Tag Archives: treatment

Plane reading

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Haute Pasture is on the road again, this time to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where we are doing as much eating as possible in order to report back to you guys. It’s a hard job.

On the plane, I caught up on some newsletters and articles that have been collecting dust on my desk. Here are some highlights:

ASPCA 2011 Annual Report, page 27

The ASPCA helped prevent the passage of “ag-gag” laws in Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, and New York last year. Ag-gag laws seek to prevent the leaking of graphic videos taken by undercover workers at factory farms by criminalizing the investigation of farm animal abuse. Exposing ethical and environmental violations on industrial farms would become much more difficult, to the benefit of the violating farms. Much more information about ag-gag laws is available on the ASPCA site.

Animal Welfare Institute Quarterly, Summer 2012, Vol 61 No 3

Did you know the USDA “organic” label does not guarantee anything about animal treatment? AWI has been working to help improve the recommendations given to the USDA by the National Organic Standards Board regarding minimum space allowances for poultry, vegetation availability for poultry and pigs, tail docking bans for pigs and cattle, and pain medication requirements for cattle dehorning.

Do you get confused by food labels? Who doesn’t! AWI has a downloadable guide to help you navigate the grocery store. Find out which labels actually indicate humane treatment, and which are meaningless. (I took a stab at deciphering egg labels last year; AWI’s guide is, ah, a bit more user-friendly.)

“The Globalization of Animal Welfare,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2012, pp 122-133

About 2/3 of the poultry, meat, and eggs, and over half of the pork produced in the world come from factory farms, but no international regulations exist for farm animal treatment. Meat, dairy, and egg exports have exploded since 1980, while footage depicting cruel animal treatment has become easier to distribute, leading to increased pressure on Western governments to crack down on animal abuse internationally. The European Union leads the US in enacting laws to protect farm animals, having banned barren battery cages for hens and gestation crates for sows. In the US, agricultural lobbies continue to successfully prevent the creation of federally mandated animal welfare protections, despite increasing public interest. Developing countries in Latin America and Asia, seeking efficiency and economies of scale, lag behind the US and EU in animal protections, but in China, a law offering basic protections to animals has been proposed, and public awareness is growing. Multinational organizations such as the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations are leading the animal welfare effort at a global level, emphasizing not only ethics, but also the importance of food security and sustainability in developing countries. The FAO’s Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare provides easy access to animal welfare information to international users, explaining that “(b)y giving less economically developed country governments, professionals and producers online access to the latest information and the opportunity to contribute information relevant to their own situation, the portal will help to improve livestock welfare, health and productivity worldwide.” The private sector is beginning to recognize the importance of animal welfare to business sustainability and social responsibility, and groups such as Global Animal Partnership seek to unite the public and private sectors to form strategies that will benefit the stakeholders while progressing animal welfare improvement initiatives worldwide.

The GAP page for consumers is worth a read. The important point is:

We don’t need to work for a multi-lateral institution or be a world-famous chef or be part of the leadership of an international corporation to make a difference.

Each one of us, in our daily lives and in our own homes, can improve the lives of animals simply by choosing to support those farmers and ranchers who have a commitment to providing higher welfare to the animals they raise.

Know where your food comes from! Shop responsibly! Sound familiar?

“It’s their misfortune that they lack big eyes.”

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Is an Egg for Breakfast Worth This? by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times tells the horrifying story of Kreider Farms, which was recently exposed by a Humane Society undercover investigation. The article describes the dirty, crowded, rodent and fly infested barns where hens are raised and argues that even chickens, who don’t display much personality, should be exempt from cruelty.

I argue that chickens have plenty of personality. I submit the following as evidence:

Guest chickens quickly sized up the threat level presented by Dog, and acted sassy toward him to the point of stealing treats from under his nose.

Guest chickens learned that the humans came through this door and rushed it whenever it opened. They would have come into the house if allowed.

Chickens are hilarious. I’m not sure how anyone who has spent time watching chickens putter around a yard could think they don’t have personalities, or could eat a factory farmed egg or chicken meat product.

ASPCA Reports Hope for Laying Hens

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The Fall 2011 issue of ASPCA Action describes a July agreement between United Egg Producers (UEP), representing the owners of 80% of the US laying hen population, and animal welfare groups, in which the UEP pledged to support (yet-to-be introduced) legislation phasing-out of battery cages for hens.

A battery cage, according to the ASPCA Farm Animal Cruelty glossary, is:

A wire cage, measuring no more than 16 inches wide, in which four or five hens are housed. These cages are lined up in rows and stacked several levels high on factory farms. This system of production has been outlawed by countries in the European Union.

Hens in these cages are so cramped that they can’t extend their wings, and the discomfort can lead them to attempt stress relief by fighting. Factory farmers often use debeaking to curb the damage done by these miserable birds. Again, from the ASPCA glossary:

Debeaking [is] a process that involves cutting through bone, cartilage and soft tissue with a blade to remove the top half and the bottom third of a chicken’s, turkey’s or duck’s beak. This measure is taken to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds in factory farms.

