In short, Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) are basically large-scale animal concentration camps. Thousands of animals are confined to small spaces, fed an unnatural diet to make them grow faster and quicker to maximize profit and minimize labor costs, until they are ready for slaughter and processed into the plastic wrapped packages we recognize.
The first small scale CAFO was created by accident. Before 1920, chicken meat was not an industry, but a by-product of raising egg laying hens. Their meat was often tough and only after a hen stopped laying eggs was it butchered and thrown in a stew or soup. In 1923, a woman named Cecile Steele, of Ocean View Delaware, received a shipment of 500 chicks instead of the requested 50. She and her husband had a small farm and only intended on raising them for eggs for their family and to sell at local markets. She decided to capitalize on this error by building a small shed and raising them indoors for meat, and unknowingly launched the broiler industry. Eighteen weeks later, 387 had survived and were sold for $.62/lb. The next year, she ordered 1000 chicks and her husband quit his job to help raise them. By 1927, their hen house was home to 25,000 birds. Other area farmers took notice of her success and followed suit, and by 1928, there were 500 farmers raising their own flocks in surrounding communities. But it's modern developments like, cross breeding, medications and processing advancements that helped turn it into a billion dollar AgriBusiness.
If you are like me, you probably don't put much thought into the meat you're selecting at the supermarket. You don't think about where it came from, how it was treated, where it lived, etc. And if you do, the picture in your head is probably vastly different than the truth. More than likely, you picture a big beautiful farm with rolling hills and the sounds of livestock happily singing their tune. When, in reality, that couldn't be further from the truth. Sadly, animals raised in CAFO's are constantly abused, treated with massive amounts of antibiotics from living in their own filth, and most never see the light of day before they are taken for processing and packaged for your supermarket. If you've seen the documentary, Food, Inc., you know exactly what I am talking about. If you haven't, a preview can be found here. If you want to stay in the dark or have a queasy stomach, stop reading now! Let's get into the specifics, shall we?
The Animals
There are more than 15,000 CAFO's in the United States, and they dominate livestock and poultry production. They are each home to tens of thousands of cattle or pigs, or several hundred thousand chickens. Buildings are referred to as "production facilities" and instead of animals or livestock, they are known as "production units". The chickens are force fed antibiotics in their feed to speed up their growth rate. It states in the preview that it typically takes 90 days to raise a chicken the natural way. CAFO's do it in 49. This allows them to increase their production numbers and add to their bottom line. But at what cost? The short lives of these animals aren't even good ones. They are confined to vast buildings under florescent lights and are lucky if they have one square foot to move around. A lot of them grow so quickly that their bones can't support their own weight and they just sit there in their own waste. And that's if their heart can tolerate the conditions in order to even make it to processing. Operators (I can't even call them farmers) go through on a daily basis and dispose of the ones that don't survive. They aren't free to forage for bugs, but are fed mass produced, genetically modified grains.
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| CAFO Laying Hens |
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| CAFO Hogs |
Now instead of trying to prevent this abuse from happening, the CAFO industry is working to prevent people from finding out about it, by introducing Ag-Gag Bills. These bills prevent a person from documenting the happenings in these animal facilities from exposing abuse. So you can be now sued for taking pictures or video of unsanitary conditions or abusive treatment of these animals without permission. In 2012, Iowa, Utah, and Missouri passed ag-gag bills and North Dakota, Montana, and Kansas have had these bills in place since 1991. However, ag-gag bills have been defeated in 11 states this year, including Indiana. Watch this short, 5 minute clip on Whistle-Blowers of the CAFO industry.
The Environment
With such a large number of animals crowded into such a small area, the concentration of manure is very high, leading to serious pollution risks and public health concerns. The waste from all these animals has to go somewhere, so they create what's known as Manure Lagoons. These giant lagoons pose real threats to surrounding soil, air and water quality and create wildlife dead zones. In 1995, a CAFO was responsible for a massive environmental spill, one of the largest in U.S. history. It happened in North Carolina, when a lagoon dike burst, releasing 25 million gallons of hog feces and urine into the surrounding fields and river. The spill killed 10 million fish in local waters and caused an outbreak of human Pfiesteria Piscicida in the area.
Animal waste is the primary source of E.Coli and Salmonella. It has the potential to pollute our drinking water and our crops and make us extremely sick. The CDC estimates that 3 million people get sick every year, and 1,000 die, from contaminated meat, thus introducing the need for meat recalls. In 2012 alone, there were a total of 82 meat recalls, stemming from things like E.Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and "Undeclared Substance".
