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Vegetarians chose to not eat meat for a variety of reasons including health factors and animal rights. A new study may suggest now that meat from industrialized farms has a strong connection to human disease. According to a 2008 study by Pew Commission on Industrial Farm and Animal Production, farms are breeding grounds for diseases. Small farms are shutting down and large farms are taking over the industry but with less farms, the same amount of animals for food are still be produced. “The Infectious Disease Society of America has declared antibiotic-resistant infections to be an epidemic sweeping through the U.S. The Food and Agriculture Organization has recommended the agricultural use of antibiotics be restricted. They claim the health of the world’s population is threatened by the globalization of the industrial animal farms and concentrated feeding operations.” With so many animals is such tight spaces the risk of pathogens rises and create more opportunities for disease transmission to humans. According to an article written by Laura Sayre in 1965 there with 53 million hogs in the United States raised on over 1 million farms across the country. Today there are roughly 65 million hogs raised on only 65,000 hog farms, with some farms raising more than 5,000 pigs at any time. Chicken production has also been raised from 355 million in 1945 to 8,400 million in 2001. Raising animals in this way is inhumane as well. Some animals spend their life being fed hormones while standing in crates, unable to move even their necks around. They also lack the ability to walk or lie on natural materials and even if they aren’t held in a cage, they do not have enough room to walk around. Scientists have proven that food safety is linked to the health of the animals that produce the meat, dairy or egg products. They also know that intensive confinement production systems increase pathogen shedding in animals. Many of the animals kept captive like this live their entire lives in stress and therefore have weaker immune systems and susceptibility to infection. Because disease passes so quickly in these tight spaces with lack of fresh air and sunlight, a large amount of antibiotics are used to keep the animals healthy. In many cases, these antibiotics transfer to humans during consumption that bring threat to human health. Farms like these not only pose a threat to the humans consuming the animals, but also to the communities that live close due to these farming methods. Livestock excretion also poses a threat to the environment since much of the manure that is tainted with antibiotics and pathogens is spread on the ground untreated.
http://www.NaturalNews.com/025716_antibiotic_antibiotics_disease.html
In our Environmental Science class this past weeks topic has been agriculture and its affect on the environment. One of the interesting topics I learned about was feedlots. Feedlots are usually a small amount of land where a large amount of cattle are raised for livestock production. Usually the cattle are kept in very small pens which can lead to disease spreading rapidly through the cattle. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has recently started regulating feedlots because of its pollution and unhealthy effects on the cattle.
Another problem is that these feedlots create a large amount of waste that are stored in lagoons. The National Resource Defense Council states that these lagoons are very dangerous because they can leak and release large amounts of Nitrogen, dangerous microbes. These large feedlots have horrible impacts on the water and air around them. The pollution from the feedlots can have very harmful affects on human health. Gas released by the animals waste such as hydrogen sulfide can lead to serious health hazards which include headaches, shortness of breath, coughing and diarrhea.
Contaminated water can create Blue Baby Syndrome which can cause death in infants. Water levels with high amounts nitrate can lead to spontaneous abortions. The amount of harmful affects from feedlots is astronomical and the Federal government is setting higher regulations on feedlots. For example if there was a leak of pollution the plants must pay for the cleanup and disposing of the waste. The EPA is considering new ways of using technology to reduce pathogens in the waste. Alternate farming methods are also available where they can raise livestock and reduce the amount of pollutants emitted in the air and water. Finally by creating smaller feedlots this reduces the amount of waste contained in one area and the threat of large leak in the water.
The animals in feedlots have high amounts of antibiotics put into them for growth quickly. As mentioned before due to the cramped amount of space in pens if one animal gets sick it can lead to an outbreak in all animals. This makes it harder to trace the source if there is food poisoning. Feedlots are not only dangerous to the animals in the pens but the people around them. People can be affected by directly eating the food are the pollution that ends up in the air or water.
People must bring awareness to this unhealthy way of raising livestock. The EPA needs to create higher standards to help maintain a healthier environment around feedlots.
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