Want another reason to give up meat or at least go with local farmers who treat their animals humanely?

The stress, crowding and contamination inside confinement buildings foster disease, especially respiratory illnesses. In addition to toxic fumes, bacteria, yeast and molds have been recorded in swine buildings at a level more than 1,000 times higher than in normal air. To prevent disease outbreaks (and to stimulate faster growth), the hog industry adds more than 10 million pounds of antibiotics to its feed, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates. This mountain of drugs — a staggering three times more than all antibiotics used to treat human illnesses — is a grim yardstick of the wretchedness of these facilities.

As more consumers seek out meat that wasn’t raised in conditions like this, the more we’ll see free-range, non-antibiotic farms come back. I mean, how many of you would pay a couple extra bucks for meat that wasn’t raised in these conditions? I definitely would.

So spread the word or else we’re going to get more of this or possibly much, much worse.

(h/t: Sully)