Clear Vision Trust

The sufferings of farm animals

Old macdonald had a factory

What do we think of when we stroll along the aisles of the supermarket looking at the almost clinical cellophane-wrapped parcels of lamb or beef? Few of us have had the opportunity to see what goes on in the production of meat. Our ideas about farming are often based on childhood picture-book illustrations of happy cows, fluffy yellow chicks, and pink pigs with curly tails running around a farmyard. Our ideas about farming - if we have any - can be highly romanticized and sanitized. Most of us have never set foot in a farmyard, and I probably wouldn't have either, if it were not for the fact that I'd trained as a vet. I'd like to take you on a guided tour of the modern farm. We don't have the time or space to look at every detail, or every animal; I will give just a few examples to convey a feeling for what life is like for a farm animal today.

Life for farm animals nowadays is not pleasant and you will almost certainly find parts of this account distressing. The accounts I give are of general modern farm practices - they don't represent the worst (and sometimes illegal) things that go on in the factory farm. There are relatively compassionate farmers who keep their animals in far better conditions than I describe. In addition, the regulations governing animal welfare, as well as the degree of enforcement of those regulations, varies from country to country. In some ways animals in less industrialized countries have freer lives, but in other ways life - and death - for animals, just as for humans, can be far crueller in poorer parts of the world. What you are about to read is a fairly typical account of how farm animals live in the industrialized world.

Cattle

A cow's natural life expectancy is twenty years - fairly long for an animal - but most won't live beyond four. The demands placed upon their bodies, draining milk at a rate which nature never intended, will typically leave them spent by their fourth year. Naturally, their bodies would produce less than 1,000 litres of milk in a year. Due to selective breeding and modern husbandry techniques, they deliver between 6,000 and 12,000 litres.

To achieve this they are milked almost all year round, even while pregnant. There is a period of only a few weeks during which they are given a respite. This is when they are heavily pregnant and their body simply couldn't cope with a growing foetus as well as milking.

Dairy cows often experience metabolic diseases because they can't take in enough nutrition to meet the demands of the milking machine. Their systems may run short of calcium or magnesium, bringing them to the point where they physically collapse. The demands placed on the cows' metabolism mean that they are often effectively malnourished, no matter how much they eat.

Cows are commonly artificially inseminated with semen from one of the large beef breeds. This gives a more valuable calf, which is good for the farmer. Unfortunately for the cow, this means that they give birth to a far larger calf than their pelvic girdle allows for. They frequently suffer greatly giving birth to these huge offspring, or require Caesarean operations, which weaken them further and shorten their lives.

A cow has to calve every year to produce milk, but her calf is taken away shortly after birth and fed on reconstituted milk. The mother's milk is too valuable a commodity to waste on a calf. Like most animals, the cow has a strongly developed maternal instinct and it's distressing for her to lose her calf. It's upsetting for the calf as well.

Whereas a calf would have suckled, on and off, all day long, the cow is milked by machine, usually only twice a day. Cows frequently suffer from painful mastitis - due mainly to the amount of milk they have to produce. The pressure of accumulated milk causes great pain. Cows sometimes kick their own udders because they are in such distress. Eventually the strain may cause the ligaments of the udder to give way and the cow will be useless for milking. A short trip to the abattoir and her brief life is over.

People often assume that cows produce milk just because they are cows, and that producing milk is what they do - as if it were their job. But cows produce milk only in order to feed a calf. They have to be made pregnant every year so that they keep producing milk. This results in a lot of calves as a side-effect of milk production. What happens to a calf once it is taken from its mother? Not many need to be kept to maintain the dairy herd. Some 42 per cent of them end up as beef at around eighteen months old. Some are sent off a few days old to be reared as veal. The meat industry and the dairy industry are inseparable and as much as 80 per cent of beef comes from dairy farms.

The calves destined to become beef tend to have the most natural lives. Some are kept on grass and can roam relatively freely, although many live out their lives on concrete and are fed concentrates to accelerate their growth. They may be castrated and dehorned. Both these operations are highly stressful and usually very painful. The animals find being handled very distressing and they are often castrated without anaesthetic. Animals are dehorned to make them safer to handle. The operation should be performed under local anaesthetic. Unfortunately, animals are usually dehorned in batches, so the anaesthetic often hasn't started to work or it may have begun to wear off by the time the dehorning starts. Worse still, I knew one vet who didn't always use anaesthetics at all because some farmers wouldn't pay the extra cost. 'If they see me taking the anaesthetic out of my bag they just laugh,' he told me.

