animals
'Enough Is Enough': US Factory Farm Takeover Continues With 1.7 Billion Animals
"The USDA's new data show that without policy changes, factory farms will continue to get bigger and bigger, wreaking havoc on public health, the environment, and the climate," said one expert.
Critics of factory farming renewed demands for U.S. policy reforms on Tuesday in response to new federal data on the nation's agricultural activity, which is released every five years.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) put out its report about the 1.9 million farms and ranches that collectively spanned more than 880 million acres as of 2022—a loss of nearly 142,000 operations and over 20 million acres since 2017. The document features state tallies and other details including inventory and values for crops and livestock.
"The USDA's new data show that without policy changes, factory farms will continue to get bigger and bigger, wreaking havoc on public health, the environment, and the climate," warned Environmental Working Group (EWG) Midwest director Anne Schechinger.
Schechinger highlighted some of the key data points for EWG's website:
For cattle and broiler chicken farms, the number of the largest factory farms has grown since 2012. In 2012, there were 1,124 cattle farms in the U.S. with 5,000 cattle or more per farm. But that increased to 1,270 mega factory farms in 2017 and 1,453 in 2022, according to the USDA's Census of Agriculture data—a 29% increase.
And the largest chicken farms increased by 17%, from 6,332 farms with 500,000 or more birds in 2012 to 7,211 farms in 2017 and 7,406 farms in 2022. The number of the biggest hog factory farms increased greatly, from 3,006 in 2012 to 3,600 in 2017 but went down slightly to 3,540 in 2022.
Across all three animal types—cattle, chickens, and hogs—the number of animals produced in the largest factory farms increased. There were 28% more cattle produced in the largest facilities in 2022 than in 2012, 24% more hogs, and 24% more chickens.
Food & Water Watch (FWW), which also analyzed the new government data, found that "there are currently 1.7 billion animals raised on U.S. factory farms every year; an increase of 6% since 2017, 47% more than roughly 20 years ago in 2002."
The group emphasized that "as factory farms take over, the number of small dairies raising animals outside the factory farm system plummeted, with barely one-third as many today compared to 20 years ago."
FWW research director Amanda Starbuck declared that "America today is truly a factory farming nation. Status quo legislating in Washington is enabling a corporate feeding frenzy in rural America."
"As industrial confinements drive family-scale farmers off their land, we are left with skyrocketing numbers of animals on factory farms producing enormous amounts of waste," she continued. "The benefits flow to private coffers while our communities and environment are left holding the bag."
The 24,000 U.S. factory farms produce 940 billion pounds of manure annually, according to Starbuck's group. That is "twice as much as the sewage produced by the entire U.S. population" and "52 billion pounds more than in 2017, equivalent to creating a new city of 39 million people (or nearly two New York City metro areas) in the past five years," FWW explained.
Animal waste from factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), "often pollutes our water and air," noted EWG's Schechinger. "These environmental damages are also dangerous for public health, with toxins from animal manure sickening people and poisoning wildlife."
"The largest livestock operations are also bad for the climate," she added. "Cows release methane to the atmosphere through their burps, and cattle and hog manure releases methane and nitrous oxide, two greenhouse gases more powerful than carbon dioxide."
Starbuck argued that "enough is enough—Congress must pass the Farm System Reform Act to ban factory farming now."
That bill (S.271/H.R. 797) "would, among other things, strengthen the Packers & Stockyards Act to crack down on the monopolistic practices of meatpackers and corporate integrators, place a moratorium on large factory farms... and restore mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements," according to its sponsors, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
The pair reintroduced that legislation last February alongside the Industrial Agriculture Accountability Act, Protecting America's Meatpacking Workers Act, and Protect America's Children from Toxic Pesticides Act.
"I have been very proud to partner with Sen. Booker to try and reform our broken food system to maintain fair competition, high animal welfare standards, and level the playing field for family farmers, ranchers, and agricultural workers," Khanna said at the time. "These bills shine a light on the disturbing practices in our current system and can help usher in a new, safer, and more resilient system."
Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Law Latest to Criminalize Defenders of Animals
Despite losses in other states, Idaho lawmakers pushing hard to paint activists as "terrorists"
Though similar efforts in other states have failed, a bill moving swiftly through the Idaho legislature this week is trying to criminalize the activities of animal rights advocates who expose the mistreatment of farm animals and livestock by documenting abuse by their human handlers.
Known broadly as 'Ag-Gag' legislation, the specific bill in Idaho is titled SB 1337 and is pitched by its backers--which include large agribusiness interests in the dairy and meat industry--as an "agricultural security measure" defending farmers, dairies, and processing plant owners against "ag terrorists," their unkind moniker for those who might secretly videotape abuse of animals without express permission.
