People care about the environment, so I don't get why they still support factory farms?

Question

I know so many environment savy people, but they continue to buy meat and factory farm products? Why would they still support this industry then rant about recycling?

"America's drinking water, rivers and lakes are at risk from giant, corporate-owned factory farms. Animal feeding operations, many of which confine thousands of animals in facilities, produce staggering amounts of animal waste -- 500 million tons per year. Too often, this waste leaks into our rivers and streams, fouling our air, contaminating our drinking water and spreading disease. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states."

Answer 1

You can do recycling yourself, but your power as a voter can't compete with the lobbyists of the factory farmers.  Food from non-factory farms is often not available or beyond people's budgets (you don't get the benefits of mass distribution).

I do not like factory farms, but I don't get to see where my food comes from on the label.  That  said, I think CAFO's ought to have much more stringent pollution controls.  This has benefits.  Manure can be digested into methane gas, which can be used for heat and/or power generation.  The effluent has much less oxygen demand (which is what kills fish if it spills), and it may even be possible to use the phosphate, nitrate etc. to make other useful products or even recover fertilizer to close the loop back to the grain fields.

Answer 2

People are idiots that don't realize that eating meat is bad for the environment and bad for the animals. The conditions that those animals are put into are just plain cruel. I think the only way that people will stop supporting factory farms is when they see for themselves the damage that they're inflicting on everybody and everything in the entire world.

Answer 3

You are very on point. I agree with you, though I'm not vegetarian, its not just factory farms its the whole consumer manufacturing period.  Until environmentalist understand that almost all manufacturing would have to cease in order to preserve the atmosphere, things will remain as they are. NO they will get worse.

Answer 4

I don't think that everyone realizes that...including me!  But you could say a similar thing about eating other food products.  If you live in the midwest (like me), eating sushi would be hurting the environment because the fuel it takes to ship it here.  The same goes for pineapples and exotic fruit not grown locally.

Answer 5

Hi Earth!

You've got some pretty good questions. What? You got a brain and know how t'use it r'sumthin'?

You make excellent points in your listed concerns, and I'm really not sure there's a good argument against their validity. However....**sigh**....are you familiar with this natural occurrence called wind? How about wind currents? Guess what? They carry all sorts of contaminants all over the world. Dust blown from Africa has been found in the barrier reefs off Florida and is killing them. If dust can be carried those distances via air currents, then..um....what all else can you imagine can be carried to any and all various food supplies which are not completely and totally isolated? This kind of intense environamental control is taking place but it is being used in a few places but it's really not economical on a large scale basis (obviously).

My experience is that OCDing (obsessing) over health can actually have an emotional backfire effect. In my years of exposure in the field of health and nutrition (since the 70s) I've found that mainly what you can do is your best. Eat as  balanced as possible. Include "fun foods" as well as healthy foods.. TAKE SUPPLEMENTS!!! Especially the ones

which detoxify and protect. Don't run your finances to the ground eating only organic and health-food store stuff (alot of it really isn't much better than grocery store items, but can be far more expensive). Do not stress yourself out about it. I became a much healthier person when I quit worrying so much about it. Just be smart. Take a premium, balanced daily multi-vitamin, if you're a gal (as I figure) take a combination omega 3/omega 6 fatty acid supplement, take at least 2,000 mg a day of a mineral-reacted ascorbate complex, use garlic, rosemary, oregano and cilantro,  chlorella, and psyllium husk fiber. These tend to help keep your body detoxified.  Beware of bad trans fats such as what's in margarine. You basically gotta decide a good balance for yourself as to the which are the worser of the evils for you in particular.....health-wise.

Just keep in mind that there are a whole lot of paradigms out there which can be mighty shifty.

This is fun.....keep asking these kinds of questions, please?

Answer 6

Talk is cheap. Don't kid yourself, if you wish to not support factory farming ...It is not enough just to become a vegetarian. Plenty ( if not most) of the manure from factory farms is sold to "feed" those vegetables that vegetarians eat.

I am a small farmer, I produce almost all of the food I eat, in a responsible ethical manner, I am a good steward of the land... including, I grow food for my animals, and the manure fertilizer they make, feeds the crops I grow. In order for the majority of non farmer people to be fed in a different way they have to make more efforts. They need to become throughly (not surfacely) educated about where the food they eat comes from, YEAH, even you vegetarians! Do you know where that "organic" fertilizer that your carrots grew in came from? I will bet not. I'll bet the majority of vegetarians don't  know where their vegetables grew or who grew them. Taking responsibility for your own food takes real work. I suggest that you look around in your area and find some small farmers on the edge of town... (they will be struggling) and support them by buying directly from them, or I suggest that you too join with those of us, who took the plunge, made the effort, and are actually living in harmony with nature and growing our own food in a responsible manner. Don't placate your self with the idea that you are not supporting factory farms by spouting about how "I am a vegetarian, I don't eat meat." Again: Talk is cheap.

Answer 7

I'm the small permaculture farmer, everyone dreams about, when they think of farms.  Pasture, hay, happy animals, living in herd, and family group, with sunshine, fresh air, clean water, ect.  

I raise two incredibly earth friendly types of animals.  Meat goats, and meat rabbits.  Both are extremely earth friendly, taking much less food and water to produce the same amount of meat as cattle, and producing much less waste, that is much earth friendlier.

