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Where Does Our Meat Come From?

Today most farm animals in the United States are manufactured in large, industrial facilities with little regard for the environment, animal welfare, food safety or worker safety. In fact, two percent of livestock farms raise 40 percent of all livestock.

Factory farms or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are about high-volume production and profit, while endangering consumer health, rural environments and worker rights. Proponents of factory farming argue that the economies of scale (particularly feed and labor efficiencies) provide an accessible, inexpensive product, allowing CAFOs to meet the high demand of our meat-centered diet. The argument does not, however, take into account agricultural subsidies for U.S. farmers. The livestock production system is propped up by cheap grains, particularly soybeans and corn; U.S. livestock consume 60% of the corn and 47% of the soy produced in this country. Agribusiness is paid to keep production high, which keeps the prices low.

Animals have become a commodity in CAFOs, where they live in tightly packed pens with little or no light. Animals are fed the cheapest grain and waste products to fatten them as quickly as possible, abetted by added hormones to make them hungry thus further decreasing production time to slaughter. Although the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) claims that the artificial hormones are safe, they are banned in the European Union due to a possible connection between hormones and some types of cancer. The United States is the only developed nation in the world to allow the sale and consumption of milk which comes from cows fed rBGH, an artificial growth hormone that may increase breast cancer risk.

In these tightly packed, unsanitary quarters, antibiotics for all animals have become a necessity. This has resulted in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in animals and humans, and development of viruses such as H1N1 (swine flu), which can be hosted in animals and humans.

Waste disposal is also a huge problem at CAFOs. Consider this example, 500,000 pigs housed in a CAFO produce more feces than all the 1.5 residents of Manhattan. It is estimated that at one such farm, the total waste discharge is 26 million tons a year, enough to fill Yankee Stadium four times. Liquefied manure is then spread on farm fields, where it runs off into nearby water systems; contributing to ground water contamination and exacerbating the problem of antibiotic-resistant diseases among animals and humans.

There is a human cost as well; the laborers on these CAFOs and meat processing facilities are disenfranchised, underpaid and mistreated, working in some of the most hazardous work conditions in the United States.

What can be done?
One of the easiest ways to change meat production for the better, for animals and humans alike, is to decrease your meat consumption. Try cutting out meat intake by just one day a week, it’s likely you won’t really miss it. Another option is to buy your meat locally. Locally produced meat is raised by local farmers who often use healthy and humane farming practices. Animals are allowed outdoors and are fed traditional foods like grasses instead of being force-fed grains such as corn as their CAFO counterparts are. This more natural existence is better for the animals, the environment and humans.

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