The Human Cost of Animal Suffering

In a column in the New York Times, Mark Bittman discusses some implications of industrialized meat production.

He makes some interesting points, most notably that the disconnect between animal slaughter and the vast majority of meat consumers has insulated those consumers from the realities of meat production, and allowed them to abdicate their responsibilities as meat eaters.

These responsibilities, as I discussed in previous posts, include sticking to the inter-species "contract" established between livestock and humans:

• Humans provide comfort, food, veterinary care, evolutionary advantages, and a humane death to their livestock.
• In return, the livestock provide their meat, skin, milk, etc...

Clearly, this compact is not made at the individual level, but it hard to argue that as species, cows, pigs, ducks, etc... have not benefited from their symbiotic relationship with humans.

The industrialization of meat production violates all of the humans' obligations under the "contract". Animals are raised in uncomfortable conditions, given unhealthy foods, pumped with hormones and antibiotics, culled instead of cured, and slaughtered in abhorrent conditions.  As consumers, we are responsible for the way in which the products we buy are produced: with our dollars/euros/yens, we agree to participate (or not) as the final rung in the production chain. This means that by consuming industrial meat, each one of us is endorsing the violation of the inter-species contract described above.

I'd like to think that most meat consumers are willfully or unwillingly ignorant of the manner in which their meat is produced, and that is why the industry is able to operate as it does. At the same time, it is fairly clear that the industry has taken great pains to hide its practices, sensing, perhaps rightly, that knowledge might bring on scrutiny and reduced meat consumption.

Meat - it messes with water

As promised, I am going to revisit the environmental issues that surround animal husbandry with a particular focus on water.

Before we proceed any further, I have to digress a bit into the field of water chemistry, but don't worry, I'll keep this simple.

Water is "clean" when the ecosystem that lives in it thrives. This ecosystem requires nutrients, which at the most basic level are carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus (C, N, P). Under normal conditions, bacteria and algae will oxidize these chemicals to grow. As you might have noticed, bacteria are not known for being braniacs and so they'll eat and multiply until they run out of something, be it nutrients or oxygen.


At the simplest level, one of the ways in which water becomes "dirty" or "polluted" is when there is so much C, N, P in it that the bacteria and algae consume all of the oxygen, leaving none - or not enough - for the fish or the rest of the ecosystem. To take it slightly further, the ecosystem can be severely harmed by the intrusion of excess C, N, P, even if not all oxygen is consumed. Some organisms, like trout, require a minimum level of oxygen in water to thrive.

This leads to our first equation :

C, N, P + WATER = POOWATER

There are plenty of sources of C, N, P in this world, including fertilizers, among others. So this wouldn't necessarily concern our meat eating ethics except that there is a second equation:

POO = C, N, P

Those who paid attention in math will know that we can combine these equations to reach this brilliant conclusion (Nobel committee, are you paying attention?):

POO + WATER = POOWATER

That's right, when a cow, a pig, a chicken, a human etc... poos in water, the water gets dirty, and now we have mathematical proof! Thanks to the utter brilliance of the above equation - brilliant because it also works with pee - you now know why it's bad that livestock to poos in water. Aren't you glad you made it this far? Besides C, N, P, poo also contains suspended solids, antibiotics/hormones (if given to the animals), and  fecal coliform, all of which are also bad for the environmental health of water and can be directly harmful to humans.



As is often the case, the amount of damage caused by livestock poo is directly related to the amount of poo as compared to the size (and other physical characteristics) of the receiving water body - river, lake, pond, estuary, groundwater, etc...

To illustrate: 1000 cows pooing on a mile or river means an environmental disaster whereas 1 cow pooing on 1000 miles of river means some happy algae.

Anybody who's been to the country knows that livestock isn't toilet trained, and will tend to relieve themselves wherever they please, which can very much include right on your shoes. So the next question we must answer is: how does poo go from the fields to the river?

The answer is a simple phenomenon called runoff. When it rains, the rainwater runs off the ground and into rivers, carrying sticks, oil, paper, mud, and (you guessed it) poo with it. If the poo is spread out over a large grassy field, there is a chance that it'll take several rainfalls for the poo to make it to the river, but if the poo is stored in a basin (sometimes called a lagoon) that can overflow all at once into the river, you can imagine that it won't be pretty for the fish.



Unfortunately, the above does nothing whatsoever to further the cause of meat eating, and so we're now getting to the interesting part. I've tried to make it clear in the above that it's the dose of poo in the water that's the determining factor. The example I used is a thinly veiled reference to the difference between extensive and intensive farming, and, as stated in other posts, it's clear that it's only extensive farming that can lead to reduced impacts on aquatic environments.

Notice that I didn't say that there would be no impact from extensive farming, just reduced as compared to intensive. The next question therefore is: is this limited impact "worth it" and would we do better by eating vegetables instead?

