I just heard an American Radio Works documentary on the changes McDonald’s — the largest buyer of ‘raw’ food in America — ordered two of its suppliers, egg farms and slaughterhouses, to make to improve the welfare of hens and cattle.
In the documentary, [ transcripts are on the site as well as Real Audio ], you’ll hear PETA and McDonald’s claim all the credit, while the narrator says that “Industry Analysts” report that both groups deserve credit for the changes.
One thing which enabled the changes was the development of ways to measure animal welfare, McDonald’s is a company that lives measurement, and given a way to measure how the animals their suppliers raise are treated, McDonald’s appears to have run with the idea. The other part of this is technology, which is in use on the killing floor of the slaughterhouses who have to implement changes or lose McDonald’s business.
And then there’s the tangible and intangible benefits of treating animals humanely. A steer which isn’t stressed when it dies yields high quality beef. And I’d guess a happy chicken probably lays a better egg.
I don’t have qualms about eating animals. Cattle and chickens have been bred for at least 10,000 years by humans. But I feel better about eating something which was treated decently.
Industry consultant Temple Grandin thinks how we kill the animals we eat reflects on us:
“And another reason to make sure we’re not doing atrocious things at the slaughter plant is that if it is too easy to do something really atrocious to an animal-with the poor animal screaming and everything-the person who could do that might not have any problem torturing people,” says Grandin. “I remember one of the reasons that St. Thomas Aquinas said that we have to treat animals right is so that people themselves don’t get corrupted.”
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