During the past 50 years, livestock industries have surged in one country after another as soaring grain yields made feeding animals on corn and barley relatively inexpensive, and intensive, specialized meat, egg, and dairy farms proliferated. In much of the world, meat consumption is rising steadily.

The factory-style livestock industries, now firmly entrenched in industrial countries, have environmental side-effects that stretch along the production line--from growing the vast quantities of feed grain to disposing of the mountains of manure. Worldwide, large livestock populations emit the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

Livestock create an array of problems not because cows, pigs, and chickens are hazards in themselves, but because human institutions have driven some forms of animal farming out of alignment with the ecosystems in which they operate. Many governments--including those of China, the European Community, and the United States--subsidize ecologically harmful methods of growing feed crops and raising animals.

Livestock Economy (excerpt):

At a global level, the primary goal of raising livestock is to produce meat, milk, and eggs. Meat has always been popular among those able to afford it, and over the centuries that group has swelled. More than a billion people now consume at least a kilogram (2.2 lbs.) a week. In the case of the world's premier meat-eating country, the United States, per-capita consumption is more than 2 kilograms a week. (USDA FAS 1991; Bailey 1990)

Meat consumption per person around the world ranges from a high of 112 kilograms a year in the United States to a low of 2 kilograms in India. The modern demand for meat can no longer be sustained by traditional livestock production systems, which integrated animals with crops. Outside the world's grasslands, most ruminant (cud-chewing) animals such as cattle and sheep traditionally ate grass and crop wastes on farms. Pigs and fowl, which cannot digest grass, subsisted on crop wastes, kitchen scraps, and whatever else they could find. In either case, domestic animals turned things that people could not eat into things people could.

To raise meat output, livestock producers have adopted new, intensive rearing techniques relying on grains and legumes to feed their animals. For example, farmers have moved nearly all of the pigs and poultry in industrial countries into giant indoor feeding facilities. There, they eat carefully-measured rations of energy-rich grain and protein-rich soybean meal. Cattle everywhere still spend most of their time dining outdoors, although beef producers--particularly in the United States, but also in Russia, South Africa, and Japan--supplement that roughage with grain in the months before slaughter. By contrast, Australian and South American cattle graze their entire lives, while European beef comes mostly from dairy herds, which eat less grain than American beef herds. (Bishop et al. 1989; Hahn et al. 1990)

Large areas of the world's cropland now produce grains for animals. Wealthy meat-consuming regions dedicate the largest shares of their grain to fattening livestock, while the poorest regions use the least grain as feed. In the United States, for example, animals account for 70 percent of domestic grain use, while India and sub-Saharan Africa offer just 2 percent of their cereal harvest to livestock. (USDA FAS 1991)

The expansion of the livestock economy has become the most dramatic change in world agriculture in recent decades. Factory-style production facilities have sprung up in much of the world, capitalizing on grain surpluses, advanced production technologies, and a global growing class of consumers rich enough to eat meat regularly. But abundance in the world's butcher shops has its costs--many of which are currently billed to the Earth.

Livestock Ecology (excerpt):

"An alien ecologist observing...earth might conclude that cattle is the dominant animal species in our biosphere," writes University of Georgia biologist David Hamilton Wright. Cattle and other ruminant livestock such as sheep and goats graze one-half of the planet's total land area. Ruminants, along with pigs and poultry, also eat feed and fodder raised on one-fourth of the cropland. Ubiquitous and familiar, livestock exert a huge, and largely unrecognized, impact on the global environment. (Wright 1990; BOSTID, NRC 1990; USDA FAS 1989)

Ecological burdens result from both modern, intensive livestock production methods--such as chicken and pig feeding houses and beef feedlots--and extensive forms--such as ranching and pastoralism. The environmental effects of intensive livestock operations run from grain fields to manure piles. And unsustainable grazing and ranching patterns of impoverished and affluent regions alike sacrifice forests, drylands, and wild species. Multiple forces have disturbed traditional pastoralists' ecologically sound livestock systems, leaving herders to crowd with their animals in areas where the land is quickly laid to waste.

