Factory Farming

Factory farming, yeah. This is predominant in the United States where the meat industry is very predominant. It is motivated by the profit these large meat processing industries make as they try to make everything as cheap and efficient as possible. This business like mentality obviously affects the raw material of the factory aka the livestock but not only that. Every aspect of the business is on the border line between cheap and legal. The workforce, the infrastructure or the farms, the waste product.

This picture shows how predominant this industry is throughout the different regions of the USA

Cattle is nowadays kept at breeding centres where they spend their life until they are taken to the factory. At these centre the manure is not removed in any way and the animals are fed one of the cheapest and most common crops in the United States, corn. This lowers the cost of keeping the animal and hence the big companies can buy them at a lowered price but it has great deteriorating effects on their health such us diseases like E-Coli or mental illnesses. What upsets me is that these animals are being treated like the raw material of a factory rather than an animal. They are like the wood for a table factory or the wheat for a bread factory. These animals would probably never step on actual grass or even eat it and they are kept with other hundreds and hundreds of more livestock just to lower the price of input for their business.

Not only cattle but any livestock is now treated like some piece of material. Broiler chickens (chickens used for meat) never see the sun until the day they are brought to the processing unit to get slaughtered for their meat. These are drugged with antibiotics and growth hormones so that in 48 days they are more than twice the size of a normal chicken. This has a great impact on their health as their skeleton cannot cope with the drugs and the chicken often experience internal malfunctions such as heart attacks or brain seizures.
This is only a tiny tiny extract on what goes on in the meat industry and I would strongly suggest to look further into this issue because is does directly concern you as a consumer and you have a great influence on these meat processing business.

Links to the pictures in order of showing:
http://archive.nocafos.org/CAFOmap.jpg
http://www.cafothebook.org/images/theissue_3.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/%D0%9F%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA.JPG