"Did you get your protein today?" The American diet seems to revolve around this question. We have come to believe that meat is the key source to all of our protein, and as a result almost every meal includes chicken, beef, pork, eggs or fish. For Thanksgiving dinner we’re all circled around a massive turkey and a nice dinner out includes sushi or steak.

But why are Americans so eclipsed on meat being at the center of our plates? We never see any hype on quinoa or restaurants claiming to have the best tofu in town. Instead we only see McDonald's newest burger filling our billboards and the promotion of a new value price for chicken nuggets.

When we are asked to picture where our meat comes from, most of us probably would like to picture a peaceful farm full of animals, contently grazing with lots of open space and pastures. We want to imagine fields of happy cattle grazing in the pasture, pigs playing and chickens exploring. We want to believe the roasted chicken before us got to live a fulfilling and comfortable life on the farm before ending up on our plate.

But in reality, 99 percent of our meat is produced at factory farms. The packaged meat we pick up from our grocery store is not from the neighborhood farmer down the road, but from barns stuffed with tens of thousands of chickens restricted to a minimum of eight-tenths of a square foot and injected with hormones and drugs to become fully grown in just 42 days.

American farming has transformed over the past 100 years, and yet many people are afraid to face what really lies before them. New technologies, mechanization and our country’s desire to get a lot of meat for cheap has caused our values to flip. We care about our animals and livestock but somehow the demand for meat has created a rush in production and lack of animal welfare in order to complete the job. Animal agriculture has become a corporation. And this corporation is pushing for us to eat an unnatural amount of meat. Americans are eating more than 150 times as many chickens as we were just 80 years ago.

Farming was initially an entire process. In 1930, more than 20 percent of America’s population was employed in agriculture; today there is just two percent in the business. Yet, the industry has never been bigger in history. Everything has become an automated science: from the water, feed, lighting, heating, ventilation and even the slaughter. The rate at which we are producing meat has become inhumane due to the demand of numbers and not the demand of quality or welfare. In 1967, there were more than 1 million hog farms in the United States, but today, only four companies are responsible for 60 percent of America’s hog population.

As consumers, we shouldn’t have to consider what are meat endured to get on our plate. 80 percent of sows are forced to live in steel, concrete ‘gestation’ crates unable to properly nest, typical cattle slaughterhouses do not even allow witnesses and three out of four of the 9 billion chickens raised each year in American factory farms have a walking impairment due to poor treatment. These facts should not be the reality, but sadly factory farming has made it so.

The environmental impact from these industrial farms is also astonishing. The farmed animals produce 130 times more waste than humans in the United States, causing for 35,000 miles of river in 22 states to become polluted from excrement. We don’t have a waste-treatment infrastructure for our farmed animals and because we want to pay as little as possible for our meat, the environment is the one who pays instead. Factory farms are able to easily pay the environmental fines and continue their destructive, but profitable, business.

The farming industry in America has transformed into a complete operation. Our food has become a enterprise, not a solution to feed the hungry.

I wouldn’t say meat is bad, but where and how America is getting meat produce isn’t good. The original idea of natural farming is not distinguishable, and has been replaced by artificial insemination and growth hormones. Sustainability and the environment have become ignored as America’s reliance on meat has intensified.

I think the more awareness we have of what the meat industry really is in America, the greater chance for a movement of change. If we can all work towards a humane and natural agriculture, I believe America, and the world, will benefit.

Statistics From:
Foer, J. S. (2009). Eating animals. New York: Little, Brown and Company