How do farmers reconcile themselves to the volumes of animals they send to slaughter over the course of their lifetimes?

[Empanadas]

Hi, this is something I’ve always wondered. However, I was watching that Netflix series about Prince Charles and the Duchy of Cornwall and there was a farmer showing a whole barn of cattle he has obviously reared from birth, but quite blithely saying, “oh they'll all be off next week.”

AIBU to think being a cattle / sheep / chicken farmer takes a certain type of person and to wonder how they deal with their conscience in this depressing business?

The animal doesn't care about motive though - it has no impact on their life and more to the point their quality of life. Quality of life is everything to an animal and we owe them all the best we can provide

@Throckmorton

The animal doesn't care about motive though - it has no impact on their life and more to the point their quality of life. Quality of life is everything to an animal and we owe them all the best we can provide

Of course not, but that doesn't mean humans can't care about motives. I'm just saying, it's not true to say they are the same thing.

Many animals are highly intuitive, they have had to be for survival, and this is a skill humans have largely lost through evolution. When I have pet sat for a friend’s dog, the dog somehow knows the day when the owners are returning, even though they wouldn’t even be anywhere near the airport! No idea how, but this dog sits and waits by the porch all day. It just knows - its unbelievable really. No other day in the two-week period did it behave like this at all.

Cats particularly, are highly attuned creatures who know when you are ill or sad and will sit with you. Cats know when you are going on holiday and will act depressed.

Yes these are pets, but pigs and cows are also highly intelligent animals. Just because they can’t speak, who knows what goes on on their minds.

“But you can't understand that for many people, our line means eating animals? “

Yes of course. Where did I say otherwise?

The thread did not ask why people eat meat. It asked how people, at the production end, reconcile themselves to mass slaughter, often over the course of an entire lifetime. How do they compartmentalise / rationalise it, I guess. Because not many meat eaters ever experience that, never mind vegetarians. It’s a reasonable question and one I’m trying to get my head around.

Of course not, but that doesn't mean humans can't care about motives. I'm just saying, it's not true to say they are the same thing.

This is fair and honest - for a lot of us these issues are as much about our own feelings as the animals’, but we’re not always honest about that.

It’s the same as the reasons I won’t let my kids have fish or hamsters/hamsters/similar - I don’t think it’s particularly kind - while I do eat some meat and dairy (though trying to do less and ensure what we eat is as high standard as possible.) it’s not that the fish or hamster is objectively worse off than a farmed cow, it’s my own feelings about the motives for keeping animals. Is the enjoyment deserved from keeping an animal as a pet objectively more or less ethical than the enjoyment and nutrition derived from eating an animal that’s been kept to produce food? I can’t answer that for anyone else, let alone objectively. It’s about my own feelings related to the motivations for keeping an animal.

How do they compartmentalise / rationalise it, I guess.

I think this question is quite telling about the assumptions you’re making - ie that they need to compartmentalise/rationalise it in the same way as you would if you found yourself having to kill and skin your own rabbits in a post-apocalyptic world after the life you’ve had to date.

Most non-industrialised farmers will have grown up much closer to these animals and to food production, the life cycle of animals and will have an entirely different understanding and emotional connection to these issues than you do. So they don’t need to approach it in the same way that you would. In some ways, most will be a lot less sentimental and anthropomorphic about farm animals than people whose main experience of farm animals is Babe, Shaun the Sheep and petting farms.

But the flip side is an entirely different kind of emotional connection that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it - pride in the animals and the way they’re treated, care for their welfare, anguish if they’re mistreated or mauled by animals.

asked how people, at the production end, reconcile themselves to mass slaughter, often over the course of an entire lifetime. How do they compartmentalise / rationalise it, I guess.

There is no compartmentalising it and it's very easy to rationalise. I don't expect that drivers do much in the way of compartmentalising when it comes to the many 1000s of animals they kill.

I think the answer is we’re agreeing to disagree on the topic of eating animals… you put the question to farmers on how they reconcile the animals dying, got your response multiple times over, the topic has changed to where we each draw the line

derxa I mean this in the nicest way, I wouldn’t bother. The thread has gone round the same topics for 27 pages. Haven’t seen any responses to everyone else being vegan (like me!) and not using any products with animal testing… ie lots want to “change” to not eating meat, but not make the commitment to no animal produce or find ethical alternatives.

People’s consciences are all different… I just don’t think the questions the posters now have are for farmers, more widely “where do we draw the line” as a more theoretical question

“ Lovely. I'd love to know how you make your living. I'm a sheep farmer. What do you do? Or your partner? I bet you won't say.”

In my life I have been a dancer (ballet). A social worker. I have worked in the remand sector with young people, sexual abuse, self-harm and adult mental health. I restrained mid-life as a specific type of therapist. At intervals, I have also been property developer. And a SAHM.

My husband has been an aid worker. A marine conservationist. An options trader in a Swiss bank. Now he’s an entrepreneur - his businesses have ranged from .coms to pharmaceuticals to travel. Now he is mainly an non-exec director and therefore, adapts to changes in the economic environment. Nothing is fixed and never has been.

