Animal Welfare at Risk in Experiments for Meat Industry
At a remote research center on the Nebraska plains, scientists are using surgery and breeding techniques to re-engineer the farm animal to fit the needs of the 21st-century meat industry. The potential benefits are huge: animals that produce more offspring, yield more meat and cost less to raise.
There are, however, some complications.
Pigs are having many more piglets — up to 14, instead of the usual eight — but hundreds of those newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over. Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed.
Then there are the lambs. In an effort to develop “easy care” sheep that can survive without costly shelters or shepherds, ewes are giving birth, unaided, in open fields where newborns are killed by predators, harsh weather and starvation.
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2 comments:
Ok, well I am confused.
I can not afford beef, the price is absolutely ridiculous, so I don't buy it. Cattle farms have trimmed their herds due to the drought. But they want to produce more?
That makes absolutely no sense.
Just more government wasted dollars. If farmers want to know how to be more productive then they should be footing the bill, not the public.
More of a reason to continue on my minimal meat more veggie diet.
Stop using corn to make alcohol to use in gasoline. It costs more than its worth in the first place as a product, and it raises the price of beef.
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