re: #252 Cato the Elder

Thank you.

Kinda reminds one of all the fine people who like their meat nice and cheap and organic but would faint dead away if they saw a free-range slaughterhouse, doesn’t it?

Yes it does. I sometimes joke that free range chickens are provided with a comfortable pillow and tiny television set before they’re shipped off to slaughter. It’s organic to a certain extent but it still require the killing of animals.

With organically grown they may not use chemicals for pest and varmint control but there again there is no humane way of eradicating such pests. That means trapping and shooting. Most organic farmers will have a loaded rifle readily available to shoot Peter Bunny rabbit. That is if they’re practicing chemical free agriculture. New South Wales has some guidelines for pest control in agriculture and methods of euthanasia includes:

Methods of euthanasia fall into two broad categories – chemical and physical. These methods may cause death by three basic mechanisms:

1. Hypoxia, direct or indirect;
2. Direct depression of neurons vital for life functions; and
3. Physical destruction of brain activity and destruction of neurons vital for life.

The method of choice for organic farmers would be numbers 1 and 3. Number 2 would require a chemical agent.