You may wonder why having a horn cut off requires anaesthetics. The reason is that horns contain nerves and blood vessels. Having a horn removed is not like having your fingernails trimmed but more like having a finger or even a hand sawn off.

Veal was originally just the meat of an unweaned one- or two-day-old calf. Because they were so young, and had never eaten grass or exercised, their meat was unusually pale and tender. It was also expensive because there isn't much eating on a baby calf. Now veal production has become an industrial process. The calves are still taken from their mothers at a day old, but they are now kept in highly artificial conditions in order to keep their flesh pale and soft. Veal calves often live in pens so small that they can barely move. This stops them from using their muscles, so their flesh remains very tender. Sometimes they are kept in virtual darkness because there is a rather irrational belief that this contributes to the paleness of the meat. This makes observation for illness next to impossible, of course, so disease may go untreated.

However, the very nature of veal production prevents the welfare of veal calves being of crucial interest to those who rear them. The calves are allowed no solid food and are fed only on milk substitutes deficient in iron. Veal calves are deliberately made ill with anaemia in order to keep the meat pale. A malnourished calf is the whole point of the veal system. In addition, their stomachs, which are designed to process large quantities of roughage, are deprived of anything solid whatsoever. The calves are not even allowed straw to lie on in case they eat it. Their craving for roughage is so strong that they chew on wood and eat their own coats. Their lives are very distressing.

However, even before the calves reach the veal units they have to face the stresses of transportation. It's unpleasant and distressing for us to be in a bus or crowded underground train in the rush-hour; how much more so then for animals being transported for (as current uk regulations allow) up to 28 hours in such conditions, for much of that time unable to feed or drink. At least when we endure such circumstances for a much shorter period we know why we are there - the animals are terror-stricken because of the unfamiliarity of the whole experience. It was against these movements of animals that thousands of people protested at airports and docks in the uk in 1995. These mass demonstrations resulted in changes in the regulations affecting uk veal production, but conditions in many other parts of the world are unchanged.

Chickens

Chickens are reared in more intensive conditions than any other farm animal. Despite the increased availability of so-called free-range eggs the overwhelming majority of laying chickens still live in tiny wire cages in vast sheds. Usually there are five birds to a cage, and each bird has a living space slightly less than the size of this opened book. There is hardly enough room to turn round. Birds kept in these conditions develop 'vices', or destructive behavioural habits, and they often have their beaks painfully severed to prevent them from pecking at, and even eating, each other. It's worth adding that chickens are not particularly nasty creatures. It's simply intensely frustrating for them not to be able to fulfil any of their natural urges. They aren't able to stretch their wings, dust- bathe, walk, establish social structures, forage for food, or sit on eggs. Take away these natural outlets and birds go mad.

The wire of the cages imprisoning the birds irritates their feet, resulting in sores that will go untreated (with 30,000 birds in a shed there is no personal attention). The birds' feet can even become 'welded' to the wire mesh as their claws or flesh grow around the metal. If they are lucky they are within reach of food and water when this happens.

Laying birds are usually killed at the end of a year. They are all females, of course. Skilled workers separate the males from the females at one day old and treat them as a waste product. They may be killed by gassing, or suffocated in rubbish bags, or they may be thrown into boxes where they crush and suffocate each other. Some, it is claimed, are thrown live into mincing machines to be used for animal feed.(footnote 1) They look exactly like the fluffy yellow Easter chicks that we see on greetings cards.

Many so-called free-range chickens don't fare much better. Despite the more attractive label, many rarely get outside. They are often crammed into sheds in their tens of thousands in conditions that are far from natural. These overcrowded conditions also prevent the birds from fulfilling their full range of natural activities and from establishing a proper social structure. Bullying and stress are common. A small group of dominant and aggressive hens can prevent the others from getting to the outside world, making a nonsense of the 'free-range' label.

Chickens for eating are called 'broilers.' They live (you're probably getting the hang of this by now) in huge sheds in tens of thousands, sometimes crowded together on the floor in a living carpet, sometimes in racks of cages. The amount of space recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture gives them about the same amount of room, when fully grown, as a battery hen.

They stand on their own accumulated faeces, which quickly become disease-ridden. The lights are dimmed to reduce the stress of overcrowding so the stockman probably won't see animals that are ill or have died. In any event there may be only one stockman for tens of thousands of birds, making effective supervision impossible. Health experts consider these sheds to be a serious hazard for workers. As one writer points out:

'Researchers warned chicken farmers to spend as little time as possible in their sheds and to wear a respirator when they go in. But the study said nothing about respirators for the chickens.(footnote 2)

Pigs

Few pigs will ever have the opportunity to be outside, to run, to wallow in mud, to dig, to nest (yes, wild pigs build nests), or to play. Pigs are as smart as clever dogs, and like most intelligent animals pigs are very playful.

