Factory Farmed or Free-Range — Animals Suffer When You Eat Meat

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re already aware of the horrible conditions — including cramped, unsanitary living quarters, lack of sunlight and persistent disease — encountered in factory farms. While free-range and other supposedly “humane” types of farming are advertised as an alternative to this, in fact they only prove what animal rights activists have known all along — namely that cows, chickens, pigs and other “livestock” are all highly intelligent, social creatures deserving of a long and happy life. If we are to honor this fact, avoiding the use of animal products entirely is the logical choice.

Animal Agriculture Kills Wild Animals, Too

It’s not only farm animals that suffer at the hands of the agricultural industry. Each year in the U.S., more than 3 million animals — including endangered species such as golden and bald eagles, as well as domesticated cats and dogs — are killed by Wildlife Services (a federal agency) in an effort to eradicate “nuisance” wildlife that could potentially attack “livestock”. These animals are often killed indiscriminately, often in painful, drawn-out ways. The current trend of free-range farming will only mean more collateral damage to animals living freely in nearby areas.

Eggs Aren’t Harmless

Taking a stand for animals can’t end with cutting out meat. If we are to be truly informed and ethical eaters, it is necessary to understand the harsh realities of egg farming, too. Here are some facts you might not be aware of:

• Hens in industrial farms are forced to lay up to 30 times more eggs than they would naturally
• 95% of all egg-laying hens live out their lives in cramped battery cages, where they are often cruelly de-beaked and frequently suffer from broken bones, hemorrhaging and dehydration
• Every year, 200,000,000 male chicks are killed by the egg production industry — typically by suffocation or ground up alive in industrial macerators

Neither is Dairy

The situation in a modern dairy farm is no less grim. Most newborn calves are forcibly removed from their mothers within 12 hours so that milking can begin.  This separation is extremely distressing to both the mother and her calf.  They often call for each other for days. Then, the calf will spend the first 2-3 months trapped alone in a small pen and fed a special milk replacer engineered to fatten them up for production as quickly as possible.

Once they are old enough to lactate, they begin a cycle of forced impregnation that takes an increasingly heavy toll on their bodies. When production declines around age four or five — less then a quarter of their natural lifespan — most dairy cows are unceremoniously slaughtered and sold for meat.

Vegan Diets Save the Lives of Animals

Every day — often without thinking — we make a series of small decisions about the foods we put in our bodies. Recognizing that you alone decide what to eat is the first step in ending animal cruelty. While many people find this intimidating, it can also be empowering.

To learn more about the link between veganism and animal rights issues, keep browsing our website and explore some of the resources we’ve put together for anyone who wants to make more responsible, humane dietary choices.

The post Veganism and Animal Rights: How Your Diet Affects the Lives of Animals appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

I don’t eat lamb…You feel guilty. It just feels kind of like…they are very gentle. It’s like a shame that they’re killed and we eat them. Well, cows are [gentle, too, but we eat them. I don’t know how to describe it….It seems like everybody eats cow. It’s affordable and there are so many of them but lambs are just different. You don’t cuddle a cow. Seems like it’s okay to eat a cow but it’s not okay to eat a lamb…the difference is weird.    — 43-year-old meat eater

Statements like the ones above epitomize the types of comments meat eaters make that bewilder vegetarians. It truly is perplexing: a butcher wouldn’t be able to carry on with his work if he really thought about what he was doing, and a rational adult male is affectionate toward one species but eats another and has no idea why. Before being asked to reflect on their behaviors, neither of them thought there was anything at all odd about the way they relate to the animals that become their food, and after such reflection their awareness “wore off” within hours. So the butcher kept the unpleasant reality of his job at bay and continued to process animals, while the meat eater suppressed his mental paradox and continued to eat them. It is no wonder that vegetarians find the mentality of meat confounding.

Yet for many vegetarians, what is most baffling is not meat eaters’ tendency to avoid reflecting upon their food choices, but the array of explanations they give for why it’s “impossible” to stop eating meat: After learning the myriad nutritional benefits of a plant-based diet, the health-conscious meat eater claims he doesn’t want to risk becoming protein deficient. After reading the statistics of the environmental damage wrought by animal agriculture, the hybrid-driving meat eater says she’s got her hands full working on other social issues and   she doesn’t eat much “red” meat anyway. After learning that countless

grocery stores and restaurants offer plentiful vegetarian options and that there’s a wide variety of cookbooks and vegetarian starter kits that offer guidelines for transitioning to a plantbased diet, the intellectual meat eater says it would be too complicated to stop eating meat. After hearing about the suffering of farmed animals, the sensitive meat eater expresses heartfelt sympathy only to end up at the Burger King drive-through later that day because she can’t break the habit of eating animals. And after eating yet another delicious faux meat meal that he claims is so much like the real thing he couldn’t tell the difference, the meat eater says he “could never” become vegetarian because he likes meat too much. The same people who find it impossible to stop eating meat may have raised a family on their own, survived a life-threatening illness, worked their way through a lifetime of schooling, lived through a major trauma, won a Nobel prize, or accomplished any number of feats that surely require more effort and sacrifice than becoming vegetarian.

Understandably, the mixed messages meat eaters send can cause vegetarians to feel exasperated and frustrated. Yet, rather than question a meat eater’s mentality, which would lead to greater understanding, vegetarians often question the meat eater’s character, which leads to further tension and confusion – at best, the meat eater is viewed as selfish and lazy, someone who puts his or her own comfort and convenience above the lives of other animals and the preservation of the planet. But while it makes sense that vegetarians would draw such conclusions, these assumptions are arguably as illogical as those posited by meat eaters. Many meat eaters are also loving fathers, mothers, and friends; they are fearless rescue-workers, dedicated teachers, impassioned activists, tireless community leaders, kindhearted philanthropists, compassionate animal caretakers, devoted partners, and great humanitarians.   that it enables humane, rational people to engage in inhumane, irrational behavior, without even realizing what they’re doing. So, vegetarians would do well to focus on meat eaters’ mentality rather than their morality and approach conversations with curiosity rather than resentment.

Approaching meat eating with curiosity can lead vegetarians to ask the questions that will help them more effectively relate and advocate to meat eaters: How can compassionate individuals put the body parts of dead beings into their mouths and find the experience pleasurable rather than repulsive? How can a nation of critical consumers who may brood over which brand of jeans to purchase leave their food choices so unexamined—choices that drive an industry that kills 10 billion animals per year? How do people not see the contradictions that are right in front of them? Vegetarians—and even a number of meat eaters—understand why people shouldn’t eat meat, but few people understand why they do eat meat and it is this latter point that must be addressed in order to have more productive conversations about meat consumption.

IDEOLOGY

The answers to the above questions make sense only through the lens of ideology. An ideology is a social belief   system that shapes people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. A dominant ideology is the belief system of a dominant (power-holding) social group – for example whites, males, or the economically advantaged – and it is so socially entrenched that its influence is largely invisible. Dominant ideologies construct our reality; they shape the lens through which we see the world by promoting beliefs, attitudes, practices, laws, values, and social norms as universal truths rather than a set of opinions that reflect and reinforce the interests of the power-holding group.

Dominant ideologies whose tenets (beliefs and practices) run counter to the deeper values of most individuals must actively work to ensure the participation of the populace. Without popular support, the system would collapse. These ideologies rely on specific strategies, or defenses, to hide the contradictions between people’s values and behaviors, allowing individuals to make exceptions to what they would normally consider ethical. Such ideologies exist on both social and individual levels; their defenses operate externally (shaping social institutions and norms) and internally (shaping our mentality). External defenses maintain a social structure that forces people to conform to the norm by rewarding those who do (e.g., making them feel socially accepted) and punishing those who deviate (e.g., making them feel deficient and ostracized). Internal defenses maintain the mentality that supports social norms, and these defenses are triggered any time information is presented that threatens the ideology. Internal defenses aren’t logical responses; they’re automatic reactions that block or distort information that may expose the ideology.

The primary defense of a dominant, “unethical” ideology is invisibility and the primary way the ideology stays invisible is by remaining unnamed. If we don’t name it, we won’t see it, and if we don’t see   it, we can’t talk about it. Invisibility protects the ideology from scrutiny and thus from being challenged. This is one reason that only non-dominant ideologies are named, at least initially; for instance, while there has long been a name for the ideology of those who don’t eat meat, vegetarianism, the dominant, meat eating ideology hasn’t been named until recently.

