Over the last several decades, industrial agriculture has had an increasingly negative effect on human health. Industrial farms take an enormous toll on the environment, lowering the quality of life and endangering the health of those who live nearby. They also produce food which may contain bacteria, pesticides, antibiotic residue and artificial hormones, all of which can be harmful to those who consume them.
Small sustainable farms, on the other hand, produce healthy, high quality food and preserve the environment. In order to protect and promote their health, consumers have a clear choice: shop sustainable.
Rural Communities and Public Health
When a factory farm moves into an area, it dramatically reduces the quality of life in rural communities and jeopardizes the health and safety of the people who live nearby. These facilities generate enormous amounts of waste, which can leach into the ground water and put residents at risk of exposure to infectious and potentially deadly bacteria such as E coli.i Runoff from industrial farms can also spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria,ii and contribute to dangerously high levels of heavy metals such as nitrates (which cause blue baby syndrome) into wells and public water supplies.iii
Industrial farms also create air pollution, which is potentially deadly to farm workers and is a blight on the surrounding community. Manure from industrial farms emits deadly gases including hydrogen sulfide, methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide, all of which can be fatal when humans are exposed to them in high levels.iv
So great is the public health threat posed by factory farms that the world’s largest association of public health professionals, the American Public Health Association (APHA), issued a resolution in 2003 urging state and local officials to impose a precautionary moratorium on the construction of new factory farms.v
Consumer Health
Unlike traditional sustainable farms, factory farms are willing to sacrifice the quality of their products to maximize their profits. Because of this, consumers can end up buying inferior food that is unhealthy to eat. Factors that reduce food quality and can threaten our health include the high stress levels of the animals kept in crowded and confined conditions, the poor quality feed they are given, and the potential for cultivating and spreading disease rapidly through the large confinement facilities.
Animal Stress
Industrial farms profit by scaling up and cutting corners, with little concern for human health and animal welfare. Animals are raised in close confinement with little access to sunlight or fresh air, and often spend the majority of their lives wallowing in their own feces. Because factory farms are often located far away from processors, animals spend long hours packed into the backs of trucks on the way to slaughter. When they reach the slaughterhouse, they are prodded and shoved in a high intensity, fast-paced environment focused on rapid production, heightening the stress levels in their bodies.
You don’t have to be a veterinarian to know that these conditions will lead to health problems for the animals and poor-quality meat and dairy products for the consumer. In cattle and sheep, and sometimes pigs and turkeys, high stress levels can lower lactic acid in the muscles, leading to DFD (Dark Firm and Dry) meat. DFD meat has poor taste, dark coloration, and a shorter shelf life because of the abnormally high pH-value of the meat.
- Because it spoils more easily than normal meat, DFD meat is more likely to carry bacteria and cause food poisoning than meat from low-stress animals.vi Stressed animals are also known to produce more E. coli in their stomachs, which increases the chances of food poisoning in humans.vii
Animal Feed
The animal feed on industrial farms also lowers the quality of meat and dairy products, and in turn can threaten human health. Factory farm animals are fed corn, grains and unsavory additives and byproducts to make them gain weight as quickly as possible. As a result, factory farmed meat has a high fat content,viii and can increase consumers’ chances of getting heart disease.
Furthermore, since cattle were meant to eat grasses rather than grains, the acidity levels in their stomachs are altered on this diet, making them more susceptible to E. Coli and other bacterial infections.ix Because industrial slaughtering facilities are so hectic and fast-paced, animal feces can often contaminate meat during butchering, making it easy for pathogens to make their way into the packages of meat that you buy at the store.
Another highly questionable additive that commonly ends up in cattle feed is meat. For years, industrial farms have been mixing rendered animal by-products from slaughterhouses into livestock feed. One result of this practice has been the transmission of mad cow disease, which can spread from one animal to another when the brain and spinal material from an infected cow is consumed by another cow.x This disease can then spread to humans who eat meat from diseased cows, and has already caused the deaths of over 150 people throughout the last decade.xi
Infectious Disease Transmission
Factory farms also threaten our health by incubating infectious diseases that can spread to the human population. Sometimes diseases are transferred directly from animals to humans. In cases of direct transmission, a worker who comes in contact with a diseased animal or its manure can contract the disease and pass it on to their family and community.xii
In other cases, an animal infected with one disease can contract a second disease from another animal, causing the diseases to mix and form a new type of illness.xiii For instance, scientists suggest that a virus passed from hogs to humans may have caused the 1918 “Spanish Influenza” pandemic which eventually killed 40 million people worldwide.xiv xv The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have expressed concern that another similar epidemic will occur in the future,xvi and with the persistence of highly pathogenic H5N1 Avian Influenza worldwide, there is a possibility that this disease could eventually mutate and spread uncontrollably.
Sustainable Alternatives
Fortunately, it’s possible to produce food without threatening our health – sustainable farms do it every day! Unlike their industrial counterparts, sustainable farms operate effectively without jeopardizing the health and safety of their animals, workers, neighbors and the general public.