So here I am, producing this earth friendly meat, in earth friendly ways.  Guess what?  I have not sold a SINGLE...not one...rabbit, or goat to a white person.  Your average white American is simply not interested in eating anything that is not "normal."  Normal is beef, pork, chicken, and turkey on holidays.

Not only do people need to support the small farmer by purchasing directly from them, they need to think about the TYPES of meat the eat.

Want to know some of the other reasons people don't buy meat from the small farmers?

The animal is usually sold whole, by the half, or the quarter (in the case of beef).  This means purchasing several hundred pounds of meat at a whack.  This meas being a responible enough human to have a freezer, and rotate your meat supply, using up the oldest first.  Most people simply do not want to be bothered.

I have heard of not a single Farmers Market (in the U.S.A.) which will allow small farmers like myself to show up with live animals.  We are discriminated against.  You can only sell at farmers markets if you sell fruits, vegtables, and baked goods.

People in cities (the voting majority) who have never been on a farm, keep voting in fear based laws, drivin by the media, and supported by the mega agra business, like Monsanto.  

It is completely illegal for me to butcher an animal for one of my customers.  That can only be done at a certified slaughterhouse.  You know....the ones that process hundreds of animals hourly, or at the least daily.  

The laws of become so extreme in some states, that it is illegal for a farmer to sell an animal directly to a customer, and for that animal to be sent to a certified slaughterhouse and butchered.  A perons (in some states) can only do that if they raised the animal themselves.  You cannot purchase an animal from someone else, nor pay them to raise the animal yourself.  You MUST do it yourself, and have it slaughtered at a certified slaughterhouse.  Don't believe me?  Check out North Carolina's laws.  Other states are the same.

So if you have religious views (Jewish, Muslim, Hindu) and want your animals butchered in special ways, TOO BAD.  It is illegal in many states.  Amazing they are taking away religious freedoms, isn't it?  I bet most people are shocked to learn that religious freedoms are being violated in many states.  Not to mention the general freedom of a free market society....how laughable it has become!

Now we can talk about the whole thing of suburban sprawl.  Does YOUR house sit on what once was prime farmland?  Most of them do.  

There simply isn't enough farmland left anymore.  It has houses, stipmalls, gas stations, ect built on it.  Never again will it be farmland.  So the only way to feed the masses of people in cities who keep voting for the laws which send more and more small farmers out of buisnes it to have factory farms.

And that suits mega agra business companies, like Monsanto, ConAgra, Cargil, ect just fine, because who-ever controls the food supply controls the people.

Don't believe me?  I dare anyone to do some HONEST research and prove me wrong that the mega big agra companies are not trying to control the worlds food supply.  And they are managing to do so with the help of the masses of people, through their fear based campaigns.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

(I can grow my own food, preserve it, and feed myself...can you?)

Answer 8

Hi Earth,

I recently went rural and found myself living in a place where hogs far outnumber humans and that has the worst record for manure spills and fish kills in Canada. So, I am not a big fan of factory farms but in a world where feeding an ever growing population is becoming more difficult they may be a necessary evil.

However, there are solutions to some of the problems. I have been very much involved in the environmental movement for over 30 years. I co founded an organization that has the motto; Environmental activism is a useless endeavor without the capability to offer solutions to the problems.

We have recently patented gasification technology that can convert manure into biogas. The mass of the manure is reduced by 87%. The heat and biogas produced can provide power and heat to the farm operation with enough left over to service advanced greenhouses we have designed. These greenhouses will produce crops, year round, for all you vegetarians.

I have recently been made aware of new anaerobic digestion technology that will do the same thing for smaller farm operations.

There are a few of us environmental savvy people who do more than rant. Sounds like you may become one of us. Good question.

Coex Dave

Answer 9

If they lived near a factory farm it would be a different story.  Farms that are a labor of love, don't smell bad.  To me the smell of hay mowing or working the earth with a tractor is as close to heaven as one can get.  A factory farm can be smelt across the township, and it ain't good.

Answer 10

Reject fast food for Health Program, Solar Power. No Pop.

Answer 11

You make it sound as though you have believed those who think every animal-rearing operation hides its waste products until no one is looking and then dumps them in the nearest waterway.

Factory farms are more efficient than having everyone have to raise his own meat.  They are also more environmentally friendly because the wastes are supposed to be confined to a certain area.  Spreading out the raising of animals also spreads out their wastes, and that would mean everyone with a crop animal would have to spend an economically unfeasible amount of money just for that single animal.

If the rules are followed and enforced, these operations are NOT major sources of pollution.  If the local authorities refuse to enforce environmental laws, then they need to be removed from office and replaced with others who will.  If you happen to be in one of the few states with woefully insufficient legal controls of this type of waste, start a movement to change that.  There are federal rules and there should be state rules and effective enforcement.

Answer 12

In a contest between the stomach and principles

the stomach often wins.

Many people are in principle pro Nature

But in reality they think of their food first.

Also far too many are totally unaware

of what Factory farming represents .

Apart from the Environmental harm ,The manner of production and killing is too far removed from the packet in the super market.

&

They should watch the movie EARTHLINGS

that will cull their appetite.

The way we go about treating the animals  is totally immoral

Answer 13

Most people do, but you gotta be realistic, most people aren't going to go too much out of their way for it, or if it cost them more money to do it.

Reality and theory are two different things. I do like going green myself, but I really don't subscribe to the hippy dippy ways of going about it of what should and shouldn't be.