The animals

What is happening to them? Nothing is happening for them, that’s for sure. To their minders, their health and welfare isn’t a concern unless it affects their economic viability. As soon as Daisy isn’t earning her board and lodging she’s off to the abattoir. What sort of calculated and violent relationship is that?
It is in fact simply slave master and slave, and that practically no relationship at all, leastways not at all a pleasant situation for an animal to find herself in. Perhaps her slavery is even more pernicious than human slavery because, unlike a human, she has no way of dealing with the torment of it. She has no ability to reason or project her future, or plan an escape. Her every ‘now’ moment must be an empty place, especially as her minders are crueller and more indifferent than ever. And ever more desperate to extract all they can from their animals, to keep themselves in business. The difficulty of turning a profit is compounded by the vast numbers of consumers demanding low priced food, which means the very lowest living expenses for animals. Customers want cheap, and they’re likely to buy imported goods if they’re cheaper than home-produced.
The finger of blame certainly points to …? Who? Everyone who spends money on animal food and clothing … but there’s more to it than buying and eating. By wanting to stay uninformed about ‘methods in modern animal husbandry’, the ordinary consumer is not so very different to the shareholder of an arms manufacturer, who only wants to know about dividends not what the weapons do. No one wants to know about the provenance of the goods and services they buy because they’d have to share the responsibility for what goes on behind the scenes.