Factory Farming And Human Health

It is not small rations production, but large-scale factory farming, that not aways a threat to our health.

Mad frighten disease (BSE) and vCJD (`human BSE') with its potential to lead to the deaths of thousands of race in the UK, and who knows by what mode many more around the world, are the terrible effects which have followed from the apparently innocuous practice of feeding dead overawes to live ones. The disaster has brought place of abode the impact that `industrial' animal husbandry -- viewing animals as production machines -- can have upon human health.

And individual only has to scratch the surface of life down upon the factory farm, to diocese that BSE may well be sole the tip of the iceberg. In a range of areas, from feeding regimes, to animal housing, to the use of medicines in the pursuit of productivity, human health may be threatened by means of factory farming. Imposing industrial demands upon farm animals may, quite literally, be producing fatal flaws in the extremity product -- our food.

It is no surprise that, faced with the BSE disaster and escalating incidence of pabulum poisoning, in particular from Salmonella, Listeria, Campylobacter and E coli O157 the UK Government's reaction has been to tighten hygiene regulations. on the other hand given the underlying nature of the puzzle -- animals being reared in appallingly cramped conditions, not seldom without access to fresh air, clean litter, and sunlight -- the measures are unlikely to show effective. Paradoxically, they may smooth make our food less safe, by the agency of ensuring that livestock production and slaughter become at any time more centralised in the hands of a small number of large industrial-scale operators, better able to bear the require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones of regulation than small-scale producers

Life, death and disease, down upon the factory farm

Consider the conditions which prevail upon factory farms -- for example, in intensive boiler chicken sheds. Animals are for a like reason crowded together that the floor is scarcely visible, and where it is visible, it can been seen to be overspreaded with excrement, and the atmosphere is filled of dust, and scarcely any sunlight. Would individual be surprised if disease was rampant? Of course not. notwithstanding these are the conditions in which many animals are reared as food

Salmonella

The UK Government's Advisory Committee upon the Microbiological Safety of aliment has stated that: `Raw domestic fowls is a significant carrier of pathogens, particularly Salmonella and Campylobacter.'[1] Their 1996 Report upon Poultry Meat found that single in three chilled, raw UK-produc chickens upon retail sale was contaminated with Salmonella; an flat greater proportion (41 per cent) of frozen birds was contaminated[2]. The emblem of Salmonella which most commonly infects chickens is Salmonella enteritidis, on the other hand there are several thousand other strains in all stamps of farm animals.

As individual might expect, the environments in which farm animals are confined can also be significantly contaminated. A overlook of litter and dust samples from commercial turkey in Canada, for example, rest Salmonella at 86 per cent of flocks'[3]

Between 1981 and 1987 there was a 13-fold increase in the rate of isolation of Salmonella enteritidis from layer chickens in England and Wales'[4] and in 1991 a report in Which? magazine claimed that up to 7000 of the 30 million ovums eaten in Britain each day carry the Salmonella bacterium.'[5]

Although Salmonella-infected animals sometimes display few, if any, symptoms, this is by means of no means always the case. Many animals experience considerably as a result of Salmonella infection, just as humans do. A report in The Veterinary Record, in 1995 described a batch of layer replacement chicks, bought in at a day old: `They were by and by seen to be huddled together with drooping wings', and ` by means of six days old 70 of 100 had died.' The chicks were rest to be infected with Salmonella pullorum.'[6]

in the way that how is it that Salmonella infection of farm animals is in the way that common, and how is it spread? According to scientists at the Central Veterinary Laboratory: `Bacterial infections can be spread through the airborne route in farm animals, particularly when reared intensively. For example, poor ventilation in domestic fowls houses can cause high concentrations of ammonia to disentangle and irritate the respiratory tract, predisposing to infection.'[7]

Airborne infection of chicks, calves and laying hens with Salmonella bacteria has been reported and in the case of the latter, within sum of two units days of exposure the hens were lay the foundation of to have a generalised infection. Their lung liver, milt kidneys, ovaries and oviducts were all infected.'[8] These airborne-infected laying hens excret Salmonella bacteria for up to 28 days. With laying hens confined with equal reason closely in battery cages, the possibility of cross-contamination between animals must assuredly be very high.

The fundamentally unhygienic conditions of intensive boiler chicken production have been described many times. In fact, Salmonella contamination of domestic fowls houses can be so sharp that pressure washing or steam cleaning of the house between the rearing of separate batches of chicken can actually lead to an increase in horizontals of bacteria.'[9]