In recent years, there is many people voice out for animal rights, but it only includes the pets like dogs or cats, and endangered animals, not for livestock.
Is that means that livestock does not have animal rights? Does their destiny cause them can only be served as a dish on the table?
What are animal rights?
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) defined animal right as humans must not perform any experiments on animals. Moreover, humans could not kill animals for food, clothing and so on. Furthermore, people were restricted from using animals for labour.
However, many factories have been doing things that endanger animal rights for years, and no one seems to care about those issues. Perhaps this is because the issues have not affected their rights.
The life of livestock
There are 1.9 billion animals’ life had been determined when they were born. Francione, who was a writer of Animal Legal and historical believed that animals were classified as property because she found that people agree with the norms that impose unnecessary torture on non-humans, and this is what we did to livestock.
The past study was done by Dopelt, Radon, and Davidovitch in 2019 revealed that there was an average of six million livestock were killed for foods every year. As Researchers Ritchie and Roser (2017) mentioned that “tens of billions of chickens; billions of pigs; and hundreds of millions of sheep, goats, and cattle are slaughtered each year for meat.”
The high demands for meat mean that the livestock industries need to produce as much as possible to satisfied the market needs. So, how the industry uses the limited space to gain the highest profit?
Most of the time, livestock were treated as commodities; therefore, they were put inside a small cage together to save spaces. World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) gave an example, “an egg-laying hen in a barren battery cage often spends her whole life crammed into a space of paper per animal.” Normally, the small space would cause animals to hurt each other out of various reasons, such as boredom, stress and so on.
Therefore, it leads to another issue. The injured livestock cannot sell at a high price; so, the owner would clip livestock’s teeth and dock their tails. These actions would increase their pain. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) stated that almost all pigs in Europe were tail docked.
Other than that, the owner needs to ensure they can earn the highest profit in the short term; therefore, fast-growing in livestock is needed. Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) explained that “factory-farmed meat chickens grow so fast that 25% suffer from painful lameness.” They indicated that it was illegal to use antibiotics to increase the growth of livestock in the European Union. However, Stockton and Davies from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism stated that one of the biggest meat producers around the world – United States still used antibiotics commonly to promote livestock growths. As mentioned by CIWF, nearly 80% of antibiotics were used on livestock.
Impact of high demands of meat consumption
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the number of livestock was increased since the year 1961, and obviously the use of land for livestock production had also increased.
The increase in livestock number is due to human needs. Researchers Ritchie and Roser published a research in 2017, they discovered that the average person consumed approximately 43 kilograms of meat around the world. Furthermore, the United States and Australia accounted for most of the meat consumption. They also found that richer countries were more likely to consume meat and dairy products. For example, “how much meat people eat is how rich they are.”
Meat is considered as an important source of protein for many people; therefore, meat consumption is growing. However, when something exceeds the average amount, that might lead to certain issues. A writer from The Guardian, Devlin shared that “the increase in average individual meat consumption means total meat production has been growing at much faster than the rate of population growth, increasing four or fivefold since 1961”. On the other hand, Ritchie and Roser indicated that livestock industry needed to use the largest land to produce foods to feed them, which meant that people needed to cut down forests for agricultural land.
In addition, the amount of meat had more than quadrupled compared to the past fifty years. As a result, emissions from livestock would increase which would lead to the greenhouse effect. FAO illustrated that the livestock industry accounted for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. However, the researchers Goodland and Anhang (2009) investigated that livestock gas emissions were not as low as those mentioned by FAO, they found that “global livestock industry is responsible for at least 51% of the greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere,” and the most gas emission was carbon dioxide.
Other than that, water pollution is one of the issues of high quantity of livestock industries. Researchers Dopely, Radon, and Davidovicth indicated that “the water pollution is caused by animal excreta, antibiotics, and hormones, fertilizers and pesticides used in forage productions, and rainfall-runoff from pasture.”
Sacrifice for festivals?
There are various festivals around the world, and some of which will sacrifice animals for festivals. On some festivals, the sacrifice of animals is a must.
In Malaysia, there is a traditional Muslim festival - Eid al-Adha. The Spanish news agency, EFE illustrated that the sacrifice of this festival is a sacrifice of Muslim themselves, their time and their wealth for Allah. Moreover, the choice of sacrifice animal has its own criteria. EFE shared that “animal chosen for sacrifice must have four legs, and most commonly goats, sheep and cows are sacrificed.” However, Penang mufti Wan Salim Mohd Noor realised that this sacrifice was not ethical to celebrate the festivals.
On the other hand, there is the biggest sacrifice festival in Nepal – Gadhimai festival. Every year the festival would sacrifice approximately 200,000 animals to celebrate the Hindu Goddess of power. Nonetheless, many hopes that this festival could be stopped, and the Nepal supreme court did announce a ban on this festival in 2015. However, an animal rights activist Manoj Gautam replied on this case, “the officials have let their personal beliefs rule over the court orders, they did not do enough to discourage the slaughters.”
Every life has an equal right to live, you cannot abuse other animals for your own benefits. Although some people are beginning to realize that animals also have their rights, but do they aware of where their daily meals come from, the effect of high levels of meat consumption, and the annual festival sacrifices?
“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they don’t suffer less because they have no words,” said Anna Sewell, an English novelist.
Eat them with your gratitude. Don’t think that they were born to satisfy your desires.
video link: https://bonjourjyt.wixsite.com/behindfoods
References:
British Broadcasting Corporation. (2014). Animal rights. Retrieved 19th December, 2019, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/rights/rights_1.shtml
Compassion in World Farming. (2011). Welfare issues for egg-laying hens. Retrieved 19th December, 2019, from https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/chickens/egg-laying-hens/
Devlin, H. (2018). Rising global meat consumption will devastate environment. Retrieved 20th December, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/19/rising-global-meat-consumption-will-devastate-environment
European Food Safety Authority. (2007). The risks associated with tail biting in pigs and possible means to reduce the need for tail docking considering the different housing and husbandry systems‐Scientific Opinion of the Panel on Animal Health and Welfare. EFSA Journal, 5(12), 611.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2019). Livestock patterns. Retrieved 19th December, 2019, from http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/EK
Francione, G. L. (1996). Animals as property. Animal L., 2, i.
Ritchie, H. & Roser M. (2019). Meat and dairy production. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved 20th December, 2019, from https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty Australia. (2011). All about farm animals. Retrieved 21st December, 2019, from https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/-/article/FAD_AllAboutAnimalsFarmAnimals
Stockton, B. & Davies, M. (2018). Antibiotic use plummets on US farms after ban on using drugs to make livestock grow faster. Retrieved 19th December, 2019, from https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-12-19/antibiotic-use-falls-on-us-farms-after-ban-on-using-drugs-to-make-livestock-grow-faster
World Society for the Protection of Animals. (2006). An overview of farm animal welfare issues. Retrieved 19th December, 2019,
Commenti