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Do you care how the animals you eat are treated?

woodoo

I watched a very disturbing video last night about the treatment of animals in abattoirs, industrial farms etc.
Its below if you want to see it. I sat through it all even though i wanted to turn it off. I watched it through because somehow i felt i at least owed it to these animals to not just turn it off and pretend it doesn't happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eoF6w7R9oI

The question i have is do you care how the animals you eat are treated in these factories, boats, abattoirs, industrial farms etc. I'm sure most right thinking people would say yes they do care. But then that wouldn't be reflected in their buying habits in the supermarkets.

I think its unrealistic to expect the people of the world to all become vegetarians, so is there a way that we can ensure decent living condition for the animals we eat and a quick and humane method of slaughter for when they die. This article may be an example of how industrial scale farms can provide a decent life for farm animals.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545647/Farm-ageddon-No-birds-No-bees-Our-countryside-laid-waste-And-billions-animals-never-blade-grass-book-warns-terrifying-threat-todays-gram-mega-farms.html

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Lucy8080

There is a video on Youtube entitled "Watch :Walmart Pork Supplier Caught Abusing Mother Pigs And Piglets."

I doubt that Walmart ( there are other retailers, but some have signed up to agreements that walmart hadn't at the time of release of the video) is the particular issue here, it may rather be a culture of accepted cruelty .

It is an upsetting video, so don't watch if you are overly sensitive.

SamAK

Sam Kade wrote: »

Is that you Paul :rolleyes:

Err.....no. I am a Sam, not a Paul!

whatdoicare

Gongoozler wrote: »

Depends on how many chickens we have versus cows and sheep etc. The majority of chickens are not free range.

I'm becoming increasingly aware of the conditions under which we get our food.. amongst other things lately, and it's worrying how little people seem to care about this. Chicken you get in a shop or butchers is not free range unless it's specifically says so. So the chicken you buy or get in a restaurant is a chicken that was bunged into a tiny cage for its short life, with twelve others, force fed to make it grow as fast as possible.

And if you do want free range chicken you pay at least 2.50 per fillet. It's actually ridiculous.

Ireland doesn't produce enough Chickens to feed the Irish population. Maybe we should address that instead.

Galwayguy35

whatdoicare wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the majority of animals here free range? My uncles don't feed their cows and sheep anything other than grass or that fermented stuff with a top up of feed. Ireland has pretty much all year round green pastures. They send their animals off into the fields all day and bring them back into their heated shed at night...... What's wrong with that? Seems like a happy life for an animal to me.

I don't know anything about abattoirs except what was on that TV show and I saw nothing awful about that. Looked humane to me. So, I'm happy enough with that. My uncles see it up close most weeks and see nothing awful about it.

I'm happy to keep eating meat.

Not really, they would be out in the fields during the summer but for the winter months would be in slatted sheds 24/7

FanadMan

Nope - I've killed and eaten animals, poultry and fish. As long as I can eat it I'm not that worried....especially if I had to buy it in a shop. Money is tight and the cheapest goes down the same as dearest.

Gongoozler

whatdoicare wrote: »

Ireland doesn't produce enough Chickens to feed the Irish population. Maybe we should address that instead.

Why is that a problem though?

Aphex

I'd rather it be part of world culture not to eat them in the first place.

How anyone could kill an animal and not have one ounce of guilt is beyond me. But hey, it's "normal" I suppose.

J_E

Aphex wrote: »

I'd rather it be part of world culture not to eat them in the first place.

How anyone could kill an animal and not have one ounce of guilt is beyond me. But hey, it's "normal" I suppose.

I'm sure you've swatted a fly more than once in your lifetime and didn't weep over it.

SPS1

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I loathe to think of any animal suffering needlessly, but it does amaze me the amount of people who'll take up arms over the suffering of animals yet remain entirely indifferent to the plight of millions of human beings all over the globe. I know people who are staunch vegetarians, quoting examples like this thread for the reasoning, yet are indifferent, uncaring, ignorant, whichever of those adjectives, towards actual human beings and their predicaments around the globe .

