Is There Anything Humane About Eating Meat?
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‘Animal rights crusader Lee Hall says the only way to prevent animal suffering is to ‘stop breeding these poor beings only to betray them.’
Natural food sections in our grocery stores are chock full of them. The ethical foodies seek them out. They’re intended to inform the consumer about where our food comes from and how it’s produced: “Sustainable,” “organic,” “free-range,” “local” products — we’ve all seen the terms and we hope they genuinely convey what they imply.
But what do they really mean? What’s the truth behind the label? Can meat ever really be sustainable? Is purchasing local a good thing for the environment? Not always, says activist, author and educator Lee Hall, who serves as legal affairs VP for Friends of Animals. Hall is also an active supporter of HumaneMyth.org, a new group that seeks to expose the facts behind our misleading food labels and farming practices.
I spoke with Hall, whose new book on animal-rights theory and advocacy, On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal-Rights Philosophy Down to Earth, is due out later this month.
Joshua Frank: As someone who frequently shops at farmer’s markets and natural food stores, I have noticed a rapidly growing trend toward so-called ethical eating. People are becoming aware of the dark side of industrialized farming, and as a result more and more animal products are being labeled with terms like “cage free,” “humane certified” and “organic.”
Lee Hall: You’re right; this trend is growing fast and the advertising hype that’s driven by enterprises such as Whole Foods have a lot to do with it, as does the reality that global warming really is upon us. Climate disruption is the most frightening thing since the bomb (and that’s not gone). People are looking for pacifiers. People want to be able to say they’ve grasped the inconvenient truth but they still want peace of mind. If they’ve got money, they’ll pay a bit more these days for that.
JF: But you’ve argued that these are simply marketing terms that do not necessarily mean what they convey to consumers. Can you explain why? What’s the reality behind these terms?
LH: First, they’re usually just marketing ploys. There’s no legally binding definition for cage-free eggs, for example. These items are bought by people who want to believe the birds were treated OK. That’s well-meaning. But think about what’s going on. Packing a mass of birds into a shed isn’t much better than jamming them into a cage. Cannibalism increases in shed situations where so-called cage-free chickens lay eggs, as does bone breakage. Recall that birds who are purpose-bred to lay eggs do that a lot. So they’re always short of calcium; it leaves their bodies and goes into the shells. That means osteoporosis is common in commercial birds. I don’t mean to be a party pooper here; I assure you there are great vegan recipes for just about anything you’re making with eggs now.
I know some people will say: Oh, but my eggs, my ham — it really does come from a good farm; look at their Web site and all the greenery! Well, you must have a lot of money to eat that way all the time. But even if the animal farms you support are spacious, think about the ramifications. More space for agribusiness concerns, less free animals in wild spaces. Just like suburban development, farms take up a lot of land. Why would we as a society continue to think this is a good trend?
Thanks to our friends at AlterNet
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Anybody who tries to stop me eating bacon sandwiches is in very serious trouble. Nuff said.
Ok lets hear from the other side. I raise cattle, chickens, geese, guinea fowl and an occasional pig. All my animals are free range except the cows which get free choice but I don’t have the acres and my neightbors aren’t understanding enough to free- range them.
I see nothing wrong with raising animals in a natural and humane way and then eating them. I slaughter the ones I eat myself and sell mostly the cows for others to do what they will with. While they are here with me their wellbeing almost always comes before mine. I have never gotten use to killing them and it always bothers me but I don’t lose sleep over it because I don’t waste their lives I use them. I am on the earth to go round and round as many times as I will as are they. They will be eaten by me and I will be eaten by microbes and worms.
There is a lot to be said for free-range products and caringly raised animals as there is the same with fruits and vegetables which I raise myself also.
Local grown is import not becasue it is local grown but presumably because you know who grew it and can even visit your meal before you eat it be it animal, fruit or veggie.
I believe that everyone should see how their food is produced also, they should realize the price that is paid for a steak or a chicken wing. It has not stopped me eating them and i think I appreciate them more than most on this post as I live with them every day.
This was a well-reasoned post BSRanch. You appear to be both conscientious and compassionate, which may be the exception rather than the rule in the meat industry. You have given me much to think about. Thanks for stopping by MMA and I hope you become a regular visitor. Peace….
I see nothing wrong with raising animals in a natural and humane way and then eating them…..I don’t lose sleep over it because I don’t waste their lives I use them.
If you were being kept penned up by a creature of a more powerful species, and you were destined to be killed in your prime by that creature for food, how much do you think this kind of talk would impress you?
No one except me has any right to “use” my life — and I would say the same of a pig or cow.
be it animal, fruit or veggie
False equivalence. A fruit or vegetable has no brain or central nervous system. It has no self-awareness or ability to feel pain or despair, as an animal does. And always remember, you too are an animal. The difference between you and a cow is quantitative, not qualitative.
Mad Mike, I disagree. This comment is neither well-reasoned nor conscientious nor compassionate. The rationalizations of the carnivorous human are the rationalizations of the rapist and the slave-driver.
Mike, recall your own earlier post about the eating of dogs and cats in China and Korea. Would you have judged a defense of that practise to be compassionate? Pigs are at least as intelligent and emotionally sophisticated as dogs, and even cows and chickens obviously have some kind of awareness and ability to suffer.
The fact that something is unthinking habit in our culture does not make it right.
I am a natural being and I live a natural life. As I stated these animals are free-range meaning I don’t pen them they are free to go as far as their lives take them. They stay where they are with me because I make their life comfortable. I provide protection, supplemental food and nutrients when needed and doctoring.
