The Future of Animal Farming E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 402

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Does animal welfare have a place in sustainable farming, or do the demands of a rising human population and the threat of climate change mean that the interests of animals must be put aside? Can we improve the way we keep animals and still feed the world - or is it a choice between ethics and economics? The aim of this book is to challenge the "them-and-us" thinking that sets the interests of humans and farm animals against each other and to show that to be really "sustainable," farming needs to include, not ignore, animal welfare. The authors of this remarkable book come from a diversity of backgrounds: industry, animal welfare organizations, academic institutions, and practical farming. They are united in arguing that farm animals matter and that sustainable farming must have animal welfare at its ethical core, along with the production of healthy, affordable food and care for the environment.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

1: The future of animal farming

The scale of the challenge

The scope of the book

Part 1: Voices for change

2: The ethics of agriculture: the end of true husbandry

Animal agriculture

Crop agriculture

3: Why farm animals matter

Some animals are much more equal than others

Cartesian automata

Enter the psychologists

The horror of anthropomorphism; Lloyd Morgan's Canon

Hierarchical problems

The ethological contribution

The way forward

4: The urgency of change: a view from a campaigning organization

5: Environmental ethics and animal welfare: re-forging a necessary alliance

Introduction

Animal welfare

Farming and environmental issues

Root causes

Desperate dead ends

Big bold solutions

Part 2: Bringing about change

6: The business of farm animal welfare

What matters to animals

The economic model

The market place

7: What is good welfare and how can we achieve it?

What is good welfare?

“Rollout”

Making things work

8: Animal needs and commercial needs

Working with genetics

Fundamental change in systems

Where do we go from here?

9: Hard work and sustained effort required to improve livestock handling and change industry practices

Be a pioneer

Hard work

Early adopters must succeed

Reward of hard work

A good equipment start-up

Applying knowledge in new ways

Give away information

Be positive and never nasty

Communicate with a wide audience

Open the door and show

Confidentiality to maintain access

Avoid off-topic controversies

Importance of objectivity

Technology does not solve all problems

Legislation is not always the answer

Contact with the field

Achievable practical goals

Eliminate vague guidelines

You manage what you measure

Suggestions for the future

10: Bringing about change: a retailer's view

11: Animal welfare as a business priority

Commentary

12: Providing assurance on welfare

What are the approaches developed by and for food industry?

Do the schemes deliver a genuine welfare assurance?

What are the political influences on these market schemes?

Differences between consumer expectations and scientific approaches to welfare

What is the future for farm assurance?

13: The role of assurance schemes and public pressures

Assured Food Standards

The beneficiaries

Improving standards

What change, exactly?

Public pressure

14: Improving the welfare of cattle: practical experience in Brazil

Introduction

Difficulties in daily handling routine of cattle

The development of best practices of handling

Conclusions

15: Organic farming and animal welfare

Ongoing standards development

Ensuring that system potential is achieved in practice

Commercial pressures

Localizing our food system

16: Enlightened Agriculture and the new agrarianism

17: Conclusions

References

Index

This book is dedicated to Ruth Harrison (1920–2000)

and David Wood-Gush (1922–1992)

“Concern for farm animal welfare is a virtue, but often seen to be in conflict with other virtues; environmental sustainability and economic justice. The value of this book is that it sees all three as facets of the same thing: respect for life. From this firm base it offers a moral and a sensible guide to the future. It explains not only why we should all care for all life on the land but also how we may all contribute to that care.”

John Webster, Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol

“This book should be read by anyone interested in animal welfare, and in the environment. ‘Factory farming’ is rightly receiving much criticism but what are the ethics of rearing animals in this new century, and what are the practical answers to treating our animals properly? With considerable editorial skill Marian Dawkins and Roland Bonney have drawn together articles encapsulating the views of campaigning groups, of farmers and of retailers. What emerges is a consensus for soundly based farming methods which are humane. The really interesting conclusion is that such methods bring economic advantages to those who introduce them.”

Sir Brian Follett, University of Oxford

© 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The future of animal farming : renewing the ancient contract / edited by Marian Stamp Dawkins and Roland Bonney.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-8583-7 – ISBN 978-1-4051-7782-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Livestock. 2. Animal welfare. I. Dawkins, Marian Stamp. II. Bonney, Roland.

HV4757.F88 2008

179;3–dc22

2007040797

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

The publisher‘s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environ mental accreditation standards.

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Foreword

Those who know my views from Animal Liberation may be surprised to find me writing a foreword to a book entitled The Future of Animal Farming. Doesn't the animal liberation movement do its very best to ensure that animal farming has no future? If the correct moral principle for guiding our conduct towards nonhuman animals is to give their interests equal consideration with our own, at least where our interests are similar, should we be farming them at all? Shouldn't we all be vegans?

Then there is the book's subtitle: Renewing the Ancient Contract. How could there really be a contract between humans and animals? The idea of a contract presupposes that both parties choose to enter it. Cows, pigs, and chickens don't have the capacity to make an informed choice about whether or not to associate with humans - to mention just one critical fact, they cannot know that their premature death is part of the bargain. The reality is that domestic animals have always been captured, bred, reared, and killed for the benefit of humans, and rarely, if ever, given the opportunity to break free and live on their own. The slave trade is a closer parallel to this than the modern idea of an agreement between freely contracting parties. No doubt traditional farmers were more likely to care for their animals as individuals than the people who manage today's vast factory farms, but the fact that some slave-owners had a genuine, if paternalistic, concern for the welfare of their slaves was not enough to make the slave trade a contract between Europeans and Africans.

I do not resile from the position I took in Animal Liberation. I see the rearing of animals for food as a manifestation of speciesism, that is, a human prejudice against giving proper consideration to the interests of beings of other species. Commercial animal raising is inherently likely to sacrifice the interests of the animals to our own convenience. Refusing to buy animal products is the surest way to avoid supporting the unethical treatment of animals. But I also recognize that while the number of vegetarians and vegans has grown, at least in developed countries, during the past three decades, the number of animals raised and killed for food, worldwide, has grown even faster. This is in large part because of greater prosperity, both in the developed world and in countries like China, and the higher demand for animal products that this prosperity brings. That demand has in turn led to a staggering increase in the number of animals spending miserable lives in the close confinement of factory farms.

In the face of this vast universe of animal suffering – which is also an ecological catastrophe on many different levels, from local water pollution to the acceleration of climate change – should the animal movement confine itself to promoting veganism? Over the next 10 or 20 years that strategy may, with luck, increase the percentage of vegans to 5% or even 10% of the population, but on the basis of what we have seen so far, the chances of it succeeding in persuading the majority of meat-eaters to abandon all animal products are remote. (At least, unless the development of in vitro meat offers a more economical but otherwise indistinguishable alternative to meat derived from animals.) This means that during the next decade or two, billions of animals will live and die in factory farms, their numbers barely diminished by the slowly growing number of vegans, and their sufferings entirely unaffected by it

It therefore seems better to pursue a different strategy. We should do our utmost to reduce the suffering of those billions of animals. This is not an either/or choice. The animal movement should continue to promote a cruelty-free vegan lifestyle, and to encourage those who are not vegans to eat less meat and dairy products. Recognizing that not everyone is ready to make such changes, however, the movement should also be involved in improving the welfare of animals used in commercial farming.

This strategy can succeed. While I was writing this foreword Oregon became the third state in the US to ban sow stalls – known in America as gestation crates – which are commonly used to confine pregnant sows in metal crates too small for them even to turn around or walk a few steps. Earlier, Florida and Arizona had passed similar bans as a result of referenda initiated by the signatures of large numbers of voters. Significantly, the law in Oregon was the first in the US to come about through the normal process of representative democracy at the state level. The European Union and Australia have also agreed to prohibit sow stalls for most of the sow's pregnancy. In addition to these legal changes, the suffering of an even larger number of pigs will in future be reduced by the decisions of Smithfield Foods and Maple Leaf Foods – the largest pork producers in the US and Canada, respectively – to phase out sow stalls.

