ANIMAL RAISING PRODUCTION

Intensive animal farming or industrial livestock production, also called factory farming or
animal production, is a modern form of intensive farming that refers to the industrialized
production of livestock, including cattle, poultry (in "Battery cages") and fish in confinement
at high stocking density a practice typical in industrial farming by agribusinesses. The
main products of this industry are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption. There have
been issues regarding whether factory farming is sustainable and ethical. Confinement at
high stocking density is one part of a systematic effort to produce the highest output at the
lowest cost by relying on economies of scale, modern machinery, biotechnology, and global
trade. Confinement at high stocking density requires antibiotics and pesticides to mitigate
the spread of disease and pestilence exacerbated by these crowded living conditions. In
addition, antibiotics are used to stimulate livestock growth by killing intestinal bacteria.
There are differences in the way factory farming techniques are practiced around the world.
There is a continuing debate over the benefits, risks and ethical questions of factory
farming. The issues include the efficiency of food production; animal welfare; whether it is
essential for feeding the growing global population; the environmental impact and the
health risks and associated pollution and health issues.
The practice is widespread in developed nations. According to the World watch Institute, as
of 2006 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs were
produced this way.
History
The practice of industrial animal agriculture is a relatively recent development in the history
of agriculture, and the result of scientific discoveries and technological advances.
Innovations in agriculture beginning in the late 19th century generally parallel developments
in mass production in other industries that characterized the latter part of the Industrial
Revolution. The discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition, in the first two
decades of the 20th century, led to vitamin supplements, which allowed chickens to be
raised indoors.[14] The discovery of antibiotics and vaccines facilitated raising livestock in
larger numbers by reducing disease. Chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise
to synthetic pesticides. Developments in shipping networks and technology have made longdistance distribution of agricultural produce feasible.
Agricultural production across the world doubled four times between 1820 and 1975 (1820
to 1920; 1920 to 1950; 1950 to 1965; and 1965 to 1975) to feed a global population of one
billion human beings in 1800 and 6.5 billion in 2002. During the same period, the number of
people involved in farming dropped as the process became more automated. In the 1930s,
24 percent of the American population worked in agriculture compared to 1.5 percent in
2002; in 1940, each farm worker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker
supplied 90 consumers.
According to the BBC, the era factory farming per se in Britain began in 1947 when a new
Agriculture Act granted subsidies to farmers to encourage greater output by introducing new
technology, in order to reduce Britain's reliance on imported meat. The United Nations
writes that "intensification of animal production was seen as a way of providing food
security. In 1960s North America, pigs and cows began to be raised on factory farms.

From its American and West European heartland factory farming became globalised in the
later years of the 20th century and is still expanding and replacing traditional practices of
stock rearing in an increasing number of countries. In 1990 factory farming accounted for
30% of world meat production and by 2005 this had risen to 40%.
Contemporary animal production
Factory farms hold large numbers of animals, typically cows, pigs, turkeys, or chickens,
often indoors, typically at high densities. The aim of the operation is to produce large
quantities of meat, eggs, or milk at the lowest possible cost. Food is supplied in place, and a
wide variety of artificial methods are employed to maintain animal health and improve
production, such as the use of antimicrobial agents, vitamin supplements, and growth
hormones. Physical restraints are used to control movement or actions regarded as
undesirable. Breeding programs are used to produce animals more suited to the confined
conditions and able to provide a consistent food product.
Factory farming is widespread in developed nations. According to the Worldwatch Institute,
as of 2006, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs
were produced this way. In the U.S., as of 2000 four companies produced 81 percent of
cows, 73 percent of sheep, 60 percent of pigs, and 50 percent of chickens and according to
its National Pork Producers Council, 80 million of its 95 million pigs slaughtered each year
are reared in industrial settings.
Chickens
In the United States, chickens were raised primarily on family farms until roughly 1960.
Originally, the primary value in poultry was eggs, and meat was considered a byproduct of
egg production. Its supply was less than the demand, and poultry was expensive. Except in
hot weather, eggs can be shipped and stored without refrigeration for some time before
going bad; this was important in the days before widespread refrigeration.
Farm flocks tended to be small because the hens largely fed themselves through foraging,
with some supplementation of grain, scraps, and waste products from other farm ventures.
Such feedstuffs were in limited supply, especially in the winter, and this tended to regulate
the size of the farm flocks. Soon after poultry keeping gained the attention of agricultural
researchers (around 1896), improvements in nutrition and management made poultry
keeping more profitable and businesslike.
Prior to about 1910, chicken was served primarily on special occasions or Sunday dinner.
Poultry was shipped live or killed, plucked, and packed on ice (but not eviscerated). The
"whole, ready-to-cook broiler" was not popular until the 1950s, when end-to-end
refrigeration and sanitary practices gave consumers more confidence. Before this, poultry
were often cleaned by the neighborhood butcher, though cleaning poultry at home was a
commonplace kitchen skill.
Two kinds of poultry were generally used: broilers or "spring chickens;" young male
chickens, a byproduct of the egg industry, which were sold when still young and tender
(generally under 3 pounds live weight), and "stewing hens," also a byproduct of the egg
industry, which were old hens past their prime for laying.

