What part does factory farming play?
Whatever the specific starting point of the 2001 outbreak, modern meat production systems ensured that more animals got FMD more rapidly. There is today increasing pressure on all farmed animals, by way of feeding and breeding regimes that are designed to extract more milk, more offspring and to get the ‘slaughter stock’ (as distinct from the breeding animals) fattened in the least time possible. Whether 100,000 chickens in a single shed or 1,000 sheep on a few lowland acres, farmed animals are raised in increasingly crowded conditions and have diminishing personal attention from those who breed them.
Whatever the specific starting point of the 2001 outbreak, modern meat production systems ensured that more animals got FMD more rapidly. There is today increasing pressure on all farmed animals, by way of feeding and breeding regimes that are designed to extract more milk, more offspring and to get the ‘slaughter stock’ (as distinct from the breeding animals) fattened in the least time possible. Whether 100,000 chickens in a single shed or 1,000 sheep on a few lowland acres, farmed animals are raised in increasingly crowded conditions and have diminishing personal attention from those who breed them.
