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?

Essentially yes, this thread was about the direct visceral action of slaughter / sending cattle to slaughter. How does it actually feel at the thin end of the wedge, if I could put it like that? As I explained, the question was specific and in response to a documentary. That’s all. It was never meant to take on the entire meat industry, globalisation, global warming, corporations high finance and everything and its aunt! As I said, eating meat is one thingand it is what it is. Directly killing it is something few have experience of.

I'd rather the slaughter process be overseen by the person who has raised those cattle, who has sat with birthing ewes in the dead of night talking to them calmly, who have nursed the lambs back to life (sometimes by mouth-to-mouth), who have sobbed when some fucking idiot has let their dogs into the field of grazing lambs and killed them, the person who ensures no part of the animal is wasted. I agree that it takes a certain type of person..a special kind of person.

Hopefully you've had some useful answers on that point then.

That is - that they don't see it as depressing. Perhaps they're more realistic about how the world works than those who are more distant from it, and therefore they don't have to 'compartmentalise'. Maybe that's the 'certain kind of person they are' - more realistic about how they interact with the way the world works, rather than like most of us who interact with it through shop tills and pension investments which we can keep at arm's length.

[quote Femme99]@Wrennie24 - I suppose it’s a good thing you have the freedom to choose what food you eat, unlike the animals that have no choice.[/quote]
Yawn.

I do think you are missing the fundamental point that animals/insects die for every single piece of commercially grown food. At the end of the day it comes down to how you value different species. You eat vegetables, fruit and grains that animals will 100% have died in the production of.

Whether that is beef cows who have been used to fertilise your organic celery, small mammals being chopped up by the combine for your oats and wheat or bees killed by neonicotinoids. It is wildly hypocritical to disparage people who farm and eat beef as monsters. I’d argue that rabbits being chopped to pieces or bees being slowly poisoned is a far crueler fate than cows who are stunned and dispatched. You continue to eat food though that is produced as the result of animals deaths, I assume you just value the lives of bees, rabbits, pigeons, voles, rats, mice, beetles etc... far less than you do a cow (although you also 100% support beef farming through the purchase of food fertiliser and grazed by beef cows).

Diabetics don't have a choice.
And farmers can't ignore the wider issues, because they have an impact on the environment, which is where they work.

@backstreet, yes there are many solutions being proposed, I didn't mean lab neat is "the" solution. As for moral superiority, in many respects I don't feel to be, but for animal slaughter, sorry but yes, I do think it's morally wrong

Yes I take the point about small animals being caught up in combine harvesters, etc. I am going to have to employ some cognitive dissonance now that I’ve taken that on board as well, as I have to eat cereal etc. But still, as I said, two (or two million) wrongs don’t make a right and the thought of mice etc being killed by farming or other horrible side effects of fatting, is hardly going to persuade me to eat beef, pork or chicken!

No ones trying to force you to eat meat; just to stop and think before making sweeping judgmental statements that position one point of view as morally better than another.

I’m not trying to persuade you to eat anything, nobody has to eat anything they don’t want to. I think it’s important to know before you attack farmers that you equally as culpable for animal deaths as somebody eating a steak is. It’s just not as clearly visible.

I also meant to say, I know a Buddhist who literally won’t kill a fly as he values all life (I do the same but he gets really upset over it). I can see it - every piece of life puts as much effort into surviving, and you may laugh but it’s all relative. He is very genuine about it, I don’t have the same outlook but I respect him for being genuine just as I respect anyone who is trying. Including the idea of lab grown meat! The point is our idea of “good” or acceptable isn’t everyone’s and we all have different priorities/ outlooks.

Sorry Thelbranati, I am indeed making a sweeping comment that slaughtering sentient animals at this industrial scale is wrong. Obviously I'm not going to judge a person purely based on their eating habits or a farmer purely based on their job. However I believe future generations will look back at us thinking we were savages in this particular respect.

We're farming beef and dairy cattle here.
You want to know what our thoughts are when we take /send cattle to the factory?
We think about the price they may make, will it clear the overdraft,
Not in a callous way, it's just a fact of life, all animals on the farm are well cared for but they're an asset, we work 365 days a year caring for our herd . We're in the business of food production but any kind of livestock farming takes hard work and dedication.

Everyone would be up in arms if we treated dogs like we treat animals that come from these factory farms.

@Empanadas, sending livestock to slaughter is what farmers do to maintain the farms that provide food for me and you. I've never met a farmer who fretted about the years when the herd was numerous and fat because meat is not just the end product, it sustains the farm. It is an important part of an ecosystem and an essential part of our food provision. Leave the farmers to manage it., they know what they're doing.

“No ones trying to force you to eat meat; just to stop and think before making sweeping judgmental statements that position one point of view as morally better than another.”

Eating bread where some mice might well have been caught in combine harvesters is not quite the same as eating pork where it’s obviously been killed as it’s in your plate! You have to admit there is a difference.

Though I totally agree that, as humans, we have totally overrun the natural habitats of all types of animals. Urbanisation and industry means habitats are constantly shrinking. Traffic and pollution are obviously massively harmful. We have stolen their world. You won’t get any argument from me there. It’s a bit like preaching to the church! It’s almost too much to comprehend but, in my way, one thing I feel strongly about is the meat industry. This is not hidden or accidental. So not participating in that, is something I can easily do in my own sphere. Other people can respond to the world as they see it.

@Throckmorton

Can you imagine if people took their pets to the vet to be put to sleep and they were slaughtered like a farm animal? Who actually thinks that happens?

I take it you've not seen pet horses being put down then? Gunshot to the head is pretty standard - much like a captive bolt gun in a slaughterhouse or the mallet to the head described somewhere up thread.

Huge assumption. I have horses. I've had horses PTS, only one shot for medical reasons. In the UK very few vets are licensed to shoot horses (just one at the practice of 6 vets that I use). Most are PTS by injection. Privately owned horses with caring owners don't go to slaughter. Many use(d) their local knackerman (cheaper than vet, very skilled and horses shot with their head in a bucket of feed at their own home rather than undertaking a long journey crammed in with horses they don't know, stressed about being away from friends and terrified by the smell of blood). Of course, there are cowardly useless penny pinching owners who don't give their horses the end they deserve. I condemn them as much as anyone would. Mine have been PTS at home, friends in sight, quietly with dignity and me by their side. Death is not instantaneous, the body's systems take time to stop, and I don't let go until they do. It breaks my heart every time and I've five horses, two donkeys, four pygmy goats and two dogs. I feel like the queen of death. With one horse, the one that had to be shot, I had no idea how I could go on living with that hollow feeling, that huge hole he left in my world, the utter grief of his loss. I know too much too well. Have seen too much suffering and won't add to it by piling my plate with the lives of others.

@WomenAreBornNotWorn

Everyone would be up in arms if we treated dogs like we treat animals that come from these factory farms.

But this thread isn't about factory farms. You won't find a farmer who likes those places.

Maestoso My point was that it's not clear cut and some horses are indeed shot. My beloved one for example. Another beloved horse of mine was put to sleep after suffering the agonies of colic - he had a far worse end than most farm animals despite the best vet care and all the love in the world. What I'm saying is that it's not as simple as saying farm animals have awful deaths and pets don't, because that is simply not true. I am sorry for your loss too - I know that awful empty feeling of loss.

You seem fixated on the notion that we're all terribly bothered at the idea of animal slaughter, or would be if we really saw it. But that's not at all true.

Yes, I don't see animals as 'equal' to humans. It's why I find some of the things said by some vegans about cows being 'sexually assaulted/raped' etc as quite offensive as it puts women on a par with cattle.

I don't think humans should be unnecessarily cruel to animals (and I guess the word 'necessary' is subjective in this context as well as in our affluent Western society, we don't need to consume animals to survive) but I certainly do not have a problem with animals being killed for consumption by humans as a concept.

I see now there’s another thread about non-stun slaughter and over there it’s fairly unanimous that both stun and non-stun slaughter is reprehensible, barbaric, etc. Interesting.

“ They're either all vegans or they're all hypocrites.”

VEGANS again you say Sound the klaxons!! Will nobody think of the celery - the hypocrites!