A Compassionate World

Sadly, we lost Hazy, one of our three adopted hens, recently despite urgent veterinary treatment for illness. As I sat with the other two hens, Hetty and Hope, I paused to reflect on life and its values. I watched as the two hens busily pecked the ground, seeking out herbs and grubs to eat. I thought about how, as sentient creatures, they not only have the capacity to sense pain and suffer, but also to experience positive emotions and well being. What happens to them matters to them, and that is why it also matters to me. Our chickens are the lucky ones. Sadly, there are many more whose individuality isn’t appreciated. Their intrinsic value isn’t respected, only their financial worth. Their individual needs don’t matter because they have no individual economic value. Their worth is seen in terms of their value as a crop to be harvested, just like potatoes. As Compassion’s co-founder, Peter Roberts, once said to me, “Factory farming begins where the individuality of an animal ends”.

Factory farming de-values animals. Animals are no longer assets but instead they become commodities to be transformed into products for human consumption. It’s time for this to stop for all our sakes. We must re-value animals as sentient beings and as an integral part of a new approach to agriculture. We need a way to produce food which is free-range, organic, sustainable and humane for both humans and animals. This is, of course, not new at all because these were the values surrounding food production for many years. I am not naive about the past but realistic about where we are today and honest about where we need to go tomorrow. Compassion is committed to ending factory farming in our lifetime. Our research shows that it is possible to feed the world by rejecting factory farming and replacing it with more extensive, humane livestock farming and responsible meat consumption. This is the recipe that we all need for ourselves, the animals, our environment and to mitigate against the effects of climate change.

We must stop perpetually reinventing factory farming. Something that is so fundamentally broken as factory farming cannot be fixed. A case in point is the proposed mega-dairy in Lincolnshire, England. The proposal is to establish a dairy farm with 8,000 cows kept intensively indoors. Currently in the UK, the average herd size for dairy cows is about 100. Many of the serious problems associated with factory farming come from keeping too many animals in too small a space. Calculations suggest that the animal waste, for example, from an 8,000 dairy cow farm could be equated to that from a town the size of Bristol! The age-old principle of working with the land and respecting its carrying capacity seems to be well forgotten if this proposal is anything to go by.

The future strategy we need to feed this country and, indeed, the world, is to take the best in how we farm extensively, sustainably today and combine it with new insights and best practice to optimise our food. This means investing in farmers who know how to farm responsibly. They need our support and encouragement to grow healthy and humane food for us to eat. We need to save these farmers from extinction. They are often under threat from the powerful interests that drive factory farming. These visionary farmers understand the importance of a human-scale, humane and sustainable approach to livestock farming. Farmers like these know their animals and understand that their true value is beyond more than just a financial one.

The pendulum has swung way too far in the direction of factory farming. It now needs to swing back to animals being kept more extensively, with greater space and wherever possible, with access to the outdoors. This is why I say we need to bring together long-established practices of extensive farming, including free-range and organic farming, and unite them with our growing understanding of animal sentience to ensure the well being of farm animals and the consequent food quality and other social benefits that flow from this. That is why Compassion works with the European Farmers Network (EFN), which is an association of farmers who are working to show that progress in sustainable food production is possible by, for example, developing a network of validated ‘demonstration’ farms. From my visits to farms like these, I have seen that it is possible to raise animals to high welfare standards. We are committed to helping EFN speak directly with political decision-makers, food companies and other farmers in the European Union and in countries throughout the world to help ensure humane principles are put into practice. Regrettably, we must also counter those who are exporting entire factory farming systems to, for example, Asia and Africa.

We all have a part to play in making sure factory farming is eradicated in our lifetime. We need to re-value animals so that they are treated as sentient beings who express individual preferences. We must work with farmers who truly treat animals humanely and care for the environment.

On a related note, I invite you to join me for our 2010 Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture in London on Monday, 20 September, 6:45 pm which is entitled, “Beef, Bread & Water: Ethical Food in a Warm and Thirsty World”. The expert panel of speakers will address such questions as what should we eat? Is organic food best? How much water do we use to produce a kilo of beef or chicken? And how can we achieve equitable food distribution? Advance booking is essential. Compassion supporters are entitled to a 50% discount on the standard rate of £25. Please call +44 (0)1483 521 953.

I look forward to seeing you!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 15:54 and is filed under General and is tagged animal sentience, hens, lecture. The entry was uploaded by Philip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.