Eating less meat saves lives

Reducing meat consumption by 30% could save 18,000 lives from premature heart disease each year according to the UK Government’s chief medical officer. Sir Liam Donaldson is also quoted in the Daily Mail as saying, “Our diet is warming the planet. It is also damaging our health. Changing our diet is difficult, but doing so would both help slow climate change and bring significant health benefits.”

Clearly, the debate around sustainable diets is heating up. As we’ve discussed before, farm animal welfare has an increasingly central part to play in future food policy, especially when it comes to the careful use of limited resources. The global impact of factory farming is huge. An area of land equivalent to the size of the European Union is used to grow feed for farm animals. Yet these crops could provide valuable food directly for the 1 billion people who go to bed hungry each night. On average, to produce 1kg of animal protein requires nearly 6kg of protein in the form of feed grains.

Globally, livestock production is escalating and is predicted to double to 120 billion farm animals a year by mid-Century. Large numbers of animals in small spaces on factory farms can lead to environmental degradation and threats to our health as well as unimaginable animal suffering.

This latest newspaper article adds further fuel to calls for a change in our food system; one that aims to feed people with decent, quality food, sustainably produced.

Vote Cruelty Free

Although the UK general election must be held on or before 3 June, it is increasingly likely that it will take place on Thursday, May 6 when local elections are already scheduled to occur. This means the general election could be less than two months away. In October I wrote about our involvement with the Vote Cruelty Free campaign. Our goal in this campaign is to ensure that the political process reflects public concern for animal welfare. So far, more than 225 Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) have signed up in support of the Vote Cruelty Free manifesto.

We recently held a reception at the House of Commons to promote the Vote Cruelty free campaign. This is run by a non-partisan coalition, which also includes the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, International Fund for Animal Welfare and Respect for Animals. The reception provided us with a good opportunity to meet with existing MPs, PPCs and representatives from the political parties.

Representatives from the Conservative, Green, Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties were among the guests. Representatives from each party were invited to say why they thought animal welfare was an important political issue.

The event was hosted by Bob Russell, Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, who welcomed everyone to the reception. He spoke for many of us in saying the welfare of animals was so important that it shouldn’t be party political. He talked about the campaign against live exports, which Compassion helped to lead in the 1990s, when its focus was on the small port of Brightlingsea near his constituency. He drew the parallel between this and the proposed “super” dairy in Lincolnshire, which we are campaigning against today.

Liberal Democrat LordRupert Redesdale was the first representative to speak on behalf of the four political parties. Lord Redesdale asked us to remember the House of Lords as part of Parliament and urged us to work with them on animal welfare issues.

Veterinary surgeon Caroline Allen from the Green Party stated their support for our report, Eating the Planet, which we co-produced with Friends of the Earth. The Green Party’s policy is to phase out factory farming and promote grass-based pastoral and permaculture systems. The Green Party, she said, is very committed to animal welfare.

Stalwart animal welfare campaigner Roger Gale, Conservative MP for North Thanet and President of the Conservative Animal Welfare Group, also spoke about the cross-party political significance of animal welfare. Referring to the Vote Cruelty Free manifesto which included an unequivocal statement opposing the seal hunt in Canada, he said he was saddened by how some of the issues remain stubbornly on the agenda, despite years of public outcry.

Labour Animal Welfare Minister Jim Fitzpatrick reviewed the government’s track record (including its part in EU bans on barren battery cages and sow stalls). He went on to announce that the Government plans additional steps on so-called dangerous dogs, wild animals in circuses, game birds and farm animal welfare standards in Public Sector Food Procurement.

I was encouraged by these positive expressions of support. I believe there is scope for us to make further progress on animal welfare, whichever party forms the next government. Our particular focus will be on the following demands from the Vote Cruelty Free manifesto:

• Export of animals for slaughter or fattening should be brought to an end
• ‘Enriched’ cages for egg laying hens should be prohibited
• Government must enforce the EU legislation requiring pigs to be provided with enrichment materials and prohibiting routine tail docking
• Animal welfare should be seen as one of the core objectives of Government food policy.

As the Election draws ever nearer, please join our Vote Cruelty Campaign. Have the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates in your constituency signed up? To find out if they have, go to Vote Cruelty Free now!

Industrialisation of dairy

Milk has long been associated with images of cows gently chewing the cud in fields of grass. Not for much longer it seems. If given the go-ahead, a proposed new dairy enterprise in Lincolnshire could see 8,100 high-yielding dairy cows kept, for much of the time, indoors. This American-style “super dairy”, as it’s been described in the media, would represent a serious leap in the industrialisation of dairy farming in the UK.

It’s a proposal that raises many questions. Speaking to a group of dairy farmers near Oxford recently, I asked what they saw as the benefit of a “super-dairy”. The room fell silent. Not surprising as the proposal could well increase competition in an already crowded and commoditised market. And putting things into perspective, the average dairy farm in the UK has a herd size of less than 130 cows, so says the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC). The scale of this proposal therefore represents the equivalent of 60 or more average-sized farms entering a sector subject to long term economic pressure.

According to FAWC, the low profitability of dairy farming has led to a lack of investment which may have hindered progress on animal welfare. The last decade or so has seen the number of dairy farms decline by 43% whilst UK cow numbers are down by 20%. Over the same period, milk yield per cow has increased by 28%. So the national picture is of fewer farms, fewer cows overall, with individual cows being worked harder to produce more milk.

What are the likely impacts of the proposed super-dairy for the cows? Well, it could well increase the pressure toward even greater milk yield per cow. And in taking the animals off the land and indoors for most of the year, it will separate the cows from the pasture for which they are adapted.

All this comes against the backdrop of serious welfare issues already in the dairy sector. Whilst most cows are kept seasonally outdoors, modern breeds of dairy cow often produce so much milk that many suffer lameness and mastitis. Indeed, the UK is said to have the worst incidence of dairy cattle lameness in the world. About 55% of dairy cows go lame in any one year, compared with a worldwide level of 26%. Contributory factors include poor housing and diets combined with breeding regimes that often push milk production beyond natural limits causing inevitable suffering. Mastitis, a painful inflammatory disease of the udder, is also rife in the UK dairy herd with over 1 million cases per annum.

Here at Compassion, we are campaigning hard against the industrialisation of dairy. We are opposed to this mega-dairy proposal. We believe that it flies in the face of welfare-friendly farming and the wishes of consumers for more ethical food. If you agree, please join our campaign and keep up-to-date with how you can get involved. Let’s help keep cows on grass where they belong, and help end the overzealous industrialisation of food and farming. Thank you for your support.