Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: קלאופטרה.
Part of “Matanya’s graduation project” at Wikipedia. See amusing answers to the perennial question “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

The way the people at the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY, talk about the animals they study reminds me so much of the naturalist Sy Montgomery, a frequent visitor to Boston Public Radio. I only ever heard her speak disparagingly of one critter, and it was one without a brain. To her, all creatures have personalities, even souls.

Emily Anthes reported recently at the New York Times about the Farm Sanctuary.

“It was a crisp October day at Farm Sanctuary, and inside the small, red barn, the chicken people were restless.

“A rooster, or maybe two, yodeled somewhere out of sight. A bruiser of a turkey strutted through an open door, tail feathers spread like an ornamental fan. And a penned flock of white-feathered hens emitted tiny, intermittent squeaks, an asynchronous symphony of chicken sneezes.

“The hens were experiencing a flare-up of a chronic respiratory condition, said Sasha Prasad-Shreckengast, the sanctuary’s manager of research and animal welfare, who was preparing to enter the chicken pen. She donned gloves and shoe covers, threw on a pair of blue scrubs and then slipped inside, squatting to bring herself face-to-face with the first hen who approached.

“ ‘Who are you?’ she cooed.

“Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast meant the question literally. She was trying to find the birds that were enrolled in her study: an investigation into whether chickens — animals not often heralded for their brainpower — enjoy learning.

“But her question was also the big philosophical one driving the new, in-house research team at Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit that has spent more than 35 years trying to end animal agriculture. …

“A growing body of research suggests that farmed species are brainy beings: Chickens can anticipate the future, goats appear to solicit help from humans, and pigs may pick up on one another’s emotions.

“But scientists still know far less about the minds of chickens or cows than they do about those of apes or dogs, said Christian Nawroth, a scientist studying behavior and cognition at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany. ‘I’m still baffled how little we know about farm animals, given the amount or the numbers that we keep,’ he said. …

‘They have their own desires, and their own wants and preferences and needs, and their own inner lives — the same way that human people do,’ said Lauri Torgerson-White, the sanctuary’s director of research.

“Now the sanctuary is trying to collect enough data to convince the general public of the humanity of animals.

“ ‘Our hope,’ Ms. Torgerson-White said, ‘is that through utilizing really rigorous methodologies, we are able to uncover pieces of information about the inner lives of farmed animals that can be used to really change hearts and minds about how these animals are used by society.’

“The sanctuary is conducting the research in accordance with its own strict ethical standards, which include giving the animals the right to choose whether or not to participate in studies. Consequently, the researchers have sometimes found themselves grappling with the very thing that they are keen to demonstrate: that animals have minds of their own.

“And today, the birds in ‘West Chicken’ seemed a bit under the weather. Ms. Prasad-Shreckengast crossed her fingers that a few of them might still be up for a brief demonstration. …

“Farm Sanctuary began not as a home for rescued animals but with a group of young activists working to expose animal cruelty at farms, stockyards and slaughterhouses.

“ ‘We lived in a school bus on a tofu farm for a couple of years,’ said Gene Baur, the president and co-founder of the organization. But in the course of its investigations, the group kept stumbling upon ‘living animals left for dead,’ he recalled. ‘And so we started rescuing them.’ …

“In 2020, the organization, which now houses about 700 animals, began assembling an internal research team. The goal was to assemble more evidence that, as Mr. Baur put it, ‘these animals are more than just pieces of meat. There’s emotion there.

‘There is individual personality there. There’s somebody, not something.’

“The research team worked with Lori Gruen, an animal ethicist at Wesleyan University, to develop a set of ethics guidelines. The goal, Dr. Gruen explained, was to create a framework for conducting animal research ‘without dominance, without control, without instrumentalization.’

“Among other stipulations, the guidelines prohibit invasive procedures — forbidding even blood draws unless they are medically necessary — and state that the studies must benefit the animals. And participation? It’s voluntary. …

“The idea is not entirely novel. Zoo animals, for instance, are often trained to cooperate in their own health care, as well as in studies that might stem from it. But such practices remain far from the norm.

“For the researchers at Farm Sanctuary, voluntary participation was not only an ethical imperative but also, they thought, a path to better science. Many prior studies have been conducted on farms or in laboratories, settings in which stress or fear might affect animals’ behavior or even impair their cognitive performance, the researchers note.

“ ‘Our hope is that they’re able to tell us more about what the upper limits are for their cognition and emotional capacities and social structures because of the environment that they’re in and because of the way we are performing the research,’ Ms. Torgerson-White said.

“Although the approach is unconventional, outside scientists described the sanctuary’s ethical guidelines as admirable and its research questions as interesting.”

“ ‘The idea that you could study these species, who are usually only studied in sort of pseudofarm conditions, in more naturalistic environments that actually meet not just their needs but even their most arcane preferences — I think they’re right,’ said Georgia Mason, who directs the Campbell Center for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph. ‘I think that really allows you to do something special.’ ”

More at the Times, here. You might also be interested in this op-ed at the Times by Sarah Smarsh on the difference between “harvesting” animals on small farms and harvesting them in the big, industrialized farms that dominate our food supply.