AgriCulture: Leading a Lamb to Assisted Living
Posted by: Marilyn Bethany
Posted on: Monday, August 15, 2011
Comments
Although you do raise some good points about how the literature unfairly lumps factory farms and other farms together, the one part that you conveniently leave out is the horror of the slaughterhouse. If your sheep were naturally allowed to live their lives until they could not survive a winter, and then were humanely euthanized in your barn, you may have a point: on your farm and farms like yours, wool sheep aren’t harmed. However, you should describe what exactly would have awaited them on their way to becoming dog food had you not found a sanctuary.
Life is as dear to the mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures. The Dalai Lama
From the article” “As the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has argued for years, without a market for meat, most farm animal breeds would become extinct, resulting in the loss of our agricultural heritage.”
And what a day for celebration that would be - our “agricultural heritage” that exploits animals unnecessarily for food and clothing to end. It can’t come soon enough for the animals, whose entire lives are for one purpose - to serve humans. Let’s let the “agricultural heritage” die a natural death and free up the space used to raise domesticated animals for food and clothing for the wild animals who have little or no habitat left. Everyone wins in that scenario - humans and non-humans both.
You were “thrilled” that those 4 dear sheep got to retire at CAS, but from what I heard thru the upstate community of animal rescuers (and via the CAS newsletter), you didn’t want to contribute one thin dime towards their continued care. Surprise surprise (not.) You are actually so typical: an old fashioned person who just breeds and breeds and then sends these sweet animals to slaughter, to become dogfood as you so nicely put it. That is the thanks they get for giving you the means to make a buck. It is only about the almighty dollar to you - not doing what is right, what is compassionate or what even makes sense…. i.e. that you had compassion for any of the animals you have at your farm is pretty erratic and weird when you are so willing to see the greater majority of them into a slaughterhouse and tin can at the end of the day. Some animals are more equal then others? Pretty wacko. Apparently in studies of animal understanding it was demonstrated that sheep remember over 45 faces. Maybe they’ll remember yours as they are put on the truck to the slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to get used to a world where a great many of us (more and more each year) are coming to the conclusion that to evolve to our fullest compassion and intelligence and state of non-violence is to understand and accept that these sentient beings are not products and do not deserve to be treated as such. Many of us have outgrown your outmoded way of thinking of the beings we share this planet with. Learning about veganism was the single most profound change many of us have made in our daily personal lives, to stop the cycles of violence that are currents under our society.
Wow.
So you couldn’t be happy with the positive story of the CAS rescue, but you had to attempt a pathetic attack on another sanctuary? Classy.
My favorite quote is “It all sounded quite heartwarming—who would not root for a cow escaping death?”
Clearly, you!! Do you actually have such a cognitive dissonance that you don’t realize you can’t root for animals to escape slaughter, while at the same time eating them? This just undermines your entire article, but let’s keep going anyway.
Most of your essay seems to focus on your belief that the information presented by WFAS (and backed up by many other organization). I know for a fact that much of this information has been gained by time spent on large factory farms, about which you seem to have little idea (I suppose that’s a good thing).
“uncomfortable underlying…never would have lived at all”: Not at all uncomfortable. Animal advocates would rather they not live than be born into horrible lives.
Most of your other responses are simply: “We don’t do that so we can’t imagine other farms doing it”. This is patently false, and as I stated previously a lot of this is based on first-hand information (much of it from Jenny herself). Maybe you’re part of the 2% taking good care of your animals. But you readily admit that once your sheep get old, it’s off to slaughter they go. No animals at CAS or WFAS have been touched by coyotes. Why can’t you afford your animals the same protections? The answer is simple: money. Despite the fact that you profit off them their entire lives, you will not shell out to protect them when they need you. That is the heart of this issue, and that is why WFAS will oppose you the same as a CAFO. I just abhor people claiming they care about the welfare of/love their animals. I would never needlessly kill someone I love. Maybe that’s just me.
One more thing. I find it quite funny that you have such a good feeling after dealing with CAS and antipathy towards WFAS. Both sanctuaries share the exact same goal; one is a bit more vocal and honest about it. I should know; I worked at both sanctuaries.
Just checked out your website and noticed you sell a variety of meat. There’s definitely no reason to pat yourselves on the backs.
“Sure we kill our animals unnecessarily. But we’re so nice to them before we betray their trust!”
YAY AnthonyD. Thanks for being eloquent and clear.
These Animal Ag people can cling to whatever lame justifications they want to, that makes them feel good about themselves for doing what they do to animals as gentle as sheep - - but they shouldn’t expect any high fives from the rest of us… I am glad the vegan community is getting more vocal and stepping out to educate. What CAS and WFAS do as non-profits is noble. What this average Sheep Farmer does is simply selfish, and all about making a buck.
I know I can’t curse here but thank goodness people are waking up to the brainwashed insincerity of the past: I mean, what kind of **hole would kill an animal as gentle as a lamb? Really, when we don’t need to do this to survive? Oh thank goodness a new generation is questioning these things and getting more vocal about alternatives.
