Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
publicly condemned by animal advocates and consumers, but
livestock industry groups as well. This does not mean that the
livestock industry and animal advocacy organizations are on
the same page. They still disagree on how and whether live-
stock should be raised for food, but the difference is that, today,
almost everyone expresses a commitment to animal welfare.
Hopefully, these examples demonstrate that the contro-
versy involves far more than being “kind” to farm animals.
They also concern how one should go about being kind. Two
individuals may have equal empathy for animals but disagree
on how the animals should be raised (i.e., their priorities differ
across the three general schools of welfare: function-, feeling-,
and nature-based schools). While agricultural scientists are
not in a position to tell society how much compassion livestock
should be given, they can play—and eagerly wish to play—a
productive role in helping society understand how to achieve
the best welfare of all animals in human care.
Scientists do not make many decisions about how animals
are treated, though. These decisions are made by the interac-
tions between agricultural industries, their customers, the
public, special interest groups, and policy. It is to these interac-
tions we now turn.
How Is Farm Animal Welfare Regulated?
Being US researchers, we will approach this question largely
in terms of US regulation, but the reader should be made
aware that the European Union has taken farm animal welfare
more seriously than any another other region. It continually
prescribes new minimum welfare standards that all EU coun-
tries are expected to meet, and these standards usually place
more emphasis on the feeling-based and nature-based schools
of animal welfare, compared to the United States.
Regulation of livestock production in the United States
tends to take place at a state level. The federal Animal Welfare
Act specifically excludes farm animals, but there are federal
