The Controversy of Farm Livestock Treatment and the Implications for Policy Change

• Introduction
  • There are over a billion animals in the United States being raised for food.
  • Animal advocates report that vast majority of livestock are raised on farms where they are treated in ways that may cause them extreme suffering.
  • In contrast, farmers contest that they do not abuse animals and their practices are the safest and most efficient way to keep up with the demand for food.
  • The controversy is whether further policy should be implemented to protect animals or if more restrictions will only interfere with farmers’ ability to do their jobs.  
• History of Controversy
  • In the past many farms were smaller and more diversified as opposed to not where they produce one product on an extremely large scale in many cases
  • According to Wessel’s Living History Farm, in the 1800’s, livestock had to be transported by train to packinghouses in larger cities, where they would then be slaughtered.
  • This continued for about a century until World War II, when trains were used by the military to transport troops.
  • It became necessary to construct packinghouses closer to ranches, and livestock were then shipped to these packinghouses and harvested locally.
  • The industry began to grow, and these packinghouses began to process larger and larger quantities of livestock.
  • Around this time (in the 1940’s), scientific advancements helped bolster the industry, specifically, the use of newly discovered antibiotics as well as food additives.
  • This allowed farmers to raise cattle in smaller spaces and with fewer resources.
  • This is when industrialization began, and it drastically changed the way cattle were raised.
  • It has led to a mechanized process of raising the animals in confined spaces and then slaughtering and packaging them.
  • This process of raising livestock had its costs, though.
  • The use of antibiotics can lead to “superbugs,” which are antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the confined spaces allow diseases to spread more easily.
  • This unnatural environment causes excess levels of fear and stress in the animals, which potentially increases the chance of attacks on other animals in the herd.
  • Some advocates say that these conditions are inhumane and need to be changed or remedied.
  • According to Dr. James M. MacDonald, these things have led to rules for the fair treatment of animals, namely, the “Five Freedoms:”
    • Freedom from hunger and thirst,
    • Freedom from discomfort,
    • Freedom from pain, injury, or disease,
    • Freedom to express normal behavior, and
    • Freedom from fear and distress
  • In 1966 the Animal Welfare Act was passed, which regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and by dealers
  • Additional federal laws and acts have been passed relating to specific cases but all refer to AWA as the minimum acceptable standard
  • The Humane Slaughter Act of 1978 was also passed. This Act requires the proper treatment and humane handling of all food animals slaughtered in USDA inspected slaughter plants. It does not apply to chickens or other birds
  • Regardless, certain practices are still excepted from the rules such as tail-docking, which is the practice of removing an animal’s tail to prevent it from potentially injuring another animal or worker.
  • Because such exceptions are still allowed, the practices of the livestock industry remain a public controversy.
• Sides of the Controversy
  • Activists/Consumers
    • Large numbers of animals are raised in factory farms called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where the focus is on profit and efficiency at the expense of animal welfare.
    • Animals are confined in tight quarters where they can barely move, let along behave normally.
    • They are kept in indoor confinements that have poor air quality and unnatural light.
    • Egg-laying hens are packed into battery cages with an enclosure so small that they cannot spread their wings.
    • Growing pigs are placed in concrete pens where they frequently bite and inflictions wounds upon their fellow pigs out of stress and boredom.
    • Pregnant sows spend their pregnancies confined to a metal gestation crate. Without even enough room to turn around, sows develop abnormal behaviors, leg problems, and skin lesions.
    • To boost production, cows are injected with the growth hormone rBGH, which leads to lameness and mastitis, a painful infection of the udder.
    • In addition, painful mutilations like cutting off the horns of cattle, cutting off the beaks of chickens, and docking the tails of sheep, pigs, and dairy cattle are routinely performed in order to keep animals in close quarters.
    • Sick and suffering animals are neglected, often due to high ratio of animals to workers.
    • Antibiotics are also misused to compensate for unsanitary conditions and some workers are rough and abusive when handling the animals.
    • When they’ve grown large enough to slaughter or their bodies have been worn out from producing milk or eggs, the animals are crowded onto trucks and transported for miles typically without food or water.
    • Once reaching the slaughterhouse, the animals who have survived the trip will have their throats slit. Many animals remain conscious when they are plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks.
    • Conscientious consumers want to buy products that support the humane treatment of animals but labels on packages can be misleading.
    • Packages of meat, eggs and dairy bear terms that appear to indicate meaningful animal welfare standards, but only in reality only a fraction of them do.
    • Some of the most commonly misunderstood labels are:
      • Natural: Does not impact animal welfare in any way.
      • Free-Range: No legal definition for use on eggs, pork, beef or dairy.
      • Humanely Raised/Humanely Handled: Undefined and subjective terms without codified standards.
      • Hormone-Free/No Hormones Added: Hormones are not approved by law for use on pigs or poultry, so the term is meaningless on those products.
      • Cage-Free: On eggs, this label indicates that hens were not raised in battery cages. However, it is an empty claim on poultry meat because although the birds may not be raised in cages, they are instead crowded into large, open sheds which is equally as cruel.