I’ll celebrate the day there are no more animals raised for products for humans. There will be plenty of wild animals to appreciate and protect, so we don’t need to be bringing more human-created “frankin-animals” into the world to do our bidding.
Meanwhile, I will tend my veganic garden, wear my hemp and modal clothing and recycled p.e.t. bottle winter coat (that isn’t heavy or itchy but is super warm), enjoy the renewed health and vigor I have these days, and cook vegan food for my friends, and just be relieved that I somehow got out of the cycle of brainwashing that was forced on all of us from childhood, about how our dominion over gentle animals was somehow acceptable and animal products in our diet represented the “apex of health” (thanks for nothing, USDA). I celebrate the growing respect and attention veganism is getting the world over, am so grateful for getting that information and doing the personal research myself that was needed to foster change - and just applaud anybody else out there open hearted enough, and wise enough to consider moving in the direction of a plant-based diet and towards more peaceful choices in the world. Go for it, and support your local veggie farmers. They are the ones who really need our support. They are the ones growing the food that can feed the world.
*Since the article author wants stats, there are a load of them in Livestocks Long Shadow, the U.N. Agricultural Body of Scientists reports on the devastation caused by animal agriculture (small and large farming all taken into consideration in the devastating numbers and tolls.)
It is good news that these few old ewes will live their last days in relative peace at Catskill Animal Sanctuary. This transfer of livestock will also serve to assuage the capricious guilt of the flesh-peddlers at Turkana Farms who will blithely (even proudly) continue to send innocent spring lambs to slaughter. What lesson will they take from this? That if they undergo this misfortune of becoming emotionally attached to some few individuals among the many, many animals in their flocks, some soft-hearted sanctuary will come to their aid, let them play the compassionate herdsmen, and allow them to go on killing the rest. Business as usual. Meanwhile, on this farmer’s blog, sanctuary proponents are accused of “anti-farm zealotry” and being afflicted with a “doctrinaire, farmer as enemy attitude.” Now that’s gratitude for you.
Contrary to the extremist rhetoric of Mark Scherzer, farm animal sanctuary supporters, vegans and animal rights proponents are not anti-farming. This particular sling of mud is simply absurd. Vegans and other sanctuary supporters are well aware that nearly every bit of food we consume comes from a farm. Our preference, however, is the avoidance of the cruelty of slaughter which is essential to animal agriculture.
The terror and agony of slaughter is the same for all those who are the product of animal agriculture, whether they are raised on quaint, bucolic farms or massive, so-called factory farms. Pain and suffering are also the order of business on large and small farms alike when it comes to routine practices including castration, tail docking, cutting the horns off bovines and goats, ripping infants from the teats of mothers in dairy production (be they sheep, goats or cows) and sending the young to their end with a slice of the throat.
The websites of Turkana Farms and similar Happy Meat companies will not show you these gruesome details. Websites like Humane Myth dot org will.
Yet Turkana Farms’ website and Mark Scherzers’ blog make claims of being humane and sustainable. Questioning the use of the term humane is not a matter of animal rights or of animal husbandry, but of the actual meaning of the word. See your favorite dictionary. Being humane requires having sympathy for the suffering of another, including animals, and, yes, including livestock. It is simply not plausible to claim to have sympathy for the suffering of an animal while being the one who inflicts needless suffering on the animals (be it by the dozens, by the hundreds, by even the thousands). Slaughter is suffering, beyond a doubt. No animal has yet to extend her hoof in the air and say I volunteer to become your dinner. The existence of millions of well-fed, happy, healthy, long-lived and peaceful vegans illuminates the undeniable fact that all of this suffering is not needed, but is merely a choice; and a cruel and deadly choice at that.
Scherzer and Turkana Farms also lay claim to being a “sustainable” animal production enterprise. A previous commenter to this blog referenced the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, originally published in 2006. This report recognized that animal agriculture is the world’s leading cause of climate-changing gas emissions. It identified livestock (without distinguishing between factory or family farms) as the majority consumer of human land use, and a leading cause of loss of bio-diversity, deforestation, water pollution, topsoil loss, fresh water supply distress, and more.
Sadly, Happy Meat mongers like Turkana Farms toss off the word sustainable yet are unable to fundamentally improve the basic facts that led the U.N., and a global consensus of agricultural scientists to conclude that animal agriculture is grossly wasteful and inherently unsustainable. Animal agriculture is unsustainable because massive inputs of land, water, energy and feed crops result in shockingly small yields of food for humans. For instance consider the free-range, organic chicken. Animal agriculture experts say a free-range chicken will eat 17 to 20 pounds of feed in her life and yield less than three pounds of meat. That is roughly a 6 to 1 negative feed conversion ratio. Consider, also that the prepared feed has a crude moisture content of less than 10% while the final product (chicken meat) has a moisture content of over 80%. When adjusting to moisture (water) content of feed to meat, the ratio becomes an appalling 48 to one loss.
