CHICKENS, “CHICKS,” AND CAROL ADAMS
Pig production in the United States has copied many aspects of industrial chicken production. It is ironic that pigs and poultry, who historically both shared greater proximity to humans by virtue of living in the backyard, are now the most industrialized livestock animals. While some are disturbed by this development when it comes to pigs (given their intelligence), few share the same level of concern for poultry, as they are considered stupid, or “bird-brained.” The long and complex relations between people and poultry (domesticated about eight thousand years ago), however, belie this description and call for changing the current lives of most chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks.
As mentioned in chapter 3, chicken meat is now the most consumed meat in the United States. Direct egg consumption has declined from a little over one egg a day in 1945 to just over half an egg a day in 2013 (Ferdman). But this does not account for all the eggs in processed and baked foods. Egg demand supports 277 million laying hens with every 100 hens producing over 75 eggs a day (“Industry Overview”). In the past the same breeds of chickens were used to produce eggs as were used to produce meat. The move to specialize in either meat or egg production did increase the rate of production and lower the cost to the consumer, but it came at a cost to the chickens. Since the laying chickens have no real value as meat, the males are sorted and killed—often ground up while alive. The females are of value only as long as they are laying, so there is no regard for their long-term health. They are housed in conditions that allow manure to accumulate, and the resulting pollutants burn their skin and lungs. Even those who are labeled organic, cage-free, or free-range are usually housed in barns with ten thousand or more hens and may never step outside. The industry focused on producing hens that could “lay an egg a day.” This requires the artificial manipulation of light, and so confinement is necessary. Forced molting can also prolong egg production, but this requires withholding food and water from the birds.
The life of broilers is also highly confined. Housed in barns with twenty-five thousand or more birds, even those who are labeled organic, cage-free, or free-range may never step outside. No longer worried about their egg-laying capacity, the meat industry focused on breeding chickens for specific purposes. For example, the Cobb Sasso 150 is for the free-range, organic producers; the Cobb Avian 48 is for live-bird markets; and the Cobb 700 produces a greater-than-average amount of breast meat. The Cobb 500, however, is one of the most popular varieties of meat chickens. It grows faster on less food. They grow so fast that they suffer from severe leg deformities and chronic pain. But their life is short—they reach the slaughter weight of five pounds at just six weeks of age (Herzog 167). Even at this young age, they suffer from blisters on their hocks and sores on their feet because they are too heavy to stand and spend much of their time lying in their own feces. The accumulated manure also pollutes the air with ammonia, and this burns their lungs and eyes. The process of catching the chickens for slaughter is very stressful for them, and many end up with broken bones as they are snatched by catchers (four or five in a hand at a time) and stuffed into small boxes. A mechanical “harvester” has been developed that lowers the injury rate and the stress for the birds, but it is not yet commonly used. Once they arrive at the processing plant, chickens are hung upside down on a conveyer line while still alive. They are sent through an electrified bath to stun them before their throat is slit. If they are not the standard size, then they are not properly stunned and the knife misses their throat. This means some birds are still alive at the third stage of the process when they are dunked in scalding water (Herzog 168–69).
The production of chicken meat and eggs was the first form of animal agriculture to become highly industrialized. In Compassion by the Pound, economists Norwood and Lusk provide an account of how egg production moved inside and got big. One hundred years ago chickens lived outside and foraged for bugs to supplement the grain they were fed. They were free to roam and could lay eggs in nests built in shelters. But these chickens fell prey to weather and to predators, so some farmers moved the hens inside to keep them safe. Since buildings are expensive, they needed to put a lot of birds in one building to keep it affordable. When put in cramped conditions, chickens fight. As Norwood and Lusk point out, “chickens can only remember the pecking order of a flock of up to 30 birds. In larger flocks, there are continual fights. Birds injure one another, and even cannibalism can occur. Fighting chickens are bad for business and bad for the animals” (47). To help stop the fighting, farmers put the chickens in cages in groups of about five. The cage system allows farmers to use a conveyer belt to catch and move the eggs so that the eggs aren’t contaminated with feces. Housing chickens on slanted wire floors with no bedding did not impact egg production and made life easier for farmers. Consumers buy more of these eggs; they are clean and cheap. Farmers who didn’t adopt this system couldn’t and didn’t compete (46–47).
Technology also contributed to the changes in the lives of hens. Before feeds could be supplemented with vitamins and minerals, it was essential that hens spend some time outside to eat bugs, dig in the dirt, and get some sunshine. As with pigs, changes in feed made it possible to keep the hens inside. When putting more hens in a cage led to fighting, beak-trimming was turned to as an answer (despite the numerous nerves in the beak). Male chicks were sorted out and killed. Since the 1940s, these “improvements” helped make the caged system the norm and the White Leghorn the best egg producer (114). Forced molting improved production even more, as hens increase their egg production after they molt (lose their old feathers and grow new ones). Withholding food and water was the standard way to bring on a molt, but this is no longer prevalent, as studies have found it is cheaper to kill and replace birds instead (117–19).
These changes moved production from 153 eggs per hen per year in the 1930s to 250 today (Animal Welfare Approved requires not more than 220 eggs per hen). The price of an egg dropped dramatically as a consequence. These cheap eggs come from barns housing one hundred thousand to one million hens in stacks of cages that are serviced by conveyor belts that bring in feed, remove manure, and carry out the eggs. Even in the barns where the manure is regularly removed, high levels of ammonia accumulate. While Norwood and Lusk state that this is not really a problem for the birds as they still “perform well” (116), the hens do develop eye and lung problems. Each bird has sixty-seven square inches, has had its beak trimmed, and cannot fully extend its wings. Unable to exercise, the hens have brittle bones that break easily; the fact that most of their calcium goes into shell production exacerbates the problems with their bones. They are kept in conditions that provide artificial light to help keep egg production high. Since most of their energy goes into egg production they don’t gain weight. When their egg production rates begin to diminish around two years of age they are killed and their depleted carcasses are often used in pet food (116–17).
As consumers came to be more aware of how laying hens are kept they objected. Norwood and Lusk note that the farmer is blamed for the conditions in which the bird lives, but they lay the blame with the consumer: “Farmers with cage systems are vilified. However, consumers had previously communicated to farmers through their purchases that they preferred the advantages of the cage system.” Norwood and Lusk think consumers must communicate their willingness to pay: “Farmers will produce chicken meat and eggs in any way that appears to meet the consumer’s preferences” (47). Because many find the standard or conventional practices objectionable, other systems have been developed. Cage-free is just that—the hens are not in cages, so they can move around. There are perches, nests (usually made of rubber), and sawdust for dust bathing. Some barns have flooring that allows manure to fall below and be removed, while others add sawdust on top of the manure and clean the barn when the hens are replaced at the end of two years (119). These hens are crowded into barns in flocks of thirty thousand or more, much like the broiler chickens, so fighting can be a problem. Norwood and Lusk note that “feral hens tend to roost in flocks of six to thirty birds, suggesting a much smaller natural flock size than is present in cage-free systems. Sometimes the spats are minor and the submissive birds run or fly away, but other times the increased prevalence of fighting results in feather pecking, injuries, cannibalism, and higher mortality rates” (120). Beak-trimming would lower the mortality rates, but this goes against the welfare goals that usually accompany cage-free production. These hens do average two hundred square inches per bird as opposed to the sixty-seven square inches in the cages. Some cage-free systems add multiple tiers inside the barn to make it more like an aviary, and this allows the hens to use the vertical space to get away from each other (119). Another alternative is the enriched cage system. The goal of this method is to keep the cage in order to prevent the fighting found in large flocks but provide some opportunity for the hens to engage in natural behaviors such as dust-bathing, perching, and laying eggs in a private nest. Fewer birds are kept in each cage, but competition among the birds results in manure in the bathing box and eggs laid outside the nest (Norwood and Lusk 123).
