Major Analysis Rails Factory Farming
A
new thorough, 2½
year-analysis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and
the Pew Charitable Trusts concludes
that factory farming “takes a big hidden toll on human health and the
environment.”
Specifically,
the report details how the amount of human illness is greatly increased by the
use of antibiotics in feedlots, and that the environment is at risk due to “animal
waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes,”
according to the Washington Post.
Normally,
with a report like this, corporate agricultural representatives would criticize
it for a lack of thoroughness in some aspect, effectively creating doubt. But it’s
difficult to do in this case. From the Post:
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.
The
report concludes by urging…
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.
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