Unrelenting poaching

"Concerted action at the highest level is needed to stop this global crisis of rampant rhino poaching..."

Some things just make me so sick I cant speak... such as the skulls of endangered species.

Factory farming is irredeemably filthy

Jonathan Safran Foer, right on. He articulates this so succinctly and directly. What a good job of showing people that there is only one way out of this one. Will they listen? No. But a few will. This is the type of shit that is so true that it cannot be denied, just blocked. You really have to put your blinders on to keep pushing on in that brutal American way.

Meat's not neat

Farm Sanctuary just put out a report blowing up common ideas of animals whose confinement is labeled as as free range and organic. This is a big deal these days. Everyone wants grass-fed this and hormone-free that. Below are some hilights from it. What it comes down to is that no one has the right to dictate how other creatures live and die. All of the animals that people use for food are thinking, feeling creatures. That's fact. The only people who outright deny that are those in the businesses of animal exploitation. There is no way to justify our dominance and their misery, outside of might and because we can. Not great reasoning to stand upon. They have the same right to a decent life as you and I.

The Truth Behind The Labels:
Farm Animal Welfare Standards and Labeling Practices

Report Summary:

The USDA's Role in Product Labeling & Marketing Claims

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allows various product labels to be used on meat, dairy and eggs, including “cage free,” “free range,” “free roaming,” “pasture raised,” “grass fed,” “organic,” “natural,” and “naturally raised.” Many of these terms have vague, informal working definitions, and in most cases compliance is not verified through on-site audits. The agency approves labeling claims on meat and poultry products based on testimonials and documentation supplied by producers, with a couple of exceptions: the USDA does verify “cage free” conditions for egg-laying hens and “certified organic” conditions for all farm animal species.

Farmers are not required to provide “cage free” laying hens with access to the outdoors. Often, hens are crowded by the thousands into large barns where each bird is allotted approximately one square foot of space.

“Free range” birds raised for meat often lead lives very similar to their factory farmed counterparts. They may be crowded by the thousands into factory-like warehouses with no flock size limits, and the outdoor area may be little more than a barren dirt lot that is difficult for them to access.

“Natural” and “naturally raised” labels have little or no impact on animal welfare, and can be applied to products from animals raised in unnatural factory farm conditions. The “natural” label on animal products applies only to how meat, dairy and eggs are processed, and it has nothing to do with how the animals are treated when alive. The “naturally raised” claim is a misnomer, merely requiring that the animals be raised without antibiotics, animal by-products or synthetic growth promoters.

The “organic” label requires that all animals be given “access” to the outdoors, and that ruminants (i.e. grazing animals) have “access” to pasture. “Access” is not defined however, and as with free range requirements, the outdoor area may be unappealing and difficult for individual animals to reach. Organic mega-dairies have utilized loopholes in government standards to confine cows in factory farm conditions. Challenged by organic food advocates, the USDA has moved to clarify standards for pasture access.

...Agribusiness has produced standards that basically codify existing cruel practices and fail to improve farm animal welfare. A handful of third-party programs initiated by food retailers and animal welfare advocates have created programs to disallow some of the worst affronts to animal well-being. But programs affecting the most animals have the lowest standards and even the highest welfare standards can not eliminate suffering that is inherent to all forms of animal agriculture.

When animals are seen primarily as production units or commodities for sale – whether by factory farms or so-called “humane” operations – the animals’ welfare tends to be secondary to economic concerns.

Farm Sanctuary has learned from more than two decades caring for rescued farm animals, that when given the opportunity, family units stay together. However, when animals are raised for food under any conditions, most are denied familial relationships. Chicks are ordered from hatcheries and shipped via the postal service. (Male chicks born at egg hatcheries are killed after sexing as they are considered of no use to the industry.) Dairy calves are removed from their mothers so that the milk their mothers biologically produce for them can be marketed to humans. Lambs and piglets are weaned and removed from their mothers to be fattened for slaughter...

