4
Just because we can do it, does that make it right? Human beings are very clever animals. In Australia, we have developed a food production system that provides us with bulk food at comparatively cheap prices all year round. Because of our innovative use of science and technology we have manipulated nature so that we can feed ourselves and produce twice as much again to send to markets overseas. We are well fed and comfortable compared to the majority of the world’s people.
We have proven we can do it, but are the practices we use to produce our food ethically or morally acceptable? Modern, conventional farming wages a constant battle with nature, sometimes to a point where it seems some of the practices we use are completely unnatural. Intensive livestock production means millions of animals are confined, mostly indoors, in cramped conditions and force-fed for rapid growth. Increasingly, food plants are being genetically modified to increase yield, quite possibly at the expense of human, plant and animal health. The natural landscape is being hammered to produce more and more from a finite resource base. Is it sustainable? Is it morally right to continue in this way?
It is not just the farmers who are faced with these ethical questions. As compliant and mostly enthusiastic consumers of food, we have a responsibility to think past our overflowing plates. Do we know how our food is produced? We are not only what we eat but also what we choose to eat. Do our choices permit us to sleep with a clear conscience—to know our decisions as consumers are in the best interests of our families, the planet and its other inhabitants?
There’s no doubt that cattle are happiest doing what cattle were made to do: graze. A paddock full of green grass and shady trees is the natural habitat of the cow, its calf and extended herd family. They stick together for protection and companionship. They were made to roam, not stand still. Chickens, turkeys and ducks are also grazing animals and prefer to range freely in paddocks close to the coop. To most farmers this feels like the most natural way to raise animals. It’s also how most Australians would like to believe their food is produced.
But times are changing. In the past 40 years, intensive factory farming has quickly replaced many traditional stock-rearing methods. This is unfortunate for the animals because it interferes with their natural life cycle. Five principles of welfare for farm animals, known as the Five Freedoms, were first drawn up in England in 1965 as factory farming began.[1] These guarantee animals the basic rights of freedom from hunger and thirst; discomfort; pain, injury or disease; fear and distress; and freedom to express normal behaviours. The Five Freedoms are certainly accepted in theory by farmers today; however, animal welfare groups claim that the current intensive production of livestock make it impossible for the last four principles to be applied.
Research in Australia during the past ten years has shown that a growing number of consumers are concerned about the treatment of farm animals for food production.[2] These are, after all, sentient beings, capable of experiencing pleasure and pain and with a level of conscious awareness. Most meat-eaters support the humane and ethical production of animals for food, and many cannot stomach the idea of intensively farmed beef, veal, chicken, turkey and pigs. It violates the very laws of nature to confine grazing animals, force feed them unnatural foods, prevent natural maternal nesting behaviour, deprive them of daylight and fresh air, and subject them to stress, injury and often invasive surgical procedures. Many more meat-eaters would reject factory-farmed meat if they knew the cold, hard facts.
Traditionally, beef cattle were grass-fed cattle, or ‘free-range’ cattle, that grazed pasture in paddocks on large landholdings across Australia. Prior to World War II, Australia’s beef cattle were fed entirely on native pastures. Many large northern cattle stations were not even fenced let alone outfitted with yards. It wasn’t until the 1930s that cattle were supplemented with fodder crops such as oats, forage sorghum and the legume called lablab in parts of Australia where these crops could be grown. With the arrival of the US-style feedlot in the 1970s, grain was introduced to the cattle’s diet.[3]
Grass-fed beef is usually leaner with less intramuscular fat, otherwise known as marbling. It doesn’t require much cooking time and is distinctive in flavour. Unfortunately, along with the burgeoning feedlot industry in America and Australia, our tastes have changed. Consumers here and overseas have developed a taste for grain-fed beef—literally. What an animal eats does actually flavour its meat and milk. While the majority of Australia’s 27 million head of cattle still eat grass for much of their lives, most destined for the table are fattened, or finished, in a grain feedlot.[4] It is a beast’s last port of call before slaughter. Today’s consumer demands consistency of quality in their meat. Cattle are fattened in feedlots to guarantee a consistent finish of meat for each particular market within a particular timeframe. The use of specifically formulated grain rations and feed additives combined with limited movement produce a well-marbled (read ‘tender’) piece of meat. The consumer is happy.
There are about 700 accredited feedlots of varying size throughout Australia catering for 1000 to 75,000 head.[5] Most carry around 25,000 head. There are many smaller, unaccredited or opportunity feedlots with numbers under 1000 head. Most feedlots are found close to cattle-and grain-producing areas—mainly in the south-east corner of Queensland, and the Northern Tablelands and Riverina areas of New South Wales.
Lot-fed cattle spend between 30 and 300 days in small outdoor pens where they have between 12 and 20 square metres of space per 600-kilogram beast. They are hand or mechanically fed a grain ration boosted with vitamins, minerals and other supplements.[6] Grain-fed cattle such as the Wagyu breed, produced for the high end of the market where plenty of marbling is required, can spend up to 600 days or almost all their lives in a feedlot (despite these traditionally Japanese grain-fed breeds now being successfully grown on grass in some parts of Australia and their meat exported to Japan).[7][8] Australian feedlots put through 2.3 million head of cattle in 2008–09, and 80 per cent of beef sold in Australian supermarkets is sourced from Australian feedlots.[9]
Lot feeding of cattle has been criticised by the animal welfare lobby for its inhumane treatment of animals.[10] While the RSPCA works with the lot-feeding industry for best possible outcomes for the animals under the circumstances, organisations such as Animal Liberation Australia claim it is cruel to keep grazing animals in small yards which restrict their movement, lack shelter and subject animals to heat stress, manure build-up, wet manure, high dust levels and flies.
Feedlot cattle have no choice of food and are essentially force-fed grain and other by-products including grape skins, citrus pulp and cottonseed. Up until the late 1990s, these by-products included meat meal, bonemeal and chicken manure. Feeding meat meal to cattle and other meat-producing animals was an accepted practice across the world, including Australia, until the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in UK cattle in the 1990s.[11] The high-protein supplement was made out of processed animal and bird carcasses—this, despite the fact that cattle are herbivores! The practice was completely banned in Australia in 2001 when it was feared imported meat meal could spread these diseases to the Australian herd.
