Stop the first US-style cow factory farm being built in the UK

And actually,

Can you tell? Do you know this for a fact, or have you made it up? (Not saying you’re wrong per sé, I ask merely for information)

You could make the same argument if you shut a cow outside for a few months over winter, unless your preference was for pre-frozen beef.

Not sure never tried it, a well fed cow can easily withstand any temperatures the majority of the UK can throw at them, the hard part is keeping them well fed, as long as they are ruminating they will be warm enough.

Can you tell? Do you know this for a fact, or have you made it up?

My experience is with beef cattle, but they certainly look happier running about and kicking up a storm when you let them out in the spring, obviously its hard to measure.

remember all domesticated animals were once free and are now no longer wild and are “imprisoned “in fields”

Ah… lament the likes of the Whitley Large Ox roaming the globe, unhindered by the dastardly scheming of mankind…

Junkyard, the idea of all domesticated animals having once been free is laughably absurd. In fact, the reverse is closer to the case. Domesticated animals exist almost entirely through complex relations with man. If it weren’t for these domesticated animals simply wouldn’t exist. Moreover, they never would have existed. Domesticated animals exist precisely because they have been valued and thus bred to provide certain characteristics that are valued to humans, they simply do not exist in the wild.

Ok, fairly pointless, but it does undermine the credibility of your other (possibly more valid and interesting) arguments when you make such ridiculous claims.

I’ve never seen a cow smile, in fact aren’t they supposed to be expressionless!? Certainly don’t see how one farmer can be the judge!!

Now if I was a cow and I was given the opportunity of being kept indoors all my life in artificial light, being fed high yield feed so I can be milked 3 times a day only to deveop mastitis and either being pumped full of anti-biotics or being prematurely killed due to it…I’m not sure i would accept. Would you?

well i see your point that we took animals and bred them to create the breeds we have now – Did I not also make that point- albeit somewhat badly? I noted that

remember all domesticated animals were once free and are now no longer wild and are “imprisoned ” in fields, selectivelty bred – often by artificial means these days

I suppose I should have said ancestors from which the domesticated animals came from . However it is a bit of a mouthful but would have made the point clearer. I am sure you knew that was what I was getting at anyway but hey ho have an stw pedant point on me 😉
Yes the animals we have today would not exist if we did not farm how could anyone argue differently?

Now if I was a cow and I was given the opportunity of being kept indoors all my life in artificial light, being fed high yield feed so I can be milked 3 times a day only to deveop mastitis and either being pumped full of anti-biotics or being prematurely killed due to it…I’m not sure i would accept. Would you?

A) you’re not a cow so how “you” would feel is baseless, and

B) I’m still waiting for you to cite any proof at all that any of these things actually happen (or are being proposed) in the UK.

If I were a cow, I wouldn’t like being painted green and have coconuts hurled at me. See how easy that line of argument is? Quick, get a petition up to stop the spread of green bovine coconutting!!

what we should do is kill off all the tasty meaty animals in one enormous barbecue and invite the world to come and have a spare rib, reduce methane emissions (major greenhouse gas)at the same time from ruminants bottoms and then all become veggie (and wear activated carbon filtered pants otherwise methane emission will increase again)

sorted!

If I were a cow, I wouldn’t like being painted green and have coconuts hurled at me. See how easy that line of argument is? Quick, get a petition up to stop the spread of green bovine coconutting!!

😯

Quick, get a petition up to stop the spread of green bovine coconutting!!

nooooo it’s too late 🙁

Heh, maybe they’re just shy.

Where did I put my coat?

No, but wait, all this arguing is pointless: if we stopped eating animals then we wouldn’t need to worry about how domesticated animals are kept.

It’s really that simple.

(Though I do concede that this scenario is unlikely to materialise so perhaps my pointing out that the argument is pointless is also pointless. Just eat less meat for now, people, cos every little helps.)

---

Unrelatedly, can you possibly back this statement up with any actual sources:

If I were a cow, I wouldn’t like being painted green

?
The coconut-pelting they would indeed probably not enjoy, but just as the lion pictured above is a boring shade of beigey-brown in order to blend into the background and more effectively sneak up on its prey, perhaps cattle would rather appreciate their prey not being able to see it walking over to have a munch.

