In short, though factory farming enables us to have plenty of cheap and convenient food, it typically yields food with little nutritional benefit that can increase your resistance to antibiotics as it pollutes your air, land, and water. While some factories can produce ethical and sustainable farming practices, it might be difficult to seek those few out—there are plenty more of the conventional, harsh farming environments in our food system.
To learn more about what to look for when buying meat, check out my post on meat labeling. Our FREE doctor-approved gut health guide. You are now subscribed Be on the lookout for a welcome email in your inbox! Main Navigation. Log in Profile. Saved Articles. Contact Support. Log Out. Your cart is empty. Our online classes and training programs allow you to learn from experts from anywhere in the world.
Explore Classes. Frank Lipman is a widely recognized trailblazer and leader in functional and integrative medicine, and a New York Times best-selling author. Last updated on March 27, Factory-farmed animals can have unhealthy diets. Bad diets make for sick animals—and people too.
Factory-farmed meat can be a less nutritious product. The animals can experience stress. Factory farming can pollute the earth. Factory farming is bad for the environment, the communities near these facilities, consumer health, and animal welfare. Below are a few key issues surrounding factory farming. Animal welfare philosophy and legislation are grounded by the Five Freedoms, a framework denoting the kind of living conditions animals should not be subjected to.
The Five Freedoms are:. The conditions on a typical factory farm make it impossible for animals to fully achieve even one of these freedoms. Harsh confinement, such as battery cages and gestation crates, makes it impossible for animals to express their full repertoire of natural behaviors.
It is also notoriously difficult to discern whether a farm animal is experiencing fear, since this would require the close monitoring of every animal in an attempt to monitor their affective emotional state. The routine mutilations of debeaking, tail-docking, and other procedures are all injuries that can cause chronic pain, and they often go unmonitored.
While some factory farms have made attempts to improve welfare or align with the Five Freedoms, they largely—and arguably always—come up short. Raising animals for food is a resource-intensive activity. Animals require water, medications, climate controls that often rely on fossil fuel energy sources, and shelter. Food is among the biggest resources required. Vast swaths of land must be planted with mono-crops such as corn and soy to feed animals. In the Amazon rainforest, crops for animal feed are among the primary drivers of deforestation.
Pollution from factory farms is another huge issue, contaminating the air, land, and water around facilities. Hog waste is particularly dangerous since it is generally not treated before being released into the environment, leading to surface and groundwater contamination. Human health can be negatively affected by factory farms. Environmental pollution disproportionately affects lower-income, minority communities who live next to or near factory farms.
The Food and Water Watch report details air pollution from broiler farms, since chicken manure contains toxins such as ammonia, which causes respiratory irritation and is linked to lung disease. Environmental pollution from factory farms is what drives these businesses into lower-income communities in the first place.
Factory farms operate off of the assumption that people in these places will put up less of a fight than more affluent, white-dominated areas. This is an example of environmental racism. Human health is further affected by factory farms through the bacterial contamination of meat, such as salmonella and E. Antibiotic resistance is another looming health threat. Animals are often given antibiotics throughout their lives as a preventative measure against illness.
Trace amounts of these bacteria may be eaten directly by consumers of factory-farmed products, causing severe, sometimes incurable illness. The United Nations estimates antibiotic resistance could kill 10 million people and force 24 million people into extreme poverty by Many rural communities in the United States trace their origins to small farms, composed of an interdependent economic ecosystem of small farms and businesses that support them.
But small farms have difficulty competing with CAFOs, since smaller operations generally cannot deliver products to match the low prices and high volumes that factory farms are able to achieve—especially when CAFOs produce a surplus of product, resulting in artificially lowered prices and driving small farms out of business.
As a result, across America the number of farms has dramatically decreased since the onset of factory farming in the early s, while the number of animals at remaining farms has increased steadily. The closing of small farms often affects other businesses that provide farm equipment, feed, or services such as restaurants and movie theaters to rural communities.
Factory farms also provide fewer jobs than smaller farms, given the high degree of mechanization that allows fewer people to manage more animals.
These compounding factors can lead communities to become hollowed out and all but collapsed because of factory farms. Workers in factory farms tend to live in rural, lower-income communities composed of people of color who often come from immigrant backgrounds and can be undocumented. Farmworkers also tend to be among the least unionized in the country. As a result, thousands of people lost their lives and likely brought the infection home to their families and communities.
Factory farms do little to mitigate these and other health risks for workers, or for the communities they call home. The federal Humane Slaughter Act is supposed to ensure that animals are rendered unconscious before they are bled out or dismembered.
However, these regulations are not readily enforced by USDA. The agency often defers to the factory farming industry to regulate itself. Even at the best of times, a trip to the slaughterhouse can mean more than a quick and painless death.
Some chickens are forced to endure live-shackle slaughter , where their legs are jammed into metal clamps and hung upside down, often resulting in broken bones.
A conveyor belt carries them toward an electrified bath of water, where their heads are dunked. The bath is supposed to stun them; however, many birds avoid this bath or are not properly stunned and remain conscious for the slaughter, when their throats are slit and their abused bodies thrown into scalding hot water meant to de-feather them.
This is perhaps the single greatest cause of animal suffering in slaughterhouses. Cattle are commonly killed using a stun-gun or stunner , which is essentially a gun with a retractable bolt instead of a bullet. This bolt is fired into the brain between the eyes of a cow, rendering them braindead. Because of intensive pig farming practices, "the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary fast track, churning out variants every year," according to a report published in the journal Science.
What it means for you : These viruses can become pandemics. In fact, viral geneticists link the genetic lineage of H1N1, a kind of swine flu, to a strain that emerged in in U. The CDC has estimated that between , and , people worldwide died from the H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated. The problem : Factory farms in the U. On dairy farms, around 54 percent of cows are injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone rBGH , a growth hormone that increases milk production.
What it means for you : The health effects of consuming animal products treated with these growth hormones is an ongoing international debate. Some studies have linked growth hormone residues in meat to reproductive issues and breast, prostate and colon cancer, and IGF-1, an insulin-like growth hormone, has been linked to colon and breast cancer.
The EU has also banned the use of six hormones in cattle and imported beef. Developments : U. Consumers can use this information to make their own decisions about the risks associated with hormone-treated animal products.
You can vote for local initiatives that establish health and welfare regulations for factory farms, but only a tiny number of states, including California and Massachusetts , are even putting relevant propositions on the ballot.
Another option is to support any of the nonprofits that are, in lieu of effective government action, taking these factory farms to task. The Environmental Working Group , Earthjustice and the Animal Legal Defense Fund are among those working hard to check the worst practices of these factory farms. Another good organization is the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project , which works with local residents to fight the development of factory farms in their own backyards.
Buying humanely raised animal products from farms and farmers you trust is another way to push back against factory farming. Sadly, products from these smaller farms make up only a fraction of the total. In the U. You can support lab-grown "clean" burgers, chicken and pork by buying it once it becomes widely available. Made from animal cells, the process completely spares the animal and eliminates the factory farm.
In the meantime, you can register your objection to factory farming by doing your bit to reduce demand for their products. In short, eat less meat and dairy, and more plant-based proteins. Lest you think that what you do on your own can't possibly make a difference, consider one of the major drivers behind all this new investment: consumers are demanding change. Tia Schwab is a former Stone Pier Press news fellow who recently graduated from Stanford University where she studied human biology with a concentration in food systems and public health.
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