...traditional family-farming techniques are fading away as the years go by. The lives of the animals are becoming devalued while the demand for their bodies increase. Factory farmers have been restricting the lives of their live-stock. Animals in factory farms are living lives which are far from the lifestyles that nature had intended for them. After reading many articles about the negative effects factory farming has on animals, I now know what truly goes on behind the walls of factory farms. I’ve been so disgusted by this that I’ve decided to eat less meat and consume organic products. Consumers of meat need to be aware of this foul practice. This not only affects the animals, but it also affects the consumer and the environment. Factory farming is not only inhumane,...
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...15 December 2015 Should Factory Farming Be Acceptable in Our Society? Since the past fifty years, farming operations in the United States have developed from individualized production to mass production, which is known today as factory farming. Factory farming is a method of food and fiber production which exploits animals in a confined environment (Marcus). As the demand for meat continues to increase, the modern agricultural practice of factory farming also continues to increase to meet the food consumption of humans. Factory farms consist of a large number of animals confined in small spaces to minimize operation costs; this mass production has decreased the price of meat as the factories produce an excess amount of meat to satisfy the demand. However, although Americans are fulfilled with the abundant amount of cheap meat, the practice of factory farming causes serious consequences for animals, humans, and the environment. This unhealthy practice has led to problems such as pollution, inhuman animal treatment, and human illness. Therefore, for all these reasons, many people have stated that factory farming is morally and ethically wrong. Since factory farms wield tremendous power in our society, they have become a controversial topic, with many people questioning whether they are detrimental or beneficial to our society. While opponents believe that the costs of factory farming outweigh the benefits, supporters rather believe that factory farming is needed in our current...
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...America is steadily declining through the practice of "factory farming." Factory farming is performed by the few large companies controlling food processing in America, it is vile and takes away humanity from those who continue to do it. It is the process in which farms "manufacture" food in unhealthy environments rather than safely breed livestock. It negatively affects the welfare of animals and the companies put the value of efficiency and profit before the health and safety of the animals. The repercussions of the choice to make these environments unhealthy by large corporations and keep them that way without trying to fix them further the damage to the treatment of livestock and the nutritional damage to America. It is imperative that America takes a stand as a nation to stop the process of factory farming and its effects, before the corporations go too far to the point where it is unstoppable. Factory farming is an increasing epidemic in the world of farming, we need to stop this before it is no longer preventable. A large portion of the population in America actually have no idea how livestock is taken care of by the corporations that they buy from. They do not know that the animals are so carelessly handled, that the animals are looked at as materials rather than actual living produce. In the documentary "Food, Inc." (2010) the producers of the movie actually get an inside view of the process of factory farming. The scene from Chapter 1: "Fast Food to All Food"...
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...5 December, 2011 Factory Farms: Meatiocre Food When a person is eating a hamburger and thinks about where it came from, he or she probably imagines a healthy cow grazing in a luscious green pasture. Unfortunately, this is the present, and free-roaming animals used for their meat are a thing of the past. Today, a vast majority of the livestock and poultry purchased comes from animals that live in a small space their entire life, and never get to see the light of day. The places that house these tortured animals have come to be known as “factory farms”. In the 1920s, an astonishing discovery was made by a group of scientists – Vitamins A and D. Farmers eventually learned that if they put these two vitamins into the animals’ feed, then exercise and sunlight would not be required for these animals to grow. With factory farmers not having to let their livestock and poultry roam freely, they started to fill up the factory with as many animals as possible, and could keep their businesses running year round. However, with the tightly packed areas, diseases were plentiful. With science constantly managing to find new discoveries, scientists concocted antibiotics specifically for these diseases in the 1940s. Society is quick to jump on somebody when they treat somebody like a piece of garbage, but they simply turn their heads when this happens to animals. Farmers had found a way to increase productivity and lower operating costs and this was by using an assembly line. Basically,...
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...Today’s farms not only abuse the animals but also produce harmful diseases and environmental hazards to each and every one of us, regardless whether you consume these animals of not. The U.S. government should ban the use of factory farming animals Factory farming should be illegal in the United States because the food produce is poor quality food. The meat from the animals in factory farms is mechanically removed, which means it it ripped from the bone and other parts of the body by a machine(Hurst). Factory farms even use parts of the body that most people wouldn't use such as: lips, eyes, testicels, and anal tracts are included in sausage and patties(Hurst). The excess meat is then blended up and added in with the other meat to make a larger profit. The food from factory farms may be cheaper the nutritional foods. Organic food continues to cost on average several times more than food from factory farms, but no one goes to farmers’ markets for bargains. But not all costs can be measured by a price tag. Once you become sick with health problems due to the poor quality of the food and have to pay for treatment. The animals are injected with a variety of drugs and hormones to increase growth and production ("Natural resources defense council"). Which is then passed onto the consumer in the food or meal making the food unhealthy for your body ("Natural resources defense council"). The drugs and hormones that are in the food that you ingest can disrupt the human hormone balance...