The obvious answer is "yes, but". As with meat, it really depends on the vegetables (or other vegetarian fare) that we're talking about. Raising plants can have negative effects on the environment as well, to wit: deforestation, pesticides abuse, irrigation, fertilizer abuse, etc... It's not the same thing to eat a piece of tofu made from locally organically grown soybeans and to eat tofu made from soybeans raised on Brazilian factory farms that have replaced the rain forest.

I do not have access to reliable figures about the relative merits of extensive/intensive animal husbandry/farming and so I can offer no objective and definitive conclusion concerning the morality of eating meat from the point of view its impact on water. Except, of course, to say that meat raised under extensive farming conditions will best intensively farmed meat any day, and will probably beat intensively farmed vegetarian food most days as well.

The environmental consequences of animal husbandry

My second criteria for moral meat-eating is that the meat should be raised in an environmentally benign way.

The relationship of all living things with the environment is one of birth, resource consumption, waste production, death, and decay. This cycle, replayed within and across a complex web of relationships that encompasses all living things from microbes and lichens to killer whales and baobab trees, is our ecosystem and it is dynamic. This is to say that any equilibrium can be perturbed, for good or bad, by chance or design. This is the stuff that drives evolution, mass extinctions, etc...

We therefore know that the world that we inhabit is affected by our actions, both in predictable and unpredictable ways - nothing Earth shattering here, this is a banal assertion. What we see perhaps less clearly is that the environment that we consider to be "natural" is man-made to a significant extent, particularly in the US and Western Europe. This is particularly true of what we like to call "the countryside".

For example, in Les Vosges, the mountains would be covered with dense forests if it were not for pastures grazed by farm animals (see pictures). The hedgerows of Bretagne and Normandy are a man-made environment, which would revert to moor or forest if it were not maintained by man and its animals. In this way, we are no different than some other large animals; elephants come to mind. Similar examples exist in the US, I am sure, and HFW gives several examples in the UK. Below are some pictures from Les Vosges.

Would letting pasture revert to forest be so bad? After all, isn't forest "good for the environment"? isn't it better than pasture?

Well, perhaps or perhaps not: some species have conquered the pastures of the Vosges and Bretagne, and would doubtlessly find themselves challenged in dense forests. In some ways, this environment that we've created has created its own biodiversity and ecosystem, which one could argue are worthy of some form of protection.

Why do I go through all of this trouble to argue for the future of pastures, hedgerows, and the animals and flowers that inhabit them? It is because extensive animal husbandry is a prime factor in the maintenance of these rich environments. Should we abandon the consumption of meat altogether, we would remove all incentive for farmers to maintain this environment. What would likely happen is that steep slopes would be surrendered to forest (perhaps not a bad thing), but flat areas would likely be turned over to farming wheat, corn, or carrots, as there would be no financial incentive for the farmer to maintain the fractured environment, and no help from livestock.

Farming plants, unless it is done by hand on small holdings, uses mechanized equipment which is hampered by hedgerows and small parcels. Fractured pasture and fields, fenced off by hedges, low walls, or trees are much more resistant to soil erosion from wind and rain than plowed fields.

A farmer with pastures and fields, who rotates the use of his land over time to raise animals and plants (fodder and/or human food), will preserve both the rich ecosystem of "the countryside" and raise tasty meat in a way that is arguably environmentally and "ecosystematically" equivalent to one raising plants only.

Need I point out the obvious: this ain't no factory farming that I'm describing here.

Next: livestock, water, and the atmosphere.

Animal suffering

I'll try to address here the first of the criteria for moral meat eating.

The first thing that we have to remember is that livestock animals (cows, sheep, fowls, pigs, and all animals that we might raise for food) are mortal.

If we accept that livestock are animals like any others, an argument voiced to argue against their organized slaughter, then we must accept that, as herbivores, they are in the middle of the food chain, destined to be some other animal's prey. As such, their destiny is to be hunted down and killed, whether by a lion, a bear, a wolf, a human, etc... Alternatively, they can die of disease, fire, drowning, or starvation. Dying from old age isn't quite an option for animals, except for pets. Old and/or weak herbivores (think gazelles, zebras, gnus...) are the easiest preys for the lion, crocodile, or what-have-yous that lurk in the tall grass. As part of natural selection, predators routinely pick-off the weakest prey. It's not philosophy, it's Darwinism.

In the wild, to the extent that such places exist, the herbivore has a fair chance at escaping his predator. Domesticated livestock meets their demise at an appointed hour. This is because we control every aspect of their life, from birth to breeding to slaughter. This control, in turn, means that we have a dual responsibility to ensure that:

1. the life of our livestock is free of the pain and suffering that befalls wild herbivores
2. the manner of death is as painless and stress free as possible

The farmer is therefore responsible for ensuring that his livestock is raised under comfortable conditions. This is to say that the animals have enough space to roam, have appropriate shelter, are protected from predators, are availed plentiful, adequate food, and are given medical care. In short, they trade their freedom for comfort. Medical care cannot include the massive preventative application of hormones or antibiotics, while space and shelter must be sufficiently roomy so that animals can follow their rooting and exploring instincts. Food must be natural, to the extent possible, not result from human transformation processes.