Of course, getting rid of sow stalls is only the beginning. It doesn't mean that pigs will be able to go outside, to roam around a pasture, or to have straw rather than bare concrete to lie down on. Even when sow stalls have gone entirely, there will still be a long way to go. But the readiness of voters, legislatures, and big corporate animal producers to make changes shows that animal suffering can be reduced, on a very large scale, by democratic, nonviolent processes. Obviously, as long as most people continue to want to eat animal products, a key role in these decisions is the demonstrated viability of alternative ways of meeting that demand. That is what the Food Animal Initiative is trying to achieve. When I toured their facilities at Wytham a few years ago, I was impressed by the significantly better quality of lives for the animals kept there than in the more conventional commercial operations I have seen over the years. Yet the farm at Wytham is a viable commercial operation, paying its own way without the assistance of sponsorships or research susbidies.

Many people will ask how we can really know what good animal welfare is. Marian Dawkins' aptly defines it as a situation in which “animals are healthy and have what they want.” That raises the further question “How can we know what animals want?” The defenders of corporate agribusiness often say that their critics are responding “emotionally” to the sight of, say, six hens crammed into a small wire cage. A proper scientific approach, they say, indicates that, since the birds are laying eggs, their welfare is satisfactory. Here Dawkins has been a pioneer, finding ingenious ways of enabling the animals themselves to tell us what they want, and thereby showing that the science of animal behavior supports the critics of factory farming, and not its defenders.

This book is dedicated to two other pioneers in the struggle to give farm animals at least a minimally decent life: Ruth Harrison and David Wood-Gush. I would like therefore to take this opportunity to say that Ruth Harrison's Animal Machines had a huge influence on me when, as a graduate student in philosophy, I first began to think about the ethics of how we ought to treat animals. In 1970 Animal Machines was the only book to tell how animals were treated in the – then still relatively novel – factory farms that were increasingly providing more of the chicken, pork, and eggs I had unwittingly been eating. Ruth Harrison's powerful and well-documented attack on factory farming persuaded me that there could be no ethical justification for the way we were treating animals, and that if I wanted to have any respect at all for myself as an ethical person, I could not continue to eat animal products from factory farms. That set me on the path that led to Animal Liberation.

In an important sense, this book is continuing the work started by Ruth Harrison and David Wood-Gush, and bridging the gaps between science, farming, and the ethically concerned consumer. May this work continue to thrive.

Peter Singer Princeton University

1

The future of animal farming

Roland Bonney and Marian Stamp Dawkins

Does animal welfare have a place in sustainable farming? Or does the threat of climate change now mean that the interests of nonhumans must be sacrificed to meet the demands of a rising human population? Can we improve the way we keep animals and still feed the world? Do we have to choose between ethics and economics? Between humans and animals?

The current debates about the future of the planet have thrown up answers to such questions that could be very bad news for farm animals. The Food and Agriculture Organization (2006), for example, has argued that since livestock contribute so much to global warming, the only solution is more and more intensive agriculture – animals packed closely together to make the maximum use of space and kept inside to limit the damage they can do to the environment. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) foresees more selective breeding and more genetic manipulation to produce animals that survive under such conditions. So just at the point where more and more people are becoming concerned with the ethics of how their food is produced (Tudge, 2004; Singer & Mason, 2006), animal welfare is in danger of being pushed off the agenda.

The aim of this book is to challenge the “them and us” thinking that sets the interests of humans and farm animals against each other and to show that to be really “sustainable,” farming needs to include, not ignore, the welfare of farmed animals. Animal welfare is so closely linked to human health and to the quality of human life that true sustainability cannot be a choice between economics and ethics or between human welfare and animal welfare. Sustainability must mean having it all – viable farms, healthy safe food, protection for the environment, as well as better lives for our farm animals.

