Public Concerns about Food Safety
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that contaminated meat- and poultry-related infections sicken up to 3 million people sick each year, killing at least 1,000—figures that are probably underreported. Most animal products in supermarkets and restaurants originate in CAFOs. Recalls of food products of animal origin contaminated with Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter, and E-Coli, are far from uncommon.
Studies consistently show that significant percentages of livestock and poultry products in retail food markets are contaminated with a variety of infectious bacteria. Various studies also show that a large percentage of bacteria in contaminated animal food products, such as MRSA, are resistant to multiple antibiotics.
Most instances of contamination of food with infectious bacteria likely take place in slaughter houses, where meat is accidently exposed to the contents of the stomachs and intestines of slaughtered animals. However, studies have verified that the high energy rations fed to animals in CAFOs to maximize feeding efficiency provide an ideal breeding environment for organisms that are particularly toxic to humans, such as the deadly E-Coli 0157:H7.
Switching animals from high-concentrate to high-forage rations has been found to reduce the shedding or potential contamination risks from E-Coli 0157:H7, suggesting that livestock raised on pasture or in grazing systems, rather than in CAFOs, presents lower food safety risks.
Grass-finished beef generally yields firm, normal size hearts, tongues and livers. Grass-finished beef livers rarely have abscesses and the color is dark red, compared to grain-fed livers, which are often a lighter color. Grain-finished beef has huge livers and large fat deposits around the top of the heart. The fat deposits do not affect the health of the heart, according USDA inspection standards, but the heart and all other organs work harder to deal with the constant diet of high-energy grains.
Processing grain rations is especially hard on the liver and results in liver from CAFOs being mushy, abnormally large, and often abscessed. Separate data is not kept for condemned livers from CAFOs, but it is common knowledge among USDA meat inspectors that many of the livers from grain-finished animals are condemned. It’s logical to be concerned about the safety of products from sick animals, even if USDA approved for human consumption.
Defenders of factory farms claim that operators of CAFOs are responsible stewards of the environment. They extoll the virtues of traditional independent family farmers in their commitment to caring for the land and caring about the well-being of their neighbors. Even if this is true, it is simply not possible to manage the concentration of manure associated with large-scale confinement animal feeding operations without sophisticated waste treatment facilities. Furthermore, under the contractual agreements typical of CAFOs, the corporate contractor [definition], not the contract producer [definition], dictates the size and construction of production facilities that place an unmanageable manure disposal burden on the contract producer.
As a last defense, CAFO operators claim they are doing a better job of manure management than the traditional independent farmers they replaced. However, water quality statistics tell a different story. In 1998 the EPA found 35,000 miles of streams in 22 states and ground water in 17 states that had been polluted by industrial livestock operations.
According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, there has been almost a three-fold increase in “impairments” of water bodies between 2002 and 2012, years when factory livestock operations were rapidly replacing independent family farms. 3 The evidence is clear; the spreading of raw sewage from factory farms is threating the quality of drinking water.
1) Carla Klein, “The Facts about CAFOs and Health Ordinances,” Sierra Club, Ozark Chapter, 2006,
https://missouri2.sierraclub.org/newsletter/facts-about-cafos-and-health-ordinances
2) U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Unified National Strategy for Animal Feeding Operations,” draft, September 11, 1998, as quoted in CAFO: The Tradegy of Industrial Animal Factories, Myths, Dan Imhoff, editor, http://www.cafothebook.org/thebook_myths_6.htm
3) Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Iowa’s Section 303(d) Impaired Water Listings,
http://www.iowadnr.gov/Environment/WaterQuality/WaterMonitoring/ImpairedWaters.aspx