Reasons To End Factory Farming
Dairy Factory Farming. Image via Wikipedia.
Top Five Ways to End Factory Farming
Farm Sanctuary President and Co-Founder Gene Baur: “The best way to end factory farming is to make the system transparent and accountable, and to align agribusiness practices with our citizens’ values and interests. The cruelty of industrial animal agriculture is an affront to basic human decency. It is inefficient, unhealthy and unsustainable, and costs our nation hundreds of billions of dollars every year.”Whole Foods Market Co-CEO John Mackey: “The best way to end factory farming is to first create more humane alternatives to it in the marketplace. The great majority of people are very unlikely to become vegans for the foreseeable future. It is therefore essential to create more humane alternatives that help raise peoples’ consciousness about what factory farming really does to animals by providing strong contrasts to compare against. Until there are widespread humane alternatives to choose from most people will prefer to remain wilfully ignorant and very little is likely to change.”
Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter: “Factory farming is a threat to public health, the environment, and the rural communities upon which our food system desperately depend. The next farm bill must urgently reverse the policies that have given all of the advantages to intensive farming operations while pushing out the small and mid-sized farms that are the backbone of a system that provides us safe, healthy and sustainable food."
Sierra Club Water Sentinel Lynn Henning: “The best way to end factory farming is to eliminate government subsidies, incentives, and tax breaks for CAFOs [Confined Animal Feeding Operations]. CAFOs are NOT sustainable. We must rethink agriculture to teach the next generation to farm. Family farms have fed this country for generations.”
Farm Sanctuary National Shelter Director Susie Coston: “The best way to end factory farming is to show people that farm animals are intelligent, emotional beings who possess just as much desire to enjoy life as the dogs and cats who we know a bit better.”
Battery Hen Cages. Image via Wikipedia.
Five Things You May Not Know About Factory Farms
John Ikerd, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia: “Factory farms are not necessarily more economically efficient than smaller-scale independent family farms. Factory farm operators use their political influence and their ability to manipulate market prices to drive more efficient family farmers out of business. Food prices are no lower with factory farms than with independent family farms.”Jim Motavalli, contributor to the New York Times, Audubon Magazine, Mother Nature Network and NPR's Car Talk, and author of the forthcoming book High Voltage: “Since the popular image of farms is of old-time barnyards populated by happy pigs and chickens, most people don't even know that factory farming exists. They'd be horrified if they knew how their food is produced, but the industry does an excellent job of keeping them from that reality.”
International Fund for Africa President and Co-Founder Dr. Anteneh Roba: “The one thing most people don't know about factory farming in Africa is that it even exists. The one thing most people don't know about factory farming in the USA is how extremely cruel it is.”
Greenpeace Senior Legislative Representative Kyle Ash: “Public health and animal welfare are inseparable. Forever, industry has tried to divide communities over factory farming, with false claims that industrial food production reduces the need to destroy our air, water and lands. The truth is that factory farming makes every public health problem worse. Shutting down factory farms is a common solution to some of our greatest animal and environmental abuses and we should work together to shut them down.”
Farm Sanctuary President and Co-Founder Gene Baur: “Most people don’t know how terribly animals are treated on today’s factory farms, and that they are legally excluded from basic humane protections.”
Pig Factory Farming. Image via Wikipedia.
Top Five Problems with Factory Farming
John Ikerd, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia: The biggest single problem with factory farming is that it shows no respect for the sanctity of life — either the life of farm animals or human life. Factory farming treats feedlots as biological assembly lines, where the animals are simply machines that produce meat, milk, or eggs for nameless, faceless consumers, with no respect for the people who work in them or live in the communities where they operate. This lack of respect for life undermines the ethical and moral fabric of society.International Fund for Africa President and Co-Founder Dr. Anteneh Roba: “It causes environmental disaster.”
Jim Motavalli, contributor to the New York Times, Audubon Magazine, Mother Nature Network and NPR's Car Talk, and author of the forthcoming book High Voltage: From an environmental point of view, the worst thing about intensive animal agriculture is it's huge inefficiency. It takes five pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat, and a 10-acre farm that could feed 60 growing soybeans would support only two people raising cattle. Reducing American meat consumption by just 10 percent would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people.
Greenpeace Senior Legislative Representative Kyle Ash: “The unnecessary torture and abuse of other animals is one of the worst human atrocities of our time. Humanity's self-aggrandizing misconception that humans rule the world with no moral responsibilities to those with whom we share this planet is reinforced by how we treat other animals, and this ironic view is facilitating destruction of the planet even for ourselves.”
Michael Greger, M.D.: "When we overcrowd thousands of animals into cramped filthy football-field sized sheds to lie beak-to-beak, or snout-to-snout atop their own waste it can present a breeding ground for disease, a perfect storm environment for the emergence of new strains of influenza and other animal-to-human diseases. These so-called factory farms are a public health menace."
Public health, environmental, and animal welfare movement experts are holding the first National Conference to End Factory Farming: For Health, Environment and Farm Animals in Arlington, Va., on October 27-29. For more information, visit www.factoryfarmingconference.org
Questions:
ReplyDeleteWhy are the practices of factory farming largely unknown to or unrecognized by the public?
What would change if more people knew about these practices? (Or would nothing change?)
1. The practices of factory farming are largely unknown and unrecognized by the public because they have a lot of power in the corporate and political arenas. Factory farms are large supporters of lawmakers and powerful businesses adn are thus able to hide what they are doing by making sure that the people they support know to kind of keep what they are doing under wraps and not let the public see what they are doing and the animal cruelty that is happening.
