The CAFO

              In this blog I will discuss concentrated animal feeding operation system that numerous  domesticated animals are kept and raised in. Such feeding operation systems are confined places that produce the meat and seafood that many of us eat. From 1940 to 1980, animal farms transformed into factories as the number of CAFO institutions increased by ten times in America. The United Nation Food Organization predicts that in 2050 the amount of meat and dairy products that people will eat will double. The pace at which animals are killed in slaughterhouses is astounding as 7,000 calves, 130,000 cattle, 360,000 pigs, and 24 million chickens are slaughtered per day in United States. Increasing CAFOs would be detrimental to our environment, as it negatively impacts the community. CAFOs would have a a bad effect on people's health as well as effects drinking water  and increases the risk of diseases.

              Daniel Imhoff discusses that CAFOs do not provide proper animal living and are not really farms. CAFOs present a very unhealthy and unnatural way of living to animals, one of the reasons being that they are isolated from real world. When confined in a CAFO, animals are unable to receive fresh air, and are deprived of sun light and the ability to walk outside. Furthermore, instead of grass, animals are forced to eat high calorie grain, animal manure, ground up fish, and waste animal parts because CAFOs intend to induce rapid growth and weight gain in the animals.

       Within a CAFO, animals are regularly fed antibiotics whether they need them or not. As a result, people who eat these animals, are consuming these antibiotics as well, which negatively affects people's health. The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University  concluded that the current method of processing foods is an unacceptable risk for public health and very dangerous for the environment. People who are working in the CAFOs suffer from many medical conditions, such as asthma and bronchitis because of poor air quality. " Clearly, the ways in which we produce our food define us as a culture and human beings" (Imhoff xviii). Basically, Imnoff implies that the use of CAFOs is a huge issue in our time today that must be addressed, as it raises questions about our ethical responsibilities as both eaters and produces in our current food production system. The way CAFO treats domestic animals reveals that our society, our government, our food system, and our way of life is gradually being drained of the morals it should hold.