* CW: This post discusses animal abuse within the context of animal agriculture. Some images and footage have been included (only when necessary for explanation and nothing unduly graphic). Some references link to sources that include graphic/disturbing imagery. *
You’ve heard about greenwashing? But what about ‘humane-washing’ ?
Humane-washing is a marketing and PR tactic used by animal agriculture industries whereby misleading or outright false claims are made regarding animal welfare to promote the illusion of ethicality. These claims are often strategically vague as to rely on consumer connotations. It’s like greenwashing, but the deceptive claims pertain to animal welfare as opposed to environmental impact and sustainability. As with greenwashing, the purpose of humane-washing is to convince you to buy their product - animal exploitation and killing are essential for the existence of animal ag industries, so they intrinsically can’t care about animal welfare.
Chapter 1:
CERTIFICATION LABELS:
i) Using Certification Labels To Ease Consumers’ Consciences
Stroll through the meat, dairy and egg aisles at any supermarket and you’ll be bombarded with products labelled ‘free-range’, ‘high welfare’, ‘humanely raised’, ‘grass-fed’, ‘cage-free’, ‘natural’, ‘RSPCA Approved’, ‘Humane Certified’ and so on. These are all examples of humane-washing.
In a 2020 industry webinar, Donald Ritter, the chief marketing officer of US chicken producer Mountaire said, “I believe that the best way to market poultry products and practices is through certification programs or strategies”, noting how there is increasing concern regarding the treatment of farmed animals. He stated, “the one thing you want a label to do is reduce consumer concerns about buying your product.” While it could be argued that he meant that consumers’ concerns are unfounded so companies should reduce these concerns through providing facts and transparency, I think that’s giving too much credit to companies that hinge on the oppression and mass murder of animals, and as we’ll see, these labels and certification programs typically mean very little for the actual animals.
The previously referenced webinar focused on One Health Certified, a label that was approved for use on chicken and turkey products in 2020, with plans to expand to other animal products, and one that Mountaire really oversells. One Health Certified, which we’ll refer to as OHC for brevity, is NOT associated with One Health - the globally collaborative approach to improving the health of humans, animals and the environment by respecting their interconnectedness.
The OHC label capitalises off swindled legitimacy from One Health which has been formally endorsed by the World Health Organization, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the European Commission, the US Department of State, the World Organization for Animal Health, among many others. This transfer technique is quite literally a propaganda modality first classified in 1939 by social scientists Alfred Lee and Elizabeth Lee in their book ‘The Fine Art of Propaganda’ which continues to be referenced and expanded upon by modern scholars. In this literature, they describe how the ‘transfer device...attempts to carry the authority, sanction and prestige of something respected and revered... over to something else’. OHC is undeniably an intentional and hyperbolized example of the transfer technique, and - so far at least - they’ve seemingly gotten away with it.
I want to note that if a company uses a couple of propaganda techniques to advertise their products, it doesn’t automatically make it full-blown propaganda. Using bold colours and graphics, for example, is fairly innocuous provided the material is truthful and consumers can make an informed decision. It’s perfectly fine to market a product as ethical if it truly is and the exact standards of ethicality are presented. Unfortunately, almost all industries and advertisements include propaganda techniques to some extent, and the onus unfairly falls on consumers to take notice of and critically assess the use of such techniques.
Examination of OHC’s standards exposes the disparity between its financial motive and One Health’s genuine health objectives. Despite being one of their ‘five core principles’, OHC’s current standards for animal welfare simply reflect conventional industry practices, so consumers are hoaxed into believing that OHC producers have higher animal welfare standards than conventional factory farms. Instead of setting their own welfare guidelines, they state that chicken producers should meet either the ‘American Humane Certified Welfare Standards for Broilers’, or the voluntary guidelines produced by the National Chicken Council - both of which are poorly regulated and largely just voluntary suggestions. Going back to the webinar, two slides included the line ‘Limited consumer education is essential for this program to succeed’ which epitomises how the label merely creates the illusion of improved welfare.
ii) Actual Meanings of Common Welfare Labels
A prime example of a label that preys on ‘limited consumer education’ is the ‘cage-free’’ label used for poultry meat products. This implies that such products without this label use cages, but in reality, chickens and turkeys used for meat are almost always in one cramped floor system as opposed to individual cages, rendering this label meaningless.
On egg products, the ‘cage-free’ label has a little more meaning, with ‘cage-free’ hens typically being held in a floor system similar to that used for broilers. It doesn’t necessitate outdoor access or more space or better treatment, so really just means they can be confined together in one big cage as opposed to many individual small cages.
