They supply much of the foods people worldwide eat every day, but industrial animal farms are also home to dangerous public health and environmental threats, says a new report that describes such risks as "unacceptable" and charts a path toward sustainable farming.

Far from yesterday's

humble family farms, modern industrial animal farms are often massive breeding grounds for emerging human diseases, sources of air, water and soil contamination, and considerable contributors to climate change, according to "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America."

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Released in late April, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production report--which was in the making for more than two years--found that the "negative effects of the (industrial farm animal production) system are too great and the scientific evidence is too strong to ignore ... While some areas of animal agriculture have recognized these threats and have taken action, it is clear that the industry has a long way to go."

Though the Pew commission is not the first to examine the health and environmental pitfalls of industrial animal farming, its recommendations are the consensus of many points of view, including cattle ranchers, public health advocates and food company executives. The report recommends banning the treatment of animals with antibiotics for nontherapeutic reasons, implementing a disease monitoring system for food animals and creating a new system to deal with farm waste, among other measures.

"Long-term success will depend on the nation's ability to transform from an industrial economy that depends on quickly diminishing resources to one that is more sustainable, employing renewable resources and understanding of how all food production affects public health and the environment," said former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General Michael Blackwell, DVM, MPH, who served as vice chair of the report's commission.

Although the numbers of farms raising animals for food have decreased in the past 50 years, the number of animals being raised remains about level, with large, centralized farm operations packing in as many animals as possible. Such tight settings and the farming techniques used to manage such conditions--techniques that are often employed for "economical" reasons as well as to produce a "uniform" product--are giving rise to numbers of public health risks, such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria and an increased chance of infection or illness among animals that end up on dinner tables, the report found. And with annual manure output exceeding human waste levels by at least three times, animal confinement facilities are subjecting their environments to massive amounts of untreated animal waste. The waste--likely containing excessive nutrients, farm chemicals, antibiotics and hormones--often runs off into local water sources, contaminates soil and threatens wildlife.

Besides water and land, industrial animal farms jeopardize local air quality, releasing various toxic and odorous pollutants. The report noted that more than 24 odorous chemicals, such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, have been identified in industrial animal farm emissions. In fact, four large epidemiological studies cited in the Pew report found strong associations between such pollution and local asthma rates, with one North Carolina study finding that children within three miles of an industrial animal farm operation had higher rates of asthma diagnoses, used more asthma medication and experienced more asthma-related emergency room visits than children living farther away. Beyond local air quality, livestock operations are responsible for considerable greenhouse gas emissions, releasing more than 7 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases. On a global scale, they exceed greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

"This is simply unsustainable--we can't go on like this," said Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University and one of the report's commissioners.

Among the report's key recommendations, Nestle told The Nation's Health, is to enforce existing environmental quality laws and regulate industrial animal farms as thoroughly as other industries that pose public health and environmental risks. Such facilities have been given a "pass on pollution without anybody really thinking about it," said Nestle, an APHA member. For example, it would be unacceptable if a city home to thousands of people chose not to treat its waste, and yet pig and cattle ranches--which can also house hundreds to thousands of animals--routinely house open lagoons filled with untreated waste that threaten local water and land sources, Nestle noted.

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria also topped the list of public health threats and underscored years of repeated calls to ban certain antibiotic uses in farm animals. While difficult to accurately estimate, the Pew report cited findings that up to 70 percent of antimicrobials in the United States are being used in food animal production. Antibiotics are routinely given to food animals to promote growth and as a way to prevent disease--though many public health advocates see its widespread preventive use as an easy way for farms to compensate for crowded conditions and disregard proper sanitation. And even though antibiotic overuse among farm animals contributes to rendering medicines useless against human diseases, the products are "readily available" for farmers without a prescription or a veterinarian's oversight, the report stated.

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"(Banning this) requires a recognition of the extent of the public health threat caused by this practice," said Rich Wood, executive director of the Food Animals Concerns Trust and Steering Committee chair of Keep Antibiotics Working.

In fact, the Infectious Disease Society of America has already declared U.S. antibiotic-resistant infections in humans to be epidemic, with 2 million people suffering from a resistant infection annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National policymakers need to take action now to end such antibiotic use, Wood told The Nation's Health, "or these miracle drugs will no longer be providing anyone any miracles." Wood pointed to the Food and Drug Administration's 2005 decision to ban fluoroquinolone antibiotic use in chickens because of its implications for resistance in humans. The decision came after reports that people were being infected with a fluoroquinolone-resistant form of Campylobacteriosis--a common food-borne illness that can be contracted via contaminated poultry. That decision took almost five years, Wood said, and the public cannot afford to "sit around and wait" for regulators to take action again. Instead, he called for support of the proposed federal Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which would target farm animal antibiotics across the board.

While the problems outlined in the Pew report are numerous, there are glimpses of progress. In North Carolina, environmental advocates and local farmers joined forces to take on mounting issues associated with the state's 10 million hogs, becoming the first state to ban new hog waste lagoons and require that new waste systems meet rigorous environmental standards for air and water emissions.

The law included funds to fix contaminated water wells and help farmers convert existing lagoons into cleaner systems, and required that utilities set aside a portion of renewable energy to be provided via hog waste, according to Joe Rudek, PhD, a senior scientist with the North Carolina office of Environmental Defense Fund, which designed the lagoon program with input and support from local farmers.

"I think it's a lot easier to get change when you consider the economics of the situation and work with farmers to make it economically feasible," Rudek said.

For more information, visit www.ncifap.org.