Your meal is smart

Some of it can add. I bet much of the rest of it can too, as well as many other things we will never understand because we are too busy butchering, devaluing, commodifying and consuming.

Scientists from the universities of Padova and Trento demonstrated chicks' ability to add and subtract objects as they were moved behind two screens.

Lucia Regolin, an author of the study said the animals "performed basic arithmetic" to work out which screen concealed the larger group of objects...

In each of the mini maths tests, a chick watched from a clear-fronted holding box while one of the researchers slowly moved the balls behind the screens - three behind one screen and two behind the other.

The front door of the box was then opened, releasing the chick into the tiny arena, so it could walk around and select a screen to look behind.

"The chicks still approached the larger of the two groups first, even though they had to rely on memory to work out which screen to choose," said Professor Regolin.

Swapping the objects from one screen to another didn't fool the maths-performing chicks.

"In a further experiment, once we had hidden the balls behind each screen, we transferred some of them from one to the other," Professor Regolin explained.

The birds, she said, were able to "count" the balls that were moved to work out which screen hid the larger set at the end of the transfer.

"They still chose correctly - adding up the numbers based on groups of objects they couldn't see at that moment."

It is already known that many non-human primates and monkeys can count, and even domestic dogs have been found to be capable of simple additions.

But this is the first time the ability has been seen in such young animals, and with no prior training.

They're also really cute.

You can't have your meat

and your planet too. Ethical concerns aside, (see the free range chickens above) if people keep eating animal products, seeing as we number nearly seven billion, we won't have a planet on which to debate ethics, morals, or anything else. It will be a dead land. It doesn't matter if it's grass-fed, it doesn't matter how free range it is. There is not enough land to exploit, there are not enough resources to keep supplying enough animals for people to eat like they do.

   Food from animals is so resource intensive. There is no way around it.

Here is an excellent article with all sorts of facts and statistics to back these contentions up:

More and more, people are also realizing the troubling connections between human starvation and eating animal products. It takes approximately 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat (thus feeding one or two people on meat versus approximately 16 people on grain). Much of this grain is grown in developing countries, where a large percentage of their land is used for cattle-raising for export to the United States, instead of being used to grow staple crops, which could feed local people directly. In a world where a child starves to death every 2 seconds, it seems impossible to justify such waste...

These farms [organic/free range] are described as ethical because of the fact that they are small, sustainable and have kinder animal-husbandry practices. As many people have pointed out, these farms can individually produce meat in a way that is arguably just as "green" as eating vegan.

However, it is an inherent part of the ethical foundation of these farms that they cannot produce on a massive scale. As we've seen numerous times, the organic farms that do try to do this, very often become virtually no better than factory farms, despite the labels they often still get to keep.

For example, many cage-free or free-range chickens still live in devastating conditions -- they simply aren't technically kept in cages in the first case, or, in the latter case, are kept in huge, crowded and perpetually dark buildings, with a single opening leading to a few square yards of bare earth.

The question of methane pollution may also make it hard to raise animals on a massive scale, regardless of whether the farms could be sustainable in other ways.

The question is not, "are a few people eating local, sustainable, free-range pork worse environmentally than a few people eating vegan?" The question needs to be, "can we feed the world's entire growing population sustainable animal products?"...

Many people within this "new meat movement" argue that it is suffering, not killing, that is unethical. Can unnecessary killing ever be completely separated from suffering? Besides the obvious difficulty in assuring a life and death free from trauma, there are the FDA regulations, which send all larger meat animals to the same slaughterhouses that are used for factory-farmed animals -- facilities notorious for the suffering of both the animals and the employees.

Even if the animals die quickly on their home farm, what justifies this killing? Having foreknowledge of death is not a prerequisite for the right to live, or else killing an infant would not seem unethical. How are we justified in ending a life of happy contentment to satisfy a passing craving?...

Culture and tradition are never sufficient justification to continue unethical practices -- if they were, we would still have slavery and public torture. Traditions have to adapt with our changing values and ethics, although these changes may be uncomfortable and unwelcome.

