More about critical review of science writing: Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free.

Veal calves and gestating sows are so confined as to suffer painful bone and joint problems. The unnatural high-grain diets provided in feedlots cause severe gastric distress in many animals. And faulty or improperly used stun guns cause the painful deaths of thousands of cows and pigs a year.

We are most likely stuck with factory farms, given that they produce most of the beef and pork Americans consume. But it is still possible to reduce the animals’ discomfort — through neuroscience. Recent advances suggest it may soon be possible to genetically engineer livestock so that they suffer much less.

Did you ever wonder why sows were confined in farrowing crates that limit their movement? It's because they would otherwise kill or injure a portion of their get, crushing them when they roll over and move about while nursing. That's nature for you. This doesn't eliminate concern about the pain that sows endure in confinement, but it does balance the simple minded ignorance of activists. There's pain either way, though different animals do the suffering. The joint pain of the sow due to confinement is balanced by the crushed limbs and death of piglets when sows are not confined. Life is pain.

I'm a free range human so when I read the works of humans living in confinement it often seems to me that they live pallid, constricted lives. Cities seem so cruel in that they allow so little freedom of movement and experience to the humans confined in them. There seems to be whole segments of knowledge and experience that they can't grasp. They are not aware of their ignorance. Still, they are spared some discomforts that I experience. The price that they pay is balanced by the price that I pay. Life is pain, though the specifics change with circumstances.

Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the operation of the anterior cingulate cortex. Prof. Min Zhuo and his colleagues at the University of Toronto, for example, have bred mice lacking enzymes that operate in affective pain pathways. . .

Given the similarity among all mammals’ neural systems, it is likely that scientists could genetically engineer pigs and cows in the same way. Because the sensory dimension of the animals’ pain would be preserved, they would still be able to recognize and avoid, when possible, situations where they might be bruised or otherwise injured.

The people who consumed meat from such genetically engineered livestock would also be safe. Knockout animals have specific proteins removed, rather than new ones inserted, so there’s no reason to think that their meat would pose more health risks for humans than ordinary meat does.

It seems that there would be far greater demand for engineered humans who had had the function of their anterior cingulate cortex altered. Painless, placid, thoughtless humans would simplify things greatly. Much has already been accomplished in this regard with drugs and indoctrination. The idea that deleted proteins are somehow less of a health threat than inserted ones is evidence of this.