Animals in Human Care
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY
For so many centuries humans have been associated with animal life.
We have sought ways to adapt wild animals to our service and to breed animal species and modify their qualities for the purpose of gaining good service. In the main, our animal husbandry has been focussed upon using them as a food source.
People demonstrate great skill and patience in the taming of animals. We are amazed to observe the degree of adaptation of selected animals and the patience of the trainers responsible for remoulding the natures of wild creatures.
Regarding specific breeding there are many examples and the deliberate mixing of breeds in order to create a line that will help in our hunting, in guarding us, in transporting us, in entertaining us, in clothing us, in guiding us, in detection and many other services best enjoyed perhaps in the companionship they offer us as pets.
Compared with this latter relationship that provides mutual exchange and a rare and often deeply felt intimacy, the impersonal husbandry of animals for food is crude and offensive to those who sincerely love animals.
Those who are involved and making a livelihood in the meat industry and in selling live stock to be slaughtered cannot afford to have feelings for the suffering of animals if they wish to retain their lifestyle and chosen work. The unethical aspects of such involvement are not considered. Their focus is to provide and satisfy those who wish to consume the flesh and organs of the end product – the carcass.
But attitudes are changing. There are even signs of compassion accompanying a trend in a thought that to love animals before we kill them is OK!
But there are many important issues to consider in relation to the methods used in animal husbandry.
DRUGGED CATTLE – DRUGGED MEAT
In addition to the adrenalin that pours into animals as they are filled with fear when herded for slaughter and creates tough flesh that has to be modified before presentation to consumers, we are faced with the persisting problem of drugs.
Veterinary aid to animals is a large part of farming. Whether used for preventive measures to keep them healthy or to remedy disease symptoms, antibiotics and other drugs are administered. These affect the quality of meat. We know the extent of the problem when reminded of the rejections that have occurred with our exported meat products.
It is not always known or monitored how long these chemical residues remain in the animal. Nor does the consumer when purchasing meat, know what diseases, if any, the animal experienced when alive.
Wolfgang Witte, PhD from the Robert Koch Institute, Wernigerode, Germany is concerned about the increasing development of antibiotic resistance in humans and looks to the possible prime cause being the use of excessive antibiotics in animal husbandry. To quote him from his paper “Antibiotic use in animal husbandry and resistance development in human infections” on the APUA website (Alliance for the prudent use of Antibiotics)……
“Besides hospitals with a concentration of patients prone to infections and corresponding antibiotic use, animal husbandry is a second considerable reservoir of heavy antibiotic use and transferable antibiotic resistance. Industrial animal husbandry keeps large numbers of animals in comparably small space and outbreaks of infections can easily spread. For technical reasons there is often mass medication of all the animals of a particular flock. In Europe animals are also under transport stress when shipped from breeding stations to farms for fattening. The consequence is a broad scale antibiotic prophylaxis.”
Whether we are considering the intensive farming methods in food factories designed to produce poultry, cattle, pigs or any other animals for human consumption, we will find the need for correction of the established methods, methods with sole purpose for increase, regardless of quality and forgetful of the human aspiration and necessity to be humane.
There are many problems of all kinds to be resolved for the future of quality food production on our planet.
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