Since the mid-2000s, the number of concentrated animal feeding operations has more than doubled in Wisconsin.
Not long ago, America’s livestock and poultry were spread out across the wide rural expanse. Idyllic scenes from family farms, with grazing cows and barnyard chickens, were a central feature of our national identity.
Today, the vast majority of those animals are stuffed, shoulder-to-shoulder, into an archipelago of immense metal buildings. These concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have taken over the animal-based food industry with shocking rapidity. In just the past 14 years, the number of CAFOs in Wisconsin has more than doubled.
The rise of CAFOs is bad news on a number of fronts. To subject sentient beings to long-term close-quarters confinement is a form of torture. And CAFOs wreak environmental havoc on communities that have the misfortune of hosting them.
The worst news is that CAFOs might kill us all. Antibiotics are an indispensable component of CAFO operations, and the more antibiotics we use, as a society, the less dependable they become. A 2016 study by the British government estimated that, if current trends continue, antibiotic-resistant infections will kill more than 10 million people per year, worldwide, by 2050. In commissioning the study, then-Prime Minister David Cameron said, “We are looking at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine.”
Imagine returning to a time when there was no such thing as elective surgery, and when a small playground cut could kill a child. Chemotherapy, which suppresses the immune system, and tumor removal might be routinely deemed too risky, even for terminally ill patients. The mortality rate of the next pandemic could far exceed that of COVID-19 due to untreatable secondary bacterial infections like those that accompanied the 1918 Spanish Flu.
Though some European countries have taken effective action against the CAFO threat, prospects for governmental action in the U.S. are relatively bleak. In fact, here in Wisconsin, earlier this year, Republican lawmakers pushed a bill in the Assembly and Senate that would have paved the way for more CAFOs by essentially cutting municipalities and counties out of the permitting process. The bill hit a snag, but its introduction and initial fast-track support shows just how powerful these corporate animal factories are.
Farmers began dosing animals with antibiotics in the 1950s, to make them grow faster. (Antibiotics promote food absorption by altering an animal’s gut microbiome.) Today, the primary role of antibiotics in CAFOs is to keep infectious diseases from spreading in unnaturally close quarters. Workers must administer the drugs routinely and preemptively, because by the time a disease is detected within a CAFO, it is probably too late to prevent mass illness.
It takes mountains of drugs to keep the infusions going. In 2018, the American animal-based food industry purchased more than 25 million pounds of antibiotics.
Because the animals fail to metabolize about 80% of the antibiotics they ingest, CAFOs are awash with them. Concentrations of antibiotics can cause mutated, antibiotic-resistant bacteria to flourish. The dangerous forms of these bacteria are called “superbugs.” Between workers coming and going, runoff from manure lagoons and various procedures that can aerosolize bacteria, mutated strains can easily find their way out of CAFOs and begin propagating in human environments. According to Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, “We’ve seen antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can leak into the environment through water and dust, jump to the skin of farmers and swap genes with other bacteria.”
Some governments around the world have taken serious action to address the superbug threat. Through a series of laws enacted in the late 1990s, Denmark effectively banned the administration of antibiotics to animals who are not already sick. The country’s meat producers responded by giving animals more space.
The U.S. has opted for tokenism. When, in 2017, the Food & Drug Administration began requiring veterinary prescriptions for preventative use of antibiotics in feed, sales of the most dangerous class of drugs quickly fell by 33%. That sounds impressive, but considering how dangerously high the usage levels were before 2017, it is akin to extinguishing 33% of a fast-spreading house fire.
Some American politicians understand that we are courting disaster. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) introduced a bill late last year that would close large CAFOs by 2040. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) are cosponsoring the measure. Locally, state Rep. Jimmy Anderson (D-Fitchburg) supports the phase-out of all CAFOs, in favor of a more sustainable model of production.
Given the power of the agribusiness lobby, it will take years for the government to act. But we cannot afford to wait. As former U.K. Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies put it, we are sitting on “a ticking time bomb.”
It is left to us, everyday people, to prevent a superbug catastrophe. If a critical mass of consumers refuse to eat products from CAFOs, be it through veganism or selective consumerism, food companies will have no choice but to respond. Together we can — and we must — force these ghastly concentration camps out of business.
Michael Cummins is a Madison-based business analyst.
