The impact of factory farming

Most simply put, someone who regularly eats factory-farmed animal products cannot call himself an environmentalist without divorcing that word from its meaning.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals¹

Bestselling author and vegetarian Jonathan Safran Foer defines factory farm in one of the early passages of his nonfiction book Eating Animals as:

[a] term […] sure to fall out of use in the next generation or so, either because there will be no more factory farms, or because there will be no more family farms to compare them to.¹

But what are these ubiquitous facilities, really defined by a set of business and production practices, that have so quickly usurped the established order of the “family farm” paradigm in industrialized nations’ agriculture and determined the dietary habits of their citizens? In less than a century, the Western world has supplanted tried-and-true methods of animal husbandry with a unique and experimental brand of mass production, employing animal abuse and genetic machinations to produce the highest yield through the least cost of materials and time. What kind of detrimental effects could such farms be wreaking on the global environment, on their surrounding ecosystems, and on the health of the humans who so eagerly consume their products? What compromises have been made over these last few decades in the interest of increased productivity and profitability and at the expense of safety, animal welfare, and environmental responsibility?

The moral implications of many factory farm practices, such as animals’ living (and dying) conditions—such as their accelerated reproduction rates; their unnatural supplemented diet which consists of antibiotics, growth hormones, and often the ground flesh of their own fallen brethren or offspring; as well as countless other flagrant instances of animal cruelty²—while certainly being significant ethical issues omnivorous consumers cannot afford to ignore, are regrettably beyond the scope of this paper. Rather than researching and addressing the horrible ethical offenses inflicted by the factory farm sadists upon defenseless and frightened animals, and rather than looking into the various disadvantageous health effects of consuming a diet which includes factory-farmed–meat with all its additives and hormones, here we will primarily address the environmental impact of the factory farming industry as it relates to surrounding ecosystems and to the atmosphere through the release of greenhouse gases.

Among the favorite political arguments used by conservatives and anti-environmentalist activists in their efforts to paint the movement in a derisive light is the fact that lowly cows release more greenhouse gases than many human activities. This statistic, should it prove accurate, would indeed be a staggering one — despite all our automobiling and mass production, could cows’ passing gas really pose a greater threat to the atmosphere than our pollutants?

US methane emissions

Values for livestock in this data may not add up to 28% because, while livestock is the largest source of methane emissions worldwide, it is only third largest in the U.S.

Cows have existed virtually forever, and their starring role in the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas, would certainly paint the entire notion of a runaway greenhouse effect—and, by extension, much of the science behind global climate change—in a different sort of light entirely. Indeed, ruminant livestock account for 28% of the planet’s methane emissions every year, being the largest contributor of this greenhouse gas from human-related activities on the planet³ (for data on its role in the methane emissions of the United States, see pie chart above).⁴ The United Nations deemed factory farming

one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. [Animal agriculture] should be a major policy focus [as] livestock’s contribution or environmental problems is on a massive scale.¹

Since the number of animals influences the amount of methane gas emitted every year, and since the population and diet of the millions of animals living and dying in industrialized countries is determined by the worldwide factory farming industry, these meat manufacturing facilities are directly responsible for the plurality of human-attributable emissions of methane.

Meat consumption vs. methane emissions

Various countries’ emissions data and their rate of production of the top three types of consumed animals show a correlation between the two, with China and Mexico representing extreme ends of the spectrum. Higher methane emissions despite lower rates of meat production for the United States and European Union are due to other methane-emitting practices.

Methane gas, “in terms of its contribution to global warming, is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”⁵ The average adult cow could emit between 80 and 110 kilograms of methane gas, which in and of itself would amount to a somewhat negligible greenhouse gas impact.⁴ However, first and foremost among reasons for these absurd volumes of methane is the sheer number of animals living in industrialized nations around the world. Due in part to factory farming, there are more than 100 million cattle living in the United States today—or about one cow for every three Americans—and more than 130 million and 230 million in China and Africa, respectively.⁶ The immense populations of cattle in these three regions alone would amount to as much as 50.6 billion kilograms of methane every year.⁷ This is a higher population of cattle, in particular, than any other point in the history of the planet.

