By Zack Brown
Farms where cows get to roam in open fields are becoming harder to find today. Experts say that factory farming is causing big problems for a lot of local ranches.
Since the 1960’s, livestock farms have been increasingly industrialized. Many smaller farms have found themselves pushed out of business by larger companies. Small farms today make up just 0.1% of all farmland in the U.S.
According to a sentience institute report, almost 99% of all livestock are raised in factories today.
“In the U.S., 121 million pigs are killed every day,” said Matt Zampa, Sentient Media.
Several counties in Florida are listed as having extreme livestock density of over 13,000 animals by the Food and Water Watch. Two percent of farms produce 40% of all cattle. Over 70% of cows are factory farmed.
The ranchers aren’t the only ones suffering though. Experts say that the animals are kept in far worst conditions in factory farms. The animals are often mutilated to prevent them from harming each other due to stress from being kept in such poor conditions. Poultry beaks are often removed to prevent pecking and pig teeth and tails are often removed.
With barely enough room to move at times these animals are unable graze and are sometimes fed their own kind as food.
“Broiler chickens are subject to accelerated growth which essentially means they get so heavy they can’t get up and can’t walk around,” Zampa explained.
Sometimes though, chickens aren’t even fed for up to 14 days to force them to molt. Despite these terrible conditions, little is being done to combat these companies, or raise quality of life for the livestock being raised there.
Many Americans are unaware of the conditions of livestock in the factories and that’s not a coincidence. Factory farms have made a huge effort to keep these large-scale farms out of the spotlight. Meat consumption was on the decline until 2014, but then started to increase again, greenwashing their products with images of happy cows while inside the factories they are suffering.
With over 27 billion pounds of meat consumed in 2019, factory farming is seeing no shortage in demand. Florida’s primary livestock factory farms include dairy farms, chicken, and egg farms.
