Posted by Rachel on: 09.04.2007 /
Photo courtesy of Farm Sanctuary
On the Michael Vick discussion thread, Julie Clawson posted this comment:
I do think the dog fighting/killing thing is horrible, but I was frustrated at how the public cares so much about this crap happening to dogs but not to other animals. The horrors of cages, of abuse, and inhumane killings occur everyday on a massive scale in our factory farms. Just because cows, pigs, and chickens are not commonly kept as cherished pets does not mean that they are less intelligent or less capable of emotion than dogs. Just because we eat them and want to do so cheaply we are okay with torturing them?
Do you agree with Julie?
Leave a Reply
Comment by: joe
1 09/4/07 2:54 AM | Comment Link |Yes. I used to work periodically in a massive aboittoir, and it was pretty grim.
Personally, I have no objection to eating meat (I can run the whole meat vs veggie argument if anyone else can be bothered later) but I am very bothered that we seem to think it is perfectly ok to keep animals (and more worryingly then kill them) like this.
As a result we decreased our meat consumption by 90% and now only buy directly from farms where we can be sure the animals are kept well. For a while we only ate game (rabbits, pigeons, venison etc) which had not been through the farming system at all.
It is a bit of a problem when you go on holiday, however…
Comment by: David H
2 09/4/07 7:28 AM | Comment Link |My older daughter, age 13, became a moral vegetarian because of the video “Meet Your Meat” that she watched on YouTube. She likes meat and believes that it can be healthy in proper doses. She would like to go with free range/non-factory meat. However, it seems odd that we live in a rural area surrounded by farms and almost none of that kind of food-stuffs are available in the groceries around us.
Perhaps this is further evidence of what happens when people get too far removed from their food source. I think most Americans couldn’t look at animals being raised like this and then eat them. I’m sure some would argue that emotional well-being for animals isn’t relevant and farming, at least in the US, has to be run like a business in order to survive. But there are big questions being raised about whether it is healthy to eat food that hasn’t been raised in a healthy fashion. All of the steroids and other growth enhancers pumped into meat today is showing up in the bodies of consumers. There is not much certainty regarding the long-term affects of that. Likewise there seems to be growing evidence that ills such as mad cow disease can be directly attributed to attempts at greater efficiency and cost savings in the raising of domestic food animals.
Comment by: Rachel
3 09/4/07 8:19 AM | Comment Link |Joe, what is an aboittoir? I’m not familiar with that term.
Comment by: joe
4 09/4/07 8:26 AM | Comment Link |Oh sorry, probably bad spelling.. it is the factory where they kill animals.
Comment by: joe
5 09/4/07 8:57 AM | Comment Link |Dictionar.ycom on abattoir
Comment by: David H
6 09/4/07 1:20 PM | Comment Link |I learned the term abattoir from my years watching Monty Python.
From the Architect sketch:
If upset with someone, Mr. Wiggin’s rant can come in handy once memorized. I particularly like “you hypocritical whining toadies….” and have used it to great effect on a couple of occasions.
Comment by: Staci
7 09/4/07 2:43 PM | Comment Link |I do think much of factory farming is generally abusive and inhumane. Like David’s daughter, I quit eating meat because of this for a time. (Generational difference: I read a book about abuses rather than seeing something on YouTube.) I added some meat back in when I was pregnant as the cravings were all I could think about. I don’t agree with, but appreciate, the arguments that all meat consumption is immoral.
There are farmers/ranchers who practice what I would consider humane treatment of animals they raise for consumption. Generally these are marked at the market as “free range” and “anitbiotic and hormone free.” For fish, they are marked as “wild” rather than “farm-raised.” These are readily available in our local supermarkets. We also have some restaurants in town that use mostly local ingredients and list these attributes on their menus. At the market, the price is a little higher, but we’ve compensated by reducing meat and increasing vegetable/fruit intake.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that animals do experience negative emotions about situations. Even if they don’t, they definitely have nervous systems that we know allow them to feel physical pain. Causing the animals to live a lifetime of pain before their eventual slaughter is, to me, unreasonable and unnecessary. The people who work in these situations definitely have emotions and I think constant exposure negatively affects those who work there.
