Eating Animal Produce

Click for larger photograph The biggest animal industry is the meat trade. All over the world countless millions of animals are raised, live and are slaughtered to put meat on people’s tables. If you care about animals, stop eating them, go vegan!

Every day 1 million animals are killed in the UK for their flesh. Each of these animals was born to a mother who is unlikely to have had long to be affectionate, suckle or care for their offspring. Each species of animals is treated differently, but the pain, suffering and slaughter of these innocent creatures is shared by all. Below is an in depth look at the lives of chickens and cows, they give an example of the type of life all meat animals experience, for more information on the lives of other farmed animals see Animal Aid

Chickens

Imagine spending your life enclosed in a shed with 45,000 others, each of you with only just enough space to move around. You cannot leave, your excrement collects on the floor and isn’t cleaned away, and you cannot reach the water points very often and only have the chance to eat when the biggest animals have eaten first. When you do get to eat the food is laced with growth promoting hormones and anti-biotics to keep you healthy. This is the life of a broiler chicken, an animal whose whole life evolves around gaining weight so that it can be slaughtered at just 6 weeks old, eyes still baby blue, cheeping like the chick she really is.

Every year more than 800 million chickens are slaughtered in the UK for consumption. Many more still will die before they are old enough to be slaughtered as they suffer from viral diseases, bullying, exhaustion or simply their bones cannot support their own weight. The meat of these animals is then sold as a healthy alternative to red meat. Despite the spin, chicken isn’t better for you than the meat of other animals, nor do chickens suffer less in the process.

Click for larger photographLife isn’t any better if you are bred for egg laying rather than to be killed for meat. At just two days old the chicks are sorted into male and female. The boys are minced alive, as they will not lay eggs. The females are enclosed in cages with insufficient room for an adult chicken to spread her wings, let alone flap them. Here the females will stay; laying an egg a day until the amount of eggs drops and they are removed from the cages and slaughtered for cheap meat products.

Some people argue that eating eggs is ethical as the hens lay so many. True the hens on egg farms keep laying an egg a day, but this is because the eggs are taken away before the hen has completed laying a clutch and began to incubate the eggs intensively. This is nature’s mechanism to ensure hens have the best chance of reproducing if their eggs are predated. If the hen lays an egg a day or 300 in a year (as they lay fewer in the colder months) then her body is depleted of important nutrients which can affect their bones and general wellbeing. Because of this hens are production falls and the animals are considered economically unviable and so killed.

Cows

Click for larger photographCows are bred for their meat and also for milk. Beef cows are generally kept outdoors, except in winter and mothers live in herds with their offspring, until the offspring are separated at 6 – 10 months old, put on sufficient weight to be killed. Their existence is more pleasant than chickens or other battery farmed animals as they live in fields with more space. This said, their lives are still cut unnaturally short when they are taken to an abattoir and slaughtered at 1-2 years old. The cows are herded into lorries and transported to the slaughter house. Here they are herded off and into a series of pens whilst they wait to be killed. The slaughter man stuns each cow with a captive bolt pistol which drives a piece of metal into the cow’s brain. The cow is then strung up by its hind leg and its throat is cut, over the next few minutes the cow bleeds to death. Abattoir vet Gabriele Meurer describes the stress prior to slaughter ‘Not many animals stand still. They are all upset, some very frightened and some move violently. The animals are never given time to calm down. Sometimes the slaughter man misses, wounding the animal terribly instead of stunning it. It may happen that the second shot cannot be done immediately and the animal is suffering for quite some time.’

Milk and beef – inextricably linked

Vegetarians choose not to eat animal flesh as they don’t want to be involved in the death of sentient animals. However many vegetarians still drink milk, a product which cannot be detached from the beef industry.

In order for a cow to produce milk she has to become pregnant like any other mammal. Cows need to be pregnant once a year to ensure a high milk yield. Most of these pregnancies result in calves being born. The life of the calf depends mainly on its breeding and sex. If the calf is a female with a dairy cow as her father, it is likely she will grow up to produce milk and replace her mother. If she is a big calf from a beef father she is likely to be sold to be for beef or to breed beef cows. If the calf is male and from a dairy cow father he is highly unlikely to gain weight fast enough to be economically viable as a beef cow and so will be killed within his first few days of life and fed to the hounds. If he is a big beef cow he will probably be reared to be killed for his flesh. In this way, people who consume milk are contributing to the meat industry as the male cows – a byproduct of the dairy industry will not produce milk, but will generate money as meat.

Female dairy cows are kept in a constant cycle of pregnancy and lactation; cows are generally both pregnant and lactating for 6-8 months during each 9 month pregnancy. The effect that this has on the body is disabling, cows frequently cannot eat enough food to be able to sustain this dual burden and so suffer from malnutrition, despite eating large amounts of food. Modern dairy cows have been bred to have huge udders and produce much more milk than would be necessary to feed their calves. In order to ensure that as much milk is available for the farmer to sell, the calves are removed from their mothers at a day or two old. They are then either killed, given poor milk substitutes and transported away to be kept in veal crates, or kept with other calves and go on to be raised for beef.

The abnormally large udders cause cows lots of problems as they drag in the mud and give the cows a bacterial infection called mastitis. The weight of the udder affects the back, hocks and feet of the undernourished cows and can cause painful injuries for which the farmers have them killed. Cows are considered spent (no longer economically viable) at 5 years old naturally they would live to 20-25 years of age. Once slaughtered these animals bodies will be used for cheap meats sold to hospitals, schools and prisons or fed to dogs and cats.