Driving cross-country, part of what people look forward to seeing are large acres of natural farmland, crops and livestock. That expectation, however, has dwindled, as farmland and natural earth have been replaced by fuming and polluting factories. Merriam-Webster defines a “factory” as “a building or set of buildings with facilities for manufacturing or the seat of some kind of production”. Unfortunately, the factories in our nation are not just producing food.

In 1820, factories started to become mainstream places of production. Back then, factories mainly produced textiles and cotton products. Nowadays, products manufactured in factories can range from the clothes on your back to the food on your plate. If you walk into your local grocery store, you are bound to find that the processed foods in boxes and containers greatly outnumber the amount of fresh produce.

According to a website called Sustainable Table, in 2006, 330 farmers left their land every week. As a result, there are now currently about five million fewer farms in the U.S. than there were in the 1930s. So what’s the big deal? The decreasing number of farms affects people more than they would think.

Small family-owned farms cared about the land they worked on and the products they created because they impacted the farmers as well. The factory farm corporations in the nation purchase land to produce food for profit, and in the process, pollute the environment and communities with chemical pesticides, noxious fumes and excess amounts of manure. The rural areas used for such industrial agriculture are left with high rates of unemployment and little opportunity for economic growth.

The technical term, as defined by the government, for factory farms is Concentrated (or Confined) Animal Operations (CAFOs). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) further defines CAFOs as “new and existing operations which stable or confine and feed or maintain for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period more than the number of animals specified.”

In these CAFOs, hundreds to thousands of animals, like cows and chickens, are tightly confined together and provided little or no access to fresh air and sunlight. Animals are also mutilated (de-beaking) to help them adjust to factory conditions and, in some cases, cannot even turn around in their pens.

Due to the harsh conditions in which the animals live, they are administered low doses of antibiotics as a preemptive measure to ward off diseases in their unsanitary and unnatural conditions.
In wake of the large amounts of livestock kept at a factory, there is excessive waste to handle.  Man-made lagoons are created to hold millions of gallons of liquid waste, and these contaminants can seep into groundwater and affect crops. The nutrients and bacteria from the liquid waste can then contaminate waterways and disturb aquatic ecosystems.

Another reason that CAFOs are detrimental is because one corporation usually controls all aspects of the production process: animal rearing, feed production, slaughter, packaging and distribution. This type of production is called vertical integration and gives tremendous power to corporations, which can leverage irresponsible practices on farmers and, in turn, lower the corporation’s accountability.

So if factory farms are taking over the food industry, how can people get sustainable and healthy food? There are still small family farms and farmer’s markets out there. In the Annandale area, there are the Wakefield Farmers Market, which operates from two to six pm between May 4 and October 26 and the Annandale Farmers Market, which is open on Thursdays from eight am to noon, May 5 through November 3. Buying local produce and meat products supports the local economy and reduces the amount of fossil fuel used to transport food. People can also choose to plant a garden and grow their own food.

In addition, non-local foods are irradiated to improve their shelf life. Irradiation changes the molecular structure of food and creates carcinogens, changes the nutritional content of food, and by-products called 2-ACBs. These byproducts have been the cause of premature death, mutations, organ damage and nutritional deficiencies in animals and genetic damage in human cells.
Food has gone from being meticulously cared for, grown and freshly cooked to being locked in cages and filled with hormones, antibiotics and additives before being packaged. So, the next time fried chicken comes to mind, think about where it came from.