Peter Fricker: Animal suffering is a legitimate Occupy Wall Street concern

by Peter Fricker on October 28th, 2011 at 4:21 PM

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One of the criticisms levelled at the Occupy Wall Street movement is that its apparent lack of focus has encouraged any group with an axe to grind against corporations to jump on the bandwagon to get its particular complaint heard. It might be true, but is there anything wrong with that?

Animal welfare advocates, for example, found it gratifying to see that Occupy Wall Street’s first official declaration included this charge against corporations: “They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.”

Not only is the statement true, but it’s also perfectly legitimate for Occupy Wall Street to connect it with the economic, social, and environmental concerns engendered by the lack of restraint on corporate power. The issues may seem disparate but they share a single root cause: the sacrifice of too many significant moral values on the altar of economic gain.

Nowhere is this truer than in modern agribusiness—and that’s why animal activists are legitimately on this bandwagon. Billions of animals suffer in what the food industry calls concentrated animal feed operations (CAFOs), better known as factory farms. Battery egg farms, the first form of CAFO, produce more than 95 percent of the eggs in Canada—by packing 26 million hens into cages so small they can’t even flap a wing. Most beef cattle end up in huge feedlots (of up to 40,000 animals) where they are intensively fed on grain (instead of their natural diet of grass) and given growth hormones and antibiotics. Modern hog barns house up to 5,000 pigs in crowded pens, with breeding sows kept in stalls so small they can’t even turn around.

Industrial agriculture is not only an animal welfare nightmare but also a major cause of environmental degradation and a risk to public health. CAFOs produce enormous amounts of animal waste, which can contaminate the local environment. (An intensive pig farm of 5,000 pigs is equivalent to a small city of 20,000 people with no sewage treatment plant.) The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said: “The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”

The economic imperatives inherent in factory farming ensure that animal welfare and the environment are low priorities. Humane treatment of animals and protection of the environment incur costs, so they are disregarded. In Canada, the intensive confinement systems that cause so much suffering among hens and pigs are perfectly legal. Farm animals are hot-branded, castrated, debeaked, dehorned, detailed, and detoed—all without anesthesia. Producers must only follow voluntary codes of practice for farm animal welfare, which are not audited.

All of this happens because no government in Canada, federal or provincial, is willing to upset agribusiness by banning intensive confinement systems like battery hen cages or sow stalls (as the European Union is doing). Yet, according to a 2010 Harris/Decima poll, 71 percent of Canadians say they are concerned about the humane treatment of farm animals. The frustration felt by animal advocates over this disparity between public concern and the monolithic indifference of government and business is exactly what the Occupy Wall Street movement has identified across a host of other issues.

Some media commentators will have fun stereotyping the variety of causes that have been woven into Occupy Wall Street (tree-huggers, bunny-huggers, et cetera) and will fail to see the thread that runs through all their concerns: that corporate profit should not always come before principles like fairness, kindness, and compassion.

Peter Fricker is the projects and communications director for the Vancouver Humane Society.

Comments

13 Comments

Rachel

Oct 28, 2011 at 4:30pm

Thank you so much or this article! I have been to Occupy Vancouver many times but other than the Food Not Bombs table I was very disappointed that there was no time given to this issue. The horrific meat industry is bad for the animals, humans, and the environment.

Jen

Oct 28, 2011 at 5:22pm

This earth is NOT just for humans. Animal suffering impacts humans (with a conscious) and their stress level - I can't tolerate seeing animals suffer anymore! The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is not a friend to animals until they start going after the real culprits of animal over-population. Those culprits include the people who breed dogs (for example) in their homes in order to make money. Dog breeding (animal breeding) without training & and associated legal accountability by the breeder (with regular investigations by the OSPCA - who in turn must be held accountable for their practices via investigations by a higher level of government & citizens) should not be allowed. Sure you can make a few thousand dollars every few months by breeding dogs at home but this contributes to over-population and since most of the sought after dogs are 'pure breds' it creates a tier or hierarchy of valuable and non-valuable animals. All animals are precious and deserve our love and protection. When the home breeders can't sell off their product - well they just eliminate it by either killing the animal (nobody asks questions as long as the body of the animal is appropriately disposed of) or dumping it somewhere in the dark of night. Gosh ... it makes me sick. My dog is my best-friend. First he was abused by his original owners, then locked up in a cold - cement floored cell during the winter months - and finally neutered because somebody wanted to take him home and make him part of their family. He is so sensitive to this day about his private parts and so frightened of being harmed ... he has all of the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder - He has improved so much and he is such a gentle, loving creature I don't even like to think about the nature of the real animals who did all of this to him.

Evil breeds in dark corners that we choose to not look in.

Jen

Patricia Ward

Oct 28, 2011 at 7:39pm

I am so gratified to know that animal abuse is finally being exposed. Thank you to all who protest cruelty to animals.

Bea Elliott

Oct 28, 2011 at 8:16pm

Oppression, exploitation and violence is endured the same whether the victims have 2 legs or 4. Wall Street is drenched in blood from the meat, dairy and egg industries - Hiring desperate laborers to do the most brutal jobs - And poisoning consumers in the meantime. Liberating the most abused ones - Will free us all!

Natalie

Oct 28, 2011 at 8:47pm

Thanks for this, great article.

Dana

Oct 29, 2011 at 12:43am

Yep I agree with you Peter Fricker that animals are abused for the frivolous "needs" of humans, and that's why I don't eat them or anything that would ooze or plop out of their bodies. But I don't think pitching a tent at the art gallery is the answer. Face it, in this regard "we" are not the 99%... I know that my beliefs about animals put me very much in the minority. Rather than holding a sign and ranting about corporate greed, I am aware that it's actually the "99%" that needs to come around to the common sense concept that animals actually do have feelings. I boycott the animal abuse industries, and what's encouraging is that it does make people curious and I do get a lot of folks asking me why out of genuine interest. I feel a change in consciousness is happening in a big way. Thanks for the article! :)

Gentleman Jack

Oct 29, 2011 at 9:19am

Spare me, you retarded meat puppets. Children are kept in factory-farms called schools; you decadent, depraved monsters. I cannot believe how low the "human" has sunk, caring more about animals than its own and its enslavement.

Slowpoketales

Oct 29, 2011 at 9:57am

Oh yeah! This is the kind of article people need to read! Thanks so much for taking the time to "expose" this issue to the public. We're planting seeds of change. :)

Brien Comerford

Oct 29, 2011 at 1:46pm

All the grains and soy fed to brutally mistreated "Food Animals" could meet the caloric needs of 8 billion people-more than the entire human population. Food animal liberation would end human starvation. Furthermore, inhumanely raising and killing animals for food causes more global warming and environmental toxicity than any other destructive human activity.