What animal agriculture is, and how it affects us all
Many of us get our food from supermarkets without giving more than a cursory thought as to where it comes from. Styrofoam containing cuts of meat, packs of eggs depicting happy hens, or bottles of milk claiming calcium benefits are all designed to separate these products from their origins. The truth is that producing these foods via animal agriculture is bad for a number of reasons, including the negative effects on the environment, animals, and human health.
But understanding where our food comes from is important, especially if you want to learn how to vote with your money and choose products that cause the least amount of harm.
Of course, there’s a reason we don’t often know where our food comes from. The real picture of animal agriculture – which accounts for a large proportion of the total food consumed in developed economies like the UK– is not a very pretty one.
What Is Agriculture?
Generally, agriculture is the practice of growing food. More than just food, agriculture is also responsible for the production of products like cotton and wool.
Humans have been practising agriculture for thousands of years, after we evolved from societies that were more nomadic, in which food was largely gathered from uncultivated ecosystems.
Does Agriculture Include Animals?
Many different animals are used for agriculture, including sheep, cows, pigs, and even insects like bees.
Today, agriculture is used to produce most of the food on the planet – and much of this includes animals. Unfortunately, this has resulted in food production systems that include considerable animal suffering and severe implications for human health.
What Is Animal Agriculture?
Vast, dimly lit indoor spaces. An overpowering stench of faeces. The sound of endless gnawing on bars. Slaughterhouses filled with the screams of dying animals.
This is animal agriculture in the UK today. In fact, factory farming is how 85% of all animals are raised for food in the UK.
Despite the problems associated with them, factory farms are spreading in the UK, with more than 1,000 of them already established.
Animal agriculture has always been cruel, but with the rise of factory farming, the practice of raising, killing, and eating animals is more fraught than ever.
What Is Animal Agriculture Called?
If you’re confused by the various terms you’ve heard used to describe animal agriculture, don’t worry! Animal agriculture goes by many names, but there are three common terms worth knowing:
- Intensive animal agriculture
- Factory farming
- Industrial animal agriculture
These terms all refer to the same thing: the practice of confining huge numbers of animals together in extremely small spaces, all to exploit their bodies for human consumption. Sadly, each of these terms are synonymous with animal suffering.
The vast majority of animals raised for food around the world – whether they be pigs, cows, fish, chicken or another species – endure life on a factory farm just to keep supermarket shelves stocked. Adding insult to injury, much of the food they suffer to produce isn’t even consumed, instead being thrown out by grocery stores, restaurants, or private residences.
Factory Farmed Chickens
Chickens are subjected to factory farming for two reasons: eggs and meat.
Within the industry, egg-laying chickens are called layer hens. Though the UK has had a ban on battery cages in place since 2012, millions of layer hens in the UK are confined to enriched cages. Despite being billed as a welfare improvement, birds still suffer in these small spaces, with limited chance to scratch, perch, and lay eggs where they feel safe.
Chickens raised for meat are known as broilers. These birds are confined to broiler barns, which are often filthy sheds crammed with thousands of birds – sometimes even hundreds of thousands of birds.
Over generations, broiler chickens have been bred to grow so quickly that today they’re slaughtered as chicks. Though their lives are short, the excessive growth rate they endure commonly results in severe health problems, such as heart conditions and lameness.
Factory Farmed Cows
You’ve likely seen advertisements of happy dairy cows and cattle raised for beef enjoying vast pastures. Well, you can forget that image right now, as their reality is far from the pleasant image portrayed by advertisers.
The fact of the matter is that dairy cows are repeatedly impregnated so that they produce milk. Once they give birth, they have less than a day to spend with their new calf before the two are separated. The mother will be impregnated again just a few short months later, while their offspring will either face the same fate or be sold to the veal industry.
Cattle raised for meat have a slightly different experience. The first several months of their lives are usually spent on pasture, but their problems really begin when they’re moved to feedlots. There, they are housed in often-barren conditions with hundreds of other cattle, and fed a diet intended to quickly fatten them for slaughter.
Factory Farmed Pigs
Factory farms raising pigs, sometimes called hog farms, are home to considerable animal suffering.
As is the case with chickens, some of the most restrictive housing – gestation crates – have been banned in the UK. However, farrowing crates, which hold mother pigs while they’re nursing their young, are still widely used. Housed in the crate, mother pigs are unable to do so much as turn around.
Unfortunately, the laws against gestation crates don’t extend to a ban on imports. The result has been a spike in the amount of imported pork from nearby countries without such a ban.
Many of the countries that the UK imports pork from still use gestation crates to house pigs for the entire duration of their pregnancy. These crates are not much bigger than the pig’s own body, preventing them from even turning around. Being forced to face the same direction for months on end, staring at the same view in front of them, unable to root, walk, play, or perform any of their other natural behaviours, has severe consequences for their welfare.
What Is the Purpose of Animal Agriculture?
The excuse usually offered to justify intensive animal agriculture is that raising animals this way allows for the production of more food – but a lack of food isn’t a problem we’re really facing. The real driver is that housing animals in extreme confinement maximises profit for corporations.
Just like buying groceries in bulk tends to be cheaper and save money, raising thousands of animals instead of hundreds is cheaper per animal. Unfortunately, the animals suffer in the name of corporate greed.
Why Is Animal Agriculture Bad?
Food systems are in desperate need of a makeover. The way that we’re currently using animals to produce food is responsible for vast amounts of animal suffering across species.
Intense Confinement
Factory farms hold as many animals as possible within the smallest possible space in order to maximise profits and reduce costs.
