Farms are factories. "It's the logic of the mad house," writes Dr Tim O'Brien of global farming practices in his recent report for Compassion in World Farming Trust - Factory Farming: The Global Threat.
O'Brien points out that when Ethiopia was being ravaged by famine in the 1980s, it was at the same time exporting grain to feed animals in Europe.
Simultaneously, EU farmers were receiving subsidies from EU taxpayers to export animals on long journeys to non-EU countries in order to forestall an over-abundance of meat and to bolster prices within Europe. Crazy.
But O'Brien sees the problems of global farming as set to become more serious, as the EU and the US increasingly have the feed for their animals produced in developing countries. The inefficiency of intensive livestock production - every kilo of beef produced in the US requires the equivalent of 10 litres of petrol, while pigs eat four kilos of grain for every kilo of pork and hens consume three kilos of grain for every kilo of eggs - means the water-table of developing countries could be threatened, in addition to the problems of soil erosion. In tandem with this, and in order to further cut costs, factory farming techniques are already being operated in developing countries by commercial food conglomerates, companies which are keen to supply the increasingly affluent economies of Asia and China. It is a fact of our food consumption that the more affluent we become, the more we consume meat and dairy products. Pork consumption in China increased 60 per cent in the five years between 1990 and 1995, while China moved from being a net exporter of grain to the tune of eight million tonnes to being a net importer to the tune of 16 million tonnes. That 24 million-tonne shift is equivalent to the entire annual grain exports of Canada.
O'Brien points out that all these problems are interconnected, so a crisis for animal welfare in terms of intensive factory-farming can also be a crisis for the environment, as well as a crisis for politics, nutrition and human welfare. Sobering reading.
Copies of Factory Farming: The Global Threat are available from Compassion in World Farming Trust, Salmon Weir, Hanover Street, Cork, tel: 021272441, fax: 021-274984.