All these systems should be seen as important experiments in alternative methods of housing chickens, but they all assume the large scale of industrial egg production. Norwood and Lusk report that egg producers who use both caged and cage-free systems prefer the cages and think the hens are better off when protected in the cages. They say the cages also help keep sick birds from spreading illness throughout the flock and prevent the selling of eggs produced by sick chickens. There are also concerns (not established by any study) about increased salmonella—between 2 and 10 percent of the eggs in the cage-free system are laid on the ground (along with feces) rather than in a nest. A bigger concern from the perspective of the economists is that the cage-free birds are more expensive per bird. This is because the hens most commonly used in cage-free egg production “are less efficient” (121–22). That means they don’t lay as many eggs. This, combined with a higher mortality rate, makes the cage-free system more expensive, without the welfare of the hens being much improved. Some argue that from a welfare perspective, cage-free production may be worse than caged systems due to the fighting it allows for.
However, the problems reported with the cage-free production are related to the size of the flock. Most consumers do not picture thirty thousand hens crowded into a barn when they are buying cage-free eggs. The pictures on the cartons certainly do not depict this kind of life either. Norwood and Lusk rightly point to the power of the consumer to communicate their preferences by what they buy, but when a system regularly masks and hides what is actually going on, it is easy for the consumer to be misinformed and misled. Norwood and Lusk suggest that cage-free systems are less preferable than cage systems, but they never question the way the birds are kept or the number of birds kept together. Industrialized egg production is simply taken as a given.
Free-range systems of egg production are another example of misleading the consumer. In the United States, all the term “free-range” means is that the hens are not in cages and that they have access to the outdoors (this is true of organic eggs as well). There are no size requirements for the outdoor area and no requirements for shelter, grass, or protection from predators. There is little difference among free-range, organic (the feed is organic), and cage-free egg production in the United States (123). Smaller farms who sell directly to consumers through CSAs, farmers’ markets, and off the farm do often have systems that are more truly free-range. Several farms already discussed, and some discussed later in this chapter, fit this description. The flocks on these farms host a few hundred hens or fewer, and they are housed in ways that provide access to sun and shelter, allow them to move around the pasture to forage in fresh grass, and contain the birds only enough to provide protection from predators. Some are locked in at night for further protection. These hens lead lives that allow them to participate in a number of natural behaviors. With proper management of predators and parasites, these small-scale farms provide the best alternative in terms of chicken welfare. The eggs produced in such a system, however, are more expensive. Norwood and Lusk suggest six dollars per dozen to break even (124–25). Since people want inexpensive eggs, conventional and large-scale caged, cage-free, and free-range eggs still dominate the market. Caged egg production makes up over 90 percent of what consumers buy (“General US Stats”).
“Egg Farm” (pseudonym) is a fourth-generation family farm in Washington. When we took a tour of the farm, our guide said, “We are in egg production, not chicken production. We raise eggs.” Their fifteen-hundred-acre farm was originally all forested. As the family cleared it, they tried to grow things, but the soil was not productive, so they switched to livestock. Originally they raised chickens, pigs, and dairy cows, but they got rid of the dairy because of runoff into lakes and streams (there was no further mention of the pigs). They went from 500 birds in 1920 to 5,000 at the start of World War II to 40,000 by the 1960s. Today they process 65,000 dozen-count cartons per day—that is, 780,000 eggs per day. They said it takes a quarter-cup of grain per chicken per day to produce one egg, and they use sixty-four tons of grain a day. The feeding, collecting, cleaning, and boxing of the eggs is all automated. As the eggs are sorted, some are deemed not good enough to sell in the shell, so there is one building devoted to making liquid eggs (150,000 pounds per week) and another to hard-boiled egg production (thousands a day). The rest are sorted for different carton sizes with different labels. Not only are there the conventional and the organic packaging, but “Egg Farm” also sell their eggs under a variety of names. That is, they grow for other companies who sell the eggs under their own label. This makes it difficult for consumers to know the source of the eggs they buy. Costco is their main customer. They also sell to Walmart, Albertsons, and a local natural food store.
On one of our tours of the farm we were with a group of elementary school children. One of the kids asked when they would “see the baby chicks.” The guide answered, “We make eggs, not baby chicks.” One child asked, “Why do you take the eggs from the chickens?” The answer was, “Because we need them to make everything we eat—ice cream, cookies, deviled eggs.” When it was asked whether the chickens have toys, the answer was simply “no.” When it was asked why there were no boy chickens, our guide simply moved on with the tour. This farm buys chicks at one day old from a hatchery. They are all hens, as the hatchery sorts out and disposes of males. At sixteen weeks of age they move from the brooder barn to the production barn. It takes two more weeks before the hens begin to “produce” eggs. They said they get one and a half years of production (eighty-two to eighty-five weeks) out of each hen. There are thirteen conventional barns—twelve of these house thirty-five to sixty thousand hens, and one has one hundred thousand hens. This makes them a mid-range producer. The smaller barns hold slanted layers that are only cleaned at the end of a cycle. That means they are cleaned after a year and a half. The big barn has belts between the layers of cages that move the manure out. All the barns have automated systems to remove the eggs. When asked about the cages in the conventional barns, the tour guide said that since those birds were more aggressive, “we are doing them a favor by putting them in cages so they don’t tear each other apart.” There are eight organic barns with twenty to thirty thousand hens each. These barns include access to an outdoor yard. Interestingly, when asked about the difference between the organic and conventional production, our guide said the only difference was the feed and did not mention the outdoor access even though we were looking at chickens who were out in the “yard.” The chickens in the organic barns can dust bathe outside and have sand inside. As one drives to the farm, signs on the side of the road proudly proclaim that their chickens roam free. In reality, only a reported 70 percent of their chickens have access to the outside.
We were told that in the conventional barns they use low light all day and have it set to mimic the longest day of year. It is dark at night. This maximizes egg output. When they tried the same lighting in the organic cage-free barns, the hens didn’t roost—so they started to emulate a more natural sunrise-to-sunset cycle, and the hens started to roost. The lighting, along with a system of nest boxes, helps the hens to “lay an egg a day.” When asked whether the lighting and constant egg production negatively affect the health of the hens, the tour guide stated, “No! They love it!” But this kind of laying, though not actually one egg a day, does affect the strength of their bones, their weight, and their general health. Depleted by egg-laying, the chickens can’t fight parasites or disease.
The farm is certified Humane only for their organic cage-free eggs. These eggs are Food Alliance–certified, and this farm got a three-egg rating on the Conucopia Institute’s website: “Brands with a three-egg rating are very good choices. Eggs from brands in this category either come from family-scale farms that provide outdoor runs for their chickens, or from larger-scale farms where meaningful outdoor space is either currently granted or under construction. All producers in this category appear committed to meeting organic standards for minimum outdoor space for laying hens” (“Organic Egg Scorecard”). This standard doesn’t guarantee much for the consumer, and nothing here informs the consumer that the same farm produces conventional eggs as well. This makes it difficult to make meaningful purchasing choices. The same confusion exists when buying chicken meat.
