Care of Animals

There is a view of the world - and it's been a fairly mainstream view for some time - that the earth is a pool of resources that exists solely in order to be exploited by human beings; it is, essentially, a giant factory producing things for human consumption.

In this view of the world, other species such as animals have no intrinsic value. They are basically biological machines that can be manipulated in various ways to become ever more efficient producers of meat for humans. According to this view, humans have a God-given right to use animals, manipulate them or destroy them as they please to satisfy their wants and needs, so long as it increases efficiencies and therefore profitability.

If animals and other life forms are not sufficiently productive to meet human needs, the solution is not to moderate human wants; it is to develop new technologies such as genetic engineering which can redesign animals or create entire new species of animals, which can be owned by companies and used as robot like machines to produce whatever products we want. Inevitably, genetic engineering will escalate the exploitation and mechanisation of animals by humans.

This view of the world has been the driving force, and indeed the justification for, the industrialisation of agriculture which has taken place over the past 50 odd years.

Ever since the 1950s when scientists discovered that pesticides could kill insects and eliminate the need for labour intensive weeding, there has been an underlying assumption that any and every invention, any and every new agricultural technology is justified, provided that it helps make food grow more quickly and produces higher yields.

As a raft of new technologies, new inventions, new chemicals changed the face of modern agriculture, almost no thought was given to animals, or how they might suffer from these various new technologies. No thought was given either, to the consumer, or how the consumer might feel about some of the practices that were being introduced.

When the discovery of vitamins and d made it possible to raise animals indoors without sunlight or exercise, poultry and pig farmers switched to indoor farming, and invested heavily in capital equipment etc, without apparently giving any thought to how the consumer might feel about some of the techniques they were using such as sow crates and cages. I suspect their main thought was how long they could keep these practices hidden from the consumer.

Once it was accidentally discovered that chickens grew faster if they were fed antibiotics in their feed, poultry farmers embraced this practice to save on poultry feed, with no apparent thought about the long term health effects of feeding millions of tons of antibiotics to perfectly healthy animals, and no thought either about what consumers might think about the practice or whether they even had a right to know about this widespread practice.

Like to quote from Lyman, mad cowboy He personifies the underlying attitude of the industrial farmer.

This then was the basis of intensive industrial agriculture; it was producer led, based on maximising efficiencies for the producer, rather than consumer led, based on making product that consumers wanted to buy. It is based on the idea that animals are biological machines or economic units, not fellow creatures that we should respect.

For many years this sort of intensive factory farming thrived, but only because it was hidden away from the public, and most consumers had no idea, when they bought their nice pieces of diced chicken in the supermarket, of the conditions it had been reared on.

But in the last decade, all this has changed, as consumers have gained access to more and more information in the information age, and become more interested in food and how it has been produced.

And as animal welfare consciousness has grown, as animal welfare groups have exposed factory farming to the glare of publicity.

New Zealand consumers only really became aware of the fact that large numbers of animals are grown in factories 6 years ago, with the referendum on phasing out battery hens. Although the referendum didn't succeed it was a watershed because it lifted the veil of secrecy that had previously surrounded factory farming in New Zealand, and made consumers aware of the cruel truth of factory farming --- that unlike animals on conventional farms who have fresh air, exercise, rest, natural feed, the ability to range around in paddocks -some degree of what humans call freedom -

The environment of animals in factory farms consists of cages, steel bars, dusty air and fluorescent lights. Consumers became aware for the first time that animals on factory farms are treated like machines, kept in cages, sow stalls where all their natural instincts are suppressed, have their beaks and tails cut off, and live on a diet that is almost totally foreign to any food animals have ever found in nature -instead of foraging around for it themselves, their feed is concocted in laboratories and factories, and arrives on an automated conveyor belt.

More recently the anti sow stall campaign has been very successful in educating New Zealanders about how pigs are reared. 75,000 New Zealanders have signed a petition calling for the phasing out of sow stalls.

Videos about have been showing in 16 Body Shops around the country.

For producers, the protests of the animal welfare activists must be like one of those annoying car alarms that just wont shut off.

Even more annoying, no doubt, are the questions they ask -questions that the industrial agriculture does not want to address: questions that are almost taboo. Is it ethical to treat animals in ways that would be considered torture if done to humans or even pet dogs and cats.

How do animals feel in their confinement. Do animals, like other living creatures, feel pain and suffer from boredom and frustration on factory farms. And the answer, obviously is, yes, as can be seen from a short video I will show at the end of my speech. Pigs for example are intelligent, curious, highly social animals who have a heightened capacity for suffering, and literally go mad with boredom and despair when locked in their sow crates.

While some hope that the protests of animal welfare activists will subside, this is a vain hope. The protests outside this conference are but a hint of things to come, as interest in animal welfare grows. Animal welfare, like genetic engineering, is one of those underlying issues that people feel very passionately about. Although NZ is way behind Europe on this issue, its almost inevitable i suggest that new Zealand will follow the lead of England and Europe where animal welfare is no longer a fringe issue but a serious political and consumer concern.

