A report released by the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA) details the progress America’s livestock, poultry and egg producers have made in more than a decade in ensuring animal well-being, protecting the environment, responsible antibiotic use and food safety. The report titled “Advances in Animal Agriculture; What the Center for a Livable Future, Pew Commission and Others Aren’t Telling You About Food Production” is a stark contrast to the 2008 report issued by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future that initiated “Meatless Mondays.”
The John Hopkins report was highly critical of modern food-animal production, says AAA President and CEO Kay Johnson Smith. “In the five years since the report’s initial release, the animal agriculture community has continued to collaborate, fund research, and evolve to meet the highest food safety and animal care standards while feeding an even larger population. The animal agriculture community continually improves—and does so of its own accord, and in spite of animal rights and anti-modern agriculture activist groups and other detractors who use fear and misinformation to confuse the public about livestock and poultry production,” she said.
Among other achievements, the report states illness rate from E. coli have dropped to less than one case in 100,000 people, meeting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Healthy People 2010 goal. It also says the U.S. is a model for sustainable livestock production, as less than 3% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to livestock production. The report also explains how animal agriculture is up to the challenge to increase productivity to feed a world population that’s expected to increase by 30 percent before 2050.
