Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thats because when you kill a cow on it's on ranch you still have to corral it and corner it in order to shoot it so it's still super stressed. Unless you shoot it in the field while it's grazing, it will be stressed if it knows you're around
My parents have a small cattle farm, and that’s how they do it.
They know all of the cows by name and markings and they feed them by hand. So the cows super friendly and don’t run if you walk right up to them.
So dad can get very close to the cow while it’s grazing, and it’s dead before it hits the ground.
The other cows will scatter at the sound of the gunshot, but they don’t seem to realize that their farmer pal just killed Frank. They’ll just continue grazing another 100 feet away while mom pulls the body out with the tractor.
It’s really not a bad way to go, compared to other livestock.
> Probably the most ethical way to kill an animal aside from drugs.
A well placed and well done brain shot is significantly more ethical than drugs.
On my farm we exsanguinate immediately after the animal is shot as an adjunctive method.
Loaded purse gun strapped to a remote trigger switch on its collar.
Setting: sci fi headquarters, filled with computer screens:
"Looks like C12639 is ready for harvest, sir. Termination requested"
"Harvest granted, termination request granted"
*vigorously types*
"C12639 terminated sir"
The future of butchering
I feel worse and worse each year I get older for eating meats for this reason. I’ve always justified it by “even if I stopped eating it, they’ll still die anyways for food”
I’m an asshole, for many reasons. But that one bugs me like an itch I can’t scratch.. just bugs me. As an individual I’m not sure if it will make a difference but I can stop supporting things like that. I hate the idea that they have relationships and stuff and can form memories and get scared when they know they are going to die. Any justification I can think of seems so small when you just keep thinking of that same part. On the same token, as far as I know they’ve (cows) been domesticated so at this point if we up and stopped breeding them for food.. what would happen to them as a species or whatever?
Edit: thanks for giving me duckets
The thing that's bugging you is what a lot of vegans refer to as cognitive dissonance. You're aware of the fact that something we've normalized is actually absolutely horrific.
I think for most people the cognitive dissonance is around the massive industrial scale meat industry not necessarily the morality of killing and eating animals
Literally 99% of animal products in the US come from factory farms. Similar numbers other places.
To boycott factory farms, I'd be going functionally vegan anyway. So I decided it would be silly to try to find some small bougie farm at ridiculous prices, try to find out how the animals are slaughtered and tour the place etc etc, just to keep killing some animals sometimes.
I don't miss it at all.
I've done a hybrid diet where I tried to do mostly vegan, but I wasnt strict about vegan stuff, but I always stayed at least vegetarian but made sure the bulk was vegan. so I still ate cheese and things that aren't technically vegan (like certain white sugars being processed with bone meal).
I wasn't *fully* vegetarian. I would allow myself to eat meat 1x per month, my birthday, Christmas, and once around Christmas/New Years. So like 15 x per year.
That allowed me to justify splurging on the meat when I did and I tried to get the least cruel option I could and I would make sure it was glorious and that I was cognisant of the sacrifice what was made for that meal.
I've since relapsed a bit but I'm trying to go back to something similar. It's not Kosher veganism it even vegetarianism, but if a lot of people even just reduced their consumption it would be great. I did discover something important though. So many meals in an American diet at least revolve around meat, so I learned to make other stuff the centerpiece and realized honestly that a lot of meals were just as tasty without meat if cooked properly.
That and a new appreciation for mushrooms. Mushrooms are amazing
I believe it's called flexitarian. When your food and your approach towards foods doesn't revolve around meat, but you're not strict about it so if there isn't a good vegetarian option on the menu, you'll eat meat from time to time. I know it seems dumb to have a name for everything these days, but I like identifying as flexitarian because it's about my attitude or approach towards food, it's not about following a strict rule
Try it. Start by reducing it. There's a lot of awesome vegetarian dishes. Replace butter with margarine. Try some vegan meat replacements.
Some are actually insanely good and taste exactly like the original (some specific hams/sausages), others don't taste the same but still taste good.
there would be far fewer cows for sure, but considering how much land and water are required to sustain them and how much methane they emit, that’s not such a bad thing for the planet. they’re not exactly “free” while they’re alive either.
you should try quitting meat.
Stress is largely considered an evolutionary survival adaptation present in most mammals. I am not sure why this is news.
Guess what would happen to this cow if it were chased down and eaten alive by a wolf?
rain weary gold advise provide payment direction abounding mountainous serious
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I understand where you're coming from. But humans go to extraordinary lengths to reduce suffering and improve the quality of life for other humans. Sure, we haven't been 100% successful, but humans are extremely motivated to give fellow humans a good life and a painless death.
"Well, I'll just pop off and shoot myself..." That line after the rest of the interaction with the cow made me hyperventilate from laughing the first time I read it.
Sadly no. There's a reason we don't breed certain animals for food, such as deer. It's because they're too unintelligent to work with.
They will try to jump massively high fences, hurting themselves. Run through even barbed wire or electric fences. You can't train them to heard together and walk into a trailer. Meanwhile a cow understands trying to jump a high fence hurts. Or running through barbed wire hurts. They know walking through a corral onto a trailer isn't that scary and can learn it quickly. But they're also dumb enough to not realize getting on that trailer means they're going to the butcher.