As some farmers specialized in egg production during the middle of the last century, others turned to specialize in the production of chicken meat. While meat chickens have often been housed inside in close quarters to be “finished” on grain for their last few weeks, the life of today’s “broilers” is nothing but this kind of confinement. This resulted in a doubling of the yield of meat that required no additional feed. As Norwood and Lusk explain, “despite the fact that today’s birds are almost three pounds larger than their 1925 counterparts they reach this larger weight in 64 fewer days” (128). Because of their breeding these chickens have more white meat, have a consistent taste and texture, and are standardized in size to allow for mechanized slaughter. Economies of scale were also achieved as the mid-range broiler producer increased in size from 300,000 birds in 1987 to 681,000 in 2007 (O’Donoghue et al. 47). All of this combines to make chicken meat much less expensive than it used to be (Norwood and Lusk 128).
But this cheap meat does cost the chickens. These birds grow so fast and get so big that they develop severe leg problems. Studies have shown these birds to actively seek food laced with pain relievers. While they do suffer, the life of the broiler chicken is short—less than two months. They are housed in large flocks (no cages), getting increasingly crowded as they grow, so they are very crowded right before the time of slaughter. There is generally no beak-trimming, since the birds are too young to be aggressive. The breeding of these birds also tends to produce less aggressive birds, but many have heart problems. The housing conditions result in polluted air and lung problems for the birds. They are kept in artificial light to keep them eating, and this frustrates their roosting and sleeping patterns. There is nothing to do but eat, so life isn’t very interesting, but again it is a short life (Norwood and Lusk 128–31). Because of the short lifespan, Norwood and Lusk conclude that “broiler farms do not cause large-scale suffering” (131).
There are more concerns about those birds used in the breeding of these meat-producing “broilers.” Because they live longer and can become aggressive, they often have their beaks trimmed. They also have their combs trimmed—without anesthetic (129). The breeders live one or two years and—because they would otherwise gain the same weight and develop the same leg problems as those chickens used directly in meat production—they receive less than a third of the food they would like to consume. While many people find this very problematic from a welfare perspective, others, like Norwood and Lusk, say that the birds adjust to the reduced feed and that it is better than the alternative of heavy, lethargic birds who can’t walk and who develop immune disorders. They even say, “The same problems seen in human obesity is [sic] observed in these birds, and the feed restrictions prohibit this from occurring” (128). They don’t seem to consider that the desire for such meat-producing machines might be problematic in the first place. Instead they say that given the total numbers of chickens produced for meat (who they don’t think really suffer) compared to the number used for breeding (who do suffer), there really isn’t a welfare issue in the industry. For the 8,867 million broilers produced in 2007, they say only 61.56 million birds were involved in breeding: “Of all the birds involved in broiler production, 0.69 percent are raised in breeding facilities. While the welfare of breeder broilers is likely low due to the feed restrictions . . . their low welfare should be discounted appropriately” (129). This seems more than a little disingenuous.
Free-range and organic labels are as misleading for broilers as for eggs. Smaller farms that provide real time on the pasture produce “pastured poultry,” which may or may not be organic depending on the feed and pasture available. The cost of these to the consumer is often four times the cost of “conventional” broilers, and there can be limited availability by season, as weather impacts this kind of production. Predation problems can also raise the costs of production for these farmers. Industrial producers and economists seem to define predation as wasted death that is to be avoided at close to any cost. In our interviews with farmers, though, most found some amount a predation a natural event. They see the benefits of the time outdoors substantially outweighing this risk. One such farmer is Carrie Little.
Situated in the Orting Valley of western Washington, Little Eorthe Farm sits on land that was once a dairy and is now part of the PCC Farmland Trust (which works to protect farmland). The mission statement on the farm’s website reads, “Our mission is, quite literally, to help save the earth. Locally grown organic produce is a responsible way of producing food. Our produce is raised without pesticides, herbicides, hormones or antibiotics, and less fuel is used to get the food to our customers. We tread lightly on the earth so you can do the same.” Little Eorthe is an organic farm with a wide variety of produce, broiler chickens, and eggs. Soon they hope to use the milk from their sheep to make cheese.
This is the second farm Little has transitioned from conventional use to organic certification with WSDA. She says it costs $750 for organic certification and is a great deal of work. She thinks the inspections are of questionable value, as the inspectors don’t know enough to ask the right questions or look for the right things. She also complained that the conventional farms don’t have to go through such a process or pay money. “The system seems designed to discourage the small and the organic agriculture system,” she said. This was a common complaint among the farmers we talked with, and many of them had opted out of certification. Little thinks being clearly labeled organic is important, though. She is also committed to social equality and developing a sense of community. Little got into farming when she started Guadalupe Gardens in Tacoma. This community garden served the poor and homeless. She wanted to extend the supply of organic produce available to the poor, so she started Mother Earth Farm, also in the Orting Valley. She worked there for many years, getting the land certified organic and supplying food for the Pierce County Emergency Food Network. She also built relationships with the women who came to work on the farm as part of a work program with the Purdy Correctional Facility. It is important to Little to build relationships with people in need as she works to save the land, heritage varieties of seeds, and heritage breeds of livestock. Being organic is just one piece of her larger mission, but the organic certification does help with the marketing of their products at local farmer’s markets. They also run a small CSA.
There are milking sheep and Dexter cattle at Little Eorthe, but it is the poultry that keep them in business. The “happy hens at Little Eorthe” have been featured on regional television shows. Little works to preserve various breeds of chickens and turkeys in addition to using heritage seeds for the produce. We visited just after the broiler chickens had been harvested. Little harvests about one thousand chickens for meat. This is an important and relatively reliable source of income. They arrive as chicks and are housed in a completely enclosed structure that is moved between flocks. They are fed organic grain and some of the produce from the farm. She slaughters them when they are between ten and twelve weeks old, using the mobile slaughter truck rather than shipping the animals. While Little names some of the animals on the farm, she stopped naming the animals she is going to slaughter. She said, “It’s too hard to name them and then kill them.” Eggs are easier. The farm has a reliable market with PCC Natural Markets (the Puget Sound Consumer’s Cooperative) for the eggs. The PCC standard for eggs says, “PCC sells only eggs from hens that are raised cage-free on local, family-owned farms. The use of antibiotics is prohibited, and the hens are fed only 100 percent vegetarian feed. Certified-organic eggs come from hens raised on certified-organic feed” (“Our Product Standards”). The cage-free eggs average four dollars a dozen, while the organic eggs average five dollars a dozen. The eggs from Little Eorthe Farm come from pastured organic chickens and so average seven dollars a dozen.
When we visited in 2014, Little housed her laying chickens with her turkeys, but she was getting ready to separate the two species as they do have different needs and sometimes have conflicts over the use of space. The birds were housed in a large wire enclosure that gets moved around the pasture, and there are various forms of shelter and spaces to lay eggs spread throughout the enclosure. She has a smaller area sectioned off for the younger birds. This allows them to sort out their own social hierarchy and to become acquainted with the older birds in a nonthreatening way. This reduces aggression. She gets an average of 150 eggs per chicken per year—far below the industry standard and well below the AWA standard. She said she gets about 250 eggs a day from her 700 chickens. The laying hens are generally used for three years (not eighteen to twenty-four months) and then Little keeps an eye on their productivity. She knows her chickens individually and can tell whose egg is whose based on their different sizes and shapes. The hens aren’t killed as soon as their productivity declines but instead are kept in the flock to help keep order and socialize the young hens. Since there is a market for duck eggs, Little hopes to add ducks to the farm soon.
Little did try raising pigs a few years ago. They had thirty-one piglets! She said people kept asking for organic pork, but in the end there were not enough customers willing to pay. The last year they raised pigs they had just three sows and still didn’t break even. She likes being pig-free given the work and the added potential of becoming attached to the individuals. In a 2016 email she told me they no longer raise broiler chickens, but she didn’t say why. Perhaps some of these same concerns were a factor.