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...What's better than burgers on the grill, or crispy bacon with breakfast? To most Americans, nothing. In fact, in 2012, Americans consumed approximately 50 billion burgers and 627 million pounds of bacon. Contrary to popular belief, all this meat is not raised on Old McDonald's farm ("Factory-Farming.com", 2010-2015). As arable land has declined over the last 100 years along with farmers as a percentage of the U.S. population, factory farms have taken their place ("How is Land in The United States Used? A Focus on Agricultural Land", n.d.). However, while factory farms produce more food optimizing economies of scale, modern technologies, and genetic engineering, factory farming more often than not incorporate abusive treatment to the animals. Factory Farming is an inhumane way of producing meat and dairy products due to its common practices of confined living conditions, wide usage of antibiotics and genetic engineering, and slaughterhouse practices. One of the most common forms of animal cruelty in factory farms is the overcrowded and confined living areas of the animals. Chickens are the most confined animal in Factory Farming with up to 120,000 birds on one farm. (Madhani, 2015). Both egg-laying hens and fryer chickens are housed in “battery cages”. Battery cages hold between five and ten hens with each hen allotted between 67 - 76 sq. inches (less than the size of a standard sheet of letter paper). Being confined to such a small area creates multiple physical and mental...
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...What Are the Effects of Animal Cruelty? Dalvi Herrera English 135 Professor Michael Gurin August.25, 2012 Do you know what animal cruelty is? This is a common question where people would probably answer with the same response. The thing is that do you really know what animal cruelty is? Animal cruelty is not only physical abuse that animals receive but also on many other factors. This type of animal cruelty mostly occurs on industrial farms. You’re also probably wondering what an industrial farm is. Well let’s just say that it’s a bad thing. A traditional farm is a farm where they raise livestock the original way. What I mean by the original way is that the animals have freedom. Animals have the ability to roam around in big spaces and live how they want with human maintenance. With this freedom, they can grow up to be healthy. An industrial farm is the opposite farm. The purpose of an industrial farm is to raise livestock and then ship them out to be slaughtered. Animals here have no freedom and no right. Animals are made to live under very harsh conditions. The living conditions are very poor. They are forced to live in a small environment with the same kind of animals. It’s so small and crowded that animals could barely move. With so many animals living in a small area, they all live in their own manure. There is maintenance in the farm but sometimes animals just live in such a long period of time in their own manure. This causes many effects but I will explain them...
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...Karen Anglin Mrs. Kerber CRN 25486 30 April 2015 The Dangers of Factory Farms Factory farming is something that many people overlook because of the way it is portrayed in the media. It is shown as a way of feeding the people of the world efficiently, with little to no consequences. This leads many people to argue that factory farming is an important and cost-effective way of feeding our world's population. While factory farms do help feed the world at an affordable price, the damage they do is far more harmful to the world’s population, than the benefits are good or helpful. Factory farming (or concentrated animal feeding operations) damages the environment with the excessive amount of waste being produced, puts small towns and farmers...
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...Introduction This paper discusses the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the economy, politics, and society. Also this paper will talk about five different groups affected by the Revolution. In addition, this paper reviews the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the average working American. The Industrial Revolution brought many changes to America as a whole; it seems as though no stone was left unturned. The Revolution affected everything in its path, including government, people, and way of life in general. Three Aspects of the Industrial Revolution Three aspects of the Industrial Revolution include society, the economy, and politics. The American economy began to change during the Industrial Revolution; this change was mainly due to the increase of productivity. Productivity increased by using the out work system. This system consisted of people completing jobs in their homes (Economic Growth and the Early Industrial Revolution). Another way the economy changed was through the factory system. This system allowed a large scale of work to be completed in one location (Economic Growth and the Early Industrial Revolution). Society was another aspect that changed through the Industrial Revolution. Society went through two major transitions during the revolution. One of the major changes was that many Americans left farming, and went to find jobs in factories (Shultz, 2014). Factories were where most jobs were being found since the factories were creating machines to make...
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...patches of cereal grasses and to domesticate animals for meat, labor, skins and other materials, and milk. The earliest civilizations all relied primarily on cereal agriculture. Cultivation of fruit trees began three thousand years later, again in the Middle East, and vegetables and other crops followed (Zohari 1986). Cultivation of rice began in Asia about 7000 years ago (Stark 1986). HISTORICAL BACKGROUND In 1884 Arnold Toynbee coined the phrase ‘the Industrial Revolution’ to describe the great changes in the organization, methods and productivity which took place in late eighteenth-century England. Not surprisingly historians soon dubbed the parallel changes in agriculture ‘the Agricultural Revolution’ … approximately 1760 and 1820 the farming of this country underwent and equally abrupt and radical change (Grigg, 1967). As humans began to form permanent settlements and gave up traveling in search of food, agriculture was born. The foods we eat, the clothing we wear, the materials we use in our everyday lives is agriculture. The term agriculture refers to a wide variety of things, it is the science, art and occupation of cultivating the soil, producing crops and raining livestock. Agriculture refers to financing, processing, marketing, and distribution of agricultural products, farm production supply and service industries. This new way of providing food and other raw materials developed slowly, but because it made life much easier for many people, it became the preferred way...