The Australian lot-feeding industry is highly regulated by government to make sure it meets industry and community standards. When standards are not upheld, feedlots can become smelly, fly-ridden quagmires that breed disease and are unpleasant for the animals, the people who work there and neighbouring communities.
The feedlot industry promotes its quality assurance system, the National Feedlot Accreditation System, which, it says, tightly regulates government-endorsed animal welfare standards and regulates waste management, hygiene, shade and the general wellbeing of animals. Lot feeders claim that the high level of supervision by feedlot managers means health and welfare issues of cattle can actually be managed faster and more effectively than in a free-range production system.[12]
However, animal welfare activists argue that cattle kept in unnatural conditions in close contact with one another are more at risk of disease, injury or accident than those roaming freely in the paddock. They say cattle in feedlots are susceptible to grain poisoning and infectious diseases. Feedlot illnesses are largely caused by an unnaturally high grain diet or imbalanced feed ration.[13] These illnesses include founder (lameness caused by too much grain), PEM (polioencephalomalacia—cattle polio caused by vitamin B1 deficiency), ergot poisoning (grain contaminated with ergot fungus), bladder stones (too much phosphorus), urea poisoning (too much urea), ionophore poisoning (overdose of rumen modifying growth promotant) and vitamin A deficiency (lack of green feed).
Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is the most common cause of death for feedlot cattle, with between 50 and 90 per cent of all feedlot deaths attributable to BRD.[14] Caused by a virus or bacteria, it is triggered by stress from handling and movement at saleyards, transport to the feedlot, dehydration, co-mingling, pen competition, change of diet and water, weather extremes, dust or a combination of all. The feedlot is a high-stress environment for animals designed to graze open pastures. BRD is treated with antibiotics although many cattle never recover enough to perform well in the feedlot. Foot abscesses or footrot from boggy yards, pink eye (a conjunctivitis bacterial infection spread by flies), heat stress and salmonella (food poisoning) are also more common afflictions in feedlot cattle than free-range cattle.
Illness in the feedlot is kept in check by the use of antibiotics through direct injection of sick animals or the low-dose, routine feeding of rumen modifiers, which prevent bloating illness. While this practice is criticised, the very nature of the feedlot environment means that without it cattle would suffer even more. The Australian lot-feeding industry is open about the use of veterinary drugs for disease treatment and the use of hormonal growth promotants, as evidenced on the Australian Lot Feeders’ Association website.[15] While some people may feel lot feeding is ethically dubious for the animal and for human health or sensibility, it is a perfectly legal activity in Australia and across the world.
Veal is another factory-farmed meat that has a controversial past—and some would say present. Veal is calf meat. It is delicate, pale, tender and of small cuts. The calves that produce the meat are artificially reared. They are taken from their mothers at a few days of age, and fed a diet of reconstituted milk and grain until slaughtered at sixteen weeks of age. Kept in dark barns to restrict their movement and to prevent access to pasture, their diet is intentionally low in iron, hence creating the paler colour of the meat. As with humans, a lack of iron causes anaemia, which leads to listlessness and general ill health. Restriction of movement causes the calves’ tiny muscles to atrophy, or to underdevelop, creating tenderness in the meat. In our modern industrialised system of farming, these traits are desirable.
Thankfully the system of veal production using crates—where calves spend their entire lives indoors in individual crates with solid wooden sides that do not allow the animal to turn around—is not used in Australia. This cruel practice was routinely used in Europe, Britain and the United States up until about ten years ago. It is still used in some states of America and many individual European countries and developing nations.
In Australia, veal calves (or vealers) are instead penned in small groups in sheds. The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Cattle states that 1.5 to 2 square metres of floor space must be provided per calf to permit self-grooming and prevent overcrowding.[16] If an individual pen is required to isolate a calf for any reason, such as ill health, it must be at least 2 metres square. The calves are weaned off milk at about three weeks of age. This does not seem long given that calves from free-range beef cattle are not normally weaned from their mothers until four to six months of age. In the wild, bovine mothers feed their calves up until about ten months when they deliver their next calf and boot big brother off. A calf’s digestive system is sufficiently mature at three weeks of age to begin to eat grass. However, for the luckless vealers, this is an experience they will never have.
Veal is essentially a by-product of the Australian dairy industry. Veal meat comes from dairy calves under 70 kilograms, and to a lesser extent, from beef calves weighing up to 150 kilograms.[17] For dairy cows to produce milk, they must give birth to a calf every year. All bull calves and three-quarters of heifer calves are surplus to the dairy industry’s requirements. This adds up to 900,000 calves a year. While fully grown dairy cattle do not make for good eating, as young animals they are quite palatable. So the unwanted dairy calves, known as bobby calves, are separated from their mothers at five days old and sold. Many are bought by the abattoir and slaughtered immediately. Bobby veal is considered to be of unpredictable quality due to unrefined feeding and handling and the high levels of stress placed on the tiny calves. However, some meat is used for human consumption while the rest of the carcass is used for leather production and by the pharmaceutical industry. As male cattle are more muscular and yield more meat, it is the male bobby calves that are sought by specialist veal producers and reared.
Veal production in Australia centres on the dairying areas of Victoria, Casino in northern New South Wales, and the Margaret River area in Western Australia. This keeps transport distance to a minimum, which is also a welfare issue for small calves. There are only a very small number of veal producers in today’s Australian market. As well as not crating the calves, they also claim that Australian vealers are not deprived of iron. Australian veal is generally pink rather than white, which indicates this is likely.[18]
In France and Italy veal has a long history of production, but Australia does not have this European veal culture. Most Australian farmers are uncomfortable with the animal welfare concerns associated with veal production in Europe. The whole concept of taking calves from their mothers, restricting their movement via little indoor pens, and depriving them of a diverse, natural diet does not sit well with most people. Anyone who knows cattle will know that, like small children, calves are very inquisitive and active. They like to frolic. They roam to graze. They are social animals that choose to live in herds. Cows and calves groom each other, they play together. Sheds, while providing needed protection to calves without mothers, also pose health risks. As with other intensively farmed animals, disease can spread quickly, with pneumonia a particular problem in calves. Damp, dark, crowded conditions contribute to this.
Animal welfare groups encourage consumers not to buy food products produced in a way that does not align with their core values. For many people, veal falls into this category, and voting with their dollar is certainly one way the consumer can help promote animal welfare.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? This is not the only philosophical question facing society today. The ethics of the factory farming of poultry have been hotly debated during the past 40 years or more too.
