Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 28
1 our country as the problem you are having here." That was
2 actually at the time the BSE was particularly prominent,
3 the BSE crisis.
4
5 Just a useful summing up of the animal husbandry. Current
6 farming methods, sorry. He said on page 11, line 23: "The
7 animal husbandry practised today is only concerned with
8 economics. The comfort and welfare of the animal is only
9 important if there is the chance that the animal will fail
10 to achieve marketability. I participated in this
11 transition. For many years I believed the end justified
12 the means. Today I regard the methods used in most animal
13 production as barbaric and inhumane."
14
15 Coming from a former cattle rancher, you may think that he
16 knows what he is talking about. Certainly that would echo
17 our sentiments.
18
19 He went on to give examples of the methods which he
20 considered to be barbaric and inhumane, talking about
21 cutting the horns off without antiseptic, castrating them
22 with no regard to the pain, branding them, putting them in
23 confined spaces, putting them on a diet that was totally
24 different to things that they were used to on the range and
25 so on.
26
27 We heard - I cannot remember where it all was, because I
28 have not had time to read all of Dr. Gonzales' evidence -
29 but there was reference to McDonald's beef in the States
30 coming from feedlot cattle, and one of the things being
31 done to the feedlot cattle was de-horning. And Mr. Lyman
32 said on page 13, line 23, when you put the cattle in a
33 feedlot aggressive animals with horns become a real danger
34 to other animals. You must cut the horns off. And he
35 said, so it is not something that has to be done out on the
36 range. Usually it is not done. It is almost always done
37 in the feedlot. So obviously that is a barbaric practice
38 which is basically only taking place so that the animals
39 can be crammed in to feedlots and be fattened up quicker at
40 less cost in order to make more profits for the meat
41 industry.
42
43 He referred to the very great distances that animals were
44 transported. He said that he personally had seen animals
45 transported from Florida to California without stopping,
46 and that he was there when they unloaded them and the
47 animals were in a terrible state of health. They were
48 dragged off the truck and left in piles. He said that in
49 Montana, because it had no slaughter facilities within the
50 State it took between 24 and 30 hours to load up the
51 animals and get them to a slaughter facility. Obviously we
52 have heard quite a lot of evidence about the suffering that
53 animals endure while they are being transported.
54
55 He referred on page 14 to the fact that there are four, he
56 said, the top three to four slaughter corporations control
57 80 to 90 percent of the fed cattle that are slaughtered in
58 the US today, and he explained how the fact that they were
59 being made into such big operations meant that the smaller
60 slaughter houses were -- it was harder to compete and
