Slaughterhouse 5: Factory Farming of Meat and Poultry

Food safety, or the lack of it, catapulted to America's front pages in August 1997 with the record-breaking recall of 25 million pounds of Hudson Foods meat contaminated with an uncommon strain of E. coli. Just the year before, Britain had decided to destroy five million British cows, after ten confirmed human cases (23 deaths to date) of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD), a fatal neurological disease now linked to "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE). In 1996, 70 people became ill after drinking unpasteurized Odwalla apple juice tainted with E. coli, and lettuce packaged less than 100 feet away from a cattle pen in California was linked to 61 cases of E. coli-poisoning across the country. Connecting all these stories is the way that pollution at the source -- the farm and the slaughterhouse -- taints our food products and harms the environment. Examples of environmental pollution:

+ Runoff of chicken manure from Maryland cornfields raised levels of the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscida in Chesapeake Bay in September 1997, killing 50,000 fish.

+ In June 1995, the dirt wall surrounding an eight-acre hog waste lagoon in North Carolina collapsed, spilling over 20 million gallons of excrement into the New River.

Perhaps the last time the meat industry had such negative attention was in 1906, when Upton Sinclair's The Jungle exposed unsanitary conditions in American slaughterhouses. The book ushered in the inspection system of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), as well as industry PR campaigns dating from 1921, when J. Walter Anderson, founder of the White Castle hamburger chain, cooked his patties in a hospital-white restaurant and sponsored scientific studies on the health benefits of hamburgers. Americans now spend $230 billion on meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products every year. The sheer size of the industry has resulted in new abuses in slaughterhouses, processing plants and factory farms. And producers emphasize end-of-the-line solutions -- killing microbes through pasteurization, irradiation and cooking -- instead of cleaning up their act.

Mega-Farms, Mega-Waste

Disease-causing bacteria, as well as drug residues and toxic heavy metals from feed supplements, can filter out of animal manure to contaminate soil and waterways. A recent Senate report states that the U.S. produces 130 times more livestock manure than human waste. The Senate report also found that 60% of rivers and streams have been polluted by agricultural runoff, which causes nutrient levels to rise, choking off aquatic life. Small diversified farms, which produce 10 to 15% of our animal foods, can use up animal wastes as fertilizer on crop fields. But the sheer volume of manure produced on mega-farms, whose only "crops" are animals, cannot just be tilled under. "A hog farm with two million pigs creates five times as much waste as Kansas City," says Rhonda Perry of the Minnesota Rural Crisis Center (MRCC).

In 1997, the largest Clean Water Act penalty in history, for $12.6 million, was levied against Smithfield Foods, which illegally dumped raw hog sewage into a major Virginia waterway.

Pathogens Proliferate on Factory Farms

Food-borne pathogens sicken 30 million people and kill 9,000 annually, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates. Many of these pathogens are found in the intestines of birds, humans and other mammals, and can be transmitted to humans via fecal contamination of food. Children, the elderly and those with impaired immune systems are the most vulnerable. Four of the most worrisome pathogens are:

+ Salmonella, found in poultry, eggs and meats, which leads to an estimated 2,000 deaths yearly.

+ Campylobacter, which contaminates a whopping 70 to 90% of chickens and causes an estimated 800 deaths every year.

+ Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7, found primarily in hamburger meat, but also on fruit and vegetables due to cross-contamination. Several children died as a result of eating E. coli-contaminated Jack-in-the-Box burgers in 1993.

+ Listeria, which contaminates meat, dairy products, and processed foods, particularly deli foods such as soft cheeses and cold cuts. Pregnant women should avoid these.

Such practices as cramped confinement of livestock increase the likelihood that animals will ingest bacteria and fecal matter from conveyor belts, water troughs, and the wood shavings used on floors that are sometimes not changed for up to a year. (See "Animal and Worker Abuse," in this issue.) Contaminants can also get mixed into feed, thanks to the practice of feeding livestock animal wastes -- from rendered slaughterhouse scraps (including beaks, brains and blood) to euthanized cats and dogs, and even chicken manure. This cheap and efficient "recycling" exposes animals to pathogens, toxic heavy metals and variants of BSE called transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Mad cow disease in England originated after sheep infected with scrapie, a TSE, were fed to cattle.

In August 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the practice of feeding ruminants (cows, sheep, goats) back to their brethren. However, rendered chicken and hog remains and cows' blood may still be used legally in cattle, chicken and hog feed and pet food. "Consumers in the U.S. should be concerned that our government hasn't introduced policies to prevent an outbreak of BSE," says John Stauber, co-author of Mad Cow U.S.A. (Common Courage Press, 1997).

