Conditions in Factory Farms are universally deplorable and a lot of people are starting to figure it out. You can tell this is true by the recent spike in references to Food Inc. in your Facebook newsfeed and the number of Colbert Report appearances by Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Luckily scientists are hot on the trend and may have a solution, one ingeniously dependent on genetic modification of animal brains:

Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the [sensation of pain.] When these mice encounter a painful stimulus, they withdraw their paws normally, but they do not become hypersensitive to a subsequent painful stimulus, as ordinary mice do.

I love science so much but this is one of those fundamentally flawed, fundamentally American approaches to problem solving:

AMERICANS: Man, I feel really bad about the horrible conditions for animals in factory farms.
COMMON SENSE: Yeah man, I feel you. Maybe we should stop eating them.
AMERICANS: Ehhhhhhh, I dunno. What if we spend millions of dollars genetically modifying their brains such that they’re physically incapable of sensing pain?
COMMON SENSE: Dude, seriously?
AMERICANS: SCIENCE!

Why solve problems elegantly with simple and responsible changes to our own behavior when we can use well funded science and comic book dreams to dramatically refashion sentient brains?