Two recent reports target the cost of factory farming. The Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have concluded a two-and-a-half-year analysis that calls for a major change in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.
One of those costs is the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise due to overuse of antibiotics. Livestock producers are using the vast majority of antibiotics and approximately 70 percent of them are used for nontherapeutic purposes, such as accelerating animal growth and compensating for the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions on factory farms; with thousands of animals kept in close confinement, disease spreads rapidly.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization state that antibiotic use to treat human infection should no longer be used as growth promoters in farm animals. The Union of Concerned Scientists believes that reducing antibiotic use would push livestock production in a more sustainable direction, like raising cattle on their natural food, grass. By raising animals in a humane way, outside of confinement, we would no longer have to worry about odor studies and contamination of our rivers and streams.
- Patricia Fuller, Council BluffsDes Moines Register
