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  3. It is not small food production that presents a threat to our health, but large-scale factory farming. Mad Cow Disease, with

It is not small food production that presents a threat to our health, but large-scale factory farming. Mad Cow Disease, with

admin2015-02-12  27
问题     It is not small food production that presents a threat to our health, but large-scale factory farming.
    Mad Cow Disease, with its potential to lead to the deaths of thousands of people in the UK, and who knows how many more around the world, is the terrible consequence that has followed from the apparently innocuous practice of feeding dead cows to live ones. The disaster has brought home the impact that "industrial" animal husbandry—viewing animals as production machines—can have on human health.
    One only has to scratch the surface of life down on the factory farm to see that Mad Cow Disease may well be only the tip of the iceberg. In a range of areas, from feeding regimes, to animal housing, to the use of drugs in the pursuit of productivity, human health may be threatened by factory farming. Imposing industrial demands on farm animals may, quite literally, be producing fatal flaws in the end product—our food.
    It is no surprise that, faced with the Mad Cow Disease disaster and escalating incidence of food poisoning, the UK Government’s reaction has been to tighten hygiene regulations. But given the underlying nature of the problem—animals being reared in appallingly cramped conditions, frequently without access to fresh air, clean litter, and sunlight—the measures are unlikely to prove effective. Paradoxically, they may even make our food less safe, by ensuring that livestock production and slaughter become ever more centralized in the hands of a small number of large industrial-scale operators, better able to bear the costs of regulation than small-scale producers.
    Consider the conditions that prevail on factory farms—for example, in intensive chicken sheds. Animals are so crowded together that the floor is scarcely visible, and where it is visible it can be seen to be covered with excrement. The atmosphere is full of dust, with scarcely any sunlight. Would one be surprised if disease were rampant? Of course not. Yet these are the conditions in which many animals are reared as food.
The word "excrement"(line 3, para. 5)most probably means "______".
选项 A、uneaten food
B、animal waste
C、hay
D、dead animals
答案B
解析 属词义推断题。根据第五段该词所处的上下文语境，可以推知，在鸡棚地面上覆盖的只能是鸡的粪便。
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