In addition, the act of spraying wastes increases evaporation and vaporization of pollutants. Better alternatives exist: Practical remedies to these problems do exist. But implementing them will require some important changes in factory farm practices and government oversight:. Regulation and accountability. Factory farms are industrial facilities and should be regulated accordingly. They should be required to obtain permits, monitor water quality and pay for cleaning up and disposing of their wastes.
Public awareness and participation. State governments and the U. EPA should implement a tracking system for fish-kill and manure-spill data. Local governments and residents must have a say in whether to allow factory farms in their communities, and they should be armed with this information. New technology. Factory-farm technology standards, unchanged since , must be strengthened. The EPA's proposed new national standards must be made stricter and include bans on new manure lagoons and on aerial spraying.
Alternative farming practices. States and the federal government should promote methods of raising livestock that reduce the concentration of animals and use manure safely. Many alternative methods exist; they rely on keeping animal waste drier, which limits problems with spills, runoff and air pollution.
Pollution-reduction programs for small feedlots. Voluntary programs must be expanded to encourage smaller factory farms, which fall outside of the regulations for industrial facilities, to improve their management practices and take advantage of available technical assistance and other resources.
If the pandemic is the flash flood that has taken us by surprise, the superbug crisis is the only-too-predictable slow rising tide. Approximately 10 million deaths are expected annually by The World Health Organisation WHO warns we could reach a stage where we are resistant to all antibiotics because of the superbug crisis — a post-antibiotic era.
This means commonplace operations like caesarean sections or cancer treatment suddenly become dangerous — perhaps impossible — because antibiotics will not protect against infection. COVID may be a virus which does not respond to antibiotics, but antibiotics are used to treat the secondary infections — such as bacterial infections of the lungs and blood — that it can cause.
But how is antibiotic effectiveness compromised by superbugs? There could be a significant additional toll from superbugs during the pandemic and into the future. Privacy Policy. This site uses cookies to improve your user experience. By using this site you agree to these cookies being set. To find out more see our cookies policy. You are using an outdated browser which we do not support.
Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience and security. If you have any further questions regarding this, or any other matter, please get in touch with us at supporters ciwf. We aim to respond to all queries within two working days. However, due to the high volume of correspondence that we receive, it may occasionally take a little longer. Please do bear with us if this is the case. Factory farming Your health Animal cruelty People and poverty Environmental damage Why does factory farming still exist?
Contrary to more natural and traditional forms of farming, this practice damages soil quality, depleting it of nutrients, and has necessitated chemical intervention in the form of pesticides and fertilizers. Whereas sustainable farming practices control weeds, insects and other pests with ecosystem management, farmers who monocrop are dependent on pesticides.
The broad use of synthetic fertilizers adds back nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into the depleted land — soil that would otherwise naturally revive itself by crop rotation or via animal manure or compost in a sustainable farming system. Pesticides are chemicals used to kill organisms that might affect crop production, such as insects or fungi. Pesticides have been linked to multiple health problems, including neurological and hormonal system disorders, birth defects, cancer and other diseases.
Despite these threats to public health, pesticides are still widely used, and research has shown that many US citizens have pesticides present in their systems. Large crop producers have come to rely on the heavy use of synthetic fertilizers including nitrogen-based fertilizers and animal waste, which are sprayed directly on fields from factory farms.
Both types of fertilizer are used to increase overall yields and to make up for the damage done to soils through monocropping, and in the case of animal waste, to find an application for excessive amounts of manure and other animal waste products. These fertilizers pose direct and indirect risks to human health.
Animal waste can contain harmful bacteria, which can infect workers or spread into nearby water systems. The occurrence of these algal blooms has become more frequent in recent years owing to increased fertilizer pollution from agriculture. Toledo, Ohio was the first US city to have their water supply affected by an algal bloom in , leaving the city without drinking water for three days. In , shellfishing in Down East Maine was forced to stop production when a dangerous species of algae, pseudo-nitszchia, bloomed in Casco Bay.
These algae produce the neurotoxin domoic acid, and eating mollusks contaminated with these strains can cause death. The modern food system relies on industrial crop production practices which produce food grown specifically for high yield, ease of transport and fast growth. These three crops together have become a major component of the US food supply largely due to governmental support systems that keep their costs low.
Many obesity-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers and diabetes are understood to be, in part, a result of over consumption of cheap, processed foods. While our reliance on staple crops has grown, modern varieties of these crops have been bred aggressively to increase overall productivity through high yield and easy transport but have not been bred for nutritional value.
The important macro- and micro-nutrient content of these crops has declined, as compared to their historical cousins. Corn and soybeans also provide the carbohydrates and protein that are used to bring animals to market weight quickly and have largely replaced grass as feed for factory farmed livestock. Government assistance to commodity farmers has made these crops cheaper than other feed options, bringing the cost of low-quality and unsustainably-raised meat down and increasing its ubiquity in the grocery store.
It has the added effect of ensuring that consumers will eat grains no matter what, even if ingested secondarily through meat.
The nutrient content of animal products has also declined with the rise of industrialized meat production. For example, while industrial dairies produce higher yields of milk, the product tends to contain lower concentrations of protein, fat and milk components. American diets tend to contain high levels of omega-6 for every gram of omega-3, an imbalance which has been shown to increase the risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
Grass-fed, organic dairy provides a balance of fatty acids at a ratio close to one to one for omega-6 and omega-3, which is thought to be more ideal for health. The conditions of concentrated animal feeding operations CAFOs , also known as factory farms, are especially threatening to public health. In , livestock and poultry on the largest factory farms produced million tons of animal waste, almost 13 times more waste than that of the million people in the US.
Most manure lagoons are lined in clay, which can leak over time, allowing the waste to seep into surrounding water bodies. Bacteria, viruses and nitrates can enter the water supply, exposing community members to disease as well as nitrate poisoning.
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