These lagoons also emit dangerous gases like ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. These gases pose real health risks in humans like, asthma, headaches, eye irritation, nausea, weakness, and other respiratory problems. Confined dairy cows have been shown to create five to ten times more ammonia than pasture raised animals. In 2008, Minnesota Attorney General, Lori Swanson, filed a suit against Excel Dairy (a CAFO home to 1500 diary cows) for air emission violations. Nearby residents were forced to evacuate their homes due to very high hydrogen sulfide readings. Their symptoms were flu-like and included headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath. Since the 1980's, U.S. farms have been required to report their levels of emission of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide to the EPA, which admits that high levels of the gases pose a health threat to humans, however, the EPA doesn't set a limit on the release, just requires reporting the levels above a certain threshold. CAFO's have, for years, repeatedly tried to get exemptions from odor emissions and waste discharges. Even going so far as to being constructed in states/counties that are more lenient or where regulations can be manipulated.
As you can imagine, all this does a number on local property values as well. Right?! (Click Here to find out if you live by one - Indiana residents only) Would you want to get in a bidding war and pay top dollar for a home anywhere in the vicinity of one of these CAFO's?! That's the American dream right? Send your kids out back to play in a cow manure swamp and inhale the fresh ammonia air on a sunny summer day?!
SuperBugs
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, now we get to address the over-use of antibiotics! Confining animals in small areas necessitates the use of antibiotics to minimize the spread of disease. To maximize production, CAFO's must use an increasing amount of these antibiotics, which leads to increased resistance in the bacteria, creating these SuperBugs. So these animals are eating it in the feed to grow faster and bigger, then by living in their own filth they get sick and are injected with more antibiotics and when that doesn't do the trick they get MORE antibiotics. I am sure it wouldn't surprise you to know that in other areas of the world, the use of antibiotics in animal feed has been banned. Places like Denmark, who stopped using antibiotics in pork 14 years ago, has since confirmed a much lower rate of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their livestock, and it didn't even hurt their bottom line. In fact, their pork industry grew in the first 12 years without antibiotics. Here in the good 'ol U.S.A., our FDA only asks producers to limit their use, not even setting a recommended level. They've even gone back on their 1977 promise to reduce antibiotic use in feed, as this was announced in the Federal Register in December of 2011. Anyone remember hearing about that? Yeah, me either.
SuperBugs like MRSA are resistant to many common antibiotics and cause life threatening infections in humans and livestock. Drug manufacturers supply four times the amount of antibiotics to animals as it does to humans. It is this constant use of antibiotics by CAFO's that allow pathogens to survive, adapt to their environment and thus, thrive. The FDA has reported that as much as 10% of all chicken breast sold in retail are contaminated with a form of salmonella and resistant to at least 1 antibiotic. Plus, nearly half of all chicken sold is contaminated with antibiotic resistant Campylobacter, a food-borne bacteria. You can read about the addition to arsenic in meat here. Hungry yet?
How it should be
Our country needs to get back to true family farming, not the big industrial 'factory' farming of today. We shouldn't be focused on highest production at the lowest cost. And our tax dollars should not be subsidizing this form of animal agriculture. There needs to be a switch to sustainable livestock operations, even if there is a greater cost to us. There will be less health risks, farms will produce less waste, we can then forgo the hormones and antibiotics and there will be less environmental impact. Our best chance for a better, more safe food system is one in which food production is humane for the animals and safe for the workers and the environment. We should all know where our meat comes from and how it lived it's life and how it was treated for the duration of it. I definitely want my dollars to support the ethical, humane treatment of the animals that do provide us food. They are serving a purpose, so give them what they deserve while they are on this earth. Grass-fed, not grain fed, pastured pork and poultry, not confined to cages and crates and fresh air, not fumes! Let them live and be animals not 'units'.
The Environment
With such a large number of animals crowded into such a small area, the concentration of manure is very high, leading to serious pollution risks and public health concerns. The waste from all these animals has to go somewhere, so they create what's known as Manure Lagoons. These giant lagoons pose real threats to surrounding soil, air and water quality and create wildlife dead zones. In 1995, a CAFO was responsible for a massive environmental spill, one of the largest in U.S. history. It happened in North Carolina, when a lagoon dike burst, releasing 25 million gallons of hog feces and urine into the surrounding fields and river. The spill killed 10 million fish in local waters and caused an outbreak of human Pfiesteria Piscicida in the area.
