“life on any factory farm still stinks”—the term “humane farm” means to me not a factory farm, but one with actual net positive animal welfare (at least). Though I don’t know if that’s how it’s used in the book. From my reading about UK high-end organic farming, it seems to me that beef cows and pigs could have positive welfare overall, and so could chickens if their density were reduced even further than in organic systems. I’m not sure about sheep—it sounds like their lives may just be hard.
The reason I tried to break down the various meanings that the word ‘humane’ can have is exactly this: It is a confusing word, which is often used with the goal of deceiving. The whole point is to mean different things to different people.
Companies use the concept of ‘humane farming’ to make consumers think of old-fashioned, pasture-based farms where animals roam freely. It is a marketing term. But in reality, most of the time that a company talks about its farm being ‘humane,’ at least in the US, the company is actually still talking about a factory farm.
In the US (the only country I’m familiar with), the vast majority of meat comes from factory farms. Even “cage-free” or “free-range” meat usually comes from a factory farm.
Sometimes, ‘humane farming’ refers to factory farms that treat their animals a little better than the typical factory farm, and sometimes it just refers to a typical factory farm.
So I personally don’t think ‘humane farming’ a very useful concept for us to try to talk about. In my experience, when animal advocates talk about ‘humane farms,’ they are doing it with the goal of being sarcastic or disparaging. Their goal is basically to criticize certain farms for deceiving consumers. Perhaps that is why the book used the term, but again, I didn’t read it.
Those animal advocates who are focused on improving the treatment of animals in farms don’t usually talk about “humane farming,” in my experience. Instead, we would talk about ‘less cruel’ methods of production, or we would talk about specific practices that a farm has eliminated, like the use of battery cages or gestation crates.
As for non-factory-farms: I’m not actually sure what the best term for them is, since they come up so rarely in my work. Maybe you could call them “pasture-based farms,” “old-fashioned farms,” “small-scale farms”?
Yeah OK, the US seems a lot worse for this. UK organic (Soil Association) standards seem to be the best or nearly the best in the world as far as I know (but only a small fraction of meat is produced that way).
“life on any factory farm still stinks”—the term “humane farm” means to me not a factory farm, but one with actual net positive animal welfare (at least). Though I don’t know if that’s how it’s used in the book. From my reading about UK high-end organic farming, it seems to me that beef cows and pigs could have positive welfare overall, and so could chickens if their density were reduced even further than in organic systems. I’m not sure about sheep—it sounds like their lives may just be hard.
That makes sense.
The reason I tried to break down the various meanings that the word ‘humane’ can have is exactly this: It is a confusing word, which is often used with the goal of deceiving. The whole point is to mean different things to different people.
Companies use the concept of ‘humane farming’ to make consumers think of old-fashioned, pasture-based farms where animals roam freely. It is a marketing term. But in reality, most of the time that a company talks about its farm being ‘humane,’ at least in the US, the company is actually still talking about a factory farm.
In the US (the only country I’m familiar with), the vast majority of meat comes from factory farms. Even “cage-free” or “free-range” meat usually comes from a factory farm.
Sometimes, ‘humane farming’ refers to factory farms that treat their animals a little better than the typical factory farm, and sometimes it just refers to a typical factory farm.
So I personally don’t think ‘humane farming’ a very useful concept for us to try to talk about. In my experience, when animal advocates talk about ‘humane farms,’ they are doing it with the goal of being sarcastic or disparaging. Their goal is basically to criticize certain farms for deceiving consumers. Perhaps that is why the book used the term, but again, I didn’t read it.
Those animal advocates who are focused on improving the treatment of animals in farms don’t usually talk about “humane farming,” in my experience. Instead, we would talk about ‘less cruel’ methods of production, or we would talk about specific practices that a farm has eliminated, like the use of battery cages or gestation crates.
As for non-factory-farms: I’m not actually sure what the best term for them is, since they come up so rarely in my work. Maybe you could call them “pasture-based farms,” “old-fashioned farms,” “small-scale farms”?
Yeah OK, the US seems a lot worse for this. UK organic (Soil Association) standards seem to be the best or nearly the best in the world as far as I know (but only a small fraction of meat is produced that way).