Industrial animal agriculture is an economic system of interlocking industries coordinated by large corporations that apply organizationally efficient and technologically advanced production techniques to achieve profitability by generating high volumes of animal-sourced foods at low cost.[1]
Note: we are not aware of a concise “overview” definition, so we propose this one.
Naturally this system has many more parts than those on the diagram. For example, there are multiple steps between feed crop harvests and the delivery of processed feed to factory farms. Live animal transport happens multiple times during most animals’ lives. Animal by-products and some animals go to rendering plants. There are administrative, marketing, legal, and lobbying functions, particularly at the top level. Finished products are transported to distributors, wholesalers, retailers, food service companies, and food manufacturers engaged in further processing.
Given the many parts of the industrial animal ag system, it is challenging to generalize. We propose the following list of key characteristics:[1,2]
Corporate control at most levels. Increasing vertical and horizontal integration. Commodity production (i.e., uniform inputs and outputs). Large numbers of tightly confined animals. Operations specialized by animal type and by sex and/or age. Animal living, transport, and slaughter conditions based on productivity. Animal bodies adapted through genetics and mutilations. Unnatural corn and soy-based diets and pervasive drug use. Monoculture feed crops with high chemical applications. Low-wage workers performing simple repetitive tasks at all levels. Government support through subsidies and weak regulation. Low selling costs reliant on negative externalities.
Rossi, J., & Garner, S. A. (2014). Industrial farm animal production: A comprehensive moral critique. Journal of agricultural and environmental ethics, 27, 479-522, p. 480. [Industrial farm animal production (aka industrial animal ag) “is characterized by: corporate ownership and/or control; economic consolidation and vertical integration; the extreme confinement of large numbers of animals; the use of ‘‘technological sanders’’ such as growth promoting antibiotics; the use and long-distance transport of remotely-grown concentrated feedstuffs, instead of forage or pasture-based feeding; and tight control over the breeding, feeding and living conditions of animals so as to achieve the greatest production at the lowest cost and in the shortest amount of time.”]
James M. MacDonald (2018) CAFOs: Farm Animals and Industrialized Livestock Production, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, Abstract. [“Industrialized livestock production can be characterized by five key attributes: confinement feeding of animals, separation of feed and livestock production, specialization, large size, and close vertical linkages with buyers.”]
Several terms are often used interchangeably with industrial animal agriculture, including industrial farm animal production (or IFAP), intensive animal agriculture, and factory farming. They all refer to the industrialization of animal agriculture.
Throughout this site, the terms factory farming and industrial animal ag are used interchangeably, often shortening the latter term to animal ag when referring to this system.
We differentiate between the factory farming system and the term factory farm. A factory farm is a single operation at one location. And though factory farms in general are a key component of the factory farming system (aka industrial animal agriculture) they are just one component among many, starting with feed crop production and ending with slaughterhouses and meat processing.