Benefits of Organic Small Farm Meat Over Supermarket Meat
Meat from large factory line food industries must be avoided. First, large corporations destroy the way of life for the rural farming communities, by running small family farming businesses into the ground because they can afford to sell meat at a lower price. Second, the meat that they do provide is associated with many health problems. Third, the industrial farming method is energy intensive and contributes in a large way to the contamination and pollution of our environment in ways that organic and natural farming does not. Fourth, employees suffer health risks because of the factory system and the fumes, usually are underpaid and do not have benefits. Fifth, the animals themselves are treated in very unethical ways. The meat that consumers get looks good but is in antagonism to their needs, ethics, health and the environment. Meat that is accessible in the supermarkets or restaurants should be avoided at all cost, rather the meat that we must consume should be purchased from local farmers whose priority is to provide meat that is healthy rather than cheap so as to bypass factory farmed meat.
The big food processing companies also cause certain problems for the small farmer. The small farmers who used to have their own freedom and had higher standards of living become dependent on the food processing corporation and their standards of living are brought down. Monica Potts, author of an academic article titled ‘The Serfs of Arkansas: : Immigrant Farmers are Flocking to the Poultry Industry—Only to Become 21st -Century Share Croppers for Companies Like Tyson’ argues that the industrialization of farming is causing large scale disruption to farmers and is in effect enslaving farmers “on their own lands”. She explains that since big companies take advantage of their large scale production, and as such sell their meat at very low costs, small scale poultry farmers are confronted either with the choice of going bankrupt, or contracting with the companies that drove them out of business to try and earn a livelihood and retain their land. She uses the example of an immigrant chicken farmer named “Tawr” who had been duped into buying a chicken farm at an “inflated price” and signed a contract with a chicken company named Tyson. Although the contract and the entire picture appeared “rosy” it was a very unfair deal. She goes on to say that the “contracts that seemed like a good deal really weren’t” and although he had hoped to have the freedoms of an entrepreneur, the conditions that Tyson imposed on him made him “more like an employee—but without guaranteed pay and benefits”. She claims that there are many families who have been duped into contracts similar to this or worse. The big “Agriprocessing [SIC] companies”, having contracted with the farmers, “dictate” terms and conditions often at the threat of “terminating the contracts” to make changes to the hen houses. These changes are financed by the farmers themselves and often drive them into debt. Since it is impractical to transport the chicken long distances to other food processor companies, farmers are usually confronted with a single regional food processor and thus helplessly have to obey, Due to this, Tawr and other farmers have been going deeper and deeper into debt and as such living lives of stress and fear of imminent bankruptcy. However, chicken growers are not the only ones in this plight. Potts mentions that hog growers also had to shift to a similar contract system, so as to stay in business as did the cattlemen. This system is not beneficial to the farmers as they had a higher median income before the arrival of these corporations since the time of Ronald Reagan’s less government policies (23+). The Industrial agricultural system has slowly driven farmers into bankruptcy and near extinction.
Carlo Petrini, author of the book “Terra Madre”, notes that “fifty years ago, half the population of the western world worked in agriculture in some capacity: today the number has dropped somewhere between 2 and 7 percent” (66). He states, “The depopulation of the countryside and the wholesale impoverishment of farmers inevitably tears apart the social fabric of communities. Seen through the farmer’s eyes, the face of industrial agriculture is inhuman and harrowing” (68).
With regards to health and environmental hazards, emanating or worsening from the industrial food system, foremost was the problem of unnatural diets being fed to animals which then causes newer diseases, environmental degradation caused by mass production of cattle feed using unsustainable methods, poisoning of the environment because of large quantities of cattle waste, and the abuse of animals. In an article titled ‘How Sustainable Agriculture can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture’, the authors, Leo Horrigan, Robert S Lawrence and Polly Walker note that the “diet” the “livestock” used to eat has been altered. Animals that used to eat grass diets now eat more grain based diets and as such, “the grain raised to supply feedlots (cattle) and factory farms (chicken, hogs, veal calves) is grown in intense monocultures that stretch over thousands of acres, leading to more chemical use and exacerbating attendant problems (e.g.,[SIC] pesticide resistance in insects and pollution of surface waters and aquifers by herbicides and insecticides” (445). Since grass is no longer being used to feed cattle which used to be the natural diet, the food that these animals now eat has to be grown of large fields thousands of acres in size, and to ensure the safety of the grain innumerous chemicals are used. These “monocultures are eroding biodiversity,” the chemicals in the form of “pesticides”, insecticides and “fertilizers” are ruining the “soil, water and air, harming both human health and the environment.”.The water is also being used up at a high rate along with soil erosion. This causes “desertification” on the long run (445,447). Another problem that emerges is the animals’ fecal waste that is usually too much to fertilize nearby fields and as such it is stored in “open air pits”, these pits often seep into water sources and the fumes from the pits also cause health problems for employees and neighboring residents (Horrigan, Lawrence and Walker 451).
