Transcription
Is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, moral problem of our time. Nine out of ten people in Europe eat meat. I call it a wonderful problem. A wonderful problem because this problem has in itself the solution to many other problems.
To satisfy the world's appetite for meat, we have created a gigantic global industry. We kill and eat more animals in a year than the number of human beings who've ever lived on the planet, from whenever we crawled out of the swamps, with devastating consequences for the Earth's ecosystem and for billions of living beings.
The suffering that we inflict on animals, we can't even imagine it—not in our worst fantasies, not in the most horrific horror movie. And it's not as if we're unaware of it. Seventy-three percent of Germans and as many as eighty-two percent of French people reject the modern form of animal husbandry. So why do we live with a system that no one actually wants?
This series searches for an answer. We tend to assume that only vegans and vegetarians follow a belief system, but the only reason we may learn to eat pigs but not dogs, for example, is because we do follow a belief system.
[Music]
[Applause]
We must confront the ethical questions that concern the core of our humanity. It comes from having been trained over the millennia through hunting to be cooperative and to take social relationships seriously. Where does the suffering come from? When was the first time a living being felt something?
The story starts out a little over a half a billion years ago with sea scum on the ocean floor. It's called a microbial mat. Our search takes us from the origins of the Earth to a future in which meat is created without animals. Media is being prepared in one tank, and then it feeds these two huge vessels. They can produce 500 kilograms of meat. This is essentially the same as a cow a day in a room that is more or less the same size as people's living rooms.
It ends with the question: will our children and grandchildren grow up in a vegan world? If we don't destroy ourselves, we could be here literally. We could be around for ten thousand, hundreds of thousands, millions of years longer. So can you imagine that all this time we will continue to keep eating animals? No, at some point this is going to stop. And if it's not the center, it will be the next.
[Music]
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our journey begins in present-day Boholt in the German region of Westminsterland. Dirk Ninhaus is a factory farmer. The way I learned animal husbandry was socially accepted at the time. All of a sudden, that's wrong.
On his farm, 6,500 pigs are born, fattened, and sent to slaughter every year. Uh, this here is the fattening stable. This is the last station for our pigs. In terms of animal welfare, this corresponds to a level two bond, which is now a standard requirement. We have 0.854 square meters per pig—an odd number.
The barn seems very full when they are lying down, but now they can move around. They have their space. Back there, you can see the manure area. This here is the eating area; there's the drinking area. So the pigs also structure the pen themselves.
The animals, like 99% of their peers, spend their entire lives indoors and gain about 850 grams every day. They live around 180 days, but pigs in nature have a life expectancy of 15 to 16 years. So it is still a very early stage. A full-grown pig weighs about 250 kilograms, but fattening the animal for that long is not worth it.
Every day, the pig needs food to live, just like we humans do. The longer an animal stays in the stable, the more you spend on maintenance alone. The ratio of kilograms of feed used to kilograms of meat gained is still okay up to a weight of 120 kilograms. After that, the ratio becomes negative.
Modern fattening is a highly engineered process. There is a pre-fattening, mid-fattening, and finishing feed. They differ in protein and in energy content. At any given time, the computer knows how many pigs are in each pen, how old they are, and which feed mixture they require.
With this app, I can choose the amount of feed that goes into the silo, and a truck will come with the feed tomorrow at the latest. The feed enters the barn automatically through a pipe system. Feces are collected under the slatted floor and transported away. Everything that goes in and out of the animal runs automatically.
And all that was necessary to be able to continue to be a farmer, to continue to keep animals. The price pressure in recent years has meant that we as a farm now have to have three to four thousand pigs to generate an income. Margins in the industry are minimal, and the fluctuating prices are mainly determined by the large slaughter companies.
There is a certain dependence because we don't have much of a choice. I can no longer choose between ten different slaughterhouses. There are ultimately two big ones for me. Then there are a few small ones, but most of them are already at capacity. So for now, I'm dependent on these two to pick up my pigs.
In the past, almost every municipality had its own slaughterhouse, but today the ten largest farms slaughter 80 percent of the pigs across the country. They dictate the precise standards with which livestock must comply.