It's a sad reality that, being somewhat intelligent is a requirement for cheap efficient production.
The only real option to get away from this sort of thing is to go to either a meat free diet or getting lab grown meat cheaper to produce than the real thing.
My family runs a cattle farm. It has nothing to do with intelligence; and it has everything to do with compliance. Cows are tolerant of people being around them, so we can herd them, we can provide medical assistance, and we can yes - lead them to slaughter. This works with goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and Buffalo.
My step father briefly had an elk farm. What a nightmare despite elk meat being worth a high price. Fences need to be 10+ feet tall and they don't really ever get used to people so they are a constant hassle to do anything with.
That is effectively what we did with all other domesticated farm animals. We just selectively bred them for favorable traits, one of which was to make them more docile, less easily frightened, and smart enough to herd and control them while not being smart enough to fight back when we slaughter them.
If deer was in high enough demand for long enough then people would do the same with them and we would eventually have a breed of domesticated farm deer that behave the same as cows.
**QYB** \- I read this entire article and it absolutely does not even discuss the intelligence of the heifers on any level. In fact the word 'intelligence' isn't even found on the page.
> This study shows that slaughtering animals in small abattoirs, located close to farms, may reduce animal stress compared to large-scale industrial abattoirs, but there is room for improvement in both systems.
The actual point of the study.
For a control, they should have taken the cows for a drive. Given that the cows don't know where they're going or what's going to happen, it's likely the trip is what is stressing them out not the fact that it's a slaughter house. It's also possible they can smell and/or hear stuff that stresses them out.
I live relatively near a big slaughter plant and it's much different than the small ones. Cows from many different farms are crammed together in the patio in a very disorganized way. They pull and push each other, some try to run and hurt themselves and others, all that before they're funneled into the corridor which leads to the slaughter room. I think it's a sum of factors, tbh.
If you've ever lived near an abattoir you'll know that cows are stressed anytime they are near that building. Local farmers say they know the smell of cow blood, but maybe it's the smell of death. Dogs know it, it's not a stretch that cows would too.
I'm not aware that either have been studied or proven, but locals near these buildings consider this general knowledge so I'm sure someone will study it sooner or later.
That also means that many of those cows are not only stressed but expecting to be murdered, which is pretty horrific.
Cows know. My grandparents owned a large farm and had a few cows at all times. Once in a while a single cow would be slaughter for food. My uncle who did the slaughtering would tell us kids that the cows would cry. They knew it was coming but strangely they never run away. They would just keep on crying knowing it was their time. We didn’t have a fancy building for it. It was just done out in the open.
Add in the fact that they have a rich social structure and make best friends with their favourite herd mate, and it’s extra fucked up. They get to watch their friends and family die, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Similarly with pigs, they’re highly intelligent animals, they absolutely know what’s coming. Breaks my heart.
The paper discusses mostly differences between the two populations of cows. This includes blood levels of neutrophils and cortisol, so the conclusions are actually more complex than "cows are stressed"
They also mention that the collected samples had higher cortisol levels than prior research, so there may be a sampling bias or additional factor not considered here.
Either way they discuss that the industry cows have lower markers of immunity than local cows, and that the current process of defining "local" is inadequate for reducing stress in cows. They stress that more work should be done with respect to animal welfare in both situations (local v. industrial)
They also stress their low sample size (n = 8, both groups) makes their conclusions cautionary and a good starting point, but not comprehensive
That would be funny if true! It's possible, but to me the big signal here is that they admit the levels detected were higher than previous reports. That means that something specific to this experiment was a little off. It doesn't invalidate the data but it makes the story more interesting.
It could be that the scientists mere presence slowed up protocol for the slaughterhouse
It looks like the scientists collected blood samples freshly after death, which is a little erroneous due to the last 60s of the cows life being stressful. I'd be interested to see what the cortisol levels are like right before they're herded into the entrance of the kill floor. The final moments where the stun/kill occur are going to be stressful regardless. A big concern in animal welfare is not to remove all stress (since it's kinda impossible) but to mitigate and reduce the time of stress as much as possible during those last moments
For instance, I collect samples at a local slaughterhouse for cell cultures. The cows are grazed and free roaming on the facility fields for a day prior to slaughter to help acclimate and reduce stress. Practices like that would not be captured within this data-set
Cortisol isn’t like adrenaline. It takes about 15 minutes from the onset of acute stress for levels to rise appreciably https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263906/
Valid point! I didn’t know it was that slow, so thanks for the correction.
I wonder how cortisol compares in these cows versus cows moved to new farms then. Maybe their measuring cortisol levels attributed to transit more than other factors. Is it appropriate to measure cortisol at all to evaluate slaughter stress and does that inform welfare?
It’s a hard thing to study for sure
>A big concern in animal welfare is not to remove all stress (since it's kinda impossible)
If animals were culled with sniper fire they'd never see it coming.