You are not in control

Business is. Fact. Below you will find the latest use of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. This FBI press release includes a laundry list of charges. Some of them are factual, some of them are exaggerated, and some of them have no basis in reality. Which ones, I do not know. I do know that the FBI has been intently dedicated to defaming movement after movement throughout its history. Communists, civil rights workers, Black Panthers, civil rights leaders, non-radical liberal environmentalists, feminists, so on and so forth. Just remember, haha, as the press release states way down at the bottom, these four "extremists" are presumed innocent. You can tell from the tone of the release, right?


FBI Press Release:

Four Extremists Arrested for Threats and Violence Against UC Researchers

On February 19 and 20, the Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested four animal rights extremists suspected of terrorizing University of California researchers. A complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday alleged Adriana Stumpo, 23, of Long Beach, California; Nathan Pope, 26, of Oceanside, California; Joseph Buddenberg, 25, of Berkeley, California; and Maryam Khajavi, 20, of Pinole, California used force, violence, or threats to interfere with the operation of the University of California in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

Mr. Pope and Ms. Stumpo were arrested Thursday in Charlotte , North Carolina by the FBI and members of the Charlotte Joint Terrorism Task Force as they returned to the United States from Costa Rica . The two appeared in federal court in Charlotte this morning, and will be extradited to California to face charges.

San Francisco Joint Terrorism Task Force members, University of California Berkeley Police officers, and FBI agents arrested Mr. Buddenberg at the Alameda County Courthouse this morning. Ms. Khajavi was also arrested this morning in Oakland . Both appeared before United States Magistrate Judge Nandor J. Vadas in federal court in San Francisco today.

The arrests stem from a series of threatening incidents beginning in October 2007:

On Sunday, October 21, 2007 a group of approximately twenty people, including Mr. Buddenberg, Mr. Pope, and Ms. Stumpo, demonstrated outside a University of California Berkeley professor’s personal residence in El Cerrito , California . The group, some wearing bandanas to hide their faces, trespassed on his front yard, chanted slogans, and accused him of being a murderer because of his use of animals in research. The professor told police he was afraid, and felt harassed and intimidated by the extremists.

On Sunday, January 27, 2008, a group of approximately eleven individuals, including Mr. Buddenberg, Mr. Pope, Ms. Stumpo, and Ms. Khajavi, demonstrated outside the private residences of several University of California Berkeley researchers over the course of the day. At each residence, extremists dressed generally in all black clothing and wearing bandanas to hide their faces marched, chanted, and chalked defamatory comments on the public sidewalks in front of the residences. One of the researchers informed authorities he had been previously harassed and the incident had caused him to fear for his health and safety.

On February 24, 2008, five to six individuals including Mr. Pope, Ms. Stumpo, and Ms. Khajavi, attempted to forcibly enter the private home of a University of California researcher in Santa Cruz . When her husband opened the door, a struggle ensued and he was hit by an object. As the individuals fled, one yelled, “We’re gonna get you.” The professor and her husband both told the FBI they were terrified by the incident.

On July 29, 2008, a stack of flyers titled "Murderers and torturers alive & well in Santa Cruz July 2008 edition" was found at the Café Pergolesi in Santa Cruz . The fliers listed the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of several University of California researchers and stated “animal abusers everywhere beware we know where you live we know where you work we will never back down until you end your abuse.” The investigation connected Mr. Buddenberg, Mr. Pope, and Ms. Stumpo to the production and distribution of the fliers. Distribution of the fliers preceded two firebomb attacks outside researchers’ Santa Cruz homes, both of which are still under investigation by the FBI.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (Title 18 U.S.C. § 43) states that whoever uses or causes to be used any facility of interstate commerce for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise, and in connection with such purpose, intentionally places a person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to that person or an immediate family member, or conspires or attempts to do so, by a course of conduct involving threats, acts of vandalism, property damage, criminal trespass, harassment, or intimidation, shall be imprisoned for not more than five years.

