3 Takeaways - 200 Billion Animals Are Killed for Food Each Year (#224)

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Chew on this: Approximately 200 billion animals are raised for food each year, often in horrific conditions. The contribution of these animals to climate change is greater than the emissions of all the cars being driven around the world. There is a solution. Listen, as Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer explains both the problem and a simple answer.

As my guest today says in his book, in 2015, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer asked what present practice universally engaged in and accepted by people of great intelligence and moral sensitivity will be seen by future generations as abominable in the way that we now see slavery as abominable. Mr. Kradhammer's answer was our treatment of animals. I'm convinced, he wrote, that our great-grandchildren will find it difficult to believe that we actually raised, herded, and slaughtered them on an industrial scale for eating. How should we think about our treatment of animals? Hi everyone, I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways.

On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today I'm excited to be joined by Peter Singer. He's thought a lot about our ethics and our treatment of animals. He was born in Australia, educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford, and became a professor of bioethics at Princeton University Center for Human Values. His work specializes in practical ethics, and he is known

for his work on animals and on global poverty. He's the author of numerous books including Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, and The Life You Can Save. His most recent book is Consider the Turkey. Welcome Peter and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today. Thanks very much Lynn, I'm happy to be with you. It is my pleasure. Peter, let's start with some numbers so everyone understands the scale of what we're talking about, about how many animals, cows, lambs, pigs, chickens and fish are produced for food each year. We're talking about an estimated 200 billion animals raised for food each year.

And I'm not including in that wild caught fish who would make the number go several times that I'm just talking about the animals we actually raise from birth to death and the death of course we cause. And the largest proportion of course we cause and the largest proportion of those are chickens and fish but they're very large numbers of all of those animals you mentioned. That's an enormous number of animals. As you've pointed out raising all those animals has a huge impact on the environment. What is the impact on the environment?

Well, there are multiple impacts on the environment. We're all concerned now about climate change, and that is one really important impact. The animal raising industry clearly contributes to climate change. Estimates vary. Something like 15% is a reasonable estimate, particularly when you're taking into account the power of methane, which the ruminant animals in particular emit. And it's especially over a short time period, like a 20-year period, it's perhaps 80 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. And people often don't factor into it that we really need to talk about the next 20 years, because if we don't, we've lost the

whole game. And they have put a lower value on methane because it does break down faster than carbon oxide, but not fast enough. So that's one difference. Another important impact it has on the environment is that it's a huge waste of food to raise animals in confinement and then have to grow food to feed them because the animals just to live and move around and at least in the case of the birds and mammals keep their bodies warm, have to use a lot of the food value just to do that and of course also to form bones and other things that we don't

even eat. So we're wasting a lot of the good agricultural land. We don't really need as much agricultural cleared land as we have, except for the fact that we're feeding a lot of this grain and soybeans to animals. So we could leave a lot more land to grow trees and absorb more carbon again. We would also have a lot less manure, of course, concentrated manure, which gets into rivers and pollutes rivers. And if any of your listeners happen to live near these places, they will know that it pollutes the air very badly. Factory farms simply stink. How does the share of animals in contributing to global warming

compare to other sources of global warming? Well, it's greater than the emissions of all the cars that are being driven around the world and of course, most of these cars are still fossil fuel driven. It's very substantial. It's something that is also easier for us to end because we can end it just by switching to a plant-based diet, which is an entirely healthy diet that people can live on. Or even if they just reduce significantly the amount of animal products they're eating, that's going to make a big

help. Whereas some of the other things that we need to cut out require new technologies that we don't necessarily have to guarantee that we have a secure and constant supply of electricity. People are thinking about how best to do that and I hope they get there, but this is something that we can do immediately and that will make a big difference to slowing climate change. For each pound of beef, pork or chicken that we eat, how much grain or food is actually required? Well it will vary with each of those species. Chicken is the most efficient converter and we're talking about something still even there like three pounds of grain for one pound of chicken. And in fact, if we're talking about protein, we can talk about protein because the grain is actually way dry and the chicken, of course, is not way dry.

So even if you're talking about protein equivalence, it's still roughly a three to one ratio. When you get to pigs, it's more like six or seven to one, the waste of you know, we only get one back for every six or seven pounds that we're putting in. And when we come to beef cattle in a feedlot, it's one in 10 or even less than one in 10 that we're getting back. We're wasting at least 90% of the food value of the grains and soil that we feed to cattle and feedlots. Those numbers are huge. Let's talk about how different types of animals are raised, grow, and live.

