At the House of Raeford Farms, one of the country’s largest poultry slaughterhouses, a 2007 MFA investigation found workers ripping heads off of live turkeys, birds being crushed to death beneath the wheels of trucks, and a worker punching shackled turkeys.
34
Prior to slaughter, pigs are typically stunned with electricity, producing a grand mal seizure. Proper stunning can take more than one try, which is very painful. In an article titled “Electric Stunning of Pigs and Sheep,” Temple Grandin writes:
To produce instantaneous, painless unconsciousness, sufficient amperage (current) must pass through the animal’s brain to induce an epileptic seizure. Insufficient amperage or a current path that fails to go through the brain will be painful for the animal. It will feel a large electric shock or heart attack symptoms, even though it may be paralyzed and unable to move.
35
According to the rules that govern kosher and halal slaughter, animals must be conscious when their throat is cut. In kosher slaughter, the cow should have her throat cut only once, after which she should bleed to death. But at the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, a 2008 PETA investigation showed workers making multiple cuts. Only months before the investigation’s findings were released, the slaughterhouse had passed inspection. Temple Grandin, commenting on the investigation, noted, “The undercover video clearly showed that when they think nobody is looking, they do bad things in this plant.”
36
There is a debate over whether properly performed kosher and halal slaughter actually renders the animal pain-free within the two seconds as claimed. An article on
NewScientist.com
reported that calves (who bleed more slowly than adults) may feel pain for up to two
minutes.
37
We would encourage anyone who eats kosher meat to watch the PETA video, which includes footage of the correct way to perform kosher slaughter. The cows do appear to suffer as they bleed to death even when slaughter is performed pursuant to kosher law.
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According to experts, fish have structures that resemble the pain receptors in humans and other animals, but whether they are actually conscious of pain is subject to debate. Studies show that fish react to pain by changing their behavior, which suggests a consciousness of discomfort. It seems fair to give fish the benefit of the doubt, especially since the ways in which they are farmed, caught, and killed are particularly inhumane. All of these animals—including lobsters, crabs, and shrimp—fight for their lives to the extent that they are able.
Bottom-trawling nets pull hundreds of tons of animals from the ocean, squeezing some of them so tightly against the sides of the nets that their eyes bulge and burst out of their skulls. For hours, trapped fish are dragged along the ocean floor. When hauled out of the water, the surviving fish undergo decompression. The extreme pressure change ruptures their swim bladders, pops out their eyes, and pushes their esophagi and stomachs out through their mouths.
Commercial fishing uses drift nets that also kill tens of thousands of sea mammals such as dolphins, whales, otters, seals, and sea lions per year, as well as depleting the food sources of many of these animals.
SLOW CHANGE
There are very few laws protecting farmed animals, and some animals, such as birds, are exempt from laws regarding farmed animal slaughter. Animal agriculture interests are, on principle, opposed to regulation of agriculture and they fight vigorously to stop even the most meager improvements for animals. And they have a great deal of political clout;
most legislation to improve farmed-animal welfare must pass through agricultural committees made up of legislators from farming areas or who receive contributions from the industry.
The good news is that there have been small changes in factory farming practices over the past few years, nearly all in response to the efforts of animal protection activists. For example, since 1994, it is no longer legal to brand steers on their faces. Voters in some states have passed measures to do away with some of the cruelest confinement systems. Withholding food from chickens for two weeks to increase egg production is no longer recommended by the United Egg Producers, and the majority of farmers no longer follow this practice (although many still do). In 2009, tail docking of cows (removing part of their tail without anesthesia) was made illegal in California. In her 2008 audit, Temple Grandin reported that ten pig slaughterhouses passed with all pigs being stunned properly.
But given the extensive and routine cruelty associated with factory farming and the strength of an industry that resists even the smallest improvements, meaningful change for all farm animals is a long way off. Animal cruelty is an inherent part of factory farming. Longtime activist and Vegan.com blogger Erik Marcus put it this way:
Many of the so-called “breakdowns” that are captured in these videos are not a result of worker incompetence or deliberate cruelty but rather stem from the design of housing systems and handling procedures. These cruelties are baked-in to the system on an industry-wide basis, and that’s why every video investigation I’ve ever witnessed has uniformly generated the same sorts of appalling images.
For instance, given the numbers of hens raised in a typical battery facility, the design of the cages, and the scarcity of employees, it’s inevitable that any video shot will reveal numerous examples of animals caught in their cages or suffering from untreated medical conditions.
And here’s the key point: Any company that tried to unilaterally restructure by seriously boosting welfare standards, while working
within the conventional factory farming system, would face insurmountable cost disadvantages. They’d be unable to compete and would be driven from business.
So while it’s convenient to blame management or supervision, and while there are certainly brutal and callous workers at some factory farms, that’s not the root of the problem. Factory farms are universally cruel by design, and these cruelties can’t be removed in any way other than for the entire industry to fundamentally restructure.
If industry wants to put an end to future cruelty videos, they’ve got to switch to systems with more space per animal, they’ve got to put an end to crowded transport and hurried slaughter, and they need to hire more workers to tend fewer animals. In short, the economics that keep animal products cheap are the same economics that guarantee a constant stream of videos shining a spotlight on the industry.
This is absolutely not a matter of bad supervision: The only way agribusiness can put an end to its worst cruelties is to spend vastly more money on each animal it raises, while putting a system in place where no company can cut corners. Until then, the videos will keep right on coming.
