IATP Hog Report - Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Section 0
people. When pathogens in fecal matter contaminate the carcass at the
slaughterplant, some can remain on the meat that reaches the grocers'
counter.
An estimated 76-80 million cases of foodborne disease occur annually in
the United States. An estimated five thousand twenty deaths from
foodborne disease occur each year. Research completed by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) indicates
that meat and poultry sources account for an estimated $4.5 to $7.5 billion
in costs stemming from foodborne illnesses in the United States each year.
Opinion polls conducted in the United States indicate that the public cares
about the welfare of farm animals. A growing number of farmers are
finding special niches in the market where consumers will pay more for
pork certified as having been raised according to strict protocols drafted
by established animal welfare organizations. Animal welfare is an issue
around which both farmers and consumers can come together to oppose
hog factories and those who profit from them.
Many of the problems we now associate with industrialized animal
production have their roots in the mistaken paradigm that forces animals
to fit into production systems designed with human convenience and
extractive profits in mind. Many of the solutions to those problems will be
found again by adopting technologies and production systems that work
with the natural, biological, and behavioral characteristics of farm animals
rather than against them.
VII. Stop the Madness!
Part Seven: Stop the Madness! describes effective strategies that national
public interest organizations and local citizens groups are following to
protect family farms, environmental quality, public health, animal welfare,
community well-being, and social justice.
Part Seven also describes the activities of organizations that are actively
developing and promoting alternatives to factory hog farming. An effort to
develop humane, sustainable, alternative forms of animal farming must go
hand in hand with efforts to end animal production that is exploitive of
people, animals, and future generations and wasteful with respect to care
and use of natural resources. Without viable and preferable alternatives, an
old paradigm will not be displaced.
There is today an urgent choice before the American public and its
institutions. We can ignore the massive and destructive structural changes
occurring in U.S. agriculture, and thus simply hope for the best.
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