The first animals to be factory farmed were chickens in the 1920s. The discovery of vitamins and their role in animal nutrition early in the twentieth century led to the development of vitamin supplements, which in turn, allowed chickens to be raised indoors.[19] Initially the spread of disease prevented successful, intensive farming, but the development of antibiotics and vaccines changed this. For the chicken this was very unfortunate. Chickens are, like cows and pigs, essentially grazing animals. That’s pretty hard to do when you are confined in a shed on a solid cement floor. With the rise of cheaper factory-farmed chickens, the demand for chicken meat grew. In 1951 only 3 million meat chickens were raised commercially. Today 470 million are eaten every year. When the first Kentucky Fried Chicken store opened in Australia in 1968 (and soon after, 75 more), Australian production of chicken increased by 38 per cent.[20]
Contrary to popular belief, meat chickens grown in Australia are not kept in cages. That delight is saved for egg-laying hens. Of the 470 million Australian meat, or ‘broiler’, chickens grown for food, 96 per cent are grown indoors under intensive conventional farming systems. This means up to 40,000 birds at a time are kept together in large, bare sheds measuring 150 metres long and 15 metres wide. The sheds are stocked at between 28 and 40 kilograms of live bird per square metre. That is about ten to twenty chickens per square metre, depending on their size.[21] The birds are genetically selected to gain weight rapidly and are fed high-protein rations to reach market weight quickly. Fifty years ago it took 98 days for a chicken to grow to 1.6 kilograms. By 1986, it took only 37 days. That’s five weeks from go to whoa!
Animal welfare groups, including the RSPCA, claim chickens farmed this way are kept in cramped, overcrowded conditions. This leads to health problems such as respiratory, skin and eye diseases, and heat stress. Because of the sheer numbers, some have trouble getting to food and water. And because the production systems of these sheds are ‘all-in-all-out’, the 40,000 birds spend the whole five to seven weeks of their lives in the shed. Their faeces accumulate on the floor beneath them. Poor air quality and high ammonia levels from chicken waste can cause blindness and breathing difficulties for birds.[22] As the chickens reach their target weight of about 2 kilograms, the floor of the shed becomes literally a thick carpet of feathers.
To start with, birds are meant to roost, not sit on cement floors. The unnaturally rapid growth of the bird places enormous strain on its body, which can result in leg deformities including bent legs, dislocated joints, legs growing backwards and fractures. Too much time spent lying down (they are big girls after all!) leads to blisters, hock burns and footpad deformities. Rapid growth can also result in metabolic disorders including convulsions and ascites, a condition caused by liver disease where fluid builds up in the abdominal cavity resulting in heart failure.
The peak body for chicken farmers, the Australian Chicken Meat Federation (ACMF), disputes these claims and states that the welfare of the birds is of the utmost importance to farmers.[23] Ensuring birds are comfortable, kept healthy, fed optimally and protected from injury is in the best interests of the farmer as the chicken is his livelihood. It does not make economic sense otherwise. The ACMF says that Australian meat chickens are not genetically engineered or modified and are not fed growth hormones. They are treated for sickness when necessary and handled humanely. Chicken meat production in Australia is regulated by government and industry-endorsed codes of practice. But the RSPCA believes this code needs be changed to decrease stocking density of sheds among other things.
Animal welfare groups are also concerned about the catching, transport and slaughter of factory-farmed broiler chickens. Stockmen collect the chickens from the shed floor carrying, by the leg, up to five birds in one hand. The weakened legs of some birds are accidently broken. They are transported in drawers of 28 birds or more per square metre. The RSPCA claims some are crushed and injured during transport. Birds can then wait up to 24 hours in the drawers before slaughter.[24] Once unloaded, they are shackled and stunned by an electrified water bath. The birds, hung by their legs, then pass a rotating blade that slits their neck. Some survive this process requiring manual slaughter. The End. The RSPCA believes limiting transport distances to slaughter, gas stunning prior to slaughter, and mandatory training of slaughtermen would improve animal welfare. Others think of these suggested improvements as merely tinkering around the edges of what is a fundamentally inhumane system.
As well as the 470 million meat chickens raised for consumption, 6 million parent birds, or ‘broiler breeders’, are kept to lay eggs for meat chicken production. Broiler breeders are treated similarly to meat chickens but must endure additional unpleasant procedures. Like most animals (and humans) kept in close confines with others, chickens can become aggressive. To prevent injury, and even death, broiler breeders have their beaks trimmed. This means part of the upper or lower beak is cut back to prevent them pecking. To protect the hen from injury during mating, the male breeding birds also have the end of the claw on their middle toe cut back. Any sharp spurs on the sides of their legs are also trimmed. It is not unlike the dehorning of cattle to prevent injury to other cattle or humans during intensive farming. These procedures are done without anaesthetic, and animal welfare lobbyists argue that they cause nerve damage, open wounds and bleeding. You and I might not consider this humane or ethical, but it is an accepted practice within the commercial meat chicken industry.
And now to eggs. It is the layer chickens that are kept in cages. Ironically, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Australian governments encouraged egg producers to move away from free-range production and adopt ‘more modern, healthy, environmentally friendly caged bird production methods’.[25] It can be taken that ‘modern’ meant increased production, ‘healthy’ meant getting the chickens off the dirt and out of the faeces, and ‘environmentally friendly’ meant collecting manure from the cement below the cage rather than leaving it to wash into waterways.
For the end product—the egg and its consumer—perhaps this method was desirable. But what about for the hen? Even to the most hardened of hearts, caged-egg production appears the most intensive, cruel and unnatural of all conventional livestock production methods used in Australia.
By definition, a battery hen is ‘a hen kept in a small cage’. A battery is ‘an array of similar things intended for use together’. In fact, three or more battery hens are kept in a wire mesh cage with a floor space the size of an A4 piece of paper. The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry says 550 square centimetres is enough.[26] In modern automated sheds, these cages are stacked five or more tiers high, and the rows go on forever—up and down the insides of massive, climate-controlled, artificially lit industrial sheds that are dotted mainly throughout New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Millions of hens are kept this way. The hens are fed a grain mix via a conveyor belt that runs past their cage. Another belt collects the egg as it rolls to one end of the sloped cage once laid each day. The hens are kept like this for their entire lives which, in battery terms, is eighteen months. After this they are considered ‘spent’. Once spent, they are killed and ground up for use in soup, chicken stock and pet food. It could be worse. Prior to laws preventing the feeding of meat meal to livestock, spent hens were ground up and fed to their sisters back at the battery. As a comparison, well-kept backyard laying hens live for eight to ten years or more.
