Tale of 2 farms that says it all
AMERICA: 120,000 wretched-looking cattle are pumped with hormones to boost growth BRITAIN: Helen loves talking to the pigs on her 1,500 acre fully-organic farm that won her OBE for animal welfare
IT IS the smell that hits you first, a putrid stench seeping in through the air-conditioning vents of the car. I’m still two miles away from Harris Ranch, one of America’s largest ‘feedlots’, or factory farms for cows. I’m hurtling down the freeway at 70mph and the windows are up, yet the stink is everywhere, filling the car and permeating the 105F air outside. When the ranch finally comes into view, the sheer size and scale of the operation is mind-boggling.
Spread over 800 dusty acres without a blade of green grass in sight, there are up to 120,000 cattle here at any one time. The animals come from ranches throughout the western states of America to be fattened up before slaughter. The locals call it ‘Cowschwitz’.
Harris Ranch, which runs alongside the busy Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, produces a staggering 150million pounds of beef every year, and supplies many of America’s biggest supermarket and restaurant chains. The business has more than £325million worth of sales a year.
As soon as I step out of the car to peer through a chain-link metal fence topped with razor wire, swarms of flies engulf me and the overpowering smell of urinecreated ammonia and raw manure makes me gag.
Miserable-looking animals stretch for as far as the eye can see, standing on barren dirt, huddled together under sheets of corrugated iron offering the only shade from the blazing Californian sun. Occasionally there is a plaintive moo, but for the most part the cattle stand silent in their manure-encrusted pens.
The ranch has a slick website featuring photos of ‘happy cows’ in green fields. ‘Harris Ranch cares deeply for our livestock and the land,’ it states. ‘Our beef cattle spend approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the time grazing on grass on western ranches. Then, at Harris Feeding Company, our cowboys ride our pens daily – rain or shine – to keep a watchful eye on the cattle and examine their state of health.’
But the only human I can see is a man in a white pick-up truck who draws up silently alongside me, filming me on a hand-held video camera.
Harris Ranch has long been a target for animal rights protesters and suffered an arson attack in 2012 when 14 cattle trucks were destroyed in a series of fires set by the North American Animal Liberation group.
Whereas growth-promoting hormones have been banned in Britain since the 1980s, they are fed to 90 per cent of feedlot cattle in America. The use of antibiotics to control disease is routine and widespread, although Harris Ranch insists the drugs are administered only under a vet’s supervision.
The company admits it doesn’t know whether an animal has been filled with hormones before arriving at Harris Ranch, but insists: ‘Naturally occurring hormones such as oestrogen and other growth promotants are commonly given in small doses to promote growth of muscle and recuse fat deposits.’
Antibiotics ‘are used in a therapeutic manner under veterinarian oversight’.
Philip Lymbery, of Compassion in World Farming, says the British public are right to worry about US meat. ‘American farm standards in general are still in the Dark Ages,’ he says. ‘Eighty per cent of all antibiotics consumed in any one year are fed to farm animals in the US, compared to less than 45 per cent in Britain.
‘Crowding tens of thousands of cattle together causes them stress, lowers their immune system and makes them vulnerable to disease.’
Cameron Harsh, farming campaign manager at World Animal Protection US, agrees: ‘Feedlot cattle receive growth-promoting hormones such as estradiol, testosterone and progesterone. These steroid hormones serve no health or welfare purpose and are only used to increase productivity, primarily increasing weight gain and improving feed efficiency.
‘The use of antibiotics in US farming is five times higher than in UK production. Their overuse across the industry has contributed to the global public health crisis of rising resistant infections and a lack of effective antibiotics to treat people.
‘For Harris Ranch to say they only use antibiotics under a vet’s supervision is misleading because often vets and feedlots work handin-hand.’
Harris Ranch refused The Mail on Sunday’s request to tour the farm and slaughterhouse, saying: ‘We really don’t do tours.’
From the outside, mountains of yellow maize – or corn – can be seen piled up in an area next to the cattle pens. Unlike in Britain, where cows are allowed to graze, these animals are fed grain because it fattens them up quicker.
‘Corn makes their stomachs acidic, causing a number of illnesses including acidosis which makes them pant, drool, paw at their bellies and eat dirt,’ says Mr Harsh. The condition can lead to ulcers, liver disease and a weakened immune system.
According to another animal welfare activist, Michael Pollan, the practice is completely unnatural.
‘We take them off grass and teach them to eat something they are not evolved to eat, mostly corn.
‘It makes absolutely no sense from an ecological standpoint – but from a financial standpoint it does. It makes the animals grow much more quickly. Cows that used to be allowed to grow to four or five years old before we ate them are now being slaughtered at 14 months.’
Harris Ranch puts in much effort to promote the public ‘face’ of its operation. A few miles down the road from Cowschwitz is a purposebuilt resort, Harris Ranch Inn & Restaurant, with a pretty pink 153room motel and restaurant.
