I take extreme issue with the idea that “factory farming” is bad. If an animal isn’t happy and healthy, it will not produce for you, period. I don’t know how it is in Australia, but here in America, farmers are extremely underpaid for their product and they can’t afford to have animals that don’t produce. You don’t just “start farming.” You have to have a lot of capital to invest and be willing to put in long, hard hours, in terrible conditions, sometimes 24/7. And you don’t do that if you hate the animals you’re raising and don’t want to take the best care of them possible. A good portion of the time, a farmer doesn’t break even. The state of the dairy industry in the US recently is miserable as well – farmers are getting paid less for their milk than it costs to produce it. And, 98% of the farms in America, including those legally classified as factory farms, are family-owned, not corporate.
The stocking density of “factory farms” does make animal health a potential issue, but that’s why the vast majority of large farms have one or more on-site veterinarians or contract with vets for animal health monitoring, multiple times a week. We had a practice owner come to talk to us who had a 6-vet large animal practice where the majority of their time and profits came from contracting with only 15 feedlots. That’s a LOT of vet care, time, and money invested in keeping these animals healthy.
What is free range meat? All cattle spend their lives on pasture. All cattle is grass fed. Grain fed beef is merely fed grain for 3 months before slaughter. So saying that beef is “grass fed” or “free range meat” is just silly, because regardless they spend the majority of their lives on grass. What is “kind milk”? Dairy cattle are not tortured. If any livestock is tortured, dairy cows would surely be the least tortured. They come in to be milked of their own volition and get to spend their days either on grass or in comfy, deeply bedded, climate controlled barns. And, I don’t know what free range chicken or eggs mean in Australia, but here it just means that the chickens have access to the outdoors for at least 10 minutes a day. They rarely choose to use that time outside of the barns, so you’re basically choosing to pay extra for something that doesn’t really change the welfare of the birds.
And there’s no such thing as low welfare or high welfare products. By all means, buy local and support your local farmers. Just don’t try to tell me that by purchasing from Tyson or Smithfield that I’m supporting animal abuse (because I’ve been to both facilities and there is no abuse there).
Okay, here we go. Before we start, I’m not a vegetarian or vegan, I’m not in the farming industry and have little to gain here either way. I do study animal welfare, though, and am heavily critical of animal agriculture as it currently stands. I’m writing this primarily for anyone reading this comment chain and interested in learning more, because I dislike the idea of somebody reading the previous comment and believing it completely.
I take extreme issue with the idea that “factory farming” is bad. If an animal isn’t happy and healthy, it will not produce for you, period.
You are going to need to give me evidence for that.
You can still kill an eat an unhealthy pig. A pregnant cow is going to produce milk whether it’s feeling good about its situation or not. I tried to find evidence for or against that but I mostly just got the pages for dairy producers assuring me that unhappy cows won’t produce milk, which I’ll take with a barrel of salt. I’ll agree that an unhappy/unhealthy cow might make less milk based on what I’ve read, but none at all? And what about animals that exist purely to be eaten? There’s nothing to produce there except for more body.
As for ‘happy’, that’s getting into a whole other thing. We barely even understand how to measure animal welfare, much less assess its impact on output. If cows have a concept of happiness then that’s a whole other thing we need to enter into, and that’s a whole other post.
I don’t see how your points about farmers are relevant so I won’t address them specifically. The existence of vets does not mean animals are healthy any more than the existence of a doctor means a village is healthy.
All cattle spend their lives on pasture. All cattle is grass fed.
I mean… most get fed grass, sure, but that’s not all they’re fed. The reason BSE was able to spread was that cows were very much not being fed grass.
As for them being on pasture, zero-grazing systems are very much a thing. You can look them up easily. A feedlot might be outdoors, but it’s hardly the wide, open pasture you’re suggesting. And, once again, being on pasture at some point in their life or for a certain part of the year =/= free range. We can be talking six, seven months at a time confined indoors. That’s a really poor attempt at matching the animal’s natural ecology so it’s hardly surprising that ARB is so common (source) (source).
