Forced Labor on the Factory Farm

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Forced Labor on the Factory Farm
by Karen Davis, PhD, founder & president, United Poultry Concerns

“Unless they were productive, their lives were worthless to their masters.”
–Anne Applebaum, Gulag, A History

A primary difference between a factory
farm and a concentration camp would appear to be
the role of forced labor.
“Work was the central function of most
Soviet camps,” according to Anne Applebaum in
Gulag: A History. In Nazi Germany, Hitler built
camps to terrorize the population into
compliance, and, after war broke out, to
provide German industry with cheap, expendable
labor. “The entire existence of Nazi
concentration camps was marked by a constant
tension between work and extermination,” says
Enzo Traverso in The Origins of Nazi Violence.
Compared to our usual concept of “work”
as “physical and/or mental effort exerted to do
or make something,” the notion that chickens on
a factory farm “work” may seem strange. Granted,
egg-laying hens are caged in horrible conditions,
but while they are there, are they not just
laying eggs the way apples fall from a tree?

Farm Animals

Humane reps can’t get to H5N1 sites in Croatia

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

DUBROVNIK–Concern that the potentially human-killing avian
flu H5N1 might hit Croatia during the October 18-19, 2005
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference in Dubrovnik proved
premature.
Though the spread of H5N1 from nearby parts of Romania,
Russia, and Turkey was considered inevitable, the first cases were
not actually detected until October 21, when six swans were found
dead at a fish farm near Zdenci National Park.
Tissue samples from the dead swans were rushed to Britain for
further testing, but Croatian officials did not wait for the
results before killing all 10,000 chickens and other domestic fowl
kept within three kilometers of where the swans were discovered.
Poultry product sales fell by hal

Chicken rescue

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Katrina closed 11 of the 14 Mississippi chicken
slaughterhouses, according to the National Chicken Council, briefly
cutting U.S. poultry killing by as much as 10%. Tornadoes driven
ahead of Katrina destroyed at least 17 “growout houses” in Georgia,
killing more than 250,000 chickens and one chicken farmer.
The Farm Sanctuary refuge at Watkins Glen, New York, on
September 14 accepted 725 chickens “saved from a farm ravaged by
Hurricane Katrina in rural Mississippi,” according to a Farm
Sanctuary press release. The chickens had been left to die or be
bulldozed into mass graves.”
“We saw a massive open grave containing thousands of dead
chickens crawling with maggots,” elaborated volunteer Kate Walker.
“Shockingly, 21 were still alive, huddled in the corner of the pit.”
“The property included five warehouse-type sheds, each
confining tens of thousands of birds,” added Animal Place founder
Kim Sturla, who was on the scene with personnel from the Black
Beauty Ranch sanctuary in Texas.
“The producer, who raises broiler chickens for Tyson Foods,
collected 15,000 birds from the damaged sheds and relocated them into
the already overcrowded remaining two sheds,” Sturla said. “He felt
it would be inhumane to cram more birds into the remaining sheds,
and allowed us to save as many as we could before they died.”
That was the only mass rescue of poultry reported to ANIMAL PEOPLE.

Horse slaughter ban clears U.S. Senate & House

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

WASHINGTON D.C.–The U.S. Senate on September 20, 2005 voted
68-29 to ban horse slaughter for human consumption for one year, as
an amendment to a USDA budget bill.
Introduced by Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada), the bill would
prevent the USDA from paying the wages and expenses of horse
slaughter and horse meat inspection staff.
An identically worded amendment jointly introduced by four
U.S. Representatives cleared the House 269-158 in June 2005.
“The House and Senate bills which contain the horse slaughter
amendments now go to conference committee to create a final law,”
explained Chris Heyde of the Society for Animal Protective
Legislation, the legislative arm of the Animal Protection Institute.
“As a result of the strong support for both the House and Senate
versions of this amendment, it is unlikely that the conference
committee will decide to omit the horse slaughter language from the
final budget. However,” Heyde cautioned, “because this is a budget
bill, after passage into law, it will be in effect for [only] one
fiscal year, beginning November 1.

South China kills dogs to send a message

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

GUANGZHOU–The Guangdong provincial government seized the
2005 National Day weekend, the first in October, to send messages
to both pet keepers and Beijing.
The message for pet keepers was that the rising popularity of
pet dogs will not be allowed to jeopardize the dog meat industry,
either by spreading rabies, the pretext used for killing pet dogs in
the streets, or by building a human constituency for treating dogs
kindly.
“The Guangzhou campaign follows similar crackdowns in
Shanghai and other cities across the mainland, as dog attacks and
rabies cases increase and more urban dwellers keep pets,” noted
Simon Parry of the South China Morning Post. But Parry failed to
note that the dogs most at risk from rabies are so-called “meat
dogs,” raised in close confinement and not required to be vaccinated.
The Guangdong message for Beijing was that even as the
central government strives to build a more animal-friendly image in
advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, in the part of China where dogs,
cats, and wildlife are relatively rarely eaten, the Cantonese
southern and coastal regions are quite capable of spoiling the effort.

