Entry #11 Research Paper ( 2nd Draft 1st hand in)

JingJing Lin

Professor Jason Smith

ENG101

21 May 2014

Impact of Factory Farming

            Being a human instinct, people keep the dog, the cat and other cute meek animals to be their pets; raise the rare and protected ones in the zoo to make sure they do not extinct or die out. Moreover, have you ever thought of how the factory farmed livestock and poultry that we get meat and dairy from are being treated during their short lives? Can you imagine the working conditions of workers who work with those animals every day? Factory farming is a high profit farming method which raise and keep a high density of livestock and poultry in narrow spaces that can merely keep them alive but can still produce a large amount of products. Meanwhile, the animals are also producing a great amount of manure that is going to be transferred to manure lagoons without doing any appropriate treatment. Factory farmed livestock and poultry desire better living environment and humane treatment, since the intensive and confined farming method is generating a huge amount of untreated manure which can cause serious impacts on aquatic environment and human community. While the factory farms are generating a massive amount of manure each and every day, manure in the lagoon is stored up and directly exposed to the environment. Additionally, the manure is not simply manure because in the manure, there are unspecific amount of different plant nutrients, pathogens, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemical additives, animal blood, silage leachate and copper sulfate, and etc(Hribar).  Once the manure that composes of various components exposes to the waterways and the air it will ultimately cause serious and harmful impacts on aquatic ecosystem and our community.

The density of animals in factory farms should be lowered down because the tons of waste that the concentrated environments produce are containing chemicals that would threaten the quality of groundwater and surface water. Some of the chemicals that the manure contains are ammonia, nitrate and phosphorus. Ammonia is a chemical that would take way oxygen in the water once it is leaked to surface water sources such as rivers, lakes and water steams. Also, having a large amount of phosphorus in water would cause an excessive growth of aquatic plants like weed and algae, which are also going to use up the oxygen in the water. As a result of not having enough oxygen in water, the fish that live in the water may die out and the aquatic ecosystem would be destroyed (Hribar). According to a data from nrdc.org, a hog farm in Illinois spilled about 200,000 gallons of untreated animal manure into a creek at the year of 2011. The spilling results in killing of over 110,000 fish in the creek ("Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms."). From the data, we can clearly see the level of impact that the animal manure have on human beings and aquatic lives and we must realize the importance of changing a farming method within factory farms.

In addition to ammonia and phosphorus, the presence of nitrate in the manure is risking the health of local communities. The reason is that nitrate is very soluble in water which it can easily penetrate through the soil and then goes into the ground water that local people used to drink. Drinking water that contains a high level of nitrate will decrease the ability of red blood cell to carry oxygen among human body. This would lead to nitrate poisoning which may cause methemoglobinemia, spontaneous abortion in woman and increasing the risk for getting cancer (Hribar). Methemoglobinemia is a blood disorder that occurs when red blood cells are unable to convey a proper amount of oxygen to body organs (“Metheoblobinemia”). The major group of people who have methemoglobinemia are infants under six moth old and one symptom of the blood disorder is having blue skin, so an alternative name for methemoglobinemia is called “blue baby syndrome”. The blood disorder may cause death of infants and even adults (Hribar). Since the chemical additives are having serious impacts on human and aquatic lives, the factory farms should increase the living condition of their animals in order to decrease the amount of manure produced and therefore to protect aquatic lives and ourselves.

 The factory farms must stop using their current method or techniques to generate products because the confined feeding environment may cause various health issues among factory farm workers. While the senior staffs of the factory farm are making money out of the products that the animals produce, the bottom staffs are here working with the animals in the confined environment and taking a risk of inhaling harmful chemicals and pathogens that spread from animal manure. Factory farm workers are victims of factory farming since they are the group of people who work the closest to the animal and are the ones who actually showing the respiratory symptoms from inhaling particulate matters (Hribar). The particulate matters come from feed, animal dander/leather, and dry manure etc. A data from sustainabletable.org indicates that 97% of farm workers have suffered from either chronic or acute bronchitis during a period of time while they are working at the farm (“Workers.”). To lower the percentage of workers who are impacted by the animal manure, the factory farms should provide larger living space for their animals limit the amount of manure produced and decrease the risk of exposing their workers under the harmful chemicals and pathogens.                