The concentrated feeding facilities of the industrial and newly industrializing countries use vast quantities of grain and soy, along with the energy, water, and agricultural chemicals that farmers use to grow these crops. Pork production absorbs more grain worldwide than any other meat industry, followed by poultry production. Together they account for at least two-thirds of feed grain consumption. Dairy and beef cattle consume much of the remaining third. (Fitzhugh et al. 1978; FAO 1985, 1988, 1989)

The efficiency with which livestock industries turn feed into meat, milk, and eggs varies among the different types of animals and different countries. The United States, one of the more efficient livestock producers, uses 6.9 kilograms of corn and soy to put one kilogram of pork on the table. Because they graze until the last 100 days of their lives, U.S. beef cattle consume less grain and soy than pigs, gaining about three-fourths of their weight from grass, hay, and other fodder. Grain use declines from beef to cheese to chicken to eggs. Farmers in other countries, notably Russia, are less efficient, and use more grain for each unit of meat, milk, or eggs--twice as much in the case of chicken. (Cattle-Fax, Inc. 1989; Bishop et al. 1989)

Other resources add to the livestock and feed industry's environmental tab, such as the fossil fuels used to supply feed grain. Including fuel for powering farm machinery and for manufacturing fertilizers and pesticides, feed grain turns out to be an energy-intensive product. US corn fields--producing mostly feed--alone consume about 40 percent of the country's nitrogen fertilizer, along with more total herbicides and insecticides than any other crop. (Hallberg 1989; Conservation Foundation 1986)

Cornell University's David Pimentel, a specialist in agricultural energy, estimates that 30,000 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy are used to produce a kilogram of pork in the United States--equivalent to the energy in almost 4 liters of gasoline. Energy use, like grain consumption, declines from pork to eggs. All told, almost half of the energy used in American agriculture goes into the livestock sector, and producing the red meat and poultry eaten each year by a typical American uses the equivalent of 190 liters of gasoline. (Pimentel 1991; Pimentel et al. 1980; Pimentel & Pimentel 1979; Fluck & Baird 1980; Duewer 1991)

Feed-grain farming guzzles water, too. In California, now the United States' leading dairy state, livestock agriculture consumes nearly one-third of all irrigation water. Similar figures apply across the western United States, including areas using water from dwindling aquifers. The beef feedlot center of the nation--Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Texas panhandle--relies on crops raised with water pumped out of an underground water source called the Ogallala aquifer, portions of which have been severely depleted. With half of the grain and hay fed to American beef cattle growing on irrigated land, water inputs for beef production mount. More than 3,000 liters of water are used to produce a kilogram of American beef. (Reisner & Bates 1990; Sweeten 1990; Weeks et al. 1988; Oltjen 1991; Ward, Dept. Animal Sciences)

The millions of tons of animal waste that accumulate at modern production facilities can pollute rivers and groundwater if precautions are not taken. If they get into rivers or open bodies of water, nitrogen and phosphorus in manure over-fertilize algae, which grow rapidly, deplete oxygen supplies, and suffocate aquatic ecosystems. From the hundreds of algae-choked Italian lakes to the murky Chesapeake Bay, and from the oxygen-starved Baltic Sea to the polluted Adriatic Sea, animal wastes add to the nutrient loads from fertilizer runoff, human sewage, and urban and industrial pollution. (Flavin 1989; Baker & Horton 1990; Hagerman 1990; Lenssen 1989)

Manure nitrogen, mixed with nitrogen from artificial fertilizers, also percolates through the soil into underground water tables as nitrates. These substances can cause nervous system impairments, cancer, and methemoglobinemia, or "blue baby" syndrome, a rare but deadly malady afflicting infants. Nitrate contamination is pervasive in Western Europe, from Spain to Denmark, and is apparently widespread in Eastern Europe as well. An official Czechoslovakian report speaks of a "nitrate cloud" contaminating groundwater under agricultural land. In the United States, roughly one-fifth of the wells in livestock states such as Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska have nitrate levels that exceed health standards. (WHO guidelines 1984; Jorgensen 1989; others)

Extensive livestock production, like modern intensive production, has environmental side effects. Many of the world's rangelands, covering one-third of the Earth's land surface, bear the scars of improper livestock management: proliferating weeds, depleted soils, and eroded landscapes. In Africa, swelling human populations, shrinking rangeland, the collapse of traditional systems of range management, and misdirected development policies have conspired to concentrate cattle around water sources and towns, degrading the land. Elsewhere, many arid rangelands suffer from overstocking and mismanagement, while ranching in the tropical regions of Latin America--fostered by subsidies and land speculation--depletes forests and soils.

