There Is No Sex In Your Violence

I have a fantasy wherein I write frequent posts and people read them and leave insightful complimentary comments.  

Item 1: So, the new incarnation of the H1N1 virus, popularly (and somewhat inaccurately) still referred to as swine flu, is big in the media now.  It is actually a hybrid of avian, porcine, and human viral strains. I haven't read anything but the subject lines yet, but I can see that PETA is sending out emails about how this is more proof of how factory farming in particular and meat-eating in general are great evils that should be stopped.  I said the same thing to my parents before I heard it from PETA (Yay! The frequently irrational crackpots at PETA back me up!).  The unhealthy conditions that abound in slaughterhouses and the "farms" that supply them are ideal incubators for virulent diseases.  Even the factory farm owners know it, since they pump their animals full of preemptive antibiotics.  I guess they should have used antivirals as well.  Granted, the bird flu originated in small, family-owned fowl coops, but these were also homesteads of people with antiquated sanitation systems (or no sanitation systems at all).  And of course, meat farming is devastating to the environment, which threatens wild species and ultimately biodiversity, which increases the likelihood that new contagions will adapt to humanity as they lose their former hosts.  I realize as a formerly struggling vegetarian and a currently struggling (and frequently failing) vegan that giving up animal products is hard (and perhaps not even entirely possible: book bindings, as well as other seemingly innocuous, everyday items are manufactured with animal by-products), but we really all should be making an effort to decrease our dependency, even if it is only by incremental amounts.

Item 2:  I encounter someone who pronounced vegan as "vay-gan."  This is incorrect.  Even if Merriam Webster does recognize several pronunciations, the originator of the word released a pronunciation guide soon after coining the term to clarify that the word is vee-gan.  Long E, hard g.  Knowledge is power.

Item 3: Last week two of my coworkers and I went to see Disney's new Earth movie, a collaboration with the BBC.  It was mediocre.  The footage was stunning, but according to my coworker, much of it was recycled from the Planet Earth series, Discovery Channel's collaboration with the BBC.  I have not yet seen any of this series, much to my chagrin, but I don't have any reason to doubt her word on this.  The documentary's story line/unifying theme was weak, and they showed the typical American view that violence is less offensive (and less corrupting of children) than sex and birth.  While I recognize that violence and death are part of the natural world, the scene of the Great White Shark snatching a seal up in its jaws shown in slow motion from three different angles seemed excessive.  

Item 4: I've been spending the last 7 months working for Americorps via the Maryland Conservation Corps (and will continue to do so into August).  I have the very best intentions of writing a post in the near future about my experiences and impressions.

Cultured Meat

Here is an article I wrote for Helium about cultured meat.  Check it out, give me props. 

Movie Review: Fast Food Nation

On Friday my Father and I watched Fast Food Nation, a recent delivery from Netflix. This movie very much held my attention for the first 80 mintues. The last 39 were iffy, but then my movie threshhold only tends to last for 80 minutes anyway. Hence my preference for children's movies. Anyway, this movie was good. I've recently come to recognize the brilliance of Richard Linklater. Whether it's because he's a good director or he picks good topics for movies (or a combination of the two), his movies are intense and thought-provoking. Fast Food Nation is a fictional adaptation of Eric Shlosser's investigative book of the same name. It chronicles the effect that fast food production has on immigrant laborers, family ranchers, and the quality of our food. A lot of the information has been covered to some degree in this blog. However, the movie will sell it in a way that I never could. It doesn't pull punches. There were a number of times when I had to close my eyes in horror, fearing to watch something horrible happen to a factory worker or animal. And horrible things did happen. As they do happen every day in real life. The movie also shows what happens when good people fail to educate themselves, when bad people fail to care, when good people get educated but feel constrained into doing the wrong thing anyway. Which is why I beg you, dear readers, to get educated, to keep caring, to not let yourself get convinced that doing wrong is the only way to survive in this world.

Vegetarianism, Part III: Inhumanity to Man

So, the end of my last Vegetarianism post I indicated that I would be talking about the effects of the meat industry on people. This post is not about the implications a meat-based diet has for your health. This is about how industrial farming affects people, notably, though not exclusively, industry employees and local communities.

What is the experience of a worker in a factory farm or slaughter house? Well, it's not dissimilar from the experience of animals in factory farms, as workers' needs go unmet in areas of sanitation, health care, safety, and comfort. The fatality rate for farm workers is five times higher than the all-industry rate (factoryfarming.com). OSHA rates meat-processing as one of the most hazardous jobs in America. Assuming full-time employment, most workers fall on or below the poverty line, and many employees do not get work or wages during seasonal slow-downs. Many employees are illegal immigrants who feel they have no recourse to help; they cannot complain to their bosses, lest they get fired, nor to the government lest they get deported.

