Our World and Everything in It

 

 

I’ve been wondering how long it would take for religious communities to recognize the cruelty of animal farming; how extremely opposite it is from the idea of kosher where animals are tended with kindness and the ” method of slaughter is a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness. This method is painless, causes unconsciousness within two seconds, and is widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible.” A condition under which the meat is further processed is supposed to be extremely sanitary.

 

This is hardly the definition of a CAFO, where animals are so depressed and frustrated, they chew on the metal bars of their confinement. I’ve written so many blogs about CAFO’s and animal farms. That’s why I was so happy to read an article in the Summer publication of All Animals, by the Humane Society of the U.S., about America’s churches stepping forward to start a grassroots endeavor to restore humane farming.

 

Methodists support totally natural systems of farming. Jewish rabbis recommend that humans strive to prevent animal suffering. While many other denominations condemn factory farms altogether.

 

HSUS’s “All Creatures Great and Small” campaign plans to call on the religious, I like to say spiritual, individuals to only purchase cage-free eggs. The article says that “participants can make an on line pledge to do so and pass it along to friends as a form of networking. It also said, “They can then download materials to use in youth groups, Sunday schools, sermons, and bulletins.” There is also a documentary from “people whose religion inspired them to make dietary changes.” This particular campaign will be this October during the monthlong feast of St. Francis of Assisi, saint to all animals.

 

This one small pledge is designed to spread grassroots style and hopefully bring awareness to the spiritually minded about the guidelines in the bible as to what and how we eat. People can argue that the guidelines are in the Old Testament that we’re living the New Testament now. Yet we cannot simply disregard the entire part of the bible that tells us where we came from can we? Without it, we would have no heritage.

 

At very least, in America, where spiritualism seems to abound these days, it might make us pay better attention to not only what we eat but how it was raised. It could make a big difference in our health and diminish the amount of pollution we unleash into the environment from factory farms. Not bad by-products for a little extra awareness about what we eat.   

I’ve complained about an unscrupulous EPA before, showing that some of its exiting hierarchy was tied to the oil industry. I’ve also tried to get the point across that the Bush administration has dismantled the federal government in small increments handing out contracts to for-profit corporations to do the work our agencies used to do, while cutting the budget drastically in many departments across the board. Sound alright? A lot of people think so—less spending. But do we know who is doing the work instead, how the contract was awarded, who is responsible if something goes wrong, or how much the contractor was actually paid for the job?

Cuts are going to happen. We must pay for the war.  But we just don’t know all the things that have been cut, until it’s too late that is. Just last year around this time, the Bush administration planned to cut some $500 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and was met with fierce opposition in congress. The complaint was that it would shortchange vital environmental programs and was unacceptable. Do ya think?

Now it’s the FDA. The cover of the April 2008 Reader’s Digest asks “Can We Trust the FDA?—Must Read Special Report,” and reveals the Food and Drug Administration is in crisis. Most of the article is about the drugs we take, but the department is responsible for regulating $1.5 trillion in food, as well as, animal feeds and drugs. The article stated that insiders say, “it’s [FDA] woefully underfunded, dangerously understaffed and fractured by bitter internal tensions.” I immediately suspected feuding within the department exists because some people have ethics. In 2004, the FDA came under fire for silencing a staff scientist about antidepressants causing suicidal tendencies in teens. Ditto for the EPA, when scientists testified before congress last year that they were tired of being suppressed, and their findings/reports compromised.

The FDA receives only $2 billion in funding, which sounds like a lot but as the article says “is about what Fairfax County, Virginia, pays for its public schools.” It’s really frightening to read words like “chilling new report” in reference to the department in charge of our food and medicine. Worse yet the “chilling” report was commissioned by the FDA’s own advisory Science Board that also describes it as “nearly out of control.”

