A few years ago, on a tour of a small village in Vietnam, we were taken to a small farm compound, where the residents manufactured rice paper wrappers for spring rolls and raised a few farm animals for food. There were chickens clucking around and a few friendly, waddling ducks. There was also an enormous pig housed in a small, concrete enclosure.

As our group approached, the pig rose up on her hind legs, placed her front legs on the ledge of her pen, and looked us all straight in the eyes with a completely charming mixture of intelligence and humor. Without a doubt, that pig was posing. The pen was small, but clean. The pig appeared to have plenty of freedom of movement. The pig was whole, no cropped tail, no sores, nothing amiss. I can’t pretend to know if that pig was a happy pig. But from my limited human perspective, she looked contented.

Every time I think about how we raise animals for food, I think about that expressive pig. That pig represents both my deep ambivalence about eating animals and also what I think of as the ideal way to raise animals for food.

For those of us who do eat meat, who don’t raise our own animals, one at a time, or who cannot afford to pay top dollar to buy direct from a very small farm, that ideal is pretty near unattainable.

For conscious omnivores, who eat meat sparingly and thoughtfully, who avoid meat raised under conditions that we call “factory farming”, what is a reasonable level of animal welfare in farming? And how accurate are our perceptions of what constitutes “good farming”?  Farming is a struggle for farmers. There is a delicate balance between the scale and methods that will allow the farmer to stay in business and earn a living, and letting the animals experience life as naturally as possible.

So what does humane treatment of animals actually look like? Who defines it? And most important, if you’re a meat eater, what is your personal line?

The Humane Society of the United States has been actively documenting the worst abuses of factory farming in a series of undercover investigations. In December, a video showing atrocities at a Smithfield pig breeding facility in Virginia was released. The pigs were kept in gestation crates barely large enough for their bodies for their entire lives, live pigs were thrown in dumpsters, and baby piglets were left to die in manure pits after falling through the slats of the crates that their mothers spent their entire lives in.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, a video documenting the routine mutilation of turkey poults at the nation’s largest turkey hatching facility was released. Fifty percent of the turkeys available in typical grocery stores came from that particular hatchery.

How can you be sure that you are not contributing to such practices? Find out what humane treatment is, study the certifications, and then buy meat that you can feel good about.

At a glance, here are the various certifications, their affiliations, and their logos:

Animal Welfare Approved: Animal Welfare Institute (non-profit)

Humane Farm Animal Care: Humane Society of the United States (non-profit)

Global Animal Partnership: Non-profit, but partially funded by and affiliated with Whole Foods

USDA Organic: Govt agency (the National Organic Program includes animal welfare standards into its rules)

American Humane Certified: The American Humane Association (not-for-profit corporation)

All these standards are summarized here. Download the pdf chart to see a chart of side-by-side comparisons.

It’s a complex issue so here’s my take on it:

Best of the Best:

If you have plenty of money and access to small farms, go for the strictest certification, which in most cases is Animal Welfare Approved. This certification seems to cover mostly very small family farms. Some of the small family farms from which you buy might more than meet the requirements, but they also might know their customers well enough that they don’t become certified. The lesson here is to know your farmer and visit the farm, if you can. In which case, the certification doesn’t even matter.

Next Best:

Humane Farm Animal Care does a great job of writing standards for operations of different sizes and scales. Some of the commonly available mid-sized regional producers are able to meet these standards, so if you buy your food in a grocery store, not direct from farmers, this is the best certification to look for.

The Rest:

Global Animal Partnership has some good standards on important issues, but doesn’t address a lot of issues that need addressing. If Whole Foods is your store, you can see where they are headed with their certification system that rates producers according to a series of steps.

USDA Organic is better than nothing but doesn’t impose many restrictions on how the animals are treated other than those relating to feed, antibiotics, and hormones.

American Humane Certified is the weakest because it isn’t transparent and doesn’t address many issues. Plus, it allows a lot of common practices none of the others do.

In the end, you have to decide what your personal limits are – both budgetary and ethically.

Summary of Major Requirements Per Species by Certification

Chickens:

Growth Hormones – prohibited by all except not addressed by American Humane Certified

Antibiotics – prohibited by all except allowed by American Humane Certified

Outdoor access – minimum access required by USDA Organic, pasture required by Animal Welfare Approved, not required by other certifications. When provided, there are specific requirements laid out by Humane Farm Animal Care

Space – 6 lb. per square foot required by Humane Farm Animal Care, .67 square foot per bird for roosting, plus range space required by Animal Welfare Approved, 6.2 lb. per square foot required by American Humane Certified, no space requirements from other certifications.

Required dark periods for sleep – 6 to 8 hours required by all except no requirements by USDA Organic or Global Animal Partnership

Beak and toe clipping – Prohibited by Humane Farm Animal Care, Animal Welfare Approved, and Global Animal Partnership, unclear whether allowed by others.

