Former Kansas Gov. John Carlin heads a blue-ribbon panel that released a report strongly critical of factory farming practices.
The two-year study by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production concluded that practices such as intensive confined animal feeding operations and widespread misuse of antibiotics pose a serious threat to human health and the environment, and sometimes fail to provide humane treatment of animals.
At the same time, factory farming shifts economic clout from farmers to corporate livestock processors.
Carlin told Associated Press that there would have to be “significant changes†in industrial farming to “address some of the public health and environmental issues†raised by the report.
One of the group’s recommendations is to ban antibiotics in cattle except for therapeutic reasons — a reasonable guideline that will help safeguard the effectiveness of antibiotics for humans.
Meanwhile, two large beef processors, including National Beef Packing Co. in Dodge City, were cited by federal inspectors for inhumane conditions — National Beef for overcrowded cattle holding pens.
28 Comments
Yeah that was obvious just by driving out that way.
Thank goodness someone is addressing it.
Will they also look into chickens and pork as well?
Well look at it this way, those corporate farms are just practice for the future.
“Soylent Green is people!”.
Kiddy aside, I do have mixed opinions on this somehow treating another living creature as nothing more than a part of the machinery. Does not seem very human, I once listen to an Indian spokesman. He reenacted what the Native Americans did after killing animal for food. They pray to the animal and thanked them for providing his family with food and asked their forgiveness for having killed them.
The other side of the coin is that farmers, corporate or family farms feeds the masses and it is in reality just a staple of life. It is not a luxury and has to be done. In that light the more efficient and productive the better for the masses. These animals are fated to die so we can live, that is not an excuse for treating them harshly and it is believed that some of the growth hormones injected has led to early starts of Puberty in children.
Profit should never supercede the health of the consumer, how much profit is there if the product makes the consumer ill or kills them?
From the Opinions section;
“Do you suppose our lawmakers will recognize they helped engineer the present food crisis by giving tax credits for turning food into fuel and mandating minimum volumes? No, they will find somebody else to blame.”
If they handle food policy as they have energy policy, we’re doomed.
The more the politicians mess with the economy and legislate their agendas, and the DemLibs are by far the worst here, the worse we are going to have it, with more people spending increasingly more simply to survive, and more going broke and hungry.
If you are willing to live with chickens and pigs, goats, sheep and burros in your cities as the Mexicans do, then you just may be able to produce enough of those types of proteins to continue to utilize them as you do now. Providing you convert your suburban acreages to chicken pens. If not, get a phucking life. Factory farms mean one thing: factory production, and there are 300,000,000 of us and six billion in the world. Each american eats 15 chickens a year. I believe that’s 4.5 billion chickens. To achieve that kind of production would take a lot of chicken ladies.
Can’t say I know much about corporate farming. As a vegetarian, I no longer worry about how meat is raised.
Interestingly, the carbon footprint of cheeseburgers in this country is greater than the carbon footprint of ALL the suvs driven in America.
So my big honking SUV is better for the environment that you cheeseburger gut busting steroid filled munchers!
Hah!
I’m tellin’ ya, John Carlin was the last REAL governor of Kansas!
Must not like the smell. Politicians leave it alone.
Politicians not liking the smell of cattle pens…isn’t that an oxymoron?
I wish I had the discipline to become vegetarian…it’s good for the body and the environment. My kids have been vegetarians for over a decade, they are really healthy and have hardly any fat on their bodies.
They quit eating meat after a trip we took out to Colorado and they had a chance to see and smell the cattle pens in Western Kansas.
The entire industry floats atop an ocean of oil and fossil fuels. Cows are fed the corn which is so cheap because it is overly fertilized with fossil fuel derived products.
The cows must be given antibiotics or they’d explode from gasses produced by bacteria living in their gut.. a digestive system developed to eat grasses and not corn.
The people eat the cows because it’s cheap.
The people get obese and sick from too much meat in their diets. And humans are wired to want fats in their diets. Ancient skinny ancestors died off during times of famine, selecting those who got a lot of fat to survive and reproduce.
This industry maximizes profits for the food industry and hurts the American people and the nation as a whole.
At least that’s the way I see it. And have you ever been in a town with a corporate pig factory nearby when the wind is just right…..? OMFG!
Smells like $$$$
Amen!
“DavidB” shares –
“The people eat the cows because it’s cheap.”
No.
People eat cows because they taste good.
Mumbly-mumbly years ago, the local cow stopped giveing milk and cheese and died and someone put the carcass on a fire to get rid of it and happend to notice that it was pretty good eatin’.