Cattle play a prominent role in global desertification--the reduction of dryland's ecological productivity. The process, however, is far more complex and varied than the word "desertification," conjuring images of sand dunes swallowing the range, implies. Initially, cattle overgraze perennial grasses, allowing annual weeds and tougher shrubs to spread. This shift in species composition is the most prevalent form of range degradation. The new weeds anchor the topsoil poorly, and can leave it vulnerable to trampling hooves and the erosive power of wind and rain. Without the cover of perennial grasses, fires that naturally control bushes lose their tinder, so shrubs expand unchecked. As the variety of plant species dwindles, wildlife species also vanish. (Darnhofer 1991; BOSTID, NRC 1990; Coppock 1991)

Estimates by the United Nations Environment Program indicate that 73 percent of the world's 3.3 billion hectares of dry rangeland is at least moderately desertified, having lost more than 25 percent of its carrying capacity. But quantifying and evaluating degradation is complicated, and such estimates have been challenged. Some argue that calculations of the number of livestock a region can support are a poor indicator of degradation on Africa's arid rangelands because the environment is so drought-prone. They conclude that drought destroys the vegetation with or without cattle. Others point out that measuring degradation in drier areas by the presence of annual, rather than perennial, plants is misleading because annuals are native there. (Darnhofer, private communication; Ellis & Swift 1988; Mace 1990; Bartels 1991)

Although the environmental status of drier rangeland may defy simple quantification, there is little debate that degradation is occurring in environments where rainfall is more plentiful and regular. The perennial plants that flourish in these intermediate zones are easily disrupted by cattle; clay soils are easily compacted and rendered impervious to water; and rains often arrive in strong, sudden downpours, sluicing away soils destabilized by cattle. In addition, these areas can support crops, so farmers have crowded pastoralists and their herds onto smaller areas, accelerating degradation. (Coppock 1990)

Ranchers commonly overstock their land with cattle, leading to weed invasion and erosion. In the savannas of northern and central Mexico, livestock are stocked at nearly four times the land's carrying capacity. And wealthy nations are not immune from the effects of overgrazing on rangeland. Spain and Portugal still bear the scars of pro-sheep land policies that began hundreds of years ago. The western United States is likewise left with a sad legacy: The great cattle boom of the last century annihilated native mixed-grass ecosystems. And unsustainable practices--including overstocking and grazing cattle for too long in the same place--continue on much of the 110-million-hectare area of public land the federal government leases to ranchers. (Vera et al. 1984; World Resources Institute 1990-91; Pearson et al. 1991; Chaney et al. 1990; Wald & Alberswerth 1989)

The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which, along with the US Forest Service, is responsible for overseeing public grazing land, reported in 1990 that only 23 million hectares--33 percent of its holdings in the west--were in good or excellent condition. Other studies indicate that half of US rangeland is severely degraded, with its carrying capacity reduced by at least 50 percent, and that the narrow streambank habitats crucial to arid-land ecology are in the worst condition in history. (US Dept. Interior 1990; Chaney et al. 1990)

Damage to rangeland is only one measure of the destructiveness of current grazing patterns. Forests also suffer from livestock production, as branches are cut for fodder or entire stands are leveled to make way for pastures. The roster of impacts from forest clearing includes the loss of watershed protection, loss of plant and animal species, and on a larger scale, substantial contributions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Latin America has suffered the most dramatic forest loss due to inappropriate livestock production. Since 1970, farmers and ranchers have converted more than 20 million hectares of the region's moist tropical forests to cattle pasture. (Pearson et al. 1991)

Eradicating tree cover sets the wheels of land degradation in motion. Shallow, acidic, and nutrient-poor, tropical soils rapidly lose critical phosphorus and other nutrients when the forest is converted to pasture. To compensate for the fertility decline, ranchers often stock newly cleared land at four times the standard rate of of one cow per hectare, which accelerates erosion and the vegetative shift to annual weeds and shrubs. Stocking rates fall precipitously thereafter, and most pasture is abandoned for land newly carved from the forest. (Hecht 1990)

Where forests recede before advancing ranches, so too does the diversity of life. The tropical forests, covering under 7 percent of the earth's land area, contain perhaps half of the earth's species. A typical hectare in the Brazilian Amazon, for example, hosts 300 to 500 different species, plus mammals, birds, reptiles, and thousands of distinct types of insects and microorganisms, many of them unknown to science. (Wolf 1987; Hecht 1990; Uhl & Parker 1986)

