Impacts of Meat Production Essay Example

The effects of factory farming are felt far past the farm. Factory farming started in the 1920s and has grown exponentially since, resulting in mass food production many places around the world. Although the impacts of factory farming are kept hidden from consumers. The factory farming of plants and animals negatively impacts human health, the economy, and the environment. The simple choice of switching to locally farmed food could save the Earth a huge amount of strain and damage. Many people think that choosing fresh fruits and vegetables and good quality meat means they are eating healthy and doing their body good, when really the dangers of eating factory-farmed food are huge. Contrary to what most think, factory farmed foods have a negative impact on human health. Poor conditions for farm animals such as lack of fresh air, sunlight, exercise, and waste disposal, and close living quarters causes livestock to be highly stressed and this affects the meat that the animal will produce (D. Miller). The combination of stress and other unnatural living factors causes the animals to become sick with diseases such as: E. coli, mad cow, and avian influenza (Probert). These sick animals pass their illness onto humans when they are eaten and the effects on humans are potentially fatal, as seen in many cases around the world. Furthermore, it is not only that humans are becoming sick from factory-farmed food, however the high use of antibiotics in these foods are building up human’s immunity to them so they are unable to get better through traditional antibiotics. Farmers feed their livestock antibiotics to keep them from getting sick; in fact half of all the antibiotics produced in America is used in animal feed (B. Miller). This overuse creates new strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and makes previously lifesaving drugs useless for humans (B. Miller). On a more intimate scale, factory farmers and packers suffer from health problems caused