Little is interested in saving the land. She tries to minimize tractor work by rotating the grazing animals to keep the grass cut and the soil fertilized. She said by “following the animals, I follow the manure.” This also helps Little reduce her use of petroleum products and, with the use of solar panels, the farm is mainly off the grid. She also talked about the different ecosystems on the farm. The land supports humans, but it is also there to support the surrounding wildlife. Little and her husband invested in an eight-foot elk fence, but they also planted trees to improve the elks’ habitat. She said, “We’re a part of their system too and must collaborate with them.” In an interview Little said, “We planted 1,100 trees in the riparian zone and the animals now have a corridor in the trees. It’s all about balance: they were here way before we were; we are borrowing the space. We try to live with those we share it with. We love our swallows, bats, owls, and other predator birds. So, we have to be mindful of how we care for our chickens. I wouldn’t trade any of the relationships we have or give up the space we share with them” (Cramer). Their five dogs bark to scare away predators—hawks and coyotes.
It is not uncommon for people interested in organic food and improved animal welfare to also be committed to broader issues of social justice. What is unusual is to see these commitments as seamlessly interwoven as they are in the life and work of Carrie Little. From starting the community garden at Guadalupe House to running her own organic CSA, she cares about human beings, other animal beings, and the land as parts of an integrated whole. Rather than pit groups against each other she works to show and foster the interconnections among them. In this she shares many of the commitments found in a variety of strains of ecofeminist philosophy. I’ve mentioned the work of Carol Adams in previous chapters and will expand on that discussion here. In her work Adams argues that the “logic of domination” operates in racism, classism, sexism, colonialism, speciesism, and more—and that you can’t fight one kind of oppression without fighting all the others. She holds that if you try to isolate one form of oppression from the others—as happens when people say they are feminists but don’t care about speciesism—you fail to get at the root causes of the oppression. And she argues that if you exploit one group in order to draw attention to another—as happens with PETA ads that use sexual images of women to make a case for not harming animals—then you perpetuate the logic of domination. Worse yet, she says, if you try to pit one group against another—as happens when women or minorities defend their status as human persons by denigrating other animal beings—you yourself participate in the logic of domination. Instead ecofeminism calls for understanding the intersecting nature of oppression in order to address the logic of domination, and theorists such as Breeze Harper ask people to examine the connections rather than further the divides. As mentioned in chapter 5, she says, “Many of us black female vegans realize that much of how non-human animals are treated in the USA, frighteningly parallels the way black females were treated during chattel slavery” (“Revisiting Racialized Consciousness”).
Building on the work of ecofeminist philosophers such as Karen Warren, Adams understands the logic of domination as a framework for most traditions of Western thinking and action. First, in Western thought, humans tend to divide the world into binaries such as male/female, culture/nature, human/animal, reason/emotion, light/dark, and rich/poor. She argues that such exclusionary extremes oversimplify lived experience. Further, she says, people tend to take such dichotomies and add value judgments to them, finding one side of the dualism to be superior to the other. She explains that such value dualisms are then used in the logic of domination to justify the more valued group oppressing the less valued group. On this logic, great power and privilege comes with being a rational, culture-producing, heterosexual, human male who is light-skinned and has money—and being on the other side of any of these value dualisms makes one vulnerable. But, she argues, dismantling one of the value hierarchies does little to undo the larger logic of domination. For instance, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) is famous for defending the rights of women (trying to dismantle the male/female value dualism) by arguing that women are fully human. To do this, though, she reinforced the human/animal dualism (and the rich/poor dualism, as her arguments focus on women of means). Some suffrage activists in the United States argued for granting white women the vote by claiming they were more rational and civilized than black men. Adams rejects such approaches and argues that all forms of oppression are interconnected and must be addressed as a whole. In holding various forms of oppression to be interconnected, Adams agrees with many feminists. But when ecofeminists add the oppression of nature, the oppression of other animal beings, or the oppression of both, many feminists fail to follow. Most continue to insist on some kind of human exceptionalism even as they argue to greatly expand who gets to count as “human.” Adams thinks feminists should not make this mistake since women and nature, and women and animals, have long been connected by language, in metaphors, and in how they are treated.
Carolyn Merchant made these connections evident in books such as The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. She noted that human women are often portrayed as more connected to nature and animals (as witches are, for example) and that women of color are regularly animalized (often depicted wearing animal print or crawling). Adams further noted that the females of other animal species are exploited in many of the same ways human women are. In the United States, for example, there is a particular focus on human women’s breasts. The actual function of female breasts is to feed human offspring, but this function is not honored by U.S. society, even as one can find exposed female breasts almost everywhere. The “breasts” of other mammals are turned from the original purpose of nursing their young to feeding humans. Interestingly in ads, dairy cows are often portrayed standing up on their back legs with an hourglass figure—sexualized as human females. Sometimes the commercials play up cows’ maternal nature, but in these ads the focus of their maternal attention is often human children rather than their own, paralleling the way black women in the United States were expected to raise the children of white families they worked for at the expense of their own family (and as Asian and South American women do now when employed as nannies). When the ads do portray them caring for their own offspring, these are misleading, as dairy cows don’t nurse their own young. Adams describes milk as feminized protein since it comes only from female mammals. She also holds eggs to be feminized protein, as they too are something females produce as part of their own reproductive cycle that is then coopted and used by humans. And the breeding females in all the livestock species are valued primarily for their reproductive capacity, which they no longer control.
Adams draws on the work of feminist philosopher Sarah Lucia Hoagland to explain the human hijacking of other animals’ bodily integrity. Hoagland illustrates the linguistic evolution of the logic of oppression with the example “Mary was beaten by John,” in which John is an agent of violence, to “Mary was beaten” to “battered woman.” In “battered woman” the violence has become something about the nature of the woman and the identity and action of the batterer disappears. Adams argues that, similarly, we move from “An animal was killed by a human so that its meat can be consumed,” where the human is an agent of death, to “animals are killed for meat” to “meat animal.” Now the nature of the animal is narrowed to this one purpose that already internalizes and necessitates the animal’s death. This can be seen in the term “broiler.” (Similarly, use value is prioritized with terms like “layer” and “breeder.”) So it is seen as in the nature of the animal to die (to be killed) so that humans can consume the meat. They are ontologized as edible (Adams, Neither Man nor Beast 101–02). Adams calls on feminists to become vegans as a way of protest and as a way to work to undo the logic of domination and oppression she sees operating in the treatment of women and other animal beings. While someone like Carrie Little shares many of these commitments with Adams, she does not make the move to end consumption of other animal beings. Instead (like Plumwood) she enters more deeply into relationships with them and works to make those relationships respectful and fulfilling. This is probably most fully done with her laying hens, who are valued for things beyond their egg-laying capacity—for instance their intelligence and social relationships. Since many of the small farmers emerging in the United States are women, and many share an array of these feminist concerns, I worry that Adams’s call for veganism creates an unnecessary and unproductive wedge among mostly like-minded people. This is I why I think a pragmatist perspective supports something closer to Plumwood’s position (discussed in chapter 7) than to Adams’s. That does not mean changes in consumption are not called for, nor that meaningful and critical conversations aren’t needed.