Forest destruction for ranching also contributes to climate change. When living plants are cut down and burned, or when they decompose, they release carbon into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide traps the heat of the sun, warming the earth. In addition, livestock are a source of the second-most important greenhouse gas, methane. Ruminant animals release perhaps 80 million tons of the gas each year in belches and flatulence, while animal wastes at feedlots and factory-style farms emit another 35 million tons. In such operations, waste is commonly stored in the oxygen-short environments of sewage lagoons and manure piles, where methane forms during decomposition. Manure that falls in the fields, by contrast, decomposes without releasing methane because oxygen is present. Livestock account for 15 percent to 20 percent of global methane emissions--about 3 percent of global warming from all gases. (Pearson et al. 1991; Houghton et al. 1987; BP Statistical Review 1990; Marland et al. 1989)

From the most immediate impacts--nitrogen contamination and retreating grasses--to the most far-reaching--loss of species and climate change--current methods of rearing animals around the world take a large toll on nature. Overgrown and resource-intensive, animal agriculture is out of alignment with the Earth's ecosystems.

High meat consumption and the expanding use of grain as feed can cause damage in the human realm. Medically, nutritionists believe that a diet rich in animal products contributes to a variety of maladies. Economically, middle-income developing countries that have attempted to provide urban dwellers with cheap meat too often have given the rural landless short shrift, while devoting growing shares of trade earnings to pay for imported feed. And socially, modern grain-based livestock production has become a major industry controlled by a handful of firms--driving small producers out of the market.

The Great Protein Fiasco:

The adverse health impacts of excessive meat-eating stem in large part from what nutritionists call the "great protein fiasco"--a mistaken belief of many Westerners that they need to consume large quantities of protein. This myth, propagated as much as a century ago by health officials and governmental dietary guidelines, has resulted in Americans and other members of industrial societies ingesting twice as much protein as they need. Among the affluent, the protein myth is dangerous because of the saturated fats that accompany concentrated protein in meat and dairy products. Those fats are associated with most of the diseases of affluence that are among the leading causes of death in industrial countries: heart disease, stroke, and breast and colon cancer. (Lipton 1983; WHO 1990; Kummer 1991; Pimentel et al. 1991; NRC 1989)

The U.S. National Research Council, the US Surgeon General, the American Heart Association, and the World Health Organization are among the organizations now recommending low-fat diets. From the current US norm of 37 percent of calories from fats--typical for Western nations--they recommend lowering fat consumption to no more than 30 percent of calories. (NRC 1988; Byrne 1988)

Recent scientific findings indicate that even that level may be too high. One study of 88,000 American nurses found daily red-meat eaters are two-and-a-half times as likely to develop colon cancer as near-vegetarians. Based on these findings, Walter Willett, director of the study and a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, commented, "the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero." (Willett et al. 1990; Kolata 1990)

A Landmark Study of Diet and Health:

A landmark study of diet, lifestyle, and health in China--the largest such survey ever conducted--suggests that lowering fat consumption to 15 percent of calories prevents most cases of diseases of affluence. This study, known as the China Project, a joint effort of Chinese, British, and American institutions, tracked the diets of thousands of Chinese in dozens of countries. It showed that as fat consumption, protein consumption, and blood cholesterol levels rise, so does the incidence of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. (Junshi et al. 1990; Vines 1990)

Surprisingly, Chinese villagers on low-fat, low-meat diets also suffered less anemia (iron deficiency) and osteoporosis (a bone disease associated with calcium deficiency) than their urban compatriots eating more meat. Both conditions are commonly thought to result from a diet too low in animal products. Study co-leader Colin Campbell of Cornell University told the New York Times: "We're basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant foods and minimizing our intake of animal foods." (Junshi et al. 1990)

Squandering Resources:

If a diet rich in animal products is not an appropriate goal of public health policy, neither is it a wise development strategy. It creates dependence on imports for food and can widen the gap between rich and poor. Yet dozens of middle-income countries import livestock feed.