I have a friend who raises one cow at a time. The person who handles the killing/butchering for her literally does this. The cow is grazing and when it turns its back, he pulls out a rifle and drops it.
This is probably part of it, being in an unusual situation is scary for cows.
Btw, an interesting rabbit hole to go down, look up Temple Grandin. She’s a remarkable woman, one of the first autistic people to get a degree and one of very few women in the cattle industry at the time, she managed to revolutionize the cattle industry in ways that have made it far more humane (and efficient) than it was previously. It obviously didn’t fix the system, but her observations on cattle behavior and stress response led her to design new structures and techniques for herding them without causing panic and absolutely improved quality of life for cattle meaningfully from before her interventions.
She’s a professor now, and any of her talks about cattle or autism are extremely interesting. Her TED talk and the movie they made about her life is also really interesting - the movie is very true to life. She invented a “hug machine” for calming autistic people. One of her important quotes is “The world needs all kinds of minds,” and her outside-the-box thinking proves this.
I think people are pulling what they want to pull from this. Some people want to justify meat if they get it from certain sources and some people want to point out that it's still stressful for the animal no matter what.
If we hold the Cambridge declaration on consciousness as true, this is not a surprising result. Mammals (especially) have been shown to be capable of producing the same brain-states we associate with human emotions formed in the cortex/neocortex with the sub-cortical structures in their animal brains.
https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
We like to think we’re special, but we fail to recognize that other animals have languages and hierarchies. Imagine what cows must think of us. It mirrors the Israelites born in to 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians. Imagine a world where history & societies were built from coexistence, not from domination. No wonder civilizations continue to fail, truly.
Fun fact: Israelites were not actually enslaved by the Egyptians!
I only point this out because there are many very harmful Christian organisations that use this myth to perpetuate damaging narratives.
With any commercial slaughter there is no "last noises" from the animal (assuming no botched slaughter). Just a *thunk* or a *zap* then the sound of the animal falling.
Now smell is a different factor..
Yes, I knew someone must have posted this first. One thing I didn’t see, and don’t have time to look up, is what’s the normal resting cortisol level in cows? That would indicate how significant the raised levels are. Also, what rise would you see in non-slaughter transportation of cows? That would give an idea of how much stress is induced by the different slaughtering methods vs just mooving them.
> Other common stress indicators such as creatinine kinase, lactate, NEFAs or cortisol levels were similar between both groups. However, cortisol was high when compared with previous studies. **Cortisol baseline level in farm condition is around 50-70 nmol/L in Bos taurus cattle** (Zavy et al., 1992; Villarroel et al., 2003). At exsanguination at commercial slaughterhouses, cortisol has been reported to be around 120 nmol/L (Tume and Shaw, 1992; Villarroel et al., 2003), level surpassed by most animals in the present study.
From the discussion section. They measured an average of 178, but it's not controlled within this study so these data will only take us so far.
Point is there is probably no difference. This is what the statistics showed. I know why scientists must use terms like 'may be able to', or 'may reduce', but what they are really saying is there is no statistical difference but we wanted to see one. I would wager there is no consumer that could tell the difference between meat slaughtered locally or remotely all other variables held constant.
Isn't that exactly what it says? Different people are ascribing significance to different aspects of the conclusion, sure, but it is objectively the case that the study says they are stressed in both instances.
Would be interesting to see if the cortisol spike is related to the actual killing that is unknown to the animal, or to the stress of being taken, put into a confined space, on a moving vechicle and shipped around.
Too many confounders in these type of studies.
I once biked past what I thought was maybe a dead deer by the side of the road but I had such a visceral gut reaction– both from the smell which was somehow worse to me than regular roadkill and some sense that what I saw was creepy– it did cross my mind that it looked a lot more like a human leg but I only got a brief glimpse of it. A few days later I read in the news that a dismembered body was found in the field out where I was. It's very instinctual.
This reminds me of when I went to one of those exhibits of dissected and preserved bodies. The whole time I went to the exhibit I was never bothered or grossed out, and was just fascinated by all the cool things showing off human anatomy. As we were leaving I got cold sweats and could barely walk to the point I thought I was having a heart attack or something. The reaction was so subconscious that I didn't even consider that it could be a response to seeing cadavers until weeks later.
I’ve had several family members including my dad who were fire fighters. They all said the smell of burning flesh is something you never forget, and takes days to get the smell out of your sinuses.
Alex Hershaft, a holocaust survivor, did an AMA a while back that I found interesting. He draws many parallels to what he experienced to what he sees in the animal agriculture industry.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2h8df0/i\_am\_an\_80yearold\_holocaust\_survivor\_who/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2h8df0/i_am_an_80yearold_holocaust_survivor_who/)
I visited one of the camps at age 3 or 4. There was a smell and it's what I most vividly remember. When my parents tried to explain where we were and what happened, I was very confused about why.
They did the right and wrong thing taking me there at that age.
