Quick reminder with this talk of new “high animal welfare” labels being introduced on the packaged flesh of murdered piglets/pigs. Though the label scheme would probably expand to chicken flesh, lamb flesh, cow flesh, dairy, eggs etc.
These labels (if enacted) will be completely meaningless in terms of real animal welfare because real animal welfare respect the animals basic rights to live free from human inflicted exploitation/suffering. So real animal welfare cannot exist when that animal is being exploited and murdered for profit. Which all “animal products” are the result of. There is no level of “animal welfare” which would make the “product” being labelled anything other than the result of violent injustice.
These labels will just add to the “humane” myth animal ag likes to perpetuate in order to ease the consciousness of consumers into falsely believing that they butchered animal flesh from murdered animals, calves weaning mil, eggs etc. are anything other than the result of animal abuse/cruelty. Which of course they are, since there is no way to farm, exploit and take the life of another sentient being for profit that isn’t by its very definition animal abuse. If you buy any animal flesh, dairy or egg “product” you are paying for violent injustice/abuse against the most defenceless of sentient beings. And a new label will not change that fact. No label will erase the fact that these “products” are the result of exploitation and murder. That they are the result of animal abuse of the most horrific kind. And to buy/consume them if you can at all avoid doing so is ethically unjustifiable and deeply cruel.
“We turn these living beings into data points, flowcharts, and percentages—calculate to a decimal point’s certainty the exact cost of every aspect of their lives and details for their deaths. We relegate the annual mass murder of over 3 billion day-old conscious, innocent babies to a footnote. A footnote in a study conducted for the welfare regulations we’re so graciously creating. We deem them legally sentient, deserving freedom from hunger, thirst, discomfort, pain, injury, disease, fear, distress and mental suffering—then use this very recognition of their capacity to feel the same emotions and sensations as we do to design—in language so disturbingly detached it’s nothing short of sociopathic—the exact manner in which we may legally violate, imprison, cut, burn, alter, and murder them.
This is how profoundly illogical our thinking is when it comes to animals. It goes against all basic human understanding. Knowing better but doing wrong anyway is worse than having no knowledge. Yet we have the audacity to hold this legislative recognition of non-human sentience on high as a giant step forward for the rights of animals. As if systematically exploiting individuals with fully admitted knowledge and comprehension of their capacity to suffer is something to commend.
Look what we offer ourselves as evidence of progress: a reduction in animals slipping and falling on their way to slaughter in one abattoir in one country. When we look at our actions from the other side, the perverse absurdity of our deluded self-congratulations is astounding. If you were in the place of these beings, how grateful would you feel if your captor laid down a bathmat on the ramp to your execution?
Is this really the best we have to offer? Being the most courteous murderers? The most considerate rapists? Pouring untold resources into these convoluted laws and regulations, all the while completely blind to the fact that there’s another option entirely.”
And of course, the most “humane” method of murdering piglets/pigs in slaughterhouses, so the method that would be the used to murder the animals whos butchered flesh will be approved as the result of “high animal welfare”? It’s literally forcing them into gas chambers which burn them from the inside out as they are slowly stunned via gas before stringing them upside down to have their throats cut open with a knife.
Highest welfare method of murdering pigs below:
To quote some former and current “humane” farmers from farms which would get this new “animal welfare” label:
“In my experience, there is no such thing as humane animal products, humane farming practices, humane transport, or humane slaughter.”
“Humane labels still designate animal lives as so inherently inferior and existentially worthless that breeding, exploiting, and killing them for completely unnecessary reasons can still be embraced, celebrated even, as “ethical” and “humane.”
“As a pig farmer, I live an unethical life shrouded in the justificatory trappings of social acceptance. There is more, even, than simple acceptance. There is actually celebration of the way I raise the pigs. Because I give the pigs lives that are as close to natural as is possible in an unnatural system, I am honorable, I am just, I am humane — while all the while behind the shroud, I am a slaveholder and a murderer.”
“I would tell everyone, “They have a really great life, up until they no longer have one.” It makes me cringe now to type that. I wholeheartedly believed in the “humane slaughter” myth.”
“Livestock farmers, no matter what kind — from the largest, most cynical, and inhumane factory farmers to the smallest, seemingly most ethical pasture-based farmers — traffic in death. It is death that is our aim, our purpose. Death is the end. Life is the means. Money the reward.”
"Farmers today keep themselves in ignorance of the needs and true nature of pigs precisely because to know would put their conscience in a terrible bind. Wilful ignorance of this kind is no better than complicity."
More testimonies from many former “humane” farmers here
A great article from @acti-veg on “ethical” animal farming
Two videos on welfarism here and here.