Even with Little’s approach to egg production she is still tied to the practices of commercial egg production, as most male chicks are disposed of, and only female chicks are sold to supply farms like Little Eorthe. Similarly, the lives and deaths of the broiler chickens really differ only in scale and diet from those of birds in industrial production. While Little’s customers think and care about these issues, most people hardly give a thought to the lives behind the eggs they buy, or the chicken they eat. They don’t want to pay for better lives for the chickens. At the same time, though, many of these same people object to the idea of cockfighting. The sport is described as cruel and barbaric. But, as Herzog points out, the life of the average rooster involved in cockfighting entails much less suffering than the life of the average “broiler” chicken or “layer” hen. To be clear, this is not meant as an endorsement of cockfighting. Rather, Herzog is pointing out one of the many ways human thinking about animals, and behavior related to the use and consumption of animals, is inconsistent and problematic.
To make the comparison with the lives of the “broilers” and the “layers,” Herzog describes the life of the fighting roosters: “Your average east Tennessee gamecock chick will be pampered during its two-year life. For the first six months, it will run free. Then it will have a lawn to loll about and a private bedroom to sleep in. The rooster will get plenty of exercise, eat better than some people, and have a chance to chase the hens around. The downside is that one Saturday night, he will feel the sharp pain of the Mexican short knife slicing his pectoral muscles, or perhaps get a long heel gaff in the throat; he will die in the dirt after a fight that lasts anywhere from a few seconds to over an hour” (169). Herzog asserts that the life of the fighting rooster is better from a welfare perspective than the life of the Cobb 500 chicken. There is nothing illegal about the treatment of chickens in the egg- and meat-producing industries, while cockfighting is illegal in all fifty states and the HSUS is working to make it a felony crime. There is, in fact, limited moral concern for the billions of chickens living on industrial farms compared to the energy and outrage focused on cockfighting.
Here power, race, gender, and money are at play. While the chicken egg and meat industry’s National Chicken Council lobbies and gains protections for practices such as debeaking, cockfighting becomes an easy target for moral outrage. It is easier to effect change when one’s opponents are largely from working-class, poor, and minority populations than when they are large corporations. Herzog says the “war on cockfighting is about cruelty, but the subtext is social class. The eighteenth-century movement against blood sports was directed toward activities that appealed to the proletariat, such as bull-baiting and cockfighting, rather than the cruel leisure pursuits of the landed gentry such as fox-hunting” (171). Today animal welfare and animal rights groups also target fox-hunting, but the point stands. Dogfighting is more of a focus than dog-racing, and cockfighting is banned while horrific conditions are legally protected in the chicken meat and egg industries.
Cockfighting has a long and varied history. The jungle fowl who were first domesticated were known for their fighting, so it is thought that humans probably fought their roosters as soon as they started keeping them enclosed. Today, in the Philippines, it is estimated that two million people make their living from cockfighting—from the fighting rings themselves to hotels to shipping companies (Lawler 96). The practice probably spread from Asia to the Middle East and then to Greece and Rome. Popular in Spain, France, and Britain, it came to the Americas with the colonists. As with any animal being used in a sport, various techniques are used to improve fighting cocks’ performance. Roosters are fed specialized diets, given vitamin supplements, and enhanced with hormones and drugs. To get the roosters in fighting shape many exercise protocols have been developed (Herzog 156).
In an effort to improve fighting ability humans bred for specific traits, and specific strains of chickens were developed: Arkansas travelers, Allen roundheads, blue-faced hatches, Kelsos, Madigan grays, Clarets, and butchers. Herzog says they are breeding for three traits: cutting ability, power, and gameness (155). It is the trait of gameness, or grit, that gets the most attention and praise from those involved in the sport. Words from this sport carry over into everyday life when people speak of “the battle royale, show pluck, remain cocky or cocksure, and sometimes have a set to” (Lawler 108). This desire to beat the opponent is taken as a sign of courage and is seen as a virtue for humans (especially men) to emulate. Many theorists have come to see cockfighting as a way for men to vicariously establish their own dominance. A rooster who refuses to fight, or who turns tail and runs, humiliates his owner. Character is important for both the bird and the handler, and cockfighting is a sport with many rules. As with other sports, the higher-end events are more regulated, with paid referees and enforced rest periods. Less formal events are where more abuse of birds and violence between people are likely to occur. As a blood sport, cockfighting involves less blood than is usually imagined, but the injuries are painful and death is inevitable (Herzog 156–60).
In Pets, People, and Pragmatism I argued that using horses, dogs, and cats in shows and other sporting events is not inherently wrong or cruel. Rather, I argue, it is the abuses that occur in these settings that are problematic; often the activity itself is something the various animals want to do. It may even improve their mental, physical, and social well-being to participate in things like racing, herding, and agility. I argued that this did not apply to dogfighting, though, as dogs rarely fight to kill. They have to be taught and baited into killing. The defenders of cockfighting, however, say it is in the nature of the birds to fight to the death. Herzog reports,
Johnny laid it out for me: “What we do is an act of nature in a controlled situation. That rooster’s going to fight if we are there or not. We make things as even as possible for them to perform an act of nature. We don’t make these roosters fight. That’s what they were put here for. It is their purpose.” (This, by the way is also the reason most cockfighters I met did not approve of dog fighting. As Eddy’s wife told me, “Cockfighting is not like dogfighting. They have to make the dogs mean. But these chickens are born to fight. They do it regardless of whether you are there or not.”) (162–63)
It is the case that these birds have some natural tendencies to fight, and these have been augmented by centuries of breeding. However, in natural conditions there is more room to maneuver and the choice to flee. There are also plenty of counterexamples in barnyards around the world where more than one rooster resides. I visited the Agua Branca Park in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where peacocks, ducks, and lots of chickens roam freely under the government’s protection. There are hens with their chicks, solo roosters, and bands of roosters roaming everywhere. I visited repeatedly and saw no fighting. While I’m sure there are some altercations over territory and mates, this park shows that fighting is not a necessary part of chickens’ version of “a good life.”
However, as Herzog points out, the harm from fighting may well be less than the harm from farming and hunting birds. I’ve already described the life of suffering faced by many birds on various farms. Herzog points out that wild birds suffer as well: “As many as 30% of the 120 million wild birds shot by hunters each year in the United States will fall from the sky wounded and fully conscious. While the lucky ones will be found and killed quickly, millions of others will die lingering deaths” (162). (This might give one pause when considering Leopold’s defense of hunting and Myers’s relationship with Ducks Unlimited—see chapter 3.) Some involved in cockfighting point to the use of various cutting blades as a way to reduce the pain that would otherwise occur from repeated blows. Some, however, deny the suffering of birds altogether, reasoning that chickens’ brains are not very developed, so they are not smart and they do not feel pain. Current research on the intelligence of birds generally, and of chickens in particular, tells a different story. Birds have long been ignored in studies of animal intelligence and communication. The derogatory idea of the “bird brain” is still strong. But according to Andrew Lawler in his book Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? this term did not come into use until 1936. At least since Aesop, chickens have had a reputation as intelligent. But as birds left the barnyard, people had less experience with them, and their reputation went downhill. During World War II, terms like “chicken out” and “chickenshit” came into use (239–40). As scientist began to study corvids and parrots, though, our thinking about birds, including chickens, began to change.
According to Lawler, research shows that chickens can add, subtract, “understand geometry, recognize faces, retain memories, and make logical deductions.” They can also “practice self-control, alter their message to fit the receiver, and . . . can feel empathy. Some of these cognitive abilities equal or surpass those of assorted primates and it is possible that the chicken possesses a primitive self-consciousness.” They have a well-developed memory and have been found to have thirty calls that correlate with specific behaviors, indicating they have a complex system of communication (240–42). None of this complexity is taken into account, much less honored, in the living conditions of industrially farmed birds. While there is more respect shown for birds on some of the farms we visited, the question remains whether farm life can provide for the needs of mammals and social birds whose neuronal organization promotes bonding, distress when separated, and nurturing behaviors directed at others, even others beyond kin (Johnson 59). Such interactive and empathetic social creatures find value in things that help with cooperation, cohesion, and harmony.
