Thursday, August 30, 2007
Industrial meat production began in the early 1900s when livestock raised on open ranges in the western U.S. were shipped to slaughterhouses on the East Coast. In the 1980s, meat plants went rural, and big-time producers, led by Iowa Beef Packers Inc. (IBP), automated and accelerated the process to boost profit. Since then, factory farms, also known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), have become the norm, replacing small farms as the way most people get their meat and dairy. CAFOs rely on hazardous working conditions and unsanitary methods, causing health problems and environmental degradation.
Factory farming consumes resources at an alarming rate. One calorie of beef expends 33 percent more fossil fuels than one calorie of potatoes. And in the U.S., 70 percent of corn is fed to livestock, while worldwide, 80 percent of soybeans are used for animal feed. Livestock are meant to eat grass. But in the industrial system, their feed is not meant to nourish, but to cause animals to gain weight. As fisheries plummet and millions of people suffer from malnourishment, roughly one-third of the global fish harvest is fed to livestock.
Factory farming also devours and contaminates water. It takes roughly 25,000 liters of water to produce eight ounces of beef, and the meat industry pollutes more groundwater than all other industries combined. CAFOs also contribute to land degradation. In just 10 years, an area in the Amazon rainforest twice the size of Portugal has been destroyed to pasture cattle for slaughter.
Then there’s the human cost. Every year, one in three meatpacking workers is reportedly injured on the job. (Because many are undocumented immigrants, injuries often go unreported, so the actual number is undoubtedly higher.) Most prominent injuries are lost limbs and gashed hands and arms. Furthermore, animal waste emits notable amounts of ammonia, hydrogen sulfate, methane, and particulate matter from fecal dust, all of which can make its way into human lungs. A February 2002 study out of Iowa State and University of Iowa found that 70 percent of U.S. factory farm workers suffer from acute bronchitis. Mental health is also affected, due to the toxic atmosphere and the stress of having to gut 60 animals every hour.
Consumers of meat produced in factory farms are threatened by diseases such as avian flu, mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and bacterial illnesses. Cattle are kept in cramped crates in piles of feces where E. coli flourishes. Since the slaughtering process is so quick and careless, these bacteria are carried onto the flesh. It can also contaminate flesh through spillage from the intestines.
Manure from industrial farms is inherently toxic due to the use of chemical pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones. Every year, American factory farms generate 600 million tons of nitrogen from manure, which makes its way into the soil, rivers, ocean, and drinking water. A synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution states about animal waste: “It’s untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased organisms. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated.” Instances of brain damage, depression, neurological disorders, miscarriages, asthma, bronchitis, and birth defects abound in communities surrounding factory farms, due to the pollutants released into the air, earth, and water.
Because antibiotics and antimicrobials cause animals to gain weight, these drugs are used consistently in factory farms, generating resistant strains of bacteria. The U.S. General Accounting Office states: “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been transferred from animals to humans, and many studies we reviewed found this transference poses significant risks for human health.” One of numerous examples of resistant bacteria linked to factory farming is the 1998 strain of salmonella that infected a Nebraska boy and was resistant to 13 antibiotics. The European Union has banned all growth-promoting uses of antibiotics in animals; the U.S. has not.
Regulations do exist, but they are minimal and largely ignored, both by companies and the government agencies that are supposed to monitor them. According to the Center for Public Integrity, “The meat industry has created one of Washington’s most effective influence machines. … From filling lawmakers’ campaign coffers to plying them with all-expenses-paid trips and dangling the possibility of lucrative post-employment opportunities, the meat interests have overwhelmed the supposedly objective decision-making process in Washington.” Industrialized meat production is now taking over much of the developing world as big meat corporations move production to countries with even fewer regulations and cheaper labor, such as China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
Worldwatch sums it up best: “Factory farming is an inefficient, ecologically disruptive, dangerous, and inhumane way of making meat.” Beginning in 2001, even the World Bank stopped funding large-scale factory farms in developing countries, not because of labor rights or environmental sustainability, but because factory farming methods are too costly.
Once a sustainable, holistic practice, raising animals for food has become a monster under the influence of big business — one that devours resources, tortures animals, abuses workers, sickens people, and ransacks the earth. It matters how we treat animals. It affects our physical and emotional health and the health of this planet. We are not alone in this world. Cows, chickens, and pigs all share the earth with us. It is high time we showed some common sense, and a flair for survival, and decided to share it with them as well.