Pew Report Targets 'Industrial Farms'
Farm production may be hampered by report.
Compiled by staff
Published: Nov 4, 2008
By Harold Harpster
Pressure continues building to force more constraints on farm animal production. Animal rights and care advocates are pushing new restrictions in New Jersey and California. And now, these groups are starting to stir in Pennsylvania.
The latest Pew Commission on "Industrial Farm Animal Production" report will reinforce those efforts. The report recommends solutions to the problems created by "concentrated animal feeding operations" in four primary areas: public health, the environment, animal welfare, and rural communities.
Members of the commission included 15 individuals from the fields of public policy, veterinary medicine, public health, agriculture, animal welfare, the food industry and rural society. It included a former U.S. secretary of Agriculture and was chaired by former Kansas governor John Carlin.
The Commission heard about 54 hours of testimony from stakeholders and experts, received technical reports from academics from institutions across the country. They visited operations in Iowa, California, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Colorado, to gather information on each of the subject areas.
Here are the summary points presented in the Commission's final report:
- Ban non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animal production to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance to medically important antibiotics and other microbials.
- Implement a disease monitoring program for food animals to allow 48-hour trace-back of those animals through aspects of their production, in a fully integrated and robust national database.
- Treat industrial farm animal production (IFAP) as an industrial operation and implement a new system to deal with farm waste to replace the inflexible and broken system that exists today, to protect Americans from the adverse environmental and human health hazards.
- Phase out the most intensive and inhumane production practices within a decade to reduce the risk of IFAP to public health and improve animal well-being (i.e. gestation crates and battery cages).
- Federal and state laws need to be amended and enforced to provide a level playing field for producers when entering contracts with integrators.
- Increase funding for, expand, and reform animal agriculture research.
Is this report just one more attack on modern animal production systems or a balanced report to be taken seriously? You decide. You can access the full report at www.pcifap.org.
Harpster is a Penn State animal scientist, and a part-time cow-calf producer.
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