VIDEO SOURCE: Dominion Documentary - Standard Egg-Farm with Caged Hens
I’m going to provide some more examples of commonly used welfare labels and their definitions, but I should caveat that I found it suspiciously difficult to find concrete legal definitions or requirements directly from the relevant sources, so take these as general definitions that could differ slightly across different countries.
‘Free-range’ or ‘free-roaming’ means the animals have outdoor access, but the size, quality and length of access are largely unregulated meaning conditions vary greatly so this label can mean very little for the animals. In some cases, this can mean access is only through a ‘pop hole’ with no full-body access to the outdoors and no minimum space requirement. ‘Free-range’ egg-laying hens generally spend the first 18-21 weeks in intensive indoor sheds before arriving at the free-range units when they begin to lay eggs and even then, due to fear, injury, overcrowding, and many other factors, some will never get to go outside.
Despite conjuring images of animals grazing on grassy hills, ‘Grass-Fed’ has no legal meaning in the UK. As for the US, animals raised in a grass-fed system are usually fed a wide variety of different grasses such as the stalks of legumes and grains, but it doesn’t mean they were raised on pasture. Even more confusingly, some products labelled grass-fed may come from animals who ate grass at some point in their lives, but not necessarily over their entire life.
The USDA does not define ‘humanely raised’ or ‘humanely handled’, so it’s essentially meaningless.
‘Natural’, as defined by USDA, only refers to how meat is processed after slaughter, not how an animal was raised, so again is meaningless in terms of animal welfare.
The fundamental purpose of these labels is not to protect animals, but to convince you to buy the products.
Recall at the start of this post that we mentioned how claims are often strategically vague. The ‘family farm’ label is a prime example of this. Consumers think of small countryside farms with animals frolicking in the fresh air and grazing on summer green grass, carefully tended to by hardworking farmers who proudly steward their land. It all very much leans into the ‘Old McDonald’ delusion of what we’ve been brought up to believe animal farms are like. The corporate aspect is displaced and we feel that we are supporting respectable farmers who are little guys just like us instead of the corrupt billionaires at the top of big companies. But what does ‘family-owned farms’ really mean? Well, it means the farms are owned by families, and that’s it. Assuming farms using this label are in fact owned by families, this isn’t an outright lie. But it knowingly relies on connotation to present a fairytale fantasy of these farms. In reality, the USDA states that, as of 2022, approximately 99% of US farms are factory farms and 97% are family farms, so our preconceived narrative just doesn't add up. The ‘family-farm’ label and the ‘support your local farmer’ sentiment is a marketing ploy that preys on our deluded, idealized version of animal farms.
Chapter 2:
EUPHEMISMS:
*CW: Discussions of killing methods.*
Animal ag industries continually use euphemistic language to ease consumer concerns about animal welfare. For instance, they often use the word ‘processing’ in place of slaughtering or killing. Similarly, instead of ‘slaughterhouse’, they now say ‘meat processing plant’. The term ‘livestock’ objectifies and commodifies the farmed animals as it’s more palatable to view them as products to generate profits instead of sentient individuals who feel pain and suffer just as we do.
The massacre of multiple barns of animals at once is termed ‘depopulation’. ‘Foaming’ is a method of depopulation in which foam is sprayed over barns of live animals. By obstructing their airways, this foam essentially drowns or asphyxiates them, ultimately ending in death
Carbon dioxide may be used to turn barns of live animals into large gas chambers.
Another depopulation method - ‘ventilation shutdown’ - is a means of exterminating barns of animals at once by cutting off the buildings’ air supplies and increasing heat levels so severely that the animals simultaneously suffocate and roast until they eventually die. This can take hours.
VIDEO SOURCE: The Intercept - Ventilation Shutdown
In 2020, after hidden camera footage from a pig farm in Iowa exposed this process to the public, the National Pork Producers Council said in an email, “We definitely need to come up with a new name to describe this.” This is yet another illustration of how such industries strategically seek to shroud their true practices from the public.
