Environmentalism/Caring about animals **WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS**

[arissa]

If people want to eat the flesh of animals, no one's going to be able to stop them. Certainly not me, some anonymous poster on some website - so please save me the "food nazi" speeches, this is a thread dedicated to those concerned about the Earth, animals, and how they can personally lessen their footprint on the Earth. You're free to make your own choices, as am I, and it is my choice to try and educate people about the food production industry. I'm not telling anyone what to eat. I'm merely challenging those who already make environmentally conscious/compassionate choices in their lives to face the reality of how their food choices negatively affect the planet as well. You're free to disagree with me, you're free to think I'm full of it, and you're free to continue your merry little chosen path. No one is forcing anything on you whatsoever.

Of course, the overly defensive folk may not even read this part, and just see the general purpose of this post and immediately click on 'Reply' to give their reactionary challenges, accusations, and insult hurling (I've seen it before). I just hope that doesn't happen. I welcome people who disagree with me and wish to actually discuss the issues based on facts in a friendly manner, as opposed to those who seek to "score points" and get into a fight.

Basically, if you don't give a shit about any of this, great, I wish you well - you're not going to change my mind and I'm not going to change yours - let's skip the frustrating infighting back and forth. But I hope those who, like me, care about the environment, but maybe never thought about how food production systems affect the Earth, might read on, or ask questions, or challenge themselves to examine this aspect of their lives.

I hope this thread can remain on-topic, and without anger towards either side. Believe it or not, nearly all vegetarians were meat-eaters once, too, we're not some mutant breed who just doesn't understand. I loved a good steak, and was a total cheese addict before I changed my diet. :)

WARNING: LINKED BELOW ARE MANY GRAPHIC, EXPLICIT AND OFFENSIVE PHOTOS DOCUMENTING THE REALITY OF FARM ANIMAL LIFE AND SLAUGHTER. PLEASE DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO VIEW THIS MATERIAL!!

In 1920, the five corporations who controlled the Beef Trust and had gained a monopoly signed a consent decree which broke up their stranglehold on the beef market.

"For the next fifty years, ranchers sold their cattle in a relatively competitive marketplace. The price of cattle was set through open bidding at auctions. The large meatpackers competed with hundreds of small regional firms. In 1970 the top four meatpacking firms slaughtered only 21 percent of the nation's cattle. A decade later, the Reagan administration allowed these firms to merge and combine without fear of antitrust enforcement. The Justice Department and the P&SA's successor, the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), stood aside as the large meatpackers gained control of one local cattle market after another. Today the top four meatpacking firms - ConAgra, IBP, Excel and National Beef - slaughter about 84 percent of the nation's cattle. Market concentration in the beef industry is now at the highest level since record-keeping began in the early twentieth century."
-Excerpt from Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, pgs. 137 & 138.

What we have in the U.S. is a system of factory farming. No longer do we have a happy picturesque family farm raising animals and a few acres of crops, this has long been abolished. From cattle (Grazing? Ha! Try massive corporate feedlots) to eggs (battery cages, row upon row of cages stacked on top of each other with 4 hens stuffed into each 16" wide cage) to dairy (confined cows hooked up to machines and kept constantly pregnant to produce more milk) to poultry production (giant sheds filled with tens of thousands of birds and kept in perpetual artificial twilight because it makes them a little fatter come slaughter time) to pig production sheds with endless rows of confined animals, so tightly restricted they can't even turn around. This is the norm, the status quo, and the vast majority of animal food is produced this way. The family farm has long been obsolete.

Such massive operations create tons (literally) of waste and pollution.

"Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the destruction of rainforests.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.

More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation’s entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins estimates that “you’d save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year.” Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves an acre of trees per year.

“We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat,” says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. “I think it’s consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food chain.”"


Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic.
© AP Photo / Douglas C. Pizac

-Excerpt from E/The Environmental Magazine's Jan/Feb 2002 cover story, The Case Against Meat, emphasis mine.
http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2002/0102feat1.html

In addition to the massive environmental damage caused by factory farming, the conditions are horrible for the animals involved. It's downright torture, for lack of a better word.

BEEF:

"Most beef cattle spend the last few months of their lives at feedlots, crowded by the thousand into dusty, manure laden holding pens. The air is thick with harmful bacteria and particulate matter, and the animals are at a constant risk for respiratory disease. Feedlot cattle are routinely implanted with growth promoting hormones, and they are fed unnaturally rich diets designed to fatten them quickly and profitably. Because cattle are biologically suited to eat a grass-based, high fiber diet, their concentrated feedlot rations contribute to metabolic disorder.

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At a standard beef slaughterhouse, 250 cattle are killed every hour. As the assembly line speeds up, workers are rushed, and it becomes increasingly difficult to treat animals with any semblance of humaneness. A Meat & Poultry article states, "Good handling is extremely difficult if equipment is 'maxed out' all the time. It is impossible to have a good attitude toward cattle
if employees have to constantly overexert themselves, and thus transfer all that stress right down to the animals, just to keep up with the line."

Prior to being hung up by their back legs and bled to death, cattle are supposed to be rendered unconscious. This 'stunning' is usually done by a mechanical blow to the head. The procedure is terribly imprecise, and inadequate stunning is inevitable. The result of poor stunning is conscious animals hanging upside down, kicking and struggling, while a slaughterhouse worker makes another attempt to render them unconscious. Eventually, the
animals will be "stuck" in the throat with a knife, and blood will gush from their bodies whether or not they are unconscious."


