It’s a pretty common refrain among sustainable farmers that happy animals make for better tasting meat which conveniently aligns the animal welfare crowd with the foodie crowd but has this been backed up by rigorous scientific study?
It seems pretty well established at this point that the state of the animal at the immediate moment of slaughter can significantly impact meat quality and people like Temple Grandin have successfully used these insights to redesign slaughterhouses. It also seems pretty well established that feed quality also significantly impacts meat flavor and chickens that are allowed to scratch around and eat bugs and such end up being more richly flavored.
However, I’ve not seen much evidence to suggest that psychological conditions unrelated to these other factors also impact meat quality. Does such research exist? What conclusions have scientists reached?
Stressed out muscles burn glycogen, and accumulate lactic acid. This biology snippet brought to you by the good folks at Wikipedia and your high school biology course. Please search for better citations, on your own, if necessary.
Glycogen tastes sweet (I’d heard) and lactic acid should taste sour, because … its an acid. Cf above for references.
Thing is, I don’t know how definitive this can be, or how practical it is to test.
Also, you’re doing the typical misquote, which muddies the whole issue. How happy can an animal be? The issue is just non-stress, but how low stress can slaughter be? And if the issue is non-stressed muscles, wouldn’t all hunted animal meat be spoiled, if the animal is run down, and not killed from stealth?
I cannot find a highly reliable cite (just blogs and such), but my understanding is that the higher levels of cortisol in chickens that are raised in the cramped conditions is not entirely healthy for you to ingest.
Many aboriginal peoples state that meat gotten from an animal that did suffer at death tastes* better*. Anthropological field notes often mention this, in association with the cruelty inflicted on game animals, such as breaking the limbs of the quarry but not killing it for the trek back to camp, to keep the meat fresh yet immobile, and to make it tasty (and full of stress hormones, lactic acid etc.).
Some Chinese culinary practices like skinning / boiling animals alive have similar given explanations.
What about veal? As I understand it, they keep the animal confined such that it can’t even turn around – which (a) I’m guessing is awful for its mental condition, but which (b) has a physical effect on the meat, which sells for a high price?
“I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly.”
Don’t know for sure, but it seems clear to me that a happy animal has the clear benefit of the animal being happy. That seems a good enough reason to pursue it, regardless of taste.
A couple decades ago, a celebrity chef in San Jose* had a tasting with his foodie friends where dishes were duplicated in veal and chicken breast. In every case but one, no difference could be detected. In the one, the chicken was preferred. The chef declared, no more veal dishes for me.
I think it is fairly simple to understand. Assuming a humane, painless and stress free death is possible (it is…I have worked in a slaughterhouse) is it morally preferable for the preceding months to be spent with the animal in a low-stress, natural environment free from unnecessary pain and suffering?
Seems clear to me that indeed it is. Even though they all end up dead it must surely be our duty to minimise the total amount of harm that an animal experiences?
I’ve heard anecdotal evidence from deer hunters that the meat from an exhausted, frightened animal is noticeably gamier tasting compared with a “one shot drop” kill. Dunno if that’s true, but the adrenaline and lactic acid is said to be a factor. Midwest Corn fed whitetail deer are much tastier and far more tender than their muley bretheren from out west. The food the animal eats makes a huge difference.
Both of those were specific cases I pointed out in the OP where evidence seems to exist and not what I’m interested in. I’m asking specifically about only their psychological wellbeing excluding the effects from slaughter.
Yes, that’s tautologically true and not what I’m interested in. This isn’t the moral calculus of how/whether to eat animals, it’s about a specific empirical claim and whether it has scientific backing.
It’s plausible that if you exceed a certain amount of suffering, meat quality starts to improve because of complex biochemical forces. It would be something difficult to test due to obvious ethical concerns and not super useful since there would be no ethical way to obtain such meat.
However, it’s also irrelevant since we already know that the emotional condition of an animal at the time of slaughter has a significant effect on meat quality, whether it be positive or negative. What I’m specifically interested in is whether “happy animals make happy meat”, independant of feed and slaughtering conditions, is a genuine, detectable phenomena or a placebo effect caused by wishful thinking?
