Meat's not neat

Farm Sanctuary just put out a report blowing up common ideas of animals whose confinement is labeled as as free range and organic. This is a big deal these days. Everyone wants grass-fed this and hormone-free that. Below are some hilights from it. What it comes down to is that no one has the right to dictate how other creatures live and die. All of the animals that people use for food are thinking, feeling creatures. That's fact. The only people who outright deny that are those in the businesses of animal exploitation. There is no way to justify our dominance and their misery, outside of might and because we can. Not great reasoning to stand upon. They have the same right to a decent life as you and I.

The Truth Behind The Labels:
Farm Animal Welfare Standards and Labeling Practices

Report Summary:

The USDA's Role in Product Labeling & Marketing Claims

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allows various product labels to be used on meat, dairy and eggs, including “cage free,” “free range,” “free roaming,” “pasture raised,” “grass fed,” “organic,” “natural,” and “naturally raised.” Many of these terms have vague, informal working definitions, and in most cases compliance is not verified through on-site audits. The agency approves labeling claims on meat and poultry products based on testimonials and documentation supplied by producers, with a couple of exceptions: the USDA does verify “cage free” conditions for egg-laying hens and “certified organic” conditions for all farm animal species.

Farmers are not required to provide “cage free” laying hens with access to the outdoors. Often, hens are crowded by the thousands into large barns where each bird is allotted approximately one square foot of space.

“Free range” birds raised for meat often lead lives very similar to their factory farmed counterparts. They may be crowded by the thousands into factory-like warehouses with no flock size limits, and the outdoor area may be little more than a barren dirt lot that is difficult for them to access.

“Natural” and “naturally raised” labels have little or no impact on animal welfare, and can be applied to products from animals raised in unnatural factory farm conditions. The “natural” label on animal products applies only to how meat, dairy and eggs are processed, and it has nothing to do with how the animals are treated when alive. The “naturally raised” claim is a misnomer, merely requiring that the animals be raised without antibiotics, animal by-products or synthetic growth promoters.

The “organic” label requires that all animals be given “access” to the outdoors, and that ruminants (i.e. grazing animals) have “access” to pasture. “Access” is not defined however, and as with free range requirements, the outdoor area may be unappealing and difficult for individual animals to reach. Organic mega-dairies have utilized loopholes in government standards to confine cows in factory farm conditions. Challenged by organic food advocates, the USDA has moved to clarify standards for pasture access.

...Agribusiness has produced standards that basically codify existing cruel practices and fail to improve farm animal welfare. A handful of third-party programs initiated by food retailers and animal welfare advocates have created programs to disallow some of the worst affronts to animal well-being. But programs affecting the most animals have the lowest standards and even the highest welfare standards can not eliminate suffering that is inherent to all forms of animal agriculture.

When animals are seen primarily as production units or commodities for sale – whether by factory farms or so-called “humane” operations – the animals’ welfare tends to be secondary to economic concerns.

Farm Sanctuary has learned from more than two decades caring for rescued farm animals, that when given the opportunity, family units stay together. However, when animals are raised for food under any conditions, most are denied familial relationships. Chicks are ordered from hatcheries and shipped via the postal service. (Male chicks born at egg hatcheries are killed after sexing as they are considered of no use to the industry.) Dairy calves are removed from their mothers so that the milk their mothers biologically produce for them can be marketed to humans. Lambs and piglets are weaned and removed from their mothers to be fattened for slaughter...

You can't have your meat

and your planet too. Ethical concerns aside, (see the free range chickens above) if people keep eating animal products, seeing as we number nearly seven billion, we won't have a planet on which to debate ethics, morals, or anything else. It will be a dead land. It doesn't matter if it's grass-fed, it doesn't matter how free range it is. There is not enough land to exploit, there are not enough resources to keep supplying enough animals for people to eat like they do.

   Food from animals is so resource intensive. There is no way around it.

Here is an excellent article with all sorts of facts and statistics to back these contentions up:

More and more, people are also realizing the troubling connections between human starvation and eating animal products. It takes approximately 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat (thus feeding one or two people on meat versus approximately 16 people on grain). Much of this grain is grown in developing countries, where a large percentage of their land is used for cattle-raising for export to the United States, instead of being used to grow staple crops, which could feed local people directly. In a world where a child starves to death every 2 seconds, it seems impossible to justify such waste...

These farms [organic/free range] are described as ethical because of the fact that they are small, sustainable and have kinder animal-husbandry practices. As many people have pointed out, these farms can individually produce meat in a way that is arguably just as "green" as eating vegan.

However, it is an inherent part of the ethical foundation of these farms that they cannot produce on a massive scale. As we've seen numerous times, the organic farms that do try to do this, very often become virtually no better than factory farms, despite the labels they often still get to keep.

For example, many cage-free or free-range chickens still live in devastating conditions -- they simply aren't technically kept in cages in the first case, or, in the latter case, are kept in huge, crowded and perpetually dark buildings, with a single opening leading to a few square yards of bare earth.

The question of methane pollution may also make it hard to raise animals on a massive scale, regardless of whether the farms could be sustainable in other ways.

The question is not, "are a few people eating local, sustainable, free-range pork worse environmentally than a few people eating vegan?" The question needs to be, "can we feed the world's entire growing population sustainable animal products?"...

Many people within this "new meat movement" argue that it is suffering, not killing, that is unethical. Can unnecessary killing ever be completely separated from suffering? Besides the obvious difficulty in assuring a life and death free from trauma, there are the FDA regulations, which send all larger meat animals to the same slaughterhouses that are used for factory-farmed animals -- facilities notorious for the suffering of both the animals and the employees.

Even if the animals die quickly on their home farm, what justifies this killing? Having foreknowledge of death is not a prerequisite for the right to live, or else killing an infant would not seem unethical. How are we justified in ending a life of happy contentment to satisfy a passing craving?...

Culture and tradition are never sufficient justification to continue unethical practices -- if they were, we would still have slavery and public torture. Traditions have to adapt with our changing values and ethics, although these changes may be uncomfortable and unwelcome.