Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

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Factory farming is insanity, not just in its contribution to antibiotic resistance but also because of its devastating impacts on the environment.

An article was published in December 2006 that described how Smithfield, America's largest pork meat producer, manages all the excrement from the 27 million hogs it slaughters every year. The article at the end is worth a read, but I'll give you a summary: 27 million hogs produce an unbelievable amount of shit. This shit is collected in what Smithfield calls "holding ponds" - which are actually lagoons - that can run 30 feet deep. These ponds contain many extremely toxic substances in addition to good old pig shit. Even light rains can cause them to overflow. And the stuff is so vicious that people are often overcome by the fumes and are hospitalized. And if someone falls into the stuff, they die.

How does this stuff affect humans? Well, gravity causes the toxic material in the lagoons to seep down into the groundwater supplies. From there it arrives in people's sinks, showers, and drinking water.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/pork-s-dirty-secret-the-nation-...

time to become a vegetarian

Or switch to sustainably raised meat (that's the focus on my farm). No medication of any kind, animals live on managed pasture that requires no inputs other than sun, air, and water.

Switching away from meat will certainly help to address the development of resistant microbes, but if you can make a switch instead to meat that was raised with regenerative pasture management practices, you can additionally have a large positive impact on many other environmental factors. Look for terms like "high-density grazing," "holistic grazing," "holistic management," or "management-intensive grazing (MIG)."

This TED talk [1] covers some of the information, for more you can google around for the above terms (sorry I don't have a good link handy). Correctly managing grazing livestock can actually reverse desertification and trap tons of carbon per year per acre in the soil. Of course, doing it wrong can have the opposite effect, so if you go this route it's important to know whether your farmer is running his operation with land restoration in mind.

Conventional vegetable production also comes with a slew of its own problems (breeding of herbicide-resistant weeds [2] being something closely related to the topic at hand). Eating in a way that doesn't cause harm is a tricky thing these days.

[1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...

[2] - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002092839.ht...

*edited for formatting

What do you do when your animals get sick?

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, I'm just curious.

It's a natural question. Sick animals are culled from the herd. They may be either processed or sold to another producer who is willing to medicate, but my program is focused on building resistant genetics. You can look into "South poll cattle" [1] for an example of this type of breeding program. I don't raise cattle at this time, but I will be soon, and I'll be using an aggressive culling system like what was used for that breed with good results. For more information about this methodology, check out the Lasater Philosophy of Cattle Raising [2]. In my case, I try to apply the same basic ideas to sheep (and eventually cattle).

[1] http://www.southpoll.com/History.html

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Lasater-Philosophy-Cattle-Raising/...

Just wanted to add two notes: First, I'm relatively new to raising animals, so I'm speaking from a position of some experience, but primarily learning from others' work. Second, sickness in general is rare for animals raised in this manner (long rest rotational mob grazing), so it's not an issue that really crops up very often.

Factory farming extends to vegetables.

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