These confinement conditions are the driving force behind many of the other issues surrounding factory farms. Having so many animals packed so tightly together creates a hotbed for disease transmission. This leads to farms giving animals preventative antibiotics, contributing to antibiotic resistance among the humans who later consume them. Producers also cut piglet tails and trim chicken beaks to prevent pecking and cannibalism due to the animals being stressed from the horrific conditions.
Antibiotics
Due to their conditions, factory farms quickly become filthy. To try to prevent the spread of disease, intensively farmed animals are given large amounts of antibiotics. Not only is this proving less and less effective, but it also contributes heavily to antibiotic resistance.
The problem with overusing antibiotics, as factory farms habitually do, is that these drugs wind up in human bodies, either through people consuming animal products or drinking water contaminated by farmed animal waste. When people are continually exposed to antibiotics, these drugs become less useful in fighting infections in humans. This leads to the risk of antibiotic resistance.
According to the CDC, antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest global public health challenges of our time. The industry’s overuse of non-therapeutic antibiotics undermines the efficacy of crucial drugs in human medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 700,000 people die worldwide each year due to drug resistant diseases.
Animal Abuse
Factory farms’ standard practices cause a vast amount of animal suffering, but it’s not just the policies and procedures causing pain. Numerous investigators have gone undercover and recorded footage chronicling the added suffering of workersBetter Chicken Commitment (BCC). abusing animals.
While breaking chicken necks by hand without pain management is common on chicken farms, investigations have also recorded workers kicking birds, hitting pigs, and dragging downed cows by their legs.
What Is the Effect of Animal Agriculture on the Environment?
The role animal agriculture has in the climate crisis has until recently gone mostly unnoticed. However, a recent International Panel on Climate Change report does call for reduced meat consumption as a necessary step to combatting the ongoing crisis.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions trap the sun’s heat within the atmosphere, leading to planetary warming, which can disrupt normal weather patterns. Cars and planes are commonly-known culprits of greenhouse gas emissions, but did you know that animal agriculture generates huge volumes as well?
Despite often being emitted from media coverage of the climate crisis, animal agriculture is responsible for as much as 19.6% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Deforestation
Forests are burned and cleared in order to make way for cattle pasture land. So much land meets this fate that cattle ranching, much of it illegal, is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
Water Use
Whether animals are being raised or crops are being grown, water is a necessary part of the process. The problem is that animal agriculture uses far more water than growing plants, and, on top of that, more than a third of the crops we grow go only to feeding livestock.
Water Pollution
Factory farms house so many animals that they produce an excessive amount of manure, which is very high in nutrients. Whether stored or spread over the land, eventually, the faeces make their way into waterways. This contributes to suffocating algal blooms that use up all the oxygen in the water and choke out other species.
Making matters worse, according to an investigation released in July, farmers are allowed to pollute rivers in the UK due to a loophole in regulations.
How Many Animals Die Each Year from Animal Agriculture?
In 2020, more than 73 billion cows, chicken, sheep, and chickens were slaughtered. In addition, 91 million tons of fish were killed in the name of food. Due to the sheer number of fish being slaughtered, specific counts of how many individuals are killed don’t exist.
Is Animal Agriculture Bad for Human Health?
For many people, some of the most immediate health impacts of factory farming go unseen, as they live in cities far from where the animals are actually being raised. However, the reality is that many of the rural residents who live near these farms suffer immensely.
Some of the hardest hit are the staff who are working directly with the animals in squalid conditions. It’s common for them to develop lung, throat, and eye problems from the chemical and biological irritants in the environment.
Working on a factory farm can also lead to severe mental health issues. While some of these issues can come from chemical exposure, others come from the work itself. Some farmers report feelings of fear, guilt, anxiety, and shame after making their first kill.
At the end of the day, factory farming impacts us all. Its runoffs seep into our water and soil, its emissions cause climate change, and its products lead to human health risks, such as heart disease.
Animal Agriculture Facts and Statistics
- To create more space for animal agriculture, roughly seven football fields of land are cleared or burned every single minute.
- The amount of waste produced by animal agriculture is around 13 times more than that generated by the entire U.S. population.
- Cows around the world collectively produce around 150 billion gallons of methane every day, which directly contributes to climate change.
How To Do Your Part
Because we all eat, we all have a say in the types of food systems we want to support. Below are a few steps you can take to support a healthier, more sustainable food system.
Stop Supporting Factory Farming
There are a number of ways to stop supporting factory farms: the easiest is to simply stop eating the products they produce. While opting for animal-free foods eliminates all animal suffering, including slaughter, choosing products that have eliminated some of the worst suffering for animals is also a good step forward, such as eggs from chickens who are cage-free.
Try Non-Dairy Milk, Spreads, Cheeses, and More
Dairy cattle contribute heavily to pollution, so choosing products without cow’s milk can help support the environment while also taking a stand against animal agriculture.
Composting
Food waste is a big problem, so starting a compost pile in your backyard or at a community garden is a great way to make sure that your organic food waste has a purpose.
Supporting Farmers Who Prioritise Composting Practices
Many farms, especially locally owned and operated ones, use compost. Opting to buy produce from them can help reduce the amount of runoff from manure-covered fields.
Adopting a Plant-Based Diet
Adopting a plant-based diet is one of the best ways to take a stand against animal agriculture, as you will no longer be supporting it at all through the foods you choose to eat.
The Bottom Line
Making individual changes and choosing not to eat animal products sends a direct message to producers that animal agriculture is not acceptable.
Transitioning away from animal agriculture to new food systems that rely on technology such as cultivated meat and plant-based protein will take some time. That’s why we encourage you to start making those changes now.
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