Happy Meat flesh-vendors also love to play the local card, yet animal feed inputs are seldom considered when making locavore claims. The manufactured feeds used by so-called local animal meat farmers is often made by producers in Vermont, Pennsylvania or Maryland from ingredients harvested still farther away. The grains in the feed may come from Iowa, the seed from Canada and the soy from Brazil. So, in a sense, that local chicken just flew in from Rio.
It is relatively easy for an operation like Turkana Farms to present an image of local, sustainable agriculture, so long as that image is near-sighted. Just don’t look beyond the quaint farm’s fence lines. When actual inputs of land, energy, and water are considered, when waste outputs including ammonia and methane are considered, all animal agriculture flunks sustainability.
I also have doubts regarding the sincerity of this sanctuary placement project by Turkana Farms. Note that the blog entry spends a few lines on the happy news of the elder ewes sanctuary placement, and a few lines complementing Catskill Animal Sanctuary, while simultaneously discrediting the rest of the animal advocacy world as anti-farming. The vast majority of the text of this blog is spent on slamming Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. My guess is that slamming farm animal sanctuaries was at least a secondary, if not a primary, motive of this blog author all along. In addition to the faint and short praise for Catskill Animal Sanctuary, in comparison to the lengthy mauling of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, Mark Scherzer seemed pretty well prepared to tee-off on the sanctuary scene. Should he have found no sanctuary willing to condescend to a meat-peddler’s pang of consciousness, he could have slammed them all as anti-farming zealots who would not lift a finger to help these four poor wretched creatures. Upon finding one sanctuary willing to play ball with a carcass dealer, Scherzer opts to play one against the other. He labels WFAS as zealots while cutting some little slack (and no donations funds in support of his dealt-off stock) to CAS.
The end result is that Scherzer gets to pose as the compassionate farmer for saving but a mere four animals, while deriding the organizations that save hundreds of animals and which would seek to foster a change of consciousness that would spare billions of lives.
If the most recent comments demonstrate nothing else, it’s that even vegans can be out for red meat.
As I said in my post, I respect the choices vegans and vegetarians have made, I find them intellectually defensible and I believe the work of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary is, like that of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, worthy. I bear no animosity to any of them.
While I respect the philosophy and work of the sanctuaries and their supporters, I do not respect the use of intellectually dishonest means to advance any cause. That was a central point of my post. And I have yet to see, in any of these comments, evidence that some of the malarkey on the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary website, such as assertions that sheep would naturally shed their wool if left unsheared, is anything but an invention. Indeed, I understand from what I believe to be a reliable source that even the Sanctuary shears its sheep—though why it would do so if it believes what it prints on its own website I cannot imagine.
The comments posted here reflect both the admirable traits of the true believer (passionate devotion to a noble philosophy) and the less admirable ones (a world in black and white, without nuance, setting up oppositions, identifying enemies, and disparaging those who deviate from the true path). In the latter category I would place those who do not know us but feel utterly free to post comments attesting to our venal motives and, ultimately through use of epithets, to our character flaws. I am particularly struck to see the repeated references to our profit motive. I assure these readers that if we were motivated by the expectation of profits we would have been out of this endeavor long ago. The struggle for anyone farming on a small scale is simply to break even.
So why do we do it? At the risk of waving another red flag, no, we do not raise sheep principally for their wool. We principally raise them and our other animals for meat, to eat ourselves and to sell to others who eat meat too.
I am well aware of the cognitive dissonance of loving and caring for an animal and killing it to eat. It is a contradiction we have struggled and continue to struggle with, have read and thought much about, and have drawn difficult conclusions about. Like many others who raise livestock this way, and many many more people who have thought about it and continue to eat meat, we have determined that there is something natural and healthy about humans being omnivores, just as it is natural and healthy that other animals feed on smaller animals, and those animals feed on yet smaller animals, and we all feed on plants that are far more evolved and perhaps conscious than we give them credit for. It is all part of what I perceive to be a chain of energy that is constantly exchanging and moving about—a sort of natural ordering principle of our chaotic world. And being humans who do try to be conscious of the inherent contradictions in the life process, we’ve concluded that if we give these farm animals a high quality of life while they are with us, a life they would not otherwise enjoy at all, and are respectful of their individual natures, that there is an ethical way to eat meat.
To those who posted comments trying to educate us to a conclusion they think is better, who would honestly choose extinction of farm animals over their being raised for slaughter, I welcome the discussion and the effort to address a moral dilemma. To those who suggest that we are, by reason of our choice, less evolved as human beings and perhaps even unfeeling profit-hungry ogres (and I particularly refer to AndyD and Vegan4Health), I would suggest that the oppositions you set up do not serve your cause well. Maybe you should give us less evolved humans the benefit of the doubt you automatically extend to even the most badly behaved animals. The lowest form of response in a discussion over differences in belief is to attack the character of one’s opponent.
Like meat eating, this desire to demonstrate oneself superior, more righteous than the demons in the other camp, is a very human instinct. Except this is one human instinct I’d like to think I’ve evolved beyond. I’d rather engage in honest debate about hard issues, respectfully and directly, without a fog of misleading misinformation and personal demonization clouding the atmosphere.
