The Importance of Animal Confinement
Statistic
24,000 people in the world die of starvation every day, approximately one in every four seconds. Good morning/afternoon ……
As a member of ………….., I was asked to explore the necessity of animal confinement in intensive production systems. Intensive farming began in the 1920’s at the discovery of vitamins A and D as food supplements. Adding these vitamins to feed mixtures meant that the animals no longer required exercise or sunlight for growth. Confinement may be feedlots, piggeries or poultry sheds.
Animal confinement has become critical because:
1. Without it, food can not be distributed appropriately throughout the world,
2. Extensive grazing is ecologically unsustainable,
3. Farmers are forced to produce as efficiently as possible to compensate for an ageing industry, urbanisation and the cost-price squeeze; and
4. In many areas, the housing of animals is essential to their survival
In the article “Africa is starving as the world feeds on Iraq” by Daphnee Dion-viens, Jean Zigler, the food rights assessor of the United States is documented as believing that with current technology and available resources, the world should be able to supply enough food for 12 billion people, twice the current population of the world. This will be achieved through intensive farming and its ability to supply a reliable resource of animal protein that can be grown regardless of the quality of the environment and produce a higher yield per area than conventional methods. Zigler sees the reason for starvation as being linked to the restriction of food distribution because of political tension and market forces rather than the ability to produce the food. While 34% of the African population is malnourished, America, Australia and many other countries alike suffer severely from obesity. By comparing the two groups of children in these pictures, each from extremely diverse countries and cultures, it is obvious that there is enough food but current distribution methods mean that both groups will suffer, through the extremes of obesity and starvation. Intensive farming improves the distribution of food by creating a reliable and safe food source where it is needed. Instead of shipping supplies across vast oceans, people in starving countries can build their own resources, producing enough food for themselves in their own country on land that was once deemed too infertile for production.
Humans are said to require three main things; food,...