Welfare On The Farm
HOW HUMANE TREATMENT THROUGHOUT FARM ANIMALS' LIVES IS ONE OF THE GREATEST WAYS A FARMER CAN MAXIMIZE INCOME
The first thing that seems to confuse a lot of people is that farms—where animals are born and grow for over 95% of their life—are not the same thing as processing plants. I’ve seen a lot of slaughter videos posted by animal welfare activists who call it the evils of factory farms… but those two things could not be more disconnected. Did you know that even most large-scale corporate farms are still family owned? Here’s what’s actually happening in most of the operations that consumers would consider a “factory farm” (which, by the way, can be for livestock or crops):
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Independent farmers own land, and pay out of their own pocket to build facilities capable of handling hundreds, sometimes even thousands of head. They then go to a large company like Cargill or Sanderson, who inspects the facilities to insure they’re adequate: the animals will have adequate room, have constant access to fresh water, and will be sheltered from the elements. It’s important to note that, in America, although federal laws protecting food animals are vague, almost every state has much more extensive livestock welfare laws, and corporations install their own guidelines that the farmers contracted with them have to meet.
If the farmer and the corporation agree on a contract, then that corporation will bring in the animals for the farmers to breed and grow. The farmer is then expected to provide a certain number of head every time the company sends a truck to pick them up. This truck transports the animals from the farm to the processing plant. The farmer owns the land and raises the animal, but the business owns the animals. The people running the farm have no control over where the animals are taken to be slaughtered, and are held accountable if the animals they put on the truck are not healthy.
It’s important to realize that how much meat an animal yields and the quality of that meat is much more dependent on what happens before that truck comes than occurrences at the slaughterhouse. Most consumers don’t realize that high quality meat can only come from well-cared-for animals. This means that diminished carcass conditions are a check against animal cruelty.
How can this be?
Think about what happens when you get stressed. Your eating habits get altered: you either lose weight or binge and gain unhealthy weight. You get sick because stress compromises your immune system. Women skip periods and may even become infertile. You lose energy and become irritable. Animals are no different.
If the farmer and the corporation agree on a contract, then that corporation will bring in the animals for the farmers to breed and grow. The farmer is then expected to provide a certain number of head every time the company sends a truck to pick them up. This truck transports the animals from the farm to the processing plant. The farmer owns the land and raises the animal, but the business owns the animals. The people running the farm have no control over where the animals are taken to be slaughtered, and are held accountable if the animals they put on the truck are not healthy.
It’s important to realize that how much meat an animal yields and the quality of that meat is much more dependent on what happens before that truck comes than occurrences at the slaughterhouse. Most consumers don’t realize that high quality meat can only come from well-cared-for animals. This means that diminished carcass conditions are a check against animal cruelty.
How can this be?
Think about what happens when you get stressed. Your eating habits get altered: you either lose weight or binge and gain unhealthy weight. You get sick because stress compromises your immune system. Women skip periods and may even become infertile. You lose energy and become irritable. Animals are no different.
If a beef steer loses weight, that’s meat literally disappearing before our eyes… profit vanishing into thin air. I’ve never known an animal to binge eat when they’re stressed—they would only be able to gorge if they were out to pasture, and weren’t having their portions served to them. Hypothetically, overeating would turn desirable marbling into pounds and pounds of fat that has to be trimmed away, jeopardizing the quality of the cuts. In my experience, a licked-clean trough is usually a sign of a happy, healthy animal.
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Swine are naturally sensitive to diseases—keeping them calm and feeling safe is imperative to allow their immune systems to function at maximum levels. Treating diseases with medication means that those animals have to wait a withdrawal period before they can be processed—this may force the farmers to grow them passed their desired slaughter weight, which is the prime point for them to be slaughtered, decreasing carcass value and wasting inputs. If left untreated, disease causing bacteria or infections could be left behind in the carcass, bringing a food safety issue to the consumer.
If a brood cow, champion sow, or high-producing hen gets stressed, you’re looking at years of reproduction being cut away. The best part about having a high-quality animal is knowing you still have the genetic package (its parents) to re-create it again and again for years to come, but infertility would put a stop to that.
All of these income-decreasing conditions would directly result from animal abuse. In 2015, the Journal of Biology, Agriculture and Healthcare published a review of the exact measurements of the production decrease between well-cared-for animals and animals who were under constant stress. The researchers found that, “stress is revealed by the inability of an animal to cope with its environment, a phenomenon that is often reflected in a failure to achieve genetic potential.” Their data was astounding:
Another study conducted by the University of Saskatchewan evaluated stress effects in beef cattle. In it, they found that: “In the current review, we emphasized that perturbations of homeostasis have been measured in terms of both altered metabolism and immune function, which then impact animal health, well-being, and productivity.”
If a brood cow, champion sow, or high-producing hen gets stressed, you’re looking at years of reproduction being cut away. The best part about having a high-quality animal is knowing you still have the genetic package (its parents) to re-create it again and again for years to come, but infertility would put a stop to that.
All of these income-decreasing conditions would directly result from animal abuse. In 2015, the Journal of Biology, Agriculture and Healthcare published a review of the exact measurements of the production decrease between well-cared-for animals and animals who were under constant stress. The researchers found that, “stress is revealed by the inability of an animal to cope with its environment, a phenomenon that is often reflected in a failure to achieve genetic potential.” Their data was astounding:
- Confining gilts (young female pigs) reduced their reproductive cycles by 14%
- Egg production was 8% higher in hens who had positive experiences with people
- Pigs handled under positive methods put on 11.3% more weight every day than those handled negatively
Another study conducted by the University of Saskatchewan evaluated stress effects in beef cattle. In it, they found that: “In the current review, we emphasized that perturbations of homeostasis have been measured in terms of both altered metabolism and immune function, which then impact animal health, well-being, and productivity.”
In writing this blog post, I don’t mean to suggest that farmers are merely restraining their abusive tendencies just to wrangle a few extra dollars… the point I’m trying to make is that producers have absolutely nothing to gain from animal abuse. There’s a general attitude in the animal rights community that livestock producers are negligent; they say we try and cram as many animals into our barns as possible and treat them only as commodities because we only do it for the money.
Most farmers would laugh at that… if we wanted to be rich, agriculture would have been at the bottom of the barrel of career choices. |
We raise these animals because we committed to providing wholesome food for society, and we believe in the products that are obtained from livestock. Animal abuse would jeopardize both of those values.
Farmers are people, too.
We care for animals just as much as you do… that’s one of the key reasons we’ve dedicated ours lives to raising them. As I previously mentioned, working with animals every day only reinforces farmers’ desires to do right by their animals.
Farmers are people, too.
We care for animals just as much as you do… that’s one of the key reasons we’ve dedicated ours lives to raising them. As I previously mentioned, working with animals every day only reinforces farmers’ desires to do right by their animals.