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“That’s just the way things are.”  This adage is a common defense to help people deal with things that seem too far out of reach.

Consequently, “green” issues inspire responses such as, “I recycle.” Or, “We compost.” An oft forgotten but important environmental issue, however, is the impact of animal agriculture on our food security, our water, our land…and our health.

The current food production system is an extremely resource intensive one, where millions of animals are slaughtered to keep up the high demand of cheap meat. The industry is a slave to this demand, relying on traditional economies of scale and forgoing proper oversight. This results in meat contamination, manure runoff and inhumane slaughter, not to mention environmental destruction.

Did you know ”meat, egg, and milk production are responsible for an estimated 18%, or nearly one-fifth, of human-induced greenhouse gases,” according to a lengthy report produced by HSUS? The report goes on to say:

“The farm animal production sector is the single largest anthropogenic user of land, contributing to soil degradation, dwindling water supplies, and air pollution…The animal agriculture sector also encompasses feed grain production which requires substantial water, energy, and chemical inputs, as well as energy expenditures to transport feed, live animals, and animal products. All of this comes at a substantial cost to the environment.”

Much of the world’s grain feeds farmed animals, not humans. Thirty-percent of our land is used to service large-scale farm campuses, and it takes 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat! To put this into perspective, meat consumption totals about 8 ounces of meat per person, every day. Let’s not even talk about fecal contamination. Ok, let’s. The EPA reported farmed animal excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in the U.S.

Common environmental issues like climate change and droughts are intensified by industrial farming. When you factor in deforestation, chemical runoff, land degradation and loss of plant and animal diversity, it’s less easy to say, “That’s just the way things are.”

It’s time for us ordinary citizens to move towards more sustainable food production and operate our own green economy. It’s going to take a village to change the village’s structure. The first step is eliminating reliance on the factory farm system. Eat less meat. While you’re at it, get rid of dairy. (I know, everybody loves cheese. But seriously, you don’t need it.) The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2010) assesses “a substantial reduction of [environmental] impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.”

Animal agriculture, as it presently stands is not just unsustainable, it’s one of the most important issues to focus on for our environment. It’s going to take more than just a shift to sustainable meat-eating. Nurturing our diets with a variety of plant-based meals will have a positive impact on the environment.

“A global vegan diet (of conventional crops) would reduce dietary emissions by 87 percent, compared to a token 8 percent for ‘sustainable meat and dairy,’” wrote Freakonomics in “Agnostic Carnivores and Global Warming: Why Enviros Go After Coal and Not Cows.”

It can be done. Cape Town was the first city in Africa to officially endorse one meat-free day a week with help from the organization Compassion in World Farming. Change is hard, and helping the environment will involve restructuring our entire economy. This is not a job with a lot of applicants. It will take all of us.

This post is my entry to win a trip to Brazil for UNEP’s World Environment Day 2012. 

Image credit: Flickr Creative Commons, eioua

If you’re a regular reader here, I bet that you stay away from meat that’s produced by huge corporations or maybe you don’t eat meat or dairy at all, so you may not feel like you’ll get much from a video on conventional meat production. Why should you take the time, when you’re already doing what you can, right? I’m a big believer that knowledge is what makes us strong advocates for animal and farmer rights and a better food system.

The Farm Bill only gets revisited every 5 years, and Congress is working right now on the 2012 Farm Bill. The Farm Bill decides how hundreds of billions in crop subsidies will be distributed and is very influential in shaping our food system.

In this eye-opening TED Talk, Food & Water Watch’s Wenona Hauter talks about a side of meat production that most folks probably don’t know much about: contract farming. In contract situations, huge meat producers, like Tyson Chicken, contract with farmers to produce their meat. What happens, is that companies like Tyson make big profits while leaving the farmers in debt and responsible for the massive amounts of waste that factory farming creates. This talk is definitely worth the 11 minutes.

No wonder these farmers cram so many chickens into these spaces! If your livelihood depended on the weight of your product and was calculated by some secret formula behind closed doors, I bet you’d do whatever you could to support your family and pay your debts. I don’t think we can blame these farmers. What we can do is ask for a fair Farm Bill. One that puts growers first. It’s good for animals, good for farmers, and its’ good for the planet!

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by b3nscott

More on the trouble with the tomato industry: Tomatoland

Organic wine growers in the EU will be allowed to use the term “organic wine” on their labels.

According to Euroalert.net the Standing Committee on Organic Farming (SCOF) reached an agreement on new EU rules for “organic wine” labeling. Once the rules are published in the Official Journal in the coming weeks the term “organic wine” will be allowed to be used by organic wine growers on their labels. Furthermore, the labels must also show the EU-organic-logo and the code number of their certifier, and must respect other wine labeling rules.

