A controversial 2 1/2-year study recommends significant changes in the U.S. industrial livestock production system. The recently-released National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production focused on four areas: Public health, the environment, animal welfare and rural communities.

After 54 hours of testimony from stakeholders and experts, technical reports by academicians, and on-site visits to agricultural operations in four states, the 15 diverse Commissioners concluded that the scientific evidence is hard to ignore. Commission Chair John Carlin said although some issues are being addressed, it's clear that the industry has a long way to go.

"The goal of this Commission is to sound the alarms that significant change is urgently needed," says Carlin, a former Kansas governor. "I believe that the industrial system was first developed simply to help increase farmer productivity and that the negative effects were never intended. Regardless, the consequences are real and serious and must be addressed."

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The Commission, funded by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, issued six broad recommendations:

1. Phase out and then ban use of nontherapeutic antibiotics
   Raising animals in close confinement, combined with the use of certain feed and animal management methods, increases pathogen risks and magnifies opportunities for transmission from animals to humans. This increased risk is due to three factors: prolonged worker contact with animals, increased pathogen transmission within a herd or flock, and increased opportunities for the generation of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (due to imprudent antimicrobial use) or new strains of viruses.
2. Improve disease monitoring and tracking
   Require mandatory registration of food animals by 2009, and implement a system to trace each animal throughout the production system. Such a system is vital to containing the spread of infections. Confidence in the safety of the food supply must be maintained, and in some cases, restored.
3. Improve manure disposal monitoring
   Animal waste in some operations today may exceed the capacity of the landscape to absorb the nutrients and neutralize pathogens. What should be a valuable byproduct (e.g., fertilizer) becomes a waste that must be disposed of. Air quality degradation is also a problem in and around these facilities because of the localized release of significant quantities of toxic gases, odorous substances, and particulates and bioaerosols that contain a variety of microorganisms including human pathogens.
4. Phase out intensive and inhumane confinement
   Good animal welfare can no longer be assumed based only on the absence of disease or productivity outcomes. Intensive confinement (e.g. gestation crates for swine, battery cages for laying hens) often so severely restricts movement and natural behaviors, such as the ability to walk or lie on natural materials, having enough floor space to move with some freedom, and rooting for pigs, that it increases the likelihood that the animals suffer severe distress.
5. Increase competition in livestock markets
   As the food animal industry shifted to a system of captive supply transactions controlled by production contracts, economic power shifted from farmers to livestock processors or so-called integrators. Such contracts make it nearly impossible for open and competitive markets for most hog and poultry producers, who must enter into contracts with the integrators (meat packing companies) if they are to sell their production.
6. Improve and increase funding for public research in animal agriculture
   Increase public spending into livestock-related pollution and related research to avoid reliance on industry-backed sources.

"Long-term success will depend on the nation's ability to transform from an industrial economy that depends on quickly diminishing resources to one that is more sustainable, employing renewable resources and understanding of how all food production affects public health and the environment," says Michael Blackwell, PCIFAP Vice Chair and former dean of the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and former Assistant Surgeon General, (Ret.) USPHS.