Food Safety: Factory Farm Alarm
Press release: March 1998

With headlines over the past year about E.coli outbreaks, historic beef recalls, salmonella, water pollution from farm animal waste, and "mad cow" disease many are calling for an examination of our modern day food machine. The North American diet, with its high demand for meat and dairy products, has prompted a revolution where "factory farms" replace the small family farm. EarthSave International, a non-profit educational group, is calling on North Americans to take a closer look at their food supply with EarthSave’s "Factory Farm Alarm" educational campaign.

Today’s factory farms are a long way from the romanticized picture of the family farm where fluffy chicks, sloppy hogs and contented cattle roam green pastures. Modern hogs, chickens, and cattle are raised on an enormous scale and slaughtered in assembly line style. Animals and feed resources are considered raw inputs in a production system with a goal of maximizing profits. The consequences can often be health risks to those eating animal products, poor worker conditions, and severe environmental pollution in areas surrounding these operations.

Consider these realities:

• A recent report summarizing 55 different studies found that approximately 30% of chicken is contaminated with Salmonella and 62% with its cousin, Campylobacter. According to the USDA, these two pathogens account for 80% of the illnesses and 70% of the deaths associated with meat consumption.

• Eating meat from cattle tainted by the "mad cow" disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE) is believed to have killed at least 20 people overseas, mostly in Britain.

• Thus far the FDA has only banned the feeding of ruminants-- such as cows and sheep-- back to other ruminants, but not the feeding of all animals as feed to other animals being raised for human consumption.

• Poultry processing has a rate of injury and illness almost double that of trades like coal mining and construction.

• Factory farm are enormous, with 80,000 chickens in a typical henhouse. A Milford, Utah hog farm raises 600,000 hogs, with plans for one to two million.

• Known as the "cell from hell," pfiesteria, a dangerous microbe associated with the poultry industry killed 30,000 fish in the Chesapeake Bay earlier this year.

• Huge livestock farms are generating an estimated five tons of animal manure for every person in the United States.

• Fertilizers, manures, and agricultural chemicals washed from the Mississippi have created a 7,000 square mile lifeless expanse at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico called "The Dead Zone."

What you can do:

You can alter the demand for factory farms by changing your food choices. To learn about reducing the amount of animal products in your diet, contact EarthSave at earthsave@aol.com for a free copy of the brochure "Making the Transition to Healthy Food Choices."