CARNISM

Carnism is the name I’ve given to the ideology in which it’s considered ethical and appropriate to eat certain animals. As long as eating meat is not necessary for survival, it’s a choice, and choices always stem from beliefs. Meat eaters are not carnivores, which are animals that need meat in order to survive. Nor are they merely omnivores which, like vegetarians, are animals that are able to survive consuming both plant and animal matter. “Carnivore” and “omnivore” reflect nothing more than a biological predisposition. For humans, eating meat is not a biological necessity, but a philosophical choice based on a set of assumptions about animals, the world, and oneself. [1]

By failing to name the system that is carnism, eating meat is seen as a given rather than a choice, and the assumptions driving meat consumption remain unexamined. This lack of awareness is why people eat pigs but not dogs and have no idea why.

Carnism is a system that is organized around intensive and unnecessary animal suffering. Because most people don’t want to cause animals to suffer, let alone know that they’ve participated in such suffering, the system must prevent them from connecting the dots, psychologically and emotionally. The carnistic system is set up to block awareness, in order to block empathy and its sister emotion, disgust. When a person sits down to a hamburger, for instance, she isn’t aware, or thinking, of the living animal she’s eating. She therefore isn’t feeling empathy for the suffering of the being that became her food and she finds the meat appetizing rather than disgusting.     But this same (American) diner doesn’t have years of carnistic conditioning when it comes to eating dogs. Were she to sit down to an identical burger, but made of dog flesh rather than beef, she would be acutely aware of the animal from whom the meat was procured and she would likely be too disgusted to eat it.

Carnism enables people to eat the meat of a select group of animals by employing a specific set of defenses that operate on a collective as well as an individual level. These defenses include, but aren’t limited to, denial (“Animals raised for meat don’t really suffer much”), avoidance (“Don’t tell me that; you’ll ruin my meal”), dichotomization (“Dogs are for loving and pigs are for eating”), dissociation (“If I think about the animal that became my meat I’ll be too disgusted to eat it”), and justification (“It’s okay to eat certain animals because they’re bred for that purpose”). Carnistic defenses are intensive, extensive, and are woven into the very fabric of our society and our minds.

RELATING TO CARNISTS

Much of the confusion and tension between vegetarians and meat eaters, or carnists, exists because neither group recognizes the carnistic mentality or the tremendous pressure to maintain the carnistic status quo. Vegetarians need to understand that carnists are ensnared in an invisible system that actively works to coerce them to act against their own interests (psychological consistency and emotional authenticity) and the interests of others. Vegetarians also need to realize that asking a carnist to stop eating meat is asking for much more than a change in behavior. It is asking for a fundamental shift of identity, for a profound paradigm shift, and for the carnist to resist deeply embedded psychological defenses. No matter how easy it may have been for you to stop eating meat, for most people, this kind of change happens only over time, when they feel psychologically and emotionally safe enough to begin questioning some of their lifelong assumptions. In Strategic Action for Animals, I describe specific principles for communicating with and advocating to carnists so as to increase the likelihood that your interaction will be mutually satisfying and your message will be received. Following are some useful points:

MODEL THE QUALITIES YOU’RE ASKING FOR: curiosity, compassion, empathy, respect, and a willingness to truly listen and self-reflect. The more defensive you are, the more you’ll trigger defenses in your audience.

RELATE TO CARNISTS AS PEOPLE, RATHER THAN AS MEAT EATERS. No matter how much you don’t respect their choice to eat animals, it’s essential to respect carnists’ humanity.

SIMILARLY , REMEMBER THAT CARNISTS ARE INDIVIDUALS, many of whom have more in common with you than they do with each other. Don’t lump them into a group and project stereotypes onto them.

FOCUS MORE ON THE PROCESS (the dynamic, or the “how”) than the content (the subject, or the “what”) of a conversation. Instead of your goal being to influence another’s

perspective, strive toward having a respectful, mutually enlightening dialogue. No matter how strongly you feel about promoting vegetarianism, the more you strive to “convert” your listener, the less likely it is that you will achieve this end.

RECOGNIZE THAT THE FACTS DON’T SELL THE IDEOLOGY . The only reason a person would choose to eat a hamburger over an identical veggie burger is because of what meat represents, rather than what it actually is. Knowing this will help you feel less frustrated with resistant carnists.

DON’T LET DEFENSIVE CARNISTS DISRESPECT YOU. Some carnists attack vegetarians as a way of defending their meat eating. You should never let people judge you as being extremist, hypocritical, picky, hypersensitive, etc. } Create an empowering environment . Empowerment is the feeling of being connected to your personal power, and empowered people are much more likely make positive changes. The opposite of empowerment is shame, and shame results from feeling judged. To empower others, treat them as though they are fundamentally worthy – speak from your heart with the objective of sharing your truth and detach yourself from the outcome of the conversation.

Understanding the carnistic mentality can be tremendously liberating for carnists and vegetarians alike. By making the invisible visible, we take a step outside the carnistic system and can choose how we participate in it. Carnists can choose to more fully examine their meat eating; vegetarians can choose to more fully examine how they relate to carnists. And both groups can better cultivate the very qualities that will ultimately transform the system: awareness, empathy, and compassion

. [1] This statement does not refer to those who are geographically or economically unable to choose whether to eat meat.

The post The Mentality of Meat appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

Our sense of superiority over the rest of animal creation has always been founded on our superior intellect. For two reasons, intelligence provides a shaky foundation for the treatment of animals. First, intelligence does not predict sentience. There’s no valid reason that a mouse should feel the prick of a needle any less acutely than does a human. The British Clergyman Humphrey Primatt (1735-1779) said it eloquently: “Superiority of rank or station exempts no creature from the sensibi then disappear just a half second later, five-year-old chimp Ayumu casually touches the exact locations on the screen in the order that the numbers appeared. He can recall all 10 digits consistently, whereas the average human rarely gets beyond three or four. When the British memory champion Ben Pridmore – who can remember the order of a shuffled deck of cards in 30 seconds – competed head-to-head against Ayumu, the chimp performed three times better.

Recent studies are also revealing not only that animals have emotions, but that they have moods or dispositions – what I call ambient emotional states. For example, most of us have had periods in our lives when we are feeling down or depressed, or positive and full of optimism. Starlings appear to have similar feelings. Birds kept alone for 10 days in impoverished cages take a pessimistic view; they are much less likely than enriched and stimulated birds to investigate a dish that may contain either palatable or bad tasting food. Rodents, primates and  other animals confined for long periods in unstimulating farm or laboratory cages develop neurotic behaviors that reflect long-term negative emotional states. Baboon mothers who have lost an infant enter a period of mourning – the scientists call it bereavement – that lasts for several weeks. And like human parents, the bereft mothers seek emotional therapy by solidifying their social networks: they engage in more grooming bouts, which helps soothe the baboons’ anguish and better enables them to “move on.”

Once thought the sole province of humans, language – in which sounds or symbols are used to represent other objects that may be separated in time and space – has now been described in many species. Chickens have a vocabulary of more than 30 specific calls, including small-, large- and intermediate-sized aerial predators. Roosters entice hens with a “food solicitation call.” Occasionally, a rooster deceptively uses the call when there is no morsel present; hens soon learn to identify a cheater, which ensures that most roosters remain honest. Prairie dogs have about 20 different words for different predatory threats, each of which elicits an appropriate response even if the listener has not seen the threat himself or herself. Owing to heavy human persecution, many colonies have added a call for “man with gun” to their vocabulary.

Only recently have scientists begun entertaining the idea that animals have a sense of right and wrong. Yet we should not be too surprised that animals behave virtuously, or that they may have the rudiments of moral awareness, because social living requires that individuals make compromises and take others into consideration. During rough-and-tumble play, animals signal to each other that they will not bite too hard, and larger participants play less roughly to sustain the playful interaction. Studies with dogs and monkeys show that both have a sense of fairness. A monkey will refuse to continue “paying” for cucumbers if another starts to receive preferred grapes in exchange for a token. A dog will stop offering a paw if only the other dog is being given a treat for doing so; the refusal is not based on boredom or fatigue, for the same dog will continue to offer a paw for no treat for much longer if there is no second dog present.

Another way animals show goodwill to others is through cooperative breeding – in which mature adults forego breeding to help others raise offspring. It is widespread in mammals, birds and fishes. For instance, when a pair of Princess of Burundi cichlid fishes of Lake Tanganyika raise their brood, they are typically assisted by five helpers of  both sexes, who may or may not be genetic relatives of the breeding pair.

This is just a brief sampling of numerous studies coming to light that show that animals are highly sentient and that they have complex inner lives. These developments present both a paradox, and great promise. The paradox is that, even though our moral awareness of animals is unprecedented, we continue killing animals in unprecedented numbers. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that in 2005, humans worldwide killed 50 billion (land) animals to be eaten. And with a growing human population and the global spread of Western, meat centered dietary habits, that figure continues to climb.