Growing Things Farm, run by Michaele Blakely, does try to honor the complex capacities of chickens and turkeys. This farm in Carnation, Washington, sits on thirty acres, seven of which are in production while the rest are pasture. When she started twenty years ago, Blakely operated one of the first CSAs in Washington. It was originally an organic CSA, but as the government regulations got more and more complicated she switched to Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), a set of standards for livestock focused on feed and medication. For CNG, all the feed must be free of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seeds. In addition, the requirements go beyond the USDA Organic requirement that the animals have access to the outdoors: CNG requires that the animals do actually go outside for most of the time. The animals must have access to fresh air, sunlight, outdoor areas with shade, and shelter that is appropriate “to the species, its stage of life, the climate, and the environment” (“Livestock Standards”). The standards note regional differences based on weather and seasons as well.
The pigs at Growing Things clear the pasture, and all the animals supply manure for fertilizer. Blakely said the weeds (properly managed) are good as they attract beneficial microorganisms and bugs. She said that the fungus in the soil is good plant food, and that if you bombard the soil with chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides you lose these “partners.” Farming requires the manipulation of nature, she said, but it’s best to “try to stay within what nature would like. It’s all part of a whole system.” She pointed to conventional fields next door and commented that nothing was growing there. No plants volunteered in the barren soil, but morning glory had recently arrived on her property with the last flooding event.
Blakely’s farm floods regularly. That’s part of what makes the soil good for growing things. When it floods, she and the birds stay up on the hill. At the time of our visit in 2010 she had three hundred laying chickens in the greenhouse, who were starting to lay eggs, and six hundred more out on the pasture. She uses a commercial breed, but since they are outdoors in natural light, they don’t lay as many eggs as those in industrial production. She leaves the grass tall in the poultry pastures. The blooms attract insects for the birds to eat, and the height of the grass gives them a place to hide. She also puts strings across the top to keep eagles out. Blakely noted that her meat turkeys and chickens are standard breeds—“nothing special, but they do just fine in pasture.” The chickens are the standard Cornish cross, and the turkeys are Standard Bronze and Broad Breasted White turkeys (discussed in the previous chapter). She said, “The turkeys are smart and have a lot of personality which makes it hard to slaughter them.” (The pigs, who are friendly and love belly rubs, are also hard for her to slaughter.) Nonetheless, these animals are all presold and slaughtered on-site. Because it is already hard to slaughter them, Blakely does not name them. Only the dogs and cats have names, but she considers them associates, not pets—they all have jobs and all work together. Her family did farm, so she had some experience, but she wanted to do things differently. She said her family thinks she’s crazy: “They’re proud of me, but still see what I do as strange.” Part of what is strange to many is the acknowledgment that the animals she raises are intelligent, have personalities, and experience complex social bonds. That she describes the pigs this way may not surprise many people, but her inclusion of turkeys in such a description might.
While most of the domesticated animals discussed in this book were brought to the Americas from Europe, turkeys were first domesticated in the Americas, exported to Europe, and then reintroduced by European colonists. Turkey remains have been found at sites of human habitation as early as 3700 BCE. In New Mexico they have been found in the Mogollon culture area dating to 300 BCE and near Anasazi settlements dated around 400 CE. By 400–700 CE the concentration of young birds indicates that they were domesticated. Turkeys are thought to have been first domesticated in the region of present-day Mexico between 200 BCE and 700 CE. The Aztecs used them for food and as religious offerings. Coronado saw wild and domesticated turkeys in the areas of present-day Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico in the mid-1500s. They were valued for their feathers among a number of American Indian tribes, and some of these tribes ate their meat and eggs. Other tribes eschewed the bird and thought of turkeys as cowardly (A. Smith 8–11). The exported turkeys started to take hold in Europe in the 1500s. They were popular animals to take on ships, and so their presence spread quickly. Since turkeys were known to eat crops, early turkey keepers kept them in pens so narrow the turkeys couldn’t move. Some were force-fed—fattened in these pens and then driven to market. They had one wing cut to prevent their escape on the trip to market, and drives of three hundred to one thousand birds are described (24, 33, 84). Having become a common part of the European diet, turkeys returned to the Americas with migrating European settlers.
PHOTO 13. Turkey at Growing Things Farm.
Photo by Michaele Blakely.
Colonists in the present-day United States hunted and ate wild turkey and also raised domesticated birds, using the feathers for dusters, quills, whips, pillows, mattresses, hats, and corsets. The wild and domesticated birds regularly interbred and created new breeds, such as the Blue Virginian (54–55). John James Audubon wrote about wild turkeys in the early 1800s, noting that males foraged in groups of ten to one hundred birds and remained separate from the females and their young. Great flocks gathered in October and moved from Ohio to Mississippi. Mating began in mid-February, and by mid-April the hens separated to lay their eggs. Some females were observed to lay eggs in a shared nest and then cooperate to sit on the eggs, help the chicks out of the eggs, and feed the young. The turkeys roosted in trees to stay safe from predators such as foxes, cougars, owls, eagles, skunks, wolves, and opossums. But this made them easy targets for human hunters, who shot them out of the trees while they slept (45–47). As settlement destroyed their habitat and hunters took their toll, the wild turkeys began to disappear. Their disappearance from Connecticut in 1813 was followed by their disappearing from Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, South Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and finally Iowa in 1907 (50–51). By 1930 it is thought that were only about a hundred thousand wild turkeys in the United States. Around that time there was an effort to reintroduce wild turkeys. As the Depression resulted in abandoned farmland, habitat became available for reintroduction, and by the late 1950s turkeys had rebounded to five hundred thousand and by 1973 to 1.5 million. In 1973 the National Wild Turkey Federation was formed to focus on these efforts. In 2005 there were an estimated seven million wild turkeys, and they are now in all states except Alaska. Turkey-hunting has again become a popular pastime—and (as with wild pigs) a profitable one for those who outfit the hunters, netting almost two billion dollars in 2003 (A. Smith 131–32). One reason the reintroduction of wild turkeys was possible was because people could turn to the domesticated bird for food.
While people ate turkey eggs, turkeys were not used for egg production, as they lay only about one hundred eggs a year and the chicks take longer to mature and begin laying (60). They were, and are, raised primarily as a meat bird. The tradition of having a turkey for Christmas carried over from England, and later the tradition of turkey at Thanksgiving was established in the United States. Thanksgiving became an official holiday in 1863, and by the late 1880s the holiday was already being called Turkey Day (76–78). With money to be made, by the mid-1850s farmers began paying more attention to the breeding of these birds, and poultry books, exhibitions, and competitions emerged. The American Poultry Association was founded in 1873. Shows such as the Northwest Turkey Show in Oregon and the All-American Turkey Show in South Dakota encouraged innovations in breeding, and the International Turkey Association was formed in 1927 to do the same. The main breeds were the Bronze, Narragansett, Black, Buff, Slate, and White. These birds had different characteristics, and all were popular for different reasons in different regions. But by the 1920s two breeds dominated commercial production: the large bronze Holland and the medium white Holland (86, 89). Then Jesse Throssel of British Columbia began focusing on increased meat yield, improved hatchability, and early maturity. He got birds to forty pounds in nine months. Their large breasts and short legs made it hard for them to mate, so the USDA turned to artificial insemination:
First, semen is collected by picking up a tom by its legs and one wing and locking it to a bench with rubber clamps, rear facing upward. The copulatory organs are stimulated by stroking the tail feathers and back; the vent is squeezed; and semen is collected with an aspirator. . . . A syringe is filled, taken to the hen-house, and inserted in the artificial insemination machine. A worker grabs a hen’s legs, crosses them, and holds the hen with one hand. With the other hand the worker wipes the hen’s backside and pushes up her tail. Pressure is applied to her abdomen, which causes the cloaca to evert and the oviduct to protrude. A tube is inserted into the vent, and the semen is injected. (97)
The eggs produced from this unpleasant experience are put in an incubator that hatches ten thousand chicks at a time. This was a bird for industrial operations, not backyard breeders. The broad breasted bronze dominated the market by the 1950s. Scientists at Cornell University crossed these birds with the Holland white, and the resulting broad breasted white became the industry standard by the 1960s. The birds were bred not for flavor but instead for docility, early maturity, and maximum growth (90–91). They were inexpensive, and turkey meat became increasingly popular.
