Farming is no longer the picturesque family-run business of livestock grazing in green pastures against the backdrop of the familiar red barn. In the past century, there has been a significant change in the way food is produced. Factory farming, an industrialized operation involving the mass-production of livestock and the overuse of antibiotics and growth hormones, is contributing to a decline in human health. Because of the health implications stemming from the prevalence of factory farming in modern America, education programs to raise public awareness, starting at a young age, and stronger government regulations are needed to protect both animals and humans. 

To fully grasp the shift from traditional farming practices to factory farming, it is necessary to look as far back as when America was first colonized. When the European settlers came to America, they discovered it was filled with an abundance of wildlife including fish, swine, and birds. It was uncommon in Europe to encounter such abundant sources of meat and, consequently, non-royals normally only ate meat once a week (Kirby 4). With the settlers’ newfound ease of access to food sources, Americans’ obsession with meat was born. Having animals, such as cows or pigs, became equivalent to having wealth in the new America. “In Maryland in the late 1600s, one cow and a calf carried as much monetary value as six or seven hundred pounds of tobacco.” (Kirby 2) This was great for small family farms because it took minimal labor to raise an animal versus the large workforce needed to grow tobacco or rice. In fact, the term “livestock” was coined during this time period in America. In Europe, “stock” typically meant wealth or money, but in America the animals were equated to wealth so they became known as “livestock.” 

In the 1900s, the meat production industry began to flourish, especially in the Midwest. With better shipping methods, such as the expanding railway system, it became much easier to transport the livestock making it even more profitable than it had been in the past. The cause of rising food prices in the early 1900s was due to the mass consumption of meat and the industry’s inability to keep up with the demand for it.  America’s involvement in WWI caused to rise even higher.  The public was so outraged that there were riots in many cities and Congress was forced to hold hearings on the subject but concluded it was an issue of supply and demand that caused prices to rise.  In the 1920s, factory farms began to emerge as a way to raise large quantities of chickens that could be sold at a lower price. 

In 1930, America took another huge leap towards modern factory farming, when a man named Jesse Jewell created a system that produced maximum profits quickly. He turned his small business into a factory farm over the span of thirty years. What really set his business apart was the production of ready-made frozen foods that were known as convenience foods. He was the first to do this on a mass scale and this would forever change the market. In the 1950s, a new discovery would have one of the greatest impacts on meat production. Vitamin B-12, manufactured from the residue of the antibiotic Aureomycin, not only improved animal health but also acted as a super accelerant. “Animals that ate it grew as much as 50 percent faster than animals fed B12 extracted from liver.” (Kirby 111) Farmers began lacing feed with antibiotics because, if an animal grows at a faster rate, it means a quicker turnover rate which leads to a bigger profit. This discovery led to the use of a multitude of antibiotics in farming which would later lead to serious consequences. 

Looking back on how factory farming techniques evolved, a pattern can be seen. Every time there is an advancement that leads to more profitability, America moves further and further away from traditional farming practices. Although these practices can be more profitable, they can be detrimental to human health. The greatest way factory farming affects human health is through the use of antibiotics. Antibiotics are given to the animals not only to treat illness but also for “nontherapeutic purposes, such as disease prevention and growth promotion.” (Holtcamp 1) The overuse of antibiotics in farming has led to strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria, sometimes called “superbugs”. Lance Price, a public health professor at George Washington University, explained in his Ted Talk that humans and animals both have live bacteria in their gut and, when they are consistently given antibiotics, the bacteria in their gut becomes antibiotic resistant. The animals’ antibiotic resistant strains are not confined strictly to the livestock but are passed on to humans through consumption of the animal, runoff from their manure into water supplies, tainted fertilizer, and occupational exposure. “Infections from common antibiotic-resistant foodborne bacteria, such as Salmonella, can cause more severe health outcomes than infections with bacteria that are not resistant to antibiotics.” (“National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for Enteric Bacteria” 1)  According to the World Health Organization, new strains of bacteria are developing at a faster rate than scientist can formulate new antibiotics that can kill them. A number of common antibiotics are becoming ineffective at an alarming rate due to overuse. If the overuse continues, it will render common necessary antibiotics, such as penicillin, useless for future generations.

