In just one hour in the US, more than 1 million animals are killed for food. Before their slaughter, they endure a life of abuse. Considering that nearly 10 billion animals each year are treated as production units rather than social, intelligent animals, this is the gravest animal welfare problem in the country.
The Humane Society of the United States has identified the six worst animal practices in agribusiness:
1. Battery Cages
In the US, 95% of egg-laying hens are confined to battery cages: small wire enclosures stacked several tiers high, extending down long rows, inside windowless warehouses. These cages offer less space per hen than the area of a single piece of paper. The birds are so cramped that they are unable to spread their wings. While many countries are banning these abusive battery cages, the US still overcrowds 300 million hens in these cruel enclosures.
2. Fast Growth of Birds
More than 9 out of 10 land animals killed for human consumption in the US are chickens. About 9 billion are slaughtered each year. The chicken industry's use of growth-promoting antibiotics has produced birds whose bodies struggle to function and are on the verge of structural collapse. (To put their growth rate into perspective, the University of Arkansas reports that if humans grew as fast as today's chickens, we'd weigh 349 pounds by our second birthday.) Ninety percent of chickens have detectable leg problems and structural deformities. More than 25% suffer from chronic pain due to bone disease.
3. Forced Feeding for Foie Gras
French for "fatty liver," the delicacy known as pate de foie gras is produced from the grossly enlarged liver of a duck or goose. Two to three times a day for several weeks, the birds are force-fed enormous quantities of food through a long pipe thrust down their throats to their stomachs. This deliberate overfeeding causes the birds' livers to swell to as much as ten times their normal size. This impairs liver function, expands their abdomens, and makes movements as simple as standing or walking difficult and painful. Several European countries have banned the force-feeding of birds for foie gras.
4. Gestation Crates and Veal Crates
During their 4-month pregnancies, 60-70% of female pigs in the US are kept in gestation crates: individual metal stalls so small and narrow that the animals can't even turn around or move more than one step forward or backward. Similarly, calves raised for veal are confined in restrictive crates, generally chained by the neck, that prohibit them from turning around. This takes an enormous mental and physical toll on the animals. Both of these practices are being phased out in the EU because of their abusive, inhumane nature, but they are still in use in the US.
5. Long-Distance Transport
Billions of animals endure the rigors of transport around the country. Overcrowded onto trucks that do not provide any protection from very hot and very cold weather, animals travel days without food, water, or rest. The conditions are so stressful that in-transit death is considered common.
6. Electric Stunning of Birds
At the slaughter plant, birds are moved off trucks, dumped from transport crates onto conveyors, and hung upside down by their legs in shackles. Their heads pass though electrified baths of water, intended to immobilize them before their throats are slit. From beginning to end, the entire process is filled with pain & suffering. Federal regulations do not require that birds be rendered insensible before they are slaughtered. The shackling of their legs causes pain, increased in those already suffering from leg disorders (see #2) or broken bones. Electric stunning has been found to be ineffective in consistently inducing unconsciousness.
You Can Help
Don't support the cruelties endured by these animals.
-Refine your diet by eliminating the most abusive animal products.
-Reduce your consumption of animal products
-Replace animal products in your diet with vegetarian options
-Only consume animal products that are locally and humanely raised (try your local farmers' market)
____________________
Breakfast: English muffin with jelly
Lunch: Veggie sub from Quizno's
Dinner: Cheeseless pizza loaded with spinach, mushrooms, onion, bell peppers, olives, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and garlic
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Why Go Veg: Reasons 5-8
5. You'll save your heart. Cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer in the United States, and the standard American diet (SAD) that's laden with saturated fat and cholesterol from meat and dairy is largely to blame. Cardiovascular disease is found in one in nine women aged 45 to 64 and in one in three women over 65. Today, the average American male eating a meat-based diet has a 50 percent chance of dying from heart disease. His risk drops to 15 percent if he cuts out meat; it goes to 4 percent if he cuts out meat, dairy and eggs. Partly responsible is the fact that fruits and vegetables are full of antioxidant nutrients that protect the heart and its arteries. Plus, produce contains no saturated fat or cholesterol. Incidentally, cholesterol levels for vegetarians are 14 percent lower than meat eaters.
