Thankfully we have not yet got feedlots in this country, but for how long? What we do have could be argued as being more sinister. We have factory farms, mostly producing chickens and pigs for slaughter, on the continent rabbits, calves and ducks produced by the same system. Factory farms can also exist under water where large numbers of fish, usually salmon around the coast of Scotland, are hemmed-in by nets and their growth rate determined by special feeding. The Spanish government is currently wondering whether to permit the development of an octopus farm off the coast of one of their islands.
Whatever the farmed animal, factory farming is driven by the same principles; large-scale production to achieve competitive unit cost of food produced thereby maintaining the myth of cheap food production, heavy borrowing to provide the capital for the initial building of production units, automatic feeding systems and the like, massive limitations on the animals natural behaviours so their activity is limited to feeding and sleeping to achieve rapid growth and then being slaughtered at an age which, if in more natural conditions, would still be that of adolescent. Thus is created a farming system which demands minimal interference as financial repayments are so crucial to profit margins.
Does the end justify the means? Is it justified by the argument that as the young animals know no different then they do not suffer? Are these creatures production units or sentient lifeforms?
Hedon Road is an interesting area to sit and watch the traffic. Almost guaranteed to see is a farm animal transporter lorry passing east on its way to the Slaughter house at Burstwick. Slaughter houses have to meet high standards of hygiene, the result being that only large regional ones survive so animals have to be transported longer distances. Are these animals fascinated by fleeting images through the slats in the side of the lorry of the outside world and daylight, none of which they have ever seen before, or as is more likely are they in mortal fear of what is happening and stressed by now being crammed together in an alien environment. By the time the lorries are coming back, destined for anywhere across Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, their cargo are probably all dead.
I once met a woman who said she was driving behind a lorry carrying crates stuffed full of hens being driven for slaughter and ‘they didn’t know whether they were alive or dead’. The next day she became a vegetarian, and has remained so. Stories like this tell a thousand words.