By Tia Schwab Source: Independent Media Institute and Stone Pier Press

Lack of governmental oversight of factory farms has created a public health crisis of antibiotic-resistance diseases in people.

In
2014, the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, commissioned by the UK
government and Wellcome Trust, estimated that 700,000
people
around the world die each year due to drug-resistant infections. A
follow-up report two years later showed
no change
in this estimate of casualties. Without action, that number could
grow to 10 million per year by 2050. A leading cause of antibiotic
resistance? The misuse and overuse of antibiotics on factory farms.

Flourishing
antibiotic resistance is just one of the many public health crises
produced by factory farming. Other problems include foodborne
illness, flu epidemics, the fallout from poor air and water quality,
and chronic disease. All of it can be traced to the current
industrial approach to raising animals for food, which puts a premium
on “high stocking density,” wherein productivity is measured by
how many animals are crammed into a feeding facility.

Oversight
for the way factory farms operate and manage waste is minimal at
best. No federal agency collects
consistent and reliable information on the number, size and location
of large-scale agricultural operations, nor the pollution they’re
emitting. There are also no federal laws governing the conditions in
which farm animals are raised, and most state anti-cruelty laws do
not apply to farm animals.

For
example, Texas, Iowa and Nebraska have excluded
livestock from their animal cruelty statute and instead created
specific legislation aimed at farm animal abuse that makes accepted
or customary husbandry practices the animal welfare standard.

After
New Jersey created
similar legislation, the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals sued the New Jersey Department of Agriculture,
claiming that “routine husbandry practices” was too vague. The
New Jersey Society won, and as a result, the state’s Department of
Agriculture has created more specific regulations.

In
North Carolina, any
person or organization can file a lawsuit if they suspect animal
cruelty, even if that person does not have “possessory or ownership
rights in an animal.” In this way, the state has “a civil remedy”
for farm animal cruelty.

Still,
the general lack of governmental oversight of factory farms results
in cramped and filthy conditions, stressed-out animals and workers,
and an ideal setup for the rampant spread of disease among animals,
between animals and workers, and into the surrounding environment
through animal waste.

Antibiotic
Resistance

The
problem:
In 2017, nearly 11
million
kilograms of antibiotics—including 5.6 million kilograms of
medically important antibiotics—were sold in the U.S. for
factory-farmed animals. Factory farms use antibiotics to make
livestock grow faster and control the spread of disease in cramped
and unhealthy living conditions. While antibiotics do kill some
bacteria in animals, resistant bacteria can, and often do, survive
and multiply,
contaminating meat and animal products during slaughter and
processing.

What
it means for you:
People can be exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria by handling or
eating contaminated animal products, coming into contact with
contaminated water or touching farm animals, which of course makes a
farmworker’s job especially hazardous. Even if you don’t eat much
meat or dairy, you’re vulnerable: Resistant pathogens can enter
water streams through animal manure and contaminate irrigated
produce.

Developments:
The European Union has been much more aggressive than the U.S. in
regulating antibiotic use on factory farms, banning
the use of all antibiotics for growth promotion in 2006. But the U.S.
is making some progress, too. Under new
rules
issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which went into
effect in January 2017, antibiotics that are important for human
medicine can no longer be used for growth promotion or feed
efficiency in cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and other animals raised
for food.

Additionally,
95
percent
of medically important antibiotics used in animal water and feed for
therapeutic purposes were reclassified so they can no longer be
purchased over the counter, and a veterinarian would have to sign off
for their use in animals. As a result, domestic sales and
distribution of medically important antimicrobials approved for use
in factory farmed animals decreased by 43 percent from 2015 (the year
of peak sales) through 2017, reports
the FDA.

However,
the agency still allows routine antibiotic use in factory farms for
disease prevention in crowded and stressed animals, so these new
rules aren’t nearly enough, says Matthew Wellington, antibiotics
program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Education Fund.

“The
FDA should implement ambitious reduction targets for antibiotic use
in the meat industry, and ensure that these medicines are used to
treat sick animals or control a verified disease outbreak, not for
routine disease prevention,” Wellington said
in a statement, according to the Center for Infectious Disease
Research and Policy.

National
Resources Defense Council Senior Attorney Avinash Kar agrees.
“Far more antibiotics important to humans still go to cows and
pigs—usually when they’re not sick—than to people, putting the
health of every single one of us in jeopardy.”

Water
and Pollution

The
problem:
Livestock in this country produce between 3 and 20 times more waste
than people in the U.S. produce, according to a 2005
report
issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That’s as much
as 1.2-1.37 billion tons of manure a year. Some estimates are even
higher.

