Animal rights

The floor of my house is filled with sticks, pinecones and walnuts. The backyard is littered with dish cloths, socks and used paper plates. All of this is courtesy of Barack, the cocker puppy, who is free to come in and out of the house, and who is busy as a bee decorating his spaces. Then there is Charlie, my colt , who also redecorates his spaces, removing the rubber feed dishes and buckets from his stall to the paddock and bringing sticks and other choice finds into the barn. My hens, as evidenced by their foot tracks, seldom go farther than the little ramp outside the door of their coop, not wanting to tread in cold snow, but willing to brave the cold just a little to sit in the sun outside the door. There are tradeoffs for allowing animals to go outside on their own and some animals don’t find winter outside very appealing. But my animals have the choice to go outside or stay inside, which is more than can be said for millions of animals around the world.

Before I go any farther with my little rant, let me explain that I am a meat eater. I have raised my own meat, bought meat from local farmers and the supermarket. I love farming - I think it’s the best occupation on earth. However I believe you can farm- particularly raise food animals - so that the animals have some quality of life before you butcher them. I applaud all the research done to make animals healthier, but I wonder if the focus on the bottom line - how much money can we make from each square foot of space? sometimes overrides making animals comfortable before we “use” them.

Michigan recently passed some laws that govern humane treatment of animals. The law doesn’t state that all animals need to have access to the outdoors, simply that they must have room to stand up, turn around, lie down and perform some natural movements. Yet the laws were met with outrage by many in the agricultural sector. It puzzles me why the law enacted bothers those in agricultural pursuits so much, it doesn’t call for unreasonable changes, it doesn’t follow some outrageous ideas of animal keeping dreamed up by animal extremist groups, just what should be considered some very basic standards of humane treatment.

Farmers as a rule don’t like being told what to do. They worry that these laws enacted will be followed by more laws, one that are harder to follow and based on ideology rather than reality. In truth most people who keep animals sincerely believe they are keeping them in a humane way. They are told it’s the best way by the researchers, and it certainly works well for the bottom line, in most cases. Money is tight in farming; profit margins are low for a lot of hard work. So if the experts say it’s ok to stuff 4 hens in 2 feet of space then they can have a lot more hens in the same amount of room, taking about the same amount of care,but getting more eggs, than if they had 1 hen in 2 feet of space.

If the experts say the best way to raise the most pigs from a sow is to confine her in a tiny crate so she can’t lay down on them, can’t turn around to even nuzzle them, the farmer might not be convinced at first. But if all the other swine farms start doing it and they are able to achieve that slight profit edge, eventually the hold outs convert or are slowly edged out of the market. (Unless they are more intelligent than most and make their more humane methods an asset, and market to a concerned and informed group of consumers.)

As part of the argument that how big farms treat animals is better for them- experts site a new study that says pigs are healthier confined indoors- they don’t get as many diseases as they did 50 years ago when most were kept outside part of their life. And yes that is probably true, they get less diseases. We would get less diseases if we were confined to our own homes, never going outside too, but most of us wouldn’t consider that a very good life. Pigs like comfort and I bet most would choose to remain inside during a typical Midwestern winter. But during the milder months give those pigs a choice and I bet they would head outside. And the inside-outside thing is only one part of the issue. Animals need enough space to feel comfortable, to move around normally, exercise and socialize. Inside confinement space costs money and a lot of time and effort to maintain, the more animals we can stuff into that unit, the more cost effective it becomes.

How happy do we need to make animals? How do we know what quality of life means to them? Do they miss what they never had? All hard questions to answer, but most of us know instinctively that there should be a balance between profit, modern farming methods, protecting our food supply and humane treatment of animals. Asking that food animals have enough room to sit, stand, lie down and perform natural movements while waiting to serve us certainly shouldn’t be considered animal rights extremism and an infringement on farmer’s “rights”. It’s just doing the right thing.