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?

@GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman sorry if you felt patronised...In terms of venison, actually i agree with you, eating game that has been hunted is better than eating factory farmed chickens.

“Empanadas

Industrial scale farming will have to end. It’s not a choice”

I absolutely agree with this… but I’m scared we’re going to end up with the American model of farming ie predominantly industrial, owned by a few corporations, chemicals&hormones used on the animals, animals living their whole lives indoors… absolute recipe for disaster. However it produces cheap animal produce and a lot of it - if we allow/ force cheap human labour, including zero hours contracts and no career progression, then we have to appreciate cheap food is needed. It’s like trapping the human and the animal in awful lives.

Christ vegans are fucking tedious

I'm a vegan but that made me LOL

Look at the variety of dairy alternatives now. If you're thinking of Oatly they're not ethically at all. Grain shipped across the Atlantic and their waste products fed to pigs. Super duper.

Animal rights aside - when you stop and think about it, doesn't anyone think it's gross eating animal flesh? & that chicken smells like death? & tuna smells like cat food? It turns my stomach now & there was a time when I thought I would never not fancy a bacon sandwich

hahaha. Sorry but you are being naive, not me. And yes, industrial scale slaughter is new indeed. If you have noticed, our population has gone through an exponential increase in the past couple of decades, and hence so did consumption.

I don't live in the UK but I can tell you that industrial scale slaughter has been going on here for quite some time - a lot longer than the past couple of decades. Obviously the more people there are the more it is going to happen, so I'm not quite sure just how you think future generations are going to suddenly decide not to eat meat! I really think you don't have a clue.

@boygirldogcatmousecheese

Animal rights aside - when you stop and think about it, doesn't anyone think it's gross eating animal flesh? & that chicken smells like death? & tuna smells like cat food? It turns my stomach now & there was a time when I thought I would never not fancy a bacon sandwich

Not really, no.

It does seem that the only available justification of meat production in here is to try to deflect / obfuscate the issue onto monocrops or the whole host of other side effects of the farming industry.

This argument doesn’t hold though.

Yes, obviously monocrops are a huge issue. Forests are being cleared leading to increased CO2. Lack of crop rotation leads to poor soil quality resulting in desertification and flooding. Pesticides run into rivers and destroy those habitats. We know all this and it’s horrific.

Insects and other wildlife are killed as a side-effect of farming in general. Habitats and animals are also lost though urbanisation, industry, traffic, pollution and global warming. It’s horrific and action is needed.

But how is any of this a reason to justify the continuation of mass slaughter practises? Why is any of this a reason to just throw your hands in the air and accept that billions of animals are slaughtered consciously and directly in ways that are in humane? It’s a filthy industry and one that needs to be tackled.

When I was young, people just bought eggs or chicken. The concept of free range hadn’t really taken hold, but now everybody knows what this is and most people would prefer free range if possible. Years ago, people weren’t really that aware about pesticides in farming, but now they are and many would look for the organic label is supermarkets. People are more health aware in general and are eating less red meat as a result. Consumer habits are changing all the time. Imagine how things will look in another 20 years?

Young people now receive information online and not simply via “the news.” They don’t buy the notion of farming being Daisy the cow and Larry lamb in the idyllic countryside. They don’t buy it. They know, the reality is a bloody and brutal business. This type of heightened awareness will mean that change over the next generation will be exponential. We are at a tipping point and young people know this. I can see it in my own children.

I’m vegan, for me it is the factory farming methods that I find utterly repulsive. There are really good farmers out there who provide their animals with a good life whilst they are under their care. But ultimately it always end the same way for these poor creatures, loaded and transported to their deaths, and there is no humane way of taking the life of a young healthy animal who wants to live. They are terrified when they enter those hell hole slaughter houses, whether it’s a metal bolt through the head, or your throat slit with a sharp knife, or death by electrified water.
The fact is that over 70 % of farmed animals in the uk are factory farmed. Their lives are hideous, short and full of suffering. It’s all they will have experienced.
The RSPCA England and Wales state on their own Twitter feed that they permit the use of gassing AND maceration for the killing of day old
chicks. Imagine tipping fluffy day old chicks alive by the thousand into a mincer.

