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?

@KeepingTrack

Or actually even better a vegan?

A deafening silence.

Yes please. Let us properly imagine if it stopped tomorrow.

Not that we woke up tomorrow morning and the issue was already 'solved' but that tomorrow is the day that all animal husbandry must stop.

How would that happen?

Specifically... what would the first step be?

I can wait for you to get to the common sense answer that actually we need to work at reducing a lot of the industry. Not the small, often more ethical farmer. But the factory farming. The cheap prices paid for meat, milk etc. The captive farmers who are held to ransom by supermarkets. Even veggie/vegans are complicit in that.

Let's look at the impact on food in the UK alone. Where is it going to come from? Can we accurately measure the changes in ecological impact (don't say yes because that wouldn't be true. The modelling for that is ongoing)?

Let's look at the global impact as well. Soya is only one problem crop.

Let's look at the synthetic food replacements, the food processing required for the human race to become vegan.

And when you've worked your way through all of that honestly, in detail, come and join me and many others who are working towards sustainable foods, reducing meat consumption, paying a fair price for all food, looking at local, seasonal foods, simplifying the food chain.

But stop haranguing, start engaging!

Imagine if it all just stopped tomorrow, worldwide.

OP, it is obviously your perfect right to choose not to eat animals.

But honestly can you imagine what would actually happen if all animal farming stopped tomorrow?

These animals require food, water, shelter and vet care to stay healthy.
Without the farmers providing that they would die in large numbers, potentially slow and painful deaths.

Then there is the damage to humans if you suddenly removed animal protein from the food chain. Starvation for more vulnerable groups would seem likely.

Then there are the large numbers of domestic pets which require animal products for their diets.

The huge additional strain on seafood to make up the protein gap from farmed animals.

The sudden massive increase in arable land that would be needed, virgin rainforest often being used for that.
The upland landscape of the UK would certainly be useless.

That doesn't mean over time humans can't reduce their dependence of animal protein but overnight would be a disaster.

We’re in London

So what’s your experience of farming other than seeing some cows in a wildlife sanctuary? Maybe start listening to some of the farmers on this thread - you know, people who live in the countryside and actually deal with the animals about which you’re talking - rather than seeing things from an arm’s length/urban perspective.

If you feel that strongly about farm animals, then I would expect you to be a ‘hardcore’ vegan.
Hardcore as in properly avoiding the many many products that are make out of animals, animal skin, gelatine, trials for cosmetics and medicines etc….

You’ll then have to balance that with climate change and wildlife protection. Is it better to kill cattles for the leather or to use petrol to produce plastic???

FWIW my personal position is that eating animals is ok. What is not ok is to then decide that you can be picky and refuse to eat some parts of the animal. The least we should do is to use it all, down to the pig trotters, kidneys, intestines etc….

“Are you a vegetarian @Empanadas?”

What do you think

It doesn’t matter about me though. I realise people want to eat meat and there’s not much U can do about that. But I still think there’s a cognitive dissonance for many meat-eaters because buying the packaged product is not the same as sending it off for slaughter. I do think most meat eaters would have difficulty doing that if they were in that position.

More farmers on the defence. They can do whatever they want but anyone who dares question them must live a life of purity. Wonder why you are all so willing to attack.

How about just answering Empanada’s questions? She’s being reasonable and not attacking anyone.

Depends. Was it you that brought up fake meat?

Like highly processed, built in a laboratory, foodstuffs are some kind of solution.

Where would all the base chemicals come from, for a start?

@Scrowy

I'm a farmer - there are many of us on mumsnet and I'm sure all of them will be just as upset as I am at reading this.

We have 80 suckler cows with around 70 calves, 60 of last years young stock and 30 bought in male dairy calves

1000ish sheep, at this time of year we also have around 1800 lambs.

Every last one of them is cared for.

We give them the best life we can while they are with us, which varies depending on what breed/sex they are, we feel sad when they leave us and we enjoy eating the good quality food that comes as a result of our and other farmers hard work.

We see life and death upfront, every new life is a joy, every untimely loss is a sadness. All of it is a privilege.

You don't have to go far to find any number of programmes on tv which show the dedication of farmers to their animals if you have no other access to working farm environments.

I wish we had a like feature -this is a wonderful description of farming.

I am a sheep farmer and I care deeply about the welfare of my animals. For somebody to suggest otherwise is insulting and just plain wrong. The world is a nasty, brutal place and, in comparison to what a lot of animals go through in the wild, farmed animals are treated very well. My sheep spend all but 6 weeks of the year outside, they have enough to eat and veterinary treatment when it’s needed. They are never left to starve or suffer which, sadly, is better than can be said for people in some areas of the world. My land would not be suitable for arable crops and we are constantly seeking to enhance the biodiversity on the farm.

Yes, I agree that factory farming, especially of poultry, is horrible but that is driven by the demand for cheap meat. I personally believe that everybody should be eating less meat of better quality. I don’t want to intensively rear lots of stock for barely any profit per animal, I’d much rather raise fewer, do it better and make a fair price. You don’t need to eat meat every day, you can buy locally and ethically, spend a bit more and eat it once or twice a week.

Slaughtering animals is not nice, but it’s part of life. Animals don’t ‘think’ in the way that we do so humanising them in the way that vegans do simply isn’t accurate. Yes they feel fear, but they don’t anticipate and most of them don’t understand death. If a lamb dies in the field, the ewe may hang around for a few hours and call for it but she won’t grieve or remember. We took a lamb off a ewe this year because she didn’t have enough milk and two weeks later she didn’t recognise the lamb. They aren’t human. The humane way to manage livestock is to ensure that their needs are met and that they are not stressed. That’s something that vegans demonstrating outside abattoirs should bear in mind, I’ve seen people left in tears after being targeted by vegans at abattoirs. Not because of the demonstration but because the vegans insisted on sticking hands, phones etc inside trailers and causing the animals severe stress. No farmer wants to see their animals suffer.