Congress has just begun to help shore up the FDA, increasing their funding by $145 million, but hey compared to billions, that’s a drop in the bucket. Of course about a quarter of that went to the drug review branch, another reason to read this story to see how much conflict of interest there is within the FDA relative to the drug industry. But special interests and conflict of interest on the food side of this equation cause an equal amount of damage. We start seeing problems like tainted food, beef, and chicken recalls, lax inspection of CAFO’s and runoff from them that may make its way into our tributaries, and of course really lax inspection of imported food. I watched a program where farm raised shrimp in an Asian country were swimming in polluted water with feces from farm animals. I check what I buy now. I steer clear of imports. I know the FDA isn’t checking.

The article said the public needs to weigh in. Weigh in? Scream for Pete’s sake. This is our bread, this is our health and it’s being handled shabbily. This type of decision-making and ethics is repetitive in the EPA, and more than likely throughout our federal agencies at this point. As I read the five key problems in this industry, they were similar to the EPA’s problems:

· The FDA suffers pressure from industry to speed decisions, and soft-pedal problems.
· Safety of New Drugs. Safety decisions are many times based on inefficient industry studies.
· Sloppy Record Keeping
· Conflicts of Interest
· Muzzled Experts

This list just about says it all doesn’t it? From the looks of things, we’re on our own.

Read the article: http://www.rd.com/national-interest/special-reports-and-surveys/problems-in-the-fda/article55513.html

Last week on Good Morning America there was a guy who has been fueling his little diesel car with Chinese oil. What is Chinese oil? It’s the leftover oil from Chinese restaurants. He said the restaurant was only too happy to give the oil away. He put it in a plastic gas container and uses a funnel to put it in his car. He said he probably saved $3,000 last year by not buying gas. So if you have a little diesel car you drive to work, why not? The Welsh do it. The Welsh were using so much vegetable oil in their cars they had to come up with laws to stop it because the country wasn’t getting enough money from gas tax. The big clue? Everytime there was a new delivery of cooking oil to the supermarkets, the shelves were wiped out in hours. Now the Welsh police are allowed to stop a car and look at what it’s running in its tank. 

On that note, I ran across something good from an oil company. While I was researching oil company contributions to alternative energy, I read that Conoco Phillips is working with Tyson foods to use chicken fat for fuel.  Reuters.com has the entire article. The article stated: “Beef, pork and chicken fat from Tyson rendering plants will be processed at ConocoPhillips refineries to create transportation fuel.” They plan in the future to produce about 175 million gallons per year of this biodiesel. Conoco Phillips is already preparing some of their refineries for processing the animal fat. The first one is in Borger, Texas. ConocoPhillips is processing soybean oil as a biodiesel fuel already at its Whitegate refinery in Cork, Ireland. Tyson said “the fats will be processed with hydrocarbon feedstocks to produce a high-quality diesel fuel that meets all federal standards for ultra-low-sulfur diesel.” And unlike ethanol, this fuel can run through pipelines. 

This is good news. These two companies are making good use of leftover pollution, and there is a lot of it in the meatpacking industry. Since Conoco Phillips doesn’t stand to gain or lose from doing this, this is a very generous move.  I just hope finding a way to get rid of rendering material doesn’t cause a spike in eating more meat, or establishing more CAFO’s! There is a humane and ethical side to the treatment of animals that figures in here, not just the environment, or money. Industrialized farming is extremely horrific for animals, totally inhumane, and we end up with sickly meat.

http://www.reuters.com/article/consumerproducts-SP/idUSN1629340720070416?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

The U.S. just had the largest beef recall in history.  Who can tell? We’ve had so many. Is it slowing anyone down from eating more burgers? Probably not. Most of the beef, 143 million lbs. was heading to school cafeterias. There was enough tainted beef to provide two burgers to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. according to ABC. Finally, ABC news aired film footage showing how sick, downed animals that are too ill to stand are pushed, prodded, even fork-lifted into a slaughterhouse to be hacked into our food. The news said: “It might be disturbing.”

