Re-engineering Farm Animals, Ignoring Their Welfare

In his front page New York Times article, “U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit,” Michael Moss reports on the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, a complex of laboratories and pastures that sprawls over 55 square miles in Clay Center, Nebraska, and whose mission is to help producers of beef, pork and lamb turn a higher profit as diets shift toward poultry, fish and produce. Moss describes how experimental agricultural methods puts animal welfare at risk; the livestock have been subjected to illness, pain and premature death over many years.