New study slams factory farming
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Factory farming takes a hit in a report, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, released yesterday. Rick Weiss of the Washington Post reports:
Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America’s economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.
The report finds that the ‘economies of scale’ used to justify factory farming practices are ‘largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated costs.’
Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.
The report was also critical of confinement systems such as battery cages for chickens and gestation crates for pigs.
-- Alice Short