As it became possible to freeze and ship meat, the big producers could hold their stock for times when they could demand higher prices. Bigger operations could negotiate for lower feed prices and start hatcheries of their own. Small farmers began to disappear in the 1920s as new feeds added vitamin D to the mix and made it possible to raise the birds inside without access to sunlight. By the 1940s many of the birds were raised in cages, and their bodies became more disproportionate, as described above (95–96). They are routinely de-beaked, desnooded, and detoed and have their spurs trimmed between three and five days of age. They stay in a brooder for four weeks—“warm, safe, and free from predators” (98)—then go to a barn with 7,000–10,000 other chicks to live in twenty-four-hour light in order to reach their slaughter weight by twelve to fourteen weeks of age. In 1929, the United States produced 18 million turkeys, but by the 1940s, 32 million birds were being produced. By the 1960s that number was 107 million, and today U.S. production hovers around 250 million birds. While the natural seasonal production of the birds fit well with the increased demand in the fall for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, year-round turkey production required creating year-round demand for the meat. This was done with processed lunch meats, sausages, burgers, meat-balls, and frozen dinners (99–102).
As commercial production became industrialized it moved from New England to the Midwest and the South. In 1890 the largest producing states were in the Midwest and the South, but by the 1920s production had moved further west, to California and the Northwest. With the increasing use of vertical integration, a few companies came to dominate the industry—Butterball Turkey Company, Carolina Turkeys, Cargill Turkey Products, and Jennie-O Turkey Store (104–05). This concentration of birds in life and death resulted in inexpensive, but not always safe, meat. Since 2001, the CDC estimates, at least 13 percent of turkeys are contaminated with salmonella. Listeria contamination has resulted in several recalls, and turkeys are blamed for causing dysentery due to shigellosis bacteria (108–09). In addition to health concerns, many have become concerned for the birds themselves. United Poultry Concerns seeks to promote respectful use of birds in labs and on farms (127). Their website provides information on the various domestic fowl—their histories, their intelligence, their complex lives, and their current suffering. They point out that these various birds are intelligent and sensitive and make great companions: “Turkeys have a zest for living and enjoying the day. Treated with respect, they become very friendly. . . . Up close one sees their large, dark almond-shaped eyes and sensitive fine-boned faces. In nature, turkeys spend up to 5 months close to their mothers. Turkeys raised for food never know the comfort of the mother bird’s wings or the joy of exploring the woods and fields with her” (“Turkeys”).
The state of Minnesota is the largest producer of commercially raised turkeys with an estimated forty-six million. In 2015 an outbreak of bird flu on several Minnesota turkey farms spread to South Dakota, Arkansas, Missouri, and several western states (Hughlett and Walsh). With more than nine million birds dying in Minnesota alone, consumers were warned that their Thanksgiving turkey would cost more. The blame for such outbreaks is usually placed on free-living migratory birds, though in this case (and in others) none of the wild birds tested positive for the flu strain. This is another example of the tension between how humans value and deal with farmed animals and how they value and deal with “wild” animal beings. The free-living birds are seen as threat from which the farmed birds need protection. This is one of the justifications given for confining commercial poultry. However, despite confinement and elaborate biosecurity measures, birds raised in large confined flocks continue to get sick. Confinement and overcrowding suppress turkeys’ immune systems and so create the very problem confinement is supposed to solve.
Clearly several of the farms we visited are doing things differently than are the big commercial producers. Smaller flock sizes, time outdoors, and semi-stable social relations all contribute to more respectful relationships that recognize individual personalities and desires. Several of the farmers also focus on heritage breeds. Smaller and more local is not the answer to everything, though. As discussed in chapter 8, with all the interest in eating locally, many people with no farming experience have ventured into animal agriculture. Sometimes they lack knowledge about the varied nutritional and housing needs of the species and breeds they are raising. As important, they often lack the knowledge and skills for handling the various kinds of livestock. In her book Livestock/Deadstock, Rhoda M. Wilkie examines the changing demographic of those working in the livestock industry in the United Kingdom. She saw many small-scale hobby farms run by people who had no farming background. She saw that while these farmers meant well, they did not always have the requisite knowledge and skills to provide good care for the animals. The Farm Animal Welfare Council presents their take on the “three essentials of stockmanship”: “Knowledge of animal husbandry. Sound knowledge of the biology and husbandry of farm animals, including how their needs may be best provided for in all circumstances. Skills in animal husbandry. Demonstrable skills in observation, handling, care and treatment of animals, and problem detection and resolution. Personal qualities. Affinity and empathy with animals, dedication and patience” (39). While one can study and learn information about nutrition and disease, it is often harder to acquire the skills of “reading stock.” Because of their inexperience, some farmers make the mistake of overly anthropomorphizing the animals in their care. This same “mistake,” however, may be what helps them excel at empathy, dedication, and patience.
Such farmers are generally less likely to think of these animal beings as primarily being commodities. Wilkie refers to livestock as “sentient commodities” to draw attention to their paradoxical status (along the lines of Plum-wood’s combining of use and respect). Wilkie writes, “Livestock animals are atypical market commodities that have an ambiguous product status. Producers may, to all intents and purposes, routinely regard them as articles of trade, but they also, to varying degrees, have to feed them, clean them out, attend to their health and welfare, and learn how best to handle them.” Because of the intimacy involved in good care, though, the animals become more than things. She writes, “Those who come face-to-face with these animals are acutely aware of the biotic and temperamental attributes and sometimes ‘get to know’ the animals as more than just things” (123). Wilkie observes that in addition to reminding us that these animals are commodities (the origin of “stock” that now normally takes a paper form), the term livestock also reminds us that these are live animals. Where Wilkie is primarily interested in how people handle their role in perpetuating this paradox, I am interested in what it means for the animal beings themselves.
Wilkie suggests that people who have more long-term relationships with their stock because they deal primarily with breeding stock or dairy stock are more likely to form bonds than those who “finish” stock. She says, “Finishers have been likened to businessmen, rather than farmers, because . . . that part of the process requires much less investment than the breeding end” (137). It is important to note that her critique is offered of “finishers” who are finishing animals out in the field. In the United States the problem is exacerbated, as most animals are “finished” in highly confined conditions on a CAFO. Fifty percent of the meat animals today come from CAFOs, which have become the main method of production in the United States (4). The move to more mechanized and larger-scale production is generally accompanied by an attitude that turns the animal into a machine, a commodity, or both, depriving animals of their status as sentient beings. Wilkie is hopeful that Europe’s recent declaration that farm animals are sentient beings will help stop them from being seen merely as “agricultural goods” (177). She thinks viewing farm animals as sentient beings goes hand in hand with the attitude of many of the farmers in her study who have particular relationships with particular animals and often want nothing to do with the killing end of the business. This ability of farmers to connect with their animals, combined with consumer concerns, may help animal agriculture make a shift. She argues that seeing animal agriculture as synonymous with factory farming, though, is not helpful, and her book attempts to show the diversity of views among those involved in animal agriculture in the United Kingdom.
