From Cattle to Capital: Exchange Value, Animal Commodification, and Barbarism

In the past half-century, massive structural, geographic, and technological changes have occurred in livestock production. This 'livestock revolution' has raised considerable environmental, public health, and ethical concerns. The majority of analyses concerning the negative outcomes associated with these transformations usually condemn industrial technologies as the root of the problem. This article argues that the force behind technological developments in livestock production is to aid capital's blind drive for self-expansion and self-accumulation and is the source of the majority of contemporary food animal suffering. It analyzes (1) the paramount role of generalized commodity production in altering the welfare of food animals and (2) the potential of fundamentally improving human relations with food animals within the system of capital.