What's wrong with humanely raised food animals?

Question

I've got a question for you vegans/vegetarians who don't eat meat because it's inhumane. I'm a vet student with a masters degree in biology. I won't work with feedlot medicine because it violates my personal ethics. But what is wrong with eating humanely and sustainably raised food animals?

I buy almost all my meat and all my eggs, milk, and honey from local farmers (usually at the farmers market) from pasture raised cattle, bison, pork, chicken, goat, and lamb. We even got a 25 lbs pasture raised turkey for Thanskgiving this year (boy, was it good!). My dogs are also all on a raw diet and much of their diet is derived from these sources. The stuff I can't buy at the farmers market, I try to buy at the university meat lab so it is still local and the animals are well cared for.

Biologically, we are omnivores. If we raise animals on a biologically appropriate diet in sustainable and humane conditions without danger from predators, what is ethically wrong with this?

As far as the health problems associated with eating meat and dairy, as someone with a masters degree focusing on environmental endocrine disruptors, I suspect that many health problems concerned with eating meat and dairy are not intrinsically associated with the meat itself, but the many, many additives given plus completely inappropriate diets. For instance, beef loses just about all its omega 3 fatty acids when fed an inappropriate diet of grains (especially corn), but studies in the Journal of Animal Science show that grass fed beef is actually quite heart healthy. Their levels of CLA and vitamin E in the meat go up and their fat goes down as well when grass fed (see www.eatwild.com for more). Cattle are ruminant grass eaters, not grain eaters and just like humans, they are much more unhealthy when fed an inappropriate diet. You want to discuss health problems? Let's discuss the dangers in soy...

Excellent ideas, please keep them coming. A few responses:

Our pets are bred to die as well. We keep them around for our personal preferences and kill them for convenience. We kill rodents like mice and rats for our convenience & to prevent transmission of disease, yet they are sentient creatures. Rats are very intelligent and resourceful animals (omnivores like us) after all. So their deaths just go to waste.

For dairy cattle, the dairy I get my milk from uses Holstein/Jersey crosses and lets the calves run with the moms. They are grass fed on organic pastures and milked once per day. As far as methane gas, there were once millions of bison on the American plains. What's the difference now with cows and methane? INAPPROPRIATE GRAIN DIETS. Grass fed cattle produce a lot less gas. As far as pasture, I would rather have the very rich biodiversity of a properly rotationally grazed pasture than a Wal-mart!

I'd challenge everyone to read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Answer 1

Absoulutley Nothing!! If more people were like You and Me the world would be a better place.

Answer 2

People don't want to have something killed just for their own tastes, maybe? People don't want to contribute to environmental degradation, maybe? Maybe because we don't need meat, and most meat isn't all that healthy anyhow?

I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian, but I think it's quite simple to understand why someone would find it vile to eat a living, sentient creature that was basically created, constrained and killed for little more than personal enjoyment of the taste.

I have a question for you - if a person's beliefs don't affect you in any way, and don't harm anyone, why does it matter?

Edit - I'm curious to know where you got the citation that grass-fed cattle produce less methane than grain-fed (if it was not taken from the section in Pollan on cattle belching). I've read in a few places that per head of cattle, grass fed produces more methane than grain fed. Most recent was an article by John Robbins, but I know I've read that elsewhere, too.

Also, the Omnivore's Dilemma is an interesting read as an introduction to industrial food, but ultimately, it should only be that - an introduction, as it's a populist read. I found his 'hunting and gathering' section particularly superficial, though I enjoyed the other two sections of the book.

I'm curious to know whether you consider the environmental impact of pastured livestock. I know it has little to do with the humane treatment of the cattle, but part of the reason a lot of veg*ns go veg is because of the terrible environmental impact of the livestock production. The cattle waste pollutes freshwater sources, and vast water resources go to cattle - drinking, washing, the slaughterhouse. Chopping down trees to create fields and allowing the cattle to graze causes the soil to erode.

