You are all mad.

Even thousands of years ago before agriculture, an animal had a horrific death at the hands of basic tools and neanderthals.

Lets say you implement these less intensive farm practices and everyone went back to an agricultural self sufficient society, when any animal is killed it would be an ordeal for them.

I have been on the land and killed animals for our own food, and let me tell you, if i were an animal i would much rather go to a feedlot and abbotior to die humanely and instantly with a bolt than by a farmer trying to cut my throat and i have to go through a harrowing experience.

Be realistic, intensive farming of Animals are a fact of life and are hear to stay. You can say bird flu, this and that, but it is better than using more precious land, degredating it, and going back to the pathetic means of killing these animals by non intensive, less structured methods.

You guys are all detached from the facts of this matter. I am an animal lover, but due to my first hand experiences i am realistic about it. It is not as bad as the writer makes out, and as i said, if i were a pig sign me up for a feedlot straight away rather than the alternate.

Where oh where are our resident ethicists when you need them?

Humans have always had a blind spot when it comes to animals. Compare our attitude towards the humane clubbing to death of fluffy baby seals with our eagerness to subject rats to a lingering death by poison.

Compare the hue and cry over fox hunting with our willingness to shoot thousands of perfectly healthy birds because one of them might have 'flu.

Or think about our unquestioning "right" to own a pet? By what "right" do we imprison for life an innocent creature, purely to meet some selfish need of our own? By what "right" do we race horses and dogs against each other for our amusement?

"Camped somewhere near the base of the moral mountain"? I'd say. But why pick on pigs? Let's at least try to be a tiny bit consistent.

As sunnypig said, “Realist is anything but”.

Global warming, caused in part by land clearing, is one of the most pressing environmental problems facing the world. Most land clearing, such as in the Amazon forest, is carried out either to run cattle or grow grain to feed them in feedlots.

Emissions of CO2 also contribute to global warming. 21% of the CO2 emissions attributable to human causes come from livestock. Stop animal farming and you immediately take a huge step toward reversing global warming.

Farming for meat is also inefficient. It takes roughly 10kg of plant protein to produce 1kg of animal protein.

If we simply fed all the grain being grown for animals directly to humans, world hunger could be solved now.

Meat also uses huge amounts of water. It takes around 13,500 litres of water to produce just 1kg of steak in terms of feed and water to the animal. 1kg of wheat, by contrast, takes around 1,000 litres of water. The typical diet of a meat-eating American requires around 5,400 litres a day, while a vegetarian diet which has the same nutritional value requires around 2,600 litres of water a day.”

Try the online eco-footprint calculator at http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/Eco-footprint/Households/default.asp and see what a difference being vegan can make to your impact on the world.

As for the amount of animal waste being produced every day by the animals we ‘farm’ – don’t even think about it. Much too messy.

Finally, and most importantly, these animals (pigs in this case) have as much right to follow their natural lives as we do. We have no right to treat them as we do (incarceration, painful operations like castration, tail docking etc., and slaughter) for unnecessary food.

We live very well on a vegan diet – a damn site better than those still addicted to meat and dairy.

Before you claim the entire moral high ground for yourself, MOS, do you keep a cat or a dog?

Then take a look around you, and count the damage you have done to the animal kingdom by your choice of clothes, or to the animal habitats that you have destroyed in the preparation of your daily newspaper, or in bringing the electricity to your house.

If you are living in an oil-lamplit mud hut back of Nimbin and cultivate your own tofu, then please accept my apologies. Because that is the only way you can avoid this thing we call "living in the twentyfirst century".

Otherwise, you are simply being selective in your choice of examples of humanity's cruelty to the animal kingdom. It's been going on since the first caveman whacked the first wild boar over the head and turned it into pork chops, and will continue until one side - probably us - dies out.

Picking on one narrow subset of such treatment is simply being hypocritical. You cannot say on the one hand "these animals ... have as much right to follow their natural lives as we do" and support their enslavement, or the destruction of their habitat, on the other.

The author might be a bit behind the times here. The old concrete bunkers are the past in pig farming, although no doubt still being used by some. Modern piggeries use a system called shelters, where 100 or so pigs are housed together and have plenty of room to tear around and play with one another etc. Tonnes and tonnes of straw
are placed in there, to keep them warm at night. The result, compared to the old concrete bunkers, is like night and day.
Far less disease, far happier pigs, far less capital investment,
so win-win all round. Who eats us when we die is not really an issue, for the worms will eat us humans in the end too.

Personally I am against concious suffering of any species, including farm animals. There is no need to be cruel to them for money.
There are in fact win-win solutions out there, if you think beyond the old square.

No – I’m not perfect, Pericles, but I do what I can.

And no – no pets – though I’d argue that today’s cats and dogs are the end product of thousands of years of co-habitation with humans and are generally very happy in our company. It’s pretty much their natural life now.

To take your line of argument (one often thrown at those of us who argue for better conditions for nonhuman animals) to its logical conclusion would mean that only the perfect could ever express an opinion. It would be a very quiet world.

Let’s stick to the facts.

The meat industry is unsustainable. It damages the environment and contributes to world hunger.

We can live very well without meat.

We are animals very much like the animals we mistreat and eat – particularly the mammals such as pigs. While there are differences I defy anyone to tell me which of those differences gives us the right to treat them as we do and ignore their pain and their interests.

The treatment of animals in factory farms is unacceptable – no matter how far either you or I have progressed along the path to perfection.

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‘Yabby’ paints too optimistic a picture. It is good to see some advances being made but according to Voiceless’s recent report on the NSW pig industry "From Paddocks to Prisons: Pigs in NSW Current Practices, Future Directions" (http://www.voiceless.org.au/Get_Informed/Factory_Farming/Pig_Industry_Report.html) there is a long way to go.

Sow stalls are still in use (approximately 26% of sows are housed in stalls in Australia for most of their reproductive cycles and up to 62% may be in stalls for a part of their reproductive cycle. Under the Pig Code, sow stalls are 0.6m x 2.0m. Sows are not able to turn around or take more than one step forward or back.)

More than 90% of growing pigs are still raised in confinement.

Piglets suffer mutilations (tail docking, teeth trimming and castration of piglets) without appropriate pain relief.