Antibiotic Factory Farming: Repercussions and How to Deal with Them

Aspirations for a world more stable and better off than yesterday and a politically driven race between international superpowers for technological advancement tomorrow now dictate the world in which we live. This industrialization of the modern day has transformed our lives socially and economically as well as environmentally impacting the planet around us. Industrialization has aided in moving society forward in terms of advancement, public health, and giving those less fortunate opportunities to improve their own quality of life. This transformation of our society is invaluable and has changed our world so much that is is almost unthinkable how our lives would be today without this social and economic movement.

Unfortunately, this change from an agrarian to industrial economy materialized in practically every large market and at such an unsustainable rate to which the planet cannot adjust. One substantial market that was heavily impacted was agriculture. The inclination of large corporations, fed by the rising potential capital in the blooming food market, industrialized the agriculture industry and created urbanization in an area that had been relatively the same for hundreds of years, the farm. The product of this change and the introduction of antibiotics and growth hormones was the factory farm and would change how the majority of the world’s meat, poultry, and crops were grown and cultivated. The risks of antibiotic-enabled factory farming greatly outweigh the benefits over the long term and this method of growing our food is detrimental to public health, the environment, and the economy. The health repercussions of antibiotic enabled factory farming are more well known now than they have ever been. The major impacts on public health are the rise of antibiotic resistance bacteria, causing the increase of consumption of meat, and contamination of diseases due to overcrowding. The rise and flourishing of antibiotic resistance bacteria will be one of the largest dangers to public health over the next 50 years and the projected deaths over the next 30 years are estimated to be in the tens of millions per year. The emerging of these resistant strains can be traced back to when antibiotics were initially used in factory farming.

As antibiotics are continued to be developed and applied to the factory farming process, more antibiotic resistant strains will evolve and cause greater risks. However, there is remains an annual increase in the amount of antibiotics used in the process of factory farming. According to the FDA, “80 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States is fed to farm animals” (Better Health Channel, 2018)

Cases involving resistant strains of bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) have increased and many have been traced back to antibiotics that are fed to the factory farmed animals. Not only does factory farming directly cause an increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria, but it has also given way for a tremendous change in our diets concerning the excessive amount of meat and poultry we consume. Mass produced meat and poultry has driven down the cost of meat considerably which enabled the growth of the fast food industry. This considerable decrease in cost has made meat and poultry abundant and allowed the consumption of meat to increase rapidly, especially in lower class families.

This increase in meat and poultry in our diets leads to a large increase in the amount of saturated fats we are consuming and to the soaring obesity rates and increasing rates of Type II Diabetes. The final major impact of factory farming is the spread of diseases and contamination due to the overcrowding of animals. This is very threatening to public health because these cases are very difficult to trace back to a source. The overcrowding of animals in small areas forces these livestock to be exposed to diseases that one animal may be infected with. Large amounts of manure that is produced in factory farming can lead an entire group of livestock to become sick from just a few infected individuals. These large farms then send the livestock to slaughterhouses which also receive healthy animals from non-infected farms. The bacteria can spread and infect a large amount of animals before being sent to an array of vendors across the country. The increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria, increase in meat and poultry consumption, and contamination due to overcrowding have all been enabled and allowed to prosper directly from antibiotic-led factory farming and is detrimental to public health. The author makes arguments throughout the text to support the thesis. The majority of the literature supports the argument that antibiotics have enabled both factory farming as well as the farming of antibiotic resistant bacteria. The author provided extensive information on the amount of antibiotics used in the factory farming process and states clearly that these same antibiotics can directly and indirectly lead to health issues and therefore supports the hypothesis. Next, the environment is heavily impacted from the rise of antibiotic-led factory farming. The large areas and massive facilities required for the growing of an extensive amount of livestock contribute to climate change, direct environmental and habitat destruction via runoff, and require a substantial amount of natural resources. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are released in huge amounts during the factory farming process. Estimates have shown that over “37% of methane emissions are a result from factory farming. ” (One Green Planet, 2017)

