'Farm Vs. Factory' Food Safety, New Resource from Food & Water Watch
Food & Water Watch, Oct. 2019: Factory farms pollute the environment and our drinking water, ravage rural communities, and harm the welfare of animals—while increasing corporate control over our food.
Factory Farming & Food Safety: Factory farming is an unsustainable method of raising food animals that concentrates large numbers of animals into confined spaces. Factory farms are not compatible with a safe and wholesome food supply. It’s time to ban factory farms. So My Food Comes From A Factory Farm. Is It Really That Bad? As a consumer, it’s not always apparent why it’s important to buy food that’s come from a REAL farm (awesome!) versus food that’s come from a FACTORY farm (boo!).
--> But we have a new interactive tool *“Farm Vs. Factory”* that will illuminate the difference and help everyone understand why it matters. Click here to use the tool — it’s like taking an online field trip!
More, https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/problems/factory-farming-food-safety
- How did we get here?: Over the past three decades there has been an economic and geographic shift in how and where food animals are raised in the United States. Large scale factory farms have raising one type of animal have replaced small or medium scale farms that raised dairy and beef cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys. The rise of factory farming has been driven by three factors: unchecked corporate power, misguided farm policy, and weak environmental and public health regulations.
- Factory Farming Increases Corporate Control of our Food: As the number of companies that farmers sell livestock, eggs or milk to has decreased due to mergers and increasing consolidation of the food industry, the number of dairy, hog and beef cattle producers in the United States has also declined sharply over the last 20 years.
The meatpacking, milk and egg processing industries have become more controlled by just a handful of big players and the remaining farms raising food animals have grown bigger. In the chicken industry, contract farming is now the norm-- meaning farmers sign up with a corporate integrator that provides the animals and the feed and micromanages the day-to-day operations on the farm-- often through the use of unfair one-sided contracts. The real price farmers receive for livestock has trended steadily downward for the last two decades. Most farmers barely break even. Learn more about corporate control in our food system...
- What Are We Up Against? Our Broken Democracy: A handful of corporations like Walmart, Koch Industries, Monsanto and ExxonMobil wield immense power in our democracy – whether it’s through court decisions like Citizens United, through corporate-run policy shops like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), or through industry front groups promoting technologies that harm the environment. By funding research programs at our universities and exerting powerful influence over our media, they essentially control the debate over important issues affecting our health and our communities.
With your help, we can change that.
Corporate influence over our democracy is one of the biggest threats to our food, water and climate. But if we can inspire enough people across the country to stand together to shift the balance of power over the things we can’t live without—our food, water, and the environment on which it all depends—we can fix our broken democracy...
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