A growing body of scientific research is showing that sustainable, pasture-raised, and organic foods provide significant health benefits for consumers. In addition to being raised without synthetic hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, sustainable meat is more nutritious than meat produced by industrial agriculture.xvii
Sustainably-raised animals are not subjected to the high levels of stress found on factory farms. They are well-treated and live more in accordance with their natural behaviors. As a result, they have high levels of glycogen in their tissues, the sugars in muscles that give animals the energy to move. This makes their meat tender, more flavorful and less likely to carry bacteria.xviii
Sustainable farms raise their animals on pasture, where they eat the grasses and greens that their bodies are naturally adapted to eat, resulting in healthier animals and leaner cuts of meat.xix Animals raised on grass and forage also have higher levels of the fatty acids that are good for us to eat, such as omega-3’s and CLA fats that help fight disease and balance out our diets.xx
Studies have shown that milk from pasture-fed cows has as much as five times the CLA (a “good” type of fatty acid) as milk from grain-fed cows.xxi Additionally, meat from pasture-fed cows has from 200 to 500 percent more CLA as a proportion of total fatty acids than meat from cows that eat a primarily grain-based diet.xxii
Grass-fed chickens have 21% less total fat, 30% less saturated fat and 28% fewer calories than their factory-farmed counterparts.xxiii Eggs from poultry raised on pasture have 10% less fat, 40% more vitamin A and 400% more omega-3's.xxiv
Crops
Recent scientific studies show the health benefits of sustainably-raised fruits and vegetables. Organic fruits, vegetables and grains, for example, contain higher levels of nutrients, minerals, and antioxidants, including vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus. Organic crops also have lower levels of certain toxic heavy metals.xxvi
One the benefits of sustainable and organic produce come from minimal or zero pesticide use, which keeps crops free of pesticide residues. In addition, better soil management techniques used in organic and sustainable farming, such as crop rotation, use of cover crops and composting, help enrich the soil and increase the concentration of vitamins and minerals in the plants. On the other hand, the chemical fertilizers used on conventional factory farmed crops lower the nutrient content of the soil, increase the level of potentially harmful nitrates, and can contain toxic heavy metals which can be absorbed by the plants.
Faster and Fresher
Food from sustainable farms is fresher because you buy it locally, unlike food from centralized industrial farms that ship their products hundreds to thousands of miles to get to your supermarket. The longer food sits after harvest, the more vitamins and nutrients it loses.xxvii And since sustainable foods reach store shelves faster, they don't need to be processed to increase shelf-life; so they don't contain preservatives and aren't subjected to irradiation.
In addition to their nutritional benefits, sustainable foods are produced without jeopardizing public health. Unlike factory farms, sustainable farms don’t promote the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria, induce the spread of food-borne pathogens, release toxic pesticides into the environment, and contaminate our air and water with harmful pollutants. In fact, sustainable farms typically enhance surrounding communities by preserving green space, providing habitat for wildlife, and stimulating the local economy.
Since sustainable farms raise animals on adequately-sized plots of land, animal waste naturally fertilizes surrounding farmland rather than being collected and stored in huge manure lagoons. As a result, sustainable farms raise their animals without polluting ground and surface water, contaminating wells, or fouling the air with harmful pollutants.
What You Can Do
- In order to protect your health, the health of your family and the health of those who live near factory farms, buy your food from small, local farms that use sustainable farming methods.
- Visit the Eat Well Guide for a comprehensive listing of sustainable farms and sustainable food distributors in your area, and check out our “Questions to Ask” page for tips that you can take with you to the farm or the grocery store.
- Know your farmer. The best way to know how your food was produced is to talk to the farmer who grew it. See Sustainable Table’s “Questions to Ask” page to find the questions you can ask your farmer, grocer or butcher.
- If you live near a factory farm and are concerned about any health effects this could have on you and your family, find out if any local groups are working on this issue. See the GRACE Factory Farm Project’s Guide to Confronting a CAFO for more information and tips.
Did You Know?
- Animal agricultural operations produce 73% of all ammonia air pollution in the U.S.xxviii
- Researchers have found antibiotics at concentrations as high as 12.5 mg/kg of dust in dust collected from hog confinement houses.xxix
- An estimated 700,000 people in the US work in animal confinement operations where they risk exposure to a variety of well-documented human health hazards.xxx
For More Information
- Pasture Perfect – this book by Jo Robinson gives detailed information about the health benefits of meat, eggs and dairy products from pasture-raised, grass-fed animals.
- How Sustainable Agriculture Can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture
Written by researchers from the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, this article provides an excellent overview of the problems caused by factory farms.
- Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation Air Quality Study
This comprehensive study provides an outstanding review of scientific research on air pollution generated by factory farms. The study provides detailed information about the impacts of such pollution on human health.
- Keep Antibiotics Working
This coalition of health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane and other advocacy groups is dedicated to eliminating a major cause of antibiotic resistance: the inappropriate use of antibiotics in food animals. The organization’s website contains a wealth of information about the health threat posed by antibiotic resistance.
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