Ellen K. Silbergeld - Chickenizing Farms and Food: How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals, and Consumers

An insightful look at where our food comes from and how it is brought to the dinner plate. Silbergeld brings us face to face with the harsh reality as she explores ways we can go forward in feeding the world.
Food, Inc.s CAROLE MORISON

A powerfully original exploration of the problems of industrial-scale animal agriculture that touches on public health, the environment, and worker safety. No one else has written so thoughtfully or vividly about the chickenization of the agricultural industry around the world and what it means. Silbergeld has written an important, informative, and excellent book.
TOM PELTON, host of The Environment in Focus, WYPR

This is a must-read for anyone interested in our food systemhow we got here, why it doesnt work, and how we move forward.
FEDELE BAUCCIO, CEO, Bon Apptit Management Company

Listen to Ellen. The dangers that she reveals are real, but so are the opportunities to do better. As a lifelong farmer, producing over 50 million chickens annually with no antibiotics or drugs, I know that a superiorand safermodel can be successful.
SCOTT I. SECHLER, owner, Bell & Evans

It takes a tough professor to write a book that takes on the proponents and opponents of the industrialization of agriculture at the same time. Ellen Silbergelds approach is based in public health: how to make sure all people are able to access nutritious and safe food. She writes with data, humor, and passion. This is a critical contribution to discussions about our global food supply.
JOSHUA M. SHARFSTEIN, MD, former Principal Deputy Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Associate Dean, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

This timely book raises issues at the core of our agricultural dilemma. If were going to expand production sustainably and safely, we need to take this uncomfortable dive into the murky ways in which we keep ourselves fed.
JONATHAN RUSHTON, Royal Veterinary College, London

What are the consequences of the industrialization of our food production? Ellen Silbergelds journey shows why we should be worried and offers a glimpse of a hopeful future.
JAN KLUYTMANS, Consult Microbiologist and Infection Control Specialist, Breda, The Netherlands

Our agricultural systems and processes have changed over the last century, with unintended consequencesfrom increased human health risks to degraded environmental conditions. Bravo to Dr. Silbergeld for reminding us of our past, confronting us with a reality we have allowed, and presenting us with questions for which we must find answers.
WILLIAM C. BAKER, President, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

This absorbing and compelling work exposes the interconnected risks to food and worker safety from industrialized animal production. Silbergeld describes the devastating impact of deliberate manipulation and weakening of consumer and worker protections by powerful vested interests. Few books have the power to change public policy. This is one.
JAMES RITCHIE, International Union of Food Workers (IUF)

CHICKENIZING FARMS AND FOOD

How Industrial Meat Production Endangers Workers, Animals, and Consumers

ELLEN K. SILBERGELD

2016 Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2016
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Silbergeld, Ellen K., author.

Title: Chickenizing farms and food : how industrial meat production endangers workers, animals, and consumers / Ellen K. Silbergeld.

Description: Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041797| ISBN 9781421420301 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421420318 (electronic) | ISBN 1421420309 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1421420317 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: FoodUnited StatesSafety measures. | Food supplyUnited StatesSafety measures.

Classification: LCC RA601 .S58 2016 | DDC 363.19/26dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041797

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post-consumer waste, whenever possible.

I came to the issues of industrialized food animal production unexpectedly, like much of my experiences in science. In 1999, my department chair at the University of Maryland Medical School asked me to sit in on a seminar being given by a faculty recruit because the room was sparsely filled. I asked, Whats the topic?

Drug-resistant infections in the hospital, he said.

I know nothing about this, I said rather brashly, and, having reached that self-satisfied point in my career where I could make such ridiculous statements, I added: I have no interest in this topic. But he persisted, and eventually I acceded.

Dr. Anthony Harris turned out to be an excellent and engaging speaker, so as I slumped in the back of the lecture room, I became interested despite myself. At one point, Dr. Harris mentionedalmost as an asidethat many drug-resistant infections came from eating food. That woke me up: at the time, I knew what most people know, that you can get sick from Salmonella if the chicken salad is left out too long in the sun. But why were some of these illnesses drug-resistant?

At the small reception and lunch following the talk, I sought out a colleague, Dr. Judith Johnson, and asked her that same question, Why are they drug-resistant infections? She hardly paused and said, Oh, thats because they feed chickens antibiotics. I will never forget my immediate and unspoken reaction: That seems like a really bad idea! More than fifteen years of research and engagement in national and international policy debates have not changed my opinion.

I want to bring you along to the same poultry and hog farms and the same slaughter and processing plants that I have visited and in which I have conducted research over those years. I will rely on this firsthand experience as well as the more distant gaze of the scientist. This book will also take you into the kitchen, not to recommend what to eat or where to buy your food, but to introduce you to the real events and real people that move food from farms to plates, affecting workers, consumers, and environments. So this book may differ from others about food and agriculture, for I do not separate these events. In many ways, we have the agriculture we deserve, because we dont see these relationships clearly.

Changes are needed, but not the changes most commonly advocated in the debate on food and food production. This book reports on the process of research and questioning that has led me to consider pathways of change that do not cause collateral damage, that do not increase the cost of food or make it more difficult to access food. This book likewise takes seriously the welfare of workers who make our food possible. I am a scientist deeply engaged in research on many of the topics in this book, and I know that the basis of science is to make progress from incomplete to more complete knowledge, and thus from more incorrect to less incorrect decisions. Making the case for change does not, however, require us to assume that those who made decisions in the past were utterly wrong.