Factory Farms – Air Pollution
The way milk is produced has changed. A lot of dairy farms are much bigger and more efficient. They’re often called factory farms. Mark Brush reports, neighbors of these farms say they’re paying a high price for the cheap dairy products on your store shelves:
More than 50 cows trudge single file into this big, new building. There’s a bright white tile floor and lots of light. The animals are herded into individual metal stalls. The gates close over their heads, kind of like how the bar comes over you’re head when you get on a rollercoaster. At the other end of the cow, workers insert its udders into suction cups – and the milking starts:
“They’re milked three times a day – then they go back to the free-stall barn, so we’re currently milking 1,000 cows.”
That’s Mark van de Heijning. He runs this dairy along with his family. They moved here from Belgium. And they started milking their cows last year. They just built another facility – and soon they’ll have 1,500 cows. van de Heijning says back home in Belgium they had a small dairy farm, but wanted to expand:
“But in Belgium the land is expensive and there was a quota system so its expensive to expand there, and there are already a lot of people so that’s why we moved over here.”
It’s a fairly common story. Farmers from Belgium and the Netherlands move here to build huge livestock operations – operations that would be too costly to run in Europe.
Full Article – Source : ©EnvironmentReport.org
Related Posts
- UK’s first vinyl floor recycling scheme lifts off
- China : poverty reduction, energy security more important than capping emissions
- President Obama Awards $2.3 Billion for New Clean-Tech Manufacturing Jobs
- DOE Announces Clean Energy Projects for Low-Carbon Communities of the Americas Initiative
- Fluor to Build World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment