Everyone likes to eat, and out appetite is increasing. Burgers, chicken, pork chops and such are all classic American comfort foods. What’s not comfortable are the conditions in which the animals that provide us with our food are kept. Worse still, are the disastrous side effects of these factory farms on the animals and the communities. In this blog I will discuss the industrialized farming system known as CAFOs, which stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, and the negative effect their practices have on American communities.
Gone are the days of cattle roaming the fields and chickens scurrying in the yard, and the natural cycle of farming. These factories pack the animals in tightly, in a shuttered windowless building, with no room to move. The definition of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a single CAFO can hold 1000 cattle, 2500 large swine (over 55 lbs.), 10000 smaller swine (under 55 lbs.), 55,000 turkeys, 125,000 chicken or 82,000 laying hens. Daniel Imhoff, author of The CAFO Reader states that these animals have been reduced from living creatures to mere production units, bred and altered to meet the needs of their confines, not those of the animals. No sun, artificial feed, and standing in their own waste are all part of the deplorable conditions these poor animals are subject too.
These CAFOs also have negative effects on the health of the animals as well as the people that work with them and live in the surrounding communities. These close confines create and ideal environment for the spread of disease and therefore mortality. This has been combated with the widespread administration of antibiotics. Imhoff writes “The states of Iowa and North Carolina, each administer more antibiotics for animal production than the entire human population of the U.S. uses for medical purposes.” This in important fact to know because this diminishes the potency of out medicines, and it has given way to new infectious disease-causing micro-organisms. Much of these illnesses come from the waste these animals produce. The high concentration of animals creates a grotesque amount of waste. A 100 acre CAFO produces the same quantity of waste as 100,000 city inhabitants, but instead of controlled monitoring sewage plants, the waste is dumped in “lagoons”. This produces run off that gets into the soil and ground water, and essentially poisoning the surrounding communities. Recent studies show that they produce 18 percent of greenhouse gases, and one study by World Watch Institute suggests 51 percent, all of which contribute to global climate change.
We all need to, and enjoy eating, but we need to mind the true cost of our appetites. As the Center for Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University states the current system “presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health, and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food.” As the consumer we need the start putting quality ahead of quantity, both for our own good and for that of our animal friends.
