Old MacDonald's Factory Farm: The Myth of the Traditional Farm and the Shocking Truth About Animal Suffering in Today's Agribusiness

by C. David Coats

There are no frolicking animals on today's farms, where mass-production techniques and modern business-efficiency programs turn out high volumes of standardized product at minimal cost per unit. But the product is living creatures, raised in an unnatural environment under appalling conditions. Coats, an animal-rights activist and vegetarian, catalogues a chamber of horrors, animal by animal. Here are pigs in crates, two-by-six feet, often chained to the floor; dairy cows that normally live for 20 years are ready for hamburger by the age of seven, having produced four to five calves and 25-30 tons of milk. It used to take three years for beef calves to reach salable weight; now they go from birth to slaughter in 11 months. Coats has equally gruesome stories about veal production (calves crated, kept in the dark, anemic) and chicken factories. He discusses genetic engineering, environmental effects, transportation of live animals and the ethics of factory farming. While his book makes a strong case for vegetarianism, Coats also advises consumers how to look for humanely raised meat products.

Genres: Food

186 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book presents a strong case for vegan eating. The author's description of the inhumane way that farm/factory animals are treated from birth to death in the name of feeding humans is shameful. If we treated our domestic pets in ways remotely similar to those that we subject billions of cattle, pigs, and fowl, we would be thrown under the jails. What the book describes as standard operating procedures in the processing of animals for human consumption is, to me, morally wrong and I believe must have deadly consequences to the consumer on molecular and spiritual levels.

[Peacegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

A universe is, indeed, to be pitied whose dominating inhabitants are so unconscious and so ethically embryonic that they make life a commodity, mercy a disease, and systemic massacre a pastime and a profession. - Prof. J Howard Moore

Those readers new to the issue of factory farming may want to read a more recently published book, not to say that the meat industry has changed since Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm was written. The only major difference is that today, 10 billion animals are slaughtered for meat yearly in the US, up from the 5 billion at the time of this book’s publication.

If you are already familiar with factory farming practices, most of the revelations in these pages won’t be new to you. (Although I was surprised to see weaned piglets being kept in battery cages until large enough to go to the “finishing” pens.) As with many books of this nature, there are examples of the grim humor industrial agribusiness seems to excel at. For example, a children’s coloring book distributed by Wisconsin Agribusiness Foundation presents the bare wooden veal crate as “somewhat like the crib you had when you were a baby.”

The final chapters discuss the environmental and human health impacts of factory farming, as well as philosophical underpinnings which have allowed this unacceptably cruel industry to thrive. Influential thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes posited that animals had no souls, minds, or senses of pain, and thus humans had no obligation to treat them with any kindness whatsoever. Yet

Animals were not the only beings to suffer from St. Thomas’s dictums. At one point he argued that women also had no souls and therefore man had no moral obligation to them. From today’s perspective, Aquinas’s views on the possession of souls seem somewhat suspect.

[Amy Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really unique look at factory farming by a phenomenal writer. I've read dozens of books on the plight of farmed animals and animal rights but this was a really unique idea. He uses idyllic pictures of how people imagine these animals to be living from vintage children's storybooks and contrasts them with the cruel reality in photos. He adresses how from childhood we're shown that all is nice on Old MacDonald's Farm,but it isn't so,he goes into how we're trained by these cutesy parts of childhood not to look for the truth and the hypocritical way we're raised to love bunnies and puppies yet eat just as lovable animals and how they become categorized in our minds. A fascinating book. His writing style is brilliant,he is so talented.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found in Mama Kate's library at The Beautiful Idea. I knew what I was going to find in here, but I was still horrified. People are really judgy towards vegans saying that we are too judgy. I don't feel like I'm judgy enough. I don't understand how anyone with any shred of decency can support these horrors. (I can't talk to the people who have less privilege than me in terms of what we need to be doing or not doing. I know there are people out there just trying to survive who can't carry one more burden. I'm only talking to the privileged people here, the ones who have the capacity to take responsibility for this society.) Vegans sometimes treat the workers at slaughter houses and cafos like the enemy, but they are really victims too. The animals and the workers are victims of the consumer who pays for these atrocities to occur. Why don't more people see that. How am I supposed to interact with people who are complicit in terrors and torture and incomprehensible cruelty??? I know the producer is to blame. I know that. I know that the industry has spent so much money on misinformation campaigns and on misleading the public. But animal rights activists have worked so hard to overcome this. They've worked so hard to expose what happens in the animal agriculture industry. The information is out there and easily accessible. It feels like only people who willfully turn away could possibly not know. And even they know. They know and still want to enjoy the please of eating flesh and animal secretions without looking and fully acknowledging the horror of how these products are made.

[Mapleleaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

By chance, my family rented a beautiful suite in Seattle one year and found this book on the shelf. This is the first book I have ever read about the terrible conditions and treatment of animals in factory farming. What an eye-opener! My husband asked if we could buy a copy of the book in the area. The suite owner told us that it has been out of print but we can borrow it (yes, we mailed it back to him). It was only after I finished it that my husband and I realized that the author was the suite owner. I've since read other books depicting conditions suffered by animals but Mr Coats presents the best persuasive account for vegetarianism.