Outside of these mass extermination instances, those deemed weak or unprofitable are killed on-farm. Birds will typically be executed via neck dislocation. Cows, sheep, pigs, and other larger animals may be shot; they may be stunned with a captive bolt gun then cut in the throat and left to die from blood loss; Pithing may be used - a process that includes stunning via a penetrative captive-bolt gun in the head then thrusting a rod back and forth through the hole made by the captive-bolt to damage their brain; blunt-force trauma methods may be used which can involve swinging the animal by their back legs and bashing their head against concrete, or striking them with an iron bar or hammer in the back of the head. Such brutal killing methods are referred to as ‘euthanasia’ - a term typically reserved to describe a kind act that is in the suffering animal’s best interest.1234
Such terms allow us as consumers to psychologically distance ourselves from what we are paying for and thus perpetrating. And in many cases, we do this detachment ourselves - our cognitive dissonance spouting out all sorts of nonsensical excuses so we don't have to admit that what we’re doing really doesn’t align with our values. Some animal farmers, slaughterhouse workers or other workers in the industry may use euphemistic terms to help them cope with their own cognitive dissonance - most probably want to believe that they are decent people when in reality their actions prove them to be animal abusers and murderers.
Chapter 3:
DECEPTIVE IMAGERY:
‘The Happy Egg Co’ Case Study
We’ve discussed humane-washing in terms of labels and terms used, but imagery is also a pivotal mode of humane-washing.
Take ‘The Happy Egg Co’ as an example…
They strive to achieve an idealistic countryside farm narrative through their signature sunshine yellow packaging with sun rays emerging from an egg-shaped sun with a cheerful cartoon chicken spreading her wings in joy; the grassy hills and green ‘Free Range’ lettering further this sentiment of nature, fresh air and freedom. The wooden perch platform that frequents their marketing materials suggests that these hens are provided with space, care and enrichment, with the RSPCA Assured label affirming that their welfare must be top priority. The British Flag waving patriotically coupled with the British Lion Quality logo implies that good old traditional British values are followed and prompts the ‘local family farm’ narrative. It’s a subtler version of the transfer technique we previously discussed. Its name, ‘The Happy Egg Co’ is the most blatant instance of humane-washing, and is disgustingly sardonic once you know the reality behind their virtuous facade.
Footage from a 2021 investigation into three farms that supply The Happy Egg Co document ‘free-range’ hens cramped together such that they can’t stretch or flap their wings, roost comfortably, forage, maintain a functional pecking order, or express other natural behaviours. Is it as bad as conventional factory farms? No. But it’s a far cry from the utopian chicken haven presented in their marketing. Those chickens are NOT happy.
VIDEO SOURCE: The Independent - Investigation into three farms that supply ‘The Happy Egg Co’
The Happy Egg Co really big up their play kits which are supposed to encourage natural behaviours, but these hens were only given a plastic bottle and a bale of hay per 1000 birds which most of them weren’t even able to access.
VIDEO SOURCES: Various ‘The Happy Egg Co’ Advertisements from YouTube - 1st; 2nd; 3rd; 4th
The company told the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) that ‘they encouraged their suppliers to use the activity kits’ with the ASA stating that ‘It was not clear...what proportion of supplier farms used them in practice.’ The word ‘encouraged’ suggests, to me at least, that these play kits aren’t even a requirement. Furthermore, the company’s marketing materials illustrating chickens exploring expanses of verdant valleys vastly juxtapose the footage of the brown sludgy barren that was only excepted by a few decrepit wooden shelters. Notice how few chickens are actually outside, despite the overfull sheds.
Remember how we discussed the intensive sheds that free-range hens are confined in before arriving at the free-range units? The 18-21 weeks spent there condition the hens to stay indoors, something that’s encouraged because of the hassle of collecting eggs from outside. Also, such barren environments as seen in this footage will be frightening to many hens as they are naturally cautious prey animals.
Most if not all of the hens filmed had beak mutilations. The Happy Egg Co removed the images on their website showing hens with normal untrimmed beaks to resolve an ASA investigation after complaints of misleading advertising. I think we can infer from this that the company do in fact cut the hens’ beaks. This involves hot-blade or infrared procedures which can cause acute and chronic pain as well as long-term health problems. Beak trimming or debeaking is used to reduce the impact of feather pecking which can lead to wounds, cannibalism and death.