The promise is that we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in our relationship to animals. There is a proliferation of university courses in animal ethics and animal law, in books on animal ethics and veg*n lifestyles, and in laws protecting animals and banning cruel farming practices. In 1997, the European Union officially recognized animals as sentient beings able to feel pain and emotion, and on both sides of the Atlantic, the worst of factory farming practices are beginning to be banned. In Holland, the Party for the Animals – the first of its kind –has made rapid gains since its formation in 2002, most recently winning 4 percent of the Dutch popular vote, and is now on the brink of winning one of Holland’s 25 seats in the European Parliament.

With the rise of new problems linked to the consumption of animal products – including climate change, zoonoses (diseases passed from animals to humans) and the epidemics of obesity and diabetes – the human race is being forced to reassess its self-centered past. No longer can we afford to run roughshod over the planet and its sentient inhabitants. Never before has compassionate living been more clearly in our own best interests. The vegetarian movement is a vital cog in the wheel of these reforms.

Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist based in Washington, D.C. He is the author of “Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good” (Macmillan, 2006), and two forthcoming books: “Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals” and “Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure” (University of California Press, CA. September 2010).`

The post Second Nature: The Coming Revolution in the Human-Animal Relationship appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

The fact to consider is that this catchphrase, if coming from a meat-eater, is beyond the pot calling the kettle black. In fact, eating animals causes a great deal more human suffering than does going without.

The amount of harm done to humans by the animal industry is enormous and no other industry gets away with such harms on this scale. It persists, frankly, because so many people make their food choices without fully thinking about the broader implications for their neighbors or themselves.

How much harm are we talking about? Let’s start on the broadest scale: Livestock production helps fuel global climate change, accounting for anywhere from 18 percent (U.N. estimate) to 51 percent (Worldwatch Institute) of all greenhouse gases.

Let’s stop right here for a moment to consider that even if acceleration of global warming were the sole bad effect of meat-eating, those who abstain
would already have a decisive edge in the “who cares more about fellow humans” question. But the harm to humans goes further than that. Much further.

The entire human population is also threatened by animal-derived viruses (e.g., bird flu, swine flu, SARS, tuberculosis) and factory farms are prime incubators of many of these, says the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

Among other “public health threats” the commission names is the careless use of antibiotics on healthy animals, a way of minimizing the spread of disease among animals in disease-friendly conditions. This accounts for more than 70 percent of all antibiotics used, which fosters new, stronger strains of disease, weakening the drugs’ effectiveness for sick people.

Add to this the outsize consumption of an ever- more-precious resource – fresh water – and already the livestock industry is bad for people as a whole.

Locally, the impact is more direct, the problems more acute. Air and water emanating from factory farms are said to cause breathing problems among their neighbors. The Pew Commission stresses that the gases generated by factory farms are associated with respiratory problems, such as asthma, for “communities proximate to [nearby] those facilities, as well as populations far away from these operations.”

The commission also cites “depression and other symptoms” attributed to animal-farm emissions. Manure contamination of sources of drinking water is also a danger, given the toxicity of E. coli and the potential effects of hormones in contaminated water.

But you’ve gotta take the bad with the good, the thinking goes, and the good is: Jobs.

Even that, though, is mostly hype. Certainly, a few people get very rich off of livestock, but in general, workers are exploited right along with the animals.
Dairies and slaughterhouses are often staffed by immigrants (illegal or not) who have little choice, and less voice, in their dangerous daily tasks. Injuries from corralling and dismembering large animals get downplayed, as the workers know they’re dispensable – and invisible.

Articles such as “The Chain Never Stops” in Mother Jones and such books as Gail Eisnitz’s Slaughterhouse have compiled both stats and personal stories detailing the misery, pain and horror these jobs entail for the down-on-their-luck populace that meat companies count on to tolerate such an abusive, violent work environment.

And while slaughterhouse workers clearly have a dangerous job, dairy employees (also often illegal immigrants) fare little better. A 2009 expose by Rebecca Clarren in High Country News detailed the misery, injuries and inhuman treatment common in these under-$10-an-hour jobs.

“It’s a job with lots of risks. If I had papers, man, there’s no way I’d be working in a dairy. But in this town, this is the best job I can get,” she quotes one illegal immigrant worker as saying. “Every worker I know says they’ve been kicked or stepped on by a cow. It’s common. But one day (the cows) might break your bones, or maybe even kill you.”

“Between 2004 and 2007,” Clarren continues, “nearly seven of every 100 dairy workers were hurt annually on average, compared to 4.5 out of 100 for all private industries. Beyond using tractors and heavy farming equipment, dairy workers interact with large, unpredictable farm animals – work that ranks among the most hazardous of all occupations, according a 2007 article in Epidemiology. Plus, they breathe air laced with bacteria and manure dust, putting them at risk for long-term respiratory disease.
Clarren notes that “The majority of the West’s nearly 50,000 dairy workers are immigrants,” and adds perspective from Marc Schenker, director of Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Western Center for Agricultural Health and  to Safety: “If you’re undocumented, you won’t complain. You won’t ask … not do a task you think is dangerous. These things lead to workplace injuries.” Shenker stresses that “[t]heir injuries aren’t inevitable; they’re the failure of our system to do the right thing. It’s not only an injustice but a tragedy.”

Animal-industry work takes many forms – and so do its tragedies: Although hundreds of children and adults were likely scarred for life by witnessing trainer Dawn Brancheau’s death at a SeaWorld show, at least she died doing a job she loved. Dairy and slaughter workers encounter horrific workplace accidents (and fatalities), without the media attention.

The effect of the gruesome workplace dangers is damaging, and, as with environmental degradation, it also washes downstream.

A recent study found that even after controlling for demographics, race, unemployment and other supposed crime-related factors, a stark correlation remained: “Slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a “Sinclair effect” [referring to Upton Sinclair, who noted
Care More About Animals  in The Jungle that slaughterhouse work seemed to make employees more violent and combative once their shifts were completed] unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.

Yes, the killing of animals – not just those in factory farms, note, but also the “humanely raised” ones spotlighted at Whole Foods – apparently leads to the killing of people, as we might expect given the many studies that show children who violently abuse animals are most likely to grow into human-abusing sociopaths.

Lastly, let’s remember consumers themselves, who raise their risk of hypertension, heart disease, cancer and stroke with every bite of meat. Add to this an additional 76 million cases of foodborne illness and 5,000 deaths each year, overwhelmingly caused by fecal contamination by livestock.

All of these harms are related: Since most people don’t want to watch what they’re paying to have happen to animals, meatpackers routinely break both humane- handling and food-safety laws. Earlier in 2010, an 18-year United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) veterinarian testified before Congress in conjunction with a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showing enforcement of humane slaughter laws is lacking.

Dean Wyatt outlined violations of the Humane Slaughter Act he witnessed on the job, stuff like “aggressively” unloading animals, letting pigs slip and trample one another, and shackling and bleeding out pigs while they were conscious. He found his efforts to call attention to these systemic abuses thwarted, though.

“FSIS [Food Safety and Inspection Service] officials who were hundreds of miles away simply took company personnel at their word that the egregious events I had personally witnessed did not justify my actions,” Wyatt said in his testimony before lawmakers. After speaking up about problems, he faced retaliation from the agency.
If the agency’s not watching close enough to see such violations, they’re going to miss others. The USDA Inspector General recently found that “Beef containing harmful pesticides, antibiotics and heavy metals is being sold to the U.S. public because agencies are neither setting limits for them or testing for them.” In
one case a shipment was so contaminated it was turned back by Mexico – and then sold to U.S. consumers.

Big surprise, huh? The same people who don’t worry about causing animal suffering also don’t give a hoot about meat-eaters or their health – only their dollars. And many continue to fork over those dollars, while forking these products into their mouths.

Conversely, living a nonviolent, compassionate life is good for us and good for the planet. A vegan lifestyle avoids almost all of the bad effects described above.

In short, going vegan means giving your fellow humans – as well as the animals – a break.

VANCE LEHMKUHL is a vegan writer, cartoonist and musician. In addition to Vegetarian Voice, his writing has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Z Magazine. He’s known for penning a collection of vegetarian cartoons, The Joy of Soy, for his long-running strip “Edgy Veggies” in Veg News, and for his live improv cartooning on veggie themes. He’s also the founder of the eco-pop band Green Beings and the host of Vegcast, a well-known vegetarian podcast.

The post You Care More About Animals Than You Do About People appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

It’s a clever gimmick, playing off of Americans’ concurrent tendencies toward both discipline and indulgence. But a very similar argument is raging around a much more serious issue – the lives of animals in the food industry – and here the concept of “lesser evil” is in no way humorous, but a matter of extreme importance for those on opposite sides of the question of how to alleviate the suffering of said animals. Given that for the foreseeable future animals are going to be needlessly exploited for food, what’s the best way to mitigate the horrible abuse they must suffer?

The argument tends to break into two major camps – along the lines Gary Francione so adamantly limned 10 years ago in Rain Without Thunder – Welfare vs. Rights, or the notion that we should form whatever alliances necessary, including with industry, to obtain whatever improvements we can in food animals’ lives, vs. digging in for the long haul, staying absolutely true to the tenets of our movement in order to achieve more significant, long-term change.

Into this breach Satya magazine has brazenly stepped with its September and October 2006 issues, taking off from a recent Whole Foods “compassionate” farming initiative. The magazine invited and aggregated opinions on the topic from a variety of well-known vegetarian thinkers. The intent was not to attempt a final analysis or synthesis into the ultimate answer, but a snapshot of the varieties of thought on this issue, with a bit of interplay between the ideas.

Though the animal rights-vs.-welfare argument dates back decades, the immediate catalyst for this discussion was Whole Foods’ adoption of “Farm Animal Compassionate Standards,” occasioned by CEO John Mackey’s going vegan. Mackey set up the Animal Compassion Foundation and instituted changes at Whole Foods including discontinuing the sale of live lobsters and drawing up more restrictive “compassionate standards” for meat from ducks and chickens. This is an interesting development in and of itself, but additionally, more than a dozen well-known animal organizations, including PETA, HSUS, Farm Sanctuary and Compassion Over Killing sent a group letter to Mackey endorsing and applauding the move.

Satya editors cleared space in two issues for a balance of perspectives from both sides, but from the get-go they telegraphed the direction they would be coming from:

When we at Satya discovered this letter it gave us pause. And made us ask questions and investigate. Eventually we will see animal products sold in Whole Foods with the Animal Compassion logo on them. What does it mean when body parts of dead animals are emblazoned with some of the words most precious to the animal rights movement? Humane. Compassion. Free.

This opening editorial goes on to quote James LaVeck – who in that issue warns readers about the folly of so called “Happy Meat” – with his observation that “To make good for the long haul, each of us must consider the possibility that our choices, however well motivated, may have unintended consequences none of us desire.” This is in fact the crux of the debate that follows – what are those consequences likely to be?

In other words, if animal advocates work together with industry in an implicit trade-off of qualified endorsement for lessening of animal suffering, what is the consequence down the road? We don’t know, but those of us who have an opinion about that relationship tend to expect its coming effects to be in perfect sync with our attitude.

To those such as Peter Singer, Bruce Friedrich, Gene Bauston and Paul Shapiro who sanction this relationship, one big consideration is the immediate consequence: Less animal suffering. Though most acknowledge that the effect is not going to be as large in practice as its PR would indicate, still change is change. Down the road, the results are more vague and myriad, but the general thought is that consumers, having begun to buy according to their conscience, will slowly continue to become more aware of the horrors of animal exploitation and pull their purchasing dollars away from the worst offenders and toward the “lesser evil” of cage-free, grass-fed, small-farm products. And then…

This is where the pro-“humane meat” vision seems to grow hazy, and where the anti-“humane meat” position, in the words of LaVeck, Karen Davis, Eddie Lama, Howard Lyman and Lee Hall, steps in to propose a very definite consequence: Having made one meager change, consumers have assuaged their conscience and feel no need to look more bluntly at the basic injustices of animal farming, so true change – the ultimate, necessary change of ending animal exploitation – becomes harder to achieve on a practical level. Additionally, by lending our credibility to part of the animal-abuse industry we risk a somewhat less tangible loss of our movement’s moral high ground, if not its soul.

As the Satya editors specify in their opening editorial, “No one is disputing whether animal activists care. Anyone working to reduce the suffering cares. It’s the question of strategy and direction that is in debate.” However, because the strategy deals with a crucial ethical issue, it’s easy for the terms of debate to leach over into ethics also, with activists pointing rhetorical fingers across the divide, conflating strategic differences with ethical ones.

“We would be irresponsible and unjust if we did not support meaningful and positive reforms that move industry away from the worst practices within animal agriculture,” says Miyun Park on one page, while Patty Mark on another asserts that “Spending any time working with the animal industries trying to make things ‘better’ is having coffee with the abusers.”

Although Satya has compiled and presented these essays and interviews so as to give both sides of this debate ample room and amplitude for their views, there is often a feeling of activists talking past one another. Both sides have long-term visions that justify either participating in or condemning the association of animal “rights” with so-called “compassionate” standards. These visions, lacking hard data about the long-term meat-buying behavior of consumers and exactly how it’s influenced, seem to be drawn from one or the other ideological perspective, rather than the other way around.

This can be seen perhaps most strikingly in Peter Singer’s interview – a man commonly thought of as the godfather of “animal rights” and commonly considered a vegan. First off, Singer curiously admits to routinely eating eggs “if they’re free-range” – despite many voices on other pages documenting the suffering of animals in “free-range” situations, details with which one would expect Singer must be familiar. Next he admonishes vegans to go ahead and eat cheese, rather than making “a big fuss” if a restaurant mistakenly serves it to us with non-vegans watching. “It’d be better off just to eat it because people are going to think, “Oh my god, these vegans…”

Notably, Singer doesn’t complete the thought he’s ascribing to “people,” which is handy, because it could just as easily be something like: “Oh my god, these vegans… tell the rest of us to give up cheese and here they eat it themselves rather than stick to their principles” in the scenario in which we’re eating rather than “fussing.” Again an attitude is ascribed to the general public without any evidence, an attitude that fits snugly with how the speaker ascribing it wants to behave. And just to spell it out, the advice is to make the case against eating animal products by… eating animal products.

Another striking argument is James LaVeck’s second essay, which blisters the incrementalist position by drawing in quotes and analogies from other historical industry/PR skirmishes involving a “divide and conquer” approach. It’s a passionately argued piece that makes the reader ready to renounce any and all compromise, any measures short of empty cages, on the basis that doing so will always benefit them (the PR folks and industry) and hurt us (activists and animals).

And such may indeed be the case. But it’s also hard to avoid being moved by the words of Adam Durand, who certainly doesn’t seem to be about compromise – he got arrested after releasing a film about cruelty at Wegman’s (grocery chain) chicken farms.

Durand has already done time in jail for trespassing on Wegman’s property, and just beat a burglary charge for the hens he rescued. So it’s hard to dismiss his fervor when Durand says: “I believe these welfare steps, like cage-free, are not just a middle ground; they are a solution to a number of the most serious problems animals face right now.”

One angle brought up by guest “carnivore” Michael Pollan was a long-term economic one, pointing out the effect a higher average price of meat would have on the total number of animals killed down the road. Moving more consumers toward small-farm “humane” production would mean more expensive meat, regularly purchased less often and by fewer people. At the turn of the year, in fact, higher U.S. meat prices were cited in a number of news stories; some blamed immigration raids on slaughterhouses, but others cited “shifting consumer diets” – less meat consumption.

If consumers are shifting their diets at all, we may not be receiving much of a consciousness-raising benefit by getting them to buy a different kind of animal product. Instead we might want to promote programs such as the successful Meatless Mondays – going entirely meatless for one day a week – sponsored by Johns Hopkins. Get the shift to be a gradual, incremental, growing abolition, rather than another sideways step to a different brand of exploitation.

Beyond that, the two branches of animal activists can find common ground in at least rejecting the phrase “humane meat” as an oxymoron. We can agree, hopefully, on the need for vegan advocacy no matter what else we do or don’t endorse. We can rejoice, whether loudly or silently, in any lessening of suffering a class of animals obtains. We can make it clear that we are one movement that contains diverse opinions, but which is dedicated to stopping animal exploitation wherever it occurs. And we can get more serious about studying what does and doesn’t work in situations with different people and circumstances, to make the case for the animals and against animal products.

Rather than conjecture we can look at actual behaviors. And, one hopes, keep watching shifting consumer diets do the incremental work while we focus on making a case for abolition.