6. You'll avoid toxic chemicals. The EPA estimates that nearly 95 percent of pesticide residue in our diet comes from meat, fish and dairy products. Fish, in particular, contain carcinogens (PCBs, DDT) and heavy metals (mercury, arsenic; lead, cadmium) that cannot be removed through cooking or freezing. Meat and dairy products are also laced with steroids and hormones.
7. You'll help reduce famine. Right now, 72 percent of all grain produced in the United States is fed to animals raised for slaughter. It takes 15 pounds of feed to get one pound of meat. But if the grain were given directly to people, there would be enough food to feed the entire planet. In addition, using land for animal agriculture is inefficient in terms of maximizing food production. According to the journal Soil and Water, one acre of land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef.
8. You'll provide a great role model for your kids. "If you set a good example and feed your children good food, chances are they'll live a longer and healthier life," says Christine Beard, a certified nutrition educator and author of Become a Vegetarian in 5 Easy Steps. "You're also providing a market for vegetarian products and making it more likely that they'll be available for the children."
___________________
Breakfast: Lots of cherries!
Lunch: Asian stir-fry (leftover from dinner last night)
Dinner: Soy chorizo (from Trader Joe's) taco and homemade guacamole
6. You'll avoid toxic chemicals. The EPA estimates that nearly 95 percent of pesticide residue in our diet comes from meat, fish and dairy products. Fish, in particular, contain carcinogens (PCBs, DDT) and heavy metals (mercury, arsenic; lead, cadmium) that cannot be removed through cooking or freezing. Meat and dairy products are also laced with steroids and hormones.
7. You'll help reduce famine. Right now, 72 percent of all grain produced in the United States is fed to animals raised for slaughter. It takes 15 pounds of feed to get one pound of meat. But if the grain were given directly to people, there would be enough food to feed the entire planet. In addition, using land for animal agriculture is inefficient in terms of maximizing food production. According to the journal Soil and Water, one acre of land could produce 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 40,000 pounds of potatoes, 30,000 pounds of carrots or just 250 pounds of beef.
8. You'll provide a great role model for your kids. "If you set a good example and feed your children good food, chances are they'll live a longer and healthier life," says Christine Beard, a certified nutrition educator and author of Become a Vegetarian in 5 Easy Steps. "You're also providing a market for vegetarian products and making it more likely that they'll be available for the children."
___________________
Breakfast: Lots of cherries!
Lunch: Asian stir-fry (leftover from dinner last night)
Dinner: Soy chorizo (from Trader Joe's) taco and homemade guacamole
Monday, August 10, 2009
Growing Local Farm Movement
Last week, CNN reported on the growing local food movement, or Community Supported Agricurture (CSAs). From the article:
[The farmers] describe their farming technique as "beyond organic," saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don't keep their animals penned up.
Life on their property -- where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them -- looks much like the classic image of a family farm. [The Farmers] say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that "had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare."
"People are becoming very disconnected from the food system," Liz Young said. "Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it's coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised.
...
Members of the nation's handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.
The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.
"Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat," said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. "Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don't know where it came from or who raised it."
Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don't spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.
Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.
...
"Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not," Tim Young said. "But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you've got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way]."
"I don't think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority," he said. "There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source."
____________________
Breakfast: Bagel with "better than cream cheese" (a non-dairy cream cheese subsitute)
Lunch: Veggie sub with avocado, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, shredded carrots, vinegar & oil
Diner: Burrito with beans, rice, zucchini, squash, peppers & salsa
[The farmers] describe their farming technique as "beyond organic," saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don't keep their animals penned up.
Life on their property -- where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them -- looks much like the classic image of a family farm. [The Farmers] say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that "had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare."
"People are becoming very disconnected from the food system," Liz Young said. "Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it's coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised.
...
Members of the nation's handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.
The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.
"Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat," said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. "Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don't know where it came from or who raised it."
Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don't spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.
Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.
...
"Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not," Tim Young said. "But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you've got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way]."
"I don't think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority," he said. "There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source."