Manure
can contain “pathogens such as E.
coli,
growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the
manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, silage leachate from corn
feed, or copper sulfate used in footbaths for cows,” according
to
a 2010 report by the National Association of Local Boards of Health.
Though sewage treatment plants are required for human waste, no such
treatment facility exists for livestock waste.

Since
this amount far exceeds what can be used as fertilizer, animal waste
from factory farms typically enters massive, open-air waste lagoons,
which spread
airborne pathogens
to people who live nearby. If animal waste is applied as fertilizer
and exceeds the soil’s capacity for absorption, or if there is a
leak or break in the manure storage or containment unit, the animal
waste runs off into oceans, lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater.

Extreme
weather increases the possibility of such breaks. Hurricane Florence,
for example, flooded at
least 50
hog lagoons when it struck the Carolinas last year, and satellite
photos captured
the damage.

Whether
or not the manure is contained or spread as fertilizer, it can
release many different types of harmful gases, including ammonia and
hydrogen sulfide, as well as particulate
matter
comprised of fecal matter, feed materials, pollen, bacteria, fungi,
skin cells and silicates, into the air.

What
it means for you:
Pathogens can cause diarrhea and severe illness or even death for
those with weakened immune systems, and nitrates in drinking water
have been connected
to neural
tube defects and limb deficiencies in newborns
(among other things), as well as miscarriages and poor general
health. For infants, it can mean blue baby syndrome and even death.

Gases
like ammonia and hydrogen sulfide can cause
dizziness, eye irritation, respiratory illness, nausea, sore throats,
seizures, comas and death. Particulate matter in the air can lead
to chronic bronchitis, chronic respiratory symptoms, declines in lung
function and organic dust toxic syndrome. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) reported
that children raised in communities near factory farms are more
likely to develop asthma or bronchitis, and that people who live near
factory farms may experience mental health deterioration and
increased sensitization to smells.

Developments:
It is difficult to hold factory farms accountable for polluting
surrounding air and water, largely for political reasons. The
GOP-controlled Congress and the Trump administration excused big
livestock farms from reporting air emissions, for instance, following
a decade-long
push
for special treatment by the livestock industry.

The exemption indicates “further denial of the impact that these are having, whether it’s on climate or whether it’s on public health,” says Carrie Apfel, an attorney for Earthjustice. In a 2017 report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General, the agency admitted it has not found a good way to track emissions from factory farms and know whether the farms are complying with the Clean Air Act.

No
federal agency even has reliable information on the number and
locations of factory farms, which of course makes accountability even
harder to establish.

Foodborne
Illness

The
problem:
The United States has “shockingly high levels of foodborne
illness,” according
to an investigation jointly conducted by the Bureau of Investigative
Journalismand
The Guardian, and unsanitary conditions at factory farms are a
leading contributor.

Studying
47 meat plants across the U.S., investigators found that hygiene
incidents occur at rates experts described as “deeply worrying.”
One dataset covered 13 large red meat and poultry plants between 2015
and 2017 and found an average of more than 150 violations a week, and
15,000 violations over the entire period. Violations included
unsanitary factory conditions and meat contaminated with blood,
septicemic disease and feces.

“The
rates at which outbreaks of infectious food poisoning occur in the
U.S. are significantly higher than in the UK, or the EU,” Erik
Millstone, a food safety expert at Sussex University told The
Guardian.

Poor
sanitary practices allow bacteria like E.
coli
and Salmonella,
which live in the intestinal tracts of infected livestock, to
contaminate meat or animal products during slaughter or processing.
Contamination occurs at higher rates on factory farms because crowded
and unclean living conditions increase the likelihood of transmission
between animals.

It
also stresses out animals, which suppresses their immune response,
making them more susceptible to disease. The grain-based diets used
to fatten cattle can also quickly increase the risk of E.
coli
infection. In poultry, the practice of processing dead hens into
“spent
hen meal”
to be fed to live hens has increased the spread of Salmonella.

What
it means for you:
According to the CDC, roughly 48
million
people in the U.S. suffer from foodborne illnesses annually, with
128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths each year. Salmonella
accounts for approximately 11 percent of infections, and kills more
people every year than any other bacterial foodborne illness.

Developments:
In January 2011, President Obama signed
the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the first
major piece of federal legislation addressing food safety since 1938.
FSMA grants the FDA new authority to regulate the way food is grown,
harvested and processed, and new powers such as mandatory recall
authority.

