 RPA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational nonprofit organization. |
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RPA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational nonprofit organization. |
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How can it be that public universities train students for industries that cause 10 billion animals in the U.S. to suffer and die each year and that also harm people and ecosystems? 10,000 Years Is Enough: Quick Links
In the mid-1800s, most Americans were farmers. So Congress passed the Morrill Act of 1862 enabling the states to set up colleges of agriculture that would also teach many other subjects. Created with profits from the sale or leasing of public land given to the states under the Morrill Act, these colleges became known as land-grant colleges. Additional land-grant colleges were also established through acts of Congress after 1862, so that 105 now exist. Each of the 50 states today has at least one "1862" college of agriculture that has evolved into a large university. Today's land-grant university typically has tens of thousands of students and a full range of academic majors. Only a small percentage of students now study agriculture. The vast number of small family farms that still operated in the early 20th century has dwindled to very few. Only a small percentage of Americans now engage in agriculture. Large agribusiness corporations now dominate farming. But, since the U.S. and the rest of the world need good food and always will, a case could be made that agriculture should still be taught. After all, many vocational, technological, and business schools exist. But should universities train students to work in big corporations that run hideous and cruel animal factories and whose products promote illness rather than health in human beings? And in agribusiness corporations whose methods waste and contaminate soil, water, and energy? It is time to stop teaching animal agribusiness! Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. (RPA), believes the animal and agribusiness industries should fend for themselves in the marketplace and should cover the costs of training their own workers as long as their activities remain lawful. Universities should serve the common good, but training people for today's animal industries mainly serves the profit interests of private businesses that provide harmful foods by harmful and often cruel methods. RPA has asked the presidents of the 50 states' main land-grant universities to stop teaching animal agribusiness! From March 31 to May 8, 2003, we sent them letters and our factsheet 10,000 Years Is Enough: Time To Stop Teaching Animal Agribusiness, explaining the animal-agribusiness problem and why continuing to teach animal agribusiness is a disservice. Seven universities have answered as of this posting. Their answers and the other 43 universities' silence demonstrate that the universities cannot justify continuing to teach animal agribusiness. In Their Own Words "Animal science" is a term often used for university animal-agribusiness teaching and research. Yet what is taught and applications of the research contradict other, less exploitative science. Some examples:
animal-agribusiness teaching and research also aren't really animal science in that they involve so few animal species and since "science" means knowledge yet animal agribusiness excludes or dismisses large amounts of knowledge in favor of exploitation. So "animal science" is a misnomer, but we think it is worth noting how this statement from the University of Guelph (Ontario) Animal and Poultry Science website - www.aps.uoguelph.ca - reveals the problem of universities' continuing to teach animal agribusiness: "The field of Animal Science has traditionally involved the development of new technologies aimed at improving the productivity and efficiency of animals used for meat, milk, eggs and fiber. Our research and teaching programs are: animal breeding and genetics (quantitative and molecular), animal nutrition (monogastric and ruminant), animal physiology (environmental, reproductive and behavioural), and growth and metabolism (meat science). Areas of interest also include animal welfare, aquaculture, and the feeding and management of horses, companion and zoo animals." What It Really Means: Animal Science = Exploitation + Misery "Improving the productivity and efficiency of animals" is of course not for the animals' sake. The animals were doing fine in terms of productivity and efficiency before human beings domesticated them: They had evolved over millions of years and were adapted to their ecological niches. That is all the productivity and efficiency they required. "Improvements" are aimed at increasing profits for the animal industries served by university animal-agribusiness programs. Such "improvements" amount to increasingly ruthless exploitation animals:
Despite terms that might at first appear to promote animals' wellbeing - nutrition, physiology, and animal welfare - university animal-agribusiness programs' only interest in the animals' wellbeing is in maximizing industry profits. In the industries, animals' wellbeing only refers to whether animals can survive long enough to produce income under the physical and mental torment inflicted on them by cruel industrial methods. So enhancing "animal welfare" mainly ensures more misery, as when a veterinarian attends to a rooster injured in a cockfight so the bird can live to be injured again or killed next time. Here are some "animal welfare advances" of the last half-century or so:
There are many more, and of course they make animals more "productive" and "efficient" - how could the industries want more from university animal-agribusiness programs?! Thanks for the Improvements, but No Thanks! So the key problem with "improving the productivity and efficiency" of animals, as compared with inanimate products, is that animals come into the world naturally capable of feeling pain, hunger, thirst, and other sensations; able to experience fear, confusion, and other emotions; and anticipating and depending on certain relationships to their family members and other members of their species and to the sun, soil, rain, fresh air, and other aspects of nature to which they adapted over millions of years. University animal-agribusiness programs must cease because, no matter what the university may teach - and even if universities' facilities are often less cruel than other facilities - all jobs for which university animal-agribusiness programs prepare students inevitably support the cruel mistreatment that dominates the animal industries. And no matter how animals are raised for food, it is extremely rare for any to live more than a small fraction of his or her natural life span. For thousands of years, human beings have known how to provide the kinds of care to pigs, chickens, cows, and other domestic animals that enables them to live comfortably and contentedly for many years - much more happily and much longer than universities teach students animals should live. Our society does not need universities to help people keep exploiting animals. What we and the animals need from universities is the courage to put a stop to a bad thing. There is no ethically acceptable way for universities to prepare students for jobs in or associated with the animal industries. Together We Can Stop It! Animal agriculture is a thing of the past, yet the animal industries are bigger than ever before and are rapidly expanding to other continents. The universities must take responsibility for making this problem much worse than it would be without their support of the animal industries! All jobs universities train students for in the animal industries support factory farming one way or another, contributing to the misery and untimely deaths of about 10 billion animals each year in the U.S. We hope you will read the letter and factsheet RPA sent to the 50 states' original land-grant universities and will wish to support RPA's 10,000 Years Is Enough campaign to end the teaching of animal agribusiness. See our list of the 50 university heads and their addresses. Write to the university in your state, the university you attended (if any), universities you would consider applying to or sending your kids to if they would stop teaching animal agribusiness. Your communications are sure to help - amazing as it may seem, some of the university presidents appear to be unaware of the enormity of the animal-agribusiness problem! Thank you for your concern and assistance and for helping to show our universities how to be the educational institutions our nation deserves rather than animal-industry patsies.
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