Dairy cattle are not tortured. If any livestock is tortured, dairy cows would surely be the least tortured.
I dunno, being repeatedly forcibly impregnated, separated from offspring, forced to express much more milk than normal to the point of causing health issues (source, source, source (more from an evolutionary/ long-term perspective but still interesting), and then being killed when no longer of use doesn’t sound that chill a life to me, but I don’t know what you’re into. Tie-stalls don’t seem to be quite the comfy paradise you’re describing (and are found in 62% of USA farms), but cool.
And, I don’t know what free range chicken or eggs mean in Australia, but here it just means that the chickens have access to the outdoors for at least 10 minutes a day.
Ahh, a topic we agree on! ‘Free range’ is often not really that good an indicator of welfare. Also, as a heads up, the duration of time outside is not actually specified in USA free range legislation. A bummer for sure.
They rarely choose to use that time outside of the barns
[citation needed]
I mean, I have seen studies that do say many chickens don’t use their outdoor access, but that study suggested it’s because the space given was inadequate. You give them more/better space, they go outside. That doesn’t seem to back up your idea that going outside is inherently unappealing to them.
There are also other, confounding variables to consider. For example, one study reports that birds rarely use the perches they’re offered, but points out this is likely due to the leg issues that many have. Again, all this suggests is that the way we currently keep these birds is flawed.
I mean perceiving an animal product as something you actively choose to use, or even a luxury, instead of a default.
Right now most people would see meat, milk and eggs and part of their staple diet. They’re part of the food pyramids we call get taught, and there’s usually at least one of them in every meal. Because they’re seen as default, there’s a strong pressure to get them as cheap as possible, to make staples affordable for everyone, and this is why and how practices like factory farming came about. People have to eat, and it’s hard to care a whole lot about various welfare implications of different food production systems when you’re overworked and desperately trying to feed yourself and your dependents.
It is tempting to see high welfare foods – free range meat, permaculture products, kind milk etc- as somewhat elitist, upper class, etc products. And from a certain point of view, they are. At least, right now. Factory farm systems have been slow to improve animal welfare in part because doing so reduces their profitability. The more space you afford an individual animal, the less animals you can fit on your property and the less money you make.
But, if consumers are willing to pay more for a product, take free range eggs for example, then producing that product starts to look more profitable. When you have a demand, supply will attempt to meet it.
You can’t realistically just go and close all the factory farms or other poorer welfare production systems out there overnight. The animals have to go somewhere, and they still supply a huge amount of food and people need to eat. But as there’s more demand for higher welfare production, the supply will change to reflect that.
For some, that means forking out the extra money for free range meat, kind milk, free range eggs, etc. For some it will mean going and buying directly from producers, so they know what sort of production system they’re paying for, or even producing their own food so they can control it directly. For some that will mean not using certain animal products, or animal products at all, because they don’t feel that any production system would have good enough welfare. And all of those choices are fine.
Society as a whole spending less on low welfare products and being willing to spend more on high welfare products will absolutely change those production systems over time. But not everyone is in a position to make that change immediately and shouldn’t feel guilty about only doing what they can do.
so you’re basically choosing to pay extra for something that doesn’t really change the welfare of the birds.
You haven’t given any evidence for this claim whatsoever. On the other hand, here’s some evidence for enrichment (including free range) having a positive impact on bird welfare:
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/17660465
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347203921725
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18079444
https://academic.oup.com/ps/article/87/1/71/1567067
Now, it would be unethical for me to claim that all the studies I encountered supported my argument. There do seem to be some health problems (particularly foot issues) more common in birds with outdoor access, and I encourage you, person reading this, to do your own research into this. There will also be cultural variation, and whilst I tried to tailor most of my stuff to the USA, I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed something.
