L.C. GOES TO D.C. TO CONVENE WITH COW HUGGERS

(Last weekend the Humane Society sponsored a conference in DC called Taking Action for Animals, so we sent L.C., the Liberally cow, to find out what her human allies are up to these days. L.C. gingerly tapped out the following dispatch on an iPhone, that ingenious device so user-friendly that even a fictitious bovine mascot can write long e-mails on it:)

Dear Matt & Kat,

I am still trying to digest everything that I saw and heard at this awesome conference—as you know, we ruminants tend to, well, ruminate. It was such a thrill to be surrounded by so many two-footed herbivores fighting on behalf of my fellow farm animals. And the food! I never knew tempeh could be so tasty. How come you guys can’t make it like that?

The folks who organized this conference bent over backwards to curb its carbon hoofprint. They provided pitchers of tap water and drinking glasses instead of bottled water, and served delicious vegan meals buffet style with real plates, silverware and cloth napkins instead of doling out the usual doleful fare in disposable containers and plastic utensils. Swanky and sustainable!

I’m delighted to report that there’s an alliance brewing between the animal rights activists, the environmentalists, and the nutritionists--everyone was talking about how industrial agriculture is such a huge contributor to global warming and the obesity epidemic. Michael Jacobson, the founder and executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, gave a talk entitled “Eating Green—for Ourselves, the Planet and Animals,” in which he said, “We’re all making progress working in our respective spheres; we could make much faster progress working together.”

And Representative Chris Shays (R-Conn.) noted, “Global warming isn’t the only inconvenient truth we need to confront.” He was talking about the fact that the world is consuming more meat than ever at a time when the single best thing people could do to help themselves, the planet, and critters like me would be to switch to a plant-based diet.

Now, I know you guys think it’s a step in the right direction just getting us cows back on a plant-based diet, eating the grass our digestive tracts were designed for instead of corn, corn, and more corn (btw, why is everybody so perplexed about the obesity epidemic? Big Ag switched us to grain in the first place ‘cause it fattens you up faster. People keep pumping kids full of corn-based by-products and cooping them up indoors; why not just keep ‘em in a feedlot?)

You “ethicureans” are so convinced that going grass-fed is a big improvement over the factory farms, and if I were an actual cow as opposed to a made-up mascot, I would so definitely prefer to be pasture-raised. Because what goes on inside those CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) makes Abu Ghraib look like a picnic. The factory farms cram us into tiny, squalid spaces that leave us so constricted we can barely breathe—not that you’d really want to, anyway, with all the foul odors emanating from the manure and urine we stand around in all day. It’s enough to make you sick, and it does; that’s why they have to use so many antibiotics to combat all the diseases we get. They use growth hormones, too, to make us grow bigger, faster.

They dock the pigs’ tails, sear off the cows’ horns, and hack off the chickens’ beaks--and all without any anesthetic, too. OK, so we can’t speak, but we can feel, you know? This kind of stuff is torture, pure and simple. We are living, breathing, SENTIENT beings, but industrial agriculture treats us like commodities to be manipulated for maximum efficiency, so all these barbaric practices are just business as usual (most of this stuff is illegal in Europe, btw.)

At least the grass farmers let their pigs, cows and chickens frolic and forage outside, and do the stuff we like to do, like roll around on the ground and chew the cud with our buds. But there was a faction of passionate vegans at this conference for whom, to quote Herbivore, the hipster purveyor of pro-vegan merchandise, “There is no such thing as humane meat.” And that’s why it got kinda ugly during the Q & A following a panel of grass-fed farmers, including Nicolette Hahn Niman of Niman Ranch fame.

Nicolette had shown some almost preposterously pastoral photos of contented cows grazing on Niman Ranch’s gorgeous ocean front ranch in Northern California. Looked like a nice slice of La Dolce Vita most livestock would die to have, even if it meant ultimately getting slaughtered, however “humanely.” But when Jenny Brown from the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary stepped up to the mic to ask a question, she expressed her outrage that the Humane Society had even invited folks like Nicolette to participate in an animal rights conference:

Ouch. You can see how the Humane Society could get gored on the horns of this dilemma. I mean, no matter how nice the livestock lifestyle at Niman Ranch, at the end of the day the cows are still gonna get slaughtered. And savored.

But roughly 97% of Americans are meat eaters, and even if half of them went vegetarian, you’d still be left with a whole lotta meat eaters. Given the atrocities the CAFOs commit on a daily basis, the Humane Society’s support for humanely raised meats seems to offer the best hope for encouraging more Americans to boycott the factory farms.

As Kim Severson noted in the New York Times last week, animal rights activists “have learned that with less stridency comes more respect and influence in food politics. So they no longer concentrate their energy on burning effigies of Colonel Sanders and stealing chickens. They don’t demonize meat — with the exception of foie gras and veal — or the people who produce it. Instead, they use softer rhetoric, focusing on a campaign even committed carnivores can get behind: better conditions for farm animals.”

The Humane Society’s approach revolves around the 3 R’s: “refinement of farming techniques, reducing meat consumption and replacement of animal products.” Severson points out that this tactic is paying off, with lots of legislative successes on behalf of farm animals in recent months and a growing awareness and acceptance of the animal rights movement in mainstream culture.

How factory farms ever came to be the norm is beyond me. I may be just a cartoon cow, but there’s nothing comical about the way the CAFOS abuse farm animals. And as the New York Times reported yesterday, the biotech industry’s busy tweaking our genes to create all kinds of genetically altered animals that supposedly solve all kinds of problems, like pigs who produce less-polluting poop, or faster growing piglets.

I may be an uddered luddite, but I wish people would stop tinkering with us and treating us like widgets. As Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” On that scale, you guys have a long way to go.