Agriculture
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1992:
“If the livestock industry demonstrates good
faith toward animal advocacy, it should suffer little eco-
nomic impact from increased regulation to enhance animal
contentment,” Ohio State University agricultural economists
Carl Zulauf and Matthew Krause recently told Feedstuffs
readers. Zulauf and Krause assumed that consumers would
be willing to pay marginally higher prices for animal prod-
ucts to be assured that they were not obtained by cruel meth-
ods. Some individual farmers would be hurt by obligatory
changes of method, they said, but others would prosper,
and the overall net effect would be nil. Much of the cost of
replacing equipment and facilities would be absorbed into
the ongoing cost of upkeep. Zulauf and Krause did not con-
sider the possibility that consumers might continue to move
toward vegetarianism at the unprecedented pace of the past
decade––a trend that could encourage many farmers to
abandon animal production.
Italian farmers have been ordered to slaughter
approximately 400,000 cows to bring milk production into
line with the new European Economic Community quotas.
Animal protection advocate Paolo D’Arpini mobilized a cow
adoption program, but discovered that many prospective
“adopters” had notions of obtaining free beefsteaks.
“We’re not out to make a killing at this,”
claims co-proprietor Sherrill Sanville, but Vermont’s first
state-licensed rabbit slaughterhouse has been bludgeoning
40 rabbits a day since August. The killing tool is a steel
pipe. The “slaughterhouse,” actually a partioned corner of
an old barn, is operated by Sanville and her husband Roger,
of Newport, together with Bernice and Frederick Weston of
Westford, who have been in the rabbit business for nearly
30 years.
Believed to be the leading rabbit producer in the
southwest, Brenda Peters of Finmark Rabbits recently
opened a second rabbitry and slaughterhouse in Clovis,
New Mexio. Peters already has facilities in Buckholts,
Texas, and in Colorado. A lecturer in veterinary medicine
at Texas A&M, Peters got into the rabbit business a decade
ago as an expansion of her sons’ 4-H Club projects. She
now sells dead rabbits to 300 outlets in six states.
A single year’s topsoil loss due to wind erosion
can take 20 years to replace, according to research done by
Agriculture Canada soil conservationist Frank Larney at
Lethbridge, Alberta. Topsoil becomes vulnerable to wind
erosion as result of overgrazing, deforestation, and/or
intensive row crop cultivation.
Farm Sanctuary will open a west coast facility
at Orland, California, with a work party on January 8.
Work parties will continue every Saturday “until the farm is
operational for rescue and shelter efforts,” according to out-
reach coordinator Joshua Goldman. Resident internships are
available. For details, write P.O. Box 150, Watkins Glen,
NY 14891-0150.
Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food
Animals have been unable to get news media to air any por-
tion of a 90-minute video the group made last April 8 of the
suffering of a downed dairy cow at the Ontario Stockyards,
according to Vancouver Sun columnist Nicholas Read.
Because the “downers” issue hasn’t yet received public
attention, Agriculture Canada animal health programs man-
ager Michael Martin says, the department has no plans to
either investigate or regulate the situation. The Ontario min-
istry of agriculture and fisheries estimates that slaughter-
houses in that province take in about 700 “downers” a
month. The total per month in Quebec, where the situation
is even less monitored, is believed to be about twice as high.
The National Cattlemen’s Association and
National Milk Producers Federation, not the best of
friends over the past decade, are beginning to discuss acting
together in opposition to environmentalists and consumer
activists, according to Render, the trade journal of the
knackers industry. (This is the industry that picks up and
processes “downers” and other carcasses or offal deemed
unfit for human consumption.)
