Quote:
Originally Posted by brandongilbert  i think we should make a clear distinction between eating local, small scale, sustainable animal products vs. consuming factory farmed products...if you have access to local small scale animal products then go for it. find local farmers and get your stuff right from them. find farmers markets. skip grocery stores. |
At the risk of repeating myself....
Small scale does not automatically mean sustainable, humane, healthy, or properly fed. Small scale just means...well... small.
You cannot go to a farmer's market and look at the butcher counter and know how the animals were raised. No offense, but the little shop "knowing the farmers" doesn't make the animals raised in any better of a way.
The meat farmers aren't going to admit what they're doing might be causing the animals poor health, suffering, or injury. They tell themselves these are "just animals" or "this is how it's always been done" or "oh no that can't possibly hurt a chicken". Who wants to admit they're intentionally cruel or abusive?
I feel like I know pretty well how meat animals are raised because I'm in a farming area. Many of my neighbors raise meat animals. When I go over to visit I can see in the pens or barns. And despite visiting farms, I've looked and cannot find any letting their animals live in a natural, healthy, suffering-free way. If such a thing exists, I am unable to locate it.
Even when the farmer's only raising a dozen pigs, the animals are locked in a dark, cement-floored old shed and fed rotten (people) food. The animals are still put through a long ride to auction or slaughter, then they're killed in a manner which is time-efficient for the slaughterhouse but maybe not in the best interest of a more humane death. Yes they're small-scale and might even meet "organic" criteria if the rotten produce they're fed is "organic", but that doesn't mean they're living as nature intended.
The one farmer across the road from me does small scale dairy. However, with any dairy, the cows are kept pregnant. Every male cow is useless to a dairy farmer, so he's locked in a tiny tiny cage or pen ("veal"). It doesn't matter if a farmer is doing a dairy of 25 cows or 250, this is what
must happen to male calves. I don't understand how this can be humane? Take a grazing animal away from his mother's milk at birth, never to graze on grass, never to leave his tiny cage until the day he's put on the truck to the slaughterhouse? How can it be healthy for him to be confined where he cannot walk around (or in some cases even turn around)
To sell meat to the public, all American meat needs to be processed at a USDA-approved facility. You cannot legally buy meat that isn't USDA. This means
all livestock face the same type of death. Commercial slaughterhouses are designed to covert animals into cuts of meat as inexpensively as possible, and this does not require the animal be handled kindly or killed humanely. Even tiny farms have to send their animals to a USDA processing facility, if they wish to legally sell to others.
The entire system of how meat is produced is so deep-rooted. This is "just how it's done". And they're not willing to change, especially when profits might be endangered. And since 99% of the public doesn't see what happens to produce meat, out of sight - out of mind.
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. "
— Paul McCartney