The chart above⁸ illustrates the undeniable link between heightened methane emissions in industrialized nations and that country’s rate of meat production.⁹ In China’s example, pork production and consumption were higher than any other nation—a whopping 46,190 metric tons of pork products generated every year⁹—and, to follow suit, in 2005 the nation of China emitted a staggering 995,760 kilotons of methane gas CO2 equivalent.⁹ Conversely, Mexico had the lowest data in both methane emissions and meat production among the five countries included, with 120,100 kilotons emitted and 4,323 total metric tons produced across the three largest consumable meat products. These are remarkable numbers, reflecting meat consumption’s fundamental cultural throne as the staple of an American and Western diet. Millions and millions of animals are born and killed each year as cogs in this enormous fleshy machine, their excrement and bodily functions releasing immense quantities of dangerous greenhouse gases as byproducts of the industry. But is it possible that this much gas is emitted solely from the animals’ bodily processes? Surely there must be more at play than cows’ passing the occasional gas.

While such gases are indeed a primary contributor, a surprisingly large portion of these emissions are the result of the animal’s waste, which is almost always irresponsibly collected and dumped into what Foer calls “shit lagoons”: moats of primarily feces, but also including blood and guts, animal fetuses and other runoff that encircle many of the larger facilities and releases dangerous toxic gases into the atmosphere.¹ He illustrates that

these toxic lagoons can cover as much as 120,000 square feet—as much surface area as the largest casinos in Las Vegas—and be as deep as 30 feet. [A] typical pig factory farm will produce 7.2 million pounds of manure annually, a typical broiler will produce 6.6 million pounds, and the typical cattle feedlot will produce 344 million pounds.”¹

Whereas in the family farming days of yore the waste of livestock would prove beneficial, even essential, in its uses as fertilizer for the farm’s other crops, waste of this nature and magnitude almost entirely go to waste due to the impossibility of transport and application or to the factory farm’s lack of interest in or production of plant crops. Since the advent of the factory farming industry, the source materials and byproducts involved in the “animal husbandry” process have been significantly and dangerously altered. The feed these animals encounter almost exclusively contains more chemicals and stimulants than nutrients, designed to augment their accelerated and genetically-engineered growth of desirable attributes—more breast meat in chickens, et cetera. However, not only do these practices render the animals sickly and their flesh made up primarily of antibiotic-muddled water, it also saddles the animals and their farmers with millions of pounds of unnatural and unmanageable waste material, filled with chemicals and toxins which are then haphazardly introduced into surrounding ecosystems.

What sort of effects does this rampant irresponsibility have on the environment, exactly? In a Rolling Stone article “Boss Hog” by Jeff Tietz, the author cites “ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorus, nitrates, and heavy metals” as being found in or emitted by these large collections of factory farm waste.”¹ The presence of these substances in animal waste is relatively unprecedented, being the result of the animals’ artificial diets of growth hormones and antibiotics. As a result, these unnatural gases are released into the atmosphere, and are a primary cause of the staggering greenhouse gas emissions statistics for the United States and other industrialized nations as illustrated above. The metals and other inorganic chemicals seep into soils and are often accidentally dumped into rivers and water sources, killing wildlife and introducing them to hazardous artificial chemicals that might induce genetic mutations in subsequent generations. “[C]onservative estimates by the EPA indicate that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has already polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in twenty-two states,”¹⁰ resulting in two hundred fish kills (when an entire population is terminated at once) in just three years.¹¹ These corporations, which in recent decades have gone international, have discovered it is more cost-effective to pay the EPA’s meager fines than to rethink their waste management process from the ground up. When Smithfield, America’s leading pork factory farming corporation, dumped twenty million gallons of waste in 1995 into a river in North Carolina—the largest environmental disaster of its kind and larger even than the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989—they were merely fined $12.6 million and allowed to continue on their merry way. Foer points out that Smithfield makes $12.6 million in revenue every few hours.¹

