Lies Big Food wants You to Believe and the Truth Behind Factory-'Farmed' Meat
"CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories", edited by Daniel Imhoff and published by Watershed Media and the Foundation for Deep Ecology, is a must read and see book about the horrors of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Featuring more than 400 photographs and 30 essays, the book includes contributions from,
Wendell Berry
Wenonah Hauter
Fred Kirschenmann
Anna Lappé
Michael Pollan
Eric Schlosser
CAFOs reveal what goes on in so-called "factory farms" and the impact of industrial meat production on animals, our environment, our communities, our agricultural system and our health.
Below is a short extract from the book. Visit the book's website to learn more about CAFOs and what needs to be done to end industrial meat production.
Lie #1 - Industrial food is cheap
The retail prices of industrial meat, dairy and egg products ignore the huge impacts on human health, the environment and other common public goods.
These costs, called "externalities" by economists, include massive waste emissions that can warm the atmosphere, spoil fisheries, pollute drinking water, spread disease, contaminate soil and damage recreational areas. Citizens end up footing the bill with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, health care costs, insurance premiums, declining property values and rising cleanup costs.
Walk into any fast food chain and you are likely to find a "value" meal: chicken nuggets or cheeseburgers and fries at a price that is almost too good to be true.
For families struggling to make ends meet, a cheap meal may seem too difficult to pass up. Livestock farm advocates often point to the low prices of American fast food as proof that the system works.
The CAFO system, they argue, provides affordable food for the masses.
But the myth of cheap meat, dairy and egg products revolves around rising external social and ecological costs that never show up on restaurant bills or food bills.
Staggering environmental burdens
The environmental damage alone should dispel any illusion that food produced in industrial livestock farms is cheap.
For decades, soil and water have been poisoned by decades of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides used to produce billions of tonnes of animal feed. Water bodies have been contaminated with animal waste. The atmosphere is full of powerful greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The costs of mitigating these problems are enormous.
Worse still, this basic clean-up of polluted resources is largely not being done.
To cite just one example, agricultural runoff - especially nitrogen and phosphorus from poultry and hog farms - is a major source of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, once a vibrant East Coast fishery and now a hotbed of many species on the brink of collapse. One study estimated the cost of restoring the Bay at $19 billion, $11 billion of which would be spent on "nutrient reduction".
There are more than 400 such dead zones worldwide.
Health costs
Industrial livestock farming poses serious health risks and costs for farmers, workers and consumers. CAFO workers and neighboring communities also suffer from emissions associated with industrial farming.
Medical researchers have linked the country's intensive meat consumption to serious human health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain types of cancer. These diseases alone cost more than $33 billion a year in the US alone. Antibiotic-resistant organisms ('superbugs'), which are created as a result of the overuse of antibiotics in industrial meat and dairy production, can increase people's vulnerability to infection.
A widely cited US study estimated the total annual cost of antibiotic resistance at $30 billion. The estimated annual US costs associated with E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, primarily from animal manure, reach $405 million: $370 million in deaths, $30 million in medical care and $5 million in lost productivity.
All these related health problems increase the cost of social services and insurance premiums. They reduce productivity and increase the number of sick days taken by workers.
They can also lead to premature death, at incalculable cost to families and communities.
Farm communities
Retail prices of cheap animal foods do not reflect the fact that industrial agriculture continues to displace farm families and the ongoing closure of businesses in rural communities.
According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the average industrial hog factory is destroying ten family farmers and replacing high-quality agricultural jobs with three to four hourly workers doing relatively low-paid and potentially dangerous work.
When small-scale farmers face hardship, many local employers close their doors and, in the worst cases, entire communities, towns and regional food production and distribution networks disappear from the landscape.
Government subsidies
Perverse government subsidies - both in the US and Europe - provide billions of tax dollars to support industrial livestock production.
Researchers at Tufts University estimate that in the US alone, between 1997 and 2005, the industrial livestock sector saved more than $35 billion as a result of federal farm subsidies that reduced the price of the feed they bought.
Similar savings were not available to many small and medium-sized farmers who grew their own feed and raised livestock in diversified pasture-based systems. Under the 2002 US farm bill, individual CAFO investors were also eligible to receive up to $450,000 from the US government for animal waste management under a five-year EQIP contract, allowing large operations with many investors to reap much larger sums.