Disturbing? If we really wanted to cure obesity in America, everyone should have to visit a petting zoo and interact with farmyard animals, pet their soft muzzles, feel their innocence, then visit a CAFO and a slaughterhouse. How about inhaling some fumes from the open-air lagoons while we’re there? It just might work to cure our eating disease.

What I saw on TV this morning is why I quit eating pigs and cows. If the average American experienced where our food came from, how it is processed, we would be a much, much thinner nation. We are an absolutely cruel nation in our utilization of Confined Animal Factories or CAFO’s, and are neglectful in paying any attention to the treatment of our farm animals. The only thing we are interested in is putting the feedbag on ourselves. 

Since the average American is not likely to come near a slaughterhouse, the next best thing is to watch the movie, “Fast Food Nation.” The movie gives many ideas as to why our food industry is serving us up tainted meat. We are processing everything far too quickly and completely neglecting what is known as  “Kosher” or clean and humanely raised food. I honestly don’t think that some of the pigs and cows that are sent into the slaughterhouse are completely dead before being cut up into steaks. The cow on this morning’s newscast was so sick it couldn’t stand, yet someone was screaming at it, scaring it, prodding it to actually walk into the slaughterhouse on its own. I sometimes hate the modern world. It progresses but with less and less empathy for other living things.

Thus is our sustenance these days. Not pretty. CAFO’s and industrialized farming should be stopped. We’re all too fat anyway. I could lose ten lbs. and never miss it. How about you and especially in light of the latest link between obesity and cancer? I’ve often thought the two somehow go together, but hey I’m not a scientist. I just know lugging around 20 extra lbs. is a lot of extra heft. I know that every time I buy 20 lbs of cat litter, or topsoil, or landscaping mulch. I can lift it. I can fling it still, but I can’t imagine walking around every day with that excess hanging about.  
 

I wrote a blog called “Pig Poo Who Knew” about the meatpacking business and CAFO’s when I read Rolling Stone’s incredible expose by Jeff Tietz called “Boss Hog.” It was such an eye opener about the cruelty of industrialized farming that I took a look at the horrid conditions in which chickens are raised too. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=100.  We seldom see any documentaries about the plight of farm animals on network television in the U.S. I presume it’s because of the food industry lobby. But in Great Britain it’s another story.

I ran across an article on Reuter’s online that states: “McDonalds sees animal welfare gaining ground in the UK.” McDonalds is anticipating that a British documentary airing on TV over there will really make a difference to farm animals particularly poultry. Admittedly, 91% of all the British know nothing about their food farms. In that case, insight into how the hens are raised should arouse quite a lot of concern. We don’t know all that much over here either and probably don’t know that chicken outsold beef at US McDonalds last year. So much for the Big Mac, and Quarter Pounder. The Reuter’s article stated that: “McDonald’s in Britain has served only free range eggs during the last 10 years,” and that “the company was currently looking at providing canopy cover for chickens to encourage hens to range more.” UK McDonalds is also looking into pig-rearing practices. It seems the poor pigs are confined, and distressed in such close proximity all the time they chew each other’s tails. The tails end up getting docked. There are infection issues I imagine, and all would be unnecessary if the pigs were raised humanely in the first place. Concern for their tails is a start. This is an intelligent animal also remember?  McDonalds UK said they don’t mind the added costs of humane farming if it served the public well. Everything comes back to the consumer. It’s our responsibility no matter how hard we try to shrug it off because if we don’t buy, things change. It’s that simple.

The actual UK documentary about the horrific way chickens are raised was highlighted in “The Independent” UK news and showcased on a website called “Chicken Out, Campaign for a Free Range Future.” “Chicken Out” is kind of catchy isn’t it? The covert filming for the documentary was done by an animal welfare group called “Compassion in World Farming” or CIWF. The article said it was about the grim life inside a chicken coop for 25 to 50 THOUSAND chickens. Imagine the ammonia stench? That would knock you down. It also stated: “Britain’s RSPCA called on supermarkets to quit selling the mass produced chickens.” Go RSPCA!