But in today’s global economy, with its increasing concern about climate change, is this possible? Isn't animal welfare a luxury for a rich minority and quite irrelevant to the majority of people in the world who cannot afford it? Surely there is not enough space, or enough money, or enough anything to achieve high standards of animal welfare when we are not even managing to ensure basic standards of human welfare? Surely we are going to have to make some very difficult choices. Of course we are. The point we want to make in this book is that those choices should put animal welfare at the heart of farming, even for those who put human welfare first. You don't have to care much about animals at all to see that their health and welfare will affect the health and well-being of you and your family and the whole human species through the food you eat, the diseases that might affect you, and the impact that agriculture of all sorts has on the whole planet.

As Bernie Rollin explains more fully in the next chapter, this interdependence between humans and animals can be seen as a kind of contract – a “deal” that goes back over thousands of years of human history. Traditionally, the deal was that farm animals provided us with food, clothing and much else while we provided them with food, protection from the elements and from predators. Humans have most often cared for their animals not out of sentiment but because their animals were valuable to them. With the industrialization of agriculture, we have broken that contract. Many people are no longer in touch with how farm animals are raised and so the health and welfare of food animals no longer seems to affect their own survival so directly. But indirectly it still does. Disease in food animals has potentially catastrophic effects on human health and the ecological effects of poor farming practices threaten the very life of the planet. It is time to renew the ancient contract for the benefit of all of us, not because it would be a pleasant extra if we could afford it but because it is a necessity we cannot afford to be without.

The exact terms of the new contract have yet to be worked out in detail because there are no easy solutions to the problems that confront us. On our side, there will have to be many changes – in our mind sets, in our diets, in our business models, and in the ways we keep animals. Furthermore, the future itself is uncertain as far as the technology that might become available or the changes in climate that might occur are concerned. But the essential elements are already clear. As this book shows, there are successful ways of farming that give priority to animal welfare, deliver high quality food, protect the environment and, most importantly, make business sense. o What people value in their food is changing and continues to change. As a result, cc there are some surprising changes in the way that global businesses set their priorities. tz There are commercial as well as social and ethical benefits to animal welfare.

The scale of the challenge

Agriculture is the largest industry on the planet. It employs 1.3 billion people and provides a livelihood for about a billion more (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006a). Livestock production, which uses land both for grazing and for growing animal feed, takes up 30% of the ice-free land on the planet and is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions measured as CO2 equivalent – higher even than transport. Of the gases emitted as a result of human activity, livestock are responsible for 37% of the methane, 65% of the nitrous oxide, and 64% of the ammonia. Much of this pollution comes from manure but livestock have an even more insidious effect on the environment. Livestock now account for about 20% of the total animal biomass in the world and 30% of what they now occupy was once the habitat for wildlife. Through forest clearance, livestock farming could thus be said to be the biggest destroyer of biodiversity. In Latin America, for example, 70% of previously forested land is now occupied by pasture (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006a).

And that is just the current situation. The human population of the world is currently 6.5 billion. It is growing by 76 million each year and 95% of this population increase is in developing countries. The UN’s medium projection forecasts that world population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Not only is the populations growing , so are individual incomes and, as people become richer their demand for food and other agricultural products also increases. With higher disposable incomes, people move towards more varied diets that include more pre-processed food, more foods of animal origin and more added sugar and fat (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006a). The statistics are staggering. Currently 276 million tonnes of meat is being produced globally each year, increasing by approximately 3% each year. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s prediction is that global production of meat is set to double from its value at the beginning of this century to over 465 million tonnes in 2050. That means that the environmental impact of the animals that are currently farmed must be halved just to keep environmental damage to its current level.