It's a mad world really, when the welfare of animals often takes immediate priority over the human beings unfortunate enough to be born outside of the luxury of the first world.We'll read a story about a man who murders several others with relative apathy, yet a story involving animal cruelty suddenly mobilizes an internal trigger in a good deal of people.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying we shouldn't question how animals are treated, not at all. It surely does deserve comment though, the relativity of the world.

I suppose it's all about conditioning. But all in all, I spend far more time thinking about people around the world in unimaginable circumstances; people just like me...and us, to worry about animals. Not that I don't care, or like animals, but there's so much worse out there, if we'd pay more attention.

Humans are the only species who war with one another over idealogy & will die for their idealogy, there is little a person this side of the world can do. Comparing this to unnecessary suffering of animals because a person wants cheap meat to eat & will purposely avoid understanding the raising & slaughtering process, in fear that it might make them uncomfortable, is completely asinine.

In regards to your second bolded paragraph. I'm baffled at how people can feel outrage at horses being lit on fire, fireworks being inserted into orfices of dogs & blown up around halloween etc (to name irish cases). Yet have complete apathy to the dire living conditions of many mammalian species that we farm for their entire lives. Both have complex developed nervous systems. Puppy farming, mink fur farming, pig farming & most chicken (non mammalian) farming here in Ireland would certainly be questionable to many individuals personal ethical beliefs on how to treat animals prior to slaughter.

It is nothing short of hypocritical, and that is excluding any argument that eating animals is inherently immoral before i'm called out on this one.

CLIFFS:
- Comparing human injustices directly to the treatment of animals for consumption is flawed
- Caring about individual cases of animal cruelty to horses/dogs, but not farm animals for their entire lives is absurd. Both are complex mammalian species.

5live

SamAK wrote: »

If abbatoirs had glass walls some of the attitudes here might change slightly.

I went to one in Cahir, Co Tipp, back when I was about 12 or so, my friends dad was a farmer and was taking a cow there that he'd sold.

Even now, 15 years on, I still vividly remember the sounds, the horrific smell, the conveyor belts loaded with organs and the gutters channeling sh1t and stomach contents away to who-knows-where, and the noises of all those cows that were well aware of their fate.

All that aside, has anyone considered how impractical and wasteful the process of meat farming is? We grow food, to feed to the animals that we eventually eat ourselves. In Ireland it's pasture, green grass or whatever(consider that Ireland was roughly 90% forest 'back in the day', and what is it now?)....but in other countries like the USA, hundreds of thousands of acres of the earth have been deforested or otherwise cleared to allow millions/billions of animals to graze. This in turn leads to desertification. Desertification is a phenomenon caused by overgrazing, and can/does lead to changes in climatic conditions.

I still eat meat, and that's no surprise. After all, monkey see, monkey do. But in the last few years I've done some serious thinking about the knock on effects of mass animal farming, and nowadays I can easily go several days without having any meat in my diet. Probably because I can actually be bothered to make an effort and think of perfectly tasty and nutritious meals that don't revolve around dead animal. I eat much, much less meat than I did a year ago, and i'm working towards quitting it altogether. It's hard, being a broke student living in a box in the city, to eat healthily and ethically. It's incredibly hard to go against the grain, especially so with the meat-eating issue.

A lot of the comments here are flippant, and that's not a surprise either, given the 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude that is sadly so rife among the population. We're disconnected, and de-sensitized, and I think that the 'anti-hippy, green loony' attitude is just a little bit narrow minded.

We need to consider the bigger picture.

On the subject of waste in meat farming, i think you have a somewhat mixed up view. The majority of beef animals are reared on grass/silage and finished on grain products/by-products. There are some niche markets where they are mostly fed grain but the majority are grass fed.
In the USA in particular the majority of growth is from grain, indeed most would never have even seen grass. There is a large proportion of the grain market diverted to dairy/beef farming. This is due to market forces, sell where the best price is. In growing that grain, however, desertification can occur. Desertification caused by overgrazing simply doesnt happen because the majority of animals are reared in 'confinement agriculture' farms.
The most famous example of desertification is the dust bowl in 1930s midwest USA due to drought and poor agricultural practices. The drought caused the dust bowl and agricultural practices at the time exacerbated it.

