Steve, you miss the point entirely.
YES, feedlots have been around for centuries. My own family has raised heards of beef cattle and fed them in barnlots. The principle word here is "CONFINEMENT."  Confinement lots encourage the spread of disease and are not healthy.
NO, I am not against making a profit. It is not capitalism per se that is dangerous, it is corporate capitalism that endangers true free enterprise. Read I'll Take My Stand.

CAFO or confined animal feeding operations, are nothing new. They have been around before Texas became a state, these are commonly known as a feedlots. It is not a factory farm or some other new way of raising cattle. Ranchers sell there calves to feedlots from about 800- 900 lbs. The feedlot fattens them up for market. The problem, the government designated feedlots as CAFO's for regulation by the EPA, Dept of Agriculture, FDA, et al, for regulatory purposes.

Due to regulation, small feedlots have a hard time making it these days. Guess what, large ag corporations now have the predominance of the feedlots for two reasons. They can afford the cost of regulation and they all have by agricultural by products to dispose of, that cattle can eat. The bottom line, the big guys can afford the regulations and feed cheaply. The problem is, these large corporations actually like regulations, they cut down competition.

Stop blaming capitalism, this is not capitalism where government and huge industries combine force out everyone else by regulation, it is Fascism. The problem is government regulation not capitalism. There is another term for it in the livestock industry, vertical integration.