Eighty per cent of eggs produced in Australia come from caged battery hens. More than 13 million chickens produce over 4 billion eggs per year. Again, the 300 commercial egg producers in Australia believe they are doing the right thing by the chicken. Farmers say the caged system provides hens with a continuous supply of fresh water and food, protection from the elements, predators, manure-borne diseases and parasites. It reduces fighting among hens and reduces the chance of contamination of eggs. Cages make it easier for farmers to identify sick birds, while reducing the need for beak trimming, producing less ammonia and dust, and minimising negative impacts on the environment.[27]
But cages are not all good for the bird. Battery hens suffer ‘defeathering’ by constantly rubbing against the wire of the cage. Their feet can become crippled or entangled with the wire floor on which they are forced to stand all their lives. Weaker birds may be trampled or pecked to death by their cage mates. Hens locked in cages become stressed and aggressive. Despite what egg producer associations say, some hens do have their beaks trimmed to prevent pecking injuries or cannibalisation in cages. Because of a lack of exercise, sunlight and probably not enough calcium, birds suffer weakened bones, resulting in broken legs that can go unnoticed among the sheer numbers and remain untreated.[28] The sheds are noisy. While new, modern sheds are climatically controlled, old sheds are not. Birds living in sheds without adequate ventilation perish in extreme temperatures, as happened in the heatwaves in Victoria during 2009 and has happened regularly throughout the country during the past 40 years.
Some of the animal husbandry practices, or ‘tricks of the trade’, used on battery hens to increase egg production must cause the bird distress. Under natural conditions, and depending on the breed, laying hens can lay eggs for up to a decade. Hens lay in twelve-monthly cycles, even under stressful conditions. After twelve months the hen stops laying for three to four months. During this period she sheds her feathers, or moults, and generally has a good rest. She is tired. But in an intensive production system, every egg counts. There is no time for rest. We clever humans have again come up with a ‘solution’ to nature’s ‘problem’.
One way to stimulate egg production in the flock is to shock the hen into a new egg-laying cycle. Food is withheld from the hen for between five and fourteen days until she loses her feathers. When good-quality food is restored, the feathers grow back and the hen starts laying again. In intensive farming this is done before the bird is due to finish her laying cycle and moult. It brings her back into production much more quickly than nature would choose. This practice is called ‘forced moulting’ and is considered an important economic tool by egg producers. The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry—the Federal animal welfare guidelines for the treatment of poultry, introduced in 2002 and made law by most states and territories since then—condones the use of forced or induced moults as long as food or water is not withheld from the hen for more than 24 hours.
So instead, producers substitute high-protein good-quality feed with poor, high-fibre, low-energy, low-nutrient food over a longer period of time to achieve the same outcome. Again, animal welfare groups are opposed to forced-moulting on the grounds of cruelty.
American research shows that forced moulting suppresses the hen’s immune system which permits an increase in the amount of pathogen Salmonella enteritidis (SE) produced in the bird by 100 to 1000 times.[29] Small amounts of SE are found naturally in the intestines of healthy birds, but the study showed that birds forced to moult had intestines that were inflamed with large amounts of SE. This bacterium can not only make the bird sick but can also infect meat and eggs to cause food poisoning in humans. The solution? Vaccination and antibiotics, of course!
Information on the extent of forced moulting and other routine practices in the Australian caged egg industry is hard to come by. The results of US research published in 2003 suggested that 70 per cent of the US flock of 240 million laying hens were ‘moulted’ annually. One hundred per cent of layers in California are forced to moult annually.[30] That’s a lot of hungry chickens with sore bellies for the sake of more eggs for us.
Chicken farmers can manipulate artificial light to their advantage too. Laying hens lay an egg every 24 hours. Under natural conditions hens will lay fewer eggs during the winter months because there are fewer hours of daylight. So by having the chicken shed lit for long periods of the day, which most sheds are, the hen is encouraged to lay as often as possible.
Alternatively, the lower the level of lighting in a broiler shed, the calmer the chickens and the better the rate of feed conversion into meat. Farcically, The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry suggests that farmers using continuous shed lighting implement a ‘blackout training period’ to ‘prevent panic should lighting fail’.[31] We assume the ‘panic’ is among the birds not the staff. This ‘training’ involves turning the lights off for 15 minutes to start with and increasing this to an hour over a period of days. What’s the world coming to when we have to teach the chooks not to panic when darkness falls?
While on the dark side of chicken production, let’s look at surplus hatchlings. It is only the female chicken that is useful for egg production. So what happens to the 12 million day-old, male chickens hatched each year in Australia? No, they are not given away to kind, primary school children to raise as backyard pets. They are gassed en masse with carbon dioxide or, worse still, ground up alive in a big mincing machine. This ‘product’ is then used for chicken stock or pet food. The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry requires that unwanted hatchlings are ‘destroyed humanely’ and recommends carbon dioxide gassing or quick maceration (mincing) as acceptable methods to do this. Maceration is actually considered more humane as there is no risk any chicks will come out alive.
In the ‘good old days’ before poultry production became such an intensive, industrialised business, the female chicks were kept for egg production and the male chicks were grown out and fattened for meat. Farmers grew the same breed of chickens both for meat and eggs. There was no need for selective breeding programs, tiny cages and massive sheds, automated feeders dispensing high-tech food and egg conveyor belts. Or high-speed, live-chicken grinding machines. But we also didn’t have cheap chicken on tap like we do today.
Despite all this, the Australian egg industry believes caged-egg production is good for the consumer. The Queensland Egg Farmers’ Association says animal welfare ‘means different things to different people’ and that people opposed to caged-egg production are entitled to their views.[32] It argues that judging animal welfare should be based on a range of indicators other than just hen behaviour. Being well fed and protected from extremes of temperature and predators were some of the positives for the hen. They also note that it is ‘the right of Queensland’s egg consumers, in particular low-income families, the elderly and underprivileged to purchase eggs produced under the most economical and efficient methods’. However, the Association also says that consumers should still have a choice, and as well as cage eggs, barn-laid and free-range eggs are commercially available to shoppers.