It isnt farming that causes desertification for the most part but it can result in the after effects being more severe and lasting longer.

wylo

I'd love to find out how all the meat I eat is treated . Just wondering how do I do this?
Some meats seem to have the name of the farm on the package.

Would farmers be welcoming of if I called them and told them I buy their meat every week and would love to visit their farm?

Another question, regarding eggs, what does free range actually mean? Do they genuinely have free reign of a very large space and naturally lay eggs or are they still inside a farm house?

Aphex

Cydoniac wrote: »

I'm sure you've swatted a fly more than once in your lifetime and didn't weep over it.

I haven't in my adult life. Honestly.

zenno

Most folk think a cow is docile and slip it onto their burger-bun, but don't be fooled, because most people are docile thinking the cow is docile

Intelligence where you never thought there was intelligence.

Einstein the cow...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaD67sj1UfQ

Gongoozler

wylo wrote: »

I'd love to find out how all the meat I eat is treated . Just wondering how do I do this?
Some meats seem to have the name of the farm on the package.

Would farmers be welcoming of if I called them and told them I buy their meat every week and would love to visit their farm?

Another question, regarding eggs, what does free range actually mean? Do they genuinely have free reign of a very large space and naturally lay eggs or are they still inside a farm house?

I often wonder how people that don't know how to Google survive in the world.

There are restrictions on what free range means within the European Union.

ScissorPaperRock

I haven't read through the entire thread because there's a lot of it, but the indifference shown in the first few pages is shocking, to be honest.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I think it's natural to eat animals and plants. We are animals and many animals eat other species of animals.

I think the way we try and pretend there's a distinction between humans and nature is damaging. We're not living sustainably, and unless people become enlightened as to that fact we will end up doing potentially irreversible damage. But I suppose that's a bit off topic.

On the treatment of animals - isn't it simply a matter of empathy? As humans, we don't like to suffer, whether that is through physical or mental pain or anguish. What separates us from other animals is the ability to understand that other species can also experience such agony. In that knowledge, how could you possibly not care? I think that's borderline psychopathic, to be honest.

Aphex

ScissorPaperRock wrote: »

I haven't read through the entire thread because there's a lot of it, but the indifference shown in the first few pages is shocking, to be honest.

I'm not a vegetarian, and I think it's natural to eat animals and plants. We are animals and many animals eat other species of animals.

I think the way we try and pretend there's a distinction between humans and nature is damaging. We're not living sustainably, and unless people become enlightened as to that fact we will end up doing potentially irreversible damage. But I suppose that's a bit off topic.

On the treatment of animals - isn't it simply a matter of empathy? As humans, we don't like to suffer, whether that is through physical or mental pain or anguish. What separates us from other animals is the ability to understand that other species can also experience such agony. In that knowledge, how could you possibly not care? I think that's borderline psychopathic, to be honest.

That's a good post tbh, but we as humans have a wider range of food available to us. It's not human instinct to kill animals and eat them, we just do it because we can.

woodoo

ScissorPaperRock wrote: »

I haven't read through the entire thread because there's a lot of it, but the indifference shown in the first few pages is shocking, to be honest.

I was watching as the first 2 pages were being written and to be honest its exactly as i expected. Every new thread in AH has a flurry of posts from people trying to be funny. Those people then drop out of the thread after a few pages. The people with something genuine to say then take over.

ScissorPaperRock

Aphex wrote: »

That's a good post tbh, but we as humans have a wider range of food available to us. It's not human instinct to kill animals and eat them, we just do it because we can.

I don't know if I'd agree that it's not human instinct to kill and eat animals. Various primates, to which we're closely related, hunt and eat other animals.

But I don't really think that whether it is instinctual or not is that crucial.

What you're talking about is whether it's wrong or not to consume animals. I don't think the fact that we do it out of choice makes it inherently wrong.

