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Who can do something about this problem and what can they do? 

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Who can do something about this problem and what can they do? 

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The general public can become more educated about food production in general so they can make ethical choices about their food. They can advocate for better treatment of animals affected by factory farming.

The U.S. Government can regulate factory farming more heavily in order to improve the conditions and lessen harm or pain to animals.

Large food producers can be more transparent in their operations and work to improve conditions for animals.

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This is an article from Forbes published July 25, 2024 by Christine Ro. It describes some of the incidents to pigs at slaughterhouses in Iowa that are heartbreaking. Although it focuses on Iowa, it's likely these types incidents happen all over the US. The article also presents some solutions to the issue. The article was written as part of a series on the opposition to factory farming in Iowa.

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How Pigs Fare Under Iowa’s Industrial-Ag Model

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Government inspectors said of these “excessive and horrific inhumane handling practices,” “I got a bit numb to the whole ordeal as time went on.”

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This is an article on pbs.org published February 6, 2020, by John Flesher with the Associated Press and discusses the impacts of the factory farms to residents living nearby the farms and impacts to the environment. Again, it focuses on Iowa, however, these issues could be applied to anywhere.

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AKRON, Iowa (AP) - In recent years, Fred Zenk built two barns housing about 2,400 hogs between them - long, white, concrete-and-metal structures that are ubiquitous in the Midwestern countryside.

The Iowa farmer didn't follow state requirements to get construction approval and file a manure disposal plan. But Zenk's operation initially flew under the radar of regulators, as have many others across the United States because of loopholes and spotty enforcement of laws intended to keep the nation's air and water clean.

Beef, chicken and pork have become more affordable staples in the American diet thanks to industry consolidation and the rise of farms with tens of thousands of animals. Yet federal and state environmental agencies often lack basic information such as where they're located, how many animals they're raising and how they deal with manure.

The animals and their waste have fouled waters. The enclosures spew air pollutants that promote climate change and are implicated in illnesses such as asthma. The stench of manure - stored in pits beneath barns or open-air lagoons and eventually spread on croplands as fertilizer - can make life miserable for people nearby.
READ MORE: Does modern society worsen allergies and asthma? Ask the Amish
For most of the nation's history, meat and dairy products came from independent farms that raised animals in barnyards, pastures and rangeland. But the system now is controlled by giant companies that contract with farmers to produce livestock with the efficiency of auto assembly lines inside warehouse-like barns and sprawling feedlots.

The spread of corporate animal farms is turning neighbor against neighbor in town halls and courtrooms. Iowa, the top U.S. producer of swine and egg-laying chickens, has been a major battleground.

"It's a fight for survival," said Chris Petersen, who still raises pigs in outdoor pens.

Michele Merkel, a former EPA attorney who quit over the agency's reluctance to punish polluting mega-farms and is co-director of the advocacy group Food & Water Justice, said the industry "has avoided any effective regulation and accountability for a long time."

Industry groups say there are plenty of regulations and livestock agriculture is simply adapting to improved technology, equipment and methods.

"We're responding to what the market is giving us," said Brady Reicks, whose company runs numerous large hog structures in northeastern Iowa. "We're doing it responsibly; we're passionate about doing it. It increases growth in rural Iowa and it helps feed the world."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began to count the nation's factory farms during the Obama administration but retreated when industry groups sued. Instead, the agency uses state data to produce annual statistics about only the biggest operations.

As of 2018, the nationwide EPA tally was about 20,300 - a roughly five-fold increase over nearly four decades.
WATCH: How these Massachusetts farmers are turning manure and food waste into power
Yet it's a tiny fraction of all confined animal operations. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are more than 450,000, most too small for inclusion in the EPA count.

Iowa has 80 million farm animals and 3 million people. Yet in 2017, regulators didn't know how many livestock farms were in the state. Under federal pressure, the Department of Natural Resources pored over aerial photos, discovering 4,200 previously unknown facilities.

Zenk's Plymouth County farm was among them.

"We knew nothing about his operation," said Sheila Kenny, an environmental specialist with the state agency.

Zenk acknowledged breaking the rules but said no harm was done. He paid a $4,500 fine.

"You think you can get by with something once in a while and you can't," he said, strolling among his barns, tractor and feed bins.

To state regulators, such discoveries mean the system works. Critics say the Iowa experience shows how easily livestock operations can escape detection.

Putting thousands of animals in one enclosure produces huge amounts of manure. Unlike human sewage, which is treated and released to waterways, animal waste is stored, then spread on croplands as fertilizer.

Farmers insist they are careful.

"We take soil tests, we decide how much manure it needs and that's how much we apply," Reicks said.

Environmental groups say fields often can't handle the volumes of manure produced, leading to runoff. Such pollution is exempt from regulation under the 1972 Clean Water Act, even though agriculture is the biggest contaminator of rivers and streams, according to the EPA.
READ MORE: How more organic farming could worsen global warming
In Emmett County, Iowa, small farmer Gordon Garrison sued a nearby operation with 4,400 hogs, contending manure from its croplands fouls a creek that runs through his property and feeds the Des Moines River.

"They're using me for a waste disposal site," Garrison said.

Livestock farms generate about 70% of the nation's ammonia emissions, plus gases that cause global warming, particularly methane.
Yet they aren't required to get permits under the Clean Air Act. The government hasn't decided how to measure emissions from barns, feedlots, storage lagoons and croplands.

And under President Donald Trump, EPA has exempted livestock operations from requirements under other laws that industries report significant releases of air pollutants including ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

Critics say yesteryear's barnyard whiffs were nothing like the overpowering stench from today's supersized operations.

"You don't want to be anywhere near them," said Brad Trom, a crop producer in Minnesota's Dodge County, who lives within three miles of 11 structures housing 30,000 swine. He says he's been staggered by powerful odors barreling across his fields.

Farmers say they're trying to reduce the smells but contend they're a normal part of country life.

"I've never lived on a farm that didn't have nature's fragrances on it," said Gary Sovereign, a swine producer in Iowa's Howard County.

Research has linked proximity to factory farms to various health risks. But scientists acknowledge it's nearly impossible to pin someone's illness on a certain polluter.

Jeff and Gail Schwartzkopf say after a hog mega-barn was built a quarter-mile from their home in northern Iowa, they developed burning and itching eyes, throat soreness and body rashes. They fear the manure odors are making them sick and ruining their home.

"Nobody's going to want to buy it. We're stuck," Jeff Shwartzkopf said.

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Factory farms provide abundant food, but environment suffers

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An industry once based on small, independent farms is evolving into large operations housing thousands of animals under one roof. The change is helping make beef, poultry and pork more affordable. But animal waste from the mega-farms has fouled waters.

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This is a journal article published November 8, 2015 in Public Health Ethics, affiliated with the National Library of Medicine. The article, by author, Jonathan Anomaly, uses 33 citations and addresses the responsibilities of the US government in protecting animals from cruelty related to factory farms and suggest the idea of phasing out factory farming.

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Abstract

Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal welfare advocates. The aim of this essay is to raise three independent moral concerns with factory farming, and to explain why the practices associated with factory farming flourish despite the cruelty inflicted on animals and the public health risks imposed on people. I conclude that the costs of factory farming as it is currently practiced far outweigh the benefits, and offer a few suggestions for how to improve the situation for animals and people.

