Day Chair Paul Kotz introduced today’s speaker Adam Yust of Grassroots Solutions speaking on “Reforming Industrial Animal Agriculture”. Watch out for news of CAFO or Confined Animal Feed Operations which are meat producers that maximize profit by minimizing space per animal and staffing. The concerns are that they minimize the welfare of the animals and their effluent endangers our water supply. Perspective: humans produce 18 million tons of effluent per year while live stock produce between 500-1000 million tons a year. The manure is usually returned to the soil as fertilizer, but it still gets into the water. Think of the dead zone in the Gulf. Incidently Minnesota is #1 in turkey production in the U.S., and #3 in hogs. And then there is the antibiotic excess. Humans use 7.7 million doses a year while animals use 29.9 million. Visit www.cafopolution.org for more details.
Chris Dokken asked about the meaning of Organic, which is surprising. It means no antibiotics and no forced feeding. But “cage free” means that the animal should be outside the cage for 1 hour a day. That’s food for thought. Also, did you know that in Arkansas they produce 400 chickens a year for every human.