Calls for reform of industrial animal food production are becoming increasingly common among scientific commissions, international agencies, activist organizations, chefs, and concerned citizens. Some favor moratoriums on further expansion of certain types of livestock CAFOs. Others are working for bans against the most brutal confinement methods. Legislation to regulate antibiotic use in animal food production, already adopted in some European countries, is now being seriously considered in the United States. Critics argue that full enforcement of existing regulations governing monopoly control of markets and environmental protection, along with elimination of perverse subsidies, is long overdue. Voices are rising for the restoration of tens of millions of acres in the United States now under feed cultivation to permanent pastures for grass-fed livestock production. Animal welfare advocates such as philosopher Peter Singer and activist Erik Marcus go a step further, calling for a citizen movement to dismantle industrial animal production altogether.
The European Union currently leads the world in CAFO reforms. These changes are rooted in a seminal report produced in 1997 by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), an independent advisory body established by the British government, that adopted a previously conceived set of principles known as “the five freedoms”:
1.Freedom from hunger and thirst—by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigor.
2.Freedom from discomfort—by providing an appropriate environment, including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
3.Freedom from pain, injury, or disease—by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
4.Freedom to express normal behavior—by providing sufficient space, proper facilities, and company of the animals’ own kind.
5.Freedom from fear and distress—by ensuring conditions and treatment that avoid mental suffering.1
The European Union has agreed to phase out the most egregious confinement techniques: battery cages (for laying hens) by 2012, and gestation crates (for pregnant sows) by 2013. Some countries within the European Union are adopting measures to make slaughtering more humane. In 1998, Denmark, a leading hog-producing nation, placed strict regulations on antibiotic medicines in the swine industry.2 Requiring a CAFO to become less pharmaceutically dependent imposes limits on the size of confinement operations and requires more careful oversight of animals.3 Denmark’s antibiotic restrictions have dramatically reduced the presence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, thereby prolonging the effectiveness of these medicines as human safeguards.
Demands are rising for animal food production to become more transparent. Slaughterhouses and feeding operations, for example, could be required to install video monitoring systems or agree to unannounced third-party inspections. CAFO operators could be required to accurately report their use of antibiotics rather than being able to purchase them by the sackload and distribute them without veterinary consult. Actual feed ingredients and detailed manure distribution records could be required and made more publicly available. Freedom of information within government agencies could allow the public to know exactly where taxpayer dollars are being spent to support the industry. None of these disclosures would be radical, but the industry is currently trending away from such transparency.
Still, it is not impossible to imagine a far different and far healthier food and farming system, beginning with a long-term commitment to pasture-based farming. Many have been advocating for some time for an ambitious transformation in U.S. agriculture away from soil-eroding feed grains toward deep-rooted perennial pastures, once again diversifying food production in the corn- and soybean-dominated Midwest. In fact, thousands of family farmers are managing appropriately scaled, grass-fed meat, dairy, and egg farms without raising animals in vile and sordid conditions. These pasture-based rotational grazing systems can be resource-efficient and often have the advantage of not needing energy- and capital-intensive inputs such as heating, ventilation, and cooling systems; expensive housing construction; imported industrial feeds; and mechanized manure management systems. They rely on sound animal husbandry techniques and integrating farm animals into a healthy landscape, using manure as a source of soil fertility. But scaling up will not be easy and will require a new generation of farmers willing to join the ranks of this noble profession; legions of consumers; and the financial, production, and processing infrastructure to support them.
To that end, citizens are calling for a much larger and more responsive role for government subsidies to guide sustainable food production. Reform of USDA farm bill programs—which pump billions of dollars into the economy and largely establish the rules of modern agriculture—is seen as an essential way to fund the transformation to a pasture-based livestock economy through green payments and other incentives. In 2008, Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas; author Wendell Berry; and a coalition of sustainable farming advocates called for the launch of a “50-year farm bill” campaign: a succession of five-year plans (the average length of a farm bill) to move the country away from highly erosion-prone feed grain agriculture toward perennial, pasture-based animal systems. Others see farm bill programs as an economic engine to help rebuild regional food systems with funds for organic production research; preservation of traditional and endangered livestock breeds; start-up capital for programs linking local livestock producers with communities of eaters; and mobile slaughtering units to serve smaller regional producers.
If the industry is made to pay its true costs and make its practices transparent, changes in food production and personal consumption habits will evolve naturally. As more people and policy makers understand the enormous price we pay for “cheap” animal food products, we will see a shift in corn and feed subsidies and less tolerance of impacts such as soil erosion or excessive nutrient contamination. Livestock will remain essential for farming systems as well as for the human diet for some time, but ultimately we will realize that no person or country has the right to eat high on the protein ladder if it comes at a cost to the local ecosystem or the planet at large. We need action on all levels immediately, from governmental to individual. The time is now to push for more local, sustainable, humane, transparent, and just systems of food production and eating—in short, to put the CAFO out to pasture.