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APR 24: 26

Singer and Mason, "Ch 4, Meat and Milk Factories"

• "Jake" refers to real interview subject. Book framed around several distinct diets of actual people and then journalism and ethics layered in.

• Pigs

• 90% fewer farms producing 103 million pigs, up from 69 million in 1975.
• Pig farms environmental footprint dominated by excrement production. 4x human/day.
• Pig interior life: smart, can express preferences, natural behaviors include socializing, forming groups, exploring enivronment. acreage ratios.
• Evidence against sow stalls in EU investigation.
• Interview with pig farmer, Wayne Bradley: small industrial, 10,000 pigs, (Implies large operation approach 700,000). Small examples of welfare: anesthesia for castration, limited nursing to accelerate production, continuous treatment for growth which cause side effects. Interesting interaction between a small industrial farmer and journalist. Note how tense it was and the allowance of an alternate ending from the farmer.

• Milk

• difficulty sourcing to particular dairy, even specialty brand. Cf. Pure Eire dairy [1]
• Natural behaviors: form friendships, have emotional lives, experience pleasure on figuing something out. [2]
• Lawnel Farm: about 900 cows, semi-industrial. cows indoors all the time, but not tied down, caves separated almost immediately, treatment of downers (
• BST (from wiki page: rBST has not been allowed on the market in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, or the European Union since 2000. Argentina also banned the use of rBST. The FDA, World Health Organization, and National Institutes of Health have independently stated that dairy products and meat from BST-treated cows are safe for human consumption. In the United States, public opinion led some manufacturers and retailers to market only milk that is rBST-free.)
• Fate of male dairy cows. Ethics of veal production. Short life of confinement. Veal production down, but calves often made into pet food (digression on eat production for our carnivorous pets. yikes.) Now mostly raised for beef, veal in decline [3]
• air pollution from dairy and cattle production.

• Beef cows

• Journalist buying calves: Pollan's is "534" - gets growth hormone implant, banned in EU. Problem of feeding a forager grain instead of grass. unnatural diet. "feedlot bloat"
• History of regulation of meat products as cattle feed after mad cow outbreak. [4] FDA did ban "beef blood" and other animal products in feed. [5]
• Feedlot runoff: evidence of environment damage in fish alteration in stream with runoff. "endocrine disruption" manure injection in fields.
• Australian ranch: example of "happy meat" -- like "crowd cow"?
• Ethics of slaughter - some improvement in first time success. also an area in which Temple Grandin has been influential. traditional slaughter methods, like kosher and halaal are touted as humane when performed properly.

• Additional sources:

• US Veal production: [6]
• Local Organic certified grass fed dairy: [7]
• Mad Cow Outbreak / Regulation timeline: [8]
• The Secret Life of cows: [9]
• Cow trauma: [10]

Estabrook, "Hogonomics"

• Journalist on a quest to Flying Pigs Farm to discover diff bt $15.00 lb and $3.49 lb pork. comparison

• FP farm: 750 pigs/yr, breeding rates, heritage pigs retain natural behaviors vs. industrial sows' life, living condition diff, labor diff,
• Differences in slaughter and "kill fee". Saline injected pink meat. Implied value difference.

Some "Ethical Diets" Logic

• Very traditional arguments: meat is toxic. Largely discredited, but see Lancet article on carcinogenicity. Health considerations support reduction of meat consumption, but not elimination.

• Traditional arguments: Suffering and Rights

• Suffering: Consider the welfarist position a baseline. "What sourcing choices does that exclude?" Then ask, "Does the animal suffer the loss of its life?"

• Yes: Continuity of life has obvious value to both humans and animals.
• Yes, but: You might agree with the premise of the Yes answer, but argue that "suffering from loss of life" is not suffering you are responsible for.
• Yes and No: Depends upon the level of sentience. Continuum from plant sentience.
• No: Categorical difference between the way a human "has a life" and the way an animal does.

• Rights: Strength of rights position depends upon basis for asserting rights. (Zoopolis takes us into this -- sentience, selfhood, personhood)

• Stronger views: If basic rights include life and liberty, hard to see how you can have rights but not a right not to be eaten.
• Weaker views: Trophic relationships matter. Prey have rights, but not right not to be eaten. Domesticated animals are domesticated prey.

• Less Traditional Arguments: Ecology and Co-evolution

• Ecological or Sustainability arguments

How inefficient is meat production? (Simon Fairlie is taking us into this question.)

Is some animal agriculture justified by waste avoidance?

• Co-evolution arguments.

• Weakness of "It's natural" arguments.
• Stronger version: Our very identity (and the identity of domesticated animals and pets) is tied to co-evolution with animals and agriculture itself. (Recall Montanari.)
• Problems with co-evolutionary arguments: Tend to be retrospective, but they do help explain resistance to ethically based dietary change.

Donaldson & Klymika, "Introduction," Zoopolis

• animal advocacy at impasse. did many goood things, but crowding out animals and eating them industrially (the "Eternal Treblinka") are big failures.
• Some, like Francione, oppose "ameliorist" positions because they can legitimate exploitation.
• Want a new moral framework: "on that connects the treatment of animals more directly to fundamental principles of liberal -democratic justice and human rights." 3
• Three typical positions:

• welfarist -- humans above animals. can make use of them.
• ecological -- focused on health of ecosystems, not nec. standing of individuals in them.
• animal rights (ART) -- equal basic rights of life and liberty (note this is a particular "strength level" of an ART thesis. Could be stronger (a little) or weaker. Problem: Why is ART so ineffective? (People prefer the other two.)

• Their criticism of the AR movement: too narrow, focused on universal negative rights (not to be owned, killed, confined, tortured, etc.) Only applied to sentient animals.
• Positive rights include: respecting habitat, designing human infrastructure in consideration of animals, rescue, obligations to dependent animals (like pets). Also "relational duties" -- might have different obligations to animals we have domesticated then animals self-dom. or wild.
• (7) An odd effect of traditional ART is to want to separate humans and animals. Francione accepts disappearance of domesticated animals. D&K argue against this vision. We are in relationship with lots of animals as a matter of course. human / animal relationship is not inherently suspect 10.
• Another problem with traditional ART: overstates diff with ecologists. AR advocates need to defend habitat. Not always at odds with ecologists.

• Problems with relational approaches: focus on specific relationships (like companions) rather than a generalized theory, mistakenly posed as alternative to ART. need for a relational theory that is "political" Focusing on "citizenship" since that involves specific positive duties and responsibilities. Some good analogies at p. 14.

Fairlie, Simon. Meat: An Extravagance, C1

• C1

• Locates his argument: agrees with social justice arguments about diverting food from poor to rich meat eaters, but doesn't accept vegan conclusion that no meat eating is acceptable. Only focused on environmental arguments, not other moral argument.

• Sees himself as agreeing with vegans about premises, but not conclusions.

• C2

• Interesting history to tell about nomadic cow/horse cultures and sedentary pig cultures and how they meet (ha!) in Europe. (American culture is cow culture, perhaps because of European migration West.)
• Different efficiency ratios for pigs. twice cows. (ruminants vs. monogastrics)
• Detail: After Black Death, demand for field crops declines, use of fodder crops allowed more animal to be kept over winter.
• Tracks emergence of "hog culture" in parts of US. role of refrigeration favoring cows. Pig meat can be cured more easily.

• C3

• Lays out the environmental case against meat. Agrees with it. Claims it's a problem for all luxuries. (Note argument strategy.)
• Environmental inefficiency of meat a concern prior to climate concerns. 50% of arable land in UK devoted to meat production.
• Starts discussion of efficiency:

• Trophic levels -- energy loss at each level accounts for need for larger inputs. p. 13 read: "By choosing to eat fish ...."
• "feed conversion" ratio -- based on percent of energy retained by animal from feed.
• parallel "land-take" ratio -- how frugally or extravagantly land can be used to produce food. Expressed as in Singer ""plant food yield about ten times as much protein per acre as meat does" (Long discussion of the 10:1 ratio initially suggests by Shelley! Variation by animal/meat type.
• turns to ag information to calculate feed conversion from expected grain needed to full weight for slaughter, then subtract non-meat part of the beast. You get about 10:1 for a cow.
• CAST vs. CIWF

• Beef is only 20% of consumption. Conversion ratios for other animals are better. Comparing CIWF (vegan oriented analysis) and CAST (meat industry analysis).
• Ultimately skeptical of CAST claim of little to no difference between animal / plant efficiency, but agrees with some of the reasons for lowering the ratios.

• 1. Nutritive value of meat, value of by products, values of fodder crops.
• 2. Animals consume food humans can't/don't eat.

• Nutritional Value -- sketchy claim here 1.4 times plant. But yields of basic nutrients should be factored in somehow along with pound for pound analysis.
• By Products -- p. 22 Mention bone broth. Value of byproducts in carcass declining due to competition from other sources. value of the cow's skin, by weight, greater than beef.
• Crop yields. Corn as a feed grain is more efficient than wheat and rice, though humans prefer wheat and rice as a staple. Skeptical of some CAST claims here, but agrees that conversion ratio goes down if the fodder crop has a higher energy yield (or lower ag inputs like water).
• The Global Pig Bucket -- foods we can't eat (grass, straw, stalks), foods we won't eat (partially spoiled, residues of food processing, kitchen waste, slaughter waste).