Farming is broken: Let’s fix it. Part 1 - People

8 minute read — Published 22nd May, 2024

Factory farming puts our lives at risk

Factory farming is a broken system: torturing animals, destroying the planet and putting our lives at risk.

Despite this, it remains the dominant system for producing meat, dairy, and eggs. In the USA, 99% of the meat we eat is factory farmed;¹ while in the UK roughly 73 - 85% of farmed animals live in factory farms.²

In this series, we explore the many harms of factory farming and some of the ways that we can, together, make farming kinder to people, the planet and animals.

The impacts of factory farming on the environment are increasingly well-known, and we all agree that it causes animal suffering. But the story of the damage factory farming does to us directly is far less well known. In this first of three articles, we explore some of the ways factory farming puts our health at risk, increases global hunger and devastates the lives of its workers.

Health Risks

The cramped, unsanitary environments of factory farms are breeding grounds for pathogens that can leap from animals to humans, setting the stage for the next global pandemic. Since 1940, half of new diseases that transfer from animals to humans have been attributed to animal agriculture.³ History sends us a stark warning of the devastating potential of these conditions with outbreaks like H1N1 bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease, SARS, Q-fever, Nipah virus all originating in animals.⁴ Even COVID has been linked to the use of animals for food (although the debate about its origins are ongoing).⁵ These diseases underline the delicate balance we have upset by prioritizing industrial efficiency over biological safety.

The threat of pandemics, however, is just one dimension of the public health crisis posed by factory farming. The perils extend to our dinner plates, with over a third of foodborne diseases (which cause 600 million illnesses and 420,000 deaths each year)⁶ linked to animal-source foods.⁷

Factory farming is also making it harder to fight back against disease. Roughly three-quarters of the world's antibiotics are administered to livestock in an attempt to combat the filthy conditions in which those animals are kept⁸. This practice means that factory farming is one of the main causes of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, which claim 1.27 million lives annually⁹ and threaten to become the leading cause of death globally by 2050. ¹⁰

Factory farming is a public health time bomb. We must fix factory farming now, not just to prevent the next pandemic but to address the ongoing crises of foodborne illnesses and antibiotic resistance. The stakes have never been higher, and the cost of inaction is measured in human lives.

Global hunger

Almost no one thinks that the way we treat animals in factory farms is ok, but it is often justified as necessary to produce enough affordable food for us all. It’s not.

Factory farming contributes to global hunger through its inefficient use of crops. It’s a cruel irony that in a world where millions go hungry, we divert a third of global crop calories to feed livestock, yet all this only produces 12% of the calories we eat.¹¹ This means that 30% of global crop calories are lost by feeding them to animals instead of directly to people. Meanwhile, just 18% of our protein comes from meat and 43% from all animal sources combined, including wild-caught fish.¹²

Why do we feed so many crops to farmed animals? Most factory-farmed animals are not raised on grazing land, but instead inside giant windowless barns. This means all their food has to be brought in from somewhere else and, to make sure they grow as fast as possible so they can be slaughtered quickly, producers feed factory-farmed animals on high protein crops like soy.

Putting an end to factory farming - by raising farmed animals on pasture instead of crops, making plant-based alternatives more available to people and developing healthy alternative proteins - would help feed an additional 4 billion people without using more land for growing food.¹³

Impact on Workers

Imagine stepping into a workplace where injury is not just a possibility but an expectation. In the United States, meat and poultry processing is notoriously one of the most dangerous factory jobs, with injury rates more than twice the national average. ¹⁴ Even the air they breathe is dangerous, full of chemicals that cause serious long-term health effects.¹⁵

Beyond the physical dangers, the repetitive, brutal nature of the work takes a heavy toll on the workers’ mental health. They are subjected to traumatic experiences that psychologists suggest lead to PTSD and other severe mental health disorders¹⁶. This is not just a job; it’s a relentless assault on both body and mind, stripping away the mental well-being of those who endure it.

Most of us, thankfully, can choose not to watch traumatic slaughterhouse footage or the undercover footage activists collect from inside factory farms. But for these workers, this is their daily reality and they have no choice but to keep on looking these horrors full in the face, day after day. This is what happens when an industry prioritizes profits over human and animal health and dignity.

To make matters worse for factory-farm operators enduring horrific conditions in an effort to make a living, many of them end up financially ruined due to predatory contracts negotiated by massive agriculture companies. For example, in the US chicken industry, operators often take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to start a factory-farm. Then, chicken companies impose unexpected costs and force owners to absorb losses from high mortality rates among chickens, leaving many trapped in a cycle of increasing debt.¹⁷

Impact on Local Communities

It's not just farm workers that bear the burden of factory farming – communities living near these facilities are harmed, as waste products, chemical pollution and foul smells from factory farms spill over into the surrounding environment. In fact the harms to local communities are so great that the American Public Health Association has twice called for a moratorium on new factory farms.¹⁸ They point to the respiratory problems and elevated blood pressure caused by the toxic pollution.

Image courtesy of Molly Condit / CIWFI / We Animals Media

But it’s not just about health. The manure smell of factory farms is so intense that many local communities have to stay indoors with their windows closed at all times. The inability to socialize and enjoy the outdoors has been linked with unusually high rates of depression and anxiety.¹⁹ What’s more, living near factory farms has even been linked with socio-economic decline.²⁰ Perhaps unsurprisingly, the communities who bear these burdens are disproportionately poor and marginalized, meaning our food system is not just unkind but unjust as well.²¹

Farming is broken, let’s fix it

While reading about the damage that factory farming continues to do can fill us with a desire to see a different world; it can feel frustratingly like there is nothing we can do. How can things ever be different?

Firstly, we should remember that factory farming hasn’t been around forever. It was only invented in the 1960s. If we invented it, we can also invent new, better, healthier and more humane ways to make food. In fact, that’s already happening.

Many farmers are experimenting with finding ways to make less intensive farming practices possible. By raising animals outdoors on pasture land, we can dramatically reduce the need for antibiotic use.²²

These less intensive approaches do use a lot of space, so they need to be paired with some people in the Western world also reducing the amount of meat that they eat. There is some evidence that this is already happening, with meat eating dropping in the EU, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.²³ If people ate the equivalent of one burger per day on average, this would be enough of a reduction to reduce the use of antibiotics for animal farming by two-thirds.²⁴

We’re also inventing new alternative ways to produce tasty proteins and even actual meat without animal agriculture. Entrepreneurs and inventors are pioneering ways to grow meat and make milk in fermentation tanks similar to the way beer is made. These new products allow us to eat the same meat and dairy products without factory farming and using a fraction of the resources.

Want to get involved?

We can all be involved in helping speed up the change to a kinder way of farming.

The charities we support are at the forefront of all these efforts: pressuring companies to end the cruelest practices of factory farming, helping make plant-based meals more available and supporting the development of alternative proteins.

By supporting these charities with even a small amount of your donations, you can be an important part of the movement to fix factory farming and make our food kinder.

