NY Times editorial on industrial farm animal abuse

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May 31, 2008

EDITORIAL

The Worst Way of Farming

In the past month, two new reports have examined how farm animals

are raised in this country. The report funded by the Pew Charitable

Trusts calls the prevailing system " industrial farm animal

production. " The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists

prefers the term " confined animal feeding operations. "

No matter what you call it, it adds up to the same thing. Millions

of animals are crowded together in inhumane conditions, causing

significant environmental threats and unacceptable health risks for

workers, their neighbors and all the rest of us.

The astonishing increase in the number and size of confined animal

operations has been spawned largely by the very structure of

American farm supports, which always has been skewed in a way that

concentrates farming in fewer and fewer hands. As both of these

reports make clear, the so-called efficiency of industrial animal

production is an illusion, made possible by cheap grain, cheap water

and prisonlike confinement systems.

In short, animal husbandry has been turned into animal abuse.

Manure — traditionally a source of fertilizer — has been turned into

toxic waste that fouls the air and adjacent water bodies. Crowding

creates health problems, resulting in the chronic overuse of

antibiotics.

And, because the modest profits in confinement operations require

the lowest possible labor costs, including automated feeding,

watering and manure-handling systems, these operations have helped

empty and impoverish rural America.

The Pew report recommends new laws regulating pollution from

industrial farms as rigorously as pollution from other industries, a

phasing-out of confinement systems that restricts " natural movement

and normal behavior, " a ban on antibiotics used only to promote

animal growth and the application of antitrust laws to encourage

more competition and less concentration.

These are all useful guideposts for the next Congress and a new

administration.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company