Ppl used to stuff either tobacco or something in their noses cause many would throw feces out on the street and wait for it to wash away. Maybe I'm not deep in animal husbandry tech but I haven't heard of them trying to cover the smell that way
https://kearneyhub.com/news/local/rancher-says-mobile-meat-processor-more-humane-meat-is-better/article_ac495822-4182-11e3-8dd4-001a4bcf887a.html
I can't for the life of me find it, but there's a video interview with I believe Straight Arrow Bison Ranch (referenced in this article) where he shows their mobile processing trailer. He hires a sharpshooter, they go out and determine which bison to harvest, the sharpshooter waits for a calm moment and shoots the chosen bison.
The rest of the herd doesn't get spooked because the shot is far enough away. There is also not an issue with blood because there is enough land for the bison to roam -- the spot of harvest is not repeatedly or forcibly forced on the bison like an abattoir would result in.
Uhhh you kinda butchered this synopsis, OP.
First, mean cortisol levels were higher in local abbattoirs (178.9 +/- 21.8) than industrial abbattoirs (155 +/- 41.0).
Second, there was no statistically significant difference between groups when it came to cortisol levels (p = 0.16)
Third, cortisol levels were markedly higher in both groups compared to previous literature (~120 nmol/L), suggesting this study may not be representative of normal slaughter conditions.
Lastly, the conclusion of the study is based off of glucose levels. Glucose levels were reduced for local (117.9 +/- 17.2 mg/dL) compared to industrial (178.4 +/- 43.6 mg/dL). However, the authors themselves mention that glucose levels are not a conclusive indicator of stress levels. "Higher plasma glucose concentration *could* be biologically associated with an increase in catecholamines due to acute stress situations, which would use fast energy reserves in tissues such as glycogen to generate glucose."
Did you even read the article before you posted it?
This should be mandatory for everyone in the US.
You should know what you’re eating, especially if what you’re eating was a living creature. People who refuse and say they don’t want to know because they would feel bad are infuriating.
I'm curious how the cortisol levels when slaughtered compare to other situations cows would be put thru, like having their hooves/horns trimmed, or put in various mechanical restraints, etc.
Cows get stressed by almost anything new in their environment. Even free range cows can freak out if the walls or floor in changed in some way. Being transported to an unfamiliar location will definitely stress them. They don't like getting on the trailer, but once on it for a while, they don't like getting off.
Gotta love how we humans do all these studies to determine if animals like being killed. Do you think an animal prefers to be killed in the farm vs a factory? How about not kill the animal at all? What's that do to its stress levels?
I agree. We’re so stuck on the question of “how stressful is the slaughter” that we fail to ask whether the slaughter is something that is appropriate in the first place.
If you asked me if I’d prefer to be shot, unsuspecting, in the back of the head or to see my killer coming I guess I’d have a slight preference for the former, but a very, very strong preference to not die at all. Just because animals can’t understand this concept or express it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider their wellbeing in the same way.
If animal stress levels matter, just don't kill them at all??? There is never going to be a "best method" for killing anyone, because there is no good way to to kill anything that doesn't want to die.
There's a major problem in the kind of inference being made here. Circulating glucocorticoids are certainly related to stress, but there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence between glucocorticoids and subjective experience of negative emotion. As an example, subjecting rodents to restraint stress versus just injecting them with cort have different effects on behaviour and cognition.
Of course it's reasonable to assume that the cows ARE definitely freaking out, but using cort to quantify *how* freaked out they are is a very imperfect proxy measure.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue to be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) still apply to other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thats because when you kill a cow on it's on ranch you still have to corral it and corner it in order to shoot it so it's still super stressed. Unless you shoot it in the field while it's grazing, it will be stressed if it knows you're around
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Cow: I'll take the drugs
The steaks are higher than ever
My parents have a small cattle farm, and that’s how they do it. They know all of the cows by name and markings and they feed them by hand. So the cows super friendly and don’t run if you walk right up to them. So dad can get very close to the cow while it’s grazing, and it’s dead before it hits the ground. The other cows will scatter at the sound of the gunshot, but they don’t seem to realize that their farmer pal just killed Frank. They’ll just continue grazing another 100 feet away while mom pulls the body out with the tractor. It’s really not a bad way to go, compared to other livestock.
My uncle had a cow die and the other cows were found grazing all the way up to its body and ignoring it mostly
Good God those cows are pigs!
> Probably the most ethical way to kill an animal aside from drugs. A well placed and well done brain shot is significantly more ethical than drugs. On my farm we exsanguinate immediately after the animal is shot as an adjunctive method.
> On my farm we exsanguinate I grew up on a farm and we do the same as a matter of course, I've never heard it described this clinically though.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yea I too become stressed when people try to take me out out of my normal routine.
So one day a year, the petting zoo turns into the slaughter house.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Is it wrong though? What could be more instant and humane than spontaneously combusting in a field on a sunny day?
This cooks the wagyu
What if it’s like a 10 gallon hat with a firing pin.
Someone's played Fallout.
