By Nick Pendergrast

This is a significant time for animals – October 2 is World Farm Animals Day and October 1-8 is Be Kind to Animals Week. In Australia, where millions of farm animals are slaughtered, kind is not the word that comes to mind.

But aren’t we a nation that condemns cruelty to animals? There was widespread public outrage at the footage of cows being slaughtered in Indonesia, just as there is ongoing Australian opposition to Japanese whaling.

As a society that condemns cruelty to animals, how do we justify the killing of millions of farm animals? In 2011, it is clear that we cannot justify this on the basis of needing to kill animals for our health or survival. Mainstream health organisations like the American Dietetic Association accept that we can get all the nutrients we need without eating animal products.

When it comes to being unique individuals who value their own life, farm animals who we call food and routinely slaughter are no different to the cats and dogs who we call companions and pat.

Everyone accepts that the animals we share our homes with are sentient. Sentient beings are self-aware individuals with likes and dislikes and an ability to experience sensations such as pleasure and pain.

I recently visited Edgar’s Mission animal sanctuary, located in country Victoria, for a second time. Visiting sanctuaries such as this, it is abundantly clear that if you spend any time at all with farm animals, you will see that sentience is just as clear in these animals as it is in cats and dogs. This is also confirmed by scientific studies, which have revealed interesting facts about cows, pigs, sheep and chickens.

Cows show excitement when they’ve learnt something new and form lifelong relationships. These relationships are ended when male “bobby calves” are separated from their mothers so humans can drink their mothers’ milk. Because bobby calves can’t produce milk, they have no use to the dairy industry so are killed for veal after just a few days of life. Their mothers’ lives are also cut short – they end up in the same slaughterhouses as those raised for meat after just a few exhausting years of continual pregnancies and milking.

According to computer tests, pigs are actually more intelligent than dogs. Yet pigs routinely face the horrors of slaughter just so we can eat products like pork and bacon. Sheep, contrary to the stereotype, have a strong sense of individuality. They can also recognise the faces of at least 10 people and 50 other sheep for two years or more, and they react to facial expressions. Just like us, they prefer a smile rather than a grimace.

Sheep are bred for wool and Merino sheep are favoured because they produce the most wool. But this breed is also the most susceptible to fly strike. This leads to the painful procedure of mulesing – where sheep have flesh near their tail removed without painkillers. Worst of all, sheep raised for wool face a horrific end to their lives in slaughterhouses.

Chickens are much more intelligent than has been assumed in the past. They have an ability to tell people apart and a greater sense of spatial awareness than young children. Male chicks cannot lay eggs and therefore have no use to the egg industry. These chicks are killed shortly after birth in various horrible ways, such as being gassed using carbon dioxide or through “quick maceration” (being blended alive). Those “lucky” enough to be born female end up in the same awful slaughterhouses as those raised for meat after just a few years of continual egg production.

There are lots of problems with our relationship with farm animals. For example, a lot has been made about the confinement of these animals, with growing opposition to factory farming.

But surely, the worst thing anyone can do to an animal, whether we’re talking about a farm animal, a companion animal, or a human, is to kill them against their will.

Dogs are being killed for food in Asia right now and campaigns in the West do not call for bigger cages for these dogs. Instead, quite rightly, they call for an end to the slaughter.

I see no rational reason why we shouldn’t extend these same calls to farm animals like cows, pigs, sheep and chickens.

Extending this same logic to farm animals can avoid the contradiction of patting some animals while eating and wearing others. It can also move us away from being a society of ‘animal harming animal lovers,’ as sociologist Roger Yates has labelled Western societies – where we condemn cruelty to animals while regularly contributing to it with what we eat and wear.

The most effective way to show kindness to farm animals during Be Kind to Animals Week or any other is to stop contributing to their killing by getting them and their products off our plates and our off our backs.  

Nick Pendergrast is a PhD candidate who studies and teaches Sociology at Curtin University in Western Australia.