Treatment of Animals in Agriculture Factory

farming is demeaning to both humans and animals alike. The Secretary of the Farm and Food Society looks at how farmers can regain the respect of the public. "The factory farmer cannot rely, as did his forebears, on generations of experience gained from the animals themselves and handed down from father to son; he relies on a vast array of backroom boys with computing machines working to discover the breeds, feeds and environment most suited to convert food into flesh at the greatest possible speed, and every batch of animals reaching market is a sequel to another experiment..."[1] Ruth Harrison {mosgoogle}When animals were first domesticated to provide food for mankind they derived certain benefits: they were protected from predators and extremes of weather, given freedom to roam within certain limits and as far as possible their food was guaranteed. Nomads and settled pastoral communities shared their lives with their beasts, while shepherds and herdsmen, knowing their value, treated them accordingly. Certain brutal practices, such as castration, might be regarded as being offset by these advantages. Slaughter certainly left much to be desired, but was not necessarily any worse than the death they would have met in their wild state. Such disadvantages still apply today. Growth of populations, urbanisation and the industrialisation of agriculture saw a worsening of conditions for livestock. In countries like America and Australia, with vast plains only suitable for stock-rearing, animals began to be subjected to mass production and slaughter. In the early 19th Century, where once wild buffalo had wandered, herds of cattl