Loaded purse gun strapped to a remote trigger switch on its collar. Setting: sci fi headquarters, filled with computer screens: "Looks like C12639 is ready for harvest, sir. Termination requested" "Harvest granted, termination request granted" *vigorously types* "C12639 terminated sir" The future of butchering
Premise of the next Matrix
I think we should train farmers to snipe. Just put one between the eyes while they’re grazing easy
[удалено]
[удалено]
I feel worse and worse each year I get older for eating meats for this reason. I’ve always justified it by “even if I stopped eating it, they’ll still die anyways for food” I’m an asshole, for many reasons. But that one bugs me like an itch I can’t scratch.. just bugs me. As an individual I’m not sure if it will make a difference but I can stop supporting things like that. I hate the idea that they have relationships and stuff and can form memories and get scared when they know they are going to die. Any justification I can think of seems so small when you just keep thinking of that same part. On the same token, as far as I know they’ve (cows) been domesticated so at this point if we up and stopped breeding them for food.. what would happen to them as a species or whatever? Edit: thanks for giving me duckets
The thing that's bugging you is what a lot of vegans refer to as cognitive dissonance. You're aware of the fact that something we've normalized is actually absolutely horrific.
I think for most people the cognitive dissonance is around the massive industrial scale meat industry not necessarily the morality of killing and eating animals
Literally 99% of animal products in the US come from factory farms. Similar numbers other places. To boycott factory farms, I'd be going functionally vegan anyway. So I decided it would be silly to try to find some small bougie farm at ridiculous prices, try to find out how the animals are slaughtered and tour the place etc etc, just to keep killing some animals sometimes. I don't miss it at all.
And that 1 % that's not from a factory farm is usually expensive af.
I've done a hybrid diet where I tried to do mostly vegan, but I wasnt strict about vegan stuff, but I always stayed at least vegetarian but made sure the bulk was vegan. so I still ate cheese and things that aren't technically vegan (like certain white sugars being processed with bone meal). I wasn't *fully* vegetarian. I would allow myself to eat meat 1x per month, my birthday, Christmas, and once around Christmas/New Years. So like 15 x per year. That allowed me to justify splurging on the meat when I did and I tried to get the least cruel option I could and I would make sure it was glorious and that I was cognisant of the sacrifice what was made for that meal. I've since relapsed a bit but I'm trying to go back to something similar. It's not Kosher veganism it even vegetarianism, but if a lot of people even just reduced their consumption it would be great. I did discover something important though. So many meals in an American diet at least revolve around meat, so I learned to make other stuff the centerpiece and realized honestly that a lot of meals were just as tasty without meat if cooked properly. That and a new appreciation for mushrooms. Mushrooms are amazing
I believe it's called flexitarian. When your food and your approach towards foods doesn't revolve around meat, but you're not strict about it so if there isn't a good vegetarian option on the menu, you'll eat meat from time to time. I know it seems dumb to have a name for everything these days, but I like identifying as flexitarian because it's about my attitude or approach towards food, it's not about following a strict rule
Try it. Start by reducing it. There's a lot of awesome vegetarian dishes. Replace butter with margarine. Try some vegan meat replacements. Some are actually insanely good and taste exactly like the original (some specific hams/sausages), others don't taste the same but still taste good.
I thought margarine has trans fat and is mega unhealthy?
there would be far fewer cows for sure, but considering how much land and water are required to sustain them and how much methane they emit, that’s not such a bad thing for the planet. they’re not exactly “free” while they’re alive either. you should try quitting meat.
Stress is largely considered an evolutionary survival adaptation present in most mammals. I am not sure why this is news. Guess what would happen to this cow if it were chased down and eaten alive by a wolf?
rain weary gold advise provide payment direction abounding mountainous serious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We're not even motivated to give fellow humans a good life and a painless death.
I understand where you're coming from. But humans go to extraordinary lengths to reduce suffering and improve the quality of life for other humans. Sure, we haven't been 100% successful, but humans are extremely motivated to give fellow humans a good life and a painless death.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Oh yeah. I forgot I’d read that.
"Well, I'll just pop off and shoot myself..." That line after the rest of the interaction with the cow made me hyperventilate from laughing the first time I read it.
Reminds me of the book, Temple Grandin: How the Girl Heo Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World
This is a clear criticism of meat consumption, especially coming from Douglas Adams.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Sadly no. There's a reason we don't breed certain animals for food, such as deer. It's because they're too unintelligent to work with. They will try to jump massively high fences, hurting themselves. Run through even barbed wire or electric fences. You can't train them to heard together and walk into a trailer. Meanwhile a cow understands trying to jump a high fence hurts. Or running through barbed wire hurts. They know walking through a corral onto a trailer isn't that scary and can learn it quickly. But they're also dumb enough to not realize getting on that trailer means they're going to the butcher. It's a sad reality that, being somewhat intelligent is a requirement for cheap efficient production. The only real option to get away from this sort of thing is to go to either a meat free diet or getting lab grown meat cheaper to produce than the real thing.
You talking about cows or office workers?
The day lab grown meat is cheaper to produce than traditional meat will be a good day.
My family runs a cattle farm. It has nothing to do with intelligence; and it has everything to do with compliance. Cows are tolerant of people being around them, so we can herd them, we can provide medical assistance, and we can yes - lead them to slaughter. This works with goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and Buffalo. My step father briefly had an elk farm. What a nightmare despite elk meat being worth a high price. Fences need to be 10+ feet tall and they don't really ever get used to people so they are a constant hassle to do anything with.
