The Worst Way of Farming

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Great expose' on factory farming, but how about just ABOLISHING all farming! http://www.nytimes. com/2008/ 05/31/opinion/ 31sat4.html? _r=1 & oref= sloginMay 31, 2008EDITORIALThe Worst Way of FarmingIn the past month, two new reports have examined how farm animals areraised in this country. The report funded by the Pew Charitable Trustscalls the prevailing systemindustrial farm animal production.The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists prefers the termconfined animal feeding operations.No matter what you call it, it adds up to the same thing. Millions ofanimals are crowded together in inhumane conditions, causingsignificantenvironmental threats and unacceptable health

risks for workers, theirneighbors and all the rest of us.The astonishing increase in the number and size of confined animaloperations has been spawned largely by the very structure ofAmerican farmsupports, which always has been skewed in a way that concentratesfarmingin fewer and fewer hands. As both of these reports make clear, theso-called efficiency of industrial animal production is an illusion,madepossible by cheap grain, cheap water and prisonlike confinementsystems.In short, animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse. Manuretraditionally a source of fertilizerhas been turned into toxic waste that fouls the air and adjacentwaterbodies. Crowding creates health problems, resulting in the chronicoveruseof antibiotics.And, because the modest profits in confinement operations require thelowest possible labor costs, including automated feeding, watering

andmanure-handling systems, these operations have helped empty andimpoverishrural America.The Pew report recommends new laws regulating pollution from industrialfarms as rigorously as pollution from other industries, aphasing-out ofconfinement systems that restrictsnatural movement and normal behavior,a ban on antibiotics used only to promote animal growth and theapplication of antitrust laws to encourage more competition and lessconcentration.These are all useful guideposts for the next Congress and a newadministration.

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