Factory farming involves raising livestock in densely populated environments often called 'concentrated animal feeding operations'. 1 Common practices include packing pregnant pigs into gestation crates so small they cannot turn around, placing egg-laying hens in cages stacked on top of one another in massive enclosed buildings and raising cows on feedlots rather than the grass pastures many of us associate with ruminants.2 Because of the stress induced by these conditions, including the constant frustration of their natural instincts, many animals develop compromised immune systems, and without a steady course of antibiotics, many more would become sick and die of bacterial infections. Thus, antibiotics are often used to compensate for conditions that would otherwise make it impossible to raise animals ( Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antimicrobials, 2010 ).

The practices that comprise factory farming evolved as a result of competition between firms to produce commodities-mainly milk and meat-at minimal cost. Competition usually benefits consumers. Factory farming has lowered the price of animal protein, and this is a real boon for poor and middle-class consumers. But there are at least three moral problems with factory farming, and none of them is factored into the price of the animal products they create. These include the spread of pathogenic viruses, the diffusion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria into our shared microbial environment and the immense cruelty suffered by animals in confined conditions.

Animals and Influenza

Experts agree that most (and perhaps all) strains of the influenza virus that infect human beings originated from contact with other animals, especially domesticated birds and pigs in Asia ( Crawford, 2000 : 95). The advent of animal agriculture brought a steady supply of protein to people, but it also increased the transmission of viruses carried by animals, and spurred the evolution of existing viruses.

There are several reasons factory farms seem to elevate the risk of novel viral outbreaks-especially variations of avian and swine flu. First, crowding animals together in close confinement can induce stress and suppress their immune systems, raising parasite loads and making animals more susceptible to infections; second, as all of us have learned after catching a cold in school or at work, viral transmission is facilitated by animals being kept in proximity to one another; third, close contact between different species of animals gives viruses a continuous opportunity to mutate and reassort to create new strains; fourth, many factory farms confine animals to indoor spaces that lack adequate sunlight or ventilation, which allows viruses to survive longer without a host; and finally, because animals on factory farms are often genetically similar, they can be more susceptible to specific parasites ( Crawford, 2000 ; Greger, 2007 ).

The situation on factory farms is in some ways analogous to that of overcrowded prisons ( Schmidt, 2009 ). Infectious diseases flourish in prisons for some of the same reasons: high stress and poor nutrition can impair people's immune systems, and crowding permits a quick transfer of microbes and a continuous supply of hosts. This is one reason many experts believe pathogenic viruses like hepatitis have spread more rapidly in crowded prisons than in the surrounding population ( Bick, 2007 ).

Most people already understand that crowding can spread sickness, and compromised immunity makes people more susceptible to infection, but few people understand how crowding different species together-as occurs on factory farms and in live animal markets-might hasten the evolution of new strains of virus. According to Dorothy Crawford, '[b]ird viruses usually lack the receptor binding protein needed to infect human cells, but some domestic animals like pigs and horses are susceptible to both bird and human strains. So gene swapping between human and bird strains often occurs in pigs or horses, causing a major genetic change in the virus make-up called an antigenic shift . Occasionally after this mixing a "new" virus strain emerges that can infect and spread in humans, and as the population is completely naïve to this "new" strain it can spark a pandemic' ( Crawford, 2007 : 205).

Viruses have long jumped between species, but the advent of animal agriculture increased opportunities for viral transmission between animals and humans. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which infected half of the world's population and killed tens of millions of people, is thought to have arisen in farm animals. Although this particular strain cannot be blamed on practices that began in the late 20th century, our current practices increase the risk that new versions of existing viruses will emerge. It should be emphasized that in most cases, it is impossible to track the exact origin and evolutionary progress of any particular strain of flu. Scientists instead look for patterns of correlation between sites of initial infections, and rely on general knowledge about the conditions that facilitate the emergence and transmission of viruses.

Regardless of the origin of specific outbreaks of swine and avian flu, the general trend seems to implicate factory farming as a significant cause of many new strains: 'there is no doubt that we are in the midst of the worst ever recorded flu pandemic in birds. The [H5N1] virus started life as a harmless infection in the intestines of wild birds and jumped to domestic chickens in the 1990s, where modern intensive farming techniques gave it the opportunity to adapt and evolve ... . And now this virulent strain has not only crossed back into wild fowl but has increased its host range to include other birds ... and even some mammals such as cats' ( Crawford, 2007 : 208).

Although I have focused on different strains of influenza, animals share many other viruses, even if only a small number induce death or disease when they jump species. The morally interesting question is whether we can justify practices that increase the likelihood of new viral epidemics.

It is conceivable that new strains of viruses that arise on factory farms will eventually lose their virulence and strength. When viruses are confined to a specific population, they tend to become weakened as they co-evolve with the animals that host them. This occurs because from the virus's standpoint-from the standpoint of the 'selfish' genes that comprise viruses-a host is better alive than dead, as a live host can create more copies of the virus and spread it to more people.

However, it can take many years for a virus to become benign ( Crawford, 2000 ), and in the intervening period, it can decimate populations. So the fact that in the long run viruses tend to lose their virulence-their ability to cause disease or death in the animals that host them-does not suggest that we should continue to allow factory farmers to house their animals in extreme confinement.3

Antibiotic Resistance

In recent years, awareness of the problem of antibiotic resistance has grown as bacterial diseases ranging from tuberculosis to gonorrhea have become increasingly costly or difficult-and in some cases, impossible-to treat by existing antibiotics ( United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013 ). Many people now understand the basic evolutionary principle that our increasing use (and misuse) of antibiotics fuels the evolution and dispersion of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But fewer people are aware of the connection between the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock and the emergence of new patterns of antibiotic resistance in people.

Resistance to antibiotics arises in farm animals for the same reason it does in people. For billions of years, bacteria have been competing with each other and with plants, fungi and animals for scarce resources. Although most of these relationships have become mutualistic (beneficial to both parties) or commensal (neither harmful nor beneficial to both parties), some are parasitic relationships in which bacteria benefit at the expense of their host. When bacteria parasitize other organisms, natural selection rewards genetic mutations and immune responses that allow their victims to fight back. The arsenal that organisms have evolved to defend themselves against exploitation includes chemical weapons that destroy bacteria, and enzymes that disrupt DNA synthesis to prevent their replication. Bacteria have responded in kind by developing sophisticated defenses, including membranes that block antibiotic absorption ( Delcour, 2009 ), enzymes that degrade the efficacy of antibiotics ( Wright, 2005 ) and efflux pumps that eject antibiotics that have already been absorbed ( Kumar and Schweizer, 2005 ).

One might think that organisms with an adaptive immune system would eventually find a way to resist bacterial exploitation. To some extent this occurs, which explains the existence of endogenously produced antibiotics in many organisms, and natural immunity to the deleterious effects of some bacteria in others. But bacteria have responded with a creative way of evolving quickly. Horizontal gene transfer through conjugation and transduction allows bacteria to acquire genes from other bacteria, from phage viruses that parasitize them and occasionally from unwilling hosts. This allows bacteria to exploit mutations and gene sequences that arise in other organisms, which is one reason most scientists see no way of developing an antibiotic that permanently removes the threat of harmful bacteria. The challenge instead is to find specific antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria, undermine their virulence or prevent them from replicating long enough for an immune system to clear them from an animal's body.

