People often say to me, “I understand why people become vegetarians, why do they become vegans?” A quick reminder, vegetarians are people who don’t eat meat, whereas vegans don’t eat meat OR animal products such as milk and eggs. This question is surprising to hear, as many people are okay with killing animals for meat, but excessively cruel practices such as Factory Farming draw people’s disgust. People who don’t oppose killing animals, but oppose making them suffer should take heed of what I’m about to say. 99 percent of Farm Animals are raised on Factory Farms. They sleep in feces, their eyes and lungs are burned by ammonia, they are constantly bored, thousands are crammed into tiny spaces too small to stretch their wings, or move. Often, Animals who can live twenty to twenty five years are killed at the age of one or two. They are cut and castrated without painkillers. Now people come up with scenarios where the animals are treated well, or ask about free range farms. Free range farms are better. But the laws for what qualifies as a free range form are badly written and poorly enforced. Particularly in The United States. If an animal is allowed to go outside at all, it qualifies as a free range farm, even if they spend the rest of the year in a tiny crate.
That being said, even in the most kind scenario, one problem remains, when an animal is held captive and part of their body is made into an industry, this inherently leads to the animal being exploited. This is why even traditional forms of farming caused intense suffering in the past. This remains true whether it’s done by corporations, or the government. They both have to keep up with the demand of a growing population. Trying to maximize egg or milk production, by overmilking, exposing hens to light, or depriving a chicken of food and water, and putting them in the dark, makes the animals become very sick. A cow’s udders will get infected. A chicken will die from physical stress and exhaustion. For companies, the problem is worse because if they pump out less animals, they are beaten by competitors who don’t. Dangerous practices are still dangerous, even if they are modified to be less harmful. If you give your abuser power over you, they have the power to abuse you even more in the future.
If we are okay with freely killing animals for food, or using them as a factory for milk and eggs it becomes psychologically impossible to consider their suffering. In the end we will cut corners to try to save money. A smaller cage, faster production, etc. Cows have to be forcibly impregnated in order to produce milk. Just like any other animal, when we quit milking them, their udders dry up. We don’t have to keep milking them forever. The idea that their udders will fill up and start to hurt if we don’t milk them is absurd and blatantly false. Our selective breeding hasn’t been able to alter their bodies that much.
Now if we tried to create a perfect scenario where we use these farm animals without harming them in any way, meat, milk and eggs would become a luxury item, only available to the super-rich. Such a situation would be undesirable to most people, and unsustainable. The question isn’t whether we can create a perfect scenario, but whether such a thing is possible in the world we live in today. Our population is higher than ever, and growing. Eight billion people. It took all of human history up to the eighteen hundreds to reach one billion. It took a century for that to multiply to its current number. The industry has to keep up. Perhaps in a survival situation, it’s more ethical to eat a bird’s eggs, rather than killing the bird for food. Or perhaps there are some people who own a small family farm with their own personal chickens to lay eggs for them. What would you have us do then, have a chicken or cow delivered to every family in the country so everyone can have their own personal animal? Breeding and selling these animals to people would become its own industry, deadly in its own way.
Reforming factory farms is difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort. We are in desperate need for emergency intervention for animals. But we need meaningful changes. Wasting energy on small token reforms like a little extra cage space, will accomplish nothing, and kill momentum. It will take steam and energy away from the movement because people will say, ‘I guess we did something,’ and those who are less invested will go do something else. Entropy will always exist – but we need to support legislation that protects downed animals, and abolishes battery cages, force feeding, veal crates, and intensive confinement for animals. Doing these things will bring the issue into public awareness. As individuals we can become vegan or vegetarian, or refuse to purchase wool and animal leather in the future, buying cotton, polyester, and plant leather instead. The government doesn’t act like something is an emergency until we do at an individual level.
Don’t try to do everything at once. You will fail. Even eating less meat, being pescatarian, or vegetarian is a huge step for considering animals. The full change is extremely important, but making some changes is better than being overwhelmed and deciding to do nothing at all. You can always do more at a later date. Changing your eating habits is very difficult for multiple reasons. People’s diets are deeply personal, people lead busy lives, and our brains are animal like and impulsive. Dairy is in a lot more products than you would think, when you look at a food’s ingredient labels. Other ingredients require people to kill animals other than meat. Things like retin, gelatin, food coloring, or enzymes which come from fish. When you start, it doesn’t matter. Start with something simple that you can easily remember. If you cut out meat, cook good meals like curry, soups, stews, beans and rice, stir fry etc. Get a cookbook if you can. Don’t be discouraged when the novelty wears off. Keep going. If you fail you can always try again. Even if you don’t want to become vegetarian, I beg you to consider what I’m saying. It can be a fun thought exercise, is it right to do these things to animals? You can be self aware, even if you’re unable to change.
Human beings are currently sleeping in their own shit. Our laundry detergents and plastics contaminate our water. Our car exhaust and lead gasoline go into our air and rivers. Lead is a poisonous metal which causes brain damage. We’ve known all this forever but feel like we can do nothing. We’re also sleeping in the shit of the billions of animals we breed. Breeding so many animals to keep up with demand uses up land, food, and water which we can use to feed humans. We have the power to exploit animals forever, they can’t assemble, protest, or fight us. We can keep doing this until we make our planet completely unlivable, and then we will move on and do this to a new planet.
Some people have the luxury to look at the problem from a distance, and consider the long term consequences. Others are affected directly, now, whether they know it or not. For example, people who live near Factory Farms, and have untreated hog waste dumped into their water.
People work at these places to provide for themselves and their families. Workers have to kill an average of two hundred fifty cows an hour, breathe in ammonia gas, and see all sorts of terrible things. Factory Farms have the highest turnover rate in the country – even up to a hundred percent of the workforce each year. Many workers are new and inexperienced, which causes conditions to further deteriorate.
The runoff from factory farms pollutes our rivers and air. Feces are drained away. Excessive amounts of leather are tanned which causes air pollution. Exploiting animals is one of the biggest sources of disease. Think of the bustling meat markets in Europe during the middle ages where animals were butchered on the open market square, which lead to plague. The animals aren’t the ones who are dirty. The odds of catching a disease from a farm animal are astronomical unless we do all sorts of things to drastically increase the odds. Meat exposed to fecal matter has residues of e coli and salmonella. Overuse of antibiotics leave residues of these drugs in meat, waste, and fertilizers. These products also contain antibiotic resistant bacteria. All this combined with pesticides contaminate the ground and water. Because of its direct pollution, many people don’t want these farms in their backyard. So the industry builds their farms next to minority neighborhoods on purpose, knowing they will have a harder time fighting back. Factory Farming affects large segments of the population directly; and will eventually harm society as a whole.
Think of it this way. This is an opportunity to add some excitement to an otherwise drab, colorless life. To finally be able to do something about the issues which have been impossible to solve. You may feel trapped by stagnation and mediocrity, here’s a chance to fix this. For others, the fight is more direct, and we will need massive societal reform.
It’s just a thought. Have a good day everybody.