One might object that a cow born in captivity has not willingly entered into this bargain: comfort and death against freedom. However, HFW makes a convincing point that, on a species basis, livestock animals have entered into this bargain with humans, growing more numerous and healthy than they could ever have dreamt to be in the wild (i.e.: compare the number of gazelles to the number of cows worldwide). In this sense, a symbiotic relationship of sorts has been established between humans and livestock, albeit one that involves the slaughter of one half of the symbiosis to feed the other.

Going back to item 2 above, the farmer is also responsible for choosing a slaughterhouse where his animals can meet their demise in a stress-free manner. While this might seem unrealistic, it should be clear that there is a big difference between a place where animals are killed after a wild stampede where some might be gored or trampled to death, and one where only a few animals at a time are killed in individual pens, by a person who administers a swift death. The difference might seem artificial, but it is fundamental in my view.
It should be clear that what I described above is the exact opposite of factory farming, where animals are kept in confined spaces, pumped up with antibiotics and hormones (in the US), and fed fish or other animal meal. Further, I essentially rule out eating meat that has been slaughtered in an industrial slaughterhouse.

Of course, that means ruling out most of the meat available in supermarkets in France and US today, but that's another story.

The morality of eating meat

Eating meat is under attack. Countless vegetarians make potent, rational, and cogent arguments about the moral precariousness of eating meat. However, these arguments have never felt completely compelling or satisfying to me, and so I've kept on eating. At the same time, I've had a feeling that I couldn't quiet provide an appropriate response to my vegetarian friends. Now that I'm reading HFW's book, I feel that I can better articulate a moral position for meat eating, and so I'll try to do it here and in future posts.

While I am no great philosopher, I can see that encouraging the suffering of sentient, social animals for my selfish pleasure is wrong, especially as alternative sources of food abound. I can further see that consuming a product whose production is bad for the environment is morally fraught. I understand and respect the position of moral vegetarians, but I think it is too narrow.

I am just not convinced that it is inevitable that meat will be both the result of great suffering and bad for the environment. I posit that meat consumption can be moral if it complies with the following:

• the meat I (and you, perhaps) consume came to my plate without additional animal suffering, as compared a hypothetical 'wild' state.
• animal husbandry does not harm the environment any more than its absence would.
• meat consumption is total, meaning that every part of the slaughtered animal is consumed as food, fuel, leather, or other raw material, etc... and no part is wasted.
• the consumption of meat is done with full disclosure of the conditions under which the animal is raised, slaughtered, aged, and sold, so that meat consumers can understand the provenance of their meat and be responsible for their actions.

I will attempt to discuss these points individually in later posts, but before I go any further, I'll state outright that most of meat consumed in the developed world fails to meet these criteria.

HFW's Meat Manifesto

Clearly, the kind of meat you buy has several ramifications. The most obvious are taste and texture, morals, and economic.

Morality comes into play because buying intensively farmed meat means that you condone the bad treatment of animals that is commonly practiced on intensive farms. While it's possible to be a moral person and eat meat, it's not ok to willingly engage in practices that deliberately hurt another living creature. I would argue that if you can't afford to eat meat that is farmed in a way that doesn't hurt the animals, you should eat less meat. Call me elitist, but at the same time realize that most people eat way too much meat as it is.

There's an economic component, clearly, to the kind of meat you buy. Of course, it's not the same thing to purchase meat that is mass-produced by giant conglomerates as to purchase (possibly for a higher price) meat produced by a single smallholder who carefully raises individual animals in humane and even comfortable conditions. With one option you are furthering a world where the concentration of the means of production leads to the reduction of choices and a sort of tyranny of large corporations (which we accept in return for the appearance of lower prices). With the other, you are fostering competition between smaller producers who retain a degree of independence that is the best guarantee against the uniformization of culture and the preservation of regional differences that form the rich cultural fabric that sustains us as humans.

In this way, the economic component becomes a cultural preservation component. Please note that I am not making the case that smallholders are inherently better, culturally speaking, than large corporations. Rather, I am saying that the fact that smallholders must be numerous, they will provide more diversity of options and cultures than a single large corporation. This diversity will manifest itself in the types or breeds of animals that they will raise, in how they will butcher them, etc... even within a single country. This diversity is what leads to a genetic guarantee against debilitating diseases that could wipe out a too uniform livestock population, saddening everyone from PETA-types to meat lovers.

All of these considerations, together with others raised by HFW, mean that a meat eater must be educated, adventurous, and thrifty with meat, ensuring that he gets the most of the meat that he purchases so that it is a satisfying experience informed by a carefully articulated moral stance.