Three years into the outbreak and amidst outrageous increases in egg prices, the United States Department of Agriculture continues to make dangerous payouts to big companies and delay corrective action.

Rate of destruction among egg-laying hens appears to be increasing

This press release was originally sent out on March 7th, 2025.

Farm Forward released a new report today detailing how the federal government’s multi-billion dollar payments to meat, egg, and dairy companies encourage the spread of bird flu, despite the growing risk of the virus mutating into a deadly human pandemic. Over $2 billion in taxpayer-funded payments have gone mainly to large, industrial meat and egg companies like Jennie-O, Cal-Maine, and Tyson, to mass kill birds that have been exposed to bird flu.

Titled “Are We Subsidizing the Next Pandemic?,” Farm Forward’s report finds:

• USDA compensation payments to poultry farms with infected birds actually increase human pandemic risk.
• USDA compensates repeat offenders.
• Current audits of bird flu safety measures are meaningless.
• Huge loopholes in bird flu safety requirements allow many farms to take no measures at all.
• Information blackout from the new administration leaves public health officials in the dark.
• Vaccine requirements lag far behind many other countries.

Nearly a year ago, it was reported that the USDA had paid out nearly $1 billion in what the industry calls “indemnity payments,” which are meant to encourage meat and egg companies to report cases of bird flu by compensating them for the value of the birds they kill off. Companies like Cal-Maine (the largest egg producer in the U.S.) are getting these bailouts even though they have seen record profits, attributed in part to skyrocketing prices for eggs.

In February, the Trump administration announced plans to spend another $900 million dollars in Big Ag bailouts. This brings the total taxpayer funded bailouts for the meat and egg industry to well over $2 billion since the beginning of the outbreak in February 2022. Approximately $400 million of the new funding would go to egg and meat companies to both indemnify losses and buy new flocks of birds to replace those killed (a “double payment” since these farmers were already paid by taxpayers for the value of the birds killed). Another $500 million would pay companies to increase so-called biosecurity measures—measures that have so far proven ineffective at containing the virus and which taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for.

As noted in the report, the only measure that has proven effective in other countries is vaccine mandates, which the USDA has refused to issue because of industry pressure. Farm Forward’s report documents how the USDA has admitted its own failings in oversight of biosecurity measures, with no meaningful audit system in place to ensure compliance. Despite this and the worsening of the pandemic, USDA response to the outbreak is likely to get weaker due to recent mass layoffs of regulators at the USDA and HHS, including dozens of federal employees who have provided critical testing and tracking information.

Additional Farm Forward research reveals the extent to which the bird flu outbreak has decimated the U.S. population of egg-laying hens, and the apparent acceleration in the rate of that destruction. According to a new analysis by Farm Forward consultant Dr. Gail Hansen, an expert veterinary epidemiologist, the current bird flu outbreak led to the death or intentional killing of at least 13 percent of the entire US egg-laying hen population in 2024. The rate of cullings appears to be increasing: approximately 39 percent of laying hens killed since the beginning of the outbreak have occurred in just the last few months, likely due to the emergence of a new strain of bird flu, D1.1. Following the spread of the D1.1 genotype and the resulting sharp spike in the killing of laying hens, egg prices increased rapidly through the fall of 2024, reaching an all-time high of an average $4.95 per dozen in January 2025. The D1.1 strain—now the predominant genotype in North American flyways—is also more dangerous to humans, having caused a Canadian teen infected after no known animal contact to become critically ill, the hospitalization of a patient in Wyoming, and the death of a Louisiana man—the first human death in the US from this bird flu outbreak.

“When you look at this data, it is 100% clear that the government’s response is not working, and is almost certainly part of why the pandemic is getting worse every day.” Andrew deCoriolis, Executive Director of Farm Forward said. “It’s insane for us to give away $900 million in new taxpayer handouts to meat and egg companies, on top of the $1.4 billion they’ve gotten already, without demanding changes to the very practices that put us at risk.”

American consumers have seen unprecedented increases in the cost of animal products over the past few years, with egg prices having more than doubled in the past eighteen months and combined meat, poultry, fish, and egg prices reaching a historic high. While inflation has impacted all food categories, two significant factors have disproportionately driven up animal product prices: the devastating impact of avian influenza, and systematic price manipulation by major meat producers. These price increases reveal deeper issues within our industrial food system and its vulnerability to both natural and human-caused disruptions.

The Impact of Avian Influenza

Egg Prices Hitting Record Highs

The ongoing avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak has become the deadliest bird flu in U.S. history, leading to the culling of 150 million poultry in the U.S. since early 2022—an average of 138,000 domestic birds slaughtered and discarded every day.

This strain of bird flu, designated a “highly pathogenic avian influenza” or HPAI, spreads rapidly through industrial farming operations where tens of thousands of birds are crowded together in close quarters, providing a perfect petri dish for multiplying the infection. The genetic similarity of commercial broiler chickens amplifies their vulnerability to the illness. Thanks to the global monopoly that just two companies—Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress—hold over broiler chicken breeds, and generations of selective breeding to increase productivity, the chickens on farms largely lack genetic diversity, and their immune systems are often weaker than those of heritage breeds. So when even one bird tests positive, the entire flock of hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands must be destroyed to prevent further spread.

Every state in the union has now been affected by outbreaks of the latest highly infectious bird flu in commercial flocks. The mass culling of laying hens has severely disrupted egg production, causing prices to spike dramatically. Grocery stores and restaurants have seen their egg costs rise from $2.25 per dozen last fall to a record $6 or $7 today, with organic and specialty eggs reaching even higher prices.

Grocery stores use eggs as “loss leaders,” discounting egg prices in order to attract customers who then spend more on other products with higher profit margins. So rising egg costs have hit consumers less hard than grocers. But consumers have definitely noticed the price hike; according to the Consumer Price Index, between December 2023 and December 2024 retail egg prices rose a whopping 65 percent.

Some grocery stores have limited the number of cartons of eggs that their customers can purchase on a given day due to egg shortages. At the same time, the loss of broiler chickens as a result of avian influenza has increased chicken meat prices, while the culling of turkeys has led to both shortages and price increases during winter holiday seasons.

The implications go beyond higher prices for retail eggs and poultry. Restaurants, manufacturers, and ingredient producers that have to pay higher egg prices pass their increased costs onto consumers. And it’s not just economics at stake. Public health experts have been ringing alarm bells about the potential for this deadly avian influenza strain, which has already jumped from animals to people, to begin to spread person-to-person, leading to the next global pandemic.

How does bird flu spread?

Poultry who have been infected with avian flu shed the virus in their feces, nasal secretions, and saliva. Healthy birds pick up the virus when they come into contact with these substances. The virus can also be spread via surfaces that an infected animal has come into contact with.

Unfortunately, birds are not the only species at risk of contracting avian influenza. In just the United States, there have been 490 confirmed cases of the disease in nonhuman mammals, including 80 domestic cats, in 35+ U.S. states. Among the wildlife victims are mountain lions in California, red foxes in Colorado, and harbor seals in Maine.

The disease can also infect people. While in 2022, there was just one human case in this country, there have been a confirmed 67 human cases of bird flu in the U.S. since 2024, leading to the first human death from bird flu in the U.S., in 2025. This is a rapid increase in human cases, given that only about 954 cases have been reported to the World Health Organization worldwide since 2003. In that time period, half (49 percent) of avian influenza infections in humans proved fatal.

The risk of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)  leading to the next human pandemic is so significant that in early 2025, the US Department of Health and Human Services announced awarding $590 million to Moderna to develop vaccines against H5N1, H7N9, and up to four other subtypes of HPAI. Unfortunately, even vaccines that are well matched to strains of HPAI currently circulating in poultry may become far less effective as soon as these influenza viruses mutate—and influenza viruses are notorious for mutating rapidly.

How can the further spread of bird flu be prevented?

While some of the 145 million poultry who have died in the U.S. due to bird flu died of the H5N1 virus itself, most were apparently healthy birds who were culled due to a concern that they may have been exposed to the virus and could pass it on to people, poultry, or other animals.

The industry kills birds who may have been exposed whether they’re showing signs of disease or not, as a means of preventing the spread of this deadly disease. Some in the industry have also claimed that killing the birds swiftly, usually within 24 hours, helps to prevent the animal suffering that the illness would likely cause.

However, the ways in which thousands of birds are killed at once have drawn widespread criticism for being cruel. One of the prevalent methods is to cover chickens in a water-based foam. The birds are rendered unable to breathe and die of asphyxiation. An alternative but equally cruel method of killing the birds, and one recommended by the USDA, is to seal off the sheds they live in and pump in carbon dioxide, leading to asphyxiation. If for some reason these two methods don’t work, farmers are advised by the department to use “ventilation shutdown.” The airflow into the barns is shut off, and this causes the temperature inside to rise to fatal levels. Producers kill their birds en masse using one of these three methods because it is more cost effective than slaughtering the birds individually.

While economically advantageous for corporations, slaughtering poultry in these high numbers puts workers at particularly high risk for contracting the virus themselves. For example, the Center for Disease Control reported that working in extreme heat under large fans during a “mass depopulation” event on a Colorado egg farm, in which an entire flock of chickens was asphyxiated by carbon dioxide, made it difficult for workers to keep on their protective equipment, likely contributing to the workers contracting five bird flu infections. This mass slaughter strategy also comes at great cost to taxpayers, since the government provides subsidies to poultry producers after a “depopulation” event.

Farm Forward recommends a far more effective means to prevent the spread of bird flu in the U.S., consisting of three steps taken that can be taken simultaneously. First, we recommend that with public health in mind, consumers eat conscientiously, as few poultry products as possible, ideally none. Actively and seriously reducing demand for poultry products will lead to decreased poultry production. Second, poultry producers must take their own role in public health seriously, and shift away from overcrowded, unsanitary barns of genetically modified birds in favor of pasture-raised heritage poultry. Third, poultry should be vaccinated against bird flu to stop the spread. (The USDA recognizes several licensed vaccines for H5N1 in poultry, but the use of these vaccines has not been authorized for this outbreak.)

The EU, China, Ecuador, and Mexico have embraced poultry vaccination against bird flu, with excellent results. For example, from Autumn 2022 and April 2023 France had reported 315 outbreaks, but from Autumn 2023 to April 2024, it reported just 10 outbreaks. Thanks to systemic vaccination of poultry, some countries have temporarily achieved infection-free conditions before isolated flare-ups have recurred.

However, the U.S. industrial producers of chicken meat appear to be uninterested in vaccinating poultry against bird flu. In 2023, The National Chicken Council told CNN that it opposes vaccination largely because vaccination would reduce profits from the export market. The public needs to pressure the government and industrial producers to take the pandemic risk of H5N1 seriously enough to institute systematic vaccination of chickens raised for meat, chickens raised for eggs, and all other poultry.

There is one sure way to address the virus’s spread through poultry: eliminate industrial poultry farming. While completely doing away with mass-confined poultry farms is the most effective way of stopping bird flu, and much progress could be made toward that goal, a complete, country-wide transition away from industrial poultry farming is unlikely in the near future. Therefore, the industry that persists must reinvent itself by providing far more space for the birds, shifting toward hardier breeds, and vaccinating all poultry. 

The Impact of Bird Flu on Dairy Prices

Partly due to ripple effects from avian influenza, cow dairy prices have also risen significantly. When egg prices spike, some consumers switch to cow dairy products as protein alternatives, increasing demand. Additionally, the cost of feeding dairy cattle has risen due to supply chain disruptions and increased grain prices, further driving up the cost of cows’ milk and dairy products.

Notably, cows are susceptible to the current strain of avian influenza, and in just the 10 months following the first detection in U.S. dairy cows in March 2024, 950 dairy herds in 16 states have been infected. Infected cows often produce significantly less milk.

Although fragments of the virus have been found in pasteurized milk, the pasteurization process neutralizes the virus’s ability to infect humans. However, raw cows’ milk can transmit the virus to people. When the FDA tested 275 raw milk samples from four affected states, it found that 14 percent of the milk samples contained actively infectious virus.

Price Manipulation in the Meat Industry

While bird flu has created genuine supply challenges for eggs, other poultry products, and cows’ milk and dairy products, investigations have revealed that major meat producers have also exploited economic circumstances to inflate prices artificially. Several recent developments highlight this issue:

1. JBS Settlement: In 2022, JBS agreed to pay $52.5 million to settle a price-fixing lawsuit that accused the company of conspiring with other major meat processors to reduce supply and drive up prices. In 2023, JBS agreed to pay an additional $25 million to settle similar price-fixing charges.
2. Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Mountaire Settlement: These companies, along with ten others, faced multiple lawsuits and investigations for allegedly manipulating chicken prices through coordinated production cuts and information sharing with competitors. In 2023, they agreed to pay over $284 million to settle the lawsuits.
3. A Pattern of Behavior: Several major meat processors had previously faced scrutiny from White House economics advisors for price gouging consumers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, while increasing their net profit margins by 300 percent.

