 Farm
animals, like humans, are healthiest when they eat certain
foods. Cows, have stomachs that are designed to digest grass.
Pigs can digest grass, corn, grains, soy and other plants.
Chickens and turkeys can eat plants as well as bugs and worms
found on the pasture. When animals are fed conventional (or
industrial) feed, which can include animal products,
antibiotics, and other unnatural substances such as chewing gum
and chicken manure, their health is put in jeopardy. And when an
animal is unhealthy, the meat and other products made from it
will also be less healthy.
Because factory farms are profit-driven, these operations
use the cheapest feed available to fatten up their animals, with
no regard to animal health or the health of humans who eat their
products. Some of the unwholesome products that can be found in
farm animal feed are meat from animals of other or the same
species, meat from diseased animals, bits of feathers, hair,
skin, hooves, blood, manure and other animal waste, plastics,
antibiotics and unhealthy amounts of grain.i
Corn and Soy
A major problem with today’s factory farm system is that
it is heavily reliant on cheap grain. Under current US
agriculture policy, the government
provides large subsidies to farmers that produce grains,
particularly corn and soybeans. Livestock producers like to use
corn and soy as a base for their animal feed, because these
protein-rich grains fatten up their animals, and because
they’re incredibly cheap as a result of the government
subsidies. Livestock consumes 47% of the soy and 60% of the corn
produced in the US.ii
It’s been estimated that factory farms get a
discount of 7-10% on their operating costs because of the
subsidies that the government provides for corn and soy.iii
Although these cheap feed grains mean that meat and dairy prices
are lower for consumers, they also result in lower nutritional
content. In general, grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy are lower in
omega-3 fatty acids (the “good” fat), and Conjugated
linoleic acid, or CLA (CLA’s help to fight against cancer
and cardiovascular disease), with higher levels of fat than
products from animals raised on grass.iv
Grains used on industrial farms are conventionally grown.
This often means they contain high levels of pesticides and are genetically-engineered.
In fact, corn and soy are the two most commonly grown
genetically-engineered crops in the US,v and little
is known about the long-term effects of eating animals that were
raised on genetically-engineered food. Pesticides are known to
“bioaccumulate” (or build-up) in the fatty tissues
of animals, and when these animals are eaten, the pesticide
build-up may be transmitted to the consumer. This exposure
to pesticides increases people’s risk of developing
cancer, and is also known to have long-term effects on our
reproductive, nervous and immune systems.vi
Dairy Cows and Beef
Cattle
Cows are ruminants, and ruminants are designed by nature to
digest grass and only grass. They digest it first by eating it
raw and then by regurgitating it and eating it again in a
partially-digested form known as cud. As ruminants, cows have
four chambers in their stomachs, and as a cow digests, the food
moves slowly from one chamber to the next.
Raising cattle on pasture not
only makes sense for their digestive systems, but makes sense
for humans too, by turning something we can’t eat –
grass – into something we can – meat and dairy
products. Cattle raised on grass provide meat that is leaner and
lower in calories, and higher in omega-3s and vitamin E.vii
Grass-fed dairy products also have five times the levels of CLA
than their grain-fed counterparts.viii
 On a factory beef or dairy farm, the main
staples of a cow’s diet are corn and soy, which cows
don’t digest well. In fact, because their digestive
systems are not designed for grain, cattle can develop severe
health problems, including liver abscesses and sudden death
syndrome.ix For filler, factory farms will also add
animal by-products to industrial cattle feed, and these
additions can transmit diseases like mad
cow to both animals and humans.
Hogs
Although hogs are known to eat just about anything, their eating
habits are actually very particular. Hogs like to eat together,
and foraging for food is an important social activity. When food
runs out, they will continue to root around, or continue chewing
even when there is nothing to chew on. Competing for food is
natural hog behavior, and although it is important for a farm to
make sure all pigs are sufficiently fed, it is equally important
that pigs are allowed to carry out competitive social behavior
at feeding time, even if it means providing extra bales of hay
for them to root in.x
Pastured pork production involves raising hogs on grass,
legumes, standing crops, or any other ground cover. This diet,
combined with good management practices, makes hogs some of the
easiest animals to raise on pasture.xi Unlike
ruminants (cows and sheep), hogs require more nutrients than
what pasture alone can provide, but a variety of crops like
turnips, kale and fodder beets are excellent protein-rich food
sources.
Although raising hogs on pasture is relatively simple,
agriculture corporations choose to raise hogs by the thousands,
ignoring their needs for space, social interaction at feeding
time, and the quality nutrients that the pasture can provide.
Confined to small pens and given no room to forage or even move,
hogs in factory farms are fed mainly corn and soy, two crops
that are cheap, easy feeds because they’re often
genetically engineered xii and typically subsidized
by taxpayer dollars. xiii
In some states, garbage can legally be fed to pigs, and
if this garbage includes uncooked meat, pigs are at risk for
diseases such as hog cholera, Foot and Mouth Disease, African
swine fever, and swine vesicular disease. Other pathogens of
concern are Salmonella, Campylobacter, Trichinella,
and Toxoplasma. These diseases may be spread to other
livestock or humans if hogs eat contaminated meat in improperly
treated food waste.xiv
Pasture-raised hogs are not only happier and healthier
than hogs raised in confinement, but they also have higher
levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their meat, and more vitamin E
than factory-farmed hogs.xv
Poultry
Pasturing poultry is heralded as an efficient, cost-effective
and healthy way to raise natural poultry products. Many small
farmers raise chickens on pasture using a mobile structure that
provides both shelter and feed used to supplement nutrients
found on pasture. A natural chicken diet can include corn, oats,
soybeans and dried alfalfa. The pasture provides grasses
fertilized by the chickens themselves, as well as worms and
bugs, many of which are abundant on the manure left behind by
cows.
 Feed
for factory farmed chickens is significantly less fresh, natural
and appetizing. Millions of tons of meat and bone meal from
post-slaughter animal waste are recycled back into animal feed
each year, and poultry and hog producers are the main purchasers
of these products.xvi
On industrial poultry farms, a range of antibiotics and additives are also added to the
birds’ feed and water.xvii Among those commonly
used is Arsenic (which can cause a variety of health problems in
humans, including warts, sore throat, cancer and poisoning).
Arsenic is used to promote growth and prevent disease, but after
this poisonous substance has been consumed by chickens, it ends
up in their meat, their feces and eventually in water supplies near the chicken
farm.xviii
The Results
When industrial animal factories force cows, chickens and pigs
to live on grain, garbage and by-products, they threaten our
food supply by creating constant and unnecessary sickness in
their herds. But rather than provide these animals with more
sanitary living conditions or a proper diet, these operations
simply feed their cows a steady stream of antibiotics.
This gigantic waste recycling program which turns garbage
and grain into meat and dairy products saves corporations money
which they then “pass on to consumers” in the form
of low prices. In the long run, they are also passing on a host
of medical, economic and environmental threats, which we pay
for with our health, our taxes and our
quality of life.
What You Can Do
Sustainable farmers use feeds grown without large amounts of
pesticides in order to supplement what the animals eat through
grazing, and their farms rely on natural pasture systems that
benefit nature and animals. When animals are raised on pasture,
their manure is dispersed at a rate that the soil can absorb,
rather than accumulating in huge lagoons. This manure fertilizes
the earth which provides the feed that farm animals come back
and eat again and again, and it is free of the artificial
hormones and excessive antibiotics and chemicals that pass
through industrial animal waste into the environment.
- Learn about the benefits of grass
from Eat
Wild.com. Find out exactly why grass-fed eggs, meat and dairy
products are better for the animals and for you.
- Use the Eat
Well Guide to find farms, stores and restaurants near you that
serve grass-fed meat and dairy. Just enter your zip code!
- Visit Sustainable Table’s Shop Sustainable
section to learn more about where to buy sustainable food.
Did You Know?
- Roughly 25,000 square kilometers or
6 million acres of the Amazon rainforest is cut down every year
for grazing cattle and to grow soybeans that are used for
animal feed.xix
- Soybean meal and shelled corn are
the most common plant proteins and grains fed to dairy cows.xx
They are also some of the most genetically engineered crops in
America, with 85% of all soybeans and 40% of all corn coming
from genetically engineered
sources.xxi
- The milk from pasture-raised dairy
cows has 5 times more CLA than milk from conventional dairy
cows.xxii
For
more information
Sources
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