The Issues: Animal Feed

 

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.

sustainable TableBecause 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

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