As I said, I think it's natural if we do it in a balanced and sustainable way. The needlessly prolonged suffering and agony of another animal, on the other hand, is wrong, IMO. And I don't know how anyone with the quality of empathy could see it any other way.

bulleyes

I care.

To the point that i grow all our own meat. Most of which are killed and processed at home by me.

whatdoicare

bulleyes wrote: »

I care.

To the point that i grow all our own meat. Most of which are killed and processed at home by me.

I thought that was illegal to do, kill the animal yrself I mean.

whatdoicare

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

Not really, they would be out in the fields during the summer but for the winter months would be in slatted sheds 24/7

Maybe I'm hallucinating so but it's January.. ie winter... And I'm looking out my window at cows grazing??

bulleyes

whatdoicare wrote: »

I thought that was illegal to do, kill the animal yrself I mean.

Not if its for your own use. If you were to sell on the meat i beleive there are a large amount of regulations.

whatdoicare

Gongoozler wrote: »

Why is that a problem though?

Our chickens are being flown in from countries where humans don't get to be free range let alone animals. Here, it's cheap to let chickens run free, there's loads of room and mild weatherall year round.

It's cheaper in other countries to keep them locked up battery style and feed them chemicals.

That might be why?

whatdoicare

bulleyes wrote: »

Not if its for your own use. If you were to sell on the meat i beleive there are a large amount of regulations.

Ah, I didn't know that. My uncle rears two pigs every year for his own consumption, one for Christmas and one for Easter but he has to bring them to his local abattoir, he gives out about this all the time as he used to be able to do it himself. Ill let him know, maybe he read the regulations wrong.

malic

Its very disturbing to read so many people who are almost proud to announce they don't give a **** as long as they get their meat.

I pity people who are too weak to acknowledge the suffering done in their name.
But anyway, here's some facts:

I keep Chickens so I know a little about them.
When you buy that cheap chicken in your supermarket and you pride yourself in saving a few euro by not falling for the free range/organic bull (sic) you're buying into a product that is extremely poor quality. If you think that a eating a Chicken that is born, raised and slaughtered in less than 6 weeks is a good idea then you are clearly suffering from a lack of intelligence.
Nature never intended a chicken to grow that fast. Its achieved through modification of their genetics, diet and chemical substances. The result is not a healthy lean meat. Its a cocktail of chemicals, bad DNA and bad FAT.

My Chickens are free range, they have a great life. Chickens need to be running around, scratching and doing chickenley things.
I was once given some of those broiler chicks, the ones that sell cheaply in the supermarket. Now my cockerel is a professional rapist and even he wouldn't go near them. I kept mine for 8 or 9 months (not the 5-6 weeks) and they got so huge they were like turkeys. These animals were so genetically messed with they could hardly move. Most don't live beyond a year (chickens should live around 5 years), they have heart attacks or their limbs break because of their obesity.
Next time you see a really fat person, I mean really fat, shoveling junk food into their body, consider the chicken equivalent you eat every day.

Plus, if you are an intelligent person you'll be smart enough to have figured out that Free Range/Organic Chicken not only tastes better and is low in fat, there is more real meat on on it and you'll get 3 or 4 times more meals out of it. So its actually not only a better investment for your health and your money, you can know that at the very least, if you must eat meat the animal had an acceptable standard of life.

But as I came to realise a long time ago. I share this planet with 50% Mingers and unfortunately Mingers have no conscience or concept of the harm they do to this planet. All they care about is No.1.

richie123

what is your point ?you dont like animals being killed to sustain human life ?

SamAK

We seem to forget that it's perfectly easy to sustain human life without eating meat.

Whenever I discuss vegetarianism with meat-advocates the standard reply is 'oh, but where will you get your protein!!?'

....

wylo

Thanks malic, nice insight and puts my mind at ease with regard to free range chicken.

wylo

Gongoozler wrote: »

I often wonder how people that don't know how to Google survive in the world.

There are restrictions on what free range means within the European Union.

It's a fairly specific question relating to the eggs and chicken we buy in Ireland. Someone with experience here could give a lot more information than trawling through Google.

TheMza

Nope