• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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    12 hours ago

    Not the person you are replying to, but that is severely underestimating the amount of factory farming. They are the dominant method of production

    Based on the EPA’s definition of a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (i.e factory farm) and USDA census data:

    All fish raised in fish farms were considered to be factory-farmed. More than 98% of hens and pigs. For chickens and turkeys, the share was more than 99%. Cows were a bit more likely to be raised outside in fields, with greater space and freedom. Nonetheless, 75% were still fed in concentrated feeding operations for at least 45 days a year.

    https://ourworldindata.org/how-many-animals-are-factory-farmed

    And even those that are not considered factory farmed don’t always look how one may think, for instance non-factory farmed cows still use plenty of grain feed

    Currently, ‘grass-finished’ beef accounts for less than 1% of the current US supply

    https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

    None of this is not limited to the US by any means. For instance in the UK:

    There are more than 1,000 US-style mega-farms in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including some holding as many as a million animals

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/18/uk-has-more-than-1000-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals

    Factory farming is unfortunately what scales well. If we want less factory farming we need the industry itself to be smaller. That is no impossible goal. Germany, for instance, has seen its overall meat consumption fall over the last decade

    In 2011, Germans ate 138 pounds of meat each year. Today, it’s 121 pounds — a 12.3 percent decline. And much of that decline took place in the last few years, a time period when grocery sales of plant-based food nearly doubled.

    https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian