Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Tuesday, September 16. 2008

Regulation of animal confinement

Farms aren't really farms anymore, are they? They have become meat, egg, and milk factories.

California's Proposition 2 seeks to regulate the confinement of these factory animals.

Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 11:02 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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In the words of Howard Lyman:
"If one does not wish to know where one's food comes from, perhaps one should not put that food in their mouth."

This is long overdue. Animals should not be treated in such ways. A society can well be judged on how it treats it's animals.

Perhaps our children would not now be facing a diminished life expectancy from primarily consuming cheap, subsidized, and unregulated animal products if the dairy industry was controlled in a sane manner.

Remember: have a 3-2-4-4 day! (nice little bit of brainwashing there, it pays to lobby!)
#1 Phil on 2008-09-16 13:32 (Reply)
Phil~ I am wondering what the term "Have a 3-2-4-4 Day" originates from. I found a button years ago that said this: Nelson Have a 3-2-4-4 Day and I am curious where it is from and referring to. Thanks for your help if you get this.
#1.1 Jill on 2008-11-25 01:10 (Reply)
It was a nutrition program taught to grammar school kids in the late 1970's. If memory serves, it meant you should eat three servings of dairy, two serving's of meat, four servings of fruits and vegetables and four servings of breads or cereals.
#1.1.1 Joel on 2011-05-24 16:18 (Reply)
Funny, Kinda resembles my vision of the trading floors of Merrill or Lehman... bunch of clueless chickens.. afraid to do the right thing (i.e. use good judgement in business practices) .. expecting a continuous stream of feed... just waiting to be "gobbled " up....

Hello Frank "BofA" Purdue?
#2 GunDog on 2008-09-16 13:50 (Reply)
Although man is given dominion over the earth, and obviously meat and poultry products do not come from trees, animal factories do not seem, well, humane. Some kind of standard seems necessary, or else animal products will be produced the cheapest way possible (which is good, up to a point). I presume readers of Maggies Farm are firm believers in property rights, but not in regards to dog fighting or bear baiting. I'd like to know how Maggies farm and/or bird dog feel on this. thank you. tomg.
#3 tomgulick on 2008-09-16 16:22 (Reply)
I am an apparent contradiction. A vegetarian and a conservative NRA member. Why? Becuase I believe in the absolute right to own a gun. And I also believe that it is my god-given duty not to participate in the torture of animals. I also am anti=abortion.

If you believe in the sanctity of life, consider vegetarianism. It is recommended throughout the Bible. Eden was vegetarian before the fall. And the food is darn good. If you crave meat, there are some pretty good meat substitutes made from soy.

I will never participate in the torture of animals by eating them, and I think we owe it to these defenseless creatures to not treat them like this, just as we should not kill babies in utero. And we should definitely get to own guns.
#4 Park Slope Pubby on 2008-09-16 16:43 (Reply)
I think alot of us would be vegetarians if we had to kill our own meat. Matthew Scully wrote a book called Dominion on factory farms and the treatment of animals. It's a good read. I sure hope the next time around the animals don't have dominion over us.
#5 jappy on 2008-09-16 17:36 (Reply)
I think that if we had to kill our meat we would appreciate it, myself included, probably eat less of it. Steaks are still very tasty things.
#5.1 grant1863 on 2008-09-16 18:05 (Reply)
I cannot speak for all, but I love meat, and hate to see animals mistreated.
#6 BD on 2008-09-16 18:59 (Reply)
Read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. We've come a long way since those days. There is an article on the web about how vegetarians suffer smaller brains - tested, tried, and true. I am sorry I don't have the ref to it, but you could Google it.

I think we project too much of our thoughts onto animals that could no more entertain our thoughts than fly. I don't care about a chicken or worry that it thinks it would rather be at the beach than pecking around with five-thousand of its up-close and personal friends. I have a little more feeling for lambs and cows but not much. And to push this a little further - plants get really sad if you yell at them. They must just die if you eat them. It's true. Plants have feelings. I have two ficus trees that will dump all their leaves if they hear a cuss word. Damn things.

We have canine teeth for a reason. Did Adam and Eve not have canine teeth, I wonder?
`
#7 Meta on 2008-09-16 20:53 (Reply)
How do we treat animals? I've taken several trips to "Amish country" where folks live the "old way". There it is downright difficult to spot a working horse that is not "off". Virtually all are in pain. Among horse-folk the reputation of the Amish it that they use horses until they are broken (in the ruined rather than useful sense) and then discard them to whatever fate befalls them. If they can get a buck for them all the better.

Dogs have long been considered as partners to humans. Yet it is trivial to find examples of humans using dogs as little more than tools with little interest in their wellbeing.

When I eat a chicken or part thereof I REALLY don't give a flying fig how it was raised, treated while alive, or killed beyond some reasonable expectation that it wasn't filled with poison. And yes, I understand there is enormous disagreement in what might rate the label "poison". If it tastes good and doesn't make me sick I'm OK. Same with pigs, cows, and fish.

Dogs, cats, and horses, on the other hand, I have invested substantial resources into treating well.

Where's the line?
#8 Knucklehead (Link) on 2008-09-16 21:54 (Reply)
Yes, because a chicken's life was so jolly throughout the rest of history, and we've ruined that.
#9 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2008-09-17 22:23 (Reply)
To equate factory farms with animal torture is oversimplistic ignorance at work.

Not that a poorly run factory farm can't abuse animals, just like a little family farm can. Or a suburban household. Or a citydweller.

This is how large urban service-oriented hi tech civilizations feed themselves. To advocate returning to little 80 acre farms across this country is no more rational than it is to advocate we go back to making all manufactured goods by hand, books can't be printed but must be handwritten by monks under candlelight, music can no longer be recorded ... only live performances. If you want gasoline for your vehicle, go start digging your oil well and setting up your own little labtop refinery. (No scratch that, can't have cars without modern manufacturing.) You want a house ... start building, no wait, you got to select the trees for the lumber you'll have to cut first. You want some nails ... better go talk to the local blacksmith. You need new clothes ... better start raising your wool sheep. Milk for your kids, or cream for your coffee, or butter .... you guessed it, go find yourself a cow and a wooden bucket. The end of specialization and efficiency of scale ... the return to waste.

The underlying message, of course, is that if we didn't raise food this way, most of the world would starve to death.

Sure, it doesn't look as quaint as the quintessential family farm ... but that doesn't make it abusive.

Those kinds of concepts go hand in hand with the Buy Local organic crowd. (Who all tend to have higher net incomes to pay for that stuff ... which is fine by me. I'm all for stupidity premuims.) ... of course, they don't want dairy cows to have antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. Now that's abusive! The stupidity of our cultural elites.
#10 ruralcounsel on 2008-09-18 14:37 (Reply)

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