Factory Animal Farming is Harmfully Affecting People and the Environment on a Local and Global Level

By Katherine Podoll

The cruel and harmful environment in which cows, chickens, and other animals are living in factory farms is not only affecting these poor animals, but is also affecting the people living around these farms, as well as the global atmosphere. In these farms, chickens are packed so tightly that they can never stretch their wings, and in some cases they live on top of each other in a way so that a chicken may never touch the ground. Pigs and cows are also confined to horrifically small spaces, and all of these animals are neglected, their living spaces never cleaned, their illnesses never treated. In 1986, after he began investigating factory farms and stockyards, journalist Gene Baur began Farm Sanctuary, an organization focused on protecting the lives of all animals. In the past 29 years, Baur’s organization has excelled, and after publishing two books on the topic, he has gained much knowledge on the issues associated with animal farming. He has discovered that the bad conditions they are living in not only affects the animals, but it directly affects all of us, as well.

     

    It is natural to have thoughts go to the animals when thinking about animal farming, but have you ever stopped to think that even just being near a factory farm can be extremely harmful to you as well? According to Baur, in these confined warehouses there are “toxic fumes that come from them. There are also antibiotic-resistant pathogens that have now been found in the groundwater. The reason for that is there are animals kept in these horrible conditions, and they are routinely fed enormous quantities of drugs just to be kept alive, which is resulting in the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, which is sickening people, and in some places people are dying.” This worst-case scenario is taking place because as the toxic fumes are escaping the warehouses, they are combining with the antibiotic-resistant pathogens and infecting the people, yet there are no antibiotics, or medicines, that can help cure the illness. Most people living near such harmful factory farms do not even realize the danger they are in, because of the quietness and secrecy with which factory farmers go about their work.

A lot of the dangers that come with animal farming are not directly linked to the animals themselves, and therefore can be hard to identify if you do not know exactly where to look. Another way that this practice is harming the local environment is by releasing herbicides into the water. And while some of this caused by the animals through their manure, the majority is caused by the food given to the animals. In fact, “70% of the corn, and 90% of the soybeans grown in the US are fed to farm animals, and those crops are grown with an enormous amount of herbicides, and pesticides. And those get into the groundwater, they get into the environment, and they impact our health,” says Baur. This is a very interesting connection to make, between animals and what they are fed. If the fact that the US is using up the land of an average 80% of corn and soybean production solely to feed harmfully kept animals is not shocking enough, the usually covered-up detail about how it is poisoning our water is not something that can be ignored.

However, not only is factory farming affecting the environment and its people on a local scale, but it is affecting it on a global scale, through climate change. “Factory farming has been found by the United Nations to be one of the top contributors to the most serious environmental problems we’re facing on the planet,” explains Baur. “They’re a greater contributor to climate change than the entire transportation industry, in fact, according to the United Nations.” He goes on to explain why this is: first, it is because of the amount of crops that need to be grown to feed the animals, which uses lots of energy every step of the way, such as pesticide and fertilizer use, which must be created with fossil fuels, and then the harvesting and transportation of the products; second, there is lots of energy behind the processes of the actual animals being raised on the farms; third, animals, particularly cows, are releasing vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere; and fourth, energy is used to transport the animals once again to slaughter houses, which use “lots and lots of energy, lots and lots of water, lots and lots of resources,” assures Baur. He adds that not only are we destroying the atmosphere by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, but we are also destroying the planet by cutting down rainforests to create space to grow crops for these animals! “Not only are we putting a lot of greenhouse gases into the environment through the production process of animal agriculture, but we are also destroying some of the planet’s best ways to clean the air,” explains Baur.

So, what can we do to reduce or prevent factory farming and all of its side effects? The answer, Baur says, is to start small: with ourselves. If we can all begin to make small changes to our diet and our eating habits, then, with enough people aware and involved, it will make a large impact. “It is critically important, especially now with the [California] drought, to look at our food choices, and to shift those in a way that we’re going to have a lighter footprint,” reports Baur. “And the best way to do that is to eat plants instead of animals.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that we all need to completely cut meat out of our diet, but we must, as a society, begin to see it as a privilege and not as a nightly necessity. If we can begin to cherish the meat we are offered, and be conscientious in only obtaining meat from holistic farms who strive to limit their environmental footprint, then we have a chance to change the meat industry and begin saving the planet and our own lives along the way.  

To learn more about or support Gene Baur's work, go to his website: http://www.farmsanctuary.org/