Why Are We Allowing Our Farm Animals to Be Tortured for Corporate Profit?
The government needs corporate-controlled farms to ensure that biopharmaceuticals and biochemicals can be introduced into our food supply at will
My wife Teresa and I were enjoying a spring day outside of a coffee shop in Valemount, B.C recently. As we sipped our drinks, two trucks and trailers with equipment we could not identify pulled up. We were curious, so we asked what the trailer equipment was for. We learned that this was a crew travelling around trimming the hooves of cattle.
Already knowing the answer, I asked the question: Are you only trimming the hooves of cows that live indoors? The answer was yes. I then asked the second question: The cows that live outdoors don’t need their hooves trimmed? The answer was: No, they don’t.
Cattle are meant to live outside. They are meant to walk on the ground. Outdoor cattle take care of their own hooves. They never need trimming. It is only cows raised indoors, in large corporate farms, that need their hooves trimmed.
I was troubled by the hoof trimming trucks and how scary it must be for the cows to be corralled into a trailer, confined, and then to have their hooves trimmed. They must be terrified each time. I am even more troubled by the practice of raising cattle inside industrial buildings. They are not free to roam around. They are not free to eat fresh plants. They do not get to feel the sun, the wind, and the rain. They will never see the stars. They will never breathe fresh air. They live their entire lives in a crowded building that stinks of manure.
Crippled Cows and Crying Pigs
The indoor cows will also become crippled. My dairy farmer friend Tyler tells me that when you go to a cattle auction you can tell which cows were raised indoors because they do not walk correctly.
I then thought of another troubling animal experience I had in Valemount. It was in the winter. It was bitterly cold. I was putting gas in my car and there was a trailer of live pigs parked nearby. The pigs were freezing and in distress. They were crying and crying.
As part of a deliberate campaign to consolidate our food supply into corporate control, the government shut down the small local abattoirs. Shutting down the local abattoirs helped corporate profits. But it was a disaster for animals which had to suffer long journeys to be slaughtered. The crying pigs were victims of this government action.
And that was not the end of the suffering for the crying pigs. A farming friend has shared with me that at some of the big slaughter houses pigs are put on a metal floor and electrocuted at up to fifty at a time. They wail and scream. They are often not dead when their throats are cut, and they are hung up to bleed. If you have a strong stomach, you may want to watch the video link below of pigs being slaughtered in Canada. You will be troubled.
I shouldn’t be surprised that we are now mistreating cattle by raising them indoors. Most of our pigs are raised indoors. Most of our chickens and turkeys are raised indoors.
We all know that animals are meant to live outside. It takes little imagination to understand that a cow, pig, or chicken confined to an indoor pen will have no quality of life. Most of us would agree that transporting animals long distances for slaughter is cruel, especially in the winter. Most of us would also agree that animals should be killed with as little fear and suffering as is possible.
I am ashamed of what we are doing to animals. How we treat animals is a reflection of our society. I don’t like what I see.
Cows are meant to be raised outdoors grazing on grass like these Scottish Highland cows raised by Lifespring Farms in the Kawartha Lakes
Government Pushes Farming towards Corporate Control
Why are we doing this? Why is there a relentless push by our governments to consolidate our food supply into corporate control? We closed down the local abattoirs, leaving only large slaughter houses that process thousands of animals a day. They have a production line that cannot be slowed. We are raising animals indoors in production facilities, rather than farms. Everything measured. Everything controlled. No sunshine. No wind. No rain. No stars. Lots of profits.
There are still family owned farms where animals live outside, but these are now being targeted by the state. Farmers are being subjected to ever-stricter controls and regulations that are designed to make family farming unaffordable, and a burden rather than a joy. The ever-stricter regulatory burden is specifically designed to get rid of the smaller farms so that our food supply will be consolidated into large corporate farms.
The large corporate farms will do everything the government wants. They will pump the animals full of vaccines and drugs. They will use only the feed approved of by the government. They will register and track every single animal. When Health Canada wants us to eat cloned meat, they will raise cloned animals.
Health Canada has published an opinion on cloned meat which explains that the main advantage of cloned meat is: "to produce several copies of transgenic animals that were bioengineered to have novel traits, such as the production of biopharmaceuticals, other biochemicals, or enhanced nutritional profiles." (emphasis added)
The government needs corporate farms to ensure that biopharmaceuticals and biochemicals can be introduced into our food supply.
Cloned meat will be another disaster for animals. The European Union has banned the cloning of animals because it causes too much animal suffering. Such ethical considerations don’t seem to apply in Canada. To learn more about the cloning of animals watch the NHPPA video at https://nhppa.org/dangers-of-cloned-meat-being-ignored/.
Bon appetit!
Resources
- Pig slaughter video - https://www.peta.org/news/pig-slaughterhouse-in-canada/
- Health Canada Opinion on cloned meat which includes: Further, most SCNT cloning is expected to be valuable for use in conjunction with genetic modification technologies. For example, SCNT could be used: 1) to produce several copies of transgenic animals that were bioengineered to have novel traits, such as the production of biopharmaceuticals, other biochemicals, or enhanced nutritional profiles https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/programs/consulation-food-derived-somatic-cell-nuclear-transfer-clones-offspring-policy-update/scientific-opinion.html#a1.4.2.1
