In livestock farming there are two rules.

Rule number one: Animals die.


Rule number two: Animals rights activists can't change rule number one.

A little food for though

My dog Ben in the snow

Here are some simple truths:

There is no glamour in livestock farming. There is low pay and much hard work.

And livestock farmers have (and are) sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, friends, coworkers, partners, and spouses. We have responsibilities, struggles, jobs, bills, dreams, plans, hobbies, and interests. We have joys, sorrows, frustrations, and lives just like everyone else.

There are thousands of things on which we could spend our time and our money--if we had any. But we choose to put our time and our money, what little there is of it, into caring for our livestock. Animals cannot be turned off at 5pm, or on weekends, or for two weeks while we take a vacation.

Livestock needs to be cared for every day of every year.

Livestock farmers eat, sleep, and breathe the work they do, sacrificing much for it.

So the next time you're geared up to tell livestock farmers get a life, to ridicule their work and way of living, or to dismiss what they're trying to say to you, stop. The next time you're ready to presume that you know more about animal issues just because you've read about them on animal rights websites, and the people who devote everything they can to learning about and caring for the animals just must be crazy, stop. Stop and consider whether you really know what you're talking about. Consider that livestock farmers do what they do because they like animals and enjoy their company. We have to like animals to do what we do.

Consider that all the time and energy we've put into learning about animals. Three or four years at college or university studying animal behaviour, welfare issues, animal housing, nutrition, diseases and parasites, as well as years actually working with the animals, feeding them, moving them, treating them when they are sick, shoveling manure, and just plain observing them, learning their habits and their little quirks, learning to recognise them as individuals, and going back day after day even after we've been kicked, trampled on, bitten, urinated on, bruised, knocked over, or thrown in the air. Yes, I have had many trips to the hospital after being injured by my charges, but I still love them, and won't give them up without a fight.

When your instinct is to attack and ridicule, instead stop and ask yourself why we're doing what we're doing, what we're getting out of it. Livestock farmers feed the world. Without us many people would go hungry. Meat is a cheap source of protein that is still eaten by 98% of the US population in spite of efforts by some to turn everyone vegan. America still needs livestock farmers. Who will feed Americans when we have been legislated out of existance? We cannot grow enough crops in this country to provide the protein needed to feed every one. What will people eat then?

Livestock farming is not wrong or immoral. Livestock farmers care for the animals they raise, and they care for the people they feed. We are producing a food product, and we treat it accordingly. We want our meat to be safe and wholesome, and we also want to make a decent living.

If you really want to help farm livestock, why not lobby for farmers to be paid the true market value of their product? Contrary to popular belief, livestock farmers do not make a large profit. When times are good we may make $20 on each animal sold. At the end of 2007 we were losing $50 on each animal we sold. For a farmer who ships 300 hogs a week that's $15,000 they were losing every week, yet we still have to pay for power, feed, bedding, veterinary services, and transport. Is it any wonder farmers are driven to suicide?

So when you are eating your festive fare on December 25th, stop for a moment and think about the livestock farmers who will be caring for their stock before they can join their families for present opening around the tree.

More answers to peta's propaganda

Because crowding creates an atmosphere that welcomes disease, animals in factory farms are fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics, which remain in their bodies and are passed on to the people who consume them, creating serious human health hazards.

Eh? pardon me? er, did I read that right? "fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics" Come on now peta, even for you this statement is a bit far fetched.

Pesticides are sprayed on crops, not on animals. Some antiparasitic preparations are used to prevent and control worms and mange but these are carefully controlled and are definitely not used in "huge amounts" A pig is treated maybe (varies from farm to farm and area to area) every 4 months and a cow once a year.

There is no incentive for any farmer to overuse antibiotics. Antibiotics are given to animals when they are sick, just like you would give them to a sick human.

Antibiotics are most effective when used as directed by a veterinarian. Misuse has no benefit to the farmer. If products are found to have residues, they are condemned and so never reach the supermarket shelves, hence they are never eaten by people, and never create any human health hazaard.

Both the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association have supported ending the use of antibiotics in this manner.(1,2) Although McDonald’s has announced that its suppliers will phase out growth-promoting antibiotics, the fast-food chain is not likely to decrease its overall use of antibiotics.(3) The industry simply could not continue to raise billions of animals per year in such extreme conditions without the drugs that allow animals’ bodies to survive conditions that would otherwise kill them.

That last sentence is a load of boloney.

The only way antibiotics promote growth is by keeping the animals healthy. A healthy animal utilizes its feed much better than a sick one, so it grows faster and also doesn't use up valuable resources like time and drugs needed to care for a sick or unthrifty animal.

