Bad News: Issue 2 Passes in Ohio

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 22:06:54 PM PST

In the waning days of the election, Food and Water Watch put out an ad in Ohio telling voters the truth. The "Ohioans for Livestock Care" PAC tried to pull the ads off the air by filing a complaint that the ads contained "false statements."

Veal Plant Closed After USDA Views Video

by: Jill Richardson

Fri Oct 30, 2009 at 18:00:57 PM PDT

"The deplorable scenes recorded in the video released by the Humane Society of the United States are unequivocally unacceptable. The callous behavior and attitudes displayed in the video clearly appear to be violations of USDA's humane handling regulations," Vilsack said in a USDA-issued statement.

Animal scientists Temple Grandin and Kurt Vogel, according to HSUS, also condemned the alleged acts: "The handling practices and attention to insensibility at this plant are unacceptable and must improve," they were quoted as saying.

Vilsack said USDA is investigating alleged violations of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA). He said he also has asked the Inspector General to conduct a criminal investigation. FSIS inspection personnel appear to be implicated.

That bit at the end about FSIS inspection personnel means that the USDA's food safety guys at the plant were apparently in on the alleged abuses (presumably because they observed them and did nothing about it).

I find the comments on Meatingplace particularly amusing. I've pasted some excerpts below.

Issue 2: A Few Days Away

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 15:12:39 PM PDT

In case anyone was wondering if this was about big agribusiness getting control of regulations... Eli Lilly was one of 106 out of state corporate agribusiness interests that have donated over $1.2 million dollars to the Yes on Issue 2 campaign in Ohio.

And if all you folks in other states aren't worried, maybe you should be. Here's a piece on how other farm states hope to copy Ohio's rules. Yikes!

The Chicks in the Grinder

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Sep 09, 2009 at 09:27:02 AM PDT

The sad truth is: money. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan refers to the Cornish Cross (a breed of chicken) as the fastest converter of corn to breast meat. Similarly, one can call the White Leghorn the fastest converter of corn to eggs. One breed for meat, one breed for eggs, and the chicken industry doesn't have use for any other breeds of chickens.

The chicken industry is so "efficient" in fact, that the slaughter process is mostly mechanized, as all the birds are roughly the same shape and size. The machines kill the birds at the rate of 180+ per minute and a human stands guard to kill any birds that the machine misses (with imperfect accuracy, tragically). Given the standardization of the entire process of producing meat birds and maximizing breast meat, clearly the baby male White Leghorns go to the grinder is a calculation of profitability. Is it cheaper to use them for meat or to kill them? Because of their rate of growth or "feed efficiency" (how quickly they turn food into meat) or amount of breast meat or inability to fit with the mechanized nature of the chicken slaughter process or whatever, they aren't profitable. So they go to the grinder, which is apparently the cheapest way to kill them (or perhaps some combination of the cheapest and most "humane" way to kill them).

The problem isn't merely this practice of grinding up baby chicks, but the entire system. And yet, with Americans' great appetite for cheap meat and ability to ignore where it comes from, how it was raised, and how it affects the people who produce it or the environment, that's the system we've created.

Humans vs. Birds: Hitchcock in reverse

by: mickeyz

Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 03:50:13 AM PDT

Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Then the "settlers" arrived. As one of those settlers wrote in the 1600's: "There are wild pigeons in winter beyond number or imagination, myself have seen three or four hours together flocks in the air, so thick that even have they shadowed the sky from us."

"By anyone's estimation, it was the most abundant bird on Earth," writes Alan Wiesman in his book, The World Without Us. "Its flocks, 300 miles long and numbering in the billions, spanned horizons fore and aft, actually darkening the sky." As late as April 1873, residents of Saginaw, Michigan witnessed "a continuous stream of passenger pigeons overhead between 7.30 in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon."

By 1900, however, all the wild passenger pigeons had been killed by humans. Fourteen years later, the last passenger pigeon died in captivity. Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Now there are none.

This might have been the most dramatic example of avicide. Today, the methods by which human activities kill birds are far more varied but no less deadly:

*As many as 80 million birds are killed each year by collisions with plate glass windows.