The debate over caged-egg production has been going on for a very long time. The first nationwide investigation into animal welfare in Australia occurred in 1984. The Senate Select Committee on animal welfare was formed to look into issues such as the plight of battery hens. In 1992 the first Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry was drawn up. In 1993 and 1994 issues around caged-egg production were investigated. No practical improvements for battery hen welfare came out of these. By 1997 there were calls from state governments, particularly in the ACT, to ban caged-egg production in Australia. In 1999 the Federal government began a review into the housing of layers. Despite intense lobbying from animal welfare groups, in 2000 the Agriculture and Resource Management Council of Australia and New Zealand (ARMCANZ) decided the cages would stay.
Yet battery cages for egg production have been banned in Switzerland since 1992. The European Union is phasing out traditional battery cages by 2012 and replacing them with a more open system. While still not offering complete freedom to birds, new furnished or ‘enriched’ cages are larger than conventional cages with more birds to a cage. Furnished cage systems provide more room for birds to walk and flap; and offer roosts, private nesting boxes and scratch mats. The Americans have passed legislation to set standards for increased space in cages relative to the movement and wingspan of a bird.
In Australia the 2009 Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Domestic Poultry continued to permit the use of the battery cage. The then Australian government gave a commitment to review this decision in 2010, but no review has since taken place. A recent national survey showed that 86 per cent of Australians believe the battery cage is cruel.[33] However, despite this, Australia appears to be at least ten years behind other First World countries when it comes to addressing animal welfare issues.
When you think ‘pig’ you may think ‘smelly’, ‘untidy’ and ‘stupid’. Well, think again. Pigs are, in fact, the cleanest and the most intelligent of our domestic animals. Pigs are very similar to humans, genetically and anatomically. If you can bear to think about it, they say the taste of human meat compares closely to the taste of pork. Pigs actually don’t stink because they don’t have sweat glands. They instead release some heat through their mouths. Because they don’t have sweat glands, pigs use other means to regulate body temperature—usually water or mud. It may not be a good look to us, but the mud not only keeps them cool, it offers protection from insect bites and sunburn. Pigs are not silly. They are also very particular housekeepers and only defecate on the same area of their paddock or housing. They have very good memories. Pigs can be taught simple commands such as ‘sit’, ‘fetch’ and ‘roll over’. They have been taught to play simple computer games. (Pigs might even be better equipped to complete the quarterly Business Activity Statement for the Australian Tax Office than some farmers!) Pigs lead complex social lives not unlike primates, or humans. They sing to their young, play intricate games with their mates and are very loyal to their human masters. Regrettably this loyalty is not always returned.
Pigs are essentially outdoor foraging animals that choose to live in a herd. Today, as is the case with other intensively farmed animals, the lives of many could not be further from nature’s wishes.
In Australia 95 per cent of pig meat is farmed in intensive indoor piggeries. A large-sized piggery in Australia is likely to house around 1000 sows with smaller operations holding 100 to 300 sows. Sheds housing sows and their offspring at various stages of growth contain thousands of pigs.
Farmers rear pigs inside because they are easier to manage and it is cost effective. The pigs are protected from predators, sunburn, and disease from wild pigs. Their food intake is controlled. Their unfavourable behaviours, such as fighting, can be controlled. In a conventional piggery, pigs are housed in long, corrugated-iron sheds with cement floors. Some pigs are kept in individual pens while others are housed in group pens. Some piggeries use deep-litter housing instead. Under this system, pigs are kept in long sheds with roofs made of hooped metal frames covered in waterproof fabric, similar to plastic greenhouses used in horticulture. The floor is made of cement or compacted earth. The pigs are bedded on straw, sawdust, rice hulls or other material that readily absorbs manure and can be replaced.
Pigs are susceptible to changes in climate, diet and stressful events and even in an outdoor, free-range environment require a great deal of management. Large-scale piggeries have different sections to accommodate different stages of production. The breeding section holds the boars (males), gilts (unmated, young females) and sows (females) either awaiting mating or in the early stages of pregnancy. Because of their naturally aggressive, robust temperament, boars are kept in separate pens. Pregnant sows are also kept in individual sow stalls for some or all of their pregnancy.
A few days before sows are due to give birth, or ‘farrow’, they are moved to the farrowing section of the piggery. Here they are again kept in individual pens called farrowing stalls, which also accommodate the piglets when they are born and protect them from being squashed by their mother. The piglets are weaned from their mother at three to four weeks of age. The mother then goes back into the system to start all over again.
The weaner piglets are moved to the weaning section of the piggery where they acclimatise to new food, a new environment and other pigs. The last section of the piggery is where older pigs are grown to either porker stage (24 to 55 kilograms) or baconer/finisher size (more than 55 kilograms). They are then sold for slaughter. And the cycle starts again.
Described this way, it doesn’t sound too bad, does it? And to the experienced farmer who is conditioned to the modern piggery environment and process of intensive pig production, it’s all fairly normal.
But animal welfare groups have recently drawn our uneducated attention to the detail of what happens inside these big sheds. To the many pork consumers who have now also become aware, it’s not normal. Large pigs, weighing upwards of 100 kilograms, are permitted only 1 square metre of space in which to live. Smaller pigs get even less space. These are guidelines set out by Australia’s Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Pigs.[34] Also permitted under the guidelines are teeth trimming and tail docking of piglets. When deemed necessary by the farmer, the incisor teeth are clipped or ground back to prevent biting of the mother or siblings. For some unknown reason piglets like to bite, particularly the tails of other pigs. Tail biting causes infection, pain and carcass condemnation at slaughter. Simple solution: cut off the offending tails.
While the close confinement of pigs in indoor systems can lead to stress, injury, abnormal behaviour and spread of disease, the use of sow stalls and farrowing stalls has caused the most alarm among animal welfare advocates.
The sow stall is a metal-barred crate with a cement floor. It has a slat-covered trench at one end for the pig’s manure to fall into. The pig has access to feed and water through the bars at the other end. The crate measures 2.2 metres long and 60 centimetres wide. The sow can stand up but not turn around. She can only take a small step forward or backwards. We must remember we are talking about a 100-kilogram grazing and foraging animal. One-quarter of all sows in Australia are kept in these small stalls for the entire sixteen weeks of pregnancy. Other piggeries use the sow stall for the first six weeks of pregnancy then house the sows in groups.
