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All photos were obtained from Cackle Hatchery's Website
“I suspect the suffering experienced by animals in factory farms is greater than that experienced by many of those sick dogs and cats we choose to euthanize, as factory farmed animals often experience an entire lifetime of suffering compared with a few weeks or months of pain.” I’ve written several posts proving that livestock animals actually live very comfortable lives (this is probably my most complete one). I don’t care that you watched an undercover video on YouTube. I don’t even care if you’ve watched a hundred of them. The majority of these films are outdated or filmed in developing countries, meaning they are simply not an accurate representation of where your meat would come from. Others still are taken out of context by people who don’t understand agriculture. I’ve actually been to the farms. I’ve seen this with my own eyes and I’ve read the science. However, there are many elements of crop production that can make life very unpleasant for the wildlife animals that call that land home, even if they’re lucky enough to survive the machinery or toxic chemicals. Having their primary food source stripped away from them causes them to go hungry or search for new sources of food. Considering that crop fields can often stretch hundreds upon hundreds of acres, this may be near impossible. With hunger comes a higher incidence of very painful diseases and infections. Cover crops are usually planted in the months outside of growing season, meaning that the landscape is changing year-round. It may seem insignificant to you and me, but imagine how disorienting that must be to small rodents or ground-dwelling birds. Consider the short natural life-span of many of these smaller mammals, then imagine how horrifying harvest must be to them. The entire world they’ve ever known is wiped away in moments, leaving death and destruction in its path. Imagine how they must perceive the loud noises of the farm equipment they hear day and night. Really, I can’t imagine a human parallel to the disequilibrium of the lives of these field animals. Why Livestock Animals Die a More Humane Death Than Field Animals I really like Mike Archer’s thoughts on this issue: “When cattle, kangaroos and other meat animals are harvested they are killed instantly. Mice die a slow and very painful death from poisons. From a welfare point of view, these methods are among the least acceptable modes of killing. Although joeys are sometimes killed or left to fend for themselves, only 30% of kangaroos shot are females, only some of which will have young (the industry’s code of practice says shooters should avoid shooting females with dependent young). However, many times this number of dependent baby mice are left to die when we deliberately poison their mothers by the millions.” I have an entire Slaughter Process Series (LINK ME PLEASE =D) where I explain how animal welfare is achieved at every point of an animal’s life, and I go into a great bit of detail about how animals are rendered unconscious before any bodily harm happens. But the bunnies and groundhogs don’t have that luxury. Their death is not instantaneous. Poisoning from pesticides or in the case of the mice plagues often include days of suffering before the animal finally loses sensibility. A snake or squirrel speared by a plow may have to endure hours of excruciating pain before they bleed out. The aquatic life impacted by bottom water hypoxia suffocate. Unlike primal fish (that can just swim out of the area anyway), benthic vertebrates have a surprisingly well-developed nervous system that allows them to feel the pain of their lungs struggling for air.
However, Lamey’s article on this issue does present a noteworthy statement: “The real question is whether it is plausible to say there is a difference between accidental and deliberate harms. I believe there is. In most legal systems, the difference between accidental and deliberate killing is the difference between manslaughter and murder. Applied to animals, surely we recognize a distinction between accidentally hitting an animal while driving on the highway and intentionally backing over it with the express aim of ending its life.” I thought this was very interesting because our justice department does place different penalties on murder (which is pre-meditated) than manslaughter (which involves no aforethought). But does this mean that different penalties for the human deaths is the equivalent of intended slaughter deaths being worse than unintended field deaths? Both murder and manslaughter victims receive the same homage and respect after their deaths, but livestock animals are much more appreciated than wildlife animals. When consumers go to the grocery store, they walk by the meat aisle and (well, usually…) associate the meat they see with the animals that were sacrificed to produce it. But people don’t walk through the produce section and picture a poisoned mouse by the carrots or severed snake near the potatoes. I would argue that livestock deaths at least get the respect of acknowledgement. Then Lamey contradicts his own argument. He rests a large portion of his case on animals that are killed by humans being worse than animals being killed by other animals (even if predation is increased by human disruptions)... wouldn’t the logic follow that the inter-species transition cannot be made for intent, either?
