Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming the agro industrial complex

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Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming - the agro-industrial complex

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30 April *

 

*Critics fault industry's influence.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120951584294254683.html

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120951584294254683.html>

 

The authors of a major study criticizing industrial farming said the

agriculture industry is exerting " significant influence " on academic

research as Congress weighs how to respond to an unprecedented series of

food-safety recalls.

Wall Street Journal. [subscription Required]

 

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*Report Targets Costs Of Factory Farming*

 

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 30, 2008; A02

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Factory farming takes a big, hidden toll on human health and the

environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails

to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by

American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that

calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat,

milk and eggs.

 

The report released yesterday, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts

and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the

" economies of scale " used to justify factory farming practices are

largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated

costs.

 

Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria

associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the

degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too

intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

 

Several observers said the report, by experts with varying backgrounds

and allegiances, is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations

that survived the grueling research and review process, which

participants said was politically charged and under constant pressure

from powerful agricultural interests.

 

In the end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed

to such controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use

of antibiotics in farm animals -- a huge hit against veterinary

pharmaceutical companies -- a phaseout of all intensive confinement

systems that prevent the free movement of farm animals, and more

vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the increasingly consolidated

agricultural arena.

 

" At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the

nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex -- an

unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and their

friends on Capitol Hill, " wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of

the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, which wrote the

report. " Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural

commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by

the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in

animal food production in the 21st century. "

 

The report, " Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in

America, " comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare

issues are prominent in the American psyche.

 

Food prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about

global climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern

agriculture is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's

greenhouse-gas production. And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the

release of undercover footage of cows being abused at a California

slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers.

 

The report acknowledges that the decades-long trend toward reliance on

" concentrated animal feeding operations, " or CAFOs, has brought some

benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent

4.2 percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and

poultry annually. By 2005, typical Americans were spending 2.1 percent

of their income for 221 pounds per year.

 

But the system has brought unintended consequences. With thousands of

animals kept in close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some

of those outbreaks -- and to spur faster growth -- factory farms

routinely treat animals with antibiotics, speeding the development of

drug-resistant bacteria and in some cases rendering important

medications less effective in people.

 

It appears that the vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals,

the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by

the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can

only estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.

 

The commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a

phaseout and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as

treatments for disease, a policy already initiated in some European

countries.

 

" That's a good recommendation. A strong recommendation, " said Margaret

Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which released its own

report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to

factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100

million to clean up their ongoing environmental damage.

 

The Pew report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste,

finding that toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO

workers and neighbors ill.

 

In calling for a 10-year phaseout of intensive confinement systems such

as gestation crates for pigs and so-called battery cages for chickens,

the commission adds impetus to recent commitments from some corporate

operators to drop, gradually, those controversial practices.

 

" These animals can't engage in normal behavior at all, " said commission

member Michael Blackwell, a veterinarian and former assistant U.S.

surgeon general.

 

Calls for comments from industry representatives were not returned.

 

The report also calls for implementation of a long-delayed national

tracking system that would allow trace-back of diseased animals within

48 hours after a human outbreak of food-borne disease. And it calls for

an end to forced feeding of poultry to produce foie gras, a delicacy

that Blackwell described unpalatably as " diseased liver. "

 

Activists said it will be up to Congress and agency officials, under

public pressure, to implement some of the commission's recommendations.

Congress is now considering a bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for

Medical Treatment Act, that would accomplish some of the Pew

recommendations.

 

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