Factory farms are now so big that we need a new word for them.

It has polluted our water and air, ruining quality of life for people who live near animal confinements. It has altered entire landscapes, helping drive the conversion of much of the Midwest’s biodiverse prairie grasslands to soy and cornfields growing feed for billions of animals warehoused in industrial sheds. It contributes an outsized share of planet-warming emissions, heightens the risk of another zoonotic pandemic, and causes unfathomable, normalized suffering for the animals themselves.