Karen Hirsch
Factory farming is an intersectional issue that affects us all. Here’s why.
The fight against factory farming is not just about protecting animals—it’s about protecting humans and the health of the planet as well.
Hopeful Environmentalist podcast host Taylor Ganis recently interviewed The Humane League’s Senior Director of Global Animal Welfare Mia Fernyhough about a significant driver of global climate change: industrialized animal agriculture.
Fernyhough took listeners through the different ways factory farms are detrimental to life on earth. Automobile and airplane emissions—two well-known contributors of greenhouse gas emissions—pale in comparison to animal agriculture emissions, and 60% of all agricultural-related emissions come from the meat and dairy industry. (The beef industry is the leading cause of methane emissions.)
Animal agriculture is also the biggest cause of deforestation. Fernyhough explained that because animals are farmed on a huge scale globally (around tens of billions per year), land and resources to rear, feed, and house animals are scaled up as well. This need for cropland (for animal feed) and farmland (to rear and house animals) leads to deforestation.
“We’re generating CO2 and other emissions through animal transport and animal housing, but also removing the earth’s natural ability to control and to absorb those emissions. So it’s a real kind of double whammy."
The environmental damage from animal agriculture doesn’t stop there—it has a “human cost as well as an environmental and animal cost.” Some of the more recognizable costs include air and water pollution, health problems (zoonotic diseases, food poisoning, antibiotic resistance), and severe weather. Others are less obvious, like taxpayer money supporting and propping up factory farming.
And though the conversation was full of sobering insights and staggering statistics about the global toll of factory farming, both Fernyhough and Ganis found hope in the global animal protection movement’s progress, and its work toward ending factory farming.
“Ten years ago, 5% of the eggs produced in the US were from cage-free systems. Now it’s 40%. In Europe, we’ve got 60% cage-free… We just got a major win in Asia, where 60% of the world’s caged hens live. Seeing these gains, and thinking about that intersectionality, I just have a real hope for a much kinder future in terms of how we treat animals and our impacts on the environment."
To listen to the interview in full and learn how to protect life on earth from factory farming, check out the podcast here.