“With so many legal options to make their voices heard and to effect policy change, it is inexcusable and cowardly for these people to resort to terrorizing the families of those with whom they do not agree,” said Charlene B. Thornton, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco office. “The FBI intends to pursue those involved in this sort of extremist activity to the full extent of the law.”

“This sends a strong message that our community won’t tolerate this type of senseless violence. You have absolutely no right to attack a family in the sanctity of their home. We are proud of the collaboration with our law enforcement partners on this case and look forward to those involved being held fully accountable for their actions,” said Santa Cruz Police Department Chief of Police Howard Skerry.

"We are very grateful for the efforts of federal law enforcement officials whose persistence has led to these arrests," said Mickey Aluffi, police chief at UC Santa Cruz. "The Santa Cruz Police Department has also worked tirelessly on the cases involving our researchers, and we are very appreciative of that office's commitment and support."

The Santa Cruz Police Department, University of California Santa Cruz Police Department, University of California Berkeley Police Department, Costa Rican Organismo de Investigacion Judicial, Costa Rican Attorney General’s office, United State Department of State Diplomatic Security Service, and the Interpol National Central Bureau in Costa Rica provided invaluable assistance throughout this investigation and contributed to the successful apprehension of these individuals.

Like all defendants, these individuals are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. A complaint contains only allegations and is not proof of guilt. However, each defendant could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

Media inquiries may be directed to Special Agent Joseph M. Schadler or Public Affairs Specialist Patti Hansen at 415-553-7450.

Poisoned pigs in Ireland

Here is a video from the BBC explaining the situation. (embedding is disabled for this video)

Here's a lesson to be learned: stop eating animals.

People act like they have no choice but to eat animals.

No matter what kind of diseases, sickness and death they get from it, no matter how much raising these animals for consumption annihilates the earth, they keep looking for ways around it instead of saying "fuck this" or even "I really need to rethink this."

Ireland recalls pork over dioxin contamination

Sat Dec 6, 2008 5:28pm EST

By Andras Gergely

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish government ordered the food industry on Saturday to recall all domestically-produced pork products because of contamination with cancer-causing dioxin.

Ireland exported 368 million euros ($467 million) worth of pig meat in 2007, half of it to Britain, according to industry body Food and Drink Industry Ireland.

"This recall involves retailers, the hospitality sector and the Irish pig processing sector," the government said in a statement. "Preliminary evidence indicates that the contamination problem is likely to have started in September 2008."

Ireland had almost 1.5 million pigs as of June, the Central Statistics Office said.

Bacon and sausages can be found on most Irish breakfast tables while ham is a traditional food around Christmas.

Dioxins are contaminants that may be formed during combustion processes and can be present in industrial wastes, the government said.

Laboratory results of animal feed and pork fat samples obtained on Saturday confirmed the presence of dioxins, it said, with toxins at 80-200 times the safe limits.

The Irish Farmers' Association said the few affected farms had been isolated and the recall was a precautionary measure as the vast majority of products on the market were safe.

Fresh meat products from the unaffected farms will come on the market soon, IFA President Padraig Walshe said.

"There will be perfectly safe pig meat on sale to consumers I expect from the middle of the week," Walshe told public broadcaster RTE.

Thanksgiving is here

Time to eat a bigger dead animal, that you had someone else kill for you so you can feel removed from the violence of it, than normal. It needn't be so.

Eat your dog

Do it. Five good reasons.

Peter Singer on California's Proposition 2

From Newsweek. Here's the original, if you want it. Proposition 2 is the ballot initiative that successfully banned factory farming, or at least as it's currently practiced.

The Rights Of Animals

California voters have put the animal-rights movement squarely in the mainstream. Will we all soon be vegans?

