'Since compassion for animals is so intimately associated with goodness of character, it may be confidently asserted that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man' Arthur Schopenhauer
'He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.' Immanuel Kant
'The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated' Mahatma Gandhi
Factory farming
The truth of the matter is that there is no clearer and simpler way to show the truth that ignorance and detachment is the number one cause of suffering on this earth, than by comparing how humans treat the animals they ought to cherish the most, the ones they eat, to how we treat the ones that we admire the most but don't eat. Take for example, our treatment of dogs and pigs - both are highly intelligent, social and playful creatures; in fact some scientists say pigs are more intelligent but that is not the point - the point is both are highly feeling animals. So too are chickens, who are very social. Yet we consign animals that we eat to terrible lives - messing up all their natural social habits, removing their freedom and putting them through all kind of emotional and physical hardships, even pumping them up with hormones. The way pate is made, as delicious as it is, is gruesome. Why do we (the great majority) do this if we can treat dogs and cats so well, and have naturally lots of respect for animals that we don't even eat. Shouldn't we care more for the ones that we do, and if that seems cruel - just be vegetarian. Why could we all be so monstrous? The answer is ignorance, nativity and detachment, not because we are monsters. So without further ado, let's dig deeper into how the greed of factory farms, corporations and the slaughter business have corrupted every-day people at the expense of actually decent farmers.
In the UK, 'over a billion animals are confined in factory farms every year – that's 85% of all UK farmed animals'. In the US, it is much worse - according to 2017 data from Animal Rights Think Tank Sentience Institute 'around 99% of US farmed animals live on factory farms'. Farming is now largely a corporate competition, far removed from the original hunter-gatherer and factory farms dangerously produce meat at far lower rates than any organic farmer feasibly can. The issue isn't the farmer, as food-based corporations rake in massive profits, farmers aren't seeing their wages rise - the issue once again is the financial system prioritising ends of means, and shareholder middle-men over consumers and producers of goods abstractly represented in the stock-market. A handful of corporations account for over half of birds slaughtered, likewise pigs, lambs etc in the US and it is similar across other countries. Consider the worlds two biggest corporations that specialise in providing meat; Tyson Food from the US and JBS S.A from Brazil. In the US food prices have risen over the last few decades, since Tyson consolidated its power over the food market in the mid-80s, whilst farmers found themselves receiving less out of every dollar spent on food, but forcibly providing more food. In other words, as a result of both consumers and farmers losing out, Tyson Food make’s literally billions in profits. In Brazil, JBS S.A. is so big it's size threatens the whole country's economy. The Brazilian company slaughters 'a staggering 13 million animals every single day and has annual revenue of $50b'. Clearly corrupt, in 2017, JBS S:A has to pay one of the biggest fines in global corporate history - $3.2bn - after admitting bribing hundreds of politicians. The company has been sued for misleading the public over environment promises too. The company's goal is profit, not caring for animals, farmers and consumers - it goes without saying. Why does any of this matter. Well, almost all these farm animals in corporation's hands are tortured through multiple ways. The 2001 book 'Animal Liberation' by Peter Singer reveals exactly how bad the situation was 20 years ago, and massively helped make inroads into improving the situation, but frankly not enough despite the information it offered, as things have hardly improved since.