Farmers insist that the crate is necessary for the protection of the pregnant sow, which is susceptible to miscarriage in the rough and tumble group-housing world of the pig.[35] Pregnant sows are aggressive and bullying is common among them. Fighting pregnant sows have been known to kill each other. When confined, the pig cannot be hurt by others, can be fed properly without others stealing her food and her pregnancy can be monitored closely. Farmers are genuinely concerned for the welfare of their pigs and believe they are doing the right thing by confining the sow to a stall.
Sows kept in these stalls for long periods often suffer muscle and bone deterioration due to lack of exercise.[36] Many struggle to stand up or lie down because of severe leg weakness. They are prone to pressure sores on their sides from the bars of the crate and foot soreness from the hard floor. Modern, fast-growing breeds have been known to grow longer than the stall, causing unbearable discomfort. Being forced to lie in their own faeces makes sows susceptible to painful diseases of the reproductive and urinary tracts, such as vaginitis, endometritis and cystitis. Being confined stifles normal behaviour. Sows cannot explore, forage or interact with other pigs. Some sows turn to bar biting and head swaying and other very unusual behaviours. You would too.
Just before the sow gives birth she is moved into a farrowing crate. Unfortunately for the pig, this crate is even smaller than the sow stall. It measures 2 metres by 50 centimetres. It has an area around it called the creep area into which the piglets can move to avoid being crushed by the sow. The maximum survival rate of piglets is important to the farmer as numbers determine his financial bottom line. Hence, the importance of the farrowing crates. The sow is kept in the farrowing crate until the piglets are weaned from her at three or four weeks of age. The crate prevents the pregnant sow from carrying out normal nesting behaviour. There is no bedding, no room to move and it permits the sow no contact with her young bar them feeding from her teats.
Sow stalls were banned in the United Kingdom in 1999. Animal welfare campaigners and the public there put pressure on a poorly managed system where 80 per cent of sows kept in sow stalls suffered shoulder sores because they were too big for the crate. Sows are now kept in group pens instead. Further animal welfare changes in the United Kingdom mean pigs can no longer be kept on slats or wire floors; they must be provided with bedding; and finisher pigs are even provided with toys to prevent boredom. The Australian pork industry watched on in horror at the cost of the changes forced upon British pork producers.
While sow stalls have not been banned in Australia, changes made to The Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Pigs in 2007 will see sow stall use limited to the first six weeks of pregnancy. The changes will come into effect in 2017, giving pig producers a ten-year phase-in period. However, animal welfare groups say the changes do not go far enough, quickly enough. Some Australian states such as Tasmania have taken it upon themselves to ban sow stalls voluntarily. They will be phased out there altogether by 2017. The Australian pork industry supports farmers’ rights to use sow stalls but has encouraged investment in alternative means to contain sows during pregnancy.
While lot feeders, commercial broiler growers and pork producers are often criticised for their perceived crimes, the factory farm is where the majority of the meat we eat comes from. You and I buy it each week from the supermarket or the butcher shop. We might be horrified at the treatment our meat-producing animals are subjected to under our industrial food production system, but every time we buy a hot chook from the supermarket or a bacon and egg burger at the local takeaway, we support it.
But why don’t the farmers do it differently, we may ask? How can they be so cruel? We don’t want our food produced like this—it’s unethical. The very nature of the industrialised system of production overlooks the fact that these animals are sentient beings with instinctive behavioural needs, not benign commodities. Perhaps economic imperatives desensitise farmers to the needs of the individual animal. The reality is that if farmers are to produce the quantity and quality of meat we demand, at the prices we are used to, they need the most efficient, most cost-effective system available to supply it. Mainstream farmers say that Farmer Jones running Daisy in the front paddock and everyone else keeping a few chooks in the backyard simply won’t achieve this. In Australia, on average, we eat 37.2 kilograms of beef per person, 36.3 kilograms of chicken per person, 22.1 kilograms of pig meat per person and 12.6 kilograms of lamb or mutton per person. There are 22 million of us.[37] That is 8 billion tonnes of beef per year and 8 billion tonnes of chicken per year. Through research and development into breeding and feeding, technological developments in processing, mechanisation, automation, storage and long distance transport, we are able to do it.
So, from an animal welfare perspective, what is the current alternative to conventional factory farming in Australia? For beef it is free-range, grass-fed beef or ‘range-land’. Add the term ‘organic’ and you get it without the use of synthetic chemicals in its production. The meat will taste different and cost more. It can be harder to find.
For chicken meat, it is ‘accredited free range’ and ‘certified organic’ with 10 to 15 per cent of chicken meat produced in Australia accredited free range and about 1 per cent certified organic. For the chicken, this may not be as good as it sounds. Free-range chickens are still housed in large sheds and fed and managed in a similar way to conventionally grown meat chickens. But they do have access to outdoor areas for part of each day and lower target stocking density—no more than 28 kilograms of live bird per square metre of floor space unless there is mechanical ventilation. Antibiotics can be used to treat sick birds but the meat can’t be sold as free range. Beak-trimming, toe-trimming or any other form of mutilation is not permitted. The birds must be vaccinated against disease.
‘Certified organic’ meat chickens have two more requirements. Feed must be from certified organic ingredients and birds cannot be treated with routine vaccinations. Chicken meat can still be described as ‘organic’ without being certified by an organic association, so shoppers should read labels carefully. Chicken meat marketed as ‘chemical free’ comes from conventionally produced chickens that may have been treated with chemicals during their lifetime. ‘Chemical free’ in this context means no chlorine is used on the meat at processing.
More confusing are the ever-increasing range of labelling options for eggs. As discussed previously, cage eggs are produced from hens housed exclusively in cages in sheds. Eighty per cent of Australian eggs are produced this way, and they are appropriately labelled as ‘cage eggs’.[38] The alternatives are barn-laid eggs and free-range eggs, and this is where it can get confusing. The barn-laid system, which produces 5 per cent of our eggs, accommodates hens in large sheds where they have access to roosts, nest boxes, and litter on the floor where they can dust bathe. Stocking densities of 30 kilograms, or ten to fifteen hens, per square metre give the hens some room to move. Free-range hens produce about 10 to 15 per cent of eggs available in Australia. This system allows hens access to large areas of open ground while returning to sheds for roosting, laying, feeding, drinking and protection. The recommended stocking density for free-range production is 30 kilograms of bird per square metre. There has been an ongoing campaign for many years by animal welfare groups to decrease stocking densities in sheds with only very slow progress made.
