The Meat Industry's Attitude

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FROM: http://www.sentientbeings.org/industry.htm Industry’s Attitude Agribusiness has tended to consider farm animals primarily as tools of production, rather than as living, feeling animals. This attitude has resulted in the commodification of sentient beings and the prevalence of animal cruelty on industrialized factory farms. The following statements exemplify this attitude. “The breeding sow should be thought of, and treated as, a valuable piece of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage machine.” — L. J. Taylor, export development manager for the Wall’s Meat Company, Ltd., National Hog Farmer, 1978 “In a contemporary agricultural context, the role and value of animals are defined in terms of their economic efficiency and productivity (and the prices for their products). In this valuational context,

animal welfare (and its study) is restricted to what has an effect on production and price.” — Bernard E. Rollin, Professor of Physiology, Philosophy and Biophysics at Colorado State University, in his book, Farm Animal Welfare: Social, Bioethical, and Research Issues “It’s a damn shame when they kill each other. It means we wasted all the feed that went into the damn thing.” — Herbert Reed, poultry producer, referring to chickens pecking each other to death in battery cages “Forget the pig is an animal. Treat him just like a machine in a factory. Schedule treatments like you would lubrication. Breeding season like the first step in an assembly line. And marketing like the delivery of finished goods.” — J. Byrnes, “Raising Pigs by the Calendar at Maplewood Farm,” Hog Farm Management, 1976 “It doesn’t bother me. We’re no different from any other business. These animal rights

people like to accuse us of mistreating our stock, but we believe we can be most efficient by not being emotional. We are a business, not a humane society, and our job is to sell merchandise at a profit. It’s no different from selling paper-clips or refrigerators.” — Henry Pace, owner of a livestock auction yard “Death losses during transport are too high—amounting to more than $8 million per year. But it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out why we load as many hogs on a truck as we do. It’s cheaper.” — Hog industry expert in Lancaster Farming, 1990 When an egg factory was charged with cruelty to animals for discarding live chickens in a trash can, its lawyer argued that the hens could legally be discarded like manure. This prompted the Judge to ask, “Isn’t there a big distinction between manure and live animals?” to which the egg factory’s lawyer responded, “No, Your Honor.”

— From trial transcript of State of New Jersey v. ISE America, Central Warren Municipal Court “Sheep farming, like most agriculture, has become agribusiness and not just a way of life. We must be concerned with the amount and quality of the salable product produced from our basic production units. In sheep farming, the basic production units are the ewes. . . . We don’t need large beautiful fat happy ewes that only produce one lamb a year. We need ewes that will provide us an adequate gross income to cover all our costs and then some.” — D. E. Hogue, Animal Scientist “The modern layer is, after all, only a very efficient converting machine, changing the raw material—feedstuffs—into the finished product—the egg—less, of course, maintenance requirements.” — Farmer and Stockbreeder, 1962 “Broilers blooming to market size 40 percent

quicker, miniature hens cranking out eggs in double time, a computer ‘cookbook’ of recipes for custom-designed creatures—this could well be the face of animal production in the 21st century.” — “Farm Animals of the Future” from Agricultural Research, 1989 “At higher egg prices, crowding always resulted in greater profits.” — Robert Brown, “Toe-Clipping May Help Hens Improve Returns in Crowded Cages,” Feedstuffs, 1985 “I believe it’s completely feasible to specifically design an animal for hamburger.” — Bob Rust, Iowa State University meat specialist, quoted in “Hamburger Cattle,” Successful Farming, 1977 “The slatted floor of the hog factory farm seems to have more merit than disadvantage. The animal will usually be slaughtered before serious deformity sets in.” — Editors of Farmer and Stockbreeder, 1961 “We don’t get paid for producing animals with good posture around here. We get paid by the pound!” — Hog farmer J. Messersmith commenting on crippling leg deformities commonly suffered by pigs on factory farms “At the Animal Research Institute, we are trying to breed animals without legs, and chickens without feathers.” — R. S. Gowe, director of the Animal Research Institute, speaking at a Livestock Intensive Methods of Production conference in 1978 “The object of producing eggs is to make money. When we forget this objective, we have forgotten what it is all about.” — Fred C. Haley, president of a Georgia poultry firm, quoted in Poultry Tribune, 1974 “Farmers treat their animals well because that’s just good business. The key to sow welfare isn’t whether they are kept in individual crates or group housing, but

whether the system used is well managed. . . . Science tells us that she [a sow] doesn’t even seem to know that she can’t turn. . . . She wants to eat and feel safe, and she can do that very well in individual stalls.” — Paul Sundberg, veterinarian and National Pork Producers Council vice

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