Instead, most pigs live in concrete boxes or are confined by iron bars in warehouse-sized sheds. The breeding sows have the worst time of it. Most of the time they stand singly in stalls so narrow that they are unable to turn round. They have no bedding and lie on bare concrete. Pigs don't find it any easier than you or I to lie on concrete, so you can perhaps imagine the discomfort. They have no way of socializing or playing or of fulfilling any of their natural impulses. Life is brutally painful and devastatingly boring.

The sow leaves her stall only when it is time for mating or for transfer to the farrowing accommodation where she will give birth to her litter. Again she lives on bare concrete and often can do nothing except lie down and stand up because the space is too narrow to allow anything else.

A farm worker snaps her piglets' eye-teeth off, severs their tails, and castrates the males - all usually at a few days old and without anaesthetic. After weaning, the piglets are kept in batches - usually on a concrete slatted floor in a bare concrete box. Any intelligent animal would become bored in such conditions and pigs are no exception. They often become so frustrated in such unnatural and limiting conditions that they become deranged. Young pigs often indulge in neurotic behaviour such as suckling each other or inanimate objects. They frequently go insane. A common sign of this is tail-biting, where pigs bite the tails of their fellow-inmates, gnawing them to the base of the spine. This is why they have their tails removed at an early age. However, once bored pigs have reached this level of psychopathy they may gnaw the remaining stump of the tail as far down as they can. Another similar 'vice' that pigs develop in these conditions is vulva-biting. The prominent vulva of the females is an easy target for a deranged pig.

Because so many pigs live in one building, airborne infections spread easily. As a result, pneumonia is widespread. When animals stand on slats above their own faeces and urine, as they usually do, the ammonia produced is an irritant to the respiratory system, further aiding the spread of respiratory infections. Leg injuries and arthritis are common because the pigs live on concrete and cannot exercise, and because forced rapid growth puts strain on the joints.

The concrete boxes in which fattening pigs live commonly overheat in warm weather. Since pigs, contrary to the popular saying, cannot sweat, they have to roll in their own faeces to keep cool. Imagine yourself in the same position.

If you are beginning to think that pigs are nasty animals because of tail- and vulva-biting then think again. You won't see this kind of behaviour in the wild. It is the result of sheer boredom. They are signs of insanity. Humans kept in similar conditions would do crazy things as well. The 'vice' is surely not that of the animal but the conditions that bring about this derangement.

Sheep

Sheep are the least intensively reared farm animals. In most of the world they tend to have relatively natural lives, brought indoors only for lambing and receiving little handling except during shearing and dipping. The downside of this is that they often die through exposure, neglect, or starvation. Sheep form a large percentage of the 16,000 large animals that die on British farms every day.(footnote 3)Many sheep are kept on hill farms and at lambing time in particular their mortality rate, due to disease and exposure to a harsh hill climate, is especially high. In Britain, 23 per cent of single-born lambs and 55 per cent of twins die on extensive pastures.(footnote 4)

The thick woolly coats that we associate with sheep are not entirely natural but are the product of selective breeding, or 'unnatural selection'. In the rain their wool soaks up masses of water (making for a fairly miserable sheep), and in the summer they overheat. Sheep are very prone to painfully itchy skin infections due to their woolly coats. The organophosphate chemicals in which they are dipped to prevent the spread of parasitic diseases are a major health hazard for the farmers, who don't actually have to go into the dip-bath. What does it do to the sheep?

A sheep's main problem is its lack of financial value. Few sheep are worth much, so they tend not to be given prompt medical attention. If you ever see sheep grazing 'kneeling down' it's because standing is too painful for them. This happens when the ground is persistently wet during periods of heavy rainfall, and fungal infections, followed by secondary bacterial infections, invade the hoofs, causing great pain. Judging by the severity of some of the cases I've observed, first aid for sheep is not usually a priority.

A story one farmer told me sums up the lack of regard given to individual sheep. One of his ewes was having trouble lambing. Rather than waste money calling the vet to do a Caesarean - which would cost as much as the ewe was worth - he did the operation himself, with a carving knife and no anaesthetic. He was pleased with himself for having saved money.