Pigs:

Growth Hormones – Prohibited by all except allowed by American Humane Certified

Antibiotics – Prohibited by all except allowed by American Humane Certified for disease treatment only

Outdoor Access – Pasture required by Animal Welfare Approved, access required by USDA Organic, not required by Global Animal Partnership or American Humane Certified, standards for both indoor and outdoor care by Humane Farm Animal Care

Tail Docking – not allowed by Humane Farm Animal Care, Animal Welfare Approved, Global Animal Partnership, allowed by USDA Organic and American Humane Certified

Cows

Growth Hormones – Prohibited by all except allowed by American Humane Certified

Antibiotics – Prohibited by all except allowed by American Humane Certified

Pasture Range Requirements – Pasture raising and finishing required by Animal Welfare Approved, Feedlot and grass allowed by Global Animal Partnership and USDA Organic (minimum pasture requirement), standards for both pasture and grass written by Humane Farm Animal Care, (feedlots allowed) no requirements by American Humane Certified

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Friends of Family Farmers

The post The Green Plate: What Every Meat Eater Should Know About Humane Certifications appeared first on EcoSalon.

A funny thing happened on the way to the local food movement. Just as small segments of the population have taken up the local foods cheer, family farms and the infrastructure that supports them continue to dwindle daily. Even as we’ve begun to realize what our addiction to convenience in the form of processed, packaged foods and cheap meat is costing us, we are in danger of losing even more sources of real food.

Hopefully we have not gone too far toward mass consolidation to dig ourselves out, because many people think that local foods are a path out of many of both our economic and environmental woes. They certainly provide a way to eat better (as in healthier and tastier), reduce one’s impact on the environment, and support local, resilient economies.

Consider this: In 2005, the year that the term “Locavore” was first uttered by Jessica Prentice we were continuing the loss of farmland that began in the 30s and accelerated in the 70s and 80s. Between 2005 and 2006, the U.S. lost 8,900 farms (a little more than one farm per hour) The American Farmland Trust estimates that we lose one acre of agricultural land per minute to development.

With the farmland goes infrastructure like feed stores, slaughterhouses, tractor dealers and the jobs go with them. Between 2001 and 2005, 200 federally inspected meat processing plants disappeared. Most were very small plants. Today, four corporations slaughter 80 percent of the cattle in the United States.

But even as we continue to lose farmland and infrastructure, like slaughterhouses, there’s a nascent movement toward re-localizing. It’s driven by the small but real demand for local foods and also, in response to that demand, by the new USDA.

As the Ethicurean reported recently, the USDA has published a study on the impact of local food dollars called “Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues.” Though direct-to-consumer sales from farmers markets, farm stands, and U-pick were only 0.4 percent of the total food economy, the numbers are growing. Local foods are growing at a rage of 10 percent per year outpacing the rest of the food economy’s growth rate of five percent.

As with other local foods, there’s a growing demand for small-scale, local meat production. The people driving the demand want to know where their food comes from and they don’t want to contribute to the devastating ecological impacts of CAFOS (confined animal feeding operations).

The USDA is supporting this movement in a variety of ways. One of the more creative is its funding and support of mobile slaughterhouses. These facilities are just coming online in several areas around the U.S. and allow smaller farmers access to USDA inspected facilities. If we are to re-localize meat production away from the four giant corporations, the small farmers will need processing facilities appropriate to their scale of production and feasibly near enough to local markets.

This move is necessary because, as the Washington Post article above points out, the barriers for small, ecological farmers in getting their product to market are incredibly high. Big slaughterhouses require appointments far in advance, are spread out and consolidated across the country, and may not want to deal with small herds. The USDA is helping small meat producers stay on their land farming by supporting the development of more mobile slaughterhouses. They provide funding, USDA inspectors, and a help line for small producers.

Though this is a tiny segment that only affects a few farmers and consumers, it is a creative strategy for reducing animal agriculture’s impact on the environment and perhaps even saving rural economies from extinction.

Environmentally, smaller scale animal operations produce fewer impacts. According to a report by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the animal waste from factory farms is produced in such large quantities, it is impossible to deal with in a responsible way and use as fertilizer, which is a role that animal agriculture has always played in row crop farming. Not to mention, the manure excreted by animals in factory farms often has a range of toxins including antibiotic-resistant residue and endocrine disrupting chemicals. These and other pollutants can get into water and airways, negatively affecting nearby communities. However, the waste created on smaller, more environmentally sustainable farms raising both crops and animals, can be dealt with effectively and used to fertilize crops.

Recent studies are starting to point to local foods as a way to jump start sagging economies. According to The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a typical farmer gets paid 10 cents of each retail food dollar, but farmers who sell direct to consumer get more money to invest in their farm and support their family. Strengthening rural communities is the key to a healthy and diversified economy. While dollars spent with large corporations almost immediately leave the community, dollars spent on local food products circulate within the community eight to 15 times, drastically improving the value of your purchase.

A local food economy study conducted by Sustainable Seattle found that locally directed spending by consumers more than doubles the number of dollars circulating among businesses in the community. Put quantitatively, the study found that a shift of 20 percent of food dollars into locally directed spending would result in a nearly half billion dollar annual income increase in King County alone and twice that in the Central Puget Sound region.

If re-localizing food production really is a way to work toward a more economically and environmentally sustainable future, than mobile slaughterhouses can be part of a larger rebuilding of the infrastructure of community-based agriculture.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Hans S

The post Mobile Slaughterhouses Promoting Local, Sustainable Meat Production and Stronger Local Economies appeared first on EcoSalon.