Peer review with tutor!

I grew up in Paraguay a country where it’s normal to raise then later on kill your dinner in order to survive. I was always a little troubled by the idea of animals being killed because I’m an animal lover, though I became accustomed to it because I knew my food was raised in a free environment as well healthy. I would’ve never known that food bought in the United States would be a far cry from that lifestyle in Paraguay. The root to where our food comes/raised from is the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) system. This is a system that our world depends on, so you’d think they’d make sure its clean and healthy right? Wrong. The CAFO system is not only unclean and UN healthy, CAFO is pure animal torture, harmful to their workers and us the consumers, also polluting the earth.

Reading “The CAFO Reader: the tragedy of industrial animal factories”, by Daniel Imhoff helped me gain knowledge of the food we eat daily. Its in our supermarkets it in society and its in our fridge. CAFO is where all our livestock is raised. This isn’t a farm-based environment where there’s animal husbandry and chickens, cows, pigs, turkeys and their baby’s are running around free. It’s a factory, with machines, pesticides and millions of workers. Conventional wisdom has it that at least four domestic animals are raised for every person on the planet. In the United States alone, nearly 10 billion domesticated livestock ¾mostly chickens, pigs, and cows¾ are raised and SLAUGHTERED annually (immhoff  xii). These animals we consume are under unnatural conditions, breathing little air and never able to see sunlight. Chickens naturally are fed corn, cows eat grass, and pigs are feed apples but in this industrial lifestyle these innocent animals are fed a high-calorie grain-based diet (sometimes including reclaimed animal manure, ground-up fish, or recycled animal parts) designed to maximize growth and weight gain in the shortest amount of time (imhoff xiv).  Seems that everything about this industry is anything but natural, they alter each and every one of these animals to fit and conform in this horrible environment. According to Imhoff, chick’s beaks can be partially seared off so they cannot fatally strike another. The tails of piglets are “docked” to instill “avoidance behavior” inside a stall crammed with hogs… The CAFO industry argues that while such practices may seem cruel to some, they are done to benefit the health and welfare of the animals and to provide an abundant and safe food supply for a hungry planet. While CAFO is wrong when they claim that their cruel actions are done with good intentions and for the health of the animal, CAFO is only right that it feeds a hungry planet (Imhoff xv). It’s affordable and every fast food restaurant are selling it

We are absorbing animals that are constructed too grow under unnatural size’s and under unnatural terms, most of us have no insight of what it leads too. Obesity and high blood cholesterol levels are among the leading risk factors for heart disease. Both of these conditions are associated with heavy meat consumption (Imhoff 70). Americans are dyeing of these conditions; the truth of it all is what’s been hidden. Americans obtain enormous amounts of meat and poultry on a daily basis so it’s logical to create a system that can feed a billion of us in the shortest amount of time. Since the 1920’s when scientist discovered adding vitamins A and D to the food the give these animals will help them keep the animals inside for a full year, able to channel their energy so they can grow faster. Ever since then mortality and diseases have been growing faster as well. These outbreaks weren’t only caused from confinement, livestock’s are given regular doses of antibiotics too grow faster, pasture was replaced by grains, and farmers turned to technology (synthetic fertilizers, toxic pesticides and herbicides) (Imhoff xiv). This method’s that they so call “diet” is also the cause of mad cow disease. Researchers state that this intense meat consumption are linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain types of cancers (Imhoff 64). They’ve replaced moral ethics with efficiency, feeding cattle’s animal proteins from other infected cows and sheep. This is practice the only recently has been banned by the U.S food and drug administration (Rollin 8). Not only are we consuming diseases but so are the people working in farm factories. These are life-threatening jobs. Imhoff reports that CAFO workers suffer from numerous medical conditions, including repetitive motion injuries and respiratory illness associated with poor air quality. CAFO workers experience respiratory disease such as chronic bronchitis and occupational asthma (Imhoff 70). Many people are blind to the CAFO industry furthermore what its doing to everyone.

CAFO system not only damages our health its damaging our earth. Slaughtering millions of animals a day may cause things to get messy. There are waste, sick animal’s and contaminated left overs that this system would need to get ride of. CAFO’s strategy is to truck them off-site, rather than recycling their waste into fertilizer. Lagoons and holding ponds are the main resources where all waste is dumped. “Nearly 60% of the world’s freshwater resources are diverted for agriculture, which of at least a third goes to animal productions… World Watch Institute estimates that the livestock sector could be responsible for as much as 50% of all climate-changing emissions making it the most critical influential factor in global warming” (Imhoff 79).  This system is so opposite of responsible and natural that it’s ruining our atmosphere. Everything they dump is contaminated with green house gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous dioxide and in result there is now 400 dead zones spread thought this whole entire world (Imhoff 64).