Why aren’t prices coming down?

Despite the resolution of several price-fixing cases, consumers continue to face high prices for several reasons:

1. Industry Concentration: Just a handful of companies control the majority of meat processing in the United States, limiting competition and maintaining artificially high prices.
2. Ongoing Vulnerability: Due to their overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, and genetically uniform animals, industrial farming operations remain particularly susceptible to avian influenza and other disease outbreaks, creating persistent supply chain risks.
3. Corporate Profit Margins: Many major meat producers have maintained higher prices even as their costs have decreased, prioritizing profits over consumer affordability.

The Role of Industry Consolidation

In the United States, four companies (Cargill, Tyson, JBS, and National Beef Packing) control approximately 85% of beef processing, 70% of pork processing, and 54% of chicken processing. This concentration of power allows these companies to:

• Control supply chains
• Influence market prices
• Resist regulatory oversight
• Maintain higher consumer prices even when production costs decrease

Looking Forward: What Can Consumers Expect?

While some relief could come from

• New antitrust enforcement efforts,
• Improved disease prevention measures, and
• Emerging competition from smaller producers,

experts suggest that meaningful price reductions would require

• Stronger antitrust enforcement,
• Greater industry competition, and
• More resilient and distributed food production systems.

The U.S. government’s response to avian influenza has been anaemic, and egg supply issues are likely to be ongoing. Already at a near-record high price as 2025 began, the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that egg prices will increase by 20.3 percent by end of 2025.

Conclusion

The current high prices for meat, eggs, and dairy reflect natural challenges, inadequate government responses to bird flu outbreaks, and corporate behavior within our food system. While avian influenza has created genuine supply disruptions, evidence suggests that major meat producers have exploited these circumstances to maintain artificially high prices. These rising costs, combined with concerns about industry consolidation and vulnerability to disease outbreaks, present an opportunity for consumers to reevaluate their food choices.

Many consumers are finding that reducing their consumption of animal products not only helps manage grocery bills but also decreases their exposure to price volatility in the meat and dairy markets. Unsurprisingly, mainstream media is increasingly running stories on alternatives to animal products, such as CNET’s 2025 article “Egg Prices Are Ridiculously High. Try These Alternatives.” For consumers who care about their pocketbooks, it’s significant that plant-based proteins like legumes (beans, lentils, peanuts, etc.), grains, and tofu often cost significantly less per serving than their animal-based counterparts, while providing nutritional advantages. Additionally, these plant-based alternatives aren’t subject to the same supply chain disruptions caused by animal disease outbreaks.

Incorporating more plant-based meals can be both budget-friendly and environmentally conscious. Whether motivated by rising prices, the climate and environment, animal welfare, pandemics prevention, or health considerations, consumers have more ways than ever to reduce their dependence on increasingly expensive animal products while maintaining a nutritious diet.

Bird flu will become a “widespread killer of humans” unless the current administration acts; and the next administration makes it an urgent priority.

This press release was originally sent out on January 7th, 2025.

Concern surrounding H5N1 bird flu is higher than ever after news reports of the death of a Louisiana resident following serious complications from contracting the virus. A human death marks a turning point and raises urgent questions around the trajectory of the nearly three-year bird flu outbreak. Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis issued the following statement:

“I am saddened by the news that a person in America has died of complications from bird flu. This virus has ravaged poultry and dairy farms across the country, threatened the health of farm workers, raised prices and impacted our food supply, and now, it has tragically taken a human life.”

“Bird flu will become a widespread killer of human beings and continue to kill animals unless the federal government acts urgently to prevent further spread. While factory farms have greatly contributed to the emergence and wildfire spread of H5N1, the problem has far exceeded the control of big ag. We need rightsized government regulation for both agriculture and public health to end this years-long bird flu outbreak—in the waning days of the current administration and as an urgent priority of the next one.”

Photo credit: Abigail Messier / We Animals

Last week, health officials in British Columbia, Canada, announced that a teenager who contracted bird flu is currently in critical condition. Concerningly, the patient has had no known contact with farmed animals and has no underlying conditions. Less than a week later, a child in California who had no known contact with farmed poultry tested positive for bird flu. These cases mark a stark shift in the spread of bird flu because of the severity of the illness and because neither had direct contact with farmed animals.

“The news of a deeply serious human case of bird flu is a massive wake-up call that should immediately mobilize efforts to prevent another human pandemic,” Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “We could have prevented the spread of bird flu on poultry farms across America, and we didn’t. We could have prevented the spread of bird flu on dairy farms, and we didn’t. Now, the system is blinking red: as bird flu has seen multiple crossover events and there is presumed human-to-human spread that has taken a serious turn, the regulatory agencies responsible must do something.”

The developments should be no surprise. Industrial animal agriculture—especially large-scale poultry farming—is among the largest contributors to zoonotic disease. “Factory farms notorious for raising billions of sickly animals in filthy, cramped conditions provide a recipe for viruses like bird flu to emerge and spread. For almost 20 years Farm Forward has been calling on government agencies, including the USDA and CDC, to address the public health risks of industrial animal farming. We are now on the cusp of another pandemic and the agencies responsible for regulating farms and protecting public health are moving slower than the virus is spreading.”

Regulatory agencies, including USDA and CDC, have been slow to act. In April, Newsweek published an article written by Farm Forward’s executive director and Gail Hansen, DVM, raising serious concerns about the USDA’s slow and piecemeal response. Meaningful action is possible, as countries like France have taken proactive steps to squash bird flu using vaccines and other preventative measures.

The US can still take steps to protect the public. The USDA recently expanded testing requirements for farmed animals, and the CDC released research findings underscoring the need for testing farm workers, moves we and other advocates have long demanded. These steps are in the right direction, but more needs to be done.

Even if we can put the lid back on this immediate bird flu outbreak, this should be a clarion call for a systemic change in the food system.

By Andrew deCoriolis and Gail Hansen

 This article was originally published in Newsweek earlier this year.

The government is freaking us out on bird flu. It’s not what they’re saying—it’s what they are not saying.

For more than two years the bird flu outbreak has caused devastating die offs among wild birds, wild mammals, and farmed birds. It’s overwhelming, and much of the public has understandably tuned it out.

But we should expect a lot more vigilance from the federal government, which seems complacent in the face of the outbreak’s newest and most frightening development to date. Last week, H5N1 made the first known jump into U.S. dairy cows and appeared to start spreading fast. Now this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the first case of the virus apparently spreading from cow to human. The USDA and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in matching statements, were quick to assure the public that everything is fine.

But the potential risks of this spillover event are much bigger than either the government or industry leaders seem ready to publicly admit. The American food system relies on factory farming of animals, pushing hundreds of millions of them together into inhumane, unsanitary, dangerously overcrowded conditions. It’s the perfect breeding ground for viruses, increasing the risk of mutations, the risk of rapid spread, and the risk of farm workers getting infected through direct exposure.

Yet the USDA’s official statements to date lack any reassurance that the agency is moving aggressively to combat these risks. Let’s break down all of the things missing in the USDA’s March 29 statement.

Early on the USDA said, “Initial testing has not found changes to the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans … the current risk to the public remains low.”

This fails to acknowledge the long history of zoonotic viruses becoming dangerous to humans. The 2009 swine flu pandemic followed that exact route, from avian flu to livestock to people. The two worst pandemics in our nation’s history—the 1918 Spanish Flu and COVID-19—were both zoonotic diseases that migrated to humans after starting in animal populations. The testing may show this strain is not highly contagious to humans yet, but spreading to livestock is a very dangerous milestone and more mutation is certain. We can’t be certain that it will ever mutate dangerously—but trusting to luck with so many unknowns is a dangerous gamble.

Likely the virus has mutated already, according to the USDA’s next claim: “Spread of symptoms among the Michigan herd also indicates that [bird flu] transmission between cattle cannot be ruled out. “This means that the virus has likely already changed enough to spread from cow to cow, as The New York Times reported. And yet the USDA said that it has only “advised” dairy farmers to change their practices to reduce spread. There is no mention here, or in media interviews, of the USDA or FDA even considering stronger steps, like emergency regulation or mandatory testing to find infected animals. Changes so far appear to be voluntary, despite the fact that a widespread cattle epidemic could be a major blow to the industry, disrupt our food chain, disrupt trade, and create much higher food prices for Americans.

Now that the virus has reached dairy cows, there are also more pathways for it to get into the human food chain. Active H5N1 virus was already found in milk that came from sick cows. But even if dairy cows are sick, the USDA said, “There continues to be no concern about the safety of the commercial milk supply because products are pasteurized before entering the market.” This is true sometimes—but not all the time. Standard industry practice is to pasteurize milk by heating it to 161 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 15 seconds. But those standards were designed to kill known bacteria, and it can take much longer to kill viruses. Research into coronaviruses found that it took 3 minutes at temperatures above 160 degrees Fahrenheit to kill the virus on surfaces. It’s not safe to assume pasteurized milk is safe from H5N1and again, there is no mention by either the USDA or FDA that they are testing it to find out.

Furthermore, the USDA said, “Dairies are required to send only milk from healthy animals into processing for human consumption; milk from impacted animals is being diverted or destroyed.” Again, it appears that the USDA is expecting farms to comply with this voluntarily, with no additional inspections or oversight. Dairy farmers have every economic incentive to ignore this advice as long as the milk appears normal. According to reports, farmers only tested milk for virus because they noticed the milk looked “thick and syrupy.” The USDA makes no mention of any plan to screen milk from infected herds to see if milk that looks normal may also carry the virus. There is no mention of USDA requiring infected herds to quarantine. There could be viruses in the milk on grocery shelves right now.

The USDA ends by saying farmers are “urged” to make changes to reduce the spread of disease. But as a longtime watchdog of the industry and a veterinary epidemiologist, we’ve seen time and again how large agricultural corporations sacrifice health, safety, and the humane treatment of animals in the pursuit of profit. There is no reason they’ll change now. But this time, the stakes are too high to ignore. The USDA needs to make it clear that they have a handle on this problem before it’s too late.

Andrew deCoriolis is the executive director of Farm Forward.

Gail Hansen is a public health veterinary expert and independent consultant. She is the former state epidemiologist and state public health veterinarian for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

 The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.

A USDA testing program finds that at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled “raised without antibiotics” or “no antibiotics ever” tested positive for antibiotics. USDA buries findings and reports no punitive action.

Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture launched a sampling project, to test food products labeled with USDA-approved voluntary marketing claims like “raised without antibiotics,” “no antibiotics ever.” The results are in, and the USDA has found antibiotics in at least 20 percent of cattle tested for drugs. Unfortunately, even after confirming that many cattle products are fraudulently labeled antibiotic-free, the USDA will not require meat companies to test and prove the accuracy of their claims. The USDA’s negligence allows large meat companies to profit off of consumers who pay a premium for a product they believe is healthier and more humane, all based on a lie. The USDA’s inaction will hurt farmers and ranchers who raise animals in more humane ways, without the routine use of antibiotics, and who can’t compete against meat companies who cheat.

While the USDA’s disappointing announcement is consistent with its long history of prioritizing big ag over the public, allowing this level of deception to persist in beef without even requiring testing surprised even us. Anything short of requiring testing is good for companies that are cheating and provides yet another example of the USDA’s toothless responses to factory farms’ failures to adhere to common sense standards.

“Increasingly, consumers are looking for products that align with their values, but it’s clear the meat industry is unable or unwilling to meet consumer expectations. Meat companies want to skate by on flimsy marketing claims like ‘sustainable,’ ‘humane,’ and ‘antibiotic free,’ without actually doing the work to ensure a product that meets those standards,” said Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis. “Humanewashing this flagrant usually is the domain of industry, but here the USDA is trying to sell us news that the US beef supply is compromised — and a meaningful percentage actually contaminated — as good news, and even evidence of their trustworthiness. Meanwhile, the USDA won’t even disclose which companies’ products tested positive for antibiotics in their study, so the public remains in the dark and doesn’t know who to trust. With no regulatory action in place to stop this harmful trend, the USDA has basically greenlit meat companies deceptively marketing products and continuing to lie to us.”

“Companies advertising RWA or antibiotic-free labels should implement transparent testing procedures with data made easily accessible to consumers. And the USDA must provide regulations for all findings. The government can’t pass that task off to the private sector because these findings reiterate that industries won’t voluntarily check themselves. It’s up to the USDA to decide that meat companies can’t jeopardize public health to turn a profit.”

Dr. Aaron Gross, founder of Farm Forward and Director of the University of San Diego Center for Food Systems Transformation, added, “Remembering that the USDA has an impossible dual mandate — to both protect consumers and promote Big Ag — helps explain its cowed response to massive deception in the beef industry. The USDA’s data suggests the need for transformation, but instead the agency is helping meat companies continue to deceive the public. Encouraging only voluntary testing amounts to a signal that deceptive labeling is an acceptable business strategy. The USDA’s response is pretending that this highly profitable mislabeling is happening by accident. The pattern suggests the mislabeling is by design.”

