I have to write a report paper on CAFO*s. It being a report I have to represent both sides of an issue.

I can't find anyone even making **** up about CAFOs being beneficial.


discuss?


confined animal feeding operation

I prefer to read it as Piglet's Laughter.

CAFO Pro :

Meat is cheaper.

One could argue that the efficiency of food production is maximized in this manner, meaning that less of the population will go hungry. A weaker pro could be perhaps that the animals involved this process would be less likely to contract various forms of diseases, although I don't know how true that may or may not be. (yay research)

Other pros could possibly include lower costs, economic contributions, standardization, and again, overall efficiency.

These aren't my views necessarily, just examining possibilities of pros for your paper concerning this topic.

I've run into a lot of information about how wasteful meat production is. It certainly follows, I remember working with cows on my grandfather's farm, and you don't exactly get a lot of meat out of them considering the amount of feed and water they consume. Their feed is usually, by the way, made from food that was at some point fit for human consumption.

I haven't looked into it terribly deeply, but the aguments for factory farming of meat 'feeding the world' seem rather weak to me.



While there isn't a wealth of data on the pro side, there is mounds of data suggesting that the health effects on not only the animals but works and surrounding communities is much more dangerous than previously thought. Consider how many animals are generally crammed into those places! Animal welfare aside, I don't want to eat a chicken that has been steaming in the **** of the 8 other chickens in it's tiny cage for it's whole life. I suppose there is also the issue of antibiotic resistance, but I don't know as much about it.



Totally! I've heard all of these referenced be proponents (or at least not opponents) but I can't find ANY numbers to back them up!



But thanks for the thoughts!

And JM I think that might be the ONLY pro. I just wish I could find a source on that side that at least cited fake research that I could debunk. They're not even really trying.

Have you tried sifting through the sources Wikipedia uses for this topic?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming

I've found that while most don't consider Wiki a reliable source of information, nothing's ever mentioned about using the sources it uses.

As for the topic, how did you come across such a topic? I just did some digging and I see what you mean now. Everyone seems to think these things are bad, yet they exist... If you managed to come across some good material, your paper could be amazing.

Some of them would provide me with a few anecdotes I could quote, but I would really love to have something that I wasn't taking out of context, you know what I mean?

A genuine opinion that states that CAFOs are a beneficial form of procuring meat would be great. Most of those claims come from bloggers or forums or some other un-cite-able nonsense, and a good half of the official statements by meat industry are just reactionary comments because of some protest or policy change.

We had to pick a topic that we could write in several genre for the whole semester. My rather broad topic is the western (American, specifically) relationship with food. You really can't write an objective paper on the morality of consuming animals (though animal welfare is much more easily treated) so my research went this way.

http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2170/Farm-Animals-FACTORY-FARMING.html

dont know if its reliable, they site sources a few times, but the links appear to be broken.

Well, here's my genuine opinion.

Free range chicken is expensive. I don't give a **** about chickens. They are chickens. The only treatment I care about is whether they are original recipe or extra crispy. Who cares how they are treated. If they didn't want to be locked into a cage and devoured, they shouldn't have let us breed them into such delicious animals.

It's a shame that cheap, plentiful battery chicken is ****ing tasteless. Y'know why everything supposedly tastes like chicken? It's because the majority of people don't know what chicken actually tastes like.

Neither does Tremayne, mayne.

You have the most annoying possible combination of opinions all the way across the board.

I try.

I pretty much agree.

I sort of agree. Bottom line is, i like chicken and I like beef. I like it as cheep as possible. If "free range" is available at a reasonable price I will get it. If not I have little qualms about buying "factory" meat.

My policy: We need animals for meat but that doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it.

More vegetarians means less meat-eaters, thus more meat for me.

END OF LINE.

The biggest thing that makes me leary is the health effects of eating meat produced in such a way.

Your food is what they ate. And not only did they eat a lot of crappy feed, but they ate a lot of other animal's ****.

The potential for local impact around these facilities and how much waste production allegedly goes into it, makes me leary of supporting this kind of stuff, regardless of how many controls the feds supposedly put on it.

Then again, I'm like, an on and off vegetarian, so it's not like I cry like a ***** when I don't eat any meat.

yeah, there is a chicken farm near about 5 or 6 miles from my parents house. i can say from personal experience they do not adequately clean out the chicken crap. on a bad day you can smell it from my parents house quite well.

That would be my only concern. The quality of life of the chickens only matters to me when it negatively impacts me.

Basically, there's no reason we should give a **** about chickens being 'happy' or not being cruel to them. Animals don't have rights, end of the story.

I was trying real hard to agree with you, JM, but the fact of the matter is that even though I don't really care that much about animals when it comes to food, I still don't think that unnecessary harm is right.

Most animal welfare laws are not based on rights, per se, but on consideration for their biological capacity to feel pain and discomfort. (OPINION)The conditions that contribute to environmental problems and health problems in the workers and end consumers, result from cruel conditions. Animals raised in comfortable (for them) conditions where they can at least move as a normal animal, also tend to produce a much higher quality and safe product.

'Not right' is a long ways off from 'wrong'.

I'm pretty sure "not right" and "wrong" are pretty close to each other. I bet they share gardening tools. They probably live in opposite halves of the same duplex, and hang out all the time.

"Wrong" is "Not Right"'s twin brother, he just happens to be in jail.