Marissa -----
ENGL 2000
Evaluation Essay
8 October 2012

Cheap Meat the Environment Cannot Afford
The modernization of farming and livestock allows Americans to purchase food at inexpensive prices. I eat at least two meals a day containing meat and could not tell you where the meat comes from. I’ve been told that Americans eat meat in excess, sometimes causing health risks. But what else does consuming this immense amount of meat effect? For example, massive amounts of land are cleared for farming to produce the food for animals to eat. What else could this land be used for? Cattle are raised for slaughter and are pumped with hormones and nutrients. How does this affect the meat we’re consuming? Trucks are needed to move the harvested meat across the country. To what extent does this affect the environment? The food fed to cows are not natural and do not agree with cows’ stomachs. The cheap feed causes the cows to become gassy. How does this additional gas affect our atmosphere?
One of the ways companies pinch pennies is by cramming as many animals into “feedlots” as possible. A feedlot is a storage facility with poor living conditions. In these cramped quarters, animals often stand in their own excrement and the excrement of other animals that are inches away. Some feedlots house more than 100,000 animals (Schlosser, 2012). When the feedlots are cleaned, the manure is often discarded in massive pits, or “lagoons”. This build-up of manure, which is normally used as fertilizer, pollutes the air with hydrogen sulfide and the land with heavy metals. Water near the lagoons may also become polluted due to runoffs (Schlosser, 2012).
Because of the unnatural state surrounding feedlots and poor quality of food, the livestock often suffer from diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea (Lessing, 2010). Hogs exhibit aggressive behavior in response to crowded confinement by biting the tails of other swine. To prevent this, farmers remove their tails. A missing tail combined with “porcine stress syndrome”, a disease similar to shock in humans, heightens the hogs’ susceptibility to illness (Lessing, 2010). To keep the hogs healthy, antibiotics are mixed into their feed. Fifteen to eighteen million pounds of antibiotics, roughly 70% of antibiotics used by the United States, are administered to livestock annually (Lessing, 2010). Most of these medications are administered preemptively, that is, before the animal shows signs of illness.

Companies pinch pennies by cramming as many animals into “feedlots” as possible. A feedlot is a storage facility with poor living conditions. In these cramped quarters, animals often stand in their own excrement and the excrement of other animals that are mere inches away. Some feedlots house more than 100,000 animals (Schlosser, 2012). When the feedlots are cleaned, the manure is discarded in massive pits, or “lagoons”. This build-up of manure, which was traditionally used as fertilizer, pollutes the air with hydrogen sulfide and the land with heavy metals. Water near lagoons may also become polluted due to runoffs (Schlosser, 2012).The excrement produced by cattle, swine, and chickens contributes a significant amount of methane into the atmosphere. Contrary to common belief, this is caused by the poor “manure management practices” rather than flatulence (Ferreira, 2010).
Because of the unnatural state surrounding feedlots and poor food quality, the livestock often suffer from diseases such as pneumonia and diarrhea (Lessing, 2010). Hogs exhibit aggressive behavior in response to crowded confinement by biting the tails of other swine. To prevent this, farmers remove their tails. A missing tail combined with “porcine stress syndrome”, a disease similar to shock in humans, heightens the hogs’ susceptibility to illness (Lessing, 2010). To keep the hogs healthy, antibiotics are mixed into their feed. Fifteen to eighteen million pounds of antibiotics, roughly 70% of antibiotics used by the United States, are administered to livestock annually (Lessing, 2010). Most of these medications are administered preemptively, that is, before the animals show signs of illness. Vicious cycle.