Virtually
all of the over 10 billion animals slaughtered for food in the U.S. every year
are the product of a swift-moving assembly line system, incorporating dangerous,
unprecedented, and unsustainable methods of efficiency. If farmers were required
by law to give their animals humane living conditions, including spacious
quarters, clean surroundings, fresh air, sunlight, and opportunities for social
interaction—if it were illegal simply to administer drugs to animals who would
otherwise die from the environments they live in—cheap meat could never exist.
Time and again, the industry fights proposed measures designed to improve the
conditions endured by farmed animals—even slightly— some of which would cost
only pennies more per animal. Ultimately, low prices have allowed demand to stay
high and the industry to become highly concentrated. Over the past half century,
farming in the U.S. has been allowed to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity,
the scale of which is hard to comprehend or even believe.
When the
Clean Water Act
went into effect in 1972, the government exempted agriculture. One result:
35,000 river miles in just 22 states are polluted by feedlot operations. And
today, an entrenched livestock industry, which produces several trillion pounds
of manure per year, balks at regulation. In 2003, the government issued two
reports. The first revealed that only a quarter of the nation’s largest dairies
and hog operations were spreading their manure on enough land to mitigate toxic
runoff. The second said that the EPA’s computer systems are grossly inadequate
to track down farms lacking manure management plans. As a result, millions of
tons of waste are sent into our waterways, and the government is unable to
control it.
After
reviewing 4,500 scientific studies and papers on the relationship between cancer
and lifestyle, a team of 15 scientists sponsored by two leading cancer research
institutions advised those interested in reducing their risk of many types of
cancer to consume a primarily vegetarian diet consisting of fruits, vegetables,
cereals, and legumes. They declared that certain cancers can actually be
prevented, with diet, weight management, and regular exercise having a 40
percent bearing on disease risk..
The
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 70 percent of
the world’s commercial fish stocks are fully exploited, over-fished, or
collapsed. Fishers, using rapacious techniques, such as sonar, driftnets,
long-lines, dredgers, and refrigerated fish packing factories, are ultimately
not only putting themselves out of business but rapidly destroying ocean
ecosystems. In the case of long-lining, fishers launch 4.5 million hooks every
night. Overall, a quarter of the world’s fish catch comes from non target
species; a third goes to feed livestock or farmed fish. Early in 1998, a meeting
of 1,600 scientists sounded the clarion call that the oceans were in peril. Five
years later, the
Pew Oceans Commission blamed industrial-scale
commercial fishing for depleting the Earth of 90 percent of the ocean’s largest
predatory species found only 50 years ago.
The Humane Slaughter Act requires that
mammals be rendered insensible to pain before being slaughtered. A Washington
Post series in 2002, however, exposed a packing industry hard pressed to follow
this law. Animals were found regularly butchered alive on speeded-up conveyor
lines. A resolution that the Humane law be followed to the letter did become
part of the U.S. Farm Bill. But long after the politicians enjoyed their
photo-ops, the live butchering surely continues. Appropriated Farm Bill funds
ended up being diverted to food-safety inspectors already employed. In the end,
it almost doesn’t matter. The Humane law does not even apply to 99 percent of
animals slaughtered, because poultry and fish are not covered by it.
A meat diet dramatically raises your risk
for heart attack, but in recent years you’re less likely to die from the trauma.
Technology will probably save your life, leaving you to live with the
consequences. In the case of congestive heart failure--an increasingly common
outcome--your heart, now damaged, is unable to adequately circulate blood to the
rest of your body, resulting in fluid build-up and organ damage. In the U.S.,
nearly 5 million people live with the condition, and about 550,000 new cases are
diagnosed every year. The disease is the leading cause of hospitalization among
the elderly, and hospital bills attributed to it total $29 billion annually.
Pigs are naturally anything but dirty and
brutish and, if given half a chance, display high intelligence. Ask Professor
Stanley Curtis of Pennsylvania State University. He taught several pigs to
understand complex relationships between objects and actions in order to play
video games. Curtis, along with his colleagues, found these creatures to be
focused, creative, and innovative--equal in intelligence to chimpanzees. Other
researchers have found chickens to be good at solving problems, cows to respond
to music, and fish to be as individualistic as dogs.
Approximately 800 million people today live
with chronic hunger, and 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes every
day. Yet the world cycles nearly 43 percent of all the grain that is harvested
through animals to produce meat. To get a feedlot steer to gain a pound, you
need 7 pounds of corn. Likewise, additional pounds of pig, chicken, and farmed
fish will cost you, respectively, 3.5, 2, and 3 pounds in feed. Of course, large
portions of the added weight turn into inedible tissue, such as bones. The meat
industry does endeavor to increase feed-to-flesh efficiency, but the
“improvements” sadly come via genetic tinkering, growth enhancing drugs, and
questionable feed.
About 25 million pounds of antibiotics are
fed to U.S. livestock every year primarily for growth promotion. This is almost
eight times the amount administered to humans. Though perfectly legal, the
practice is leading to the selection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and adding
to the general worldwide crisis of drug-resistant disease. The consumption of
meat contaminated with these superbugs raises the threat of human illnesses that
physicians are unable to treat.
Every year, Americans suffer from
approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths
from something they ate. That something was probably of animal origin. The main
culprits are E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and campylobacter. The annual cost
to the U.S. for the top-five foodborne pathogens, all predominantly associated
with animal-derived foods: $6.9 billion.