THE
Of

SILENG
THE LAMBS

v

4

 

 

=

tl

How industrial farming harms humans
By Adam Tatelman, Staff Writer

Per farming: the industrial
process that converts
carbohydrates to animal protein
for mass distribution and
consumption. If these terms
seem too clinical, that’s because
they lack the ethical context,
without which the only concern
is efficiency. Consequently, we
must consider the methods by
which such efficiency is achieved
as well as the harm industrial
agribusiness inflicts on both
humanity and animals alike.

Since the average North
American citizen consumes
almost 14 ounces of meat per day,
producing 99 per cent of all North
American meat products—which
factory farms do—is a tall order.
According to the North American
Meat Institute (NAMI), 8.6 billion
chickens, 33.2 million cattle, 239.4
million turkeys, 2.3 million sheep,
and 12 million hogs were raised
for slaughter by factory farms
in 2013. That’s over 93 billion
pounds of meat, consistent with
the average rate of consumption.
This proves that there is generally
no surplus; the great efficiency
of factory farms is their ability to
distribute all of their production
every year.

Considering the sheer size of
this inventory, that’s impressive.
How do factory farms achieve
this level of efficiency? Logically,
the life of a livestock animal from
birth to slaughter must be as brief
as possible, while still allowing for
its maximum growth potential in
this time frame. Livestock must
also be bred as quickly and in as
great a quantity as is manageable,
ensuring high population at all
times. Expenses on feed and care
must be minimized, and any unfit
animals must be discarded.

Factory farms continent-
wide have a booming clientele
in the form of chain stores

s-

and fast-food distributors like
McDonalds, Tim Hortons, Saputo,
and many others. They are both
the primary distributors and
beneficiaries of animal meat
products; they are also listed as
partners of the National Farm
Animal Care Council (NFACC)
which regulates Canadian factory
farming practices, primarily to
promote the factory farm business
model. The vested interest here is
obvious, so what kind of farming
methods does the NFACC permit?

Consider the life of an
average factory-farmed egg-laying
chicken. She spends her short life
packed inside a wire cage with up
to 10 other chickens where each
bird is allotted less than 8.5 by
u inches of space. Many go stir
crazy from the crowding and peck
each other to death. To avoid this,
their beaks are clipped off—no
anesthetic is provided, since
that is an unnecessary expense.
Through weeks of malnutrition,
these chickens are kept in a
perpetual egg-laying state.

After a couple of years, a hen’s
productivity slows. No longer
useful, she is slaughtered.

Broiler chickens live similar
lives, except they are bred for
maximum breast size—most
cannot even stand due to their
weight. Ducks and geese are force
fed through tubes for weeks at a
time in order to swell their livers
to many times their normal size,
in order to make foie gras. Sows
spend six months in tiny crates,
forced to breed again and again,
repeatedly traumatized as each
litter is taken away from them.

Beef cattle spend a year
confined in barren feedlots,
crowded shoulder-to-shoulder
and knee-deep in their own waste,
force-fed improper grain diets
which are engineered solely to
promote rapid weight gain. Like

sows, dairy cows spend their
entire lives in a traumatic cycle of
pregnancy in order to stimulate
perpetual lactation.

The newborns are treated
most harshly. Male offspring
of dairy cows live six weeks in
tiny crates, fattened for veal in
enclosures that keep them from
even turning around. Since there
is no market for male offspring
of egg-laying hens, they are
euthanized moments after they
hatch. Piglets are castrated at
birth without anesthetic.

All of this is done in the
name of efficiency; it seems
ethics and efficiency in factory
farming co-exist only up to the
vanishing point where greed
meets opportunity. This method
of farming is predicated upon
the idea that animals exist to be
used by humans; that they have
no rights, cannot have rights, and
that there is no ethical problem
with treating them like farm
equipment instead of sentient
creatures that require humane
care.

This dichotomy breeds
considerable academic debate
on the “personhood” of
farm animals. Theoretically
interesting, but often the focus
shifts from advocating for
ethical restrictions on industrial
agribusiness to debating whether
those restrictions are needed.
Abolitionists like Tom Regan,
an animal rights advocate, claim
that all forms of life have equal
and inherent value, and thus a
right to basic humane treatment.
Their opponents, like University
of Michigan philosophy professor
Carl Cohen, maintain that
animals, lacking the ability to
make or enforce moral claims,
cannot have rights or obligations
of any kind.

Total abolition of animal