The most common defense of factory farming is that it produces cheap food.
I call bullshit on that.
Your 1.09/lb chicken breasts do not actually cost 1.09/lb.
Adam Smith talked about how the invisible hand of personal interest would lead to the most efficient production of goods and the common weal of a society.
People, supposedly rationally, would vote with their dollars, therefore allowing the wisdom of crowds to more efficiently allocate production that those moronic central planners.
Well, the rationality of consumers is an open question. A question tellingly answered by the existence of advertising firms.
Assume for a moment that consumers are rational - will this still result in a society in which the rational forces of the market serve the common weal?
Only if external costs are incorportated (internalized?) into the prices we see for goods on the shelves.
For example, if a factory dumps cyanide byproducts into a stream, the resulting environmental degradation, deaths, cancer, clean-up, lost production in other affected areas, and generally reduced quality of life for the domiciles of downstream dwellers are not reflected on the package price. So the consumer says “Wow! Hairspray for only $1 a can! Awesome! I’ll take 20!” The consumer gets a cheap product and the manufacturer gets a quick profit. But the consumer loses and the society as a whole suffers.
If the costs of the clean-up were incorportated into the price by requiring the company to avoid the spill or mitigate its effects, maybe the can of hairspray would cost $2. If consumers still buy it, it is now safe to say that hairspray production is efficient. But if the hairspray cannot be made without polluting for less than $20/can, perhaps that money is better spent elsewhere.
Even if the consumer is aware of the environmental cost, the consumer is going to pay that cost in higher taxes and shorter life expectancy whether or not they personally benefit from the cheap hairspray. So they might as well buy the cheap hairspray and look good in their little cheap consumer casket. This is called the “tragedy of the commons.”
Believers in the power of the invisible hand ought to insist on the internalization of costs. Big factory farms extrnal costs all over the place.
The cost of that cheap chicken is e-coli-rich effluent, erosion, higher gas prices, and pollution. The expitation of the workers in the polutry plants (read “Fast Food Nation”) also leads to other external costs. In Harrisonburg, the city had to spend $42,000,000 on a new high school because the immigration encouraged by unskilled poultry processing jobs has led to an influx of children who have many special (read: expensive) needs, whether they are ESL, Special Ed, or disciplinary costs. The city has also seen a huge increase in crime as a result of the new urban underclass that has developed. I don’t know how you would put a dollar sign on it, but the all-encompassing stench of confined chicken and turkey houses sits like a sick miasma over the city. How much have the residents of Harrisonburg sacrificed in property values in order to have cheap chicken?
My small farm can’t necessarily compete in quantity with the big boys. But if the big boys were not being subsidized by the rest of society, my environmentally friendly beef would be cheaper.
Plus, it just tastes better.