Regarding chickens, the first torture put in place is messing with lighting throughout their lives - putting on full light non-stop the first two weeks so that chickens put on weight faster and then when the weight-gains lead to overcrowding and aggression, making the lights unnaturally dim constantly to deter aggressive behavior. Chickens are highly social, and naturally hierarchical - hence the phase pecking order. They maintain a hierarchy based on physicality, but also coolness, courage, etc. just like humans do to an extent. Singer writes 'studies have shown that a flock of up to ninety chickens can maintain a stable social order, each bird knowing its place; but 80,000 birds crowded together in a single shed is obviously a different matter. The birds cannot establish a social order'. Some unnatural vices which arise as a result of such abnormal social conditioning is not only brutal feather-pecking but even cannibalism. The broiler chickens are killed young - Broiler chickens are killed when they are seven weeks old whilst the natural lifespan of such a chicken is about seven years. By the time they are killed, their experience of space will be like having been tinned sardines, being permitted approximately '450 square centimeters for a hen weighing more than two kilos'. Some farmers, to economically reduce the damage of feather-pecking and cannibalism will de-beak the chickens, initially done 15 chickens a minute style with a blowtorch. Zoologist Professor F. W. Rogers Brambell reveals the harm this does - 'Between the horn and the bone is a thin layer of highly sensitive soft tissue, resembling the "quick" of the human nail. The hot knife used in debeaking cuts through this complex of horn, bone and sensitive tissue, causing severe pain.' From all the stress, birds can panic and rush to one corner of their shed and die from suffocation, called 'piling'. Chickens suffer more from a mysterious stress-provoking disease called 'acute death syndrome'. However, it is considered worth the economic price to be able to house tens of thousands in one place instead of hundreds where they naturally should be housed, at the expense of a rise in casualties of a minority of the chickens. The end of the chickens lives is no less stressful than the poor lives they leave behind - they experience sunlight for the first time before being carried out upside down and as Singer writes 'summarily stuffed into crates which are piled on the back of a truck. Then they are driven to the "processing" plant where the chickens are to be killed, cleaned, and turned into neat plastic packages. At the plant they are taken off the truck and stacked, still in crates, to await their turn. That may take several hours, during which time they remain without food and water. Finally they are taken out of the crates and hung up side down on the conveyor belt taking them to the knife that will end their joyless existence.' Meanwhile, hens that lay eggs are regularly caged in such cramp spaces that they cannot even stretch their wings. That's the equivalent of a human not ever being allowed to walk, or worse. Singer explains the severity of this problem as the stress provokes numerous fatalaties writing that 'it is commonplace for an egg farm to lose between 10 and 15 percent of its hens in one year, many of them clearly dying of stress from overcrowding and related problems'. Lastly, bear in mind - in 1955 it took on average 73 days to raise a full-grown chicken, now it takes just 48 on average and chickens now grow to be nearly three times the size that they used to.
Pigs are arguably just as socially intelligent as dogs, in fact they can learn signals from humans like dogs. They play a lot, and form groups, and sows have their own natural and independent ways to give birth. However, when factory farmed pigs are doomed to a most unnatural life, where as Singer writes they ‘have nothing to do but eat, sleep, stand up, and lie down. Usually they have no straw or other bedding material, because this complicates the task of cleaning.’ They are labeled as greedy but ‘British research has shown that pigs kept in a barren environment are so bored that if they are given both food and an earth-filled trough, they will root around in the earth before eating.’ Bored and unable to move about, they gain weight, which pleases the corporations, and become aggressive – biting other pigs tails, which displeases the corporations. So farmers decide to prevent the latter by tail docking – cutting off the pigs tails in anticipation of the aggression their lifestyles produce, which according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture is a ‘common practice’. This evil practice which pigs hate would be avoidable if they were just given some more room and straw bedding, and it’s made worse by the fact the likes of the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommend it without any recommendation that pigs should be given anesthetics beforehand. Confined pigs suffer more from diseases such as ‘porcine stress syndrome’ which often leads to extreme stress and then sudden death. The lack of space affects the atmosphere making it suffocating and full of ammonia. Floors are made of concrete for easier waste disposal but this all leads to immense foot damage rates, hip damage, sores and leg deformities. Whilst pigs bred for slaughter are over-fed, sows (pigs bread for breading) are typically malnourished, some studies showing eating only 60% of what they naturally would do.
