Gestation Crates, Selective Breeding, and the Danger of Anthropomorphic Reasoning

​A friend forwarded me a link to this page, which allows you to virtually experience life as a sow living in a gestation crate.  I encourage you to check it out.

​It is a powerful tool for those attempting to phase out gestation crates.  In fact, if I were trying to convince someone of the inhumanity of gestation crates, I'd be hard pressed to think of a more effective message.

That being said, the experience provided at the link can be misleading.  You are not a pig.  And, how we project ourselves feeling in those cages may or may not correspond to the way pigs feel who have been selected to live in those environments.  

I was reminded of this when reading Haidt's most recent book when he wrote:

In the 1980s the geneticist William Muir used group selection to get around this problem.  He worked with cages containing twelve hens each, and he simply picked the cages that produced the most eggs in each generation.  Then he bred all of the hens in those cages to produce the next generation.  Within just three generations, aggression levels plummeted.  By the sixth generation, the death rate fell from the horrific baseline of 67 percent to a mere 8 percent.  Total eggs produced per hen jumped from 91 to 237, mostly because the hens started living longer, but also because they laid more eggs per day.  The group-selected hens were more productive than were those subjected to individual-level selection.  They also actually looked like the pictures of chickens you see in children’s books – plump and well-feathered, in contrast to the battered, beaten-up, and partially defeathered hens that resulted from individual-level selection.

​Haidt was making a point about how genetic selection works not only at the individual level but also at the group level in humans and animals .  But, he also mentions another important point.  The animals we have on farms today are specifically selected for the environments in which they live.

I wrote a paragraph exactly on this point for our recent book on animal welfare that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor.  Here it is resurrected:​

Seeing a picture of a pig living out its life in a small cage can invoke strong emotions, but we must recall that the pig was genetically selected, in part, because it was relatively unbothered by such living conditions. Some people do not mind spending all day lounging on the couch. Others of us cannot sit still. Animals exhibit similar diversity in their need and desire for movement and exercise. An animal that is constantly fidgeting and stressed about living in confined quarters is an animal that will not rapidly gain weight. Because farmers want just the opposite, they have purposefully selected and bred animals that are not terribly troubled about living in a crate.This does not mean that such animals would not prefer a larger pen or to live outdoors, but it does suggest it can be dangerous for humans to transpose their needs and emotions on farm animals, especially those animals that have been purposefully bred for the environments in which they live.

None of these comments necessarily justify gestation crates, but they do at least suggest caution in making decisions based on anthropomorphic thinking.

Artificial Meat

​I was interviewed recently for this piece on artificial meat that appeared a couple days ago in a major online French publication.  I'm not fluent enough in French to competently comment on the content of the article, but I found one line of questioning by the journalist, Yannick Demoustier,  quite perceptive.  

He noted the demand for meat substitutes and artificial meat was motivated by many factors including animal welfare and environmental concerns.  Many (though not all) of the folks trying to reduce meat consumption are also motivated by a "return to nature" phenomena - seeking to avoid "artificial" food. ​  

The journalists asked how these folks will react to meat made in a lab with the latest scientific technologies.  The choice pits desires for "naturalness" against desires for "sustainability" and highlights the fact that these two are not the same.  I don't think we know much about this trade-off and it is a great question for future research.

Gestation Crates and Unfunded Mandates

The New York Times had a nice piece ​on the challenges faced by hog farmers converting from gestation crate systems to open pen systems.  For background, the Human Society of the United States (HSUS) has won successful ballot initiatives in states such as California, Florida, and elsewhere banning gestation crates, and in recent months several large restaurant chains have said they will (at some future date) no longer source pork from farms that use gestation crates.

I strongly disagree with the ​farmer in the piece who says,

What I don’t like is some big restaurant chain in Chicago that knows nothing about raising animals is telling us how to raise pigs.

It is the consumer, after all, who wins the day.  Nobody who makes a living selling what they produce to others has the final say so (at least as long as they want to stay in business).