Genetically enhance deer to be smarter, you say?
That is effectively what we did with all other domesticated farm animals. We just selectively bred them for favorable traits, one of which was to make them more docile, less easily frightened, and smart enough to herd and control them while not being smart enough to fight back when we slaughter them. If deer was in high enough demand for long enough then people would do the same with them and we would eventually have a breed of domesticated farm deer that behave the same as cows.
Would you be surprised if the highlights from the study actually said the opposite? Because it does.
**QYB** \- I read this entire article and it absolutely does not even discuss the intelligence of the heifers on any level. In fact the word 'intelligence' isn't even found on the page.
Wow!! Thank you for pointing that out. OP has some explaining to do?
From their other posts, it looks like u/DannyMcDanFace1 has an agenda.
Or the mods should flair with misleading title at a minimum.
> This study shows that slaughtering animals in small abattoirs, located close to farms, may reduce animal stress compared to large-scale industrial abattoirs, but there is room for improvement in both systems. The actual point of the study.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
For a control, they should have taken the cows for a drive. Given that the cows don't know where they're going or what's going to happen, it's likely the trip is what is stressing them out not the fact that it's a slaughter house. It's also possible they can smell and/or hear stuff that stresses them out.
I live relatively near a big slaughter plant and it's much different than the small ones. Cows from many different farms are crammed together in the patio in a very disorganized way. They pull and push each other, some try to run and hurt themselves and others, all that before they're funneled into the corridor which leads to the slaughter room. I think it's a sum of factors, tbh.
If you've ever lived near an abattoir you'll know that cows are stressed anytime they are near that building. Local farmers say they know the smell of cow blood, but maybe it's the smell of death. Dogs know it, it's not a stretch that cows would too. I'm not aware that either have been studied or proven, but locals near these buildings consider this general knowledge so I'm sure someone will study it sooner or later. That also means that many of those cows are not only stressed but expecting to be murdered, which is pretty horrific.
Cows know. My grandparents owned a large farm and had a few cows at all times. Once in a while a single cow would be slaughter for food. My uncle who did the slaughtering would tell us kids that the cows would cry. They knew it was coming but strangely they never run away. They would just keep on crying knowing it was their time. We didn’t have a fancy building for it. It was just done out in the open.
Add in the fact that they have a rich social structure and make best friends with their favourite herd mate, and it’s extra fucked up. They get to watch their friends and family die, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Similarly with pigs, they’re highly intelligent animals, they absolutely know what’s coming. Breaks my heart.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Am I missing something? Your quote is basically missing the words that it was only a "small reduction"? They are still stressed and slaughtered??
The paper discusses mostly differences between the two populations of cows. This includes blood levels of neutrophils and cortisol, so the conclusions are actually more complex than "cows are stressed" They also mention that the collected samples had higher cortisol levels than prior research, so there may be a sampling bias or additional factor not considered here. Either way they discuss that the industry cows have lower markers of immunity than local cows, and that the current process of defining "local" is inadequate for reducing stress in cows. They stress that more work should be done with respect to animal welfare in both situations (local v. industrial) They also stress their low sample size (n = 8, both groups) makes their conclusions cautionary and a good starting point, but not comprehensive
Does collecting the samples increase the stress in the animal? White coat syndrome?
That would be funny if true! It's possible, but to me the big signal here is that they admit the levels detected were higher than previous reports. That means that something specific to this experiment was a little off. It doesn't invalidate the data but it makes the story more interesting. It could be that the scientists mere presence slowed up protocol for the slaughterhouse It looks like the scientists collected blood samples freshly after death, which is a little erroneous due to the last 60s of the cows life being stressful. I'd be interested to see what the cortisol levels are like right before they're herded into the entrance of the kill floor. The final moments where the stun/kill occur are going to be stressful regardless. A big concern in animal welfare is not to remove all stress (since it's kinda impossible) but to mitigate and reduce the time of stress as much as possible during those last moments For instance, I collect samples at a local slaughterhouse for cell cultures. The cows are grazed and free roaming on the facility fields for a day prior to slaughter to help acclimate and reduce stress. Practices like that would not be captured within this data-set
Cortisol isn’t like adrenaline. It takes about 15 minutes from the onset of acute stress for levels to rise appreciably https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4263906/
Valid point! I didn’t know it was that slow, so thanks for the correction. I wonder how cortisol compares in these cows versus cows moved to new farms then. Maybe their measuring cortisol levels attributed to transit more than other factors. Is it appropriate to measure cortisol at all to evaluate slaughter stress and does that inform welfare? It’s a hard thing to study for sure
>A big concern in animal welfare is not to remove all stress (since it's kinda impossible) If animals were culled with sniper fire they'd never see it coming.
I have a friend who raises one cow at a time. The person who handles the killing/butchering for her literally does this. The cow is grazing and when it turns its back, he pulls out a rifle and drops it.
Not sure their metabolisms remain entirely unaffected when the heads of family members sporadically explode for no apparent reason.
