IN THE GRASS
By: Matthew Molina
What the workers are being exposed to
everyday!
Working Conditions in Factory Farms
Factory farm workers are exposed to numerous workplace hazards. Workers in hog barns are exposed
to much higher levels of dust, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, noise, and odour than are farmers in
smaller scale operations due to the difference in the amount of time each spends in barns. They are
also exposed to drugs and hormones used in factory farm production.
Hydrogen sulphide poisoning
Hydrogen sulphide is produced by decomposing liquid manure. It is a colourless, odourless deadly gas that can reach
hazardous concentrations in confined spaces. Several Canadian workers have died and many have been affected by H2S
poisoning.
Hydrogen Sulfide: The Deadliest Manure Gas
Exposure to Antibiotic resistant pathogens
The routine feeding of antibiotics to livestock in factory farms results in microbes evolving antibiotic resistance {link to
Antibiotic fact sheet>. Workers exposed to these pathogens can become sick, or become carriers of the disease, spreading it
within their communities.
Guelph Researchers Find MRSA in Pigs
“The researchers found no difference in the prevalence of MRSA among suckling, weanling and grower-finisher pigs, but they
concluded that people working on pig farms are at higher risk for MRSA than the general population.”
Noise
Thousands of pigs in a confined space make a lot of noise. Studies have shown that decibel levels in intensive hog barns are
above safety thresholds much of the time. Continuous exposure to such noise leads to stress and hearing loss.
Occupational noise exposure assessment in intensive swine farrowing systems
Air quality and respiratory disease
“Large hog barns are complex environments with a variety of gases and dusts present. It is well documented in the
international scientific literature that exposure to the air in large hog barns may cause short and long term harmful health
effects in workers.”
Industrial Hog Barns - Air Quality Occupational Health Considerations by Manitoba Federation of Labour, Occupational Health Centre,
Inc. April 2007
11 Facts About Animals and Factory Farms
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A "factory farm" is a large-scale industrial operation that houses thousands of animals raised for
food—such as chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs—and treats them with hormones and antibiotics
to prevent disease and maximize their growth and food output.
Animals are fed corn, wheat and soy that are grown through intensive industrial farming that use
large amounts of pesticides, which can remain in their bodies and are passed on to the people who
eat them, creating serious health hazards in humans. Ask your school to create Meatless Mondays
in the cafeteria to highlight the hazards of overconsumption of meat. Sign up for Meatless
Mondays.
The beaks of chickens, turkeys, and ducks are often removed in factory farms to reduce the
excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds.
A typical supermarket chicken today contains more than twice the fat, and about a third less
protein than 40 years ago.
2 in 3 farm animals in the world are now factory farmed.
Confining so many animals in one place produces much more waste than the surrounding land
can handle. As a result, factory farms are associated with various environmental hazards, such as
water, land and air pollution.
The pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, depression,
and even death for people who live near factory farms.
Dairy cows typically live to their third lactation before being culled. Naturally, a cow can live for
20 years.
Hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated
groundwater in 17 states.
Egg-laying hens are sometimes starved for up to 14 days, exposed to changing light patterns and
given no water in order to shock their bodies into molting. It’s common for 5% to 10% of hens to die
during the forced molting process.
Worldwide, about 70 billion farm animals are now reared for food each year.
Factory farms are the new sweatshops
By Chris Grezo
If you’re interested in global justice, you may be aware that there are strong arguments to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet – the prime reasons being
the environmental impact of eating meat, and world food prices. Another reason, which often gets overlooked, is the appalling treatment of workers by
the international meat industry and the effect of this on communities. A Human Rights Watch report from 2005 on the state of the meat industry in
the US documented that slaughterhouse workers lose limbs, suffer from massive repetitive motion injuries and frequent lacerations, and sometimes
die in horrendous accidents, often as a result of extreme production-speed demands and lax health and safety protocols. The country’s Bureau of Labor
Statistics has documented that in the last decade the rate of illness and injuries for slaughterhouse workers was over twice as high as
the national average, and the rate of illnesses alone was over 10 times the national average. And these are ultra-conservative estimates, as the
industry has been shown massively to under-report injuries in order to avoid fines. One of the reasons that slaughterhouse companies get away with
such appalling working conditions is that the workforce is often made up of illegal immigrants. These illegal immigrants are threatened with being
exposed and deported if they kick up a fuss.