*60 to 80 million birds are killed each year by motor vehicles. This averages out to roughly 15 bird deaths per mile per year.

*120 million birds are murdered by hunters each year.

*Feline companions allowed to roam free kill about 4 million birds each day in North America alone. Worldwide, the yearly number of birds killed by domestic cats is in the billions.

*There are 77,000 radio-transmission towers higher than 199 feet in the U.S. and nearly 200 million birds collide fatally with these towers per year. Add in 175,000 cell phone towers and the number of dead birds approaches a half-billion annually.

*Then, of course, you have habitat loss, environmental toxins, introduced diseases, and the biggest bird killer of all: the meat-based diet, e.g. every day, 23 million chickens are killed in the U.S. for food. That's 269 dead chickens per second.

It's Hitchcock in reverse as the planet's most destructive species systematically slaughters everything in its path.
Once, there were many billions of passenger pigeons in America. Now there are none.
I don't wanna live on a planet without birds. Do you? In fact, I can't live on a planet without birds and neither can you. So, what should we do about it...now?

Mickey Z. is the author of two upcoming books: Self Defense for Radicals (PM Press) and his second novel, Dear Vito (The Drill Press). Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net  

FDA Investigates Spot-On Flea Control Products

by: K Lamont

Wed Jul 01, 2009 at 09:38:41 AM PDT

"While many people use the products with no harmful effects to their pets, EPA recommends that pet owners take precautions when using these products," according to the EPA site.

The EPA launched its study after noticing an increase in the number of reported adverse reactions in pets treated with spot-on products (according to the EPA's website, 1300 that were serious or caused death in 2008- and those were just the ones reported!).

Adverse reactions reported range from mild effects such as skin irritation to more serious effects such as seizures and, in some cases, death. [July 2009 PET AGE]

I think the most important point is to be fully aware that you are in fact putting a pesticide on you animals when you use spot-on treatments and to use appropriate cautions/care.  

The Animal Welfare Fight Continues

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Jun 23, 2009 at 16:02:17 PM PDT

Meanwhile, in Ohio, the animal ag industry has a brand new tactic to prevent Ohio from passing its own "Prop 2." They want to create a state board that determines animal welfare standards, a measure backed by the state's Democratic Governor. One thing I've learned is that industry doesn't support ANYTHING if it's not in their best interests. That makes me tend to believe the Humane Society's criticism of the creation of a state animal welfare board:

Big Agribusiness' attempt to amend Ohio's constitution by creating an industry-dominated council to oversee farm animal treatment is poor policy and an attempt to thwart meaningful reform. This proposed council is a blatant attempt to stall efforts to halt inhumane confinement practices for veal calves, pigs and other animals on factory farms - systems that are so restrictive that the animals are often prevented from engaging in basic movements such as turning around and extending their limbs.

We have been asking the Ohio Farm Bureau to engage in serious dialogue on these issues for months, but not only have they refused to respond to our initial proposal, but they now want to enshrine their favored oversight system into the state constitution...

It's a special interest power grab that is designed to circumvent the input of all Ohioans into the process and divert attention from serious reform.

This is a fight that will continue to play out around the country and in Washington, DC. Animal ag is spending a lot of money to lobby against animal welfare laws at the federal level, even though there is absolutely no momentum to do anything on the issue in Washington. New York, California, and Ohio seem to be the big battleground states for animal welfare at the moment, and Ohio is the next place we will probably see a ballot measure similar to Prop 2.

Animal rights, ecofeminism, and rooster rehab

by: mickeyz

Mon Jun 08, 2009 at 07:24:06 AM PDT

pattrice jones is an ecofeminist educator, activist, and writer. She is the author of Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies and co-founder of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center.

Founded in a rural region of Maryland dominated by the poultry industry, the sanctuary provides a haven for hens, roosters and ducks who have escaped or been rescued from the meat and egg industries or other abusive circumstances, such as cockfighting. Not surprisingly, pattrice and company take things further than your average sanctuary. "We work within an ecofeminist understanding of the interconnection of all life and the intersection of all forms of oppression," she explains. "Thus we welcome and work to facilitate alliances among animal, environmental, and social justice activists."

