Food and Nutrition:
What Everyone Needs to Know
Chapter 18
Making the Meat You Eat: There's Nothing Natural About It
Chapter 18: Key Themes and Abstract
Factory Farming, CAFOs, and the Industrial Meat System
This chapter examines animal foods in human diets (chicken, pork, beef, goat, and insects), specifically conventional (industrial) meat produced in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and their role in planetary health, sustainability, climate change, and society. It posits that meat is the ultimate ultra-processed food (UPF). Globally, 92 billion animals are slaughtered annually, packed into factory and megafactory farms, and fed antibiotics and hormones to produce protein and meat efficiently, cheaply, and inhumanely. CAFOs fuel antibiotic resistance (antimicrobial resistance; AMR), a growing public health threat, while endangering meatpackers. It describes greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) from deforestation and methane production due to manure lagoons alongside land use, fuel, and water costs—plus air, soil, and water pollution that disproportionately impacts BIPOC communities. It concludes with the “chickenization” of our species, the Earth encrusted with poultry bones, sharing anthropological evidence that sapiens in the Anthropocene are living in the Age of the Chicken.
Guiding Questions
- How many billions of animals are used to make meat—and who in the world is eating them?
- What is a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), and how many factory farms and megafactory farms make meat and other animal foods?
- What is antibiotic resistance, how is it related to factory farming, and who’ s at risk?
- Why are hormones used to make meat and milk, and does it matter?
- What land, fuel, water, chemical, and other resources are needed to make meat and animal protein?
- How do factory farming and industrialized meat-making impact our shared planet and communities?
- What does chickenization say about our agrifood system—and our civilization?
The Realities of Modern Meat
Learn the realities behind your burger, including the conventional animal food production process, and why meat is the most ultra-processed food out there; this material is crucial for courses in public health, nutrition, food policy, environmental science, and climate change modules, as well as eco-conscious eaters.
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