In a newly released report, UCS makes the case that the biotech monolith’s advertising stands in marked contrast to observable sustainability problems caused by Monsanto’s products. Saying ‘Yay for Sustainable Agriculture!’ simply doesn’t cut it. The proof’s in the pudding, as they say– or rather, in the pesticides.

Sustainable agriculture should meet the following criteria:

• produce adequate amounts of food, over long periods of time
• preserve biodiversity and environmental quality
• protect farmers’ economic viability and life quality
• integrate natural biological cycles and controls, to limit pollution
• make the best use of nonrenewable resources

And these factors must be considered long-term rather than short-term pursuits.

The UCS argues that Monsanto’s products — and the overly aggressive marketing of these products, to the point of antitrust investigation — has failed to facilitate sustainable agricultural practices, and has instead actually slowed progress toward the goal of sustainable food production.

In their blistering report, the USC claims Monsanto has earned a sustainability ‘F’ at least eight times over, by

1. Promoting pesticide resistance among weeds and insects.

Glyphosate-resistant weeds now infest millions of acres of U.S. cropland…

These “superweeds” are causing huge problems for U.S. farmers, especially in the Southeast (but also spreading in the Midwest), where some of these weeds cannot be effectively or economically controlled. The impact on cotton production has led one scientist to compare a glyphosate-resistant weed to the notorious boll weevil, which devastated cotton production across the American South in the 1920s.

In response, farmers are increasing their overall herbicide use (see #2) and in some cases, returning to heavy tillage (plowing), which can increase soil erosion—thus reducing two of the sustainability benefits claimed for the Roundup Ready system.

2. Increasing herbicide use, with ever-escalating pollution from glyphosate and other even harsher (and more volatile) toxins.

…the number and extent of resistant weeds have increased dramatically over the past decade. At the same time, some Roundup-susceptible weeds have been replaced by weeds inherently less easy to control with glyphosate. The result has been an increase in overall herbicide use—recently estimated at about 383 million pounds higher than would have been the case without Roundup Ready crops.

3. Genetic contamination of non-target organisms.

The history of genetically engineered crops shows that it is not a matter of whether they will contaminate other farmers’ crops, but when and how much. Monsanto jeopardizes the future of the fast-growing non-GE and organic food sectors—and the environmental benefits they provide—by threatening the purity of their products through gene contamination.

n a 2004 pilot study, UCS tested samples of conventional (non-GE) corn, soy, and canola seed and found low-level but pervasive contamination with DNA derived from GE varieties. Some 50 percent of the corn and soybean samples and more than 80 percent of the canola samples were contaminated, with Monsanto’s genes detected in all three crops.

4. Expanding reliance on monocultures of a small number of commodity crops, decreasing biodiversity.

Large-acreage field crops—corn, cotton, soybeans, canola, and now alfalfa—make up the bulk of Monsanto’s products, in part because of the high cost of developing engineered traits. And the approach to agriculture that this product line encourages—monoculture, the production of only one crop in a field year after year—is not a sustainable one.

5.  Marginalizing alternatives.

Monsanto’s single-minded emphasis on GE fixes for farming challenges may come at the expense of cheaper, more effective solutions… Monsanto’s extensive advocacy of engineered crops marginalizes [approaches such as classical breeding, cover cropping, and crop rotation] despite their lower cost for purchased inputs like fertilizer and pesticides and their often superior results. A recent industry-sponsored survey found that the average cost for developing a new engineered trait is about $136 million, while a typical classically-bred trait in corn has been estimated to cost just $1 million.

6. Lobbying and advertising. Monsanto routinely applies its practically limitless bankroll to food policy manipulation, in ways that at best fail to support sustainability goals and at worst — more often — actively thwart them.

In 2008—the last year a federal Farm Bill was negotiated—the company reported a whopping $8.8 million in lobbying expenditures (see table below)intended to influence decisions in Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies.

Quarterly disclosure reports filed with Congress show that Monsanto’s lobbyists worked to:

• Push through a short-lived crop insurance program called theBiotechnology Yield Endorsement, which provided cut-rate USDA-backed crop insurance to farmers who planted specific genetically engineered varieties of corn developed and sold by Monsanto.
• Defeat or weaken a patent reform effort in Congress.
• Protect Monsanto and other biotechnology companies from liability when their patented genescontaminate non-GE farmers’ crops.
• Prevent labeling of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormones on milk packaging.
• Enable further agribusiness consolidation, which could allow Monsanto to further reduce already poor competition for seed sales, leading to higher prices and even fewer choices of non-engineered seeds.

7. Suppressing research. Farmers and policy makers can’t make informed decisions about sustainable practices without unbiased research, which Monsanto has limited and suppressed at virtually every opportunity.

n 2009, 26 academic entomologists wrote to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that because patents on engineered genes do not provide for independent non-commercial research, they could not perform adequate research on these crops. “No truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions involving these crops,” they wrote.

