Hi! Great post. Im a small farmer in Canada (sheep, not pigs ), and youre absolutely right about how many people know a farmer (and see things are done humanely on that farm), but likely still eat factory farmed meat. The very best solution that consumers can effect to take the power away from factory farming and their disregard for animal welfare is to shop direct from the farm! You might pay a bit more because those small farmers need to have an income, and their profit margins work way differently than a huge factory farm, but by doing so, you have helped a family put their kids in music lessons. You've sourced your meat from an animal who spent its life in the sunshine, with a great deal more freedom to move, play, and enjoy life, that was likely not medicated on a whim, and who only ever had one REALLY bad day, and it was over quick.

The next best solution is to start farming yourself, if at all possible. This might be as simple as a pot of tomatoes grown on your apartment balcony, as unorthodox as tilling up your backyard and planting a huge garden with a few chickens to scratch between the rows, providibg fertilizer(manure), pest control, and eggs and meat from a completely verifiable source(city bylaws permitting you keeping chickens of course), or as crazy as buying a ramshackle plot of land in the country and raising crops and/or livestock to sell to all your friends who still live in the city!