Equally, illegal tactics are used to prevent unions forming that would push for safer working conditions. One example of such tactics is the case of
Smithfield Foods in North Carolina1. At this huge, industrialized slaughterhouse 5,000 workers kill, cut and package 25,000 pigs a day. As well as
firing union supporters, Smithfield Foods created an Internal security force with ‘special police agency’ under North Carolina law, which allows the
force’s officers to wield police-like powers. The security force arrests union supporters, and patrols the factory with guns to keep workers in line.
The unethical nature of the modern meat industry stretches across the globe. One particularly unjust example is the use of slave labour by the beef
industry in Latin America. Many Brazilian cattle farms use the old trick of debt bondage to trap workers. These young men are generally used to
destroy areas of the rainforest that can then be used for cattle farming. In a chilling parallel to Smithfield Foods, some farms employ armed guards to
watch over the workers and threaten to murder anyone who tries to escape these isolated hell-holes.
In August 2010, Brazil’s High Labor Court declared that a company running a number of ranches had been keeping 180 workers in
slavery and making them work up to 24 hours a day. There were even teenagers as young as 14 among the slaves.Factory farming, with
its propensity for terrible working conditions and negative environmental impact, has spread from the West to India, China, Brazil,
Ethiopia, Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines. It is perceived by some as beneficial: it’s more efficient and
potentially more profitable, proponents say, and therefore offers the chance for developing countries to increase their income. However, it
rather depends on who within the country is actually benefiting. Studies by both the World Bank and Britain’s Department for
International Development argue that the spread of factory farming in the developing world is harming the poorest and reducing food
security. It seems paradoxical that a process that increases the efficiency of meat production would result in communities having less
secure access to food, but the evidence is mounting. The introduction of factory farming reduces the number of farms and farmers:
Small holder farmers go out of business as they can’t compete with factory farms, and the rural poor are undercut, so not only do they
lose income but they stop producing food. If there is then a disease outbreak at the local factory farm, or it closes for some other reason, or
there are transport problems, or there is a change in the global food markets, the rural poor will face extreme hardship since there are no
longer alternative local food sources. This scenario is not unlikely: epidemics at factory farms are common, thanks to the combination of
appalling conditions and over-bred livestock, which mature quickly but have poor immune systems. there is a change in the global food
markets, the rural poor will face extreme hardship since there are no longer alternative local food sources. This scenario is not unlikely:
epidemics at factory farms are common, thanks to the combination of appalling conditions and over-bred livestock, which mature quickly
but have poor immune systems. Factory farmers themselves lose their autonomy as they are at the mercy of transnational companies
that control both the technology and the franchises. Workers in the international meat industry, whether in the Global North or South,
suffer exploitation and terrible working conditions. Factory farms are the new sweatshops.
1 Human Rights Watch 'Abuses against workers taint US meat industry'; Human Rights Watch 'Blood, sweat and fear'; The American
Prospect 'Unions come to Smithfield'
- See more at: http://newint.org/blog/2012/11/20/factory-farms-are-new-sweatshops/#sthash.8fTEPoiA.dpuf
KEY TERMS
Factor farm
 Industrial operation
 Workplace hazard
 Hydrogen sulphide
 Pesticides
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Why are the industrial farming companies being
allowed to higher undocumented immigrant
workers?
 How can we prevent industrial farming
companies from abusing their employees and
animals?
 Will we be able to regulate the industrial
companies from ignoring the safety regulations?
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