VIDEO SOURCE: Dominion Documentary - Day-old chicks being debeaked via infrared machines
The cause of severe feather pecking is multifactorial, but it’s largely due to the sheer number of hens crammed together. Hens are social animals who value being part of a flock, but can only recognize up to about 90 other flock members and their relative positions within the pecking order. So when thousands of hens are packed together, successful pecking orders can’t be formed. Along with increased stress levels, misdirected foraging or grooming behaviours, nutritional deficiencies, and other issues associated with this confinement, it’s unsurprising that serious feather pecking is common in the commercial setting. It’s worth noting that sanctuaries won’t trim beaks (though some are rescued after already being debeaked) because, unlike in commercial poultry housing systems, there are suitable numbers of hens and enough space and enrichment so they can naturally form a pecking order within a few days of meeting so feather pecking shouldn’t be an issue. Despite this debeaking, the footage shows that some hens were almost featherless and some had raw skin and bloody wounds. On all three of these farms, corpses were left to rot among the living hens. Those hens are doubtlessly suffering psychologically and physically.
So what was done about this mistreatment? Well, the RSPCA launched a so-called ‘rigorous investigation’, and after a day they decided that two of the three farms were indeed up to their standard and could keep the RSPCA Assured title. The other farm was investigated for two weeks and told to take some remedial actions such as adding more staff, after which it too was reinstated its RSPCA Assured title. When this footage was first released to the public, an RSPCA spokesperson said: “We are really saddened by some of the footage,” adding that “There is no excuse for poor welfare.” Yet all of these farms were reinstated as approved suppliers and RSPCA Assured? Something isn’t right here.
I think it’s worth noting that the company that owns The Happy Egg Co also owns the Big and Fresh egg brand. These eggs are produced by caged hens in standard factory-farm conditions, making their claims of prioritising animal welfare even more unconvincing.
All this along with similar footage and findings from earlier undercover investigations by Viva! and recent 2024 investigations by the Animal Justice Project, suggests that these farms are likely representative of the average supplier of The Happy Egg Co.
VIDEO SOURCE: Viva! Investigate The Happy Egg Co
Despite the dichotomy of the marketing vs the reality, The Happy Egg Co continue their deceitful advertising to dupe well-meaning consumers into being unknowing animal abusers.
But let’s just ‘play devil’s advocate’ for a second and say maybe these examples are just outliers, and most of The Happy Egg Co’s farms are as idyllic as their marketing portrays. Even this very best-case scenario is completely unjustifiable.
Firstly, we don’t need eggs or any other animal product.5678910 These exploitative industries exist due to customer demand as opposed to an unfortunate necessity. The production of any animal product comes with a 100% guarantee of suffering - these industries cannot exist without exploitation and murder.
The wild ancestors of modern commercial chickens lay around 10-15 eggs per year, but due to decades of selfish selective breeding, modern hens lay close to an egg a day (around 250/300 per year) which comes with significant health problems. In prioritizing profit and productivity, these hens often suffer what are referred to as ‘production diseases’, most notably osteoporosis and associated bone fractures, and can lead to reproductive disorders, which may ultimately lead to premature death. Research suggests that the osteoporosis problem may be worsening, possibly due to industry’s continuous push toward maximizing productivity. Additionally, a recent study showed that over 85% of hens in commercial systems had keel bone fractures, which were noticeably absent in the males of the same genetic line. Those who survive are forced into trucks to go to slaughter when they’re just 72 weeks old due to being less profitable as egg production declines. The next flock will take their places in the sheds as egg-making slaves, be slaughtered, and the cycle repeats.
Some sanctuaries give their hens birth control implants to lessen the excessive strain on their bodies by inhibiting egg production, thus reducing the risk of such production diseases, and of course, since they don't value them based on their productivity, these birds won’t be killed.
VIDEO SOURCES: Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary IG; Dean Farm Trust Sanctuary IG; Loving Farm Animal Sanctuary IG; Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary IG
If animal welfare was truly ‘of the utmost importance’ to The Happy Egg Co as they claim, would they breed these animals into existence in the first place knowing that they will likely suffer due to selective breeding? Would they exterminate the male chicks who aren't profitable to them? Would they let these hens suffer and die instead of giving them a birth control implant to stop egg production, or would they prefer to wring out as much profit as possible from such tortured birds instead? Would they then go on to murder the ‘happy girls’ who manage to survive once their egg production declines?
Ultimately, animal welfare and profit are two opposing goals in the context of animal agriculture, and the logical and moral solution is to not have industries that necessitate the suffering and killing of sentient individuals.
Even in this best-case scenario where the hens ‘explore, forage and play’ all day and are tended to with care, they all end up with a knife in their neck.
