A reporter who spent decades investigating "big agriculture" explained why the pursuit of cheaper food is too expensive

Last modified on Tuesday, August 4, 2020 07.26 EDT

We walked quietly through the woods, and the water in front looked like an artificial fishing lake, or a small reservoir. We are in a forest, along a monorail path, towards a huge industrial farm. The sky was gloomy, and the tall trees made the sky more gloomy.

We were hired to investigate the conditions of the farms that supply British supermarkets for TV shows and non-profit events, which is why we found ourselves in this huge pig farm in Poland. Facts have proved that the entry of foreign meat companies into the country has caused controversy. Local residents worry about the environmental consequences of the establishment of multinational meat companies on their doorsteps and the impact on small-scale farmers.

We arrived the day before, slept very little, and then drove to the countryside for a few hours. I twitched, a little nervous, and had a headache after spending the night on an unfamiliar bumpy mattress. We know that the farm is somewhere nearby, but we are not sure which way to go. Then in front of us, through the woods, we saw the lake. At the same time, the smell spread to us: a shocking stench, this is one of the worst smells I have encountered in my life.

This is not a lake. It was an open pit, a huge lagoon, full of waste from the pig farm. Floating under the water are the carcasses of pigs in different stages of decay. Through the dirt, we can see the nose and curly tail.

Scraps of factory agriculture—plastic syringe shells, needles, and white medical gloves—float in rancid pools and are discarded on neighboring farmland. That was the first time I stepped into a factory farm. That is a moment I will never forget.

I grew up mainly in towns. My agricultural experience is limited to those compulsory but boring schools or boy scouts visiting the local dairy products, or the livestock you may encounter on the rural family day.

In the early 1990s, I remember watching TV reports about the BSE scandal and hearing about the dangers of eating beef. But I am still a teenager. I have more important things to worry about. But in 2001, foot-and-mouth disease spread in the UK, with burnt cattle pyre and "no entry" signs all over the countryside. I paid attention this time. The whole incident - the hard-hit farmers, the ruined rural economy, the culling of millions of farm animals, the political wrestling, and the endless debate about who or what should be blamed - somehow highlight us There is a problem with the farming and production methods.

I work in journalism and freelance for magazines and newspapers. At the end of 2003, I co-founded a media agency — partly a production company, partly a detective agency — to investigate environmental and human rights issues and animal welfare. We want to use the strategy of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). They are the first to use virtual companies, hidden cameras and undercover agents to expose the ivory trade and illegal logging, working as journalists and non-profit organizations. Business is booming. The demand for our work is high, and in 2005 we were commissioned to Poland.

Although we are increasingly aware of how our food is produced due to the work of journalists such as Felicity Lawrence and Joanna Blythman, to me and most people, modern agriculture is still a distant abstraction.

In 2010, a newborn calf in a Spanish dairy farm was separated from its mother.

But now, in Poland, I see reality. In a huge, windowless warehouse, hundreds of piglets can be seen under artificial lights: moving, screaming, eating, shit. Obviously unmistakable animal droppings and chemicals waft. Lame and injured pigs—some were as big as grapefruits, some looked thin and weak, and some looked sickly—dead animals were left on the ground, and live pigs rustled around their carcasses. Hanging on the wall are charts that record dead animals—so-called mortality records—and medication lists detailing the antibiotics that can be used.

After that, this smell has been with us-on our clothes, on our skin, on our hair-seems to last for several days.

Why is our food produced like this? This is shocking and I want to know more.

I now spend most of the fifteen years covering almost all aspects of the global meat industry. During this trip, I visited farms of various types and sizes, from small family farms to large-scale centralized animal feeders (CAFO), to slaughterhouses, livestock markets, ports and food factories in many countries.

The global meat industry has a culture of secrecy, lacks accountability, and is dominated by a few powerful but little-known companies. Therefore, uncovering the dark corners of "big companies" requires months of research, searching for frequently suppressed data and documents, cooperating with whistleblowers, and conducting undercover investigations.

In fact, many times it is to seize the opportunity. Quickly aim the camera through an open window or barn door or locked door or barbed wire. You shoot what you find, first the scene setting shots, giving a sense of scale and background, and then the close-up shots, making the details come alive.

Sometimes, if you are following up about a particularly problematic farm, what you see may be frustrating-a pile of dead and dying chickens; a waste cow lying on the floor panting; An injured sheep, still alive, with maggots in the wound-accompanied by deafening screams in the background or the constant grunting of detained livestock, or when you try to concentrate, the trash is disgusting Smell.

It always feels like you stayed too long, even if only for a few seconds. You worry that you don’t have enough shots—the farm is inevitably dark, which is not conducive to the beauty of the film—you pray that the camera has done its job.

Usually, there are too many things happening and it is not known where to point the camera. For example, when a group of chickens are rounded up for slaughter, workers flock in near darkness.