Editor’s Note: Regrettably Satya ceased publication in 2007. However,
many of their excellent articles are still available at http://www.satyamag.com

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My job was to feed the cows supplemental grain. One morning, after a tremendously stormy night, the cows didn’t show up for breakfast. Cows always show up for breakfast. I knew that something must be wrong, so I went searching, and found them at the edge of the woods – next to a blackened tree – all dead. They had been hit by lightning during the storm, the current passing from one body to another as they huddled together. I counted 16 bodies – 12 cows and four calves.

There had been 10 calves, that meant that six might still be alive!

One by one, I located the babies and brought them back to the barn. They were only a few weeks old, still nursing. As I taught them to drink milk from bottles, a sense of commitment passed through me that seemed to equal the strength of the electricity that had passed through their mothers.

If an “act of God” hadn’t killed them,, there was no way I would allow an act of man to do so either! The Cow Sanctuary began with those six little calves that I half-sadly, half-jokingly called, “The Lightning Herd.” It was 1988 and I was a farm worker earning $5 an hour. I had no land to keep them on, and besides, they “belonged” to the man who owned the farm where I worked. All I had was determination, but I had a lot of that. I traded six months’ wages for the calves’ lives. Never was money better spent.

Next I had to find land. That took three years and in the meantime, they lived in a small field I rented next to my house. When I first brought them to their temporary quarters, my next door neighbor came over to see them. He was a retired dairy farmer, who had milked cows for more than 40 years. When I mentioned that I thought the cows were pretty bored in this new home, he laughed. “Bored?” he said, “Come on! Cows don’t do anything anyway, except eat.” I was amazed that after all those years of being around them, he was unaware of the many different ways that cows spend their time.

Eating is very high on their priority list, but it’s certainly not the only thing they do!

While their days have a regular pattern that includes eating, napping, running and playing, there’s plenty of impromptu activity. For example putting in fence post fascinates cows. While I’m digging, they sniff each lump of earth as it comes out of the hole. When the hole is done, they think they need to inspect it, getting down on their knees and poking their heads as far into the hole as they can.

This is what they do as a herd. Within that general routine, they have all kinds of individual things that they like to do.

And of course, each cow has his or her own special story, including Oblainka, so named because that’s what Old Blind Cow sounds like when you say it as loving baby talk.

Oblainka didn’t grow up with the Lightning Herd. She is an old, blind cow whose first owner was a rodeo cowboy who practiced bulldogging on her when she was a calf. Struggling against him was how she lost one eye, and all trust in humans. The other eye clouded over as a result of pinkeye.

The herd that she belonged to was pastured in a field very close to my cows. Their “owner” was going through some hard times and didn’t look in on them very often. When winter came, and the grass died, he didn’t bring them any hay. They could see me feeding my animals and would moo like crazy when the hay truck went by. I couldn’t watch them go hungry in the snow, so I started to feed them too. I noticed that one cow with white eyes was being pushed out by the others. She must not have been completely blind, or maybe she could tell with her hearing, but when I set a flake of hay down far away from where the other cows were eating, she came right to it and chowed down. By the third day she didn’t even try to fight her way into the main pile of hay, she just waited and followed me. That’s how she and I became friends.

After about a month, her “owner” finally resumed feeding these cows, but when I would go by, she still came running over. I’d give her a little grain, which she ate out of my hand. We did this through the winter. One day the man came with his livestock trailer. “That old blind cow isn’t bred,” he said. “Guess I’ll beef her.” I asked him what she was worth. “Sixty cents a pound,” he told me. I gave him the money and Oblainka joined our family.

Cows are pregnant for nine months, just like humans. Eight months and three weeks later, Oblainka gave birth to Charlie!

Cows have an extremely strong maternal instinct. They really love their calves…a lot. I knew that Oblainka must have had at least nine or 10 calves already, and that they had all been stolen from her, so I was happy for her that she was able to keep this last one.

She was determined to keep him, too, unaware that he wasn’t in danger. For the next six months, if anyone except me came into the pasture she would position herself between Charlie and the intruder, head down, ready to charge, pawing the ground and throwing clods of dirt high into the air with her hooves.

Somehow she communicated to him that he was not to trust any humans, and he didn’t let me touch him until he was three months old, even though she continued to eat out of my hand every day. Eventually she let Charlie share the grain she was taking from me and soon after that, he decided that being scratched all over felt wonderful. Oblainka still worried, though, and would jump up the moment I entered the shelter, nudging Charlie to get up, too and be ready to run if necessary.

As Charlie got older, Oblainka became less alarmed and would let me move about the other cows without getting up, provided that I didn’t come close to her and her son.

The breakthrough came when Charlie was just over a year old. I came into the shelter late one night to check on the cows before I went to bed. Oblainka and Charlie were lying down in a back corner. I could hear that there was something wrong with her breathing. It was very loud and wheezy. I moved closer, slowly, so as not to disturb her. When I got right next to her and she didn’t get up, I was sure that there was something seriously wrong. Pneumonia, I thought. Kneeling by her side, I tried to listen for the telltale gurgle in her wheezing. Then she woke up and the terrible wheezing stopped. Oblainka had been snoring! When she sniffed me, and stayed lying down, I knew that at long last she trusted me.

Every cow has a story…a number of stories. Not just mine, but each and every one of the billions and billions “served.” Every pot of beef stew was once a cow-person. Please think about it before you decide what to have for dinner.

(Editor’s Note: The strange twist of fate in this story is that Oblainka was also killed by lightning.)

Excerpted and adapted from What Cows Do: Personality Sketches of My Cows, published in Humane Innovations and Alternatives, volume 8, 1994.

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It was a huge paradigm shift when our Earth was shown to have something other than a starring role in the grand scheme, and is to some extent still being played out. The current orthodoxy is that although we were placed on an out-of-the-way planet nowhere near the center of our galaxy, our species is still the be-all and end-all of creation, or at least, failing that, of consciousness.

Now, within the last couple of decades, our mantra “that’s what separates us from the animals,” or what I call “human supremacy,” has been assailed by new science on animal behavior. Within even the last couple of years this credo has been forced to stake out more complex positions on higher ground as the floodwaters of reality have swamped our previous outposts.

Since the dawn of time, we were supposedly the only animals with a real language. By the 20th century that notion was already discredited, and our claim to distinction became “Man the Tool-Maker.” First we were the only animals that used tools, then when that was knocked down, the only animal that made tools. With documentary evidence of chimpanzees fashioning and using termite-scooping tools in rotting logs, that fell by the wayside as well.

It’s a good thing the defenders of unique humanity didn’t loudly proclaim that they might have tools, but we have entire tool kits, because it’s just come to light that certain chimps also use multiple self-fashioned tools on a given job. “Using infrared, motion-triggered video cameras,” National Geographic reported, “researchers have documented how chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo use a variety of tools to extract termites from their nests.”

“The new video cameras revealed chimps using one short stick to penetrate the aboveground mounds and then a ‘fishing probe’ to extract the termites,” the story continued. “For subterranean nests the chimps use their feet to force a larger ‘puncturing stick’ into the earth, drilling holes into termite chambers, and then a separate fishing probe to harvest the insects. Often the chimps modified the fishing probe, pulling it through their teeth to fray the end like a paintbrush. The frayed edge was better for collecting the insects.” Pat Wright, a primatologist with New York State’s Stony Brook University commented that “It’s exciting to watch these chimps do something that we’ve seen only people do before – use their feet to push the stick into the ground as a farmer might do with a shovel.”

Even lower primates have shown higher mentality than expected in recently devised tests. Last year, capuchin monkeys were taught to swap tokens for food. “Normally, capuchins were happy to exchange their tokens for cucumber. But if one monkey was given a cucumber while the other got a (tastier) grape for the same token, the first monkey rebelled. Some refused to pay, others took the cucumber but refused to eat it. The animal’s umbrage was even greater if the other monkey was rewarded for doing nothing. They did more than sulk, sometimes throwing the food out of their cage,” reported the Telegraph. The capuchin study reveals an emotional sense of fairness plays a key role in [economic] decision-making, said Sarah Brosnan of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre of Emory University. This sense of equality may be common among social primates, the article added.

And while it’s often easy to see, and easy for human supremacists to concede, similarities between our behavior and that of other primates, people who ascribe what are considered human characteristics to their animal companions are known to be “anthropomorphizing.” Or at least they were – one of the key assertions that cat and dog people make, that their animals have distinct personalities, has just been scientifically established. Discovery News reported late last year about a cross-species personality published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, showing that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans. “Dogs,” the article notes, “were chosen because of their wide availability, the fact that they safely and naturally exhibit a wide variety of behaviors, are understood well by many humans, and can travel to research sites with ease. Experts, however, suspect that many other animals also possess unique personalities.”

