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Importance of agricultural development
negative impacts on factory farming research paper
the drawback of factory farming
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Environmental scientists and social activists are starting to argue that Caged Animal Feeding Operations ( CAFO’s) are detrimental to the environment in a variety of ways. CAFO’s are the result of 10,000 years of human progress stemming from the transition of a hunter/gatherer society to an agrarian society. The transition from a hunter/gatherer society to an agrarian society contributed to the creation of major cities, resulting in higher populations i.e. Mesopotamia. As time progressed and countries started becoming more populated, specifically the United States, a higher demand for food needed to be met due to the growing populous. It got to the point where there were so many people that small family run farms could not meet the demand of the growing population.
The advent of new technology such as the automobile, refrigerator, food processing and preservation provided a way for business entrepreneurs to start new businesses that allowed for large scale production, distribution and centralized retailing of both meat and plant foods. The result being CAFO’s.
CAFO’s are beneficial in that they can provide a low-cost source of meat, milk and eggs due to efficient feeding and hosing methods of the animals, as well as boost the local economy by providing jobs. Unfortunately the negatives of CAFO’s outweigh the benefits immensely.
The most pressing issue that is associated with CAFO’s comes from the amount of manure/waste they produce. The manure that results from CAFO’s contains a panoply of potential contaminants. The manure is filled with plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens such as E.coli, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, silage...
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...urkholder, J., Libra, B., Weyer, P., Heathcote, S., Kolpin, D., Thorne, P., et al. (2007). Impacts of waste from concentrated animal feeding operations on water quality. Environmental Health Perspectives, 11(2), 308–312. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1817674/pdf/ehp0115-000308.pdf
Hribar, Carrie, MA. Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities. Ed. Mark Schultz, MEd. Http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/understanding_cafos_nalboh.pdf. National Association of Local Boards of Health, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2013. .
Sigurdarson,S.T. & Kline, J.N. (2006). School proximity to concentrated animal feeding operations and prevelance of asthma in students. Chest, 129, 1486–1491. Retrieved from http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/129/6/1486.full.pdf
Although factory farms may sound harmful, they are good to the animals, the environment, and the farmers that look over them. Just like humans, animals love to be around other animals. They want the contact between each other or they will get lonely. Factory farms help make this possible by raising an abundance of animals, whether it is beef cattle, swine, dairy cattle, or the most common, chickens. Like what the media portrays, Factory Farms have negative influences on animals in agriculture and society as a whole.
A big river pollutant in Iowa are animal confinements. These confinements can contain thousands of pigs, chickens, and cows. With so many animals, thousands of pounds of manure are generated, and in that manure is excessive amounts of nitrogen. On the EPA’s website (2008), a table shows that Iowa has produced 398,551 kg of nitrogen and 144,981 kg of phosphorus from animal manure in 2007. This shows that in
Phasing out animal agriculture and replacing it with stronger, safer plant cultivation would greatly reduce pollution released into the environment as animal waste, burning fossil fuels, and contaminated water runoff. The animal waste produced in factory farms is dumped into immense open-air lago...
Steinfeld, Henning, et al. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006. Print.
According to [foodispower.org]”one dairy cow produces 120 lbs of wet manure per day, which is epuivilant to 20-40 people”. When they produce so much waste it lets out a lot of methane gas and that is not good for us to breathe in. According to food is power.org CAFOs use many machines that pollute the air but industrial farms use people to do the jobs that CAFOs machines do. In factory farms they use many machines which pollute the air when they use diesel. They use the poop and put it in their soil and in cesspools which has a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus also many others which is bad for the soil. That can affect plants and the animals that eat the grass and may even kill humans. Traditional farms also do not dump it in a giant pool they put it on plants. CAFOs also pollute water by the poop getting into our waterways and that is not
Animal agriculture causes resource depletion, habitat loss, water scarcity, and global hunger. Not only do livestock add on to greenhouse gas emissions, but livestock uses thirty to forty percent of the earth’s entire land surface. As the world’s appetite for meat increases, countries are bulldozing huge areas of land to make room for livestock. Raising animals for food is responsible for ninety-one percent of the destruction of the Amazon. Approximately one to two acres of rainforest are being cleared out every second. More than twenty percent of the world 's oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest. As more trees are cut down, the less carbon dioxide that can be absorbed. For each hamburger that originates from animals raised on rainforest land, fifty-five square feet of forest has been cleared out. Not only that, but most of the freshwater available for consumption is used for agribusiness. Animal agriculture is responsible for thirty percent of all freshwater consumption on earth. Growing crops to feed livestock consumes fifty to sixty percent of the water. One pound of beef requires two thousand and five hundred gallons of water. One gallon of milk requires a thousands gallons of water. One pound of eggs require four hundred and seventy-seven gallons of water. In addition to consuming huge amounts of water, animal agriculture has also polluted millions of gallons of water. Each day, factory farms produce millions of pounds of manure, which end up in rivers, oceans, and lakes. The one trillion pounds of waste produced by factory-farmed animals each year are used to fertilize crops. The waste runs off into waterways along with the drugs and bacteria that they contain. Waste ends up on crops and pits in the ground, polluting groundwater. The excrements of factory farming has contaminated and polluted thirty-five thousand miles of rivers in twenty-two states. The use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers poison waterways and creates dead
Runoff from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, farms where animals are fed a plethora of drugs including antibiotics and hormones, are contributing large amounts of drug contamination to the water supply (Powell). Much of this runoff comes from biowaste and manure produced by large farm animals. It has been found that states with more CAFOs experience higher numbers of contamination problems every year (Hribar). The waste that these farm animals produce not only contains hormones, but more significantly, dangerous nitrates. According to the EPA, “Animal agriculture manure is a primary source of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface and groundwater” (Estimate). The nitrogen produced naturally in addition to that excreted from animals becomes dangerous because it is soluble, and it easily infiltrates the animals and the water supply.