Footnotes

1. Our World in Data (2023): “How many animals are factory-farmed” – "There is no specific definition of a ‘factory farm’. In agricultural research, they are often known as ‘concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)’. The US Department for Agriculture has consistent criteria for CAFOs to track and quantify these farms. ... the Sentience Institute has used publicly available data – in this case, published by the USDA Census of Agriculture (number of animals per farm) and Environment Protection Agency (CAFO definitions).. It estimates that 99% of livestock in the US were factory-farmed in 2017”.
Sentience Institute, 2019: US Factory Farming Estimates – "We estimate that 99% of US farmed animals are living in factory farms at present. By species, we estimate that 70.4% of cows, 98.3% of pigs, 99.8% of turkeys, 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs, and over 99.9% of chickens raised for meat are living in factory farms. Based on the confinement and living conditions of farmed fish, we estimate that virtually all US fish farms are suitably described as factory farms, though there is limited data on fish farm conditions and no standardized definition. Land animal figures use data from the USDA Census of Agriculture and EPA definitions of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.[↑] 2. Compassion in World Farming cites 73% in one estimate, and 85% in another:
(a) "It is estimated that around 73% of farmed animals in the UK are kept in indoor factory farms",
(b) “It’s a sad fact that around 85% of farmed animals are confined in factory farms here in the UK.” [↑] 3. Matthew Hayek, 2022: “The infectious disease trap of animal agriculture” – “Since 1940, an estimated 50% of zoonotic disease emergence has been associated with agriculture” [↑] 4. (a) Morse et al. 2012: “Prediction and prevention of the next pandemic zoonosis” –“Most pandemics—eg, HIV/AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, pandemic influenza—originate in animals”; “The emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia in 1997”, transmitted from bats to "intensively managed” pigs and then to humans.
(b) World Health Organization, 2020 – “Zoonotic pathogens can spread to humans through any contact point with domestic, agricultural or wild animals. Markets selling the meat or by-products of wild animals are particularly high risk” [↑] 5. Chala et al, 2023 – “Re-Emerging COVID-19: Controversy of Its Zoonotic Origin, Risks of Severity of Reinfection and Management” – “The early cases of COVID-19 were likely related to contact with infected animals at a seafood market in Wuhan, China, suggesting animal-to-human transmission” [↑] 6. World Health Organization (2015): “WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases: foodborne diseases burden epidemiology reference group 2007-2015” – “Together, the 31 global hazards caused 600 (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 420–960) million foodborne illnesses and 420,000 (95% UI 310,000–600,000) deaths in 2010. The most frequent causes of foodborne illness were diarrhoeal disease agents” [↑] 7. World Health Organization (2023): “Red and processed meat in the context of health and the environment: many shades of red and green: information brief” – “Over a third of foodborne diseases are linked to animal-source foods” [↑] 8. (a) Tiseo et al. (2020): “Global Trends in Antimicrobial Use in Food Animals from 2017 to 2030” – As of 2017, “73% of all antimicrobials sold globally are used in animals raised for food”.
(b) Hannah Ritch (2017), World Economic Forum: “Three-quarters of antibiotics are used on animals. Here's why that's a major problem” – “Use of antibiotics for livestock greatly exceeds that of uses for humans: Although data collection on antibiotic use in some regions is poorly documented, it's estimated that global veterinary consumption of antibiotics in 2013 was around 131,000 tonnes. In relative terms, antibiotic use in livestock and humans is similar, averaging 118 mg/PCU (population-corrected unit, explained below) and 133 mg/kg, respectively. However, since total livestock biomass greatly exceeds that of human biomass, total antibiotic use for humans is estimated to be much lower — around 40,000 tonnes in 2013. This means antibiotic use in livestock is likely to account for approximately 70-80 percent of total consumption.” [↑] 9. The Lancet’s Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators (2022): “Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis” – “We estimated that, in 2019, 1.27 million deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 0·911–1·71) were directly attributable to resistance” [↑] 10. Jim O’Neill (2016): “Tackling Drug-Resistant Infections Globally: Final Report and Recommendations” – “We estimate that by 2050, 10 million lives a year and a cumulative 100 trillion USD of economic output are at risk due to the rise of drug resistant infections” [↑] 11. Cassidy et al. (2013): “Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare” – “36% of the calories from global crop yields being feed to farm animals and only 12% of those calories make it to human consumption” [↑] 12. Henchion et al. (2017): “Future Protein Supply and Demand: Strategies and Factors Influencing a Sustainable Equilibrium” – “Currently vegetal sources of protein dominate protein supply globally (57%), with meat (18%), dairy (10%), fish and shellfish (6%) and other animal products (9%) making up the remainder” [↑] 13. Cassidy et al (2013): “Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare” – “In this study, we demonstrate that global calorie availability could be increased by as much as 70% (or 3.88 × 10^15 calories) by shifting crops away from animal feed and biofuels to human consumption… which could feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arriving through population growth)” [↑] 14. Human Rights Watch (2004): “Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants” – “...meatpacking has become the most dangerous factory job in America, with injury rates more than twice the national average”. [↑] 15. (a) Schultz et al. (2019): “Residential proximity to concentrated animal feeding operations and allergic and respiratory disease” – “Air emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) have been associated with respiratory and allergic symptoms among farm workers, primarily on swine farms”