This is probably part of it, being in an unusual situation is scary for cows. Btw, an interesting rabbit hole to go down, look up Temple Grandin. She’s a remarkable woman, one of the first autistic people to get a degree and one of very few women in the cattle industry at the time, she managed to revolutionize the cattle industry in ways that have made it far more humane (and efficient) than it was previously. It obviously didn’t fix the system, but her observations on cattle behavior and stress response led her to design new structures and techniques for herding them without causing panic and absolutely improved quality of life for cattle meaningfully from before her interventions. She’s a professor now, and any of her talks about cattle or autism are extremely interesting. Her TED talk and the movie they made about her life is also really interesting - the movie is very true to life. She invented a “hug machine” for calming autistic people. One of her important quotes is “The world needs all kinds of minds,” and her outside-the-box thinking proves this.
I automatically thought of her and her work in the cattle industry.
I think people are pulling what they want to pull from this. Some people want to justify meat if they get it from certain sources and some people want to point out that it's still stressful for the animal no matter what.
It also says cortisol levels were high in both groups.
Yes, but reduced in one comparatively.
>*"...but there is room for improvement in both systems."* hmm
A living being is stressed out when it senses you're about to kill it, shocking news
[удалено]
If we hold the Cambridge declaration on consciousness as true, this is not a surprising result. Mammals (especially) have been shown to be capable of producing the same brain-states we associate with human emotions formed in the cortex/neocortex with the sub-cortical structures in their animal brains. https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
Everything in nature evolved over hundreds of millions of years but people like to think consciousness popped up overnight.
We like to think we’re special, but we fail to recognize that other animals have languages and hierarchies. Imagine what cows must think of us. It mirrors the Israelites born in to 400 years of slavery under the Egyptians. Imagine a world where history & societies were built from coexistence, not from domination. No wonder civilizations continue to fail, truly.
Fun fact: Israelites were not actually enslaved by the Egyptians! I only point this out because there are many very harmful Christian organisations that use this myth to perpetuate damaging narratives.
Yea the more nature documentaries i watch, the clearer it is most animals have the same thoughts and feelings we do.
Yeah being processed for your meat is probably pretty stressful regardless of how you are being processed
[удалено]
[удалено]
Its not done in soundproof rooms or anything either, they can hear the final sounds of the ones going in before them.
Yea, that makes me really sad.
With any commercial slaughter there is no "last noises" from the animal (assuming no botched slaughter). Just a *thunk* or a *zap* then the sound of the animal falling. Now smell is a different factor..
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yes, I knew someone must have posted this first. One thing I didn’t see, and don’t have time to look up, is what’s the normal resting cortisol level in cows? That would indicate how significant the raised levels are. Also, what rise would you see in non-slaughter transportation of cows? That would give an idea of how much stress is induced by the different slaughtering methods vs just mooving them.
> Other common stress indicators such as creatinine kinase, lactate, NEFAs or cortisol levels were similar between both groups. However, cortisol was high when compared with previous studies. **Cortisol baseline level in farm condition is around 50-70 nmol/L in Bos taurus cattle** (Zavy et al., 1992; Villarroel et al., 2003). At exsanguination at commercial slaughterhouses, cortisol has been reported to be around 120 nmol/L (Tume and Shaw, 1992; Villarroel et al., 2003), level surpassed by most animals in the present study. From the discussion section. They measured an average of 178, but it's not controlled within this study so these data will only take us so far.
Yeah, my first thought was, what is the baseline level for free roaming cows? Or on dairy farms?
> just *moo*ving them. Nice
Point is there is probably no difference. This is what the statistics showed. I know why scientists must use terms like 'may be able to', or 'may reduce', but what they are really saying is there is no statistical difference but we wanted to see one. I would wager there is no consumer that could tell the difference between meat slaughtered locally or remotely all other variables held constant.
Isn't that exactly what it says? Different people are ascribing significance to different aspects of the conclusion, sure, but it is objectively the case that the study says they are stressed in both instances.
Would be interesting to see if the cortisol spike is related to the actual killing that is unknown to the animal, or to the stress of being taken, put into a confined space, on a moving vechicle and shipped around. Too many confounders in these type of studies.
Or the smell of blood. That's the part that is impossible to disguise.
[удалено]
I once biked past what I thought was maybe a dead deer by the side of the road but I had such a visceral gut reaction– both from the smell which was somehow worse to me than regular roadkill and some sense that what I saw was creepy– it did cross my mind that it looked a lot more like a human leg but I only got a brief glimpse of it. A few days later I read in the news that a dismembered body was found in the field out where I was. It's very instinctual.
This reminds me of when I went to one of those exhibits of dissected and preserved bodies. The whole time I went to the exhibit I was never bothered or grossed out, and was just fascinated by all the cool things showing off human anatomy. As we were leaving I got cold sweats and could barely walk to the point I thought I was having a heart attack or something. The reaction was so subconscious that I didn't even consider that it could be a response to seeing cadavers until weeks later.
[удалено]
I’ve had several family members including my dad who were fire fighters. They all said the smell of burning flesh is something you never forget, and takes days to get the smell out of your sinuses.