A Purdue University entomologist who signed the letter put it more succinctly to a reporter for a scientific journal: “Industry is completely driving the bus.”

8. Falling short on its promise to decrease world hunger.

The vision of “sustainable” agriculture proposed by Monsanto includes high-tech seeds, reduced tillage, and GPS-guided precision application of fertilizers.

This prescription was written for the large industrial monocultures of the midwestern United States. This approach is likely to remain highly dependent on fossil fuel-based fertilizer and pesticides at the expense of regional biodiversity. And because it is very capital- and machinery-intensive, it is not viable for many small, poor farmers around the world.

On the other hand, data show that small farms can be more productive per acre than large ones on an overall (rather than single-crop) basis. In addition, many agroecological approaches outperform more expensive GE approaches…

Sorry, Monsanto: you’re going to have to do more than just talk about sustainability! Let’s see you buckle down and apply yourself: if you can bring these grades up, fine. If not… well, let’s just say some of us wouldn’t mind seeing you expelled for bad behavior!

Image credit: Creative Commons photo by SierraTierra.

Midwestern hog farmers have been experiencing problems with exploding manure pits for a few years now, according to the Minnesota Daily. Basically, foam began inexplicably building on top of pig manure pits. This foam traps in methane gas, and if a spark nears it, the pit explodes, taking barns and pigs with it.

According to the article, roughly a half dozen barns have exploded since 2009. This isn’t just any foam, ladies and gentlemen. It can reach heights of 4 feet! University of Minnesota researchers are now attempting to find a solution. One researcher, Chuck Clanton, thinks “a new set of [bacteria] species has formed in these pits in the last few years.”

Grist wrote an article suggesting ”manure is stored underneath the barn before transfer to those notorious manure lagoons.” Well, that sounds sanitary. Additionally, “the routine practice of feeding pigs dried distillers grains, a byproduct of ethanol production” could be another possible cause for this flammable foam. These grains are industrial waste, and are full of antibiotics which are pumped into farmed pigs to keep them healthy in their…pigsties. Hog farmers may be worrying about their barns and their profits, but what about the poor pigs? And what about the millions of Americans who consume meat that is exposed to antibiotic-filled pig poop?

The issue seems to have left researchers and farmers perplexed. “It’s very frustrating when you have two identical buildings sitting next to each other with same management, genetics, diets, etc. One foams, and the other does not,” Clanton said. But one clear finger to point seems to be at the factory farm system and the blatant lack of oversight into the living conditions of the animals raised for food. However, changing the system is not an easy task. The Minnesotan economy is deeply tied to pork production, necessitating mass output. (That’s their rationale anyway). “Pork farmers earned $2.1 billion in gross income from hog sales in 2010,” according to the Minnesota Pork Board. But, when does profit mean more than health and safety?

Image Credit: Creative Commons from photoverulam.

Gross. One more knock against the chicken industry, it came out in Meatingplace magazine that 80 percent of poultry growers NEVER sanitize their crates. Ever.

First, I take issue with the fancy wordplay calling those who pump millions of chickens through the factory farm system “poultry growers,” though that’s a common PR move. Those are live chickens, not crops.

Back to cleaning crates. Imagine the carrier you use to transport your dog to and from the vet. Then imagine never, ever washing it. Not after he uses the bathroom, not after he vomits a little antibiotic, not after he gets muddy from playing at the dog park. Never. Oh and imagine your dog never leaves his crate for his entire life. Then multiply that by 9 billion.

“The [poultry] industry raises 9 billion birds in sheds the size of 1.5 football fields (about 450 feet) lengthwise and 40 feet wide. These factory-style facilities hold as many as 20,000 chickens, with enough space to offer each about a letter-size piece of paper’s worth by the time they reach market size. Naturally, such conditions—along with the industry’s zeal to get birds to fatten as quickly as possible—leads to all manner of injury and disease.” – Mother Jones, from the Humane Society of the United States

But there’s a little more at stake than just EXTREMELY dirty birds. Let’s factor in, on top of the birds who’ve been rolling around in their own fecal matter, inducing a high probability for the spread of salmonella and ecoli, these birds, because of their horrifically terrible living conditions, are pumped full of antibiotics in order to keep them alive just long enough to kill them, and to make sure they are plump enough to appease America’s appetite. So all this bacteria floating around is a perfect experiment to see just how long it might take for them to become resistant to antibiotics.

Basically, these are some prime situations for humans to get sick, but not be able to be treated for any illness which may occur. And millions of birds have to suffer in the process.

Bon appetit!

How about an alternative?

Image Credit: Creative Commons user nist6ss