I don’t know how many people reading this have played any of the Harvest Moon games but basically they are sim games where you run a farm.  You grow crops, raise cows for milk, sheep for wool, and chickens for eggs.  Now, here’s the thing about the game.  You never kill your animals and the nicer you are to them the more milk/eggs/wool they produce.  And if you don’t take care of them they will stop producing milk/eggs/wool.

I was reading a help guide for one today and read something that both pissed me off a bit and made me roll my eyes at the same time.  The person said that they loved this game because it was so educational, and that they had no idea how farms worked before playing.  I was really blown away at their comment since I thought that pretty much everyone knew that there was no such thing as the “friendly family farm”.

Do people just want to live in their own little fantasy world so they can continue to eat what they want guilt free or is there really that large of a misconception about what goes into producing animal products?

I honestly can’t answer which is more likely.  I was shocked a while back to learn that a lot of people don’t realize that a cow has to be repeatedly impregnated to produce milk.  They think that giving milk is just a part of a cows job, like that’s what she was made for.  I don’t want to offend anyone who either has in the past or currently thinks this way but how do people remain so ignorant?  Cows don’t produce milk for humans.  They produce milk to feed their young and just like any other mammal, they have to become impregnated to produce milk.  This is why the dairy industry is directly connected with the veal industry, that’s where all of those baby cows go so that humans can steal their milk.

In the real world animals used for food are nothing more than commodities, units to yield profit.  The well being of the animal is secondary to profit and unlike in the game, unhappy animals are still just as productive as happy ones.

If anything I’ve written here comes as a surprise to you, I desperately urge you to go and educate yourself on the factory farming industry as well as the laws associated with terms like free-range, cage-free, and humanely raised.  You’ll be amazed at the cruelty that is allowed in these industries, even those with a “happy label” which is usually only there to make the consumer feel better and has no real bearing on the well being of the animal at all.

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