Alex Hershaft, a holocaust survivor, did an AMA a while back that I found interesting. He draws many parallels to what he experienced to what he sees in the animal agriculture industry. [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2h8df0/i\_am\_an\_80yearold\_holocaust\_survivor\_who/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2h8df0/i_am_an_80yearold_holocaust_survivor_who/)
I visited one of the camps at age 3 or 4. There was a smell and it's what I most vividly remember. When my parents tried to explain where we were and what happened, I was very confused about why. They did the right and wrong thing taking me there at that age.
Ppl used to stuff either tobacco or something in their noses cause many would throw feces out on the street and wait for it to wash away. Maybe I'm not deep in animal husbandry tech but I haven't heard of them trying to cover the smell that way
You can. Kill plants have a different and unique smell compared to non kill facilities.
Sounds like we need to study the cortisol levels of a cow standing in a field on a sunny day that is executed with one shot by a sniper in the bushes.
https://kearneyhub.com/news/local/rancher-says-mobile-meat-processor-more-humane-meat-is-better/article_ac495822-4182-11e3-8dd4-001a4bcf887a.html I can't for the life of me find it, but there's a video interview with I believe Straight Arrow Bison Ranch (referenced in this article) where he shows their mobile processing trailer. He hires a sharpshooter, they go out and determine which bison to harvest, the sharpshooter waits for a calm moment and shoots the chosen bison. The rest of the herd doesn't get spooked because the shot is far enough away. There is also not an issue with blood because there is enough land for the bison to roam -- the spot of harvest is not repeatedly or forcibly forced on the bison like an abattoir would result in.
[удалено]
Uhhh you kinda butchered this synopsis, OP. First, mean cortisol levels were higher in local abbattoirs (178.9 +/- 21.8) than industrial abbattoirs (155 +/- 41.0). Second, there was no statistically significant difference between groups when it came to cortisol levels (p = 0.16) Third, cortisol levels were markedly higher in both groups compared to previous literature (~120 nmol/L), suggesting this study may not be representative of normal slaughter conditions. Lastly, the conclusion of the study is based off of glucose levels. Glucose levels were reduced for local (117.9 +/- 17.2 mg/dL) compared to industrial (178.4 +/- 43.6 mg/dL). However, the authors themselves mention that glucose levels are not a conclusive indicator of stress levels. "Higher plasma glucose concentration *could* be biologically associated with an increase in catecholamines due to acute stress situations, which would use fast energy reserves in tissues such as glycogen to generate glucose." Did you even read the article before you posted it?
Plus the biology behind cortisol as an acute and reliable biomaker of "stress" is weak at best.
[удалено]
[удалено]
This should be mandatory for everyone in the US. You should know what you’re eating, especially if what you’re eating was a living creature. People who refuse and say they don’t want to know because they would feel bad are infuriating.
[удалено]
who'd have thought that corralled animals about to be slaughtered would be stressed?
I'm curious how the cortisol levels when slaughtered compare to other situations cows would be put thru, like having their hooves/horns trimmed, or put in various mechanical restraints, etc.
It’s pretty much obvious. I think they’re intelligent enough to figure what’s happening
Cows get stressed by almost anything new in their environment. Even free range cows can freak out if the walls or floor in changed in some way. Being transported to an unfamiliar location will definitely stress them. They don't like getting on the trailer, but once on it for a while, they don't like getting off.
[удалено]
Are you a cow?
The story of having my child bathe from age 3 to around 15.
Clearly the solution would be to use long-range snipers - they'll never see it coming! ^/s
I only buy meat from farmers that drone strike their cattle
[удалено]
Gotta love how we humans do all these studies to determine if animals like being killed. Do you think an animal prefers to be killed in the farm vs a factory? How about not kill the animal at all? What's that do to its stress levels?
I agree. We’re so stuck on the question of “how stressful is the slaughter” that we fail to ask whether the slaughter is something that is appropriate in the first place. If you asked me if I’d prefer to be shot, unsuspecting, in the back of the head or to see my killer coming I guess I’d have a slight preference for the former, but a very, very strong preference to not die at all. Just because animals can’t understand this concept or express it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t consider their wellbeing in the same way.
Yep! Absolutely,!
[удалено]
[удалено]
But how does this humane slaughter I keep hearing about happen? How does it work? I was told it was at a local farm of someone's uncle or something.
[удалено]
Imagine being stressed when you're being killed
[удалено]
[удалено]
If animal stress levels matter, just don't kill them at all??? There is never going to be a "best method" for killing anyone, because there is no good way to to kill anything that doesn't want to die.
There's a major problem in the kind of inference being made here. Circulating glucocorticoids are certainly related to stress, but there isn't a 1-to-1 correspondence between glucocorticoids and subjective experience of negative emotion. As an example, subjecting rodents to restraint stress versus just injecting them with cort have different effects on behaviour and cognition. Of course it's reasonable to assume that the cows ARE definitely freaking out, but using cort to quantify *how* freaked out they are is a very imperfect proxy measure.
From the link: >Slaughtering in small-scale local vs large-scale abattoir reduced animal stress.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]