You're trying to find somebody, which means the dead slaughtered animal is pulled through a probe where the whole carcass is measured by ultrasound. We then receive a certain number of points per kilogram of cutlet, per kilogram of fillet, per kilogram of ham, and the points are then converted into money.
Ultimately, you could say we are basically suppliers of cutlets that fit into the Aldi packaging. The animals must be neither too small nor too large for the slaughterhouse standards. If a ham weighs more than 21.49 kilograms, there are deductions.
See the one that's running away? That one is ready to go, so he will leave Monday before shipping. The animals ready for slaughter have to be carefully selected because the ham is one of the decisive factors. I always have to stand behind the pig to inspect it.
Usually, I listen to music while I'm doing it because you really have to concentrate on the animal to see which one has it and which one doesn't. And when I have one, he gets a line on the back and then knows what's going on. Okay, he doesn't know what's happening, but we know.
This takes a lot of time. It takes me about half an hour to make a selection because that's ultimately—this is going to sound really bad—but it's like a harvest. It's what we've spent half a year cultivating and nurturing. If I were to sell it at the wrong time, I would have much lower proceeds because of all the factors I have to take into account.
That's why you need a lot of time for it. That's the way it is.
[Music]
The entire life of the animal is designed around putting the right amount of fat and muscle on the right part of the body. There's this classic term, species-appropriate. We can never achieve that here. A wild boar lives in the forest; it lives freely, it lives in small groups. That would be species-appropriate, but we can't offer that here.
When you're with the pigs every day, then you can sense if the animals are doing well. Considering the situation, we're not taking anything away from the animal because it doesn't know any different. If an animal lived outside on the pasture and I looked it up after a year, then it may miss or have this relationship to the outside. But they don't know that with us.
We grew up here in the country. I couldn't imagine living in the city. The city child is used to the city. It's the same game. It's a very extreme comparison, of course, but I think that's kind of how you have to look at it.
[Music]
No one is born an animal abuser or an animal exploiter. You grow into it; you adapt; you get numb. That's why even though such people are my opponents in the fight to end animal exploitation, I don't feel hatred.
One o'clock at night, somewhere in southern Germany, the animal rights group SoKo Tierschutz is on a mission. Friedrich Moon and his team have set out to uncover the scandalous conditions in factory farming. We want to show people that it's not just the exception; it's the true face of an industry that does not show people its ugly side.
Tonight, they're on their way to a turkey farm to find out if the animal welfare laws are being violated when the animals are transported to the slaughterhouse.
"Don't slam the door."
So call signs: banana, apple, lemon. Let's do a test. They look for clues as to when the next transport will take place. Lemon to banana—all clear.
Tens of thousands of turkeys are kept in sheds. The law allows 58 kilos per square meter—that's about three males or five females.
"Keep to the left."
There's a motion detector. Life in the barn follows the rhythm of the machines. The ventilation and feeding systems are deafeningly loud. The smell is accurate. No frantic movements or noises.
Every time I see a turkey farm, I find it touching because I know what great, intelligent animals turkeys are. Totally curious, they have social behavior, and here they're crammed together in a shed like this. I just feel sorry for that.
Newborn chicks weigh less than 100 grams. Within a few weeks, they'll weigh 15 to 20 kilograms by the time they're ready for slaughter. That's also such a horrible term. They're still baby animals. We eat—well, I don't—but people eat baby animals.
A turkey can live 15 years, and we kill them at five months. They're actually bloated chicks. Despite the young slaughter age, one-tenth of turkeys die before they reach the slaughter weight from the consequences of extreme breeding and husbandry.
Cadaver bean. Some of the dead animals have terrible injuries. That animal has its guts hanging out the back. Their feet are infected from walking on excrement. Their feathers are torn off, and their bodies are littered with wounds.
Here you can also see that the beak is much shorter at the top than the bottom. That's mutilation. Unable to forage for food on the ground like their wild ancestors, fattened turkeys exhibit massive behavioral disorders such as mutual feather pecking or cannibalism.