What to do? If regulations prevented this kind of treatment, then producers would not be able to argue that they can’t be profitable if they follow humane and healthy practices. This is one market where there is much less foreign competition - most Americans at least are leary of such meat due to concerns about mad cow, etc. As consumers:
* Buy free-range, wild, antibiotic and hormone free, grain fed, etc. animal products at your supermarket, butcher, etc. Also look for these indicators at restaurants.
* Purchase meat directly from a farmer/rancher. We split a cow with another family last year and had beef for an entire year. They sent it to a butcher who did all the cutting and wrapping.
* If you live near a rural area, chances are you can buy eggs and/or milk from someone nearby. A mile or so from our house there are people who don’t really have big farms, but they have chickens and sell the eggs.
* Ask at your local farmers market or butcher for recommendations of local farmers/ranchers.
* Eat less meat. If you reduce portion size and/or frequency of consumption you will be healthier and reduce demand that leads to the “need” for mass production and adding growth hormones.
Comment by: Rachel
8 09/4/07 5:29 PM | Comment Link |Thanks for those excellent suggestions, Staci!
Comment by: Martin Gugino
9 09/4/07 8:51 PM | Comment Link |Michael Pollan writes about how pigs are raised properly at Polyface Farms. Industrial agriculture is beyond immoral; it is the corporation stealing from us all. Here is a scarier story about Monsanto’s genetically modified seed. Monsanto is headquartered in Sonje, a municipality completely surrounded by East St Louis, the poorest city in the nation, to which they contribute nothing.
Comment by: Keith
10 09/5/07 1:11 PM | Comment Link |Having been raised on a hog farm and being married to a gal whose family also raised pigs, I have some insight in what goes on “behind the scenes” in at least two of these types of farms. I would love to understand more about precisely what actions Julie considers “torturing”, what inside info David H. has that the “emotional well-being” of these animals are not considered by the farmers that raise them, and what specifically Staci is referring to by “lifetime of pain.” Without more specifics I feel my comments may be based on misunderstandings.
I can personally speak of the attachment and emotional investment in particular animals. From the joy of seeing an ill animal nursed back to health to the pain of seeing a pig die of a disease we weren’t able to help them fight off, I can personally speak to a farmer’s emotional investment in their livestock. If the complaints are primarily about confinement buildings, I wonder if the complaints are about what they look like more than what they are … because they are certainly clean, healthy environments in which pigs can grow to adulthood.
That an animal gives its life for someone else to have nourishment is not seen as a grievous evil by some farmers, but as a beautiful picture of how life is sustained on this earth from generation to generation. I agree with David H. that it is a shame that people are separated from their food source, but not for the same reasons. There is a gratefulness for how God provides my daily bread (and in this specific instance meat), and I know that his provision was not bloodless. Neither has his spiritual provision for me been bloodless.
Are there excesses in the industry that should be spoken against? Absolutely. But I do not yet sense that there is a specific excess being spoken against here, and if there is not perhaps we should stop biting at the hands that feed us. Organinized and efficient are not necessarily the opposites of justice and compassion.
Thank you for posting on this topic. I look forward to receiving clarification from Julie, David H., and Staci. Perhaps you are pointing to specific instances of which you have knowledge, in which case I will be happy to join you in opposing those excesses.
Comment by: David H
11 09/5/07 9:56 PM | Comment Link |Full disclosure: I was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. They raised cattle and pigs as well as feed crops. My brother and sister married into farm families and my brother spent about 10 years working on a Michigan dairy farm, my sister continues to work on a family-owned farm in Missouri where she raises some cattle and pigs while growing food crops.
I have seen family farms and factory farms. Not every family farmer I have met had an “emotional” investment in his livestock, some did while others saw it primarily as a financial investment. However, the couple of factory farms I visited didn’t seem to have much in the way of any emotion. It was just a business.
My sister and her husband spent a few years raising chickens and pigs for two of the major companies supplying products from those animals to US supermarkets. They quit on both because they wouldn’t eat the meat they were raising because of the conditions established by the companies contracting them. They didn’t like the regimen of drugs that were being pumped into the animals and were at little taken aback at the death rate of the chickens even though it was in the acceptable limits for the contracting company.
But Keith has a point. It isn’t fair to just say inhumane conditions and then not elaborate. Here is the PETA video that upset my daughter. It is a bit overly dramatic, but there are things depicted there that are obviously cruel but done for the sake of efficiency. You probably don’t want to watch this around dinner time.