Whilst we may not want to anthropomorphise too much it does not seem too hard to work out what is nice and what is not nice from a cows [or other animals] point of view up to a pont. I am sure a cow/chicken would rather be free range than a battery cow/chicken. I presume I could do some research – bet there is lots of funding available- to prove it but it seems fairly self evident. Not really enough for an ignoble prize though 😥

Oh God,where is Great Big Billy Goat Gruff when you need him?
Ian

Junkyard- Not trying to be pedantic, I just picked up on the domestication thing as I just think that amongst all the decent points you make, there are some you make that undermine them.

I strongly agree that all domestication and agriculture involves instrumentalisation, though I am not as convinced as you are that this is necessarily ethically unacceptable. Nor am I convinced that the slaughter of animals is necessarily the least ethically justifiable element of agricultural practices involving animals. Also, though I think the intensive use of animals enforced by the ‘average’ consumption patterns (here at least) is ethically unjustifiable for numerous reasons, I am very much against the blanket notion that all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected. I strongly disagree with the idea that carnivores can have no reasonable moral concern for the interests of sentient beings that they are willing to consume. Finally, I do agree that in certain situations it doesn’t generally take an idiot to sense what an animal is feeling (accusations of anthropomorphism aside). And that you can get funding for that kind of thing, even with the recent cuts.

Anyway, not too sure how that contributes to the wider debate any more. Please continue.

pretty good summation basically most peole agree factory/intensive is the least nice option. Most then think it is ok to eat/kill/farm meat some dont. I also agree that all some meat stuff is sustainable either and I am sure a balance could be struck if that is what people want.
this appeared on one of these threads on here – I am a vegan btw but pro choice- and made me chuckle

I am very much against the blanket notion that all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected.

Me too. I completely concede that most people living, say, above 66° North need animal products to continue their lifestyle: vegan Inuit are probably less sustainable.

I had a rant on another ‘forum’ (4chan, off all the possible places to attempt to argue…) and the point I made there was basically: “Using land to grow food to then feed that to animals and then feed the animals to humans is retarded. If you don’t know why learn2food chain- trophic levels- energy flows, ****”

That all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected is a blanket notion that is utterly true for 99.9% of the animal products consumed in this country.

I think the animal welfare groups have missed a trick on this one….
We live in a globalised world, the majority of the chicken sold in the UK comes from Brazil/ Thailand.
Why is it cheaper to grow the chickens half way round the world and then fly the carcasses back?
The reason is that in 1996 the EU banned all anti-biotic growth promoters (the same ones that some people seem to think cows are ‘pumped full of’) in the food chain. This left UK producers unable to compete against cheap foreign imports – so the net result of the do-gooders was to move meat production from a highly regulated area to an almost totally unregulated area. Thus individual animal welfare actually decreased because of the actions of the welfare campaigners.

So to my mind these huge style farms should be here so that people like LHS and supporters can then actually ensure that welfare standards are actually improved rather than being hidden half way round the world.

Wow, magowen, that’s a really flipping good point! It would also mean jobs created in the production industry. Definitely a step in the right direction for animal welfare.

Further to what I rambled on about above, however, what would we feed animals reared in this country on? Probably what most animals in Europe are fed on: grain and soya imported from the Americas. Sustainable…?

The high protein food is interesting, dont know about cows but certainly pigs fed high protein food show more agression to each other and tail biting becomes a problem. The theory goes that the high protein fed doesnt fill them up so they are always hungary and so will eat more. Obviously the intensive rearing in crates stops tail biting as they cant reach!!

My friend did her PhD on dairy cow welfare and proved that if you stroke cows a lot when they are young they get less stressed and let down their milk quicker when they join the milking herd…..
Not sure how either of these points move the debate on but I thought they were interesting.

Now if I was a cow and I was given the opportunity of being kept indoors all my life in artificial light, being fed high yield feed so I can be milked 3 times a day only to deveop mastitis and either being pumped full of anti-biotics or being prematurely killed due to it…I’m not sure i would accept. Would you?