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This piece was written by Farm Forward’s Summer Intern, Molly Mulvaney.

As a result of the widespread use of antibiotics on industrial animal farms antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has emerged as a pressing global health issue.1 AMR both threatens the effectiveness of modern medicines and creates conditions for the rapid spread of deadly illnesses. The links between industrial animal farming and the antimicrobial resistance crisis, and the connection between deforestation and risk of new zoonotic diseases, are examples of how human health is inextricably linked to the health of nonhuman animals and to the health of the environment. The scientific and public health community have long recognized these connections and now describe the connections as “One Health.” The World Health Organization (WHO) defines One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems. In the past decade the One Health framework has grown in prominence and is increasingly accepted by national governments and international bodies.

Antimicrobial Resistance is an increasing threat to human and animal health. Solving the problem requires significant reforms to agricultural policy and industrial animal farming practices. Yet, the largest international One Health programs largely fail to acknowledge industrial animal farming as a key threat to the One Health mission. While governments in low- and middle-income countries take the risk of AMR and zoonoses head on, high-income countries continue to dodge root causes and point their fingers elsewhere. To seriously address the AMR crisis, culpable nations must integrate agricultural reform into their One Health frameworks and public policies.

Today, over a dozen countries and international agencies have published variations of “One Health” policies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, India, the Netherlands, China , and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The foci of One Health vary among countries and international agencies, but most are concerned with AMR, zoonotic diseases, food safety, public health, environmental degradation, and vector-borne illnesses. The growing number of One Health initiatives use the framework as a guide for public policy, but none adequately address any root issues of AMR, particularly industrial animal agriculture. The One Health framework must incorporate both systemic reform of animal agriculture and preventative measures in developed countries. Without both objectives One Health approaches fail to ensure a better future for humans, animals, and the planet.

Antimicrobial Resistance is a Factory Farming Problem

In 2019, AMR indirectly contributed to nearly 5 million deaths and directly caused over a million. Animal agriculture is a large contributor to AMR due to producers’ widespread use of antimicrobials to prevent disease and to promote animal growth. The WHO declared that “approximately 80% of total consumption of medically important antibiotics is in the animal sector” of certain countries.2 The United States is one of the largest contributors to antibiotic overuse, with consumption per kilogram of livestock almost twice as high than that of all of Europe in 2020. Despite the efforts of groups like the US and UN, however, One Health action plans have failed to take seriously the prevention of AMR within animal agriculture.

What Are Countries and International Agencies Doing to Address AMR? Not Enough.

One of the largest One Health programs is the One Health Quadripartite (OHQ), made up of the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the UN Environment Programme, the World Health Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health (formerly OIE). This consortium of international organizations has communicated strong goals for tackling AMR but misses the mark. The OHQ published a “One Health Joint Plan of Action” that dictates their plans for the years 2022-2026. Although the plan emphasizes preventive measures, it lacks any focus on problems stemming from the animal agriculture sector. The document acknowledges that “livestock and fish production systems are not specifically addressed” despite their importance in both preventing and solving AMR. In the OHQ’s lengthy AMR research agenda, they boast that their focus lies “at the interface between sectors that are most relevant to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs),” even though these countries are doing the least to contribute to the AMR crisis. The OHQ’s attitude resembles US remarks that other countries must work to solve climate change while not doing enough itself to reduce emissions. Mitigation and treatment of AMR in LMICs is important, but entirely overlooks causes of AMR attributable to massive meat companies in countries like the US.

The EU Commission on One Health (“Commission”) has similar goals to OHQ but focuses slightly more on the importance of animal agriculture in solving AMR. Animal agriculture reforms from the Commission are vague or unenforceable, leading to minimal or no changes in the production system. Their guidelines on antimicrobial use on animals read, “training courses and guidance materials given to farmers should include information on preventive measures that promote animal health, in particular, implementation of biosecurity measures, good farming practices and herd health planning.” Training courses and guidance materials are valuable but the Commission lacks specific standards, regulations, and rules to gain meaningful change. The Commission does describe some specific methods for addressing AMR, including supplying quality feed and water, improving housing, and using safe alternatives to antimicrobials. While these changes may begin to address the AMR crisis, they have not yet been translated into legislative policies or other regulatory actions.

In the United States, the One Health Federal Interagency Coordination Committee (OH-FICC), run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is the leading organization for One Health. OH-FICC works with numerous federal regulatory bodies including the USDA and FDA. Despite the extensive network of OH-FICC, the initiative lacks appreciable calls for animal agriculture reform or preventative measures. OH-FICC fails to take accountability for the massive amount of antibiotics used on animals within the food system. The organization contains a National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, yet will not publicly acknowledge that most of the antibiotics used in the United States are on animals raised for food. In the last few years, OH-FICC has focused much of its resources on projects that evaluate livestock farming in LMICs and find alternative practices that reduce disease and AMR. Animal agriculture can surely use reform, but it is hypocritical of the CDC to ask LMICs to change small farming operations when the United States has some of the most unethical, disease-ridden, AMR-causing livestock practices in the world.

Although previous examples demonstrate One Health failures, Rwanda’s lengthy One Health framework displays thorough and promising initiatives against AMR. Rwanda has developed a report on their One Health plans through 2026 in addition to an entire action plan on AMR. Their AMR plan includes a focus on both animal agriculture and prevention and breaks down objectives including increased education, surveillance, sanitation, and hygiene. Perhaps their most important efforts include training for agricultural workers, veterinarians, and agronomists while also implementing biosecurity guidelines for farms, slaughter plants, and aquaculture facilities. Moreover, the Rwandan government seeks to “restrict broad or generalized use of antimicrobials as growth promoters or as feed additives” and “strengthen regulation and oversight for the supply chain and use of antimicrobials in agriculture and veterinary medicine.” Rwanda’s plan for preventing and treating AMR is highly sophisticated compared to other nations. The CDC, for example, includes minimal AMR prevention, despite the US having 72 times the amount of cattle as Rwanda. Rwanda’s work exhibits a strong start for combating AMR that other, more culpable countries must follow and augment.

Conclusion

Climate change and the intensification of animal production will continue to exacerbate AMR, zoonoses, and emerging health threats. Powerful countries and international organizations must take greater responsibility for public health and develop thorough, accountable One Health approaches.

More than 40 dairy herds in nine states have been infected with the latest strain of H5N1 bird flu. The virus has also infected at least two farmworkers, one in Texas and another in Michigan. We’re even seeing outbreaks in domestic cats and house mice.

The USDA and FDA maintain that dairy milk is safe to consume. Government regulators say pasteurization kills off the virus, though new research finds that commercial pasteurization doesn’t kill all live viruses in milk, meaning there may be live viruses in milk on store shelves. As for unpasteurized dairy products like raw milk, the FDA and USDA recommend not consuming them. Despite this warning, sales of raw milk are increasing. State laws on raw milk vary widely, and though the FDA is urging states to ramp up testing and restrictions, few states have limited the sale of raw milk meaning thousands of consumers are at risk of exposure to bird flu in dairy products.

The most upsetting part of the current bird flu outbreak is that it’s not a surprise. Farm Forward has been sounding the alarm for years that factory farms are petri dishes for zoonotic diseases. On factory farms—which account for 99 percent of animals raised for food—animals are overwhelmingly genetically uniform, immunocompromised, and crammed together by the tens of thousands. Following the emergence of COVID-19, Farm Forward board members Jonathan Safran Foer and Aaron Gross warned in an April 2020 op-ed in the Guardian of the need to end the industrial chicken industry as a measure to prevent future bird flu pandemics. Now that bird flu has spread to more than 200 wild animals, including seals, bears, and mountain lions, and has spread to domestic and farmed animals such as cats and dairy cows, further spread of bird flu seems inevitable. If the virus jumps to pigs, the chances of a wider human outbreak increase substantially.

So why isn’t more being done to protect the public from dangerous farming practices? Simple. Factory farm owners are incentivized by profits, and the simple-but-scary fact is that it’s more profitable to raise animals in ways that are dangerous to public health, harm animals, and pollute the environment. And government bodies are mostly unwilling to use their authority to meaningfully regulate industrial animal farming, instead seeing their role as protecting the financial interests of agribusiness.

Take testing. The federal government has mandated testing only of lactating dairy cows traveling across state lines. Funds have been allocated to pay farm owners to test dairy herds, but officials say they can’t mandate broader testing. And farmworkers who get tested are eligible to receive $75 each—but that’s hardly an incentive, as testing positive would require workers to visit a clinic, then stay home from work. Many of them can’t afford to do either.

Instead of getting at the root cause by better regulating farms, the federal government is scrambling to get ready for the now-inevitable spread of bird flu; they’re preparing 4.8 million doses of a bird flu vaccine for humans in case the virus jumps again.

Maddeningly, the federal government is also reimbursing giant farming corporations for cleaning up the mess they themselves caused. Farms kill animals en masse and get paid for it. Our own investigation found the USDA has paid $715 million to companies like Tyson and Jennie-O to compensate for losses from bird flu outbreaks that those very companies largely caused. “These payments are crazy-making and dangerous,” said Andrew deCoriolis, Farm Forward’s executive director. “Not only are we wasting taxpayer money on profitable companies for a problem they created, but we’re not giving them any incentive to make changes.”

The best treatment for a pandemic is preventing it before it starts—by decreasing the size of animal farms, reducing crowding, and improving the genetics of the animals. These steps are critical in addressing the underlying conditions that lead to pandemics like the one we’re now facing.

A new investigation by Farm Forward and Our Honor finds that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is rewarding big meat and egg companies with bailouts to compensate for losses from bird flu outbreaks—even as those companies’ very own factory farming practices are a main cause of the outbreaks to begin with. The New York Times, working off our research, reported that giant meat and egg companies like Tyson, Hormel, and Rembrandt Foods are getting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to compensate them for losses from highly pathogenic avian influenza (bird flu). However, the government is doing nothing to demand that they reform the conditions that lead to bird flu outbreaks. More on the implications of these findings can be found in our published op-ed in Newsweek.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, Our Honor uncovered the recipients of the USDA’s Indemnity and Compensation program. The results are damning. The top 60 companies that benefited from the bailout funds took over half a billion dollars of federal money. Notably, Jennie-O, a subsidiary of Hormel, was granted the highest disbursement: a stunning $88 million to one company. In the same year as the USDA’s bailout, Hormel reported a revenue of $3.2 billion. In other words, The federal government is giving taxpayer dollars to hugely profitable, large-scale factory farms.

Collectively, the USDA has allocated a total of $715 million towards bird flu compensation in just the past couple of years. Stunningly, these payments are not contingent on industrial operations making changes that reduce pandemic risk (e.g., by lessening extreme confinement). In other words, industrial operations that mass kill millions of birds as a result of bird flu—a zoonotic disease that devastates precisely because of the conditions of their operation—are given millions of dollars to be compensated for their systemic failure. On top of that, the policy does nothing proactive to rectify the conditions that, more broadly, lead to avian influenza. This would be like US taxpayers paying BP to clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and doing so without requiring any changes to reduce the risk of future spills. It’s no wonder then that the poultry industry isn’t taking meaningful action to reduce the risk of future bird flu outbreaks.

Importantly, the mass depopulation method that many of these companies use is inconceivably cruel. The most common method used to mass kill chickens or turkeys is ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+), which involves shutting down the ventilation systems in poultry houses and pumping in heat, leading to a rise in temperature and humidity to lethal levels over many hours. Tens of millions of birds have been killed this way.  

Unsurprisingly, many of the companies receiving bailouts have had other flu outbreaks. In 2015, Rembrandt had a massive outbreak at an Iowa complex that resulted in the mass killing of 5.5 million hens. In 2022, Rembrandt had another outbreak, killed 5.3 million birds, and then laid off 250 employees.

And more recently, cows at several dairy farms across the country have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza. In other words, there are now cases of the virus jumping from poultry to cattle. While the federal government assured that the risk to the public remains low, it’s still concerning that multiple operations are reporting cross-species infection. And early this April, the Washington Post reported a case in Texas, where a person contracted bird flu after contact with infected dairy cattle.

“Fixing” a problem that industrial poultry created

Policymakers continue to ignore the scientific consensus that industrial poultry farming poses a clear and present danger to public health from increased pandemic risk.

As the UN Report, Preventing the Next Pandemic, states:

“The intensification of agriculture, and in particular of domestic livestock farming (animal husbandry), results in large numbers of genetically similar animals. These are often bred for higher production levels; more recently, they have also been bred for disease resistance. As a result, domestic animals are being kept in close proximity to each other and often in less than ideal conditions. Such genetically homogenous host populations are more vulnerable to infection than genetically diverse populations, because the latter are more likely to include some individuals that better resist disease.” (pg. 15)

If the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us one thing, it’s that we have to take pandemic prevention just as seriously as preparedness. A serious commitment to preventing the next pandemic must tackle the sources of greatest risk—which includes factory poultry farming. To truly protect ourselves from future pandemic risk, we have to end Big Poultry.

