In defense of animals, p.14
In Defense of Animals, page 14
Moderate 1,811 55
Substantial 63 2
Unclassified 139 4
Total 3,309 100
Political Campaigning
Various commentators have seen the animal liberation movement as some sort of left-wing conspiracy. Yet, over the years, no evidence has appeared of any ulterior political motivation and, indeed, Marxists and socialists have usually been counted on the other side of the argument. Marxists are often great speciesists. Indeed, active discouragement of organized animal welfare was very much a feature of life in Eastern Europe during the Communist era. However, the European reform movement, since the 1990s, has included the parties of the center and the left – the Democratic Socialist, Social Democrat, and Liberal parties. This marks a change from the animal welfare movement of previous decades, which had become rather middle-class and conservative, a phenomenon deriving from the highly respectable position attained for the promotion of animal welfare in late nineteenth-century society on both sides of the Atlantic. Prior to the 1970s in Britain, center and left-wing politicians tended to be skeptical of animal welfare, and some viewed it as middle-class sentimentality – a preference for pets over people. This outlook was gradually changed by the new campaigns of the 1970s, the spate of serious publications on the subject, and the deliberate and successful attempts of the 1980s and 1990s to “put animals into politics.” Campaigns led by Lord Houghton, Clive Hollands, and myself in Britain from 1970 led to an arousal of public awareness and, eventually, to the passage of the new laboratory animal legislation in London and the EU in 1986.
In the U.S. much progress was made by the late Christine Stevens and other animal groups in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s. After the publication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in New York in 1975, a new activist animal rights wing of the American movement developed and skilled campaigners such as Henry Spira, inspired by Singer’s lectures, achieved important results. Alex Pacheco, Barbara Orlans, Tom Regan, Ingrid Newkirk, and many others followed up. The tactics followed a similar pattern to those in Europe: the presentation of evidence of atrocities to the media, public protest, and the focusing of public feeling onto politicians or other influential figures such as the heads of major testing companies. Some others took direct action including break-ins. The U.S. media were intrigued by the issue during the 1980s, but, as animal rights became part of popular culture, serious media interest waned during the following decade. The American scientific and academic establishments for the most part remained implacably hostile. Nevertheless, attempts were made to promote the “three R’s” within the American laboratory community and Dr Andrew Rowan of the Humane Society of the U.S. initiated an important campaign to assess and eliminate the pain and distress inflicted on laboratory animals. In 1999 a coalition of representatives from the research, animal protection, zoo, and sanctuary communities, supported by the well-known primatologist Jane Goodall, successfully pressed for the introduction of the Chimpanzee Health Improvement Maintenance and Protection Act (CHIMP) by Rep. James Greenwood. This was signed into law by President Clinton on 20 December 2000, establishing a national sanctuary system for retired laboratory chimpanzees. Furthermore, supported by a major grant in 2003, the Florida-based Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care announced it would permanently care for some 300 chimpanzees and monkeys once used by the Coulston Foundation. Less successful was the campaign by a coalition of seven animal protection bodies to provide protection to laboratory birds, rats, and mice under the Animal Welfare Act. This failed in 2002 when Senator Jesse Helms, prompted by medical research organizations, amended the Farm Security Act so as to permanently deny protection to these species under the Animal Welfare Act.
The Political Animal Lobby (PAL) of the 1990s led the way in Europe by using not only personal contacts with ministers and media campaigns, backed by science and law, but also the legitimate funding of political institutions (Ryder 1989, 1998). In Europe, too, more than in the U.S., some good “insider” relationships have been established between scientists, animal welfarists, and politicians.
