Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming - The Washington Post

[Guest guest]

While many are aware of

this issue, it is finally hitting the mainstream media which I’m hoping

will bring more action.

 

 

Report Targets Costs Of Factory

Farming

By Rick

Weiss

Washington

Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A02

Factory

farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the environment, is

undermining rural America's

economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock

increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2

-year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture

produces meat, milk and eggs.

The

report released yesterday, sponsored by the Pew

Charitable Trusts and Johns

Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the " economies

of scale " used to justify factory farming practices are largely an

illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated costs.

Among

those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated

with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land,

water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be

neutralized by natural processes.

Several

observers said the report, by experts with varying backgrounds and allegiances,

is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations that survived the

grueling research and review process, which participants said was politically

charged and under constant pressure from powerful agricultural interests.

In the

end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed to such

controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics

in farm animals -- a huge hit against veterinary pharmaceutical companies -- a

phaseout of all intensive confinement systems that prevent the free movement of

farm animals, and more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the

increasingly consolidated agricultural arena.

" At

the end of his second term, President

Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the

military-industrial complex -- an unhealthy alliance between the defense

industry, the

Pentagon, and their friends on Capitol

Hill, " wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew

Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which wrote the report.

" Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural commodity groups,

scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their

friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in animal food production in the 21st

century. "

The

report, " Putting

Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America, " comes at a

time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the

American psyche.

Food

prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about global

climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern agriculture

is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's greenhouse-gas production.

And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the release of undercover footage of

cows being abused at a California

slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers.

The

report acknowledges that the decades-long trend toward reliance on

" concentrated animal feeding operations, " or CAFOs, has brought some

benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent 4.2

percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and poultry

annually. By 2005, typical Americans were spending 2.1 percent of their income

for 221 pounds per year.

But the

system has brought unintended consequences. With thousands of animals kept in

close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some of those outbreaks --

and to spur faster growth -- factory farms routinely treat animals with

antibiotics, speeding the development of drug-resistant bacteria and in some

cases rendering important medications less effective in people.

It

appears that the vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals,

the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by the Food

and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can only

estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.

The

commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a phaseout

and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as treatments for disease, a

policy already initiated in some European countries.

" That's

a good recommendation. A strong recommendation, " said Margaret Mellon of

the Union

of Concerned Scientists, which released its

own report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to

factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100 million to

clean up their ongoing environmental damage.

The Pew

report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste, finding that

toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO workers and neighbors

ill.

In

calling for a 10-year phaseout of intensive confinement systems such as

gestation crates for pigs and so-called battery cages for chickens, the commission

adds impetus to recent commitments from some corporate operators to drop,

gradually, those controversial practices.

" These

animals can't engage in normal behavior at all, " said commission member

Michael Blackwell, a veterinarian and former assistant U.S. surgeon

general.

Calls for

comments from industry representatives were not returned.

The

report also calls for implementation of a long-delayed national tracking system

that would allow trace-back of diseased animals within 48 hours after a human

outbreak of food-borne disease. And it calls for an end to forced feeding of

poultry to produce foie gras, a delicacy that Blackwell described unpalatably

as " diseased liver. "

Activists

said it will be up to Congress and agency officials, under public pressure, to

implement some of the commission's recommendations. Congress is now considering

a bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, that would

accomplish some of the Pew recommendations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Erika Sotirakos

EVMS Analyst

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work: 443-402-9038

 

 

Email: ERIKA.T.SOTIRAKOS

 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/esoti

 

 

 

 

 

 

SAIC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See who we know in common

 

 

Want a signature

like this?