The need to feed ever-increasing numbers of animals reduces the amount of grains and other plant proteins for direct human consumption. Alongside this, the problem of pollution gets ever worse. Livestock production is a major contributor to most of the world s environmental problems, including acid rain. Ammonia gas from manure and slurry combine with oxides of sulphur and nitrogen in the atmosphere, produced by burning fossil fuels, to produce sulphuric and nitric acid. These acidify the ground or rivers and can dissolve out metals, particularly aluminum, from the soil, washing them into rivers where they poison fish.
Fodder grown on irrigated land also demands large quantities of water as do meat processing plants.
Effluent from poultry farms and processing plants is frequently discharged into rivers, adding to the burden of pollution. Factory farming methods promote disease in the stock, necessitating the reckless overuse of antibiotics to counteract disease. Often meat from intensive farming methods is contaminated with pathogens that cause food poisoning in humans, for example, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter and E. Coli. Intensive duck farming causes serious environmental damage, while forcing billions of living creatures into lives of human-made deprivation. Article by Ed Ayres, editorial director World Watch Institute, Time magazine, Nov. 1999.