@boygirldogcatmousecheese

Animal rights aside - when you stop and think about it, doesn't anyone think it's gross eating animal flesh? & that chicken smells like death? & tuna smells like cat food? It turns my stomach now & there was a time when I thought I would never not fancy a bacon sandwich

No, I don't. I don't have an issue with raising animals to eat, slaughtering them or eating the carcass but I do have an issue with mass produced, industrial farming techniques and hormone fed meat. In a supermarket you can't distinguish between the types of production so I do try not to buy supermarket meats, preferring to buy farm shop stuff where I know where it comes from. I'm from a farming community and have the ability (financial, space and knowing where to go) to that, lots of people don't. I live in a big city, my local 3 butchers shops do not know what farms the specific meat comes from, I've asked! If the option were mass produced meat or nothing, then I wouldn't eat meat but I enjoy meat so currently do. I also struggling with a vegan diet, my choices are limited due to allergies so it makes meals very repetitive (like if I only ate chicken).

But how is any of this a reason to justify the continuation of mass slaughter practises? Why is any of this a reason to just throw your hands in the air and accept that billions of animals are slaughtered consciously and directly in ways that are in humane? It’s a filthy industry and one that needs to be tackled.

I find people always seem to expect vegetarians and vegans to throw their hands in the air and see the various other issues they bring up as worse than mass animal slaughter (usually things that have a more inconvenient impact on humans - farmers being out of work is another big one that frequently comes up), which to me shows a fundamental lack of ability to empathise with the fact that if you object to mass slaughter of animals, very little is going to "trump" that.

@aSofaNearYou

But how is any of this a reason to justify the continuation of mass slaughter practises? Why is any of this a reason to just throw your hands in the air and accept that billions of animals are slaughtered consciously and directly in ways that are in humane? It’s a filthy industry and one that needs to be tackled.

I find people always seem to expect vegetarians and vegans to throw their hands in the air and see the various other issues they bring up as worse than mass animal slaughter (usually things that have a more inconvenient impact on humans - farmers being out of work is another big one that frequently comes up), which to me shows a fundamental lack of ability to empathise with the fact that if you object to mass slaughter of animals, very little is going to "trump" that.

I don't understand this - if you eat only plants it still results in huge numvers of animal deaths. It seems vegetarians/vegans only object to the deaths of animals eaten directly, not the animal deaths that occur directly as a result of the plants they themselves eat.

Even if this argument is true (which I'm doubtful of), it always feels pretty disingenuous to me. As if claiming that we're doing these species some huge FAVOUR by breeding them by the billion just to kill and eat.

THIS

I don't understand this - if you eat only plants it still results in huge numvers of animal deaths. It seems vegetarians/vegans only object to the deaths of animals eaten directly, not the animal deaths that occur directly as a result of the plants they themselves eat.

Can you give us some examples because I'm not sure what you're referring to. And what % of animals die as a result of plants vs being farmed?

And don't people who eat meat also eat plants, and there are WAY more of them so actually meat eaters are still responsible for the vast majority of these plant-related animal deaths you speak of?

Look at how supermarkets have adapted even in the last five years. Look at the variety of dairy alternatives now. Meat replacement products aren’t really my thing, but there’s a whole aisle of these type of products now

For me, the trouble with many of these is that we are replacing one form of (increasingly industrialised, environmentally damaging with poor labour practices internationally) food production with another form of increasingly industrialised, environmentally damaging with poor labour practices internationally form of food production. It's just the animal products that have been taken out of the equation.

