Factory farming isnt just inhumaneit may contribute to the rapid mutation

of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and viral influenza outbreaks that commonly

put human public health at risk, says Jonathan Anomaly in Whats Wrong
With Factory Farming. On factory farms, animals are packed tightly together
to minimize the farmers cost of space, more often than not unable to turn
around or stretch out their limbs. This crowding makes the spread of disease
easiernot only due to the proximity of animals to one another (and their
waste), but because the stress of confinement weakens their natural
defences against illness. Viral diseases (like influenza) that would normally
take much longer to spread thrive in these environments, jumping from host
to host (and even species to species) and mutating at an alarming rate, bird
viruses adapting to be able to infect pigs, cows, horses, and even humans.
Farming is conducive to viral species-jumping: in the wild, the animals might
not be nearly so close together, nor would they be so close to each others
waste. It also brings animals closer to peoplean entirely different host for a
virus to attack. Whereas viruses left to a single population of a single species
die out, viruses with a wide variety of prospective environments stay a step
ahead of their hosts.
Antibiotics are fed to factory-farmed livestock in sub-therapeutic (not as
much as would be used in the treatment of disease) levels in order to
promote growth and compensate for compromised immune systems. But
even though the full dosage isnt used, this still provides bacteria with
enough exposure to the antibiotic to adapt the resistance it needs to render
said antibiotic useless. These resistant strains of bacteria make their way
into the human body and become the widely feared and discussed
superbugs that our healthcare system is not equipped to fighttheir drugs
have already been neutralized. In a space of just nine years (2002-2011),
multi-drug-resistant Salmonella in raw chicken in the US has increased from
~20 to 45%, and in turkey from ~20% to 50% (p. 3). This trend is truly
worryingbacteria mutate much faster than pharmaceutical researchers can
keep up creating new antibiotics and putting them on the market. Europe has
responded, having phased out the use of sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics
in feed, but US farmers will continue to depend on it as long as factory
farming conditions remain the same.
When discussing animal welfare, the same philosophical question always
arises: who or what is deserving of moral or humane treatment? Does it
depend on a creatures intelligence? rationality? creativity? Or do all living
things deserve ethical treatment? How far does this treatment go? The US
has laws protecting household pets like dogs and cats from cruelty, giving jail
sentences to animal abusers. But farm animals are not protected under
these lawsin fact, they are expressly exempted within the laws language:
Farm animals, such as domestic cattle, horses, sheep, swine, and goats
are exempt from coverage by the [US Animal Welfare Act of 1966] (p. 5).
States like California may pass their own laws banning gestation crates for
pigs or battery cages for laying hens, but there are 49 other states farmers
can move to to continue saving money on animal housing.

But the real issue is the consumerthe consumer is an enabler for factory
farms, and as long as they buy the cheaper meat that factory farming
produces, the more encouragement is given to those in charge of the farms:
keep churning out cheap animal products, because they sell quickly and
consistently. Because the prices are so low, making meat and dairy and eggs
so accessible to people of all incomes, the consumer does not want to think
about why these products are so affordablehow then could they rationalize
their purchasing behavior? Consumer ignorance is something our market
relies on in order to move cheap product, like sweatshop clothing and
plastics containing carcinogens. The consumer is not, in general, all that
bothered about antibiotic use, nor are they knowledgeable about it. Anomaly
argues that, in this void of consumer information, it falls to governments to
further regulate factory farming, following the lead of European countries
that have seen economic and public health benefits from similar changes in
legislation.
Anomaly raises many questionsbut he does not answer some of them.
Countries like Denmark, which he uses at least twice as an example, are
often lauded by American liberals as having things all sorted outbut the
population of Denmark and its needs are rather different from that of the US.
This isnt to say similar reforms are impossible, but the battle would be more
uphill: Denmark has a much longer and less commercialized history of
farming, and doesnt see half the agricultural lobbying from Landbrug &
Fdevarer as the US sees from various sectors of Big Ag colluding together
(spending a total of over $132 million in 2015, according to
OpenSecrets.org), the beef producers relying on the corn producers for
cheap feed grain and the corn producers relying in turn on livestock
producers to buy their crops. A smaller populace with less marked economic
inequality as we have is also easier to educate about ethical farming
practices, eating a nutritious diet without consuming so many animal
products, and the use of antibiotics in animal feed. Nations like Denmark also
have fewer instances of food deserts, where its easier to find a Slim Jim or a
McDouble than it is to find a bunch of kale or a block of tofu.
Anomaly does an excellent job of pointing out one of the major scientific
reasons why factory farming is a bad practicewithout relying so much on
more emotional appeals favoured by animal welfare activists. This is the
easiest way to convince the meat-eaters who argue that animals are for
eating to perhaps think more about where those animals come from. When
factory farming is a public health, and not an emotional, crisis, it becomes all
the more worrying to the general public. And antibiotic resistance in bacteria
is an undeniably worrying trendone exacerbated by factory farming.
Antibiotics are doctors first line of defence when treating any injury or
infection, and even in post-operative caredrugs like azithromycin, for which
5.2 million prescriptions were written in 2013 (healthgrove.com).
Azithromycin is a macrolide, and though its a human drug, other macrolides
like it are used in factory farming, like tylvalosin (which is supposed to help
swine use feed more efficiently). When bacteria grow resistant to a single

drug within a class (which CDC expert Lauri Hicks says can take anywhere
from a matter of weeks to a few years), it becomes simple for bacteria to
resist other drugs within the class, which have similar structures and
mechanisms of action.