To Market, to Market: Farmers Face Modern Dilemmas

In the generally accepted scheme of things, farm animals are viewed in this country as food -- and little else -- by most people and civil authorities, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Animal lives have value to today's modern mega-farms only as products that will yield the highest profit at market value.

That mindset is as wrong as it gets, contends Gene Baur, author of Farm Sanctuary, an indictment of the evils of so-called factory or industrial farming, a highly refined, assembly-line-like corporate system that subjects billions of farm animals to shockingly harsh conditions and ultimate slaughter annually.

"Farmers have lost their connection with the earth and small farmers, forced to get big or get out -- a mantra that began in the 1950s in the U.S. -- have been pushed out by corporate factory farming that is profitable in the short term, but harmful in the long term," Baur told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Law during a national lecture tour recently.

Baur, a lover of animals since childhood, a leading animal-rights activist and a vegan (no animal products either eaten or used in any way), is co-founder of Farm Sanctuary -- from which the book draws its title -- safe havens founded in Watkins Glen, N.Y., in 1989 and in Orland, Calif., in 1993, where rescued farm and other animals are allowed to live out their lives in freedom and peace, and not as meat for table and trough.

Yes, farm animals have been fed and fattened in modern times on the flesh of other farm animals -- sick and diseased ones, known as "downed" or "downers" in stockyard parlance -- quite often, and, if such meat is eaten, it makes for a potential human health hazard.

While protecting and preserving the lives of animals -- and instilling that message -- are Baur's main goals, major by-products of Farm Sanctuary's thinking are health and environmental benefits for the planet.

Not eating meat and other animals products, explained Baur, means a lot less animal fat in human diets (and in the human heart and arteries). And the end of factory farming would mean less of a drain on the earth's natural resources, including the massive amounts of water required to operate a factory farm. Such farms can hold hundreds of thousands of cattle and, possibly, millions of chickens.

"Large slaughterhouses that kill cattle use between 250,000 and 500,000 gallons of water each day. Poultry plants use even more, about 1.5 million gallons per day (about 6 gallons per bird)," Baur has written.

While planet earth would go greener with the demise of factory farming, people would also go leaner, he commented.

"It is true that everyone in the industrialized world, and increasingly around the globe, today has more access to farmed animal products than ever before," he said. "Indeed, so many of us live 'high on the hog,' and enjoy the fat of the land that it's not surprising that we have never been heavier."

Citing national health records, he noted that "in 2005, each American ate a record high amount of meat and poultry -- nearly 190 pounds. Currently, 64.5 percent of U.S. adults age 20 and older are overweight, and 30.5 percent are obese.

"We pack on the pounds in affluent cultures in a manner that rather perversely parallels the animals we eat, who have been bred to grow big, fast -- until both eater and eaten can no longer function normally and begin to suffer health problems," Baur pointed out in his book.

With obesity at critical levels, more and more medical professionals are recommending diets low in saturated fat.

Some Ethical Questions

In his book, Baur examined -- with thought-provoking clarity -- animal rescues and the fight for laws to treat animals humanely, while keeping "downers" out of the food supply; the ethical questions involved in the production of beef, poultry, pork, milk and eggs; and the systematic mistreatment of the 10 billion farm animals slaughtered explicitly for food in the United States each year.

Baur has documented cases of animal treatment by factory farms that include the use of veal crates, which confine calves to spaces so small that they can't turn around; and battery cages (so-called because of the vast battery of cages under one roof) in which egg-laying hens are squeezed together so tightly -- six to eight in a small cage -- that they have difficulty spreading their wings (literally and figuratively).

Among the Farm Sanctuary's most glowing legal victories are the 2004 federal ban, which became permanent in 2007, on the slaughter of downed cattle; and a 2006 Chicago law that bans the sale of foie gras in the city's restaurants -- which is also quite a cause célèbre in Philadelphia.

On the legal front, a November 2008 ballot initiative in California would ban veal, and gestation crates and battery cages, to help protect some 20 million animals.

Since he began his work in the name of the fair treatment of animals, Baur and his associates have rescued many animals -- mostly from stockyards, but on farms as well.

Some of the animals -- referred to as "who" and not "that" by Baur, who regards them as intelligent creatures, friends with distinct personalities -- include "Hilda," his first rescue, a sheep left for dead in the now defunct Lancaster Stockyards; "Opie," a downed calf, rescued from a stockyard in Bath, N.Y., and who died in April 2008; and "Rudy," "Truffles" and "Terrin," pigs rescued after falling out of trucks on interstate highways.

Ideally, to improve human health and to respect the rights of animals to live, Baur, who noted that he believes hearts and minds are changing, would like to see a vegan world come to pass. "Never doubt that a small group of people can effect significant change. As Anne Frank said, 'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' "

As for the way kosher meats are slaughtered, Rabbi Bradley N. Bleefeld of Beth Hill Congregation in Carmel/Vineland, N.J., said that "the whole purpose of the way Jews take the life of another creature is based on preserving our humanity. We must do so in the most humane fashion possible."

There is no law that's going to stop people from eating meat, he said, but Jews must respect both adult and young animals.

"No animal is slaughtered by knowledgeable Jews without two things happening. First, a prayer is said every time, with every animal, to remind the slaughterer that he is a human being and not an indiscriminate killer -- animals do what they want, but we can't; and, second, an absolutely flawlessly sharp blade -- that is inspected before each and every use -- must be used to inflict the least amount of pain possible on the animal.

Added Bleefeld: "We know our own psychological makeup, but we don't that of animals. Our means of slaughtering an animal distinguishes us from other people."

For more information, go to: www.farmsanctuary.org.