Didn't see this relayed at DK and wanted to share.
The New York Times just published U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit; Animal Welfare at Risk in Experiments for Meat Industry by Michael Moss.
The story is the result of a NYT investigation into experimental breeding practices at
a taxpayer-financed federal institution called the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, a complex of laboratories and pastures that sprawls over 55 square miles in Clay Center, Neb. Little known outside the world of big agriculture, the center has one overarching mission: helping producers of beef, pork and lamb turn a higher profit as diets shift toward poultry, fish and produce.
Some of the experiments involve "retooling" sheep and pigs to breed litters nearly twice normal count, and cows bred to birth twins or triplets, which "often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed."
Some center staff brought questionable practices to media:
“They pay tons of attention to increasing animal production, and just a pebble-sized concern to animal welfare,” said James Keen, a scientist and veterinarian who worked at the center for 24 years. “And it probably looks fine to them because they’re not thinking about it, and they’re not being held accountable. But most Americans and even livestock producers would be hard pressed to support some of the things that the center has done.”
USDA policies are interbedded with Big Meat's goals of increased profits and global market share. But there is serious institutionalized myopia about the potential for increased industrialized livestock production to be a renewable answer to world food demand.
“We’re just as concerned about the humane treatment of animals as anyone else,” said Sherrill E. Echternkamp, a scientist who retired from the center in 2013. Still, he added: “It’s not a perfect world. We are trying to feed a population that is expanding very rapidly, to nine billion by 2050, and if we are going to feed that population, there are some trade-offs.”
Adverse effects to local environments, human health, and animal welfare really are not acceptable trade-offs for increased private profits. Please read the story at the above link.