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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 3:27:20 AM | Modern farming methods are the reason i decided to go veggie at the age of 14. Animals are injected with steriods to make them bigger therefore more meat to profit the farmers. Anti biotics are given to the animals to prevent them from becoming ill, this is being fed to them, then they fed to you. Some of those drugs are getting into your system and im sure you all know the benefits of anti biotics when your ill and in need of them, but when your not ill and not in need yet they still get into your system, then you build up an immunity. Should you ever be ill and require anti biotics, your body will have become slightly immune to their affect, therefore not fight off the infection so easily.
The way the animals are kept in tiny spaces is cruel. Chickens are so tightly packed in they loose the ability to walk, hold their bodies upright and they are stacked on top of each other, sh!ting on each other. We all know the dangers of bird poo, right, Salmonella. Most of these birds are actualy infected with the disease, its only the way you cook it that kills off the bug and as you probably know, the infection can easily be transfered to hands and kitchen items before the bird goes in the oven.
Do you know that pregnant pigs are kept in tiny cages, when they give birth they have no room to move about, lie down in comfort etc. As soon as the pig gives birth, the piglets are taken away and fed artificialy while the mother is still left in that standing position in her cage, exhausted and in pain mentaly and physicaly. Yes animals have hormones too, just like any mother who has given birth will grieve if her babies are taken away so soon without being given the chance to feed them as they should be fed.
These animals are living creatures seen as nothing but profitable items by farmers greedy to make more money.
Also consider the environmental impact on the planet. Cattle are now fed on more soya than anything else. The rainforests are being stripped down to make room to grow more soya, not for us veggies before anyone starts on that, but for low cost animal feed. Then there are the chemicals used by farmers on the animals enclosures, they are sprayed with incecticieds containing carciogenics. These animals you are eating have been standing in pools of cancer causing chemicals that the farmer would allow on his skin, he probably wears protective clothing. These chemicals are also soaked into the ground.
I am not promoting vegetarianism here, but just asking that you consider buying your meat more ethicaly, organic, free range if you really need to eat it. Have some consideration for the feelings of these animals, their freedom to be animals and the impact on the planet.
Please dont turn this into a veggie bashing session. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 3:53:14 AM | | well we all need to eat... I just wish the animals were treated humanely.. it is hidious that they are not in many cases. That is a sin | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 6:30:56 AM | Yes Joanne we do all need to eat and we all need to be more responsible and make informed ethical choices.
If you feel its a 'sin' (im assuming by that you are a christian and using the word sin as it is used in christianity) then are you making ethical choices or do you do what someone else here said, 'close their eyes and chew' i think one guy said.
If enough people cared and choose to boycot the cruel ways animals are reared and killed, if enough people knew how food gets to their plates then there would be no need for these horrible farmers to continue making a profit out of cruelty and inflicting disease amongst humans. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 6:37:41 AM |
Can you explain the economic benefits of producing a pandemic that kills millions of people all over the world?
It slows population growth. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 7:57:04 AM | I managed a chicken farm producing eggs... this is my take:
The farm had both free range and cage birds. 99.9% of farmers will tell you treating your animals in an inhumane way, and having them die or sick makes NO sense. They are, after all, OUR livelihood.
Chickens in cages are unable to dust bath (cover themselves in dirt and keeps parasites down) if too many are caged together they are unable to sit down or turn around. Small farms will house one bird to a cage sometimes two, depending on size of the cage. More commercial farms, 4 to a cage. These are elevated off the floor of a large shed and manure from the birds is collected regularly and sold. The shed is water cooled using dam water and recycled through sprinklers on the top of the shed and back into the dam (Kind of the same way a meat safe works) Hessian on the sides of the sheds gets wet through this process and breeze cools the birds in summer. Birds are drip fed fresh drinking water from covered tanks, suspended over the cages through water nipples.
These birds are fed well (crap food, produces crap eggs) the better the food the better the eggs, and lay on average 2 times per day for a laying life of 2 years, after which, they are sold off (the production of eggs, like in a woman, slows, but are still good for hobby farms or pets...and continue to lay for many more years)
The problem for farmers is many and varied. Free-range eggs need to be collected, and free-range birds don't lay neatly where they should. Collecting is a back breaking job, and a bit risky as you aren’t sure if the eggs your collecting have been in the sun (health risk), when it was laid (the time), and usually covered in sh*t, all of which needs to be cleaned for grading and packing (we are not talking about a few hundred eggs we are talking thousands, and birds laying twice a day 7 days a week). More people need to be employed for collection adding to cost There is no control over their diet, as they will eat whatever is available and around, not just grain provided. Birds are aggressive to one another, and with any birth that involves blood, peck at the chicken until death. There is also the added problem of predators, by foxes and Lace monitors to name just two.
The alternative is housing "free range chickens" in a large shed, but still face the difficulties of collection of eggs, birds attacking one another, collection of manure, which the birds would walk through and nest in. The aim is to keep both bird and product in good order.
Avian influenza, also known as bird flu, is a type A influenza virus. It is lethal to poultry and is potentially fatal in humans. Bird flu spreads between both wild and domesticated birds. It has also been passed from birds to humans who are in close contact with poultry or other birds.
Water birds such as wild ducks are believed to be the carriers of all avian influenza type A viruses. The viruses are carried inside the birds’ intestines and are distributed into the environment via bird faeces. Migratory birds infected with the virus could potentially spread the bird flu to any of the countries they visit. So the fear is free range poultry picking this up from open water sources.
The greed is not from farmers but from retailers. The cost of eggs to produce would make us 30cents on a dozen eggs. Retail, the price of a dozen eggs packed onto their shelves doubled at the very least, making the retailers 100 - 150% profit - not bad for doing nothing but providing a shelf (I'm simplifying here).
Smaller farms are closing unable to compete with larger Industry. The answer is to keep the profits at the farm. For people to buy direct, saving them money and giving the farmer more money and incentive to make improvements. This also keeps money local and in the community. Keeping the cost to the consumer down.
I am NOT for mass factory farming, but I am for managed keeping of birds in humane conditions. One bird per cage giving them the ability to turn and lie down, socialise yet separate, Kept no longer than 2 years. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 11:48:53 AM | | Good write up Jewels , what happened to the Australian dream . A quater acre block in suburbia with a chook yard down the back and a couple of fruit trees. Grow some herbs so you can eat chives and pasley on your scambled eggs . I buy a bail of hay and chuck it in the chook pen , the chooks peck and scratch around in it and when I remove it to use as mulch on the vegies it's covered in fertiliser . Too easy really . In our consumer society we go to work to buy the tyres to put on the car to go to work to put petrol in the tank to get to work . How many people complain about stuff but don't ask them selves what little thing in my life can I do to make a difference. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 12:21:31 PM | to 7rainbows: we cant all save the world, only a little at a time. I protest puppy mills, petshops that sell dogs & cats or dont care for their small animals & birds properly; backyard breeders of dogs & cats; & selling horses for food out of the country- they are also slaughtered inhumanely. I also dont want government interference or PETA(animal rights activists) telling me I cant have a pet.
Mine are treated as good as most people; yet they are not spoiled & are well behaved. Thats not saying they dont get into mischief sometimes; kids do too. But people who abuse their animals, or fight dogs are less than human in my book.
I think with more agents surveying, farm animals raised for food can be treated humanely. There is also a growing movement of raising farm animals free range; the food from them is a bit more expensive; but no antibiotics to pass on to us & our kids; or growth hormone etc. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 3:05:13 PM |
Can you explain the economic benefits of producing a pandemic that kills millions of people all over the world?
In relation to the bird flu:
Humans who have close contact with sick birds are at risk of infection with bird flu. For example a person may handle a sick bird, contaminate their hands with chicken faeces, and forget to wash their hands before eating. They will then ingest the infected bird faeces. This is the most common way for a human to catch the bird flu. The virus can also survive in raw poultry meat but is destroyed during normal cooking.
There is no evidence that the current circulating H5N1 strain of bird flu can be spread easily from human to human. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 3:43:00 PM | I was raised on a family farm for the first couple of decades of my life. This was thebeginning of the end of the era when the grass stood still and the cows moved. Now the cows stand still and the grass and grains are moved onto feedlots. It was during that winnowing period of the late 60s and early 70s that many farms such as ours were practically forced to borrow our way into deep debt to by the equipment to "remain competitive". I've watched over the ensuing years as every promised new technology or advancement in animal management, further winnowed out family farms held for generations. The current corn to ethanol scam is just another example of how Big Ag kills family farms in favor of corporate control over more and more land. The documentaries, "King Corn", "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" and many others illustrate the forces that have worked against safe food production.
Feedlot and CAFO animal production are inherently dangerous to animal health. The current rise in anti-biotic resistence has much more to do with routine anti-biotic use in CAFOs than over-prescription by doctors or patients not completing their 'scripts.
The corn aspect of making cows fat toward the end is cruelty to animals (King Corn) and is responsible for human health impact from the fatted cows. The corn ethanol industry needs CAFOs to get rid of their byproducts that are deadly to cattle. The giant waste lagoons have become essentially superfund sites that leach into groundwater and rivers and have been responsible for subsequent water bourne and fish bourne disease outbreaks. It will only continue to get worse if people buy into the Big Ag bs. The latest news indicates that CAFO pork production is now leading the field in human disease generation in food sources. Even spinnich e-coli outbreaks have been implicated to land disposal of animal waste.