As the sanctuary begins a move from Maryland to Springfield, Vermont, I thought it would be the perfect time ask pattrice a few questions, via e-mail:

MZ: What led you to such work? Why hens, roosters, and ducks?

pj: We found a chicken in a ditch. Seriously. Miriam Jones and I (then partners, and still family) were both experienced social justice activists when we inadvertently landed in poultry country, having moved "back to the land" with Green Acres dreams of going off grid. At the time, it was not uncommon for birds to flee to freedom by jumping from transport trucks, and "growers" for the poultry industry would sometimes let us rescue birds they were supposed to cull (the industry has since tightened its transport and security procedures.)  One bird became two then five then thirty-five... within six months of finding the first bird, we incorporated the sanctuary.

MZ: Fortunately, there are many animal sanctuaries but I'm curious to know more about what you call the 'gendered form of animal exploitation."

pj: That first chicken was a rooster we originally mistook for a hen. I had to work hard to feel the same way about him once I knew he was a rooster. He was the same tenderly friendly bird he'd always been, but all of those "rooster" ideas - cocky, aggressive, etc. - were interfering with my ability to see him clearly. That got me thinking about the ways that people project gender stereotypes on animals and then read them back as evidence that traditional sex roles are natural, a process I have come to call the social construction of gender by way of animals. So, when we got an urgent call about 24 roosters who had been living together peacefully but all other sanctuaries had turned away under the theory that so many roosters cannot possibly get along, we said yes. Besides livening up the place, that colorful crew inspired us to try to figure out a way to rehabilitate roosters used in cockfighting, which we have done.

MZ: What do you mean when you say "rehabilitate roosters"?

pj: Roosters confiscated from cockfighting operations used to be automatically euthanized, on the presumption that they were too aggressive to ever live peacefully with other birds. But that's the propaganda of cockfighting enthusiasts, who argue that they are just watching roosters doing what comes naturally. In fact, chickens - like the wild jungle fowl from which they descended and to whom the birds used in cockfighting are very nearly genetically identical - naturally live in flocks in which multiple roosters coexist peacefully. Roosters in the wild fight to the death only against predators, not against each other! They sometimes will have highly stylized fights with each other, but these are not the pitched battles to the death that we see in cockfighting.

MZ: Why do fighting roosters fight?

pj: Raised in isolation and constant frustration, they never learn the social signals by which roosters resolve their conflicts and figure out their places in flocks. Prior to cockfighting bouts, they are often injected with testosterone and methamphetamines. In the bouts, they face opponents who, like themselves, have had their combs shaved (so they look more like a hawk than another chicken) and their spurs augmented by sharp blades. It's kill or be killed. What we do is give former fighters the chance to learn, by observation and gradual participation, the social skills they need to coexist peacefully with other birds. We give them a safe space from which to do this and, over time, recover from the trauma to which they have been subjected.

MZ: Your approach with the roosters sounds like a logical, compassionate strategy for any living thing that has undergone trauma.

pj: Right. We all - or at least all social species - need the same things when we've been traumatized, including safety or sanctuary and the chance to restore the relationships (with others and within ourselves) that have been strained or severed by trauma. I talk about that, for people, in my book Aftershock. In relation to animals, I'm happy to be working with Gay Bradshaw of the Kerulos Center and other members of the new International Association for Animal Trauma and Recovery; we've all been thinking hard about how to apply what we know about trauma and recovery among people to the task of helping animals who have suffered human-engendered trauma.

MZ: So now you're bringing this approach to a new location?

pj: Our move to a larger property in Vermont, a small state with 33 factory farms serving the dairy industry and adjacent to Maine (the home of the infamous DeCoster egg factory) will allow us to expand our bird rescue capacities and also expand our activism to include dairy, which - like cockfighting - is a gendered form of animal exploitation.

