Sir, - In all the many acres of print media coverage and hours of airtime devoted to the foot-and-mouth crisis, one aspect has hardly been mentioned: the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of animals involved.
The consumer's demand for cheap food, and the supermarkets' determination to supply it, has ensured that, no matter what regulations apply, farmers are under enormous pressure to cut corners, whether in sourcing animal feed or moving animals to where they can get maximum profit. The food may be cheap but there is a huge price to pay and it is the animals that pay it.
The battery hen, the broiler chicken, the sow confined to her stall for all of her life, the dairy cow pushed to the limit of milk production, and now, the vast numbers of healthy animals being slaughtered as a precautionary measure, are all suffering for our greed. Recent research has shown that the price difference between humanely produced food and the factory-farmed kind is very small; often only a matter of peace. Until we, the consuming public, show that we are willing to pay this small extra amount, the relentless pressure on food producers and their animals will continue with the resultant recurring plagues.
Many veterinary experts now believe that free movement of animals equals free movement of diseases. It has always been a key policy of animal welfare bodies, including the ISPCA, that food animals should be slaughtered as close as possible to the point of production. There is an urgent need for all of us to look at how we treat our food animals, for their sake and our own. - Yours, etc.,
Ciaran O'Donovan, Chief Executive, ISPCA Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6.