Kerre McIvor: Blunt death for calves

Slaughtering stock here is quick and relatively painless.Photo / APN

The video footage of a Waikato farmer clubbing bobby calves to death on a farm in Chile has horrified animal lovers around the world. The farmer was employed as production manager at Manuka, a farm in Chile owned by a consortium of New Zealand shareholders. He and other workers can be seen using blunt instruments to crack the skulls of the calves.

There is absolutely no doubt that the killing of the calves was brutal and unsophisticated, and Chilean authorities are investigating.

Many Kiwis who have never lived on farms were horrified to discover that it's legal in this country to kill an animal with a blunt instrument. Cruelty is not allowed, but if a cow is dying in agony in childbirth or a rogue dog has got in among the sheep leaving them with horrific injuries, and a farmer doesn't have a gun to hand, he or she is allowed to use a blunt object to put an animal out of its misery. And that's the thing about farming - life and death coexist on a daily basis.

People who have never spent time on farms anthropomorphise animals; their animals are pets and very much part of the family. Their dogs and cats live indoors; their personalities are indulged and when they are injured or become ill, their human owners will go to enormous lengths to keep them alive. When their pets die, townsfolk mourn them as they would a member of the family, many needing time off work to cope with their grief.

If you're a farmer running a couple of thousand stock units, you simply aren't able to care about animals in the same way. Good farmers look after their beasts - they have to, otherwise they don't make a living. And I'm sure even the most hardened stockman would have favourites among their herds or flocks. But they can't afford to be sentimental about their animals. Life as a farm animal is one that is brutish and short, to paraphrase Hobbes. And people who choose to eat meat need to know that. If you like a steak or a chop, the animal providing your protein hasn't spent a lifetime gambolling in a grassy pasture, under cerulean skies, before finally lying down in the long grass to die peacefully in his sleep, happy in the knowledge that his death will mean the fortification of humans.

In reality, the animal will be raised to a certain age and weight and then trucked to the freezing works where it will walk up a covered ramp, enter the works through a narrow doorway and then, within seconds, its life will be over. The animals are stunned, flipped upside down and their throats are cut and the butchering begins. It's messy and it's bloody, but it's quick and it does appear to be relatively painless. The beast doesn't even have time to let out a bellow of horror before it's all over. There is absolutely no excuse for cruelty to any animal. But there's also no excuse for people to be wilfully blind to where their meat has come from and how it arrives on their table.

If they don't have the stomach to appreciate that farm animals live only so that they will be killed to feed humans, then they should look at other options. (And just for the record, I love a good steak once a week or so, and yes, I've seen exactly where it's come from.)