Introduction

When you think of farm life, you probably think of a quaint little farmhouse with a big barn nestled among fields and pastures.  While this used to be the norm, it is becoming less and less common in North America.  The family farm of old is being replaced with large corporate owned factory farms.  These farms, also known as CAFO’s (concentrated animal feeding operations) cause several issues including total disregard for animal welfare and environmental degradation.

We all have pictures in our minds of the cows gazing out in the pasture, of pigs wallowing in mud holes or chickens scratching the earth for bugs and worms.   While the large corporate agricultural interests spend millions of dollars in advertising to paint this picture in our minds, the fact is that their CAFO’s are hell on earth for the animals.  The animals are confined by the hundreds, thousands or in the case of chickens millions in poorly lit, poorly ventilated buildings.  Their feces and urine are mixed with water giving off noxious and toxic gases that they are forced to breathe.  Their food passes before them on a conveyor belt.   Everything that they endure is predicated in getting the maximum amount of profit from them, no thought is given to their welfare.


Environmental Impact

The environmental effects of factory farms mainly involve the waste of the animals.  Many of the factory farms produce more sewage than many small to medium sized cities.  In an effort to minimize the cost, the feces and urine are mixed with water and pumped into lagoons for storage.  There are three ways that can cause leakage of this waste into the environment, first is a heavy rain can cause the lagoon to overflow, sending the waste into local watersheds.   This has occurred several times at the Verba-Hoff factory farms located near Hudson, Michigan, sending the untreated animal waste into the Maumee and River Raisin watersheds.  Another way for this untreated waste to enter into the environment is the improper construction of the lagoons, if they are not properly lined, the waste will seep down into the groundwater polluting the whole aquifer.  The third way for the waste to enter the environment is via the generally accepted method of disposal, which is spraying the waste onto fields.  While animal waste can be used as fertilizer, the soil only has the capacity to absorb so much, the over application of the waste just builds up, meaning it will wash off the fields into the local watersheds during rain storms.


Human Impact

We have already briefly discussed how the waste from the animals is mixed with water to add in the cleanup and the resulting toxic and noxious fumes.    If you have ever walked into a barn where the animals are able to roam freely, you have had the experience of smelling the feces and urine of a few animals.  Now if you multiply that by 100, you would have to admit the smell could be slightly overpowering.  The people that work in the factory farms must endure these toxic gases daily.  Neighbors who moved to the country for fresh air must endure the smells when a factory farm moves into the area.  There have been some studies that are showing an increase in respiratory illnesses of people that either work or live near a factory farm.  There have also been some reports of people living near factory farms having elevated levels of chromium in their systems due to groundwater pollution.


Animal Welfare

The generally accepted term for what the USDA refers to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations is Factory Farms.  The name Factory Farm is very meaningful in that the animal imprisoned in such an environment is treated as a machine, not as a sentient being.   Every decision is made for maximizing profits instead of having the slightest care for the animal.  Fresh air, sunshine, being able to graze, scratch or food, all these normal activities are denied to the animal for the sake of saving a few dollars. 

While there has been a lot of attention lately to the abuses that animals endure at slaughterhouses, those that have arrived there from factory farms have endured a life of abuse and neglect.   Discussed below are the typical conditions that the various animals must endure during their lives.


Egg Laying Chickens
Picture a box that contains a small television.  Now imagine four to eight chickens being forced to spend one or two years in such a space, unable to move.  Now imagine a “barn” filled with these cages stacked one on top of the other from the floor to the ceiling, the building containing 50,000 to 100,000 or more chickens in total.  The cages are made of wire allowing the waste of the chickens to fall upon the chickens below them.  The wires of the cages cut into the feet of the chicken and rub the feathers off of their bodies as they try to stretch their wings.  This is the way they are forced to spend their lives.

