The Hog Industry & CAFOs

We will be writing occasionally about our industrial food system, its health impacts, its cruelty to workers and animals alike, and about the public policy that allows such a system to continue to exist.

As Daniel Imhoff writes in the Introduction to The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories “[in] the United States and in other parts of the world, the raising of livestock has been increasingly dominated by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), intensive livestock operations (ILOs in Canada) and smaller animal feeding operations (AFOs). These are essentially factory like buildings into which animals - industrially bred for rapid growth and high output of meat, milk, or eggs - are tightly crammed, caged, and sometimes even chained or tethered.” They have one goal, feed the animal and get it to market as soon as possible. The less exercise the animal gets, the quicker it gains weight.

Anyone who has driven through rural Illinois or Iowa on a humid summer day has probably encountered the stench of a large scale hog operation - a CAFO.. These operations lower property values in the area, pollute the environment, and are usually protected by some form of ag-gag legislation (e.g., laws that make it a crime to take pictures of the operation preventing the average citizen in gaining knowledge where their food comes from). We will dive more into ag-gag legislation in another post. Suffice it to say that the owners of these operations are politically powerful in their region.

“The Hog Barons” is a story by Charlie Mitchell and Austin Frerick that highlights some of the issues with large-scale hog operations. The link to the article is here https://thefern.org/2021/04/the-hog-baron/