Page 63 - Fall2013

All Thumbs Book Reviews

The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of lurking in the purest scientific circles. Some of
Industrial Animal Factories the most extreme members of this cult claim they
Edited by Daniel Imhoff don’t recognize the reality of anything that can’t
Published by The Foundation for be measured, quantified, touched or seen. Such
Deep Ecology in collaboration with a view doesn’t stand up to very close inspection.
Watershed Media, first edition 2010 That rationale may conveniently dispose of feel-
ings but does it really make sense to think that
Each chapter in this extensive collection of way? What is a thought? Can it be measured or
essays on factory farming is written by a differ- is it tangible? Such a paradigm destroys thoughts,
ent author. The authors I’m most familiar with are science, philosophy, ideas, and itself just as com-
Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin. pletely as feelings.
One of the first chapters is written by Andrew Wendell Berry also touches on the effects of
Kimbell who looks at some of the historical as- ruthless, amoral science. If all of nature is just
pects and ideologies behind how we got where a mechanism or collection of mechanisms, the
we are vis-a-vis industrial animal factories. He objective is to force the mechanism to work bet-
and other authors give several examples of what ter, faster, or more efficiently. If nature won’t do
happens when science is separated from morality it, then we will replace nature with technology
or feeling. Genetic engineers produce or try to and factories that will. The goal is always greater
produce chickens without feathers and pigs with capacity and efficiency. The factories get bigger
more meat that are so deformed they can’t walk. and consume more and more resources, including
Feedlot operators crowd cows so close they end land. That leads to less room and less tolerance
up coated with their own excrement. Keeping for landowners who work with nature. Thereby
that waste out of the meat is almost impossible the United States has been transformed from a
when it comes time to butcher, so their solution is land of owners connected to life-giving nature
to hose the carcasses off with toxic chemicals and into a land of employees serving a machine.
irradiate them. Hog factories confine the animals Michael Pollan several years ago bought a
to crates insuring these tortured creatures are in steer creatively named No. 534 and followed his
pain their entire lives. Chickens suffer similar progress from the ranch where he was born to
fates. the feedlot where he met his ultimate fate. Life
How do people who participate in this horror on the ranch was not bad. Life at the feedlot was
live with themselves? Kimbell expounds on what typical. Antibiotics are required on feedlots or the
he calls cold evil. Unlike the more familiar hot animals would all be dead shortly after arrival.
evil that seethes with rage and violent emotion, Even with antibiotics they can’t last long on the
this cold evil feels nothing. These animals are large amounts of grain they are fed. Pollan talked
not viewed as living beings, but as machines. to a veterinarian who very frankly admitted that
Their screams are the equivalent of the screech- if the cattle had a little more space and an ap- How do
ing sound your car makes when a belt is worn propriate diet, he would be out of a job. people who
out or improperly adjusted. The screams don’t Smithfield is one of the biggest factory participate
mean pain, just malfunction. There are no living farmers in the world. This company has polluted
animals on factory farms, only production units. North Carolina as much as North Carolina will in this
Cold evil has no empathy. It does not recognize allow so they have moved on to Romania and horror
good or evil. Nothing is good. Nothing is evil. Poland to see how much they can get away with live with
Everything merely exists. It is machine-like in there.
its indifference. There is a cult of objectivity Factory farms are not just confined to land themselves?
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