Farm Forward plans to push the USDA and Congress to take action to address the root causes of pandemic risk. Sign up below for more updates about our work.

Farm Forward welcomed the federal government’s recent request for public guidance on its new “National One Health Framework to Address Zoonotic Diseases and Advance Public Health Preparedness in the United States” (NOHF-Zoonoses), spearheaded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

We submitted a comment we consider critical for addressing zoonotic disease and public health preparedness: factory farming creates perfect petri dishes for endemic and emergent zoonotic diseases. Deintensifying existing poultry and pig farming—while placing a moratorium on new factory farm construction—is the public health measure that would most dramatically reduce the risk of the next pandemic virus. 

With the CDC itself reporting that 3 out of 4 new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, and that bird flu has broken out more than 800 times in 47 states since January 2022, mostly affecting birds in factory farms, it’s critical that the One Health Framework include attention on the issue that will most materially reduce future risk of zoonotic diseases—namely industrial animal agriculture. 

We call on world leaders to bring the age of factory farming to an end.

Here’s the bulk of our comment as submitted to the CDC and HHS:

—

Given that the NOHF-Zoonoses draft’s Appendix A, the “Prioritized Zoonotic Diseases of National Concern in the United States,” prioritizes “Zoonotic -Influenza” as number one zoonotic disease of concern and “Salmonellosis” as the number two zoonotic disease of concern, any national effort to address zoonotic diseases and advance public health preparedness must include focus on reforming industrial animal agriculture. So including the word “agricultural” in Objective 2.4 and the phrase “animal agriculture” in Objective 5.2 is essential.

Industrial pig and poultry farms are the United States’ top breeding grounds for zoonotic diseases, due to the crowded conditions of thousands of immunocompromised animals. Influenza viruses such as H1N1 (swine flu) and H5N1 (bird flu) evolved on pig and chicken farms. Genetic analyses have shown that crucial components of H1N1 emerged from a virus circulating in North American pigs, and an analysis of 39 antigenic shifts that played a key role in the emergence of particularly dangerous influenzas showed that “all but two of these events were reported in commercial poultry production systems.” Since Appendix A of NOHF-Zoonoses lists zoonotic influenzas as the first priority, animal agriculture must be specifically mentioned in the document. 

Farmed animals today are overwhelmingly genetically uniform, immunocompromised, lodged together by the tens of thousands, and routinely administered subclinical antibiotics—a perfect petri dish for cultivating antibiotic resistance, as well as endemic and emerging zoonotic disease threats. 

Addressing industrial animal agriculture is not optional but essential. The adoption of the One Health framework presents a critical opportunity to nudge our country’s animal agriculture toward higher welfare, more sustainable farming practices that enhance rather than imperil public health.

Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media

Avian flu has spread swiftly across farms globally since late 2020, leaving bird populations devastated in its wake and consumers facing higher egg prices. In the United States, the outbreak has resulted in the culling of more than 58.7 million birds across 47 states in a series of more than 830 outbreaks.

The high price of eggs is just one outcome of bird flu. Far more worrying is the possibility that the disease could adapt to human bodies and lead to the next global pandemic. Though eating chicken or eggs is unlikely to lead to illness, experts agree that the pandemic risk of avian flu is real, stemming largely from the way birds are raised on factory farms and the particular breeds of birds that have come to dominate the supply chain.

What is bird flu?

Bird flu, also known as avian influenza or by the names of its various subtypes such as H5N1, refers to a group of viral infections that exist naturally in aquatic birds in the wild. These viruses also have the potential to spread among other types of wild birds and mammals, domestic fowl, humans, and a variety of other animals.

There are four different categories of influenza: types A, B, C, and D. Avian influenza is categorized as a type A virus. The viruses in this category are different from the other three types in part because they spread more easily between species. Type A influenzas can more readily proliferate and have a higher risk of resulting in a pandemic. Categorization is further defined by the animal species from which the virus originated, for example swine flu or, in this case, avian flu.

How is bird flu transmitted to humans?

Most human cases of avian influenza start with close contact between a human and an infected bird, their carcass, their droppings, or their environment. Infections of people with H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b, the strain causing the current illness among birds around the world, are rare. Transmission between people has not yet been observed. In February 2023, two human infections of H5N1 occurred in Cambodia, the first in the country since 2014, prompting fears about the widespread bird flu’s potentially rising infectiousness between humans, but these were later attributed to a different form of the virus (clade 2.3.2.1c). However, experts are concerned about future pandemic risk caused by a strain’s capacity to evolve to infect people more easily.

The virus could accomplish this in one of two ways: mutation—in which the virus changes to evade the human immune system’s response, as occurred in the pandemic of 1918—or reassortment—which entails avian flu and a human flu infecting a person at the same time and swapping genes, creating a new and more infectious or virulent strain, as occurred in the pandemics of 1957 and 1968.1

Currently there is no vaccine to protect against contracting bird flu. The seasonal flu vaccine that people are advised to take every year does not prevent the contraction of avian flu.

What are the symptoms of bird flu in humans?

In humans, the virus can cause no symptoms at all, cause a mild illness, or come with a range of indicators ranging from moderate to severe, among them: headaches, fever, sore throat, fatigue, body aches, and even seizures in particularly acute cases. The infection fatality rate of avian flu is much higher than that of COVID-19.

According to the CDC, since 1997 there have been 890 people diagnosed with H5N1, and of these, about half have died from the illness. A different strain of H5 bird flu, H5N6, was identified in people in China in 2014. Since then 81 people across China and Laos have been diagnosed with it. Among those who were hospitalized for the disease, 30 percent died.

What are the symptoms of avian flu in birds?

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, there are several indicators that a flock of birds may be experiencing an outbreak of avian influenza. Symptoms include nasal discharge and sneezing, diarrhea, purpling or swelling of the body, and even sudden and inexplicable death.

On an industrial farm, if avian flu exposure takes place, the entire flock of birds is killed, not just the sick individuals. This is done in an attempt to prevent the spread of disease to other flocks, wild birds, and the people working at the facility. The destruction of entire flocks has contributed to the extremely high number of birds that have been slaughtered as a result of the current avian flu outbreak. Many of these birds are killed in inhumane ways, such as having water-based foam sprayed over them causing them to suffocate, or sealing off their sheds and pumping carbon dioxide into the air. In some instances, birds have also been killed by simply cutting the airflow into their shed and causing temperatures to rise to lethal levels.

How is bird flu diagnosed in humans?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of people have become familiar with swabbing noses or throats for PCR tests. A similar process, in which a sample is collected from a sick person’s nose or throat, is performed when testing for avian influenza. An alternative way of diagnosing bird flu is by testing phlegm that is coughed up by the sick person.

How is bird flu treated in humans?

A person who is suspected of having avian influenza will likely be asked by their doctor to quarantine at home and be given medications to manage the symptoms of the illness. These antiviral medications can help by reducing the severity of the illness while also increasing the chances of survival. Once a diagnosis has been made, there are few options for the ailing, aside from quarantine, prescription antiviral medications, and hoping for the best.

Can you get bird flu from eating chicken?

According to the World Health Organization, there have been rare infections of people who consume dishes with raw, infected poultry blood. However, no evidence suggests that avian flu can be contracted from consuming properly prepared chicken products.

Can you eat eggs from a chicken with bird flu?

No evidence suggests that you can contract avian flu from consuming the eggs of an infected chicken.

Should we stop eating chicken due to bird flu?

While the consumption of chickens and eggs may not place individuals at risk of contracting bird flu, factory farming poultry is a major risk factor in producing the next pandemic. Experts agree that bird flu emerged on industrial poultry farms, and that some bird flu strains have already spread from birds to people. There is consensus among experts that the ongoing industrial farming of poultry makes the emergence of new, more dangerous strains of bird flu—which could more easily spread from bird to humans—far more likely.2 Much of the risk posed by factory-farmed chickens results from their genetic uniformity and the conditions in which they live. The industrial farming status quo gambles with public health. Only with a radical restructuring might raising chickens on farms with a reduced pandemic risk be possible.

Why do factory farms increase risk?

While all factory farms present some risk of causing zoonotic disease, the risk produced by chicken farms is the most severe due to the genetic similarity of the birds, the scale and density of production, the close human-animal contact, and the undermining of the birds’ health and immune systems through selective breeding and poor conditions.

At any given time a single barn on one chicken factory farm is likely to contain over 30,000 birds. These birds live in tight quarters that are ideal for disease transmission, and because they have been bred for efficiency from similar stock they have very similar genetics. The people who work directly with the chickens provide the perfect opportunity for a strain of bird flu to make the jump from chickens to humans.3

How can risk be reduced?

To reduce the risk of pandemics associated with animal agriculture, particularly chickens, we must change the way we eat and farm. Given that many of our recent pandemics originated from animals, including COVID-19, changing animal agriculture will save not only animal but likely also save human lives.4

The changes start with what we eat. Instead of consuming large amounts of chicken and other poultry products, we must shift diets toward plant-based foods. We recommend that people eat conscientiously, as few animals as possible, ideally none. Since some people will continue to eat animals, though, we need to completely reshape how animals are farmed. The chickens currently raised on commercial farms should be replaced with hardier, slower-growing, heritage birds. Another shift that farms need to make is to take a cue from the “social distancing” required by the COVID-19 pandemic and dramatically reduce the density at which the chickens are housed. These measures would make it more difficult for diseases to spread from bird to bird, reducing the chances of human exposure or a mutation that leads to the next pandemic.

Conclusion

Continuing to raise genetically similar birds by the tens of thousands, tightly packed together in sheds, is a recipe for disaster. Though one individual consuming the eggs and meat of these birds is very unlikely to lead to the spread of disease, the aggregate demand of individuals shapes agricultural production. Failing to shift our dietary habits and farming techniques puts all of us at risk.

Bird flu is making global headlines. As an H5N1 outbreak ravages the U.S. poultry industry and egg prices reach record highs, scientists are ringing alarm bells that the virus could soon enter a new, more dangerous phase of its evolution. Recent evidence from a mink farm in Spain and the death of a young girl in Cambodia have governments scrambling to prepare for the possibility that bird flu becomes a human pandemic.  

Last week the UK Health Security Agency announced it will be looking into “the disease’s genetic mutations to reveal data about the increased risk to human health from avian flu.” The U.S. government has already stockpiled egg-based vaccines for avian flu, and the country has developed a secret chicken stockpile in undisclosed locations across the U.S. in case we need to make egg-based vaccines quickly—such as during a flu pandemic.

There’s broad consensus among scientists and public health officials that bird flu poses a real threat of becoming a human pandemic. Despite that consensus, most of the public discourse has been limited to how we might prepare for an eventual spillover event. Preparation seems prudent, but what about prevention? Why aren’t we asking the simple question: “What would it take to reduce the pandemic risk caused by poultry farming?”

I suspect the reason this question doesn’t get asked more often is because Big Meat would resist any of the changes that would reduce the risk of a pandemic. That should not deter our advocacy for healthier agriculture systems; we have recent precedent of countries shutting down entire animal agriculture industries because they posed too great a risk to public health.

During the early phases of COVID-19, it became clear that the virus was mutating on mink farms. Some countries took steps to shut down their mink industries rather than risk a more deadly outbreak. While chicken is seen as a more indispensable commodity than mink fur, societies could look carefully at the aspects of poultry farming that pose the greatest risks and outlaw or ban those practices.   

As Farm Forward has previously written, industrial poultry farming poses a unique risk because of its scale, density, geographic distribution, and the genetic uniformity of the animals. To prevent a bird flu pandemic, world governments should take steps to prohibit the specific practices of the industry that pose the greatest risks.

Preventing the next pandemic

To prevent bird flu from becoming a human pandemic, governments and international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO) have to look at the aspects of the poultry industry that make it such a unique public health threat. The WHO recently began negotiating a global pandemic accord—which in its first draft failed to mention animal agriculture as the likely source of the next pandemic. Global and national health organizations including the CDC and the WHO recognize that industrial poultry farming poses a significant pandemic risk, so their failure to encourage countries to take steps to mitigate that risk is particularly frustrating. It seems crazy to have to say this, but public health agencies must be willing to name and address the biggest threats to public health.  

We don’t have to wait for national governments and public health agencies to act. We can take steps to protect ourselves from the next pandemic, including switching to more humane alternatives, removing animal products from supply chains, and supporting policies that would phase out industrial scale animal farming. We need to change the way we eat and farm—because the world isn’t prepared for the next pandemic. 

Farm Forward welcomed the World Health Organization (WHO) Intergovernmental Negotiating Body’s recent request for public guidance on the question, “What substantive elements do you think should be included in a new international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response?”

We submitted a comment we consider critical for pandemic preparedness: factory farming poses the greatest future pandemic risk. With the CDC reporting that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, it’s critical that the global public health community focus on the issue that will most materially reduce future risk of pandemics—namely factory farming. 

