The American Public Health Association, the largest organization of public health professionals in the world, has called for a moratorium on factory farms. In fact the APHA journal, the American Journal of Public Health, published an editorial going beyond just calling for an end to factory farms. It questioned the prudence of raising so many animals in the first place: "It is curious...that changing the way humans treat animals--most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten--is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and from killing them for food. Yet humanity does not consider this option....Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet....[I]t is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species."
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