Some of the farmers I have visited over the years are happy to have us; they have nothing to hide and welcome the opportunity to talk about the challenge of making a living. Sometimes—especially in the case of farms or slaughterhouses owned by large corporations—public filming is not an option. You have to rely on undercover reports and hidden cameras.

In the past, as long as you used common sense, followed biosafety and basic health and safety rules, you could do this and worry about the details later. Now, any secret reports must be cleared in advance by editors and lawyers, and a large number of forms need to be filled in to ensure public interest and legitimacy. It should be, but it will definitely make things more complicated.

As a reporter, my job is to personally understand the worst situation I have heard. In Italy, on a farm that supplies “handmade” Parma ham, I see pigs kept in battery conditions and animals in metal cages—pregnancy boxes or sow pens—designed for those who have recently been fertilized. They have no room to turn around: the cage is not much wider than the pig itself.

In Portugal, I saw pigs being beaten repeatedly, dragged by ears, screaming, and being transported to transport vehicles before they started slaughtering. In Spain, thousands of quails-raised for their eggs-are stuffed into dirty cages, many have lost their feathers, others are dead and left to rot. As part of the veal trade, calves are also kept in separate enclosures-some require several days of truck transportation.

In Bulgaria, I visited the original horse and donkey farm, including a farm where animals were fixed to the wall or floor with ropes and chains. Some people have almost no straw or other bedding. On a farm, the corpse of a horse was lying outside with blood stains on the ground. Similarly, in Croatia, I saw cows tied up day and night in dim sheds, and some people never set foot on the grass.

In Chile, I saw a huge offshore "floating feedlot" with thousands of salmon being packed in underwater cages. In the United Kingdom-one of the country's largest intensive cattle farms-we saw cows clumped with dung and other waste in flooded, dirty yards, without any protective measures.

In poultry units in Europe, I have seen broilers, turkeys, ducks and geese crowded in spacious, crowded sheds time and time again, unable to enter from outside. Every morning, the workers on these farms clear the birds that died overnight. Sometimes a handful, sometimes dozens of birds, were thrown in a pile on the floor or loaded on a cart, while the chicks—some were still alive—were thrown into a tall bucket full of corpses. .

These scenes illustrate the virtual value of individual birds. On some farms, hundreds of chickens die every week—in the UK, more than 1 million chickens die each year before they reach the slaughterhouse.

A duck farm in Australia, 2017

The chain did not end on the farm. Animals must be processed into meat, and slaughterhouses have repeatedly faced cruel accusations, even though they are considered to be strictly regulated in many countries.

I have been to a poultry and rabbit slaughterhouse. I work undercover in Portugal, shooting shots at a slaughterhouse that specializes in suckling pigs, and usually roast whole pigs as a popular food. The vivid scenes we shot caused an uproar in a country where few people have seen how their meat is produced.

After being unloaded, the pig was taken to a stunning room with a series of small enclosures. A worker stood among the screaming animals with something that looked like a large pair of pliers, calmly applying electric shocks to everyone’s head, and then Use shackles to shack the pigsty. The corpses were transported to a mobile production line, which carried them up through a hatch on the wall.

Some people twitched involuntarily after attaching to the moving track, while others seemed to be fully awake. They moved along the line, kicked their legs with their eyes open, and entered the killing room. Here, a worker inserted a large knife into the neck of each pig, causing a puff of blood to pour into the tray below, and grabbing each pig's leg when it began to "bleed".

The butcher gave me the knife in case I wanted to go. I refused.

Where the camera cannot go, you must rely on other evidence. An unpublished report by a British veterinarian and health inspector stated that I had received thousands of detailed reports of – apparently the entire industry – violations of welfare regulations, including cases where chickens and pigs were boiled alive after being immersed in hot water tanks. , Used to soften the skin and remove hair or feathers.

The smells, sounds, and frenetic activities of the slaughterhouse will not let you leave. The buzzing of machines, the clinking of chains, the sounds of animals, the shouts of workers, steam, blood and internal organs; corpses swinging on the line. Animals may feel stressed, but you also want to know how this affects workers who do this day in and day out.

The impact of these industrial systems is not limited to farms or slaughterhouses. I have seen the wider impact of looking for food miles away from the farm. Animals that once relied on land or waste now get expensive industrially produced feed bags; in order to make them fatter as soon as possible, a large amount of protein input is needed, and this protein comes from all over the world.

Soy is a source. I have reported on the well-known deforestation problem, but I have also written about some chilling human rights violations related to Paraguayan industry, where many soybeans are shipped to factory farms in China and Europe. Farmers and indigenous organizations have been protesting the encroachment of their land by soybean farms. With the support of the police and paramilitary forces, some bean farmers’ reactions were brutal: violent expulsions, shootings and beatings, causing many injuries and several deaths, as well as arbitrary detentions and disappearances.

As I have seen in Peru, fish meal is another source of protein that has its own impact. A few yards away from the hustle and bustle of Chimbote Harbor, lying on the trash-ridden beach, lay the carcasses of about six sea lions, rotted quietly in the sun. Their gray and silky skin turned into a rusty orange. A corpse, eyes long gone, tongue spit out from the swollen body, and it was full of flies.

Sea lions have been slaughtered by local fishermen, who see them as competitors to the decline of fish stocks in this part of the Pacific. The demand for anchovies—used in fishmeal and fish oil—has affected the ocean’s natural food chain, reducing the stock of abundant species previously caught for human consumption.

Forty fishmeal factories are processing anchovies caught by the city’s fleet, and the area has become a major point of conflict. (New fishmeal frontiers in West Africa and Asia have joined this ranks, bringing new problems.)

I visited a poor community where a dozen women and children gathered on dusty, unpaved streets to vent their anger at fishmeal factory pollution: they claimed to be the culprits of asthma, bronchial and skin problems, especially It's a child.

Milk steak team waiting for milking, Spain, 2010

The video taken by the residents showed the factory in operation: billowing black smoke drifted across the street, blurring the vision, and suffocating passersby. It looks like the aftermath of a bomb.

According to environmentalists, the waters of the Ferrol Bay near Chimbote are now becoming a "dead zone," mainly due to pollution from the fishmeal industry. The factories are accused of discharging proteins, fats and oils into the Gulf, as well as contaminated seawater used in the process of pumping fish from the hulls to the processing plants.

I remember looking at the ocean stretching in front of us, feeling angry and confused, because it was killing lives-to be precise-mainly to feed the livestock confined to remote farms.

So how did we get this system? The industry leaders I interviewed believe that the existence of factory farms is due to the demand for cheap meat, and only through the use of intensive systems can sufficient meat be effectively produced to meet this demand.

They point out that supermarkets — arguably the biggest proponents of cheap food — need reliable and consistent supplies that can meet accurate specifications throughout the year. If they only buy from smaller independent family farms that are traditionally operated, then such a large-scale purchase is not feasible.

Although the expansion of large farms has caused an uproar, scale is not an indicator of the welfare standards they maintain; in fact, larger, more modern units are often superior, with high-tech systems and good veterinary care.

Although I have seen this, my experience tells me that most livestock farmers are decent and hardworking people who do their best to make a living in an industry where money is not easy to flow to the small people and the profit margins are usually high. So slim that any unforeseen event could be catastrophic.

North Carolina pig farm with open-air pig manure lagoon

I have talked with dairy farmers who are desperately working hard to keep their business running, but they admit that at some point, their farms will have to be closed, even though in some cases several generations are in the same family. I have talked with cattle farmers — some of whom have quietly expressed criticisms of the intensive farm-style cattle farms that have emerged across the UK — they are committed to providing higher welfare grass-fed beef, which is sold directly to the public. As an alternative to cheap supermarket products.

Many of these farmers, like their livestock, are victims of the system.

In an era when food is super cheap, you can buy a whole chicken for a few pounds and a pint of milk for less than a bottle of water. However, these prices fail to reflect the true cost of production. The terms imposed by supermarkets and processing companies have left too many farmers in a weird situation. The food they have spent weeks, months, or years producing is losing money.

The problem lies in the huge scale of production driven by unsatisfied demand, which provides the impetus for larger farms and more intensive systems-the more animals you can squeeze in, the more food you can produce, and the more money you make more.

Large farms with thousands of pigs, poultry, beef cattle and dairy cows are now common. But when something goes wrong—fires, floods, disease outbreaks, equipment failures, pollution—the bigger the farm, the greater the consequences.

Coupled with a vertically integrated supply chain and controversial contract farming models — which critics say, outsource many financial risks to farmers — this inevitably creates a system that turns farm animals into pure commodities. "Meat machine", as an activist said.

The language used by the poultry industry illustrates this: industrially produced chickens are no longer called birds, but "crops", just as you might refer to lettuce or tomatoes. Chicken producers can be called "growers" rather than farmers, so it is not surprising that they are paid not for each chicken, but for the weight achieved by each batch of "chickens".

As a British farmer told me, modern chicken coops are just "a petri dish of live protein on the legs".

Approximately 70 billion terrestrial animals are produced as food every year in the world, and it is estimated that two-thirds of them are raised under intensive conditions. Many of the issues that this has caused, I have discussed extensively — food safety, antibiotic resistance, animal welfare, worker exploitation, pollution, deforestation — now firmly occupy the global agenda and cause widespread concern.

The Covid-19 pandemic has once again triggered calls for change: In the United States, some politicians have called for the phasing out of the largest factory farms by 2040. Even the United Nations is urging to reconsider industrialized agriculture on the grounds that zoonotic diseases and widespread use of farmland as animal feed have led to deforestation.

Solving the problem of how the world can safely and sustainably (and humanely) produce enough meat to feed a growing population while protecting the environment is more important and more complex than ever.

I will leave it to scientists and others who are more qualified than me to answer this question. But thinking back to that dirty farm in Poland and everything I have seen since then, I can safely say one thing: we shouldn’t do this.

This is an edited excerpt from a longer version of this article, available on Medium.com