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?

@Sunnyday321 I was brought up on a small holding where we raised our own meat, either had the slaughterhouse man out or as legislation changed took it to be slaughtered.
We then prepped the whole carcass and ate it over the next season.
So yes, I could do that.

The thing is OP humans have to eat something. The food has to be produced somewhere, from something. There is no way that no impact subsistence hunter gathering would work without a mass human cull. So it is always partly going to be about weighing options.

Rather than starting goady threads spread some plant based joy.

Be kind!!!!

meanwhile, we have no issue destroying natural habitat and kicking people out of their living space, and letting kids survive on giant rubbish dumps full of our modern shit.

But how cruel to raise animals to eat them.

This is the thing … if people have an issue with meat they look to the farmers as if we lack feeling. There would be no animal farming if there was no demand - so Empanadas are you not better off asking consumers at your supermarket, in the street, how they feel about eating things that once had a life?

The response from farmers on this thread has been an overwhelming “we treat them with respect and know life and death”. We KNOW what it means to raise and kill animals. We know what it is to eat our own “produce”, to have that meat in the freezer and what the animal went through. We also know and respect our animals. Farmers aren’t some strange evil group and thinking that makes it easier for you - it turns a blind eye to the real issues, the uncomfortable truths about all of our own consumption.

I think what consumers like yourself get shocked by is this q of how do you reconcile caring and killing. But we’ve lived with this and reconciled, one way or another, forever. Every farmer here has a different response, we’re not a homogenous group, but we aren’t scared of it or shy away from it. We deal with it everyday.

I’m glad you’re raising the question - maybe it’ll make you vegan like me! But that itself isn’t ethical necessarily at all, produce from abroad has muddled production lines (workers rights especially) and many issues with being “green”.

There is no “solution” unless you live off your own land, something few can do, and then with our crap weather and unreliable home crops, and like everything food consumption is a very personal choice.

Same with us, same with you.

I thought similar when I was watching a vets programme the other day when a Ewe had to have a c-section to deliver twin lambs. farmer was making a big fuss of these lambs being born safely and I just thought they'll be sent off to slaughter in a few months.

@lljkk

Cycle of life. People gotta eat & high quality protein & heme iron sources are valuable nutrition; people are designed to get vitamin B12 from somewhere. Animals eat animals. We are animals, too.

How do Jains reconcile selves to how rest of world eats and lives? Jains are the only ones with any valid claim to moral high ground. Rest of us are just pretenders.

No animal can make vitamin B12, not humans not cows not sheep. It either comes from the yeast in the soil that the cows eat with their grass, or much more commonly these days is given to cows in the form of supplements. This is then an incredibly inefficient way of getting vitamin B12 into humans, when we could easily take supplements ourselves

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

How is presiding over the economically optimum time for mass death a privilege? This reads like some kind of god complex, if I may say so.

Vegans are hilarious. Preaching about evil meat eaters/farmers while still shopping in tesco and mainstream supermarkets. Happily pretending that because their shopping basket doesn't contain meat that they aren't funding the meat industry by shopping there.

@Sunnyday321

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 ?

But it's not important or relevant whether people (meat eaters) could or could not personally be involved with the rearing and killing of the meat they want to eat. Farmers are offering a service and people are accepting that service. Just like all the millions of other services that your normal person can't do or doesn't want to do themselves.

@Empanadas

I understand animals graze the land. We’re in London, but there is a wildlife sanctuary to the back of us and there are about ten cows and various sheep that graze the land around the edges. They come to the bottom of our garden to say hello. They’re the lucky ones I guess.

When you see them being loaded into the lorries, does this not affect you deeply? Do you sense their terror? Do you never have the urge to pull a few off and save them, just because you can?

We load them in and out trailers throughout their lives.

To move them between fields, to bring them in to the sheep pens for spaneing/ fluking/ worming etc.

They aren't terrified being loaded to go to slaughter, they are sheep, at best they think, 'oh here's that wagon again'

When they get to the abattoir I suspect they think, 'oh I'll just follow the guy in front of me through here' like they do in the sheep pens at home.

Animals that are terrified before they die don't taste nice to eat.

“Animals that are terrified before they die don't taste nice to eat.”

Really? In what way? That is utterly horrendous.

Far too many vegans on here who have watched two Netflix documentaries and think they understand how an entire industry operates.

Shop from small, local farmers. The biggest enemy here are large scale, indoor based farming operations and by tramping over farming as if it’s a one size fits all situation, all you’re doing is killing off the farms who have several hundred animals and do things the “old” way, with plenty of outdoor grazing, and pushing the consumer towards only having one option- where the animals never see sunlight.

The amount of misinformation sprouted by militant vegans is staggering.

