Page 91 - The Welfare of Cattle

68 the WeLfare of CattLe

Though the ancient contract with domestic animals was inherently sustainable, it was not in fact
sustained with the coming of industrialization. Husbandry was born of necessity, and as soon as
necessity vanished, the contract was broken. The industrial revolution allowed farmers to produce
far more plant and animal products than one needed to survive. The industrialization of trans-
portation allowed farmers to access new markets well outside of their local area. The traditional
agricultural values of stewardship of land, agriculture as a way of life, and animal husbandry were
rather rapidly supplanted by capitalistic values of efficiency and productivity, ushering in an unprec-
edented vision of technological agriculture.
In essence, the key to success in husbandry agriculture was putting square pegs into square
holes, round pegs into round holes, while creating as little friction as possible doing so. Technology,
beginning with the Industrial Revolution, created what I have called “technological sanders,”
allowed us to force square pegs into round holes, round pegs into square holes, so that even though
animal welfare is no longer respected, animals remain productive. These “sanders” include antibiot-
ics, bacterins, air-handling systems and vaccines without which the animals would, in addition to
being miserable, sicken and die and fail to produce. (There are, of course, legitimate uses of these
modalities.)
Not only was the fair contract between animals and humans that had lasted over 10,000 years
cavalierly broken, as we mentioned earlier, sustainability, agricultural way of life, small rural com-
munities, small independent farmers, environmental health, animal health, and human health were
also eroded. From the late 19th century until the early 1960s, the public did not seem to notice these
problems, content to reap the benefits of cheap and plentiful food.
It was well into the 20th century before society became concerned about the treatment of ani-
mals in confinement agriculture, and consequently about animal welfare. Arguably, this concern
began in Great Britain with the publication of Ruth Harrison’s groundbreaking book, Animal
Machines, in 1964. This book illustrated in a striking way how far animal agriculture had strayed
from good husbandry. It was obvious even then, to what extent good husbandry was iconically
embedded in the social mind. People were shocked by the crowding of animals into small spaces
and unnatural environments. The image of cows grazing on green grass in pastoral conditions
was emblazoned in the minds of the general public. Similarly with chickens raised in the open,
under extensive conditions. When Harrison exposed the reality—veal calves kept essentially immo-
bile in wooden crates; chickens crowded into battery cages; sows kept in cages sometimes smaller
than they were—the British public was horrified, forcing the government to charter the Brambell
Commission. Though the Brambell commission had no authority to effect change, it became a
moral lighthouse all across the world. Most famously, it was responsible for the concept of animal
welfare embedded in the Five Freedoms we discussed earlier. This way of thinking reached its cul-
mination in Europe with the Swedish law of 1989, essentially abolishing confinement agriculture
as we know it in North America, and guaranteeing in the Swedish Constitution that cattle must
eternally have “the right to graze.”
Because such a significant percentage of the United States population lives in urban and subur-
ban situations, most people have no contact with farm animals and thus little awareness of the fact
that the values of husbandry had been replaced by the values of industry. But by the mid-1980s, the
US public became ever increasingly aware of animal suffering, particularly in research, safety and
efficacy testing, and agriculture. Other societal factors also served to potentiate the demand for a
new ethic dealing with animal suffering.
As we mentioned earlier, society historically had little need for animal ethics, since good hus-
bandry was presuppositional to self-interest, as poor treatment of animals led to diminished pro-
ductivity. The ethic of anti-cruelty sufficed to deal with those irrational people, i.e., sadists and
psychopaths, who hurt animals for twisted reasons of self-gratification. However, that ethic was
totally inadequate for constraining animal suffering resulting from such putatively laudable uses
of animals as research or industrialized agriculture. In other words, there was no way to expand