Answer 3

The military does not make a great effort to provide organic food. If you eat Kosher for religious reasons, you could ask your command for "separate rations" once you get done with Basic Training and AIT. They would give you the food stipend that married people get, so you can go off base and buy organic and Kosher foods. If not, you can just buy food on your own. You get paid enough in the military to afford that. On deployments and for field training, you can't get that, so there's Kosher MREs available. They are not organic though. A lot of Jewish soldiers and more health conscious soldiers just choose to eat vegetarian. And just so you know, people in the military eat a LOT better than homeless people.

Answer 4

What you describe is certainly preferable to industrial farming methods. There is much less suffering involved, which is definitely something positive. I feel less sad when I hear that people eat animals that have been raised humanely.

Unfortunately, the end result is the same: all animals destined to become meat must die, and often a lot sooner than their natural lifespan would allow. I believe that to be both sad and unnecessary since with a little know-how people are able to live quite healthfully on a plant-based diet.

Most people hold the belief that it's wrong to kill other people. As a vegan I definitely agree, but where I differ is that I also include animals in that belief. Life is valuable no matter what form it takes, and I don't feel it's my right to take it if I can help it. When it comes to what I choose to put in my mouth, I CAN help it.

Answer 5

I'm not an omnivore! sorry... :) To answer your question, yeah, maybe they were pasture raised, but i am pretty sure your meat was still brutally slaughtered. that is what is ethically wrong with this. If they were pasture raised, they actually still are in danger from predators. That's why farmers are allowed to shoot wolves and coyotes that go onto their property (and neighbourhood dogs, sadly). And, people who eat them are predators too.
It's good that you're buying locally though. :)

Answer 6

Nothing if you believe they deserve to die. For me, I don't want them to be bred and brought into this world so they can be killed humanely or not. For me animals are animals, not food. I don't think they should die. Everyone has a different opinion to what's ethical and what's not. There isn't just one guideline on that. If you're comfortable with your lifestyle, that's fine, too. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but on the other hand, you also need to respect people's choice not to eat animal products.

Answer 7

If you are comfortable with what you are eating I dont see a problem. If others think differently then they just dont have to eat the meat. There's room in the world for both carnivores and vegans.

Answer 8

First of all, there's no such thing as humane meat as the animals are still killed in the end. It's less cruelly raised meat. And nothing will convince me that eating a dead animal is okay, no matter how nice his life was.

And you really don't need cows' milk unless you're a baby calf. Let the cows give their babies nourishment instead of stealing it from them.

Answer 9

Well I must say I respect you more than the average meat eater because you actually care where your meat comes from and you seem to put a lot of thought into the dangers of modern day factory farming. If you know they are humanely raised then I definitely think this is better than buying factory farmed meat. Personally though I still would not want to eat it because I still see death as pain and suffering. These animals have still been 'grown' and slaughtered for the benefit of human tastebuds which I don't see as a good enough reason for causing them pain. Sure, if it was a matter of life and death then I may be able to sympathize but vegetarian and vegan diets have proved to be healthy so I wouldn't want to put something in my body that was a result of something else's pain just to please my tastebuds. That's just my personal belief though and again I'd like to stress that humanely reared meat is a hundred times better than factory farmed meat. There is still the case of the environment though... cow's methane has an obvious and very real danger to the environment but there's also the fact that the rearing of these animals takes up a lot more energy and land than growing vegetables or grain would. The cows you mention graize on pastures which take up a lot of land per animal and then I'm assuming grass is grown and cut for hay in the winter too. So space, water and energy is used to grow the food to feed the animals which then turn into food themselves but only 1kg of meat is produced per 10kg of food they consume which isn't a very effective way of using resources to me. Just using the space to grow human food seems a much more logical way instead. Hopefully they get all their food from the UK because if they get it from overseas (especially 3rd world countries where people are starving right next to fields of food which is being sent to the west as animal fodder) then this would be even worse.

