I came across this Guardian article (via this post on Vegan.com) about a proposal to require CCTV in all UK slaughterhouses, in the wake of an Animal Aid investigation that found significant abuses and acts of cruelty in six of seven slaughterhouses they secretly installed cameras in.
A few things to consider.
I think this points out the fundamental flaw in accepting, uncritically, the notion that better welfare laws magically equate to better conditions for animals. Without question, the legal standards for animal welfare are better in the UK (compared to the US) on several fronts. But does that actually mean anything? I’d argue no. It would appear that even given the UK’s more stringent legislation, that doesn’t actually mean anything if the legislation isn’t enforced.
But Animal Aid is itself sending something of a mixed message; they’ve launched a campaign to get supermarkets to put pressure on UK abattoirs to install CCTVs in all slaughter facilities in the United Kingdom, and to pledge to only purchase from slaughterhouses that have cameras installed going forward.
Of course this is problematic on at least a couple of fronts.
If the legal welfare standards in the UK were actually effective, would Animal Aid have found significant illegal abuses happening in nearly every one of the slaughterhouses they investigated? If the UK’s welfare standards aren’t especially meaningful, why assume that this move to install cameras will be any more successful? If there’s no particular oversight of the industry to enforce the existing welfare standards the animal welfare movement in the UK is so proud of, why should we assume that there will be much (or any) subsequent oversight of this particular CCTV measure?
Further, all we’re still really saying with this is that animals don’t care that we kill them; they only care how we treat them while alive. This is more of the same wrongheaded line of thinking that supposes that the act of eating animals is rendered morally neutral so long as we tell ourselves the animals in question have been well cared for (with standards of care as defined by us, largely for the sake of making us feel good – which the lax enforcement of the existing legislation drives home to me.
Animal welfare regulations are not about animal welfare. They’re about making humans feel better about needlessly killing and eating animals.
babble 