I do welcome VeganAlstine’s contribution, which at least contains substantive information regarding environmental issues along with the character attack. VeganAlstine’s points merit further teasing out. Do the environmental depredations to soil and water quality VeganAlstine speaks of, for example, result from low intensity grazing as well as CAFO’s, or can grazing improve the land? Because the UN study s/he cites failed to distinguish between the effects of factory farms and family farms, does that mean we should not consider the differences? Are the objections to “chickens that flew in from Rio” the same if you use locally grown (ours come from Millbrook and Livingston) feed grains? Is the use of land for grazing or raising chickens better or worse for the environment than the apparently inevitable alternative of transformation into large lot housing for car-dependent mowed-lawn suburban development? Is use of petroleum-derived products for clothing, as the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary suggests, better for the environment than the use of wool? And what is the environmental cost of large scale cotton agriculture (another proposed alternative), grown largely in arid areas with massive irrigation input, as opposed to fiber animals? When VeganAlstine talks of “billions of lives saved” what are those billions? If s/he’s talking about billions of livestock lives, the question I come back to is whether abandoning livestock agriculture saves those lives or relegates them to extinction—lives never lived. There are costs to every choice, and they should all be weighed in the mix.
I’m glad to have provoked some interest, and would be even happier if we had a discussion that recognizes common ground where it exists, rests on real evidence, and involves some unapologetic carnivores as well as committed vegans.
Bravo to Mark and Peter!
My experience with CAS was with poultry: They wouldn’t let me adopt the one hen unless I adopted the eleven roosters (at $15 each). A bit inhumane for the hen, no? Their staff was judgmental (“You’re going to EAT the eggs?”) and surprisingly ignorant of basic animal behavior and needs.
Compassionate farming is a reality to everyone who has spent hours and days checking on livestock, bathing wounds, picking out maggots after attacks, finding homes for animals for many reasons. Going out to look for animals well after midnight, bringing them into the house to keep them warm, staying up all night trying to spoon feed ailing livestock. We’ve done it all. We’re on first name basis with many vets and know how to do much of the emergency care ourselves. We know reality is euthanasia as well as slaughter.
We also eat some of them. But I sleep great knowing my family is eating animals that were well loved and cared for, not scared and who spent their lives inside, eating only crap feed filled medication. Our animals have the best lives possible up to minute they cease to breathe.
Farmer 2007: You DO sleep great? When your family does not need to eat those gentle animals to survive? Well, I don’t know how you do. In the psychoanalytic field they call this “disconnect.”
Again, don’t expect high fives from all of us. I mean, I just wouldn’t brag about it. You say you eat “some” of your animals. I am guessing you sell the others to be eaten by others so - - you basically kill all your animals and let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s just call it out clearly, okay, and not hide behind nice vagueries.
You may take good care of your animals - but not because you are a caring person - but so you can eat something that meets your standards. That is the definition of selfish. It does not meet any definition of a person who actually “cares” (in the true sense of the word care, involving compassion) about any of your animals. You only care about the animals far enough that it benefits YOU.
And no sanctuary - not CAS, not any - would make you adopt that many roosters - - they are well aware of the problems with socializing that many roosters together and give tours that educate the public, that it is hard to put many roosters together (which is the reason so many abandon them in the first place.) They also do not have any unacceptable fees which you complain about - - The proof of this is right in the above article - it is why Mark and Peter got away with not giving one thin dime when their ewes were accepted at the sanctuary (i.e rescued) from them. No money is squeezed out of anybody. They are a rescue. There is always a suggested donation, a hoped for donation, at non-profits who rescue animals of any kind. But many people do not give anything. Even at the ASPCA, in adopting a cat or dog, there is a small fee (theirs is mandatory). The idea being you are not just supporting the work of the non-profit that rescued the being you want to adopt and helping others (something you are clearly not interested in), but it sends a message to the potential adopter that caring for an animal costs money, and if you don’t have it, you should not take on that responsibility. If you are relegating that hen’s life to not even be worth $15 (despite you taking her eggs for years to consume) then you are the prime example of someone who should not be caretaking animals. You do not value their lives enough to give the best of care.
I would look deeper into your definition of “compassion.” It doesn’t mean “giving good care so you can kill them later on.” That is not what it means to many of us. They aren’t “livestock” (an abhorrent term that calls them stock product and negates the word “live” at most turns.) They are intelligent and feeling beings with nervous systems and feelings and individualism. They are sentient beings. To deny that is to stand against where all knowledge and science and human understanding has progressed.
Farmer2007, I’m only going to respond to one point in your post. And this goes out to all small farmers. Stop claiming you love your animals. I don’t care how well you treat them. Eating them does not constitute a loving relationship under any definition. Just seriously, stop. It’s ridiculous and insulting.
Actually I want to respond to your chickens at CAS comment also. Many of the volunteers and several of the employees are either omnivores or lacto-ovo-vegetarians. There is no way that you were judged for your egg eating especially since that is the only humane way to get eggs. There is also no way that they tried to make you take 15 roosters and 1 hen. Just stop.