A major human health concern that the authors, Horrigan, Lawrence and Walker also mention is that due to the increase in “growth promoting antibiotics in animal agriculture”, there is an “increase in antibiotic resistance in humans” (445). The problem of “food borne pathogens” also is amplified in the industrial food system (451). The reason this happens is because of “crowded conditions in factory farms”. Due to the overcrowding, and the “high speed automated methods of slaughtering and processing” the risk of contamination is higher (451).It was also mentioned in the same article that “the US centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) have estimated that food borne diseases cause 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5000 deaths in the united States each year” (451). “75% of the 1,800” deaths caused by “known pathogens” are “blamed on Salmonella, Listeria, and Toxoplasma” which are “transmitted through meat” (451). Yet another disease that became epidemic “in cattle” was the “bovine spongiform encephalopathy” caused by feeding cattle a diet that was “prepared from the dead carcasses of other ruminants” (451). This caused a “neurological degenerative disease” to appear in humans who had consumed that meat from cattle which were infected (451).
In an article by Chuck Jolley, ‘Meat Safety Under the Microscope’, the author explains that although many meat suppliers label their meat “all natural”, it is not necessarily so. The label ‘all natural’ has many loopholes in it and what major meat processor corporations mean is that the meat is “minimally processed with no growth hormones or antibiotics”. However, it does not mean that the animals have a natural diet. Unnatural diets can still cause “Mad Cow Disease” and Mutated E-coli bacteria may still remain in the manure and get into the meat (21).
Gowri Koneswaran and Danielli Nierenberg, in their article, ‘Global Farm Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change’, mention that since cattle that is “confined to feedlots” and fed unnatural “high protein” diets, they gain weight rapidly. This “can cause a range of illnesses” and this unnatural diet also “leads to increased methane emissions”. “In contrast” they say, “cattle raised on a pasture, eating a more natural, low-energy diet composed of grasses and other forages, produce manure with about half of the potential to generate methane”. They also mention that the “agricultural sector” is “responsible for 35-40% of annual anthropogenic methane emissions” caused by “enteric fermentation in ruminants” (digestion) and “from the animals’ manure” (580).
Another problem with industrialized factory farming is essentially an ethical issue pertaining to the abuse of animals awaiting slaughter. Overcrowding of animals in a small space makes these animals very “aggressive”. The author mentions that there were instances when chickens become so aggravated by the overcrowding that they would fight and often “eat each other”. This had led to the industrial process of “painful de-beaking”. Other animals also display similar tendencies and have been dealt with in similar fashion. Calves are held in tight compartments to prevent mobility so as to ensure that they do not “develop muscles” causing the meat to be “tender”. They are also kept in “darkness and isolation most of their lives” to make them “anemic” so that the “flesh develops the pale color prized in the market” (Horrigan, Lawrence and Walker 449).
Jolley mentions some of the techniques that corporations now use to ensure safety from E-Coli. The “irradiation method” where meat is exposed to minimal amount of radiation is used by some. Cattle Showers to get rid of the manure stuck to the hides of animals is also popular. He also mentions a technique called “UHP” or “ultra high pressure” which applies pressure on the meat that kills off all the microbes. These are some of the ways that the health effects have been controlled (22). A better diet would be one that relies more on vegetarian diet with a lower frequency of meat consumption. If meat is to be consumed, it must be purchased from local organic farms. This is not an elitist solution, but families and individuals must prioritize their spending. It would be better to spend more money on eating a healthy diet than to spend that same money on expenses that are not essential like an internet or phone bill with data packages. Good decent clean food must be a high priority. Unsustainable eating patterns of modern city dwellers creates an unnatural demand for meat which must be met by unnatural supply patterns which use unnatural means to harvest as much meat as possible over short time and at such an unnaturally fast pace that the balance of nature goes off course.
Works Cited
Horrigan, Leo, Robert S. Lawrence and Polly Walker. “How Sustainable Agriculture can Address the Environmental and Human Health Harms of Industrial Agriculture.” Environmental Health Perspectives110.5 (2002): 445-456. JSTOR. Web. 25 July 2011.
Jolley, Chuck. “Meat Safety Under the Microscope: The Initial Bull Market for Beef Created Huge Trade for Meat. But it also Opened the Door to Major Health Issues.”Food Processing 66.5 (2005): 21+. Academic OneFile. Web. 24 July 2011.
Koneswaran, Gowri and Danielli Nierenberg. “Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change.” Environmental Health Perspectives 116.5 (2008): 578-582. JSTOR. Web. 27 July 2011
Petrini, Carlo. Terra Madre: Forging a new Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing. 2009. Print
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