ReplyDelete2. If more people knew about these practices there probably would not be that much that would change, but there might be a little bit. Emotionally, many people would obviously not support this kind of factory farming and would people would hopefully try to find alternatives to eating animals from factory farms, such as raising their own animals for food in a more humane way or finding food alternatives.
1. The practices are largely unknown, because as the article says, the factory farm industry does a good job of covering it up. The factory farms industries' main goal is to make a profit, and a negative view of their industry would decrease that profit. Therefore they have used their wealth and political influence to keep people in the dark about what they really do.
ReplyDelete2. I don't know that much would change even if people knew about the practices. I think a lot of people are at least partially aware of what goes on, but to many, ignorance is bliss. It's easier for them to ignore the truth than it is to see the consequences of their food choices.
1. The practices of factory farms are not widely spread as public knowledge for economic reasons. I would like to think that if people knew the truths of the environmental damage and animal rights violations that factory farms are responsible for, that they would not purchase meats. However, it isn't necessarily that simple, since meats in the US aren't accurately labeled as to their origin and now people do not even know whether or not what they are eating has been genetically modified or is a cloned animal product.
ReplyDelete2. If more people were aware of what actually happens to the animals I think that factory farms would face higher scrutiny. At least I would hope so. I have been a vegetarian for six years and have done several presentations on the impacts of factory farms, but whenever I have shown them to family members or friends who aren't vegetarians, they tell me that they wish I hadn't told them all of these things and to not keep explaining. So, I guess that for many people they had rather not think about the impact that they have when they choose to eat meat and to ignore where it actually came from.
1. Factory farming is a secretive industry because everyone who works in that industry knows quite well how disgusting and depressing the entire process is. If the majority of Americans REALLY knew how factory farming really worked, they wouldn't eat hamburgers and bacon quite so often, I hope.
ReplyDelete2. I think people would have a much larger issue with the current state of farming in our country if they really knew (or cared) what it actually consisted of. There is an actual job position on pig farms where a person stands at an assembly line and blows brain matter out of stripped pig skulls one by one, day after day, ingesting aerosolized pig brains. People get sick from this stuff but because the industry is so secretive, no one wants to talk about it at all.
1. I believe factory farming is unrecognized by the public because that is the plan of the factory farm owners. The brutality and gruesome truth behind the meat and produce we eat and is sold in our local grocery stores is unethical and almost evil. I think the farmers do not want the public to see how they are operating their business and how violent the methods of factory farming actually are.
ReplyDelete2. If the public became more knowledgable and educated on the methods of factory farming, I believe people would buy their meat and produce from more local farms and grocery stores. People want to eat fresh, clean, and healthy food that is produced the right way. Animals need to be healthy and raised well to produce good, quality food.
1) I would say that more people know about factory farming, or at least suspect it, than this article seems to indicate, but I could well be off on that. If the ignorance that they talk about exists to the extent that they seem to indicate, I would say it's probably because modern farming involves so little of the population. We don't need a lot of human labor to feed a lot of people, and so very little human labor is involved. This reduces the odds that any individual stands of being involved in factory farming or of knowing someone who is.
ReplyDelete2) If more people knew about the practices of factory farms, there would be at least some more pressure for them to change, in all likelihood. I don't know if things would change, in reality. If everyone knew, things might change, but it takes a lot of energy to care about this issue unless there are lots of other people who care, as well, and I mean a lot more than are currently involved. If the perception persists that that's just the way it is, and the way it's gonna continue to be, no matter what, then that's precisely what will happen. Somehow, somebody's gonna have to change that perception.
1. In the digital age, technological distractions are rampant. Why watch thousands of chickens be tortured when you can watch Jersey Shore? Our society is becoming increasingly detached to the industries that support it, and food is no different from clothing or technology. Although the industrial food industry does a great job of covering up their injustices, so they deserve most of the credit for these issues not being more well-known. Compound that with the fact that the main people fighting to put an end to factory farming are devout vegans who are seen as the general population as maniacs, and with the ALF (animal liberation front) labeled as terrorists by the government.
ReplyDelete2. If more people knew about these issues I think there would be some change, yet from my experience it is so hard to get people to stop and listen with an open mind for five minutes that it will be a long and hard debate before our society can finally call itself ethical. These ethics can be applied to more than just factory farming though. If people knew the makers of their Ipad's were sometimes basically indentured servants, would that slow our technology addiction down? To most of America, ignorance in bliss.
1. I think that factory farming practices are unknown by the public because both sides have an interest in covering up and ignoring the reality of it. The industry, of course, wants to profit, and so it uses its vast economic resources to make it more difficult for the average person to find out what goes on at these farms. On the other hand, a lot of people are comfortable with their food choices, and they don't want to be presented with the "inconvenient truth" of where their food actually comes from because then they might have to change their behavior.
ReplyDelete2. I definitely think that things would change. I think it would become more stigmatized to eat food from factory farms, just as wearing fur has become more stigmatized over the years as activist groups have brought those practices to light. I'm sure some people would not care, but I think enough people would to get companies to take notice and change their behavior.
This is so sad and is why I have had bouts with vegetarianism for so long. If the smaller farms, that we got ride of, were to come back, then the conditions would improve. I think it that in order to make money, some companies cover up these kinds of stories, and I think other people just don't care. I think this could change, but we need to bring back smaller, local farms first.
ReplyDelete