As it is, there are too many environmental problems to deal with and factory seems to be adding a lot more environmental concerns and problems. Factory farming, in case you do not know is a practice of rearing or confining massive number of animals on a single farm, keeping poor animals in warehouse-like conditions.

Cows, pigs, and chickens are kept there until they are killed in order to produce meat for human consumption. Factory farming has some serious public health and environmental issues that need to solved at the earliest, or factory farm pollutants can make it very hard for humans to survive on this planet.

Environmental and human health risks of factory farming

Here are some extremely harmful effects of factory farming on human health and the environment:

Excess of waste production

Factory farms have massive number of animals on it, so you can imagine for yourself what amount of waste they produce every day. Such huge amount of waste cannot be absorbed by the soil, so it continues to pollute the environment. Many factory farms claim that they provide animal waste to neighboring farms, wherein they use it as a fertilizer.

Well, an ignorant person would easily believe this claim but the truth is different. Even if the factory farm waste is put to use as a fertilizer, it would still have much more side effects than benefits.

Harmful factory farm fertilizer

Factory farm fertilizer is loaded with excess of phosphorus and nitrogen. As this waste is available in plenty, it is supplied in abundance to neighboring farms. The soil unable to absorb all the nutrients let the excess of nutrients run off and they enter our water systems.

Once they enter water systems, algae starts to grow at an exponential rate, which is not a good happening. Algae suck out majority of oxygen from the marine environment, making it very hard and almost impossible for plants and marine species to survive.

Loaded with antibiotics

Animals are raised in stressful and filthy conditions in factory farms, which require great strength in animals so that they could survive in such tough conditions. They are given plenty of antibiotics so that they survive in filthy and tough factory farm conditions.

These antibiotics are very much present in these animals waste that is taken to neighboring farms where it is used as a fertilizer without any treatment. The fertilizers loaded with antibiotics spoil the crops and people who consume such crops are infected, and sometimes the infection proves fatal.

Land Pollution

As mentioned earlier also that factory farm fertilizer contains excess of phosphorus, nitrogen, some of it helps agricultural production but most of it goes waste. The soil does not absorb all of the nutrients and they run off into the water bodies, or they start degrading the quality of soil, as in they leave the land barren.

Air Pollution

Factory farm waste has lead to some serious health disorders owing to the presence of various harmful gases and bacterial toxins in it. Ammonia and bacteria present in the waste create an acid that evaporates, combines with nitrous oxide and other pollutants in the atmosphere and result in nitric acid rain.

Acid rain brings with it a fair share of destruction, as in it deprives soil of is nutrients, disturbs forest habitat, and kills aquatic animals. Factory farm workers and the surrounding communities usually suffer from serious respiratory and other health disorders because of the ammonia present in factory farm waste.

Factory farms with so many animals forced to live in filthy and tough conditions pose a serious threat to our environment.