(Tuesday, July 3, 7:30pm)
Our main purpose here is to introduce what is known about the cognitive abilities that facilitate natural pig behaviour. Commercial pigs released into natural conditions show many of the behavioural characteristics of their wild ancestors: they will form family groups with differentiated rank relationships, forage together, build nests for giving birth and rearing their neonates, the sexes mingle mainly for mating. However, most commercial pigs are kept in conditions very different from those in which their species evolved. This creates a potential mismatch between motivation and expectation on the one hand, and reality on the other. Our other aim, therefore, is to explore how we might assess scientifically how such a mismatch might make the pigs feel.
van Nieuwamerongen, S. E., Mendl, M., Held, S., Soede, N. M., & Bolhuis, J. E. (2017). Post-weaning social and cognitive performance of piglets raised pre-weaning either in a complex multi-suckling group housing system or in a conventional system with a crated sow. Animal cognition, 20(5), 907-921.
Piazza, J., & Loughnan, S. (2016). When Meat Gets Personal, Animals’ Minds Matter Less: Motivated Use of Intelligence Information in Judgments of Moral Standing. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(8), 867-874.
Moderator
Both my questions are for Prof Held :
ReplyDelete1) Is the hierarchy of the pig collectivity stable (like a family structure that remains the same) or is it a dynamic society where dominants and subordinates change roles depending on context (like a power struggle) ?
2) And also, what sort of ethical implications your discovery of the pigs social behavior can have in animal welfare ?
I don’t understand how it is possible that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency aren’t stricter about what happen to commercial animals... How much collusion do you think there is between meat industries and that kind of federal agency that should be protecting animal welfare?
ReplyDeletePanelists said that Canadian laws are really vague, so nothing changes. My question is: as vague as those laws can be, how can knocking a piglet on concrete can be tolerate? It is clear that this goes against animal’s welfare. Also, as it has been said in the discussion, it isn’t true that must Canadian are aware of the condition in which farmed animals are treated. Education on that matter must continue.
ReplyDeleteI was interested by this statement M. Reber made at the very end of the workshop : that shock images were not an effective tool to change habits. Would you be so kind as to give us the references of those studies ? Were they specifically on animal product consumption or on another subject ?
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Just posting my question for student evaluation (already had the answer): I asked about the human workers’ conditions within the slaughterhouses or even the factory barns. The floor is filled with feces, it’s dark, and there’s probably a lot of other things. Are there any regulations for the workers themselves? For their safety or anything. Would that be a good easy, simple and quick first step towards regulating these infrastructures and hence the welfare of the animals? If the workers are treated in a gross way as well in their work environement, they won’t be willing to be nice to the pigs, right?
ReplyDeleteAu Québec, les animaux de ferme ou d’élevage n’ont plus le statut d’objet ou de propriété. Cependant, je pense que dans la conscience collective, ils le sont encore. Plusieurs consommateurs de protéines animales ne voient jamais l’animal dans la ferme, mais se font une impression de l’animal comme un produit qu’ils achètent dans les épiceries. Il y a aussi cette impression que les animaux de la ferme sont notre création puisqu’ils sont le résultat de sélection artificielle et d’élevage intensif. Ces impressions peuvent amener les gens à oublier que les animaux d’élevages sont aussi des êtres sensibles (avec le ressenti). Je pense que des vidéos sur leurs conditions d’élevages difficiles et des recherches démontrant leurs capacités cognitives (comme pour le poulet et le cochon) peuvent aider les gens à changer cette impression négative qu’ils ont d’eux.Au Québec, les animaux de ferme ou d’élevage n’ont plus le statut d’objet ou de propriété. Cependant, je pense que dans la conscience collective, ils le sont encore. Plusieurs consommateurs de protéines animales ne voient jamais l’animal dans la ferme, mais se font une impression de l’animal comme un produit qu’ils achètent dans les épiceries. Il y a aussi cette impression que les animaux de la ferme sont notre création puisqu’ils sont le résultat de sélection artificielle et d’élevage intensif. Ces impressions peuvent amener les gens à oublier que les animaux d’élevages sont aussi des êtres sensibles (avec le ressenti). Je pense que des vidéos sur leurs conditions d’élevages difficiles et des recherches démontrant leurs capacités cognitives (comme pour le poulet et le cochon) peuvent aider les gens à changer cette impression négative qu’ils ont d’eux.
ReplyDeleteIf there is one session I was happy to look at home, this was the one. I gave up meat two years ago and am currently cutting every animal product since I took Alain Roy's class and since I now have a deep interest in animal rights, especially farmed animals.
ReplyDeleteI hope that this conference, those images, those moments can be shared with many people. Often, people don't want to look, saying they KNOW what happens but are still not ready to give up on bacon.
I find that argument very upsetting. If you know, then why are you still encouraging animal suffering by eating those products?
How would you respond to that argument? This question is adressed to anyonne of the speaker or discussant who would like to answer!