Neither of us are British and are here because we have tended to move / adapt to where work takes us and retrain accordingly.

Empanadas I don’t mean to be goady AT ALL but one thing in your control is those cows in the urban farm you have; you can volunteer to ensure their care right to the end, seeing them pass and be removed respectfully. Will you commit to that? I’m saying this as vegan and knowing you have some animals you can care for and help out with - at least that’s a positive change you can definitely make and a long term one. Knowing how they’re cared for will help you educate others too

“An options trader in a Swiss bank. Now he’s an entrepreneur - his businesses have ranged from .coms to pharmaceuticals to travel” I mean lol at these being so unethical and non green!!! How does he and you who benefits from that money compartmentalise the completely unethical international banking industry and ruinous-to-the-planet travel industry?! And you’re asking about farming? Lol

Ok you’ve lost me, from a vegan to you… LORD!

@Empanadas I'm not disputing that
'The Highlands will exist whether there’s cattle or not. Times change, people evolve, demand changes. Just as we used to rely solely on coal for energy, we no longer do. I’m not saying it was easy for people in those communities, but they adapted. Communities adapt all the time. Nothing has to be inevitable'

But I'm curious as to what you think would happen to remote rural communities if the land was not farmed any longer? Its not a small area that would become parkland but half the area of Scotland? People already have to leave the area for work if they aren't in one of about 5 areas. If you decimate farming, once again you contribute to a a modern day clearances.
It is easy to be idealistic in a city surrounded by convenience imagining what you believe a farming community life to be

@Empanadas oh and as a postscript to that, there is still sufficient demand for coal here for the coal man to be making daily rounds

omg where do we even start on those industries…. And you’re judging meat eaters?! Loooooooooooooooooooooool LOL!! I’m literally screenshotting and sending to my mates, I mean good for you for being vegan too but the sheer hypocrisy WOW

My husband is not a vegetarian. Two of my kids are, two aren’t. Do you think I expect them all to be the same as me? You have no absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, frankly.

And where did I say I have an urban farm? That was another poster.

Oh yes, I forgot, sorry. Vegans have to shun all work and flagellate themselves in the garden while wearing an organic sack and trying not to squash the grass, Anything else, is outrageous hypocrisy. To work in finance - or work at all, it seems a you must eat meat. All meat. Every day.

I don't have any issues with my conscience about eating meat, so long as I know the animal had a decent life.

I always end up pointing out on these threads that almost all food production involves killing animals, from insects to deer. Rabbits, wood pigeons and deer are all culled to protect the crops. Even organic crops. If you seal everything up in polytunnels, completely destroying the local habitat, you won't have to worry about anything except the odd outbreak of insect pests, and foxes trying to dig their way in to eat the worms in the warm polytunnel soil.

But if you eat, you are party to the deaths of animals and the destruction of habitat. I'd rather eat grass-fed beef from pasture full of insects and birds and small mammals than tomatoes from a Spanish polytunnel.

Lol ask your husband how he reconciles eating animal produce then!

I can’t believe you’re this super corporate London family asking how farmers reconcile producing animal produce, and you’re married to a non-vegan. Ask him! And while you’re at it talking about drawing the line I think he’s worked in despicable industries, how do you reconcile using such dirty money? Property development isn’t exactly green either!

If he’s a NED with a financial background he can put his experience to helping ethical industries, will he? And you can do the same - why not start an ethical business suppling/ promoting what you consider decent produce?

Everyone’s “draw the line” is different, but I’m surprised at your background. Did make me lol!!!

Vegans have to shun all work and flagellate themselves in the garden while wearing an organic sack and trying not to squash the grass, Anything else, is outrageous hypocrisy.

No one's saying that - but surely you don't have to ask how farmers 'reconcile themselves' or compartmentalise when it comes to farming livestock, given that you've someone in your house who has worked in sectors with a catastrophic environmental footprint - destroying the lives of countless animals and the lives and livelihoods of many people.

Couldn't you just ask him how he does it?

Yeah…. As with everyone I have different ethics to you!! Loooool at bothering with this, go make a change in your life

It’s not about everyone living eating rocks and self flagellating, I’m like a level 10 vegan and I’ve said multiple times I don’t judge well informed meat eaters.

It’s about hypocrisy…

I'm starting to think it would actually make more sense if OP was farmer who has created a Barnes baby ballet enthusiast with a banker DH expressly with purpose of getting others to reconfirm their commitment to rural life and farming.

Do people think all vegans only marry other vegans and insist their children become vegan? Like some kind of cult?

What job is my husband allowed to do? A greengrocer? Oh wait... vegetable farming harms the environment. Given he has a VEGAN wife, would you say he’s allowed to travel in any form of public transport?

You did realise, vegetarians / vegans / pescatarians come in all guises and all jobs and all walks of life. Did you imagine I lived in some kind of hippy commune?