"Consumers want better treatment of animals used for food not for the agriculture industry to cover up illegal acts and penalize those who try to expose cruelty." --Matthew Strugar, PETA
But opponents of animal cruelty say laws like the one in Idaho not only endanger animal welfare, but are an assault on the public's right to know about the treatment these animals receive in certain facilities when operators think no one is watching.
"Consumers want better treatment of animals used for food not for the agriculture industry to cover up illegal acts and penalize those who try to expose cruelty," said Matthew Strugar, senior litigation counsel for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), in an email sent to Common Dreams.
SB 1337, sponsored by State Senator Sen. Jim Patrick (R-Twins Falls), would ban unauthorized video recordings on agricultural facilities and treat those found engaging in such activities as criminals, with punishments of up to one year in prison and fines up to $5,000.
On Tuesday of this week, the bill was voted out of committee and is now headed to the full Senate for a vote.
As local journalist Kimberlee Kruesi reported for the Twin Falls Times-News:
The bill is being endorsed by Idaho's $2.5 billion dairy industry just two years after an animal rights group released undercover footage of abuse at Dry Creek Dairy southwest of Murtaugh, owned by large-scale dairy owner Luis Bettencourt.
The video was obtained after an investigator - who was employed by Los Angeles-based Mercy for Animals - began working on the Bettencourt dairy in July, 2012. Within three weeks of working on the facility, he recorded employees using a tractor to drag a cow on slippery concrete by a chain wrapped around its neck, employees punching and stomping on milk cows and one employee beating a cow with a pink cane.
Though animals rights groups have helped defeat similar laws in other states, the tensions in Idaho are strong. Backers of the bill have repeatedly vilified those with animal rights concerns while couching the law as one that defends the rights of private property owners.
"The cruelty [documented at the Bettencourt Dairies] drew nationwide attention and condemnation, but instead of taking meaningful steps to improve animal welfare, the state's dairy industry is simply trying to silence its critics." --Matthew Dominguez, Humane Society
According to the Associated Press, during Tuesday's committee hearing, Sen. Patrick described those who film animal abuse in dairies or slaughterhouses as "comparable to marauding invaders centuries ago who swarmed into foreign territory and destroyed crops to starve foes into submission."
"This is clear back in the sixth century B.C.," Patrick said. "This is the way you combat your enemies."
And another supporter of the law, state Sen. Jim Rice (R-Caldwell), said farmers shouldn't have to worry that someone is monitoring the treatment of animals on their property. "Do you have a right to control your own activities on your property or not?" he asked at the hearing. "Throughout our history, the answer has been yes."
But animal rights activists say these arguments are both absurd and a distraction from the real issue: preventing cruelty to animals and improving the public perception of all farmers by creating a culture of transparency, not secrecy, when it comes to farming and food processing operations.
"If the Idaho state legislature passes this bill and it becomes law, people all over the country will think Idaho's agriculture sector has a lot to hide," said PETA's Strugar.
PETA has long used undercover investigators to expose animal cruelty like that found in Bettencourt case.
"It's vital that the public retain the right to document abuse wherever it occurs," Strugar explained to Common Dreams, "because there are no inspections of farms for cruelty violations and workers who report abuse are often ignored, evidence from undercover investigations is crucial in prosecuting criminal acts."
The Humane Society of the United States, which has been active in opposing the Idaho law, released this television ad to help make its case to the public:
Idaho Ag-Gag Commercialwww.youtube.com
Matthew Dominguez, who works on farm policy for the Humane Society and has been actively lobbying against the bill, says the argument about private property rights is a red herring pushed by agribusiness to confuse the issue.
"The real motivation behind these dangerous ag-gag bills," Dominguez told Common Dreams, is "to prevent the public from learning about the horrors occurring on factory farms."
He continued: "The cruelty [documented at the Bettencourt Dairies] drew nationwide attention and condemnation, but instead of taking meaningful steps to improve animal welfare, the state's dairy industry is simply trying to silence its critics."
Both Strugar and Dominguez agree that though the AG-Gag bill now before Idaho's full senate is designed to insulate the dairy and agriculture industries from outside critics, what its really doing is making consumers in the state and across the country less trusting of the people who are responsible for caring for the many millions of animals used for food production each year.
"This dangerous effort by Idaho's dairy industry is going to hurt the public's trust in all of Idaho agriculture," said Dominguez. "Other farmers should resent that the dairy industry for giving the impression that all of the state's food producers have something to hide.