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...Andrew Jerzewski Kayleen Schumacher Eng 201 (6:30) 22 October 2013 You Are What You Eat; The Benefits of Being a Vegetarian There are only 7.3 million Americans who are vegetarians (“Vegetarian Statistics”). Many people either know a vegetarian or are one themselves. A vegetarian is defined as a person who does not eat or does not believe in eating meat, fish, or fowl (Shravan). Not only does vegetarianism help one’s body become healthier, it actually helps society as a whole as well. Becoming a vegetarian is quite straightforward and the health and social benefits can be extremely positive. The need for vegetarians is becoming increasingly crucial because farmers are going out of business everyday. Meat eaters should start taking action and gradually cut meat out of their diets in order to become financially stable and have overall better health. Many people go as far as saying that eating meat is a fundamental liberty and it must be defended. It may be part of the cycle of life, but many vegetarians will argue that it is unethical to kill animals for food when other options such as vegetarianism and veganism are available ("Should people become," 2013). A meat-eater would contend that this is just how nature works; that it has been part of human evolution for 2.3 million years. Vegetarians will counter by stating all warm-blooded animals can feel pain, fear, and stress ("Should people become," 2013). Animals should not have to be slaughtered to fill an unnecessary...
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...Through a steady chain reaction, fast food has slowly changed factory farming and agriculture. Corporate ownership, harsh working conditions, and new ways to produce food have risen out of the fast food industry and are now prominent in all aspects of agriculture. Although agriculture affects many, those who witness its negatives first hand are workers. Agriculture in today’s terms can no longer be called farming. Regarded as “agribusiness” by an environmentalist group known as Grace Communications, factory workers are often employed and controlled by corporate owners. These corporations have an unexplainable upper hand over workers and other farmers. Two types of corporate farming are common in the U.S: contract farming and vertical...
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...small farming operations to machine manufactured products and large scale farms using more mechanical equipment. While the birthplace of the revolution was in Britain around 1760, one similar took place in America from 1790 to 1870. Britain had tried very hard to keep the monopoly on its industrial technology, however this couldn’t last forever. Some of the British saw the potential of profitable opportunities and took this knowledge abroad (Industrial Revolution, 2013) With any major change in a society has consequences. One social consequence of the Industrial Revolution was the division of social classes. Before, there were the very rich and the very poor. As factories and industry made production of goods more efficient, these goods were cheaper. People could now afford to buy everything they needed and still have money left over. They could now afford to enjoy leisure goods instead of only buying what they needed to survive. Thus, the emergence of the middle class. This class consisted of anyone with a decent job, shop clerks, accountants, managers and so on (Introduction to the Industrial Revolution). While the production of goods at a faster rate and larger quantity made them cheaper and more available had its advantages, the division of society had negative consequences as well. The use of technology on farms meant fewer workers were needed, so people moved to towns to fine work. This lead to overcrowding. Working conditions in the factories were...
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...Food Inc. Summary and Response Mark Pearsall I’ve always been skeptical of the food on the shelves at the supermarket that claim they’re “100% Fresh!” or “Made from Real _____’s!” My response is “Shouldn’t you be fresh?” and “Shouldn’t you be made from that?” The movie “Food Inc.” examines the corporate effect on the food industry. This documentary ranges from discussing the meat packing industry and its effects on people, to the laws surrounding the use of corn and seed in farming. No topic in the food industry goes untouched in this movie and shortcut taken goes uncovered by director Robert Kenner. The secrets we have feared but have never known are told and shown to us in this movie. The first segment of the movie shows the corporate side of the meat packing industry. The advertising for clean farms where animals are raised to their highest maturity levels and then slaughtered is proven false as the movie shows factories with animals on what resemble assembly lines going on for miles. Chicken factories are shown where hundreds of baby chickens are put on conveyor belts taken through the factories where they are led to their end. But the factories aren’t as bad as the farms where hundreds of thousands chickens live in a dark farm where they defecate all over each other and haven’t ever seen light. This segment brings up the issue of animal treatment and health in the slaughterhouse. I personally don’t have a preference on how my animals are killed; the truth is that...
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...------------------------------------------------- Intensive farming Intensive farming or intensive agriculture is characterized by a low fallowratio and generally the high use of inputs such as capital, labour, or heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers relative to land area.[1][2] This is in contrast to many sorts of traditional agriculture in which the inputs per unit land are lower. With intensification, energy use typically goes up, either provided by humans, or supplemented with animals, or replaced with machines. Intensive animal husbandry involves either large numbers of animals raised on limited land, usually confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) often referred to as factory farms,[1][3][4] or managed intensive rotational grazing (MIRG). Both increase the yields of food and fiber per acre as compared to traditional animal husbandry, but in a CAFO the animal feed is brought to the animals which are seldom moved, and in MIRG the animals are bunched up and constantly moved to fresh forage. There are many modern-day forms of intensive crop based agriculture, but they are all characterised by innovations designed to get the most yields per acre possible. This is usually done by a combination of multiple crops per year, very few if any fallow years, and improved cultivars. It can sometimes also involve the use of high inputs of fertilizers, plant growth regulators orpesticides, and mechanization. Most large modern intensive farms include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology...
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