There is an electric car-charging station to entice Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to stop for a break on their way from northern California to LA. The meat-heavy menu features a huge range of steaks, including 24oz Porterhouse.
All around me – two metres apart – people are tucking in. The waitress trills about the quality of the beef and the restaurant’s rave reviews.
But with the wretched smell of the feedlot still lingering on my clothes, I order a salad.
HELEN BROWNING is crouched in a pig paddock, cheerfully chattering away to the dozen or so pink and grey piglets mobbing her. A contented sow wallows in a nearby mud-bath while another rootles about in the undergrowth. ‘When I’m here and the sun is shining, I could just spend all day playing with the pigs,’ says Helen, smiling.
With its mix of well-tended livestock, arable crops and orchards, Helen’s Wiltshire farm is as traditional as you will find anywhere in Britain.
Such is her commitment to animal welfare, in 1998 she was awarded an OBE for services to farming – and it’s that passion which helps explain why she is so worried about the future of British agriculture.
Like other farmers, she is aggrieved by the Government’s failure to agree a legal protection that would stop food being sold in this country with lower safety or animal welfare standards. In particular, she’s concerned about the prospect of a market being flooded with cheap American meat pumped with antibiotics and hormones.
‘It will lead to a race to the bottom, simple as that,’ she says. ‘Corners will be cut and standards will drop. Farmers and animals will suffer.’ Since inheriting Eastbrook
Farm from her father Bob in 1986, Helen has endeavoured to prove that a working commercial farm can also give its stock a good life.
‘I like to think we give animals the five-star treatment,’ she says. ‘If you’re breeding dairy cows or pigs for slaughter, the deal is that you treat them well.
‘I realise that not all British farms can operate like we do, but treating animals safely and with dignity is what we as farmers should all be striving for.’
Nestled deep in the countryside, the fully organic 1,500-acre farm has 150 Saddleback sows, 3,000 pigs which are bred for slaughter every year, a dairy herd of British Friesians and 400 acres of crops. And while she loves all the animals equally, the pigs clearly hold a special place in Helen’s heart.
‘You can always tell if one is happy and healthy as its tail is curly,’ she says, gesturing towards the dozens of curly tails, some even wagging, that crowd around her.
How very different from America where pigs’ tails are docked at an early age to prevent other stressed piglets – often kept in cramped conditions in ‘super-size’ farms – from biting them.
The Eastbrook porkers are kept in conditions that, as far as possible, mimic nature, such as living in family groups with free access to fields when conditions allow.
In general, Helen’s pigs are kept outdoors. Other pampering includes arcs (pig huts) with computercontrolled windows that open and close to regulate temperature.
In America, farmers wean piglets off their mothers at an early age so the sows can produce more young. But it’s proven that sows forced to have more young than nature intended become stressed and generally die younger. And weaning at such a young age – when a piglet’s immune system is not fully developed – can lead to illness. As a result, increasing numbers of pigs in America require antibiotics, which, in turn, risk creating drug-resistant superbugs. Scientists have predicted that such infections could kill an extra ten million people a year worldwide by 2050.
While US farmers often wait only two or three weeks to wean piglets, at Eastbrook they are weaned after eight weeks and rarely require antibiotics. ‘We only use antibiotics on around one in 200 pigs, and even then it will be if the pig has a nasty scratch or pneumonia,’ Helen, 58, says. ‘They are only used when absolutely necessary.
‘As a farmer, if you’re using antibiotics in large quantities, something has gone wrong and you need to ask yourself why.’
It is one reason why Helen, who is also chief executive of the Soil Association, which promotes healthy and humane farming, is so concerned about the consequences of a flawed US trade deal.
‘If Britain is flooded with cheap American meat that’s been treated with all sorts of antibiotics, most of which are illegal in the UK, and the animals are kept in appalling conditions, I fear this will put a huge amount of pressure on British farmers,’ she says. ‘There will be a downward spiral, not just with welfare, but environmentally, too. It is a serious concern.’
Helen describes the Agriculture Bill, criticised for omitting environmental or welfare rules for farm imports from the end of the year, as a ‘missed opportunity’.
‘This was a real sin of omission. We were hoping to see some guarantee of welfare or environmental standards but it just wasn’t there.’
Maintaining environmental standards is as important, too.
As an organic farm, Eastbrook uses almost no pesticide and avoids manufactured herbicides or artificial fertilisers.
Instead, grass is fed with organic matter, which in turn helps it retain more water, survive dry spells and provide more food for cows.
Cows are moved every day around different fresh ‘blocks’ to allow fields time to grow back.
‘British farming is about compassion, dignity and maintaining proper welfare and safety standards,’ says Helen.
‘I think the public will be horrified if they are presented with meat produced under these appalling standards in America.’
If you are using antibiotics in large quantities, something has gone wrong