However, I am not so much concerned by how you kill the animals or even, in some cases how they live until they die. I don’t eat veal, but it isn’t because I find it cruel that calves are chained into small cages and not permitted to move for essentially their entire short lives. I don’t like the texture of the meat. What alarms me are the drugs and medicines pumped into these animals via shots and feed. Drugs that force abnormal growth or enhance the quality of the meat as outlined in this article.
Using hormones to promote marbling or make meat leaner is necessary for many animals because they don’t get the exercise that used to contribute to those qualities. While the article points out that there is no proof hormone-treated beef has adverse health affects for those ingesting the animals (of course very little study appears to have been done on the subject) there are clear issues with some other practices that may not be inhumane but certainly are dangerous. Among those are the practice of feeding animals the unsellable bits from other animals of the same species. According to this article and others I have read, it is fairly common. The practice is considered the likely vector for the spread of Mad Cow Disease, but despite that many beef industry associations have fought regulations to prohibit the practice because it provides a cheap way to enhance the protein in cattle feed.
Over the past 50 years the mom & pop farms that I knew as a child and have been worked by members of my family have drastically dwindled. According to the USDA, the number of farms in the US has declined from nearly 7 million in 1935 to just about 2 million in 1974. The number of farms has remained relatively steady since then, however, that doesn’t tell the whole story. The average size of farms has nearly quadrupled, but not because family farms are getting bigger. Primarily it is because factory farms have taken over a significant portion of farming. In 1997, according to the USDA, 2 percent of the farms in the country accounted for more than 50 percent of the sales. Those mammoth farms don’t leave a lot of the pie for families still trying to survive on farming. Practices some would consider cruel (e.g. packing animal living quarters so tight there is no room for movement, boiling them while still alive in preparation for removing the hide, etc.) are SOP at many of these factory farms because they are either the easiest or cheapest way to move from living animal to packaged food product.
Hopefully this clarifies some of my issues with farming in the US. Based on my research and even some reporting I did years ago, these are not occasional excesses. The factory farms I have visited haven’t left me with any beautiful pictures.
And for the record, I didn’t suggest that the emotional well being of animals is not being considered. What I said was that some argue that it isn’t relevant. How do I know this? Because during my 20 years as a newspaper reporter I spoke to some farmers and government officials who said that very thing.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
12 09/5/07 10:55 PM | Comment Link |Food Fight
Keith, I think the issue is about confined animal feed operations (CAFO). These practices are wrong, and not only for the animals. It is not a question of efficiency; it is a question of sustainability, and public health. The above video is about the Farm Bill, and farming issues in general - again starring Michael Pollan from Berkeley. There are many videos that demonstrate animal cruelty. Wegmans recently had a movie made about their egg farm. They deny any wrong doing, and say that they are bringing affordable eggs to western New York. The more shocking thing, is that the expensive so called free-range alternative is also a CAFO operation.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
13 09/6/07 5:20 AM | Comment Link |So these two planets run into each other, and the first one says “Oh, you look terrible. What’s wrong?” The second one says, “I’ve got humans.” The first one says “That’s too bad. At least it doesn’t last too long”. (rim shot)
Comment by: Martin Gugino
14 09/6/07 8:57 AM | Comment Link |Temple Grandin has written much about humane treatment of animals, has designed slaughterhouses, and taught how to control animals without electric prods. She is the title story in the Oliver Sack’s collection “Anthropoligist on Mars”.
She is wonderful. He is wonderful.
Comment by: Staci
15 09/6/07 1:50 PM | Comment Link |I think David and Martin have covered my concerns well.
Comment by: Keith
16 09/7/07 7:28 AM | Comment Link |David H.,
Thank you for the detailed response. I am sorry that I misrepresented your statement … this error was unintentional and I regret it.
I agree that many of the specific actions you mentioned are dangerous and unethical. Specifically the mistreatment of a live animal, confining to the point that movement is restricted, and the over-doping of animals to achieve a desired effect that causes the animal life-long pain are not only wrong, but dangerous to people, animals, and the industry. I am with you in opposing those specific actions.
The facts and figures on the state of the family farm which you uncovered by research, are verified by my family’s personal history. I have known families who “signed” with factories, though my family remained independent … and as independent farmers have not experienced all of the pressure your sister and her husband have.
