Goats
Goat meat is the most-consumed meat in the world but most Americans have never tried it. However, as the US population changes and as palates broaden, goat meat is gaining popularity here for the first time.
Indeed, total consumption of goat flesh in the U.S. grew by 64% from 1999 to 2003 and has remained in the double-digits since then.
In New York City, goats are more often found in urban live kill markets than other mammals, typically for Halal or Kosher slaughter. So while at the farm we get lots of calls about escaped chickens running around the streets of Manhattan, we also frequently get calls about goats.
As goat meat gets more popular in the US, goat’s milk cheese has already moved into the mainstream. Which means that goat dairy operations now share the same characteristics as cow dairy operations, albeit on a smaller scale…for now.
Whether cow or goat dairy, industry goals are to keep production as high as possible. As with cows, goats must be first made pregnant in order to produce commercial quantities of milk. So the females are kept constantly pregnant and the male offspring are typically killed young — “kid meat” it’s called, a delicacy — and the female offspring are raised for future milking.
Goats are indeed the new factory-farmed animals. It’s called “zero graze goat farming” or “zero graze”. In the UK, goats bred for their milk are typically zero grazed – that is, they are kept in a barn or warehouse all year round as a matter of convenience. It is intensive farming. Some of the larger farms have thousands of goats kept permanently in barns. Which means goats, whose nature needs “browsing”, or eating their way through pastures, weeds, and more–all outside–are denied their nature as surely as factory farmed chickens.
In addition, ‘disbudding’ is commonplace. This is a painful procedure, acknowledged by one industry authority to be dangerous and life threatening. A hot iron is used to burn the horns off a kid within her first few days of life. The possibility of infection is great. The reasons goats are disbudded are twofold: so that they can fit easily into milking machinery; and to prevent the goats damaging one another in the stressful intensive conditions.
Zero graze goat farming, along with its practices of disbudding, killing newborn males and keeping females continuously pregnant, is making its way to the US as goat meat and dairy is more in demand.
How long before goats are factory farmed just like cows or chickens or pigs?
Like these other animals, goats are curious, friendly and affectionate. And maybe this applies to the others as well, but goats just make it so clear: as writer Bill O’Halloren says, “For some wonderful reason, goats not only aren’t afraid of but actually live for fun. Anyone who has seen a goat race headlong across a field then leap sideway into the air for the sheer joy of it knows what kicking up your heels really means.”
May we see the end of factory farming for all.
