Industrial animal agriculture contributes to low wages, by indentured contract and slave labor, child labor, and human trafficking. Land grabbing acquisitions steal farms that may have been in families for generations. Operators of factory farms who are the suppliers to large agricultural interests often take on large amounts of debt to create and maintain these installations, with no guarantee of income since they are reliant on the large agricultural corporations for the animals that they rear, and at risk of receiving poor quality animals.

Industrialized animal farming, high-speed slaughterhouses and meat processing plants are generally located in poor communities and can be a catalyst for exacerbating a form of cognitive dissonance leading to a moral indifference to life, with resulting depressive and/or aggressive behavioral problems inducing criminal acts, violent behaviors, and substance abuse. These behaviors aggravate the circumstances of the poverty-stricken and make it harder to get out of poverty.