Farming Science, Without the Conscience
January 26, 2015 The New York Times Editorial Board
You don’t have to be a vegan to be repulsed by an account in The Times revealing the moral depths to which the federal government — working as a handmaiden to industrial agriculture — has sunk in pursuit of cheaper meat and fatter corporate profits. The article, by Michael Moss, examines the little-known U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, financed by American taxpayers, which employs the sophisticated tools and scientific expertise of modern animal management — apparently without a conscience.
The details Mr. Moss’s article exposes are sickening. In engineering animals to maximize industry’s bottom line, the center, at a sprawling, secluded site in Nebraska, has created pigs that bear freakishly large litters of frail piglets, which are often crushed by their mothers. Cows give birth to triplets, many of them deformed. Lambs are born in open fields, where they starve, are eaten by predators and are overcome by the elements. These so-called easy-care sheep are bred to eliminate the need for shelters and human help at birthing time.
How does the consumer benefit from the center’s research? Lower prices, as well as bigger lamb chops, leaner pork loins and more tender steaks. The cost to taxpayers of the research at the center seems negligible — its budget was $22.7 million in 2014. But the cost borne by animals, in pain and suffering, is clearly horrific.
American consumers have steadily grown more aware of the ruthless excesses of industrial agriculture. Animal-rights advocates have toiled for years exposing things the industry does not want customers to know. Some reforms have taken hold; federal laws have improved the treatment of livestock since Upton Sinclair wrote of the horrors done to animals in “The Jungle.”
But
the conditions of industrial feedlots and factory farms — the confinement of
animals, the rampant use of antibiotics, the manure lagoons — would shock anyone
who naďvely imagines farms as bucolic places out of children’s books. And while
the federal Animal Welfare Act seeks to limit suffering, it does not regulate
farm animals used in agricultural research. The Agriculture Department
rigorously oversees conditions at slaughterhouses and private labs, but as Mr.
Moss wrote, “it does not closely monitor the center’s use of animals, or even
enforce its own rules requiring careful scrutiny of experiments.” (Reuters has
reported that the secretary of agriculture, in the wake of Mr. Moss’s article,
has directed the agency to create a new animal welfare plan, which will involve
employee training and a review of research practices.)
The humans who work at the center are not necessarily oblivious to its failings. Some veterinarians and researchers told The Times they were appalled by the suffering and abuse. They should not have their consciences degraded by what is supposed to be beneficial work. Congress founded the center 50 years ago. It should oversee it and reform it — or shut it down.
Note: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) also has a conflicting mandate to encourage and increase consumption of Canadian livestock products while at the same time act as its regulator.