Nearly half of all antibiotics worldwide are given to farm animals to promote growth and prevent diseases in the crowded quarters in which livestock are increasingly kept, and in the US, an estimated three quarters of all antibiotics go directly to livestock on factory farms ( US GAO, 2011 ). For many years, public health experts have warned about the dangers of using large quantities of antibiotics in farm animals, especially when they are used at sub-therapeutic doses over long periods, as this creates an ideal environment for bacteria to evolve and spread resistance to antibiotics ( Gorbach, 2001 ). Antibiotics are administered at low levels because they can speed the growth of some animals by increasing nutrient absorption and preventing infections in cramped conditions ( McEwen and Fedorka-Cray, 2002 ). Using antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes gives farmers a small but significant advantage over those who decline to use them, thus creating a negative sum game in which the rational profit-maximizing choice for each farmer gives no farmer any particular advantage over others, but leaves nearly all animals and people worse off.

Animals are worse off because of the cruel conditions in which they are kept. Farmers are no better off using antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes if their competitors are also permitted to use them. People are worse off because antibiotic-resistant bacteria often find their way into human hosts.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria that arise on factory farms can spread to human hosts in a number of ways. First, those who work on farms and handle animals or raw meat can pick up antibiotic-resistant bacteria from animals who have it, and transfer it to other people; second, some bacteria survive in meat even after it is cooked, and are transferred directly to those who eat it; third, animal waste from factory farms that contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria is often used to fertilize crops, and some of these bacteria infect people who either work with crops or consume them; and finally, as bacteria do not respect physical or biological borders, some are transferred to animals and streams around factory farms ( McEwen and Fedorka-Cray, 2002 ; Casey et al. , 2013 ).

In a recent overview of antibiotic resistance on US farms, the Environmental Working Group found that among the most common meats bought in US supermarkets, 81% of turkey, 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef and 39% of chicken contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria ( Undurraga, 2013 ). By themselves, these numbers should not be alarming, as many bacteria have been carrying antibiotic-resistant genes for millions of years. It is possible for resistant bacteria to spread from animals to humans, or from humans to animals, so the misuse of antibiotics among people may be (at least partly) responsible for recent increases in resistance among bacteria that colonize farm animals ( Singer, 2003 ). However, recent increases suggest that factory farming practices are largely responsible for antibiotic resistance among farm animals, and thus in the meat that derives from them. While experts argue about whether most resistance comes from the misuse of antibiotics (such as their use for growth promotion), or whether it comes simply from the total quantity used, there is clear evidence that more use in people or animals creates more resistance in the bacteria that colonize them (Wegener, 2003a), and that reducing their use in farm animals in countries like Denmark has led to less resistance (Wegener, 2003b).

Although it is necessarily imprecise, we can measure the increased prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria over time. For example, between 2002 and 2011, multidrug-resistant Salmonella in raw chicken in the US has increased from ∼20 to 45%, and in turkey during the same period, it increased from ∼20 to 50% ( Undurraga, 2013 ). Human deaths from multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli derived from poultry are on the rise, and this is likely to be true for many pathogenic bacteria derived from farm animals ( Collignon et al. , 2013 ). Unfortunately, withdrawing antibiotics from animal feed does not work especially quickly. Just as it takes time for bacteria to acquire and spread genes that confer resistance, it often takes time for them to lose these genes when antibiotics are withdrawn ( Lenski, 1998 ). This is because although genes that confer resistance are costly to carry, the costs are often minimal and some genes can encode for the conditional expression of resistance, so that resistance genes are only phenotypically expressed in bacteria when antibiotics are present ( Andersson and Levin, 1999 ). And although the prevalence of resistance genes typically falls over time when antibiotics are withdrawn, it takes a long time to approach 0. So when antibiotic use is resumed, even a small number of bacteria with antibiotic-resistant genes can spread rapidly within and between different bacterial populations ( Salyers and Amabile-Cuevas, 1997 ). This suggests that it may take considerable time before removing antibiotics in agriculture restores their efficacy.

While most European countries have phased out the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock over the past decade, the US and other countries have been slow to respond-presumably because there are significant upfront costs to changing the way farm animals are fed and housed, and because farmers with lobbying power fear losing market share to less scrupulous farmers in other countries who continue to use factory farming techniques that necessitate antibiotics.

Animal Cruelty and Public Policy

Philosophers argue about whether animals have rights, and if so where these rights come from. These are important arguments to have, but any plausible theory will hold that sentient creatures capable of feeling pain and frustration have interests that deserve protection. The problem is that the interests of animals and people can come into conflict. People have an interest in advancing medical research and consuming cheap protein, and animals have an interest in being able to exercise their instincts, or at least being free from gratuitous pain and frustration. When interests collide, the differences between various theories of animal rights will come to the fore. However, we can start with the assumption that any theory of animal welfare worth taking seriously will include a pro tanto obligation not to inflict cruelty on animals without sufficient justification.

Some think that rationality or consciousness is a necessary condition for moral standing. 4 Others suggest that sentience is sufficient for moral standing, so that all sentient animals deserve to have their interests protected. The claim that animals are equal in the sense of having their interests equally considered does not imply that they should be treated the same. Instead, the idea is that having an interest means that moral agents should take these interests into account when deciding what to do. The fact that a pig has interests does not imply that it should be given the right to own a home or drive a car, but rather that we should minimize unnecessary pain and frustration ( Singer, 1976 ), perhaps by according it legal rights, and by requiring farmers to abide by certain animal welfare standards.

Another view is that although a variety of qualities like rationality, sentience and empathy give animals moral standing, there is no precise combination of qualities that clearly separates animals with and without rights. Call this view pluralism. James Rachels seems to endorse this view:

There is no characteristic, or reasonably small set of characteristics, that sets some creatures apart from others as meriting respectful treatment. That is the wrong way to think about the relation between an individual's characteristics and how he or she may be treated. Instead we have an array of characteristics and an array of treatments, with each characteristic relevant to justifying some types of treatment but not others. If an individual possesses a particular characteristic (such as the ability to feel pain), then we may have a duty to treat it in a certain way (not to torture it), even if that same individual does not possess other characteristics (such as autonomy) that would mandate other sorts of treatment (refraining from coercion). [ Rachels, 2004 : 169].

Some find this view unsatisfying because it fails to draw clear lines or to list off a single set of obligations that we owe to all creatures with moral standing. But the fact that our moral universe is more complicated than we would like it to be does not imply that pluralism is false. Regardless of their differences, pluralists like Rachels and consequentialists like Singer agree that farm animals should be guaranteed minimally decent treatment, and that using them as mere means to our ends is wrong.

Animals used for food are treated differently around the world, and even Western countries offer different protections. For example, while the European Union (EU) has robust anti-cruelty laws that apply to all member states, the US federal government affords no protection at all to animals raised for food. The US Animal Welfare Act passed in 1966 exempts most animals that humans come into contact with from protection against cruelty:

Farm animals, such as domestic cattle, horses, sheep, swine and goats that are used for traditional, production agricultural purposes are exempt from coverage by the AWA [emphasis added]. Traditional production agricultural purposes include use as food and fiber, for improvement of animal nutrition, breeding, management or production efficiency, or for improvement of the quality of food or fiber.5

The federal government has delegated this responsibility to state governments, and many states have created animal welfare laws designed primarily to protect the interests of meat producers, and companion animals like dogs and cats, while excluding farm animals of similar or greater sentience from similar protection. Most states make it difficult to prosecute violations of animal welfare laws, and have relatively weak anti-cruelty provisions, which count a practice as unacceptably cruel only if it violates existing practices.

