Hello all, I am posting this on behalf of one of our students in animal science, Keena Mullen, with whom I shared this interesting discussion thread and she wishes to provide her insights on the topic. Her e-mail address is below if you wish to correspond to her directly. Cheers!
Yasmin From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keena Mullen Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 9:12 AM To: Yasmin J. Cardoza Cc: CEFS List; Wilmer Pacheco-Dominguez; David Rosero Tapia; Santa Mendoza Benavides Subject: Re: [cefslist] FW: [ECOLOG-L] Livestock practice and ethics Hi all, Here is the response that I sent to Dr. Ganter last night. I received your post on the ECOLOG-list from Yasmin Cardoza at NCSU. I am a PhD candidate in Animal Science at North Carolina State University, and I would like to respond to your comments. I won't be able to address all of your questions, but I would like to give you some points to ponder. One of the major challenges that Animal Science faces is to produce animals more efficiently so that we can feed the ever-growing population with less land and resources. In order to do this, we have studied management strategies to increase production of food from animals. These strategies include those you mentioned - beak trimming, hormone usage, and "mass rearing facilities". Many animal science programs around the country have a mandatory animal welfare/animal well-being class that undergraduate students take. In addition, research in recent years has focused on animal welfare and assessing the natural behaviors of livestock, so that we can more adequately allow these animals to express their natural behaviors. One example of this research is the work of Dr. Temple Grandin, with whom you may be familiar. Her work on cattle handling has greatly decreased the stress of cattle heading to slaughter and her recommendations are being put into place worldwide. Another major issue that Animal Science is dealing with in regards to increasing efficiency is that many consumers do not seem to care how their meat has been produced. I say this, because consumers in the United States spend very little of their income on food ( <http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-spending-less> http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-spending-less) relative to other countries. Consumers demand cheap meat, so we strive to come up with technologies to produce it more efficiently. Of course, there are people who are concerned about where their food comes from, and that growing segment of the population is demanding change. I work with pasture-based and organic dairies and I see the great future in the market for these operations - many are also Animal Welfare Approved. This label is one way that consumers can make choices on purchasing food that will affect change in animal production. Regarding the "ag-gag laws", I would like for you to think for a moment from the side of a farmer. Let's say you own a company, and you have a suspicion that your employees are doing something terribly wrong, but they seem to be doing their job and you don't find any evidence that they are doing something punishable. Your company is expanding and you decide to hire on a few more people. The next thing you know, those bad things you had suspicions about are posted all over YouTube by one of your recent hires. Your reputation is ruined, and your company has a black mark because you hired in someone that you trusted and, instead of telling you what was going on, they video taped it for the whole world to see. My interpretation of the "ag-gag laws" is to prevent these types of untrustworthy people from being hired and destroying farms from the inside out. I agree, farmers should be more transparent about what they are doing to their livestock. I just think this can be accomplished by people visiting farms to learn about where their food comes from, rather than from a sensational YouTube video that may have been provoked by an animal rights detective. I know that this does not answer your posed questions, but I thought I might pass on some "food for thought". <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Yasmin J. Cardoza <[email protected]> wrote: I thought this might be of interest to some of you...it definitely got me thinking how little we usually think about this subject... -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ganter, Philip Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 3:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Livestock practice and ethics Ecologgers: Two items caught my attention today. One was a NPR interview program on the recent internet buzz over the Chinese government's supposed eugenics program (specifically, plans to breed for increased intelligence). The other was a story read on the Atlantic website: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/how-state-ag-gag-laws-co <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/how-state-ag-gag-laws-c ould-stop-animal-cruelty-whistleblowers/273962/> uld-stop-animal-cruelty-whistleblowers/273962/ concerning legislative efforts to gag those who would inform the public about currently common livestock practices. What tied the two together for me were these two interlinked questions: How many of the problematic production techniques (mass rearing facilities, hormone manipulation, beak trimming, etc.) referred to in the Atlantic article were developed in university agronomy facilities and to what degree are research agronomists ethically responsible for the effect that the techniques they develop do not violate the animal welfare standards we must apply to research animals? Is there a connection here? Do research animals deserve better welfare than farm animals? If so, why so? The answer can't be that farm animals are destined for the slaughterhouse in any case. Many research animals are "sacrificed". I ask these questions in a sincere desire for both information and others thoughts. I don't know who develops these techniques or how schools of agriculture treat the ethical question and would love to hear from someone who does. Why on ecolog? I am an ecologist and know that, before the rise of ecology departments, the connection between agriculture and ecology was much closer than today. Even though many ecologists are found at schools with no agriculture, I still feel connected and perhaps other ecologists do as well. The circle will be completed. It's already happening (think of the LME movement in Fishery Science). In any case, I was disturbed by the thought that university research may be behind common livestock practices that are so abhorrent to the public that the agriculture industry seeks to deprive the public of its right to know about them. Are we complicit? Phil Ganter Dept. of Biological Sciences Tennessee State University (a 1890 Land Grant HBCU) The CEFSlist is a listserv for CEFS associates and affiliates used to communicate within the organization. Please contact [email protected] to change your settings. -- Keena Mullen Graduate Student in Animal Science North Carolina State University [email protected]