____________________
Breakfast: Bagel with "better than cream cheese" (a non-dairy cream cheese subsitute)
Lunch: Veggie sub with avocado, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, shredded carrots, vinegar & oil
Diner: Burrito with beans, rice, zucchini, squash, peppers & salsa
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Meet Your Meat: Pigs
Back to the basics this week: Meet your meat.
Pigs are often compared to dogs because they are affectionate, loyal, and intelligent. Most people are not familiar with pigs because 97% of pigs in the United States today are on factory farms. People would be surprised to learn that pigs dream, recognize names, play video games better than some primates, and lead social lives of the same complexity as primates. In fact, according to Dr. Donald Broom, Cambridge University professor and former scientific advisor to the Council of Europe, "[Pigs] have the cognative ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds." Learn more about the intelligence of pigs.
Pigs on today's farms are denied all of their instincts. Mother pigs (sows) spend the majority of their lives in individual "gestation crates" which are two feet wide, too small for them to even turn around.
According to a March 2004 article in the Des Moines Register, "A pregnant sow's biological need to build a nest before having her litter is so great that some sows confined in modern hog buildings will rub their snouts raw on the concrete floor while trying to satisfy the drive."
This deprived environment causes neurotic coping behaviors such as continual bar biting, obsessive pressing on water bottles, and sham chewing (chewing nothing). One slaughterhouse investigator wrote, "what will remain with me forever is the sound of desperate pigs banging their heads against immovable doors and their constant and repeated biting at the prison bars that held them captive. This, I now know, is a sign of mental collapse."
Piglets are taken from their mothers as young as 10 day old and are packed into overcrowed pens until they are sent off for breeding or fattening. Because they are not properly weaned from their mothers, they bite each other's tails, searching for milk. To prevent this problem, piglets' tails are cut off and the ends of their teeth are broken off, both without the use of pain killers.
Just like all other animals in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), sick pigs are left untreated and either die from illness or are killed by "thumping" (slamming animal's head against the floor until they die), drowning, or standing on their neck. According to a November 2002 article in the New York Times, "Sick pigs, being unproductive 'production units' are clubbed to death on the spot."
Approximately 100 million pigs are killed in the US each year. A Washington Post article reported that, "[hogs] are dunked in taks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water."
According to one slaughter plant worker, "After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they're dunked in 140° water...Water any hotter than that would take the meat right off their bones...There's no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they're still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time."
____________________
Breakfast: Cereal with soy milk
Lunch: Falafel pita sandwich
Dinner: Went to a BBQ - veggie burger, pasta salad, cornbread, beans
Pigs are often compared to dogs because they are affectionate, loyal, and intelligent. Most people are not familiar with pigs because 97% of pigs in the United States today are on factory farms. People would be surprised to learn that pigs dream, recognize names, play video games better than some primates, and lead social lives of the same complexity as primates. In fact, according to Dr. Donald Broom, Cambridge University professor and former scientific advisor to the Council of Europe, "[Pigs] have the cognative ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than] three-year-olds." Learn more about the intelligence of pigs.
Pigs on today's farms are denied all of their instincts. Mother pigs (sows) spend the majority of their lives in individual "gestation crates" which are two feet wide, too small for them to even turn around.
According to a March 2004 article in the Des Moines Register, "A pregnant sow's biological need to build a nest before having her litter is so great that some sows confined in modern hog buildings will rub their snouts raw on the concrete floor while trying to satisfy the drive."This deprived environment causes neurotic coping behaviors such as continual bar biting, obsessive pressing on water bottles, and sham chewing (chewing nothing). One slaughterhouse investigator wrote, "what will remain with me forever is the sound of desperate pigs banging their heads against immovable doors and their constant and repeated biting at the prison bars that held them captive. This, I now know, is a sign of mental collapse."
Piglets are taken from their mothers as young as 10 day old and are packed into overcrowed pens until they are sent off for breeding or fattening. Because they are not properly weaned from their mothers, they bite each other's tails, searching for milk. To prevent this problem, piglets' tails are cut off and the ends of their teeth are broken off, both without the use of pain killers.