Is it good for us? Is it the most efficient way to provide protein and vitamins and minerals to the human diet? Maybe not. But it sure tastes good.
All those animal sacrifices of all ancient cultures… Think they didn’t know they were letting a leg o’ lamb go to waste? (Mmmmm. garlic gravy… mint jelly….) It damned well was a sacrifice, I tell ya!
A cow (or goat or pig, whatever) is simply a storage system of energy. They eat energy in the summer and their meat gives it back during the winter when the veggies aren’t growing and they’re more or less frozen an preserved.
That’s how it worked for millions of years in the food chain.
Today we can manipulate the environment so we can eat meat all year ’round. ‘Cuz it tastes good.
Factory farms are one approach to address an industry-created demand for year-round meat. A century or so ago, people ate from the garden in the summer and ate hams and sausage and preserved meat in the winter. We’re now in a a market where we can get summer vegetables in the dead of winter, thanks to technology.
I walk into high schools and the teens tower over me. I’ve always wondered if it’s because of all the BGH kids are ingesting these days. I went beef free a few years back and it really wasn’t difficult at all. Giving up on bland, tasteless flab for organic venison. Like there’s a choice between the two.
I just waiting for the day I can get my meat out of a test tube.
Can’t wait for some fine test tube barbequed brisket fresh from Meat Labs, inc.
Or perhaps some succulent chicken breasts right off the test bench of Poultry Research Institute.
Perhaps some spiral cut ham right off the laser beam factory floor of Hormel Artificial Lifeforms Plant.
Yummy, my mouth is watering…
(cough,gag)
I agree Monkey…I LOVE a good steak grilled outside. Nothing tastes better. My kids say after one gets used to not eating it, it becomes pretty nauseating though. I don’t care…at my age a few bad habits are OK.
We’ve been getting a side of beef every now and then from the Turkey Foot Ranch.
http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M3804
A little pricey for a side of beef, but still cheaper and a lot better than ’store bought’!
I highly recommend it!
Its like smoking or drinking…when you get the nicotine, alcohol, or animal flesh out of your body, the smell and taste of it is repulsive.
Could it be that ex-governor John Carlin is throwing his hat in the air for a possible political race. Don’t think he could run for Kansas Governor again but he might run for U.S. Senator or Congressman.
Of course, as I recall, he spent the past ten years or so in Washington involved with the historic records department … what is that department called?
Ksfarmgrrl: I will have to agree to disagree with you that Carlin was a “real” governor. Been a while ago so off the top of my head, I don’t remember his problems as governor.
LOL! I never said a great steak ain’t deeeelicious! I have steak several times a year.
But the huge, unhealthy and enormous amounts of meat we eat… perhaps unprecedented in human history… yuck… just look at all the morbidly obese people all around us…
I don’t blame the people.. I blame the food industry and the governmental policies that fosters and encourages these unhealthy diet habits.
Why cannot fresh fruit and vegetables be subsidized?
I suggest you view some of the essays found at: http://www.michaelpollan.com
specifically http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=88 YOU ARE WHAT YOU GROW
and
http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87 UNHAPPY MEALS
I think obesity is because of the amount of sugars in foods.
My problem with Carlin was he changed wives every time he got elected. Must be a Democrat thing.
“KansasNative” alleged –
“…when you get the nicotine, alcohol, or animal flesh out of your body, the smell and taste of it is repulsive.”
For some people maybe.
I quit smoking and there’s never been a moment I haven’t been tempted to smoke again. Second-hand smoke is ambrosia to me. Somebody at a stop light’s puffing a Camel? I’m getting off on the contact high.
A few years ago I promised myself I wasn’t gonna pay more than two-bucks a pack for cigarettes. The price and taxes and Bushonomics caught up with me and I’m jonesin’ every day.
One of the reasons why Americans are so fat is our lifestyle and the availability of fast food…everyone eats on the run nowadays. Try going into a Quik Trip and finding something healthy to eat…it’s nothing but a junk food store. Everytime I go in there to get my cup of morning tea..there is some poor kid buying a coke and a candy bar for breakfast.
“The price and taxes and Bushonomics caught up with me and I’m jonesin’ every day.” — Monkeyhawk
Roll your own; there’s always a way.
MonkeyHawk,
I quit cigarettes a little over seven years ago. The first day I was a little uncomfortable, but mostly, I have thought, why did I wait so long? It was much easier than I expected.
I second what Hank said.
I have made an intentional effort to avoid factory farmed meat (at least in the home). It is more humane and it is better for the environment. And yes, the meat is less bland.
Monkeyhawk,
I’ve always liked Bucky Fuller’s view that a cow is a machine for making grass edible to humans.
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