Dr. Michael Fox: Animal Rights

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FOX: And that's a terrible shame because, to put the case in simple terms, the free enterprise system — as it applies to farming — is being eliminated by corporate monopolies. Labor- and community-destroying, fossil-fuel-dependent, and energy-capital-intensive factory farming is taking over. In many cases, the independent farmer either has to become an employee of the corporation or is forced to sell out . . . simply because he or she doesn't have the cash to compete with the big operations.

And when the land and livestock don't really "belong" to the farmer anymore-because he or she is functioning as a manager for a company of investors-a counterproductive element is introduced. The "new" system works against the traditional sense of pride, of personal investment, that's present when a man or woman tends the land with the dream of passing it on to his or her children, and also works against the farmer's feeling of empathy for the animals involved.

The best example of this counterproductive influence can be seen in the U.S.S.R., where the per-acre yield was three- to fivefold greater on the peasants' privately owned allotments than it is now on state-run cooperative farms. American "corporate socialism" may be creating a similar problem here.

PLOWBOY: Didn't a wise Chinese poet once say, "The finest fertilizer is the footprints of the gardener"?

FOX: I don't know the quote, but it certainly sounds Oriental. The Chinese Taoist philosophy is largely based upon ecology.

PLOWBOY: Can you describe some of the specific practices, resulting from the impersonal and profit-oriented nature of factory farming, that animal welfare people are concerned about?

FOX: Well, most of the problems have been created — at least in part — by [1] the belief that bigness, in terms of scale of operation, etc., is best . . . [2] the emphasis on operator convenience in the design of livestock management systems, at the expense of the animals' basic requirements . . . and [3] the need to confine livestock in pens or crates in order to easily monitor the animals' performance. The most pressing problems resulting from this combination of factors are overstocking (for example, keeping five adult laying hens in a tiny 12" X 18" cage) and the related concerns of extreme restriction of movement and environmental impoverishment.

Under the "confinement" method, for example, veal calves spend their entire lives — often in the dark — in wooden stalls that measure only 2 feet wide by 4-1/2 feet long . . . too small even for the animals to turn around in. And in order to make sure that the meat is of the now popular "light" color, the animals are fed nutritionally deficient diets, and often suffer anemia from shortly after birth until they're slaughtered. Now, some veal operations have begun to provide a little light and use slightly larger crates, but such changes are too minor to significantly affect the welfare problem.

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