I agree that when factory farming is presented as the only way of raising animals for meat, milk, or eggs, there is little to defend. This encourages animal rights groups to call for the abolition of all farming of animals. This in turn sets up a hostile relationship between the various animal groups and a whole range of people involved in raising farmed animals. This shuts down discourse and often increases ignorance on all sides. Caricatures of animal advocates as seeing all animals as human children abound; farm workers are all painted as abusive and uncaring. Most people, however, are found somewhere in the middle. It is in this messy middle that I am trying to work, as I suggest that it is not ethically necessary (nor even desirable) to end all farming of animals. Nor, however, can we continue with most of the practices found in large-scale industrial agriculture. This requires changes from everyone, though. Consumer desire helps shape the fate of these animal beings. To end this chapter I turn to two bird species whose lives are being changed due in large part to consumer demand: ducks and geese.
PHOTO 14. Ducks at “Soft Farm.” Photo by Danielle Palmer.
Although (according to USDA estimates) people in the United States consume only about one-third of a pound of duck each year and their consumption of goose is even less, there is a growing market for both duck meat and duck eggs. The United States doesn’t make the list of the leading duck- and goose-producing countries, but in 2007 there were more than thirty million ducks raised in the United States, and more than twenty-five million of these were processed in federally inspected facilities. In the same year an estimated 339,000 geese were raised (“Ducks and Geese”). And they are raised for more than just meat and eggs, as duck and geese feathers are used in down bedding and clothing. The main use for ducks and geese is liver pâté. The production practices of this industry are controversial, though, and many states seek to end its production while giving no thought to how other (more numerous) birds are raised. Many chefs sing the praises of duck and goose eggs for baking, and duck meat is seen as a “wild” meat and touted as healthier for humans, dogs, and cats. However, the reality is that while there are some small farms that produce duck meat and eggs locally, most meat and eggs come from commercial farms that resemble commercial chicken and turkey farms. For meat ducks, operations range from 6,000 to 100,000 birds (B. Stein). While the stocking density is lower for ducks than it is for chickens, most everything about this industry is modeled on the commercial chicken industry. Ducks are raised in semi- and total-confinement systems with wire mesh flooring. These buildings require extensive ventilation. One management guide says, “When properly designed and managed, modern duck housing provides ducks a high degree of protection from the detrimental effects of extremes in weather and entry of duck diseases.” As with chickens and turkeys, the high level of confinement is justified by the perceived danger of introducing diseases from wild birds. However, the main “advantage” of such confinement seems to be that it allows for continuous production of meat and eggs. As an article on duck housing and management notes, “In addition to allowing year-round production and marketing at an earlier age,” the benefits of confinement include “improved feed conversion and more predictable, and usually better weight gain.” Semi-confinement duck housing is similar to the above in many respects with the exception that ducks over two to three weeks of age are allowed outdoors during the day (Dean and Sandhu).
This is a far cry from the image of ducks on a pond, or ducks flying, that many people have in their minds, if they aren’t picturing Donald Duck. It is thought that Donald Duck is modeled on the Pekin duck—which is the primary breed for the meat industry, though some hybrids are emerging. While these ducks would have a natural lifespan of about ten years, most are slaughtered much earlier. Even those kept for eggs rarely live past three or four years because they are slaughtered after their productivity drops. Many of these ducks have lost their nest-building instinct and broodiness in the process of domestication, so chicks are hatched in an incubator or sometimes under a broody chicken. Ducks and geese have been domesticated for about four thousand years and have developed into a number of different breeds with distinct characteristics and personalities. Because they have been “underutilized” in agricultural production, though, most breeds of duck still share many behaviors in common with their wild cousins. Most of these behaviors are frustrated by how the birds are kept on farms. They like to swim, fly, forage on land and in water, preen, and sleep. They are also very social, with complex communication systems (Kalita).
The most confined and unnatural confinement and feeding is found in the production of foie gras. This high-end “gourmet” food is made from the fatty liver of geese and ducks who are force-fed in order to enlarge their livers. The force-feeding of these birds makes foie gras the moral equivalent of veal for many people and has prompted campaigns seeking to end its production and ban its sale. While I agree that this is a morally problematic production system, with an extra degree of suffering for the animals involved, I disagree that it should be singled out. The problem with the veal and foie gras campaigns is that they get people to focus on a single “product” and become outraged about the treatment of those particular animals. But they generally don’t place this in the larger context of industrial agriculture as a whole. It is not veal per se that is the issue but rather the way veal is raised within this larger system. There is pastured veal, as we saw on Neunzig’s farm. While it is not as “white” as stall-raised veal, many people find it quite good. It still requires the death of the calf at a young age, but those calves have good physical and social lives up until that point and may be spared the stress of weaning. The same can be done with foie gras from migratory geese. Geese add fat in preparation for migrating and can be harvested more humanely and sustainably as long as consumers contain their demand and pay a higher price for what they do consume.
Consumers need to adjust their expectations for both what they eat and the amount they eat in order to make the lives of the various livestock animals good lives. Consumers also need to work to stay informed about what is involved in the lives and deaths of these animals. The lives of the many different animals commonly considered livestock in the United States are intertwined in many complex ways. Ducks and geese provide just one more example. On a small scale, some ducks and geese are raised (for at least part of their life) by ponds where tilapia are raised. The duck manure provides food for the fish. While more commonly manure from poultry kills fish when it leaks from the lagoons on industrial farms, this alternative model shows another way the lives of birds and fish can work together. But when it comes to fish farms, the intersection is more likely the feeding of industrial poultry by-products to farmed salmon, while fish meal is fed to poultry in an industrial system that fails to respect any of the beings involved—human, fish, or poultry. And this brings me back to where I started—on a boat headed toward a vortex, on my way to a salmon farm.
In the last few hundred years, humans have approached food in much the same way as those who blew up the rock that was in the way of the ships approached the problem posed by the rock. The way they solved the problem of the rock created the problem of the vortex. The way the problems of predation, disease, and parasites were solved improved the lives of livestock animals until the feed and drugs allowed for the ability to completely confine the animals and raise them in large numbers. At that point, the very practices that had originally been meant to improve the animals’ lives were turned around to create an almost total disregard for the animals themselves and a focus on profit and cheap food. Humans removed the vulnerabilities of the livestock that limited the numbers the humans could raise, but that move created a whole host of new problems—the vortex of industrial agriculture. Up until this point I have tried to use various philosophical perspectives to examine the current conditions for animals in industrial agriculture and to propose and examine alternatives. I have argued that important but often missing perspectives—pragmatism and ecofeminism—provide insights that help explicate the root of the problems with the current approach to animal agriculture and provide ways of thinking about alternatives that don’t fall prey to absolutist thinking. The works of John Dewey and Val Plumwood are particularly important for developing a pragmatist ecofeminism that can help create room for dialogue, understanding, and amelioration between humans and livestock. I will now conclude by returning to the difficult problems of objectification and death (of human and other animal beings) and point to some possible ways forward that might help humans and livestock avoid the vortex of exploitative and disrespectful relationships and find a way forward to a future based on mutual enrichment, cooperation, and friendship.