Governments tend to move only when pressed; when the pressure is released they usually cease to move. In the case of modern pressure-group politics the principal tools of the trade are media attention, the arousal and targeting of public opinion, and direct approaches to government and politicians supported by scientific, legal, and psephological evidence. European groups have excelled at these tactics. An early and classic example of this was the stopping of the slaughter of grey and common seals in Scotland in 1978. First, Greenpeace boats confronted the sealers and thus caught the attention of the media. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) made the next major move by placing whole-page advertisements in the British press telling members of the public to “Write to the Prime Minister.” (This caused James Callaghan to receive some 17,000 letters on this topic in one week – the most ever received on one subject by any Prime Minister in such a short period.) Finally, I headed an RSPCA deputation to the Secretary of State bearing some scientific findings which cast an element of doubt upon the scientific research of the government; this duly helped to provide the government with the excuse it by then needed to call off the seal slaughter. In this campaign the three elements (direct action attracting the media, the channeling of already aroused public feeling, and, finally, high-level political contact providing a face-saver for the government) all worked perfectly together.
Many politicians are sincerely moved by arguments, especially if these are backed by science and the law. But, ultimately, the effective incentives for politicians are votes and, sadly, money. Far more needs to be done in the future to tame the great international forces that now affect the welfare of animals around the world. The OECD, the World Trade Organization, the International Standards Organization, and even the United Nations now need to feel the skilled pressure of animal protectionists. There is also a need for better-educated and more humane government and science. These are the challenges for the twenty-first century.
Notes
I am particularly indebted to Dr Maggy Jennings, Dr Penny Hawkins, and Barney Reed of the RSPCA and to Dr Carmen Lee of Philadelphia and Dr Andrew Rowan of the Humane Society of the US for their assistance in bringing this chapter up to date in 2005.
1. British Journal of Radiology 49 (1976) and European Journal of Cancer 15 (1979); British Journal of Experimental Pathology 61 (1980), 62 (1981); Toxicology 15(1) (1979); British Journal of Pharmacology 70 (1980).
2. “Biogenic Rodent Model of Chronic Pain” (www.neurodigm.com).
3. Nature 417 (June 13, 2002), p. 686.
4. Home Office figures, 2003.
References
Becker, Howard C. (2000) “Animal Models of Alcohol Withdrawal,” Alcohol Research & Health 24(2), 105–13.
Eichacker, P. Q., et al. (1996) “Serial Measures of Total Body Oxygen Consumption in an Awake Canine Model of Septic Shock,” American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine 154(1), 68–75.
Godlovitch, Stanley, Godlovitch, Roslind, and Harris, John (1971) Animals, Men and Morals, London: Gollancz.
Hess, B. J., and Angelaki, D. E. (1997) “Kinematic Principles of Primate Vestibulo Ocular Reflex,” Journal of Neurophysiology 78(4), 2203–16.
Hong, C. C., et al. (1997) “Induced Spinal Cord Injury,” Journal of Chinese Society of Veterinary Science 23(5), 383–94.
Miller, Harlan B. (1983) “Introduction” to Harlan B. Miller and W. H. Williams (eds), Ethics and Animals, Totowa, N.J.: Humana Press.
Ryder, Richard D. (1975) Victims of Science: The Use of Animals in Research, London: Davis-Poynter; rev. edn, Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press Ltd (Dutch translation 1980; Norwegian 1984; Hungarian 1995).
—— (1989) Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell; rev. edn, Oxford: Berg, 2000.
—— (1998) The Political Animal: The Conquest of Speciesism, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.
—— (2001) Painism: A Modern Morality, London: Opengate Press.
Schwei, Matthew J., Honore, Prisca, Rogers, Scott D., Salak-Johnson, Janeen L., Finke, Matthew P., Ramnaraine, Margaret L., Clohisy, Denis R., and Mantyh, Patrick W. (1999) “Neurochemical and Cellular Reorganization of the Spinal Cord in a Murine Model of Bone Cancer Pain,” The Journal of Neuroscience, December 13, 10886–97.
Singer, Peter (1975) Animal Liberation, New York: Jonathan Cape.
7
Brave New Farm?
