Factory farming
This Act also excludes birds, who make up more than 90 percent of the animals slaughtered for food, as well as rabbits and fish. Price Seekers, comprising 14% of the sample, are primarily concerned with low prices.The aim of the operation is to produce as much meat, eggs, or milk at the lowest possible cost. The confinement at high stocking density aspect refers to lack of natural vegetation that the animals can eat and that can naturally process the resulting animal waste.
At one farm (Farm 2105) run by Carrolls Foods of North Carolina, the second-largest pig producer in the U.S., twenty pigs are kept per pen and each confinement building or hog parlor holds 25 pens. Support is particularly strong for females, Democrats, and residents of the Northeastern United States.
The agriculture correspondent of The Guardian wrote in 1964: Factory farming, whether we like it or not, has come to stay. The discovery of antibiotics and vaccines facilitated raising livestock in larger numbers by reducing disease.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), farms on which animals are intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers. There is a continuing debate over the benefits and risks of factory farming.
The survey finds that consumers desire high standards of animal care, even if it raises food prices and involves government regulation. A swine flu which quickly killed more than 100 infected persons in that area, appears to have begun in the vicinity of a Smithfield subsidiary pig CAFO. The result of confinement and overcrowding is a lack of exercise and natural locomotory behavior for the animals.
The conditions that we keep these animals in are much more humane than when they were out in the field. The issues include the efficiency of food production; animal welfare; whether it is essential for feeding the growing global human population; the environmental impact and the health risks. The UN and OIE estimate that in coming decades there will be billions of additional consumers in developing countries eating meat factory farmed in developing countries, but currently only about 40 out of the around 200 countries in the world have the capacity to adequately respond to a health crisis originating from animal disease (such as swine flu, avian flu, West Nile virus, bluetongue, and foot-and-mouth disease).
Where disease breaks out, it may spread more quickly, not only due to the concentrations of animals, but because modern approaches tend to distribute animals more widely. This, in turn, weakens both their bones and muscles.
They re looked after in some of the best conditions, because the healthier and The large concentration of animals, animal waste, and the potential for dead animals in a small space poses ethical issues. Developments in shipping networks and technology have made long-distance distribution of agricultural produce feasible. According to the BBC, factory farming in Britain began in 1947 when a new Agriculture Act granted subsidies to farmers to encourage greater output by introducing new technology, in order to reduce Britain s reliance on imported meat.
The 28 hour law, enacted in 1873 and amended in 1994, covers farmed animals during transportation only. For example, the EU is bringing in further regulation to set maximum stocking densities for meat chickens by 2010, where the UK Animal Welfare Minister commented, The welfare of meat chickens is a major concern to people throughout the European Union.
Residents near such farms report nuisances such as unpleasant smell, flies and adverse health effects. The CDC has identified a number of pollutants associated with the discharge of animal waste into rivers and lakes, and into the air. The United States Department of Agriculture claims that the law does not apply to birds.
Factory farming is the practice of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a factory — a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses. Confinement at high stocking density is one part of a systematic effort to produce the highest output at the lowest cost by relying on economies of scale, modern machinery, biotechnology, and global trade. The United Nations writes that intensification of animal production was seen as a way of providing food security.
Breeding programs are used to produce animals more suited to the confined conditions and able to provide a consistent food product. The distinctive characteristic of factory farms is the intense concentration of livestock. Today they re in housing that is environmentally controlled in many respects.
Naturalists place great importance on allowing animals to exhibit natural behaviors and exercise outdoors, and comprise 46% of the sample. In the 1930s, 24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in 2002; in 1940, each farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers. The number of farms has also decreased, and their ownership is more concentrated.
Eight per cent of global human water use goes towards animal production. Industrial production of pigs and poultry is an important source of GHG emissions and is predicted to become more so. This last group perceives amenities such as access to outdoors and ability to exhibit natural behaviors unimportant for the well-being of farm animals. According to the U.S.
The discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition, in the first two decades of the 20th century, led to vitamin supplements, which in the 1920s allowed certain livestock to be raised indoors. The tide will not be held back, either by the humanitarian outcry of well meaning but sometimes misguided animal lovers, by the threat implicit to traditional farming methods, or by the sentimental approach to a rural way of life.
The identification of nitrogen and phosphorus as critical factors in plant growth led to the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers, making possible more intensive types of agriculture. According to Denis Avery of the Hudson Institute, Asia increased its consumption of pork by 18 million tons in the 1990s. Factory farms hold large numbers of animals, typically cows, pigs, turkeys, or chickens, often indoors, typically at high densities.
In the U.S., four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens. Europe has become increasingly skeptical of factory farming, after a series of diseases such as BSE (mad cow) and foot and mouth disease affected its agricultural industries, yet despite these outbreaks there are indications that the industrialized production of farm animals is set to increase globally. To provide high standards of animal care, consumers as a whole perceive allowing animals to exhibit natural behaviors and exercise outdoors to be more important than protection from other animals, shelter, socialization, and comfortable bedding.
High stocking density destroys the vegetation and produces unacceptable pollution from the animal waste in run-off and ground water unless it is handled appropriately, so laws have been enacted to deal with that; thus the legal definition for the term CAFO. Agriculture adopted more intensive methods during the 18th century, with this growth in production best characterized by the Agricultural Revolution, where improvements in farming techniques allowed for significantly improved yields, and supported the urbanization of the population during the Industrial Revolution. Innovations in agriculture beginning in the late 19th century paralleled developments in mass production in other industries. Decreased genetic diversity increases the chance of a food crisis. The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the first recorded use of factory farming to an American journal of economics in 1890. An animal feeding operation is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a lot or facility where animals are kept 45 days of the year or more In the U.S., some factory farms are also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) CAFOs and factory farms can be mostly indoors or mostly outdoors operations.
The Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act is similarly limited. As awareness of the problems of intensive techniques has grown, there have been some efforts by governments and industry to remove inappropriate techniques. In the UK, the Farm Animal Welfare Council was set up by the government to act as an independent advisor on animal welfare in 1979.
Poultry manure from factory farms emits high levels of nitrous oxide and ammonia. Organic pig meat production has a lower global warming potential per kg than does intensive pig meat production. However, this relies on perfect, fail-safe biosecurity – and such measures are near impossible to implement.
Faison states tongue-in-cheek: They re in state-of-the-art confinement facilities. The GHG emissions for free-range poultry meat are slightly higher than for factory farmed poultry meat. Environmental impacts of factory farming can include: Animal welfare impacts of factory farming can include: Farmed animals are excluded by most state animal cruelty laws and the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA).
The use of antibiotics may create antibiotic-resistant pathogens; parasites, bacteria, and viruses may be spread; ammonia, nitrogen, and phosphorus can reduce oxygen in surface waters and contaminate drinking water; pesticides and hormones may cause hormone-related changes in fish; animal feed and feathers may stunt the growth of desirable plants in surface waters and provide nutrients to disease-causing micro-organisms; trace elements such as arsenic and copper, which are harmful to human health, may contaminate surface waters. In the European Union, growth hormones are banned on the basis that there is no way of determining a safe level. Further intensification of the industry has been suggested by some as the solution to avian flu, on the rationale that keeping birds indoors will prevent contamination.
Intensive farming is creating highly virulent avian ‘flu strains. The law states that when animals are being transported for slaughter, the vehicle must stop every 28 hours and the animals must be let out for exercise, food, and water.
Selecting generations of birds for their faster growth rates and higher meat yields has left birds’ immune systems less able to cope with infections and there is a high degree of genetic uniformity in the population, making spread of the virus more easy. In a year which has been as uneventful on the husbandry side as it has been significant in economic and political developments touching the future of food procurement, the more far-seeing would name the growth of intensive farming as the major development. Agricultural production across the world doubled four times between 1820 and 1975 During the same period, the number of people involved in farming dropped as the process became more automated.
In addition, an intensive poultry farm provides the optimum conditions for viral mutation and transmission - thousands of birds crowded together in a closed, warm and dusty environment is highly conducive to the transmission of a contagious disease. Chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise to synthetic pesticides.
The UK has stated that in the event of the EU raising the ban at some future date, to comply with a precautionary approach, it would only consider the introduction of specific hormones, proven on a case by case basis. The various techniques of factory farming have been associated with a number of European incidents where public health has been threatened or large numbers of animals have had to be slaughtered to deal with disease. Physical restraints are used to control movement or actions regarded as undesirable.
Workers may develop acute and chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal injuries, and may catch infections that transmit from animals to human beings. Pesticides are used to control organisms which are considered harmful The CDC writes that chemical, bacterial, and viral compounds from animal waste may travel in the soil and water. With the frequent flow of goods within and between countries, the potential for disease spread is high. Concentrating large numbers of animals in factory farms is a major contribution to global environmental degradation, through the need to grow feed (often by intensive methods using excessive fertiliser and pesticides), pollution of water, soil and air by agrochemicals and manure waste, and use of limited resources (water, energy). Livestock production is also particularly water-intensive in indoor, intensive systems.
Individual states all have their own animal cruelty statutes; however many states have a provision to exempt standard agricultural practices. . Confinement at high stocking density requires antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions.
The manure is usually stored in slurry form (slurry is a liquid mixture of urine and faeces). And the feed is right there for them all the time, and water, fresh water.
Movement between farms of people, materials and vehicles poses a threat and breaches in biosecurity are possible. BSE, foot and mouth and bird flu. In April 2009, lawmakers in the Mexican state of Veracruz accused large-scale hog and poultry operations of being breeding grounds of a pandemic swine flu, although they did not present scientific evidence to support their claim.
Originally passed in 1958, the Act requires that livestock be stunned into unconsciousness prior to slaughter. and expresses its policy as five freedoms: from hunger & thirst; from discomfort; from pain, injury or disease; to express normal behavior; from fear and distress. There are differences around the world as to which practices are accepted and there continue to be changes in regulations with animal welfare being a strong driver for increased regulation.
and around the world to phase out their use as a result of pressure to adopt less confined practices . A study done by Oklahoma State University, utilizes results of a representative telephone survey to measure consumer attitudes towards farm animal welfare, and investigates how these attitudes vary across individuals. On intensive pig farms, the animals are generally kept on concrete with slats or grates for the manure to drain through.
Consumers vary in their perceptions though, and are divided into three classes of consumers: Naturalists, Price Seekers, and Descartes’ Entourage. This agreement sends a strong message to the rest of the world that we care about animal welfare.” However, given the assumption that intensive farming techniques are a necessity, it is recognized that some apparently cruel techniques are better than the alternative.
Widespread use of antibiotics increases the chance of a pandemic resistant to known measures, which is exacerbated by a globally distributed food system. There are differences in the way factory farming techniques are practiced around the world.
Food is supplied in place, and a wide variety of artificial methods are employed to maintain animal health and improve production, such as the use of antimicrobial agents, vitamin supplements, and growth hormones. During storage on farm, slurry emits methane and when manure is spread on fields it emits nitrous oxide and causes nitrogen pollution of land and water.
Descartes Entourage make up 40% of the respondents, and value animal welfare but perceive it can be achieved by simply providing food, water, and treatment for injury and disease.
