CAFOs vs. Free Range
Demand Labels on Factory-Farmed Meat
Factory farms, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), are a disaster for the environment and our health. Nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens and pigs, are crammed into CAFOs, where they are literally imprisoned and tortured in unhealthy, unsanitary and unconscionably cruel conditions. Sickness is the norm for animals who are confined rather than pastured, and who eat GMO corn and soybeans, rather than grass and forage as nature intended.
In November 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved AquaBounty salmon, a genetically engineered (GE) “frankenfish” engineered to grow about twice as fast as typical farm-raised salmon. In Canada, the GE salmon are already being sold and eaten, to the tune of 5 tons in 2017, and could be coming to U.S. grocery stores as early as 2019, with no labels as such. Farmed fish facilities, often described as CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) of the sea, pump water from rivers into their hatcheries, then pump it back out to the river once it’s no longer clean.
Read more
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, became a national news story, and for good reason. Republican leaders in the state were finally forced to take steps to stop the poisoning of Flint's drinking water with lead and other toxins, foisted on the community as part of a short-sighted cost-cutting measure. Despite improvements, the future of Flint's water supply is uncertain, but at least that story has brought increased attention to the problem of lead in water in many large cities, including Chicago.
Read more
It has happened at slaughterhouses run by Smithfield Foods, Swift and Agriprocessors.
Now U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has swooped down on Southeastern Provision, a cattle slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tennessee.
On April 5, with helicopters chopping overhead, 97 workers, mostly Hispanic, were detained by ICA. That left a workforce of only three. According to an article in the New Yorker, 32 of the detainees were released the same day, 54 were kept in detention and 10 were arrested for defying previous deportation orders.
Original news reports about
Read more
Murphy Brown LLC, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, has been hit with lawsuits from more than 500 North Carolina residents who say their operations and manure lagoons are harming their health and lowering property values. In April 2018, a federal jury ruled in the favor of area residents, awarding the plaintiffs a collective $750,000 in compensation plus another $50 million in damages; the lawsuit is the first of 26 nuisance lawsuits filed against Murphy Brown. In 2017, North Carolina legislators passed a law setting a cap on how much people can receive
Read more
Fish farms are the water-based equivalents of land-based concentrated animal feeding operations, and as such they create the same, if not worse, environmental concerns. Since the salmon pens are placed along wild salmon runs, they pose a severe threat to wild salmon that pass by, exposing wild fish to diseases such as piscine reovirus, which now threatens wild salmon with extinction. Toxicology testing reveals farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world — more than five times more toxic than any other food tested, with eight times higher PCB levels than wild salmon.
Read more
More than 160 people crowded into a little country club on an overcast spring evening, but they weren't there for a round of golf. These people were more concerned with row crop fields and manure pits than fairways and sand traps.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources' public meeting Wednesday at the Tipton Country Club addressed public comments and concerns with the proposed Tipton East concentrated animal feeding operation.
Read more
Nearly 50 rural Delaware residents say they’ll sue a local Mountaire chicken-processing plant to force it to stop polluting their drinking water with nitrogen from chicken waste.
Read more
A new rule in the US would eliminate food inspectors and lift limits on how quickly pigs can be killed. The impact on workers, animals and consumers would be disastrous.
The Trump administration has proposed a radical change in food safety protection. They’re misleadingly calling it the “Modernization of swine slaughter inspection rule”, but what it really does is roll back progress on protecting the public from serious and sometimes fatal diseases such as salmonella.
Read more
In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially banned the use of antibiotics on CAFOs for the purpose of growth promotion and now requires a veterinary prescription for antibiotics on the farms. CAFOs saw little ramifications from the ban, which allows them to continue dispensing antibiotics as usual for purposes of disease prevention. In all, an estimated 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the U.S. are used by industrial agriculture, with industry veterinarians continuing to support their everyday use.
Read more
Missouri farmer Wes Shoemyer worries that the state law protecting his crops from the herbicide dicamba will come under threat if legislation that Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced for inclusion in the 2018 Farm Bill gains traction in Congress.
Read more- Page 1
- ››
for CAFOs vs. Free RangeVideos
![Food Inc - Official Trailer [HD]](https://www.organicconsumers.org/sites/default/files/styles/media_thumbnail/public/media-youtube/5eKYyD14d_0.jpg?itok=Eia50lcT)
Alerts
Downloads
Scientific Studies
SIGN UP FOR NEWS & ALERTS
Get Local
Cool the planet.
Feed the world.