What animals are affected by factory farming?
A “factory farm” is a large-scale industrial operation that houses thousands of animals raised for food—such as chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs—and treats them with hormones and antibiotics to prevent disease and maximize their growth and food output.
How do animals suffer from factory farms?
Animals on factory farms endure constant fear and torment: They’re often given so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.
How does factory farms affect the environment?
Factory farms contribute to air pollution by releasing compounds such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and methane. The waste lagoons on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) not only pollute our groundwater, but deplete it as well. Many of the farms use the groundwater for cleaning, cooling, and drinking.
Do animal farms cause pollution?
Animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions after fossil fuels and is a leading cause of deforestation, water and air pollution and biodiversity loss.
Why do factory farms still exist?
The answer is simple: scientists, economists, and farmers agree that factory farming is still the only way to keep up. The fact of the matter is that, while the demand for commercially produced, affordable meat may be decreasing, it is still high, primarily because there are more people on the planet than ever before.
Why is factory farming cruel?
Factory farming operations are designed to produce large volumes of yield for the smallest possible price. It’s expensive to farm animals because animals require constant supplies of food, water, and shelter in order for them to grow large enough to be slaughtered, or to produce milk or eggs for human consumption.
Why animal farming is bad?
Livestock farming has a vast environmental footprint. It contributes to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, acid rain, coral reef degeneration and deforestation. Nowhere is this impact more apparent than climate change – livestock farming contributes 18% of human produced greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Why are factory farms so dangerous to the environment?
Because thousands of animals are kept together in factory farms, the concentration of the gases produced can be extremely dangerous to the local community. For example, roughly 80 percent of ammonia emissions in the U.S. comes from animal waste.
How does animal agriculture affect the air quality?
These particulates can include dry manure, feathers, bits of feed, and animal dander. They can travel through the air for miles and turn the sky hazy near the factory farm. The antibiotics that livestock are given to protect them while living in a high stress, filthy environment are also potent airborne matter.
What are the inhumane practices on factory farms?
Inhumane Practices on Factory Farms. The rearing of farm animals today is dominated by industrialized facilities known as confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs (often referred to as “factory farms”) that maximize profits by treating animals not as sentient creatures, but as production units.
How does animal waste contribute to air pollution?
Animal Waste Causes Harmful Air Pollution. Animal farms may produce food, but they also produce massive amounts of animal waste like urine and manure that emit around 400 different harmful gases