On the one hand, 88% of French people want to see farm animals better treated. On the other hand, more than a billion land animals are exploited in very difficult living conditions and killed each year in France to meet the demand for meat, eggs and milk. This is “the meat paradox” described by many researchers. Romain Espinosa, animal condition economist and CNRS researcher, devotes a book to him:
How to save the animals? An economy of the animal condition (Ed. PUF), released in February.
A book that resonates with current events, while the European Commission has just undertaken to present, by 2023, a legislative proposal to ban cage farming in the EU, one of the symbols of intensive farming, and that
Julien denormandie, the Minister of Agriculture, announced on Sunday the ban on the crushing of male chicks and the live castration of piglets from January.
Why such a gap between our concern for animals and the way we exploit them? How do we bring about a society where animal exploitation is the exception, and no longer the norm? Romain Espinosa responds to 20 minutes.
Why must farm animals be the priority in the fight for animal welfare?
Without neglecting the dropouts [100.000 par an] and cases of abuse, the 60 million pets in France are mostly well treated by their owners and benefit from a protective legislative framework. Laws, in France and in Europe, also govern the use of
laboratory animals, even if their fate is not enviable. Two to four million animals are affected in France.
With farm animals, we are on a whole different scale. Already by their number. Three million animals are killed every day in France for our consumption of meat, eggs and milk, or 1 billion per year. But also by the conditions they are subjected to and the little protection they enjoy. Many of these animals live in intensive rearing systems, in which they may never see the light of day, spend much of their lives in cages, and suffer severe damage to their basic needs.
Have we gradually lost awareness in France of the fate of farm animals?
From the 19th century, animal suffering in breeding gradually became hidden. Slaughterhouses are relocated outside the cities. There is also the Grammont law, passed in 1850. It is the first major animal protection law in our modern legal system. But its effective perimeter will only be violence done in public, with the idea of protecting human sensitivity and not really that of animals.
This loss of contact with farm animals accelerated further after World War II. We then fall into a process of industrialization of meat production, in which animals are reduced to intermediate goods. We even do genetic selection of farm animals, so that they are more productive or grow faster. And all of this is done behind walls that we rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to cross.
What is more problematic: the number of animals killed each year for their meat or the way they are raised and slaughtered?
The two are intrinsically linked. Today we have such a demand for meat, eggs and milk that we are obliged to have a very large number of farm animals. This leads to the establishment of industrial processes in which it is impossible to humanely treat each animal. This is why reducing meat consumption is one of the main challenges. Pressure is then removed from the farming systems. In other words, we make it possible to breed fewer animals, to slaughter less, and therefore, each time, to do it better.
The steady decline in meat consumption in France [- 12 % en dix ans] is it a sign of a growing awareness of the need to improve the condition of farm animals?
The proportion of vegetarians and vegans remains stable in France. Between 2 and 3%. That of flexitarians – those people who cannot quite do without meat but sharply reduce their consumption – is growing strongly: 39% of French people define themselves as such. The rise of flexitarianism therefore largely explains the decline in meat consumption in France.
This is positive, but this movement, largely taken up by the marketing of the meat industry, has its limits. Because he claims to want to reduce his meat consumption, the flexitarian notably creates moral credit vis-à-vis the rest of the population (who eats more meat). This small step gives him a good image of himself, which would legitimize the rest of his meat consumption. We are in a case of “moral license”, one of the cognitive biases which explains this paradox of meat.
In general, relying only on the fact that individuals decide to reduce their meat consumption will not be enough to put an end to animal exploitation as we know it today. We will run up against a ceiling very quickly. We also need collective actions, strong public policies.
Among the biases that you describe, there is that of “sincere ignorance” … Is it still possible when associations like L214 very regularly publish videos on the suffering inflicted on animals in farms?
Yes, this “sincere ignorance” still works in part. Even if there is an undeniable awareness of animal suffering in farms, we do not always know how badly it can go. As I devote my days to this subject, I myself regularly discover new forms of abuse. Above all, we are not aware of the number of animals that are in intensive farming systems. This is the case for 95% of pigs, for example, 80% of chickens, 99% of rabbits, etc.
Cognitive dissonance, system 1 / system2, reactance, social learning… You list many other factors that can explain this paradox of meat. Can we classify them by importance?
It is complicated to prioritize them. No doubt cognitive dissonance plays an important role. It can be defined as rejecting information when it does not please us or calls into question our habits. Typically when we say to ourselves that the breeding conditions should not be as terrible as we have heard. But all other phenomena also play a role at different times.
Reactance, for example, can kick in when you hear an animal activist advocating to eat less meat and see it as a threat to your freedom, making you want to do the opposite. Another situation: you are at a family meal where everyone is asking for meat … You will do the same without asking yourself any questions. We are in social learning. It is also our food shopping that we do in automatic mode. We then mobilize system 1 of our thought, without the latter seeing fit to call system 2, that of conscious, controlled, deliberate logic … The combination of all these phenomena makes it difficult for many to modify their meat consumption .
Could the European Commission’s commitment to legislate to ban cage farming in the EU make it possible to take a leap forward in animal health?
It would be a historic step, with a huge impact. NGOs estimate that more than 300 million animals spend, if not all, at least a significant part of their life in cages, on European farms, as we speak. However, the conditional remains in order. It will be necessary to see how the discussions will take place between the States and how this proposal will apply.
France has already done everything to get animal welfare out of the negotiations around the future CAP, and we must expect that it will weigh with all its weight against this proposal. The state is very far today from playing the role it could have. The colossal weight of the lobbies and financial interests of the meat industry has a lot to do with it. So practically nothing happened during the five-year term on this subject. The Bill from deputy Cédric Villani, which aimed at the gradual end of intensive and cage rearing,
was not put to a vote in the National Assembly. That of the senator
Esther Benbassa, on ethical breeding,
was rejected by the Senate. As for the presidential majority’s bill on animal abuse, all the livestock amendments were rejected on the grounds that they were irrelevant. The exception is the ban on the breeding of mink, which only represents a very small proportion of the animals killed each year, and which was enacted mainly with the aim of preventing zoonoses.
Julien Denormandie’s announcements [sur les poussins et les porcelets], Sunday, could constitute a notable advance. But it will be necessary to be attentive to the application, which should be progressive from 2022, especially with regard to the means put in place for the fillies and the age of the embryos for the eggs, at which the sex of the chicks is determined.
Are plant substitutes and cultured meat the most promising solution to end animal exploitation in breeding?
For years, we have been recommended to eat less fat, less salt, less sugar. However, we continue to frequent fast food restaurants. After a while, we can tell ourselves that the challenge is to work so that fast food offers a healthier diet.
To improve the welfare of farm animals, it’s a bit the same thing. We can act either on demand or on supply. We have been trying for a long time to act on the first part, with the impression of reaching a ceiling, as evidenced by the stable proportion of the number of vegetarians and vegans. The rise of imitation meat [des produits à base de protéines végétales dont l’aspect, le parfum, la texture et la saveur sont très proches de la viande] and cultured meat [développée en laboratoire à partir de cellules souches] allows you to work on the offer. The promise is that consumers will no longer have to change their habits so much, since they will now be able to orient themselves towards its substitutes which give them the same taste pleasures, but without causing animal suffering.