We call on world leaders to bring the age of factory farming to an end.

Here’s our comment as submitted to the WHO:

Any global effort to reduce pandemic risk must focus on reforming industrial animal agriculture. Deintensifying existing poultry and pig farming while placing a moratorium on new factory farm construction is the public health measure that would most dramatically reduce the risk of the next pandemic virus.

Factory farms, especially pig and poultry farms, are breeding grounds for pandemics. Influenza viruses such as H1N1 (swine flu) or H5N1 (bird flu) evolved on pig and chicken farms. Genetic analyses have shown that crucial components of H1N1 emerged from a virus circulating in North American pigs, and an analysis of 39 antigenic shifts that played a key role in the emergence of particularly dangerous influenzas showed that “all but two of these events were reported in commercial poultry production systems.”

Influenza and coronaviruses move fluidly between animal and human populations, just as they move fluidly between nations. When it comes to pandemics, there is not animal health and human health—not any more than there is Korean health and French health. Farmed animals today are overwhelmingly genetically uniform, immunocompromised, and lodged together by the tens of thousands—a perfect petri dish for creating pandemics.

The era of intensive confinement of farmed animals must come to an end.

World leaders must build a future without industrial animal agriculture, and transition toward plant-based foods and sustainable farming practices that enhance rather than imperil
public health.

Your support can make a different future possible. Sign up to receive updates, and consider a recurring gift today to help Farm Forward ensure a better world.

Lead image credit: We Animals Media

Connecting the dots

In 2021, The University of Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics launched a Thinking Out Loud series on ‘Animals and Pandemics’ led by Dr. Katrien Devolder. She interviewed Farm Forward founder and CEO Dr. Aaron Gross about why factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics, and what we, as individuals, can do to reduce the risk of new pandemics arising.

Dr. Devolder first learned of Farm Forward in an op-ed for The Guardian titled “We Have to Wake Up: Factory Farms are Breeding Grounds for Pandemics,” which connected the dots between factory farming and pandemic risk. Written by Dr. Gross and a Farm Forward board member, best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer, the op-ed notes the staggering pandemic virus threat posed by industrial pig and chicken farms and calls for societal change:

“The link between factory farming and increasing pandemic risk is well established scientifically, but the political will to curtail that risk has, in the past, been absent. Now is the time to build that will. It really does matter if we talk about this, share our concerns with our friends, explain these issues to our children, wonder together about how we should eat differently, call on our political leaders, and support advocacy organisations fighting factory farming. Leaders are listening. Changing the most powerful industrial complex in the world – the factory farm – could not possibly be easy, but in this moment with these stakes it is, maybe for the first time in our lifetimes, possible.

The facts

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least three out of every four new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals. With an estimated mortality rate of around two percent, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc worldwide. But it could have been much worse. Had COVID been another virus on the CDC watch list, like H5N1 (bird flu), we could be facing a pathogen with a 60 percent mortality rate. And of the 19 viruses currently dominating the CDC’s list of influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered “of special concern,” at least 11 emerged in commercial poultry farms.

While COVID-19 may have emerged from a wet market, the greater pandemic risk is our insatiable appetite for cheap, factory farmed meat. The meat that we eat today is overwhelmingly from genetically uniform, immunocompromised, regularly drugged animals lodged by the tens of thousands into buildings or stacked cages – no matter how the meat is labelled.

A new way forward

The world is a different place since the emergence of COVID-19 – we are waking up to the huge costs and disruptions caused by a pandemic and we are more ready to act now to protect our future. Some political leaders have rightly called for a moratorium on new factory farms while others are seeking additional protections for workers in slaughterhouses and meat packing plants. In this moment we can re-envision a future without industrial agriculture – in which alternatives abound and animals are raised with dignity.

Your support can make a different future possible. Consider a recurring gift today to help Farm Forward ensure a better world.

My grandmother is in her nineties and my sister, who is only in her thirties, has an autoimmune disease, and works in medicine. I don’t need to spell out the risk they are in because of COVID-19. And I don’t need to know who is reading this to assume that you have a similar list of loved ones. It is more than reasonable in such times to limit our focus to simply making it through coming months. Yet it is precisely the precariousness of the lives of people we love that make it unconscionable to postpone taking actions that could dramatically reduce the risk of another pandemic. The magnitude of suffering our actions now could reduce is simply too great.

The CDC reports that 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases come from animals.1  We’ve all heard about wet markets and their probable role in the emergence of COVID-19. Many are wisely calling for various forms of bans of wet markets and the Chinese government has already banned meat from wild animals at them. Yet an equally great, or possibly greater, risk factor for another pandemic well-attested in the scientific literature has received surprisingly little attention: the particularly striking role that industrial poultry plays. Commercial pig operations are also implicated with notable frequency, and other aspects of agricultural production figure as well, but industrial poultry is for pandemics what fossil fuels are for climate change.

The crux of the issue is that we know that most of the influenza viruses with pandemic potential considered “of special concern” by the CDC emerged from commercial poultry operations. Read that sentence twice.

We also know why industrial poultry is so efficient at producing novel viruses. Tens of thousands of genetically identical birds, along with their excrement, are packed in a single building creating an environment ideal for viral mutation.

Significantly, all these birds are immunocompromised. Novel “hybrid poultry” breeding techniques that became widespread in the 1970s created fast-growing genetic strains that are now the exclusive basis for the global industrial chicken industry, but these techniques simultaneously devastated the immune systems of the chickens and turkeys we eat. No other farmed animals have been so dramatically re engineered at the genetic level. Industry opts to keep these fundamentally diseased birds alive through controlled environments, constant use of antibiotics, or simply killing them before the full pathology of their genetics has manifested.

The modern poultry industry is a perfect storm for a pandemic plague: an ideal environment for pathogens, ideal almost-identical hosts with fragile immunity, ideal conditions of filth and feces, and on a mind-boggling scale.

Globally there are fewer than 100 million cattle, perhaps 2 billion pigs, but more than 23 billion of our food units are individual chickens (up from 14 billion in 2000).2

We are fortunate that scientists understand the viruses that cause pandemics as well as they do.  They can tell us, for example, that on April 9, 2020 the USDA identified a highly pathogenic H7N3 avian influenza in the U.S. for the first time since 2017—they can even tell us it was detected in a South Carolina commercial turkey flock.3  The CDC reports that H7N3 has “primarily caused mild to moderate illness in people.”4  It is strange to consider that good news, but it is.

Had they detected another virus on the watch list, H5N1 (bird flu), we would be facing the imminent possibility of a pandemic that would make coronavirus look mild. The CDC reports that H5N1 kills humans at roughly 30 times the rate that COVID-19 does—a 60% mortality rate.5  And unlike COVID-19, H5N1 does not spare children.

Thankfully, we can make ourselves and our families safer, far safer than if we limit our concern to the wildlife trade and wet markets. Eliminating the industrial poultry industry in favor of extensive farms or alternative proteins is literally in the best interests of every human being.

Banning industrial poultry does require, what some might call, a sacrifice: chicken and turkey would return to their historically higher price, which is closer to beef. Is more expensive chicken worth the sacrifice? There is a seesaw: on one side is the modern industrialized poultry industry and the likelihood of another pandemic, and on the other side is greater reliance on other protein sources, a return of actual poultry farming, and a guaranteed safer future. We are currently barreling toward another pandemic. The current White House is even likely to direct most of the $14 billion in much-needed aid slated for agriculture in the COVID-19 stimulus package to support the very forms of agriculture that make a pandemic more likely.6

By contrast, political leaders like Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have started, quite sensibly, to speak about a moratorium on building new industrial farms. This would indeed be progress, for the growing poultry industry spells growing pandemic risk. But is maintaining the threat of another pandemic at its current high level the best we can do?

If the science really does show the poultry industry is a major risk factor for pandemics, as I suggest is beyond doubt, why would we hesitate to ban industrial poultry? If this pandemic risk were about how how we produce cars or computers would we hesitate to demand a change? The issue may very well be that it is not about chickens at all, but the industry their lives suffer to serve.

Our relationship with food is complicated, emotional, and intimate—perhaps with meat especially. Chicken soup is supposed to be soothing. Turkeys help us celebrate Thanksgiving. We make our food choices for complex reasons, but public health does not figure high on the list. Yet we cannot let our nostalgia over soup mislead us with stakes so high.

The production of any product through methods that menace the planet with another pandemic should be ended. Industrial poultry barely existed two generations ago and our generation should be the last to tolerate it. Building the political will to ban industrial poultry will be hard, even to imagine. Real change always is. Yet, if the present moment teaches us anything, it’s that everything can change. There is no exemption for industrial poultry from this immutable law. It is, simply and profoundly, our choice.

Reduce the risk. Pledge to End Big Poultry now.

This week in response to the Trump Administration’s April 28th announcement that it would invoke the Defense Production Act to compel meatpacking companies to stay open during the pandemic, Farm Forward joined nearly 100 food, labor, and environmental allies to show broad support for frontline foodworkers.  

This executive order could impact 194,000 processing workers around the country who are still on the job. Reports from the ground tell us that workers—the majority of whom are immigrants and workers of color—are still at grave risk. Meatpacking plants are not practicing social distancing, not providing adequate PPE to workers, and are not sufficiently sanitizing plants to limit exposure to risk.  

Sending meatpacking workers back to work without protections and mandatory standards is sending workers to die or to get sick,” says Axel Fuentes of the Rural Community Workers Alliance (RCWA).

RCWA has filed a lawsuit against a Smithfield plant in an effort to force the company to protect workers’ health and safety. “If we have to fight in courts to make only one plant provide safety equipment to workers, can you imagine what will be required to compel other employers to act?” Reports show that over 5,000 meat processing workers have tested positive for the virus and at least 20 workers have died1 due to COVID-19 exposure2. Over 100 USDA inspectors have also tested positive. These deaths could have been prevented and are a tragic failure of government oversight to ensure workplace health and safety.  

House Labor and Education Committee Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott highlighted this in his April 28 statement, “If President Trump orders people to work in meat processing  plants but refuses to protect their health and safety, the result will be more preventable illnesses [and] the tragic deaths of workers across the country.” On April 21 he also introduced bill H.R. 6559- COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act of 2020 in an attempt to require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promulgate an emergency temporary standard to protect employees from occupational exposure to SARS–CoV–2, and for other purposes. 

Furthermore, we understand this measure and Trump’s remarks are intended to give companies the message that they will be protected from liability. This message was reinforced in an April 28th statement by the Occupational and Safety Health Administration (OSHA). This tells workers and neighboring communities that if their health and safety rights are violated they will have little recourse to improve their situation, effectively intimidating workers from protecting themselves. Furthermore, workers who are opting to stay home to protect their health and the health of their families are being told they will be denied unemployment benefits. This is a clear tactic of intimidation and retaliation. OSHA has also failed to ensure workers are protected from the virus and its impacts, refusing to issue mandatory health and safety standards for employers that require companies to protect frontline food chain workers and other workers at risk. With the refusal to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard, OSHA has allowed companies to continue to evade responsibility for worker deaths and exposure to illness. At a time when frontline workers still do not have basic health and safety workplace protections and are dying on the job, we must strengthen worker protections–not weaken them. A failure to act will result in the needless loss of more lives, and more family members mourning their loved ones in communities across the country. As regulatory agency leadership and public servants, it is their civil duty to do everything within their authority to ensure workers are kept safe in the workplace. 

In solidarity with all frontline food workers—many of whom are taking courageous action to organize for better protections on the job—we urge the following: 

• OSHA must issue and enforce an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect food workers and all essential workers from COVID-19. 
• Congress must immediately pass legislation to: 
  • Compel OSHA to issue an enforceable Emergency Temporary Standard—as is laid out in H.R. 6559—and provide OSHA with commensurate funds to implement this mandate.  
  • Mandate employers to provide premium pay at a minimum of time and half to all workers given the increasingly hazardous, deadly conditions. 

Sending workers into unsafe workplaces without adequate protection is completely unacceptable and will lead to more illness and deaths, both for workers, and for surrounding communities. Food workers are not disposable. Public health must be a priority over profits. We expect swift action to ensure workers’ and communities’ health and safety. 

To stay up to date on this issue sign up for our weekly news updates and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Update — (September 17, 2019) Today, after years of overwhelming public push back by Farm Forward and a diverse coalition of more than 35 consumer, labor, environmental, public health, animal protection and civil rights organizations, the USDA’s FSIS published its final hog slaughter inspection rule that will revoke maximum slaughter line speeds, while also transferring key inspection duties to the plants themselves, presenting a number of food safety, animal welfare, and worker safety concerns. This egregious form of deregulation, done in the name of modernization and innovation, reflects a food system that places profit over people, animals, and the planet.

