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Factory Farming Factory Farms are a legacy in food production that has done both good and bad for our society. Unfortunately in the present day society this is mostly a destructive industry. Animals raised on factory farms endure many hardships, diseases, cruel behavior, and mental problems. Each other these problems can be attributed to the manner these animals are treated. The current factory farms are inhumane and can be traced to causing health problems in both the animals being produced for food and the humans, which consume the meat produced. Animals have mothers, feeling, and a heart. Humans tend to forget these details when ordering a steak, burger, or turkey sandwich. It is obvious that people do not want to be reminded that their dinner was once a living and breathing animal. One strong example of this is found in the grocery store. In order to make meat seem less cruel, alternative names are given to each item. When trying to purchase food for dinner it is easy to see why anyone would prefer to purchase “ground beef” opposed to “dead cow.” While many people would take this statement as offensive, it is the truth. Margi Clark stated, “If you want to eat meat, you should have to kill it yourself and eat it raw. This way you are not blinded by the hypocrisy of having it processed for you.” The hypocrisy spoken of here is that that occurs on factory farms. If most people are forced to view the inhumane treatment and watch their meat being produced, they find it an unjust system. These horrible and scary details are hidden from the consumer. People are lead to believe that they are “higher on the food chain” therefore have the rights to eat what they want. At no point in the United States Constitution did the framers of our country give anyone the right to consume meat and cause harm to defenseless animals. The food chain is old and no longer applies to modern society. During times of survival of the fittest, the food chain made sense. Each person must use their brain to achieve and obtain sources of food for themselves and their families. There was a time when hunting for food was honorable and a necessity. A question to think about is how much honor does one gain by driving to the closest store and purchasing a package of chicken or beef. None. The food chain and survival of the fittest has no purpose in today’s modern society. Mass production of defenseless animals, which occurs on factory farms, does no good. The food produced has been traced to cause death. 97% of all coronary occlusions can be prevented buy abstaining in a meat free diet. Heart disease aside, food produced on factory farms is unhealthy. When raising animals such as cattle on a factory farm, many problems occur. The strongest opposition for most livestock farmers is disease. Due to the large range of medical problems animals endure when held in close contact with each other without proper care, treatment for disease becomes difficult. Veterinary care costs too much to take care of each animal separately so ranchers tend to do blanket care. To prevent the spread of disease Ranchers pump the animal feed full of antibiotics. Because the act of treating only the infected animals would be to costly and time consuming, even healthy animals are given high doses of these drugs. Feeding the antibiotics to all the heard is more logical and less time consuming. As in humans, continued use of any antibiotic will lower the resistance to drug making the animal immune to the drug. To solve this problem, according to Merzer, ranchers rotate antibiotics (generally every thirty days) and changing the dosage. Even with often rotation, each antibiotic becomes less efficient each day it is fed to the animals. (1998.) Often the drugs used to inoculate the animals can cause health problems themselves. Many drugs used on animals are banned after research proves them to be harmful for human consumption. While theses drugs are banned for the harm they may cause towards humans, the government hardly enforces the restrictions the put out. Most members involved in agribusiness will spend years using stock of banned chemicals. Along with chemicals put directly into the food, insecticides are also highly used. The foods fed to the animals along with the animals themselves are soaked in insecticides. When the animals are covered in insecticides, it is to protect them against insects such as grubs, however the insecticides are absorbed into the animal and then into the food eaten buy consumers. Among the other various drugs animals are pumped full of, growth hormones are one of the most popular. These hormones are used to help increase the rate of an animals growth and to abort pregnant animals. Once again, each of theses drugs is absorbed into the animal’s body and then given straight to the consumer through consumption. When animals are kept on factory farms, the treatment given to them is much less then humane. Animals are kept in warehouses without room to move around. After long periods of confinement in their small cages animals