Probably not. But to be honest neither would I accept being forced to bear offspring effectively constantly and having the male “child” shot at birth, or shipped off for veal, and the “female” forced to enter the same cycle.

I dont believe that these cows are kept in a battery style, more that they are intensively farmed, and to my mind they are vastly different. Its like the picture that the advertisers/producers/supermarkets try to paint in consumers minds about “barn chickens or eggs” they try to suggest that the barns are made of wood in the classic Disney style and the farmers wife goes out to feed them fresh picked corn from her wicker basket and knows all of their names. When in reality its a big metal shed and people wearing white overalls walk in and pick up the dead ones and the place reeks from the feed and their excrement.

being fed high yield feed

so do cows hat are not kept in these conditions only eat green grass?

like it or not the world is now in the position where intensive/highly efficient farming is required to feed its growing population. To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan mat be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Most people are missing the point, it’s not the fact that this super dairy is being proposed, it’s why it is. The reason is, as some people have already pointed out, the criminal prices farmers are being paid for their milk by supermarkets, as the price they are being paid is not meeting the cost it took to produce that milk, but whilst all this is going on, the supermarkets are still making HUGE profits. This is, quite obviously, unsustainable, and anyone with half a brain will tell you so. When milk prices shot down in 2003, dairy farmers either had to go out of business or drastically increase the size of their herd to meet production costs in the long run. But as people still want cheaper and cheaper milk, farmers must find a way of producing more milk even cheaper, which will never work other than to keep thousands of cows inside close to the parlour. Small dairy herds, which most people think of as the ideal, happy cows grazing outside had to go out of business due to incredibly low milk prices that farmers couldn’t afford to keep, no mind make a living off. If people actually care and want to make a difference, then they should vote with their wallets and buy the more expensive british milk than the budget milk and make supermarkets raise milk prices, unless you want more super dairys to be built to meet demand for low cost milk. If people had complained about the milk prices farmers are getting in the first place, then i can guarantee that this thread would never had needed to exhist, and most small dairy farms may have been able to survive, but with the way were going now, its only going to get worse. And i’m an agricultural student aswell as working two to three days a week on a 400 cow dairy farm and have done so for some time, so i do know quite a bit about this subject! as for the regular anti-biotic injections and growth hormones- complete utter made-up trash, aswell as cows being crammed inside with little to no room. All made up by idiotic wannabe eco terrorists that have to complain about everything that they have no knowledge about!

Is it people who are wanting the low price for the milk or is it the supermarkets who are looking to use it as a leader to get people into the shops so they can spend cash on other things? And also so the supermarkets can make their big wad of profit from it, just as they do when they tell the producer that they are to provide ,and fund, the free one in the buy one get on free deals. Genuine question, it could well be both the consumer and retailer. I know I dont look at the price of milk when I buy it, I just know that I need it for my cereal in the morning 🙂

From my media fed knowledge I agree that the price of milk paid to producers is criminally low and it has to be putting the farmers under massive pressure to reduce their costs. I seem to recall that a couple of years ago in Germany that the dairy farmers made a protest at the low cost they were getting for milk that they all milked their cows as normal but poured it all down the drains for a number of days. IIRC they did allow some to be processed for the elderly and kiddies milk.

it does not seem too hard to work out what is nice and what is not nice from a cows [or other animals] point of view up to a pont

It seems quite hard to me, but then I’m not an animal behaviourist. The anthropomorphic view would say that they’d be happiest gamboling in the sunny green fields, but the ancestors of cows and chickens would probably have existed in herds or flocks for safety so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if their preferred environment was to be crammed together somewhere safe.

