Animal Writings

This is third of three posts that discuss why you should reduce meat and dairy from your diet as much as possible. The first two posts presented health and environmental reasons. This post looks at animal cruelty. After that, we will focus on how to replace animal products with plant-derived ingredients—without giving up taste or significantly changing your routine. You will, however, almost certainly increase the diversity, satisfaction, and healthfulness of your diet.

This post is not a comprehensive treatise on the cruelty and suffering—or, for that matter, the moral transgressions—involved in the raising and killing of animals for food. That would require a book.

Where to start? Perhaps with this: All the animals who are killed for food are individuals. Any of you who have lived with more than one dog or cat know that each one is unique, with his or her own personality. A dog or cat may be gregarious or shy; assertive or timid; active or a couch potato; easily bored or satisfied with a comfortable routine; an explorer or a passive observer. If you've interacted much with companion animals, you've probably noticed their unique quirks, preferences, and habits. You've picked up on—and maybe been amazed by—their emotional capacity: Their joy when playing, their anticipation of a tasty meal, their affection toward their human and non-human friends, their fear of danger, their depression when they're sick, and their grief when they lose a long-time companion.

It's no different with cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, lambs, sheep, or goats—or any other animals on farms or being trucked to the slaughterhouse. I've gotten to know many of these animals; each one is different from any of the others. They have as broad a range of personality and emotions as companion animals. All have the capacity to feel joy and sadness; all of their lives have meaning to them, and none want to die, unless they are on death's door and in severe agony. In many deep respects, they are just like our dogs and cats, and just like us.

Please take a look at these pictures and video, for a brief overview of modern animal farming. You should know what it is you're causing—what you're financing—whenever you buy meat or order it at a restaurant. That alone might compel you to reduce your meat consumption.

Chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse

A baby chick getting her beak amputated with a searing hot blade. The ends of chickens' beaks are filled with nerves. The chicks are given no painkillers during this operation. In fact, farmed animals are never given painkillers when portions of their bodies are amputated.

Pigs who died on their way to slaughter

A pig being castrated without anesthesia

An introduction to how turkey meat is produced. In the video, the mutilations, painful procedures, and slow deaths are inflicted on newborn turkeys. This is their introduction to the world.

Similar cruelties and suffering occur at dairies and egg farms. All those animals are killed, too, at young ages, and almost all of them are subject to horrific conditions throughout their lives. In fact, please view one more set of pictures—a brief slide show of large dairy farms in California, where they like to boast of pampered cows in lush pastures. Note the difference between the commercials and the reality.

It's not hard to find extended suffering and brutal mistreatment of animals in all phases of the agriculture business, including breeding, auctioning, raising, "culling" (destroying animals who aren't market-worthy), transporting, and slaughtering. Here are a few excerpts:

From Animals' Angels:




In January, 2007, Animals' Angels "filmed Sara Lee turkeys in cages being trucked to slaughter in Iowa with broken legs, missing toes, and frostbite on their heads and toes. Some birds appeared to be dead, others were crammed into a broken container, and there was a large amount of blood on top of one of the cages. Birds and cages were caked with feces and once the trailer arrived at the slaughter plant (at 6:30 pm), the turkeys had to sit for 2 more hours in the open cold as the trucks waited in line to enter the plant." (As summarized by United Poultry Concerns)

Sara Lee turkey products are sold under the brand names Hillshire Farms, Jimmy Dean, and Ball Park.

Keep in mind that this is just the very tip of the iceberg.

What about "free range?"

"Free range" tends to be a far-fetched exaggeration. A "free range" operation can mean ten thousand birds confined in a dark, ammonia-filled shed with a door in the back that's open an hour each day and leads to an uncovered, muddy area that's big enough for a hundred birds. That's all legal.

Don't believe any of the pictures on packages; don't trust any of the producers' claims. Here's a photoessay of a "free range" turkey farm that supplies turkeys to Whole Foods. "Free range" in this case, like so many other cases, is a cruel farce.

I'm not trying to single out Whole Foods; in fact they're better than most grocery stores. The dishonesty and deception is widespread.