begin to show similar signs as humans suffering from sever mental illness. The small area literally causes brain trauma to the animals forcing them to go crazy. The cages are so small that they cannot walk let alone spread their wings, says The Vegetarian Times. (1996.) While kept in these cages, they are stacked sometimes either or ten high. They are kept in wire cages to allow their droppings to fall through the cage, simplifying clean up. This means you have animals standing in their own along with others droppings. The wire mesh is large enough to allow debris to fall through. The wire is however harmful to the animal itself. Many get foot problems, which limit they ability to hold their body up themselves. Also, due to the large amounts of hormones, the animals grow so rapidly the bones are not strong enough to support their own weight. While on the farm before the slaughter animals must endure months if not years of pain. This begins at birth for most animals. When calves are born on a farm, they are immediately ripped away from their mother, causing mental trauma. After this they must endure being branded, docking (having their tail removed with a hot iron), and castration. Calves that are to be raised for veal endure even more trauma. Theses animals are kept in a “veal crate” which is only two feet wide, chained down so they may not stand up. They are force fed a diet purposely low on needed nutrients to help obtain the desired skin color and low fat amounts. Due to the lacking nutritional value in this diet, the animals are highly susceptible to disease. To prevent this, high, sometimes-deadly doses of antibiotics are added to their feed. Many of these drugs used are illegal for human consumption and pose a threat to human health upon consumption. Factory Farming.com reports that after this horrible treatment to veal calves, they are slaughtered at only sixteen months. After animals are raised to maturity, they are then forced to endure a slow and painful death. Beef cows are supposed to “stunned” prior to slaughter. The sun is supposed to go to the head, and render the animal unconscious. With lacking care given to the animals, often the stunning is ineffective if it occurs at all. This leads to animals being fully aware during their murder. After their supposed stunning, cows are hung upside down by their hind legs. The animal’s throat is then slit and the cow bleeds to death. When the animal is awake during this, they are crying and trashing back and forth trying to free themselves. According to Paul McCartney, “if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. We feel better about ourselves and better about the animals knowing we are not contributing to their pain.” The bliss that occurs with the ignorance of not knowing or understanding what happens on these farms is often what allows people to continue endorsing a society based on a meat eating diet. Poultry animals are killed in a different manner, however equally cruel. The animals are ripped out of their crowded cages and hung by their feet onto a moving conveyor line. Each chicken is sliced at some point to induce bleeding in order to kill the animal. After this, they are doused in boiling hot water to help with removal of the feathers. Once again, most of these animals are alive throughout the entire procedure and feel pain during it. Most often animal cruelty is worsened due to consumer need, according to Jim Mason, “consumer demand can make a difference.” (1980.) Another large problem associated with Factory Farms is food contamination. Food contamination occurs in many different ways. The most common is the though to food fed to the animals themselves. The old cliché “You are what you eat” basically says it all. Most cattle raised on farms are turned into cannibalistic animals. Factory farms have turned animals that thrive on eating grass and wheat products into meat eating animals. Much worse, through modern rendering techniques, they often end up eating other cows that have died on the farm, sometimes their own family. Downed animals are a sad truth that is faced daily among animal farmers. A downer can be defines as “animals so diseased or badly injured that they cannot even walk.” (NoDowners.com.) Most of these downed animals can still be sold for human consumption. The downed animals that are healthy enough for human consumption are sent to slaughterhouses. Unfortunately, once declared a downed animal, the few federal regulations regarding humane treatment are not longer remotely enforced. The animals that are not healthy enough for human consumption are sent to rendering plants. Renderers pick up the carcasses of 100,000 downed cows every year and mix them in with other animals. At these plants they are turned into food often fed back to animals are farms along with pet foods. In 1997, after the outbreak of “bovine spongiform encephalopathy” (Mad Cow disease) rendering regulations have been put into place. It is currently illegal to feed cattle food produced from the remains of other cattle. This regulation is in place, however it still occurs