European Union farm subsidies also support industrial livestock farmers, providing $2.25 a day per dairy cow - 25 cents more than half the world's human population lives on.
A less expensive alternative
In contrast, many sustainable livestock farms use production methods to address potential negative health and environmental impacts.
They produce less waste and forego hazardous chemicals and other additives. Pasture-raised meat and dairy products have been shown to be high in omega-3 and other fatty acids, which have anti-cancer properties. Smaller farms also receive fewer and smaller federal subsidies.
While sustainably produced foods may cost a little more, many of their potentially beneficial environmental and social impacts are already included in the price.
Lie #2 - Industrial food is efficient
Industrial food livestock producers often proclaim that "bigger is better" and ridicule the "inefficiency" of small to medium sized farms using low-impact technologies.
However, CAFOs currently rely on heavily subsidized agriculture to produce feed, large capital injections to dominate markets, and lax regulations on waste disposal.
Perverse incentives and market controls give an unfair competitive advantage to smaller producers and obscure a more holistic view of efficiency.
Factory farms and CAFOs only appear efficient when we focus on the amount of meat, milk or eggs produced from each animal in a given time.
But high productivity or market share dominance should not be confused with efficiency. If we measure the total cost per unit of production, or even the net profit per animal, the picture is more sobering.
Confined housing comes with severe external costs - inefficiencies that go beyond the CAFO or feedlot. These hidden costs include subsidized grain discounts, unsanitary market controls, depleted aquifers, polluted air and waterways, and concentrated surpluses of toxic feces and urine.
The vast global area of monocultures producing maize, soybeans and hay to feed confined animals could arguably be more effectively managed in the form of smaller, diversified farms and grazing operations, along with protected wild areas.
Reverse protein factories
Livestock farms achieve efficiency by replacing pasture with maize and soya, and even wild fish.
To reach one pound of body weight, a broiler chicken needs to eat an average of 2.3 pounds of feed. Pigs convert 5.9 pounds of feed into a pound of pork. Cattle need 13 pounds of feed to produce one pound of beef, although some estimates are much higher. To supplement the feed, one-third of the world's catch of marine fish is ground up and added to the rations of pigs, broilers and farmed fish.
A 2006 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report, Livestock's Long Shadow, summed it up this way:
"In simple numbers, livestock production actually takes more from the total food supply than it provides... In fact, livestock consume 77 million tonnes of protein in feed that could potentially be used for human consumption, while 58 million tonnes of protein is contained in the food provided by livestock."
Full recall
The effectiveness of slaughterhouse practices must also be questioned, as their incessant growth in speed, drive for profit and sheer size has led to contamination and mass meat recalls.
In the United States alone, between spring 2007 and spring 2009, there were 25 recalls involving 44 million pounds of beef due to the virulent E. coli O157:H7 pathogen.
When all the costs of research, prevention and market losses are added together, E. coli contamination has cost the beef industry an estimated $1.9 billion over the past decade.
Waste accumulation
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that factory farms produce more than 500 million tons of waste each year - more than three times the amount produced by the country's human population.
On a small, diversified farm, much of this manure can be effectively used as fertilizer.
Instead, most CAFOs store waste in huge lagoons or dry waste piles that emit toxic fumes, leak or overflow.
Soil and surface water can be contaminated with bacteria and antibiotics.
pesticides and hormones containing endocrine disruptors.
dangerously high levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients
Inconsistent enforcement has allowed CAFO disposal problems to escalate in many areas.
Meanwhile, the environmental and health impacts of this contamination are rarely calculated as part of the narrow set of parameters that CAFO operators use to determine effectiveness.
Government subsidies
Not only do CAFOs impose environmental and health costs on citizens, they also feed at the proverbial public trough.
Between 1997 and 2005, US government subsidies saved farms $3.9 billion a year by allowing them to buy corn and soybeans at prices below the cost of production.
Without these feed discounts, which represent a 5 to 15 percent reduction in operating costs, it is unlikely that many industrial farms could remain profitable. By contrast, many small farms, which produce most of their own feed, do not receive public aid. Yet they are expected to somehow match the efficiency claims of large subsidised megafarms.
On this uneven playing field, CAFOs can be misleadingly perceived as "outperforming" their smaller, diversified counterparts.
Anticompetitive behaviour
The fact that many independent producers do not have access to the market also clouds any meaningful debate about efficiency.