Almost every chick's life begins with the removal of part of the upper beak. The procedure does not eliminate the disturbed behavior, but with the shorter beaks, the birds do less damage. This is actually a clear violation of the Animal Welfare Act, which prohibits mutilation.
There's a specific paragraph that states this clearly: you're not allowed to cut off testicles, cut off tails, cut off ears, grind off teeth, or cut off the beak. Yet it's done again and again.
There are millions of exemptions.
[Music]
This is just an example of how the financial interests of the industry override animal welfare concerns. This is a factory farm. If I had the chance to go through it, I'd find many more violations.
This footage was captured at a different turkey farm. I found animals lying on their backs, unable to turn around and being suffocated by their own pectoral muscles. I found animals with bad injuries. Turkeys with pecked-out eyes are common. I've seen that all too often.
I simply cannot fathom how such a thing can be allowed. There are thousands of such farms in Germany, hundreds of thousands worldwide. In principle, they all look the same.
Temperature for tonight, the animal rights activists have accomplished their mission. They now know when they can film the animals being transported to the slaughterhouse. It's likely that the transporter will come on Monday or Tuesday because they're pretty much ready.
But even if they find evidence of animal welfare violations, they won't be able to change the animals' living conditions quickly. This system is divided into two areas. On the one hand, there are clear criminal structures that are in violation of the law, and on the other, there's legalized crime.
Whether in pig fattening, turkey farming, or chicken farming, actually, if you read the Animal Welfare Act, you'd find that none of this is permissible. But it was legalized under pressure from the lobby. It's tolerated, and it's our job to keep putting our finger in the wound and say what we have here.
Keeping a pig in 0.75 square meters, routinely cutting the beak off turkeys, putting a sow in a narrow cage where she can't even turn around, chaining a cow—it's all forbidden.
The Animal Welfare Act also states, for example, that animals should be kept in species-appropriate conditions. Clearly, a pig kept in less than one square meter on a slatted floor is not species-appropriate.
It's so bad that if the Animal Welfare Act were really enforced, mass animal husbandry would end at once. The numbers produced by the global factory farming industry are so large they are difficult to comprehend.
Just since you tuned in, 9,200 cattle have been killed on the planet every second. Nine more are added in the same amount of time. Nineteen thousand four hundred turkeys, 33,300 sheep and goats, 42,200 pigs, 105,000 ducks, and 2.3 million chickens have been slaughtered—all in the last 16 minutes and 41 seconds.
If we stacked on top of one another all the animals we kill and eat in a year, we would reach the Moon and back 40 times. Fish die in such large numbers that we only measure them in tons.
Idyllic grazing in the Lower Odor Valley National Park. These cows live the way marketing would have us believe is the norm.
"Ellie, come. Runa, Mara, that's it. You're fine."
Anya Radetsky, who knows each of her 170 cows by name, calls herself a cow whisperer. Many people ask me, "Isn't it much too cold for the cows?" or "When it rains, shouldn't they have a stable?"
No, that's what we humans think because we have such thin skin and always have to put on our rain jackets. Cattle have leather jackets, and in winter, it is also well lined with fat.
Yeah, I think it's good for animals to be exposed to the elements and that we don't overprotect them. Each cow here has ten thousand square meters. On conventional farms, they get 2.5.
In fact, Anya Radetsky does almost everything differently. Nicole, a cow, doesn't want to walk on concrete. If it has the choice between the road and a grass strip next to it, it will walk on the grass strip. It wants to run on the grass and not on the concrete, where one can pile the crap together nicely.
In the dairy industry, there's an unchangeable law of nature: to get milk, you need a pregnant cow. Cows need to give birth every year in order to continually produce milk. They are separated from their calves shortly after birth. Often, the mothers call for their young for days.
Every parent can empathize: how cruel would it be to be told in the hospital, "Okay, we have to take your baby away now, but please don't forget to keep pumping your milk." I don't mean to humanize the animals, but these are mammals like us, and we think we have the right to take their babies away so we can have their milk.
