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Factory farming should be outlawed for a number of reasons. It's inhumane, devastating to the environment, and bad in a million other ways. It's not even effici

Factory farming should be outlawed for a number of reasons. It's inhumane, devastating to the environment, and bad in a million other ways. It's not even efficient, except in jurisdictions that allow the farms to (freely) dump their effluent-- an externalized cost. Factory farms are literally putting huge quantities of shit into their local water tables. That would be a start. Then we put a ban on the sale, for human consumption, of animals that were treated with antibiotics. If you want to save your pet cat's life-- or your pig's-- that's fine. Just don't sell it as food. That's the low-hanging fruit. It will make meat slightly more expensive, but I'm okay with that. People in the developed world eat too much meat for their own health anyway. What remains is educating people about antibiotics so they stop asking for them when they get colds and flus (they don't do a damn bit of good for a viral infection). Doctors in the US tend to be over-liberal with the drugs, even knowing that they have no effect on viruses.

alvarosm 14y ago
It's funny how everyone has solutions for our eating up the planet. But it's never the obvious: stop having children like there's no tomorrow. If you think you have the right to have 90 children if you feel so inclined, then you'll have to acknowledge the planet must turn into a massive farm.
- dwiel 14y ago
  Do you mean to imply that the only thing we need to do is "stop having children like there's no tomorrow?" michaelochurch didn't say that outlawing factory farming was the only thing we should do like you seem to imply.
  - XorNot 14y ago
    Also it's been done. Western fertility rates are on average ~2. Development and education in poorer nations - especially for women - also results in declining birthrates. Interesting side point though: reduced birthrates don't result in any benefits to drug-resistant bacteria though, since a small population can still run high density feedlots which promote them!
    - schiffern 14y ago
      >Interesting side point though: reduced birthrates don't result in any benefits to drug-resistant bacteria though, since a small population can still run high density feedlots which promote them! Side-note is incorrect. It's a probability game. Going from (hypothetically) 1000 CAFOs to 10 would drop the rate of production by 100x.
      - XorNot 14y ago
        Which doesn't matter, because it only has to happen once. Literally nothing about reducing the population density of an area addresses the horrific practices of the meat industry. They would still be a bad idea if there was exactly 1 next to a town of 1000 people, because that town would still be wiped out by drug-resistant bacteria. We don't need current meat production practices - they're about corporate profit, not long-term efficiency.
        moheeb 14y ago
        No, you're incorrect. Reducing the human population density would decrease meat consumption, which would decrease cattle population density, which would decrease anti-bacterial consumption.
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  Who exactly is having children like there's no tomorrow? If not for immigration, the US population would be declining already. Educate people (esp women) and suddenly your major western nation can't maintain population replacement levels of births. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_exploding.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/0...
  - lysol 14y ago
    You know those people still have children regardless of which country they're in, right?
    - spatten 14y ago
      No, actually I didn't. In my experience, "those people" are indistinguishable from "people who have the same skin colour as me" after a generation or two. Oh, and here a some studies with, you know, numbers and statistics that bear that out: Migrant birthrates falling in Germany, study finds -- http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100811-29073.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100811-29073.html "Fertility rates among foreign-born women start to decline relatively soon after they arrive in Canada, and eventually reach those of women who were born in Canada" --http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/031222/dq031222c-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/031222/dq031222c-en...
    - gpvos 14y ago
      Citation needed. Even if true, once they're here, their children are likely to be better educated and have access to birth control.
- jaibot 14y ago
  There's a known method to get reproductive rates down currently being applied across the globe: affluence. There's no need to mandate it, people are getting there on their own. Of course, affluence is where most of the problem lies. The difference in environmental impact between a rich human and a poor human is much greater than between a poor human and no human. Which leads to a more accurate description of the problem: how do you make not destroying the planet more appealing than destroying the planet on an individual level?
theorique 14y ago
In areas home to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations) there are lagoons of liquified pig or cattle waste. Lagoons of shit. Literally.
enraged_camel 14y ago
>>That's the low-hanging fruit. It will make meat slightly more expensive, but I'm okay with that. You may be okay with that, but there are a large number of low-income people who are not. I'm not disagreeing with you - I think factory farming and antibiotic usage for farm animals should be banned. I just think it's worth keeping a broad perspective so that we can appreciate that these problems are in fact very difficult to solve.
- boomlinde 14y ago
  Maybe these low-income people could make a decent living out of tending to farm animals if it was more of a concern to the industry than it is now. ... or we could all deal with the fact that meat isn't a human right, and the lack of it would be a slight inconvenience compared to the implications of antibiotic resistance. So yeah, low-hanging fruit.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > or we could all deal with the fact that meat isn't a human right Neither is food, if you really want to go that route. The point of civilization is that we try to provide for ourselves things that are not just our rights, but our desires. (Show me where nature will automatically provide food for humans.)
    - harshreality 14y ago
      I think GP was saying that access to meat is not a survival requirement, or even a requirement to be happy. I know people who would miss steak and ribs in a nostalgic sense, but anyone who hasn't found tasty vegan food hasn't looked very hard. Access to basic nutrition is a de facto human right, in the modern civic sense. Nature doesn't guarantee that humans are fed, but many governments try to, with welfare and food stamps.
      - derleth 14y ago
        > access to meat is not a survival requirement, or even a requirement to be happy It is for some people. Or is their culture wrong to you?
kragen 14y ago
> Then we put a ban on the sale, for human consumption, of animals that were treated with antibiotics. If you want to save your pet cat's life-- or your pig's-- that's fine. Just don't sell it as food. This is an interesting proposal I haven't heard before, and it sounds like a good idea. I think it's going to be difficult to convince ranchers that they have to suck up the loss of a $5000 steer to a bacterial infection that could have been cured with $10 of antibiotics.