For me, it's the system, not the product, that needs to fundamentally change. Our government screwed it up on the Australia trade deal - a golden opportunity to say 'you can only have free trade on agricultural products that meet our welfare and environmental standards'. But the Brexit face-saving that brought us the Delta variant is also bringing us more industrialised farming (because most of the Australian farmers who produce higher-quality, higher-welfare, lower-impact meat have no interest in the European market, Asia is where the money is).

For me, environment is as much a driver as farm animal welfare, because the cost of environmental degradation is catastrophic for animal welfare - particularly wild animals - as well as for humans, most of whom have a much lower impact than people in rich countries.

And industrialised production of many non-meat products carries huge environmental damage too. So for me, cutting out meat and then thinking it's all fine, I've done my bit, would fundamentally miss the point. But that's based on my motivation. Others are much more directly motivated by farm animal welfare. We're all different.

But please don't drink almond milk instead of dairy. Please.

I don't understand this - if you eat only plants it still results in huge numvers of animal deaths. It seems vegetarians/vegans only object to the deaths of animals eaten directly, not the animal deaths that occur directly as a result of the plants they themselves eat.

Well yes, because A) deliberate slaughter is a different ball game ethically and B) most do care about both, they just don't think that slaughter is the lesser of two evils.

Example - the horrific effects on urang utans from the production of milk substitutes. I just think it's disingenuous to talk to meat eaters as though we are the only ones whose diet directly results in animal deaths. I would rather drink milk from well cared for cows than contribute to orange utans starving to death.

Can you explaion why slaughter is ethically worse please - the animal is just as dead, and if it starved to death from habitat loss it suffered a lot more than an animal killed humanely.

Can you explaion why slaughter is ethically worse please - the animal is just as dead, and if it starved to death from habitat loss it suffered a lot more than an animal killed humanely.

It's an interesting one, isn't it? And it comes out in so many online discussions - what matters more, the intent or motive, or the impact.

I won't deny that my consumption choices result in animals suffering when they wouldn't otherwise have done. In a modern society that is pretty much unavoidable.

I know many on this thread feel very strongly that eating something that comes from a farmed animal is ethically worse, because of the motive - that animal was always in

For me, it's a different ethical equation that is more about impact rather than intent - how can I overall reduce the impact on animals, including their suffering, from my choices, along with other factors.

Is a field mouse that's running from a combine harvester more or less frightened, and more or less wanting to live, than a cow? I've no idea; none of us do. I suspect they're pretty close. And with a modern diet at least one of those things happening. I can choose foods that minimise the suffering to a standards that's acceptable to me. That means than some animal product replacement products are absolutely unacceptable to me in a way that animal products are not, because of the kind of suffering they can cause both directly and indirectly. But I recognise that equation is different for different people, and for others the more direct link and the intent plays a larger role in that decision making.

Throckmorton - thanks not true though. It’s not a binary “all or nothing issue.”

When I go out, I’m not sweeping the streets ahead of me in case I tread on an insect. We don’t avoid mowing the lawn in case there might be beetles in there.

My route to vegetarianism and veganism was far from being some great, holier-than-thou revelation moment. It happened gradually. As I said, it’s a very personal thing and will vary between individuals. I never really ate red meat as a child because, to be honest, I just saw blood. So I compromised with chicken, but obviously as I became more aware of that industry, I dropped that. Up until my late 20s , I rationalised to myself that fish was acceptable because fish are not mammals, short memory spans, cold blooded / don’t feel pain in the same way, etc etc. I tended to avoid more “meaty” fish such as swordfish, however. Then, eventually I just stopped eating it at all - partly because of the damage to marine environments by large scale trawling (and how many dead fish are thrown back in the sea), but also it just seemed “unclean” to me, in the same way as meat does.

But, if I had to eat meat / fish again, I’d far rather have a prawn, than chicken, pork or a steak! I don’t see an insect or a shellfish or a prawn or even a fish as the same as a pig, lamb or cow in terms of its ability to suffer fear and pain. What is the actual physical difference between a lamb, for instance, and you dog or cat? What is the physical difference between a cow and a horse, in terms of their ability to suffer and feel pain? There is no difference in my mind.