Yes, your right as it is the average consumer that just wants cheap milk and has no thought for a second how it has come to be there for that price and what effort that has gone into getting it. I appretiate that many people don’t and won’t know how that milk gets there, but as people want cheap milk, they will get it them by passing the savings onto the farmer, and supermarkets are well in the knowledge that they are not meeting the cost of the production.
It’s a case of supply and demand, as long as people are buying and wanting cheap milk, supermarkets will continue to get it by ripping the farmers off, so yes it is the fault of the consumer and the supermarkets in my opinion. Somethings got to change…some farmers have been setting up protests outside supermarket depos, mainly ASDA, to raise awareness of low milk prices, they may claim to pay one of the highest milk prices, but thats only to their direct suppliers, they have even basically admitted that they pay below production costs to most of the regular farmers, and even these are being cancelled out by rising costs of everything else RISING COSTS

I haven’t followed this thread but this caught my attention and made me chuckle :

No, I am not a lion, which is a pure carnivore. I am a human, which is an omnivore. There’s quite a difference in the teeth from vegetarian species you see

I love the comparison with a group of animals which we are not even vaguely related to 😀

Here are the teeth of a very close relative of ours which is exclusively vegetarian (apart from the odd termite or grub)

The teeth are remarkably simular to ours. In fact other than the canines being a tad longer than ours, there doesn’t appear to be any real difference. And obviously the canines aren’t used for eating meat.

like it or not the world is now in the position where intensive/highly efficient farming is required to feed its growing population.

This can all be done responsibly. Its never too late to maintain high standards.

To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan mat be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Don’t think anyone has stated that at all. What has been said is that we don’t have to eat steak for every dinner.

Don’t think anything really new is being proposed here – just the scale.
I worked on a zero grazing dairy farm in Lancashire in 2001-2002. Not quite as big but probably exactly the same type of system. We were milking 1,000 cows 3 times a day.
As others have said above the cows need to be happy or they won’t produce the milk. The cows I worked with were mostly very happy and well looked after.

ernie

gorillas can and do eat meat as DNA from small monkeys and forest antelopes has be found in gorilla fecal matter

here is an even closer relative of ours and they will quite happily hunt in packs for monkeys and small deer

see, you can’t outrun your evolutionary design, now pass me some fruit and insects 😀

ernie

gorillas can and do eat meat as DNA from small monkeys and forest antelopes has be found in gorilla fecal matter

Contaminated “fecal matter” then.

Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla):
Consumes parts of at least 97 plant species. About 67% of their diet is fruit, 17% is leaves, seeds and stems and 3% is termites and caterpillars.

Mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei):
Consumes parts of at least 142 plant species and only 3 types of fruit (there is hardly any fruit available due to the high altitude. About 86% of their diet is leaves, shoots, and stems, 7% is roots, 3% is flowers, 2% is fruit, and 2% ants, snails, and grubs.

Provide with me with evidence that Gorillas hunt.

here is an even closer relative of ours

Yes I am fully aware that Chimpanzees have a more varied diet. You have obviously completely missed the point I was making which was, you don’t need the teeth of a cud-chewing herbivore for proof of a vegetarian diet – just look at Gorilla teeth.

And btw I completely accept that humans are naturally omnivorous, although I believe that the point is overstated – I doubt whether large quantities of muscle flesh from large prey is entirely natural. I reckon much owes itself to social convention and protocol, rather anatomical evolution. Which is quite possibly the case with Chimpanzees too.

“Stop the first US-style cow factory farm being built in the UK”

Or should it be: “Stop the growth in the population explosion on our planet”??

Food production is a competitive business and the abuse of animals is an inevitable consequence of this.

We could take the moral high ground here, but you can be sure if we do this that cheaper food will find it’s way onto our plates form elsewhere in the world. Suprize surprize, this has already been happening for decades!

Intensive food production methods are the future, unless of course, you wish to starve!

We need to get in check the rapid increase in the world’s human population.

That all production of animal products is necessarily less sustainable than the vegan alternative projected is a blanket notion that is utterly true for 99.9% of the animal products consumed in this country.

Possibly, given the current UK diet is heavily biased towards beef, chicken and pork. But given that a large percentage of land is useless for arable farming a mixed diet would actually be more sustainable – more vegetarian that is currently the case, definitely less beef, but there’s no real environmental reason to completely eliminate pork, chicken, goat, rabbit…

The teeth are remarkably simular to ours

Ha! They may be similar to yours

And my point was, I am not a lion. (Grr) (referring to the silliest post on this whole thread)

Intensive food production methods are the future, unless of course, you wish to starve!

