Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
crowding out family hog farms in the Midwest. And beef production has moved to huge in-
dustrial feedlots in Colorado and other western states. 23 Already we see an almost total con-
version to factory farming among poultry farmers. The Web site www.factoryfarming.com
has excellent descriptions of factory-farming techniques for eggs, pork, dairy, beef, poultry,
and fish. Here is a brief excerpt for poultry.
Table 4.3. Share of Economic Activity within the Agricultural Sector Accounted for by
Farmers, Input Suppliers, and Marketers: 1910 and 1990
Nearly ten billion chickens … are being hatched in the U.S. every year. These birds are typically
crowded by the thousand into huge factory-like warehouses where they can barely move. Chickens
are given less than half a square foot of space per bird… . Today's meat chickens have been ge-
netically altered to grow twice as fast, and twice as large as their ancestors… . An industry journal
explains “broilers [chickens] now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well
enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremend-
ous death losses.” … Chickens … are taken to the slaughterhouse in crates stacked on the back of
trucks. The birds are either pulled from the crates, or the crates are lifted off the truck, often with
a crane or forklift, and then the birds are dumped onto a conveyor belt. As the birds are unloaded,
some fall onto the ground instead of landing on the assembly line conveyor belt. Slaughterhouse
workers intent upon “processing” thousands of birds every hour, don't have the time nor the inclin-
ation to pick up individuals who fall through the cracks… . Once inside the slaughterhouse, fully
conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. The first station on
most poultry slaughterhouse assembly lines is the stunning tank, where the birds' heads are sub-
merged in an electrified bath of water…. After passing through the stunning tank, the birds' throats
are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade, and blood begins rushing out of their bodies. Inevitably,
the blade misses some birds who then proceed to the next station on the assembly line, the scalding
tank. Here they are submerged in boiling hot water. Birds missed by the killing blade are boiled
alive. This occurs so commonly, affecting millions of birds every year…. 24
For farmers in the United States and elsewhere, the globalization of production means that
the markets for their products have become very unstable. Unless a farmer is able to enter
into a long-term contract with a canner, packer, or other purchaser, his/her ability to make
long-term plans is seriously compromised.
As Bill Heffernan notes, “The centralized food system that continues to emerge was never
voted on by the people of this country, or for that matter, the people of the world. It is the
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