Well after ruralintelligence lost my entire post I’m going to have to rewrite it. Hopefully I don’t miss anything the second time around.
Mark this is all for you. First and foremost, I’m insulted by the idea you seem to have come to about me and my feelings towards humans. This goes double for Vegan4Health, who is one of the kindest people I’ve met towards both humans and non-humans. I have no lack of compassion and empathy for my own species, and I’m sorry you think that by, calling out what I see as immoral actions, I have some kind of hatred for humans. If working with animals has taught me anything it’s how extremely similar we are to them. The similarities in the interactions between a group of pigs and a human family are quite uncanny. I haven’t used any epithets towards you and any characterizations I have made of you have been surmised solely from your comments. I’m not sure why you think that by calling you out on what I see as immoral actions, I’m placing you below the status of non-human animals.
I’m still confused about the ewes. If your primary goal is to use them for meat, why were you happy to seem them saved? And if money is not a factor, why is the care not being provided by you? These are not rhetoricals, I’m genuinely curious.
As for WFAS, you certainly seem to bear some animosity towards them as demonstrated by the article. This is a quote from their website on the topic of sheep: “It is only through human involvement that the wool grows faster because it is constantly being sheared off.” I am sure this is not something with which you would disagree. If you’re really interested in honest discourse, then be sure you’re not arguing strawmen, purposely or accidentally.
As for your 6th paragraph, you honestly seem like an intelligent guy and I’d expect you to know that it’s one big appeal to nature. While I understand it may be your personal feeling, it has no place in an intellectual debate. And I certainly hope you’re not attempting to compare the sentience of a farm animal to the “mind” of a plant.
I’m going to expand on what I said to farmer2007 about love. I appreciate your acknowledgement of a cognitive dissonance in your feelings towards animals and your slaughter of them, though you cannot hold two directly conflicting ideas and expect to have an intellectually honest debate. I really have to take issue with your use of the word “love.” That clearly does not accurately describe the situation and I really wish farmers would stop using that word. It makes us feel the same as you feel when someone claims “Sheep don’t need to be shorn period.”
I’m completely happy to have an intellectual debate based on logic and facts, but I think you’ve got a ways to go yourself.
<<If the most recent comments demonstrate nothing else, it’s that even vegans can be out for red meat.>>
Cool, we are happy to demonstrate that we are not all passive and willing to be pushovers about such a serious issue. The bulk of society has no trouble brushing the suffering of billions of animals a year under the rug, refusing to take responsibility for their part in supporting such suffering, but some of us take issue and are willing to draw some “metaphorical” blood via the pen. It is so much cleaner than actually butchering a living creature. The tone of your post is responsible for the lack of “sunshine” in my responses.
<<As I said in my post, I respect the choices vegans and vegetarians have made, I find them intellectually defensible and I believe the work of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary is, like that of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, worthy. I bear no animosity to any of them.>>
Thank you? I don’t know. Funny way of showing it. And funny way of supporting the worthy work of CAS, who took the 4 ewes. I say it again: Not one thin dime towards the care of the animals you “love.”
<<And I have yet to see, in any of these comments, evidence that some of the malarkey on the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary website, such as assertions that sheep would naturally shed their wool if left unsheared, is anything but an invention.>>
Maybe it is badly expressed and could be tweaked to be more clear, because they are referring to an ideal situation where we stop domesticating sheep - but if you read up on the more wild/ancestral breeds of sheep, they have no human to shear them and live without assistance from humans - they are first off originally native to colder more mountainous climates where they NEED their coat more, and it thins naturally enough in warmer weather to keep them cool. It is outlined here at this site:
http://www.veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/wool.htm
a quote from them:
“Natural sheep, like the wild Dall Sheep pictured on the right, don’t need any help. They grow just enough wool to protect themselves from the cold in the winter and to keep cool in the summer. When it is time, they will shed their winter coat all by themselves.”
But that is “vegan slanted” info (lol) so if others want to read up more and fact check around to diverse sites please do. You can start with the site above which is the “cliff notes” of horror around supporting sheep farming and go from there.
There is even more back up from actually a sheep-ag supporting site called “Sheep 101”: http://www.sheep101.info/hair.html
A quote from that site:
“Some breeds of sheep REMAIN TRUE TO THEIR ANCESTORS and do not have long, wooly coats that require shearing.”
[I will continue in another post so as to answer all questions from MS.]
(More answers to MS’s queries):
<<The comments posted here reflect both the admirable traits of the true believer (passionate devotion to a noble philosophy) and the less admirable ones (a world in black and white, without nuance, setting up oppositions, identifying enemies, and disparaging those who deviate from the true path).>>
Sorry - You are right, it is pretty black and white to us. Killing an animal that is so innocent, has done nada to harm you, or simply treating them as a product do not constitute any part of a “loving” relationship. Any excuses or rationalizations beyond that is going to seem moot. To argue any cruelty or betrayal as being justifiable in defining “love” and “care” is just plain weird to us.