In terms of milk I'm sorry but I don't think there's any 'humane' way of obtaining this. I can understand humanely reared meat to an extent but I actually see dairy farming as worse than the meat industry. Dairy cows have been manipulated and bred over the years to produce an uncomfortable amount of milk in their udders... I think it's increased by about 5 times in the past 100 years which has led to 1 in 3 cows getting mastitis. Also cows are impregnated every year and have their calfs taken away from them after only a couple of days so they don't drink the milk which is rightfully theirs. Male calfs are of no use to the dairy industry and are too scrawny to be raised as meat so they're either shot at birth or sent abroad to veal farms. The mother cows, to be the most productive and cost effective, never get a break and carry the double burden of producing milk while they're nurturing a baby inside them at the same time. The weight of this causes enormous stress on their legs which is why 50% of them will become lame. Then a quater of the way through their lives they are slaughtered for their meat because they are 'spent' from the stress their bodies have been through. I really have no sympathy towards the dairy industry and cannot think of any reason why we should use animals like machines when all the nutrients in milk can be found in other sources.

I think it's great you care where you buy your animal products but personally, I don't want to see animals as objects when the only reason for doing so is because of something as trivial as taste.

EDIT:

Personally I don't think animals should be bred for our convenience. I do have pets but they're from rescue centres and sure I benefit from their company but what do you mean by killing them for our convenience? Isn't that animal abuse? I also would never kill a rat.

Ok the milk you buy may come from cows that are allowed to have their babies close to them but they would eventually be taken away to be killed... they would not have a male cow among a dairy herd for long. You may have a point about the methane gas but I really don't know too much about organic cow gas so I'm not certain of it. I still think the environmental and ethical factors largely outweigh our tastebuds. Yes, products from humanely raised animals are better but suffering still is involved and I wouldn't want something to go through pain just for my tastebuds.

Answer 10

I think this is the only type of meat people should eat if they are going to insist on eating it. I'm going vegetarian because it's better for me. I eat healthier as a vegetarian. Besides I've never really liked meat. So why waste the money?

Answer 11

Animal flesh and secretions are not a healthy food source.
While it is true that we can survive on them for short periods of time, science indicates that they are not healthy to eat on a regular basis.
Animals that were meant to eat a diet comprised mostly of animal proteins do not die because of their diet. The biggest killers for people in the western world are DIET RELATED.
Milk has been proven to cause cancer. There is a strong link between milk and breast cancer, in particular. We know eating meat contributes to colon cancer. People don't want to know these things because people like to eat the foods they like to eat.
If you are truly curious, I highly suggest you read THE CHINA STUDY. The most comprehensive nutritional study ever undertaken suggests strongly that the more meat and dairy you eat the higher your risk for western diseases such as cancer and heart disease (our biggest killers) and the less you eat the less your risk getting those diseases. That seems pretty compelling to me. I'm always surprised that more people just seem to blow it off.

There also is some disagreement with whether we are truly omnivores. People say we CAN eat meat so we must be meant to. Well, when Nature keeps killing us for eating it the way we do...um, well I'm going to listen. Here's some essays that make a good arguement against consuming animal flesh and secretions:
http://www.celestialhealing.net/physicalveg3.htm
http://www.all-creatures.org/mhvs/nl-2003-wi-meat.html

And lastly, taking a life for food when it has been proven time and again that it is unecessary to do so and simply because you think it tastes good is unethical no matter how you look at it. The fact is that in today's world the majority do NOT need to eat meat or drink milk to survive. It is cold and cruel and unethical to keep doing so for no other reason than taste and habit, and that's what it amounts to.

P.S. it is highly offensive when people say "there's room enough for vegetarians and people who eat meat...you're not bothering anyone...it's your decision". THERE ARE LIVES BEING TAKEN THAT DO NOT HAVE A SAY. Ugh. How barbaric can you get?