Somewhere out there someone must be raising ‘food’ animals ‘humanely,’ therefore I’m justified in eating this steak, chicken, egg, pig part, turkey leg, hamburger, sausage, etc., etc., without feeling guilty–there’s always a chance that meat meal was humanely raised and compassionately killed, right?
Wrong!
It’s amazing how many people use some version of this feeble argument in rationalizing their culpability to cruelty, as if ‘humane’ animal farming gives them a license to ‘kill’ (so to speak).
I understand there are some who think the ‘humane meat’ movement will lead to a more compassionate future for factory farmed animals. But the fact is, advocating any form of animal agriculture that results in the breeding and premature death of an animal just legitimizes factory farming to the masses who may not see the subtle difference between a hot dog made with body parts scraped off Farmer John’s bloody-red kill floor or off Farmer Joe’s slightly greener kill floor. Yes, Farmer Joe may be able to keep his slaughterhouse a little tidier, but that’s only because he may ‘process’ fewer animals at a time, not because he truly thinks he’s being ‘compassionate.’
What would it take to provide ‘humane meat’ to everyone who won’t consider giving up their flesh? Robert Grillo answers that question, in this quote from an article entitled, Pasture Raised Eggs: The Humane, Sustainable Fiction:
“As for the scale of such an operation, where does all the land needed to give animals a “natural” farm life come from?, asks author and program director of United Poultry Concerns, Hope Bohanec. “At any given time, there are 100 million head of cattle and 70 million pigs alive in the U.S. Currently, only about 9 percent of all livestock is pasture raised. How would we ever have the land to pasture raise them all? To give all farmed animals the space they need to have even a semblance of a natural life, we would have to destroy millions more acres of wild areas, forests, prairies, and wetlands to accommodate them.”
“No one who truly respects animals, respects their dignity, feels with and for them, and wishes them joy in life supports “farming” them, because animal farming is about degrading animals meanly to the level of their genitals and their genes, mutilating their body parts, destroying their family life, controlling every aspect of their lives including culling (killing) them as one pleases when they are deemed not “productive” enough to keep feeding, and ultimately murdering them.
“How can anyone claiming to respect animals promote a view of them as ‘dinner’?”
This quote from a Facebook friend sums the situation up succinctly: “‘Humane’ animal farming is nothing more than the devil putting on a fancy suit. Vegan is the only way”
And, PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk put out a U-tube on the folly of ‘Humane meat’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfUBMKwVl7Q
Exposing the Big Game 
Really good article & the image is perfect!
I’m also consistently dismayed that the horrid treatment of female animals — dairy cows and laying hens, for example — doesn’t pull at the heartstrings of more women. When I look into the eyes of my fellow female beings, all I can think is I am she, and she is me. I don’t hold women to a higher moral standard than men in this regard, but as a woman, it breaks my heart that the empathy of our shared experience and historical understanding of violence and exploitation isn’t a natural cornerstone of compassion for females of other species. Of course, I do realize all of this is a component of speciesism and its convenient irrationality — no matter who the human being.
As you so rightly say, even the convenient irrationality of speciesism doesn’t explain the lack of empathy.