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to high volumes of water usage, land that could be used to grow crops for people is used to grow animal feed not to mention all the transportation required to ship animal feed and animals to be processed.

Companies have taken a captive supply and/or vertical integration approach to agribusiness. Captive supply is when a packing company owns contracts for cattle giving them a market advantage because they do not have to bid on cattle for slaughter in the open market.(22) Vertical integration gives an even greater advantage because the company owns the entire process - factory farms, fertilizer manufacturing plants, feed sources, slaughterhouses, packaging and distribution centers as well as technology like genetic engineering and irradiation.(23) These companies are modern day monopolies. To save our environment from further adverse effects of factory farms, they must be either preferably dismantled or held accountable for their negative impact on our environment.

Factory farms profit at the expense of animals and our environment. Their wealth and power influence government policies. We may not pay at the checkout line, but we pay when we visit the doctor for health problems directly correlated to factory farms' callous operations and with our tax monies to subsidize the meat and dairy industries as well as clean up their toxic waste. One way to combat factory farms' adverse effects on the environment is to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle. Consumers unwilling to give up animal products should purchase responsibly and write representatives urging them to enact harsher penalties for factory farms' spills, leaks and runoff disasters.

(1) Sustainable Table. (n.d.), Retrieved September 30, 2008, from http://www.sustainabletable.or g/issues/factoryfarming/.

(2) Food and Water Watch. May 2008. "Cargill: A Corporate Threat to Food and Farming." http://www.foodandwaterwatch.o rg/food/pubs/reports/cargill.

( 3) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "Pollution from industrialized livestock production." February 2, 2006. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/0 10/a0261e/a0261e00.pdf.

(4) United States Government Accountability Office. "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations." September 24, 2008. http://www.gao.gov/products/GA O-08-1177T.

(5) Food and Water Watch. May 2008. "Cargill: A Corporate Threat to Food and Farming." http://www.foodandwaterwatch.o rg/food/pubs/reports/cargill.

( 6) United States Government Accountability Office. "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations."

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