I was raised in the consummate "meat and potatoes" tradition of the midwest. We grew, slaughtered and harvested over 90% of our food on our land. In addition to the inherent unsustainability of converting grains to protein via animal production on a shrinking planet, the rapid and continued decline of animal health in the CAFOs have been instrumental in my eating lower on the food chain. I still fall down and get my occasional dose of anti-biotics and grow hormones through asenic laden chicken or mercury loaded farmed fish.
The good news is that there is a growing movement to reform the farm movement, that small farms are becoming viable with organic and older techniques as consumers are educated and beginning to respond. The scale of and impact of The Food Chain Gang/Big AG will decline as consumers educate themselves, support community based farming and animals and humans will benefit. Bon apetit' | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 3:44:52 PM | | PS...Slightly paraphrasing the band Timbuk 3 in the song..."If you are what you eat, then you're dead meat." | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 11:05:17 PM | Thanks for that very informative post Earthpuppy and for the positive outlook on the future .
Unfortunatly what is right and what makes a dollar are two different things with the dollar usually winning. Most of us put a dollar value on decisions we make but not everything can be measured in money . For an example imagine this. I'm at work at some stinking refinery about 6 levels up on the steel work welding away and it's ' a cold miserable day . The wind is consistent , the smell of the refinery is unpleasant but it's almost morning smoko so I go down the stairs and sit in the drivers seat of our ute ( Aussie term for pickup ) The windows have been wound up to keep the airbourne crap out of the car and the sun has been shinning on the windows so the interior is relatively warm. I start the engine and warm it up while I wait for the other two guys in my crew . When I turn the key on a song I love comes on and takes me away, I'm getting out of the cold and I'm going to have a nice coffee and something warm to eat very soon . I feel good . How good ? Is this a $12 feeling or a $75.30 feeling ?
When a well know farm machinery company demonstrated a machine capable of doing the work of 100 men with scythes the older wiser folk thought that it was foolish to want more than was accepted for decades as enough. The younger generation welcomed the new technology . Have we slowly but steadily outsmarted ourselves .
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/14/2009 11:56:52 PM | True enough junkart..
I have even had to draw the line on what I could do for tolerable work. I was ready to quit working at the meat packing plant after two days on the kill floor. Nothing quite like watching the cattle being hooked live, suspended upside down by one back leg and having their throats slit by the Rabbis, to pushing barrels full of warm internal organs and udders, fluid sloshing in my face, the smell wretched, and the pay not THAT good. That happened while I was still a kid who could hunt, kill, field dress, and eat many critters. They moved me to the de-boning room that was not so bad
I think that most these days, who still eat high on the hog, would be unwilling to do the dirty work required to get to that nice pork chop, including shoveling manure. They would rather eat toxic, tortured meat real cheap than pay for reality. I think a visit to the CAFO and slaughterhouse should be required in primary education. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 4:17:36 AM | Earthpuppy and Junkart have hit the issues right on head.
How many are willing to give up what we have become accustomed to, and pay more?...bottom line.
Distasteful as it may be, our consumer driven lives are destroying traditional animal management, and replacing it with
toxic, tortured meat real cheap ..This IS the reality...one, we are all responsible for, and helped to create. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 5:36:03 AM | The majority of our food in the western world is based on a highly unsustainable system developed via Big Oil and Big AG. Because of our oil dependence, food prices will inevitably soar. We just saw a big jump when fuel hit $5/gallon and people fell for the corn ethanol scam. As oil supplies tighten and prices go up, farmers will be choosing between food or fuel production feedstocks for corn and cellulosic ethanols. These are the last of the good old days of cheap food in the US.
Currently the average bite of food in the West has traveled 1500 miles to our mouths, and expended 1.4 calories for every calorie produced. The iceburg lettuce grown in California, consumed in New York for instance, is 95% water, takes 4750 calories to grow and transport and contains only 110 calories.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7553958.stm
http://www.eponline.com/articles/66442/
One can of 1 calorie diet soda requires 2200 calories of fossil fuels. We expend nearly as much of our fossil fuel use on food production as we do on transportation. We eat 500 gallons of oil per person annually. Thus oil wars are also essentially food wars. If/when the system breaks down via war or depletion, massive starvation will ensue, unless we have a backup plan.
