Factory Farms

Factory farms, also known as CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feed Operations), are not what you typically see advertised on their products, with images of happy animals free-roaming farmlands beneath the bright sun in endless, lush green fields. It's far from it. Factory farms cram animals, such as cows, hogs and chickens, by the thousands into tightly packed, filthy, windowless sheds where they are confined to gestation crates, wire cages, barren dirt lots or other cruel confinement systems. As PETA explains, "These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won't even feel the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter." Designed to produce the highest possible output at the lowest possible cost to the operator, factory farms operate without regard for public health, the environment, food safety, rural economies, animal health, or their surrounding communities. Learn more.

"CAFOs (factory farms) produce high levels of waste, use huge amounts of water and land for feed production, contribute to the spread of human and animal diseases, and play a role in biodiversity loss. Farm animal production also contributes to climate change: the industry accounts for an estimated 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emission." ~ Worldwatch Institute

Factory farms aren't bound to land:

Factory Fish Farming

Factory farms produce half a billion tons of manure each year, more than three times as much as that produced by the entire U.S. population. Learn more.

According to a comprehensive, fact-based, balanced two-and-a-half year study by the Independent Pew Commission on industrial farm animal production, factory farms often pose unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals, and recommended that significant changes be implemented immediately. Learn more.

"Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; they are food producing machines. They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. Even the most minimum humane standards proposed are thwarted by the powerful food conglomerates." ~ IDA

Big Chicken: Pollution and Industrial Poultry Production in America

The Suffering of Pigs on Factory Farms "Many people who know pigs compare them to dogs because they are friendly, loyal, and intelligent. Pigs are naturally very clean and avoid soiling their living areas. When they are not confined on factory farms, pigs spend hours playing, lying in the sun, and exploring their surroundings with their powerful sense of smell. Considered by animal behaviorists to be smarter than 3-year-old children, pigs are very clever animals. Most people rarely have the opportunity to interact with these outgoing, sensitive animals because more than 90 percent of pigs in the U.S. today are raised on factory farms. These pigs spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy warehouses under the constant stress of intense confinement and are denied everything that is natural and important to them." ~PETA Pigs Used For Food

"Since the 1970s, global meat production has tripled, increasing 20 percent since 2000 alone. More than 60 billion land animals are used worldwide for meat, egg, or dairy production, and if current trends persist, the global livestock population could exceed 100 billion by 2050—a number more than 10 times the projected human population." ~ State of the World 2012

PETA: The Suffering of Pigs on Factory Farms

Pigs used for food

PETA: Butterball's House of Horrors

Turkeys used for food

Impacts of Factory Farming

Industrialized food may seem inexpensive, but like coal , the price tag you see is unreflective of what you truly bear.

Human Health

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 80% of growth in the livestock sector comes from factory farms, which cause millions of Americans to get sick each year. Factory farms cause groundwater contamination, air pollution, respiratory disease, increase the risk of pathogens like E. coli and Salmonella that cause foodborne illness in people, create and spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria, use intensely crowded conditions, which can be a breeding ground for disease, and use arsenic and growth hormones, which can increase the risk of cancer and raise your blood pressure. Approximately 75% of the new diseases that affected humans from 1999 to 2009 originated in animals or animal products. According to Worldwatch Institute, "Diets high in animal fat and meat—particularly red meat and processed meats, such as hot dogs, bacon, and sausage—have been linked to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer." According to PETA, "Some of the leading killers in America today, including heart disease, cancer, obesity, and strokes, are directly linked to meat-based diets. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in America today, and it can often be caused by the build-up of cholesterol and saturated fat from animal products in our arteries. Vegans are approximately one-ninth as likely to be obese as meat-eaters and have a cancer rate that is only 40 percent that of meat-eaters. People who consume animal products are also at increased risk for many other illnesses, including strokes, obesity, osteoporosis, arthritis, Alzheimer's, multiple allergies, diabetes, and food poisoning." (see also). According to a 2011 nationwide study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers collected and analyzed 136 samples - covering 80 brands - of beef, chicken, pork and turkey from 26 retail grocery stores in five U.S. cities, and found that drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases, are present in meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores at unexpectedly high rates. Nearly half of the meat and poultry samples - 47 percent - were contaminated with S. aureus, and more than half of those bacteria - 52 percent - were resistant to at least three classes of antibiotics. An industry-wide survey of food manufacturers released by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) shows antibiotic overuse is still the norm despite that in the U.S. alone, 99,000 people die each year as a result of antibiotic resistant infections (see also). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chemical, bacterial, and viral compounds from animal waste may travel in the soil and water, which can cause adverse health effects, such as creating antibiotic-resistant pathogens, contaminating drinking water, stunting the growth of desirable plants in surface waters, which provide nutrients to disease-causing micro-organisms and contaminating surface waters with trace elements, such as arsenic and copper, which are harmful to human health. According to the Humane Society of the United States, "Crowding pigs into factory farms likely led to the emergence of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. So far, millions of people have been infected and thousands have died. Influenza is scientists' top pick for humanity's next killer plague. Up to 60 million Americans come down with the flu every year. The next pandemic virus may be manufactured in the filthy conditions common in factory farms, where chickens are packed together by the tens or hundreds of thousands in utter filth, allowing viruses to spread rapidly from bird to bird and mutate into very dangerous strains." According to IDA, "Dust, dirt and toxic gases from the pigs' waste create an unsanitary environment that encourages the onset of a number of diseases and illnesses, including pneumonia, cholera, dysentery and trichinosis." According to Food & Water Watch, "By creating a breeding ground for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the sub-therapeutic dosages used on millions of factory-farmed livestock can reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics for human patients. The feed used for livestock can also introduce public health threats. Broiler chickens often receive arsenic-based feed additives to promote pinker flesh and faster growth, and beef cattle continue to be fed with animal byproducts, which increases the risk of mad cow disease." Learn more.

