Don’t Confuse Animal Welfare with Animal Abuse

I have been debeaked. Mistreatment?

Truer words were never spoken! Don’t do it, people. No matter how much you may want to confuse animal welfare with animal abuse, bust out your dictionaries and do your due diligence.

These are the words of Dan Thomson who is also Dan Thomson, DVM. According to Mr. Thompson, animal rights activists don’t care about animal abuse, they just care about ending animal agriculture. If animal agriculture wasn’t such a hotbed of animal abuse action, animal rights activists would definitely need to re-prioritize.  But, it seems to me that denying an animal the right to live for an end-product most of us don’t need to survive is pretty bad welfare.

We control their reproduction. We control their bodies and, when we see fit, we mutilate them. In the case of farmed animals, all the mutilation is done without pain relief – the de-beaking, de-toeing, de-horning, tail docking, ear notching, branding…all ways we inflict suffering in order to mold another living being to suit our needs. We breed them to be fat, to gain weight at such a rapid clip that, in the case of “meat” birds, all 9.3 billion of them can be killed at the age of 6-weeks. Six weeks! We take babies from mothers, separate lifelong friends, deny natural mating. We twist their natural biology and turn it into something artificial and deadly – ovarian cancer in the White Leghorn exists because we bred them to produce 300 eggs a year, 3-5 times more than normal. We put them in cages so small they cannot turn around or in cement pens or dry lots.

Call me crazy for wanting to see that end. To see their suffering, so great and seemingly insurmountable in its magnitude, stop.

But Thomson goes further, saying that activist groups, “play emotionally on the bond between humans and animals.”

Stop the presses, people! Activist groups a) believe there IS a bond between humans and animals and b) uses that bond to, you know, get folks to empathize and stuff. Well, they should just stop that. Be like Thomson’s farmers – cold, emotionless, made of sterner, stronger stuff, free of the human bonds that tie us all together and all that.

Oh. Another thing. Happy cows? Happy cows. Say it, happy cows. The entire “Happy Cow” campaign hinges upon our ability to empathize with the cow. No matter that the Milk Advisory Board is twisting the truth, the fact is that the campaign relies on the happy feel-good emotion tied with knowing an animal is content, feeling good about life. Or, poor, sad, family farmer. See how they suffer. See how they struggle to make ends meet. Goodness, don’t you feel sorry for them – emotional, even? Or, farmers love their animals. They feed them. House them in warm barns. They cry when one is sick or when they go to slaughter. I read article after article, see campaign after campaign, in which agribusiness groups play off of the emotions of their audience.

So, in the interest of fairness, animal rights activists can be the kettle if you will be the pot, Thomson and company.

I will leave you with this quote from a farmer, a quote I have heard from thousands of farmers. A variation on a theme. “I really get angry when I hear the animal rights people go after agriculture. They don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s not in our interest to mistreat animals.”

Because, as you know, nothing says “kind treatment” like a captive bolt gun to the head and a knife to the neck. In fact, you’re probably signing up right now for the gold-star farm treatment, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?!?