Surprisingly, animal manure from factory farms has a potential to contain over 150 pathogens that would tend to have impact on human health. Several common pathogens that exist in manure are Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and cryptosporidium. Some of the pathogens can even survive in water up to one year. Once any of these pathogens escape from manure lagoons to drinking water and then goes into a human body, it would cause severe diarrhea, fever and other fever-like symptoms. However, it may cause death on young kids and adults who are having weak immune systems (Hribar). A recorded data illustrates an example of cryptosporidium outbreak that happened during April, 1993 in Minnesota. 400,000 people were having diarrhea and showing fever –like symptoms. Sadly, 100 people with weak immune systems were killed by cryptosporidium. However, people later found out that a possible source of the pathogen outbreak is animal manure (“Cryptosporidium”). Besides this, there was a recall of Ready-to-eat salads in 2013. About 181,620 lbs of salad were being recalled after 33 people were infected in four different states. And scarily, all the samples that The California Department of Public Health collected from Atherstone were shown to be negative for E. coli O157:H7 test. However, later people checked out that near the vegetable field, there are two cattle operations ("Lettuce: FDA Investigation Summary - Multistate Outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 Illnesses Linked to Ready-to-Eat Salads."). This means there is a great possibility for the cattle operation to be the origin of the pathogen E. coli O157:H7. The farmer may used the E. coli O157:H7 containing manure as a fertilizer to fertilize the vegetable field or the manure may leak from the manure lagoon to goes into either groundwater or surface and later reaches the farmland and caused the E. coli O157: H7 outbreak. The best way to protect our lives from the pathogens is to provide a larger living environment to the factory farmed animals in order to decrease the density of animal and to decrease the amount of animal manure.

Another way for animal manure to disturb human community is through the air. Manure from manure lagoons decreases and pollutes the local air quality by the emission of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, methane and particulate matters (Hribar). The two chemicals that really bother the local residents and bring discomfort to them are ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, because these two chemicals are having unpleasant orders. The stench odors often restrict the outdoor activities of the local residents and made it hard for them to open their windows for exchanging fresh air. In short, the unpleasant odors created by the factory farms declined the living quality of local residents. In consideration of local residents’ welfare, factory farms should limit the manure that their farms are producing by reducing the number of animals in the farm.

There are many more details can be told, however, it is more important to have an actual action than just keep and keep talking and analyzing about animal manure. Please think back and find out the root cause for the existence of factory farms. Why there are factory farms existing? And why they are still running while they are polluting the air, ground water, and surface water. They are indirectly murdering aquatic lives and even human lives! When in fact, there is only one action that ordinary people could do to reduce the impact of factory farms on aquatic ecosystem and human community, which is to get away of the meat and dairy products that is made by the factory farms. And, this requires us to read labels on food carefully and correctly when purchasing food on supermarkets. First of all, we have to make sure if the label is certified or approved, since the non-certified labels are not so reliable and they may mislead us when we are deciding what to buy for food. The names on some common certified and approved labels are “USDA Organic”, “Animal Welfare Approved”, “Certified Naturally Grown”, “Fair Trade”, “American Humane Certified”, “Non-GMO Project Verified” and “Grassfed” ("Food Labeling: Organic, Fair Trade, Natural and More Explained."). It is beneficial for us to look up the labels when buy food, thus we know what are we eating. Meanwhile, we are also protecting ourselves and the environment to from being attached by the exceeding amount of animal manure.

In order to reduce the production of animal manure, factory farms should stop using their current farming method and increase the living space for the animals. So that the density of animals will be lowered and less manure will be produced. To help the poor animals out, we must stop buying products that came from factory farms. Instead, we can buy products with certified labels, buy meat products that from local farms and/or just simply eat less meat. Overall, the principal cause of the series of pollution and pathogen outbreaks is simply treating farmed animals inhumanely in confined spaces, what we can do is to help them out and help ourselves out.

Works Cited

"Cryptosporidium." health.state.mn.us. Minnesota Department of Health, n.d. Web. 22 May

2014.

"Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms." nrdc.org. Natural Resources  Defense Council,

n.d. Web. 22 May 2014.

"Food Labeling: Organic, Fair Trade, Natural and More Explained." farmaid.org. FarmAid, n.d.

Web. 22 May 2014.

Hribar, Carrie. "Understanding Concentrated environmental health Animal Feeding Operations

and Their Impact on Communities." cdc.gov. National Association of Local Boards of

Health, n.d. Web. 22 May 2014.

"Lettuce: FDA Investigation Summary - Multistate Outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 Illnesses

Linked to Ready-to-Eat Salads." fda.gov. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 11 Dec.

2013. Web. 22 May 2014.

"Methemoglobinemia." nlm.nih.gov. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 22 May 2014.

"Workers." sustainabletable.org. GRACE Communications Foundation, n.d. Web. 22 May 2014.