The British documentary will air on mainstream British television and be given a boost by chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver. They want to highlight what food animals go through in order to keep prices down and mass production up, and that free range chickens and organic birds are the way to go if the industry is ever going to change. Imagine some of our stellar chefs hosting a show on NBC or Fox that would air the extremely bad conditions of farm animals perpetuated by one of our big, national food suppliers? Yeah, that’ll happen. 

So what’s wrong with our media? Sure I’ve caught many articles in magazines and documentaries on PBS, and subscription TV channels about the horrid conditions for our farm animals, but 20 million Americans don’t have subscription TV. The rest that do aren’t getting-in-your-face documentaries. Let’s face it, our news media is not going to upset a major lobby like big meatpacker, Smithfield Foods, unless it’s Rolling Stone magazine of course. So I have to say kudos to the UK and the spirit of revealing the unnecessary cruelty of the food business to the mainstream public in an effort to change, whether their food industry takes a hit or not.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0447565920080104
http://www.chickenout.tv/news.html?newsid=67.

Whether or not cloned meat is safe is not an issue. It’s not a good idea based on what the meatpacking business does with real animals on industrialized farms and CAFO’s, the fact that Americans disregarded health warnings and boosted our obesity quotient some 30% last year, and our propensity to waste half of our food supply to begin with. Do we really need to clone animals for food?

It’s highly doubtful looking at these pictures of dead hogs stacked sky high that lived from birth to death confined in a box, chewing on metal bars out of distress, then died for no good purpose whatsoever:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters.

As you look at this stack of pigs, remember that science has declared them to be highly intelligent animals. If we do this to regular farm animals, what will we do with clones? Our cruelty quotient will go up and it’s not all that good now. We turn our heads to all types of cruelty already.

We don’t need to fuel obesity either. Type II diabetes is on the rise and linked with obesity from pounding down too many burgers, 20 oz. steaks, and slabs of ribs. Producing more food from cloned animals is contrary because we’re already stuffed on only half of what we produce. The average family throws away 14% of all their food. If beer and pop counts, I’m surprised it’s not higher. Rounding up cans and bottles from party aftermath is a little unnerving. There are always a bunch of them half empty and a few completely full.

So the push for cloning for more food doesn’t make sense, but the push for cloned animals for research does. We’ll be off and running in that direction all too quickly and with little recourse because we didn’t protest cloning animals for food in the first place. The FDA stated they wanted to get public opinion about cloned animals for food. So let them know.

I just got through reading some current worldwide environmental news and have to say, we don’t seem to have a clear-cut view of anything. What we profess, what we say, and what we actually do is all contrary.  First, I saw the Pope give his blessing and speak on behalf of peace and the environment over the Christmas season to over one billion Catholics. And the World Council of Churches that represents 560 million Christians worldwide is calling concerns over global warming a matter of faith. The WCC has had a program about climate change since 1992 and books about ecotheology (I’m interested).  Dr. Samuel Kobia the Secy. General of the WCC stipulates that Christians are well aware that dominion over all living things was given to us. He said that meant, “We were entrusted with the care of the rest of God’s creation.” The emphasis is on the word “CARE” here.

Care doesn’t come under savagely taking a machete to an orangutan trying to defend it’s young, or hooking a live dolphin in the side and sending it to be stripped of skin before it’s even dead, while the resulting meat is basically poison from ingesting too many pollutants, or shooting 6 elephants dead for stepping into a coffee field that is supposed to be their sanctuary. We should actively try to get this stopped, but our demands for things like lumber and coffee encourage it.  Oh and don’t forget about native animals and the latest Internet hunting websites that have yet to be banned in over 20 states.