According to Wolfson and Sullivan,

In a rapidly growing trend, as farming practices have become more and more industrialized and possibly less and less acceptable to the average person, the farmed-animal industry has persuaded the majority of state legislatures to actually amend their criminal anticruelty statutes to simply exempt all 'accepted', 'customary' or 'normal' farming practices ( Wolfson and Sullivan, 2004 : 212).

These provisions would be considered outrageous if applied to humans. Imagine a world in which some humans are considered the property of others, and the question is how the property owners should be allowed to treat their subjects. Some owners argue that it would be costly to improve the already awful standards, so we should only regard acts as cruel if they violate practices that already exist. While there are clear differences between human and non-human animals, defining morally acceptable practices by reference to whatever is currently done is morally perverse, and it precludes virtually any improvement in existing standards.

In recent years, some states have extended more protection to farm animals. For example, in 2008, California voters passed the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which requires that 'calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be confined only in ways that allow these animals to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.' 6 While this is a slight step forward, it may also induce farmers to move to other states to continue their cruel but cost-saving practices. States like Nevada have made significant efforts to lure farmers out of California.7

In contrast to the US (and much of the rest of the world), the EU has enacted strong protections for farm animals, and some individual states have passed laws that exceed these standards. For example, while the entire EU has banned the use of gestation crates for pigs and battery cages for hens, Germany has banned cages and crates for all farm animals. In Germany, farmers are required to raise hens in large barnlike aviaries, to allow other animals to move around with some degree of freedom, and to have straw or grass bedding, rather than sleeping on concrete floors surrounded by metal cages ( Wolfson and Sullivan, 2004 ).

An advantage of the EU's approach to animal welfare is that it establishes minimally acceptable requirements that states and farmers are free to exceed. Therefore, it reduces the collective action problem in which farmers who would prefer to provide an enriched environment for animals fear that other farmers will exploit this concern by using cheaper techniques that externalize the moral costs of production.

It might be argued that if people are concerned about the treatment of animals, or the threat of zoonotic epidemics and antibiotic resistance, they should change their consumption rather than using the power of the state to force producers to alter their production practices. While I agree that people who understand the costs of factory farming have a moral obligation to change the way they shop for meat (for example, to look for labels like 'certified humane' and 'free range'), and that some people who do not understand the moral issues surrounding factory farming are culpably ignorant and have an obligation to familiarize themselves with the issues, I do not think we should simply assume that consumers will voluntarily change their habits.

First, some ignorance of morally repugnant practices is, in the economic sense, rational. Because we have limited time, and information is costly to gather and process, consumers are often rationally ignorant about how their actions and consumption choices affect other people and animals. It is difficult, and arguably undesirable from a social standpoint, to expect consumers to know everything about how the products they consume are made. In fact, this is the point of prices in a well-functioning market: consumers and producers do not need to understand how everything is made to act in ways that tend to make others better off ( Hayek, 1945 ). But this is only true when prices capture most of the costs and benefits generated in producing pencils and paperclips, and other consumer goods. When milk and meat are produced in such a way that the costs to people and animals are not factored into the price of production, we are not necessarily better off, and our ignorance can lead us to make choices that we would not make if we were aware of the harm they impose on others.

Second, the core function of a liberal government is to produce public goods and prevent people from imposing unwarranted harms on each other. Giving people the discretion to consume factory-farmed foods allows them to inflict cruelty on animals, and to inflict significant health costs-even death-on other people. While the harm to animals is direct, the harm to other people is probabilistic and diffuse. Each person's consumption of meat from factory-farmed animals merely contributes to a process that significantly elevates the risk of harm to other people in the form of antibiotic-resistant infections, or new viral infections that arise in birds and pigs.

Since some people will continue to consume factory-farmed products because it is cheaper than the alternatives, or because they are ignorant of the harms associated with these products, we cannot rely solely on social norms and moral outrage to drive farmers to alter their practices, nor can we rely on farmers to voluntarily phase out factory farming, as most farmers who act this way will be driven out of business by less altruistic competitors. 8 Instead, governments should require factory farmers to change the way they raise animals.

An obvious starting point is for the rest of the world to follow the EU in banning the use of battery cages for hens (which typically involve stuffing half a dozen hens into cages so crowded they can barely move) and gestation crates for veal and sows. By requiring farmers to use straw or other bedding for animals and increase roaming space and access to fresh air, we can marginally increase their comfort and decrease the stress that leads to compromised immunity. This alone would significantly increase welfare and reduce the risk of zoonotic viral infections. It would also reduce the need to administer antibiotics to prevent infections brought on by crowding.

The US should also follow Europe in banning the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals ( Lessing, 2010 ), and should tax the use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes, using the revenue to fund research into new vaccines and new antibiotics ( Vagsholm and Hojgard, 2010 ; Anomaly, 2013 ). One study suggests that when we tax pollution-in this case, the use of antibiotics that leads to antibiotic resistance-and use the revenue generated from the tax to address the source of pollution or compensate victims, public support for the tax increases ( Kallbekken et al. , 2011 ). It is also arguably more efficient and fair to tax practices that produce social costs rather than activities that are socially beneficial ( Anomaly, 2010 ).

At the very least, the US and other countries should prohibit the use of all medically important antibiotics when they are used simply for the purposes of growth promotion, or as a way of compensating for crowded and unhealthy conditions on factory farms. This is what the US Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act proposes, although even if it eventually passes, there is some worry that it may not go far enough because sometimes resistance to non-medically important antibiotics can also confer resistance to medically important ones. 9 Because we share a microbial environment, the overuse of antibiotics aimed at particular bacteria can increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistance among other bacteria that are likely to affect human health. Thus, instead of allowing farmers to decide on the kind and quantity of antibiotics to give to their animals, we might at least require veterinary oversight. Allowing farmers to administer antibiotics indiscriminately is tantamount to allowing them to decide how much harm they would like to inflict on other people.

One potential problem with banning antibiotics for growth promotion, and requiring veterinary supervision and prescription for administering antibiotics to sick animals (or as prophylaxis for potentially sick animals), is that farmers might pressure veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics when they are not really needed. More plausibly, in the absence of other requirements like increased roaming space, farmers might actually need antibiotics for sick animals-not because animals naturally get sick a lot, but because the conditions on factory farms ensure that animals will be infected with pathogenic bacteria. 10 This suggests the need to impose a complementary package of requirements on farmers that both improves animal welfare and decreases the transmission of disease.

It is impossible to say with precision what the total cost of imposing new requirements on farmers would be. If the cost was large, this could be a real loss for people with less income. But the argument from cost is not decisive.

Evidence from Europe indicates that the cost of complying with more stringent rules may not be as high as farmers anticipate. For example, in Denmark, the extra cost so far of implementing standards that increase animal welfare and decrease antibiotic use is estimated at $1 per pig ( Wegener, 2003b : 448). It is likely that forcing farmers in the US and China to switch from intensive methods would impose greater costs, as both countries currently use much more confinement and antibiotics than Denmark ever did. The problem with estimating the cost of changing methods is that organizations representing animal welfare advocates and factory farmers give different estimates, and it is too early to know precisely how new provisions in Europe and California will impact prices, as they are just beginning to come into effect.

Another reason to think the argument from cost is not decisive is that although meat has been a cheap and sometimes necessary source of high-value protein for humans throughout much of our history, a nutritionally adequate diet does not require the consumption of meat, and certainly does not require the amount of meat consumed by people living in Japan or the US ( Smil, 2013 ).

