Cattle Imprisonment: The CAFO Industry revealed

Meats of all kinds to some people are considered to be extremely delicious. Although meat is full of great protein that our bodies need to grow, do people ever stop and think, “Where does the meat come from?”. Of course the meat comes from the animal itself, but what goes into the animal takes affect on the animals body, affecting the meat that people consume. What is everyone really eating when they emeat? More than what they may believe.

Normally when people think of Cattle and other farm animals, they picture them grazing the luscious land or in a spacious barn running around free. In some cases this is true, but in most, the actually sights that are seen on some farms are not only shocking, but completely and utterly absurd. Prison, is a better way to describe some farms for cattle and other animals such as swine and chicken. This “prison” is also known as CAFO or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (Porter, Tinker, Wieberg, Medley & Heitmann, 2012). In CAFO’s animals are raised in confined areas. Instead of grazing land and eating natural grasses and other plants, cattle are kept closely together and fed whatever the workers may decide to feed them. 

AFOs congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland(Porter, Tinker, Wieberg, Medley & Heitmann, 2012).

These cattle are confined to feed them and make them gain weight, hence why they are not allowed to roam around, because that would cause weight loss. Feeders want the animals to be fat for when they slaughter the cattle. What the cattle consume is very important, but the feeders do not care about the longterm affects of the feed, they just want the cattle to be big enough to slaughter and sell to the next meat market. 

As grain replaced pasture as a primary feedstock, farmers also turned to twentieth-     century industrial technologies such as synthetic fertilizers, toxic pesticides and herbicides, and hybrid and genetically modified crop varieties to boost feed harvests. 

Photograph of Cattle in confinement. Source: http://www.epa.gov/region7/water/cafo/index.htm 

There are toxic pesticides and other dangerous chemicals that are put into 

making this feed for the animals that people eat.  These cattle live in a place surrounded by all of their waste and most cattle die well before they even get to the slaughter house.  It is not only bad that these animals get slaughtered in the first place, but the fact that they die before they can even be slaughtered because of CAFO is completely rediculous and bad for our health on top of the animals health. 

People need food to live in this world. Everyone needs to be aware of what really lies underneath the processing of all of our food. Even more so what happens before the food even gets processed. Many americans love meat and with more knowledge on what happens to the meat before eaten, it will help people have a better understanding of how bad it really is for us and how awful the animals are treated in the process. 

References 

Porter, D., Tinker, G., Wieberg, C., Medley, T., & Heitmann, D. United States Environmental Protection Agency, (2012). How do cfao's impact the environment. Retrieved from website: http://www.epa.gov/region7/water/cafo/cafo_impact_environment.htm

Imhoff, D., & Clearly, A. (2010). Cafo- the tragedy of industrial animal factories: The issue. Retrieved from http://www.cafothebook.org/theissue_3.htm

Kessler, B., Blake, H. L., Williams, C., Bass, S., Phillips, A., & Saadi, S. (2010, October 20). Cafo-the story in pictures. Retrieved from http://www.greenrightnow.com/boston/2010/10/20/cafo-the-story-in-pictures/2/

Appendix A