Food & Water Watch - Factory Farming & Food Safety
Factory farming is an unsustainable method of raising food animals
that squeezes large numbers of chickens or livestock into one
facility. In order to keep the animals under these stressful and
unhealthy living conditions, factory farms rely on routine doses of
antibiotics, which are contributing to the rise in antibiotic
resistant bacteria that can make people sick. Factory farms are not
compatible with a safe and wholesome food supply – it’s time to
get rid of factory farms. Waste From Factory Farms: An Environmental
and Public Health Crisis Small, diversified farms that raise animals
as well as other crops have always used manure as fertilizer without
polluting water. The difference with factory farms is scale. They
produce so much waste in one place that it must be applied to land in
quantities that exceed the soil’s ability to incorporate it. And the
big meat and chicken companies take no responsibility for this
waste—leaving it up to their contract farmers to figure out how to
dispose of it. The vast quantities of manure from factory farms can
— and do — make their way into the local environment where they
pollute the air and water. Many municipal water systems in the
Midwest, where many factory farms are located, must regularly
implement costly clean up techniques to remove factory farm pollution
from the water supply that would otherwise create a public health
disaster. Likewise, pollution from factory farms run of into streams
that feed into our major waterways, like the Chesapeake Bay, Great
Lakes and Gulf of Mexico—contributing to dead zones that destroy
aquatic ecosystems, recreation and livelihoods. Factory Farms Have
Replaced Independent Farmers The number of dairy, hog and beef cattle
producers in the United States has declined sharply over the last 20
years as the meatpacking, processing and dairy industries have driven
farmers to increase in scale. The tiny handful of companies that
dominates each livestock sector exerts tremendous control over the
prices that farmers receive, and these companies micromanage the
day-to-day operations of many farms. The real price that farmers
receive for livestock has trended steadily downward for the last two
decades. Most farmers barely break even. In 2012, more than half of
farmers lost money on their farming operations. Learn more about
corporate control in our food system. Food Safety Risks The stressful,
crowded conditions of factory farms make it easy for disease to
spread, which can also lead to food safety risks. When thousands of
beef cattle are packed into feedlots full of manure, bacteria can get
on their hides and then into the slaughterhouses. Contamination on
even one animal can contaminate thousands of pounds of meat inside a
slaughterhouse. In 2010, the crowded, unsanitary conditions at two
Iowa egg companies caused a recall of more than half a billion
potentially Salmonella-tainted eggs. What’s worse is that our
government, at the urging of the biggest companies, is trying to
essentially deregulate poultry inspections, and they aim to do the
same for other types of meat. Company inspectors are replacing
knowledgeable and trained government inspectors, and line speeds are
increasing, making it nearly impossible to closely inspect all the
birds headed for processing. Increased corporate control of our food
system means more factory farms, more food safety scares, and more
potentially unsafe imports.