Organic dairy is still rape

Just without hormones. Isn't that nice? Read about how the CEO of Pacific Natural Foods, Chuck Eggert, treats the "organic cows" that he thinks he owns:

Eggert tapped son Charlie to run the complex operations: managing the milking cows and 100-plus calves; seeing to artificial insemination; and feeding herds an organic mix of alfalfa, barley, flax, composted corn silage and minerals. He found himself birthing calves at 2 a.m. -- and collecting and disposing of millions of gallons of waste each year.

If forceful impregnation, in this case coldly referred to as "artificial insemination" isn't rape, then I don't know what is.

Organic dairy cows are still victims of capitalism, but a variety with a friendlier face. They are supposed to be able to move more than non-organic dairy cows, have "natural" food and all sorts of wonderful benefits that they would normally have if people hadn't made them rape/production slaves, which are all things that make people feel better about themselves for paying people to rape cows, confine them, take their milk and sell them off to slaughter when they pass their peak rates of production.

Capitalists, of course, are chiefly concerned with money. Money always wins over welfare and wellbeing. I think "green" capitalists or "concerned" capitalists or however they try to redefine themselves do those cost/benefit analysis things where they figure out how to make the most money while having to spend the least, which, in this case, often results in keeping a large number of cows and treating them not quite as shittily as their relatives in factory farms.

Here are what some local critics have to say of Eggert's two dairy farms:

Kimbirauskas, with Friends of Family Farmers, says there's a simpler way to reduce manure impacts: Cut herds and get them in pastures. That reduces odor and the volume of waste to be handled.

"There are other organic dairies that aren't putting millions of dollars into waste technology," she says. "They're just putting their cows on grass."

Until now, national organic standards have only required dairies to provide "access to pasture." Some of the Eggerts' neighbors say they've rarely seen cows grazing in the past.

Here is how various Oregon state agencies have felt about Eggert's "green" practices:

His twin dairy farms near the Willamette River southwest of Wilsonville were intended as an extension of that ethos: organic, cutting-edge operations that would be models of environmentally sustainable and economically successful agriculture.

It has not gone well. Eggert's Mayfield and Rock Ridge dairies have repeatedly mismanaged the manure that 700 milking cows produce, racking up 20 manure-related violations and $35,000 in state fines. A $20,000 fine this month was the largest ever by the state's Confined Animal Feeding Operation program.

Nice, Chuck, nice. Good going there, really. You are showing people how much different "green" capitalism is from the normal kind, whatever you want to call it.

Finally, here's Chuck propagating that myth that cow's milk is somehow necessary for life:

"If you just say no dairy should be more than five cows, all you're doing is providing an elitist food system," says Eggert, 61. "Some people might go to the store and pay $10 a gallon for a gallon of organic milk. Most people can't afford that."

"Elitist food system." Or a more compassionate one.

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...

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.

A peculiar relationship to food

I was sitting in the food science building at school the other day and noticed a display on the wall entitled "Role of Nutraceuticals in Cancer Treatment." There was a picture of some broccoli and another picture of carrots, along with explanations of how nutraceuticals, or extractives of food, combat cancer.

Nutraceuticals. In other words, food? Reterming food as a drug? Rethinking food as a drug? This struck me as very odd.

What's so odd? Well, if people taking "nutraceuticals" had eaten these things in reasonable quantities in the first place, it would have been "food" and they would have been much less likely to develop cancer. Instead, many people in the western world eat copious amounts of things that are not really food. Sure, you can eat them, but they provide no nutrition to your body and often have adverse affects, like raising blood pressure, cholesterol, clogging your arteries, giving you diabetes, making you obese, giving you heart disease, cancer, so on and so forth. You CAN eat a lot of things, but that doesn't make them food. People have eaten bikes and I don't even know what else. Little kids will eat their own shit if you let them.

Our concepts of food, I think, are often defined by those who produce and market food. If it's on a shelf, in a package, then it's fair game. If someone will sell it to us, then it's food. They wouldn't knowingly sell us things that are so bad, right? People will decline to eat things based on taste, but seldom out of some objection to its quality, or whether or not it counts as food. Realistically, much of the food available to us is ridden with bug spray, which they've somehow convinced us is safe to eat, and of course ingredients that make us sick, slowly poisoning us, especially high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oil, and monosodium glutamate. We consume dairy products and flesh rife with hormones, antibiotics and literal disease - see any outbreak of e coli or salmonella.

And that's normal. Those are our diets. That's what we're sold, so that's what we buy. That's what we grew up eating, so that's what we keep eating. No one wants to think that we were raised on shit. No one wants to think that our parents fed us poison. Understandably, we do not want to believe that the society around us, of which we are a part, and especially those in control of it, is so perverse and ignominious.

So nutraceuticals, yeah. Food. You ate shit and didn't take care of yourself, and you have cancer or diabetes. Now you want the benefits of those "healthy foods," but you don't really want to eat them or change your diet all that much. Besides, it couldn't have been related to your diet. It just happens.

It's complicated to parse out responsibility for this mess. In the end, the overarching blame rests with the food industry, no doubt. The proliferation of shit food is absolutely a case of supply creating demand. Were people ever clamoring for twinkies? No. People made these foods in labs, packed them with artificial flavors, colors and scents, and made sure to incorporate ingredients that have physically addictive properties, particularly the sweeteners they use. Sugar is certainly addictive on its own, but much more so when distilled into more potent forms, such as white sugar and the worst, high fructose corn syrup. Then these foods were unleashed on the public and here we are, fat, sick and dying.

Still, we need to take responsibility for ourselves, you know? We need to take a good look at what we eat and what it does to us. We need to listen to our bodies. Getting in tune with your body is so important - what makes you feel good, what you should eat, what your body does not want you to eat. We've all been raised to ignore our bodies and take what we want, trying to fix the problems we make with drugs. Our bodies know best.

pumpkin waffles for breakast

fucking rules. at noon. after staying up all night.