Well, personalities, yes, but can dogs think? Now, whether the dog who recently saved her owner’s life by calling 911 and barking incessantly into the phone receiver was “thinking” may be arguable. Certainly the puppy who managed to shoot the man who was killing the whole litter was just a lucky shot. But these anecdotes, and others, are not the only indications of the capabilities of companion animals.

In June, the journal Science reported that “A German border collie named Rico has learned 200 words, indicating that a dog’s ability to understand language is far better than expected.” A Bloomberg News story goes on to explain that Rico “correctly retrieved 37 out of 40 toys by name.” Here’s the kicker: “The dog was given the names of the toys just once.”

Do you speak German? If not, pretend you’re given German words for 40 objects, hearing each word only once. Would you then be able to match more than 37 of them? I’m pretty sure most non-German speakers, including me, wouldn’t even come close. What does that tell us?

Any one of these incidents puts a serious dent in the concept of human supremacy, if only because it shows that our previous assumption about the line delineating human consciousness from (non-human) animal consciousness is not where we thought it was and calls into question our ability to judge the issue dispassionately. But the pull of speciesism is strong, and the human brain is powerful and adaptable enough to generate new rationalizations on the fly: Primates are close to us genetically, and dogs and cats are close to us domestically, so sure, those animals might be the exceptions that prove the rule, but the rule still stands: You don’t see other, lower animals making tools, for instance.

But even that assurance was torpedoed two years ago, when “Betty the Crow” surprised tool-usage researchers by making her own tool to complete a task. Researchers wondered whether she would know to pick a hooked wire rather than a straight one to successfully lift a small jar from a tube to get at food. When her companion flew off with the hooked wire, Betty took the straight wire and bent it into a hook and retrieved the food – then she repeated this nine out of ten times in subsequent experiments.

In short, all this time it may have been our own inability to measure and comprehend the thought processes of birds (for instance) that has made the expression “bird brain” so derogatory. A recent Christian Science Monitor article begins with a humorous admission of this: “Bird brains seem to be smarter these days.” Less ironically, it continues: “Scientists are finding hints of a higher level of intelligence than expected as they look more closely at our avian friends.” A pair of studies on finches and jays showed the birds grasping more about their social situation and acting more upon it than scientists had assumed they could.

Similarly, news from the world of squirrels shows that there may be realms of intellect, socializing, and language that we have so far not been privy to because they work, literally, on a different wavelength. Using video cameras and a special ultrasonic device, Canadian researchers discovered that Richardson’s Ground Squirrels were warning each other about predators by means of high-pitched squeals inaudible to humans and probably most of the squirrels’ predators as well. “They’re able to discriminate among callers based on their calls, and they can communicate fairly specific information,” said zoologist David Wilson, who speculates that the content of the squirrels’ vocalizing “may include detailed information about the squirrels’ predators.”

A similarly-constructed study reported in November found sea animals virtually translating what entirely different species are saying: Seals, dolphins, and other marine mammals listen to the voice patterns of killer whales and can distinguish between two social classes of the same species of whale, knowing when to get out of the way of those that are hunting. An article in Discovery says these findings “could suggest marine mammals translate what the whales are saying,” and although lead author Volker Deecke resists putting it that strongly, he does go on to mention that “forest monkeys can decipher the alarm call of another monkey species, and hornbills, a tropical forest bird, can decipher monkey and eagle alarm calls.” The question might arise of how well human efforts to decipher other animals’ communication compare with these.

One line of delineation that persists even in discussion by some animal rights activists essentially excludes farm animals from true consideration in the intellectual community. Unsurprisingly, not many cognitive experiments are done on Holsteins or pigs. But even our poster child for the concept of “dumb animal,” the sheep, has been shown to be able to remember up to 50 different sheep faces for more than two years, as well as recognizing human faces. (How many sheep faces can you tell apart, by the way?)

And the more we look at even “lower” animals than that, the more we discover about the limitations of our own understanding. Fish, it turns out, “possess cognitive abilities outstripping those of some small mammals,” reports the Sunday Telegraph. With tests of memory and cognition that had previously been untried, Dr. Theresa Burt de Perera found that fish are “very capable of learning and remembering, and possess a range of cognitive skills that would surprise many people.”

Well, no matter what, we can fall back on our unique sense of self, though, right? Animals may be conscious of many things in the world around them, more things than we may have previously recognized, but we’re still unique because we are aware of our own consciousness – we can think about thinking, a “cognitive self-awareness” that is unknown in other animals. Or rather, was unknown, until we made a real effort to look for it.

“The Comparative Psychology of Uncertainty Monitoring and Metacognition,” in the Journal of Behavior and Brain Sciences describes three studies with humans, a group of Rhesus monkeys and one bottlenose dolphin using memory trials. Any animal that didn’t want to complete a particular trial could respond “uncertain.” It turned out that the monkeys and the dolphin used the “uncertain” response in a pattern “essentially identical to the pattern with which uncertain humans use it. Indeed, head researcher David Smith said that “the patterns of results produced by humans and animals provide some of the closest human-animal similarities in performance ever reported in the comparative literature.” He added that the results “suggest that some animals have functional features of, or parallels to, human conscious metacognition.”

In other words, science has repeatedly shown us that our basis for classifying our species as unique and supreme is more thoroughly based in chauvinism than in reality. Ironically, we seem to be irrational about defending our rationality. But why would this be?

Of course part of the problem is the way this information is conveyed, with each scientist proudly (jealously?) proclaiming a conventional-wisdom- busting breakthrough as though no others had occurred, and the mainstream media delivering the story to us as “quirky” or “odd” devoid of larger context. But the other part is that most humans don’t want to entertain the possibility that other animals share most of the characteristics we think of as uniquely human. That’s because it’s only by thinking of animals as unthinking, unfeeling automatons – by insisting that the sun still revolves around the earth – that we can shrug off the enormous harm that our species perpetrates on other animals, cruelly and unnecessarily, each and every day.

If we are to make a case for ourselves as uniquely conscious, the most logical way to prove that might be to abandon “human supremacy” and behave in a way that shows we grasp the larger implications of our species’ actions: To restore ecosystems instead of destroying them; to eat what’s best in the long run for our bodies and our ideals, instead of what’s most immediately handy; to instill in our children a respect for all forms of sentient life.

It’s possible, of course, that we could subsequently find that some animal somewhere has in some way done the same thing, once again redrawing the line. But the effort would not be wasted: At the very least we would have finally lived up to and embodied the term we use to describe ourselves: Humanity.

VANCE LEHMKUHL is a writer and political cartoonist. A collection of his vegetarian cartoons is published as a book, “The Joy of Soy.” Vance is featured as a speaker and entertainer at Vegetarian Summerfest and he has released a CD with his original music group, Green Beings.

References:

Chimps Shown Using Not Just a Tool but a “Tool Kit”, National Geographic News 10/6/04

Capuchins prove we are brothers under the skin, The Telegraph (UK) 9/18/03

Study: Dogs Have Personalities, Discovery News, 12/11/03

Four-legged lifesaver, Tri-City Herald, 10/29/04

Pup shoots man, saves litter mates, Associated Press, 9/9/04

Dogs Understand Language Better Than Expected, Study Finds, Bloomberg News, 6/10/04

Crow Makes Wire Hook to Get Food, National Geographic News, 8/8/02

Intelligence? It’s for the birds, Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/04

Ground squirrels scream ultrasonic warning, CBC News, 7/29/04

Marine Mammals Eavesdrop on Orcas, Discovery News, 11/12/04

Study Shows Shee Have Keen Memory for Faces, Scientific American, 11/9/01

Fast-learning fish have memories that put their owners to shame, The Telegraph (UK), 10/3/04

New UB research finds some animals know their cognitive limits, University at Buffalo Reporter, 12/11/03

The post The Decline & Fall of Human Supremacy appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

Many people, including some who call themselves vegetarians, think fish are less capable of suffering than mammals and birds. These would-be vegetarians may avoid eating mammals and birds while continuing to eat fish, sometimes arguing that the problems associated with the production and consumption of other animal products don’t apply to fish. After all, they reason: fish aren’t raised in the cruel confinement of factory farms; unlike the raising of “livestock,” fishing doesn’t cause soil erosion and depletion, require deforestation to create pasture land and land on which to grow feed crops, or require huge amounts of pesticides and irrigation water; also, fish flesh is generally lower in fat than other animal-derived foods and is a healthy food. All of these assumptions are either wrong or problematic.

Let us consider typical vegetarian arguments that address treatment of animals, health risks, and environmental sustainability, as they apply to fish “production” and
consumption. Even though by definition fish (and other aquatic animals) have never been considered part of a vegetarian diet, the reasons to avoid their consumption as you will see are compelling.