… or pay more.

With regards to ‘sustainability’ and the veggie / omni / carni arguments, for instance this:

Using land to grow food to then feed that to animals and then feed the animals to humans is retarded. If you don’t know why learn2food chain- trophic levels- energy flows, ****

… I was under the impression that the farmland required to feed the population a wholly vegetarian diet (even assuming all the cows magicall vanish) would require more arable farmland than we actually have land. Far from being “retarded” it’s actually a lot more efficient in terms of land usage to find animals made of meat and then feed them grass.

I don’t have a readily demonstrable source for this, but I’ve read it a few times in what I’d like to think are realtively unbiased publications (most recently, Wired).

Much as I’d like more people to be veggie (if only so that I can go to a restaurant and not be presented with a menu with three different kinds of steak, twenty chicken dishes, several varieties of fish, and at the bottom the old lip service “vegetarian option available”), I don’t believe that going vegetarian globally (or even nationally) is sustainable.

To try to say that we should all go vegy or vegan may be a solution but it just is not going to happen.

Don’t think anyone has stated that at all.[/quote]

I did say that, cos it is a solution, and I also said it’s probably not gonna happen. Shame really.

no real environmental reason to completely eliminate pork, chicken, goat, rabbit…

Wild rabbit, and other “game” may well be very sustainable, but there’s no way it could possibly feed the current huge consumer demand for meat. Chickens and pigs though… just where exactly in the world do you reckon their feed comes from? I’ll make it easy with two options: home or abroard? Or: a sustainable source or not…?

And those arguing about teeth: just stop it. Only silly vegans point to our teeth and go “Imma a horse! Derp!” The others know that our omnivorous bodies can indeed make healthy use of animals as food but also realise that, as I think I might have mentioned, we don’t need to. At all. I’m not vegan for environmental (well, not primarily), health or hipster-cool reasons; I’m vegan because making animals suffer for our ‘needs’ and then killing them is just pointless. Ramble over.

Edit: (Ramble on!) Oh Cougar, there’s a few things wrong with your post but sadly I’m late for work and can’t point out the holes. Would indeed be nice to have a few more options when eating out, agreed!

Far from being “retarded” it’s actually a lot more efficient in terms of land usage to find animals made of meat and then feed them grass

All these animals are veggies that are beinng eaten so how many KG of veg matter [and water] does the walking meat need to consume in order to make 1 kg of meat?
This number varies if we replaced it with potatoes we would get 200 kg of potatoes for eack kg of meat that we could eat instead. How is it more efficient to feed a cow – that will waste some of the energy- that eat the food ourselves? Granted upland sheep land is of little no use for growing but we do not need more land to all go veggie we would need less. A lot of animals are actualy fed feed, rather than grass or hay, as they want to fatten them up quickly – ironically this is often soya based and imported – hence the wiki link I posted above re C02 emisions of the industry and links to deforestation to grow [generally] soya to ffed the cows.

Wild rabbit, and other “game” may well be very sustainable, but there’s no way it could possibly feed the current huge consumer demand for meat. Chickens and pigs though… just where exactly in the world do you reckon their feed comes from? I’ll make it easy with two options: home or abroard? Or: a sustainable source or not…?

That’s why I said you’d have to reduce meat eating. Chickens and pigs can be fed on waste / foraging – again, you’d have to reduce meat eating, and industrial feeding wouldn’t be possible, but eliminating it completely wouldn’t be the most environmentally friendly option.

Don’t think anything really new is being proposed here – just the scale.
I worked on a zero grazing dairy farm in Lancashire in 2001-2002. Not quite as big but probably exactly the same type of system. We were milking 1,000 cows 3 times a day.
As others have said above the cows need to be happy or they won’t produce the milk. The cows I worked with were mostly very happy and well looked after.

This kind of straight talking practical experience based opinion will not be stood for! Please re-state your comment with extra swear words, exclamation marks and random made-up statements. 😆

just get on and built it already and see how it works…