The Other White Meat
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Environment
Want another reason to give up meat or at least go with local farmers who treat their animals humanely?
The stress, crowding and contamination inside confinement buildings foster disease, especially respiratory illnesses. In addition to toxic fumes, bacteria, yeast and molds have been recorded in swine buildings at a level more than 1,000 times higher than in normal air. To prevent disease outbreaks (and to stimulate faster growth), the hog industry adds more than 10 million pounds of antibiotics to its feed, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates. This mountain of drugs � a staggering three times more than all antibiotics used to treat human illnesses � is a grim yardstick of the wretchedness of these facilities.
As more consumers seek out meat that wasn’t raised in conditions like this, the more we’ll see free-range, non-antibiotic farms come back. I mean, how many of you would pay a couple extra bucks for meat that wasn’t raised in these conditions? I definitely would.
So spread the word or else we’re going to get more of this or possibly much, much worse.
(h/t: Sully)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 and is filed under Economy, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
These swine megafarms are heinous at the very least,but with American farmland disappearing so quickly,where do you think free range pork will come from? A slash and burned rain forest farmer? Concerned Americans need to realize that the Earth Day generations have seen this coming for decades.America is overpopulated and rapidly running-out of fresh water.Forget the Great Lakes,they’re spoken for by two countries and the surrounding states.Ending immigration and deporting illegals is a necessity.All other options have been tried and failed.Get Green now.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
HA HA HA, that’s so funny!
The truth is there is no way for those “local” farmers to make enough money to stay in business. It would take a huge change in the buying habits of the the American people. The same people who go to Wal-Mart to buy the cheapest possible products at the expense of actual humans will pay a significant premium for their meat? HA! Ain’t gona happen.
The other problem with that is there is no more “local” or “family” farm any more. Most of the “Family” farms that are left are multi million dollar enterprises. In my home county in Iowa there are about 4 farmers who control about 80% of the farmland (they don’t necessarily own it, but they lease it if they don’t). The mechanization of farming since the 30’s has reduced the numbers of people needed to farm each acre and made it much harder to make a living as a small scale farmer. For example, the farm my Great-grandfather owned at the turn of the century was worked by himself, his entire family, and several hired hands, is now run by one of his grandsons, as a part time job with some help from his father.
the economics dictate industrial farming, and the laws passed in the last 50 years reinforce the economics. There is no way that without structural changes in both law and buying patterns of the American public that any of the “problems” you cite could be solved.
March 14th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
More & more people are paying a little more for organically grown food. As their numbers rise, somehow the prices fall. An additional of factory raised food cost is the number of folks getting sick from these factory farms is increasing every year. Medical care is a lot more expensive than safer food & humane treatment of animals would be.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Ahem.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Justin,
I may be wrong, but I believe it is unlikely that the vast majority of people in this country will pay a large premium for meat and produce they can buy cheaper elsewhere. I do know people who do, but not many. One of my Aunts is one of those people who insist on “organic” and “local” fresh produce, she has the time to go to the farmer’s market downtown every day to pick up that produce and lives in an area with a large amount of traditional (Amish) farmers. She also has enough income to afford the premium prices charged by those farmers. Not everyone does.
I think that the average person, most of whom have never been to a farm and who’s idea of farm life is informed by “Charlotte’s Web” are easy marks for PETA and others who believe that farmers abuse animals for fun and profit. That is patently untrue. Every farmer wants to make money, the best way to do that is to get the animals to market weight as fast as possible. Abusing the animals would slow down the process and loose the farmer money, in some years the difference between profitability and a loss on an animal is only a day or two of feed. It makes no economic sense to increase the time to market.
If you want to make changes to the standard of care for farm animals, get congress or the state legislature to change the laws. just remember the law of unintended consequences. If you raise the cost for domestic farmers to raise animals, you will make it even easier for foreign competition to take over yet another portion of the American economy.