      • USDA Organic: This label has vague and poorly enforced regulations for animal rearing, and none at all for transport or slaughter.
    • According to a Context Marketing survey (2010), 69% of consumers responding said they would be willing to pay more for food that “promises to be produced to higher ethical standards”, showing that this is an issue that consumers truly care about.
  • Factories/Farmers
    • However, the reality is that death is not pleasant for any species and there’s no way one can make it pleasant which consumers sometimes fail to remember.
    • People also hold misconceptions about factory farms based the horror stories of animal cruelty.
    • Many people do not realize that a factory farm only needs to have 500 beef cattle, 500 dairy cows, sell 500,000 chickens annually or house 100,00 egg-laying chickens, therefore making it possible to both be profitable and considerate towards the animals’ life-quality.
    • Factory farms are one of the biggest reasons why it possible to consume meat every day if  one wants.
    • Factory farming comes under criticism, but consumers still want a less expensive and easily accessible product.
    • Farmers primarily understand animal welfare in terms of animal health and productivity, and they pay less regard to animals’ feelings and mental states.
    • Farmers were found to perceive the welfare of farmed animals as positive or satisfactory, whereas consumers reported overall negative perceptions
    • Pain treatment like anaesthesia and analgesia are not often used because they are time consuming and the public is generally unwilling to support the additional costs involved.
    • In a U.S. study, farmers were found to perceive the welfare of farmed animals as positive or satisfactory, whereas consumers reported overall negative perceptions.
    • It has been found that people have poor knowledge and understanding of animal welfare issues in animal production, particularly, modern intensive food production.
    • In fact, family-run farms are particularly diligent about humane treatment in sustainable farming.
      • Animals are raised without the routine use of antibiotics.
      • Antibiotics are only administered to a sick animal.
      • Organic farmers pull the sick animal from the herd before treating it and the meat is not sold under that label.
      • No hormones are administered to animals on sustainable farms.
      • Animals are permitted to carry out natural behaviours such as rooting in the dirt and pecking the ground.
    • “Our nation’s ability to protect its food supply can be threatened by unnecessary regulations driven by activist agendas, often by people who’ve never set foot on farmland or have no idea what it takes to produce a crop,” said Paul Schlegel, director of environment and energy policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
    • For example, Curt Pate, a stockman ship clinician who works on a ranch in Montana, practices stress-free cattle handling by keeping the herd in tight bunches and allowing them to bite grass before moving on.
      • This is practice offers a more humane lifestyle for cattle and produces better tasting meat.
      • Fear makes adrenaline pump through the animal, which is called a dark cutter, creating tough, wild tasting meat.
      • But an animal that is relaxed without an increased heart rate will make for good-flavored, tender meat.
    • All in all, farmers feel they are obligated to provide the best life for their livestock but with the ultimate purpose of growing and producing a product.

• Effect on Policy
  • Currently, there is only one law in place that regulates the treatment of animals in exhibition, transport, and research.  This law is known as the Animal Welfare Act, which was originally passed in 1966, and the most recent amendment was passed in 2008.
  • The enforces only the minimum standard of care must be followed for animals in commercial or research use.
  • The law is over fifty years old, so there are many arguments to be made for a change in policy.  Alternatively, there is also a case to be made for an entirely different set of regulations to be written specifically for the treatment of farm livestock.   
  • The set of rules stipulated in the Animal Welfare Act are to be treated as guidelines, which allows livestock farmers to do certain things as they see fit.  Since the Animal Welfare Act isn’t very specific, policies should be put in place to help prevent mistreatment of farm livestock.
  • In an article published in The New York Times by a lawyer and farm rancher named Nicolette Hahn Niman, she proposes several ways Congress can take action to prevent the mistreatment of livestock.
  • States can put their own policies in place to protect the welfare of animals.  Congress can also pass legislation that regulates the amount of antibiotics used in livestock farm animals (antibiotics are mainly used so farmers can keep livestock in crowded living conditions.  Grass-based methods for farming should also be encouraged because grass is the best way to keep livestock healthy. If environmental laws are better enforced, this can also have a positive impact on livestock animals.  Niman even goes as far as to suggest an Animal Peace Corps to be formed to ensure these animals are taken care of, and this method would also provide jobs that help lower the unemployment rate.  
• Analysis/Conclusion
  • While many organization such sa PETA have started to oppose the current treatment of animals
  • The practices currently in place are somewhat needed to maintain our current levels of consumption so a change would cause a major overhaul of the industry
  • However many studies show that our growing rate of consumption is not sustainable anyway, so an overhaul may be needed anyway
  • The current law in place in the US is the AWA, passed in 1966, and has been amended multiple times since then but no other overarching regulation has been out in place despite pushes for it
  • The government also continues to subsidize industries that treat animals this way so it would be difficult to then limit those industries with regulation
  • So clearly there is no easy solution, however there is room for improvement and compromise between the two opposing sides