Singer writes 'By the combination of mechanical nursing and other novel techniques like super-ovulation' there are produced 'as many as forty-five pigs per sow per year, instead of the sixteen that have been the average.' He finds 'two aspects of these developments' to be 'alarming' - 'First there is the effect on the baby pigs, deprived of their mothers and confined in wire cages. In mammals, the early separation of mother and child causes distress to both. As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy. The second alarming aspect of the new techniques is that the sow is being turned into a living reproduction machine...Under the best conditions there is little joy in an existence that consists of pregnancy, birth, having one's babies taken away, and becoming pregnant again so that the cycle can be repeated-and sows do not live under the best conditions. They are closely confined for both pregnancy and birth. While pregnant they are usually locked into individual metal stalls two feet wide and six feet long, or scarcely bigger than the sow herself; or they may be chained by a collar around the neck; or they may be in stalls yet
still .be chained. There they will live for two or three months. During all that time, they will be unable to walk more than a single step forward or backward, or to turn around, or to exercise in any other way. Again, savings on feed and labor are the reason for this brutal form of solitary imprisonment. When the sow is ready to give birth she is moved-but only to a "farrowing pen. " (Humans give birth, but pigs "farrow.") Here the sow may be even more tightly restricted in her movements than she was in her stall. A device nicknamed "the iron maiden," consisting of an iron frame that prevents free movement, has been introduced and widely used in many countries.'
Beef cattle that used to see the outdoors for at least two years now are lucky to be free for 6 months and by and large (over 70%) are rounded up and sent to feedlots, where instead of having their natural diet of grass, they feed on cereals and grains which are lacking in fibre for them and can cause stomach abscesses, but does fatten them up faster.
For the production of milk, calves are taken from their mother’s at an early age and fed a cheaper liquid substitute to its natural food, cow’s milk. Lots of dairy cows are reared indoors. The mother’s are milked twice a day for ten months in a process of hyper-lactation and re-impregnated on the third month, and the process repeated – usually five or six times before the cow is slaughtered for hamburger or dog food.
The issue is, Singer writes, that ‘in order to obtain the highest output, producers feed cows high-energy concentrates such as soybeans, fish meal, brewing byproducts, and even poultry manure. The cow's peculiar digestive system cannot adequately process this food . The rumen is designed to digest slowly fermenting grass. During peak production, a few weeks after giving birth, the cow often expends more energy than she is able to take in. Because her capacity to produce surpasses her ability to metabolize her feed, the cow begins to break down and use her own body tissues; she begins "milking off her own back.”’ Moreover, he tells ‘Dairy cows are sensitive animals who manifest both psychological and physiological disturbances as a result of stress. They have a strong need to identify with their "caretakers." Today's system of dairy production does not allow the farmer more than five minutes a day with each animal.’ Finally, they are fed Bovine growth hormone (BST) and as a consequence in combination with their diet are plagued from illnesses. David Kronfeld, professor of nutrition and chief of large animal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, reported ‘in one trial over half of the cows given BST were treated for mastitis (a painful inflammation of the mammary gland) compared to none in a control group receiving no BST.’
Singer sums up that an animal should have ‘five basic freedoms’ – to at least have sufficient freedom of movement to be able without difficulty to turn around, groom itself, get up, lie down and stretch its limbs, yet these freedoms ‘are still denied to all caged hens, all sows in stalls and tethers, and all veal calves in crates.’
Animal testing
If you search on the internet say primate researcher Professor Harry Harlow, you will find positive, celebratory articles like 'The Science of Affection: How a Rebel Researcher Pioneered the Study of Love in the 1950s and Illuminated How Parents Shape Children’s Emotional Patterns'. The article will go on to describe how his 'obsession' was 'that love matters' and this led him to 'study mother-infant attachment and how the effects of maternal separation and social isolation illuminate the nature of love.' Whilst that sounds all noble, if you look deeper into Harry Harlow's practices to prove the nature of love, they couldn't be more sadistic and further from love. He and another researcher Suomi experimented using 'cloth-monkey mothers who upon schedule or demand, would just eject high-pressure compressed air. It would blow the animal's skin practically off its body'. He thereby could show that the baby monkey still 'ćlung tighter and tighter to the mother, because a frightened infant clings to its mother at all costs'. Lovely right?