Hi Daïka, I don't have one answer, but bits of answers than might contribute to your thirst for understanding:
Delete1. Social pressure: imagine my case... I've been with the same girlfriend for 16 years, now married, but her Vietnamese parents took over 10 years to accept me. Mentalities change slowly... but one of their main worries, strangely, was that if she married a westerner, the marriage would go bad because I would look in disgust at their traditional food... at this point, what am I supposed to tell them when they cook lobster and thank heaven that I actually had to force myself to get used to seafood. This is so paradoxical.
2. guilt and avoidance of guilt: the savings I have with Desjardins, I am fully aware that part of the profit on them is due to the sale of weapons. Bombs that kill children. Am I a murdered because I eat nutella sometimes, knowing that the palm trees this company plant are actually killing animals by the thousands everyday? The more you think about the state of the world, the more you find ways to feel guilty for not living in misery. So at some point, you shut down, as a defense mechanism, you stop feeling guilty and you just try to living a life that's not too depressing, for the sake of it. I think most non-psychopathic meat eaters are just sick of feeling guilty because it hurts and life is hard enough as it is (half of the developed world in on Prozac). It goes beyond just cognitive dissonance. It's just that we avoid pain, we don't want to feel that we're bad people, and the less painful way is the status quo.
3. Changing habits is hard, not just for social reasons, but because we've been conditioned. It's hard to deprogram children who were born in a sect. It's going to be even harder to deprogram kids who have been taught that loving some animals is wonderful, but eating others goes in some other compartment in their head. Research on cults is scarce, as far as I know, but perhaps some hints may hide in there.
4. People seem like they never change their mind, but the truth about it is that when they do, they do it in private. It's a slow process. Point is: never underestimate the power of dialogue, even when it seems perfectly evident that you're talking to a wall.
None of this is proper justification for inflicting pain, of course.
Wanted to share this recent article to remind that slaughterhouses are not only a symbol for animal exploitation and suffering but also for human exploitation. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/05/amputations-serious-injuries-us-meat-industry-plant?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other This could be important to mention when speaking to meat eaters who don't care for animals but maybe for fellow humans.
ReplyDeleteEncore une fois, ce fut une présentation intéressante dans laquelle j’ai appris beaucoup de chose. Le cochon a une excellente mémoire, est capable de jouer, a des interactions socialement complexes, ressentent la douleur, des émotions, de l’empathie, est capable d’effectuer des tâches relativement complexes, etc. En sachant cela, et en ayant vu les conditions atroces dans lesquelles ils se retrouvent dans l’industrie, il est grandement temps que nous repensions notre relation aux cochons (et à beaucoup d’autres animaux) et que nous repensions notre méthode d’alimentation.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering, when you speak to former slaughterhouse employees who have decided to go vegan or vegetarian, what do they point to as the reason they decide to change their habits? Is it because of your protesting or for some other reason? I am wondering because I am wondering about what the most effective ways might be to sensitize people to the suffering of animals even when they seem uneffected by seeing it occur daily in their jobs.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the talk. In United States, feral pigs are quite a big problem. They eat crops, wreck havoc everywhere they go and reproduce at an alarming rate. For what I have seen, most interventions to limit their impact are far from humane, killing them mercilessly by the hundreds. Given the results on pig cognition highlighted in the beginning of the presentation, could we intervene by training them to live in the wild in a more harmonious way with the ecosystem ? Or perhaps better ways for humans to interact with them? Or simply more humane practices that could be efficient to address this problem as well as considering their mental habilities?
ReplyDeleteIndépendamment du statut accordé par la législation locale (ici semble-t-il ontarienne) à l'animal, ie "bien meuble" ou "être doué de sensibilité", ou de toute autre réglementation sur la façon de maintenir certains standards dans l'élevage, il n'en reste que le vidéo présenté ici nous montre des actes criminels qualifiés selon le Code criminel canadien en vertu des dispositions sur la cruauté animale(la soussignée est retraitée de la profession d'avocate, y incluant plusieurs année de pratique en criminel). À noter qu'on voit ici des conditions assez "particulières" (pour demeurer polie...)qui ne représentent pas nécessairement l'agir du commun des éleveurs, pour en avoir dans ma famille. À ce titre, je ne peux qu'inciter les omnivores à porter systématiquement attention à la provenance de leurs aliments et à favoriser les petits élevages biologiques où les porcs sont élevés librement, parfois même avec la possibilité de sortir dans un champ à l'extérieur, et où les éleveurs prennent la peine d'accompagner eux-mêmes leurs animaux à l'abattoir afin d'observer ce qui s'y passe. Ce, même si cela fait en sorte de payer un peu plus cher votre épicerie! Les élevages responsables ne peuvent se maintenir sans le support des consommateurs.
ReplyDeletePour une explication du biais cognitif et des références à des études sur différentes espèces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias_in_animals