One of the most popular ways animals are given these antibiotics is through medicated feed. Typically, a free choice feed system is used which means the food is left out for the animals and they can eat as much or as little as they like. Therefore, there is no set dose of medication each animal is receiving. “The FDA has approved 685 drugs for medicated feed, some of which are consumed on a free-choice basis.” (Love et al. 1) This means that there are 685 drug resistance causing substances legally being given to livestock everyday. In the same article the FDA reports that 13.1 million kg of antimicrobial drugs were sold or distributed for use in food-producing animals in 2009, and many of the antibiotics in industrial food animal production are also used to treat infections in humans. Since it is free choice, over and under administration of the medications are common which can lead to a number of issues. To high of a dose can lead to animal toxicity and the presence of drug residues in meat and milk. Whereas “under administration may lead to animal treatment failure, or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of microorganisms in food animals.” (Love et al. 1) These side effects make the practice of giving animals the power to choose their own daily dose of antibiotics very risky. 

Another issue with medicated feed is that animals normally only absorb about 25% of the antibiotics they are given while the remainder is released in waste. That waste will become runoff that can infect water sources with drugs harming the environment and humans. Runoff from factory farms is a huge problem that environmentalist and our public health professionals are facing today. Livestock are commonly given growth hormones so that animals grow at a significantly faster rate than normal. On factory farms, it is common that crop fields will be treated with livestock manure as a fertilizer. “Ninety-six percent of cattle in U.S. factory farms receive steroid hormone treatments.” (Biswas et al. 1) That means that the vast majority of manure being used in crop fields also contain hormones. When it rains, surface runoff from the crop fields can transport the hormones into water resources harming aquatic life and potentially making the water toxic. An example of this happened in Iowa in 2013. Hormel’s spam plant in Minnesota was trying to move into China’s grocery stores ahead of a big competitor so they were in a rush to start producing larger quantities of spam. The supplier for this increased production would be New Fashion Pork in Iowa. Since New Fashion Pork would now need to increase their production, more pigs were required than every before which consequently meant more manure. New Fashion has huge concrete enforced pits under their pigs to catch manure to prevent leaching into soil. The resulting contamination was due to farmers using it as fertilizer for the millions of acres of corn fields that were planted to use as food for the new hog population. Then in July of 2013, a drought that had been going on for quite some time ended. With the increase in rainfall, manure contamination in the area’s rivers reached levels higher than ever seen before. At its peak, “nitrate in the Raccoon reached 240 percent of the level allowed under the Clean Water Act, and the DMWW warned parents not to let children drink from the tap, reminding them of the risk of blue baby syndrome. (Nitrate impairs the oxygen capacity of the bloodstream; in babies and toddlers the syndrome can effectively cut off their air supply, rendering them a deathly blue)” (Genoways 1). The runoff was unfortunately not the only problem. The gases that came off of the fertilizer caused air pollution problems. “A report published jointly by the University of Iowa and Iowa State University in 2002 concluded that air pollution from large-scale confinements ‘may constitute a public health hazard,’ explaining that the problem did not arise primarily from the containment of manure in waste pits but from its application aboveground as fertilizer. (The report attributed fully 80 percent of hazardous gas release to the first six hours after this was done)” (Genoways 1). Similar cases throughout North America are becoming increasingly common. 

