Let’s hear it for McDonald’s, which has taken a step towards making the lives of the pigs it feeds to people a bit less brutal. It is requiring its pork suppliers to create plans for phasing out gestation crates, which I described in an earlier blog post:
Gestation crates are small metal cages only two feet wide that prevent pregnant pigs from turning around or even lying down comfortably. Sows spend most of their adult lives in these crates as they are inseminated soon after they give birth and thus kept pregnant over four out of every five months. Gestation crates cripple pregnant pigs and cause obesity. The fumes and toxins produced from the concentration of so many animals in one space sicken them (and the humans who “take care of” them). Pigs are smart, affectionate animals, and the constant confinement, lack of activity or stimulation, and pain lead to neurotic behaviors like biting the bars of their cages over and over, or chewing on nothing.
As the largest restaurant chain in the world, McDonald’s has the potential to eliminate gestation crates from the industry by refusing to patronize suppliers that use them. Unfortunately the company has not announced guidelines that factory farms will have to follow in place of gestation crates. Will sows have more space, or will they be crowded together though not in individual pens? Will they be able to socialize with each other? Will their environments allow them to satisfy their instinct to burrow and root around? And what about farrowing crates, where sows are caged and prevented from touching their piglets while they nurse?
The best announcement of all would be that McDonald’s and its competitors are going to stop feeding animals to people. But here in reality, let’s support the Humane Society of the United States, which worked with McDonald’s to create this policy to make farmed pigs’ short lives less miserable.
An update on my previous post, Factory Farms are Breeding More Than Cows: Agribusiness Antibiotic Abuse Creates Superbugs: the FDA has refused consumer advocates’ petitions to “limit the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals.” For an administration that claims it wants to improve health care, rendering some of our most important medications powerless is a funny way of showing it.
From a new study by the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology:
” ‘Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. Our studies show that this motivates people to deny minds to animals,’ ” researcher Dr. Brock Bastian said.
The university’s website continues, the “research demonstrates when people are confronted with the harm that their meat-eating brings to food animals they view those animals as possessing fewer mental capacities compared to when they are not reminded.
“The findings also reveal that this denial of mind to food animals is especially evident when people expect to eat meat in the near future.” In other words, people lie to themselves just to eat a burger.
Bastian calls this the “meat paradox.” It is a paradox for meat-eaters to tell themselves that animals don’t have minds because, of course, they do, and the very same people will acknowledge that in different contexts.
Meat isn’t just bad for the animals and for people’s health — it’s bad for people’s souls.
Congress and President Obama have managed to accomplish one thing together: legalizing the slaughter and human consumption of horses.
If horse meat catches on, it will be the first time in the U.S. that people will routinely eat animals who are commonly kept as companions. This will test the persuasiveness of the animal rights slogan, “if you love animals called pets, how can you eat animals called dinner?”
If it turns out that people can comfortably call the same animal both pet and dinner, then advocates for vegetarianism will have an even tougher time than they expected convincing people that meat is murder.
On the other hand, maybe all the little girls who ask for ponies for their birthdays will make the connection early on between the animals they love and the food they eat. Best case scenario: this cruel and gross law will create a new generation of vegetarians.
What to do with old clothes? The cotton industry has come up with an innovative answer, one that helps both the environment and people in need while clearing space in your closet: they will recycle your unwanted denim into home insulation and donate it to Habitat for Humanity and others who are building in needy communities. Get the details at CottonFromBlueToGreen.org. Just one more reason to buy and wear non-animal fibers.
