Sustainable Livestock Production

This guest lecture is hosted by Kelly Daynard, Executive Director of Farm & Food Care Ontario. Dr. Sara Place, Chief Sustainability Officer, Elanco Animal Health, discusses how grazing animals fit within a sustainable food system, covering sustainability, feed vs. food competition and climate change.Description: This lecture was part of a series of presentations hosted by Farm & Food Care Ontario November 10, 2020, at the Royal Winter Fair Food and Nutrition Forum.

[meagan]

It's almost as if someone who is paid by and employed by the meat industry might have financial incentives to be very pro-meat - especially while speaking at industry funded events.

As someone who grew up on a farm in Ontario, the animals that are raised here are treated poorly and slaughtered painfully. 5 month old piglets are asphyxiated with high concentrations of C02 that cause the individual to feel as if the liquid in their lungs, eyes, and brains is boiling. Cows are incorrectly stunned at least 15% of the time - with calves being improperly stunned moreso than adults - which results in significant distress and pain for the animals. Almost all poultry is slaughtered fully conscious in the USA.

While farmed animals do eat some of the inedible waste humans produce, we also clear-cut the Amazon and everywhere else in order to plant soya and other crops that are grown specifically and only to be fed to animals. In fact, the vast majority of soya grown worldwide is for animal feed. The number one cause of deforestation in Australia, for example, is livestock production.

You people are complicit in the willful abuse of the millions of farmed animals who suffer in Canada every single day - from minks to cows. You are contributing to the pervasiveness of zoonotic plagues. You are mortgaging the health and welfare of our planet to line your pockets. People are suffering from unprecedent levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and other animal-product driven health consequences. Osteoporosis is highest in the countries that drink the most milk. You're no better than the fossil fuel companies or the cigarette manufacturers. And that's how you'll be remembered.