In Conclusion This is a series I’ve been wanting to write for a very long time. Being raised around both crop and livestock production, I’ve seen both types of deaths. However, up until this point, I never found a good source of the exact difference in the death toll. I hope my calculations, which were derived from the combined methods of both vegan- and omnivore-supporting articles as well as a consideration of a larger number of commodities, are easy to follow and can be a good reference for future discussions on my forums. A quick recap:
First of all, I want to say how despicable it is that the animal welfare activists are getting so desperate for traction that they’re willing to make mockeries of serious social movements such as combatting racism. But secondly, I want to point out how silly it is… All animals are different. They have different needs. They have different DNA. They have different diets. They are different physiologically. And yes, they even have different purposes. That’s not hate, it’s science. But it is a valid question that we can’t blame people distanced from agriculture for asking: How do we determine what animals we use for food and what animals we don’t? The question can be answered by a simple reference to an elementary science class, and, in specific, the section on food chains. Here’s a refresher course:
Just like she mentioned, humans are a part of the food chain, too. Because we are omnivores (and yes, we are omnivores!), we have the ability to be both primary and secondary consumers. This means we can eat plants and any animals that eat plants. However, because of the energy lost at each trophic level, it’s not considered natural for us to eat animals that make meals out of other animals. Humans are not tertiary consumers or apex predators. Animals that are apex predators include species like dogs and cats. Although they may be man’s best friend, dogs are actually further up than us in the food chain. However, animals like cattle, sheep, or even natural omnivores that are fed a diet of only plant-based roughages like chickens or swine, are exclusively primary consumers. That’s why we eat one type of animal and not the other. It is the undeniable physiological differences between species that determine where each falls in the food chain. If vegans want to be equal to animals, then why not choose to be equal to a lion who toys with their meat, intentionally causing it to suffer before they kill it. Sure, I’m being facetious—just because we’re different than animals, all farmers are going to agree with animal welfare activists that we shouldn’t use our place in the food chain to justify causing animals to suffer. We are physiologically designed to eat animals, but, contrary to popular belief, we are able to do that in a way that the animal lives a comfortable life and dies a painless death. But this brings up a major logic flaw in the vegan speciesism argument. By refusing to eat animals for sake of being equal with them, we would be denying that species higher up on the food chain need to eat meat to survive.
The problem with this argument is that a human’s digestive system does not have the ability to make use of all the nutrients plants provide. Ruminant livestock species such as cattle have a very intricate digestive system that is able to break down the nutrients, put them to use, then store them in their tissues. This is why meat and milk have higher quality proteins and why the vitamins and minerals available in animal products are much more bioavailable.
The truth is that this “middle man” actually has a very important job of turning the chemicals in plants into nutrients that human bodies are able to utilize. So yes, our food does get the things we need from plants, but only truly herbivorous animals have the ability to deliver it to us in a form our bodies can handle.
“In Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein, more environmental damage, and a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat.”
I will admit that these are nowhere near my own calculations. Mike Archer did one plant commodity: wheat, against one animal commodity, beef. I found that, when you average many plant commodities together then compared it with many animal commodities averaged together, crop production kills only 5.8 times more animals (not 25 times more) per usable kilogram of protein. However, Archer’s research is a good consideration for an extreme snapshot of agriculture or for those living in Australia.
I’m going to critique the only three scholarly(-ish) responses to Davis’ calculations I know of. If there is another one that I don’t mention, please share it with me and I’ll happily discuss it in a follow-up post. For now, I’ll be constantly referencing my own corrections to Davis’ study (LINK ME PLEASE=D), which I would recommend opening up and keeping on hand as you peruse through this article. Matheny’s Response Matheny, Gaverick. "Least Harm: A Defense of Vegetarianism From Steven Davis's Omnivorous Proposal," Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 16 (2003): 505-511.
productive. Check out what I mean here. I’ll be discussing this more in the conclusion of this Deaths Comparison series.
proposing a “crops with ruminant-pasture” system. It was just pasture, with the cultivation of forages (forages are grasses and legumes that farm animals feed on, not crops that are being grown with massive amounts of inputs for human consumption). To speak to the total amount of land, I criticized Davis for this, too. In my calculations, I evaluated deaths caused in our current system, which does use over twice as much land for pasture than the amount of land utilized as crop field. In my calculations, I did a deaths per food unit (ie calories/servings/grams of protein) in addition to the deaths per unit of land.
identified line up pretty closely with my own calculations… they’re still not realizing that only 40% of agricultural land is usable in crop production. Livestock have the ability to graze land that cannot grow corn or wheat or soy and turn it into usable calories. Once again, my calculations used the current land usage which does represent livestock producing fewer grams of protein per hectare. Recall that I reframed the deaths/land unit into deaths/food unit (ie calories/servings/grams of protein), which overcomes this issue, but not in a vegetarian’s favor.