Here, though, calves are allowed to stay with the cows. They're first in line and get as much milk as they want directly. Then we humans take the rest. I think that's the right way of doing it.
This attitude is the absolute exception—a niche within a niche. In Germany, there are only about 100 dairy farms where calves and mothers are kept together. That's just two percent of organic farms, and all organic farms together produce only about 3.5 percent of the country's milk.
"Do you have any spicy cheese?"
"Yes, it's quite stinky and spicy."
Perfect. Once a week, Anya sells milk and cheese in her farm store. The first one is natural; then there's the one with pepper. Every batch is a little different because the cows are always grazing in different corners.
Her method comes at a price. She has to charge much more than the supermarket.
"It's 34.20, please."
Still, the income barely covers the expenses. A conventional farmer will get maybe 30 cents for his milk when he would have to get 40 cents to cover his costs. Our milk costs just about three euros, and our employees get minimum wage.
If we wanted to double the wage to 20 euros, then the leader would have to cost six euros. That's already too high for herself. There's not much left over.
Yeah, seven years we've put everything back into the business and haven't taken that much for ourselves. We haven't calculated our salary on an hourly basis, so we're making under three euros an hour, and that's not enough. It doesn't seem right.
Anya doesn't only want to be an entrepreneur but an activist. I think it's so important that there are always people who hold that up and say, "Hey, I'm important."
"Um, what's this? Is this something you can eat?"
"No, can you look at it?"
No, Anya's convinced it is possible to farm animals in species-appropriate conditions. But the basic rule of animal husbandry also applies to her: keeping an animal alive is only worthwhile as long as it performs before it's shot.
There is always a moment of total stillness, as if everyone were waiting. And in that moment, I think of the animal and let it go with gratitude so that the soul can also go. It's spiritual.
Today, it's Nuria's turn. She will not die in the slaughterhouse but where she lived. It's definitely more pleasant to shoot her in the pasture as if she were a deer.
[Music]
"Oh yes, the grass is nice here. You've chosen the tastiest spot."
Each animal slaughtered this way in the pasture must be individually registered and approved by the authorities. An official veterinarian inspects each animal.
What costs a large slaughterhouse but a few cents costs Anya around 40 euros per animal.
[Music]
Death should come as suddenly as possible, surprisingly and without fear. The specially commissioned hunter shoots Nuria at close range between the eyes.
[Music]
When we think about where our meat comes from, we like to imagine that the animals lived and died the way Nuria did. But the truth is, unless we've made a very conscious decision to do so, we've probably never eaten such meat.
[Music]
Not only is the life of his animals a thoroughly optimized process, the pigs themselves are standardized industrial products. The sows are completely intoxicated so they tolerate it. I could sit on one now, and she would not react because she's completely stimulated by the ball.
The boar behind the grid only serves as a decoy and is not suitable for breeding. The constant quality from the tube is superior to natural insemination. Farmers order sperm and sows from a catalog from a highly specialized genetics company.
[Applause]
[Music]
The mother sow model TN70, for example, stands out with five stars in maternity and efficiency, according to the manufacturer. The sperm from terminal sire TN select promises the highest scores in slaughterhouse measurements and four stars in meat quality.
Yes, the milk bar is open. This is where the piglets are born. Around the time of birth, called farrowing, the sows are moved to a special cage—the gestation crate.
At some point, someone thought of fastening the sow in place during birth and found that through this protective cage, many more piglets survived. In the narrow pens, the sows would otherwise crush their own piglets.
What can I say? It definitely causes a lot of discussion because clearly, the animal can't move. It can't turn around freely; it's standing in one place for four weeks at a stretch. So yes, I understand the controversy.
Calls for stricter animal welfare requirements are growing louder, but changes to livestock housing systems would mean significant investments that farmers would have to pay off over several years.
To make my farm really future-ready in terms of grades three and four farming, as is currently on the discussions, I'm around 750,000—so three-quarters of a million off—in order to maintain the stocks.
First, I have to maintain the status quo I currently have, which is more or less fit for the future, without a guarantee that what is required will still be valid or desired in five or ten years. That is the big question.
