What's Wrong With Industrial Agriculture?

Industrial agriculture, aka factory farming, involves the mass production of crops and livestock used for food. In order to be more economically efficient, industrial agriculture uses fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics and keeps animals confined in inhumane living conditions. The impact of these practices reaches virtually every environmental issue, including air and water pollution, global warming, biodiversity, ecosystem destruction and human health. In addition, the pain and suffering that livestock is forced to endure during their life and slaughter is nothing less than barbarism.

  • Antibiotics are given to livestock to control disease that is a result of unnatural and unsanitary confinement, injury and mutilation. Antibiotics are present in the meat that people eat and their overuse contributes to the generation of drug resistant bacteria in both animals and people.

  • Industrial agriculture is responsible for using unsustainable amounts of fertilizers and pesticides on crops which pollute soil, groundwater and eventually runoff into streams, rivers and oceans destroying land and aquatic ecosystems. There is evidence that large ocean mammals such as dolphins and whales as well thousands of other organisms are suffering the consequences of factory farming

  • Large concentrations of animal waste are produced as a result of thousands of animals being housed closely together. This waste contributes to air pollution and the release of green house gases into the atmosphere. Animals are forced to eat sleep and breathe their own waste and surrounding communities are plagued with rancid odor. Transporting manure to various areas via large vehicles and machinery to be used as fertilizer expends fossil fuels depleting natural resources and contributing to global warming
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  • The transport of food products from thousands of miles away exploits fossil fuels at unsustainable rates.

    • Animal Cruelty The following are only a few of the atrocities inflicted on livestock and the details of their cruel and mishandled slaughters are not mentioned here. For more information on the cruelty of industrial agriculture please visit PETA's Factsheet

  • Hours after birth, baby chickens are subjected to having their beaks seared off to prevent them from injuring themselves and other chickens; a typical response behavior of these birds when they are under stress. This practice is a remedy to the problems (i.e., stress) that result when chickens are housed in cages stacked on top of one another that have the area of a sheet of a piece of paper.

  • The tails of cattle are docked to prevent soiling. As such these animals must endure the torture of flies and biting insects as they have no means of deterring them with their tails.

  • Veal calves are confined in pens where they are unable to move in order to eliminate muscle formation.

  • Animals are fed the ground up unwanted remains of others of their kind in order to reduce the expense of feeding the animals



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