by Lucinda Gunnin

Created on: January 29, 2009

Trying to determine the human health impact of concentrated animal feeding operations takes only a look at the headlines and a look at history.

Concentrated animal feeding operations, or feed lots, are designed to fatten up an animal before it is sent to slaughter. In general, it means feeding the animals high calorie food and lot of it while giving the animal no room to move. And, it does add weight to the animal. Weight in the form of fat.

Since the scale at the alughterhouse doesn't care if the meat is lean or fatty, the concentrated animal feeding operations packs on the pounds, or the ounces for smaller livestock, via the quick creation of fat. Humans then eat the fatty meat and it contributes to heart disease, obesity and any number of human ailments.

Another human health hazard presented by these feed lots is the opportunity for food contamination. Since feed lots squish as many animals as possible into a small place, one sick animal can infect the entire herd. Since the time spent at the feed lot is short, the operators may not notice, or care, if the animals start showing signs of illness before they are slaughtered.

In the strictest sense, this can lead to problems like mad cow disease. The basic beleif about the cause of amd cow was that cow remnants, including brains, were being fed to other cows at feed lots to fatten them up faster. The ground cow parts were higher caloric values than the grains and grasses they were usually fed and sped up the fattening process.

It also allowed for the development of the brain disease we colloquially call mad cow disease.

Historically, the use of feed lots has also contributed to worldwide pandemics. It is generally accepted that the Spanish Influenza, the last pandemic, started, at least for American citizens, outside a military base in Kansas. The base raised pigs and chickens and the first American cases of the Spanish Influenza broke out near there. The Spanish flu was a variant strain of the avian or bird flu and was eventually traced back to the feed lots. Scientists are still researching how it jumped from animals to humans, but it did.

The Spanish flu killed millions around the world, striking the young and healthy as it used the body's own immune system against it. The last worldwide pandemic was the result, at least partially, of concentrated animal feeding operations.

There are other reasons to be concerned about feed lots as well, including the cruel conditions they place animals in and their impact on the local environment, but the main human health hazard of these operations is their usefulness as a breeding ground for disease, from influenza to heart disease.

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