Death on a Factory Farm on HBO

They are welcome to do them to my cat. Any other cat and I would be angry.

Tom

 

Unfortunately, it's because we have collectively decided that we aren't willing to pay for quality food. We have settled on the many cheap food-like alternatives, and honestly, most people can't tell the difference. We've traded quality for quantity - that's why we accept ammonia-treated chicken meat. There's a reason that modern supermarket meat doesn't taste as good as it used to. It's the same race-to-the-bottom that's eating away at so many social institutions.

 

I'm not a vegetarian, but I don't eat pigs. About once a year we get a side of beef from a ranch that's raises only free-range, grass-fed animals. Yes, they're still killed and eaten, but I like to think they live better and healthier, with less impact on the environment, than they would in a factory farm.

 

Life and death aren't pretty. Ever watched a cat play with a captured mouse before killing it? I'm not saying it's right, but it's just the harsh truth. If you want to seek more humane food production, you have to speak with your dollars (and use more of them). But also be aware that food production on the planet is not infinate (nor is the human population) so there will always be a counter push for efficiency and low cost to balance the push for humane, repsonsible food production.

(there is no easy answer)

 

I did not see it and from the comments here, am grateful I didn't. I can't stomach things like that. I'm a vegetarian for over 20 years but took this path simply because I didn't want to eat animals. At the time, I had no idea the cruelty farm animals were subjected to.

I saw a video about 15 years ago about the cruelty that animals are subjected to when they undergo testing of various chemicals/products and now avoid animal tested products at all cost too.

What I wonder is how these people go through life not affected by their actions. Are they desensitized or do they just lack compassion for other life forms? Did the documentary touch on that?

 

Whoa, did Tony just have a serious post?

I'd have a hard time going vegetarian, but I do avoid red meat, more for health reasons than anything. Having grown up on a farm (small family farm), I'm used to some aspects of life and death, but I find much of factory farming despicable. I haven't seen the show in question.

I'm looking forward to the day when meat tissue can be grown efficiently on a shelf, no need for confining & slaughtering semi-intelligent animals, and in theory much more efficient.

But that's not going to happen for awhile. In the meantime I have no problem with pasture-fed/open-range farming or a bit of venison occasionally. That is close to carbon neutral, as opposed to everything about feedlots. With higher oil prices looming, feedlots may be a dying business model (one can only hope).

 

So you're in favor of GMO's? That's the only way what you predict can happen. Frankly, I don't think I'd trust laboratory/frankinstein meat.

Livestock has been a part of human existance for thousands upon thousands of years and will continue to be for a long time. It is only the factory farming techniques that are new, and they are a direct result of the race to the bottom attitude about food costs.

Livestock allows food energy to be stored in a non-perishable form that we humans can "harvest" as needed. As opposed to non-animal foods that must be harvested when ripe and which require preservtion to use untill the next year's crops are ready. Non animal foods aren't even any better in terms of environmental damage. They use as much energy imputs, esp since strict vegetarianism for most people requires either transportation of crops over thousands of miles or massive preservation of local food supplies. And that doesn't even mention the oil dependancy OR monoculture farming techniques that non-animal crops are farmed by.

* Animals have always and will always be eaten by predators. An unpleasant death is inevitable for all creatures including ourselves.
* All food consumption has ecological consequences, we can only seek to miminize them.
*Nobody is eager to return to living off canned foods.
* We SHOULD seek the most humane treatment of livestock within reason, but we should not expect humans to suddenly stop being the predators we have been for thousands of years.

 

I am actually worried that the opposite is true. Higher oil prices will make ALL foods many times more expensive and make factory farms all that much more appealing to people who can't barely afford food NOW.

Inhumane treatment stems not from some sick and perverted desire to cause suffering by a few people, but from the ever present price pressure of our collective shopping behaviors (which on the whole, are NOT good).

 

I agree with most of what you say in the last two posts. We can never have no impact on the environment, but we can surely bring it down by an order of magnitude. I've heard that clearing the forests over the last 300 years for farming, roads and buildings has put as much CO2 into the air as all cars have done (I don't have the exact quote, sorry, I think it comes from Conservation International though).

With mildly higher gas prices, feedlots will still work, just because of their efficiencies with mass production. But I don't think oil prices will stop at $100/barrel, at least not for long (they're currently $75/barrel for short-term contracts). When gas is $5/gallon, the smaller feedlots that have to pay for corn won't be able to compete with the cows that go out to graze their own food. Meat prices will go up of course for everybody, but hopefully we won't be using 50% of our corn supply on feedlots.