When the chickens’ egg production begins to fall off, they are deprived of food and water for one to three weeks in a process caused forced molting.  During this process the hens lose 25 to 35 percent of their body weight.  Forced molting is very stressful to the hens, and combined with continuous egg laying causes the depletion of many minerals in their bones resulting in many broken bones.  Forced molting also compromises the hen’s immune system, increasing the probability of the hen contracting Salmonella and passing it on through her eggs.

Once the hen has been completely and totally spent, when forced molting will not get her egg production up to “acceptable” levels, the hen is either flung into a transport cage to be made into soup, or simply tossed alive into a dumpster to be buried in a landfill.


Pigs

Pigs are naturally inquisitive and highly social animals.  In the wild pigs will roam great distances in their search for food.  In factory farms, the 100 million pigs that are slaughtered for food annually are reduced to being treated as little more than meat producing machines, enduring many things that would be considered animal abuse if the laws applied to farm animals.

Breeding Sows are forced to be repeatedly impregnated every four months.  During this time many are confined to a two foot wide gestation crate in which they can only lie down or stand up, unable to roam or even turn around.   The gestation crate is normally placed on a hard surface with little or no bedding material, making it impossible for the sow to use their snouts to “root” which is their natural instinct.  Once the sow gives birth, she is moved to an equally small farrowing crate where her piglets are prematurely weaned so as not hamper the continued production of new pigs.  The sow gives birth to about 2 ½ litters of piglets each year.   Once the sow’s body is completely spent and she is no longer able to produce efficiently, she is sent off to slaughter.

Meat producers are the boars and the sows not selected for breeding, they endure their own forms of abuse.   The average pig is sent to the slaughterhouse when they reach the weight of 266 pounds, or about the size of a linebacker in football.  Now can you imagine what it would be like for eight linebackers living in a small one bedroom apartment 24/7?   This is approximately the same crowding that the hundreds or thousands of pigs in the metal barns of a factory must endure.   There crowded conditions cause extreme distress in the pigs, fighting among the pigs is endemic.  To reduce the possibility of injury to the pigs, their tail are “docked” without anesthesia; the males are also castrated- once again without anesthesia.   The pigs endure this while standing on hard floors standing or laying in feces and urine.


Dairy Cows

When you think of dairy cows, you generally think of cows grazing in the pasture under sunny skies being content.  This is the ideal that the big dairy industry wants us to believe is still occurring. Maybe you have seen the dairy advertisement about the “Happy Cows,” in California. This could not be further from the truth.  The vast majority of the dairy cows in the United States spend their days confined in lots wading through mud and manure, or they are packed into metal buildings.

As the milk we get from them is meant to feed their calves, the cows must be continually impregnated to ensure a steady supply of milk.   All the male calves and the female calves that are not required to replenish the herd are either sold for beef production or sold to be raised for veal; both of which will be discussed later.

Through selective breeding, and artificial hormones, modern dairy cows can produce up to 100 gallons of milk a day.  This amount of milk production can cause an infection to develop in the udder and teats, so to prevent this, the cows are routinely given antibiotics which can be passed on in the milk, along with dead pus cells from the infection.

Cows in a natural environment would live for about 25 years, but the continual impregnating combined with the overproduction of milk leaves the cows completely spent and broken in three or four years.  When the cow is sent off to the slaughterhouse to be turned into hamburger, they are so weak that they can hardly stand or walk.  The vast majority of the “downer” cows are actually dairy cows.  These cows, too weak to walk or stand, are prodded with forklifts or cattle prods, water is sprayed down their throats, they are kicked and pulled; all in an effort to get them to stand.


Veal Calves

Can you imagine being torn away from your mother soon after you were born?   Can you imagine instead of being tenderly fed a nutritious food meant to help your body grow; you are fed food that is to keep you anemic?  Can you imagine being confined in a crate that does not allow you to move or get any exercise?   Can you imagine after a few months in this living hell, you are sent off to be slaughtered?