<<In the latter category I would place those who do not know us but feel utterly free to post comments attesting to our venal motives and, ultimately through use of epithets, to our character flaws. >>
Yes and you REALLY took the time to get to know us. Have you even visited the sanctuary you chose to publicly denigrate? What objective journalist would do such a thing - write a story about a place they had not even been to, to see the work they do first hand. And - had you done a little googling you actually would have found things that do substantiate what WFAS has on their site (albeit, I give you, maybe a bit more clearly) So - if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the vegan kitchen.
It is admirable you want facts and stats and we have ‘em in droves or we couldn’t do this work (see the rest of WFAS sites with zillions of links; they cover a massive amount of ground as best as possible) - - but do you understand how ironic this is when the very first question that needs to be factually answered: is it right to raise an animal, make him/her trust you, and then send that being to a premature death - subjecting them to separation from all that they knew, from family, subjecting them to anxieties and fear, and ultimately, shock and pain and shortened life- - - is a question for which your own answers ring hollow?
<<I am particularly struck to see the repeated references to our profit motive. I assure these readers that if we were motivated by the expectation of profits we would have been out of this endeavor long ago. The struggle for anyone farming on a small scale is simply to break even.>>
I don’t care if someone makes $5 off of their deaths or 5 million. One is profiting from their loss, their suffering. There is a peaceful way to live without taking part in any of this and we will continue to work to let anyone who is interested, know how. There is enough unconscious cruelty going on in life, that is a given - so we don’t need to add to the conscious stuff.
<<I am well aware of the cognitive dissonance of loving and caring for an animal and killing it to eat. It is a contradiction we have struggled and continue to struggle with>>
For many of us, it was not much of a struggle. Saw, learned, changed.
[One more post to follow.)
Lastly, more answers to MS:
<<we have determined that there is something natural and healthy about humans being omnivores, just as it is natural and healthy that other animals feed on smaller animals, and those animals feed on yet smaller animals, and we all feed on plants that are far more evolved and perhaps conscious than we give them credit for.>>
There is nothing natural today about the animals we eat (frankinanimals.) There is nothing natural about the mind-boggling, massive numbers in which we raise and kill them. There is nothing even remotely resembling any sort of natural “food-chain” going on here anymore. And regarding plants: to ignore the cries and restrain forcibly the animal who wants to flee from fear - - by using the argument that plants feel pain too, is a diversion from making responsible, ethical change based on what you & ( DO know.
<<if we give these farm animals a high quality of life while they are with us, a life they would not otherwise enjoy at all, and are respectful of their individual natures, that there is an ethical way to eat meat.>>
If you were respectful of their individual natures, you would probably have sussed out they don’t want to die an early death to become someone’s dinner. It is inborn for them to try to run from anyone they discern to be a predator. Sadly, humans fool them with housing & food & stuff.
<<To those who suggest that we are, by reason of our choice, less evolved as human beings and perhaps even unfeeling profit-hungry ogres (and I particularly refer to AndyD and Vegan4Health), I would suggest that the oppositions you set up do not serve your cause well.>>
Well, I didn’t call you an ogre but it is interesting in a Freudian way that you chose that word yourself.
If you say I do not set up my cause well, I disagree although I normally do it in a tone that is less pissed-off sounding than what your post inspired. If there was ever a decent thing to be pissed about, it would be the unnecessary harming of peaceful animals & people.
<<This desire to demonstrate oneself superior, more righteous than the demons in the other camp, is a very human instinct. >>
Glad some of us are flexing vegan muscle (thank you Mac Danzig and Ricardo Moreira - vegan Extreme Fighters.)
<<I’m glad to have provoked some interest, and would be even happier if we had a discussion that recognizes common ground where it exists.>>
Well, it can’t all be unicorns and rainbows. But you gotta understand - we work against a vicious tide of apathy and business-as-usual attitudes, and don’t appreciate people who initiate the conversation publicly tearing down our work (I am a former employee of one of the sanctuaries you have mentioned - and currently work caring for a herd of privately rescued animals that were all going to slaughter. ) We see a LOT of the ugliness behind the bucolic things people like you work so hard to insist do not go on. I suggest you go meet with the Staff at WFAS & continue the dialogue there.
In his reply to a few pro-vegan comments on his original blog, “Leading a Lamb to Assisted Living,” Mark Scherzer asks sever valid, engaging question about vegan ethics and related environmental concerns. Well I certainly can not claim to speak for all vegans and would not claim to be the definitive authority on vegan ethics, I am happy to offer answers to the questions to the best of my ability.
First I want to address a couple details of Mr. Scherzer’s reply. He accuses the vegans of using “epithets.” I’m not sure if he was referring to my comments specifically, but perhaps he had my label of “flesh-peddler” in mind. A peddler is someone who sells goods, which Scherzer does. Meat (a word which used to refer to all solid food, including gain, fruits and vegetable) currently is generally used to refer to the flesh of animals, which indeed Mr. Scherzer sells. So if flesh-peddler is an epithet, it is one that I stand by.