 

There's also the issue that there is very much a veil dropped over most consumers when they go shopping. I would argue that the supermarkets (yes, even Whole Foods -hell, especially Whole Foods) intensely market a facade that evokes images of cows grazing on vast green fields and happy pigs rolling in the mud. To borrow a phrase from Michael Pollan, it's Supermarket Pastoral. Nobody ever thinks of vegitables and fruits sprayed with 9 different kinds of pesticides (http://www.foodnews.org/methodology.php - I will never eat non-organic peaches ever again) and cows standing in big CAFOs ankle deep in their own feces.

There's also an important factor you're missing, which is the governace structure of these farms is essentially big-hierarchical-corporate. This is not to say that it can't be "done right", however there is a strong push in hierarchical organizations to manage resources in a quantitative fashion. In the case of farming, this may not be the most effective option since the factors that are being optimized, for example feed cost per pound of meat, does not necessarily directly translate into the most desirable set of qualities in food (I could really care less about cheap and fast growing if I could get much better tasting, which is a much more difficult thing to quantify).

 

The intrepid hunter, off to the grocery store, bringing home his daily kill in neat, sterile little packages...

If only we were still predators! Most of us are too fat and lazy, and the species has suffered for it. Not to mention the rest of the planet.

 

(I am also a big fan of Michale Pollan's work)

What is "optimized" is dictated by demand.
You and I might "care less" about cost per pound as a well educated consumer...but cost per pound of meat is what the market in general has dictated through our collective purchases for decades. That goes for EVERYTHING, not just food. Lead painted toys, subsidized ME oil, or even our cars.

The only way to get consumers to pay extra for products that are better quality, or less damaging to the enviroment, or more humane, or more supportive of our own local businesses.....Is through better education. Remember, business has no moral compass, they deliver what sells. And for the last few decades, cheap has sold very well. Responsibility, long term thinking, health concerns, etc... have been taking a back seat.

 

That's true for a lot of things. Fruit and vegetable varieties are largely developed for shelf life, size and color, since that is what the consumer sees at the time of purchase. Taste is not necessarily a driving point. Growing up we picked a lot of wild berries - strawberries, blueberries, chokecherries, raspberries etc. and they always seemed to have more taste than the store-bought equivalents.

 

Killing the animals in the several different ways allowed is okay by me. But the dudes who were tossing live pigs into an enclosure did not get enough sensure or fine. I was raised on a farm where we buthered our own. It seems fear of death is known only to humans. My grandfather would feed his hogs a special meal and would stand besiside the hog he chose to butcher and slide a knife into the throat and only a faint squeal was heard before resuming eating. After a few minutes the hog would go to clean straw provided and dose off. Very humane and it added importance to we kids in kindness to our livestock. God bless my grandpa.

 

Afer watching Food inc. my 8 year old son wrote a letter to Obama asking him to please help us. He told him that we need to have farm food not factory food.


I am one proud mamma.

Because of that we decided as a family to make a change.
This is a picture of the "big fella" we are eating now. He grew up on a friends ranch near Sisters Ore.

I was just having a most interesting conversation with a new friend last night about the evolution of the prius into mainstream. We ran out of time but one my mind was the parallel between that process and the progress that "organics" are making.

We start out with this new good thing. We know it is better than what everyone is doing now so we champion it. We say. "Go buy a prius" or "Eat local, eat organic!" and we are right!

Then... when it catches on, we see a dilution of the original values that drove us to champion the change in the first place.

It's maddening!

It's capitalism.

We now have several other companies making hybrids.. and this is good as long as, they are making them with the same GOAL in mind, to use less fuel, reduce the footprint, and all round take better care of our home. When their goal is just to make money, they will cheat, they will lie, they will "market" them to people, hiding truths to sell cars.

We now have a boom in the Organics market. This is good IF THE SAME GOAL that originally fueled the movement is in tact.

Sadly, often it is not.

We now have a whole industry dedicated to convincing us that the crap they are selling us is hormone free, free range, grass-fed, organic.... There are several companies out there that still make terrible choices but have learned to jump through the hoops to be able to claim the coveted "organic" label.
It really is a case of buyer beware and as a result, my boys and I have worked hard to remove ourselves as much as possible from the mainstream food supply.



*end rant*

 

+1000000
I used to be able to tell people to just buy the organic version of whatever to help ensure that you got the most flavor out of whatever it is you're making. I realized how wrong I was when I tried Horizon organiv milk, which I'm convinced is organic in name/labelling only. It tastes like the same watery, pus-filled (Google Answers: Puss in milk) swill that is normal for supermaket/convenience store milk.

 

agreed. Horizon is one brand we never buy. period.