For a poor country where people eat few animal products, reaching self-sufficiency in food grains requires just 200 kilograms of cereals per person per year. But that number quickly rises when people switch from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one. Rapidly industrializing Taiwan, for instance, increased per-capita consumption of meat and eggs sixfold from 1950 to 1990. To produce those animal products required raising annual per-capita grain use in the country from 170 kilograms to 390 kilograms. Despite steadily growing harvests, Taiwan could only keep up with the demand for feed by turning to imports from abroad. In 1950 Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990, the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used. (Vocke 1986; Sarma 1986; Bailey 1990; USDA 1990)

Mainland Chinese are following the Taiwanese up the meat consumption ladder. Since 1978, when agricultural reforms boosted production, meat consumption has more than doubled to 24 kilograms. The growth has been particularly marked in cities, where the government has helped create pig and poultry plants using Western-style grain-feeding technology. Though the country's farmers have been able to grow sufficient feed grain for the swelling meat industry so far, few observers expect them to keep pace for much longer. The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990. (Bishop et al. 1989; Bailey 1980)

An Appetite For Economic Problems:

China's agricultural future may resemble that of the former Soviet Union, where rising meat consumption created economic problems. From 1950 to 1990, meat consumption tripled and feed consumption quadrupled. Use of grain for feed surpassed direct human consumption in 1964 and continued to rise. In 1990, Soviet livestock were eating three times as much grain as Soviet citizens. Grain imports had soared, going from near zero in 1970 to 24 million tons in 1990 (the world's second-largest grain importer). (USDA 1989,1990,1991)

In the Middle East and North Africa, grain-fed livestock operations are proliferating, boosting the demand for imported feed. The richest Middle Eastern countries match Western levels of meat consumption by depending heavily on imported feed and meat. Egypt, the poorest country in the region, is also a major grain importer, partly due to rising grain-fed meat consumption in the cities. Since 1970, grain imports have risen from near zero to 8 million tons per year. (USDA 1990)

Middle-income Arab nations, such as Syria, also have seen rising meat consumption and soaring feed demand. The area in Syria devoted to barley for feed increased from 300,000 hectares in 1950 to almost 3 million hectares in 1989. Much of the expansion occurred on the country's dry steppes, which are ecologically suited only for grazing. Farmers in traditional barley-growing areas, meanwhile, are heeding government advice to plow under soil-conserving fallow fields for continuous barley cropping. Yet neither the addition of new land nor the switch to single-crop production has sufficed to keep up with feed demand; Syria, in 1965 a barley exporter, now imports the cereal. (Treacher 1991; Cooper & Bailey 1991)

In other countries, the pattern is more complicated. Mexico, for example, despite its colossal debt burden, continues importing corn and sorghum. Indeed, Mexico generally imports between one-fourth and one-third of the grain it consumes. Imported sorghum is used as feed, while imported corn is used as food. But the need to import corn is partly a consequence of shifts in Mexican agriculture from growing corn to growing sorghum for feed. (Barkin & Dewalt 1988; USDA 1988)

What is true for many developing countries individually is also true of them collectively. On balance the Third World exported grain until the early sixties; by the late seventies, it was consistently importing cereals. The change came not from just growing populations but also from exploding livestock industries. The FAO reports that 75 percent of Third World imports of so-called coarse grains--corn, barley, sorghum, and oats--fed animals in 1981. Little has changed since. As US Department of Agriculture trade specialist Gary Vocke writes: "Imports of corn and sorghum [for feed] have outpaced domestic production, leading developing countries to a lower level of self-sufficiency--a trend that will accelerate as livestock feeding expands in the next 10 years. (USDA 1990)

Meat Consumption Among The Affluent, at the Expense of the Poor:

Higher meat consumption among the affluent frequently creates problems for the poor, as the share of farmland devoted to feed cultivation expands, reducing production of food staples. In economic competition for grain fields, the upper classes usually win. In Egypt, for example, over the past quarter-century, corn grown for animal feed has taken over cropland from wheat, rice, sorghum, and millet--all staple grains in Egypt. The share of grain fed to livestock rose from 10 percent to 36 percent. (Barkin et al. 1990; Barkin 1991)

Likewise, the area in Mexico planted to corn, rice, wheat, and beans, the staples of the Mexican poor, has declined steadily since 1965, while area planted to sorghum has grown phenomenally. From the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties, sorghum expanded from 2 percent of grain land to 16 percent, as corn fell from 83 percent of grain land to 69 percent. Sorghum, grown mostly on irrigated, mechanized commercial spreads, is now Mexico's second-ranking crop by area. The grain is used to raise chicken and pork for urban consumers. In total, Mexico feeds 30 percent of its grain to livestock, although 22 percent of the country's people suffer from malnutrition. (Barkin & DeWalt 1988)