Learn More About These Animals' Stories
Calves
Turkeys
Geese
Cows
Pigs
Ducks
And arguable the mosy abused animal on the planet: Chickens

Environment

Beyond the animal cruelty and human health impacts of factory farming is a major contribution to global environmental degradation and climate change; accounting for an estimated 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, including 9% of carbon dioxide, nearly 40% of methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and 65% of nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. According to a report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, animal agriculture generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation vehicles combined, which isn't surprising considering it takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein. According to the United Nations, raising animals for food uses a staggering 30% of the Earth's land mass, which has led to the clearing of more than 260 million acres of U.S. forest, the extinction of plant species, soil erosion, desertification and the equivalent of seven football fields of land being bulldozed worldwide every minute to create more room for farmed animals. Furthermore, more than 70% of the grain and cereals grown in the U.S. are fed to farmed animals, which equates to taking up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and it doesn't end on land - farmed fish are fed up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce just 1 pound of farmed fish flesh. As for water consumption, nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food where it takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. According to the Worldwatch Institute, "Livestock production is a major driver of deforestation: cattle enterprises have been responsible for 65–80 percent of the deforestation of the Amazon, and countries in South America are clearing large swaths of forest and other land to grow animal feed crops like maize and soybean." According to Food and Water Watch, a dairy farm with 2,500 cows can produce as much waste as a city of 411,000 people, and unlike a city in which human waste ends up at a sewage treatment plant, livestock waste is not treated, which results in feedlot animals having the potential of exposure to various viruses and bacteria via the manure and urine in their environment and according to the Pew Commission, factory farm operations produce an estimated 500 million tons of manure each year, more than three times the sewage produced by the entire U.S. human population. Factory farms produce so much waste that when the manure is applied onto the land, it exceeds the soil's ability to absorb and recycle it, which leads to the manure making its way into the local environment, polluting the air, streams and groundwater. Manure contains nitrogen, phosphorus and often bacteria that can endanger the environment and human health by contaminating residential drinking wells with dangerous bacteria and the runoff can damage the ecological balance of streams and rivers, even killing aquatic life. Moreover, factory farms cause a loss of biodiversity due to eutrophication, acidification, pesticides and herbicides, a worldwide reduction of the genetic diversity of livestock and loss of traditional breeds and species extinctions due to livestock-related habitat destruction. Learn more.

Animal Welfare

Animals on factory farms live short, torturous lives whose stories usually go untold, but can be profound enough to turn even the sturdiest meat-eater into a vegetarian , or to seek out less cruel - but not cruel-free - alternatives, such as free range and organic. Animals on factory farms are treated merely as machines to grow fat, produce milk and lay eggs at rates many times higher than normal, which exerts incredible stress and pain to the animals and without any form of pain suppression or care. Most factory-farmed animals have no access to the outdoors, never see daylight or enjoy fresh air and spend their brief lives in dark, crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can't even turn around or spread a single wing and spend much of their time standing in their own waste, which can remain on their bodies when they go to the slaughterhouse . Before the slaughterhouse, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported many miles through all types of weather extremes, typically without water or food. Those who survive are killed, often while they are still conscious, by being tossed into the scalding-hot water of defeathering or hair-removal tanks, having their bodies being skinned or hacked apart, or their throats slit. As PETA further explains , "(Factory-farmed) Animals raised for food are bred and drugged to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible—many are so heavy that they become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of their water supply. Animals on factory farms do not see the sun or get a breath of fresh air until they are prodded and crammed onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the slaughterhouse, often through weather extremes and always without food or water. Many die during transport, and others are too sick or weak to walk off the truck after they reach the slaughterhouse. The animals who survive this hellish ordeal are hung upside-down and their throats are slit, often while they're completely conscious. Many are still alive while they are skinned, hacked into pieces, or scalded in the defeathering tanks." Learn more.

Factory Farms have put hundreds of thousands of U.S. farms out of business.

A 2003 study found that living downwind from industrial hog operations reduced the property values of neighboring residential homes by approximately 10%.

According to the Government Accountability Office, storing large quantities of livestock manure on factory farms can emit “unsafe quantities” of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and particulate matter and that the number of large livestock operations tripled from about 3,600 in 1982 to 12,000 in 2002. Learn more.

According to Food and Water Watch, "Between 1997 and 2007, U.S. factory farms added 5,800 broiler chickens every hour."

Food & Water Watch: Factory Farm Nation Factory farms have created worker conditions that Human Rights Watch describes as “systematic human rights abuses.” Discover the Human Rights Issues with Factory Farming

The Life of A Cow - An infographic by the team at PETA

"Shaped by national and international policies biased towards large, specialized farms, the countryside in most nations has become less biologically diverse, as farmers plant more uniform fields and rely on fewer crop varieties. These monocultures have reinforced a strong dependence on chemical inputs, widespread in the industrial world and becoming more common in developing nations. Worldwide, farmers use 10 times more chemical fertilizer today than in 1950, and spend roughly 17 times as much—adjusted for inflation—on pesticides.This dependence on agrochemicals not only pollutes the soil and harms human health and wildlife, but also contaminates water at a time when usable supplies are increasingly scarce." ~ Worldwatch Institute
USDA APHIS Wildlife Services and livestock producers kill wildlife, such as wolves and grizzly bears, to protect farmed animals. According to Vegan Outreach , "Federal government hunters now kill more than 100,000 coyotes, feral hogs, foxes, bobcats, wolves, bears, and mountain lions each year. They are typically shot, caught in steel-jaw leghold traps or neck nooses, or poisoned with cyanide." Learn more.