Let’s hope the ASPCA and other farm animal welfare groups can push Congress to enact legislation quickly to improve conditions for laying hens and other factory farm animals.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma QotD

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From The Ethics of Eating Animals, p. 317

To visit a modern Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines–“production units”–incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else.

Surprise Ally: The Paleo Diet

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What? How can a diet that encourages eating large quantities of meat be considered a friend to the anti-factory farming movement?

The Paleo Diet preaches the consumption of pasture raised, humanely treated meat and eggs. The emphasis is on the fact that these foods are more wholesome, and therefore better for humans than factory farmed meats and eggs, but the side effect of supporting humane farms is a welcome one.

Animals raised on pasture and slaughtered humanely produce healthier food: more vitamins, a better fat profile and fatty acid ratios, no unnecessary antibiotics, and less stress hormones.

In short: eat only happy, healthy animals (or products from those animals) and you will be a happy, healthy human! Remember: you are what what you eat eats!

Links:

http://paleodietnews.com/1264/%20usda-study-says-factory-farms-are-worse-for-the-environment-than/

http://paleodietlifestyle.com/paleo-101/

http://robbwolf.com/faq/

http://whole9life.com/category/conscientious-omnivore/

Interactive map of factory farming investigations

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This is a very cool tool from Animal Visuals:

Factory Farm Investigations Mapped

The map was created to bring attention to the laws preventing filming inside factory farms, by showing the pattern of abuses within factory farms across the country. It’s a great tool for learning about specific investigations, and for demonstrating how widespread the problem of animal abuse on factory farms in the U.S. really is.

Happy Friday, egg factory hens!

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United Egg Producers and the Humane Society, working together?

From the New York Times:

Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages

The groups said they would ask Congress to pass a law enacting the new standards, which they said would be the first federal law addressing the treatment of farm animals and would pre-empt efforts in several states to set their own standards.

The proposed federal standards would include cages that give hens up to 144 square inches of space each, compared with the 67 square inches that most hens have today. They would also include so-called habitat enrichments, like perches, scratching areas and nesting areas, that allow the birds to express natural behavior.

The two groups met in the middle: HSUS was pushing for a complete ban on cages, and United Egg Producers has been trying to boost its image after secretly-taped footage showing sub-par farm conditions went public, and last year’s egg-related salmonella outbreaks. Also, now that individual states are passing differing hen welfare laws, it’s becoming more appealing to egg producers to have a single federal law to follow.

Note that this is just an agreement to work together to try to get a federal hen protection law created; and if the law is enacted, its timeline for full adoption is a whopping 18 years. There are still possible roadblocks: buy-in from UEP members is required; other livestock groups may fight the law to protect their own industries from regulation; and even if the law makes it to Congress, it may not pass. But the first step in changing a situation is awareness that the situation needs to change, and by partnering with HSUS, the UEP has admitted that it is aware that its chickens should be treated more humanely. And hopefully the commotion around this effort will increase consumer awareness of the plight of other factory farm animals, in addition to laying hens. Sure, they are baby steps, but at least they are steps forward!

Politics vs conscience

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New footage was released today from an undercover camera in a pig factory farm in Iowa:

Company’s Farm Practices in Question After Video Is Released

First of all: what is wrong with these people? Who can callously throw a piglet? And encourage others to do so? Who can justify cutting tails and castrating pigs without painkillers? How can someone make a career of doctoring animals and claim that a gestation crate is humane?

Secondly: how can one’s political allegiances override one’s basic human sensibility? The bill-supporting politicians are supporting animal abuse. The article says the politicians did not watch the video. Perhaps the way to think the abuse isn’t so bad is to ignore it, pretend it’s not real, stay in a state of denial by not looking at the proof. Disgusting.

On a brighter note, at least some of the grocers are doing the right thing and suspending shipments from the company that distributes pork from the offending farm. Kudos to Safeway and Kroger.

Chinese animal activism on the rise

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Animal treatment awareness is increasing among Chinese citizens:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-06/19/c_13937814.htm

Activists are pushing for the passage of the China Animal Protection Law, which has been languishing in the legislature for almost 2 years. The law would be China’s first comprehensive animal welfare law, and would include protections for food animals.

A heightened awareness of animal rights illustrates a cultural shift in China. From AFP:

“Compared with their parents’ or grandparents’ generations whose only concern was putting food on the table, the younger generations have the luxury of thinking more of other so-called ‘unessential’ things such as travel and companion animals,” said Li.

“When I was back in China in the 1980s, ‘animal protection’, ‘animal welfare’ and ‘compassion for non-human individuals’ were never phrases in China. Today, all these terms are known to many over there,” he added.

“The younger generation shall be a mighty force against animal cruelty in China.”