Can you tell us about pigs? Pigs nowadays, they're indoors all of their life. They're living either on concrete floors or on metal slatted floors. Both of those are easier to keep the manure off to hose the manure down. But they're really bad for the hooves of the pigs. They're used to walking on soft floors or they've evolved to walk on soft floors I should say in forests. soft floors, or they've evolved to walk on soft floors, I should say, in forests. And they get foot deformities and foot pain from standing on concrete and metal. They don't have any straw to bed down into, which would make them more comfortable because that's another imposed cost to provide the straw and to clean it out.

So everything is done just for the cost efficiency of the operation and nothing for the wellbeing of the operation and nothing for the well-being of the animals. And then with pigs, the worst thing that happens is that the sows are often kept in narrow stalls, so narrow that they can't turn around. So these are the mother pigs who produce the pigs that then get sent to market. And their role is just to produce litter after litter after litter. They're pregnant most of their lives and when they're pregnant they're in these stalls where they cannot even turn around let alone really walk around. So that's a really miserable situation for a lively intelligent animal who would normally

be foraging in the forest and still has those instincts but has no ability to do it. How about cows? Well if we're talking about cows kept from milk, they're also now increasingly concentrated. We have the image of the cows grazing in the fields, able to walk around in a herd that is natural to their kind, but the intensive dairies are nothing like that. A lot of people realized this a year or so ago when there was a fire that destroyed a Texas dairy and 18,000 cows died in that fire. Now these 18,000 cows were not caught in the fields. They were in a building or in several buildings, very concentrated together. Often they're tied up so they can't walk around and again, that's for the convenience

of the workers, put some manure in the same spot, and then they're just fed there. So they're often just standing or sitting down all day, that's all they can do. And they can't socialize with other animals in the way that they would if they were out of a herd. The other fact I should mention about dairy cows, of course, is that you have to make them pregnant to keep the milk flying. So as with other mammals, including humans, the females don't just produce milk without having a baby. But if you want the milk to sell, then the standard practice is to take the calf away within the first hours of birth, which causes real distress to the cow and

of course to the calf as well. How about farmed fish? Is that more humane? I think the only thing one can say about farmed fish is that there isn't as much research about what the fish go through. But we do know that fish can feel pain. That's been established beyond doubt by research by a couple of women scientists in the last decade or two, Victoria Breithwaite and Lynne Sneddon. So especially when we have carnivorous fish like salmon, they are used to swimming long

distances in the ocean. But of course, they can find their nets where they just go round and round in endless circles. To feed them, to keep a salmon and raise a salmon to its market weight may take as many as 140 fish, one study showed. There's fish that are often caught in the oceans, cheap fish that don't have high value in themselves, but they caught and then they ground up and made into fish pellets and the pellets are fed to the salmon. So it's actually if you're eating farmed salmon, you're not just responsible for the death of your salmon, you're responsible for the death of maybe 140 other fish too.

How about chickens? What kind of lives do they live? There are two kinds of chickens. There are factory found, one of them are the laying hens who produce eggs. And they are still unfortunately often in standard wire cages that would not allow even a single bird to stretch her wings if she were alone in that cage. But she's not alone. There's probably three or four other hens in with her. And she's standing on a wire floor, which is not really suitable for her feet. She lays eggs on the floor which when rolled out at the front of the cage, saves labor,

but it's an awkward perch for her. And of course, the weaker birds have no way of getting away from the stronger birds in these small cages. These cages, incidentally, are illegal in the European Union, across the entire European Union. They're also now fortunately illegal in California and a few other US states, but in the majority of US states, and especially those where most of the eggs are produced, they are not illegal. And when we come to the chickens raised from meat, they're not in cages, but they are incredibly crowded. You might get 20,000 birds in a single shed.

And if you look at a photo of it, it just looks like a white carpet across the floor of the shed. You can't see the floor. There are so many birds there. And they've been bred to grow extremely fast. So they put on weights. The chickens sold in supermarkets are about six weeks old, but they're as large as birds that in the past might have been twice as old as that or more. So the problem there is that their immature leg birds can hardly bear their weight. And experts who've studied the chickens say that they're in pain as they gain weight. They start to be in pain just because of the weight of their body pressing down on their legs

and feet, which have not matured enough to support that weight. Is there a lot of demand for chicken breast meat and how does that impact the raising of chickens? There is demand for breast meat and chickens have been bred to grow fast and to have large breasts. In fact that's even worse for turkeys because people particularly want the breast of the turkey and so the standard breed, the dominant breed that's sold in American supermarket is actually called the broad-breasted white. The bird has such a dominant breed that's sold in American supermarket is actually called the broad-breasted white. The bird has such a broad breast that the male actually cannot physically mate, cannot