The share of cropland growing animal feed and fodder in Mexico went from 5 percent in 1960 to 23 percent in 1980, a transformation agriculture analyst David Barkin of the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico City refers to as ganaderizacion ("livestockization") of the Mexican countryside. He sees the trend outside of Mexico as well. In Peru, for example, pastures have replaced potatoes, and feed corn has replaced staple corn. (Barkin & DeWalt 1988)

With two colleagues from the United States, Barkin examined agricultural developments in 24 Third World countries. They found clear evidence in 13 countries that farmers were switching from food crops to feed crops; in eight of them, farmers had shifted more than 10 percent of grain land out of food crops in the past 25 years. Worse, Barkin and his colleagues concluded that, at least where data were available--Brazil, Columbia, Egypt, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Venezuela--the demand for meat among the rich was squeezing out staple production for the poor. (Barkin et al. 1990)

Industrial Farming at the Expense of Small Farms:

Beyond its effect on food security for the poor, grain-fed intensive production--because it is essentially an industrial operation--tends to create inequities within agriculture. In traditional production, animals play an equalizing role in agriculture. Because grass, crop wastes, and other fodder are widely dispersed, they are best utilized by small farms. Indeed, in most developing countries animals are more evenly distributed among agricultural families than land. By contrast, ownership of grain-based livestock production tends to concentrate in ever-fewer hands, because grain readily lends itself to economies of scale. The larger the operation, the lower the overhead costs per animal, and the cheaper the product. (Lipton 1988)

In most countries, even as meat output rises, the number of livestock producers falls. Animal farms keep growing in size and dwindling in number. The number of Japanese pork and poultry firms fell by two-thirds between 1965 and 1987. Thailand's chicken industry made a similar transition in the first half of the seventies. Likewise, five firms control 75 percent of Brazil's commercial poultry production. (Bishop et al. 1989)

In the United States, where beef cattle are raised on grass for a year before going to the feedlot, the industry's profile reflects the concentrating power of grain feeding. More than a million farms and ranches raise young beef cattle, but four companies slaughter nearly 60 percent of them. Since 1962, the number of large American beef feedlots (those capable of holding 16,000 head of cattle) has risen from 23 to 189, while the number of small feedlots (those holding no more than 1000 head) has dropped by 117,000. The same pattern applies to the US pork and poultry industries. Together, three poultry companies now produce nearly 40 percent of broiler chickens, and the number of pig farms has declined by 85 percent since 1950. (ITC 1990; Charlier 1990; Martinez 1991)

The Sprawl of Animal Agriculture:

Ranch-based livestock production also fosters inequality between agriculturists in Latin America, where ranches expand at the expense of forests and arable land. Ranches create few jobs for this region's numerous jobless rural workers, employing just one person per 1,500 hectares on typical spreads in the Brazilian Amazon. Indeed, in Latin America, no other major type of agriculture enterprise creates fewer jobs per hectare than ranching. In Central America, ranchers have expanded not just into forests, but also into fertile land more appropriate for crops. In 1950, 35 percent of Costa Rica's arable farmland was in pasture; in the early nineties, the figure was 54 percent. As much as two-thirds of the rich farmland along the Pacific coastal strip of Central America is pasture. (Hecht 1990; Annis 1990; Leonard 1987)

The sweeping advance of ranching into forests in Latin America cannot be explained by the profitability of beef production. Real estate speculation is the overriding motive. In Latin America's forest frontier zones, where land is up for grabs, the value of cattle is dwarfed by the value of the earth under their hooves. When roads come through, or when minerals are discovered nearby, land values can skyrocket. An entire industry has emerged around leveling forests for pasture, selling the land for a quick profit, the repeating the venture. (Hecht 1990; Fearnside 1989)

For the land speculator, cattle ranching is simply the cheapest way to claim property: it takes little investment or labor, and states recognize pasture as the kind of "productive" land use to be rewarded with a property title. States also bypass ranches in land reforms, which distribute idle and "unproductive" lands to the dispossessed. Where inflation rates are high, as in much of Latin America, urban investors are especially keen on buying assets that retain their value, such as land. (Hecht 1990)

Closing Remarks:

The problems with animal agriculture mostly fall in the category of "too much of a good thing." Too much meat consumption leads to illness. Too much meat production leads to dependence on grain imports, a food system skewed against the poor, and a worsening environmental predicament. All the same, if livestock production is linked to a profusion of problems, the root causes of those problems are found in human institutions. Indeed, the livestock industry's shortcomings are faithful reflections of deeper faults in human societies.