MZ: How can readers help and get involved?

pj: Because we were founded in one rural agricultural area and are now moving to another, we depend entirely on support from afar to fund our programs. Because we are a small and chronically underfunded sanctuary, even small donations make a big difference. And we fall all over ourselves with gratitude for those who can afford to give more and do. Folks can find donation information on our website (http://www.bravebirds.org).

If you live in a big city, another way to help out with money is to hold a vegan pot luck fundraiser at your house. Eat, watch a movie like Peaceable Kingdom or Chicken Run, and then pass the hat for the sanctuary.

In terms of volunteering, folks who live near our new location in Springfield, Vermont might want to pitch in on coop cleaning and grounds maintenance. We need folks in our original locale, on the Delmarva Peninsula, to occasionally help out by driving local birds to sanctuaries in Maryland and Virginia. As we expand our rooster rehab program, we'll be needing folks up and down the east coast to sign up to sometimes drive birds to us from wherever they might be confiscated by authorities after a cockfighting bust.

We need everybody to have a look at the information and ideas on our website and then subscribe to our blog so that they will receive action alerts as we continue and expand our efforts to fundamentally reform food and agriculture while building bridges among social justice, environmental, and animal liberation activists. We're going to be coordinating a new, explicitly feminist, campaign concerning dairy later this year. Watch for it!

You can e-mail pattrice at: sanctuary@bravebirds.org
Website: http://www.bravebirds.org

Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net

Egg McCruelty

by: Jill Richardson

Sun May 24, 2009 at 15:23:18 PM PDT

The other day I noted that the Humane Society was congratulating Wendy's for switching a mere 2% of their eggs to cage-free. Turns out Wendy's isn't alone. Burger King, Hardee's, Quizno's, Carl's Jr. and Denny's are each going to buy about 5% of their eggs as cage-free. I interpret this as a "shut up and get off my back" move by the fast food chains to placate the Humane Society without getting bad press and protests at their restaurants. It seems that McDonald's wasn't even willing to go that far to get HSUS to back off - they'd rather "study the issue" for 2 years first.

In fact, the VP of Corporate Social Responsibility at McDonald's had the chutzpah to say "I have been to our laying facilities and I am proud of them. The birds are protected well." Protected by cramming 10 of them into each battery cage, giving each hen less room than a sheet of paper? Oh they are protected all right. In huge, windowless rooms with 100% protection from the elements and from coyotes or any other critter that might want to harm a chicken. You might say that prisoners in maximum security prisons are "protected well" too.

Quite frankly, I'm disappointed that the Humane Society is going to settle for this - any of this. If they care about the chickens so much, don't they care enough to keep negotiating for more than just a 5% switch?

Let these restaurants know that we can spot hypocrisy when we see it:

• McDonalds
• Wendys
• Hardees
• Dennys
• Burger King: 305-378-3535 (call M-F, 9am-5pm EDT)
• Quiznos
• Carl's, Jr.

Read the Fine Print

by: Jill Richardson

Fri May 22, 2009 at 18:04:08 PM PDT

Hens in a battery cage, making 98% of Wendy's eggs.

The other 98% still come from hens in battery cages, described by HSUS as follows:

Arguably the most abused animals in all agribusiness, nearly 280 million laying hens in the United States are confined in barren, wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can't even spread their wings. With no opportunity to engage in many of their natural behaviors, including nesting, dust bathing, perching, and foraging, these birds endure lives wrought with suffering.

Because of animal welfare concerns, countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria have banned battery cages. The entire European Union is phasing out conventional cages by 2012.

Battery cages are not only cruel because the hens live in filthy, crowded conditions (sometimes stacked so that birds poop on the birds below them) and can hardly move. When trying to act out natural behaviors like dustbathing, they beat their bodies against the metal bars of their cages. HSUS also provides a video of hens in battery cages, a photo gallery of battery cages (read the caption with each photo), and a comparison between battery cages and cage-free egg production.

Wendy's, this is really disingenuous. It's fantastic that with your large demand you are improving the lives of many chickens, no doubt, but if you truly believe in the cruelty of battery cages and the need to address the issue, why are you only going 2% of the way? Probably to garner press releases like the one that I stumbled upon, without the expense of actually making real change. That's my hunch.