There was the news about a zoo tiger that got loose and killed one man, and maimed two others before it was shot dead. The media wanted to know and put this question out to the public if it is wise to keep caged and wild animals? 145,000,000 people visit zoos every year without incident. If we didn’t have zoos the likelihood of seeing a live polar bear, tiger, elephant, orangutan, gorilla, condor, panda…etc., would more than likely be nil. I have to wonder about the media here. Do they operate with any type of perspective about things, or just pounce on a bit of fantastic news with so much fervor it gets skewed out of proportion and normalcy? People are maimed in cars every day and no one says: “Gee, should we really be driving?”

 

We’ve heard about individual states taking their own course of action for the environment with many implementing their own environmental laws especially since the Supreme Court decided that the EPA is supposed to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases according to the Clean Air Act but has not done so. So what do I read? The Bush administration: “Thursday announced that it will block efforts by California, Maryland, and 15 other states to cut emissions of global warming gases from cars and trucks.” Now that is an example of talking out of two sides of one’s mouth isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be forging ahead with alternative energy anyway?

 

This administration got elected based on a big moral majority. Do we or do we not celebrate animals? I hope we  understand the world is in our care. We simply can’t keep spreading and demanding, taking up room where other things live. We end up killing the very same animals we ooh and ah over at the zoo. We love cartoon movies with animals, little talking pigs, Flipper, the Lion King. We are supposed to teach our children to be kinds to animals. But when animals act out in their normal manner we talk about dispensing with them right away, like the zoo issue. We sacrifice living breathing creatures in our own species chain over things we need for our big houses or our big lifestyle. And we elect our president/vice president based on morality when this latest threat to block states trying to do right by the environment proves the opposite. So where do we stand between what we believe, what we say, and what we actually do about our world and everything in it because I can’t tell?

 

By the way, a current gallop poll has President Bush as the number one pick among the most admired men and women of 2007. Is that not the icing on the cookie for contradictions as far as you’ve read them here?
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2007/2007-12-24-01.asp.

      

  

 On Christmas Eve I think it’s important to remember where the Christ Child was born, AMONG THE ANIMALS in a manger. Every nativity scene is one with animals. A manger in those days was: “a feed trough found in a stable. In Bible times mangers were made from clay mixed with straw or from stones held together with mud; sometimes they were carved in natural outcroppings of rock,” http://www.padfield.com/1999/manger.html. There is an actual picture taken of a manger at Megiddo used in the stables of King Ahab on the linked website.

So the King of Kings was placed in the feed trough of the animals of a stable. This is a quite a statement about the beasts of the earth, that they were worthy of such an event. This Christmas take the time to reflect not only on mankind, but peace for the earth and all of the living things that are in jeopardy of extinction. The “beasts” as in animals of the earth are written about in the old and new testament over 200 times. Their importance is undeniable. We weren’t meant to live in a world without animals, especially those that have been here for centuries that are now in danger.

PEACE

A few blogs ago I wrote about setting an example as far as being humane to animals before we point fingers at other countries that dolphin hunt, seal hunt, whale hunt, and kill tigers, elephants, and apes.  Someone retorted about other countries, which was exactly what I made a point about NOT doing. After all, isn’t that one of the first things we teach siblings, not to point fingers elsewhere?

Anyway after the same commenter digressed to this being the best country in the world, the idea of being a good example was kind of lost in conversation. But it is important, and I am resurrecting the notion. Being good examples for all types of humanitarian efforts would give us much better leverage for persuading other governments to give up inhumane hunts like the renewed Japanese whale hunt.

An example of what I am talking about jumped off the “Verbatim” page of Time Magazine’s December 3rd issue. This Japanese whale-meat butcher in the whaling port of Shimonoseki, the home of Japan’s largest whaling expedition in decades, remarked about the inhumanity of it all: ‘”How is eating whale different from eating pigs or cows?”‘ See my point?