Furthermore, he mentions over “100 microbial pathogens that can make humans sick, including salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptococci and giardia.” These harmful greenhouse gases, toxic chemicals, and disease-causing pathogens are being released into the atmosphere by the billions of pounds of livestock waste produced and irresponsibly handled by factory farms across the country and around the world. What’s worse, but perhaps predictable, is that these airborne toxins being released in such great abundance near human communities has been the cause of scores of medical complications. Millions of children born and raised in close proximity to these factory farms have been diagnosed with asthma and other respiratory disorders from an early age. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a flesh-eating bacteria that has been linked to hog factory farms, and “kill[s] more Americans annually (18,000) than AIDS.”¹ Those subjected to living within the radius of these dangerous farms are “rarely wealthy and treated by the [factory farm] industry as dispensable.”¹ Legislation on these effects on surrounding communities are lax or nonexistent, as the troubles of these few are kept from the public attention.

Pictured above is a hog factory farm in North Carolina, where Smithfield is headquartered. Just west of the image are the towns of Pikeville, Eureka, and Fremont, which together account for almost 3,000 people. To the south is Goldsboro, which itself is home to almost 40,000 people. These offenses give rise to a whole host of human rights issues, and have some worrisome implications concerning the complacence of state and federal governments on the matter of factory farming.

Interestingly, however, a new proposal has been brought forward that could have a twofold beneficial impact on the environmental issues brought about by greenhouse gases. In his March 2010 article “The Only Upside to Factory Farming,” Matthew Wheeland sheds light on a little-known plan by the Cargill corporation, which deals in cattle products, which has seen the creation of a new sort of power plant that converts their millions of pounds of waste into electricity for hundreds of homes in Idaho. Regrettably, news of this plan has seen little press coverage for reasons unknown (it may have something to do with the fact that, until recently, one of the energy companies who stood to lose even a minimal amount of business to this new technology, General Electric, was also owner of one of the nation’s largest broadcast news networks, NBCUniversal. However, this may be conspiracy theorizing). Below is the Cargill corporation’s press release regarding their new concept.

Along with generating enough renewable electricity to power approximately 1,100 U.S. homes per month, the project will also generate carbon credits from reduced methane emissions in the atmosphere. Cargill is currently in the process of selling the first 28,000 tons of emission offsets generated by the initial Bettencourt Dairy digester. At peak capacity that digester is expected to produce 1.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, enough to power approximately 1,400 U.S. homes.¹²

This revolutionary idea could potentially offset some of the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-burning plants which currently shoulder the burden for the United States’ energy appetite, as well as safely remove some of that harmful animal waste from the surrounding ecosystems and its resultant gases and chemicals from the atmosphere. It remains to be seen how effective and truly clean this new proposal would turn out to be, but should these sorts of plants which “digest” toxic animal waste prove to be worth their salt, both the environment and surrounding human communities would surely benefit. Operating this facility might, in the short term, run Cargill at a loss, but selling the electricity and benefiting from the amassed carbon credits might aid their efforts to make such a venture profitable. Of course, the ethical issues of factory farming remain unaddressed in such a proposal, but it’s heartening to see these corporations take measures to cut back on their dangerous emissions and rethink their waste management, at the very least in the short term while the American tongue is weaned off of factory-farmed meat in general. Until then, however, a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels that also helps prevent the release of these toxic quantities of waste into the environment—both stemming the tide of greenhouse gases introduced into the atmosphere by either factory farming or coal-burning plants—is certainly a welcome prospect.

