Factory Farming Just Ain’t Right

Factory Farming is a word that means the overcrowding of animals in miserable conditions, depriving them usually of sunlight and the ability to feel the ground underneath their feet. It is a modern response to a system in which animals are regarded as having no value other than their inherent value as a commodity, their own feelings of discomfort are relegated to inconsequential if they are even regarded in any way at all other than as a value product.

   This type of close-quarters stocking results in cannibalism and other severe psychological distress on the animals. Due to the quick and easy transmission of disease in these unnatural conditions, the animals are dosed regularly with high amounts of antibiotics, as well as hormones to increase the meat production.

   “you are what you eat’ is the old axiom… but why is it when it comes to this method of ‘animal husbandry’ (I can’t really regard it with those words I learned in Ag. classes), we don’t apply the same thinking? It is precisely because these farms are not at our doorstep.  No one really sees the miserable conditions of the average ‘laying hen’, kept with a dozen other hens in a small area just large enough to stand in, with no nesting box, the hard wire cage floor designed to roll the egg down the bottom and out a chute where it will roll on to it’s eventual cleaning and crating.

   Yes, this makes for a low-cost food source in terms of economics. But what is the cost to the body of the hormones and antibiotics in our foods? What are we doing to our children, the next generation when we encourage them to eat these chemicals? Might there be a correlation in the age of puberty American children are now entering so early and their food sources? The rise in autism is attributed to several factors, but none have been proven yet, might the meat ingested by the mother while pregnant be a factor? The aggression seen among young women now, how much of that is merely sociological, and how much might be attributable to high levels of chemicals in their blood and brain from before birth?

   One thing to know, if you buy your meat from an organic farm, the animals cannot be given antibiotics unless there is a definite reason to prevent the death of the animal.  And as I recall, that animal cannot then be sold as organic. (we don’t raise meat animals, so I never studied the rules too closely). Animals on organic farms are also required to be allowed to get out into the sunshine a little each day. The sun is the great giver of energy, it enters the body and the cells and gives us vitamins that the body cannot properly make without it. It is essential for animals also. When I go by our neighbors cattle pastures, and see a ten acre field with twenty head in there, I see the young calves playing, butting heads, I know those are well-cared-for animals with plenty of room to roam.

   I don’t know the solution to this issue… primarily I guess it rests on the shoulders of the government to pass laws to restrict or eliminate factor farming. this will doubtless cause meat prices to rise a bit, but it will also result in more rural jobs for farm workers to care for the animals, the factory farms are designed to be as low on human labor as possible to decrease costs. The huge amounts of manure from the concentrated animals would be spread over a larger area, resulting in less localized pollution from manure. And perhaps the food supply would be healthier than we now have, with less antibiotics messing up our own immune systems, and fewer growth hormones causing rage incidents and ten year-old women.

   At any rate, the article that caused this rant is at the NY Times, ‘The worst way of farming’.