Guest: Leah Garces, president of Mercy for Animals
50 years ago, meat costs $7/lb, today chicken is $1.80/lb
“These prices are fake”
Chickens today grow much bigger, much faster, much cheaper
-Reach slaughter weight in 6 weeks time, 3x faster than before
-50K birds in one warehouse – lose any sense of individuality
-Used to be 2-5sf of space per bird, now 3/4sf per bird – wall to wall
Battery cages
-for laying hens to produce eggs
-6 to 10 birds in a barren wired cage, crowded, causes aggressive behaviors, peck each other
-solution: industry shears off beak tips to reduce damage
Fish numbers are hard to quantify because they’re reported in tons
Land animals – 80 BILLION in the world, 70 billion are chickens (90%)
America is highest meat consumer – per capita eats 27 animals per year
America produces / have access to – 225 pounds of meat per person per year
Numbers are growing – last year was highest number ever produced and consumed
Chickens today grow so big so fast that they collapse under their own weight – especially their breast muscle – can’t survive past 6 weeks old, have heart attacks, too metabolically taxed
Product of selective breeding just for breast muscle
Chickens in wild can live many years
The meat has more fat and protein content than before, white stripes in the meat which are literally disease markers as result of fast growth
Chicken warehouse / factory farms
-chickens are very immobile, plopped down
-lots of sores on body
–“marshmallow on toothpicks”
-often panting, taxed by weight / size
-very fragile
What % are raised industrial – globally it’s 90%; in America it’s 99%
A positive trend: 1/3 production of eggs is cage-free now, as result of pressure campaigns
-still an industrial setting (indoors, over crowded, given antibiotics)
-just not kept in cages anymore
Gestation crates for pigs
-source of bacon, sausage
-pregnant pigs kept in metal crate so small that pregnant pig can’t turn her body, can’t really lay down; bottom of cage is cold and wet with slatted floors for feces; after giving birth, kept in a slightly larger farrowing crate, essentially a breeding machine, piglets are taken away – and the cycle starts again
-the pigs scream when their babies are taken away
70% of medically imported antibiotics in US are used in animals
-necessary for these animals to survive, grow faster
-antibiotic resistance is growing; millions of future deaths will come from antibiotic resistant diseases
-to reduce antibiotics would require changing genetics of the animals
–
Meat industry needs to internalize these external costs
-CDC tracks viruses of concern: most are things like avian flu, swine flu – spreading from birds and pigs
-zoonotic diseases (from animals -> humans)
-pigs are more closely related to us than chickens
Impact on climate change
-livestock farming – mostly cows emitting methane – 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (could be underestimate, as high as 25%)
–half of world’s usable land is for agriculture, most for livestock
-1/3 of arable land is used just to raise crops to feed farm animals (eg, soy, maize)
-contributor to deforestation
-contributor to air pollution (chickens produce ammonia and dust particles to local area; pig waste is collected in a cesspool which is sprayed into the air / fields, usually in low-income areas)
eg, Eastern North Carolina – former slaves area, hog industry moved nearby, hog waste ends up on clothes, cars, houses, but don’t have power to fight back, “nobody’s gonna put this in San Francisco”
–Gulf of Mexico dead zone – fertilizer run off into Mississippi, then into Gulf of Mexico – a zone the size of Rhode Island where no sea life can exist, only some species near the surface – the bottom has no oxygen nor life
100x more land used to produce a calorie of meat than a calorie of vegetable
Why isn’t meat more expensive? What are the externalities?
-animal suffering
-climate change
-air pollution
-farmers – owe lots of debt, often in low income areas
for chickens, farmers collectively owe $5B+ in debt, held hostage by it
a chicken farmer is basically a babysitter
keeps chickens alive for 6 weeks, then company collects and pays them
a form of indentured servitude
What about tax payer / government subsidies?
-in 2011, government purchased $40M of extra chicken supply – tax dollars paying for over production
-during covid, gave $270M in pandemic assistance
–spent $40M for “de-population” of chickens and pigs – slaughtered right on farm, “ventilation shutdown”, gets too hot and the animals suffocate
-why does government / taxpayer dollars pay? The industry should pay
2011 – Prop 12 – banned production and sale of extreme close confinement of animals raised for meat – almost 70% of Californians voted in favor
Industry appealed, Supreme Court hearing the case, Biden supports industry / overturning Prop 12
Compassion is an infinite muscle – we can have direct impact on improving farm animals’ lives
What are some modest steps for improvement?
-internalizing industry costs thru regulation – pollution tax, improving factory conditions
-meat prices will rise, consumption will decline
3 recommended books from Leah
-Wastelands by Addison – Smithfield’s case in North Carolina
-Meatonomics
-Animal Machines – Ruth Harrison – catalyst for “Five Freedoms” for animal welfare