Pros And Cons Of Promoting Animal Welfare

An essential ingredient to improving animal welfare and human health is to farm slower and smaller. The World Animal Protection and the Farm Animal Initiative have developed a project called the Model Farm Project in effort to promote humane farming internationally. The WAP link, “Farm Animal Welfare,” argues that humane farming is both profitable and sustainable. The WAP asserts that keeping farms moderately sized creates jobs, reduces pollution and environmental damage (and expensive clean up efforts), and raises profits because healthy animals are less costly to maintain. In terms of animal welfare, the key is allowing animals to behave and eat as normally as possible. Industrial farming adds all sorts of hidden costs, including mutilations …show more content…
My impression is that it wouldn’t be that big of a sacrifice to produce (and consume) less, but better quality meat. I believe Americans could—and would—adapt.

Another way to achieve more humane farming methods is through public policy. Evelyn Puhler's article, "Meat and Morality: Alternatives to Factory Farming," published in the Journal of Environmental Ethics, offers several ethical and moral alternatives to mass scale meat production and consumption, including vegetarianism and in-vitro meat production (?!), but the part of her article that relates to my exploration of sustainable and humane alternatives for meat production centers on government regulation. The European Union is more progressive than the U.S. on regulating humane farm practices; however, many U.S. states have taken steps to discontinue some of the most egregious practices, such as gestation crates, veal crates, and battery cages (Puhler 462). While the author examines whether any farming of animals for food can be considered moral or ethical, I don't believe we will become a nation of vegetarians any time soon, so the notion of regulating "humane" treatment of farm animals seems a real possibility. Another related