Finally, when the relative price of meat increases, markets will reward research into synthetically created meat, derived from stem cells, which may eventually be healthier and cheaper than 'naturally' created meat. 11

The argument that phasing out factory farming would unfairly harm the poor by increasing the cost of meat is not a sufficient reason for failing to act. Many poor people around the world would still be able to consume humanely raised animal products, and people in destitute poverty may have to turn to grains and legumes for most of their protein (as they already do). But being forced by circumstance to consume less meat than one would like does not give people the right to consume or produce food in a way that inflicts unwarranted harm on other people or animals.

Notes

1. According to the EPA, a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is a farm in which 'animals are kept and raised in confined situations. CAFOs congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields or on rangeland.' http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=7 [accessed 10 October 2013].

2. For a more thorough description of conditions on factory farms, see Singer and Mason, The Way We Eat ( 2006 ), the HBO documentary, Death on a Factory Farm (2009), and Wolfson and Sullivan, 'Foxes in the Henhouse' ( 2004 ).

3. My point here is more about the degree of animal confinement, or stocking density, rather than the size of the farming operation. It may be that larger animal farms that enclose the animals from contact with wildlife are safer, and make disease surveillance more cost-effective, than backyard chicken or pig farms.

4. Immanuel Kant is generally thought to have held this view, although he did acknowledge indirect duties toward non-rational animals.

5. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_welfare/policy.php?policy=17 [accessed 10 January 2014].

6. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_2,_Standards_for_Confining_Farm_Animals_%282008%29 [accessed 10 January 2014].

7. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126334191947626965 . Wall Street Journal [accessed 26 November 2013].

8. The biggest flaw in current US policy is that it sets recommendations rather than binding requirements for farmers to limit their use of antibiotics, and to alter their practices to increase animal health ( United States Government Accountability Office, 2011 ).

9. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1150 [accessed 10 January 2014].

10. There is some evidence that in Denmark, where non-therapeutic antibiotics were banned in 2000, farmers have steadily increased the use of antibiotics for therapeutic purposes, although net use is still down significantly ( United States Government Accountability Office, 2011 : 40). This problem could be minimized by requiring veterinary prescription, and by imposing modest taxes or fees on the use of antimicrobials. If the taxes were too high, this might lead to an increase in easily preventable animal suffering. But even a modest tax could deter superfluous use, force farmers to keep animals in better conditions and raise revenue for research into alternatives to existing practices, including the development of new kinds or classes of antibiotics.

11. The latest version of synthetic meat is being bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2384715/At-tastes-meat-Worlds-test-tube-artificial-beef-Googleburger-gets-GOOD-review-eaten-time.html [accessed 21 September 2013].

Articles from Public Health Ethics are provided here courtesy of Oxford University Press

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Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal ...

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This is another article in Forbes, published July 25, 2024, also by Christine Ro, as part of the series on the opposition to factory farming in Iowa. The article talks about the small farmers who have been unable to compete with the larger corporate factory farmers. In addition, the article discusses how advocacy and community involvement can put pressure on government and local leaders to take action against the detrimental impacts of factory farms.

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The Iowans Stopping Factory Farms, One At A Time

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Given the many ways that CAFOs affect physical, economic, and social health, there’s a constellation of small groups fighting them in Iowa.

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This is a journal article published December 23, 2021 in the National Library of Medicine and has 78 citations. The authors are Delcianna J. Winders and Elan Abrell and discusses the problems with the regulatory system in the US related to industrial slaughterhouses. The article conveys the need for more oversight in factory farming that will prioritize the relationship between humans, animals and environmental health.

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The Need for a Rights-Centered Regulatory Framework in the United States That Recognizes Interconnected Interests

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on industrial slaughterhouses in the United States and their impacts on the vulnerable beings-both human and animal-they exploit. But the severity of these impacts is the result of a long history of failed regulatory oversight. This paper highlights the inadequacies of the current regulatory system in the United States and how they have contributed to dangerous conditions for slaughterhouse workers, environmental degradation, and severe animal suffering. Further, it argues that a rights-centered One Health approach would provide the necessary conceptual foundation for a new regulatory framework that can meaningfully address the interconnected rights, health, and well-being of humans, animals, and the environment. As a first step in establishing this new framework, the United States should create a federal Slaughterhouse Oversight Commission to strengthen the rights, health, and well-being of humans and animals.*

Introduction

When COVID-19 came to the small city of Waterloo, Iowa, where a Tyson Foods pig slaughterhouse is based, it spread quickly through the communities of slaughterhouse workers and their families, many of whom are immigrants or refugees. The impact of the Tyson outbreak was devastating to the city, disproportionately harming some of its most vulnerable community members. The desperation and fear of workers is palpable in their phone calls describing conditions at the slaughterhouse to state legislator Ras Smith, who represents Waterloo's historically Black east side: "A coworker vomited on the line and management let him continue to work ... There are eight people working in front of me and another 10 or more behind me ... I am scared I will die because of work, but I need to work to buy food for my family."1 As of December 2020, between 1,500 and 1,800 of the 2,800 workers at the Waterloo slaughterhouse had been infected with the virus, and eight workers had died; with contact tracing, the cases tied to the Tyson outbreak were between 2,500 and 3,000, "making it one of the largest-if not the largest-workplace outbreaks in the country."2 Although a combination of factors led to this public health disaster, the long history of failed oversight of the animal slaughter industry in the United States played a significant role in shaping the disastrous conditions at the Waterloo slaughterhouse and scores of other slaughterhouses throughout the United States.

The failure of regulatory oversight in the US slaughter industry is actually multifold, negatively affecting workers, animals, and the environment (including the communities that live near slaughterhouses). We argue that these regulatory failures are rooted in a conceptual failure to recognize the interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health and well-being and the central role of legal rights in protecting them. In this paper, we therefore make the case for a new regulatory framework governing the US slaughter industry that prioritizes protecting, strengthening, and enforcing rights to improve the health and well-being of both humans and animals. Particularly relevant rights in this context include the rights to bodily safety; to be free from cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment; to just and favorable conditions of work; to health; and to a healthy environment.3 However, due to the disparity between legally recognized rights afforded to humans and those afforded to animals, there are admittedly practical limitations on the degree to which they can be equally enforced on behalf of workers and animals under the regulatory framework we propose. Nonetheless, we argue that it would be a significant improvement over current conditions and could serve as the initial step on a pathway to meaningful legal recognition of nonhuman interests.

This paper begins with a description of how the inadequacies of the current regulatory system contribute to dangerous conditions for slaughterhouse workers, environmental degradation, and severe animal suffering. It then argues that an expanded One Health approach that centers rights and justice for both humans and animals to maximize optimal health outcomes provides the necessary conceptual foundation for a new regulatory framework for the slaughter industry that can better address the interconnected rights, health, and well-being of humans and animals.4 We conclude by proposing that the US government, as the first step in establishing this new framework, create a federal Slaughterhouse Oversight Commission.