Update — (April, 2019) This month just weeks after Pat Basu, the chief veterinarian with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from 2016 to 2018, refused to sign off on a new pork inspection system because of concerns about safety for consumers, workers, and livestock, Trump’s USDA made plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry. Under the proposed new inspection system there would be NO LIMITS ON SLAUGHTER LINE-SPEEDS.

Update — (May 2, 2018) the USDA closed it’s public comment period on the “Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection” rule. Thanks to you, Farm Forward submitted over 3,000 comments in opposition to this rule that if passed, would roll back progress for animals, workers, and consumers. We’ll continue to update progress on this rule here so check back often.

Thanks for joining us in our fight to end factory farming. We can’t do it without you.

Original Post

Farm Forward is proud to join a diverse coalition of more than 35 consumer, labor, environmental, public health, animal protection and civil rights organizations opposing USDA’s expansion of a high-speed hog slaughter program. We need your help—sign the petition below!

If passed, the “Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection” rule will revoke maximum slaughter line speeds, while also transferring key inspection duties to the plants themselves, presenting a number of food safety, animal welfare, and worker safety concerns.

Even USDA inspectors who’ve observed the faster speeds first-hand have spoken out against them. According to an inspector who participated in the pilot program:

“On numerous occasions, I witnessed plant employees fail to spot abscesses, lesions, fecal matter, and other defects that would render an animal unsafe or unwholesome.” The inspector further explained that without incentive, these plant workers “don’t actually want to shut off the line to deal with problems they spot on the job. Obviously, their employer will terminate them if they do it too many times.”

You can help! Here’s how:

The USDA is accepting public comments on the rule until May 4,2018. Sign our petition below to let them know that as a concerned American citizen you oppose the “Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection” rule because it rolls back progress for animals, workers, and consumers.

We’ll submit the signatures we collect directly to the USDA prior to the close of public comments on May 4, 2018.

Click Here To Help Us Stop The USDA

Thanks for helping to create a more just, humane, and sustainable food system. Please share this petition using the icons below to help us spread the word. And please consider making a donation or starting a Facebook fundraiser to support our ongoing work to change the way our nation eats and farms.

Since Hurricane Florence hit eastern North Carolina in September, more than three dozen hog lagoons have breached or been submerged, releasing millions of gallons of toxic hog waste from CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) into the surrounding ecosystems. As floodwaters carried waste from the lagoons into rivers, streams, and the groundwater, they threatened the health of people living in the region and caused immeasurable and possibly permanent harm to ecosystems. At least 5,500 pigs and 3.4 million chickens were reported killed due to Hurricane Florence, according to preliminary estimates from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, but the true numbers could be much higher. This catastrophic harm to animals, humans, and the environment was not only preventable, but also predicted.

Hurricane season has barely ended in North Carolina, and yet national attention to this environmental and moral disaster receded with Florence’s floodwaters. We interviewed Rick Dove and Larry Baldwin of the Waterkeeper Alliance and Jessica Culpepper of Public Justice to learn why it is so hard to remove CAFOs from flood-prone regions and to ask what people can do to help. Rick and Larry took all the photographs in this article as they flew over Eastern North Carolina in the week following the storm. The interviews are below. First, some context.

Last September we spent a few days with Rick and Larry in Telluride, Colorado, during the premiere of the documentary film, Eating Animals. The film lifts up Rick’s and Larry’s efforts to monitor and expose the devastating damage that swine CAFO runoff has caused to river ecosystems in North Carolina. They told us how—despite advocates raising awareness about the problem for decades—politicians have made few moves to relocate or shut down the CAFOs, or to prevent new ones from locating in flood-prone regions. That weekend a storm warning was in effect for North Carolina, and Rick and Larry worried aloud that severe rains might flood the CAFOs, as several previous hurricanes had, polluting the rivers and lands that they had spent decades protecting. A year later, their worst fears have come true again.

Rick Dove, of the Waterkeeper Alliance, regularly flies Eastern North Carolina to monitor pollution from hog facilities. This photo shows a CAFO with a breached lagoon spilling its contents. The unflooded lagoon on the left displays a characteristic pink color, caused by the mixture of chemicals, bacteria and hog waste. Photo courtesy of Rick Dove

The post-Florence ecological disaster is not a freak accident, but (literally and figuratively) a spillover into public view of the systemic harms to animals, humans, and the environment that the factory farm industry normally keeps hidden from sight.

Because the government agencies tasked with monitoring factory farm conditions provide very little actual oversight, investigations by activists are among the only effective ways to hold companies accountable. But in 2015 North Carolina became the eighth state to pass an ag-gag law, legislation that impedes activists like Rick and Larry. Ag-gag laws are designed to hinder investigations of abusive or environmentally dangerous conditions on factory farms by prohibiting, among other things, any individual or public interest group videotaping the farms themselves.

According to Farm Forward’s General Counsel Michael McFadden, who has spearheaded our own anti-ag-gag efforts,

The citizens of North Carolina face two problems—hog feces and hurricanes—and both are likely to continue getting worse over time. But rather than call out and address the increasing risks of keeping millions of animals and tens of millions of tons of toxic liquid waste hidden from public sight, North Carolina’s legislature chose to bury its head in the sand when it passed its ag-gag law in 2015. The law allows companies to sue their employees for exposing abuse, including punitive damages of up to $5,000 per day. While the law was clearly intended to intimidate animal advocates, it’s written so broadly that it could be used to punish whistleblowing at hospitals, nursing homes, and daycare centers.
— Michael McFadden, Esq.

Since Hurricane Florence, Rick and Larry have been flying over the floodplains documenting the flooded barns and breached and submerged lagoons while Riverkeepers in the state have carefully tested water for contamination. They share the photographs and information they collect with the media and with groups that work to get CAFOs removed from flood-prone regions. One such group is Public Justice, which uses the data that Rick and Larry collect in lawsuits against the largest animal agriculture companies operating in North Carolina.

We spoke with Rick and Larry, and with Jessica Culpepper, the Food Project Attorney at Public Justice, to ask them what people need to know about these images showing flooded and damaged CAFOs in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

What follows are excerpts from those interviews:

Farm Forward: Can you help us Understand what we’re seeing in these Photographs of flooded CAFO’s and hog lagoons? Do any images stand out for you? 

Rick Dove: Since 1993, I’ve got over three thousand hours in the air, flying over these factory farms. In the 11–12 days after Hurricane Florence, I spent 30 hours in the air. So I’ve seen it again and again. The [images] that stand out most in my mind are where the berms of the lagoon completely blew out, and all the contents, an estimated seven million gallons, went flowing down the river.

We’ve seen a lot of these facilities where…the industry calls it “overtopping.” That kind of sounds like putting whipped cream on a dessert. “Submersion” is what’s happening. These lagoons go underwater, and when the floodwaters recede, they take the contents with them. We’ve got videos of hogs floating down the river. We’ve got dead chickens floating around in their own feces. Some journalists actually kayaked inside of some the poultry barns and filmed the dead chickens floating in the barns in the muck. It’s a terrible sight.

The industry term “overtopping” refers to floodwaters submerging hog lagoons, sometimes causing even more contamination than breaches. Lagoons that have been mixed with floodwaters appear brown, instead of their characteristic bright pink color. Photo courtesy of Larry Baldwin.

Farm Forward: Why does this keep happening? 

Jessica Culpepper: The answer is not to rebuild safer, because there is no safer. Even if you could prevent water from inundating the facility, there’s no way that operators can get there. It’s either leave the animals there, or rush them off to slaughter beforehand, which usually means [transporting them to] farther slaughterhouses—that is incredibly stressful for the animals. These facilities should never have been built there. If it were up to me, Smithfield would clean up its own mess, and it wouldn’t be the taxpayers buying out these facilities. But I think it’s more important for the public to use its resources to make sure this never happens again. In the 100-year floodplain, there are 62 hog facilities (over 200,000 hogs), and 30 poultry facilities (1.8 million chickens)…The worst possible thing that could happen right now is any kind of move to rebuild. I don’t think there should be CAFOs. But certainly, we should not be raising them in floodplains.

Rick Dove: The hog industry has taken the same approach for the past 25 years … This is how it goes: First, everybody gets very concerned because a hurricane is coming, and for good reason. The hog industry says, “We’re getting prepared,” but there’s nothing they can really do to prepare. They could move some animals, but some is the key word—they don’t have the ability to move them all, there’s no space for them. They don’t know what areas will flood until the hurricane arrives. And there’s no way they can get these lagoons out of harm’s way. And then everybody gets concerned about it, there’s a lot of news. And [after the storm] everybody says, “Now we’re going to fix it.” But soon the aftermath of the storm fades away from memory and the press quits covering it. Then they start repairing the buildings and putting the animals back in the same buildings. Until the next hurricane comes, and then we do it all over again, and again, and again, and nothing really changes.

Larry Baldwin: We were no better prepared for Florence than we were for Floyd in 1999 … we still have too many of these facilities in the 100-year floodplain and the 500-year floodplain. We’ve had three “100-year” floods in less than 100 years. Now, three times we’ve proven that these facilities should not be located where they are. What are we going to do?

Poultry barns in North Carolina during the flooding from Hurricane Florence. Photo courtesy of Rick Dove.

Farm Forward: What kinds of legal actions are being taken to prevent this from happening again the next timer there’s a big storm?

Jessica: In the aftermath of Floyd, in 1999, the state legislature started the North Carolina Swine Flood Buyout program. To date it has bought out 43 swine operations that were in the 100-year floodplain…When they buy out these facilities they put a conservation easement on the land that says no animal facilities can be located there. That is a surefire way to make animals safe from flooding and people safe from the raw sewage.

Rick: The river’s edge is no place for these facilities to be located … What’s worse, all these new poultry facilities are being built right in the same place. What amazes me more than anything is—with all the problems faced by the older swine and poultry facilities located along the rivers—they should know not to build new poultry facilities there. But land in the lowlands is cheap, so that’s where they build them, and now they’re getting flooded too. They keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, and that’s never going happen.

I think if anything’s going to change it, it will be these lawsuits with these horrific punitive damages. There are only three cases tried so far, with some 21 more to go. If these cases keep coming in the way they have been, it’ll be a terrible blow to this industry. Everybody says, “Now change is going to happen.” From my standpoint, I say, “We’ll see.” I’m not overly optimistic. I’ve been through this drill so many times.

Despite environmental warnings, swine facilities (and, increasingly, poultry facilities) continue to build in flood-prone areas where they oftentimes contaminate waterways after heavy storms. Photo courtesy of Rick Dove.

Farm Forward: What can consumers do?

Rick: The public has got to say “We don’t want this anymore.” Groups out there are talking about boycotting the meat, they’ve got yard signs, so that’s already happening. Personally, I think we make a big mistake in eating as much meat as we do. I don’t eat any. I was a vegetarian for years. I’m now a vegan. I’ve found a plant diet that for me is very, very satisfying, and very, very good tasting and healthy. I don’t miss meat anymore. That’s a personal choice I made—I don’t tell anybody else what to eat. But if all of us relied less on meat, it would be better for the planet, better for our health, and it would scale back a lot of this pollution that we’re seeing from these factory farms. If we’re eating the products that come from farming, we’re participating in farming activity … We’re all farmers and we have a duty to have a say in how food is grown.

Larry: It’s going to take the public … to be the ones that force that change. As long as we keep buying the bacon from the Smithfield Foods or the industry leaders, we’re still part of the problem.

Farm Forward: Is there anything that you think the media hasn’t paid enough attention to in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence?

Rick: There’s one issue that hasn’t been covered as much as it should…and that is what happens to all these dead animals. First of all, we’ll never know from the industry exactly how many of these animals perished…But the one thing I do know, there is no efficient way of disposing of these huge numbers of dead carcasses. And there’s a safety concern connected to that. In North Carolina, under normal conditions dead hogs are taken to a rendering factory, they’re boiled down for their fat and so on. But when we have a hurricane, or we have a disease like PED [Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea] which just killed millions of animals in North Carolina, the only way to get rid of them is to dig a hole in the ground and bury them.

In many instances where we’ve seen these burials take place, they’re unsupervised—the location is chosen by the local grower, there’s no chemicals or anything put in with the animals. In many cases they’re left uncovered for weeks. Buzzards are seen feeding on them. There’s groundwater in the burial pits mixing in with the dead carcasses…And the only agency in North Carolina that has supervisory control is the Department of Agriculture and its veterinarian service, but to my knowledge they don’t do any supervision.

We’re photographing it from the air and the ground when we can, and we’re sending them the pictures when it happens, but basically, they take a hands-off attitude … We have asked for years that the government task the local county health director with the ability to go in and supervise these burials as a public health issue. But to the surprise of most citizens, no county health director has any authority, under any normal condition, to go into factory farm buildings and do a health inspection. The only health inspection that is done is by the state veterinarian, and to my knowledge it’s just not happening. So, there is very little done regarding the protection of human health as the result of these animal deaths that occur.