Mr. Scherzer objects that the vegan respondents point out his “profit motive” in his animal agriculture enterprise. While his profits may be meager and certainly require hard work (all farming is very hard work) Turkara Farms is a for-profit business. Turkara Farms has sought to profit from dealing in animals, including the four ewes who were sent to Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Mr. Scherzer profited from the fleece and the meat of the lambs born of these four ewes for the past eleven years, but declined to make any donation to CAS to help support their ongoing care. That discrepancy is the impetus for point to Mr. Scherzers profit motive.
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AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Mark writes:
Since I wrote about the dilemma of what to do with an increasingly frail elderly ewe a few months ago, a number of people have asked me “What happened to Marina?” We debated her fate at length. Peter convinced me that she and her twin sister, Mira, and the two other elderly ewes, Brigid and Kybele*, who arrived here together 10 years ago, would have a terrible winter ahead. He worried that because they were increasingly unable to keep up with the herd, they would be prime candidates to be torn up by coyotes. I reluctantly agreed it was time for them to go, and we arranged to send them off to slaughter—there’s a market for older animals as dog food.
I’m thrilled to report, however, that at the last minute Peter called around and instead found a home for all four of them at a wonderful institution, the Catskill Animal Sanctuary in Saugerties. We took them last Monday, and it seems it will be a fine home for them, run by delightful, caring folks who did not have the doctrinaire,“farmer as enemy” attitude I feared. Instead of becoming dog food, these two sets of devoted sisters are now happily retired to assisted living in the farm animal version of DelRay Beach. [*Kybele’s first lambing resulted in twins, one of which she rejected because of insufficient milk. The author, above with the rejected twin Orhan, whom he and his partner bottle-fed and castrated to be the herd wether. Orhan now leads the herd.]
The reason I had concerns about our reception was a certain anti-farm zealotry that sometimes comes across from those associated with farm animal sanctuaries. I got a sense of this antipathy just a couple of weeks ago, when Peter (right) told me about Joe Donahue’s interview on WAMC radio with Jenny Brown, of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. In the interview, she recounted the saga of Kayli the cow. Kayli recently escaped while awaiting slaughter at a Halal slaughterhouse in Pennsylvania. Her cause was adopted by local animal rights activists; she was pardoned by Pennsylvania’s governor, and finally brought to the Sanctuary in Woodstock to live out her days as a celebrity cow.
It all sounded quite heartwarming—who would not root for a cow escaping death?—but Peter suggested to me that there was a certain anti-agricultural subtext. I listened to the interview, in which Ms. Brown sounded quite reasonable. I then turned to the Sanctuary’s website. There “the subtext” was in bold relief, essays ostensibly about factory farming, but which paint with such a broad brush, they could be used to condemn all livestock raising.
True believers concern me. I admire their passion and commitment, but always worry that their allegiance to a particular vision of an ideal world might make things in the real real world in which we live worse. This has certainly seemed true of late with the rigid ideological zealots of the Tea Party in Congress. The Woodstock Sanctuary has an admirable mission of saving abused and neglected farm animals, but, from what I can discern from its website, it is also guided by a rigid ideology that rests on some unexamined assumptions and damaging misinformation about farm life. The effect of the misinformation is to set up opposition between two groups—small, humanely-run farms and farm animal sanctuaries—that ought to be allies in a shared effort to see that farm animals are well cared for.
Let’s start with the unexamined assumptions. The story of Kayli, like many of the essays on the website, rests on the assumption that saving farm animals from slaughter promotes happier lives for them. The story does not confront an uncomfortable underlying truth: the only reason people support farm animals—provide food, shelter, and attention—is because they serve human needs. If Kayli had not been raised for food, she probably never would have lived at all.
Indeed, over thousands of years of selective breeding, livestock have been essentially created by man to serve as human food or fiber sources. The creatures we’ve created rely on us, not only for their sustenance, but also for protection. If allowed to roam free and reproduce naturally, it is likely that, in short order, they would face extinction. Domesticated livestock do not have the resources or genetic imprint to live on their own. They would be easy prey for predators.
The evil the Sanctuary says it is trying to address is inhumane, unhealthy and environmentally unsound factory farming. The Sanctuary tells us that agriculture has changed: our picture of the small family farm, with contented animals grazing out in pasture, is at least fifty years out of date, and the factory farming that has largely replaced it is full of unspeakable horror. I couldn’t agree more. But the Sanctuary’s remedy is to stop eating meat, poultry and eggs altogether, and even to stop using wool. There is no mention of the obvious alternative of encouraging the movement so evident in our region of raising livestock in a humane and sustainable way. If the Woodstock Sanctuary approach prevailed, the only place you would find farm animals would be at the Sanctuary and like institutions, or on the estates of the rich folks who keep them as pets. Ironically, achieving that goal would jeopardize the continued existence of the very animals that are the objects of the Sanctuary’s work.
Believing that all farm animals will enjoy natural, happy lives if only we stop raising them for food or fiber is kind of like believing that cutting taxes for wealthy people creates jobs—it’s essentially a religious conviction lacking empirical support. When, to support its arguments, the Woodstock website offers facts beyond those about the horrors of factory farming, many of those facts seem to have been created to justify their ideology rather than their ideology growing out of the facts.