The kind of treatment farm animals receive may seem incredible. What would happen if you or I tried to keep a dog in the conditions that a pig has to endure, or if we confined a pet bird so that it couldn't spread its wings? In any civilized country a court would quite rightly prosecute us for cruelty. Farmers can keep animals in such conditions only because of the demand for cheap meat. There is a chain of causality connecting a consumer's appetite with the kind of suffering we have seen.

Fish are the only commonly eaten animals living an entirely natural life (except for farmed fish). However, their death through suffocation when they are taken from the water must be deeply unpleasant. Fish farming causes serious pollution, not least because of the heavy metals used in anti-fouling paints used to prevent molluscs and seaweed colonizing the fishes' cages. We have to remember that eating fish also puts us into competition with fish-eating wildlife. Part of the true price of fish is the culling programmes carried out on wild animals like seals and birds of prey to make sure there are enough fish for human consumption. Vast numbers of the fish caught in nets are not used for human consumption. The fishing industry call them 'trash', and dumps their corpses at sea. 'Trash' can constitute as much as half of a catch.(footnote 5)An additional indicator of our lack of regard for both fish and land animals is that 40 to 50 per cent of the world's fish catch is fed to farm animals - most of which are naturally vegetarian.(footnote 6)

The way of all flesh

'Neither with their legs nor with their horns do the cows hurt anybody, being obedient like lambs and yielding jars of milk. The king, seizing them by the horns, had them killed by a sword. Then the gods, the ancestors, Indra, the titans and the demons cried out as the sword fell on the cows: 'This is unjust!'(footnote 7)

Few of us would wish to visit an abattoir. They are hellish places. The stench of death, the blood-slicked floors, the noise of machinery, chain-saws tearing flesh and bone, the report of the captive bolt pistols that stun animals before they have their throats cut and, above all, the noises of fear and distress as animals are led to their deaths; all contribute to make a slaughterhouse a hell on earth.

In the abattoir, haste is essential to keep costs down. Animals have to be bullied to come forward to the killing area as quickly as possible. Some abattoir workers believe that a distressed animal makes for better meat due to the release of adrenaline. This 'fight or flight' hormone - released in conditions of fear - tenderizes the muscles and helps stop the meat from becoming infected with bacteria. Slaughtermen are often therefore at no pains to make the animals' last minutes less distressing than they need be. Electric cattle prods goad animals towards the slaughtering area. That these implements are distressing can be inferred from the fact that they are a favoured instrument of torture in countries with the worst records of human rights abuses.

Abattoir workers have to stun all animals that are to be slaughtered to lessen the animals' distress. The exception to this is Muslim (halal) or Jewish (kosher) slaughter, where animals are fully conscious while they are turned upside-down and have their throats cut. The distress of this is unimaginable, and it is worth remembering that many animals slaughtered in this way end up on the shelves of our supermarkets.(footnote 8)

A common method of stunning is by captive-bolt pistol. A metal rod is fired from a gun into the brain, destroying the higher functions. A flexible plastic rod is then inserted in the bullet hole and stirred to destroy the reflexes in the lower brain - a process known as 'pithing'. Pithing is done to prevent the corpse from thrashing around and injuring the workers. Pigs, and sometimes sheep, are often stunned with electric tongs, which, in theory, render the animal unconscious. More rarely a carbon dioxide gas chamber may be used. These have been described by researchers as causing 'severe respiratory distress'.(footnote 9)

Electric tongs are, understandably, dangerous to the workers, and problems arise because low voltages are used in order to render them less hazardous. Animals commonly begin to recover consciousness before they are killed. In any event some people believe that animals stunned in this way are not unconscious at all, merely paralysed. One hopes that this is not true - it must be appalling to be aware of what is happening but unable even to cry out. Even when carried out effectively the electric stunning is likely to be extremely painful, as humans who have experienced similar shocks report.(footnote 10)The actual killing is achieved by cutting the arteries that carry blood to the brain.

Chickens are killed in specialized processing plants. They too have to be stunned first, and this is usually done by suspending them upside-down by the legs on a conveyor line that leads them towards an electrically charged saline bath. Inevitably, as some of the birds struggle, they manage to miss being stunned and are still conscious when they reach the rotating blades that sever the carotid arteries.

Some authorities believe it is better to allow animals destined for slaughter to see their fellows being killed in order to shorten the time they have to wait in terror. Others hold that animals should wait longer so that they are spared seeing their fellows being killed.(footnote 11) It is a useful exercise in empathy to decide which we would prefer if such circumstances were forced upon us. Afterwards we could reflect on whether we want to put animals in that situation at all.

Notes: