All God's Creatures
Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind; cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. . . .
- Old Testament, Genesis 1:24
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE
Under the big 500-watted lamps, to the huge sawdusted government
inspected slaughter-house,
head down from hooks and clamps, run on trolleys over broughs,
the animals die.
Whatever terror their dull intelligences feel
or what agony distorts their most protruding eyes
the incommunicable narrow skulls conceal.
Across the sawdusted floor,
ignorant as children, they see the butcher's slow methodical approach
in the bloodied apron, leather cap above, thick square shoes below,
struggling to comprehend this unique vision upside down,
and then approximate a human scream
as from the throat slit like a letter
the blood empties, and the windpipe, like a blown valve, spurts steam.
But I, sickened equally with the ox and lamb,
misread my fate,
mistake the butcher's love
who kills me for the meat I am
to feed a hungry multitude beyond the sliding doors.
I, too, misjudge the real
purpose of this huge shed I'm herded in: not for my love
or lovely wool am I here,
but to make some world a meal.
See, how on the unsubstantial air
I kick, bleating my private woe,
as upside down my rolling sight
somersaults, and frantically I try to set my world upright;
too late learning why I'm hung here,
whose nostrils bleed, whose life runs out from eye and ear.
- Alfred Hayes, b. 1911
Then God said, "Behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.
And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.
And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. . . .
- Old Testament, Genesis 1:29-31
* * *
The Hunger for a Solution
By: pattrice le-muire jones
October 11, 2001
Starving children and suffering animals. We've all seen the images again and again: lonely little boys with distended stomachs...sad caged hens with mutilated beaks...all of them wishing to be anywhere else.
Because we usually see the images in isolation, we rarely realize how closely the fates of these children and animals are intertwined. The lives of starving people and enslaved animals are held hostage by the same powerful corporations in affluent nations. The boy is hungry in part because the hen is caged. Now, in a perverse reversal of reality, livestock corporations are promoting increased industrial animal agriculture as a solution to world hunger.
"Never doubt," we are fond of reminding each other, "that a small group of committed individuals can change the world." And indeed such a small group is hard at work right now.
They are the owners and stockholders of multinational corporations who, with the aid of their supporters at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are literally reshaping the world as they spread their environmentally destructive practices across the globe.
Among those practices are the industrial animal agriculture operations commonly known as factory farming. Facing a flat market for their products at home, U.S. and European vendors of meat, eggs, and dairy products want to develop new markets in low-income nations where people have traditionally eaten a predominantly vegetarian diet. At the same time, these corporations are actively planning to relocate and expand their operations in those nations, where they hope to be far from the prying eyes of environmental, labor, and animal welfare activists.
The livestock industries can count on the IMF to use its influence over "debtor" nations to ensure that low-income nations accept the plans of the corporations and do not impose environmental or animal welfare regulations.
The IMF wields power by means of Economic Structural Adjustment Programs (ESAPs), which low-income nations are obliged to undertake if they cannot afford to pay their alleged debts to the IMF. These debts arose when previously colonized nations had to borrow funds from their wealthy former oppressors to finance their newly independent but long impoverished countries. Other debts were incurred in the 1970s by dictatorial leaders of nations whose people did not democratically authorize the loans, which were later misappropriated or squandered. Despite worldwide calls for these debts to be erased, they remain on the books.
Nations that cannot afford the payments must agree to ESAPs in order to obtain debt relief. Typically, ESAPs require debtor nations to be more open to foreign investment; countries must allow corporations to come in and use their natural resources and the labor of their citizens to create corporate profits.
Thus, nations that are struggling to feed their people may find themselves forced to devote agricultural resources to factory farming operations that produce commodities for export, with most of the profits going to foreign corporations.
For its part, the World Bank has funded projects specifically intended to increase consumption of foods derived from animals. For example, one project promotes the consumption of dairy products in China, despite the fact that a high proportion of Chinese people are lactose intolerant. The World Bank also exercises significant influence over the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
That's where tragedy becomes obscenity. The World Food Security Committee of the FAO is the international body officially responsible for crafting global policies to end world hunger. Swayed by World Bank influence, the FAO now supports the expansive plans of U.S. and multinational livestock industries, even going so far as to promote those plans as hunger relief efforts. For example, the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security asserts that "governments are responsible for creating an enabling environment" for private investment in agriculture; a footnote to the document explains that the term "agriculture" always includes livestock.
Of course, as Francis Moore Lappé demonstrated in the influential Diet for a Small Planet and John Robbins confirms in The Food Revolution, meat and other animal products are the least efficient ways to nourish people.
Meat, dairy products, and eggs require far more land, water, and energy to produce per calorie or unit of protein than vegetable foods. The failure of hunger relief agencies to embrace a vegetarian agenda mystifies scholars and activists who promote plant-based solutions.
However, the fact remains that hunger is largely caused by inequitable distribution and inefficient use of existing resources. According to Union of Concerned Scientists chairman Henry Kendall and Cornell Agricultural Sciences professor David Pimentel, "With the world population at 5.5 billion, food production is adequate to feed 7 billion people a vegetarian diet, with ideal distribution and no grain fed to livestock."
Of course, since people in affluent nations are not going to stop consuming animal products overnight, food production must be sustainably increased in the regions where people are hungry. Self-directed cultivation of indigenous and locally adapted food crops represent the most cost-effective, environmentally sustainable, and culturally appropriate means of increasing the food supply in low-income, food-deficient nations.
Increases in the consumption of animal products also will result in higher rates of diseases associated with heavy consumption of animal-based foods. This has already happened in China, where the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project has found strong correlations between increased consumption of livestock products and greater incidence of such degenerative ailments as coronary heart disease and certain forms of cancer.
Imperial Impoverishment
Agricultural colonialism is another cause of world hunger. During the era of European imperialism----which began with the conquest of the Americas and did not end until after World War II ---- colonized nations were forced to grow cash crops for export on lands previously devoted to sustainable production of plants for local consumption.
In this era, the former colonizers use their economic power to promote the continuation of cash-crop agriculture and to promote specific agricultural practices, such as the heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides vended by multinational corporations. The result has been further impoverishment, hunger, and degradation of natural resources.
The livestock industries are the latest agricultural colonizers. Their plans will starve the very people they claim their projects will help to feed.
Factory farms pollute the water and degrade the soil, destroying the environment upon which local animals and people depend. As the chief source of worldwide water pollution, factory farms and meat processing plants are largely to blame for the impending global water crisis.
The World Resources Institute predicts that by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people will experience water shortages. The expansion of factory farming into nations already experiencing water stress will lead to local and global environmental disaster.
The harm these socially and environmentally destructive plans will do to farmed animals cannot be overestimated. By moving existing operations into low-income nations, agribusiness corporations hope to remove themselves from government oversight and the scrutiny of animal welfare activists. By expanding their operations, factory farming operations will torture and kill billions more animals than they already do. Both the number of animals abused and the extent of the abuse will significantly increase.
For these reasons, many organizations devoted to farmed animal liberation have placed globalization at the top of their agenda. "Factory farming is spreading its tentacles globally," says Compassion in World Farming Director Joyce D'Silva.
"Animal activists must campaign to reverse this destructive trend."
Karen Davis, founder of United Poultry Concerns, notes that "meat production in 'developing nations' has increased by 127 percent in the past 20 years and, unless we intervene, will increase at a much higher rate over the next decade. The poultry industry in particular has actively promoted both consumption and production in China and other populous nations. We must be just as active in our opposition."
A growing number of environmental, animal liberation, and anti-globalization groups have come together to endorse the Statement of Principles of the Global Hunger Alliance (GHA) (available at http://www.globalhunger.net/ ).
Initially a collaboration between the Farm Animal Reform Movement and the Italian organizations Progetto Vivere Vegan and Societie Vegetariana, the GHA has grown to include such diverse members as the Gay/Straight Animal Rights Alliance of Salt Lake City, Utah; EarthFirst Nigeria; and the Women's Emancipation & Development Trust in Tamil Nadu, India.
Most immediately, the Alliance aims to influence the outcome of the FAO World Food Summit in Italy this November, where global food policy for the next decade will be set. The GHA is lobbying Summit participants and other food policy-makers concerning the hazards of factory farming and the promise of plant-based solutions to world hunger. Recognizing that grassroots protest can bolster such efforts and raise public awareness, the Alliance is also planning demonstrations in Rome and Washington, D.C., at the time of the Summit.
In the long run, the Global Hunger Alliance will develop and maintain international coalitions among animal liberation organizations, with a particular emphasis on sharing resources with organizations in low-income nations. This will help activists in nations targeted by the livestock corporations to organize local opposition.
The Global Hunger Alliance will also develop and maintain coalition relationships among animal liberation, environmental, and anti-globalization activists and organizations. This will facilitate joint actions and also will expose activists in other movements to the concerns of the animal liberation movement. In addition to bringing new people to animal liberation, this will ensure that the concerns of animals will not be left out of the growing worldwide movement against globalization.
At the November demonstrations, activists will be shouting "Basta... Enough!" There is already enough food to feed everyone, if only we would distribute it more fairly and wisely. There has been enough of agricultural colonization, animal exploitation, and corporate domination. The world has seen a bellyful of pictures of starving children and suffering animals.
We can and we must feed the children and free the animals at the same time.
pattrice le-muire jones is the Coordinator of the Global Hunger Alliance. She lives in rural Maryland, where she and her partner run the Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary.
Visit http://www.globalhunger.net/ to learn more and to download materials, or call (410) 651-4934 to receive information by mail.
For more, GO TO > > > Down on the Factory Farm; The World Trade Organization
* * *
". . . children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in certificates - died of malnutrition - because the food must rot, must be forced to rot."
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
* * *
November 4, 2007
Cargill Inc. Recalls
Tainted Beef
WASHINGTON — The giant agribusiness company Cargill Inc. said Saturday it is recalling more than 1 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.
The ground beef was produced between Oct. 8 and Oct. 11 at Cargill Meat Solutions' plant in Wyalusing, Pa. and distributed to retailers across the country. They include Giant, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Wegmans and Weis.
Cargill learned the meat may be contaminated after the Agriculture Department found a problem with a sample of the beef produced on Oct. 8, the company said. The bacteria is E. coli 0157:H7.
"No illnesses have been associated with this product," said John Keating, president of Cargill Regional Beef, said in a statement. "We are working closely with the USDA to remove this product from the marketplace."
E. coli is harbored in the intestines of cattle. Improper butchering and processing can cause the E. coli to get onto meat. Thorough cooking, to at least 160 degrees internal temperature, can destroy the bacteria.
E. coli 0157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. The very young, seniors and people with compromised immune systems are the most susceptible to E. coli.
Cargill Meat Solutions, based in Wichita, Kan., is the umbrella organization of Cargill's beef, pork and turkey businesses.
The Wyalusing plant produces 200 million pounds of ground beef annually.
Cargill Inc., based in Wayzata, Minn., is one of the nation's largest privately held companies. It makes food ingredients, moves commodities around the world and runs financial commodities trading businesses.
www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Nov04/0,4670,BeefRecall,00.html
For more, GO TO > > > The Vultures in Cargill
FREE THE ANIMALS!
CLOSE HUNTINGDON LIFE SCIENCES
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is the world's second largest animal testing laboratory. HLS operates three testing centers: one in East Millstone New Jersey, USA and two in England. HLS has become synanomous with animal cruelty and bad science.
Imprisoned in these notorious laboratories are 70,000 animals, including dogs, cats, monkeys, birds, rabbits, fish, mice and farm animals. Every animal used in HLS's barbaric and useless experiments are killed at the end of their short, misery filled lives. 500 animals die each day within the walls of Huntingdon Life Sciences.
HLS is in the business of conducting chemical tests on animals. These tests are commissioned by its clients, who are some of the top names in the pharmaceutical, biotech and agrochemical industries.
Chemical testing on animals is a very ugly business. Each year at HLS, 180,000 animals are forced to ingest, inhale and endure all manner of toxic chemicals. Animals are restrained and forced to consume toxic doses of pharmaceuticals, pesticides or industrial chemicals such as weed killers and disinfectants. Some animals are placed in inhalation chambers where they are choked by noxious fumes; others have caustic chemicals applied to their shaved, raw skin.
At the end of these excruciatingly painful procedures, some of which last up to a year, the surviving animals are killed and their bodies are dissected for analysis. For the animals, HLS is a living hell.
HLS has been the target of five undercover investigations that have revealed horrendous animal cruelty, health violations and the incompetence that takes place inside HLS. Videotapes from these investigations have exposed HLS staff punching and violently shaking beagle puppies, performing a dissection of a live monkey, transplanting a frozen pig's heart into a baboon and breaking numerous animal welfare laws.
These investigations have resulted in HLS employees being convicted of animal cruelty, fined by the USDA and almost being shut down by the British government. We hope that you will join the fight to end animal cruelty, and shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences!...
Contact Huntingdon Employees
There are people who are directly responsible for the poisoning, torture and death of 500 animals a day,180,000 a year at Huntingdon Life Sciences - and these people have home addresses.
Huntingdon Life Sciences Employees:
Cathy Brower
Position: Human Resources Executive
346 Franklin Road
N. Brunswick, NJ 08902-3257
~ ~ ~
Bank of America:
The Bank of America has its entire mutual fund program run through the controversial investment firm
Stephens Inc.
Stephens Inc. provides to the Bank of America mutual fund legal consultation, state reporting, research, management, and sales of mutual fund programs. Insiders within the Bank of America have reported Stephens handles as much as 160 billion dollars in resources for the companies they manage through the bank.
PRINCIPAL OFFICERS
Kenneth (Doyle) Lewis
President, Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer
2525 Richardson Dr.
Charlotte, NC 28211-3311
~ ~ ~
CALIFORNIA
Gregg Carpenter
Seabury & Smith
777 South Figueroa St
Los Angeles, CA 90017
Marsh Risk & Insurance Services and Seabury & Smith
2555 Third St, Suite 100
Sacramento, CA 95818
Peter Garvey, Danny Lindquist
Guy Carpenter
101 California St, Suite 250
San Francisco, CA 94111
JoAnna A. Reynolds
Marsh USA Inc.
2000 S Colorado Blvd.
Tower 1, Suite 5000
Denver, CO 80222
Allison Mortlock, Marsh USA Inc
745 Fort St., Suite 800
Honolulu, HI 96813
http://www.freetheanimals.homestead.com/closehls.html
February 9, 2002
Bush Promotes More Global Markets
By Lawrence Knutson, Associated Press
DENVER - President Bush told cattlemen yesterday that Congress should pass legislation providing a "safety net" for farmers, "while opening opportunities to sell beef and other farm products around the world.”
Backed by cattlemen in broad-brimmed Western hats, Bush said he wants a farm policy that is affordable and protects farmers without "political gimmickry."
"What we don't want is to overpromise and underperform," the president said as he addressed the 2002 Cattle Industry Convention and Trade show.
Bush said it is likely that a farm bill will pass Congress providing spending of $73.5 billion over the next ten years....
Bush also said he wants a farm bill that supports trade.
"Our ranchers and farmers are the best in the world at what they do and it seems logical to me that we need more opportunity to sell around the world," he said.
"We want people in China eating U.S. beef," Bush said, adding that he wants a policy that will make sure "that places like Europe make markets for healthy American beef."...
For more on the Pride and Predjudice of President George W. Bush, GO TO > > > Impeach Bush!
December 30, 2000
THREE MILLION DIE FROM FAMINE
IN NORTH KOREA
By Carla Garapedian, producer of "Children of the Secret State" in Britain,
Los Angeles Times
PRESIDENT CLINTON was wise in deciding not to visit North Korea. Sure, he might have persuaded North Korea's leader, Kim Jong II, to sign a ballistic-missile treaty. But he also would have rewarded him for the deaths of at least 3 million people for an avoidable famine. The remainder of the population has been driven to acts of unspeakable barbarism not seen since Pol Pot's Cambodia.
I've witnessed the horror. Despite the strict controls on foreign journalists, I recently led a British TV documentary team that managed to sneak footage out of North Korea, the most secretive state in the world. Our cameraman, Ahn Chol (a pseudonym), is a North Korean who lost both his parents to the famine and escaped to neighboring China two years ago.
Risking execution, he ventured back into North Korea to secretly film what's really going on there for us. His footage is shocking. Starving children abandoned by the state. Orphans thrown into state asylums and left to die.
Our other cameraman risked his life to film U.S. aid sacks being sold on the North Korean black market, with emaciated children begging for food close by. The labels on the sacks read, "A present from America."
These aren't the well-fed tots sent out to parade with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Pyongyang in October to assure us that U.S. aid was getting through.
There are 200,000 orphans believed to be starving, despite the fact that North Korea receives more food aid per capita than all but one country in the world.
"The international aid is being channeled to the military," Ahn Chol says.
Clinton should know about Jang Gil-Su, a 15-year-old who risked being shot as he escaped to China. He and 14 members of his family are in hiding there, desperate to avoid the Chinese police who return North Korean refugees to face punishment, even death.
Jang's is a chilling case. Over the past three years, he has drawn and annotated 120 pictures of everyday life in his country. . . . [These drawings] have been published in Seoul in book form.
They show families eating anything to survive: pine bark, snakes, rats. A man at a market stall- "Man selling human flesh at a farmers market in Hoeroung city," writes Jang.
Human flesh? "Saram hoki" (cannibalism), other refugees tell us.
All of the North Koreans we interviewed knew about it. Gil-Su's picture of a dismembered child in a cooking pot says more than any of the numbing statistics....
"There are many cases of killing people and eating the flesh," a refugee told us. "You eat it without knowing it's human flesh," a teen-age orphan added. "You're so hungry, you just eat it."
The starvation is no accident. North Korea has done nothing to address its food crisis, said Lee Min Bok, a former top North Korean agricultural expert. Natural disasters are blamed, but the regime's Stalinist agricultural policy is the main culprit. Lee should know; he went to prison in North Korea for proposing reform.
At the same time, North Korea is supplying Americans with a quick fix.
One farmer told us that he and other farmers were ordered by the state to stop growing food and to grow opium instead. The opium would then be processed by the state into heroin and sold abroad. The proceeds would go to arm the military.
This farmer could be killed if he were caught talking to us. "I have to let the world know what's going on," he said.
Survivors of North Korea's prison camps present an even bleaker picture. Eyewitnesses attest to 12 of these camps, with a total population of 200,000. A former prison guard told us that whole families are incarcerated in these camps. Women are sexually abused and tortured. Children are forced to do hard labor in mines.
Many children died this way, says Kang Chul-hwan, who was imprisoned when he was 9 years old. Nine! Why? Imprisoning families for something a father, husband or son may have said against the state- however trivial- is how the dictatorship controls dissent.
"There hasn't been a single demonstration in North Korea for the last 50 years," Kang says. "Who would dare dissent if you know your family will be taken away?"
Despite international reports of these horrors, the Clinton administration is silent on North Korean human rights, tiptoeing around Kim Jong II. But as the victims of this brutal regime would attest, Kim's reign has been psychopathic, perverted.
Can any democratic leader shake hands with a dictator who imprisons little children and who has driven his people to cannibalism?
February 18, 2002
HORSE MEAT MARKET
SPURS GROWING DEBATE
More slaughtered for food; some try to restrict trade
By Kirsten Haukebo, The Courier-Journal
Inside the patchwork of wood and metal, the air is thick with cigarette smoke and grease from a small kitchen. Men and women in coveralls and work boots settle on rough-hewn wooden bleachers, ready for a six- or seven-hour parade of horse flesh.
This is the Bullitt County Stock Yard in Shepherdsville on a Monday night. It's a far cry from the genteel scene most people think of when they imagine a Kentucky horse auction.
There are no pampered, $1 million yearlings here. The breeds for sale are the scruffy losers of the horse world - the slow, the sick, the worn-out.
Some of them will be sold as pets or work animals.
While the glue factory is still an option, some horses will be sold to the slaughterhouse, carved into steaks and flown overseas.
With fears of mad cow disease and other beef-related illnesses prevalent in Europe, selling horses for meat has become an increasingly lucrative business.
A total of 62,379 horses were slaughtered in the U.S. in fiscal year 2001, reversing a long decline in horse-meat sales, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Europe's hunger for horse meat has picked up, largely because horses don't get mad cow disease or hoof-and-mouth disease.
Some legislators who don't want horses used as food are trying to introduce laws that would hobble the industry by regulating how these horses are transported to slaughter.
"We feel that, given the horse's position in this country, they deserve protection," said Mike Brady, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Thomas Renyolds, R-NY. Reynolds has introduced a bill in Congress that would virtually stop the horse-meat trade. It would prohibit the interstate transport of horses for slaughter or the transport of horse flesh for human consumption....
Jay Hickey, a lobbyist for the industry-funded American Horse Council , said the industry opposes Reynolds' bill and other efforts to stop the slaughter of horses.
Slaughtering horses likely saves many from being starved and neglected in remote fields, he said.
"It's difficult to get rid of unwanted horses," he said. "You can't just bury them in the backyard. It costs money to have the vet euthanize them, and it's often hard to bury them because of environmental considerations."
As the final years of a horse's life can be expensive, slaughtering for meat not only wipes out those costs but can bring in $500 per horse. European markets make slaughter an attractive option.
There, some butcher shops sell only horse meat, whether it's in the form of sausage or prime cuts. The meat is said to be similar in texture to beef but slightly sweeter. In southern Japan, raw horse meat, or basashi, is served in small strips accompanied with soy sauce.
Very little horse meat ends up in dog food. It's too expensive, with some cuts selling for $20 a pound....
Ryan's Horse Sales of Elizabethtown conducts the sale at the Bullitt County Stock Yard twice a month....
"The Ryans ship to Beltex in Fort Worth, Texas," one of three U.S. slaughterhouses that export horse meat, said Arlow Kiehl of Watertown, N.Y., a veteran slaughter-house buyer. . .
The other slaughterhouses are Dallas Crown Inc. of Kaufman, Texas, and Cavel in DeKalb, Ill....
January 7, 2002
Report on Animal Food
Enrages Pet Owners
By Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times
ST. LOUIS - It started with footage of Blacky and Scoop, dogs with no one to claim them, alone at the city pound - and due to be put to death within hours.
"No one wants them. Alive, that is," a reporter said.
The film then cut to a rendering plant that boils down St. Louis' euthanized dogs, along with dead pigs and cows from local farms and leftover bones, hooves and organs from slaughterhouses. The end products are used to make cosmetics and fertilizer, gelatin and poultry feed, pharmaceuticals and pet food.
The report last month by KMOV-TV's Jamie Allman - headlined "What's Getting Into Your Pets" - suggested that dead dogs and cats from local shelters were ending up in kibble. As proof, Allman aired footage of a tanker truck emblazoned with the motto "SERVING THE PET FOOD INDUSTRY" entering the rendering plant.
Pet owners went nuts. Thousands turned to KMOV's online polls to register their disgust. Scores more called animal-control departments to demand an end to the practice.
The Millstadt Rendering Co., a small, family business that for decades had been taking the region's euthanized animals for free in what the owners thought was a public service, reeled in the face of so much rage. Hoping to lessen the public-relations fiasco, it announced just before Christmas that it would stop accepting euthanized dogs and cats.
But the local animal shelters couldn't stop euthanizing. And so, throughout the region, animal carcasses began to pile up....
In the short term, with freezer space limited, the city and county have been forced to send their dead dogs and cats to landfills.
Lost in all the emotion were the facts about rendering - and about pet food.
Rendering has long been considered one of the most environmentally friendly ways to dispose of animal carcasses because it recycles them into useful fat and protein. By far, the bulk of rendered material comes from slaughterhouses.
Members of The Pet Food Institute, who make 95 percent of the dog and cat food sold in the United States, use rendered material from livestock in their chow. But they insist there are no ground-up pets in their pet food....
Experts see little health risk in rendered pets entering the animal food chain because high temperatures used in the process kill most disease agents.
As for the Millstadt Rendering Co., its owners are trying to get back to business as usual.
They maintain that the TV report unfairly linked their product to pet food. The tanker truck with the pet-industry logo, they say, was headed to a separate rendering plant that handles restaurant grease. Still, they acknowledge they have no idea where their product ends up. It's sold to brokers who sell it to manufacturers.
The way they look at it, they don't need to know the details - and the public probably doesn't want to....
October 12, 2001
The Fur Fringe
By: Danielle Bays and Lydia Nichols
When you think of fur "fashion" you might picture a traditional mink coat or maybe even a more contemporary, brightly colored fox-fur chubby. But what about a microfiber jacket trimmed with fox fur? Although historically the fur industry's emphasis has been on full-length coats, fur trim is becoming a mainstay of the trade.
The Fur Information Council of America (FICA) recently claimed that retail sales of fur rose 21 percent over last season (fall 2000-winter 2001) to $1.69 billion....
Yet while sales of fur coats are undoubtedly down, the fur industry can rightfully claim victory in its efforts to make fur trim socially acceptable. In 1996, fur-trimmed and fur-lined items made up 46 percent of the value of all fur garments sold. Since then, the number of fur-trimmed items sold has increased. Using FICA's latest figures, the fur-trim market is worth nearly $500 million annually....
With the trim trade expanding, the death toll is rising. Sandy Parker Reports, a fur industry newsletter, predicts that the number of animal pelts used for trim will soon outnumber those used for all-fur garments in western European and U.S. markets. According to a recent headline in Sandy Parker Reports, "New York trimming manufacturers report they are having their best season in memory."
Demand for fur trim is currently so strong that some U.S. manufacturers that typically produce only full-fur garments are now moving into the trim business.
Economics, and the deaths of many of the veteran fur manufacturers, has led to the demise of the once-thriving U.S. fur-manufacturing center. Emphasis on mass-produced fur trims and accessories has enabled fur manufacturing to move overseas, where the labor is cheap and controls are less stringent.
China is now the top nation for the manufacture of full-fur and fur-trimmed garments.
The vast amount of fur products shipped out of the country nearly masked China's use of dog and cat fur in the trim trade, but once U.S. consumers were alerted to this atrocity they successfully lobbied for a ban on such products ("The Far Reach of the Barbaric Fur Trade: Asia's Dog & Cat Fur Business," Jan./Feb. 1999).
Demand for fur trim puts less emphasis on pelt quality, color, and uniformity, and has driven up the price for lower-grade pelts and pelts from breeder animals. This means that the quality of the animals' care----which is known to be deplorable already----is likely getting worse.
A little trim, a lot of suffering
For some people, wearing a garment with "just a little" fur trim may not seem as inhumane as wearing a full-length fur. But the animals suffer and die just the same, victims of the institutionalized cruelty of fur farms or the agony of steel traps.
Foxes are the most common animals used for fur trim. Ninety percent of the foxes raised on fur farms are killed for the fur-trim market. Blue foxes (the industry term for cage-raised arctic foxes) are the primary type used, followed by the silver fox (cage-raised red foxes). Trapped foxes----red, gray, and arctic----are also skinned for the trim trade.
Mink and sable----both those raised on intensive farms and those trapped in the wild----are regularly converted into neckpieces and other vanity accessories. Male mink, whose pelts are larger, are killed almost exclusively for trim (makers of full-length coats prefer female pelts). Other animals regularly exploited for the trim trade include such wild-caught animals as raccoons, coyotes, and beavers, as well as cage-raised chinchillas and Finraccoons (the moniker given to raccoon dogs, a wild Asian species commonly raised on Finnish fur farms).
Despite the benign-sounding industry propaganda surrounding fur "ranches," there is nothing humane about fur farms. Life inside small, barren wire cages is a far cry from these animals' natural environments. The animals often resort to unnatural behaviors, such as incessant pacing, self-mutilation, and even cannibalism, to escape the boredom and frustration created by their harsh and deprived conditions.
Foxes are extremely fearful of humans; they tremble, defecate, and withdraw to the rear of their cages when approached. They have a high rate of cannibalism----primarily mothers killing their young----as a result of cramped caging. Fox farmers lose an estimated 20 percent of their animals prematurely, and half of those deaths result from cannibalism. Death is no easy escape either, as the most common killing method of farmed foxes is anal electrocution.
The increased use of raccoon fur as trim on cloth and leather garments has renewed demand for this type of fur. The number of raccoons trapped in the United States dropped an estimated 75 percent this past season, but with the trim market expanding, the forecast for this winter may be deadly for raccoons.
Trapped animals suffer a different type of torture than those on fur farms. Volumes of documentation prove that leghold traps mutilate wild animals caught in their grip-ripping flesh, tearing tendons and ligaments, and even breaking bones. Many animals, especially raccoons, will chew or twist off their own limbs in a desperate attempt to escape.
The indiscriminate nature of all traps is well documented, with scores of nontarget animals (including family companions) caught by traps intended for other animals. Body-gripping traps often cause excruciating pain and prolonged death; neck snares are particularly cruel for coyotes and foxes because the significant musculature around these animals' tracheas and carotid arteries slows death and magnifies suffering.
Buyer beware
By actively marketing fur-trimmed items, the fur industry seeks to inundate consumers with fur-buying options. Shoppers don't have to go to fur salons or seek out furriers anymore; fur trim can be found even in discount stores, where, ironically, people may assume the trim is therefore synthetic. Consumers are looking for innovative apparel rather than the traditional styles of fur fashion, one reason why the fur industry markets fur-trim products to a younger generation in an effort to broaden their customer base....
Designers such as Gucci, Chanel, and Christian Dior are using more vibrant colors and unique styles in hopes of attracting younger consumers.
People who check garment labels can be confused or even deceived by the fact that most products aren't required to state whether trim is made of real fur or what kind of animal was killed to produce it. With fur trim coming in such a range of colors and cuts, it has become increasingly difficult for consumers to identify what is real and what is not.
Labels don't help much, since labels on most trimmed products aren't required to state whether the fur is real and, if it is, what kind of animal was killed to obtain it. A loophole in the federal Fur Products Labeling Act exempts garments costing less than $150 from truth-in-labeling provisions.
As a movement, we must broaden our focus on the fur industry to include fur trim and to condemn this trend as vigorously as we do full-fur items. We can't let someone off the ethical hook because they are wearing "just a little" fur. Let's educate the public about the trim trade and the cruelty that is inherent in each and every collar and cuff.
Danielle Bays is Wildlife Issues Associate for The Humane Society of the United States; Lydia Nichols is Executive Director of the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade.
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Last update November 4, 2007 by The Catbird