The major milestone in 20th century poultry production was the discovery of vitamin D,
which made it possible to keep chickens in confinement year-round. Before this, chickens
did not thrive during the winter (due to lack of sunlight), and egg production, incubation,
and meat production in the off-season were all very difficult, making poultry a seasonal and
expensive proposition. Year-round production lowered costs, especially for broilers.
At the same time, egg production was increased by scientific breeding. After a few false
starts, (such as the Maine Experiment Station's failure at improving egg production) success
was shown by Professor Dryden at the Oregon Experiment Station.
Improvements in production and quality were accompanied by lower labor requirements. In
the 1930s through the early 1950s, 1,500 hens was considered to be a full-time job for a
farm family. In the late 1950s, egg prices had fallen so dramatically that farmers typically
tripled the number of hens they kept, putting three hens into what had been a single-bird
cage or converting their floor-confinement houses from a single deck of roosts to tripledecker roosts. Not long after this, prices fell still further and large numbers of egg farmers
left the business.
Robert Plamondon reports that the last family chicken farm in his part of Oregon, Rex
Farms, had 30,000 layers and survived into the 1990s. But the standard laying house of the
current operators is around 125,000 hens.
This fall in profitability was accompanied by a general fall in prices to the consumer, allowing
poultry and eggs to lose their status as luxury foods.
The vertical integration of the egg and poultry industries was a late development, occurring
after all the major technological changes had been in place for years (including the
development of modern broiler rearing techniques, the adoption of the Cornish Cross broiler,
the use of laying cages, etc.).
By the late 1950s, poultry production had changed dramatically. Large farms and packing
plants could grow birds by the tens of thousands. Chickens could be sent to
slaughterhouses for butchering and processing into prepackaged commercial products to be
frozen or shipped fresh to markets or wholesalers. Meat-type chickens currently grow to
market weight in six to seven weeks, whereas only fifty years ago it took three times as
long. This is due to genetic selection and nutritional modifications (and not the use of
growth hormones, which are illegal for use in poultry in the US and many other countries).
Once a meat consumed only occasionally, the common availability and lower cost has made
chicken a common meat product within developed nations. Growing concerns over
the cholesterol content of red meat in the 1980s and 1990s further resulted in increased
consumption of chicken.
Today, eggs are produced on large egg ranches on which environmental parameters are well
controlled. Chickens are exposed to artificial light cycles to stimulate egg production yearround. In addition, it is a common practice to induce molting through careful manipulation

