Here’s the Problem With Humane Meat

In a recent Salon
article, journalist and author James McWilliams discusses “humane meat as a
contradiction in terms.

Factory farming is cruel. There’s no
debate there. Even the majority of meat eaters agree that modern farming
practices are unacceptable. Many say they’d prefer the animals were raised
humanely on organic farms. Unfortunately, farms where pigs, cows, and chickens
roam freely in meadows don’t exist outside of fairytales. Even if they did,
isn’t “humane slaughter an oxymoron? Ethicists have long debated this very
question.

According to McWilliams:

The primary problem with condemning
factory farming while continuing to eat animals from nonindustrial sources
comes down to this basic point: doing so demands selective moral consideration.

How is a pig killed for pork any different from a dog or cat
who cuddles with you on the couch? The answer is simple: he isn’t.

McWilliams further states:

The rationale applied to animals
in factory farms goes something like this: animals have feelings that are
worthy of our moral consideration; animals are not objects; their welfare
matters; therefore they do not deserve the abusive confines and unavoidable
suffering of factory farms. These beliefs assume that animals have emotional
lives, experience suffering as a result of being raised inhumanely, and thus have
moral relevance. This recognition means that animals’ capacity to suffer, while
perhaps different in degree from our own, is nonetheless meaningful and
familiar enough for humans to demand that animals be spared the abuses endemic
to industrial animal agriculture.

So what does “humane mean to the factory farming industry? See
for yourself. Check out this undercover video recorded at a Foster Farms
facility that was certified as humane by American Humane Association:

Don’t like what you see? Choose a compassionate lifestyle by
switching to a plant-based diet. Click here for
free recipes and tips.