Industrial slaughter and the interconnected interests of workers, the environment, and animals

As the meat industry often points out, slaughter is one of, if not the, most heavily regulated points of industrial animal agriculture. Given the shocking lack of legal oversight over animal raising, this is not saying much.5 Most slaughterhouse oversight focuses on food safety, and even in that space there are myriad shortcomings that are beyond the scope of this paper. As for workers, the environment, and animals, there are some laws in place that, in theory, provide at least basic rights in the form of legal protections against harm.6 However, these laws are both inadequate and poorly enforced, as detailed below. It is well recognized that a right without a remedy is no right at all, and too often that is the case for those exploited by slaughterhouses: the baseline legal rights-including labor rights and animal welfare protections-promised to humans and animals by Congress become virtually meaningless when enforcement is left solely to administrative agencies that have demonstrated a pattern of apathy at best, and at worst an affirmative desire to put industry profits over the interests of those vulnerable beings they are tasked with protecting.

Slaughterhouse workers

Slaughterhouses are incredibly dangerous places to work, populated by some of the most exploited and disempowered members of society. Data from the US Census Bureau documents that the meat- and poultry-processing workforce is "overwhelmingly made up of people of color, with a large percentage of immigrants and refugees," the vast majority of whom are noncitizens, and an unknown percentage of whom are undocumented workers.7 "Immigrants are particularly overrepresented in frontline meatpacking occupations."8 They work elbow to elbow, engaged in fast, repetitive movements with sharp tools and exposed to dangerous chemicals and high noise levels. Because of their vulnerable status, these workers often do not report their injuries.9 Nevertheless, reports of amputations and hospitalizations are high. As the National Employment Law Project recently noted, according to self-reported industry data-which is recognized to be an undercount-"meat and poultry workers are injured at rates on average 50% higher than all other workers in the private sector, with injury rates in red meat plants running almost twice as high."10 Injuries are not only more prevalent-they are also more severe, even when compared to other dangerous industries.11 Slaughterhouse workers also suffer psychological harms that have been documented and connected to "increased rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder."12

In addition, these workers have been especially hard hit by COVID-19-though the full scope of the impact on this vulnerable population remains unknown. An examination of COVID-19 deaths by occupation from March to October 2020 found that death rates were the highest among food and agriculture workers.13 As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recognized, slaughterhouse conditions, including "the close proximity of workstations and prolonged contact between employees," facilitate rapid COVID-19 spread.14 According to publicly available data gathered by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, as of September 2, 2021, at least 59,148 meatpacking workers had tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 298 had died (by comparison, this same dataset documents COVID-19 infections in 18,793 food-processing workers and 13,776 farmworkers, and the deaths of 61 food-processing workers and 107 farmworkers).15 According to the National Employment Law Project, "More workers have died from COVID-19 in meat and poultry plants to date during the pandemic than died from all causes in the industry in the past 15 years."16 The vast majority of these victims are racial and ethnic minorities.17 Moreover, these numbers are undercounts, as state and local governments and industry alike have concealed worker illness data.18 Most meat companies have not released any information about COVID-19 among their workforces, there are increasingly fewer public sources for that information, and there is no federal record.19 Recognizing that COVID-19's toll on slaughterhouse workers is likely even more extensive than previously thought, a House panel is currently investigating the issue.20

And these risks do not remain contained within slaughterhouse walls. One study linked community transmission of COVID-19 to "livestock-processing plants," estimating the total excess COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with proximity to these plants to make up 6%-8% of all US COVID cases, and 3%-4% of all US COVID deaths as of July 21, 2020.21

Despite the high risks posed to workers and their communities, slaughterhouses resisted providing even the most basic protections during the early months of the pandemic. A Washington Post investigation found that three of the largest meat processors in the United States "failed to provide protective gear to all workers, and some employees say they were told to continue working in crowded plants even while sick."22 Some slaughterhouses workers were instructed to use hair nets as masks and to not use their own masks they had brought themselves.23 Meat companies took out full-page ads in major newspapers suggesting that Americans would face food shortages and skyrocketing prices if slaughterhouses weren't able to conduct business as usual during the pandemic-even as they exported record levels of meat abroad.24

When worker sickness levels became so high that slaughterhouses did not have enough people to maintain operations, companies resorted to bribing and threatening sick workers to get them to return to work, and obtaining permission from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to increase slaughter line speeds-even as the CDC recommended line speed reductions, as faster line speeds require even closer quarters and have been linked to even higher rates of COVID-19 spread (in addition to higher injury rates).25

Slaughter and the environment

Slaughter is a resource-intensive, waste-extensive business, and its environmental impacts are disproportionately borne by low-income communities, particularly Black communities and other communities of color. Federal data show that almost half of the slaughterhouses in the United States "are in communities with more than 30 percent of their residents living beneath the poverty line (more than twice the national level)," and a third "are in places where at least 30 percent of the residents are people of color."29

Meat processing facilities are responsible for 29% of the agricultural sector's total freshwater consumption worldwide, and the diversion of such massive amounts of water has a significant impact on wildlife and aquatic resources-impacts that are exacerbated by increasing drought conditions driven by climate change.30 Slaughterhouses in the United States consume billions of gallons of water annually-and then often discard the used, polluted water directly into waterways.31 A recent Environmental Protection Agency study found that "74% of [meat and poultry-processing] facilities that directly discharge wastewater to surface waters are within one mile of census block groups with demographic or environmental characteristics of concern," indicating that these facilities may be disproportionately impacting communities of concern.32 The study further found that this industry "discharges the highest phosphorus levels and second highest nitrogen levels of all industrial categories."33 Pollutants also enter drinking water supplies via runoff and groundwater seepage from agricultural fields where slaughter facilities frequently spray their waste, resulting in a host of issues, including asthma attacks, autoimmune disorders, bacterial infections, birth defects, cognitive impairment in children, cancer, gastrointestinal problems, miscarriages, and even death.34 Slaughterhouse wastewater pollutants include organic matter such as blood and feces that carry pathogens like E. coli, antibacterial agents (which have been linked to a proliferation of antibiotic-resistant pathogens), pesticide residues, growth-promoting and other drugs, and high nutrient loads that cause algal blooms and "dead zones" in water bodies that are fatal to aquatic life and dangerous to human health.35 Slaughterhouses also create large amounts of solid waste, including contaminant- and chemical-laden toxic sludges and air pollution that not only make it impossible for nearby residents to sit outside or open their windows but cause serious health problems and contribute to climate change.36

Animal suffering at slaughter

Animal suffering at slaughterhouses has been well documented, including through numerous undercover investigations, whistleblower reports, and government reports. Although the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA) mandates that slaughterhouses handle and kill livestock "humanely," the USDA has interpreted this law to apply only to mammals, thus excluding birds-the vast majority of land animals killed for food-from even these basic protections.40 The agency purports to nevertheless require humane handling and slaughter of birds under the Poultry Products Inspection Act, but its stated policy is to take action only if inhumane handling or slaughter rises to the level of "a process control issue," meaning that the agency does not require humane treatment on a "bird-by-bird" basis and considers enforcement only if there is an "ongoing pattern or trend of" inhumane handling or slaughter.41 As a result, slaughterhouses have been repeatedly documented throwing and hitting chickens, even ripping their bodies from their legs, without enforcement, as well as allowing fully conscious chickens to enter scald tanks intended to remove feathers from dead birds.42 These birds-about a million of them annually, according to USDA data-die from scalding or asphyxiation.43

Downed animals-those who are too sick or injured to stand or walk-are especially vulnerable to inhumane handling at slaughter. For example, recent USDA records document slaughterhouse workers kicking, shocking, and dragging downed pigs to try to get them to rise.47 Downed animals are also often set aside in overcrowded slaughterhouse pens for prolonged periods without water or protection from the elements.48 The USDA has documented fatal trampling, frostbite, and confinement in direct sunlight when temperatures exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit in these pens.49 Downed animals also pose heightened zoonotic risks. For example, an industry-funded study found that more than half of downed pigs were actively infected with H1N1, an airborne flu virus transmissible between pigs and humans.50 In 2009, H1N1 sickened 60.8 million Americans, killing 12,469 people.51

Because of the unique humane handling issues and other concerns implicated by downed animals, in 2002 Congress directed the USDA to study and report on their treatment and promulgate any regulations needed to protect these animals.52 Despite the passage of nearly two decades, the agency has yet to comply with these mandates. That same year, Congress also passed a resolution "expressing the sense of the Congress that the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act ... should be fully enforced so as to prevent needless suffering of animals."53 This precatory resolution has likewise gone unheeded by the USDA.