Even the cows that are fenced in are fenced with 50 year old fences that if they wanted they could break easily.
To say I am a more powerful species than a cow or bull shows your ingorance of the situation.
As I mentioned at the start, I am a natural being I live in a natural world one that has a natural world order. Carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores eat both. It is natural. So if you want to live an unnatural life it is your choice it is not mine.
I have the same reservations about killing plants and wasps and ants as I do cows. Any life wasted is, well, life wasted.
Infidel, you state “I have no illusion that my own personal avoidance of meat has ever saved or improved the life of a single animal.”
Well I can say that I have improved the lives of many animals even if I eventually kill them and eat them.
In that respect I take great exception to your falacious statement comparing me to a rapist or a slave driver. That is sensationalized rhetoric.
BSRanch,
Don’t know if you’d seen the movie Food INC? there was a Free Range ranch depicted in one part of the movie. The animals lived a free life, roaming the fields until it was their time. They were killed quickly.My daughter noticed as the rancher passed one of the pigs he patted it absentmindedly as he spoke towards the cameraman;sounds kind of like your relationship with the animals.
The rancher had paid for a lot of testing and he was consistently safer and cleaner than the big slaughterhouses yet the FDA constantly harassed him (rather than the big slaughterhouses).
In a perfect world nothing would ever die, every creature would be loved and never suffer. We don’t live in a perfect world. People eat animals in every culture. Personally I don’t but that’s my choice, I wish no animal would ever die but that just wishing. My mother told me once “wish in one hand and shit in the other and see what you get”. The reality is animals are eaten and if it’s gonna happen I’d much rather it be the way you do it.
So I respect you BSRanch.
I just went total vegan about two months ago from being vegetarian. Can’t stand to even smell meat anymore. Hubby is still eating small amounts of fish and chicken, but no more red meat. I’ll get him off of that in time. Mother Hen, I was that liberal hippie spending extra for free range and organic. I happened to catch some video or another and it was, oh not any more will I buy something else alive.
My wife and I stopped eating meat several years ago. We just decided that even though 99% of Americans still do we didn’t have to. My uncle owns a hog farm and when I was a llittle boy I watched a hog get slaughtered. It was horrifying and has stuck with me for years. Those hogs were smart, like dogs. I don’t know why it took me so long to make the decision to be an “almost-vegetarian.” We still eat fish but may stop that someday, but the doctors say fish is good for us so what the heck.
I stopped eating meat a long time ago. Continuing to eat just certain kinds meant working from distinctions I eventually decided were only marginally meaningful.
That being said, persuading whole populations to stop eating meat would be difficult because humans have an evolved craving for it. Chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest relatives) live mostly on fruit, but they also hunt and eat monkeys and other animals. Many animal spedies eat other animals, with no regard for the suffering they inflict.
What Lee Hall is actually talking about here is not “to prevent animal suffering”, it’s to prevent humans from inflicting animal suffering. The whole natural world is filled with animal suffering far worse than what happens on farms. It’s not yet technologically feasible to end all of that, unfortunately.
I have no illusion that my own personal avoidance of meat has ever saved or improved the life of a single animal. It just spares me the repulsive feeling of being complicit.
Most people just rationalize their behavior by assuring themselves that animals were put here by God to serve us however we choose, and since they have no souls, why should we give a damn? We should all give a damn about the suffering of any living creature. It is bad enough that we eat them. Why should they have to live a life filled with torment?
I’ve noticed there are some types (most all my hippie liberal friends) who will pay more for a “cruelty free” product to assuage their guilt. Everyone should have to watch a meat processing video and/or visit a dairy and chicken farm (a big one) before consuming these products. There is a huge disconnect between what people eat and how it is made.
I seriously doubt most people could stomach going to one of these facilities, and most would change their eating/buying behavior. Not much can be done about the sense of dominion over the earth that is indoctrinated into the religious types though, and they are the majority.
since they have no souls, why should we give a damn?
This “soul” nonsense is another example of how religion distorts people’s thinking. Of course animals don’t have “souls” any more than humans do. Conciousness, will, emotions, and other mental traits are emergent properties of complex electro-chemical activity in the brain — whether it’s the brain of a human or a cow. Different species have those traits to differing degrees of sophistication depending on the complexity of the brain, that’s all. There’s no reason to think that pain or unhappiness in another animal feel different from pain or unhappiness in a human.
I agree Infidel. Sadly I hate to think about that. Shame on me for it.
Absolutely my opinion as well. It sickens me how people will claim they are “special” (as opposed to other primates?) because they have souls. If the only life you have to live is this one, shouldn’t it be as painless and enjoyable as possible?
I agree MH it’s abominable what is done to animals. I was vegetarian for many years, used to drive a delivery truck delivering office products to the slaughterhouses down in Vernon (LA area).Big murals of happy cows and pigs smiling on all the buildings, whole small city of Vernon permeated by the smell. I had to pass thru the kill floor in one place, the workers would laugh at people like myself who would be trying not to throwup. I really did get sick one time, driving behind a blood truck as sheets of blood splashed out whenever it hit a bump in the road. cured me of eating meat for a long time, although for big family gatherings I break down. Not like that would be OK with the poor animals. Just human failing.
This is a very distressing story Mr.Oso. I am sorry you had to go through such a horrible thing.
I love your articles and I have to catch up. We have been gone for a couple of weeks.
Thank you so much johnnyredfox for the kind words.I hope you and yours are well!
I could never go there. When I was a young fella living in California my buddy Richard and I found our way to a slaughterhouse and watched as they used a .22 rifle to put them down. I think about it from time to time all of these years later. It was horrible.