No day's food consumption is truly balanced unless there's some bits of dead animal in there somewhere, that's what I say. And I'm an enthusiastic wearer of leather and fur, as long as the fur isn't wild-caught from an endangered species. And I adore ivory and tortoiseshell, as long as it's vintage.
I have no problem with any sort of farming (for food, fur, or anything else) as long as the animals' welfare is taken into consideration. I'm a member of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour, which has backed a lot of fascinating research into the behavioural needs of farm animals.
Decent farmers are always keen to keep their livestock healthy and contented. It makes economic sense. You get more and better meat, milk, eggs, fur, or whatever if the animals are happy.
The welfare problems come from battery farms, which have been profitable only because consumers have insisted on cheap food. Now that people are turning away from factory-farmed rubbish and are willing to pay more for good food and proper animal welfare, we should start to see a decrease in battery farming.
Have you seen the latest in dairy farming? The cows practically run the place. The cows can go outside or stay in as they please, have constant access to food, constant background music, soft rubber mattresses to lie on, and automatic wall-mounted massagers and brushes. They queue up for the massagers, each allowing the cow in front a reasonable amount of time - but no more! Then whenever each cow feels like being milked, she goes to the robotic milker and gets it done. They happily queue up for that, too. The farmers find they get more milk of better quality than under any traditional system.
On an animal behaviour video I own, there's a pig farm where each pig wears a radio-coded ID collar. The idea is that when each pig goes to the automatic feeder, the computer recognises it and gives it the appropriate amount of food for the day. If it's eaten its ration for the day, it doesn't get any more. But it didn't take long for the pigs to learn that, if they find a loose collar lying around and take it to the feeder, they get double helpings!
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