Compassion for Animals

Fishers and animal rights advocates have long debated whether or not fish can feel pain. Among the overwhelming evidence that fish can suffer is a recent report by a team of marine biologists at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute. The report was published by the Royal Society, one of Britain’s leading scientific institutes. The researchers found that rainbow trout possess pain receptors and react to a harmful substance (in this case, acetic acid) with “profound behavioral and physiological changes . . . over a prolonged period, comparable to those observed in higher mammals.” The researchers concluded that their findings “fulfill the criteria for animal pain.” Their conclusion is also consistent with common sense: fish, like other animals, need to be able to feel pain in order to survive.

Methods of catching and killing fish are clearly abusive. When fish are hauled up from a considerable depth, the sudden change in pressure on their bodies causes painful decompression that often causes their gills to collapse and their eyes to pop out. As soon as fish are removed from
water, they begin to suffocate.

Hooked fish struggle because of pain and fear. As described by Tom Hopkins, professor of marine science at the University of Alabama, getting hooked on a line
is “like dentistry without Novocain, drilling into exposed nerves.”

Fish who are “farmed” rather than caught experience more-prolonged suffering. Today in the United States, (to maximize profit,) most “farmed” trout, salmon, catfish, and other fish are raised in the same sort of intensive crowding found in commercial chicken and pig operations. Like the chicken-flesh industry, fish “farming” involves large-scale, highly mechanized production. Thousands of fish are crammed into ponds, troughs, or sea-floating cages, so that fish farmers can raise the greatest possible number of fish per cubic foot of water. In most cases, each fish is allotted a space scarcely larger than their body.

Farmed fish are fed pellets designed for unnaturally rapid weight gain. Under these abnormal intensely crowded conditions, fish suffer from stress, infections, parasites, oxygen depletion, and gas bubble disease (similar to “the bends” in humans). In an effort to prevent the spread of disease among the fish, producers give them large amounts of antibiotics. Even so, many fish die before slaughter. For economic reasons and to reduce fish feces, most farmed fish are starved for days or weeks before they are slaughtered.

Fish are not the only animals to suffer because of people’s appetite for their flesh. Egrets, hawks, and other birds who eat fish commonly are shot or poisoned to prevent them from eating the captives of these large open pools. Also, many sea turtles, dolphins, sea birds, and invertebrates suffer horrible deaths in commercial fishing nets.

Health Considerations

Many people who eat fish erroneously believe that it’s a healthful food. In a 1997 survey commissioned by the National Fisheries Institute, more than half of the 10,000 surveyed households cited health benefits among their primary
reasons for eating fish.

What are the actual health effects of consuming fish? Fish flesh contains omega-3 fatty acids which appear to be heart-protective. However, there are healthier plant based sources of these acids, especially flax seeds, and, in lesser amounts, canola, soybean, walnuts, tofu, pumpkin, and wheat germ. Further, these plant foods provide health-promoting fiber and antioxidants. And they don’t contain the toxic heavy metals and carcinogens found in fish flesh.

In any case, the possible benefits of omega-3 fatty acids are largely limited to people at risk of heart disease, and for pregnant and breast feeding women. The largest study of cholesterol levels, carried out in Framingham, Massachusetts, showed that people with cholesterol levels below 150 have virtually no such risk. Because people on well-planned vegan diets generally have cholesterol levels below 150, the best way to maintain cardiac health is to follow such a diet, thereby ensuring that artery blockages don’t occur in the first place.

As a result of human pollution of aquatic environments, eating fish flesh has become a major health hazard. Industrial and municipal wastes and the agricultural chemicals flushed into the world’s waters are absorbed by the fish who live there. Big fish, such as tuna and salmon, eat smaller fish. So, in general, the bigger the fish, the greater the accumulation of toxic chemicals throughout their flesh. Pollutants that concentrate in fish include pesticides; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); toxic metals such as lead, cadmium, chromium, and arsenic; dioxins; and radioactive substances such as strontium 90. Because of biological magnification during movement up the food chain, pollutants can reach levels as high as 9 million times that of the water in which they live. These pollutants have been linked to many health problems, including impaired behavioral development in children. Nursing infants consume half of their mother’s load of PCBs, dioxin, DDT, and other toxic chemicals. These toxins have been linked to cancers, nervous system disorders, fetal damage, and many other damaging health effects. Dr. Neal Barnard, director of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), describes fish as “a mixture of fat and protein, seasoned with toxic chemicals.”

Higher mercury levels in mothers who eat significant amounts of fish have been associated with birth defects, mental retardation, seizures, cerebral palsy, and developmental disabilities in their children. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) analysis released in 2004 indicated that about 630,000 of the 4 million children born annually in the U.S. are at risk of impaired motor function, learning capacity, memory, and vision – due to high levels of mercury in their bloodstreams.

The Food and Drug Administration and the EPA have advised that groups most sensitive to mercury – women of childbearing age and young children – should not eat swordfish, king mackerel, or shark because they’re high in mercury. Removing fish from the diet eliminates half of all mercury exposure and reduces one’s intake of other toxins.

“Farmed” salmon contains even more contaminants than flesh from wild-caught salmon. As reported in Science, an analysis of over two tons of flesh from salmon “farmed” in different countries indicated toxic levels of PCBs, dioxins, and banned insecticides such as toxaphene. The risks are so great that the EPA’s guidelines suggest that no one should eat flesh from “farmed” salmon more than once a month. The authors of the Science report warn that girls and young women should eat even less because pregnant women can pass on fish-flesh contaminants to their fetuses, impairing mental development and immune-system function. Two studies published in 2003 in the journal Chemosphere also reported elevated levels of PCBs, and certain chemicals, including flame retardant, in flesh from “farmed” salmon. Most salmon in U.S. markets today are farmed.

It’s easy to understand how industrial toxins accumulate in the flesh of ocean-dwelling fish, but how did farmed salmon get so contaminated? Most farmed salmon are fed pellets made from fish hauled up from the polluted sea floor. It takes 3 to 4 pounds of wild fish to produce just one pound of “farmed” fish.

“Farmed” fish also are fed dyes to give their flesh a pink color, as well as massive amounts of antibiotics to stave off bacterial diseases and sea lice. Farmed salmon are fed more antibiotics, per pound, than any other animals reared for slaughter. This contributes to increasing numbers of drug resistant bacteria, making it more difficult to treat some human diseases.

In a six-month investigation, Consumers Union found that nearly half the fish tested from markets in New York City, Chicago, and Santa Cruz, California were contaminated by bacteria from human or nonhuman feces. In addition, fish often contain disease-causing worms and parasites.

Even when carefully handled and continually refrigerated, dead fish rapidly rots. Fish often stay on trawlers for long periods before being brought to markets.

Fish flesh contains large amounts of protein. While most people think this is positive, the average American consumes excess protein, which has been linked to a number of health problems, including kidney stones and osteoporosis. Unlike fats and carbohydrates, protein can’t be stored by the human body. Any consumed protein that exceeds the amount that can be used on a given day is broken down and excreted. After someone eats concentrated protein, such as a salmon steak or fish fillet, their blood must be cleansed of protein wastes, such as urea, ammonia, and amino acid fragments. Since cleansing requires calcium, the excess protein from fish causes the loss of calcium through the urine. Continued year after year, this calcium loss may result in thin bones that easily fracture: osteoporosis, a condition that affects 15 million Americans. Due to lower acid production, vegetable protein generally causes much less calcium loss.

Fish contain none of the protective phytochemicals found only in plant-derived foods. Also, fish flesh has no fiber and virtually no complex carbohydrates. Lack of fiber may contribute to a number of diseases related to digestion, such as diverticulosis and colon cancer.

While fish is generally lower in fat than other animal-derived foods, not all fish is low in fat. Fifty-two percent of the calories in salmon flesh are from fat. In the case of many fish, such as catfish, swordfish, and sea trout, almost one-third of the calories are from fat. While fish fat is generally unsaturated and therefore doesn’t increase cholesterol in the blood of consumers, it does contribute to the build-up of toxins. Studies show that diets heavy in fish do not reverse arterial blockages. In fact, blockages often continue to worsen in patients who regularly eat fish.

Environmental Impact

Another very serious, and escalating, problem is the impact that fishing and fish “farming” have on the environment. Modern commercial trawlers are the size of a football field, with huge nets (sometimes miles long) that scoop up everything in their path. They can take in 800,000 pounds of fish in just one netting. Trawlers scrape up ocean bottoms, destroying coral reefs. Half of the fish and other sea creatures (including some protected species) obtained through commercial fishing are fed to animals reared for food, including “farmed” fish. Each year, about 30 million tons of aquatic animals – maimed, dying, or already dead – are simply tossed back into the ocean.