Social change is happening so rapidly right now that it makes me wonder: do I continue to do this or do I not? You work 365 days a year; you have little vacation; you ultimately have an insecure income.
On the other hand, you can still get a lot of criticism, which is perhaps even partly justified and has led to the fact that we have also changed massively in the last ten years. But you notice that what we've done so far is simply not enough.
In the last ten years, the number of farms has fallen by half. As many pig farmers have given up, the farms that survive are getting bigger. What society wants isn't being financially rewarded.
But ultimately, it's a demand from the citizen that the consumer decides differently, even though they're the same person. Dirk Ninhaus also wants a better life for his pigs.
Regardless of the conditions we have here, I would also like to give the animals more light, more air. But at the moment, because of the economic situation, there comes a point where I have to say it's no longer possible.
And even if I don't, the bank will. It can turn off the tap; that can really happen at any point. That's what keeps me awake at night, where I think, "Actually, my plan was different."
Thank you.
[Music]
600 kilometers to the south, animal rights activist Friedrich Moon also believes that any genuine change has to start with demand.
"When to consume?" My main opponent is the consumers who are buying the stuff, who are pushing the button that sparks this whole chain reaction. But in order to reach them, I have to deal with all kinds of lackeys in this industry where the suffering is happening.
In order to show my main opponent, the people, "Hey, this is what you're causing—this suffering."
Friedrich Moon has been researching the meat and food industry for almost 30 years. He and his team have long since professionalized their operations.
I got my first night vision device from my father when I was 13. Of course, it wasn't as high quality as this one. This is the standard night vision device of the US Army. I'm sure you've seen it in action movies.
Oh, you're so technical. Here we have imaging technology, residual light amplifier, thermal imaging camera, super zoom camera, camcorder, infrared flashlights—that's a bug finder back there.
Activists see themselves in a permanent arms race with the farming industry. I think it's great that we're using this military technology, which was developed to kill people, for a purpose that actually protects life.
That's somehow a totally blatant irony of history that smells like NATO.
Like oil, the server is full of horrific footage of animals in the food industry. Thousands of broiler chickens, for example, are loaded and driven around the country for hours. You can see how carelessly they grab them by the feet and throw them in there, ratchet the doors shut, no matter if there's a head or a wing sticking out.
Aging cows are carelessly disposed of, sometimes illegally slaughtered when they no longer produce milk. Male calves are worthless from the start. Turkeys are overbred to such an extent that they barely last until they are ready for slaughter.
[Music]
The body grows rapidly; it literally vegetates, and bones and joints just can't keep up.
[Music]
Before being slaughtered, pigs are stunned with CO2 in gas chambers while they panic and fight for their lives. That's not a scandalous exception, but the norm.
Every biologist knows that CO2 causes pain in the mucous membrane, but the big corporations have pushed this through, have made it possible, as it's the only way you can slaughter 25,000 pigs a day.
That one's still not stunned back there. The same patterns are evident everywhere: a system designed around profits and only as much animal welfare as the law requires.
I'm an optimistic animal rights activist. That makes me very different from the majority of people who call themselves animal rights activists because they say everything's getting more and more horrible.
And yes, I believe that we—and I—will live to see the end of mass animal husbandry because I'm watching very closely how this industry is developing, what problems it has, where it's already crumbling, where the first parts are already collapsing.
And that's in full swing right now. We have the most extreme human-animal relationship dynamic in the history of humanity.
Sometimes, I can't even stand documenting the conditions. That was the sweetest thing ever. I was rescuing a duck from a farm. I found it, and I just couldn't leave it there.
This is Zelda the duck. She's such an enthusiastic bird. She immediately started to clean herself. She was so dirty. After that, the bird was clean, and the whole bathroom dirty.
Now, when we turn on the flush, the bird goes absolutely crazy.
[Music]
And this is the first time that this water bird gets to swim in water. So that was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced.
[Music]
It's like we have two pairs of glasses. Through one, we see animals as food; through the other, as individuals. How would the world change if we wore the second pair more often?
Watch it.