Jim Mason and Mary Finelli
In our mind’s eye the farm is a peaceful place where calves nuzzle their mothers in a shady meadow, pigs loaf in the mudhole, and chickens scratch about the barnyard. These comforting images are implanted in us by calendars, coloring books, theme parks, petting zoos, and the countrified labeling and advertising of animal products.
The reality of modern farmed animal production, however, is starkly different from these scenes. Now, virtually all poultry products and most milk and meat in the U.S. come from animals mass-produced in huge factory-like systems. In some of the more intensive confinement operations, animals are crowded in pens and in cages stacked up like so many shipping crates. In these animal factories there are no pastures, no streams, no seasons, not even day and night. Growth and productivity come not from frolics in sunny meadows but from test-tube genetics and drug-laced feed.
Animal factories allow producers to maintain a larger number of animals in a given space, but they have created serious problems for consumers, farmers, and the environment, and they raise disturbing questions about the degree of animal exploitation that our society permits.
The animal factory is a classic case of technology run horribly amuck: it requires high inputs of capital and energy to carry out a simple, natural process; it creates a costly chain of problems and risks; and it does not, in fact, produce the results claimed by its proponents. Moreover, the animal factory pulls our society one long, dark step backward from the desirable goal of a sane, ethical relationship with the natural world and our fellow inhabitants.
Factories Come … Farms Go
Right under our noses agribusiness has wrought a sweeping revolution in the ways in which animals are kept to produce meat, milk, and eggs. It began in the years before World War II, when farmers near large cities began to specialize in the production of chickens to meet the constant demand for eggs and meat. By supplementing the birds’ diet with vitamin D, they made it possible for them to be raised indoors without sunlight. The first mass-producers were able to turn out large flocks all the year round. Large-scale indoor production caught on fast around the urban market centers, but the new methods created a host of problems. Nightmarish scenes began to occur in the crowded, poorly ventilated sheds. Birds pecked others to death and ate their remains. Contagious diseases were rampant, and losses multiplied throughout the budding industry.
The boom in the chicken business attracted the attention of the largest feed and pharmaceutical companies, which put their scientists to work on the problems of mass-production. Someone found that losses from pecking and cannibalism could be reduced by burning off the tips of chickens’ beaks with a blowtorch. Soon an automatic “debeaking” machine was patented, and its use became routine. Richer feeds made for faster-gaining birds and a greater number of “crops” of chickens each year. Foremost of the developments, however, was the discovery that sulfa drugs and antibiotics could be added to feed to help hold down diseases in the dirty, crowded sheds.
Chickens themselves were not entirely ready for mass-production, and the poultry industry set about looking for a better commercial bird. In 1946, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (now A&P) launched the “Chicken of Tomorrow” contest to find a strain of chicken that could produce a broad-breasted body at low feed cost. Within a few years poultry breeders had developed the prototype for today’s “broiler” – a chicken raised for meat who grows to a market weight of about five pounds in seven weeks or less. The pre-war ancestor of this bird took twice as long to grow to a market weight of about three pounds.
The egg industry went to work on engineering their own specialized chicken – the “layer” hen, who would turn out eggs and more eggs. Today’s model lays twice as many eggs per year as did the “all-purpose” backyard chickens of the 1940s. Egg producers also tried to follow the “broiler” industry’s factory ways, but they were faced with a major problem: confined hens produce loads of manure each week. “Broiler” producers had the manure problem with their large flocks too, but the birds were in and out within twelve weeks, and accumulations could be cleaned out after every few flocks. (Today, it can be years between complete litter changes.) Egg producers, however, kept their birds indoors for a year or more, so they needed a means of manure removal that would not disturb the hens or interfere with egg production. Unfortunately for the hens, they found it: producers discovered they could confine their chickens in wire-mesh cages suspended over a trench to collect droppings. At first they placed hens one to each cage, but when they found that birds were cheaper than wire and buildings, crowded cages became the rule. Although crowding caused the deaths of more hens, this cost was considered “acceptable” given the increased total egg output.
