80-136 lecture notes 7/12/01
Should we eat animals? Down on the factory farm.
- Factory Farming
- Big companies buy out small family farms or push them out of business
- Economic advantages
- Economic principles drive choice of farming methods, nor moral ones
- Methods cause animal suffering
- Two issues:
- How they live
- How they are slaughtered
- Key Questions
- How much animal suffering is acceptable?
- How strong is the inductive claim that factory farming causes animals
to suffer?
- Are Singer's claims credible?
- How strong must it be to be significant?
- What, if any, public policies should be created to limit the amount
of animal suffering?
- Chickens
- Background
- Removed from natural setting post-WWII
- Agribusiness considers huge success story
- Model for other farm animals
- Most legal protections don't apply
- General method
- Confined indoors
- Kept on floor or tiers of cages
- Controlled environment to foster quick growth on less food
- Overcrowded
- Broiler Chickens
- Killed when they are 7 weeks old
- Natural life span of a chicken is 7 years
- Results of overcrowding
- Stress leads to fighting and cannibalism
- Vices cost money
- No vices in traditional farming
- Hence no need for debeaking
- "Piling" (smothering)
- "Acute death syndrome" (ADS)
- Ammonia filled air
- Ulcerated feet, breast blisters, hock burns...
- Myth: economic rewards and good life for birds (& animals)
go hand in hand
- Profitability isn't compromised by overcrowding
- See quote on p. 106
-
Fact sheet on chicken farming
-
Pictures
- Slaughter
- Turkeys
- Live 13-24 weeks in similar conditions
- Hens
- Egg factories
- Live 18-24 months
- Crowed in battery cages
- Can't nest, walk around, stretch their wings, stand comfortably...
- High mortality rate
- An egg farm loses 10-15% hens/year
-
Pictures
- Pigs
- Life span 20 years; slaughtered after 6 months
- Like dogs, high intelligence demands special requirements
- Physical comfort
- Ability to nest
- Likes to play (gadgets)
- Confined indoors like chickens
- Kept in barren, overcrowded conditions
- Mechanical sows
- Farrowing Pens
- Finishing Pens
-
Pictures
- Video
- Tail biting
- Response: tail docking
- See quote on p. 121
- Porcine Stress Syndrome (PSS)
- Psychological disorders
- Profitability isn't compromised
- Veal
- Background
- Flesh of young calf
- Pale, tender
- pre-1950s: sold after two days
- PROVIMI method: 16 weeks
- penned in (indoors)
- liquid diet: deprive them of iron
- iron turns the flesh red
- pale pink flesh=anemic
- Veal stalls
- Chained around the neck
- can't turn around, lie down
- can't goom
- can't suck on anything
- can't ruminate (chew cud)
- leads to digestive disorders
- kept anemic
- given no water so that they eat more
- kept in overheated stalls so that they're dehydrated
- kept in the dark 22/24 hours
- many don't survive
- but high profit margin for veal producers
- veal fetches a good price
-
Video
- "The whole laborious, wasteful and painful process exists for the
sole purpose of pandering to people who insist on pale, soft veal..." (136)
- Dairy Cows
- automated milking
- indoor confinement
- pushed to produce 10x more milk than is natural
-
pictures
- Cattle
- branding
- de-horning
- transportation
- slaughter issues
- Killing
- electric current or captive bolt considered most humane
- p. 150
- frantic pace
- poleax (sledgehammer)
- Jewish and Moslem dietary laws
- animal must be "healthy and moving" when killed
- FDA act: animal must not fall in the blood of a previously slaughtered
animal
-
pictures
- Productivity vs. Welfare
- Welfare
- = well-being of individual animals
- Five basic freedoms
- to turn around
- to groom
- to get up
- to lie down
- to stretch the limbs freely
- Productivity
- = output per $ or unit of resources
- farm animals have been chosen because of their ability to grow
and reproduce under adverse conditions
- use of antibiotics & genetic engineering makes it easier
for the agri-business to overlook welfare considerations
- Genetic Engineering issues