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Factory Farming
What
Is Factory Farming? Is It Good Or Bad?
By Siri Undlin
Earth.com staff writer
What we eat, and the
ways we farm our food, are complicated. With more humans on Earth than ever
before, factory farming has risen as a way to feed people everywhere.
So, what is factory
farming? Is it good or bad?
Let’s start with a
concrete definition.
Factory farming is
defined as a system of rearing livestock using intensive methods, by which
poultry, pigs, or cattle are confined indoors under strictly controlled
conditions.
There is plenty to
say about the complexities of food and farming. There is incredible pressure on
farmers as they do their work.
The planet has a
growing population that needs to be fed.
Asking whether a
global industry is “good” or “bad” is never a completely straight forward
question.
However, if you value
the health of the planet, the civil rights of human beings, and you are against
cruelty towards animals, there are really no ifs, ands, or buts about it —
factory farming is bad.
Agriculture and Society
By studying ancient
cultures, scientists understand that around 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers
started to transition to agriculture in order to provide for themselves and
their families.
With family units
becoming more stationary, more complex societies began to form.
What started with
cultivating wild plants like peas and lentils would eventually lead to skyscrapers
and iPhones.
The earliest farmers
we know of resided in the fertile crescent — modern-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria,
Palestine, Israel, Turkey, and Iran.
This was not just one
single group of people, though.
Isolated groups
of genetically diverse communities remained insular for
the first few thousand years.
Instead of a melting
pot, these settlements remained separate while trading tools, ideas, and
communications with one another.
Over the course of
tens of thousands of years, humanity went from domesticating goats to consuming
over 550 million Big Mac burgers every year (in
the United States alone).
But at what cost?
Cruelty Towards
Animals
According to
ASCPA, 94% of Americans agree that animals deserve to live
abuse and cruelty-free.
It is well documented
that factory farms contain animals to cages, crates, and crowded pens.
A term that pops up
again and again while investigating these practices is “CAFOs.”
This stands for
concentrated animal feeding operations.
A CAFO can house
thousands or millions
of animals.
These facilities are
seemingly efficient means for packing animals together in the smallest space
possible.
This is done in order
to garner the highest profit. Not surprisingly, these operations have extremely
negative impacts on animal welfare.
For example, while
the U.S. slaughters over 9 billion chickens every year and another 30 million
are used for egg production, chickens are excluded from all federal animal protection laws.
Female chickens are
debeaked. After mutilation, they are confined to small cages.
They are stuffed
together so tightly that their movements are extremely constricted.
They are unable to
live the active and social lives that chickens exhibit
naturally.
When animals are
stressed by over-crowded conditions, disease spreads easily.
The more you learn
about the conditions of chickens, pigs, cows, and aquatic life in factory
farming conditions, the worse it gets.
It is difficult to
comprehend the level of cruelty humans can exert towards other species.
And if you’ve ever
driven across the middle states of the U.S, you probably smelled these farms
well before you saw them.
Dead Zones and Other Environmental Factors
Cruelty towards
animals expands when you look at factory farms’ impact on the globe.
The environmental
effects of factory farms are nothing short of catastrophic.
Major concerns
include the spread of infectious diseases, water pollution, and air pollution.
Phillip Lymbery, the
author of Farmageddon, explains that the focus needs to be “moving
the issue out of being a technical niche to get people to understand industrial
farming as a big, global problem.”
Lymbery stresses the
fact that while factory farming might seem more efficient and cost-effective at
first, the invisible costs of these operations far outweigh the benefits.
One of the previously
invisible costs that we are suddenly learning a lot more about are “dead
zones.”
A dead zone is an
area in the sea where farm pollutants create algal blooms that “kill off or
disperse all marine life.”
One of the largest
dead zones is in the Gulf of Mexico. Toxins from the global meatpacking
industry are largely to blame.
Opinion vs. Science
Factory farming has
been talked about as necessary for producing food on a global scale.
It lowers costs for
farmers. It reduces the prices of meat and dairy for consumers.
These statements
reveal a narrow economic viewpoint. This perspective assumes that we live on a
planet of unlimited resources. If we do not invest in a livable planet, none of
that matters.
Scientists and
activists have been ringing the alarm bell for years on the dangers of this way
of looking at industry and society.
With growing
awareness of climate change and sustainability practices, people are finally
starting to listen. Consumers are not powerless.
Here is some food for
thought: one third of Earth’s land is used for meat and dairy
production.
However, a recent
study shows that if Americans switch their diets from beef to beans, the United
States would achieve 46 to 75 percent of the reductions needed to meet
their 2020 greenhouse gas emission goals.
This is an exciting
prospect. It is possible for us to make different choices, better choices for
the health of our planet.
With these factors in
mind, do you think factory farming is good or bad? What are your experiences
with meat production and consumption?
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