Recently there was a front page story in a major Chicago newspaper regarding the treatment of pigs raised for slaughter. Animals raised for food are in one of the most powerless positions of any living creatures on earth. How they are treated, poorly in far too many instances, would cause an uproar if the same treatment were applied to companion animals. Because there is usually little to no human emotional attachment to animals raised for slaughter, the standards for the care and treatment of these animals are often ridiculously low.
These animals should have some measure of legal protection backed by people with the authority to exercise the law. Laws, no matter how strong, are meaningless if there are not sufficient numbers of people with the power and authority to enforce them. Agribusiness fails if it cannot provide minimal standards of care. It is not enough to provide cheap meat if it comes at a heavy cost in terms of animal suffering, poor working conditions and environmental damage.
There are better, more humane ways to lead pigs to slaughter than are presently practiced in many slaughterhouses. There are significant deficiencies, with some exceptions, in every aspect of the way pigs (and other animals used for food) enter this world, live in it, and then leave it.
There are better alternatives than keeping sows kept in confinement pens, without the ability to turn, move, exercise, and that in frustration chew on their metal bars. A simple search on the internet reveals alternatives offered to this severe confinement. It is clear that some people with strong knowledge bases regarding animal science are thinking about these matters, and there are better alternatives. Some of the alternatives are expensive, some are not. There is one design, carefully thought out, that is a relatively inexpensive alternative to restrictive confinement pens, and that does not involve putting sows in a stressful group situation (pigs in general are highly social animals that seek out the company of each other, but not in all situations).
It simply is inexplicable that technology has advanced at an incredibly rapid pace, but the technology for the proper care of animals raised for meat has languished. As long as the nature of a business involves the use of living creatures, simple human decency demands that the animals in their care be afforded the right not to be subject to unnecessary, excessive, gratuitous cruelty, violence or neglect.
In factory farms and slaughterhouses where wages are low and the stress for workers is high, management still has obligations both to its employees and to the animals in their care.
Government has an obligation to protect both these animals and the workers, and to quit shielding factory farms and slaughterhouses from any achievable methods of accountability.
The well funded, lucrative animal welfare, humane, against cruelty, ethical treatment type organizations, who also are never held accountable, have fallen far short. A simple challenge remains for any one of these organizations to debate in a public forum or in any manner of their choosing regarding their position that they help animals, and the opposing position that they are more ineffective, harmful and exploitative than they are helpful.
Few people choose to stop eating meat. Some people choose to eat meat only raised in a manner that meets certain standards. But for the vast majority of people, they do not have the will or interest, or the financial resources, to eat anything other than meat that is least expensive, regardless of how it is produced.
Most animals never receive any measure of protection other than what the industry itself provides. This makes it all the more imperative that there is consistent, across the board standards for all animals raised for meat. The science and technology already exists to mitigate against unnecessary suffering. Unfortunately, the moral will is still lacking.
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