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| Typical Manure Lagoon |
These lagoons also emit dangerous gases like ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. These gases pose real health risks in humans like, asthma, headaches, eye irritation, nausea, weakness, and other respiratory problems. Confined dairy cows have been shown to create five to ten times more ammonia than pasture raised animals. In 2008, Minnesota Attorney General, Lori Swanson, filed a suit against Excel Dairy (a CAFO home to 1500 diary cows) for air emission violations. Nearby residents were forced to evacuate their homes due to very high hydrogen sulfide readings. Their symptoms were flu-like and included headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and shortness of breath. Since the 1980's, U.S. farms have been required to report their levels of emission of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide to the EPA, which admits that high levels of the gases pose a health threat to humans, however, the EPA doesn't set a limit on the release, just requires reporting the levels above a certain threshold. CAFO's have, for years, repeatedly tried to get exemptions from odor emissions and waste discharges. Even going so far as to being constructed in states/counties that are more lenient or where regulations can be manipulated.
As you can imagine, all this does a number on local property values as well. Right?! (Click Here to find out if you live by one - Indiana residents only) Would you want to get in a bidding war and pay top dollar for a home anywhere in the vicinity of one of these CAFO's?! That's the American dream right? Send your kids out back to play in a cow manure swamp and inhale the fresh ammonia air on a sunny summer day?!
SuperBugs
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, now we get to address the over-use of antibiotics! Confining animals in small areas necessitates the use of antibiotics to minimize the spread of disease. To maximize production, CAFO's must use an increasing amount of these antibiotics, which leads to increased resistance in the bacteria, creating these SuperBugs. So these animals are eating it in the feed to grow faster and bigger, then by living in their own filth they get sick and are injected with more antibiotics and when that doesn't do the trick they get MORE antibiotics. I am sure it wouldn't surprise you to know that in other areas of the world, the use of antibiotics in animal feed has been banned. Places like Denmark, who stopped using antibiotics in pork 14 years ago, has since confirmed a much lower rate of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their livestock, and it didn't even hurt their bottom line. In fact, their pork industry grew in the first 12 years without antibiotics. Here in the good 'ol U.S.A., our FDA only asks producers to limit their use, not even setting a recommended level. They've even gone back on their 1977 promise to reduce antibiotic use in feed, as this was announced in the Federal Register in December of 2011. Anyone remember hearing about that? Yeah, me either.
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| MRSA |
How it should be
Our country needs to get back to true family farming, not the big industrial 'factory' farming of today. We shouldn't be focused on highest production at the lowest cost. And our tax dollars should not be subsidizing this form of animal agriculture. There needs to be a switch to sustainable livestock operations, even if there is a greater cost to us. There will be less health risks, farms will produce less waste, we can then forgo the hormones and antibiotics and there will be less environmental impact. Our best chance for a better, more safe food system is one in which food production is humane for the animals and safe for the workers and the environment. We should all know where our meat comes from and how it lived it's life and how it was treated for the duration of it. I definitely want my dollars to support the ethical, humane treatment of the animals that do provide us food. They are serving a purpose, so give them what they deserve while they are on this earth. Grass-fed, not grain fed, pastured pork and poultry, not confined to cages and crates and fresh air, not fumes! Let them live and be animals not 'units'.
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| Our grass fed beef |
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| Mass produced, CAFO, grain fed beef |
What you can DO
By now you may be asking yourself how you can avoid this meat. It is important to know that there are other options. You get three votes per day. You vote with your dollars. By buying CAFO meat from supermarkets and the fast-food industry (a big purchaser of CAFO meat), you are supporting the lifestyle forced upon these animals. I highly recommend the internet! Use this resource to learn more about your meat. We have used www.eatwild.com, and www.localharvest.org/ to find things in our area. We now go through a humane farmer that raises their animals on pasture and no GMO grains! We know what we're eating and it feels amazing. On top of that, it tastes great and is healthier for you, too. Many farmers have CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) options or you can make individual orders. There are plenty of humane farmers out there, you just have to know how/where to look.
There are also places to order grass fed beef online, like US Wellness Meats and Tendergrass Farms, and American Grassfed, just do a little research and know what you're buying. You don't want it to say 'grain finished', that just means they took the cheap route to fatten it up for processing. But if you must buy from a supermarket, look for organic meat that is antibiotic free, not from a CAFO.
Lastly, spread the word. Tell your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors. More than likely, they don't know either and are supporting it without their knowledge. Tell them what you've learned and how they can make changes to make their family healthier.
***some photographs borrowed from: CAFO; the book
There are also places to order grass fed beef online, like US Wellness Meats and Tendergrass Farms, and American Grassfed, just do a little research and know what you're buying. You don't want it to say 'grain finished', that just means they took the cheap route to fatten it up for processing. But if you must buy from a supermarket, look for organic meat that is antibiotic free, not from a CAFO.
Lastly, spread the word. Tell your family, your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors. More than likely, they don't know either and are supporting it without their knowledge. Tell them what you've learned and how they can make changes to make their family healthier.
***some photographs borrowed from: CAFO; the book
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