daily. According to Merzer, “rendering is a 2.4-billion-a-year industry.” (p.12) Any animal dead or diseased, euthanized pets and animals from shelters, road kill, and the waste parts of animals from factory farms are all part of the rendering plan. This mix is turned into a fine powder, which is added to most pet foods along with sold to farmers. The fine powder is referred to as “protein concentrates” and added to most livestock food. In 1997, the New York Times stated that rendering is the most likely reason for the Mad Cow disease outbreak. Any animal, no matter how sick and diseased, will be accepted for rendering which will eventually end up back in food eaten by consumers daily. Many people have health problems and look to outside influences to blame. The last thing the majority of the population wants to do is stop eating meat. The largest reason for this is tradition. If people raise their children as vegetarians, those children rarely end up eating meat. In today’s society, meat is a staple. People like following the crowd and do not enjoy being unique and different. Rationalizing meat consumption often comes from family roots. It is easy to hear statements such as “My father ate steak and eggs every day of his life and he lives to be 85.” While this may be true, he was one of the lucky ones. With disease such as heart disease, high cholesterol, and type two diabetes running rampant in society, these traditions must be reevaluated. Type two diabetes has two large factors. The first risk is genetics and the second is diet. The onset of this disease is becoming widespread with the raising rate of obesity. The easiest and healthiest way to control weight and blood sugar is to cut meat from the diet. By reducing meat intake and having a diet strong in fruits and vegetables, the risk for type two diabetes is greatly lowered. Eating meat can be compared to smoking cigarettes. It is something most people are aware as a dangerous habit, yet people still chose to participate in risky behavior. Factory Farming is a current necessity for society. If the owners of these farms took more measures to help improve the health of their animals, they would drastically help the health of meat eating consumers. Most of the measures that need to be taken to help improve health and quality will also lead to a more humane farm. A few steps that must be taken care of are cage size, cleanliness, feed quality, and drugs and chemicals used. By increasing the size of the cages animals are kept in, it would give the animals more room and help prevent them from standing in their own droppings. Cleaning cages well and often will help prevent food contamination and help to prevent the spread of disease from each animal. Ending the use of rendering feed will greatly reduce the risk of medical problems and the spread of diseases such as Mad Cow disease. Lastly, ending the use of growth hormones, unnecessary antibiotics, and insecticides on the animals will greatly help the health of consumers. While meat is still bad to eat often, and they are still at risk for cholesterol and coronary problems, disease from the infected meat can be cut down. None of these factors are too much to ask. Consumer health should be a number one concern. If these factors are taken care of, much of the animal cruelty that occurs daily on factory farms will be ended. Next time it is time to order a meal off a menu, think about the chemicals and cruelty that goes into each meat product, and chose a meatless substitute. Most people would be amazed at how easy it is to adapt to a cruelty free-living style. Bibliography Cucolo, Steve. “Animal Agribusiness Industry.” The Abolitionist. Issue 9 (2000): 2-4. Farm Sanctuary. (2001). Factory Farming: The truth hurts. FactoryFarming.com [Online] Farm Sanctuary (ed.). Available: http://www.factoryfarming.com [2001, February 12] Farm Sanctuary. (2001). No Downers: A Farm Sanctuary Campaign. NoDowners.org [Online] Farm Sanctuary (ed.). Available: http://www.nodowners.org/ [2001, February 20] Hargrove, E. (1992). The Animal Rights/ Environmental Ethics Debate. New York: State Press. House, C. (2001). Compassion in World Farming. CIWF International [Online]. House, Charles (ED.) Available: http://www.ciwf.co.uk/ [2001, February 13]. Jasper, J., & Nelkin, D. (1992). The Animal Rights Crusade: The growth of a moral protest. New York: Macmillan. Kirchheimer, G. (2000). Mad Cows. High Times Magazine [Online]. Available: http://www.hightimes.com/magazine/2000/2000_07/article2.tpl [2001, February 22] Lyman, Howard, Glen Merzer. Mad Cowboy. Scribner: New York, New York: Simon and Schuster Inc, 1998. Mason, J., & Singer, P. (1980). Animal Factories: The mass production of animals for food and how it affects the lives of consumers, farmers, and the animals themselves. New York: Crown. Regan, T. (1983). The case for Animal Rights: Los Angeles: University of California Press. Singer, P. (1990). Animal Liberation. New York: Random House. Vegetarian Times. (1996). Vegetarian Beginners Guide. Macmillan: Author |
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