I’m certainly no scientist, but that’s never stopped me from developing theories. Here are two I’ve been thinking of. Some may call them cacamamie, but I’ve heard crazier things:

1. The antibiotics and hormones fed to factory farm animals to make them bigger and fatter faster must have some similar effect on the humans who eat meat and animal products from factory farms. (Since giving up such meat and reducing my consumption of dairy and eggs, I’ve lost weight without changing anything else in my diet.)
2. The rate of depression and anxiety in humans has risen since the advent of factory farming (depression rates have actually doubled every 20 years). We already know that stress at slaughter effects the texture and taste of the meat. I’d take it a step further: I suspect that pain and fear reside in animals’ bodies (ours included) on a cellular level, and that when we ingest the flesh of a tortured animal, it becomes our own.

The man who once filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act was also one of the few politicians on the national level to speak out against farm animal cruelty. From his landmark Senate speech from 2001:

The law clearly requires that these poor creatures be stunned and rendered insensitive to pain before this process begins. Federal law is being ignored. Animal cruelty abounds. It is sickening. It is infuriating. Barbaric treatment of helpless, defenseless creatures must not be tolerated even if these animals are being raised for food–and even more so, more so. Such insensitivity is insidious and can spread and is dangerous. Life must be respected and dealt with humanely in a civilized society.

When I visited Costa Rica I was shocked by how the rainforest teemed with life. It seemed like every nook of nature–and everything there was nature–was writhing with animals and plants. It was like “Planet Rainforest,” totally otherworldly. A crab loped across my hotel floor. I went on a zipline tour through the old-growth rainforest canopy, and toward the top of a tree I saw a hole in the trunk, filled with rainwater, a tiny yellow frog perched within. The moist jungle climate was almost scary; it reminded me that the life force was powerful and fierce and would not be denied. It would have its way.

The rainforest is the result of million years of co-evolution. There’s a certain kind of algae that grows nowhere but on the hair of the sloth, giving it a green sheen for camouflage. The sloth only eats leaves from the Cecropia tree in which it sleeps. It does its business on the rainforest floor once a week, and one certain kind of fly depends on it for food. The rainforest doesn’t need fertilizers or pesticides; the ecosystem knows how to keep life in balance.

Us, not so much. These days most of our food–both plants and animals–is grown as monocultures: single life forms grown or existing over great expanses (in contrast to polycultures).

Planted year after year on the same land, monocultures destroy topsoil. Agribusiness doesn’t believe in sabbaticals, the ancient Biblical recommendation that everything and everyone get a rest once in awhile: land every seven years, people and their work animals every seven days (and now, of course, tenured professors every seven years). Sabbaticals would reduce profit, in the short term, by 14%.

Monocultures also require more and different pesticides each year, since a single virus, bacteria, fungus, disease, or pest can wipe out the whole lot in a heartbeat. It’s not just crops, though, factory farm animals are also monocultures: there’s one breed of laying hen, one breed of pig, and so on. The ubiquitous Broad-Breasted White Turkey is the product of such bizarre breeding that it can no longer naturally reproduce. Animals on factory farms are so vulnerable to disease that they ingest “sub-therapeutic” antibiotics with every meal.

Animals on factory farms are bred to produce lots of milk or eggs, gain weight fast, or yield particular types of meat. They’re also almost exclusively fed the great American monoculture staple, corn. In contrast, heritage or heirloom breeds are better adapted to withstand disease and survive in harsh environmental conditions, and their bodies are better suited to living on pasture.

Naturally, thousands of animal breeds and crop varieties and the valuable genetic diversity they once possessed have disappeared since farming went industrial. Our diets have become “mono” along with them; when we eat meat, we’re eating more corn. Variety is the spice of life; the food we eat, however we may season it, has become dangerously unvaried. Thanks to the flavor manipulations of modern food science, though, we don’t even notice.

I’m no scientist, but I would guess that monocultures are to the food world what marrying your sibling is to the human world: a shortsighted genetic practice for which one eventually pays a terrible price. Monocultures also remind me of the mind-numbing sameness of airports. You get the same generic food and stores in every airport. It’s hard to get anything fresh and real; “airport land” is a corporate, airless bio-dome. You are trapped: if you want to ever get anywhere far away, it’s literally their way or the highway.

Luckily farmers’ markets are the opposite of airports. Those odd tomatoes you see there every summer, veiny and misshapen as goiters, in every shade and combination of red, yellow, green, and purple, are heirloom breeds. Same with the eggs that have a pale green shell. Most of the meat you see at the farmer’s market is from heirloom breeds, too. On menus, it’s a good bet that when a breed of animal or vegetable is named, it’s not a monoculture. Type in your zip code at Eat Well Guide to get to the good stuff.

I’ve never been to Ohio. However, I love the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song “Ohio.” Neil Young wrote it after seeing photos of the Kent State shooting in Life magazine. I’m writing this after seeing the recent footage of animal abuse on an Ohio dairy farm. I know for sure that this post won’t be as poignant as those lyrics or as gorgeous as those four voices, but it must be written nonetheless.

In late May, undercover video taken by animal welfare activists from Mercy for Animals hit the newswire and went viral on the web. The video was taken at Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio, and documented the sadistic abuse of dairy cows. Watch it if you dare, but if you don’t (and who could blame you?), just know that these activists risked their safety to document workers, including the farm owner, doing the following: violently punching young calves in the face, body slamming them to the ground, pulling and throwing them by their ears, using pitchforks to stab cows in the face, legs and stomach, kicking cows too injured to stand in the face and neck, beating restrained cows in the face with crowbars, twisting cows’ tails until the bones snapped, and punching cows’ udders.

Conklin Dairy Farms is a fourth-generation family operation large enough to receive federal subsidies, effectively blurring the line between “factory farms” and “family farms.” The Ohio Department of Agriculture inspected the facility three times within the last year and approved it as a “Grade A” facility.

Of course, these are egregious instances of cruel treatment, but there are plenty of other forms of more routine, legal cruelty within agribusiness. It’s cruel to confine chickens in such a way that they can’t spread their wings or to keep sows and veal calves in cages that don’t allow them to turn around at any point during their miserable lives. It’s cruel to let sick and injured animals into the food supply rather than euthanizing them humanely (and it’s cruel to use inhumane methods of euthanasia on those animals).

But here’s some news that won’t make you cringe: Ohioans for Humane Farms, endorsed by The Humane Society of the United States, The ASPCA, and Farm Sanctuary, is trying to get a measure on Ohio’s November 2010 ballot that will set certain minimum humane standards for factory farms. Michigan recently adopted such reforms, providing farm animals with more space to turn around and extend their limbs. Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine and Oregon have done the same.

I’m sad to say I was so derailed by the footage that I avoided thinking about the issue. Now, with six days left to collect the signatures needed to make it a ballot initiative, I’m asking you to please forward this to anyone you know in Ohio. At ohiohumane.com, they can take action.

The B-side to “Ohio,” by the way, was Stephen Stills’s “Find the Cost of Freedom.”