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There are many other problems associated with factory farming, related to global warming and food safety, that are beyond the scope of this book. What is clear—based on animal cruelty, environmental effects, and human health—is that factory farming must end. This then raises questions about whether there are humane options for people who wish to continue eating animal products.
There are a number of labels used on animal products that suggest the animals lived in better conditions than factory farms: “humane,” “all-natural,” “free range,” and “organic” are some of them. You might be surprised, however, to learn that products carrying these labels almost universally come from factory-farmed animals—and from the
same slaughterhouses we discussed above. For example, the slaughterhouse investigated for cruel treatment of veal calves was the same company used by organic Vermont dairy farms (see page 225).
In 2010, the Cornucopia Institute, an organic farm watchdog group, released
Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture
. The report was based on visits to more than 15 percent of USDA-certified organic egg farms and surveys of all name-brand and private-label industry egg companies. While organic standards include a requirement for outdoor access for animals, including laying hens, they found that “most industrial-scale producers are currently confining tens of thousands of hens inside henhouses, commonly only offering tiny concrete or wooden porches as ‘outdoor access’—and getting away with it. In some cases they’ve used statements from veterinarians concerning hypothetical disease transmission as an excuse to offer
no outdoor access whatsoever.
” (Emphasis added.)
Mark A. Kastel, the Cornucopia Institute’s co-director and senior farm policy analyst, said, “[I]t’s obvious that a high percentage of the eggs on the market should be labeled ‘produced with organic feed’ rather than bearing the USDA-certified organic logo.”
For most products touted as “humanely produced,” cruelty lurks behind the cheerful label. Even if free-range dairy farms provide better treatment for cows, their male calves are still taken from their mothers within hours of birth and sold for veal production. Chickens in cage-free facilities can spread their wings, but they still spend their entire lives packed by the tens of thousands into windowless warehouses. The male chicks are still killed at birth and the females are debeaked. They go to the same slaughterhouses as caged chickens.
You can read more about the various labels and what they actually mean in Farm Sanctuary’s
Truth Behind the Labels
report. There is only one way to know the conditions of the animals from whom eggs, milk, and meat are derived, and that is to visit the farm where they live and the slaughterhouse where they die.
THE BETTER SOLUTION: GO VEGAN
If some of the worst factory farming abuses are eliminated through legislation, we can expect the cost of animal foods to go up and consumption to go down. Influencing the supply of animal foods in this way is an important part of dismantling animal agriculture—which is important whether you support the rights of animals or simply want to see an end to the barbarity of factory farming.
But by far the most effective and powerful way to end factory farming is to eliminate demand. And the only way to do that is to adopt a vegan lifestyle. While it’s sad to think about the plight of animals on factory farms, it’s empowering to know that we can choose not to contribute to their torture—and that this choice can prevent animal suffering and threaten the very existence of animal agriculture.
DO ANIMALS HAVE RIGHTS?
People who choose a vegan lifestyle because of ethical concerns for animals may have fundamental differences in their beliefs. Some believe that any use of animals is likely to involve suffering, and therefore the only humane and ethical option is to avoid all animal products. Others embrace the animal rights perspective articulated in the early 1980s by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, or experiment on.” In other words, whether or not animals are treated humanely, we don’t have the right to use them for our own purposes.
Both perspectives can play critical roles in achieving the goal of eliminating animal suffering. But we believe that there is compelling reason to support the second viewpoint and that human rights can be logically extended to make the case for animal rights.
A human rights ethic suggests that no human—not just intelligent humans, but also babies, infants, and those who are mentally challenged—should be abused and used by others for whatever purpose
they like. This raises the question about whether rights should be extended to animals. The idea that if we grant rights to humans of lesser intelligence or ability, we should also grant rights to animals is sometimes referred to as the
argument from marginal cases
. If intelligence and capability are not criteria for the possession of rights, why would animals—who have the capacity to feel fear and pain—be excluded from moral consideration? Some philosophers may reject the argument from marginal cases, but we have never known any of them to provide a compelling reason for doing so.
Catastrophes
Because huge numbers of farmed animals are confined in massive sheds on today’s farms, when catastrophes strike, there is no escape. If there is a fire, flood, or tornado, these animals are doomed to burn, drown, or suffer severe injuries. Over a recent two-year period, hundreds of thousands of farm animals were the victims of these types of tragedies. In 2010, for instance, 60,000 chickens died from heat exhaustion on a North Carolina farm when the fans stopped working following a power outage. A year earlier, nearly 4,000 pigs met the same fate when a vandal turned off the fans on an Iowa farm. And on a farm in Texas, 800,000 hens died in a fire. There are many more examples of fire, flood, and transport truck accidents that cause terrifying and agonizing deaths for hundreds and thousands of animals.
In his book
A Theory of Justice,
John Rawls put forth a moral philosophy based on a hypothetical “original position.” In this scenario, the person who makes the moral rules for a society does so without prior knowledge of who they will be in that society. So place yourself in this original position: You are making decisions about whose interests will be deemed important—without knowing what color your skin will be,
whether you’ll be a mentally-challenged person, male or female, or a cow or a chicken or a tree or a rock.
The only safe way to protect your interests is to give equal consideration to the interests of all. In this situation, you would clearly feel a strong imperative toward making things as fair as possible for everyone. Right away, we can dismiss the needs of rocks, since rocks have no needs. Plants are similar to rocks; they don’t have brains or the capacity to feel pain. They can’t avoid mutilation, so it would serve no purpose for them to fear it or suffer from it. (Does anyone really believe that mowing a lawn causes plants a similar agony to that of cutting off the limbs of animals or humans?)