I’d also give a recommendation to watch Clarkson’s Farm where as funny as it is, he does raise very good points.

You eat food produced by animal agriculture even if you are vegan. How do you reconcile that with your beliefs? I work in farming having been a vegetarian all throughout my teenage years. I was entirely naive and had no idea how farming works.

This is the thing - it IS about “whatabouterry”.

For example I tbh laugh at vegetarians - what’s the point? Be vegan or don’t bother, it’s still contributing to death. And we don’t shop in a big supermarket but a family owned store to support local and make our veganism as green as possible.

So far, so righteous. BUT 99% of the country can’t afford to eat like we do. And our tofu is not green and neither is our avocado!! I think those factory chicken farms are an abomination but it’s cheap for people to eat.

I also don’t judge people for eating meat. It’s their choice completely. What I slightly judge is - vegetarians as above! Sorry! - and those who moan about farmers. Do you think we control the market? Why don’t you spend an equal amount of time asking consumers why they eat meat? Why look at the producers and not the end point? To demonise any one group (and as if we’re all the same) is really dumb.

Anyway, to whatabouterry. Why be embarrassed about that if you have “the answer”? If we are wrong then surely there is a right? Tell us what you think WOULD be a balance of economics, consumer affordability and green? How would you change the market to that?

There is no such thing as ‘humane’ slaughter. It’s never humane to slaughter a living sentiment being that doesn’t want to die. Language is important too. Once somebody described ‘meat’ as ‘flesh’ and ‘corpse’ to me, which is of course what it is, it definitely started that seed of doubt. On the plus side, I think people are becoming more mindful of where there food comes from and veganism/vegetarianism is definitely increasing for a variety of reasons, one of which is better communication.

OP - I do think that the best way to have these discussions is to talk to those closest to you, or even better, wait until you’re asked about why you’re vegetarian/vegan. This is both how I became vegan (friends and family turned vegan, and I asked why) and why others close to me have now started to question their meat consumption. As this thread shows, there will always be a reaction when such a huge aspect of most people’s lives is challenged in such a broad stroke (and maybe not the best audience here)! What we eat and what we avoid eating seems to form a huge part of personal identity, and I for one find it’s better to talk to those who are open to changing their eating habits already. I don’t think shaming meat eaters and/or farmers will change their resolve.

Also I am super miffed about Instagram - as a vegan! Seriously the videos on there going “look at this cow farm” and you can see it’s a slaughterhouse and people are responding “look at the pens!”. Why/ how would farmers keep cattle in pens like this for more than an hour! Honestly… but if you don’t have a background in farming I guess it is a muddle.

"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."

I disagree with that. They do not see them as objects. However, they are animals bred to be farmed and that is the farmer's livelihood.

@cheugy

I bet all the vegans on this thread either drive / use gas and electricity in their homes / own smart devices that have been made with precious minerals mined out of the ground / wear clothing shipped from countries abroad / eat fruit shipped from abroad etc etc etc...

ALL of which contribute to global warming that will have a much bigger impact on animal life that just meat consumption.

And? I bet all the farmers do the same and everyone else that eats meat. It’s very childish to think so black and white.

Animal products are unethical no matter how many cute stories you tell about them. You’re causing unnecessary pain and stress. Going on the defence and trying to poke holes in veganism isn’t going to change that.

My point is that all of the sanctimonious people on here are guilty of contributing to a much wider problem. Which makes them hipocrites. There's the childish behaviour.

@Backstreetsbackalrightdadada not in the UK I’m afraid.

I eat meat and I'd rather pay more for an animal that's been cared for.

Question. If the world went vegan, what exactly happens to the existing livestock? Shot and incinerated because they no longer have any economic use and I'd guess that dairy cows especially would be quite expensive for zoos because of the milking compared to their customer attracting possibilities.

I'd also hazard a guess that a hell of a lot of land used for grazing isn't suitable for conversion to arable farming.

God help us all if anyone finds out that vegetables have any form of sentience.

@Lolalovesmarmite, yes, this.

We're from London

I'm out OP. In fact I think your referencing 10 cows in a wildlife park suggests you're either on the wind up or really quite ignorant.

There is a saying here "you can't educate Pork."

Shall we play "spot the pain in the arse, preachy vegan"?

Not hard, is it....

The UK couldn’t farm enough arable for us all to be vegan, too much of the land couldn’t support arable, or support the range of arable needed for a liveable diet, and anyway the farming would all need to be non-organic to ensure decent yield. So the solution really is a lower population, basically the most ethical thing is to stop having kids.

Anyway my answer is to push for more visibility on slaughter and it being done ethically, and slaughterhouse workers being supported and well paid.

@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.

Bullshit.

Have you ever met a farmer?