Drug Abuse

Nearly 50% of the antibiotics produced in the U.S. are given to farm animals to prevent infections and promote growth. The result: more and more strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Salmonella typhimurium can no longer be fought by five commonly used antibiotics. Nearly all strains of Salmonella are resistant to tetracycline. "Taking an antibiotic when infected with [antibiotic resistant] Salmonella will kill all the other bacteria in your intestinal tract, allowing the Salmonella to proliferate," says Lester Crawford, Ph.D., director of the Georgetown University Center for Food and Nutritional Policy. Use of fluoroquinolones, a group of antibiotics, in the animal industry has increased drug-resistant Campylobacter in humans, too, according to Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist for the Minnesota Department of Health.

Then there's illegal use of unapproved drugs. In 1994, Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association (HFA) discovered veal industry use of clenbuterol, an unapproved drug that promotes rapid growth in calves and causes increased heart rate, muscle tremors, headaches and nausea in humans. In 1995, after federal investigators cracked down on violators, Eisnitz found that one-third of supermarket samples still contained the drug.

A Nuclear Band-Aid

Approved for use on meat in December 1997, irradiation kills most pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli. Irradiation may create trace amounts of radiolytic products such as benzene and peroxides. "These products are known to be toxic and carcinogenic, and have not been properly isolated from irradiated food and tested for carcinogenicity," says Samuel Epstein, M.D., professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

In addition, "Worker safety and environmental consequences are concerns associated with irradiation," says Elizabeth Dahl of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Building irradiation plants and transporting nuclear waste will increase the likelihood of accidents, such as equipment failures or leaks, and exposure of workers. It is further estimated that irradiation will raise the price of meat by five cents per pound. "The meat industry should be taking steps to clean up and slow down the food production system, not sterilizing food that they processed under filthy conditions," says Connie Wheeler of Consumers United for Food Safety. An August 1997 CBS News poll found that 73% of people oppose irradiation nationwide, and 77% say they would not eat irradiated food.

Monitoring Food Safety

A new monitoring system called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point System (HACCP) has been adopted by large meat processing plants and slaughterhouses. Smaller plants must comply by the year 2000. Each plant privately develops a plan to measure and control contamination. USDA inspectors are in charge of monitoring the plants, and will continue to inspect every animal visually. Nevertheless, HACCP may not help if federal authorities do not stop production in unsafe plants. In January 1998, Cox Newspapers reported that USDA inspectors uncovered 140,000 instances of food contamination that were "certain" to sicken the public in the nation's 6,000 packing plants in 1996, yet only six plants were shut down. A plant operated by Tyson Foods in Waldron, Arkansas amassed 1,753 "critical" violations in 1996 and 4,100 in 1997 before it was closed.

"Best Management" Solutions

Supporting smaller local farms reduces our dependence on industrial producers of animal products and encourages greater diversification of agriculture. Patchwork Family Farms, a collective in the Midwest assisted by MRCC, raises pigs without growth stimulants and routine use of antibiotics. Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) works with small egg producers in the Midwest and Northeast in a program called NEST EGGS. Participating farmers use sterilized grain and feeding equipment that is less likely to spread contamination. In addition, they permit free-ranging for chickens, and frequently test chicken houses, feeders, box liners and manure for Salmonella.

Certified organic livestock must be fed organic grain, eliminating the possibility that rendered animal wastes and manure are used as feed. Current organic standards prohibit animal confinement and routine antibiotic use. While there is no guarantee that free-range or organic livestock will be free of food-borne pathogens, healthier, well-cared-for animals with fewer stresses are less vulnerable to bacterial attacks.

Some farmers are beginning to implement pollution prevention programs through the use of buffer zones, in which farmers plant trees along lakes and streams to control agricultural runoff. Buffers are part of what Dick Coombe, of the Agricultural Watershed Council in New York calls Best Management Practices (BMPs), a combination of practices -- from use of drainage systems to applying fewer pesticides on crops -- which aim to protect water quality.

"Improving the quality of water that cows drink greatly reduces the risk of E. coli contamination," says Coombe. Most farms which implement BMPs are small and, although it's not a requirement, most organic farms use some variation of BMPs. Larger commercial farms with up to 900 dairy cows could implement BMPs, but industrial farms would have a harder time unless they increased their land-to-animal ratio, Coombe says.

"We believe that livestock belong on pastures, not factory farms. They would be eating food more natural to their systems and providing nutrients to the pasture," says Gary Valen, director of sustainable agriculture for The Humane Society. Outbreaks of food-borne illnesses highlight, once again, the necessity of rethinking our food system. Factory farming has disconnected us from our food, and now we are paying the price.