Cruelty at Mealtime

When the subject of animal cruelty comes up, Canadians instinctively think of pets or wild animals being mistreated. The cows whose milk we take and who eventually become hamburger, the calves who are taken from their mothers and turned into veal, the birds whose eggs we eat and the birds who we turn into chicken nuggets and turkey burgers, the pigs whose bellies are sliced up thinly for our frypans—we try not to think of any of them. At some level we know that if we did not eat them they would not be killed, but we would prefer not to take responsibility for those deaths (currently just over 20 animals per capita per year). And most of us would like to think the animals are treated humanely, at least before they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Anyway, we must be a lot better than the United States, right?

No is the short answer. The period in which intensive farming has taken over world agriculture—roughly, the past half century—coincides with the period in which...