Factory Farming-Cultivating Destruction

By Coming Soon • May 17th, 2009

Because these industrial operations are considered "farms," or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), they are not subject to industrial emissions standards required by the Department of Environmental Conservation and Environmental Protection Agency.

Even as industrial farms produce more emissions than transportation, they are also responsible for a majority of emissions produced by all transportation functions. Most food animals travel hundreds of thousands of miles in their lifetimes as they are transported between various operations such as stockyards and slaughterhouses. Maintaining the support industries of factory farming also takes a toll on local environments. Planting, fertilizing, irrigating and harvesting feed crops, continually pumping water and sewage, running packing plants and slaughterhouses, (which kill 250 cows an hour), all rely on heavy machinery and fossil fuel consumption.

Because of the deforestation, soil erosion and desertification these support industries cause, they are fundamentally unsustainable and have an extremely negative impact on the environment. Thirty percent of the earth's land is now occupied by livestock, with another 33 percent devoted to GMO feed crops, and this number is expanding every year. Seventy percent of previously forested land in the Amazon has been converted into cropland and pastures, destroying biodiversity, introducing carcinogenic pesticides, and playing a primary role in pushing species toward extinction at a rate 500 times of that we ought to be experiencing according to models based on fossil records.

Protecting the Source
In the context of the global water supply, the impact of animal agriculture threatens utter catastrophe. Factory farming is responsible for 37 percent of pesticide contamination, 50 percent of antibiotic contamination and one-third of the nitrogen and phosphorus loads found in freshwater.

Poisoning water is bad enough, but depleting the supply borders on the suicidal. The majority of the earth's water is now used to support animal agriculture, and much of it cannot be reclaimed. It takes thousands of gallons of water to produce one pound of factory farmed beef. This means a single person can save more water simply by not eating a pound of beef than they could by not showering for an entire year.

But it's not only fresh water sources that are at risk; ocean waters are also imperiled. Dead zones, vast stretches of costal waters in which nothing can live, are created by untreated hormone-, nitrate- and antibiotic-laden agricultural waste seeping into the soil, groundwater and rivers before contaminating the ocean, the source of all life on earth. According to the EPA, 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and groundwater in 17 states has been permanently contaminated by industrial farm waste.

Despite these horrifying statistics, global production of meat and milk is projected to double in the next 10 years.

With the average American already consuming more than 200 pounds of meat per year, the choice to support industrial farming is devastating from an environmental perspective, exacerbating global warming and jeopardizing a plentiful food supply for future generations that today we take for granted.

The Compassionate Revolution
While factory farming's role in ecological degradation is not news to many animal advocates, few environmental organizations have based their call to action on the direct link between the cruelty of the "food animal industry" and our current ecological crisis.

A groundbreaking partnership between Farm Sanctuary and the international environmental group Brighter Green intends to change that. Brighter Green, an action and research organization advancing public policy on the environment, equity, animals, and rights, was founded last year by Mia Macdonald, a senior fellow at the World Watch Institute, and Martin Rowe, author and co-founder of Lantern Books. The organization's focus is to work across various sectors to advance research and public policy on the root causes of crucial environmental concerns.

Farm Sanctuary President Gene Baur says the collaboration with Brighter Green is only natural. Farm policy, he says, not only concerns animal rights advocates, but also those invested in issues of economic justice, human health and the environment.

"The price we're paying for denying the links we share to all living things is obviously an economy and a culture based on ecological collapse," Baur says. "The lack of laws to protect farm animals has lead to a rise in practices that are not only unconscionably cruel, but completely unsustainable from a global perspective."

This summer, Farm Sanctuary and Brighter Green are co-sponsoring a whitepaper on the $90 billion congressional Farm Bill, a piece of legislation used to subsidize corporate agribusiness. Baur says the whitepaper is expected to have a major impact on public policy and public debate. Its release marks a new holistic approach appropriate to the sweeping impact of the environmental crisis.

"The problems and issues we are facing today all have multiple entry points," Macdonald says. "Globalization, public health, sustainability, poverty, gender issues, are all key elements in putting together policies that will truly be effective. Factory farming is not just a concern because it produces toxic waste. The environmental impact of factory farming is a direct result of animal cruelty. The concerns of animal rights activists have an equal place at the table when discussing environmental policy and strategy."

Among the recommendations in the co-sponsored report is a call for Congress to end the Farm Bill's silence on farm animal welfare, support small and organic farms, eliminate programs that promote the spread of factory farms, and ensure the protection of wildlife habitats.

Baur and Macdonald are calling on every sector of our society to look closely at the causes and the end results of industrial farming. They both acknowledge that in an immediate sense, adopting a meat-free diet may be the most rewarding and effective step an individual can take to help save the planet.

"Viewing any animals as commodities has had a profoundly negative impact on understanding the world we live in," Baur says. "There is no more important task at hand than combating the false notion that the entire natural world is economically quantifiable or exists simply for our purposes alone."

"An animal, an ocean, a forest, a species, are not separate, but intimately connected in every way," he adds.

Baur admits that all environmental groups have an uphill climb. But he says the philosophical approach Farm Sanctuary and Brighter Green are taking is rooted in "patience, persistence and the belief that at heart we all want the same thing."

"Every living thing shares common interests and concerns," Baur says. "No one likes blood and violence and gore. No one wants to see gratuitous suffering of any kind prevail."

While groups like Brighter Green and Farm Sanctuary continue to make the point that the leviathan of industrial agribusiness must be confronted by a broad international coalition that represents various interests throughout the environmental movement, they also believe deeply that an individual has the power to make a difference.

"Factory farming represents a race to the bottom for all species," Baur says. "But fortunately there is another choice, a simple one that everyone has the power to make: don't eat meat."

Many thanks to Farm Sanctuary for providing MyYogaOnline with this informative article. When Farm Sanctuary started in 1986, it was a fledgling, all volunteer organization that was funded by sales of veggie hot dogs from a VW van. Today, Farm Sanctuary has grown to become the nation's leading farm animal protection organization, with hundreds of thousands of supporters. Farm Sanctuary remains solidly committed to their mission to end cruelty to farm animals and promote compassionate living through rescue, education and advocacy efforts.