Talk:Factory farming
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[edit] Archiving
I've aggressively archived all past comments. Given that the main parties in dispute appear to have discontinued, my view is that a fresh start to the talk page is a healthy approach. Nothing is lost. Spenny 16:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Picture may not be right
The picture of cows on a feedlot may not be a real factory farm. Such feedlots exist where cattle merely pass through and are not retained there. I note it is from an epa website that is about animal feeding operations and not necessarily factory farms. --Blue Tie 23:24, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, but what is a factory farm? Serious question: is for example an animal feeding operation simply a form of factory farming aka industrial agriculture? The terms are not clearly defined, what definition were you thinking of? Personally, it strikes me as representative of an example of a style of factory farming, but I wouldn't fight a battle over some suitable alternative. Spenny 23:32, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
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- I was using the definition of factory farming as provided in the article. By that definition, this picture does not seem to apply. --Blue Tie 23:38, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
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- Which definition? There are several, for example under terms it suggests it applies to In the U.S., factory farms are also known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), concentrated animal feeding operations, or intensive livestock operations (ILOs). which would seem to cover the picture context you mention. However, we have a barren and unnatural version from the intro which is also applicable. There is a long debate on terminology, and the problem is that even within the article it is not absolutely clear, though in reality there is not one definition but a variety of definitions.
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- What do you think would be a good way to address your concerns? Spenny 23:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
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- I get the impression that a "Confined animal feeding operation" (CAFO) is what is meant by Factory Farming. CAFO is a form of "Animal Feeding Operation" (AFO) but AFO is not a form of CAFO. The picture is of an AFO but not a CAFO. You can see that the definitions for Factory Farming and other examples are indoors, whereas this picture is outdoors. (And certainly a CAFO must be indoors).
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- So if the definition includes ordinary feedlots as part of factory farming, then this picture would apply, but, then too, the article should be revised to express this wide ranging definition. I think that perhaps the picture should be removed. At the very least it should be retitled in the article, but I do not think that would go far enough. I'm interested in hearing what others think. --Blue Tie 00:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
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<<<CAFOs can be outdoors. The "barren" aspect refers to lack of natural vegetation that the animals can eat and can naturally process the resulting animal waste. High density destroys the vegetation and produces unacceptable pollution from the animal waste in runoff and ground water unless it is handled appropriately, so laws have been enacted to deal with that; thus the legal definition for the term CAFO. Confinement here is about destroying the vegetation. Caged for life in pens too small to be humane is a completely seperate issue from what "confined" refers to when used to define "factory farms" and "CAFO"s. WAS 4.250 05:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- I am not entirely sure how this definition exercise pertains to the picture which appears to me to be of a transition feedlot. --Blue Tie 18:36, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- I am not entirely sure why you think being a transition feedlot (if it is) precludes it from also being part of a factory farming operation. WAS 4.250 22:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Googling "transition feedlot" produces nothing but googling "feedlot "factory farm"" produces sources indicating that many American cattle have a traditional first few years of life followed by being processed by factory farming (industrial farming) methods. Perhaps you were under the impression that it isn't "factory farming" if it isn't conception to dinner-table industrial processing. It is a set of methods that are constantly in evolution as research and laws and disease and consumer attitudes creates new conditions. WAS 4.250 23:06, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
[edit] new animal health material
I have reverted this section since it needs discussion prior to such a major change. The first reference used is a "group" formed by most major drug companies selling pharmaceuticals to the animal agriculture sector - see members here: http://www.ahi.org/aboutAHI/member_comp.asp As such, they are far from impartial as a source. One of the references used for the USDA is a list of references and the other is to the table of contents of a report - not to the report itself - neither are good references.Bob98133 (talk) 15:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] proposed content
- Animal health — "Because farm animals produce a vital part of our food supply, farmers use different tools to protect and maintain the health of animals. Healthy animals are an essential first step to ensuring safe food."[1] Unhealthy farm animals can spread disease to other animals and humans and decrease the farmers' profits; so farmers, the farming industry and society all take measures to insure farm animal health. These measures include antibiotics, vaccination, stress reduction measures, research, disease surveillance, quarantine, agriculture trade restrictions, proper nutrition, and other measures.[2]
WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:33, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Acording to the FAO: "you cannot feed six billion people today and nine billion in 2050 without judicious use of chemical fertilizers. [...] data and models regarding the productivity of organic as opposed to conventional farming show that the potential of organic agriculture is far from large enough to feed the world. [...] The key elements in feeding the world now and in the future will be increased public and private investments, the right policies and technologies, knowledge and capacity building, grounded in sound ecosystem management."[3]
WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:33, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Your first statement about how many animals you can feed using chemical fertilizers is out of place in this article. The article is not about chemical ferilizers, it is about factory farming. Although I agree there is probably a link between the two, this is the wrong article to be making it in. If you are keen on this info being in Wiki, why not put it in organic farming or pesticides or soemwhere it belongs? Please read this entire article prior to making changes - much of what you say is already discussed in the Key Issues section. I reverted your last edit since there is always a balance between things like big farms being able to hire vets more easily and how many animals each vet has to examine. Realisically, when 100,000 chickens are kept in one barn, it would take almost that many vets to assure their well-being. When a farmer has 10 chickens, he is probably better aware of their health even if he is less likely to call a vet. If you are going to claim that the availability of vets is a bonus for factory farms, then you have to examine the vet:animal ratio for it to make sense. The AVMA publishes data on the number of vets involved in intensive agriculture - if you divide this number into the number of animals produced in intensive agriculture, you're going to end up with each vet "caring" for thousands and thousands of animals. Maybe that's better than small farms, but I wonder. Bob98133 (talk) 16:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
As near as I can tell, you are making the same mistake some previous editors made in that you are mistaking this agriculture article for an animal rights article. My two edits where merely to add sourced information, not to engage in debate on an issue close to your heart. In the one case, "animal health" is an important issue that is dealt with using a variety of measures and your response is to bizarrely claim that people making their lively-hood in agriculture are not to be trusted making claims about agriculture. In the second case, someone added a fact tag so I tried to illuminate what was being claimed - there are two aspects to the need for "factory farming" to support the human population - one, that I did not go into involves the fact that humans are not choosing a meat free diet - that concerns the more limited definition of "factory farming" as a concentrated animal farm - two, that I did address, was the need for factory style farm management - specifically in terms of soil management. WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:38, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
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- Sorry if you think I'm mistaking this for an animal rights article. Actually, I thought it was an article about intensive confinement farming which has to do with the number of animals kept and the condtions in which they are kept. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of chemical fertilizers, organic foods or the number of vets per animal. Bob98133 (talk) 14:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- Maybe the article should be about intensive confinement farming; but if it were, we would then need to delete the claims about mad cow disease because that is related to animal feed issues and not animal density issues. The article is a mess due to a former battle that got way out of hand. Maybe you could help improve the article to be an agriculture article about intensive confinement farming; because that's not what it is now. What it is now is the messed up battlefield of an ugly edit war. WAS 4.250 (talk) 19:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry if you think I'm mistaking this for an animal rights article. Actually, I thought it was an article about intensive confinement farming which has to do with the number of animals kept and the condtions in which they are kept. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of chemical fertilizers, organic foods or the number of vets per animal. Bob98133 (talk) 14:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- Ah, OK. I can see how that happened. I'll take a look at this article as a whole when I have time and see if I can reorganize it so it makes more sense and stays on topic. Any help is appreciated! Thanks Bob98133 (talk) 19:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
- See Industrial agriculture for our article on "factory farming" in the broad sense of the phrase and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Confined_animal_feeding_operations&action=history for the location the content of this article could go if it was confined to the subject of intensive land animal confinement farming. See Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture for an interesting example of the new movement towards the scientific integration of multiple species in an integrated artificial ecology that renders obsolete simplistic divisions of agriculture. Also see Industrial agriculture (animals). WAS 4.250 (talk) 20:20, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] NYT
There's a Mark Bittman article on factory farming in the NYT Week in Review. Useful? Incidentally, a quote: "Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all." Is the use of the word 'growing' common? Perhaps we should consider using it here. Relata refero (talk) 10:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
- Just read the above exchange. Copying this note to the other article. Relata refero (talk) 10:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] refs
- ^ Animal Health Institute
- ^ USDA 2005 United States Animal Health Report (PDFs) USDA 2005 United States Animal Health Report (PDFs) Table of Contents
- ^ FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS article Organic agriculture can contribute to fighting hunger - But chemical fertilizers needed to feed the world published December 10, 2007
[edit] Animal rights tone
I'm changing "treating farm animals as mere factory parts" to "treating farm animals as factory parts" since the original is an inflammatory statement indicative of an animal rights bias. Qc (talk) 04:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
After reading a bit more this article has a major animal rights bias. A lot of cleaning needs to be done. Qc (talk) 04:17, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
I would read the use of mere as indicating that factory parts are lesser than farm animals; in the sense that animals are alive. Consider, "John handled the precious vase as if it were mere glass.", it should be read as saying that John was not being careful with the vase. The whole idea behind the sentence "treating animals like factory parts" seems to suggest that animals are greater in value than factory parts in terms of intrinsic rights; thus, the "mere" doesn't really seem to be suggestive of anything beyond making this clearer.Phoenix1177 (talk) 09:20, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