Commercial fishing fleets are rapidly destroying aquatic ecosystems. As a result, the number of large predatory fish has dramatically declined over the last 50 years. Once-huge populations of tuna, swordfish, and cod have dwindled to mere remnants. Dalhousie University biologist Ransom Myers has stated, “Unless we seriously control industrial fishing worldwide, many of the species will go extinct.” The ocean’s biodiversity rivals that of tropical rainforests. In effect, humans are clear-cutting these environments. Waters that once teemed with life are now so barren that they’ve been compared to a dust bowl.

Plummeting fish populations have ripple effects throughout the marine ecosystem. Predator-prey relationships have been disrupted. For example, a decline in pollack in western Alaska has caused a 90 percent decline in Steller’s sea lions, who are now listed as endangered. Because of the decrease in sea lions, who are orcas’ primary prey, orcas have been eating more sea otters. As a result, sea otters have declined by 90 percent since 1990.

As vessels scour increasingly fished-out waters, international confrontations are increasing. Russians have attacked Japanese vessels in the Northwest Pacific. Scottish fishers have attacked a Russian trawler. Norwegian patrols cut the nets of three Icelandic ships in the Arctic, and the crews exchanged shots. The United Nations has reported a sharp increase in piracy and armed robbery directed toward ships, many of them fishing vessels.

“Aquaculture,” too, has a significant negative impact on the environment. First, native fish are displaced as introduced fish invade spawning grounds and compete for food. Interbreeding pollutes the genetic pool. According to the National Fisheries Research Center, “aquaculture” has contributed to 68 percent of fish extinctions worldwide.

Fish “farming” also depletes natural resources. Modern commercial fishing is extremely energy-intensive. It requires as much as twenty calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce one calorie of energy from fish. Moreover, where fish are grown in artificial ponds, vast amounts of water are required to replenish oxygen and remove wastes. Rearing a ton of fish for slaughter requires eight tons of water. Producing one pound of flesh from captive fish requires three to four pounds of flesh from wild fish, so people who eat farmed fish contribute to the decimation of free-living fish populations.

“Aquaculture” also results in enormous pollution. The intense accumulation of wastes from fish farms can pollute the local marine environment and spread illnesses. Researchers at the University of Stockholm have found that pollution from fish farms can extend to an area much larger than the farm itself. In Scotland, for example, caged salmon contaminate coastal waters with untreated waste equivalent to that produced by 8 million people.

Because it requires massive water use, “aquaculture” routinely is conducted on coastal land that is the prime breeding and spawning ground for many free-living fish. Much coastal land has been cleared of forests, swamps, and rice patties to make room for fish “farms.”

Antibiotics given to farmed fish harm nearby seas and oceans. When farmed fish, laden with antibiotics, escape and breed with free-living fish, aquatic ecosystems may be thrown out of balance because of the mating of wild and farmed fish. Escaped fish raised in intensive confinement may spread disease to free populations of fish.

The “production” and consumption of fish flesh causes great suffering to fish and other animals, harms human health, threatens aquatic biodiversity, wastes natural resources, and invites international conflicts. A shift away from eating fish is both a societal and moral imperative.

Many thanks to Joan Dunayer, Jay Lavine, M.D., Michael Greger, M.D., and Dawn Carr for their valuable suggestions regarding this article.

The post Troubled Waters: The Case Against Eating Fish appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

Plus: Millions of chickens are scalded alive in huge tanks after neck-cutting, where they flop, scream, kick, break their bones, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads.

Hens Raised to Lay Eggs are:

• painfully debeaked at the hatchery, with no anesthesia.
• typically raised in 50 X 500 ft caged laying hen houses holding 80,000-125,000 hens (99 percent of U.S. laying hens are in cages averaging 8 hens per cage or about 48 to 61 square inches – a hen needs 72 square inches merely to stand comfortably and 290 square inches to flap her wings).
• force molted by food deprivation for up to 2 weeks to manipulate egg
  production.
• suffering from osteoporosis from lack of exercise and inadequate calcium for bone maintenance (hens would normally spend 60 percent of their day foraging for food).
• continuously breathing poisonous ammonia fumes arising from the manure pits beneath their cages.
• suffering from chronic respiratory diseases and untreated wounds and infections without veterinary care or treatment.
• prone to getting their heads and wings caught in the cage bars, resulting in a slow, painful death (the survivors live side by side with rotting corpses of their former cage mates and the only relief they get from standing on wires is standing on these corpses).
• when “spent,” generally put in dumpsters on site to suffocate (or are electrocuted or gassed) to death and then trucked to rendering companies to be turned into “pet” food, livestock/poultry feed and “spent hen” meal.

Plus: Yearly more than 250 million “egg-type” male chicks are suffocated, gassed or ground up alive at the hatchery because they don’t lay eggs and have no commercial value apart from pet food and farmed animal feed.

What About Free-Range Chickens?

Egg-laying hens:

• are debeaked at the hatchery in the same manner as battery-caged hens.
• may be force molted by food deprivation the same as battery-caged hens.
• often have only 1 to 2 square feet of living space per bird, typically living in crowded flocks of 2,000 or more birds (free-range does not solve the problem of oversized flocks and an unstimulating environment).
• are hauled to slaughter after a year or two, the same as battery-caged hens.

Plus: The male chick counterparts of free-range hens are destroyed at the hatchery using the same horrific methods as non-free-range chicks.

And: Although “free-range” chickens raised for meat must have USDA-certified access to the outdoors, environmental quality and space per bird are ignored in the regulations.

Did You Know?

In the United States, 9 billion chickens are slaughtered yearly for food, and worldwide it’s over 50 billion.

• 300 million laying hens are in U.S. agribusiness production each year.
• Chickens are excluded from the Animal Welfare and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Acts.
• The average American consumes 21 chickens per year, compared to approximately one (or part of one) cow or pig.
• Switching from “red meat” to chicken involves the suffering and slaughter of many more animals (it takes many small animals to add up to one large one).

The post Chickens’ Lives – Facing the Unappetizing Facts appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.

In the case of laying hens, these animals are nothing more than expendable egg producing machines that are spent after one or two years. For decades, egg operations that raise their birds in battery cages have been publicly charged with cruelty by some animal advocates. Now that public sentiment is shifting toward food options that are more “natural” and “humane,” some egg producers are taking heed, switching to “cage-free/free-range” methods.

Superficially to the unwary consumer this sounds like a grand improvement, especially to those who have some sympathy for animals. But, what does it really mean for these birds? First, cage-free operations are held to no standards, nor is there a credible inspection system. And what do we find back on the “farm?” We’ve traded thousands of stressed birds crammed into cages in large dark building for thousands of stressed birds crammed into large dark buildings. Actually most cage-free “farms” would more correctly have to be called industrial operations.

That’s not all that is troubling. Cage-free hens and battery hens come from the same hatcheries, where the male birds (hundreds of millions per year) are killed by suffocation or ground up alive at one day old. Like their battery hen counterparts, most cage-free hens are debeaked. And when their production falls (approximately two years) they are sent to the same slaughterhouses or rendering plants.

Egg producers could not afford the costs associated with keeping thousands of spent hens until they died naturally. That could mean providing food, shelter and veterinary care for a decade or longer.

According to Michele Alley-Grubb, cofounder and operator of the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary in Colorado, some of the most egregious cases of animal abuse they have encountered have come from so-called “cage-free” facilities and “family” farms. She’s often asked, “Don’t you think it is still better that people buy cage-free eggs rather than the others if they are going to buy eggs anyway?” Alley-Grubb says, “It is like asking if strangulation is better than suffocation. The answer is: Neither is an acceptable option.”

The tragedy of this new variety of farm animal abuse is compounded by the fact that well-meaning consumers believe they’re making compassionate choices when in fact they’re financially supporting (and helping to perpetuate) inhumane systems. Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has joined the growing ranks of individuals and activists who are debunking the claims for “humanely” produced animal products.

Alley-Grubb says, “One of the most destructive things we can do for the animals is to lie to ourselves or allow ourselves to be fooled and misinformed into believing that animal agriculture of any kind is humane.”

To learn more about Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary, or to support their efforts, visit:www.peacefulprairiesanctuary.org; or contact: peacefulprairie@netecin.net

The post Cage-Free Eggs – Are They Really a Humane Alternative? appeared first on North American Vegetarian Society.