As a young child, I loved cats and dogs but ate pigs and cows. I didn't know that's what I was doing. I stopped wanting to eat animal flesh when I was a kid and I first found out that meat was the bodies of animals who were killed so I could eat them. I didn't stop eating it right away. It took me several years, because I really wanted to be “normal.” But I also wanted so much to be good. It hurt my mind that I couldn't reconcile being good with being normal. Although knowing that I was causing the deaths of others was enough for me to know it was wrong, it wasn't enough for me to resist the pull of wanting to do what a normal and obedient child was expected to do.
I made up my mind only after watching a family friend slowly bring lobsters to a boil. She didn't even boil the water first and then drop them in, which would have killed them more quickly. Instead she put them in a huge, cold pot of water and then slowly brought it to a boil. Half an hour later I could still hear them moving around in the pot, their claws slowly scratching at the sides. In my mind they were trying to escape, to climb out, or else they were clawing at the sides of the pot in agony. Thinking about their suffering as they died flipped the switch for me and made me realize I had to stop hurting animals no matter what it cost me personally. And what it cost me personally turned out to be very little.
Deciding to make major changes is usually harder than actually making them, and this was no exception. Even though I was trapped in a world where adults make the rules, I found that once my mind was made up, people around me adjusted fairly quickly. But I became increasingly maladjusted as I tried, and failed, to understand how other people knew the same things I did but didn't feel the same way about them. I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't just learning the facts that did it for me. It was learning the facts and then having a gut-wrenching emotional experience related to killing animals as well.
So I understand the disconnect most people have, but not the lack of motivation to overcome it. How is it that otherwise good and kind people think their taste for someone else's flesh makes it okay to abuse and kill another living creature? Some people don't think animals suffer, but that's pretty unusual. Others think animals suffer but it doesn't matter. That's hard to stomach, but I get it. It's everyone else – the majority of the population – that I don't get. Most people would never harm a cat or a dog, but think nothing of harming pigs, cows and chickens. One of the things that has turned over and over in my mind is the question of why abuse means different things in the same contexts but with different animals.
There's not a whole lot of difference in the nervous systems of mammals. This means that, although farmed animals may experience the world differently than humans do, they have a similar ability to feel pain and pleasure, happiness, depression, fear and frustration. Although it is still unknown exactly how consciousness works in any animals – including human animals – it's common knowledge in the scientific community that mammals, birds, elephants, and cetaceans are conscious and emotional animals. Mammals and birds have pretty sophisticated brains, but the most basic conscious experiences – those that determine whether someone feels enjoyment or agony – do not require a brain with anything close to human-like complexity. People who exploit mammals and birds do not deny this, though they often try to trivialize it.
There's a serious disconnect between public opinion and what actually happens to animals – what people pay money to support. It's probably no coincidence that there's also quite a distance between the reality of animal treatment and what farmers say, and between what the public believes and wants and what the law allows.
A farmer says
“Most people don't understand animal husbandry. They don't realize it's normal. That it's not harming the animals... Abuse is different from animal husbandry... We don't break off the beaks of chickens. We burn off the tips.”
A scientist says
"There is now good morphological, neurophysiological and behavioral evidence that beak trimming leads to both acute and chronic pain. The morphological evidence is that the tip of the beak is richly innervated and has nociceptors or pain receptors. This means that cutting and heating the beak will lead to acute pain. In addition, it has been shown that as the nerve fibers in the amputated stump of the beak start to regenerate into the damaged tissue, neuromas [tumors] form. Neuromas are tiny tangled nerve masses that have been implicated in phantom limb pain (a type of chronic pain) in human beings.”
Our friend the farmer said, “Abuse is different from animal husbandry.” But what about when they are one and the same?
A judge says
“An act which inflicts pain, even the great pain of mutilation, and which is cruel in the ordinary sense of the word” is permitted “whenever the purpose for which the act is done is to make the animal more serviceable for the use of man.” In other words, it's okay to inflict any amount of pain on a nonhuman animal as long as there is some benefit to humans.
A farmer says
"So our animals can't turn around for the 2.5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets. I don't know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around.... The only real measure of their well-being we have is the number of piglets per birth, and that's at an all-time high."
