Factory Farming : Who has the Power?
The animal factory farming system has come under close scrutiny in the recent past especially the treatment of animals, their living conditions and its effects to the environment. This is especially through literature and media in the form of movies and documentaries and social networking sites which describe the plight of the animals bred in large numbers and the increase in the carbon footprint. These animals are namely: cows for beef, pigs for pork and chickens for both eggs and meat. Of which cows are attributed to release huge amounts of methane gas which contribute to global warming. The question then arises who has the power to ameliorate the effects of factory farming to the environment and at the same time improve the breeding conditions of the animals.
This is where the network exchange theory comes into play. The basic premise behind this theory is to analyze the social interactions and determine who is powerful in a social network. In other words, it is a cost-benefit analysis of the involved parties with each party’s main interest being to maximize their outcome. Applying this to the factory farming system would make the farmers(A), meat processing companies(B) and consumers(C) as the parties involved. This is ignoring the fact that there may be middlemen involved. In this scenario, the meat processing companies have significant power because they control not only the market prices for the consumers, but also the market prices of the animals from the farmers. As a result, they have most influence on society in terms of economics and general social influence which may include what company a consumer is loyal too. For instance, consumer may prefer meat processed by a company X to a company Y.
Nonetheless, I would be quick to note that in as much as the meat processing companies have significant power in terms of economic power, consumers and farmers have considerable power in terms of social capital. Particularly, if consumers would choose to reduce their daily intake of meat, this would result in a decrease of sales and thus adjusting of production volumes which would in turn reduce the net carbon emissions from animal factory farmhouses. At the same time, the market price for meat would increase and thus the farmers would increase the prices of animals and would also benefit. This would in turn result in better living conditions for animals as they would be lower demand thus less animals in each stall.
It would then follow that all parties involved in the network have the power to ameliorate the effects of the factory farming system, but at different degrees.