The fossil fuels required throughout the factory farming process from transportation, creating and applying synthetic fertilizers, and creating the food for the factory farms emit approximately 90 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. (One Green Planet, 2017)3. These large factory farms have also cleared over 260 million acres of forest in the United States alone and continue to grow as the demand for cheap meat and poultry grow. The combination of huge amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere and massive events of deforestation are sure to increase water levels, increase acidity of nearby as well as large bodies of water, and increase in global temperature. Along with the amount of habitat destruction happening due to deforestation, factory farms runoff support the growth of resistant bacteria that can easily reach surrounding ecosystems and infect wild life. This is due to the large amounts of waste that is produced during the factory farming process is too much to be placed back into the soil as fertilizer so it is placed into lagoons and other shallow bodies of water temporarily. Although these lagoons are not directly connected via large waterways to other large bodies of water, nitrates, microbes, and resistant bacteria have been known to seep through underground pathways and into local waterways. This runoff can then create algae blooms and the creation of toxic dead zones by killing fish species and other wildlife in the area. Furthermore, these large factory farms require a huge amount of natural resources throughout the entire process of factory farming, notably water. Sources have estimated that “Industrial agriculture sucks up 70% of the world’s freshwater supply. ” (The Guardian, 2018)4 This large sum of water is needed from growing food for the livestock, drinking water, and for the maintenance of the machinery and irrigation of crops. With only a limited amount of freshwater, a large amount of water required by these large facilities can affect how much water that is available for the long term. Small scale farms do not require as much water for irrigation of crops, drinking water, and the maintenance and operation of large machinery.

In Big Chicken, McKenna indicates at points how large these facilities are and how much livestock they house. McKenna also has indicated the growth of these factory farms and indicates that they are detrimental but talks more how the factory farms infect the animals and the people directly connected to the facility. McKenna does not focus on the impacts these factory farms have on the environment, on climate change, and on the strain placed on natural resource reserves. The author should have focused more through the scope of how these factory farms can affect the entire ecosystems that surround factory farms as well as the world as a whole. This would have given the audience a broader view and helped build a foundation for the audience to have an opinion on rather than a narrow viewpoint. The author supports this argument but fails to explain why factory farms are detrimental outside of just the dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Finally, antibiotic-enabled factory farming has detrimental effects on the local economy.

Although factory farming and the industrialization enabled the expansion of the fast food industry as well as the meat and poultry industry, it has hurt the local economies in small markets. This industrial expansion has pushed out local farmers while monopolizing the food industry. Over the past decade, the number of independent farmers has declined at a very high rate due to the emergence of large factory farms and packaging companies. Small towns and cities that have relied on farming as their main source of income over generations are now struggling to get by. A survey had shown that “in 2012, more than fifty percent of farmers in the United States could not break even and lost money in their farming operations. ” (Food and Water Watch, 2013)5. More and more farmers are forced to take on contracts from these large companies to provide food and crops for the factory farms. To take on these new contracts, farmers must change their entire farming process and purchase new equipment to meet the large company standards. The contracts provide money early on but the equipment they need to meet the company standards must be purchased and installed and this requires capital to be loaned from these large companies. This translates into dying economies but also how the large factories are monopolizing the industry. By contracting these farmers, they are providing them with some capital but forcing the farmers to take on huge amounts of debt. This traps farmers into renegotiating their contracts and forcing the local farmers to take on new contracts with the large corporations. The factory farms are using these farmers to get resources such as crops to run these huge factory farms but keep the farmers under their thumbs.

This leads to the entire food industry being run by only three or four large companies. By the growth of antibiotic-fueled factory farms, the market for meat and poultry has become non-diversified which means a weak economy over the long term. If one thing were to happen to these large factory farms overnight, the world would not be able to adjust quickly by shifting back to true farm grown livestock. The industries that rely on these factory farms, such as the massive fast food industry that bring in billions in revenue every year, would be toppled. Like ecosystems and environments, a non-diverse economy is a weak economy. McKenna hints throughout the text that the world should switch back to the old days and “ditch” the factory farms. McKenna states throughout the text that these factory farms have transformed the American and international rhetoric of meat and poultry by fixating on quantity over quality and abundance, speed, and consistency over flavour. McKenna also stated that if attention was given to how these factory farms are indeed monopolizing the food industry, we will return to where food was grown naturally on farms. Although McKenna agrees with the fact that society should return to farm grown food, the author does not state the repercussions of immediately removing these factory farms from the economy.

The author also indicates that there are less and less independent farmers but fails to acknowledge why there are less farmers, how the economy of the entire industry has changed. McKenna focused on only the dropping of prices due to factory farms but does not talk about the domino effect that this price drop had on the economy as a whole. This context would have provided the reader more information and a broader viewpoint to aid in making a decision. Although McKenna agrees with the hypothesis, the method in which the economy should switch back to farm grown livestock is different.

In conclusion, the risks of antibiotic-enabled factory farming greatly outweigh the benefits over the long term and this method of growing our food is detrimental to public health, the environment, and the economy. These factory farms have industrialized, monopolized, and completely altered the food industry as it once was. Although the industrialization of this industry had many capital benefits in the short term, the possible long term impacts will have lasting repercussions on the world. The rate at which this industrialization happened in combination with the negative effects from the operation of these factory farms is not sustainable. The text Big Chicken agrees with this hypothesis that the control and impact that factory farms have on the industry as a whole should be cut down and the more control should be given back to local farmers.