Down on the farm

1298:

What goes on, down on Animal Farm? Perhaps hatching a few chickens, or more profitably, hatching a few ideas. Some of them have revolutionised animal farming, to the extent that even the name of these places has changed from ‘farms’ to ‘intensive operations’. Many of them are now nothing more than efficient factories for producing animal protein. The animals, as animals, as individuals, simply don’t exist any longer.

You can imagine how some smart bloke dreamed up an idea for making more money out of the animals he owned. He looked at his chickens pecking about the yard and thought “inefficient”.  He realised he could reduce his feed bill as well as the untidiness of his farm yard by caging his birds, keeping them immobilised and automating the collection of their eggs. He sought to increase his profits at the expense of the animals, whose feelings were no longer worthy of consideration. The idea of crossing the boundary from animal-care to animal-contempt gave birth to the idea of intensive farming methods.

Once we take away all sentimentality about animals’ feelings, it becomes possible to keep animals on the threshold of survival and treat them merely as food producing machines. Then, the sky’s the limit. As long as there’s no customer-objection, then imagination can run riot. Animals whose strong instinct is to survive, are pushed to the limits by restricting any of their natural behaviours which don't turn a profit for the producer. But there’s a run-away problem that accompanies any such 'super-improvement'. Gradually, competitors either catch up and overtake to avoid going to the wall. For those who succeed, they must lower their costs by ruling out any 'animal-welfare' considerations. And by treating their animals badly, they can stay in business. 'Intensives' require ever more drugs to be pumped into their animals to prevent outbreaks of disease amongst the densely confined flocks and herds. And as the meat and by-products become laced with more and more chemicals, so it has a detrimental flow-on effect on the health of the consumer. And alongside the health implications are problems associated with environmental pollution and the huge carbon emissions from animal factories.

From what at first seemed like such a good idea, increasing profit and lowering prices, a whole new set of problems have been created; people get used to cheap food and will buy it where they will, from the competitive food market. Retailers will go overseas for their product if the home-produced product can’t compete, pricewise. So, neither farmers nor governments nor consumers have the will to hold back their support for intensification, and thereby each encourages a lowering of animal-welfare standards.

If the individual human brain can invent something nasty it can also uninvent it, but not in the usual way. We’ll never be able to uninvent the atom bomb or the battery cage, but any one of us can withdraw our support, and with others of like-mind, we can demonise what should never have happened and cause it to become so unfashionable that it is eventually considered too evil to be acceptable. That is really the only way to uninvent, by bringing about a transformation of attitude amongst an otherwise accepting public.

What could happen? We could, collectively, begin to consider the consequences of any of our favourite one dimensional improvements to life, examples of which might include the ultimate weapons of destruction, the intensive farming systems and the internal combustion engine, each of which was seen at first as an improvement but later something very destructive.

Inventing, takes up a new role. It now moves onto a more multidimensional and spiritual plane. Where we once saw food only in terms of cost, we can now see it in terms of its effect on our subtler sensitivities. Emphasis moves from our pocket to our peace of mind, from poor health to well-being. As we prioritise ethics over economics, so the old systems are tempered by the potential of new systems. Our body grows with our ideas, so that it need less bulk of food and greater quality of food. As we see a more healthy, vibrant and peaceful human being emerge, so we turn away from the unethical and exploitative and turn to cruelty-free food producers and help them broaden their market, lower their costs and reduce their prices.

We are lucky to have powerful brains to get us out of our scrapes. All we need now is the will to engage these brains of ours.