I’ve never been to a farm before so I found this visit really interesting and a nice change of scenery.
I’ve always grown up eating meat and think it’s important people know where their meat comes from and how it gets to your plate. We live in a society where the process can easily be forgotten about i.e. my mum used to only by chicken breasts and refuse to buy whole raw chickens because seeing it vaguely looking like the chicken freaked her out, and I think that we shouldn’t be softened to the reality of breeding and slaughter. With all the biased documentaries on mainstream media sources like Netflix, YouTube, BBC etc exposing farms by showing animal cruelty and other malpractice it was refreshing seeing a farm that does treat their animals well and reminded that it’s in the farmer’s best interests to treat their animals as best as possible because the better quality the animal the more product and profit they will get. Although it is awful that some farms will harm their animals and should be closed down it is also incredibly important to recognise that not all farms will function that way and there are standards set by the UK and EU to prevent malpractice. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding animal farming which need to be eradicated; for instance some people don’t realise that dairy cows need to be milked otherwise it causes them great discomfort and how there is machinery which the cow opts to use and aren’t herded to be milked. As well as that, when I found out the cows were kept in the shed all year round I thought it was quite cruel but then after asking the farmer about it I realised it wasn’t as ‘cruel’ as I thought it was as they aren’t cut off from the outdoors as they have adjusted the shed to allow from wind and fresh air into it without the cows being too exposed. They aren’t animals that need a massive space to exercise in such as horses or dogs so the shed was big enough for them to still walk around without being on top of one another.
The birth of a male calf was a good discussion point I think. Although no-one wants to hear that they get killed as they can’t produce milk it is the truth and the way of farming. From the farmer’s point of view I understand that they can’t keep them all as the veal industry isn’t large enough int he UK to justify keeping them and they aren’t bred for beef farming thus, again, costing the farmer money to rear them. However, after further looking into the subject I don’t think we should be able to export them to other countries where the veal standards are far lower than our own as it will subject them to poor conditions that lead to health defects for the animal (Compassion for World Farming, 2016).
The visit from the Soil Association was pretty informative. Although I was already aware that farms need to rotate crop growth so not to completely deplete the soil of its nutrients from previously studying Chemistry I didn’t realise there was a big spectrum of varying types of soils. I really enjoyed the activities we were given to do, arranging the different stages of how a burger is made, as it emphasised the importance of soil and how everything originates from there.
References
Compassion for World Farming (2016) About calves reared for veal. Available at: http://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/cows/veal-calves/ (Accessed: 19 October 2016).
