The dominance of industrial-sized livestock operations continues to grow, with tens of millions more animals living on such facilities, an environmental group said.
Food & Water Watch, which advocates for a moratorium on large animal feed operations, said the number of cattle, chickens, turkeys and hogs on “factory farms” grew by 6.1 percent from 2017 to 2022, or 97 million animals.
Citing the Department of Agriculture’s five-year census of agriculture, the group said that climb in production accounted for 52 billion additional pounds of manure annually, along with the environmental challenges of handling it.
“America today has truly become a factory farming nation. Industrial animal warehouses pockmark our rural communities and litter our environment with tidal waves of unchecked pollution,” said Food & Water Watch Research Director Amanda Starbuck in a statement. The number of animals on such farms has climbed by 47 percent in the past 20 years, the group said.