Farmed Animal Treatment

World Farm Animals Day is supported by people of conscience, regardless of their personal dietary choices, who are outraged by the abysmal treatment of animals raised for food.

Each year, nearly 56 billion cows, pigs, chickens, and other innocent, sentient animals are caged, crowded, deprived, drugged, mutilated, and manhandled in the world's factory farms and slaughterhouses. In the US alone, 10 billion land animals are abused and slaughtered.

"Veal" calves are torn from their mothers at birth, chained by the neck for 16 weeks in tiny, filthy wooden crates, and force-fed an anemia-inducing liquid formula. They are deprived of their natural diet--including water, roughage, and iron--as well as exercise, fresh air, sunshine, and their mother's love.

Meanwhile, their mothers (dairy cows) suffer horribly as they are pumped full of growth hormones and perpetually impregnated for their milk. When their production slumps, they are slaughtered.

Breeding sows are kept pregnant for three years in metal "gestation crates," enclosures so small the sows cannot even turn around. Their piglets are torn away after only two weeks so the sows can again be impregnated.

Laying hens are crammed 5-7 birds into wire-mesh "battery cages" the size of a folded newspaper, which cut their feet and tear at their feathers. They are frequently starved for up to 14 days to boost egg production, a process known as forced molting. Upon hatching, male chicks are placed in garbage bags, where they suffocate slowly or are crushed under the weight of their brothers.

Animals are transported to slaughter in crowded trucks with no food, water, or protection against weather extremes. Many die in transit. Sick and injured animals, called "downers," are dragged with chains to the killing floor.

According to a 10-year investigation based on interviews with slaughterhouse workers and USDA inspectors, many animals actually survive the slaughter process. Many -- alive and conscious -- are skinned, dismembered, gutted, scalded, and drowned in their own blood.

Additional details and documentation are provided under internet resources.

Remedial Legislation

State and federal regulations to protect farmed animals are nonexistent or unenforced. More than half of the states have enacted legislation exempting factory farms from anti-cruelty statutes. The others just ignore them.

The 1958 Federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, expanded in 1978, has never been funded or enforced. USDA inspectors who have complained about slaughterhouse atrocities have been reprimanded or fired.

Congress has yet to pass a bill requiring euthanasia of downed animals (animals too sick to walk). Reacting to the public's concern about Mad Cow disease, the USDA imposed guidelines to keep downers out of the human food supply. However, these guidelines are self-imposed; they can be reversed at any time and do not carry the weight of law. In February 2008, the USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef due to undercover video footage taken by the Humane Society of the United States. The video revealed slaughterhouse workers using kicks, electric shock, high-pressure water hoses, and a forklift to force sick or injured animals onto the kill floor. The seldom enforced USDA regulations are designed to discourage the processing of sick and injured animals because of the high risk of contamination by E. coli, Salmonella, or Mad Cow disease.

What's the solution?

Attempts to improve the treatment of animals through legislation have not worked. Our best option to end these atrocities is to stop subsidizing them at the market checkout counter. Click here to request a free Veg Starter Guide today.

Media Center

Much of the success and rapid growth of the World Farm Animals Day observance over the past 20 years has been due to the generous support by the national and local media. Radio and television networks have conducted interviews with celebrity members of WFAD's National Council like Casey Kasem, Mary Tyler Moore, Ed Asner, James Cromwell, Jennie Garth, and Bill Maher. Local media have reported extensively on community events. Each year, nearly a hundred newspapers have carried letters to the editor.

Some likely topics for interviews and feature articles include:

Are there any regulations protecting farmed animals in the US?
Why does the European Union treat farmed animals so much better than the US?
What are consumers' attitudes towards the treatment of farm animals?
How safe is our meat supply and how is it affected by the threat of bioterrorism?
Why is the meat industry luring illegal aliens?
Why is the meat industry exporting factory farms to developing countries?
What are the World Farm Animals Day events in my community?

We are pleased to provide the following news releases for use by the media. Please bookmark and keep checking this page at least once a week for new items added as our campaign unfolds. For background information, we recommend our internet resources.

For additional information, please contact us at info@wfad.org or 888-FARM-USA (327-6872).