It is intuitive that the nature of the work is dangerous: live, usually terrified animals and tools such as large blades and air-powered knocking guns aren't exactly baby-proofed. Many workers get kicked by cows and pigs. However, the working conditions in factory farms involve many more dangers than the nature of the work makes inevitable. Rampant bacteria and toxic gasses lead to some unpleasant diseases. For example, Johns Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health found that in a sample of chicken catchers, more than 40% tested for campylobacter bacteria, which can cause diarrhea, stomach cramps, and fever (goveg.com). Factory Farm laborers also spend all day inhaling dust from confined animals, which causes respiratory problems. And then there's the ammonia from all the excrement that doesn't get cleaned up, which also gets inhaled. Plus, Factory Farms use large-scale industrial chemicals, like pesticides.

Then of course there are the local communities who are affected by these plants: "Factory farms have been linked to health problems for farm workers and neighbors, and contaminated water and air in surrounding communities. The stench alone can ruin rural communities, as residents rush to shut their windows and bring their children indoors when the wind shifts. These communities have been fighting lonely, uphill battles against operators that take advantage of lax enforcement of zoning and environmental laws.

'In a 16 mile corridor we have dairy operations dumping five times the amount of raw sewage as that produced by the entire population of Seattle onto our fields,” said Helen Reddout, president of Community Association for Restoration of the Environment in Yakima County, Washington. “Contaminated waste on our fields is dangerous as we can see in the California spinach case.'" (foodandwaterwatch.org) Factory Farming in America has actually put over three million family farms out of business, according to David Grazia's A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights (which I mentioned earlier) This happened in part because agribusinesses receives huge government subsidies (so, your meat isn't as cheap as you think it is).

In fact, the repercussions of the meat industry can be far-reaching, more so than any of us might think. According to A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights, the misuse of resources involved in the meat industry can affect people on a global scale. It takes 8 pounds of hog feed to produce a pound of pork, 21 pounds of calf feed to produce a pound of beef. America, that's where your grain is going. The demand for meat in wealthy countries makes plant proteins unaffordable in poorer countries, since it's better business (meaning higher profits) to feed to the animals that get fed to the rich than to feed the poor. Poor communities than abandon sustainable farming practices to produce cash crops and meat. Non-sustainable farming means short-term business, short-term profits. Which means poor communities stay poor. If we didn't channel most grain protein into huge herds of livestock, we could easily feed all the people on earth. So why should we eat hamburgers and spare ribs when there are children in third-world nations are starving?

Here is another web page I found on the subject:
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/behind-closed-doors.asp (which for some reason features an image of a highland cow)

You can also check out http//:www.hfa.org or just google "factory farm workers."

Book Recommendation

I've recently started reading A Very Short Introduction to Animal Rights by David DeGrazia, part of Oxford's "A Very Short Introduction" series. It's very readable is quite good at explaining the basics philosophies behind the animal rights movement (as well as behind those who are opposed to it). I think you'll find it helpful whether you're a dvoted vegetarian who wants to be able to make better arguments or someone who is still trying to learn more about the decision to support animal rights.

Vegetarianism, Part II: Eggs and Dairy

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a vegetarian but not a vegan, and quite ashamed about it. I try to stick to organic yogurt, and cage-free eggs when I buy eggs, and I don’t eat ice cream or drink milk as a general rule, but that’s a pretty small concession to veganism, and I admit it honestly, if not freely. It should be assumed that the following applies to “factory-farms,” not necessarily operations like family-owned farms, kosher facilities, or certified humane businesses. Whether or not these other types of farms are acceptable alternatives is another question, which may be addressed here at a later date, though I’m not making any promises.
So, it’s a pretty miserable life being an egg laying hen. Hens are debeaked, with hot irons, because the horrendous conditions in which they are kept can induce destructive behavior such as cannibalism. 98% of egg-laying hens “live” in stacked battery cages, with 5-7 birds in space not really adequate for long term residence for one: 20x24”. They’re improperly fed to manipulate their egg production. They lose their feathers from malnutrition and their feet are destroyed by the harsh metal floors they have to stand on. The egg industry also feeds the slaughter. Any male chicks which are born are killed, as they have no use for egg laying. According to PETA, they’re often killed in a high-speed grinding machine called the macerator. The hens, who are exhausted by the malnutrition and overproduction, not to mention osteoporosis, are worn out and therefore shipped to slaughter around 2 years of age, one-fifth the potential life-span of a chicken.
Dairy cows in factory farms also suffer. There are approximately 9 million cows on dairy farms, some 13 million less than in 1950. Yet milk production is up, an indication of the unnatural and demanding position dairy cows are in. They are kept constantly pregnant, and never given the chance to actually raise their young. Male calves are taken away when they’re a day old and fed a milk substitute, destined for the veal market. Females are slaughtered or “groomed” for dairy production. Through genetic manipulation, antibiotics, and hormones cows are forced to produce an unnatural quantity of milk. Some cows are kept chained to poles on concrete floors while others are crammed into over-crowded mud lots. Grass doesn’t even come into the equation, as their feed consists of various animal parts, even including cow meat. This particular abomination is what gave rise to the mad cow problems being experienced, particularly in Britain, a few years ago. One of the most frequent disorders affecting dairy cows is mastitis, a painful inflammation of the mammary glands, in part due to the automated milking systems employed by high-yield dairy farmers. Here’s something particularly disturbing from PETA factsheets:

Studies have shown that providing cows with cleaner housing, more space, and better diets, bedding, and care lowers the SCC of their milk and their incidence of mastitis.(15) A Danish study of cows subjected to automated milking systems found “acutely elevated cell counts during the first year compared with the previous year with conventional milking. The increase came suddenly and was synchronized with the onset of automatic milking.”(16) Yet instead of improving conditions on factory farms or easing cows’ production burden, the dairy industry is exploring the use of cloned cattle who have been genetically manipulated to be resistant to mastitis.(17)

Rather than consider a little bit of kindness or compassion, dairy farmers are trying to make Frankencows.
We shouldn’t kid ourselves. Eggs and dairy aren’t harmless, especially when we don’t pay attention to where they come from. It isn’t easy to give up, or even cut back on, the foods we love. But that omelet may come at the price of everything that’s supposed to be good in humanity.
And if the suffering of animals doesn’t bother you, you should see what the livestock industry is doing to people.

Go Vegetarian, Part I

Well, I put it off for several months, and I think I deserve some recognition of my restraint. But here is my exhortation to go vegetarian. First, a note on etymology: vegetarian comes from “vegetare” which is Latin and means “to enliven.” It comes up sometimes, so just FYI. Also, if you remain completely unmoved by what I’m about to tell you, don’t ever ask a vegetarian if she eats animal crackers. It’s the dumbest, most annoying joke imaginable.

Vegetarianism is the right thing to do. The first, but most certainly not the last, reason to eschew meat, and perhaps even eggs and dairy if you have the strength and dedication, is that to consume animal products causes animal suffering. At a very basic level, death is something that all animals try desperately to avoid. Animals die for you to eat meat, and even if one could imagine that there are completely painless, fearless ways to slaughter an animal, and it seems unlikely, you are robbing them of the enjoyment of life. And animals do enjoy it. If you have a pet, you know this.
But if needlessly killing a sentient being doesn’t bother you, then what about the acute suffering that animals go through as they are raised for your plate? Unless you are buying certified organic and cruelty-free, then you are contributing to the life-long torture of farm animals. According to FARM (www.farmusa.org), some 300 million turkeys and 9 billion chickens are slaughtered for human consumption. In factory farms, poultry is housed in sheds with roughly 10,000 birds to a shed. The animals are fattened up as quickly as possible, and many collapse under their own weight, and are then unable to get food and water or protect themselves from the mass of other birds. The sheds aren’t kept clean, and there develops a build-up of sulfides, methane, and ammonia. The birds are only taken out of these sheds to be crammed into wooden cages for transport to slaughter. I’ve seen rescued turkeys who had to be supported by a sling (for more stories of animal rescues, visit www.animalsanctuary.org ).
Then there are the cows. Beef cattle are kept in feed lots, where there is no shelter, no grass, no space; there are tens of thousands of cows kept in a single lot. Cattle are dehorned, castrated, and branded without anesthetic.
And of course, the pigs. Breeding sows are kept pregnant almost all of the time, the only respite is the 2-4 weeks (as opposed to the natural 12 weeks) of nursing 10-12 pigs. The gestation crates are so narrow that the sows cannot move. The farrowing pens are not much better. After 3-4 years the sows are sent to slaughter. After premature weaning, the piglets are put in tiny crates and fed synthetic formula, where they, like the cattle, are castrated and tagged without benefit of anesthesia. They are then moved to overcrowded feeding lots for six months before slaughter.
During transport, animals are deprived of food and water for hours. If they’re too weak to walk to the killing floor, they’re dragged. Sometimes animals are skinned, dismembered, or even boiled alive while still conscious.
And I haven’t even gotten to the egg-layers and dairy cows.