Supplied - AconcaguaA stun bolt gun presses against the skull, between the eyes of Betsy, a cow over-brimming with health. Pull?
Arguments for or against killing animals and eating them have long been part of an interesting and prominent debate. Journalists such as Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Pollan have dedicated significant portions of their careers developing positions on this topic. Both have criticized industrial farming practices, and Foer argues vehemently that slaughterhouses cause undue suffering to animals. Beyond this point, the most interesting question in this debate is one of principle: should we kill animals and eat their flesh?
Cows are pretty dumb. If you drive a truck up to a herd of cattle, they don’t know what’s happening until you’re very close. Some cows possess a certain amount of intelligence — some can figure out how to open the gate of their pen with their tongue and get out, literally, to greener pastures.
Someone told me over the weekend that an anti-beef argument considers if it’s in an animal’s best interest to exist or not exist. Others claim the absurdity of endowing the idea of best interest onto a cow. But I’m willing to posit the idea of a cow’s best interest.
Suppose there’s a farm where cows are not subject to factory farm practices, where cows spend their days grazing, hanging out, and suntanning. A cow’s best interest would probably be to stay on this farm. A farmer’s goal is to make their cattle as healthy as possible. An open-range farm has vast expanses of land, cattle feed regularly (sometimes abundantly), veterinary medicine is highly sophisticated and cows are well-protected. Cows and calves especially don’t fare well against coyotes. Cattle live even better than some humans do in this city. But should we kill cows?
An interesting documentary called Cowspiracy claims that the widespread industrial farming of cattle is the leading cause of global warming, water depletion and deforestation. I’ll posit their research. If cows are such a threat to environmental stability, according to humans’ best interest, we should get rid of a lot of cows. So then, once we kill a great many, should we let them go to waste or eat them as quickly as possible? Although this voracious behaviour might be interpreted as an increase in demand (because economists can be silly sometimes), I’ll take the latter.
It might be a good thing to kill cows on a mass scale. But back to the principle — is it in the animal’s best interest to exist or not? Cows in their old age can acquire a number of diseases and suffer, but of course, medicine takes care of that. The anti-beefs are actually right about this — I think it is in a cow’s best interest to live into old age because their luxurious lifestyle is preferable to non-existence.
But is it in humans’ best interest to seriously consider the cow’s best interest? Is it in a cow’s best interest to consider humans’ best interest?
I almost forgot about the cultural aspect of cattle (Alberta beef), the economy, the nutritional value and the taste. The taste.
Meh.
Allow me to toll the cow bells.
Goodnight Betsy.
She even won’t know what hit her.
Unfortunately I would argue that most farmer’s main goal is not to make their cattle as healthy as possible but instead to make the most money possible.