Another proposed solution pertaining more specifically to the issue of greenhouse gas emissions from factory farms is to introduce legislation that would require concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) to comply with either state or federal regulations that would limit the amount of greenhouse gases that a single CAFO could emit. There are no current federal limits on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that CAFOs can produce, and in recent years the EPA has become less strict about regulating emissions from the animal agriculture industry.¹³ For instance, the EPA requires all CAFOs to obtain a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit that regulates waste management in terms of water pollution at the animal feeding facilities. However, with the exception of four states, these permits are issued and regulated by individual states, rather than the federal government, and are largely self-regulating.¹⁴ In terms of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants discharged from factory farms, the EPA conducted a study with a number of CAFOs to determine the amount of air pollutants that are emitted from factory farms. The EPA made a compromise with the farms that were monitored during the study, ensuring that they would not be penalized for the amount of pollutants that were discharged from their operations.¹³ The survey has been completed, although the results have yet to be interpreted and are therefore not of much use to the general public.¹³

Various groups and concerned citizens are proposing to introduce and pass legislation to place limits on concentrated animal feeding operations’ emissions in response to the growing problem of greenhouse gas emissions, among a plethora of other issues with CAFOs.¹⁵ One such attempt at legislation is being led by the American Public Health Association. The APHA proposes a moratorium on new concentrated animal feeding operations. The moratorium calls for a cessation in development of all new concentrated animal feeding operations until more information has been made available by the EPA about the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by CAFOs, along with other information such as health hazards and soil, air, and water contamination.¹⁵ This moratorium would give the EPA insight to the amount of air pollutants being emitted from concentrated animal feeding operations and ideally lead to stricter regulations concerning these emissions. Other groups, including the Humane Society and Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, have petitioned the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations.¹⁵ These groups would like to see the greenhouse gas emissions from CAFOs listed air pollutants, in addition to higher standards of performance among these CAFOs being updated under the Clean Air Act.¹⁵

Taking steps to enact legislature and public policy to ensure the regulation, oversight, and enforcement of improved standards for acceptable levels of greenhouse gas emissions from the factory farming industry is a great start to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted. However, drastic changes in public policy often take an enormous amount of time to go into effect, if these changes even go into effect at all. The vast majority of meat produced in the United States comes from factory farms, and in order for greenhouse gas emissions to be effectively reduced, the operating structure of concentrated animal feeding operations would need to be drastically changed. One of the biggest changes that would need to be made would be improvements in animal waste management and reduction in the number of animals concentrated in one single feeding operation. Unfortunately, these are some of the biggest factors that allow for meat to be produced and sold so inexpensively.

While it is undeniable that factory farms are a leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions,¹⁶ it is also undeniable that they provide a cost-efficient source of food for millions of people in the United States. Many people are dependent on food from factory farms to feed themselves and their families. For these people, if the process of reducing greenhouse gas emissions results in a more expensive product, then they might not be eager to pass legislation to do so. Eliminating an inexpensive source of meat and animal products also poses questions about justice. Is it ethical to eliminate a cost-effective source of food that a large number of people from poor communities depend on? Some might not think so. On the other hand, some might argue that the volume of greenhouse gases emitted by factory farms is unethical because of their contribution to both air pollution and climate change. Allowing toxic pollutants to contaminate the air in communities in close vicinity to factory farms is yet another issue of ecological justice.

Vegetarian diet

Among the options for consumers with purchasing power is to subscribe to a vegetarian or, as pictured, vegan diet.

Another solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from factory farms that has been proposed takes the form of a more grassroots approach, which is to use individual consumer power to influence the practices within the animal agriculture industry. One common approach is for an individual consumer to not purchase or consume any animal products whatsoever in an effort to decrease demand, and ultimately production, of products manufactured from concentrated animal feeding facilities. It is estimated that there are over seven million vegetarians in the United States, and that the number of vegetarians in the United States is rising.¹⁷ Although people adopt a vegetarian lifestyle for a number of reasons such as health concerns or animal rights issues, many consider the environmental impacts of factory farms to be one of the primary reasons for becoming vegetarian. Some people may not choose to become fully vegetarian, but rather to reduce the amount of animal products. A 2006 study found that even a small 20% reduction in daily meat consumption in the United States could prevent 1,485 kg of carbon dioxide emissions.¹⁶ Simply reducing meat consumption can have a great impact on reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from factory farms, and is proposed by a number of different groups including the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.¹⁸

Choosing to become vegetarian is not the only strategy that individual consumers use to address the issues with factory farms. Many consumers would like to continue to eat meat and dairy, and have made the decision to purchase meat, dairy, eggs, and other animal products exclusively from small local farms that feed their livestock what the animals naturally eat, allow the animals space to roam, and have smaller numbers of livestock that are much more manageable to maintain in a healthy, sustainable way in terms of both product quality and greenhouse gas emissions.¹⁹ Free-range and small-scale produced meat has seen an increase in demand that has not gone unnoticed by meat producers and small, local farms. If consumer demand for ethically and environmentally sustainably produced meat increases, so will the number of farms that produce meat in this way. Consumers who purchase meat exclusively from local, sustainable sources reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from both transportation of the product, and the manufacture of the product itself. This is a particularly useful option because it allows consumers who prefer to eat meat to continue to do so, while still having a positive impact by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

For instance, the number of operating farmers’ markets in the United States is on the rise, many of which have locally and sustainably raised and produced meat, eggs, and dairy products. In the year 1994 there were only 1,775 farmers’ markets across the United States. Today there are over 6,132 farmers’ markets across the nation, and the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has increased 16% in the past year alone.²⁰ The chart below shows the rise in the number of farmers’ markets operating in the United States over the past 16 years.

Rising numbers of farmers’ markets in the US

Note the 16% increase between 2009 and 2010.

Of course, consumer choices of which products to buy or not buy can be a rather complex subject. Individual consumers will make selections of products differently depending on a number of factors, some of which may include money available to buy food, knowledge of impacts on the environment and greenhouse gases emitted by factory farms, availability of alternative sources of food, personal judgments of value, and convenience, among an endless number of others. Examining the options that consumers have to choose from leads one to see the different benefits to consumers who choose to purchase their food from different sources for different reasons. Each consumer has different criteria to consider when making his or her food choices. It would be unrealistic to assume that every consumer is going to use his or her purchasing power in the same manner. A well-educated family in an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood will certainly spend their money differently than a poorly educated family in a rural area who struggles to feed themselves on a daily basis.

Factory-farmed meat and animal products offer a source of food that is inexpensive and relatively nutritious to an enormously large demographic of people in the United States, particularly to those is poor communities. A family with a low income may very well not be able to afford to buy meat unless is comes from a factory farm. It would cost more to purchase foods with the same amount of calories from plant sources than it would to purchase meat produced from a factory farm. It would be impractical to suggest that a low income family spend a greater amount of money on meat that has been produced in a sustainable way, just as it would be impractical to suggest that a low income family spend a greater amount of money on anything else.

Factory-farmed animal products also allow consumers to buy greater quantities of meat, regardless of their socioeconomic standing. People who can afford to spend a lot of money on food often would prefer to buy a greater quantity of inexpensive food than a smaller quantity of more expensive food. From an exclusively monetary standpoint, which is the greatest deciding factor in the choices of many consumers, there is no reason not to buy factory-farmed meat products. Another major problem concerning the issue of sustainably produced meat is that if all meat was to be produced in a sustainable manner, it would be impossible to produce enough of it to match the current demand for it. Without the use of factory farming techniques, consumers in the United States would have to drastically decrease their consumption of meat and other animal products. For some, it may certainly be worth consuming less meat to avoid the harmful effects of factory farms on the environment. For others, the idea of reducing consumption and doing without may seem absurd.

Another factor to consider with sustainably produced meat is availability to different consumers. A family may not even have access to non–factory-farmed meat and dairy in the area in which they live. In a large city near an agriculturally viable landscape there may be a market for non–factory-farmed meat, but in smaller communities or regions that cannot support local agriculture, where nearly all food comes from large supermarkets, meat is simply not available from small, local farms. In regions like the midwest, there are plenty of available resources for raising livestock on small, sustainable farms. In other regions of the nation where soil quality is poor and water is scarce, small scale farms would not fare as well and therefore be a rare enterprise. In an area where education is poor, consumers may not demand sustainably produced animal products. If there is no demand for sustainably produced meat and animal products, it is unlikely that there will be a supply of such products. Even where there is a demand for locally produced, sustainable food there is not always a supply. Small scale farmers often travel to larger cities to sell their produce for a higher price to consumers in more affluent communities as opposed to providing their local communities, who often have less access to quality produce, with fresh and relatively inexpensive sources of food.²¹

Again, this brings up issues of justice. Are people in wealthier communities any more deserving of locally produced food than people living in poorer communities? Probably not. In that case, it would be worth considering ways to increase the availability of local, sustainably produced food to not only wealthy communities, but to consumers in all local communities who would like to have access to these foods. In cases like this, even a consumer who was aware of and concerned with the environmental impact of the products he or she purchases and would like to buy animal products that have been produced in a sustainable manner may simply not have access to other alternatives to factory-farmed meat. The frightening truth is that upwards of 99% of all animals in this country come from factory farms,¹ and—while there are indeed alternatives—those rare family farms highlighted in the latter half of Foer’s book so few, far between, and expensive that eating exclusively their meat would require relocation and a winning lottery ticket.

A large number of people may simply be unaware that the animal products they buy and consume are produced in a way that is detrimental to the environment. Communities of people who are not highly educated may not realize the magnitude of environmental impact caused by their daily food choices. Many people go through their daily lives not considering the consequences that their actions have, while others are quite aware of the consequences of their actions but become indifferent over time. It can be overwhelming to think about the scope of such an issue, especially when there are countless other environmental, social, political, and personal issues that a person could consider. It is not difficult to see how a person could become demoralized and feel as though he or she could not possibly make a difference. Others may know and think about the impacts of their food choices but are more concerned with convenience and immediate practicality than long-term consequences.

Just as it would be impractical to suggest that a low income family spend more money on food, it would be impractical to suggest that every family who can afford to buy sustainably produced meat should do so. Many families have parents who spend an incredible amount of time working to provide for their families that they do not have time, or are not willing to sacrifice extra time, to look for and purchase sustainably produced animal products. Weighing the different options available and coming to conclusions about how to go about consuming resources will end with different people making different decisions about how to use their resources. If the environmental problems presented by the factory farming industry are ever to be resolved, people must decide what exactly it is they value most and act upon those decisions.

The first-world consumption of meat as an integral staple of our dietary habits has given rise to perhaps the most inhumane and efficient systems of flesh production in the history of the world: the international factory farming industry. This presents we consumers with a pressing ethical dilemma. Do we continue in our implicit endorsement of these production practices with our purchasing power, yielding to the inconvenience of a vegetarian diet or to the comforts that our traditional eating habits provide? Or do we, for the sake of our communities and our global environment, choose to alter our daily meals and eat only that which falls snugly in line with our own moral stances and environmental beliefs? This, indeed, is a question for the twenty-first century, and a choice each one of us will necessarily have to confront. As Jonathan Safran Foer expounds upon towards the conclusion of his book:

Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn’t motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?¹

With increased awareness of the ethical and environmental issues surrounding factory farming, it is the hope of many that first-world consumers around the globe will use their purchasing power to send a message to the industry. We cannot rely on these corporations to self-regulate, as they’ve proven corrupt and cheated system after system for decades (as an example, the term “free-range” can be applied to any product produced by chickens whose facility features a window—even if the animal in question cannot see it). Perhaps the dinner table of the future will feature more tofu than buffalo wings, and perhaps the American of the future will have a clean moral conscience to compliment their weight loss from a vegan or vegetarian diet. In the short term, however, it’s more likely that higher standards and regulations, imposed by new legislation, will be able to curtail some of the worst offenses of environmental devastation and curb these factories’ greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, experimental ideas like Cargill’s waste “digestion” plants might offer a short-term alternative to the waste lagoons surrounding today’s factory farms and have a small role to play in the country’s clean, renewable energy future. There are solutions available to these crises, if only we Americans weren’t so chicken.