We’ll never get anywhere asking other countries not to seal, whale, or dolphin hunt when we slaughter and treat animals inhumanely ourselves. It looks like pollution may halt hunts like these before conscience even comes into play. The Japanese plan on hunting 50 endangered pin whales and 50 threatened humpback whales, along with others, totaling 1000. Trouble is, just like the dolphin meat from the barbaric Japanese dolphin hunt, the whale meat is more than likely poison, tainted by chemical toxins. Many of the larger species of fish and mammals in the ocean are contaminated. A current study by: “Norwegian scientists found that killer whales - or orcas, as they are sometimes known - have overtaken polar bears at the head of the toxic table” according to a BBC article. It said: “No other arctic mammals have ingested such a high concentration of hazardous man-made chemicals.” I was a little amazed at what was found in the blubber, traces of pesticide, flame retardant, and PCB’s. The WWF or World Wildlife Foundation says, “The Arctic has become a chemical sink.”

But are the Japanese worried? Why should they be? An opinion poll done last year by the Nippon Research Centre found that 95% percent of Japanese never or rarely ate whale meat. So why the hunt? Like I stated in another blog, this hunt is being done under the guise of research. The odd thing is another study found that, “65% of Japanese students agreed with the view that scientific research on whales should only use non-lethal methods.”

All the bad international press about this whale hunt embarrasses Japan’s leadership. Japanese don’t eat the meat. A majority of Japanese college students do not advocate the killing of a species in order to study it. And the meat is more than likely poisoned. But the hunt goes on? Sounds like other countries have the same problem as we do where a majority of voices go unheard, and unheeded.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4520104.stm
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/fearing-us-reaction-japanese

Five dollars per gallon for milk by fall might be enough to cause people to give it up. Milk and dairy prices are going up because gas prices are spiking transportation costs. Supposedly feed for the cows has gone up because corn is being used for ethanol also. Which I think is a crock. Anybody see a bunch of ethanol pumps anywhere? Anyway, there are droughts in many parts of the world affecting milk production also while demand for milk worldwide is increasing.

I suggest that people in Monroe buy Monroe milk from Calder Brothers Dairy. If you’re going to pay $5 per gallon for that shabby milk from the grocery store, you may as well get the best. Calders is the sweetest milk my husband and I have ever tasted. It’s pure milk like it used to be. We are lucky enough to be within the delivery routes for Calders out here in South Rockwood. We have had a milk box and a milkman for 20 years. I am spoiled forever. We get 3 quarts per week and anything else Calder’s produces on my porch every Tuesday, like fresh eggs. We drink skim milk, and I will challenge my Calder’s skim milk to the regular milk at the store for taste and substance anytime. It might be skim but I still get a cream ring at the top of the bottle. Now that’s real milk. I ran out of Calders once and picked up a quart of 2% regular milk at the store. My husband wanted to know if it was sour. Calders is worth the money.

If you live in Monroe you should visit the Calders Farm off of Stony Creek Rd. because it’s fun to walk around a real farm. The more land we loose in this country to fire and urban sprawl the less likely farms like this will be around for generations to come. Turn left onto Stony Creek from Telegraph Rd. north, and follow the road until you see the signs for Calders. You’ll know you’re close when you see the black and white dairy cows. It’s an old fashioned farm with all types of animals roaming around including llamas. Kids love it.

Calders is kind to animals also. I found a home there at the farm for a rooster I rescued. The rooster was abandoned in a park near my house. Calders said they would take him. He was ornery and I figured they’d off him in a stew pot, but since he was black with green feathers, and a handsome guy, Calders found the value in his offspring. The next time I visited, I found he had his own fenced area and hen house. Nice. By the looks of all the ducks, chickens, and cats, others have left their former pets off there also.

The best part of the visit to Calders is getting ice cream in their country store. It’s oh so good. Visitors can purchase just about anything Calder’s produces at the country store. Oh and if you are an eggnog junkie during the holidays, the most decadent, richest eggnog you’ve ever tasted is made by Calders. The farm is a nice asset for Monroe. Check it out while the summer months are still here. The animals and ice cream await you. For more info read:  http://www.calderdairy.com/.