Peter Singer

NEWSWEEK

The notion that animals should have rights was widely ridiculed when it was first advocated in the 1970s. Now it is getting more respect. The movement has gained tens of millions of adherents and has already persuaded the European Union to require that all hens have room to stretch their wings, perch and lay their eggs in a nest box, and to phase out keeping pigs and veal calves in individual crates too narrow for them to walk or turn around. And earlier this month Californians voted 63 percent to 37 percent for a measure that, beginning in 2015, gives all farm animals the right to stand up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. The state's 45 major egg producers will have to rip out the cages that now hold 19 million hens, and either put in new and larger cages with fewer birds or, more likely, keep the birds on the floor in large sheds. California's sole large-scale pig-factory farm will also have to give all its pigs room to turn around.

Pressure on other states to grant the same basic freedoms may prove irresistible. Many people see this movement as a logical continuation of the fight against racism and sexism, and believe that the concept of animal rights will soon be as commonplace as equal pay and opportunities for women and minorities. If that happens—and I believe it will—the effects on the food we eat, how we produce it and the place of animals in our society will be profound.

If this sounds radical, so did suffrage and civil rights a few decades ago. The notion that we should recognize the rights of animals living among us rests on a firm ethical foundation. A sentient being is sentient regardless of which species it happens to belong to. Pain is pain, whether it is the pain of a cat, a dog, a pig or a child.

Consider how widely humans differ in their mental abilities. A typical adult can reason, make moral choices and do many things (like voting) that animals obviously cannot do. But not all human beings are capable of reason, not all are morally responsible and not all are capable of voting. And yet we go out of our way to claim that all humans have rights. What, then, justifies our withholding at least some rights from nonhuman animals? Defenders of the status quo have found that a difficult question to answer.

If animals do have rights, what rights would those be? The most basic right any sentient being can have is for his or her interests to be given equal consideration. After that, things get more complicated. Some advocates think that all animals have a right to life. Others give more weight to the lives of beings such as chimpanzees, which are capable of understanding that they have a life, and of having hopes and desires directed toward the future. The movement's supporters agree that the way we treat animals now, as test subjects and factory-farm products, is flagrantly wrong.

If society were gradually to accept animal rights, it would spell dramatic changes. Some people might accept humanely raised meat, eggs and dairy products, if the animals had good lives, living outdoors in social groups of a size natural to the particular species. But this would most likely prove to be an interim stage. As the demand for animal products dwindles, the meat industry would breed fewer chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle. Eventually the only remaining beef cattle, sheep and pigs would be small herds preserved so that we can take the grandchildren to see what these once abundant animals look like. Factory farming—for meat, eggs or milk—would disappear. If we are to continue to eat meat, we'll have to rely on scientists who are now trying to grow meat in vats. When they succeed, it will be the real thing, grown from animal cells, not a soy-based substitute, and it might even be indistinguishable from the meat we eat now. But since it would involve no animals, and hence no suffering or killing, there will be no ethical objections.

Milk and cheese are no easier than meat to reconcile. Cows will not give milk unless they are made pregnant each year, and if the calves are left with their mothers, there won't be much milk for humans. The separation of the cow and her calf causes distress to both. Hens are not so concerned about the removal of their eggs, and genuinely free-range hens appear to have a good life, but male chicks have to be disposed of, and no commercial egg producer allows hens to live beyond the point at which their rate of laying declines. That's why animal-rights advocates today tend to be vegans.

Where animals are now used for research, we must find alternatives. In Europe, cell and tissue cultures have already replaced some product testing of live animals, and that will increase dramatically once harmful research on animals is put ethically out of bounds. Research using animals may not cease entirely, but in a nonspeciesist world it could continue only under the same strict ethical safeguards that we use for research on human subjects who can't give their consent.

Our greatest difficulty in respecting other species may lie in our quest for land. The animal movement forces us to consider that land we do not use is the habitat of other sentient beings, and we must do what we can to allow them to continue to live on it, including limiting our own population growth. Even wilderness presents a problem. Are humans ethically bound to prevent animals from killing other animals? To contemplate interfering with the workings of ecosystems would be presumptuous, at least for now. We will do better to concentrate, first, on lessening our own harmful impact on our domestic animals.