At the supermarket (Walmart's, usually) I pick up the organic eggs and think, "Should I spend the extra money to get these?" When I was working, I would readily, but now I'm retired on a much reduced income. So I think, "I don't want to patronize producers who torture animals, and food from humanely run farms is healthier for me . . . . but my tight food budget has to last till the end of the month. I often end up ignoring the animal-welfare factor and just think about what way of spending my money will get me the best nutritional bang for my buck. The no hormone milk is over $4.00/gal., while the cheap strore brand of milk is only a bit over $2.00/gal. Then I think about how me not patronizing the worst of the producers isn't going to shut them down. So, lately, I've been opting for the cheaper food products.

This thread stimulated me to do some more reading about industrial farming. It is awful. I may allocate my money a bit differently. I have only myself to consider. But a low income family has to think about what their kids would have to give up, if more money was spent on food from better farms. As discussed above, it's hard to give up things to spend more on food that often doesn't taste any different. Then, again, do all kids really have to have smart phones? (I know families getting food stamps where every member has a smart phone, including kids.)

We, as a country, have to look at our priorities. If we, as a nation, insist on better treatment of farm animals, then better conditions will prevail and the industry will evolve more efficient ways of organizing better conditions. Those ways won't ever be as cheap as the current practice of treating animals as unfeeling units, but they can be evolved less expensively than when those practices are employed only on small boutique-like farms. What's needed is for more people in all income brackets to care. We need wider understanding of how bad it is - worse than I thought. Then we need to change our culture of what is acceptable to civilized people.

At one time, working conditions for humans were awful in the food manufacturing business. I'm thinking of how the novelist, Upton Sinclair, exposed conditions in the meat packing business. The industry said that poor working conditions for humans were necessary to produce food cheaply. After reading The Jungle, the country decided it can't be necessary to have amputated human body parts ground up in sausage meat. We need a similar awakening about the current deplorable conditions.