Massive Industrial Farms Are Devastating the Environment, New Drone Footage Reveals
Newly released drone footage reveals massive factory farms, each housing tens of thousands of animals, polluting Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
From Mercy for Animals June 25 2019
By Hannah Bugga
Factory farming is spreading around the world. Mark Devries, Mercy For Animals’ certified drone pilot (and the director and star of this documentary), traveled to southeastern Mexico to witness the damage being done in the area.
A Mexican undercover investigator took Devries through small towns and down narrow roads to see huge factory farms carved into the rainforest. Devries was horrified:
I have seen dozens and dozens of factory farms over the years, but I have never seen anything at the scale of what’s being built here.
The drone captured footage of sprawling facilities, including a chicken farm with nearly 100 buildings, each containing thousands of birds. The footage of the pig farms is perhaps the most shocking. Devries says:
Nothing I saw was more horrifying than the pig facilities. The thousands of pigs in these places produce so much sewage that it fills giant ponds.
The footage shows a network of pipes that pump millions of gallons of untreated animal waste into ponds surrounding the farms. Facilities like these can produce more sewage than a small city. This waste can contaminate the air and local water supplies, endangering the people living nearby.
The environmental impact of factory farms is well-known. According to a recent analysis by environmental protection organization Mighty Earth, America’s largest meat companies are to blame for the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. Meat companies have failed to develop or implement practices to protect water quality. As a result, “145 million tons of untreated animal waste and other pollutants washed into the Mississippi River watershed last year, threatening local water sources and contributing to the toxic algal blooms that help create the Gulf dead zone.”
As factory farming spreads around the globe, so does its destructive impact. The best way to fight factory farming, no matter where you live, is by choosing plant-based foods. For delicious recipes and meal ideas, order your FREE Vegetarian Starter Guide today.
Read the original article here
Watch this video of drones exposing factory farms in Mexico here
Absolutely heart breaking! Disgusting! Damaging the earth, the animals, our health! The animals must be crying out – we must hear them!
Simply deplorable.
Like carbon air pollution, it isn’t until we look at the entire picture that the horror show starts. Not until “thousands of animals” are jammed together in facilities that don’t allow them room to move, is the devastation caused by their waste apparent
No one would dream of putting people into this type of overcrowding without accounting for their waste. But it’s good enough for industrial farms. They are measured by their output. How much was produced. No one cares about the environmental destruction; just how much output was there.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before; which is why they are secretly photographed by drones. If there was nothing to hide, no one would be hiding it.
Industrial farms have always been a disaster for the environment as well as for the animals. They should be banned but I doubt the politicians have the will to do it – or enforce it. What happened to all the little farmers? They got bought out by big business. AND, for many, their children just didn’t see the advantage of back breaking work for so little reward. We do not treat our farmers well.