* CW: Discussions of killing methods. *
Another infamous aspect of the egg industry is the killing of billions of male chicks. In the hatchery, conveyor systems bring chicks into a sexing room where workers will quickly determine the sex of each chick. The females are usually debeaked as we previously discussed. Since the males will never lay eggs and haven’t been bred to grow large rapidly like broiler chickens, they are unprofitable so are killed soon after hatching along with any females who are perceived as weak. This tends to be done via maceration in the US - a method in which the chicks are minced up alive and fully conscious in a big industrial blender called a macerator.
VIDEO SOURCE: Farm Transparency Project - Chick maceration in an Australian hatchery - (BLURRED BUT STILL DISTURBING)
In the UK, maceration may be used, but asphyxiation via poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide tends to be a more common ‘disposal’ method. The Happy Egg Co, being RSPCA Assured, use argon gas to mass kill unwanted male chicks. The RSPCA touts maceration and gas methods as the ‘most humane’ methods. Suffocation via plastic bags or containers may be used, though this tends to be more common for smaller farms. The slaughter of male chicks and females who have been deemed unprofitable is standard legal practice - when you pay for eggs, including those from so-called ‘ethical’ companies like The Happy Egg Co - you are directly funding this mass annihilation of chicks, among many other atrocities.
VIDEO SOURCE: Dominion Documentary - Chicks killed via gas chambers
Outside of the actual planned slaughter of ‘spent’ egg-laying hens and the systematic killing of male chicks, chickens may be killed on-farm at any stage. Common reasons for such killings, euphemistically referred to as ‘euthanasia’ include injury or illness where vet bills would be too high for the chicken to be deemed sufficiently profitable.
These are the typical methods used for both broiler and egg-laying chickens:111213
Cervical dislocation - This is typically the main method of on-farm killing. Cervical or neck dislocation ruptures the spinal cord so the bird can't breathe, and ruptures the blood vessels in the neck to disrupt blood flow to the brain. This combination kills the bird. Research indicates that neck dislocation doesn’t consistently concuss the brain and is unlikely to cause immediate insensibility. Usually manual dislocation is used for chicks, while either manual or tool-assisted can be used for chickens. The National Chicken Council provide an infographic of how to perform cervical dislocation manually. Tool-assisted is much the same but uses a tool to dislocate the vertebrae.
IMAGE SOURCE: The National Chicken Council
Decapitation - The chicken’s legs are held manually with one hand or are shackled with the chicken hanging upside down. A sharp instrument is used to slice off the chicken’s head. Their head should be fully separated from their neck and a sudden presence of involuntary reactions such as wing flapping and other reflexes should be observed. When I was 8 years old, my pet rooster was brutally decapitated in front of me while I begged my dad to let him live. The poor little guy screamed and flapped in terror, desperately trying to escape. He was quite literally ‘running around like a headless chicken’ for several seconds after his head had already been chopped off.
Captive bolt gun - The shock of the captive bolt device, which may be penetrating or non-penetrating, provokes severe and irreversible damage to the brain. Most guidelines prescribe a second shot if a bird shows signs of recovery, or to try a different killing method.
Products labelled ‘American Humane Certified’ allow all of these killing methods for chickens. Different labels and countries can have slightly different guidelines, for example, Red Tractor seem to allow decapitation only if the chickens are stunned prior, but the cores are the same for practically any welfare label.
In terms of slaughter specifically, the most common method for both egg-laying hens and broiler chickens in the US begins by shackling them upside-down by the legs. Notably, on top of these chickens likely already being sick and/or injured, their legs will be extra fragile and painful due to the high concentration of ammonia that builds up in the sheds which can irritate their skin. Such factors make the rough handling and leg restraining all the more agonising. Being cuffed upside-down is an especially vulnerable position physically and emotionally for these prey animals. They may go into a state of tonic immobility due to extreme stress which should NOT be mistaken for calmness. Along with this psychological stress, chickens don't have a diaphragm so when restrained upside-down their organs crush their lungs, making it incredibly difficult to breathe. Their heart struggles to pump blood and blood will pool in their brains. In short, this is torturous for chickens.
Once shackled, the conveyor system drags their heads through a bath of electrified water. The intent is for a shock to go straight from their heads to their feet to render them unconscious, and they should maintain unconsciousness while their necks are being slit, and ultimately die from blood loss.
