What’s needed desperately is a system of labelling that has strict guidelines and offers a spectrum from “Factory Farm” to “True open range” with a few gradients in between. Just like is needed for “Standard Big Ag” to “Hippie Joe’s Organic Garden”.

A strict range of labels would provide the market niche that the latter, the extremely holistic/organic providers need. This should have strong penalties to prevent the big companies from just slapping an “organic” generic label, raising the price, but selling it at half “Hippie Joe’s” minimum price and putting him out of business. If a range of labels is implemented so consumers can choose, then slowly the market will shift from “Big Ag” standard to the middle of the road with the extreme “Organic” end entering a renaissance. Big Ag will then simply shift to having grocery stores accept local produce again and importing luxury/out of season goods.

After all, as the article (parenthetically) points out, cows and pigs from these idyllic farms end up in the same places as the McCows. (For a look at a “USDA-inspected plant”, see the latest undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the US

It’s so easy to fall into the “happy meat” trap. All it takes is good marketing, and a willingness to not dig too deeply, ask too many questions.

That GOOD bought the hype so thoroughly is just…not good journalism, ethics, or exploration. It’s just a stacked deck.

Those who want another side to the “humane” meat story should visit these issues of the late, great Satya magazine, which explore how and when and if animal products can truly be compassionately produced:

Killing Us Softly?

Milking Us Gently?

Answer: Of course not. One of their most personal and inherent desires is their own well being, and that of their offspring. Obviously, killing them does not validate that– it is a complete denial of their most basic interest in themselves.

No matter how “compassionately” farm animals are treated, sooner of later they’ll be on death row. It’s a pretense to suggest this is humane– “humane slaughter” is an oxymoron.

Non-human animals are living beings– they are not plants to be grown.

There’s no way to preserve the “animal’s way of life” under human control because domestication, selective breeding, and sytematic killing are artificial.

“Clean” meat has nothing to do with compassion for animals. Neither can small farms supply a nation of meat eaters.

As for the notion God put animals on earth because “they taste good”,

YouGotaBKiddding

Ok, so what are plants? NON-living beings? Living non-beings?

This is nuts. If animal life is so sacred should we put every cow on life support when it’s on the brink of a natural death? Should we muster all the resources of modern medicine to cure every chicken of naturally occurring disease?

Quality of life matters more than quantity of life.

Instead of making rash assumptions, think about it. As the subject of one’s own life, one should not be made into an object for others. Rather than put cows on life support or give chickens every advantage of modern medicine, they should not be owned, bred, commodified, and sold. Human and non-human beings should be free to experience their lives on their own terms, unless they are causing harm to others.

Got it? If not, try reading animal rights theory as explained by Lee Hall and Joan Dunayer, and see if you can dispute it. (I don’t mean PeTA and all that other nonsense that really has nothing to do with animal rights theory.)

As for ‘quality of life’, I think that’s a decision you have a right to make for yourself, and under some circumstances, for dependents. Outside of that, the decision should be one’s own.