A scientist says
“Sows on concrete in confinement stalls suffer abuse according to all the Five Freedoms :
lack of oral satisfaction;
lack of thermal and physical comfort;
pain and lameness from injuries, muscle weakness and osteoporosis;
stress-related oral stereotypies;
almost complete denial of normal maintenance behaviour (e.g. grooming, limb stretching).
Because of their extreme cruelty, sow crates have been outlawed in some states, but such laws are for the benefit of the people who are bothered by animal suffering, and not for the sake of the animals themselves. In New Jersey, one of the states with the strictest animal welfare laws, a judge clarifies that the enactment and enforcement of the laws are not for the benefit of the animals themselves but for the benefit of humans.
A judge says
New Jersey state regulations on the treatment of animals raised for food, including such practices as gestation crates for pigs and debeaking chickens are “consistent with the meaning of the term ‘humane.’... The dispute before this court has nothing to do with anyone’s love for animals, or with the way in which any of us treats our pets; rather, it requires a balancing of the interests of people and organizations who would zealously safeguard the well-being of all animals … with the equally significant interest of those who make their living in animal husbandry.”
OK, OK, you might be thinking. Enough about how animals are affected. Maybe human interests should take precedence over animal health and wellbeing. But if the situation for animals were really that bad, wouldn't someone say something? After all, when information that dramatically affects human welfare becomes known, it's clearly communicated to the public, right?
Not always. When the U.S. Academy of Science “concluded that the only safe intake of trans fat is ‘zero,’” did they recommend that people stop eating trans fats? No. Why not? Their reasoning is that “it would be impractical to eliminate all trans fat from the diet, [so] the panel recommended that people consume as little trans fat as possible.”
Trans fats occur naturally only in animal products, and the position of the U.S. Academy of Science was further clarified by a scientist on the panel:
“Well, we could tell people to become vegetarians. If we were truly basing this only on science, we would, but it is a bit extreme.”
So even scientists don't necessarily base their recommendations on science, even when human lives are stake. What hope do animals have?
What have we learned so far from farmers, scientists and judges? Abuse is not abuse if it's also animal husbandry. Things done to farm animals that are cruel in the ordinary sense of the word are not cruelty if humans benefit from it. Animal abuse matters only when it causes humans discomfort. And it would be unreasonable for scientists to base their recommendations on science. What's next? Animal cruelty law doesn't apply to animals because they aren't animals?
Sure. Why not?
So animal agriculture harms animals, and many humans are upset by this. But what about all the people who use cows, pigs, and chickens for a living? What can be done to account for their human interests? That's easy. Just exempt the animals they use from the Animal Welfare Act.
“The AWA regulates the care and treatment of warmblooded animals, except those, such as farm animals, used for food, fiber, or other agricultural purposes.” Mice and rats, used in more than 90% of experiments, were also exempted. Because it would be unreasonable to apply the same science in their case as is applied for other animals. But why bother to exempt them, when you can just de-classify them as animals?
After a 2002 amendment to the Animal Welfare Act, this is how “animal” is defined:
(g) The term “animal” means any live or dead dog, cat, monkey (nonhuman primate mammal), guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, or such other warm-blooded animal, as the Secretary may determine is being used, or is intended for use, for research, testing, experimentation, or exhibition purposes, or as a pet; but such term excludes (1) birds, rats of the genus Rattus, and mice of the genus Mus, bred for use in research, (2) horses not used for research purposes, and (3) other farm animals, such as, but not limited to livestock or poultry, used or intended for use as food or fiber, or livestock or poultry used or intended for use for improving animal nutrition, breeding, management, or production efficiency, or for improving the quality of food or fiber. With respect to a dog, the term means all dogs including those used for hunting, security, or breeding purposes.”
Is it just me or is it kind of weird that experiments on learned helplessness on rats in the 1950s showed them to be highly sensitive psychologically, and then when the Animal Welfare Act came along in the 1960s they weren't classified as animals? One of the reasons rats are used in experiments is because they are so much like humans. Now after the 2002 amendment to the AWA (the version quoted above), they have been explictly excluded from the definition of “animal.”