Lamey’s Response Lamey, Andy. "Food Fight! Davis versus Regan on the Ethics of Eating Beef," Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 2 (2007): 331-348.
for Davis’s argument. The animal protection movement as a whole has long drawn an ethical distinction between animals killed by people versus those killed by animal predators.” Lamey is saying that these deaths cannot be counted because they were a part of the natural food chain of animals. However, here is a quote from the Tew and Macdonald study Lamey is trying to reference: “The removal of the cover afforded by the crop greatly increased predation pressure on the mice.” This means that these deaths would not have occurred if it was not for human intervention. The vegan philosophy, as I understand it, would count these deaths because, had no crops ever been planted, native grasses would inhabit the field keeping the mice safe from predators. If humans had not taken the action, the animals would still be alive.
predators of small mammals in the cereal ecosystem such as tawny owls Strix aluco and weasels Mustela nivalis.” The jump from “may benefit” to “a bonanza” shows a vegan agenda peeking through. Lamey is trying to suggest that crop production saves these predators, but that’s not at all what Tew and Macdonald are saying. Nowhere does this study say that these predators would die without the crop harvest. Instead, they identify a change in hunting behavior, not a risk of going without.
at its longest duration. Here are some sources about that: “Sugarcane.” Agritech, Apr. 2014, agritech.tnau.ac.in/agriculture/sugarcrops_sugarcane.html. “Sugar Cane.” Purdue Horticulture, Purdue University, 6 Dec. 2017. “Usual Planting and Harvesting Dates for U.S. Field Crops.” Mannlib Cornell, USDA, Dec. 1997. That brings us to an average growing time of 13 months, which is not significantly different from other crop growing times. The reason that the Nass study references a much longer growing time is because it was conducted in 1970 and also in a tropical climate, whereas it’s grown inland more commonly. Today, we use much more advanced methods, including improved fertilizers, equipment, land tillage techniques, etc. that speed that time drastically up. Unfortunately, all of these advancements also contribute to many more animal deaths because they require more passes through the field and larger volumes of pesticides that have more- concentrated toxins. It could be argued that transferring the 77% mortality rate found in the Nass study to today’s conditions is downplaying the death toll from sugarcane production.
Am I (or even Davis) daring to suggest that harvesting on every farm causes exactly a 60% mortality rate of the wildlife animals? No—sometimes it will be less, sometimes it will be more. We’re simply trying to get an average that’s usable in big-picture calculations that’s applicable anywhere in the world.
that will be discussed later in this series!
all large-scale livestock operations must submit a Nutrient Management Plan. If it wasn’t for crops, all manure could be recycled as energy and these risks would not be present.
manufactured, are more dangerous to humans because they release toxins into the air, including greenhouse gases, and many have exploded with hundreds of unfortunate casualties.
on this, and it said, “Page Not Found.” Lamey goes on to say that the most common method of death is attacks by bulls. Simply put, bulls just aren’t really kept around on the majority of farms because of artificial insemination. Furthermore, ninety-nine percent of the time, if an animal attacks, it’s because they feel threatened. One could argue that vegans should be happy that animals fighting back is a check against animal cruelty. I’m not denying that being a farmer is a dangerous job, but no evidence is presented here that working with livestock is any riskier than cultivating crops. I may do a follow-up post about this.
bad when it got pulled out of your butt. Jokes aside, working in a meatpacking plant is a very dangerous job and I will agree whole-heartedly that it’s something we need to address.
above human lives. Middleton’s Response Middleton, Mark L. “Number of Animals Killed to Produce One Million Calories in Eight Food Categories.” Animal Visuals: Visual Animal Advocacy, Animal Visuals, 12 Oct. 2009, www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc. This report tried to do exactly the same thing as me, reframing death calculations in terms of food-related units instead of the land used to produce it on.