CatherinedeBourgh I would love the details of this if you can PM me! We’re looking into the same on our farm.

People upthread mentioning factory farms… we’re potentially on the same side. Small farming was basically driven extinct by Labour (I’m actually a Labour voter) and the supermarkets driving down prices on milk especially. You basically cannot turn a profit on milk unless you have a min.100 herd - around our area no small herds survived, the only milk farms we have now were bought out by big farmers, meaning maybe 25 small farms are now 8-10 mega farms. Welfare in these bigger dairy farms can be very good, but it’s a completely different way of farming - you don’t get to know the cows as well, you literally don’t see them up close as much. So it’s not as “cute” but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for the cows. The market was very bad for the farmers’ MH as so many went bankrupt, farms repossessed and felt helpless that their only skills were useless. Suicides were common, I can think of three, especially coupled with F&M.

Now factory farming pigs, chickens etc - absolutely gross, never seen an example I think is close to acceptable. Dirty and unhygienic and totally unacceptable for the animal. Our farm rule is the bed, water, food and space have to be good enough that we’d use it. Not the case on those farms at all - unethical to the extreme (certainly a lot of big chicken farms).

@ChangePart1

*They don't see them as living, breathing, individual beings. They certainly don't see them as having any intrinsic rights or worth beyond financial.

To them it's the same as if they were growing crops and then sending them off to distributers. They don't see themselves as having anything to come to terms with or reconcile themselves to.

And I agree, it definitely takes a certain sort of person. But I think it takes a certain sort of person to be able to eat animal products, work in an abattoir, or carry out animal testing too.*

Your post and you are full of shit.

Have a burger, it will do you a world of good.

They are feeding the country

If you plan on reducing the population drastically to ensure as a whole we need less food, let us know.

@Backstreetsbackalrightdadada good response. I eat mainly plants and try as far as possible to eat locally grown food - avoiding almonds snd avocados and palm oil . I do eat the lamb from my friend's farm - she really cares about her animals welfare (and there is really tight legislation around this) She takes a few sheep at few a time in her trailer to an abattoir she knows well. Slaughter day is not her favourite day but this is how she makes a living and how land unsuited for crops can be used to raise food.

Same way as I find easy to kill the rats in my garden. They are living breathing creatures and I don’t even need to kill them for food.

There are people that eat meat, and there are people that don't.
I would be quite interested to find out how many people would be prepared to spend a week living in a farm to see , feed , touch those animals as living beings, and then to follow the lorry that took them to the abattoir , watch them die, then go to a butchers to see them processed and then eat what they turn into ?
Hand on heart - could you ?

I think if you'd thought deeply you'd not be a vegetarian but a vegan. One chicken pecking around then dying or salmon living wild then fished suffers less than a dairy cow separated from calf after calf after calf after calf.

I'm neither although I eat as plant based as possible whilst also avoiding unsustainably produced food and feeding as many friends and family my delicious vegan food. Rather than starting goady threads spread some plant based joy.

I couldn't btw.

Of course there are other environmental issues associated with other types of mass farming - avocados and palm oil being the most publicised. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. Different issue, different thread. Pointing to the whole spectrum of issues in the world and the inevitable defensive “whataboutery” doesn’t answer the question.

The stuff about male dairy calves is a few decades out of date.

They can be sold to beef farmers like me for a pretty good price these days, approximately £250-500 depending on if they are weaned or not.

We either adopt them on to cows that have had a dead calf, or are very milky and at risk or mastitis, or if they are already weaned we rear them up and sell them 10-12 months down the line.

No one is shooting them at birth anyway.

By the way, all the people who spout statistics about how beef farming is worse than flying.

It isn't, there are some incredibly manipulated essentially untrue 'facts' out there promoted by the vegan lobbies but when you actually dig down into them they don't account for the huge amount of carbon sequestration etc that also happens as a result of pastoral farming, and tend to be based on figures from intensive beef units in the americas rather than small suckler beef farms in the British Isles.

During lockdown when the earth became cleaner, the smog lifted and the environment thrived the farmers were still farming, the fields and fells were still sucking in huge amounts of carbon and the cows were still farting away merrily.

Is it really too hard to think through the logics that despite what you are being told with people who have a vested interest that cars and planes are probably much more polluting than cattle....

Hand on heart - could you ?

what makes you feel we couldn't? Never been hunting either I assume?

My main problem with killing the animal myself is killing it swiftly and not make a mess of it. I eat meat, that doesn't mean I would like to torture an animal for fun.

I also find gutting animals really gross. Someone has to do it, but I don't like it.

Other questions?

Lola - Thankyou for you reply, but can I ask how you know animals don’t anticipate?

I tend to think most animals are more intuitive than humans.

Not the same volume, but we kept, bread and butchered our own rabits. Tens at a time.
No issue, no bad feeling. That's just how it is. 🤷🏻
We liked them, took care of them, then eat them.
I imagine the farmers have similarly a matter of fact alproach about the death. Doesn't mean though not caring at all

I guess because it’s their job. The same way they think it’s ok to remove day old babies from their mothers so the milk can be used for public consumption. Saw a program this week where The dairy cows rarely if ever go outside. It was heartbreaking.

My grandparents live next to a farm and Years ago I I watched a cow go absolutely crazy when her baby was removed and rampaged across a field and fell into a river. The farmer had to shoot her because of her injuries. I’ve been vegan ever since.

Thankyou for you reply, but can I ask how you know animals don’t anticipate?

they do actually. Many feel that something is not quite right. We still need to eat.