Industrial farming is intensive animal farming it’s also called factory farming. Animals are stuck in cages all day. More than 9.3 million cows were used to produce milk in the United States in 2008. More than 2.5 million dairy cows were slaughtered for meat. Usually just within hours of birth, calves are taken away from their mothers. (Farm) People don’t like industrial farming because animals have no access outside and there keep in temperatures that are intended to maximize production at a low cost. Factory farming is bad because animals are living in cruel conditions. The bad conditions animals live in breed disease and illnesses within the animals. (Apecsec.org) Due to the immense overcrowding, the land surrounding these factory farms cannot handle the amount of waste that the animals produce (Apecsec.org). The family farm has been nearly wiped out in the U.S. due to these types of operations. This is the reason why factory farming is bad. …show more content…
The profit margin for these factory farms is large, this is because the proper care of animals is looked over, which is where much of farming costs lay. Factory farms are huge operations, which need a huge number of employees to ensure they run correctly. Factory farms offer a wide variety of job opportunities and economic stimulation to areas of the world. This is the reason factory farming is good. People say factory farming is good because it’s cheaper and gives people more jobs. But some people don’t know what happens in factory farms. They don’t know that animals are stuck in cages all day. That they are packed into incredibly small areas, often indoors, and fed additives in order to fatten them up (Apecsec.org). Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions (Factory Farming Misery for
It would also be important to compare government policies towards large factory farms and small, family operated farms.
The fast food industry also hurts environments around farms in general. It has created an unsustainable cycle that farmers cannot escape. In order to feed themselves and their family, farmers play it safe and buy more fertilizer than needed. When the farmers do not use all of it, they must dispose of it, because that fertilizer will not be as effective next year, so they dump the fertilizer in the areas surrounding their farms. But what this causes is too much nitrogen in the environment because too much nitrogen can kill plants and throw the nitrogen cycle out of balance, in turn hurting the environment.
In many ways, Farm City is a political book that touches areas that the city population didn’t know existed. When we imagine a farm we think large vast area with perfect sunny weather and huge sum of produce. What we learn from this book is that we can be a farmer with just planting a pot of vegetation by the windowsill or keeping a pet rabbit with intent to kill it and consume it. I spontaneously went to the flee market one Sunday and came across some rabbits. I currently am raising a bunny in my apartment that I adore and although I might not kill it myself, I heard rabbit’s meat is delicious.
“Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest.” - Wendell Berry Many people question whether or not the morality of treating animals in a humane way outweighs the morality of cheaper food for a nation where 1 in 6 people are facing hunger, and/or starving in any way. Back in the day, a while after World War II, industrial agriculture was applauded as a technological success that permitted an ever growing population to practically feed themselves. Now, many farmers and scientists see it as a blind alley, rather made for factory work.
Animal waste runoffs or feedlots are farms that specialize in cattle or hogs. These animals are stayed in a very small area of land and they are raised on hormones and grains that make them big and fat for slaughter. Feedlots help provide a lot of protein in America but feedlots contain a lot of the animals poop and other bad substances that can pollute the air and the water with their runoff. Pros of having feedlots is that they produce meat that satisfies U.S. consumers, they’re efficient, and cheap. Cons of having feedlots is that manure contains nitrogen and phosphorus; if not managed properly, they can pollute the nearby lakes,streams,rivers, or oceans, and antibiotic use increases genetic resistance to bacteria in the human body.
In Blake Hurst’s “The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-Intellectuals,” he opposes the accusations made by tofu-eating, recycled-toilet-paper-using, self-starving Michael Pollan and his followers. Throughout “The Omnivore’s Delusion…,” Hurst mentions how methods of farming have evolved to match demands of produce. The author states that “Only ‘Industrial farming’ can possibly meet the demands of an increasing population and increased demand for food as a result of growing incomes” (Hurst 4). This quote essentially means that “Industrial Farming” is the most efficient way to farm for today’s population level. A second point that is made by Hurst is that changes made by today’s farming are necessary.
Industrial farms can make more products than traditional farms and that may be the reason why industrial farms are given more spotlight to and are gradually expanding while other farms are moderately deteriorating. Pollan is more understanding of the technological advances which Berry is not. Berry and Pollan agree and concur at times on the same issues of how the industrial model of agribusiness is
Michael Pollan’s alternative to Factory farming has given a huge insight into a better ethics on food. In “The Animals: Practicing Complexity” Michael Pollan writes about a polyface farm and how it works. The goal of a polyface farm is to emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhance agriculture. Everything on a polyface farm has the potential to be helpful to something else on the farm. Pollan states “The chicken feed not only feeds the broilers but, transformed into chicken crap, feeds the grass that feeds the cows that, as I was about to see, feeds the pigs and the laying hens” (Pollan 345).
So they just ship dirty meat out for people to buy and eat. Meat plant workers are senseless. The meat packing plants are so unsanitary its just gross. With all of these factors, I believe the meat packing industry should get the rest of my
The problem of industrial farming is dangerous to the land to our health because there are children who are getting sick from the food they eat. America should be concerned about food production because they don't know what’s in it and that could be dangerous for the children and everyone else. In the article “When A Crop Is King” by “Michael Pollan” argues that how our food is made out of corn and it’s unhealthy for us.
With no laws to stop it, moral concern surrendered entirely to economic calculation, leaving no limit to the punishments that factory farmers could inflict to keep costs down and profits up.” (Scully, 159). Factory Farming in itself is a way get more profit and lower cost but also put animals in unclean places and with machines that emits lots of chemicals in the air which harms both animals and the environment. One can infer that if these farms have no rules to how the animals should be treated, then how is the food processed, is the meat even cleaned properly? Referring back to the quote Scully says that there are no regulations therefore people in charge of running the farms can do as they please to maximize profit and cut down
Eating meat is beneficial to humanity, because they provide nourishment that cannot be obtained from other sources. Without the support of animals, humans lack a distinctive diet, that is essential to their well-being. However, since animals are so important to the diet, they deserve great care and respect as well. Humans were always hunters and gathers. They always knew that meat was a big source of protein that helped keep them going(Araki).
Web. 16 Mar. 2017.) Factory Farms are awful for people and the animals because the animals suffer, they’re treated with antibiotics, and factory farming affects the environment. Animals suffer because of the living conditions they are in. The animal is treated with antibiotics, which is not good for them.
I strongly believe that factory farms need to be put down because they are causing massive issues. For a long time, animals living in factory farms
The past saw more small-scale animal/poultry rearing. Even as recently as 1954, there were over two million dairy farms in the US, each of which had only around 10 cows. However, these numbers have since reduced, as the meat industry has reached, in the past decades, levels of demand that can only be met by larger-scale industries. There is also the combined factor of the increase in pedantry in the part of consumers, when it comes to wanting their products to have had minimal human contact in production processes and the space efficiency of such large-scale livestock farms. All these factors combined lead to the evolution of a term called “factory farming”.