(b) Iowa State University Extension (1992): “Livestock Confinement Dusts and Gases” – “In typical modern livestock housing, where animals are densely confined, dusts from the animals, their feed, and their feces, ammonia (NH3) which comes primarily from the animals' urine and feces, and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from manure pits, especially during agitation and emptying, can rise to harmful levels.” “Confinement dusts and gasses can affect any exposed person within a short time, and in extreme cases have caused sudden death or have forced owners, employees, and veterinarians to stay out of confinement buildings or seek other employment.” [↑] 16. Rachel MacNair (2002): “Perpetration-induced traumatic stress: The psychological consequences of killing” – “This volume introduces the concept of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS), a form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms caused not by traditionally expected roles, such as being a victim or rescuer in trauma, but by being an active participant in causing trauma. Sufferers of PITS may be in the roles… where it is socially acceptable or even expected for them to cause trauma, including death.” [↑] 17. See coverage of this issue here, here, here and here. [↑] 18. The American Public Health Association has called for a moratorium on the creation and expansion of concentrated animal feeding operations twice (in 2003 and again in 2019) on the basis of their health and socioeconomic impacts for neighboring communities:
– They point out that these facilities have come to dominate the animal farming industry in the USA, with 54% of livestock concentrated on 5% of farms already by 2001, and that this geographic concentration leads to a high health burden for local communities,
– They state that these facilities pollute the local environment with antibiotics, pathogens, bacteria, hormones, nitrogen, and phosphorus through the dumping of manure.
– They mention health effects for workers and community members such as “exacerbat[ing] respiratory conditions including asthma, eye irritation, difficulty breathing, wheezing, sore throat, chest tightness, nausea, bronchitis, and allergic reaction”.
– They add that “toxic air emissions include particulates, volatile organic compounds, and gasses such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia”, and that odorous air pollutants “interfere with daily activities, quality of life, social gatherings, and community cohesion and contribute to stress and acute increased blood pressure”. [↑] 19. (a) Quality of life:
“Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) Air Quality Study”, 2002 – “Quality of life was greatly diminished among residents near a 6,000-head swine confinement operation” because of how often “neighbors could not open their windows or go outside even during nice weather due to CAFO odors”.
(b) Social health:
Donman et al. (2007): “Community Health and Socioeconomic Issues Surrounding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” – “The highly cherished values of freedom and independence associated with life oriented toward the outdoors gives way to feelings of violation and infringement. Social gatherings when family and friends come together are affected either in practice or through disruption of routines that normally provide a sense of belonging and identity—backyard barbecues and visits by friends and family. Homes are no longer an extension of or a means for enjoying the outdoors. Rather, homes become a barrier against the outdoors that must be escaped.”
(c) Mental health:
Donman et al. (2007) – “Greater self-reported depression and anxiety were found among North Carolina residents living near CAFOs” [↑] 20. American Public Health Association, 2003: “Precautionary Moratorium on New Concentrated Animal Feed Operations” – “Increased numbers of CAFOs in an area often are associated with declines in local economic and social indicators (e.g., business purchases, infrastructure, property values, population, social cohesion), which undermine the socioeconomic and social foundations of community health” [↑] 21. Downey and Van Willigen, 2005: “Environmental stressors: the mental health impacts of living near industrial activity” – Analysis combining individual-level survey data with data from the U.S. Census and the Toxic Release Inventory finds that “residential proximity to industrial activity has a negative impact on mental health”, and “the impact is greater for minorities and the poor than it is for whites and wealthier individuals”. [↑] 22. Alliance to Save Our Antibiotics (2017): “Real farming solutions to antibiotic misuse” – “An alternative approach exists, which involves altering farming systems to improve animal health. As antibiotic-use data collection improves, there is increasing evidence that less intensive farming systems require far smaller quantities of antibiotics… In the UK, antibiotic use in dairy cattle is significantly higher than in beef cattle, and the main health problems requiring treatment are mastitis, foot problems and uterine problems. According to an European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) review, these health problems are greater in ”zero-grazing” dairy systems where the cows are kept indoors all year round… Beef cattle in the UK are often farmed less intensively than in some other European countries with significant veal-calf industries. The latest data shows that this results in much lower antibiotic use in the UK. This is as expected since, according to EFSA, in intensive beef systems, disease incidence is linked to overstocking, inadequate ventilation and excess feeding of concentrates, whereas cattle raised on pasture generally have good welfare” [↑] 23. Our World in Data: “Per capita consumption of meat” – Per capita meat consumption was lower in 2021 than 2011 in the EU, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand (among others). [↑] 24. Van Boeckel et al. (2017): “Reducing antimicrobial use in food animals” – Reducing meat consumption to “the equivalent of one standard fast-food burger” per day “could reduce global consumption of antimicrobials in food animals by 66%”. [↑]