Planet Debate 2011 September/October l-d release Animal Rights
Welfare Regulations Sufficient to Solve
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Welfare Regulations Sufficient to SolveSHOULD INCREASE ANIMAL WELFARE RESEARCH Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, 2008, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, [http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf], p. 87 Recommendation #5. Improve animal welfare research in support of cost-effective and reliable ways to raise food animals while providing humane animal care. a. There is a significant amount of animal welfare research being done, but the funding often comes from special interest groups. Some of this research is published and distributed to the agriculture industry, but without acknowledgment of the funding sources. Such lack of disclosure taints mainstream animal welfare research. To improve the transparency of animal research, there needs to be disclosure of funding sources for peer-reviewed published research. Much of today’s agriculture and livestock research, for example, comes from land-grant colleges with animal science and agriculture departments that are heavily endowed by special interests or industry. However, a lot of very good research on humane methods of stunning and slaughter has been funded by the industry. b. More diversity in the funding sources for animal welfare research is also needed. Most animal welfare research takes place at land-grant institutions, but other institutions should not be barred from engaging in animal welfare research due to lack of research funds. The federal government is in the best position to provide unbiased animal welfare research; therefore federal funding for animal welfare research should be revived and increased. c. Focus research on animal-based outcomes relating to natural behavior and stress, and away from physical factors (e.g., growth, weight gain) that do not accurately characterize an animal’s welfare status except in the grossest sense. d. Include ethics as a key component of research into the humaneness of a particular practice. Scientific outcomes are critical, but whether a practice is ethical must be taken into account. While there is a large amount of peer-reviewed research on animal welfare issues being done today, there is room to improve the quality and focus of that research. More diversity in the funding sources for animal welfare research is also needed. While land-grant institutions are where most animal welfare research takes place, other institutions should not be barred from engaging in animal welfare research due to lack of research funds. Federal funding for animal welfare research should be revived and increased. The Federal government is in the best position to provide unbiased animal welfare research. Welfare Regulations Sufficient to SolveSHOULD IMPLEMENT REGULATIONS PROTECTING FARM ANIMAL WELFARE Robyn Mallon, Attorney, 2005, Journal of Medicine and Law, Summer, 9 Mich. St. J. Med. & Law 389, p. 409-10 Since there is a Humane Slaughter Act, there should clearly be a Humane Standards of Living Act to cover how the animal is raised. Animals should be given the chance to do the things they naturally do such as pigs rooting in the mud and chickens scratching the ground. All animals should be allowed the chance to go outdoors and have the ability to move around freely, exercise, and socialize in a meaningful way. As part of the return to sustainable agriculture, battery cages and gestation crates should be banned. Battery cages are so small that when the chickens grow, their feet are forced to grow around the wire because they get stuck to the bottom of the cage. n172 These cruel cages serve to immobilize the chicken trapped in it even more.
Another part of the Humane Standards of Living Act would be a provision that eliminates antibiotics from animal feed. This would eliminate factory farms because animals could no longer be kept in such close confinement if antibiotics were disallowed. This would ruin the factory farm's economies of scale and cost containment. There is simply too much of a risk for contracting superbugs and other diseases that are immune to conventional antibiotics if humans continually ingest antibiotic tainted meat. The Act would also have provisions that disallow for any changes to an animal's basic anatomy. For example, the chicken cannot be debeaked and the pig cannot have its teeth pulled and its tail docked. It cannot be castrated without anesthesia. A cow cannot have its horns removed. These actions are simply too painful to be endured without anesthetics and the basic bodily integrity of these living beings should be preserved, especially if one subscribes to the view of equitable self ownership. The purpose of this Act would serve as a complement to the Humane Slaughter Act. The provisions above would serve as a starting point for the Act. As science uncovers even better husbandry standards, those provisions should be added to the Act at a later time. To enforce the Act, a neutral third party would be required to inspect feedlots to ensure the mandated husbandry standards are being met since corporate farms clearly are not capable of self monitoring and cannot even follow standing laws such as the Humane Slaughter Act. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.43 Mb. Share with your friends:
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