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POULTRY:

"Today's meat chickens have been genetically altered to grow twice as fast, and twice as large as their ancestors. Pushed beyond their biological limits, hundreds of millions of chickens die every year before reaching slaughter weight at 6 weeks of age. An industry journal explains "broilers now grow so rapidly that the heart and lungs are not developed well enough to support the remainder of the body, resulting in congestive heart failure and tremendous death losses." Modern meat type chickens also experience crippling leg disorders, as their legs are not capable of supporting their abnormally heavy bodies. Confined in unhealthy factory farms, the birds also succumb to heat prostration, infectious disease, and cancer.

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Once inside the slaughterhouse, fully conscious birds are hung by their feet from metal shackles on a moving rail. The first station on most poultry slaughterhouse assemblylines is the stunning tank, where the birds' heads are submerged in an electrified bath of water. Although poultry is specifically excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act which requires stunning, the practice is common because it immobilizes the birds and expedites assemblyline killing.

Stunning procedures are not monitored, and they are often inadequate. Poultry slaughterhouses commonly set the electrical current lower than what is required to render the birds unconscious because of concerns that too much electricity would damage the carcass and diminish its value. The result is that birds are immobilized but are still capable of feeling pain, or they emerge from the stunning tank still conscious.

After passing through the stunning tank, the birds' throats are slashed, usually by a mechanical blade, and blood begins rushing out of their bodies. Inevitably, the blade misses some birds who then proceed to the next station on the assembly line, the scalding tank. Here they are submerged in boiling hot water. Birds missed by the killing blade are boiled alive. This occurs so commonly, affecting millions of birds every year, that the industry has a term for these birds. They are called "redskins"."


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PORK:

"Approximately 100 million pigs are raised and slaughtered in the U.S. every year. As babies, they are subjected to painful mutilations without anesthesia or pain relievers. The piglets' tails are cut off to minimize tail biting, an aberrant behavior which occurs when these highly intelligent animals are kept in deprived factory farm environments. In addition, notches are taken out of the piglets' ears for identification.

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Numerous research studies conducted over the last 25 years have pointed to physical and psychological maladies experienced by sows in confinement. The unnatural flooring and lack of exercise causes obesity and crippling leg disorders, while the deprived environment results in neurotic coping behaviors such as bar biting, dog sitting, and "mourning".

After giving birth and nursing their young for two to three weeks, the piglets are taken away to be fattened, and the sow is reimpregnated. Hog factories strive to keep their sows '100 % active', as an article in Successful Farming explains, "Any sow that is not gestating, lactating or within seven days post weaning is non-active." When the sow is no longer deemed a productive breeder, she is sent to slaughter.

In addition to experiencing overcrowded housing, sows and pigs are also experience crowding in transportation - despite the fact that this crowding causes suffering and deaths. As a hog industry expert writes, "Death losses during transport are too high - amounting to more than $8 million per year. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out why we load as many hogs on a truck as we do. It's cheaper. So it becomes a moral issue. Is it right to overload a truck and save $.25 per head in the process, while the overcrowding contributes to the deaths of 80,000 hogs each year?"."


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DAIRY/VEAL:

"Although the dairy industry is familiar with the cows' health problems and suffering associated with intensive milk production, it continues to subject cows to even worse abuses in the name of increased profit. Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), a synthetic hormone, is now being injected into cows to get them to produce even more milk. Besides adversely affecting the cows' health, BGH also increases birth defects in their calves.

Calves born to dairy cows are separated from their mothers immediately after birth. Half of the dairy calves born are female, and they are raised to replace older dairy cows in the milking herd. The other half of the calves are male, and because they will never produce milk, they are raised and slaughtered for meat. Most are killed for beef, but about one million are used for veal.

The veal industry was created as a by-product of the dairy industry to take advantage of an abundant supply of unwanted male calves. Veal calves live for up to sixteen weeks in small wooden crates where they cannot turn around, stretch their legs, or even lie down comfortably. The calves are fed a liquid milk substitute which is deficient in iron and fiber and designed to make the animals anemic. It is this anemia which results in the light colored flesh which is prized as veal. In addition to this high priced veal, some calves are killed at just a few days old to be sold as low grade 'bob' veal for products like frozen TV dinners."


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EGGS:

"After one year in egg production, the birds, are classified as 'spent hens', and sent off to slaughter. They usually end up in soups, pot pies, or similar low grade chicken meat products where their bodies can be shredded to hide the bruises from consumers. The hens' brittle, calcium-depleted bones often shatter during handling and/or at the slaughterhouse.

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In some cases, especially if the cost of replacement hens is high, the hens may be force molted. This process involves starving the hens for up to 18 days, keeping them in the dark, and denying them water to shock their bodies into another egg laying cycle. The birds may lose more than 25% of their body weight during the molt, and it is common for between 5% and 10% to die.

For every egg laying hen confined in a battery cage, there is a male chick who was killed at the hatchery. Because egg laying chicken breeds have been selected exclusively for maximum egg producton, they don't grow fast enough or large enough to be raised profitably for meat. Therefore, male chicks of egg laying breeds are of no economic value. They are literally discarded on the day they hatch - usually by the least expensive and most convenient means available. They may be thrown in trash cans where they are suffocated or crushed under the weight of others.

A common method used to dispose of unwanted male chicks is grinding them up alive. This method can result in unspeakable horrors as a research scientist described, "Even after twenty seconds, there were only partly damaged animals with whole skulls". In other words, fully conscious chicks were partially ground up. Eyewitness accounts at commercial hatcheries indicate similar horrors with chicks being slowly dismembered on augers carrying them towards a trash bin or manure spreader. "


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Above excerpts and photos courtesy of Farm Sanctuary (website gives permission), http://www.factoryfarming.org

MORE MISCELLANEOUS PHOTOS:


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Above photos from http://www.mercyforanimals.org