Veal is tied to the dairy industry; the young calves are torn from their mothers soon after birth.  Instead of their mother’s milk, they are fed an iron deficient solution to keep their flesh pink.   Instead of running through the pastures, they are confined to a crate where they are unable to move; this keeps their flesh tender.  After about twelve weeks of this living hell, the calves are sent off to be slaughtered. 

If you use dairy products, you support the veal industry.


Beef Cattle

Beef cattle typically spend the first few years grazing on rangeland or pastures as this is the most inexpensive way to get them to grow to the proper size for feedlots.  While you may think that this is not too bad, the cows receive little to no veterinary care.  On the rangelands, they suffer the most, many will die from freezing in the winter or of heat stroke in the summer.

After two to three years of grazing, the animals are loaded into trucks and transported hundreds of miles to feedlots.   These feedlots are nothing more than manure and mud filled holding pens crammed with thousands of cows.   The cows are fed a diet of grains to fatten them faster.  This diet is completely different from their normal diet of grasses and causes serious digestive disorders.  Another way the cows are fattened is by feeding them antibiotics, which causes them to grow faster. When they get sick from their diet they are given additional antibiotics; this causes antibiotic resistant bacteria to develop, not to mention the residue of the antibiotics that remain in trace amounts in the flesh of the animal after slaughter.


Misconceptions about Cage Free, Free Range Organic and Grass Fed

Many people feel that they are avoiding the cruel and inhumane conditions of Factory Farms by only buying “free range,” organic, “grass fed” or “cage free items.   While in theory, this might be good, you must remember that all these terms with the exception of organic are nothing but marketing terms that are only terms to invoke a more humane method of raising the animal.

The term “cage free” is used primarily in the poultry industry and when you hear it you think of chickens running free with plenty of room to roam and feed.  This could not be further from the truth.  While the chickens are not confined to cages, they are packed into small buildings with little or no room to move.  When workers enter the building to clean or feed the animals, the chickens are kicked, stepped upon or thrown out of the way, injuring the birds.

“Free Range” is also a term primarily in the poultry industry.  Once again the marketing people have developed a term that invokes the sense of chickens roaming around a large area.  While there are some producers that will provide this for their chickens, there is no standard for the amount of space that the chickens have to use the term “free range.”  A farmer can have a barn packed with thousands of chickens can provide a four foot by four foot fenced in area that the chickens can go into to use the term.

When people think of organic they once again think of the animals roaming free in the open pastures and barnyards.  Unfortunately, organic only means that the animals are not given artificial hormones and antibiotics.  To be classified as organic, the animal only has to be fed organic feed and not given hormones.  As the large corporations that control a large portion of food production realize they can achieve higher profits by selling “organic” food, many are establishing factory farms that feed the animals organically grown feed.  All the abuse and horrors of the standard factory farms are in place in these “organic” farms, the only difference is the feed.

“Grass Fed” is primarily used with cows; it causes one to think of the cows grazing in pastures.  The truth is that just like organic, it has nothing to do with the way the animals are treated, but rather what they are fed.   The animals are just fed hay, while this is a major improvement for the cow’s health over the grain based diet the cows are fed in a feedlot; they can still endure all the horrors of the standard factory farm.


What Can You Do?

The very best way to combat the scourge of factory farms is to follow a vegan diet, not eating or using any animal products.   If enough people would become vegan and give up the eating of meat, dairy and eggs; there would be no demand for the products of the factory farms and they would cease to exist.    If you must continue to use animal products; visit your local farmers market or small butcher shop and ask questions on how the animals were raised, ask to visit the farm and see for yourself the how the animals are treated.


an article by SMART volunteer Jim Richardson


Additional Resources

Below are some additional resources to get more information.

Animal Welfare Institute - http://www.awionline.org/farm/fai.htm
Sustainable Table - http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/
Vegan Outreach - http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/animals.html
Rolling Stone Pork's Dirty Secret: The nation's top hog producer is also one of America's worst polluters - Rolling Stone
The Grace Project - http://www.factoryfarm.org/home.php
United Poultry Concerns - http://www.upc-online.org/