Despite that quibble, the article does a nice job characterizing the trade-offs ​entailed in phasing out gestation crates and documenting the reasons why farmers adopted these systems in the first place (something we also tried to do in our book on the subject).

The end of the piece has a quote from my friend and collaborator, Glynn Tonsor at Kansas State University, ​who gets at the crux of the problem faced by many pork and egg producers.  The issue is that when consumers show up in the voting booth, they enthusiastically vote to ban practices such as gestation crates in pork production and battery cages in egg production.  Yet, when those same people visit the grocery store, they aren't willing to pay the extra amount for meat and eggs produced in alternative systems.  

In essence, we have consumers requiring farmers to adopt practices, which the consumers (according to their own behavior) aren't fully willing to pay for.  Farmers, then, face something very much like an unfunded mandate (a phrase I believe I heard Glynn first use in this context).  Unfunded mandates normally come about when the government requires the adoption of a costly practice or service without providing the funding to accomplish the outcome.  In a similar manner, consumers and restaurant chains are requiring farmers to adopt practices without being willing to pay for what they say they want.

​The ultimate result will be lower profits for hog farmers (well, at least US hog farmers).  It should be noted that hog farmers are already predicted to suffer record losses over the next year because of rising feed costs.  

While we may have to live with a less profitable hog sector, I at least implore voters to count the costs in the voting booth in the same way they do in the grocery store.​  Some hog farmers, who have transitioned away from gestation crates, have found niche markets of consumers who are willing to pay the higher prices.  Here's hoping the niche grows mainstream so that funding will follow the mandate.

A Vegetarian on the Board of Tyson Foods?

I read this story with some amusement (here is the version from HSUS).  According to the article, the CEO of the Humane Society of the United States (perhaps the largest animal advocacy organization in the US), Wayne Pacelle has bought shares in and is seeking a seat on the board of directors of Tyson Foods.  Tyson Foods, by the way, is the largest producer of chicken and the second largest producer of beef and pork in the US. 

My initial reaction was that a vegetarian on the board of a major meat packer just seems wrong.  Yet, upon further reflection, I have to give it to Pacelle.  I'm having a hard time finding anything wrong with his move from the perspective of liberty and freedom of choice. 

I like to eat a good steak.  But, I'm not entitled to it.  If, hypothetically, Tyson decided its money would be better invested in another venture and decided to shut down its beef, pork, and poultry operations, how can I blame them?  I'd be sad, but Tyson doesn't owe me hamburgers. 

To garner sufficient influence in the election of Tyson's business, Pacelle and colleagues had to fork over major dough.  And, he'll have to convince other shareholders to give their support.  If Pacelle gets on the board and advocates for decisions that ruin Tyson's profitability, Pacelle looses financially as do other shareholders who support him.  That's the price he and others are willing to pay to change animal living conditions. 

Again, I'd be sad to pay higher beef prices or perhaps even sad if there was no beef from Tyson to buy.  But, I can't (and shouldn't) have the right to tell Pacelle and others how to spend their own money. 

If you don't like Pacelle's attempt to buy board membership in Tyson Foods, I have one piece of advice.  Put you money where your mouth is.  Buy shares in Tyson Foods.

Compassion by the Pound

Over at Freakonomics.com, James McWilliams graciously referred to the (in his words "superb") book Bailey Norwood and I wrote last year, Compassion by the Pound​.

​The question he raises in his post is whether it is profitable for farmers to adopt higher animal welfare standards.  There is a common  belief in the agricultural community that happy animals are profitable animals.  And that is partly true.  But as we argued in our book, and in more detail in this recent journal article  entitled Animal Welfare Economics, farmers aren't necessarily interested in maximizing individual animal profitability but the profitability of a group of animals housed on a fix amount of land.  When the goal is to maximize the total profit calculated over all animals, we show that a producer will sacrifice some individual animal welfare to achieve higher group output.  The intuition is straightforward.  A larger group of slightly sadder animals can produce more output than can a smaller group of slightly happier animals.