Alright kids, who here knows what a CAFO is? I’m assuming at least a third but for overview:

A CAFO is a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) different from just a regular animal feeding operation (AFO) as the operation confines animals for more than 45 days during a growing season, in an area that does not produce vegetation, that meets certain size thresholds.

These already sound like a disaster based off of the 3 qualifications that define them especially when putting together “confined animals” and “no vegetation”. Of the approximate 257,000 AFOs in the United States, 15,000 of those meet the narrowed criteria of a CAFO. These CAFOs house up to thousands of domesticated food animals which does not make the living conditions for them very hospitable. In fact, a percentage of animals kept in CAFOs die before they are even mature enough to be used for product use (killed anyway for meat).

Have any of you ever seen that chicken farm documentary in high school? I’m like positive I’ve seen it on like 3 separate occasions in health class and environmental science and for an English project… the point is that the operations that are being viewed in videos like that are CAFOs. I know in some documentaries, the owners don’t let filmers take video of the animals because what they are doing should be illegal.

But what makes such things environmental hazards? These operations aren’t just morally wrong, they’re hazardous to our health and environment. They are extremely unsanitary. All those animals that poop every day have nowhere to do their business except for the confines in which they are being kept. Not only that but water runoff takes this excrement to streams and rivers and poisons aquatic life and the water itself. Water runoff is also contaminated by nutrients, fertilizers, and pathogens from fields and storage compartments.

It is also very easy to spread pathogens in these CAFOs. One hen gets sick, and then all 125,000 hens get sick and that meat from them is no longer safe for us humans to consume. Mostly because their areas are so unsanitary, it’s almost impossible for an animal to stay healthy, whether that be immune system health or their physical health.

By physical health, I mean the fact that all animals today are genetically modified. Now don’t go thinking GMOs are some evil, they are not. Every dog breed of today is genetically modified. But these livestock and poultry animals are modified to be bigger and more savory for people to eat, and that does not do anything nice for the animals were are not supposed to live like that. They grow bigger but their bone structures are not modified to accommodate for the extra weight. And like I said, GMOs are not some evil, dog breeds of today also have intense health issues because people thought it was cool to play God and make these animals look more appealing with interbreeding and now some can’t function correctly because they are not supposed to look like that.

Anyway, these are environmentally unsavvy for the animals and for water circulation, but I said in the beginning of my blog stream that most everything can lead back to being problematic in the issue of global warming. And cows are nothing short of that.

CAFOs release several types of gases such as ammonia, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. All of which have various health risks. But one stands out among the rest… methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that actually comes from the manure that is used in CAFOs and comes out of cattle. Livestock operation are accountable for 17% of greenhouse emissions globally and cattle industries contribute nearly 30% of anthropogenic methane production. If the levels of greenhouse gases emitted by CAFOs continues to increase with the amount of livestock (which continually increases because of the huge demand for meat products all the time), global methane production is predicted to increase 60% in less than 15 years.

CAFOs are no joke, they harm animals, people, and the environment.. so why are they still around, why are they legal? Well, for one, there really is no other way to mass produce meat at the level that it is demanded. Unless 80% of the world suddenly became vegetarian, there is no other way to supply all the meat needed to sustain the world’s population. Obviously, there are nicer ways to care for animals of slaughter, but that is much much more expensive and much much less rewarding in its ability to sustain a population. There’s basically no other way to get it done, unfortunately.

Here’s some pictures to share to support how bad CAFOs are 🙂