But I’m afraid that drawing the conclusion that farming style does not affect animal welfare and that buying factory-farmed meat is not contributing to animal cruelty is simply incorrect. I’m glad you’ve visited the facilities and found them to be decent, I guess, but anecdotal evidence isn’t data, and the data points towards the way we keep animals being inadequate.
(that’s without even getting into the disastrous environmental consequences)
Okay so:
1. “Happy” is largely in the dairy cattle industry. A stressed cow will not let down nearly as much milk as one that is not stressed. Again, given the state of the dairy industry, farmers cannot afford to have their cows give any less milk than is possible. In addition to making their cows as comfortable as possible, there are many farmers that are starting to add environmental enrichment such as calming music to their parlors to make their cows happier. If the majority of dairy farms are telling you that they care about animal welfare because only happy cows produce good milk, you should believe them.
https://www.dairynz.co.nz/media/214384/Milk-let-down.pdf
https://modernfarmer.com/2014/02/milking-music/2. Health is certainly mandatory for dairy cattle, since you can’t sell the milk from a sick cow or one that is on antibiotics. It’s also mandatory for the rest of the industry. Sure, you can kill and eat an unhealthy animal. However, it will not weigh as much, certain parts of it which are valuable (such as the liver) will be discarded, and you will not get nearly as much money for the animal. If a zoonotic disease such as Listeria, E. coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella, etc is found in your products, you will lose money in a forced recall and forced sanctions on selling your products. If your end goal is breeding, a sick cow/sow/ewe will not cycle efficiently or maintain pregnancies, and a sick bull/boar/ram will not produce healthy semen. Again, a healthy animal is to the advantage of the farmer. I don’t really think sources are needed on this one, but if you would like them I’m happy to provide you my notes from vet school.
3. The parts about farmers are relevant because these are living breathing people who depend on their animals. They need the animals to produce well for them or else they will go under.
4. Feedlots are obviously not grazing systems. However, there is a considerable amount of time between weaning and going to a feedlot for a calf. It’s called a “stocker.” They spend 12-16 months on pasture and then 4-6 months on the feedlot. And yeah, being on grass for 12-16 months very well does mean that they’re free range, since they spend a majority of their life on grass pasture. They just get to be free range *longer* if they’re grass-finished. Your studies are from dairy cattle that were tethered, which doesn’t happen in beef production, so this is not relevant to this discussion. Also, I don’t know where you are, but there are only 5 recorded cases of BSE in the US, and while that did come from being fed grain with animal byproducts, it’s not as if that was a major problem here and that’s illegal now.
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/bse/case-us.html
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/cattle-feedlot-visit (this link also has great information about animal welfare in feedlot systems)
https://www.kla.org/CMDocs/KansasLA/AdvocateResourceCenter/FactSheet_ModernBeefProduction.pdf5. As far as tie stalls, there seems to be some discrepancy as to what percent of farms use them. Regardless, done properly it doesn’t seem to affect the welfare of the cows. Your other two arguments are appeals to emotion. Cows and calves that haven’t had the opportunity to bond are not really bothered about being separated from each other. And “forcibly inseminated”? Please. These cows would be pregnant the same amout of time if they were in the wild. That’s how this works. And what else would you have farmers do after the cow doesn’t produce enough milk or any milk at all? It’s not economically feasible, especially in the current state of the dairy industry right now, to keep cows until the end of their natural lives. Your animal welfare studies must not have gone into much detail about avoiding anthropomorphism.
https://hoards.com/article-15026-cow-comfort-matters-in-tie-stalls-too.html
https://afs.ca.uky.edu/dairy/tie-stall-facilities-design-dimensions-and-cow-comfort6. Your analogy about doctors and villages is irrelevant. The villagers are not checked over for signs of illness on a routine basis by profesionals and treated upon first sign of illness, and cattle are, so. Yeah. Intensive vet care does correlate with health of the animals.
