When most people dig into a juicy steak or a pile of chicken fingers, they do not think about their food’s journey from farm to slaughterhouse to plate. That’s probably for the best; examining the conditions and treatment of food animals is a quick way to lose your appetite.
Before I became a vegetarian five years ago, I was just as blind to the treatment of food animals as anybody else. Many meat-eaters, if they think about their food before they eat it at all, tend to idealize the environment in which the animal was raised—they picture a pastoral landscape with wide-open green fields and a gentle farmer to care for his herd. In reality, the majority of food animals are raised in unsanitary, claustrophobic, industrial facilities with little or no access to green pastures.
Every animal has its own factory problems. Chickens’ beaks are cut off at an early age so that they do not peck the workers or each other. Pigs cannot turn around in their cages. Cows are tightly packed together. All factory-farmed animals are pumped full of hormones to increase their weight as quickly as possible, and antibiotics are used in attempt to counteract the unsanitary conditions involved in keeping a high density of animals in such a small space. Consequently, every time you consume meat, you are consuming all of the antibiotics and hormones that the animal ingested as well. Because animals kept alive longer expend more resources and therefore cost more money, there is a trade-off between raising healthy, well-treated animals and raking in as much cash as possible.
If this were not troubling enough, animals are often physically abused before and after they reach the slaughterhouse. Before transportation, living animals are forced to live in tight cages with the decaying bodies of other dead animals. After transportation, the bolt gun used to kill animals like cows and pigs often malfunctions, leaving animals alive yet completely paralyzed. They are conscious as their skin is removed and up until the point that they are cut into pieces. This kind of treatment does not take into account animal welfare, or even human welfare. The ultimate goal of factory farming is not to feed as many people as possible, but to make as much money as possible, which is evident in the inefficiency of factory farms and the gross mismanagement of the large volumes of animal waste produced.
It would seem as though the ethos of factory farming is based upon the idea that animals cannot feel pain. This is, obviously, a fundamentally flawed conception. Like all vertebrates, food animals have nervous systems that respond to pain in the same way that human nervous systems do. Similar to humans, animals express their pain through facial expressions and shrieking. Because animals can suffer just like humans, it is completely unjustifiable to condone the kind of treatment that animals receive throughout their lives in factory farms and slaughterhouses nationwide.
This is a very upsetting issue, and there is no reason for it to become a permanent fixture in modern agriculture, especially when there are such easy measures that anybody can take to act in the benefit of those who cannot stand up for themselves.
Instead of eating industrially-processed meat, eaters can choose to eat locally. There are always restaurants that serve locally-sourced organic meat, which has not been pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. Local farmer’s markets not only provide hormone-free meat but support the small family farms that have been almost wiped out by the giants of industrial agriculture. This measure will help make the lives of animals better, and support the regional economy and to help loosen factory farms’ hold on agricultural policy and their near-monopoly on the meat industry.
Furthermore, to reduce the number of animals brutally slaughtered, consumers can alter their diets. This doesn’t mean everybody needs to become a vegan (although that certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing), but there are other, less extreme measures that are still helpful, like using the vegetarian station at Leo’s or resolving to go meatless a few days a week. Making cruelty-free choices is simple, easy, and has far-reaching positive effects.
How we as humans treat those below us defines who we are as a species, and the brutality, cruelty, and violence with which factory farm animals are treated offends humanity itself. Farm animal rights have nothing to do with how good your filet mignon or your pork loin is. Caring about the treatment of animals involves nothing more than the human capacity for fairness, kindness, and justice.
Viggy: your Texas cattle rancher grandfather would have loved your insightful article about farm animal rights! He did run his beautiful ranches with humane ideals that translated into healthy productive livestock and superior meat. His cattle loved him so much that they followed his red truck all over the pasture. Your exposé will hopefully aid the organic trend in meat consumption.
Being able to do things in a small scale, more “humane” and “kinder” way simply isn’t sustainable. As long as people eat animals there will always be a market that will appeal to profits before ethics. Factory farms and assembly line slaughterhouses will always be there to pick up the pace providing “more meat” at cheaper prices and more dear costs to victims. That’s just a simple understanding of how economics work.
Advocating for “gentle” meat production is a pipe dream.
Furthermore… Why is it so very wonderful to remove a “happy” animal from the earth? Don’t they want to live just as much, if not more than their unfortunate “warehoused” counterparts?
The crux of it all is that we don’t need flesh to thrive – It’s bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment and a living nightmare for animals. The solution is to eliminate not to regulate.