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Mar 19, 2008
This week's theme
Words from guest wordsmith Matt Ball, founder of Vegan Outreach

This week's words
vegan
speciesism
factory farming
cartesian
karuna

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

factory farming

(FAK-tuh-ree FAHR-ming) Pronunciation Sound Clip RealAudio

noun: An industrialized system of producing meat, eggs, and milk in large-scale facilities where the animal is treated as a machine.

[From the idea of operating a large-scale farm as an efficient factory.]

Some of the characteristics of a factory farm include intensive crowding of animals, trimming of birds' beaks, cutting pigs' tails, force-feeding of ducks, injecting artificial growth hormones, restricting mobility, etc.

"'When you look at environmental problems in the US,' says [geophysicist Gidon] Eshel, 'nearly all of them have their source in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is 'optimal' only as long as degrading waterways is free."
Mark Bittman; The Meat of the Matter; The Dallas Morning News; Feb 10, 2008.

X-Bonus

There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare. -Sun Tzu, general (6th century BCE)

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