This week, the World Health Organization — which works globally to improve human health — will meet in Geneva to select a new director general. We have a mission for that leader: take on factory farms, a major threat to health and the environment.

Starting just after World War II, animal production in the United States became increasingly industrialized. Factory-like farms radically increased the number of cows, chickens and pigs they could raise and slaughter with economic efficiency. This is one reason meat consumption rose sharply in the United States after the war. So, too, worldwide, meat production has tripled over the last four decades and increased 20 percent in just the last 10 years, according to research by the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group.

This sweeping change in meat production and consumption has had grave consequences for our health and environment, and these problems will grow only worse if current trends continue.

Taking on this public health issue is well within the W.H.O.’s mandate. Addressing last year’s World Health Assembly, Margaret Chan, the organization’s departing director general, called antibiotic-resistant microbes, climate change and chronic diseases “three slow-motion disasters” shaping the global health landscape. Factory farming connects the dots among them.

In a heartbreaking new undercover video, Compassion Over Killing reveals violent abuse of gentle mother cows at Mason Dixon Farms, a massive dairy factory farm in Pennsylvania with more than 2,500 animals.

Mason Dixon supplies some of the biggest names in dairy, including Dairy Farmers of America and Land O’Lakes. 

One of the largest dairy facilities on the East Coast, Mason Dixon was the first in the US to implement milking of cows by machines, known as “robo-milking.” Approximately half of the 2,500 cows on this factory farm are now “robo-milked.”

Though Mason Dixon touts itself as a leading example in the dairy industry, the footage taken by COK’s investigator who worked inside the facility uncovers a different reality

Ignoring Findings, State Lawmakers Look to Shield Big Pork from Liability. 

Scientific tests found abundant hog feces on homes and lawns, and in the air of private properties near big hog farms in North Carolina – proof that factory farms are exposing nearby communities to dangerous fecal bacteria, endangering the health of tens of thousands of citizens. Despite this disgusting evidence, state lawmakers are moving to strip citizens of their right to fair compensation through so-called nuisance suits against concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

"This study, by a scientist who has done groundbreaking work for the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, proves that industrial-scale swine farms are not just a nuisance that damages property values, but a serious threat to the health of people who live nearby," said Ken Cook, president of EWG, which has mapped an estimated 60,000 homes within half a mile of North Carolina swine and poultry CAFOS.

A scathing front page exposé in The Washington Post May 2 provides strong evidence that the largest organic milk producer in the United States has been operating illegally, jeopardizing family-scale farms here in Wisconsin. The Post’s investigative journalists visited Aurora Dairy's largest factory farm complex in Weld County, Colorado, finding that almost all of the 15,000 cows there were confined to dirt and manure-covered pens rather than grazing out on pasture as organic law requires.

Repeated observations on eight days (some 10 hours long), supplemented by drone and satellite imagery, revealed that no more than 10 percent of the dairy herd was ever out on grass — and many times, significantly less were.

The Cornucopia Institute has long asserted that giant industrial dairies are gaming the organic system, confining cattle in order to push cows for high milk production. This approach resembles the standard operating practices on conventional CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).