Larry: This is. . . life and death stuff down here, not just for the animals, but for the people as well. Out here it’s environmental justice issues: the waters around [the CAFOs] are contaminated. If you happen to get your drinking water from a well…We know people are getting sick, we don’t know exactly why. We’re exposing communities to a level of health impact that we don’t know how to quantify.

Jessica: I would like to see the North Carolina Swine Plain Flood Buyout Program extended to poultry facilities. [Four] million birds have died. It’s really tragic. Unfortunately, the existing state program is heavily defined [as applicable only to swine]. Legislation needs to get together with industry and change that. In the time between Floyd and now, there’s been a really heavy influx of concentrated industrial poultry operations. And the laws need to catch up with that.

Photo courtesy of Larry Baldwin.

Farm Forward: What about the farmers, the contract CAFO owners? Are you seeing any of them question this system?

Larry: They’re corporate farms…I’m sure these producers are not getting paid by Smithfield when they’re not producing. I have compassion for these producers…they’ve bought into a system that was broken from the very beginning. There are some out there—who obviously do not want to be identified—who will say completely off the record, “If I had this to do again, I would never get into this situation.”

Jessica: Smithfield and the industries knew this would happen…they had a responsibility to their contract growers to make sure that they were located in a place that would keep their animals safe. That said, the important thing to me right now is getting these facilities out of the 100-year floodplain.

Farm Forward: For people who want to do something to help, right now, what do they do? 

Rick: It’s very helpful for the public to support environmental groups generally. You need to look at the reputation of each group—how they spend their money, what they do, what is the return for the money that people donate…So, certainly, Waterkeeper Alliance is an organization I’ve been associated with for over 25 years. To me they are at the top when it comes to water protection. But there are other organizations out there as well. Farm Forward is certainly right up there at the top as well. But people need to get involved, and they need to not only contribute money, but actually get in there and find how they can join up with the organization and volunteer and do good work.

Larry: I don’t care whether you live in North Carolina or don’t live in North Carolina. You can contact your own senator, or call the senators in North Carolina, [or the North Carolina county officials who] are in the pocket of the industry and will try to keep things as status quo as much as they can. Support North Carolina Waterkeepers so they can do more on-the-ground sampling before, during, and after the storm comes through.

In Closing

Rick, Larry, and Jessica know that media attention to the problems of CAFOs was drawn by Hurricane Florence and has faded after the storm. Sustained attention will be required, however, to put pressure on politicians, government agencies, and companies who could prevent North Carolina’s destroyed CAFOs from being rebuilt as soon as the floodwaters subside. There is only one solution that permanently addresses all the harms of factory farming that Florence has brought to the surface. We must end factory farming as a means of producing our food. A food production system that values cheap meat products more than the health of people, the lives of animals, and the well-being of rivers and other ecosystems should not be acceptable to any of us.

Here are a few ways you can help right now:

1. Support organizations that provide the oversight of CAFOs that the government is failing to deliver. You can donate to Waterkeepers Carolina, or support the Waterkeeper in your specific watershed.
2. Don’t buy products from factory farms, and tell your institutions to stop too. Farm Forward has resources to help you understand animal welfare certifications, as well as tools to help institutions like universities and businesses make the switch to “less and better” meat.
3. Join us in ending factory farming. It’s the only long-term solution to ensure that this sort of harm to animals, people, and ecosystems does not happen again.

For Immediate Release, December 2, 2018

Meat-heavy Menu at UN Climate Conference Could Contribute 4,000 Metric Tons of Greenhouse Gases.

KATOWICE, Poland — New analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity, Farm Forward and Brighter Green today finds that the meat-heavy menu at the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change conference COP24 could contribute more than 4,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases to the climate crisis.

The data found that if all 30,000 visitors choose meat-based dishes at the conference’s largest food court during the 12-day conference, they would contribute the equivalent of burning more than 500,000 gallons of gasoline or the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to 3,000 people flying from New York to Katowice.

The groups that compiled the research called on the United Nations to create a framework for host countries to prioritize climate-friendly menus at future climate meetings.

“The meat-laden menu at COP24 is an insult to the work of the conference,” said Stephanie Feldstein, director of the Population and Sustainability program at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If the world leaders gathering in Poland hope to address the climate crisis, they need to tackle overconsumption of meat and dairy, starting with what’s on their own plates. That means transitioning the food served at international climate conferences to more plant-based options with smaller carbon footprints.”

The menu features twice as many meat-based options as plant-based ones. These meat dishes generate average greenhouse gas emissions four times higher than the plant-based meals. The two dairy-free, plant-based options generate one-tenth of the emissions.

In addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, the meat-based dishes on the menu require nine times more land and nearly twice as much water as the plant-based dishes.

“What people eat at a conference may seem like small potatoes when it comes to curbing global emissions,” added Farm Forward’s Claire Fitch. “But if those at the forefront of global climate negotiations aren’t going to ‘walk the talk’ at the highest-level climate conference, how can we expect the rest of the world to get on board?”

Studies have shown that it will not be possible to meet global climate targets without reducing meat and dairy consumption and production. Yet the need to tackle the overconsumption of animal-based foods has been largely absent from international climate negotiations and commitments. The majority of food-related efforts focus on improving production practices with few or no significant targets for shifting to less climate-intensive diets.

“We know that we cannot meet the Paris Agreement goals, or the 1.5C target, with business as usual,” said Caroline Wimberly of Brighter Green, who will be in Katowice for COP24. “Food is not a matter only of personal choice, but an essential factor in solving the climate crisis. Demand-side policies and efforts, including food waste reductions and shifting diets — prioritizing populations with the highest consumption of animal-based foods — are critical in achieving a climate compatible food system and curtailing emissions.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Brighter Green is an environmental think-tank based in New York, and has been participating as an NGO observer in the UNFCCC since COP15 in 2009.

Farm Forward is a team of strategists, educators, campaigners, and thought leaders guiding the movement to change the way our world eats and farms. They implement innovative strategies to promote conscientious food choices, reduce farmed animal suffering, and advance sustainable agriculture. Farm Forward is pushing the ceiling of animal welfare by looking beyond incremental suffering reduction on factory farms, towards the institutional and cultural change that will end factory farming.

In early December, residents of Millsboro, Delaware—home to Mountaire Farms’ chicken processing plant—began receiving free bottled water from Mountaire due to contaminated local water wells. The Mountaire plant had sprayed, on nearby farmland, hundreds of gallons of effluent saturated with up to 41 times the legally permitted levels for nitrates and up to 5,500 times the permitted level for fecal coliform.1 Some of that effluent had leached into nearby residents’ wells, exposing drinking water to pathogens and health risks associated with nitrates.2 The most surprising part of this case was not that hazardous waste had been released from a factory farm, nor that it had contaminated local water wells, but that the pollution and subsequent contamination had been identified by a state agency, and that Mountaire was acknowledging and addressing the problem.

This news signaled a theme that would appear many times at the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project’s December 2017 Factory Farm Summit: even as the problems caused by industrial agriculture worsen, public awareness of the faults in the system is growing, materializing in resistance to industrialized agriculture and increasingly loud calls for change.

This year, Farm Forward joined farmers, local officials, concerned citizens, public health professionals, and advocates for the environment and farm animals at the Factory Farm Summit in Ocean City, Maryland. The summit offered a factory farm tour followed by three days of powerful talks, panel conversations, and networking sessions, all designed to empower communities in their fights against factory farms.

We witnessed first hand the impact that the proliferation of factory farms has on local communities. We visited a Somerset County, Maryland resident’s home that now sits parallel to six chicken concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—each holding 50,000 birds—and in an area with 103 chicken CAFOs in a three-mile radius. No one monitors any outputs of these chicken houses, regardless of the industrial fans that blow noxious odors out of each house, and despite the high rate of adults with asthma in Maryland’s top chicken-producing county.3 Air monitoring is a necessary first step toward protecting Marylanders’ health in the face of industrial-scale broiler chicken production. At the summit, Maryland Senator Richard Madaleno and community organizers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore introduced the Community Healthy Air Act, which would require the Maryland Department of the Environment to monitor and report air pollution from these and all other Maryland factory farms.

The summit challenged the idea that factory farms bring jobs and economic benefits to rural communities and the notion that factory farms feed the world. As often as these arguments are held up by agricultural companies, there is little data to suggest that they are true:4,5 Somerset County, for example, has had the highest level of chicken production in Maryland6 for many years; it also had the highest average unemployment rate in the state in 20177 and ranks second in the state for the percentage of the population that is food insecure.8

Daisy Freund, Director of Farm Animal Welfare at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), reminded the audience that those fighting on behalf of farmed animals often have the same vision as those fighting on behalf of sickened community members, misled contract growers, employees of dangerous processing plants, and the environment: we all want a food system that respects the health and dignity of people, animals, and the planet. As Freund pointed out, no one goes to the grocery store intending to buy food from animals that led miserable lives. No one wants the food on their plate to contaminate the drinking water of rural America, pollute waterways, or support a system in which people are forced to choose between unemployment and insecure, even dangerous jobs. Yet we unwittingly contribute to these problems when we buy factory farmed animal products.

The summit connected dedicated and passionate people working to stop the harms of factory farms. We are working in common cause: society can no longer exchange our health, rural economies, the environment, and animal welfare for profits for the few.

Join Farm Forward in our fight against factory farming by signing up for our newsletter or making a donation today!

Most Americans know that factory farming is a nightmare for animals and our environment, but too often we forget that the people who work within these industries suffer as well. To remain employed, workers are forced to slaughter and process animals at dangerously fast rates.1 The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) limits meatpacking line speeds to reduce rates of foodborne illness, but no state or federal statute limits line speeds standards for worker safety.2 Unsurprisingly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meatpackers face an illness and injury rate two and a half times higher than the national average.3

In working conditions the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) associates with “high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculoskeletal disorders, and hazardous chemicals,”4 meatpackers must quickly perform precise and repetitive tasks, often with knives in hand.5 Line processors commonly have only seconds to kill or cut apart one animal before turning to the next. Since profit margins are slim, volume is paramount, and workers are under constant pressure to process more animals in less time.6

Lives on the Line

While the poultry industry thrives, the workforce pays the price, as detailed in Oxfam America’s 2015 report “Lives on the Line: The Human Cost of Cheap Chicken.” Each worker handles thousands of birds every day: hanging live chickens, trimming skin, cutting off wings. Hourly wages are low; injury and illness rates are high.7 Even breathing takes a toll, as workers are often confined to spaces where the air is laden with dust, chlorine, and ammonia.8 According to a 2011 study, poultry processors have one of the highest rates of human exposure to some cancer-causing agents, and have an elevated risk of dying from chronic disease including leukemias, thyroid diseases, and bacterial infections.9

The rapid line speeds cause a range of worker injuries, including carpal tunnel syndrome and other musculoskeletal disorders.10 The current poultry industry line speeds generally range from 70 to 140 birds per hour. This rate is harmful not only to workers but also the birds facing slaughter; nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are unintentionally boiled alive each year in U.S. slaughterhouses, often because fast-moving lines prevent workers from killing the birds before they are dropped into scalding water.11 Nonetheless, in 2012 the USDA conducted a pilot program in 20 slaughterhouses to test an increased line-speed limit of 175 birds per hour. Thanks to two years of pressure applied by animal protection organizations and workers’ rights groups, including Farm Forward, the USDA dropped the proposal after a two year battle12—but the industry’s valuing profit over welfare has led to a new tactic:

In September 2017 the National Chicken Council (NCC) petitioned USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue to waive line speed limits entirely, complaining that line speed limits reduce profits and dampen the industry’s competitive advantage in a global marketplace.

Taking Action

Farm Forward has joined a coalition of organizations that—on behalf of our combined tens of millions of supporters—have urged the USDA to deny the NCC’s petition. On October 16, 2017 our coalition met in person with USDA representatives to urge the department to reject these new rules. The USDA has not yet made its decision, and has launched a public comment period, open until December 13, 2017.

We urge all readers who support worker safety to comment now, even just by writing “I urge you to reject the NCC petition.” To comment, click the blue button in the upper right corner of this page. Please share this article with your social networks and encourage others to join us!

For years, Farm Forward has worked to create a more just and sustainable food system, where the experiences of workers and animals are respected and valued, but we can’t continue this work without your help. Please donate now and support our mission to change the way our nation eats and farms.

Farm Forward believes that a sustainable and just food system treats animals and humans with dignity. We’re facing a new administration whose agricultural advisory committee will include outspoken opponents of wage reform and animal welfare policies. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we approach our advocacy in strategic ways, building new alliances and supporting efforts to improve the food system for both animals and people. Our latest effort is joining a coalition of organizations—including those representing workers and the environment—to oppose the nomination of Andrew Puzder as President-elect Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Labor.