In Australia there are no uniform or legislated definitions of ‘free range’ let alone any other production method. In recent times, terms such as ‘barn laid’, ‘cage free’, ‘organic’ and ‘free to roam’ have crept into the poultry industry’s marketing lexicon. But what commercial chicken meat producers label as free range or ‘free to roam’ are worlds apart from what many consumers take this to mean. Fast-food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has withdrawn advertising which says its chickens are ‘free to roam’ after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleged this was misleading labelling.[39] In late 2011, the ACCC launched Federal Court action against poultry producers Baiada Poultry and Bartter Enterprises, who supply KFC with Steggles chickens, alleging ‘barn-raised’ chickens are not free to roam. The ACCC says the population density of barn-raised chickens, in effect, does not allow them to roam—freely or otherwise. An A3-sized space for two chickens to move around in was not enough. Animals Australia has gone even further and called for this production method to be labelled as ‘factory farmed in sheds’.[40]
Shoppers are entitled to know what they are buying and how it was produced. Free-range chickens and eggs are more expensive to buy. They are also more costly to produce. Switching from cage production requires egg producers to make a change in management and housing design. Production costs increase by an extra 10 to 15 per cent,[41] and this is passed on to consumers. But changes are being made, as evidenced by the growing number of free-range eggs available today. Shoppers who don’t wish to support unethical egg production systems should vote with their dollars, as this is one instance where supply is definitely driven by demand.
Australian supermarkets are already listening. In late 2010 Coles announced it would phase out Coles brand cage eggs by 2013. At the same time, to help shoppers afford the traditionally dearer free-range eggs, Coles announced it would drop the price of the Coles brand free-range eggs and absorb the cost. Coles’ market research showed that 95 per cent of customers would buy free-range eggs if the price were lower. We trust this is a demonstration of Coles’ good corporate citizenship and not a cynical exercise to better position its product at the expense of its competitors or the farmer.
The free-range pig production system is smaller and costs more to deliver but undoubtedly provides a more humane approach to raising pigs. Free-range pigs live outdoors in groups and have access to arks, or huts. They graze on pasture but are also fed grain rations. They have access to mud. They truly are pigs. Pregnant sows are not kept in sow stalls and farrowing crates. Instead they are given room to escape aggressive others and to nest and farrow naturally. In an outdoor setting a pig will gather sticks and leaves and make a bowl-like nest in which to give birth. A good mother will push her piglets away so as not to squash them. And if not, nature takes its course regardless of market pressures. Free-range pig producers in Australia say that the problems cited by intensive pig producers as a deterrent to free-range production—such as the threat from predators, sunburn, the spread of disease from wild to domestic pigs, and the problem of containing manure from the environment—are all manageable.[42]
Free-range pork should not be confused with ‘bred free range’. Bred free range means the piglets are born outdoors to a free-ranging mother but at 21 days old they are weaned and confined indoors and raised largely on a grain diet. While mother and piglets may not have had to endure the inhumane sow stalls or farrowing crates, the pig is not fully raised as a free-range animal.
Prompted by customer demands, Coles appear to have taken ethical leadership by announcing that from 2014 it will no longer sell fresh pork grown on farms that use sow stalls. This shows the influence consumers can have. Australia’s biggest pork producer, Rivalea, at Corowa in New South Wales, has already begun its own $16 million program to disband stalls for its 40,000 breeding sows. Due to consumer demand, Rivalea is expanding its free-range production capabilities as well. The Australian pork industry is cynical of Coles’ move away from pork produced with sow stalls, saying that 80 per cent of Coles’ pig meat products are imported from countries where sow stalls are readily used. Coles says that all fresh pork sold in its stores is Australian grown but does admit that processed product such as ham, bacon and other smallgoods can be imported. I guess you have to start somewhere.
Practices prevalent in other countries came to Australians’ notice recently too when they were forced to confront the reality of the live export market. While Australians obviously don’t eat the meat from sheep or cattle exported live to other countries, many Australians are concerned about the welfare of the animals involved in this trade. Australia exported 874,916 head of live cattle in 2010 worth $684 million.[43] Sixty per cent of these cattle went to Indonesia with the remainder shared among Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Japan, and Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.
In June 2011, public outcry in Australia over the live cattle trade caused the Australian government to suspend live cattle exports to Indonesia for a month and ask the Indonesian authorities to improve slaughter standards. The move came after the ABC Four Corners program showed images of cattle being brutally mishandled and their throats cut without stunning in Indonesian abattoirs.[44]
While many Australian cattle producers were horrified at the television pictures, others directly affected by the trade suspension reacted as though their throats had been cut too. No doubt it was nearly as painful for many Top End cattle producers who were already cash-strapped, debt-laden and trying to recover from a series of natural disasters. The live export market had become a convenient, lucrative market for northern beef producers and West Australian sheep and goat producers. During the past twenty years government and beef industry bodies had actively encouraged farmers to restructure their businesses to sell into the Indonesian live trade rather than traditional domestic markets. The lost business caused by the suspension of live export trade cost individual cattle producers, transport operators and exporters in the north millions of dollars and put severe emotional stress on many. It also somewhat tarnished the Australian beef industry as a whole, despite the fact that it was not Australian farmers who were mistreating their animals.
The episode demonstrated how ethical issues could become a financial problem for Australian cattle farmers and government, even when the mistreatment happened abroad. It also demonstrated the power of the people to affect government policy (even if its implementation was rash and short-lived).
The live export trade out of Australia continues. Unfortunately, in recent years, many cattle and sheep have also died cruel deaths through lack of oxygen, heat stress, disease and accident or injury aboard the massive ships that transport thousands of animals thousands of kilometres across the globe for weeks on end. The Australian government has introduced legislation—the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock—which sets strict rules for the shipment of live animals. It says animals onboard ships must be given adequate ventilation, drainage, food, water, enough space to lie down and special pens for sick animals to receive veterinary care.
But even if the journey is comfortable (and how can it be for cattle, who instinctively roam, to be confined in a stall on a ship for three weeks?), many animals meet a cruel end once arriving at their destination, as the Four Corners program demonstrated. Sometimes due to religious and cultural beliefs, but more likely through plain mismanagement, many countries treat livestock in a way unacceptable to most Australians. This includes slaughter without stunning to satisfy the Halal and Kosher beliefs of Muslims and Jews respectively.
