Hi Ulrik—I’m not aware of farms which have slaughter facilities on-site (is this more common in the US than in the UK maybe?) and the ‘small, local high welfare farm’ is also a bit of a myth. The majority of farmed animals (85% in the UK, 99% in the US) are factory-farmed (i.e. raised in the most intensive conditions), are killed at a fraction of their natural lifespans, transported and killed in high-speed slaughterhouses—whilst abuses have been documented in both large and small ‘local’ slaughter facilities. The 2 conditions / requirements you have stipulated in your post are hypothetical / wishful-thinking type scenarios which are, unfortunately, not borne out by the realities of farming and killing billions of animals for consumption.
“The majority of farmed animals (85% in the UK, 99% in the US) are factory-farmed (i.e. raised in the most intensive conditions)”
But the majority of cows and sheep are not factory farmed. All chickens are factory farmed and they are many. On the other hand, ruminants are often raised from pastures, as anybody driving in the coutryside can check by herself.
Nor in Scandinavia. Driving, or riding trains, you often see cows grazing on pastures. Of course, that is not in the slaughterhouse, or when their young are taken away from them, but I still wonder whether their life on average is worse than mine. (I am also going to die one day, and adjusted for my greater understanding I am not sure mine will be a more pleasant death than a cow’s.)
Ok that’s good to know—I will probably be pretty vegan going forward. By the way I love all the hard evidence here on the EAF about animal welfare. It really makes me viscerally upset about the scale of abuse we currently inflict on our feathered and four-legged friends. So thanks to you and everyone else on further opening my eyes and heart to this.
Hi Ulrik—I’m not aware of farms which have slaughter facilities on-site (is this more common in the US than in the UK maybe?) and the ‘small, local high welfare farm’ is also a bit of a myth. The majority of farmed animals (85% in the UK, 99% in the US) are factory-farmed (i.e. raised in the most intensive conditions), are killed at a fraction of their natural lifespans, transported and killed in high-speed slaughterhouses—whilst abuses have been documented in both large and small ‘local’ slaughter facilities. The 2 conditions / requirements you have stipulated in your post are hypothetical / wishful-thinking type scenarios which are, unfortunately, not borne out by the realities of farming and killing billions of animals for consumption.
“The majority of farmed animals (85% in the UK, 99% in the US) are factory-farmed (i.e. raised in the most intensive conditions)”
But the majority of cows and sheep are not factory farmed. All chickens are factory farmed and they are many. On the other hand, ruminants are often raised from pastures, as anybody driving in the coutryside can check by herself.
Nor in Scandinavia. Driving, or riding trains, you often see cows grazing on pastures. Of course, that is not in the slaughterhouse, or when their young are taken away from them, but I still wonder whether their life on average is worse than mine. (I am also going to die one day, and adjusted for my greater understanding I am not sure mine will be a more pleasant death than a cow’s.)
Ok that’s good to know—I will probably be pretty vegan going forward. By the way I love all the hard evidence here on the EAF about animal welfare. It really makes me viscerally upset about the scale of abuse we currently inflict on our feathered and four-legged friends. So thanks to you and everyone else on further opening my eyes and heart to this.