Hilarity from the Anti-Animal Rights Movement

by: Jill Richardson

Mon May 18, 2009 at 15:58:24 PM PDT

I've transcribed it below. Be warned, what you are about to read is insane, arrogant, and at times, totally insulting.

Ohio Might Get a Prop 2

by: Jill Richardson

Wed May 06, 2009 at 09:00:00 AM PDT

For me, the best effect of Prop 2 was getting factory farm conditions covered on shows like Oprah where people who perhaps never wondered where their meat came from got a look at footage of factory farms. I think the real value of measures like this is not the actual improvements in animal welfare achieved (although I don't dispute that that part is good - it's just not enough by a longshot) but the public discourse that happens when we examine and debate how we treat our livestock.

The hope of animal welfare advocates was that after Prop 2 passed, other states could successfully pass similar measures. Obviously, Prop 2 barely scratched the surface of cruel livestock practices (which are often bad for the environment and bad for food safety as well) but it's a start. And now, it seems that the Humane Society - the group that made Prop 2 happen - is looking to do a Prop 2 redux in Ohio. The choice of Ohio is significant because Ohio is the #2 egg-producing state in the nation (behind Iowa). Details below.

Foie Gras: Too Cruel or The Same As Any Other Delicious Dead Animal?

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Apr 05, 2009 at 13:30:00 PM PDT

A friend of mine who waited tables at a French restaurant had a faux menu he liked to recite. It began like this: "Pâté de foie gras -- made from the liver of a small goose who's had its foot nailed to the floor and food stuffed down its throat through a tube until its organs explode."

That is not a precisely accurate description of gavage -- the ancient art, if we can call it that, of force-feeding geese and ducks to enlarge their livers for our delectation -- but it sums up the general feeling, on this side of the Atlantic, that foie gras crosses the line between delicious and decadent...

What put [famous chef Charlie] Trotter off his fancy foie? "It's done in a mass-produced farming style where literally there's tubes being jammed down their throats," the chef told the reporter. "We have cases of ripped esophaguses, chipped and broken beaks and ripped feet." Another chef, Rick Tramonto, took Trotter to task for hypocrisy: "Either you eat animals or you don't eat animals." Then Trotter got out the steak knives: "Oh, OK. Maybe we ought to have Rick's liver for a little treat. It's certainly fat enough."

My own take? I do believe there's a large gray area between eating all animals and eating none at all. Certainly here in California, a large majority of voters (most of them meat eaters) voted to ban the cruelest of cruel livestock practices and I doubt many of them saw a contradiction between their dislike of veal crates and their love of eating tasty animal flesh.

As for foie gras itself, my opinion is colored by a story I heard at Slow Food Nation last year. I believe it was told by Dan Barber of New York's Blue Hill restaurant but I am not certain. He told of a man who made foie gras without forcefeeding geese. Instead, he waited until the weather began turning cold and the geese forcefed themselves in anticipation of a hungry and cold winter. Voila! Humane foie gras. Obviously, that does not suit an industrial system very well at all, but if we must have foie gras (and clearly some people believe we must) then I think that is the proper way to do it.

UPDATE: I'm being corrected in the comments... apparently the practice of forcefeeding is so gruesome that there's no way any goose would eat THAT MUCH on its own. I recounted that story as I heard it but perhaps it was overly optimistic.

vegan pet food

by: LeeN

Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 03:51:34 AM PDT

my critter Gabbie

This is a picture I took of my dog and sent to my daughter who is in college.

 Gabbie is totally motivated by food. Especially meat.We got her from the local shelter when she was around a year old and my daughter was 8.My daughters' now 19.Her previous owner had tied Gabbie to the front door of the shelter and left. 

Death on a Factory Farm

by: Jill Richardson

Tue Mar 17, 2009 at 17:30:00 PM PDT

I'm specifically referring to the HBO special aired last night, Death on a Factory Farm. I believe it will be replayed, and you can see several clips from it here.

Below, I've included my own opinions and those of several others who wrote about Death on a Factory Farm.