Just like all other animals in CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations), sick pigs are left untreated and either die from illness or are killed by "thumping" (slamming animal's head against the floor until they die), drowning, or standing on their neck. According to a November 2002 article in the New York Times, "Sick pigs, being unproductive 'production units' are clubbed to death on the spot."
Approximately 100 million pigs are killed in the US each year. A Washington Post article reported that, "[hogs] are dunked in taks of hot water after they are stunned to soften the hides for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered into the water."According to one slaughter plant worker, "After they left me, the hogs would go up a hundred-foot ramp to a tank where they're dunked in 140° water...Water any hotter than that would take the meat right off their bones...There's no way these animals can bleed out in the few minutes it takes to get up the ramp. By the time they hit the scalding tank, they're still fully conscious and squealing. Happens all the time."
____________________
Breakfast: Cereal with soy milk
Lunch: Falafel pita sandwich
Dinner: Went to a BBQ - veggie burger, pasta salad, cornbread, beans
Monday, August 3, 2009
Meat's Not Green: Water
Nearly half of the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture. Between watering the crops grown to feed farm animals, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning the filthy factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a serious strain on our water supply. According to a special report in Newsweek, “The water that goes into a 1,000-pound steer would float a destroyer.” It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce a meat-based diet, but only 300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce a vegetarian diet.
Besides just wasting water, factory farms also pollute it. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, animal factories pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. The major sources of pollution are from antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for feedcrops, sediments from eroded pastures, and animal wastes.
Cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food produce approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population, except there are no sewage systems to dispose of the waste from factory farms. Much of the millions of pounds of excrement and other bodily waste produced by farmed animals every day in the U.S. is stored in sprawling brown lagoons.
These lagoons often spill over into surrounding waterways and cause massive destruction. In 1995, 25 million gallons of putrid hog urine and feces spilled into a North Carolina river, killing 10-14 million fish. This spill was twice as large in volume as the Exxon-Valdez oil disaster. But, it doesn't take a spill of this magnitude to wreak havoc on the ecosystem. In West Virginia and Maryland, for example, scientists have recently discovered that male fish are growing ovaries, and they suspect that this freakish deformity is the result of factory-farm run-off from drug-laden chicken feces.
Besides the environmental problems caused by farmed animal waste, the dangerous fecal bacteria from farm sewage (including E. coli) can also cause serious illness in humans.
A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution issued this warning about animal waste: “...it’s untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased... It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with, and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick...Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated... Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick.”
The EPA reports that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states yet, amazingly, the federal government continues to allow factory farms to use our rivers as sewers.
____________________
Breakfast: Whole wheat bagel
Lunch: Mango "chicken" (soy chicken subsitute) from Chinese/Thai fusion restaurant
Dinner: Veggie burger
Besides just wasting water, factory farms also pollute it. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, animal factories pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. The major sources of pollution are from antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for feedcrops, sediments from eroded pastures, and animal wastes.
Cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food produce approximately 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population, except there are no sewage systems to dispose of the waste from factory farms. Much of the millions of pounds of excrement and other bodily waste produced by farmed animals every day in the U.S. is stored in sprawling brown lagoons.
These lagoons often spill over into surrounding waterways and cause massive destruction. In 1995, 25 million gallons of putrid hog urine and feces spilled into a North Carolina river, killing 10-14 million fish. This spill was twice as large in volume as the Exxon-Valdez oil disaster. But, it doesn't take a spill of this magnitude to wreak havoc on the ecosystem. In West Virginia and Maryland, for example, scientists have recently discovered that male fish are growing ovaries, and they suspect that this freakish deformity is the result of factory-farm run-off from drug-laden chicken feces.
Besides the environmental problems caused by farmed animal waste, the dangerous fecal bacteria from farm sewage (including E. coli) can also cause serious illness in humans.
A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution issued this warning about animal waste: “...it’s untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased... It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with, and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick...Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated... Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick.”
The EPA reports that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states yet, amazingly, the federal government continues to allow factory farms to use our rivers as sewers.
____________________
Breakfast: Whole wheat bagel
Lunch: Mango "chicken" (soy chicken subsitute) from Chinese/Thai fusion restaurant
Dinner: Veggie burger
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