Debunking the myths

This photograph was taken in 2006 on an intensive livestock farm in Canada.
Notice the windows, the bedding, and the snoozing, contented sows.


From peta factsheet
"Factory Farming: Mechanized Madness"


The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past, which are still portrayed in children’s books, have been replaced by windowless metal sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems—what is now known as “factory farming.”

Well peta you hit the nail on the head there "portrayed in children’s books" is exactly where the "green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes" exist because they never did exist in real life.

Prior to the advancements in technology and the need, driven by an ever increasing population, farming was a very risky business for humans and animals alike. Animals lived in cold draughty buildings or outdoors where they were subject to cold or heat, wind and rain, to predators, and every disease known that blew in with the wind or on visiting animals, humans or vehicles.


Farmed animals have no federal legal protection from horrific abuses that would be illegal if they were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilations and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and inhumane slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less sensitive, intelligent, or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs or cats whom we cherish as companions.

Horrific abuses? Mutilations? Drug regimens? Chronic pain and crippling?

And these things benefit the producer in what way exactly?


Deprivation and Disease
The factory-farming system of modern agriculture strives to produce the most meat, milk, and eggs as quickly and cheaply as possible—and in the smallest amount of space possible.

And guess what? By using the smallest amount of space we achieve the following benefits to society:

Affordable meat products
Affordable poultry products
Better standards of health and care for the animals (compared to pre 1960 farming methods)
Better working conditions for the stockman (compared to pre 1960 farming methods)
More land available for wildlife/human recreation than there would be with less intensive farming methods.
The virtual certainty that global famine will never happen.


Cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, rabbits, and other animals are kept in small cages or stalls, where they are often unable to turn around.

Pigs in some countries are sometimes kept in gestation crates. Layer chickens are sometimes kept in battery cages. Veal calves are kept individually, usually in small huts with an outside area. Rabbits are usually kept in cages.

As for the other animals? Tut,tut,tut, peta. Methinks you exagerate to gain effect.


They are deprived of exercise so that all their energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. They are fed drugs that fatten them faster, and they are genetically manipulated to grow faster or produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally.

Oh dear peta, you do come up with some rubbish. Where do you get it from? inbred's warped brain?

Intensively farmed livestock are not fed drugs to fatten them faster. They are fed good, wholesome food that is very expensive. Diets are carefully formulated to meet the needs of the animal. Feeds contain primarily wheat and barley, supplemented with whatever else may be available, such as pulses.


genetically manipulated to grow faster or produce much more milk or eggs than they would naturally?

God give me strength! No. Animals produce the amount of milk, meat or eggs that they produce because the poor producing animals are culled out. There's nothing new about this, its been going on for thousands of years. Farmers have always selected their best animals to produce the next generation.

Factory farming 101

Does abuse really exist on livestock farms to the extent the ARA's claim?

No.

It would be wrong to say that abuse does not exist, because it does, but, by no stretch of the imagination could it be considered the norm.

In my opinion, abuse tends to occur when:



1) Its the wrong person doing the job.

Ignorance, incompetence, lack of empathy, laziness, can all be a recipe for abusive situations.

Filling job vacancies on livestock farms can be very difficult. Sometimes, in desperation, companies will employ anyone with two arms and two legs regardless of their aptitude for the job. This can be disastrous for the animals. Luckily such people rarely last more than a few weeks.


People who choose to work with animals need to have certain qualities, first and foremost, they should like animals and enjoy being around them. Working with animals requires patience, dedication, empathy and compassion, but it doesn't mean being soppy and letting the animals walk all over you, animals need to know who's boss, and I believe that applies regardless of species.

Sometimes a person thinks, "I like pigs (elephants, horses, dogs, whatever) I want to work with them," but then, when they are faced with the reality of feeding, cleaning out, bedding, dealing with an uncooperative creature, etc. they discover they don't have the necessary skills or the right temperament for the job. So animals are left unfed, without water, dirty, cold, untrained, illness is not recognized or not treated.

This is abuse through neglect and rarely happens in intensive livestock farms because there is almost always someone else who does care, to take up the slack.



2) When a person who, under normal circumstances, would not treat an animal badly is under stress because of exhaustion, sickness, worry/anxiety, time constraints etc.


I'd be surprised if anybody who works with animals hasn't fallen into this category.

And it effects us all no matter how much we like to think otherwise. Working with animals is 24/7 and doesn't stop because a person has a cold, the flu, or a hangover from a little excess the night before.


3) When a person is mentally ill, sadistic, or just plain mean. These people should never be allowed near animals unsupervised.