The compounding impacts of slaughter deregulation

Slaughter and an expanded One Health approach

Need for an expanded One Health framework

As we argue below, the current regulatory framework's failure to protect workers, animals, and the environment underscores the need for a new regulatory approach. However, any new regulatory apparatus would risk reproducing the same harms if it is not guided by an alternative paradigm that recognizes the interconnection and interdependency of human, animal, and environmental health. Emerging almost two decades ago out of growing concern over the danger of a global pandemic stoked by the emergence of zoonotic diseases such as SARS and avian influenza, the "One Health" concept is a public health policy approach based on the interconnected health of people, animals, plants, and the environment.57 The CDC defines One Health as "a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach-working at the local, regional, national, and global levels-with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment."58 Similarly, the World Health Organization defines One Health as "an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation, and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes."59 The One Health approach is essential to effective public health policy efforts, a fact only underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, One Health's potential for improving the health and well-being of humans, animals, and the environment at every scale has yet to be fully realized, with application of the approach focused primarily on issues such as food safety, antibiotic resistance, and targeted zoonoses.60

One path through which the One Health approach could more effectively deliver on its intended goals entails recognizing rights and justice as fundamental priorities in achieving health policy goals. As philosopher Joachim Nieuwland observes, "human rights are not a prominent part of discussions on [One Health]. This absence is alarming considering the fact that human rights reflect the basic entitlement of justice."61 By centering rights and justice for humans and animals as the primary mechanisms for realizing optimal health outcomes, an expanded One Health approach would enable a more effective and impactful realization of One Health's potential by enlarging its focus to a broader range of social and environmental contexts, including the prevention of physical and mental trauma to individual humans and animals in the industrial food system. Rights are essential to this approach precisely because they shape and are shaped by the same interspecies connections that are so influential on the health and well-being of humans and animals.

Slaughterhouses in the United States provide an exemplary model of how human and animal rights are as interconnected as human and animal health. As the problems outlined above demonstrate, the deprivation of even basic legal protections for animals in the slaughterhouse setting negatively impacts the rights of human workers as well. On the other hand, implementing policies that recognize and strengthen animals' rights would also improve the health and well-being of workers. We thus argue that protection measures grounded in this recognition are a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for ameliorating many of these harms.

The interconnected harms described here can be completely eliminated only by ending industrial slaughter entirely. However, safeguarding and strengthening rights in the regulation and oversight of slaughterhouse work would provide an essential and obtainable form of harm reduction in the short term, as well as a platform on which to build more robust protections.

Integrating an expanded One Health approach into slaughter regulation

In her analysis of how the regulation of slaughter line speeds in Canadian slaughterhouses negatively impacts both humans workers and animals, legal scholar Sarah Berger Richardson illustrates how "regulatory decisions in food safety governance have profound implications on animal welfare and occupational health and safety," and when these decisions "discount social-cultural and moral perspectives about how workers and animals should be treated in the decision-making process, real harm results."62 Considering how the safety and health of animals, human workers, and (indirectly through meat products) consumers are all affected by conditions such as the speed of the slaughter line, she argues that it is "imperative to take seriously the interconnectedness between all three and the social impacts of the acceleration of [slaughter] on the well-being of humans ... and animals that meet on the kill floor."63 A One Health approach that prioritizes the interests of the human and animal rights-bearers on the kill floor, albeit constrained by the practice of slaughter itself, is a prerequisite to any regulatory system that can begin to adequately address these concerns.

Most recently, the waiving of line speed restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed human workers to greater risk of both injury and viral infection while exposing animals to increased risk of severe suffering, including from having their throats slit and entering scald tanks while still conscious, not to mention increased food safety risks as a result of meat contamination.67 The USDA's approval of an unprecedented number of line speed waivers coincided with former US President Donald Trump-citing concerns about potential liability to meatpacking corporations-signing an executive order in April 2020 to use the Defense Production Act to give slaughterhouses cover to stay open. These actions were taken despite the obvious danger to workers as slaughterhouses rapidly became significant hubs of infection early in the pandemic. In fact, meat companies knowingly fueled the virus's spread by intentionally concealing early cases among workers while requiring employees to work in close proximity without any protection.68 A lawsuit filed against Tyson Foods, for example, alleged that managers at the Waterloo pig slaughterhouse described above not only misled employees about the risk of COVID-19 exposure but even bet on how many workers would be sickened by the coronavirus.69 As Berger Richardson notes, the "prevalence of COVID-19 among slaughterhouse workers should come as no surprise ... With COVID-19, dangerous working conditions were made worse."70

A regulatory framework prioritizing rights, particularly the rights of both humans and animals, and recognizing the fundamental interdependence of human and animal health would have led to radically different policies during 2020-2021, which likely would have prevented human and animal suffering that was instead aggravated by the current regulatory system. An expanded One Health approach to slaughterhouse regulation would have not only prevented line speed limit waivers but also drastically curtailed current speeds. Similarly, the obvious necessity of closing slaughterhouses entirely until companies could implement social distancing measures, ventilation infrastructure, and access to personal protective equipment would have likely led to much lower infection rates at US slaughterhouses and the communities they are situated in. Of course, the meat industry would have experienced financial impacts from such policies, but a rights-centered approach to human and animal health would have enabled policymakers to clearly identify and follow courses of action that prioritized rights, health, and well-being without the distraction of industry interests seeking to skew that process toward policies that maximize profit at the expense of vulnerable humans and animals.

To facilitate such a shift in policy priorities, though, we must stop looking to the USDA to provide protections that conflict with its primary mandate: the support of US agricultural industries. Historically, the USDA has had primary responsibility for slaughterhouse oversight, a responsibility that its own Office of Inspector General has found it to have failed to take seriously. It should perhaps come as no surprise that an agency whose primary mandate is to promote agriculture has a tepid-at best-interest in regulating agribusiness. In other words, the USDA is structurally unable to meaningfully implement anything like an expanded One Health approach to slaughterhouse regulation because doing so is incompatible with its goal of industry support. In the United States and around the globe, the meat industry is one in which "vulnerable animals are often slaughtered by some of society's most vulnerable humans."71 For policies that reduce that vulnerability and improve the well-being of both humans and animals, we need a regulatory agency that can embrace the principles of an expanded One Health approach to the fullest extent possible within a context that still allows the slaughter of animals.

