Factory farms vs. the environment

Factory farms are not self-contained units. By that, I mean the effects of a factory farm are not limited to the suffering that goes on inside of them. The horrors animals endure in these massive torture chambers are beyond belief for most of us, but the effects stretch far beyond what goes on inside the physical structures. The environment is hugely impacted and that means that we are all affected regardless of our food choices.

Let's start with water. All life (including us!) is dependent on it. Sure, this seems obvious, but unfortunately clean water is becoming more scarce. In fact, some experts predict that in the future wars will be fought over water similarly to wars fought over oil. In some parts of the world right now people don't even have access to clean, fresh water. So what does this have to do with factory farming? A couple of things.

Factory farms use water in an extremely inefficient way. According to John Robbins in his book "The Food Revolution" (excellent and very informative read!) it takes 23 gallons of water to produce one pound of lettuce or tomatoes, 24 gallons for one pound of potatoes, 25 gallons for one pound of wheat, 49 gallons of water for one pound of apples, 1,630 gallons for one pound of pork and whoa...5,214 gallons of water needed to produce just one pound of beef. Based on those calculations we could literally produce 30 pounds of lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, wheat and apples and still have 894 gallons of water left. That's 150 pounds of food plus a whole bunch of water which could feed a lot of people vs. one pound of beef, which would feed probably 1-2 people. Some statistics say that half of the water used in the U.S. is used for livestock production. 

In addition to using water very inefficiently factory farming is actually a huge contributor to both water pollution and greenhouse gases which, as we know, contribute to global warming. Think about it: 10 billion animals living on farms eating mostly unnatural diets consisting of grain, soy, manure, dead animals and animal parts, chemicals and drugs (I'll discuss this in a later entry). Besides the sheer number of animals producing bodily waste their diets are so unnatural and upset their digestive systems further exacerbating the output. Where does all that waste go? On real farms manure is often utilized as fertilizer but today there is so much waste it's not feasible to use it. Plus, given the garbage these animals are eating would you want that used to fertilize your veggies? I wouldn't!

Instead of reusing livestock waste as fertilizer they now collect it in giant lagoons near the farms. It is funneled out of the huge sheds that the animals "live" in and collected in lagoons the size of football fields and sometimes 30 feet deep. That means that all over the country and the world there are massive pools containing ridiculous amounts of feces, urine,  dead animals, various bodily fluids and body parts and of course all of the hormones, drugs, and chemicals the animals are fed. As you can imagine these pools are not exactly contained. Rather the waste seeps into the earth, rivers, lakes, oceans and of course, the air, left to make people, fish and other wildlife sicks.

This quote from John Robbins' "The Food Revolution" which is a summary of the findings of the U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee pretty much sums it up: "Untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and disease-bearing organisms...(livestock waste) goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It's poisoning rivers and killing fish and sickening people...Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated...Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick." So, yeah, that's what' happens to livestock waste and if it hasn't affected you yet it very well might eventually if we don't stop this. Here's a map of factory farms in the U.S from the organization Food and Water Watch. They're everywhere and if agribusiness has it's way there will be one in your hood before you know it!

Last thing I'll touch on for now is air pollution. All of that livestock waste is accompanied by methane, like any solid waste. A report issued by the United Nations (Livestock's Long Shadow-Environmental Issues and Options) in 2006 that set out to detail the environmental impacts of factory farming said that  "that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global (Wikipedia)." Apparently livestock are responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gases and that's even more than transportation! The problem is, of course, in the number of animals. 


The good news is that humans can reduce their meat over-consumption which will reduce the profit for big agribusiness and in turn, cause them to reduce the number of animals they're growing for food, and thus, reduce the amount of pollution. Fortunately for us we all have voting power every time we go to the grocery store or to a restaurant. We don't have to support this destruction of our environment  and if enough people stop supporting agribusiness with their buying power, then the environmental impact of factory farms will diminish, creating a safer, healthier, planet for us and for our children.