factory farming

The British are " animal lovers." The organisations for rescuing dogs, cat, horses, and donkeys are swamped with almost more money than they can handle. The international rescue organisations have a ready response to their appeals for dogs killed in the Phillipines, for African animals maltreated for a profit.
Yet they do not care about cows, hens, sheep, ducks, pigs, continuing to eat them though they know they have been kept in what have been called concentration camp conditions and killed barbarically? To this must now be added the sufferings of horses, transported hundreds of miles by rail and sea to be slaughtered for cheap food. According to the British government's shadow environment secretary, Mary Creagh, up to 70,000 horses are unaccounted for in Northern Ireland.   According to Viva, the animal welfare organisation, horses are taken to Ireland, where export rules are said to be easier,  sold for £10 each and then resold for meat to dealers for £500 and sent overseas in long, hard sea and train journeys.   And an estimated 65,000 horses are transported back and forth across Europe, many from Romania.
   The final agonies of the horses, intelligent, sensitive animals whose lives are closely linked to humans, are at last being recognised. "The fact that animals belong to other species ought not to disqualify them from our compassion.....raising them for our food we cause animals more pain than we gain by eating them.....Unlike scientific knowledge, which is cumulative, moral knowledge can be lost just as easily as it is gained. Historical progress means a reduction in suffering and increase in happiness for sentient beings everywhere. ...abolishing slavery, giving women the vote and legalising gay marriage fall into this category," wrote Amol Rajan in the Evening Standard in one of the most intelligent columns on this subject.
It took a long time for Britain to persuade the rest of the European Union that farm animals were sentient beings, not machines, and worthy of being treated as such. Pigs are intelligent and sociable, and like ducks and hens caring and responsible parents - in fact more responsible than many humans. We can all see the sheep caring for their young, while there are still some left out free on the fields before being exported live in appalling conditions. People will encourage their children to coo over lamb and calves. No one will tell them what the future holds for them, apart from the few farms where the welfare of the animal is still put first - cows left to graze, pigs kept outdoors, able to feed and mother their young, hens able to roam freely, ducks able to be in their natural habitat on water.
The RSPCA insists that it makes its views on factory farming clear, and has set down guidelines for the proper treatment of farm animals. But they are not obviously effective. In fact, only Government legislation could work to ensure better conditions for farm animals and so far there is no sign of this appearing. When New Labour first came in, they had an excellent manifesto for animal welfare - but they worked only on a ban on foxhunting. (At least foxes escaped being factory farmed.) At one time live exports were banned, but started again by the Conservatives way back in the 'seventies, and are still going on.
Imports of food from countries like the United States with even worse farm animal conditions would still go on even if legislation stopped cruel practices here. In his landmark book "Eating Animals", Jonathan Safran, exposing the tortures and horrors of factory farming in the United States made the point that the same things went on in the UK. There were some important differences, but "A British reader who cares about the issues raised in this book should not find any peace in being British. Approximately 800m chickens, turkeys and pigs are factory farmed in the UK every year - more than 10 animals for every human." And this did not include cows and fish.
Organisations like Viva and Compassion in World Farming have been fighting for many years to achieve change, and have had some success, particularly in the on-the-spot research by brave members which have produced painful scenes of the processes of factory farming.
Chickens can think and feel, they enjoy dust bathing, nest building and roosting, look after their young, form friendships and pecking orders - when they can. Pictures taken by Viva show chickens locked up, often up to 40,000 of thems in foul-smelling, windowless sheds with no room even to turn around or sit. The space they have is roughly an A4 sheet of paper. This is the only life they will have. Then they will appear in chicken sticks, chicken dinners, cat food
and endless chicken menus in the supermarkets. Over 850m are killed every year,hanging down from lines on the factory floor.
The latest horror are the new plans in several areas for huge cow prisons, known as "zero-grazing farms." Already planning for one in Lincolnshire includes 16 sheds housing 500 cattle each, with 8000 cows working all day and all night, being milked three times a day and meant to produce 250,000 litres daily. With no access to grass, the cattle will be forced to feed through metal bars, kept standing in metal stalls, their calves taken from them after just a few days, and with the prospect of endless calving so they will produce more milk, still with no chance to care for the calves. Still want to drink cheap milk?
Or to eat duck? Viva has filmed major duck producers and claims duck sales have dropped by 2m since the media coverage of their investigations. Certainly an impact on takeup of chicken is at last to be spotted in some supermarkets as chickens stay on the shelves, though most cookery writers still take chicken as one of the main ingredients for their recipes without any mention of whether these were free-range chickens or had gone through the hell of the factory sheds. One or two celebrity chefs have certainly taken up the case for going back to natural farming, and have had some success, but in the cheap takeaways, burger bars and most supermarkets, the message is largely ignored.
Every year in the UK, Viva reported that most of the 19 million ducklings raised for meat each year spent their short lives imprisoned in "a filthy windowless shed with up to 10,000 others." They have to fight for every drop of water." They had filthy, matted feathers and caked eyes. Yet people ordering duck in a restaurant probably thought this a compassionate choice, picturing the duck bobbing along on a lake, living happily until it was killed for human food.
Yet the saddest pictures of all for many have been of the imprisoned mother pigs, with no straw, standing on slatted bars, unable to reach their babies These are intelligent and aware creatures with individual personalities, condemned to a life of uncomfortable imprisonment. Young pigs are bundled together by their thousands in large sheds.
Earlier this year, Viva investigators randomly visited three pig farms in the north-east. At one, worn-out sows were housed on bare concrete, the word "cull" crudely sprayed on their backs. They found dead and rotting pigs and decaying piglets uncollected outside units, sows with open sores imprisoned in metal farrowing crates, pigs in concrete pens with no bedding or environmental enrichment, even though this is now illegal. On one of the farms they found tiny piglets, huddled together, covered in flies, without their mother. One was so badly crippled that he dragged himself across the floor by his front legs. Two of the farms were signed up to the Farm Assured scheme, supposedly a guarantee of better welfare. The footage was passed on to the Government department, yet two of the farms were still given a clean bill of health.
How much longer are we going to let these concentration camps and the cruelties of thousands of miles of transporting animals go on? How will future generations view our indifference and greed? And we don't even need to eat meat, or to drink milk.