The
FSMA “basically codified this principle that everybody responsible
for producing food should be doing what the best science says is
appropriate to prevent hazards and reduce the risk of illness,”
according
to Mike Taylor, co-chairman of Stop Foodborne Illness and a former
deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA. “So
we’re moving in the right direction.”

However,
almost a decade later, the FSMA is still being phased in, due to a
shortage of trained food-inspectors and a lack of funding. “Congress
has gotten about halfway to what it said was needed to successfully
implement” the Act, Taylor said.

The
Flu

The
problem:
Both the number and density of animals on factory farms increase the
risk of new virulent pathogens, according
to the U.S. Council for Agriculture, Science and Technology. In
addition, transporting animals over long distances to processing
facilities brings different influenza strains into contact with each
other so they combine and spread quickly.

Pigs—susceptible
to both avian and human flu viruses—can serve as ground zero for
all sorts of new strains. Because of intensive pig farming practices,
“the North American swine flu virus has jumped onto an evolutionary
fast track, churning out variants every year,” according
to a report published in the journal Science.

What
it means for you:
These viruses can become pandemics. In fact, viral geneticists link
the genetic lineage of H1N1, a kind of swine flu, to a strain that
emerged in 1998 in U.S. factory pig farms. The CDC has estimated
that between 151,700 and 575,400 people worldwide died from the 2009
H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.

Breast,
Prostate and Colon Cancer

The
problem:
Factory farms in the U.S. use hormones to stimulate growth in an
estimated two-thirds
of beef cattle. On dairy farms, around 54
percent
of cows are injected with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a
growth hormone that increases milk production.

What
it means for you:
The health effects of consuming animal products treated with these
growth hormones is an ongoing international debate. Some studies
have linked growth hormone residues in meat to reproductive issues
and breast, prostate and colon cancer, and IGF-1, an insulin-like
growth hormone, has been linked to colon and breast cancer. However,
the FDA,
the National
Institutes of Health
and the World
Health Organization
have independently found that dairy products and meat from cows
treated with rBGH are safe for human consumption.

Because
risk assessments vary, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel
and Argentina have banned the use of rBGH as a precautionary measure.
The EU has also banned
the use of six hormones in cattle and imported beef.

Developments:
U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines allow beef products to be
labeled
with “no hormones administered” and dairy products to be labeled
“from cows not treated with rBST/rBGH” if the producer provides
sufficient documentation that this is true. Consumers can use this
information to make their own decisions about the risks associated
with hormone-treated animal products.

What
You Can Do

You
can vote for local initiatives that establish health and welfare
regulations for factory farms, but only a tiny number of states,
including California
and Massachusetts,
are even putting relevant propositions on the ballot.

Another
option is to support any of the nonprofits that are, in lieu of
effective government action, taking these factory farms to task. The
Environmental
Working Group,
Earthjustice
and the Animal
Legal Defense Fund
are among those working hard to check the worst practices of these
factory farms. Another good organization is the Socially
Responsible Agricultural Project,
which works with local residents to fight the development of factory
farms in their own backyards.

Buying
humanely raised animal products from farms and farmers you trust is
another way to push back against factory farming. Sadly, products
from these smaller farms make up only a fraction of the total. In the
U.S., roughly 99
percent
of chickens, turkeys, eggs and pork, and 70
percent
of cows, are raised on factory farms.

You
can support lab-grown “clean” burgers, chicken and pork by buying
it once it becomes widely available. Made from animal cells, the
process completely spares the animal and eliminates the factory farm.
“The resulting product is 100 percent real meat, but without the
antibiotics, E.
coli,
Salmonella,
or waste contamination,” writes
the Good Food Institute.

In
the meantime, you can register your objection to factory farming by
doing your bit to reduce demand for their products. In short, eat
less meat and dairy, and more plant-based proteins.

More
than $13 billion has been invested in plant-based meat, egg and dairy
companies in 2017 and 2018 alone, according
to the Good Food Institute, and Beyond Meat’s initial public
offering debut in May marked the most successful one since the year
2000.

Lest
you think that what you do on your own can’t possibly make a
difference, consider one of the major drivers behind all this new
investment: consumers are demanding change.

“Shifting consumer values have created a favorable market for alternatives to animal-based foods, and we have already seen fast-paced growth in this space across retail and foodservice markets,” says Bruce Friedrich, executive director of the Good Food Institute.

Author Bio: Tia Schwab is a former Stone Pier Press news fellow who recently graduated from Stanford University where she studied human biology with a concentration in food systems and public health.

Credit Line: This article first appeared on Truthout and was produced as part of a partnership between Stone Pier Press and Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. An earlier version appeared on Stone Pier Press.