We are also looking at severe limitations on water in our California food belt in the foreseeable future. We are facing the inevitable imperative to increase and diversify local production, and eat lower on the food chain. Seed sales are up this year as back yard and community gardens and community based agriculture are making a comeback. Those who at least practice the art of gardening and learning the old ways, are better suited for survival in the long term. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 6:17:07 AM | Clean kills are rare in hunting and livestock processing. The Rabbis I watched during the Kosher runs would not even allow stunning prior to putting a hook through the cow's leg and dangling it upside down while slitting it's throat. The cows kicked in line for a considerable time. Examine the various slaughter techniques and get back to us on which ones are considered humane. Kosher and Halal are the worst IMO.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x6909e/x6909e09.htm
Since the hindquarters are considered inedible for Kosher runs, they are fed back into the general food supply chains. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 6:21:59 AM | This just in..
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-sci-wheat-rust14-2009jun14,0,3346864.story?track=ntothtml
A 'time bomb' for world wheat crop
The Ug99 fungus, called stem rust, could wipe out more than 80% of the world's wheat as it spreads from Africa, scientists fear. The race is on to breed resistant plants before it reaches the U.S. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 11:06:07 AM | I read a book I picked up somewhere that caught my eye . It was called Money Business and Power . A business can range from a small one man operation to a multi national conglomerate . This book was writen in 1975 and is out of date but basically what it said was the biggest corporation in the world at that time alternated with the second biggest corporation at being No. One . Those companys were Exxon and General Motors . One pulls the oil out of the ground the other provides a need for the oil . No cars , trucks and buses , no market for the oil products and visa versa. About number 10 down the list was Boeing . Bums on seats , paying customers = airbourne livestock transport =oil company sales of aviation fuels. Agroculture has become Monoculture . Televison tells people through the power of suggestion what to do. Monkey see monkey do . Computers and modelled on the human brain . Storage and retreival of information . You can't say it was round like an orange if you'd never seen an orange . What do you do with a computer ? you programme it . What do we watch on television ? programmes . Heavy sh*t . How many people go for a walk and have a good think ? How many people who probably could do with the exercise , sit in their cars with the engine running while they go through a drive through fast food chain drive through take away set up . And can't see there is anything wrong with doing this .
WAKE UP , the movies over time to go home folks.
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 1:58:19 PM | has anyone been watching the tv series blood sweat and takeaways? Please do look it up. Last nights episode was so upsetting. It was following workers in Bangkok who work in a chicken factory producing cheap food for USA and UK supermarkets.
It showed the conditions of the workers who had to stand for hours and hours with no breaks, shoved into tiny spaces packing live chickens onto convayerbelts, slitting their heads off inhumanly, some not being done properly and only having half their necks slit. The workers were under constant pressure, no breaks, no air conditioning, long hours and many of them were young women, mums who had to leave their children with the grandparents to work in these dreadful places. They would get to see their children just twice a year as wages were so poor they couldnt afford to travel home. These women lived in tiny hotel rooms, just like battery hens, cramped in tiny spaces. For some the wages were just not enough and turned to prostitution to make up enough money to send home to support their children.
The food industry is not only cruel to animals, but to people too. Please google the series, its about time the world knew the whole truth about how food gets to their plates and the suffering of both animals and people are involved. | |
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| Factory Farming & the problem
Posted: 6/15/2009 4:38:27 PM | During the past decade or so, I was intrigued as I passed through Postville, Iowa as it went through changes from a lily white midwest community to a multi-cultural island in the middle of the corn and soybeans. My dad lived nearby and I observed the reactions and ensuing growing prejudice among the locals that made the South of the US look enlightened.
Hisadic Jews bought the packing plant and then displaced the over-priced local whites with immigrant labor, then got busted for exploiting those workers. It was like any local packing plant until the new immigrants changed the demographics from nearly 100% northern european stock into 70% "not from here". The racism aspect of this change was just as intriguing as the unwillingness of the white kids of families unwilling to do that sort of work anymore.
Starting with farming, shoveling the byproducts of grass ingestion, miking and maintaining cows in 14 hour work days, I moved into a number of food production jobs later on, all now done by our southern neighbors who still know how to work and can smile while doing so.
The guy who bought our farm and the nearest 4 he could afford to try to remain viable is a millionaire on paper, worth millions. Most of those millions are borrowed and reliable labor is nearly impossible without hiring people who have no business trying to survive Wisconsin winters. Byron is the rare individual who treats his help with utmost respect and true concern for their families. His new work forces do so because it is what is needed to support families and communities....and the US can no longer afford to pay it's own people to do our own work. Most citizens have lost the willingness or ability to do real work for honorable wages. We like our food cheap, toxic, exploitive, fast and on the backs of others. The men and women in Postville/Postvile are making the wages I earned doing the same work nearly 4 decades ago. The worst aspect of this is the way the workers have been treated under owners ignored by our government, not much better than Maquiadoras below the border or overseas.
http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/2009/05/12/post-postville-it%E2%80%99s-about-worker-exploitation-not-ice/
http://feetin2worlds.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/one-year-after-immigration-raid-postville-iowa-struggles-to-survive/ | |
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