Sobering Statistics About Factory Farming

Sobering Statistics About Factory Farming
Why It's Smart to Go Vegan
by Ardeth Baxter
June 18, 2007
(full article - link is below)


It's a frightening reality that more than two-thirds of our original American topsoil is now gone, with 85% of this loss attributed to livestock production. To create a meat-centered economy, 260 million acres of forest have been cleared for cropland. Seventy-eight calories of fossil fuel are required to produce only one calorie of beef protein; in contrast, only two calories are needed to produce one calorie of soybean protein. Almost half of the total amount of water used annually goes to grow feed and provide drinking water for cattle and other livestock.

According to the General Accounting Office, more plant species have been eliminated or threatened by livestock grazing than any other cause, and cattle grazing harms about 20% of endangered and threatened species. Some $37 million of taxpayer money is used to trap, poison, gas, and gun down almost one million wild animals and birds each year for livestock protection and pest control.

In the United States, every year 10 billion land animals and countless billions of fish raised at fish farms or taken from the wild are killed for food. The factory farming industry treats animals not as the sentient creatures they are, but rather as profitable commodities. They live in crowded cages and enclosures, are deprived of a normal social or family life, and spend their short lives largely without seeing daylight or being able to walk on the ground.

Forty million cows and calves are killed annually.

To read the full article: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/274046/sobering_statistics_about_factory_farming.html?singlepage=true&cat=22

Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture?

Symptom: swine flu. Diagnosis: industrial agriculture?
by Tom Philpott
28 Apr 2009

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-28-more-smithfield-swine

Several days after news broke of a possible link between Mexico-based hog CAFOs and the rapid spread of a novel swine-flu strain, what have we learned?

• Clarifying details about respiratory ailments in the Perote area of Vera Cruz State—where U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield Foods raises nearly a million hogs a year in large confinement buildings, under a subsidiary called Granjas Carroll—have emerged. In my original post on this topic, I didn’t fully understand that the outbreak of a virulent respiratory condition in the town of La Gloria—located near Smithfield’s farming operations—wasn’t initially identified as swine flu. The disease emerged as early as February and infected 60 percent of the town’s 1,800 inhabitants, according to the widely cited blog Biosurveillance, run by the U.S. disease-tracking consultancy Veratract (which claims the CDC, the World Health Organization, and the Pan-American Health Organization as clients). Three children died during the outbreak, Veratract reports. Residents blamed the Granjas Carroll confinements for the outbreak; and local authorities
evidently agreed. “Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies [which grew in swarms on Granjas Caroll’s manure lagoons] that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes,” according to a Monday account in the Guardian.

To read the full article: http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-28-more-smithfield-swine

Wake-Up Call: Factory Farms Could Be Breeding Swine Flu

Wake-Up Call: Factory Farms Could Be Breeding Swine Flu
It’s too soon to be sure, but some observers think CAFOs are perfect settings for swine flu evolution.
By Leah Zerbe

http://www.rodale.com/swine-flu-and-pig-farms?cm_mmc=DailyNewsNL-_-2009_04_29-_-Top5-_-NA

Tell your elected officials you want agricultural programs to subsidize safer, smaller, more diversified farming operations.

Swine flu source? Raising pigs in factory farms may have led to the current flu outbreak.

04-29-09 RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The swine flu is spreading in the United States, with hundreds of students in New York City alone likely sickened from the new virus. In California, the Los Angeles Times reports that a coroner is looking into the deaths of two men, ages 33 and 45, who may have succumbed to the flu strain. On Tuesday, several people across the country were hospitalized for possible swine flu, though most cases so far have been mild. So where did this all start? It’s too early in the outbreak to be sure, but one possibility is that the filthy conditions, tight confinement, and huge number of animals housed inside buildings in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) present a perfect breeding ground for this type of viral manifestation. “It’s the likely scenario,” says Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environment Group and executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which released a
2-year independent study in 2008. Long before this outbreak, his group’s research pointed to serious concerns about commercial swine operations because of the role pigs play as conduits for swine and avian flu.

To read the full article: http://www.rodale.com/swine-flu-and-pig-farms?cm_mmc=DailyNewsNL-_-2009_04_29-_-Top5-_-NA