Consider these passages from their section on what’s wrong with using wool:
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Supposedly, shearing a sheep is a humane practice because the sheep would otherwise be burdened with kilograms of excess wool. This, of course, is a myth. Sheep grow enough wool to cover, insulate and protect themselves. It is only through human involvement that the wool grows faster because it is constantly being sheared off. Sheep are sheared each spring, after lambing, just before they would naturally shed their winter coats.”
Actually, the human effect on the growth of wool on sheep is the result of eight thousand years of selective breeding. Beginning with Ovis Orientalis, a hairy goat-like wild animal, man bred domesticated animals to produce far more fibers than the animals themselves needed, in order to serve human needs. Shearing removes this excess fiber. Anyone involved in raising sheep knows that without shearing their wool grows longer and thicker and becomes matted—a big source of discomfort once hot weather arrives. The matted wool around the anus can become caked with manure, creating a breeding ground for maggots and flies. Further, sheep do not naturally shed their winter coats. This we know from the few times we have been late getting our shearing done or when we’ve decided not to shear the new lambs born in the spring.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Timing is considered critical. Shearing too late means loss of wool. In the rush, many sheep die from exposure after premature shearing.”
Give me a break. I’ve never seen or even heard of this happening on farms like ours. Our twice a year shearing is timed to give the sheep relief from summer heat (the spring shearing) and to give them time to grow back a nice coat for winter (the fall shearing). Judging from the challenges of scheduling our expert shearer, Bruce McCord, everyone else is on pretty much the same schedule. Our shearing is about as threatening to the sheep as a haircut would be to a human.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Every single year, hundreds of lambs die before the age of 8 weeks from exposure or starvation. Many mature sheep die every year from disease, lack of shelter, and neglect.”
Out of the millions of lambs born each year world wide, “hundreds” or “many” die? The vague numbers themselves (asserted without any citation to scientific literature) should give you an idea of just how serious an issue this is. Most breeders we know of create warm, sheltered environments similar to our birthing pens in the barn for sheep to have their lambs, and buy milk substitute to bottle feed the lambs if their mothers are unable to nurse them. Some breeders even make tiny garments for their newborn lambs to keep them warm. If you want a sense of the environment that sheep on small scale farms enjoy, go to the sheep barns at the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival in October.
No birth (sheep or human) is risk free, but you can be sure that livestock keepers, for whom the sheep have value, take measures to avoid risk. Sheep are quite hardy and can give birth successfully even outside in January blizzards, but if you want to see a big increase in deaths from exposure among the more vulnerable lambs, stop raising sheep agriculturally and let them roam wild.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “Many people do not know that the sheep farming industry involves abuse, pain and suffering. The animals are often treated inhumanely and are made to undergo severe amounts of pain and brutality. Lambs’ ears are punched, their tails cut off and the males castrated all without anesthesia within the first few weeks of their lives.”
Is punching lambs’ ears (that is, piercing ears for identity tags) painful abuse? Tell that to the millions of men and women who elect to pierce their ears, noses, lips and nipples, solely for cosmetic reasons. As to the admittedly less comfortable issue of castration, there’s a balancing of cost (including the minimal pain to the animal if done right) and benefit, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago in this space. You can make up your own mind, but in doing so, keep in mind that humane societies and animal shelters, which are not raising animals for either food or fiber, generally require neutering of both males and females before they release animals for adoption. Is the SPCA then guilty of abuse? There are many good reasons for limiting reproduction.
WOODSTOCK WEBSITE: “While animals such as egg-laying hens, dairy cows and wool-bearing sheep are not immediately killed to procure their salable products, they suffer tremendously for years prior to their ultimate and unavoidable slaughter.”
As to whether keeping of sheep generally leads to lives of pain and abuse, I am sure the operators of the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary, and the readers of this blog, could readily find dozens of farms to visit within less than an hour’s drive of home where suffering is simply not part of the picture. I believe that, in our region, farms that make humane treatment of their livestock a priority far outnumber factory farms. If the evil is factory farming, then an attack on all livestock farms and all use of meat and fiber is far too broad a remedy.
Folks are certainly entitled to believe that the ultimate slaughter of animals for food is distasteful or immoral; being vegetarian or vegan on that ground is, to my mind, a readily defensible philosophy. But what is not defensible is justifying that philosophy by speading misinformation that implies that raising animals for meat or fiber necessarily involves pain or abuse. Failing to adequately draw the distinction between factory farming and humane farming implicitly vilifies the many people of good faith who live with farm animals and care deeply about their welfare even as they choose to continue the very human practice of eating meat.
As the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy has argued for years, without a market for meat, most farm animal breeds would become extinct, resulting in the loss of our agricultural heritage. If raising farm animals is restricted to the few farm animal sanctuaries that have room for a breeding pair or two, these breeds will not be preserved. If the Woodstock Sanctuary were to succeed in its goal of “saving” all farm animals from their fate, it would ultimately be dooming cows like Kayli to extinction. —Mark Scherzer
For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