Because CAFOs have direct relationships with meat processors (and are sometimes owned by meat processors, i.e., are "vertically integrated"), they benefit from access to a reduced number of slaughterhouses and distribution channels for processing and marketing their products.
Many medium-sized or small independent producers do not have such access and as a consequence have to grow large, develop separate distribution channels or simply disappear.
Lie #3 - Industrial food is healthy
Industrial animal agriculture increases the risk of foodborne illnesses that affect millions of Americans every year.
Rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity - often linked to excessive meat and dairy consumption - are at all-time highs. Respiratory illnesses and disease outbreaks are on the rise among CAFO and slaughterhouse workers and are spreading to neighboring communities and the general population.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that contaminated meat figures - and poultry-related infections sicken up to 3 million people a year and cause at least 1,000 deaths - are likely underreported.
Crowded together in cramped cages, factory farmed animals often cling together with their own droppings. Animal waste is a primary source of infectious bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella, which also affect the human population through contaminated food and water. Grain-rich feed can also increase bacterial and viral loads in confined animal waste.
As a result, CAFOs can become breeding grounds for diseases and pathogens.
Nutritional impacts
Americans today consume more meat and poultry per capita than ever before, part of a diet high in calories and saturated fat.
According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future, meat and dairy products provide all the cholesterol and are the primary source of saturated fat in the typical American diet. About two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, which increases the risk of developing breast, colon, pancreatic, kidney and other cancers.
Obesity and high blood cholesterol are among the leading risk factors for heart disease. Both conditions are associated with high meat consumption. More directly, researchers have linked a diet high in animal fat to a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease.
On the other hand, studies regularly show that vegetarians have the lowest incidence of heart problems.
A high intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and Mediterranean dietary patterns (rich in plant foods and unsaturated fats) has been shown to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases and associated risk factors, including body mass index and obesity.
Contaminated feed
Animal feeding practices also raise important health concerns.
For example, corn and soybeans have been shown to absorb dioxins, PCBs and other potential human carcinogens through air pollution. These persistent compounds can be stored in animal fat after feeding to animals.
These harmful contaminants can later move up the food chain when the animal fats left over after slaughter are rendered and reused as animal feed. As the fats are recycled in the animal feed system, the result is higher concentrations of dioxins and PCBs in the animal fats consumed by humans.
Animal and vegetable fats, all of which can store dioxins and PCBs, can account for up to 8 percent of animal feed rations.
Workers' health
CAFO workers suffer from a range of health problems, including repetitive motion injuries and respiratory illnesses linked to poor air quality.
Studies show that at least 25 percent of CAFO workers have respiratory diseases such as chronic bronchitis and occupational asthma.
Slaughterhouse workers are also at risk for work-related health conditions. In early 2008, for example, an unknown neurological disease began to affect employees at Quality Pork Processors' Minnesota plant, where 1,900 pigs are slaughtered daily.
Workers who fell ill suffered from burning sensations and numbness, as well as weakness in the arms and legs. All the victims worked at or near the "head table", where the pigs' brains were removed from their skulls using compressed air. The disease is suspected to be caused by inhalation of microscopic pieces of pig brain.
After a CDC investigation, this practice was stopped.
Community health
CAFOs can put neighboring communities at risk of exposure to hazardous air and water pollutants.
More than one million Americans, for example, drink groundwater contaminated with nitrogen pollutants, mostly from agricultural fertilizers and animal waste. Several studies have linked nitrates in drinking water to birth defects, thyroid dysfunction and various types of cancer.
Furthermore, the prolonged use of antibiotics in livestock is widely recognised to increase the incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Infections caused by these new "superbugs" are difficult to treat and increase the risk of human disease. A study of 226 North Carolina schools found that children living within three miles of factory farms had significantly higher rates of asthma and more asthma-related emergency department visits than children living more than three miles away.
A separate study found that people living near intensive hog farms suffered from more negative mood states (e.g., tension, depression, anger, decreased vitality, fatigue, and confusion) than controls.
Exposure to hydrogen sulphide, emitted by concentrated animal feeding operations, has been linked to neuropsychiatric disorders.
Food production, which,
safe for the environment
is kind to animals
healthy for workers and communities,
...offers the best chance of creating a food system that is safe and healthy for both consumers and producers.
