Factory farming & greenhouse gas emissions

In high school I was something of an iconoclast. I enjoyed arguing matters of politics with the conservative students and faculty my Catholic school surrounded me with, and over time I grew familiar with some of the common conservative talking points on issues as divergent as reproductive rights and gun control. Among the favorite environmental arguments I routinely found presented to me in these exchanges was the idea that methane emissions from livestock worldwide contributed more to the greenhouse effect than all human activities combined. This statistic, should it prove valid, would indeed be a staggering one—despite all our automobiling and mass production, could cows passing gas really pose a greater threat to the environment than our pollutants? Cows have existed virtually forever, and their starring role in the emission of methane, a greenhouse gas, would certainly paint the entire idea of a greenhouse effect—and, by extension, much of the science behind global climate change—in a different sort of light entirely. However, the truth behind the matter is rather interesting: while the magnitude of livestock’s role in greenhouse gas emissions should not be understated, the reality is that the population and diet of livestock living in industrialized countries is determined by the economic practice of factory farming, and that their methane emissions should actually be attributed to humankind.

“Factory farming” is defined by a number of practices by which meat and animal products are produced at highest volume and at lowest cost to the farmer—or, rather, manufacturer. Animals are provided with minimal provisions and a diet consisting primarily of growth hormones and other supplements, their range of motion limited and more often nonexistent. Factory farming produces millions of sickly and mutated chickens, pigs, turkeys, cows, tuna, and other livestock every year in dozens of industrialized countries in an effort to match growing demands for meat and animal products.¹ Chickens, for example, become monstrous lumps of breast meat who are often unable to stand on their own legs and who will likely never see the daylight during their artificially-accelerated lifetimes (unless, of course, they’re “free range” chickens—a term so legally ambiguous that the animals might have access to a smallish window at one end of the facility). Animal rights activists have long taken issue with the decades-old customs for their cruelty to animals, and more recently health experts and environmentalists have drawn connections between factory farming and harmful effects on human health and the environment, respectively.² The primary obstacle presented by factory farming from an environmental perspective is the amount and toxicity of waste produced in the process of maintaining a “herd” of millions of artificially-nourished animals in close quarters. Each site produces an absurd amount of waste year after year which is oftentimes disposed of irresponsibly in what Jonathan Safran Foer refers to as “shit lagoons” around the facilities.¹ According to a 2008 article in the Washington Post, this waste, in conjunction with emissions from the animals themselves, “responsible for about 20 percent of the nation’s greenhouse-gas production.”³⁴ How could an economic practice so detrimental to animals, to the environment, and to the health of the consuming public possibly be justified?

Proponents of factory farming, usually factory farmers, point out that this level of industrialization in the production of foodstuffs is necessary in order to feed 6-billion-plus hungry mouths. The number of cows it would take to produce the number of hamburgers Americans consume on a yearly basis could not possibly be sustainably raised on a balanced diet ¹, and so in the interest of practicality and meeting the demands of the American buying public the factory farms make a number of compromises. An internet article by Matthew Wheeland also suggests that big agribusiness is looking into an alternative to Foer’s “shit lagoons” in waste-to-energy plants:

Along with generating enough renewable electricity to power approximately 1,100 U.S. homes per month, the project will also generate carbon credits from reduced methane emissions in the atmosphere.⁵

Animal rights organizations have also made legal headway in the interest of ensuring the animals’ relative wellbeing and to prevent abuse at the hands of employees as much as possible, so the state of the animals might soon be improving.

As something of an animal rights activist myself, I find factory farms’ treatment of the animals under their care despicable and inhumane. While eating meat is another issue entirely, there exist methodologies employed by smaller “family farms” resulting in truly free-range, healthy, happy animals—even while their farmers have every intention of some day slaughtering them (humanely) and selling their flesh for human consumption. From an environmental perspective, as well, it would seem that our nation’s penchant for industrialization has produced a methane-belching monster beyond anyone’s control. The sheer number of animals necessary to sate Americans’ appetites has become the problem, and it would seem that the only solution would be a fundamental shift in America’s diet, from cheeseburgers and hot dogs to beans and lentils. However, I also acknowledge the need for cheap, accessible food products to feed an exponential population. Should factory farms in industrialized countries around the globe downsize their production even one iota, prices for currently-affordable products would increase, limiting access to a meal for millions of impoverished consumers. Meat is cheaply produced using these methods, keeping prices low and worldwide consumers happy—only a fool would question meat’s fundamental rank in an American’s diet.

Should ventures like agribusiness’s exploration of transforming animal byproducts and wastes into a renewable energy source prove fruitful, the facilities might become more defensible. The connection has, for me, been irrevocably drawn between these facilities and the greenhouse gas emissions behind global climate change, but if these theoretical waste-recycling plants really could offset emissions from similar coal-burning power plants, I might be more willing to forgive factory farms a few—a very small few—of their infinite injustices. While I’m not sure I like the idea of paying my electrical bill to and buying steak from the same corporation, the proposed reuse of the animal waste in this way would be a responsible way to avoid adding to gas emissions and disposing of the immense amounts of waste which might otherwise taint the area around the factory farm in an aptly-labeled kind of lagoon.