We have gone from free-range farms having abundant green grass and happy animals roaming freely, to ugly, cruel AND cramped Factory Farms. This happened along the modern generation as farmers attempt to meet the growing demands of consumers who grew to have large appetites for food.
As Clean Eaters, should we be aware of where our food comes from, what our meat ate and how the animal was raised? Of course we should! As consumers, we all need to have a conscious mind and ask “questions”. We need to look beyond the juicy steak that’s sat on a reduction of sweet jus or the chicken breast that’s been carefully stuffed with mozzarella and spinach, to even our plain boiled egg with toast.
With the mass availability of meat, poultry, and dairy goods, there must have been an intensive process to produce it. The process starts with intensive, factory farming or CAFO’s (concentrated animal feeding operations).
Intensive Farming was introduced in the 1950’s to meet growing consumer demand and a need to produce as much animal product as possible at the lowest cost possible. Animals are confined to small indoor areas and given antibiotics to reduce the spread of disease in the cramped living conditions. Antibiotics then enter the food chain as we, the consumer eat the meat. As Dr Micheal Greger, Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture for the Humane Society of the US, writes “Unnaturally high concentrations of animals confined indoors in a limited airspace and producing significant quantities of waste may allow for the rapid selection, amplification and dissemination of *zoonotic pathogens”. (*A disease that normally exists in animals, but then can infect humans eg. MRSA, E-‐Coli).
Animals are fed unnatural diets eg. corn, wheat and soy, which have also been produced using intensive methods that use large amounts of pesticides. These pesticides can remain in the animal’s body after slaughter and passed on to the consumer, creating serious health hazards. (Cows eat grass not grain)
Animal welfare is no longer a priority and a certain amount of ignorance is shown towards the animal and how it lives its life. A comment I’ve come across recently is “it doesn’t matter, it’s going to die anyway”. When did we stop caring?
How do we stop this cycle? By returning to traditional farming methods, allowing animals to roam freely and to eat what they should normally eat. Unfortunately and expectedly, there are cost implications to this and farmers will be unable to produce the same high yields that they can with Intensive farming. As a consumer we have the power in our hands to encourage farmers and producers to return to traditional methods. We do this by asking for organic, hormone and antibiotic free, exclusively grass‐fed (care needs to be taken here as grass‐fed meat can be labeled as grass‐fed even though it has been finished on grain. In doing this all the benefits of eating grass‐fed meat will have been stripped). Ask for Free‐Range eggs from Free‐Range poultry, eat cage free birds that have been allowed to roam, freely outside.
By continuing to eat food coming from intensive farming methods, we actively encourage this form of aggressive production and it will continue. If we demand and ask questions, maybe, just maybe, we can turn things around, if not for us, but for the next generation.
By Donna Howarth