Differing levels of understanding or acceptance of ‘good’ animal husbandry practices contribute. What Australians regard as cruel, others may not. In late 2010 there was evidence that sheep exported live from Australia to Bahrain and Kuwait were shoved into car boots three at a time for transport, tied up with wire and had their throats cut in the streets while still fully conscious. The sheep had been bought for home sacrifice as part of the Eid al-Adha Festival to celebrate the end of Ramadan.[45]
Despite Australian farmers’ best efforts, industry codes of practice, government education campaigns aimed at our trading partners, and multiple government enquiries, farmers have no control over their animals once they leave Australian shores. Australia’s legal responsibility for animal welfare ends when the animal arrives at port in its new country. Countries like Indonesia are sovereign nations. The Australian government can only ‘influence’, not enforce, humane practices in other countries, and that influence doesn’t always carry much weight.
It could be argued, however, that the farmer and industry as a whole has a moral and ethical responsibility for the animal’s welfare that doesn’t end at the foreign port. For this reason, many sectors of the Australian community have called for the banning of the live export trade altogether. This is the only way Australia can ensure animal welfare, they say. It remains to be seen what effect any continuing controversy around the live export industry will have on the trade or on the wider Australian livestock industry.
So is factory farming as unethical as it appears? Certainly the farmers and processors working in intensive farming appear to operate in a different paradigm to the consumer. The industry sees intensive livestock production as a business: the animals are the production commodity and while they are healthy, growing and reproducing, and the farmer is making a profit, all requirements have been met. There is a disconnect between producer and consumer.
Research has shown that many consumers do not approve of animals being mass produced under these conditions, for welfare reasons. Are we, as consumers and observers, just over-reacting? There is, after all, plenty of government regulation in place to protect the wellbeing of food-producing animals. The Model Codes of Practice for the Welfare of Animals spell out the minimum standards in all areas of animal welfare. They apply across all industries and have been reviewed and updated regularly over the years. Our animals in Australia are certainly miles ahead of the boot-transported, streets-laughtered sheep of Bahrain.
Despite this, factory farming will never be approved of by the animal welfare lobby. It is criticised by organisations in Australia such as Voiceless, which blames factory farming for the most suffering to the largest number of animals. It claims that intensive farming industries engage in legalised cruelty of animals to reap higher profits and produce cheaper meat and eggs. They say The Model Codes of Practice only institutionalise and entrench factory farming, doing little to help the animal’s plight, but merely sanctioning the cruelty.[46]
Animal welfare lobbyists say there is an inherent conflict of interest at work within state and Federal Departments of Primary Industry in Australia because they are responsible for not only promoting the interests of animals, but also the interests of agribusiness. Never the twain shall meet. Animal activists say the political will for substantial change is just not there. Furthermore, consumers trust the messages coming from industry and government: that through industry guidelines and government legislation, farm animals are being treated well.
Voiceless says once you look inside the sheds, you can see they are not. And not all pieces of animal welfare legislation are equal, either. As they apply to domestic pets, these animals are given good protection. But not so farmed animals. Animal welfare bills are applied inconsistently and paint a false picture of the welfare of farmed animals. In most states it is illegal to dock the tails of dogs and cats, yet under The Model Codes of Practice in many states, tail docking of pigs and dairy cows is fine as is beak trimming, toe cutting, teeth grinding, dehorning, dubbing, de-snooding, ear notching and any number of invasive and gruesomely labelled procedures.
Another sticking point is that The Model Codes of Practice are, in effect, just a guideline. Not all of the standards in the Code have been regulated (made law) in all Australian states. The standards are therefore not enforceable. An example: current regulations for battery cages state that the minimum floor space for each cage is 450 square centimetres for hens weighing less than 2.4 kilograms. For cages installed since 2001, the Code states that the minimum size is 550 square centimetres. Because this change has not yet been regulated in all states and territories, it is not binding for all egg producers. Smaller cages of 450 square centimetres can be used without penalty—and still are. The RSPCA in Australia can only prosecute egg producers if they are breaking the law or contravening regulations that set minimum standards for better cages.
Because of this discrepancy, organisations such as the RSPCA and the Humane Society have come up with guidelines and accreditation schemes of their own. RSPCA accredited and labelled eggs are produced in barns where hens have access to a nest in which to lay eggs, litter in which to dust bathe, and space to move freely, flap their wings and socialise. They have constant access to food and water and protection from predators and the elements. Stocking densities are lower and RSPCA-accredited farms are inspected every eight to twelve weeks by an experienced RSPCA officer. Likewise, the Humane Society’s ‘Humane Choice’ label certifies that the free-range beef, lamb, pork, chicken and eggs endorsed by it were produced humanely with the animal’s interests at heart.
Unfortunately, the ethics that farmers apply to food production have shifted in line with the new methods we use to produce food. Fifty years ago the basis of good animal welfare was good animal husbandry. Producers were small scale and labour intensive. Animals were treated as individuals and highly valued. Following the development of intensive, high-tech production systems, the relationship between good welfare and production has broken down.[47] Larger-scale farming has meant animals have become commodities. Intensive farming methods mean the removal of animals from their natural environment, altering their normal social structures and behaviours, and raising them in controlled conditions with the help of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, vaccines, modified feed and often invasive surgical procedures.
Public reactions to health scares and disease outbreaks in food animals around the world have come at great cost to farmers. Public expectations have driven farmers towards more controlled environmental systems to manage health, hygiene and food-safety issues. The consumer has benefited from a supply of cheap food that 50 years ago was considered a luxury. The real price has been paid by the animal.
Research shows Australian consumers are becoming very sophisticated in their food-buying habits. They want to know whether their food has been genetically modified, whether or not chemicals have been used on it and how food animals are reared. Animal welfare is important. Consumers are demanding increased transparency in food production and farmers and policy makers need to provide it.
The irony is that many consumers support the views of the animal welfare lobby and often hold them dear to their own heart. Yet many of us continue to buy food produced by ethically dubious means (despite the tick of approval given some of these practices by animal welfare codes).
Demand determines supply. If we want change we need to ask questions and educate ourselves about our food. We need to think before we buy.