Ranchers Can’t Feed Cattle, So They Starve Them To Death
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Investigators haven’t had to go out of their way to find dead cattle in Nebraska, where 6.5 million head roam. Since early this year, three cases of alleged starvation deaths involving a total of about 240 cattle have been reported in Nebraska — more than some officials can recall.[...]
“Neglect cases are on the rise, and what’s causing it, I’m not sure,” said Steven Stanec, executive director of the Nebraska Brand Committee, a state agency that helps police the cattle industry. “We’re having whole herds of hundreds of cattle being neglected.”[...]
“We are going to have more cases of this,” said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She said starvation that can often take months to cause death is the worst type of animal abuse.
“There’s no excuse for livestock starving to death,” Grandin said angrily when told of the Nebraska cases. “You can always sell them. They might not be at a good price, but you can always sell them.” (source)
While Grandin is absolutely right that there’s no reason to starve cattle to death when you can just sell them for slaughter, there’s also no reason to starve them to death period. Likely, they could just ask for some help from animal rescue organizations. Sure they’d lose the profit from selling the cattle as food, but the animals don’t have to die and their lands don’t have to be over-grazed. The animals don’t have to die. And they certainly don’t have to die a painful, slow death of starvation.
When you have a cat or a dog and you run into financial trouble and can’t afford to care for your animal anymore, the responsible and moral thing to do is find another home. The same is true for these cattle. Letting animals starve to death is just plain wrong.
Eating animals won’t fix this problem. The ranchers won’t change their warped sense of morality simply if/when people are willing to pay more for death animal flesh. Nope, humane meat is a myth. The fact is, so long as there is animal agriculture, some segment of the human population will abuse and neglect the animals. There will ALWAYS be abuse. The ONLY way to avoid contributing to animal suffering is to go vegan!
I’m curious, Grandin writes, “You can always sell them”: I wonder then, what fate awaits them after their purchased at a reduced price? Perhaps worse than death by starvation?
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