How can existing cattle and poultry farming (housing/processing) be modified to accommodate human food stock?

Question

This is a follow up question to the one below:

How can existing methods of plumping, genetic modification, and gmo feeding be altered to accommodate the need for plumper, meatier human food stock?

After taking over earth, the orcs have decided to enslave humanity and use them as a food source rather than exterminating them. This is a source of amusement for them, as they enjoy the suffering and humiliation this entails on a conquered species. After developing methods to fatten their captives up into a meaty and muscled product, they must decide on how to care for these changed organisms until they are ready to be harvested. How can existing cattle and poultry farming (housing/processing) be modified to accommodate human food stock?

Answer 1

The model you want to use is slavery. Food slavery is simply a variant of agricultural slavery as practised by many human cultures from antiquity to 19th century or so. You can find a human slavery practising society that is similar to your orcish country, look how they did it, and adjust to match.

Basic model would probably be the human slaves bound to the land. They would have no right to leave their land unless sold by their owner.

The humans would live either in their own settlements with oversight (and strict bans on anything resembling a weapon) or in large slave farms managed by Orcs. Either way they would farm their own food. Why would Orcs work to feed them? Just provide land, make them do the work. As an added benefit, there would probably be some excess to be sold. If nothing else the food they farm can feed Orcs directly.

When the owner has excess of humans they can just sell them and march them to slaughter like cattle. There would be no need to tell the humans what happens to sold slaves.

Because seriously you do not want to keep them in a state of despair, that results in wasted resources managing them and causes them serious health issues that impact the amount and quality of produced food. Much better to keep it a surprise, sell them in good condition and without attempts to resist or escape that require resources to deal with. Let the customer enjoy the shock and surprise the humans get when they realize what is coming.

Answer 2

The answer is... with some difficulty.

Most of our farm animals can withstand a wider range of temperature and conditions than puny humans can. Also, most of these animal enclosures are either too big or too small for humans. Finally, unlike our cattle, humans can be potty trained, which reduces some of the complexity about waste and feed separation.

I would say that instead of looking to how humans treat animals, orcs should take example on how humans treat other humans: Concentration camps were designed to handle as much human density as possible, and to dehumanize those interned, so I would say it is a good template to handle human cattle. I would also look to use exactly the same psychological techniques they used there, to crush all resistance while ensuring some degree of cooperation, including the use of humans as camp supervisors and "special showers" for the cattle that doesn't fit the profile, either physically or mentally.

If you don't want to go that much back, I would suggest to look at old prisons: modern ones tend to hold less humans than you would like, but old ones can be very good indeed.

You can convert farming buildings into concentration camps, but it would probably be cheaper to torn them down and build them directly. If its needed, the minimal modifications would be:

• You need the buildings to be climatized, specially on hotter/colder climates. They not need to be confortable, but at least be kept in the 12-27ºC range.
• You need to separate the feeding area, the sleeping area and the cleaning area. Unlike what it sounds, this is an advantage vs cattle (where you would have the three things on each room), as you can rotate shifts for eating, and as I said, humans can be potty trained, so you don't need a latrine for each human.
• You will need a separated maternity ward (because humans, unlike cattle, cannot fend for themselves after childbirth). This maternity ward does not need to be much better than the rest of the building but to ensure infant mortality is kept to a minimum I would recommend to emulate a hospital environment.

Slaughterhouses, on the other hand, can probably be used almost the same, although you probably will want to change how to kill humans, as it is designed for bigger/stouter animals and is way too fast if you want them to suffer. The other equipment (saws, grinders, etc), can be used on humans as it was on pigs.