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In the latter part of the twentieth century, Jim Mason explained that the methods used in the processing of nonhumans for food vary from species to species, but that the principles were the same. The objective, he maintained, was to keep costs to a minimum and maximise profit.

Maximum profit was achieved, in part, by using innovative techniques to ensure optimum productivity. This meant that the reality for nonhumans used for the production of food was that they existed in crowded, barren, restricted and unnatural environments, that they were stressed and frustrated and that they were fed additive-laced, unnatural diets. Mason cites the condition for veal calves as an

124

Gail Eisnitz, ‘From Farm to Fork: Presentation by Gail Eisnitz’ (Compassion Action for Animals, 1999) <www.exploreveg.org/issues/farmtofork.html> accessed 23 November 2011. This source appears to have been moved. A version is available at

<www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/From%20Farm%20to%20Fork.htm> accessed 3 May 2016. For additional accounts of animal suffering, see also Compassionate Action for Animals, ‘Embrace Your Empathy’ <www.exploreveg.org/stories/>accessed 17 October 2016.A brief search of social mediaalso confirms that suffering exists on a huge scale. Bill Winders and David Nibert say that ‘some of the worst forms of

mistreatment of other animals in agriculture have been ameliorated somewhat by reforms in Europe …’. Bill Winders and David Nibert, ‘Consuming the Surplus: Expanding ‘Meat’ Consumption and Animal Oppression’ (2004) 24 (9) International Journal of Sociology and SocialPolicy76, 91. For a critical discussion of welfare measures, see Sobbrio (2013).

53 example of the harsh conditions newborn babies had to endure. These newborn calves, born surplus to the dairy industry, were taken from their mothers and ‘turned into anaemic neurotic animals to provide the luxury-grade ‘milk-fed veal’’.125 In fact, the calves suffered intense distress caused by separation from their mothers, were tied in small confined spaces to restrict movement and were fed a replacement diet of dried milk, starch, fats, sugar, antibiotic and other additives. This replacement diet was deficient in iron to facilitate the necessary white flesh that is caused by anaemia. White flesh was most profitable.

Peter Singer also argues that in the late twentieth century, it was not possible to rear animals for food without inflicting suffering. He observes that at the time of writing in the later part of the twentieth century, food production methods meant that nonhuman animals suffered from being castrated, from having their herds broken, from being branded, and from being transported to slaughterhouses. He explains, in one example, the more sinister details of the conditions for chickens. Chickens, who are highly sociable creatures with a need for a specific social order, suffered light and space deprivation, causing them to attack and kill each other. In an attempt to limit the impact of their confined conditions, the birds underwent a process of ‘debeaking’. In this procedure, Singer explains that the chick’s head was inserted into a machine that slices off a portion of the beak. According to Professor Brambell, this process causes severe pain because it cuts through bone and sensitive tissue resembling the ‘quick’ of a human nail.126 In these conditions, the birds also suffer sores and abscesses. In addition, being naturally timid and nervous, they also suffocate in ‘piling’ caused by crowding in fear, on top of one another in a corner of

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Jim Mason, ‘Brave New Farm’ in Peter Singer (ed), In Defence of Animals (Blackwell 1985) 94.

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54 their housing. Singer argues that food producers were aware that the conditions in which the birds were kept was responsible for causing their suffering but that market forces prevented them from offering the birds better living environments.

There is overwhelming evidence that Mason’s and Singer’s historical observations remain prevalent in food production. Current farming practices show that animals continue to suffer cramped, confined conditions and suffer physical and psychological harm in the high-yield, low-cost food production business.127 The harms cited, including de-beaking and many more brutal procedures, remain norms in the industrial production of nonhumans whose fate is to exist as marketplace commodities.128

Bill Winders and David Nibert confirm these conditions in which nonhumans exist as commodified resources in a capitalist economy that is driven by efficiency and profit. They speak of exceedingly painful, brutal and gruesome deaths, factory farm horrors, miserable deprivations, grotesque deformities and rough handling. They explain that it is not uncommon for nonhumans to arrive at the slaughterhouse in pitiful conditions: for example, thirty to forty percent of chickens that reach the slaughterhouse already suffer with broken bones. They explain that in the profit- driven economic system in which they exist, the life-span of other animals is of no significance: in the case of chickens, one seventh of their natural life expectancy is not unusual. They explain that the feelings of other animals and their urges and instincts to care for their young are disregarded. They report that birth mothers are traumatised from being removed from their offspring, which often occurs within

127

See, for example, the short video at Animals Australia: The Voice for Animals (Animals Australia, nd) <http://www.animalsaustralia.org/media/videos.php?vid=factoryfarming> accessed 16 February 2017.

128

See, for example, the current website of United Poultry Concerns <http://www.upc-online.org/> accessed 16 February 2017.

55 hours of giving birth, and that generally, in the modern food-processing industry, a wide range of nonhumans suffer violence on an unprecedented scale.129

Suffering is thus cited as a natural consequence of the forces of production – but literature argues that permitted cruel and painful practices do not relate to any notion of human need. Bill Winders, David Nibert and Bob Torres, for example, argue that the conditions nonhumans endure are directly related to their subjugated status and their commodification in a capitalist economy that has encouraged the consumption of them as resources through progressive advances in mechanised, industrial modes of production. Rather than being a necessity for human survival, the suffering of other animals is related to capitalist commodification that has exploited entrenched prejudice. For these authors, it is these social conditions that ground the normative, violent practices that inflict immense suffering.130 For Hooley and Nobis, harming is standard practice despite suffering being clearly obvious, its identification being a matter of common sense and it being unequivocally evidenced by overwhelming scientific research on the cognitive, emotional and social lives of other animals.131 David Thomas, Solicitor and Director of The Association of Lawyers for Animal Welfare, argues that the outlook for nonhumans caught up in this system is bleak. He also observes a deeply entrenched, institutional, oppressive force in his claim that governments are more concerned to protect commercial interests than animals.132 Nibert concurs: nonhuman animals suffer because ‘it is not in the nature

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Winders and Nibert (2004).

130

Bob Torres (2007).

131

Dan Hooley and Nathan Nobis, ‘A Moral Argument for Veganism’ in Andrew Chignell, Terence Cunio and Matthew C Halteman (eds), Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments about the Ethics of Eating (Routledge 2016).

132

David Thomas, The Law and Animals (2005) 149 (7) Solicitors Journal <www.alaw.org.uk/articles/thelawandanimals.pdf> accessed 12 May 2016.

56 of capitalism’133 to reduce oppressive gaps; capitalism depends on a false naturalisation and rationalisation that protects the invisibility of oppression and nonhuman pain and suffering.134