Wool industry & live transport developments

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

“If animals have been subjected to cruelties in their
breeding, transport, slaughter, or in their general welfare, meat
from them is considered impure and unlawful to eat,” taught the late
imam B.A. Hafiz al-Masri of the Shah Jehan Mosque in England,
quoting parts of the Q’ran and Hadiths (sayings) of the Prophet which
forbid cruelty to animals.
Exposing crulety in the shipment of animals to the Middle
East for slaughter, and mulesing, the practice of cutting away
skin flaps from the anal region of sheep to prevent flystrike, PETA
in June 2005 tried to air a paid ad depicting mulesing and quoting
al-Masri on Al Jazeera, the Qatar TV network known for gruesome war
coverage, but the ad was refused.
The Australian Wool Growers Association in August 2005 broke
with the rest of the Australian sheep industry and agreed to end
mulesing by 2010 if PETA would lift a boycott of Australian wool
exports. Australian agriculture minister Peter McGauran and the
Australian Sheep & Wool Industry Taskforce rejected the deal. ASWIT
is a coalition including the National Farmers Federation and
WoolProducers, the largest organization representing the sheep trade.

AVMA refuses to condemn foie gras, amends sow crate policy, excludes critics from hall

September 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

MINNEAPOLIS–The American Veterinary Medical Association
House of Delegates on July 16, 2005 unanimously defeated a
resolution asking the AVMA to formally find inhumane the practice of
force-feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras.
The resolution was rejected, AVMA publicist Sharon Granskog
said, “because limited peer-reviewed scientific information dealing
with the animal welfare concerns associated with foie gras is
available, and because the observations and practical experience of
members indicate a minimum of adverse effects on the birds involved.”
Charged Farm Sanctuary in a membership alert, “The AVMA
House of Delegates rejected the 1998 Report of the Scientific
Committee on Welfare Aspects of the Production of Foie Gras in Ducks
and Geese as being out-dated.”
The resolution was squelched, Farm Sanctuary alleged, “due
to opposition by the American Association of Avian Veterinarians,
the American Association of Avian Pathologists, and the New York
State Veterinary Medical Association. These organizations claimed
that their recent visits to foie gras farms in New York revealed
proper care of birds. However, in previous unannounced visits to
the same farm, ducks were videotaped in diseased and filthy
conditions.”

BOOKS: Meat Market: Animals, Ethics & Money

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Meat Market: Animals, Ethics & Money
by Erik Marcus
Brio Press (244 Blakeslee, Hill Road, Suite 5, Newfield, NY 14867), 2005.
273 pages, hardcover. $21.95.

Erik Marcus writes crisply in this book about the evils of
factory farming. He disposes of common misconceptions and
exaggerated arguments, frequently employed both by industry
apologists and Animal Rights activists. His logic is clearly
expressed and his prose flows tightly. In fact the book is so easy
to read that it would make an excellent text book for humane
education and animal law courses.
Marcus examines the transformation of animal agriculture
since 1950 and analyses the growth of factory farming at the expense
of small family-owned farms.
Aiming squarely at urban activists who have no clear
understanding of farming methods, he introduces us to the life of a
layer hen, describing in harrowing detail her tortured life. Then
he does the same for broiler chickens, pigs, dairy cows, and beef
cattle.

82% of caged broilers are burned by urine

July 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

LONDON–Examining the carcasses of 384 broiler hens raised
according to the British Farm Standard and offered for sale on
supermarket shelves, an investigation commissioned by the Royal SPCA
and directed by Cambridge University professor Donald Broom reported
in July 2005 that 82% had been burned on their legs or bodies by
prolonged contact with ammonia from feces.
“Lack of space and fast-growing bodies that can become too
heavy to be supported by their legs increases the likelihood of birds
receiving painful burns, as the birds spend more time in contact
with floor litter,” said RSPCA scientific officer Marc Cooper.
Among 25 organically raised free range chickens whose
carcasses were inspected, 42% had burns, the researchers found.
The RSPCA findings were released five weeks after the BBC
Programme Com-plaints Unit upheld a British Poultry Council complaint
that the BBC “Food Police Programme” showed bias against the poultry
industry in a 2004 expose of ammonia burns.
“The use of surreptitiously filmed material and reference to
Compassion In World Farming campaign efforts did not of themselves
give rise to bias” the Complaints Unit said, “but, together with
other features of the item, they implied criticisms of the
poultry-rearing industry which there should have been an opportunity
to address.

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