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THE CRUELTY OF FACTORY FARMS - It is an enduring myth that efforts to reduce animal abuse inevitably come into conflict with human needs.
For example, the atrocities that take place in factory farms are assumed to be an inevitable price that we pay for feeding a growing human population.Ý However, far from being necessary to reduce human malnutrition, intensive farming actually increases it.
When animals are kept in factory farms, the grain that they eat could just as well have been used to feed a hungry person.Ý The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC says that it takes three calories of grain to produce a single calorie of meat; less conservative estimates put the ratio as high as nine to one.Ý Two thirds of all grain produced in the US, and one third of all the grain produced worldwide is used to feed livestock, rather than people.
Quite apart from this, factory farms pose very serious ethical problems.Ý In many cases, pigs, calves and chickens are kept in cages so small they cannot even turn round.Ý Even where they have a little more space, the stress caused by overcrowding makes the animals' lives a misery.Ý Undercover work by Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association has shown that when the animals are killed they are often not stunned properly first, and may be cut up and skinned while they are still alive.
Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the cruelty that is involved.Ý The corporations that have the most to lose from any changes have, through their advertising dollars, PR agencies and legal departments, done their best to keep the public in the dark, and to ensure that there is no open debate about the issue.
One of the biggest animal welfare groups campaigning against factory farming is Compassion in World Farming.Ý But their impact is tiny compared with the $2 billion that McDonald's alone spends trying to convince children that hamburgers grow in cabbage patches.
When advertising money is not enough to keep the truth under wraps, the companies bring out their lawyers.Ý
In a $16 million legal battle, the longest civil trial in British history, McSpotlight McDonald's sued an unemployed ex-postman and a part-time bar worker for libel, because they distributed leaflets outside a McDonald's branch criticizing the company.ÝAlthough McDonald's eventually won the case, the judge agreed that the company was responsible for cruel practices among its suppliers.Oprah Winfrey also suffered at the hands of the meat industry.Ý After hearing about the risks of bovine spongiform enchepholphacy (BSE) [also known as "mad cow disease." --Ed.] in American beef, she said on camera that she was not going to eat another hamburger.Ý She won the subsequent $10.3 million lawsuit from Texas cattle ranchers; however, one consequence of the case has been that the meat lobby in many US states has forced state legislatures to pass "food protection" laws which attempt to curb public debate.
The actor Alec Baldwin recently approached the Discovery Channel, asking them if they would be interested in running a documentary which, among other things, criticized the beef industry.Ý He was turned down, apparently because the channel was afraid of the consequences.
Another example concerns a book by J. Robert Hatherill, a research scientist at the University of California.Ý The book, How to Beat Cancer, discussed the effects of growth hormones given to cows.ÝSuch passages had to be cut out before the book was published, again in order to avoid legal action.
However, the most effective way to stop change is not through lawsuits, but through propaganda.Ý Many children, for example, have a natural love of animals, and are often horrified when they find out the truth about the food they eat.Ý Concern about cruelty is natural, and has to be forcibly repressed.
Animal rights protesters are typically presented as if they were interested in helping animals at the expense of humans.Ý In fact, people who support animal rights tend to be much more supportive of human rights than the general population.
For example, research carried out by David Nilbert at Wittenberg University showed that the 17% of people who are most opposed to animal rights are also more likely to oppose abortion rights, show racial prejudice, approve of interpersonal violence, blame rape victims, want easier access to guns and be homophobic.
The same connection is seen in the US Congress.ÝAn examination of voting patterns in Congress in 1989 showed that those members who supported animal welfare legislation were more likely to support laws which increased protection for workers and the rights of humans.
Nevertheless, the idea that factory farms are needed in order to feed a growing world population seems, on the face of it, to make sense.Ý After all, land is obviously in finite supply, and animals crammed into a tiny space take up less space than those allowed to roam freely.
However, this isn't the reason why animals are kept in total confinement: land isn't that expensive.Ý The advantages are, first, that, because the animals can barely move, they use less food to stay alive and fatten more quickly; and second, that it is more convenient to look after them.Ý According to Land O'Lakes, a large agribusiness corporation, it takes just 12 minutes of human attention to look after a pig during the animal's four months in the facility.
Throughout the world, livestock is moving from traditional environments, which are reasonably humane, and in which the animals feed on grass and food waste, to intensive units, which are extremely cruel, and where the animals eat grain.Ý In the US, 90% of all the agricultural land, and 67% of all the arable land, is used, either directly or indirectly, to produce dead animals or milk.
According to the IFPRI, the use of grain for feed grew by 50% in the developing world between 1983 and 1993, and increased faster than overall grain production in nearly every developing region.Ý Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute, believes that "grain production is unlikely to rise fast enough to satisfy projected demand for both food and feed".
In many parts of the world, the limiting factor on agriculture is lack of water.Ý Raising animals for food uses an enormous amount of water: not only do the animals themselves drink water throughout their lives, the food that they eat may have required extensive irrigation.Ý Estimates of water used vary wildly, from an extreme of 100,000 litres per kg of beefÝ (Pimentel et al., 1997) to 3,682 litres per kg (Beckett and Oltjen, 1993).Ý Even this low figure represents 1.6 million litres of water for a 1000 lb (454kg) steer.Ý
In the US, much of this water is subsidized.Ý According to Cornell economists David Fields and Robin Hur, even in California, a state which imports most of its meat, subsidizing the water used by the meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion a year, or $1000 per person.
The World Health Organization believes that two billion people are suffering from one or other form of malnutrition.Ý Iodine deficiency is the greatest single preventable cause of mental retardation, and vitamin A deficiency is the single greatest preventable cause of childhood blindness.Ý Five million children under the age of five die each year from lack of food.
FEED THE HUNGRY. You can help someone else in this world and IT WON'T COST YOU A DIME. If you simply remember to drop by The Hunger Site every day that you surf and click a simple button ONE LESS PERSON WILL GO HUNGRY. The food is distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme and paid for through the sponsorship of companies that care. Do your part.
Not all malnutrition is caused by an overall lack of food: often, this is because of war (such as in Ethiopia), or natural disasters.Ý However, the five million children who are dying aren't all in war zones.Ý Their parents just can't afford to buy enough food for them.
Despite uncertainty over the exact figures, it is reasonably clear that factory farms are aggravating food shortages, not alleviating them.Ý Grain that could have been fed to humans is processed, very inefficiently, into meat.ÝIn the process, hundreds of millions of intelligent animals live lives of complete misery.
According to the Overseas Development Council, if Americans reduced their consumption of dead animals by just 10%, this would release enough grain to feed 60 million people.Ý Given that eating meat is neither necessary nor healthy, everybody would gain from this change.
The next time you are in McDonald's, biting into your dead cow, spare a thought for all the dead humans in Africa.
DR. PAUL KAIL was born in the UK. He studied medicine at Oxford and then did a PhD in neurophysiology at Cambridge on the subject of visual perception and consciousness. He has written two books, one of which has been translated into German.
He has lived in Hungary, Austria and Australia. At present he lives in Prague, the Czech Republic, where he writes about animal intelligence, animal consciousness and animal rights. He is the director of the Animal Consciousness Foundation. This is his first article for G21: The World's Magazine.
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