Why Factory Farming is Bad For the Planet
By Amelia Crowley
Commercial farming is responsible for 14.5% of carbon emissions. Though almost all people in the United States eat animal products (2% vegetarian and .5% vegan), factory farming is one of the most wasteful and cruel industries on earth.
Factory farming causes water pollution, air pollution, and deforestation. The animals in factory farms can produce one million tons of manure every day, and are fed mostly corn, which cows, pigs, and chickens, and other livestock are not meant to naturally eat. These animals are fed corn so that they grow faster and bigger, but it also makes them very unhealthy. For example, cows normally live up to 25 years, but are killed as soon as only five years old. It is the same unfortunate way for other animals in factories.
The animal waste from factory farms gets stored in shallow pools, which sometimes have no lining and are called lagoons. These lagoons can overflow and spread pollutants throughout an ecosystem just from being slightly flooded, and can kill fish, local animals, and plants.
The animals on factory farms are kept in dangerously small enclosures, especially birds like chickens. This means that the animals can spread diseases through the population, or hurt themselves or others. Most chickens have their beaks cut off so they can’t peck each other.
Factory farming is especially dangerous because humans can get diseases from the meat that they eat. Sometimes people get mad cow disease because the feed has random, unregulated items in it, such as sawdust, concrete powder, and even other animals' brains. Also, because the animals live in such squalorous, crowded, and unclean places they are given over 70% of the antibiotics consumed in the United States alone. This creates antibiotic resistant infections that kill an estimated 90,000 Americans each year.
Factory farmed meats also contain saturated fats, and are the main source of this fat in the American diet. Saturated fat is one of the main causes of heart disease and obesity.
To help stop this abuse, you don’t have to go entirely meatless all at once, that can be a hard change for your body, but consider having meat one less meal a day, or one less day a week. Helping the planet can help you too.
Sources:
Omnivore’s Dilemma, Micheal Pollan
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