Human beings have practiced agriculture and raised animals for food for at least 10,000 years. Animal "farming" today bears no resemblance to the original. It began with simple technology when fewer people lived on Earth than now inhabit New York City. The merciless industrial monster it has become is often called animal agribusiness. Treated as mere grain-processing equipment, animals live short lives and suffer constantly. About 10 billion chickens, pigs, turkeys, cattle, and others are killed for food each year in the U.S. The land-grant universities design and promote much of the animal-agribusiness machinery and teach students to manage it.

Preventing needless animal suffering and deaths is reason enough for universities to stop teaching animal agribusiness. Universities should also wish to join the international community seeking to end the egg, milk, and meat industries' harm to people and the other beings on Earth: waste of plant foods, topsoil, and rapidly diminishing fresh-water and oil supplies; contamination of water, air, and soil; chronic diseases responsible for health-care cost increases; and more.

The most destructive changes have occurred since Congress established land-grant universities to teach agriculture - understood to be the cultivation of fields, not the raising of animals - for the common good. Rather than use knowledge to help everyone, universities continue to serve private animal- and feedcrop-industry interests - at enormous cost to the rest of us. Teaching animal agribusiness diminishes our universities' credibility and violates their original mandate. Universities can do much better by adopting the following principles to establish responsible policies for animals that are also responsible polices for people and ecosystems.

Universities should not provide training and research for industries that torment and destroy animals, breed animals in order to kill them, and perpetuate the animals-as-property ethical disaster. The egg, milk, and meat industries kill animals far short of their species' natural lifespans after subjecting them to constant misery. Most of the animals live indoors in filthy, crowded conditions, denied their natural behavior. Painful, traumatic mutilations keep them from injuring and killing each other due to stress. Antibiotics keep disease from wiping out thousands at a time. Tens of thousands suffer and die when ventilation systems fail or severe weather strikes.

Universities must not serve industries that torment and destroy animals, breed animals in order to kill them, and perpetuate the animals-as-property ethical disaster. Animals killed for food die very young, most after living in constant misery and enduring cruel transport and slaughter. Producers and government kill cougars, coyotes and other indigenous carnivores to protect private animal-industry interests. Far more mice, voles, and other small animals are killed in crop harvesting and protection than if crops were not grown to make animal products. Such carnage is based on destructive, archaic attitudes rejected by intellectual and spiritual leaders and much of the general public - all who have "done their homework." Universities should reject them as well.

Universities should not serve industries that pollute on a massive scale. By crowding large numbers of animals into small spaces, the egg, milk, and meat industries accumulate millions of tons of untreated animal waste. Stenches and flies diminish local property values and cause or worsen health problems. Animal-waste pollution kills millions of fish and other animals. Manure sprayed on croplands poisons soil and groundwater. Cattle in today's massive numbers turn landscapes to desert and worsen climate-change problems.

Universities should not serve industries that threaten agriculture and nutrition. Poor management of resources - especially topsoil - has destroyed past civilizations. U.S. topsoil is lost much more quickly than it will be when our society stops producing crops for the animal industries. Most groundwater used to produce food is wasted on animal agribusiness. "But a few years ago, water experts calculated that we humans are now taking half the available fresh water on the planet …," according to World-Watch magazine, July/August 2004. Being natural herbivores, people will do much better living on grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables, and legumes. Animal-based diets are nutritionally poor and too rich in saturated fat and protein.

Universities must help make food, not war. As Michael T. Klare writes in Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (2001), "Conflict over valuable resources … has become an increasingly prominent feature of the global landscape. Often mixed with ethnic, religious, and tribal antagonisms, such conflict has posed a significant and growing threat to peace and stability in many areas of the world." Supporting the animal industries threatens young people in particular as they are most often called upon to fight and also must live tomorrow in the world universities are helping to shape today.

Universities should teach agriculture in the true sense of that word - the cultivation of fields -- as Congress intended: to feed people, not agribusiness that did not even exist when Congress established the land-grant universities. Those who gain financially in the short term from animal agribusiness - the egg, milk, meat, feed-crop, chemical, oil, water, pharmaceutical, and other private industries and many people in government - are serving themselves, not the common good. But land-grant universities were established to promote the common good.

Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. (RPA), has sent three highly informative mailings to the 50 states' "1862" land-grant universities, explaining in detail why they should cooperate with RPA's 10,000 Years Is Enough campaign to end the teaching of animal agribusiness. Many administrators have replied. University newspapers, animal-industry publications, PR Week, and other news venues have reported on the 10,000 Years Is Enough campaign, which is supported by donations from concerned people.

Since the land-grant universities drive the industrialization of animals and their continued enslavement and constant suffering, RPA will work as long as it takes to sever links between higher education and the egg, milk, and meat industries. RPA is glad to discuss these matters at universities, in the news media, in public forums, at private meetings, and elsewhere.

RPA will gladly provide a list of recommended readings and urges all people to learn about animal exploitation, food-production methods, ecosystems, conservation, and nutrition. Only by understanding effects of our purchases can we make informed and responsible choices as citizens in a free society. Food choices are political and not merely personal matters. See also Responsible Policies for Animals Factsheets #s 2 & 3 and www.RPAforAll.org.

Revised June 2004