Shelley Bridgeman: Your Christmas meal's sad origins

Most of our pork, bacon and ham is produced from animals who live in windowless sheds for their entire lives. Photo / Getty

Forget the Grinch that stole Christmas. It seems that animal advocacy organisations Save Animals from Exploitation (SAFE) and Farmwatch have been doing their best to suck all the joy out of our Christmas meal this year.

If you're concerned about the exploitation of animals, there's a raft of traditional fare that ought to be avoided this festive season.

Almost every classic dish, from glazed ham to stuffed turkey and pavlova to custard, just might have unsavoury origins. Here are six foods/food groups associated with significant animal welfare issues.

1. MILK, CREAM, CHEESE AND BUTTER

Animal cruelty within the dairy industry was exposed by TVNZ's latest edition of Sunday. One Farmwatch investigator says he witnessed "deliberately cruel treatment of calves at about 15 of the 50 farms he secretly filmed across the Waikato".

He added: "We saw calves being torn from their mothers and left in the hot sun for hour after hour, thrown into trucks and then beaten to death".

The Ministry for Primary Industries is also investigating. Farmwatch's video "The dark side of the NZ dairy industry" makes heartbreaking viewing for any animal lover. The wooden crate labelled with the words "CASUALTY CALVES" shows the position these creatures have. They are treated as waste products of a system that requires cows to produce maximum quantities of milk for human consumption. This is why two million bobby calves (four days old or slightly older) are slaughtered annually in New Zealand.

HAM

Pig welfare is one of SAFE's key concerns. Intensive factory farming means most of our pork, bacon and ham is produced from animals who live in windowless sheds for their entire lives. "Dry sow stalls", "farrowing crates" and "fattening pens" confine the pigs still further. Unable to roam, play or dig, they are forced to sit in their own excrement.

Pigs are said to be highly intelligent. According to SAFE, research has shown they "experience complex emotions, and can feel optimistic or pessimistic, according to how they are being treated. Pigs suffer tremendously within factory farms".

TURKEY

Factory farmed turkeys live in dark, crowded sheds with thousands of others. Conditions become increasingly cramped as the turkeys grow to "slaughter weight". Overcrowding often leads to the spread of infections and disease. SAFE's website says that: "To combat the turkeys harming each other, painful mutilations, such as beak trimming, are performed without anaesthesia, and can result in excessive bleeding, infections and death".

CHICKEN

The conditions in which factory-farmed chickens bred for meat live are well documented. These intensively reared chickens inhabit dark sheds with up to 40,000 others. They have no ability to express natural behaviour such as perching, foraging, running and flying. But if the plight of these creatures leaves you unmoved, perhaps the news that testing has found "an antibiotic-resistant strain of campylobacter" to be "present in three of the four main suppliers of poultry in the North Island" will inspire you to rethink your Christmas menu.

The Poultry Industry Association of New Zealand says this discovery "presents no additional risk to public health and food safety".

Of course, this assurance is cold comfort when you consider that, according to the Ministry for Primary Industries, "[u]ncooked poultry meat is frequently contaminated with campylobacter". This is just business as usual for the poultry industry.

EGGS

I've written previously about the plight of battery hens: "millions of battery hens are treated like egg-producing machines rather than the sentient beings they are".

According to SAFE, "[e]ighty-three per cent of ... eggs consumed in New Zealand are produced by caged hens that spend their entire lives mistreated and abused". Hens kept in such cramped and soulless conditions are likely to endure stress, disease, brittle bones and a poor diet.

And, because males of the species are surplus to requirements in this industry, over three million one-day-old chicks are killed every year - either "by gassing or maceration (being minced alive)". If you didn't realise eggs were even on your Christmas menu, I have just one word: pavlova.

SALMON

As my options for a cruelty-free Christmas lunch narrowed, I started to imagine serving salmon, perhaps glazed with miso and tamari. Well, I need to think again. Factory farming of fish may not be well publicised but it poses ethical problems nonetheless.

"All fresh salmon in New Zealand has come from factory farm operations," says SAFE. Overcrowding is one issue: "[a] 2.5-foot fish can spend his entire life in a space the size of a bathtub. Physical injuries, abnormalities and blindness are common."

Slaughtering methods, which include "leaving the the fish out of the water, electrical stunning and brain spiking", are of concern, too. And, no, the old they're-only-fish argument doesn't cut it.

Evidently, fish "experience pain and distress" and "are intelligent, have long-term memories and individual personalities, and they live in sophisticated social groups". Oh well, it looks like nut roast and salads will be on the menu at my place this year.

Merry Christmas!