How he got these numbers: In other words, he’s saying that the number of deaths can be calculated by dividing the target number of calories (he used one million, the amount a human would consume in a year and an easy-rounding number) by the product of the following: calories per food item (ie one cow yields a little over 850 thousand calories) X what I think he means here is dressing percentage or the ratio of live weight to carcass weight X live weight. In simpler terms, this formula could be stated as how many animals have to be slaughtered to make one million calories of just that animal. That’s not terribly different from what I did, except I did an overall average of all species slaughtered, whereas he only did the top five US livestock commodities. Not counting the deaths from harvest, his deaths per calorie are probably very similar to the numbers I found for animal products, just shown on a different scale. I’m not entirely sure what the meaning behind the harvest deaths (orange bars) being added onto the livestock products are for. Does he believe that livestock grain is made from fully produced crops? If that’s what it is, then those should just be knocked off because I’ve explained time and time again why that’s simply not the case. Where his calculations find error are in his estimations in deaths of crop production. He uses Davis’ mortality rate of 7.5 deaths per hectare, which, as I mentioned in the previous article, only represents the deaths of mice from harvesting, completely ignoring all the other wildlife species and all the other field activities. Furthermore, Middleton never mentions how he how he calculated the number of hectares are needed to grow one million calories of vegetables, fruits, and grains. I explained my methods in the spreadsheets, and am suspecting with different results. What’s more? Calories are just one way of expressing the deaths, and, conveniently for Middleton, the one with the lowest relative death toll to animal products. Here’s some other things Matheny got wrong because he simply does not understand farming:
natural causes. Egg-laying chicken breeds are completely different from meat chicken breeds-- the birds your eggs come from do not get slaughtered. The male chicks are the only ones dying. Multiply by one.
thanks to these practices. I’ve busted all these myths here.
hunting crop pests and how habitat modification for livestock improves the quality of life for wildlife (definitely not killing them!) but habitat modification for crops causes extensive suffering and deaths. I discuss how most food-borne illnesses are caused by plant-based foods here (If you go to read this one, I recommend searching “food-borne illnesses,” it’s a pretty long article).
inhibited by crop production. I also debunk all of the cattle-being-bad-for-the-environment nonsense, and also provide sources as to why there is NOT enough land on earth to feed the world a plant-based diet in this series.
I struggled on whether or not to write this post, but I consistently have had people approaching me wanting posts about the topic, or just asking my opinion in general. I didn’t want to comment on it because, to me, animal testing is one of those issues where there doesn’t seem to be a clear right answer. I see three options: 1. No more animal testing We halt all animal testing and go straight to human trials, causing people experience horrible conditions (sometimes even untimely deaths) because human volunteers will try out medicines, treatments, and activities that have absolutely no precedent. The researchers will have no predictions of what will happen other than their hypotheses. Most of us remember coloring in that arrow in our second grade Scientific Method Worksheet that linked drawing conclusions from the experiment back to the hypothesis… the point of the exercise is that science is all about making predictions and proving yourself wrong only to make new predictions and test them again (if there are no animal test subjects, this is a whole new group of human volunteers that are likely to experience a whole new round horrible side-effects). “The Scientific Method,” our teachers would repeatedly say, “is a never-ending process.” Animal rights activists say that we should look at other species as equal to human beings but, in this model, we are placing animal welfare above human welfare.
With our justification that no one should have to be sentenced to suffering in a laboratory, much more rampant suffering will be caused by a lack of action. Or…
3. We move forward with our current model We continue using animal test subjects as a preface to human medicine. We increase regulations, including laws, law enforcement, and surveillance, over their use, and spread awareness about the issue. Just like with anything, the goal should be to have objective yet empathetic conversations that include all stakeholders, including the researchers, the general public/consumers, practicing doctors, and even those whacky, left-fringed anti-vaccers who are convinced the Uber Secret Society of Science has already cured cancer and is shipping the treatment to googly-eyed aliens on Venus to gain intergalactic peace. Another point that’s important to make here is that testing something on animals is only the first step. We can’t automatically assume that everything that’s true in mice, or even in monkeys who are genetically similar to us, is applicable in human medicine. For that reason, it is very important for people to go volunteer for experimental treatments that are farther along in the process. There will always be risk involved, but just remember that, if it wasn’t for someone who took that same risk decades ago, we would all still have measles or not have good smelling lotion. My opinion on animal testing is a question I have been asked a surprisingly frequent amount of times, and, each instance, I have dodged it by saying that it falls outside of my niche topic. For those of you who asked me and did not receive an answer, I apologize for the delay, and there are no hard feelings if you have a different opinion. Like I said previously, there is no one right answer. For those of you who didn’t ask but still read, thank you for indulging the darker side of my reasoning skills, and I hope this will inspire some thought or conversations about where that convenient little Tylenol capsule came from, or all the advances the medical field could be just on the brink of thanks to animal test subjects. |