As I sit in the car, listening to my music with my eyes focused on my phone, trying to ignore my dad singing that’s completely out of key, I know the minute we get close to a farm. It's not the change of scenery or my dad saying, “Look cows!”; it's the smell. Everyone knows it too well, the stink of manure. Weather its cow patties, animal droppings, dung, guano, or stool, every animal goes number two; and some more than others. According to Daniel Oldham, a researcher at North Carolina A&T State University, hog farms produce forty three billion gallons of manure yearly. That’s a lot of poop! This manure has to go somewhere, so farmers create lagoons to hold manure until they are ready to spread it onto the fields as fertilizer. Most people
One issue in support of the idea that factory farms are not suitable involves the excessive amount of waste that is produced when so many animals are enclosed in such small areas. Factory farms cause an enormous amount of waste. In fact, a peninsula
coli and salmonella, along with other severe illnesses. Since the farmers have absolutely no say as to what should be a better alternative, they are forced to fill these animals with numerous chemicals that puts the consumer at many health hazards. For instance, Kevin Kowalcyk, a two year old boy who died from a foodborne illness in 2001; Kevin was on vacation at the lake with his family, at the end of their trip, they all decided to grab a quick and convenient burger from a local fast food chain. Kevin seemed fine, then the stages of his death occurred; his mother found blood in the stool, failing kidneys, sunken in eyes and physical appearance of malnourishment; Kevin was put on dialysis treatments for 8 days, but never returned home. Along with Kevin are 3,000 Americans who die every year from foodborne pathogens, and the numbers are increasing.; yet even with activists who stand up for food- safety bills, these food productions fail to realize the point, the food is not safe, although it is cheap and economical it is not beneficial to any factor. If companies would use the obvious alternative; open, nature filled farms or pastures, not only would the animals benefit from being in a natural, safe, and healthy environment but the customer as well.
The cocoa industry is not nearly as harmful to the environment as society would expect because of low income crop many farms can not afford pesticides or chemicals which results in a nearly organic farms. The industry is controlled through small farms which aren’t able to afford machines, resulting in the work being done through manual labor. The byproducts of the cocoa are used to form fuel and fertilizers to give back to the environment. Through the combination of the low economic value of the crop, and the support of different companies to support a sustainable lifestyle at the farms the cocoa industry doesn’t have much of an effect on the environment.
Can you imagine spending your whole life in a cage? This is the reality that animals face daily on a factory farm. Factory farming needs to be stopped. This should be a serious concern because animals from factory farming can harm human health, it also harms the environment and it is not an ethical way to treat the animals.
The biggest threat to the environment is due to animal waste produce by factory farming. “According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the EPA, animal feeding operations produce approximately 500 million tons of manure every year”( AN HSUS Report: The Impact of Industrialized Animal Agriculture on the Environment). Traditional farming operations that include the production of produce as well as livestock use the animal waste as fertilizer for crops, the high nitrogen levels help to boost plant growth. However industrial livestock companies must use other disposable methods due to the lack of land required for grassroots solution to animal waste. Instead corporations will haul to smaller nearby farming operations, the intense concentration of the manure in these agriculture areas cause high levels of harmful natural occurring chemicals found in animal waste end up in the water supply. Water runoff inevitably ends up in streams, ponds, lakes and drinking water. The high levels pollutants such as phosphorus and nitrogen removes oxygen from the water which is detrimental to aquatic life. Moreover the use of manure lagoons, which are essentially open pits used for storage of manure, pose a great risk to air quality due to the release of high levels of harmful gases (An HSUS Report: The Impact of Industrialized Animal Agriculture on the Environment). There is also great risk that manure lagoons could spill and leak into nearby water supplies which poses an immense threat to local wildlife and aquatic animals. The increasing amount of these pollutants in the air put workers and nearby residents at risk for developing severe chronic illnesses and contributes to the declining overall quality of breathable air. Factory farming is a major contributor to global climate change due to the emission of green house gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. As the
There are many economic benefits and effects with using factory farming methods in the dairy cow industry. Factory farms, such as CAFOs, are typically big businesses that provide a large number of jobs to small rural communities (Rivoli). Small rural communities do not usually have a lot of job opportunities within a reasonable distance so having a factory farm near a small rural community will help to improve the economy of the
Cunningham, William, and Mary Ann Cunningham. "Chapter 18: Water Pollution." Environmental Science. ; A Global Concern. 12th ed. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2011. 396-421. Print.