Dr. Michael Fox: Animal Rights

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Modern agriculture is based upon the economy of scale, you see. And in the factory farms the goal isn't maximum productivity per animal . . instead, everything turns on cold profitability, tax angles, and such. Now there are those who claim that the overall productivity of such enterprises — that is, the yield per cage or per square foot of space, as opposed to that per animal — is proof enough that the livestock aren't suffering. After all, the argument goes, unhappy or unhealthy creatures wouldn't be productive.

The truth is, though, that the argument doesn't hold water. In fact, in many cases the need to maximize profits will work directly against an animal's welfare. We've found, for instance, that aggression among chickens — which, of course, is an enemy of productivity — decreases when they're crowded into battery or gang cages beyond a certain density (whereas it would show up strongly if the crowding weren't so severe). What happens is that the birds are simply overwhelmed with tension to the point that they become paralyzed. Under these circumstances, bird losses through aggression do drop . . . but this sort of stress-induced helplessness is a horrible form of suffering, and one of the most serious of animal welfare concerns.

As another instance, many pork producers are now killing off their sows after the first litter — even though the animals would become more productive with future birthings — simply because the sows are worth most to the factory farm when considered as a capital loss for tax purposes!

And despite such practices, the average U.S. farmer isn't getting rich . . . although — as I mentioned already — many of the agribusiness support industries are doing quite well. No, the owner of a typical family-sized dairy farm earns about as much in a year as does an individual working at a supermarket checkout counter . . . but you know the farmer is putting in longer, harder hours.

And ironically enough, although the middlemen and the support industries are, in effect, shortchanging the farmer, the agribusiness journals are able to use the farmers' hard times against the animal welfare movement! We're typically characterized — in such publications — as a bunch of crazed vegetarians who are out to destroy the American farm.

Well, the American farm is being destroyed . . . but it's being brought down by the loss of five billion tons of topsoil a year . . . by the pollution of our air . . . by eutrophication — excessive enrichment, and loss of oxygen — in our streams and rivers . . . by the use of agricultural chemicals that are possible carcinogens and immunosuppressants . . . by the feeding of poisons (including arsenic) to livestock as appetite stimulants . . . but not by farm animal welfare workers. We don't want everyone to stop eating meat . . . we simply want that meat to be raised in the most humane way possible, a practice that would likely improve the quality of the end product, as well.

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