Modern Views about Livestock Farming and the Meat Industry

Intensive livestock farming has the difficult task of producing food cheaply and profitably whilst satisfying the newer expectations on environment, conservation, amenity, food safety and animal welfare. In developed countries, it is facing the following challenges and opportunities:

● moves towards industrialized livestock farming

● food safety issues

● demand for organic produce

● pressure from animal rights groups

● public concern about advances in animal genetics

● stricter control over environmental hazards

● decreasing profit margins per unit of product leaving the farm

This section briefly discusses the first five topics, and the impacts that attitudes amongst the public are having on the meat and livestock industry.

Industrialized livestock farming

Some animal advocates claim that industrialized livestock farming leads to a loss of compassion and empathy for animals. It is said that compassion is at a low ebb where large numbers of animals are managed and where there is limited individual contact or care. In a survey of farmers in the west of France, this was confirmed to be the case. The farm staff said they had too many animals to look after. Farming had become a victim of its own efficiency, and people within the industry were unhappy with the situation, as were those who viewed it from outside (Porcher et al ., 2004).

This situation has similarities to human health care. Health care workers are complaining that they have to look after too many patients, and as a result they are becoming indifferent to the patients. Indifference emerges when large numbers of people or animals have to be served or cared for. Women have more positive views about the situation, and compassion plus empathy persist better than in men. Regardless of gender, educated staff are more indifferent about their animals than the less educated.

When stock people have a busy work schedule and have less time to watch and interact with their animals on a one-to-one basis, the animals are prone to being less manageable during routine handling procedures. The animals are more nervous and in extreme cases this can lead to escape behaviour and self-inflicted injuries. In general the facilities used at farms, markets and lairages are designed to control escape attempts and minimize injury risks, but accidents happen, especially where facilities are not well maintained and a batch of unruly animals comes through. From the producer’s point of view, the incentives to spend time training or familiarizing the animals with being handled are not strong. The commercial meat quality benefits are not usually great enough to warrant the additional expenditure in labour (Lensink et al ., 2000). In addition, from the producer’s perspective, handling difficulties are usually someone else’s problem. They are worst when the animals are confronted with a novel environment, such as a market or abattoir.

Another concern about industrialized farming is that it focuses on treating animals as converters of inexpensive feeds into more valuable meat. The criticism here is that animals are viewed as items instead of sentient beings. It is claimed that this outlook is amoral rather than immoral because of indifference towards animals as individuals (Singer, 1990).