There have long been debates over whether massive factory farms are better for the consumer and livestock being raised for market than the traditional family operation. Well, now a 2 1/2 -year analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health document how and why industrial-scale farm animal production poses unacceptable risks.

The 124-page report, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America" shows that while the mammoth, industrial farming operations have, in some cases, lowered food costs, they harm human health and the environment, treat animals inhumanely and destabilize the already beleaguered economy of rural America.

Pew investigators have determined that the negative effects of the corporate producers of milk, eggs and meat "are too great and the scientific evidence is too strong to ignore."

"Significant changes must be implemented and must start now," the commissioners said, and here are some of the recommendations the organization offered:

1. Ban the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animal production to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance to medically important antibiotics and other microbials.

2. Implement a disease monitoring program for food animals to allow 48-hour trace-back of those animals through aspects of their production.

3. Treat these farms as the industrial operation they are and implement a new system to deal with farm waste to protect Americans from the adverse environmental and human health hazards of improperly handled IFAP waste.

4. Phase out the most intensive and inhumane production practices within a decade to reduce the risk to public health and improve animal well-being

5. Increase funding for, expand and reform, animal agriculture research.

Here is a link to Pew and the report.