I may be wrong, but I believe it is unlikely that the vast majority of people in this country will pay a large premium for meat and produce they can buy cheaper elsewhere. I do know people who do, but not many. One of my Aunts is one of those people who insist on “organic” and “local” fresh produce, she has the time to go to the farmer’s market downtown every day to pick up that produce and lives in an area with a large amount of traditional (Amish) farmers. She also has enough income to afford the premium prices charged by those farmers. Not everyone does.

I think that the average person, most of whom have never been to a farm and who’s idea of farm life is informed by “Charlotte’s Web” are easy marks for PETA and others who believe that farmers abuse animals for fun and profit. That is patently untrue. Every farmer wants to make money, the best way to do that is to get the animals to market weight as fast as possible. Abusing the animals would slow down the process and loose the farmer money, in some years the difference between profitability and a loss on an animal is only a day or two of feed. It makes no economic sense to increase the time to market.

If you want to make changes to the standard of care for farm animals, get congress or the state legislature to change the laws. just remember the law of unintended consequences. If you raise the cost for domestic farmers to raise animals, you will make it even easier for foreign competition to take over yet another portion of the American economy.

Ain’t gona happen.

Ahem.

The other problem with that is there is no more “local” or “family” farm any more. Most of the “Family” farms that are left are multi million dollar enterprises. In my home county in Iowa there are about 4 farmers who control about 80% of the farmland (they don’t necessarily own it, but they lease it if they don’t). The mechanization of farming since the 30′s has reduced the numbers of people needed to farm each acre and made it much harder to make a living as a small scale farmer. For example, the farm my Great-grandfather owned at the turn of the century was worked by himself, his entire family, and several hired hands, is now run by one of his grandsons, as a part time job with some help from his father.

the economics dictate industrial farming, and the laws passed in the last 50 years reinforce the economics. There is no way that without structural changes in both law and buying patterns of the American public that any of the “problems” you cite could be solved.