reproduce with a female unaided. So every one of these turkeys, all the turkeys that people are eating at Thanksgiving or other times is the result of artificial insemination, which particularly the females appear to hate, just they're kind of flipped upside down, they're forced open. Female turkeys in the wild are very selective about who they'll allow to mate with them, but of course they're just compelled to have this male turkey semen injected into them. They squawk, they fight against it, but they have no ability to resist in the end. What you describe as how these animals live is horrifying. What do you see as the main ethical problem

with eating animals? Well, I think the first ethical problem we should think about is that animals are sentient beings, that they have interests in living a decent life, not suffering pain and we violate their interests all the time. Every one of these factories farm chickens and pigs and dairy cows and laying hens and maybe to a somewhat lesser extent the beef cows. Their lives are really bad. We are inflicting suffering on them and we don't need to because as I said, this is a waste of food. It's not nutritionally necessary for us to eat these products.

I think the ethics of it is just that we should not be causing this harm and pain to sentient beings unless it were necessary for our survival and it's clearly not. How do you believe that we should act toward animals? There are two things that we can do. The first one is we can stop giving our support to these methods of industrial farming. And of course, whenever we buy the products, we are giving our support to them because that's all the incentive they need to continue to produce them and to make profits, which mean

that they become a very powerful lobby. And that's why the United States has no federal legislation at all governing the welfare of animals on farms. So a lot of these industrial farms, people are basically free to do whatever they like that will be profitable, irrespective of how much suffering it causes to the animals. The other thing you can do, of course, is to support animal advocacy organizations, and particularly those advocating for farmed animals, because that is, as I said, just overwhelmingly where most of the suffering we inflict on animals is. I know

that a lot of people are fond of their dogs and cats and think about the problems of stray animals and want to give to those shelters. But those shelters already get, I think, a disproportionate amount of funds compared to the number of animals in need of assistance, the number of dogs and cats in need of assistance, as compared with the number of chickens, pigs, cows, and also fish in need of assistance. Should we treat different species of animals differently? For example, should we treat dogs differently from turkeys? I don't believe we should treat, I mean, you know, I should say, of course, obviously they have different needs, but I think in terms of the amount of weight we give their interests

and the extent to which we ignore or discount their interests, as we're clearly doing with turkeys to a vastly greater extent than we're doing with dogs, that just seems to me to be wrong. And in Consider the Turkey, I actually describe the life of one turkey, Cornelius, who was lucky enough to be taken to a sanctuary for animals, where Cornelius marched into the house and the people running the sanctuary and said, you know, most of the animals were outside in various enclosures and said, I'm going to live here. There was a pig already living in the house, a pig called Esther, and Cornelius and Esther

became firm friends. They would spend a lot of time cuddling up on the sofa together, and that was tolerated by the people running the sanctuary. When Esther had to go to the vet and stay overnight for a couple of days because of medical needs, Cornelius went out to the gate where Esther had left from and would watch for Esther to return. And when Esther eventually did come back, they were basically sort of embracing and tattling with each other because they were both so happy to be together again. Peter, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today?

The first takeaway I would say is to examine what you're eating and think about what you're eating and what that is doing both to animals and to the planet. The second takeaway is to think what you're doing with your money because if you're fortunate enough to have more than you need to meet your basic needs, there are many other good things you can do with them. I've already mentioned donating to animal advocacy organizations, but you can also donate to organizations assisting people in extreme poverty. And one of the other things that I do, I founded a charity called The Life You Can Save, which is actually

a charity that recommends other charities. You can go to the website, you can find the most effective charities independently assessed that are helping people in extreme poverty. And you can donate directly to them and 100% of your donation will go to them. We don't charge any commission or take any fee for that. We just want to encourage people to donate more effectively. And the third takeaway I would say is, ask what you can do to make the world a better place and you will be rewarded yourself for doing it. I've known many people who are living purposeful lives and have the reward of knowing

that they are making a difference, whether it's to other people in need or non-human animals in need, it's a rewarding way to live. And I can recommend it on the basis of my experience and that of many others I know. Thank you, Peter. Thank you for your time today on Three Takeaways.

And thank you for your work and your books on ethics and how we should live. You're very welcome. My pleasure. If you're enjoying the podcast, and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at ThreeTakeaways.com where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm Lynne Toman and this is 3 Takeaways. Thanks for listening.