Maybe not for most people reading the people reading the EA forum. I think if you take a serious look at the issues of animal suffering and farmed animal conditions, you’ll probably arrive at a number similar to existing statistics on numbers of factory farmed animals.
But I think there’s plenty of people who have motivated reasoning to doubt those statistics, or minimise the badness/factory-ness of a farm, or farming practice. For example, my extended family run a dairy farm. I remember when first reading about factory farms thinking ‘well, the family farm isn’t like these factory farms… right? ’
I also think it’s possible animal agriculturists will seize on uncertainty around the term ‘Factory Farm’ to sow confusion and whitewash animal welfare issues. Suppose that in the future, the concept of ‘Factory Farms’ gains widespread public vilification, in the same way that ‘Fossil Fuels’ does now. Now imagine a pan-European animal agriculture lobby group seizes on the looseness of the term ‘Factory Farm’ to ensure European farms aren’t associated with it:
European farms aren’t Factory Farms! We have better animal welfare standards here. There are cage-free policies here! Animal welfare laws! Standards and checks! It’s only farms outside of Europe that are factory farms, those are the ones that should be counted in the statistics, not European farms!
I don’t see this as “economic or moral incentive to sit on the borderline” but rather ‘if forced to adhere to higher welfare standards, there’s an incentive to maximise the reputational gain from this’.
Maybe not for most people reading the people reading the EA forum. I think if you take a serious look at the issues of animal suffering and farmed animal conditions, you’ll probably arrive at a number similar to existing statistics on numbers of factory farmed animals.
But I think there’s plenty of people who have motivated reasoning to doubt those statistics, or minimise the badness/factory-ness of a farm, or farming practice. For example, my extended family run a dairy farm. I remember when first reading about factory farms thinking ‘well, the family farm isn’t like these factory farms… right? ’
I also think it’s possible animal agriculturists will seize on uncertainty around the term ‘Factory Farm’ to sow confusion and whitewash animal welfare issues. Suppose that in the future, the concept of ‘Factory Farms’ gains widespread public vilification, in the same way that ‘Fossil Fuels’ does now. Now imagine a pan-European animal agriculture lobby group seizes on the looseness of the term ‘Factory Farm’ to ensure European farms aren’t associated with it:
European farms aren’t Factory Farms! We have better animal welfare standards here. There are cage-free policies here! Animal welfare laws! Standards and checks! It’s only farms outside of Europe that are factory farms, those are the ones that should be counted in the statistics, not European farms!
I don’t see this as “economic or moral incentive to sit on the borderline” but rather ‘if forced to adhere to higher welfare standards, there’s an incentive to maximise the reputational gain from this’.
edit: added last paragraph