It’s very sad to think of insects and mice getting caught up in combine harvesters etc. But still, given the option of eating bread or cereal where this may well have been a side effect, or eating a directly slaughtered animal when I have 100% certainly that its shortened life met with a horrific end - it’s not the same. I fundamentally don’t agree that animals are human commodities, full stop. That is the basic principle for me here and why I don’t eat meat or fish. The switch away from dairy, for me, came later, when I realised that dairy cows are not wandering the hillsides and just wandering into a barn for a bit of milking. They are kept permanently lactating, calves stolen from them and sent to the knackers yard once they have no further human use. It’s a horrific industry all round.

Wildlife is affected by farming, of course, but it’s also affected by construction, traffic and human activity in general. As an individual, I can’t stop that. But what is in my control is to not give money to an industry that treats animals as human commodities. So I don’t.

@nanbread an estimated 7 billion wild animals die per year as a result of arable agriculture. Yes, it’s less than those that are eaten but it’s still a significant number.

For those lauding organic agriculture - animals (chickens, beef, sheep and fish) are critical to producing it. You entirely lack understanding if you don’t know this. Without animals in organic agriculture prices would be significantly higher than they already are.

@JassyRadlett

Can you explaion why slaughter is ethically worse please - the animal is just as dead, and if it starved to death from habitat loss it suffered a lot more than an animal killed humanely.

It's an interesting one, isn't it? And it comes out in so many online discussions - what matters more, the intent or motive, or the impact.

I won't deny that my consumption choices result in animals suffering when they wouldn't otherwise have done. In a modern society that is pretty much unavoidable.

I know many on this thread feel very strongly that eating something that comes from a farmed animal is ethically worse, because of the motive - that animal was always in

For me, it's a different ethical equation that is more about impact rather than intent - how can I overall reduce the impact on animals, including their suffering, from my choices, along with other factors.

Is a field mouse that's running from a combine harvester more or less frightened, and more or less wanting to live, than a cow? I've no idea; none of us do. I suspect they're pretty close. And with a modern diet at least one of those things happening. I can choose foods that minimise the suffering to a standards that's acceptable to me. That means than some animal product replacement products are absolutely unacceptable to me in a way that animal products are not, because of the kind of suffering they can cause both directly and indirectly. But I recognise that equation is different for different people, and for others the more direct link and the intent plays a larger role in that decision making.

Also, when talking about farmed animals, animals die twice due to the feed needed to feed the farmed animals. The animal is slaughtered for meat, but also the rabbits, I sects, field mice due producing food to fatten the cow.

For those lauding organic agriculture - animals (chickens, beef, sheep and fish) are critical to producing it. You entirely lack understanding if you don’t know this. Without animals in organic agriculture prices would be significantly higher than they already are.

I think that comes down to the different ethical considerations people make, doesn't it? Ie those who are driven primarily by their direct contribution to animal farming, they won't want to contribute economically to the primary purpose for an animal being farmed and the main economic driver for the animal farming, but the by-products of the farming are more ethically acceptable to them?

I'm not trying to speak for others, but the different ways that people construct their personal moralities and ethics is something I've always found fascinating and I think it's what causes so much lack of understanding and conflict around tricky issues like this.

For me, it's the system, not the product, that needs to fundamentally change.

This, a thousand times this.

Also, when talking about farmed animals, animals die twice due to the feed needed to feed the farmed animals. The animal is slaughtered for meat, but also the rabbits, I sects, field mice due producing food to fatten the cow.

I don't disagree.

However that isn't really the point, is it? I was explaining why my approach to these issues may be different to someone else's, and why I don't draw the same distinction between the destruction of animals in crop production (both direct and indirect) and the direct destruction of farmed animals as others may do.

As I've said, all my choices will end up in animals being destroyed. I can own that, for me it's about where my overall line is in mitigating both the suffering of animals and the destructiveness of the farming systems. Other people's calculations will be different.