Many family farmers bristle at over-reaching outcry against farming that lumps everyone in together. When the charges get very specific, it is much easier for farmers who initially feel targeted to come alongside the protesters and stand against the protested action.
Btw, nearly all farmers today use some type of confinement building. If I am understanding this issue correctly, it might be more effective to use David H.’s language of “packing animal living quarters so tight there is no room for movement” rather than the phrase “confined animal feed operations.” There are CAFO’s (which btw is actually concentrated animal feed operations) which meet the EPA’s regulatory standards, and which do not mistreat the animals or irresponsibly interact with the environment. By lumping them all together, any person pursuing compassion and justice will create both significant collateral damage and needless resistance from people who actually agree that the protested actions are inhumane.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
17 09/7/07 9:54 AM | Comment Link |Our thoughts are quite divergent.
The current practices are too broad. This is not primarily an issue of mis-treatment of an individual animal, although it does emphasize animals as inventory rather than as creatures.
I have no problem with confinement or with buildings. Fences and barns are confinement.
Not going to happen. The term CAFO is well-defined and useful as a term, even though within it there are useful subtypes for chickens: caged and so called free-range.
Some people disagree with this statement. The case against chicken CAFOs is especially well documented.
The term CAFO already lumps them together. I believe that all CAFOs possess properties that can reasonably be objected to. Some of these have to do with animal treatment, some with environmental impact and sustainablity, partly with dependence on oil, but primarily because they they have more similarity to strip-mining than to farming. Polyface Farms is model of what we should be moving to.
Comment by: Julie Clawson
18 09/9/07 3:26 PM | Comment Link |Sorry to miss the conversation to this point…
I eat meat and I have family members who run a grass-fed, open range cattle ranch in Texas. It is the issues (that others here have defined already) that I have issues with. Severe confinement, forced feeding or starvation, beak removal, feeding animals remains of other animals (including their own species), killing without stunning, to name a few practices i have issues with. Then there are the videos of chickens being thrown against walls, or exploded with CO2 for entertainment of the factory workers. Sure those things are excessive, but if you are paid to mistreat animals all day why should one stop at more extreme methods of torture?
My issues with factory farms are bigger than just the treatment of animals. The severe environmental impact is scary as are the uses of hormones and antibiotics.
The book The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason is a good overview of the issues with factory farms.
Comment by: Nathan Ketsdever
19 09/10/07 9:58 PM | Comment Link |Great post! Julie’s right on too. Peter Singer is quite good.
Comment by: Benjamin ady
20 09/11/07 8:03 PM | Comment Link |the dialogue here has been really helpful to me. I want to thank everyone. I have good friends up in B.C. who raise chickens and pigs, and i felt a bit defensive on their behalf upon reading the original post. but I see now that there is a wide array of practices in the industry.
On the other hand, I have to watch myself, because I do the whole arrogance thing far too well. “I’m better that all those loser white trash masses who eat at macdonalds, shop at walmart, etc. etc. because *I* care about where my food is raised, how my products are made, blah blah blah etc.” I totally slip into thinking like this so easily.
Comment by: Saving the Environment & Eating Locally (and not from Factory Farms) « Compassion in Politics
21 09/12/07 2:30 AM | Comment Link |[...] 12th, 2007 · No Comments Are Factory Farms Immoral? One of my favorite blogs, Justice and Compassion discussed the issue and then today I ran into a [...]
Comment by: Julie Clawson
22 09/12/07 9:31 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin - yes that arrogance is hard. Finding where the balance is has been a struggle. Because one has to believe that one’s stance is right (to some extent) to believe it at all and to start working for change, but to do that without demonizing people. Where is the balance in lovingly bringing people on board and caring for the environment, animals, and the health of the workers involved?
Comment by: Keith
23 09/12/07 1:13 PM | Comment Link |Great question, Julie. I don’t have the answer, but it seems that the closer any protest (if that’s the correct term) comes to balancing just that, the more effective it can be.
Comment by: Martin Gugino
24 09/18/07 7:04 AM | Comment Link |Squeal to Meal - vertical integration in hog farming.
This is a good article by a great organization, the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. Naomi Klein is associated with them. [These people are new to me, but are obviously excellent.]