Factory Farming Is Among Top 8 Killers

12May09

Why is factory farming so bad for you and me? Here are 8 points to see you through the mess thanks to Will Allen, author of “The War on Bugs“.

1. Farming Messes Up the Planet’s Air

In 2007, the US EPA figured that agriculture caused 18% of the US carbon footprint. This doesn’t even include the chemicals, the fuel, the shipping, the power, the heating or even the greenhouse gas emissions. If you count those thing’s it’s 25-30%. A third of the pie ain’t no laughing matter.

2. Fertilizer Runs Into Streams Making Dead Zones

Dumping too much fertilizer to make lots of food really fast means you have some running off into lakes, rivers and oceans. Then it makes lots of other plants in the water grow really fast in huge amounts. Result? When all those algae plants die, they suck the oxygen out of the water (thanks to water bacteria).

What else happens? No oxygen means fish die off and nothing can live in it. In 1995 there were 60 “dead zones” worldwide – now there’s 405 in 2008.

3. Body Poison in Your Water

Pesticides can poison the body and the mind. Along with antibiotics and hormones, you can find pesticides everywhere. They have a nasty habit of sticking around for a very long time (i.e. like 100s of years for DDT)

Other interesting facts to remember:

- over 12,000 wells in the US, giving water to 100 million people have way too much arsenic and lead. Both are bad even if you get a little (it builds up over time).

- nearly 30,000,000 (30 million) people in the US are drinking water contaminated with DDT poison related chemicals.

“All these DDT relatives caused cancer and multiple birth defects in tests on laboratory animals. They continue today to greatly damage bird populations in farm country.”

4. We’re Still Using Too Much Poison Everyday

“Factory farmers continue to use enormous quantities of the most toxic poisons. In 2006, four of the six most used farm pesticides in California were among the most dangerous chemicals in the world. Farmers applied more than 35.7 million pounds of four pesticides: Metam sodium, Methyl bromide, Telone II, and Chloropicrin.”

5. Is Anyone Watching?

Apparently no one cares to know how much poison we’re spraying out except California. They’re the only guys except maybe New York who are keeping good records.

You know things are bad when you hear that:

“We must begin these reductions because cancer and birth defect clusters are now common in most U.S. farm communities and people are being exposed to multiple pesticide residues on their fresh and processed food and on their clothing.”

6. Stick Animals with Steroids, Now Eat ‘Em!

Our animal farms are so filthy with so much antibiotic and hormone use that they’ve become places for super bugs and diseases to grow fast. Think of it like a cut that just won’t close and then gets infected, turning purple and green and … You get the picture.

Frankly a lot of people in our society are eating way, way, way, way too much meat. Take a look at some of the US statistics.

2008: 11 billion animals for food in the US

2008: 95% of 69 million US pigs were raised factory farm style (like crazy filthy and with enough pig waste to drown thousands of people – I joke not)

2008: 300 million (300,000,000) chickens were raised in cages too small for them to move

2008: 10 billion (10,000,000,000) meat chickens (the ones you’d use for KFC, Burger King or McDonald’s) and 500,000,000 (500 million) turkeys were raised in pens so crowded that you likely couldn’t see most of their feet – it would be like a carpet.

Okay if I go any further I’ll go crazy – I think you get the picture and we haven’t even gotten to the cows.

“About 33 million beef cows and 9.7 million dairy cows spent their dreary days in disgusting feedlots and dairy barns. These facilities and their meat products are rife with disease that the public is advised to combat by thorough cooking. In December, 2008 Consumer Reports found that 83% of the 525 meat chickens they studied had salmonella or campylobacter. With deadly diseases on all but 17 chickens out of 100, customers are asking: What about the salmonella on my drain board or my hands? No wonder there is so much food borne illness!”

“In December, 2008 Consumer Reports found that 83% of the 525 meat chickens they studied had salmonella or campylobacter. With deadly diseases on all but 17 chickens out of 100, customers are asking: What about the salmonella on my drain board or my hands? No wonder there is so much food borne illness!”

7. Fixing Factory Farming Is Like Trying to Fix a 100 ton Rock With 1 Finger

Two studies by The Pew Charitable Trust, Johns-Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Union of Concerned Scientists have found that factory farming is so much of a loose cannon that it threatens to blow our health away. Kind of like Dirty Harry’s magnum with all of the attitude. Right now, you, the guy paying taxes is forced to pull Dirty Harry’s trigger to wreck your kid’s future. What a way to go!

That’s what happens when we do only cheap food and pay people nearly nothing to be able to buy food. Got to keep making it cheaper and that means farming has to cut corners.

8. Toss Out Factory Farms, Do It Different

People are fighting for local organic food as we speak. The best way to say it is: good, clean, local and fair. Will Allen talks about chemicals and government regulations. He’s right – we’ve got to cut out the chemicals and the poisons. Government has a big role to play – they’re supposed to protect the people and to date they’ve failed to look out for the little guy.

At the same time however farmers, business and government aren’t the only ones who have to change their thinking. Every person on this world has to realize that all this cheap food, using farming that cuts corners is just part of the picture. It’s about the way we view and value food AND people AND ourselves.

The real reason we started using so much chemicals and so much factory farming is that no one wanted to do hard work, everyone wanted food cheaper and faster. Now we’ve gone too far. Now we don’t even value people who make that food. Our health suffers because we don’t value ourselves (yes, don’t forget exercise or being a couch potato) or our food.

The first step for real change is to change yourself and then the world.

Original Source

Agriculture Is One of the Most Polluting and Dangerous Industries | Water | AlterNet: “Taxpayers are demanding that government enforce existing regulations and create more stringent rules to limit the excess and greed in banking, insurance, housing, and on Wall Street. But, in the rush to regulate, we can’t forget to oversee industrial agriculture. It is one of our most polluting and dangerous industries. Like the financial sectors, its practices have not been well regulated for the last thirty years. Let me run down a few of the major problems that have developed because of our poorly regulated U.S. agriculture.”

(Via Alternet.)

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Filed under: Agriculture, CSR, Environment, Food Sovereignty, Health and Wellness, sustainability   |  3 Comments
Tags: Agriculture, Burger King, chemical, CSR, Environment, factory, farming, industrial, KFC, McDonald's, pollution