However, the chickens are slightly different in size, so some of their heads won’t be submerged in the electrified water. Their wings may hit the water first and give them an electric shock without rendering them unconscious. Some manage to lift their heads to avoid the electrified water. Some are stunned but regain consciousness. In all of these cases, these individuals will face the blade fully conscious. Some chickens may still be able to move when they reach the automated blade and avoid it entirely, while others will have their necks only partially sliced. Unless a worker notices and manually slits their throat, these chickens will be boiled alive, drowning in the scalding tank. Slaughter line speeds tend to be about 2 - 3 chickens per second, so it’s unreasonable to expect workers to spot every chicken who hasn’t been properly stunned or knifed. The scalding process is intended to remove feathers from dead chickens, so while the slaughter protocol doesn’t include boiling chickens alive, it does happen. Given that billions of chickens are killed via this live-shackle method just in the US every year, millions will be conscious when their necks are cut, and hundreds of thousands will be boiled alive and conscious in the US every year. And of course, these figures are inflated drastically when considering the global scale.
As for the UK, the public generally trusts products labelled ‘Red Tractor Approved’ and ‘RSPCA Assured’. Both allow the slaughter method above, though the RSPCA Assured guidelines favour using gas chambers instead. This gas method, known as Controlled Atmosphere Stunning/Killing, is now the most prominent for chickens in the UK. The RSPCA themselves note that ‘gas systems do not instantaneously render poultry unconscious and insensible to pain and distress’ and favour systems that start at a low gas level and gradually subject the chickens to increasingly higher concentrations of the gas to asphyxiate them. While I agree that this method is less brutal than the live-shackle method, I definitely wouldn't go as far as to call it ‘humane’ as the RSPCA does. And given that we don’t need animal products, all of this suffering is completely needless.
I want to stress that this is merely an overview and we’ve mainly just covered the legal killing aspects with a specific focus on chickens. There are so many other horrifying practices inflicted on farmed animals such as forced insemination, mutilations without pain relief, terrible conditions on farms, etc, and I encourage you to investigate further.
While this is just one example, The Happy Egg Co are far from the only culprit of using deceptive humane-washing imagery.
VIDEO SOURCES: McDonald’s Ad; RSPCA Assured Ad; Bird’s Eye Ad; Waitrose Ad;
Arla Cravendale Ad; Red Tractor Approved Ad; McDonald’s Ad
Also, I want to clarify that I’m all for improved welfare to decrease suffering, but it should be framed as a stepping stone with total animal liberation as the end goal. For example, the RSPCA encourages gas-killing systems over the live-shackle method, and I agree that this would likely lead to less suffering and would be a beneficial step in the right direction to reach the end goal of not breeding these animals into existence to kill them at all. But instead of portraying it as a less torturous way to commit an unjustifiable act as a means of reducing suffering until we can fully abolish animal agriculture and other inherently exploitative industries, the RSPCA hypocritically promotes animal products. They slap their RSPCA Assured labels on animal corpses to encourage us to buy them, thereby increasing demand, and wrongly reassuring us that such products are ethical, which actively increases suffering.
VIDEO SOURCE: RSPCA Assured Advert
Organisations such as the Animal Justice Project and Animal Aid, amongst others, campaign for welfare improvements while making it clear that these are just stepping stones to get closer to the end goal of completely ending animal farming. They absolutely never promote animal products and instead encourage veganism, which in short, is a way of living to reduce suffering as far as practically possible. I’m never sure that I’m expressing my point clearly so I will read you a summarised passage from Animal Aid’s website; “Our ultimate vision is of a world... free from animal abuse and exploitation... The public would recognise and respect the rights of animals, and these would also be protected by law...We recognise that this is very much a long-term vision, which will take many decades to achieve. So as well as working towards this, we also take a pragmatic approach, and campaign for measures that will help to reduce animal suffering in the meantime. In practice, much of our work brings the truth about animal exploitation to the attention of the public, and this contributes towards both the achievement of our vision and to measures that will help to reduce animal suffering in the shorter term.”
CONCLUSION:
While the vast majority of farms are disgustingly abusive and rely on propagandistic advertising, I have seen first-hand a couple of farms where the animals genuinely seem content and the farmers appear to be decent people who, due to cognitive dissonance, don’t want to admit to themselves that they cannot simultaneously care for their animals while sending them off in murder trucks - and that’s the essence of my overall point. Even in the case of these very rare ‘good’ farms, or when a less painful slaughter method is used, or even theoretically if a completely painless method was used, how can we truly ‘humanely’ kill an animal when it’s not in their best interest to do so? Even in the very very best-case scenario with the best treatment and best slaughter method, how can we justify killing these animals?
“Animals go into the slaughterhouse alive, and come out chopped into pieces, and people like to think something humane happens along the way.” - Larry Fisher