Not surprisingly, the chief executive of farm animal welfare organisation Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery is not a big fan of such a practice.
For several years, Lymbery, accompanied by journalist Isabel Oakeshott, travelled the world on an investigative journey behind the closed doors of a global industry.
The result was Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat, a somewhat disturbing and thought-provoking read.
Some 70 billion farm animals are produced worldwide every year, two-thirds of them now factory farmed. Without fuss or fanfare, farm animals have slowly disappeared from the fields.
Kept permanently indoors and ''treated like production machines'', Lymbery writes they are pushed ever further beyond their natural limits, selectively bred to produce more milk or eggs, or to grow fat enough for slaughter at a younger and younger age.
The numbers involved are mind-blowing - he cited the eerie feeling of looking down from a helicopter on a farm rearing 750,000 chickens with not a bird in sight, and of driving through a Mexican valley producing a million pigs without seeing a single animal.
Since farm animals are no longer on the land and have no access to grass or forage, their feed must be transported to them, sometimes across several continents.
Together, they consume a third of the world's cereal harvest, 90% of its soya meal and up to 30% of the global fish catch - resources Lymbery says could be fed direct to the starving masses.
Without a change of tack, he believes mega-piggeries, mega-dairies, battery-reared beef and genetically engineered crops - and animals - will soon be the norm.
Farmageddon is compelling reading. But if you're looking for some light pre-dinner reading, it could well put you off your supper.
Sally Rae is ODT agribusiness reporter.
