I would like to make something clear, we are not about anthropomorphising animals (and in fact cannot even say it!).

We do not think animals should not be treated like humans and accept that pets are treated differently to the animals that produce our food.

Farm animals are bred and reared for the sole purpose of feeding us, any meat eater should accept  this fact instead of ‘delegating’  the morally hard choices to someone else, then criticising it when it goes wrong!

Anybody who has decided they can not live with the moral responsibility of eating meat, frankly, should turn vegetarian. If you are a vegetarian for this reason, I salute you and wish more people would make a stand for what they believe in.

If you are a meat eater, I hope you understand that there are thousands of different systems, run by millions of different characters, in hundreds of different countries that produce your meat.

There are some general principles of purchase and labels carrying regulation that may help you chose meat less likely to be neglected or reared in conditions that are unacceptable.  RSPCA Freedom foods, Organic Certification among others, will offer detailed standards to potential customers and inspect producers to try and hold them to these standards.

The principle and terminology of ‘free range’, ‘grass fed’ and ‘outdoor bred’ may give you some indication of what system has been used to produce your meat but it is very difficult to prove and regulate that the system is producing high welfare meat – it is wide open to abuse, in more than one way!

At the end of the day, when that inspector has walked away from their short Farm visit for another year, how are these regulations going to be enforced? They can’t be.

‘WE DON’T NEED A LAW AGAINST MCDONALS OR A LAW AGAINST SLAUGHTERHOUSE ABUSE, WE ASK FOR TOO MUCH SALVATION BY LEGISLATION. ALL WE NEED IS TO EMPOWER INDIVIDUALS WITH THE RIGHT PHILOSOPHY AND THE RIGHT INFORMATION TO OPT OUT EN MASSE’
JOEL SALATIN.

So how do we guarantee high welfare meat?

Well, we think it is down to judging the character of those who rear our animals. To get to the heart of issue you need to find out several things.

• Why are they farming or running this business? Is it just for profit? because that what their family has always done, or because they are passionate about the environment and the animals they rear?
• How do they talk about and act around animals? what terminology do they use? is it respectful? does it indicate empathy?
• When they handle their livestock, are they gentle with an understanding of how the animals tick? Do they appreciate and work with the animals instinctive social and mothering habits?
• Are their animals healthy? Is there any tell tale signs of neglect, disease, poor land management or indications that they are not thriving? Only another stock-person could judge.
• Are there any hints that they are just not being truthful about what they are saying?

By working closely with our farmers and getting to know their characters we can make the best possible choices of who we can trust to produce our meat.

Grazing animals are designed to eat plants and require large amounts of fibre in their diet for their digestion to work correctly. When an animal is fed a grain based diet the nutrients are supplied very quickly, enabling the animal to fatten faster, returning a better profit.

Unfortunately this allows fermentation acids to accumulate in the rumen, stops the animal absorbing essential nutrients and often leads to ulcers and eventually abscesses on the liver. Anti biotics are then required (in some parts of the world these are routinely fed and added to the food) to manage the disease. The anti-biotics alter the microbial balance of the animals gut, leaving it the perfect place for pathogens to flourish.

In the US, feed lot beef is often subject to mass recalls due the difficulty in managing the e-coli problem, particularly worrying are the strains that seem to be resistant to the acid shock of the stomach. Farmers now face the problem that some animals are no longer responding to anti-biotics due to their overuse. There are also concerns over the effect of eating anti-biotic residues in the animal flesh and the effect this may have on humans.

Animals are designed to graze, moving around in the sun and the rain, they are acting in a natural way and therefore their welfare state is high. The ‘pasture for life’ label ensures that animals have been grazing and eating pasture for their whole life. By default this will allow them to have had a higher quality of life.

Grazing animals have adapted over thousands of years to know when something is wrong with their health, and what they need to eat in order to self-medicate. In extensive grazing systems, it is interesting to see the animals eating different plants and trees at different times of year. The grazing action keeps their teeth and gums clean and healthy and a farmers running a pasture based system rarely have to intervene medically with their stock, often they calve easily, lameness is rare, there is no need for mineral supplements and requirement of a vet is dramatically reduced if not eliminated.