The younger a consumer is taught how to eat healthy nutritious foods the more likely they are to stick with those habits through out their life. This is important because these children will one day be choosing how America’s food will be produced and regulated. There have been many examples recently of how teaching young children to pay attention to what they put in their bodies is beneficial. Japan is an excellent example of this. They have one of the top school lunch programs in the world, along with one of the highest life expectancy rates and lowest obesity rates. In Japan, “Beginning in elementary school, kids come to understand that what you put into your body matters a great deal in how you think and feel throughout the day - and how you go about your life.” (Weller 1) A typical school lunch in Japan consists of a well-balanced and nutritious meal of soup, rice, vegetables, and meat. "Japan's standpoint is that school lunches are a part of education," states Masahiro Oji, a government director of school health education. (Weller 1)  Some school districts in the US are following Japan’s example and making school lunches a priority and a learning opportunity such as “The Healthy Schools Campaign, Chicago, Illinois: Over 350,000 students in Chicago public schools eat healthier food thanks to the Healthy Schools Campaign. Produce is regionally grown, and chicken is raised without antibiotics in nearby Indiana.” Also “Shelby County Nutrition Services, Tennessee: Over 110,000 students are served breakfast and lunch daily at Shelby County Public Schools, where Nutrition Services focuses on providing nutritious, healthy food to improve educational achievements. Nutrition Services are connected with the Farm to School Movement, which aims to serve healthy meals in school cafeterias, provide agriculture and nutrition education, improve student nutrition, and support local and regional farms.” (Nelson et al. 1) These school programs popping up in schools across the country are important because public education, especially of the next generation, is the first step to improving health through safer farming practices. 

Along with educating the public, factory farming needs to be more regulated in America to make it safer for consumers. Even though America is the second largest producer of meat in the world, we have significantly fewer regulations on how meat is produced than most developed countries. For instance in 2006, the European Union banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in feed. The ban was the last step for the EUs plan to phase out all antibiotics for nonmedical use. The Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, Markos Kyprianou, explained why the European Union chose to ban nonmedical antibiotics. “This ban on antibiotics as growth promoters is of great importance, not only as part of the EU’s food safety strategy, but also when considering public health. We need to greatly reduce the non-essential use of antibiotics if we are to effectively address the problem of micro-organisms becoming resistant to treatments that we have relied on for years. Animal feed is the first step in the food chain, and so a good place to take action in trying to meet this objective.” (European Commission 1) The European Union put an end to the use of growth promoting antibiotics because they saw early on the health problems they were causing in people. If the antibiotics being used were hurting Europeans, and America is still using the same antibiotics, than they must be hurting us, too. One of the main arguments against regulating the use of growth promoting antibiotics, as the Europeans did, is that without them we would not be able to produce enough meat to supply the U.S population. Critics such as Curt Zingula  (a Line County farmer) argue that “factory farms are crucial due to the population increase.” (Zingula 1) He believes that they are the only way to be able to produce enough food to meet the need. By looking at the European Unions success with banning the growth antibiotics, it can be seen that they are still able to meet the population’s need for meat without resorting to dangerous growth antibiotics.  If they are able to feed their 510.3 million citizens, we should be able to feed our 326.4 million with out the use of growth antibiotics. 

Due to public pressure, the FDA has released some new guidelines for administrating antibiotics to livestock. The “New Animal Drugs and New Animal Drug Combination Products Administered in or on Medicated Feed or Drinking Water of Food-Producing Animals: Recommendations for Drug Sponsors for Voluntarily Aligning Product Use Conditions with GFI #209 (Guidance #213), provides guidance for drug companies to voluntarily revise the FDA-approved labeled use conditions to (a) remove the use of antimicrobial drugs for production purposes; (b) add, where appropriate, scientifically-supported disease treatment, control or prevention uses; and (c) change the marketing status from over-the-counter to Veterinary Feed Directive for drugs administered through feed or to prescription status for drugs administered through water in order to provide for veterinary oversight or consultation.” (FDA 1) These new guidelines are a step in the right direction towards making factory farming safer but do not completely solve the problem. While this will hopefully decrease the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic reasons, it does not completely stop the use of growth antibiotics in factory farming. Essentially the drugs are still legal to give to the animals with approval by a veterinarian. 

Two of the simplest yet most effective ways to promote safer farming practices are by educating the public and stricter regulations on factory farming. The two correlate with each other. Educating the public, especially children beginning at a young age, is the first step because people have to be aware that there is an issue in order to want to change it. Once people are aware that there are health risks, they typically will standup and insist the threat be eliminated. This can be done by creating stricter laws and regulations to phase out the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics and hormones in farming. Because of the health implications stemming from the prevalence of factory farming in modern America, education programs to raise public awareness, starting at a young age, and stronger government regulations will lead to the protection of animals and humans. 