Smaller farms can be just as bad as large industrial farms. Far too many eyewitness accounts show animals starving to death, sick animals neglected and left to suffer and die, animals outside in 95-degree heat with no shade or water, excessive cruelty in prodding animals onto slaughterhouse-bound trucks, violent "culls" of unmarketable pigs, and more. The animals on smaller farms, just like on larger farms, typically—depending on their species—have their horns, testicles, toes, teeth, beaks, and tails amputated without painkillers. The animals are fattened up at a hyper rate due to intensive breeding and feed additives. Dairy cows have their calves taken from them—permanently—when only two days old. The animals are subject to the same gruesome transport and slaughter as their brethren imprisoned in larger factory farms.

Here's one more story, about a naive meat-eating couple who, after witnessing the realities of "free-range" farming up close, decided to change their lives and provide a haven for those animals instead. [Note that the story is continued on page 2 of the PDF document, but you need to scroll down to near the end of the document to see that part of page 2.]


Nine out of ten animals killed for food in the U.S. are chickens.

"Broiler" chickens—their fate embedded in their names—are killed at only seven weeks old. Some are still peeping. They've been engineered to grow at super-fast rates. They're the equivalent of human children weighing over 300 pounds. Many die of heart attacks. Others fall over and can't get back up because their legs can't support their oversized upper bodies; they slowly die of dehydration, even though they may be within inches of water. This is all due to the public's demand for cheap "white meat."

The chickens are starved for one to four days before their slaughter, because their last meals wouldn't have enough time to be converted to sellable meat. The day of their slaughter, they're grabbed by their legs and stuffed into cages on trucks. Several chickens may be crammed into each cage.

Once at the slaughterhouse, they may sit on the truck for another one to twelve hours. Then they're yanked out of their cages and hung by their feet in shackles. At this point they're on the moving slaughterhouse line. Each chicken is dunked head-first into an electrically charged trough of water that paralyzes their muscles but does not knock them out. An employee called the "cutter" attempts to sever both of the chicken's carotid arteries. But because the process is so rushed, and some birds are improperly hung, he may miss the mark, with the result that the chicken will be fully alive and conscious—but still paralyzed—as he or she is submerged in a "scalding tank" of near-boiling water that loosens feathers from the chicken's body.

I haven't talked much about eggs, mostly to save space. But here are some facts you may not know about egg production. Hens in commercial egg facilities have been engineered to lay up to ten times the number of eggs they would lay in the wild. This robs the hens of calcium and other nutrients, leaving their bones weak and brittle. The intense egg-laying frequency also increases the chances of painful conditions such as prolapse, in which the egg sticks to the uterine wall. At the hatcheries that produce laying hens, all the newborn male chicks are killed because they're of no economic use to the producers. The laying hens themselves are slaughtered when they're between one and two years old. They may be killed by the same torturous methods as those used on broiler chickens, or they may be disposed of in other gruesome ways, such as being thrown into a macerator, which is basically a wood-chipping machine. For more information, see www.noeggs.org.

There is a myth that farmers have to take good care of their animals or the animals won't produce. On today's farms, almost the exact the opposite is true. Animals are kept in hideous conditions, and they're confined so they won't burn up calories and cost more to feed. Farms only have to keep broiler chickens alive for seven weeks. Genetic manipulation makes them grow at ridiculous rates during that brief time. Even under the best conditions, at farm sanctuaries, these birds suffer from a host of problems and don't live long. Likewise, laying hens' "productivity" is a function of genetic tinkering and environmental tricks such as near-constant lighting that makes their bodies lay more eggs. By the time these hens are the equivalent of teenagers and are slaughtered, they look miserable and often are filled with disease.