Having reduced chickens to the equivalent of living machinery, entrepreneurs and government scientists began looking about for ways to extend factory technology to other farmed animal species. In the 1960s they began developing systems for pigs, cattle, and sheep that incorporated the principles of confinement, mass-production, and automated feeding, watering, ventilation, and waste removal. The wire cage, which made everything possible for the egg industry, would not work for these heavier, hoofed animals. But slatted floors – rails of metal or concrete spaced slightly apart and built over gutters or holding pits – did much the same job. Now large numbers of animals could be confined indoors and held to rigid production schedules, for the laborious tasks of providing bedding and mucking out manure had been eliminated.
The basics of factory husbandry had been established. Now the job of refining mass-production systems and methods fell to husbandry experts, opening up a great new field for them. It opened up, as well, great new markets for the agribusiness companies that could profit from the expanded sales of feed, equipment, drugs, and the other products required by the new capital-intensive technology. Humanity and concern retreated further as animal scientists – funded by these companies and by government – worked out the “bugs” in the new systems.
The Factory Formula
Factory methods and equipment vary from species to species, but the principles are the same: keep costs down and manipulate animals’ productivity upward. These principles ensure that animals are crowded in barren environments, restricted, stressed, and maintained on drug-laced, unnatural diets.
The modern chicken comes from the sterile laboratories of a handful of “primary breeders” worldwide. In the U.S., these companies sell animals for breeding to some 300 “multipliers” or hatcheries (down from 11,405 in 1934), which in turn produce the chicks who are used for egg and meat production. At the multipliers, birds have the run of the floor in the breeding houses, for freedom and exercise promote health and a higher percentage of fertile eggs.
If the hatchery is turning out birds for egg factories, the first order of business is to destroy half the “crop” of chicks. Males don’t lay eggs, and the flesh of these specialized layer breeds is of poor quality – “not fit to feed,” as one hatchery worker put it. These chicks, by the millions annually, have for decades been thrown into plastic bags to be crushed or suffocated. Large-scale hatcheries have moved toward the use of gas asphyxiation or “macerators,” which grind up the live chicks at high speeds. About threefourths of the female chicks (“pullets”) are reared in cages, the other fourth raised loose in floor facilities. Shortly before they begin to lay eggs, at between eighteen and twenty weeks of age, they are moved to the egg factory.
Today, 98 percent of commercial layer hens in the U.S. are caged. At an industry average of eight birds per cage, each hen gets about 50 square inches of floor space. In 2002, under pressure from public opinion, the industry trade group United Egg Producers announced “Animal Care Certified” guidelines that will, over a six-year period, gradually increase the space allowance to a minimum of 67 inches per hen, or seven birds per cage. Studies have shown, however, that hens require 71–5 square inches of space just to stand and lie down, and about twice that much space to stretch their wings. In major egg-producing states, operations with flocks of 100,000 hens are common, some housing as many as 200,000 hens in a single building. The owner of a planned 2.4 million-hen facility explained: “We used to have one person for 10,000 chickens. Now we have one for every 150,000.”
After a year in the cages, hens’ egg productivity wanes and it becomes unprofitable to feed and house them. The manager may decide to use “force molting,” a procedure which causes the birds to grow new feathers and accelerates and synchronizes another cycle of egg production. This is usually accomplished by reducing light and depriving the hens of food for ten to fourteen days. In a large study, mortality doubled during the first week of the molt and then doubled again during the second week. Aggression also increases among the starving birds. After a force molt or two the hens are deemed “spent” and are removed from the cages to make room for the next flock. There is a poor market for the birds in these days of mass-produced “broiler chickens,” so they, too, are thrown into macerators, buried alive, or killed by having their neck broken. Now that these gruesome methods have created controversy, a few firms are beginning to experiment with other ways of killing hens, such as electrocution and gassing. Whatever the method of killing, millions go to renderers to be turned into companion-animal food and feed supplements, to incinerators, or to landfills.