The U.S. Department of Labor exists to protect the rights of working people, in part by ensuring employers follow the law. As CEO of CKE restaurants, the parent company of fast food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., Mr. Puzder has spent the last 16 years overseeing a fast food chain notorious for violating basic wage and hour laws.1

At any given time, there are about 3.5 million fast food workers in the U.S. They typically work for minimum wage without medical benefits or the right to unionize. Fast food workers also suffer one of the highest injury rates of any employment sector, and are statistically more likely than police officers to be murdered while working.2 Paul Secunda, Director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at Marquette University, has voiced concern that Puzder has taken advantage of the fact that fast food workers are a vulnerable population that is easy to abuse:

“They are usually at the bottom of the pay scale, they usually don’t have the sophistication to know their rights under the law, and it’s hard for them to be collective in their approach because they’re moving around so much… It’s really easy to manipulate them and exploit them, and that’s what we’ve seen,” said Secunda.

Even within a dangerous industry CKE stands out. Since 2006, investigations of CKE restaurants have found workplace health and safety violations in 57 percent. The Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC United)—a nonprofit that advocates for restaurant workers’ rights—surveyed over 500 CKE restaurant employees and not only found that close to a third of the workers had experienced a form of wage theft, but also that two-thirds of female workers experienced sexual harassment at work.3 The rate of sexual harassment across the fast food industry is high— 40 percent of female workers report some form of unwanted contact, but ROC United further notes that the 66 percent reporting rate found among CKE employees is “disturbing.” Given this track record Puzder is in no way qualified to serve as Secretary of Labor, a position that wields so much power over the most vulnerable of our workforce.

During his tenure as a fast food CEO, Puzder has made 650 times more money per year than his lowest-paid full-time employees. According to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of the most recent data, Puzder has made as much as $10 million per year in total compensation. Special executive “perks” made up just a small portion of this pay, and yet these rewards dramatically illustrate the challenge of Puzder’s labor policy positions. For example: Puzder opposes mandatory sick leave policies for workers and wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, he himself has enjoyed huge reimbursement checks from his company for medical and dental costs — above and beyond his regular employer-provided health insurance benefits. In just one year, these reimbursements totaled an astounding $61,000. In contrast, only 9 percent of CKE non-managerial staff have access to health-care through their employer.4

The increasing demand for cheap chicken fuels an unbalanced system—one rife with the abuse of power—that creates the suffering of both factory workers and animals alike. An in-depth look at the treatment of poultry plant workers this year by Oxfam America revealed the severity of worker abuses in the industrial agriculture system. Their comprehensive report, “Lives on the Line: The Human Cost of Cheap Chicken,” highlights the labor and wage abuses inherent in today’s large scale industrial poultry industry.5 For more information, see our article “The Human Costs of Factory Farming.”

The poultry industry is booming. Consumer demand is growing and profits are climbing. Executive compensation is soaring at the cost of both humans and animals. The buying power that fast food chains, like Puzder’s Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., wield could ostensibly shift our industrialized food system to one that is more humane and sustainable. Puzder and CKE restaurants exemplify the fast food industry’s blind abandon of dignity, sustainability, and respect for the lives of workers and animals. We must vigorously oppose Puzder’s nomination both ethically and morally as Secretary of Labor since he has made a career of exploitation.

A Secretary of Labor Puzder would support the interests of the fast food industry—and its big meat and food industry suppliers—over the needs of hard-working people in the food system. Fast food companies couldn’t exist without the products that come from animals raised on factory farms; his confirmation would ensure that the unnecessary suffering of farmed animals on factory farms continues.

We need you now more than ever. Will you join us in our opposition to Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor as we fight for a more just and sustainable food system that treats the land, farmers and animals with respect? Fill out this quick form to let your Senators know you care.

Factory farms, also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or Industrial Farm Animal Production (IFAP) facilities1 can house more than 125,000 animals2 under one roof and are designed to produce the highest possible output at the lowest possible cost to the operator. These farms and their associated industrial slaughterhouses produce “cheap” meat, eggs, and dairy by externalizing their costs. The costs to the public from the ecological damage and health problems created by factory farms are not considered any more than the law requires, and companies have often found it less expensive to pay fines for breaking those laws than to alter their methods. For this reason, the true cost of meat is never reflected in the price consumers pay. Animal suffering is given no meaningful consideration except in a few idiosyncratic cases.

Factory farming now accounts for more than 99 percent of all farmed animals raised and slaughtered in the United States.3  (Virtually all seafood comes to us by way of industrial fishing or factory style fish farms.)4

Farmed animals are remarkable creatures who experience pleasure (pasture-raised pigs, for instance, are known to jump for joy)5  and have complex social structures (cows develop friendships over time and will sometimes hold grudges against other animals who treat them badly).6  The cheap animal products churned out by factory farms come at a high cost to the animals themselves (many are confined so intensively that they cannot turn around or stretch a wing).7  The structure of factory farming ensures that even the animals’ most fundamental needs—clean air, sunshine, freedom from chronic pain and illness—are denied them.

The present system of producing food animals in the United States is not sustainable and presents an unacceptable level of risk to public health and damage to the environment, as well as unnecessary harm to the animals we raise for food.
–Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production

At the same time, factory farming’s industrial slaughterhouses have created worker conditions that Human Rights Watch describes as “systematic human rights abuses.”8 Employing illegal immigrants and underage workers is a common practice—in part because the vulnerability of these populations allows the industry to avoid compensating them for the numerous injuries and chronic pain that are equally standard in industrial slaughter. Processing-plant line workers in California interviewed by Farm Forward reported, to their shame, that it was not uncommon for them to be denied access to the bathroom in order to “hold the line” and maintain productivity.

The factory farm record on the environment is no better: Worldwatch, the Sierra Club, the Pew Commission, Greenpeace, and other major environmental watchdogs have singled out factory farms as among the biggest polluters on the planet.9 There is now a scientific consensus that animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to global warming—outstripping even the transportation industry in its production of greenhouse gases.10 A 2008 New York Times article reported that “if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan—a Camry, say—to the ultra-efficient Prius.”11

The disturbing nature of these problems can make it difficult for many people to accept the truth about factory farming when they are first confronted with it: “Surely,” one is tempted to say, “it can’t be that bad.” But once the scale of the devastation that this industry is wreaking on our health, the environment, and animals becomes clear, the most surprising aspect of factory farming is how effectively these problems have been hidden from the public in the first place.

There are more just, higher welfare, and sustainable ways to eat. Now more than ever there are numerous progressive alternatives to factory farms. With your help, we can find that best way forward.

A law preventing one of the most egregious forms of animal abuse in contemporary agriculture has just been overturned in California. The law, which Farm Forward has supported in California and other states, has protected the public from consuming meat from “downed” or “nonambulatory” animals—animals that are so sick or injured that they cannot stand or walk without assistance.1 On January 23, 2012, the US Supreme Court struck down the law, dealing a serious blow to animal welfare.

The California law required nonambulatory animals arriving at a slaughterhouse to be euthanized immediately, and prevented workers from using abusive means to move the animals.2 The law prohibited California slaughterhouses from either buying or selling nonambulatory livestock, including pigs, cows, sheep and goats. (Chickens and turkeys were not included,3 though the same problems with illness and injury are present in the poultry industry).4

California passed the law in response to a video released by The Humane Society of the United States in 2008. Filmed at a California slaughterhouse, the video captured employees attempting to get downed cows to walk by kicking, electrocuting, and dragging them with chains, as well as spraying pressurized water into their noses to simulate drowning.5

The video triggered the largest recall of beef in the history of the United States.6 Most of the recalled beef had already been consumed, and about 50 of the 143 million pounds had gone to The National School Lunch Program.7

Disturbingly, meat from downed animals is more likely to be diseased for two reasons. First, animals may be nonambulatory due to disease, making their meat—in the words of Ed Schafer when he served as Agriculture Secretary—“unfit for human food.”8 Second, animals that are not diseased but downed because of fatigue, stress, or stubbornness are more susceptible to disease because the animals end up lying in the refuse of other animals.9

The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that the California law was preempted by a federal law, the Federal Meat Inspection Act, was not unexpected. Nevertheless, it was a major setback to states that find the current federal law inadequate. The Federal Meat Inspection Act and the accompanying regulations permit the slaughter of downed animals (except cows in most cases) if they pass an inspection by a USDA inspector.10

Reacting to the Court’s decision, the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States explained that “If the federal government had strong rules and laws on the books, there would be no reason for California or any other state to adopt a reinforcing statute. But it’s precisely because the Congress and the USDA are in the grip of the meat industry that we have anemic federal laws on the subject.”11

Despite the setback the Court’s decision represents, the fact that California passed the bill at all shows which direction the wind is blowing. We need to stay informed, stay vigilant, and continue to let our elected officials know that current policy on downed animals, battery cages, gestation crates, and the unsustainable use of antibiotics just isn’t working.

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The recall of more than half a billion potentially deadly eggs in the Fall of 2010—enough eggs to make an omelet for every person in America—focused public attention on several unsafe and cruel practices within the egg industry. This recall, in addition to news of a historic agreement between the egg industry and welfare groups, means that legislators will be giving attention to the conditions of laying hens. With hen housing debates in full swing and the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of birds at stake, Farm Forward wants you to have the facts about how America’s egg supply is produced.

Hen Housing Today

Here’s a breakdown of all modern forms of housing for laying hens:

• Conventional battery cages: These cages are used to produce 95%1 of all eggs in America. Each hen is given roughly 67 sq. inches of cage space, less room than a single sheet of paper.2 The limited space and lack of enrichment in these cages does not allow for “species-specific” behaviors like nesting, which are crucial to basic welfare.3

Three additional categories of housing are employed on egg farms that provide the remaining 5% of our egg supply:

• Enriched cages: Though the standards are loosely defined, enriched cages are intended to provide features like perches, nest boxes, litter, scratching areas, and additional space.4
• Cage-free: Animals are kept in a barn or aviary setting with the birds generally housed on the floor.
• Free-range: These operations are similar to cage-free operations but claim to provide “access to the outdoors.” However, since “free-range” is not a term that is meaningfully regulated, consumers have virtually no way of knowing if the hens that laid their “free range” eggs are any better off than birds in cage-free systems.

The improvement of welfare in any of these three alternative factory farming systems is limited. As Farm Forward board member Jonathan Safran Foer explains in Eating Animals, “Cage-free . . . means no more or less than what it says—they are literally not in cages. [And] one can assume that most ‘free-range’ [and] ‘cage-free’ laying hens are debeaked, drugged, force molted, and cruelly slaughtered once ‘spent.’”5

The Debate: Enriched Cages Versus Cage-Free

There are two possible ways the industry is likely to proceed as it phases out its use of battery cages: battery cages will either be replaced with enriched cages or with cage-free operations. Segments of the poultry industry are presently favoring enhanced cages over cage-free systems.

Humane farming advocates—such as HSUS, The RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming and others—have argued that cage-free systems of one kind or another provide better welfare than enhanced cages. Farm Forward stands with these organizations, along with Nicholas Kristof, Wal-Mart, Costco and countless others urging industry to adopt cage-free production methods as part of a multifaceted approach to improving welfare standards for the millions of laying hens raised in the United States.

When combined with good management, enhanced cages and cage-free housing operations provide significant welfare advantages over battery cages, but no housing system can sufficiently improve the welfare of the Frankenstein breeds of laying hens currently used in the industry. The genetics and physiology of modern laying hens has been altered to maximize production at the expense of the animals’ wellbeing. Virtually all hens bred to lay eggs suffer from skeletal weakness related to osteoporosis.6 As a result, the risk of bone-fractures during laying is very high, especially in cage-free systems.7 Moreover, as long as poultry producers continue to use hens bred with disregard for basic welfare, the morbidity and mortality rates of laying hens in cage-free operations can be higher than in well-run systems that employ enhanced cages.8

In other words, cage-free systems may not be any more humane than enriched cage systems unless the genetics of the hens is taken into consideration. While it’s hard to imagine that any animal would be healthier if never allowed outside a cage, one can imagine disabilities that might make this so. Because of the profound genetic problems introduced in laying hens as they were bred for efficiency at the expense of welfare, virtually all laying hens today are disabled.

Clearly, talking about the cage or barn in which we raise laying hens is only half the picture of welfare. The other half is the genetic health of the animals. Farm Forward agrees with HSUS: “hens should be biologically sound and healthy, and able to move freely and without risk of injury, as they were before commercial breeding practices pushed them toward their biological limit. The solution to this problem should be pursued by science and industry in conjunction with the move toward cage-free systems.”9

Cage-free systems improve welfare for today’s breeds of hens but the industry is correct to note that so do enhanced cages. Farm Forward still favors a move towards cage-free operations over enhanced cages. We do so because as the poultry industry is pushed to return to more traditional genetics, the welfare possible in cage-free systems will far exceed the modest improvements in welfare possible in enhanced cages.

With your help, Farm Forward will continue to advocate for a more humane poultry industry that includes meaningful steps toward the reintroduction of high-welfare heritage genetics that allow birds to run, jump, and fly as they were meant to do. We hope you will join us.

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