Animal exploiters often do or sponsor studies on the social and emotional lives of farmed or research animals in order to be able to more efficiently exploit them. The social lives of rats is even studied in order to develop more effective pesticides. So the people who use animals in abusive ways know better than anyone that animals are, in fact, animals. So, what is going on here?
Farmers do animal welfare studies all the time. But what do they study? They study things like whether an animal in a cage prefers to have straw in the cage or no straw. Not surprisingly, animals prefer cages with straw to cages without straw. But what does that really tell us? Is anyone looking at whether or not they would prefer not to be in a cage at all?
Well, yes. Sort of. There have been studies that look at animals' physical health and mortality rates in cages and outside of them. What have they found? They often report that chickens and pigs are healthier and less stressed inside cages than outside of them. Our farmer friend from above who informed us that abuse is not the same as animal husbandry warned his colleagues about the ignorance of the American public on the matter of freedom of movement and reported that, “Almost half of the U.S. population believe that animals have to be able to exhibit natural behaviors in order to have a high level of welfare.”
Now, I find this pretty surprising. Not the fact that so much of the public thinks extreme confinement is bad for someone's welfare, but the fact that anyone who works with animals can suggest otherwise with a straight face. How do farmers manage to do this? They compare the health of caged animals to the health of free range animals. But just like the terms animal cruelty and humane, free range has its own special meaning in the world of animal agriculture. And by a special meaning, I mean no meaning. Literally, in the case of egg-laying hens. There is no legal definition. As a result, most “free range” animals are simply crammed into a windowless shed. They are just as crowded together as when they were in cages. The “free range” animals live in uncomfortably large groups and in such close proximity that it upsets their natural social order, the “pecking order” in the case of chickens. That, and the fact that their lungs are constantly burning from the methane they inhale and their bones are collapsing because of their unnatural size tend to make them a bit irritable. Chickens and pigs get stressed out in these environments and they start fighting and also injuring themselves. Farmers try to help them by mutilating them, slicing off the tips of beaks and cutting off teeth. But, alas, the animals still suffer more injuries in this environment than they do when they are locked in a cage that prevents them from moving at all. So kindly factory farmers have decided that in order to prevent the stress and injuries that result from the dangerous freedom of being crammed into a windowless shed, they should be caged for their own protection. Just like swaddling a baby.
What do we as a society think about this? According to a 2008 survey, 81% of people in the U.S. realize that animals and humans have the same ability to feel pain, and in surveys conducted in 2012, more than 90% of people said they thought farm animals should be well cared for. According to an earlier Gallup poll, 25% of people in the United States said they thought nonhuman animals should have the same rights as humans. That sounds like good news for animals. Nobody is cramming humans into cages and windowless sheds or killing them in their infancy to munch on their flesh. Yet of this group who thought nonhuman animals should have the same rights as humans, more than half opposed bans on hunting, 38% opposed banning product testing on animals, and 33% opposed stricter animal welfare laws. So as a society, we're a bit confused about this.
Yet the hundreds of millions of dollars donated in the US every year to animal protection organizations and animal shelters shows that, as a society, we do care about animals and we're often willing to put our money where our mouths are. At least when those mouths are talking and not eating. We just don't always know what to do about it. Many of us think it's the responsibility of government or industry to do something about it. It's easy to feel like we don't have the responsibility, or that we don't have the power to change things ourselves. But we do have the power to change things as consumers. Even animal farmers say so when they discuss how consumer perceptions will influence agricultural practices. However, animal farmers are trying to make a living out of using animals, so the weight of their concern will always tip towards economic interests. And so will their attempts at public education.
Animal lovers abound, and so do McDonald's restaurants. So what is going on here? Why is it standard industry practice, and perfectly legal, to treat cows, pigs and chickens in ways that would land someone in jail if it were done to humans, dogs or cats?
Abuse is understood differently whether you are looking at it through the lens of economics, law, or, um, common sense. Law doesn't have a mind of its own and neither does economics, so we can't rely on them to think for us. If we care about ending abuse, we have to end it. The way to do that is simple: stop supporting it. Stop buying the products of abuse.