7. Zero-grazing is not popular in the US, where the largest population of dairy cattle in the world is. So again, not relevant to the US discussion.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/nahms/dairy/downloads/dairy14/Dairy14_dr_PartI.pdf8. Okay so I looked it up, and you’re right. There’s no set limit of time that they have to be allowed outdoors. But my point still stands: they don’t tend to use their time outdoors, and prefer the climate controlled barns. There are also more fatalties with free range and cage free layers than there are in traditional laying situations. I don’t really like the idea of cage laying operations either, but my point stands that you’re paying extra for the cage free or free range label when it doesn’t significantly improve welfare for the bird.
https://www.agdaily.com/livestock/poultry/farm-babe-look-at-hen-houses-and-the-egg-production-system/9. The environmental impact of farming is greatly exaggerated by anti-animal-agriculture media. 85
percent of U.S. grazing lands are unsuitable for producing crops, and grazing animals on this land
more than doubles the area that can be used to produce food. Beef and pork production are both very efficient compared to other countries and is rapidly becoming more efficient.Leading scientists throughout the U.S., as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have quantified the impacts of livestock production in the U.S., which accounts for 4.2 percent of all GHG emissions, very far from the 18-51 percent range that advocates often cite.
http://www.caes.ucdavis.edu/news/articles/2016/04/livestock-and-climate-change-facts-and-fiction
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
https://www.facebook.com/MyBeefCheckoff/videos/vb.114323964716/10156073397419717/?type=2&theater
https://www.facebook.com/MyBeefCheckoff/photos/a.138773094716.108552.114323964716/10153155704449717/?type=3&theater
https://www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com/raising-beef/environment
https://www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com/raising-beef/beef-sustainability
https://www.pork.org/environment/environmental-impact-pig-farming/
https://www.facebook.com/ThePorkCheckoff/photos/a.432778085162.208277.105531140162/10151330830420163/?type=3&theater
http://www.beefmagazine.com/livestock/how-does-carbon-footprint-us-beef-compare-global-beefI think the data I’ve provided is plenty to let you know that current standards are farming are not inhumane. Certainly they could be even better, and Dr. Ferox has another post with suggestions for this. I see your animal welfare degree and raise you an animal science degree where I actually learned how to raise and handle these animals, plus half of a veterinary degree where I’m learning to maintain and improve the health of these animals for the rest of my life 🙂
Currently on vacation but these are all good points by @gettingvetted . Also meat / animal products are not a choice/luxury for a lot of people with food related disabilities such as celiac, Crohn’s, or allergies. Please stop leaving disabilities out of these discussions.
I may be able to respond when I return from holiday but this has been discussed extensively on my blog in the past. Please stop spreading misinformation.
@why-animals-do-the-thing please boost?
^ meat is not a luxury or a choice for people with extensive allergies or food related disabilities, and I’m kind of tired of being told it is. I’m hypoglaucemic, always anemic, allergic to the vast majority of fruits and vegetables, and I cannot eat most fake meat/meat replacements due to the prevelance of the use of products like soy. As a result my diet consists of meats, grains, sweets, and vitamins. That’s it. It’s not a ‘cannot make the choice to switch right away’ for people like me, it’s ‘cannot switch at all because we’d starve to death’.
Framing the meat discussion as a choice very much ignores people who require it, and I have had vegans tell me, offline, no internet screen to hide behind, to my face, that in their perfect world people like me would learn to adapt or starve and die out and that would be preferable to continuing to kill animals for food. There’s a reason people are protesting some of the wording of this post and a lot of it comes from that. It perpetuates this idea that, given enough time and resources, everyone can make the switch to consume minimal animal-related products. Not everybody can. Not even if I was given a million dollar budget every day could I make that switch.
Puppy mills exist. Animals will breed when under stress, and anything that is a part of the reproductive cycle will continue for most levels of stress.
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