alvarosm 14y ago

It's funny how everyone has solutions for our eating up the planet. But it's never the obvious: stop having children like there's no tomorrow. If you think you have the right to have 90 children if you feel so inclined, then you'll have to acknowledge the planet must turn into a massive farm.

dwiel 14y ago
Do you mean to imply that the only thing we need to do is "stop having children like there's no tomorrow?" michaelochurch didn't say that outlawing factory farming was the only thing we should do like you seem to imply.
- XorNot 14y ago
  Also it's been done. Western fertility rates are on average ~2. Development and education in poorer nations - especially for women - also results in declining birthrates. Interesting side point though: reduced birthrates don't result in any benefits to drug-resistant bacteria though, since a small population can still run high density feedlots which promote them!
  - schiffern 14y ago
    >Interesting side point though: reduced birthrates don't result in any benefits to drug-resistant bacteria though, since a small population can still run high density feedlots which promote them! Side-note is incorrect. It's a probability game. Going from (hypothetically) 1000 CAFOs to 10 would drop the rate of production by 100x.
    - XorNot 14y ago
      Which doesn't matter, because it only has to happen once. Literally nothing about reducing the population density of an area addresses the horrific practices of the meat industry. They would still be a bad idea if there was exactly 1 next to a town of 1000 people, because that town would still be wiped out by drug-resistant bacteria. We don't need current meat production practices - they're about corporate profit, not long-term efficiency.
      - moheeb 14y ago
        No, you're incorrect. Reducing the human population density would decrease meat consumption, which would decrease cattle population density, which would decrease anti-bacterial consumption.
ahoyhere 14y ago
Who exactly is having children like there's no tomorrow? If not for immigration, the US population would be declining already. Educate people (esp women) and suddenly your major western nation can't maintain population replacement levels of births. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_exploding.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/0...
- lysol 14y ago
  You know those people still have children regardless of which country they're in, right?
  - spatten 14y ago
    No, actually I didn't. In my experience, "those people" are indistinguishable from "people who have the same skin colour as me" after a generation or two. Oh, and here a some studies with, you know, numbers and statistics that bear that out: Migrant birthrates falling in Germany, study finds -- http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100811-29073.html http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100811-29073.html "Fertility rates among foreign-born women start to decline relatively soon after they arrive in Canada, and eventually reach those of women who were born in Canada" --http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/031222/dq031222c-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/031222/dq031222c-en...
  - gpvos 14y ago
    Citation needed. Even if true, once they're here, their children are likely to be better educated and have access to birth control.
jaibot 14y ago
There's a known method to get reproductive rates down currently being applied across the globe: affluence. There's no need to mandate it, people are getting there on their own. Of course, affluence is where most of the problem lies. The difference in environmental impact between a rich human and a poor human is much greater than between a poor human and no human. Which leads to a more accurate description of the problem: how do you make not destroying the planet more appealing than destroying the planet on an individual level?

theorique 14y ago

In areas home to CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations) there are lagoons of liquified pig or cattle waste. Lagoons of shit. Literally.

enraged_camel 14y ago

>>That's the low-hanging fruit. It will make meat slightly more expensive, but I'm okay with that. You may be okay with that, but there are a large number of low-income people who are not. I'm not disagreeing with you - I think factory farming and antibiotic usage for farm animals should be banned. I just think it's worth keeping a broad perspective so that we can appreciate that these problems are in fact very difficult to solve.

boomlinde 14y ago
Maybe these low-income people could make a decent living out of tending to farm animals if it was more of a concern to the industry than it is now. ... or we could all deal with the fact that meat isn't a human right, and the lack of it would be a slight inconvenience compared to the implications of antibiotic resistance. So yeah, low-hanging fruit.
- derleth 14y ago
  > or we could all deal with the fact that meat isn't a human right Neither is food, if you really want to go that route. The point of civilization is that we try to provide for ourselves things that are not just our rights, but our desires. (Show me where nature will automatically provide food for humans.)
  - harshreality 14y ago
    I think GP was saying that access to meat is not a survival requirement, or even a requirement to be happy. I know people who would miss steak and ribs in a nostalgic sense, but anyone who hasn't found tasty vegan food hasn't looked very hard. Access to basic nutrition is a de facto human right, in the modern civic sense. Nature doesn't guarantee that humans are fed, but many governments try to, with welfare and food stamps.
    - derleth 14y ago
      > access to meat is not a survival requirement, or even a requirement to be happy It is for some people. Or is their culture wrong to you?

kragen 14y ago

> Then we put a ban on the sale, for human consumption, of animals that were treated with antibiotics. If you want to save your pet cat's life-- or your pig's-- that's fine. Just don't sell it as food. This is an interesting proposal I haven't heard before, and it sounds like a good idea. I think it's going to be difficult to convince ranchers that they have to suck up the loss of a $5000 steer to a bacterial infection that could have been cured with $10 of antibiotics.