Proposing a federal Slaughterhouse Oversight Commission

The gross failure of our federal laws and agencies to protect even the most basic interests of workers, the environment, and animals from the myriad harms inflicted by slaughterhouses-and, indeed, the role of these agencies in actively disregarding the interests of these stakeholders to facilitate greater industry profits-warrants urgent attention. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the longstanding plight of slaughterhouse workers, while simultaneously giving industry cover to further disregard worker interests, including in ways that inflict further harms on animals and the environment, such as faster line speeds.

Scholar Jeff Welty has recommended that responsibility for HMSA enforcement be removed from the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA and given to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), another USDA sub-agency, citing APHIS's existing responsibilities under the Animal Welfare Act and lack of ties to agribusiness.72 However, given APHIS's chronic failure to adequately enforce the Animal Welfare Act and its focus on treating regulated entities as "customers" to whom it provides "services," we strongly disagree with this recommendation.73

David Cassuto and Cayleigh Eckhardt have expanded on Welty's passing alternative suggestion of a new, standalone agency, proposing the creation of an entirely new-and, importantly, independent-federal agency, which they tentatively call the "Animal Welfare Agency."74 For many reasons-some addressed in this paper, including the USDA's failure to adequately enforce the HMSA, refusal to apply that statute beyond mammals, and failure to adequately protect birds from inhumane handling under the Poultry Products Inspection Act-and others beyond the scope of this paper, we strongly support the creation of an independent animal protection agency. Assigning primary HMSA responsibility to such an agency would help ensure that protecting animals does not take a back seat to promoting agriculture. Moreover, greater protections for animals at slaughter would frequently align with safer conditions for workers and the environment. For example, slower line speeds reduce the likelihood of both animal suffering and worker injuries, while also limiting overall production, which translates to reduced resource demands and pollution.

The creation of an entirely new federal agency-especially one that will likely meet opposition by agribusiness-will take significant time and resources. It is a worthwhile endeavor, but the irreversible harms being inflicted daily on workers, the environment, and animals by slaughterhouses need timely attention. Moreover, as detailed in this paper, workers and the environment also suffer discrete and serious harms inflicted by slaughterhouses that, though they may be mitigated by an animal protection agency, warrant closer scrutiny and swift remedial attention in their own right. The interconnected interests implicated by slaughterhouses call for an integrative regulatory approach.

Accordingly, we recommend the creation of a Slaughterhouse Oversight Commission that is tasked with applying, to the fullest extent possible within the context of animal slaughter, an expanded One Health framework to investigate, report on, and make recommendations regarding the issues set forth in this paper. Of course, numerous nonprofit organizations are already engaged in investigations, reports, and recommendations related to these issues-indeed, many of them are cited and relied upon herein. But none of them address the issues holistically. Moreover, these private bodies lack the ability to readily access the information needed to fully assess these issues. A government commission, by contrast, could be fully empowered to issue subpoenas. Recommendations from a federal commission would also carry more weight. Furthermore, federal commissions are uniquely positioned to facilitate cross-agency collaborations and communications, which is especially important in the context of slaughterhouses, given the overlapping responsibilities of various federal agencies, including the USDA, OSHA, and Environmental Protection Agency.

There is ample precedent for such an approach, including the US Commission on Civil Rights, Marine Mammal Commission, and many more. Admittedly, no such commission has taken an explicitly interconnected approach. But no other issue has called out so clearly for such an approach. And never before in our history has the overlapping nature of human, animal, and environmental interests been so clear. Indeed, such a commission could serve as a model for tackling other issues affecting the health of humans, animals, and the environment.

There is also existing momentum that could be seized, including from the House Committee on Appropriations' March 2021 Hearing on Health and Safety Protections for Meatpacking, Poultry, and Agricultural Workers; the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus's ongoing investigation into widespread coronavirus infections and deaths in meatpacking plants; and strong coalition work by animal, consumer, environmental, and worker protection advocates against the deregulation of slaughter.75 As Berger Richardson observes, "the pandemic has created a unique policy window to address systemic problems with the way animals are currently slaughtered for food; a policy window that should be seized."76

Conclusion

The dual, and intertwined, impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and line speed increases on slaughterhouses and the vulnerable beings they exploit have shone a bright light on the usually hidden world of industrial animal slaughter. These recent developments have exacerbated an already bad situation for workers, animals, and the environment, but in doing so have garnered unprecedented attention-attention that highlights the interconnected nature of human, animal, and environmental health and well-being and the central role of rights in protecting them. This unique historical moment is an opportunity to take a novel regulatory approach that recognizes the interconnection and interdependency of human, animal, and environmental health. A rights-centered and expanded One Health approach provides the necessary conceptual foundation for a new regulatory framework for the slaughter industry that can better address the interconnected rights, health, and well-being of humans and animals.

*Postscript

As this article went to print, two significant developments unfolded that underscore the need for a rights-centered regulatory framework in the United States that recognizes the interconnected interests of slaughterhouse workers, animals, and the environment. First, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus issued a damning report finding that COVID-19 deaths and infections among slaughterhouse workers were up to three times higher than previously thought, that meatpacking employers prioritized profits and production over worker safety, that the government agencies charged with protecting these workers failed to do so, and that minority workers were disproportionately impacted.77 Second, the US Department of Agriculture announced the launch of a new trial program allowing pig slaughterhouses to operate without line-speed limits so long as they implement baseline worker safety measures and assess worker impacts, but without any special requirements regarding animals or the environment.78

Acknowledgments

We thank Natassia Tuhovak and Kyle Ash for their invaluable research assistance and the two anonymous peer reviewers for their excellent feedback.

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57. Cristina Schneider M., Munoz-Zanzi C., Min K. "'One Health' from concept to application in the global world," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Global Public Health. 2019. April 26,

62. p. 101. Berger Richardson (see note 12),

67. Chapman (see note 56).

69. Grabell and Yeung (see note 1).

70. p. 112. Berger Richardson (see note 12),

76. p. 99. Berger Richardson (see note 12).,

Articles from Health and Human Rights are provided here courtesy of Harvard University Press & François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights

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Slaughterhouse Workers, Animals, and the Environment: The Need for a Rights-Centered Regulatory Framework in the United States That Recognizes Interconnected Interests

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The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a bright light on industrial slaughterhouses in the United States and their impacts on the vulnerable beings-both human and animal-they exploit. But the severity of these impacts is the result of a long ...

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This is a journal article published April 23, 2021 in the National Library of Medicine by Jordan O. Hampton, Timothy H. Hyndman, Benjamin L. Allen and Bob Fischer. The article discusses the various ways in which food production impacts animal welfare, not just factory farming but other food production methods. The article lists various ways animals are impacted and includes several photos of deceased animals from direct or indirect food production. The article hopes to inform consumers and food producers about various impacts to animals so they can make informed choices about their food. The article lists 291 citations.

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Animal Harms and Food Production: Informing Ethical Choices

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Consideration of animal welfare in food choices has become an influential contemporary theme. Traditional animal welfare views about food have been largely restricted to direct and intentional harms to livestock in intensive animal agriculture settings.…

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General public

Activist Groups

Local Small Farmers

Factory Farmers (corporations)

Suppliers to factories

Animals

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What are the constraints and affordances around this problem?

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What are the constraints and affordances around this problem?

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Constraints:

Inability of government to provide more oversight due to budget constraints.

Consumers and general public not caring enough, making it a priority or taking action.

Profit loss by corporations who have stakeholders wanting stock increases and profits.

Affordances:

Activist groups concerned with animal welfare pushing for more regulations.

Legislators who put a priority on the environment, animal welfare and human health to enact laws that lessen those impacts.