Increasing demand for animal food products exerts extra pressures on an economy in all sorts of ways. It encourages advanced breeding and feeding technology in livestock production and it leads to the development of irrigation systems and the use of fertilizers to increase production of plant crops on which to feed the animals. However, the largest pressure is for change in the very structure of livestock production itself. Much animal farming is rapidly shifting away from extensive systems towards more intensive, “landless” production, particularly of pigs and poultry. Comparisons between world livestock production systems by the FAO (averages for 1991–1993 and 2001–2003) show that globally, 14.6% of total meat is produced in grassland-based systems (ruminants), compared to 33.6% in landless systems. Total pig meat output rose by 30% at world level, an increase accounted for almost entirely by Asia. The total production of poultry meat grew by approximately 75%, again with the highest expansion in Asia. By contrast, cattle stocks are up 5% and small ruminants 10% (Steinfeld et al., 2006).

All of us, rich or poor, city dwellers or rural farmers, are affected by agriculture and by the rising global demand for animal products. Against this background of potential water shortages, pollution and environmental damage, rising fuel costs, and the need to feed the human population, it would be all too easy for animal welfare to get lost. Indeed, the FAO response to what it calls “Livestock’s Long Shadow” is to concentrate entirely on the human issues and to see the future of farming in terms of intensive, indoor units, which have the aim of maximizing productivity and limiting the environmental damage food animals can do. There is no mention of animal welfare anywhere in the report (2006). The aim of this book is to redress that balance and to explore a more optimistic future for animal farming.

The scope of the book

We will be questioning the pessimistic view that there are just two possible futures for animal farming: either more and more intensive farms or no meat eating at all. Many different people will argue from many different points of view that these are not the only alternatives in front of us. We want to show that there is another future that involves farming in a sustainable way but also makes sure that food animals have reasonable lives. The basis for this optimism is the fact that there already are successful commercial farms that are putting into practice many ideas that could form the future for animal farming if enough people want them and are prepared to make them work. The contributors to the book come from a diversity of backgrounds – from big business, from animal welfare organizations, from academic institutions, and from practical farming. They certainly do not agree with each other on everything but two common threads unite them. They all agree that farm animals matter and they all agree that sustainable farming must have animal welfare at its core, along with healthy food, human welfare, and environmental protection.

The book falls loosely into two sections, the first making the case for why major changes in animal farming are necessary, the second describing what the changed farming will be like. However, the fact that there is no clear distinction between the case for change and change that is already happening is one of the most encouraging features of the book. It shows that the aspirations are not only realistic but practical.

The book is dedicated to two people who directly or indirectly inspired many of b the contributors to this book. Ruth Harrison’s book Animal Machines (1964) awoke the public to the dangers of intensive agriculture and “factory farming” Throughout her life Ruth continued to campaign on behalf of farm animals and was never afraid to make herself unpopular on their behalf. David Wood-Gush was Professor of Agriculture at Edinburgh University and brought veterinary science and ethology (the study of behavior) into the service of animal welfare. His “family pig” system has now, with modification, been adopted with great success into a commercial venture and, as we will see throughout the book, provides a case study for how it is possible to bring about sustainable change in animal farming. We remember them and thank them.

Part 1

Voices for change

We start with the arguments in favor of changing the way in which animals are currently farmed. Some of these arguments come from looking at how farm ani-mals are kept now and the deep-seated conviction that many people have that all is not well. This imperative for change comes from a rejection of current farming practices because of the harm they do to animals (Rollin, Chapter 2; D'Silva, Chapter 3; and Midgely, Chapter 4 , who argue that we must change because farm animals suffer from what is now done to them). But other arguments reach the same conclusion from quite different starting points. Even if current farming methods are considered acceptable as far as the animals are concerned, we must change because what we are doing is unsustainable. We cannot continue as we are because we will run out of space, food, and water and we will be overcome by disease and pollution. This imperative for change comes from the fact that current farming methods cannot last. The threat of climate change has seen to that.

It is the convergence of these two kinds of argument - concern for animals and the need for sustainability in the face of climate change - that is now bringing about the possibility of real change (Rawles, Chapter 5). Public concern for animal welfare may not in itself be enough to have a major impact on farming as a whole. But couple it with the need to farm in a way that helps not hinders the problems of what is happening to the climate and we have a powerful and unstoppable force for change in farming.