Factory Farming of Livestock   PigsFour.gif (1289 bytes)

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Photo: R. Willett, News & Observer (Raleigh)
"We are no longer a nation of small farmers... Two per cent of farms generate 40% of gross farm sales. Five corporations control 85% of the beef market. Four corporations control 58% of all pork processing and forty producers control one third of all hogs. In the past 25 years, the number of poultry farms fell by 35%, but production tripled to over seven billion birds."  --Laura Orlando, "McFarms Go Hog Wild," Dollars and Sense, July-August 1998.

TextMiller.gif (1060 bytes)  Assigned outside reading

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  Miller, pp. 206-216 

ReadOnln.gif (285 bytes)  Assigned online reading

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  "The Environment (...and Factory Farms)," by Patty Cantrell, Rhonda Perry, and Paul Sturtz, Rural America / In Motion Magazine, April 1998. [2,400 words] Includes sections concerning:

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  "McFarms Go Hog Wild," Laura Orlando, Dollars and Sense magazine, July-August 1998. (The changes in farming mentioned toward the end of this article are explored later in the course, under Agricultural Bioengineering.)   [1,700 words]
BallRed.gif (967 bytes) RoosterStrut.gif (11779 bytes)"Intensive Poultry Production: Fouling The Environment," United Poultry Concerns, updated 1999 -- "U.S. slaughterhouses now kill more than 30 million birds every day, 8 billion birds a year. This carnage pollutes land, air, and water with diseased carcasses, feces, heavy metals, chemicals, bacteria, parasites, pathogen cysts, and viruses."  [1,500 words]

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  "How Livestock Antibiotics Threaten Our Health," Sierra Club -- As factory farmers needlessly dose their anmals with antibiotics, bacteria develop resistance to the drugs and humans may ingest those resistant microbes via contaminated meat or water. Essential antibiotics are becoming ineffective.  [600 words]

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  What's the factory farming situation in Wisconsin?  [200 words] 

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  Some Solutions to Factory Farming 

SeeFilm9.gif (462 bytes)  Video shown in class

BallRed.gif (967 bytes)  Drumbeat for Mother Earth (2000, 52 min.) -- Are persistent toxic chemicals (POPs) the greatest threat to the long-term survival of Indigenous Peoples? This video extends the topic of last week. Please arrive in lecture a few minutes early, so we can let out on time. (Optional info about the video) 

AND NOW: Food irradiation!!

The latest scheme by Agribiz brings together Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), the country's largest beef processor, and Wal-Mart, the nation's leading discount retailer. Calling the process "electronic pasteurization," the two companies propose to sell, in Wal-Mart outlets, boxes of frozen, irradiated IBP beef patties.

While there is benefit to be had by killing bacteria, irradiation substantially reduces the nutritional quality of meat. Irradiation reduces the level of vitamins A, B2, B3, B6, B12, C, E, K, thiamine, folic acid and amino acids. In the irradiation process, radiolytic products or "free radicals" are created, many of which have not been tested for health effects; some of these are toxins -- formaldehyde, benzene, formic acid and quinones. Irradiated meat can appear or smell different than non-irradiated meat.

In 50 years of research conducted worldwide, lab animals fed irradiated food have suffered premature death, cancer, reproductive and immune problems, liver and kidney dysfunction, low birth weight, nutritional muscular dystrophy, chromosomal damage and other serious problems.

Irradiation may give consumers a false sense of security and meat-packers an excuse to ease up on sanitation standards. Irradiated meat products have been found to still harbor host botulism, salmonella and listeria. Of particular concern is "mad cow disease," which is remarkably resistant to irradiation, as well as other known methods of food purification.

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"Nationwide, 130 times more animal waste is produced than human waste-- 5 tons per person [compared to about 80 pounds of solid human waste]-- making some large livestock operations the waste equivalent of a town or even a large city. One dramatic example is a 50,000 acre swine operation in southwest Utah designed to produce 2.5 million hogs annually, with a potential waste output greater than entire city of Los Angeles, California."     -- "Animal Waste Pollution in America," December 1997, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry
  
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Fact Niblet... Irate Cows...

Q-Write.gif (1242 bytes)  Questions to answer concerning factory farming:

1. What are the main characteristics of a "factory farm" that produces livestock, and how do these traits usually contrast with those of a "family farm"?

2. Using quantitative data, how would you describe the consolidation and importance of corporate livestock operations (or factory farms) in the U.S. today?

3. How does the U.S. production of livestock waste (feces and urine) compare with the production of human waste?

4. Briefly describe the typical environmental impacts of a factory (or "corporate") hog farm regarding each of the following:

(a) waste--
(b) odor / gases / air--
(c) water & soil--
(d) food safety concerns--
(e) animal welfare--

5. What environmental consequences are especially likely from poultry litter? (In one of the chains, specify four or five cause-and-effect links.)

6. Beyond accumulation of droppings, what effects are common where many poultry are kept in close confinement?

7. What is Pfiesteria piscicida, its importance, and its probable relation to factory farming?

8. What regulations does Wisconsin have that help to limit factory farming?

9. Why and how do state and local governments often compete with each other to attract factory farms?

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Remember: Eat more meat!

Optional Resources concerning Factory Farming

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Thomas Detwyler maintains this page (tdetwyle@uwsp.edu)
Last updated 8 June 2001