of light and the amount of food they receive in order to further increase egg size and
production.
On average, a chicken lays one egg a day, but not on every day of the year. This varies with
the breed and time of year. In 1900, average egg production was 83 eggs per hen per year.
In 2000, it was well over 300. In the United States, laying hens are butchered after their
second egg laying season. In Europe, they are generally butchered after a single season.
The laying period begins when the hen is about 1820 weeks old (depending on breed and
season). Males of the egg-type breeds have little commercial value at any age, and all those
not used for breeding (roughly fifty percent of all egg-type chickens) are killed soon after
hatching. The old hens also have little commercial value. Thus, the main sources of poultry
meat 100 years ago (spring chickens and stewing hens) have both been entirely supplanted
by meat-type broiler chickens.
Some believe the "deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry
practices".Others have a more nuanced position. According to the CDC articleH5N1
Outbreaks and Enzootic Influenza by Robert G. Webster et al.:"Transmission of highly
pathogenic H5N1 from domestic poultry back to migratory waterfowl in western China has
increased the geographic spread. The spread of H5N1 and its likely reintroduction to
domestic poultry increase the need for good agricultural vaccines. In fact, the root cause of
the continuing H5N1 pandemic threat may be the way the pathogenicity of H5N1 viruses is
masked by cocirculating influenza viruses or bad agricultural vaccines." Dr. Robert Webster
explains: "If you use a good vaccine you can prevent the transmission within poultry and to
humans. But if they have been using vaccines now [in China] for several years, why is there
so much bird flu? There is bad vaccine that stops the disease in the bird but the bird goes
on pooping out virus and maintaining it and changing it. And I think this is what is going on
in China. It has to be. Either there is not enough vaccine being used or there is substandard
vaccine being used. Probably both. Its not just China. We cant blame China for
substandard vaccines. I think there are substandard vaccines for influenza in poultry all over
the world." In response to the same concerns, Reuters reports Hong Kong infectious
disease expert Lo Wing-lok saying, "The issue of vaccines has to take top priority," and Julie
Hall, in charge of the WHO's outbreak response in China, saying China's vaccinations might
be masking the virus." The BBC reported that Dr Wendy Barclay, a virologist at the
University of Reading, UK said: "The Chinese have made a vaccine based on reverse
genetics made with H5N1 antigens, and they have been using it. There has been a lot of
criticism of what they have done, because they have protected their chickens against death
from this virus but the chickens still get infected; and then you get drift the virus mutates
in response to the antibodies and now we have a situation where we have five or six
'flavours' of H5N1 out there." Keeping wild birds away from domestic birds is known to be
key in the fight against H5N1. Caging (no free range poultry) is one way. Providing wild
birds with restored wetlands so they naturally choose nonlivestock areas is another way that
helps accomplish this. Political forces are increasingly demanding the selection of one, the
other, or both based on nonscientific reasons.

Cattle
Cattle, colloquially referred to as cows, are domesticated ungulates, a member of
the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat (called
beef
and
veal), dairy
products (milk),
leather
and
as draught
animals (pulling carts, plows and the like). In some countries, such as India, they are
honored in religious ceremonies and revered. It is estimated that there are 1.4 billion head
of cattle in the world today.
Cattle are often raised by allowing herds to graze on the grasses of large tracts
of rangeland called ranches. Raising cattle in this manner allows the productive use of land
that might be unsuitable for growing crops. The most common interactions with cattle
involve daily feeding, cleaning and milking. Many routine husbandry practices involve ear
tagging, dehorning, loading, medical operations, vaccinations and hoof care, as well as
training for agricultural shows and preparations. There are also some cultural differences in
working with cattle- the cattle husbandry of Fulani men rests on behavioural techniques,
whereas in Europe cattle are controlled primarily by physical means like fences.
Once cattle obtain an entry-level weight, about 650 pounds (300 kg), they are transferred
from the range to a feedlot to be fed a specialized animal feed which consists of corn
byproducts (derived from ethanol production), barley, and other grains as well as
alfalfa, cottonseed meal, and premixes composed of micro ingredients such as vitamins,
minerals, chemical preservatives, antibiotics, fermentation products, and other essential
ingredients that are purchased from premix companies, usually in sacked form, for blending
into commercial rations. Because of the availability of these products, a farmer who uses his
own grain can formulate his own rations and be assured his animals are getting the
recommended levels of minerals and vitamins.
Breeders can utilise cattle husbandry to reduce M. bovis infection susceptibility by selective
breeding and maintaining herd health to avoid concurrent disease. Cattle are farmed for
beef, veal, dairy, leather and they are sometimes used simply to maintain grassland for
wildlife- for example, in Epping Forest, England. They are often used in some of the most
wild places for livestock. Depending on the breed, cattle can survive on hill grazing, heaths,
marshes, moors and semi desert. Modern cows are more commercial than older breeds and
having become more specialised are less versatile. For this reason many smaller farmers
still favour old breeds, like the dairy breed of cattle Jersey.
There are many potential impacts on human health due to the modern cattle industrial
agriculture system. There are concerns surrounding the antibiotics and growth hormones
used, increased E. Coli contamination, higher saturated fat contents in the meat because of
the feed, and also environmental concerns.
As of 2010, in the U.S. 766,350 producers participate in raising beef. The beef industry is
segmented with the bulk of the producers participating in raising beef calves. Beef calves
are generally raised in small herds, with over 90% of the herds having less than 100 head of

cattle. Fewer producers participate in the finishing phase which often occurs in a feedlot, but
nonetheless there are 82,170 feedlots in the United States.