That wasn't enough - they did various experiments showing babies would always cling to their surrogate mothers - one other monster surrogate mother 'would rock so violently that the baby's head and teeth would rattle', another 'had an embedded wire frame within its body which would spring forward and eject the infant from its ventral surface', then there was the 'porcupine mother' who 'would eject sharp brass spikes over all of the ventral surface of its body'. That wasn't enough, they then forced rape and solitary confinement on female monkeys to train female monkeys to not have any attachment to their babies, even when crying or worse, as the researchers described to be 'brutal or lethal. One of their favorite tricks was to crush the infant's skull with their teeth. But the really sickening behavior pattern was that of smashing the infant's face to the floor, and then rubbing it back and forth'. Harlow concluded with no hint of irony himself '“If monkeys have taught us anything, it’s that you’ve got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.”
Consider another American neurosurgeon and bio-ethicist Robert J. White who working in general hospitals 'specialized in transplanting the heads of monkeys and keeping these monkey heads alive in fluid after they have been totally detached from their bodies.' Such experiments are tragic and only take place due to public ignorance and indifference. However, America isn't the worst - barbaric animal experiments are permitted across the world although more protective laws were put in place to prevent such issues in 'Australia, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom' according to Peter Singer. Consider, 'at the Heller Institute of Medical Research, Tel Aviv, Israel, in experiments published in 1 971 and paid for by the United States public Health Service, T. Rosenthal, Y. Shapiro, and others placed thirty-three dogs "randomly procured from the local dog pound" in a temperature-controlled chamber and forced them to exercise on a treadmill in temperatures as high as 1 1 3 degrees Fahrenheit until "they collapsed in heatstroke or reached a predetermined rectal temperature." Twenty-five of the dogs died. Nine more dogs were then subjected to a temperature of 122 degrees Fahrenheit without treadmill exercise. Only two of these dogs survived longer than twenty-four hours.' Numerous similar studies exist, paid for by tax-payers in the name of science. You have to ask the question how these individuals are not charged for mass-animal cruelty and murder?
Moreover, so often animal studies are pointless as Thalidomide, Opren, Practolol and Zipeprol show - 'even after thalidomide was suspected of causing deformities in humans, laboratory tests on pregnant dogs, cats, rats, monkeys, hamsters, and chickens all failed to produce deformities'. Meanwhile, drugs like morphine cause mice to go into 'frenzies', insulin produces 'deformities in infant rabbits and mice, but not in humans' and should penicillin have 'been judged by its toxicity on guinea pigs, it might never have been used on humans'. The truth is animal testing is glorified and seen as advanced, but in reality is far from effective, expensive and over-rated - just consider how different a human is to a guinea pig, dog, chicken - it doesn't require a brain scientist to realise that comparative drug testing for human-safety is a bit of a stretch. The brutality of most animal-testing in the face of such ineffective results is shocking. Consider how many billions have been spent on animal experiments unsuccessfully to fight cancer and that 'tens of thousands of animals have been forced to inhale tobacco smoke for months and even years, the proof of the connection between tobacco use and lung cancer was based on data from clinical observations in human beings'.
International differences
According to the latest Animal Protection Index Rankings no country warrants an A for its way of treating animals. However, six received a B at least and all were European. They were - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden. Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Sweden led the way when they passed a law in July 1988 requiring the abolition of cages for hens over the subsequent ten years and that cows, pigs and animals raised for their furs must be kept "in as natural an environment as possible." Meanwhile, the sad news was that in 2023 Switzerland held a direct referendum on whether to ban factory farming - 63% of voters voted for factory farming. Still that was a groundbreaking referendum. It is only a matter of time before people wake up to the disgusting nature of factory farms and for countries to ban factory farming on the basis of animal torture, as the referendum shows (a 14% shift in opinion will surely happen withing my lifetime).
References
(1) Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, 2001
(2) Factory Farms Are Rising Across The UK, Compasion in World Farming, https://www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/factory-farming-map/
(3) The Science of Affection: How a Rebel Researcher Pioneered the Study of Love in the 1950s and Illuminated How Parents Shape Children’s Emotional Patterns, Maria Popova, 2016, https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/07/07/love-at-goon-park-harry-harlow-deborah-blum/
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