Undercover investigations at slaughterhouses typically reveal cruelties and suffering that go beyond what I've described and that are outside the scope of this post. Investigators witness sadistic acts such as employees impaling live chickens on spikes, jamming steel rods into pigs' anuses, and throwing turkeys full force against a concrete wall. Imagine being in a job where you were soaked with blood and killed animals every day, with such rapidity that you ceased to see the animals as individuals. Add to that the repetition of the job, the long hours, the low pay, and the almost non-existent benefits. Some of the workers take out their pent-up frustration on the animals. The animals, unfortunately, are an easy target. Slaughterhouses are saturated with violence. The non-humans are brutally killed, but there is a human toll, too. Remember, you support all this when you buy meat, as well as when you buy dairy, eggs, and products such as muffins and soup that contain animal-derived ingredients.

Now, there's little to be gained from getting disgusted, angry, or depressed and then not being able to do anything about it. Fortunately, that's not the case here. Your choice of which foods to buy and eat can make a huge difference in terms of your health, your environmental footprint, and your contribution to animal suffering.

But it may go beyond that. Reducing your meat and animal product consumption may also give you peace of mind. Most people are decent and do not really want to harm animals if they can help it. But we get stuck in our ways. We eat what we're used to, what's convenient, and what others are eating. We don't think about this, but we become emotionally attached to our diets. They're comfortable. If we're eating roughly the same foods as our friends, co-workers, and relatives, we're never the "odd man out;" and it's nice to fit in—as much as we may like to consider ourselves independent and above all that.

So in the back of our minds we're uncomfortable with the suffering and death we inflict on animals (and maybe with the negative impact we're having on the environment and on our long-term health). We push those thoughts out of our mind, or we make rationalizations. But the disconnect ultimately takes a toll.

When your diet is more in line with your deepest goals and your morals, it relieves you of a burden you may never have even realized you had. It improves your relationship with the earth and its creatures, and it brings you peace of mind.

For most people in the West—where we have an abundance of foods all year long—the barriers to reducing meat and dairy consumption are almost all psychological. True, there are exceptions; some people have unusual dietary needs or health conditions that impede their efforts to replace meat with vegetarian alternatives. In those cases, a veg-friendly dietitian may be of great benefit. But for the vast majority of people in this part of the world, their reasons for not cutting meat consumption and trying vegetarian main dishes are primarily mental and emotional.

One persistent barrier is a reluctance to give up familiar routines and favorite foods. That's perfectly understandable. If you take a vacation to Japan, you may decide to become absorbed in the culture while you're there and eat miso rice and soup for breakfast each day. Even if you go to France, another Western country, you may do as the French do and eat a baguette with jam or Nutella every day for breakfast. But when you get home, chances are close to 100 percent that you'll settle back into your normal eating patterns, which may consist of cereal and toast for breakfast. You'll be enriched by your overseas experience but be glad to be eating familiar foods once again.

It's not that cereal and toast makes any more sense than miso soup and rice for breakfast. It's what you're used to. We grow attached to our comfort foods.

My observation is that this fear of having to give up everything that's comfortable and replace it with things that are strange is an impediment to people changing their diets, and specifically trying vegetarian foods.

My goal in the next several posts is to show you easy, unstressful ways to reduce meat and dairy and replace them with plant-based choices. I'm putting myself in your place, as though I were a somewhat skeptical meat-eater (which I used to be).

I'll start with a few straightforward substitutions, then move on to:

• Simple ways to boost the fruit, vegetable, whole grain, and/or legume content in your menu;


• Tips on how to vary and increase your enjoyment of dishes that you already eat that are vegetarian.


• Foods that may be new to you but that—alone or in combination with other ingredients—yield familiar tastes and textures.

Finally, we'll venture into slightly more exotic stuff as well as cooking hints.

I don't want to narrow the focus too much, but the primary audience I'm targeting is people who don't cook much and whose tastes are fairly conventional but are willing to try new things.

With the holiday approaching, I'll probably be pressed for time and have to add to the posts in small batches. I'll continue the convention of ending incomplete posts with More to follow....

If you are going to a faraway land that has limited Internet access, have a great holiday, snack on Smokehouse Almonds instead of cheese, graciously bring some (spoiler alert!) Silk Nog to your hosts' house, don't fight with your relatives, and check out the series when you get back!

To be continued...

Labels: chicken, chickens, defense mechanisms, diet, eggs, nog, slaughterhouses, violence