Golden Arches and the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg:  Subsidizing Humane Treatment of Farm Animals

            There’s been a movement in the food industry recently toward demanding humane treatment of the livestock that provide us with meat, milk, and eggs on our dining room tables.  The shift in this direction is being driven, oddly enough, by the fast-food megaconglomerates like McDonald’s and Burger King.  (USA Today wrote a comprehensive article on this in early August of 2003.)  Exacting standards are being demanded for the chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, and other creatures that contribute so much to our own sustenance.  As heartening as these moves are, however, they’ll succeed over the long term only if the demands of the consumers dovetail with the supplies offered by the producers.  “Certified Humane” food will catch on only if the soccer mom with 3 kids purchases items with this label instead of those that lack it.  Certified Humane will probably come with a bit of a surcharge, however; it’s a bit more expensive to treat the animals well.  As I note below, the quality of meat and milk produced in animals given humane treatment will likely be superior to that obtained by animals cooped up and fed gallons of hormones.  However, the principal justification for purchasing Certified Humane products should be an ethical one, which I attempt to lay out here. 

            Free market capitalism generates no end of all-night arguments here in the US as far as its desirability as an economic and, especially, ethical model.  Many people, citing the rise of maquiladoras south of the border and the export of American jobs elsewhere, raise questions about the desirability of unfettered free trade.  If the objective is to knock prices down as low as possible, does this not inevitably mean that ethical concerns—including adequate compensation of employees and a modicum of concern for their safety—might be brushed aside in the Wild West-style capitalism of the global economy?  Not necessarily.  I believe in the free market, but I feel that it works only if consumers are well-informed of their choices and act in an ethical manner.  Maybe I’m just not yet cynical enough, but I actually do believe that the masses of American consumers are capable of making informed moral choices about the products they purchase in the supermarkets and department store shelves.  This article is my own little effort to provide some information about an ethical choice that I feel to be essential, one that can reduce the suffering and improve the conditions for billions of animals.  So why we should pay extra out of our own pocketbooks to purchase Certified Humane goods?

            My take on this is as follows.  Let’s say we lived in a totally unscrupulous alternate world in which slavery was still considered acceptable.  You could buy your house, your car, and your clothes significantly cheaper if the materials for each of these items were manufactured by slave labor.  Thus if, for example, slavery were to be introduced into the U.S. or Mexico or Bangladesh or Sudan, and those slaves compelled to toil for multinational corporations, the prices on the shelves would be far lower for the slave-produced goods than those issuing from factories where the employees were actually defrayed for their labor and safety standards were carefully observed.  So, while shopping at Wal-Mart or Target, you could save money by purchasing goods produced in the “slave factories,” the products being far cheaper than those generated in the “pay factories.”  This, in turn, would reinforce the “market desirability” and viability of the slave factories, over and above the inconvenient hue and cry over “human rights.”  (Incidentally, in our history, this perverse economic favorability in fact did help to support the perpetuation of the institution of slavery in the world during the 18^th and 19^th centuries despite strenuous objections; the goods produced on slave plantations were unfathomably cheap in comparison to factory-produced goods.  This, also, provided an economic pretext for abolitionists on top of their ethical ones—they could claim, rightfully, the presence of unfair price competition.)  So if you were aware of the fact, would you select the cheaper goods, despite knowledge of their reprehensible origins?  I sense that the vast majority of us would have serious qualms about this, and I look at the animal welfare issue the same way.

            You could, conceivably, acquire cheaper goods on the grocery shelves if the chickens were crammed uncomfortably into minuscule coops, if the cows were force-fed hormones and God-knows-what-else while being immobilized in little stalls.  Meat derived from animals given better treatment—chickens allowed to roam free on a range, and cattle raised without being subjected to Frankensteinian treatments—will probably cost a bit more at the counter.  But by consciously supporting those companies and food preparers who take their animals’ welfare into account—and actively endeavor to minimize their suffering and enhance their freedom—you’ll be stating, with your purchase power, that you demand proper treatment for the animals.  If these livestock are providing us with our very sustenance, the very least we can do for them is to ensure that they live with some freedom and are treated humanely.  Maybe one day we’ll have a means to produce our meat through a sort of tissue engineering process that enables us get the chicken without ever having to slaughter a chicken (I think this will occur, and I’ve made it a centerpiece of my own SF novel).  But until such time, we should do everything in our power to ensure that our own nutrition is achieved with a minimum of suffering on the part of the food-bearing animals that help us to acquire it. 

            The “Certified Humane” labels will probably be appearing on store shelves by early 2004.  Just make it a regular part of your routine to focus your gaze solely on the products that have this label.  The meat is probably healthier in any case; there’s less saturated fat and fewer who-knows-what additives in free-range chickens and cows, so you’re likely going to get more for your money in addition to supporting animal welfare.  So do it for yourself and for the farm animals that you’ll be helping in the process. 

-- Wes Ulm

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