COVER STORY | ANIMALS
Fourth-generation rancher Beth Robinette and her father practice “low stress cow handling” with their cattle. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
“BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST,” CONTINUED... panion animals from farm animals to celebrate companion animals’ status as ‘honorary humans’; they do so in order to demarcate which animals they love, and which animals they love to eat.” Scholars argue that one reason humans moved slaughterhouses out of urban centers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to separate ourselves from atrocities we didn’t have the stomachs for. In his book, Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories, Peter Atkins — a professor and writer at Britain’s Durham University — says that animals were a big part of urban society until sanitary ideas started to be widely adopted. That marked the beginning of “The Great Separation” — when humans began to become detached from the production and slaughter of their food. Before that, animals were an integral part of city life, writes Atkins: “The Victorian town would strike us as an incongruous mixture of urbanity and barnyard setting, with townhouses interspersed with stables, pigsties, and slaughter-houses, and where sheep and cows jostled with horse-traffic, and pigs and chickens dwelt in close proximity to human habitations.” The 19th century city was a smelly place, one where blood from slaughterhouses ran in street-side gutters. Cities like Paris and London were so overwhelmed with dung that Victor Hugo, in Les Misérables, was inspired to write that “a great city is the most mighty of dung makers.” But Atkins says that as Victorian-era cities urbanized and sanitation practices came into play, the dirt and the persistent odor of live animals, not to mention the gruesome factories that processed animal fat, blood and bones, were out of step with the new purity of ideas. “Within the city as a whole, the abattoir was generally pushed toward the edge,” Atkins writes. “Here society’s growing queasiness and guilt about the killing of animals could be mitigated because it was out of sight and out of mind.” Though questions of animal welfare and slaughterhouse conditions popped up sporadically through the 20th century (perhaps beginning with Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle), Cherry often refers to the 1980s as “the first wave of animal rights activism” — seeing it as the first moment when widespread animal welfare move-
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ing them, aiding them in labor and moving them from ments emerged. pasture to pasture. “They were still focusing on fur and hunting and According to a report by the state Office of Farmanimal testing,” she says. “When you think about ’80s land Preservation, the number of farms in Washington animal rights, you think about ‘Save the Whales!’“ increased steadily from 2006 to 2011. And a 2010 Seattle But in the 1990s and 2000s, the focus of animal Times article reported that 90 percent of those Washingrights activists became less about calling for protections ton farms are owned by individuals or families, like the of species the public might not ever see, and more about Robinettes. concern for what was on the dinner plates right Tom Davis of the Washington Farm Bureau in front of them. says he can’t envision an ag-gag bill ever flying “People were focusing more on what they Send comments to in the Evergreen State. “If the bill could make it ate from an ethical point of view, no matter editor@inlander.com. out of committee, that’s as far as it would go,” what view of ethics that was,” Cherry says, he says. Davis says he thinks most Washington pointing to the success of Michael Pollan’s 2006 farmers are proud to show their animals are book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the “locavore” taken care of — and more and more, so do the stores that movement. purchase their products. Now, she says, animal rights is not just reserved for Over the years, the Robinettes have begun to practice vegetarians or vegans. It’s something that many Amerisomething called “low stress cattle handling” — which was cans practice — whether it’s a desire to buy cage-free eggs developed when cattle feedlot owners started noticing or humanely raised meat. their herds losing weight. “Beef is sold by the pound. And so, pounds go away, dollars go away,” Maurice says. On a bright, windy weekday morning, Beth RobiResearchers figured out that if cows aren’t stressed nette and her father Maurice sit at the family’s dining — aren’t corralled by horses or dogs, aren’t slapped room table sipping steaming cups of coffee. Since 1937, with electric cattle prods or yelled at all the time — they here on the same Cheney, Wash., property where they produce better meat. “There’s sort of a saying in the beef sit today, the Robinette family has owned cows. They industry: ‘You have to go slow to go fast,’” Maurice says. milked until the 1950s, when they converted to a cattle “And what that means is you’ll get your animals to where ranch. “We’ve been beef ever since,” says Maurice, who you want to go if you just take it easy.” pronounces his name “Morris.” Beth says that’s part of the problem with industrial The conversation around the breakfast table here agriculture — the ability to have respect for the animals isn’t what you might expect. The Robinettes talk of ethics gets lost in massive factory farming productions. It’s the and humanity, of systematic change and environmental system we’ve demanded as Americans, a system that enimpact. A conversation with Beth and Maurice about courages harm to animals to maximize cheap, fast output. farming is less about the price of beef and more talk of Beth says Idaho’s ag-gag law is like putting a Band-Aid desertification and sustainable grazing practices. on a gaping wound. The family’s Lazy R Ranch, a 100-cow operation, is “People having the information and the ability to small. And it’s different: Here they raise cows from birth, look inside and see what’s happening is a million times and unlike most of the beef industry, slaughter them in better than passing a law saying, ‘You can’t do this’ or the place where they’ve always lived. Most of that beef ‘You can’t do that,’” Beth says. goes directly to families, with some going to restaurants The Robinettes believe the public should understand like Spokane’s Manito Tap House. Through their lives, where their food comes from and are constantly extendthe Robinettes are the only ones herding their cows, feeding invitations to customers to see their cows slaughtered.
LETTERS
‘To Honor the Sacrifice’