England banned the dry sow and tether system earlier this year, and all of Europe committed itself a few months ago to prohibit the use of conventional battery cages by 2012, and to make it illegal to install any new ones after 2003.

It's only a matter of time before the same thing happens here. Animal welfare bill is a step in the right direction, with its stipulation that animals should be able to express normal patterns of behavior - nevertheless, the animal welfare act is seriously flawed, it has legalised many forms of animal abuse, it has failed to address many of New Zealand's animal welfare problems, including factory farming which is the greatest contributor of animal abuse in New Zealand, causing millions of animals to suffer extreme cruelty.

On the positive side, if this provision was strictly enforced many of the practices used on factory farms today would be illegal.

In the next three years as the different codes of practice, which have been given the force of law, come up for review, there will be intense pressure to make sow stalls and battery hen farming and other practices which flout the spirit of the act -that animals should be able express normal patterns of behavior -illegal. The green party certainly intends to take a lead in the next parliament in making sow stalls, battery farming and other cruel farming practices which prevent animals from expressing normal patterns of behavior illegal under the act. Phased out.

But perhaps even more significant, from producers point of view, is the way consumers are voting with their wallets and making food purchases in the supermarkets based on animal welfare, as well as health and safety concerns.

In the future, all the trends indicate, consumers will want to know how animals have been treated, and what conditions they were reared in. Farmers who treat their animals cruelly will face consumer boycotts and a growing consumer backlash against their products. Already we see this happening in England where most major supermarkets no longer stock hens that have been grown in cages and freedom foods, from animals that live in freedom, are being promoted.

In New Zealand, boycotts against pork and the recent announcement of the RNZSPCA 's endorsement of barn eggs are a sign of things to come as consumers begin to exert their power, and use their knowledge to influence the market.

It is not only animal welfare activists who don't want meat from factory farms. Consumers generally want safe, wholesome, unadulterated foods, and many are shocked when they discover that the meat they buy comes from animals that have been fed antibiotics, the ground up remains of other animals, or genetically engineered feed.

Consumers don't want to eat meat from animals that have been fed antibiotic growth promotants every day of their short and miserable lives, or the ground up remains of other animals, or genetically engineered soy meal. We want safe, wholesome, natural food, and will use their purchasing power to buy it and to avoid meat from factory farms.

As we move ever further into the information age, experts are warning that producers, whether they like it or not, will have to be consumer, rather than producer, driven, as they have been in the past. However galling they may find consumer concerns, they will have to listen to them, for the consumer as ray winger says in his paper, is the determinant of the food we produce-as even a giant multinational corporation like Monsanto has recently found to its cost.

Finally, of course, factory farming is not only the greatest contributor by far of animal abuse, causing millions of animals to suffer, it is simply not sustainable. It is not sustainable to continue feeding animals antibiotics every day of their lives, when officials have confirmed that this practice is contributing to the upsurge in superbugs in hospitals, and when health officials warn that antibiotic resistance is going to be one of the most serious problems confronting consumers in the next century.

Nor is it sustainable to continue feeding animals the ground up remains of other animals, as the bse crisis demonstrated. Which is why the practice is illegal in Europe.

The genetic engineers think they can create new super pigs and super sheep and super salmon which will solve some of these problems, but aside from the ethics of what they are doing to animals, it is doubtful that these laboratory created animals will be healthy or sustainable. Already reports coming in from Ruakura suggest that clones of dolly, the sheep, are abnormal, 8 times more likely to die prematurely, may not be able to graze in the paddock, and has serious health and other problems which raise questions about whether these animals lives should be sustained.

Like the factory farmers of yesteryear the genetic engineers are doing their experiments in secret, obsessed with the idea that anything that makes animals more productive and therefore more profitable, is acceptable, with no apparent concern, apparently, for how the animals, or consumer will feel about the new life forms they create.

I am particularly disturbed by the trend of the crown research institute Agresearch into genetic engineering and cloning of cows and sheep, producing unnatural animals which are treated like machines, some of this research is classed officially as laboratory work which needs no public input before behind the scenes official approval, and it is continuing without public scrutiny and debate.

Examples include work at Ruakura near Hamilton to add human and other genes to dairy cows. According to written details of the research, scientists work on young calves aged six to nine months to induce lactation well before the calves are naturally ready for this. The government scientists also take out and insert various embryos and fetuses, including in very young animals. Scientists continually operate to obtain skin and other body samples.

Scientists in recent years created deformed mice by taking out whole gene sequences. Some of these mice are barely alive, with loss of liver functions, walking difficulties, no hair, failed immune systems, and failed pregnancies. The scientists have been talking about similar knock out gene sequences in sheep and cattle and are likely to have produced these animals already in secret.

An Agresearch report in 1997 about a particular 'knocked out' gene sequence regulating muscle growth said this New Zealand discovery had opened the flood gates for work on sheep to greatly boost the amount of muscle. The green party has had an anonymous message from Ruakura staff saying staff have been sworn to secrecy about GE sheep which have ongoing problems retaining bodily fluids and which the messenger says should not be kept alive.