Food and Agriculture

April 1, 2015April 2, 2015 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / Leave a comment

Livestock made to stand in manure and urine all the days of its life until the day it dies. This is a Controlled Animal Farming Operation.

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). Unlike free range livestock, food is brought to these animals while they wait in manure and urine. Photo Credit: Save Our Rain

Increase in Food production and its Impact on the Environment and Food Safety:

In the United States, we are fortunate to have an abundant supply of food. However, this abundance is largely due to the advances in agricultural technology, which have in turn created numerous concerns surrounding our food sources. The first example of an increase of food production within the United States is the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) also known as Animal Feeding Operations (AFO) (EPA, 2015) where animals such as swine, chickens, and cows, are confined in small quarters for a short amount of time before being slaughtered for consumption. While the time it takes for the animal to grow to capacity has decreased due to hormone injections and the genetically modified organisms that are fed to them, the impact of CAFO’s across the U.S. on our environment is substantial.

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Locavore

March 21, 2015March 22, 2015 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / 1 Comment

Photo Credit: Foodem.com

“Locavore – One who primarily eats food that is grown or produced within the Local Community or Region.”

Support your Local Farmers!

Biomes and Biodiversity

March 20, 2015March 27, 2015 / Ivory Free Ohio - IFOH / 4 Comments

“Despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems including; global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.” – Dan Lipinski

Should humans be concerned with the extinction rate?

If humans are not concerned with terrestrial or aquatic extinction they should be, especially when it comes to the trophic cascade of the African Forest Elephant which is a keystone species in Kenya. Trophic cascade is defined as the “cascading effect that a change in the size of one population at the top of the food web has on the population below it.” (Turk & Bensel, 2014) Because of the rapid decline of the African Forest Elephant due to human-wildlife conflict other r-selected and k-selected species that rely on elephant activity for their survival will also be affected.

African Forest Elephants are a lot like humans whereas they are family orientated, social, self-aware, mourn the loss of family members, and the calf’s are dependent upon their mother’s milk the first few years of their life. Without their mother or families to protect them it would only be a matter of time before the calf would succumb to the elements or from a broken heart. (Bradshaw, 2004) Because African Forest Elephants gestation period is roughly two years, when herds of elephants are killed by poachers for their ivory the chances of extinction increases as maturity levels for reproduction do not occur until around 15 years of age. Continue reading →