quick facts
Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2006).
Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface. (Ibid).
Intensive, concentrated livestock production is growing in Canada. The 2006 Census of Agriculture found that Canada has 20 per cent fewer cattle farms than it did in 2001, although the average number of cattle and calves is up 13 per cent to 144 per farm. As well, the number of pig farmers has dropped by more than a quarter, but the size of the average operation has grown by 45 per cent, from 902 pigs to 1,308.
The Fraser Valley has the highest animal stocking density in Canada. (UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability - Dr Hans Schreier)
The number of chickens in the Fraser Valley has nearly doubled since 1991. (Ibid)
The Fraser Valley poultry industry was producing 736,500 cubic yards of manure in 2000 and this is expected to rise to 1 million cubic yards by 2010 (according to the Sustainable Poultry Farming Group: 604 556 7781).
Livestock production in the Fraser Valley is causing water and air pollution.
More than 665 million intensively-farmed animals were slaughtered in Canada in 2004. (Canadian Food Inspection Agency statistics).
Meat chickens, or broilers, live in huge indoor sheds in groups of 5,000 to 50,000, eating and sleeping in their own waste for their entire lives.
Egg-laying chickens, or battery hens, spend their lives crammed in tiny wire cages–stacked like shipping crates–with four to six others, each hen living in a space smaller than an 8½ by 11 inch piece of paper.
Hog barns house up to 5,000 pigs in crowded pens. Stress from overcrowding creates aggression and boredom, so most pigs have their tails cut off to prevent tail-biting.
Breeding sows are confined for almost their entire reproductive lives in stalls that are just slightly bigger than the sows themselves. They eat, sleep, and defecate in the same space; their manure falls through slatted floors to a cesspool beneath.
For the last 60 to 120 days of their lives, beef cattle live in feedlots of up to 40,000 animals. Standing in piles of manure and fitted with growth-hormone ear implants, they are fed mostly grain to increase their market weight and meat marbling. This can wreak havoc on ruminants’ digestive systems, which are more suited for grass, creating painful bloating and severe discomfort.
