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Oink ... Moo ... Hotdogs and Hamburgers.
Meat and meat byproducts like lips and assholes.
Yummy?
They use everything,
but the squeal and the moo,
for real, they even use the poo.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat a hotdog for many years.
When I was a kid we lived on a small farm and I thought nothing of it , or almost nothing, when my dad chopped the head off a chicken every now and then. I collected eggs every day from our little flock of chickens. Ahh ... the idyllic innocence of youth, but it never bothered me until I had the opportunity to see larger commercial farms and the conditions that they kept the animals in to ‘feed the city people’ as they explained it to me. After seeing the wholesale slaughter it did make the individual slaughter back at home a subject for more serious reflection, especially when it became my chore to chop a chicken eevry now and then.
Now I live in town but we have a small organic free range poultry farm nearby for fresh eggs and poultry. Even the grocery stores have organic products available. It’s a better and more responsible choice. Not only for poultry and eggs but fruits, vegetables, rice and beans too.
These days I make an effort to eat less animals and make better choices when I do and try to remember to be thankful to be at the top of the food chain.
Posted by David in Canada on Mar 24, 2006 at 6:55 PM
... and doesn’t the piggy in the picture at the top of the article look sad?
Posted by David in Canada on Mar 24, 2006 at 6:55 PM
One of the points this writer tries to make about factory farms is the environmental damage they cause and how they monopolize vital resources like water causing cost increases for the community. They mostly exist because of the monopolization of the market for poulty, pork, and beef by four big food processing and packing conglomerates who control between 65 and 80% of the market for these products. These big conglomerates pressure the intermediate factory farms (called Consolidated Animal Feedlot Operations-or CAFOs by the industry and the USDA) by downward monopsonist pressure on the “gate prices” of their livestock thus forcing more intensive breeding and use of anti-biotics, steroids and growth hormones, and other such inputs to compensate for the squeeze applied by the “Big Four.” There has been a great shift in the proportion of the food dollar going to factory farm intermediaries over to the big packing houses and mega-retailers like the Walmart Supercenters. Even the factory farmer is being sqeezed out and those remaining have become less independant ranchers than an intermediary link in a global agribusiness chain controlled by the big packing monopolies.
Often this creates uneconomic and wasteful activity like independant free range ranchers in Iowa for the first time having to ship beef at big losses over long distances instead of to an IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) packing house nearby because companies like IBP now own their own herds and don’t need to pay the local ranchers much. The price to the consumer keeps increasing though the unit cost to the big packing houses declines as do the prices to the independent ranchers and CAFOs. This issue is the concentrated and monopolized market for highly processed food by big business and the social impact they have on the industry and local communities in general. The organic food, farmers market, and sustainable agriculture movements seem to have some goog answers.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 24, 2006 at 10:44 PM
The author, Mark Winne, does a fair job of covering the environmental issues, and articles like this are, of course, always welcome. But the article does suffer from some shortcomings. To name a few, it
(1) ignores the moral issue of exploiting animals for our purposes,
(2) pays slight attention to the shamefully cruel nature of the business of raising non-human animals for consumption (or entertainment, clothing, experimentation, and so on),
(3) ignores the health effects on humans of eating meat vs. a plant-based diet,
(4) ignores the fact that methane is the leading contributing factor towards global warming (see, for example: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm),
(5) fails to mention that the use of grain to feed livestock is dreadfully inefficient and robs the poor of substance in order to feed the rich a steady diet of animal products, and
(6) doesn’t discuss the wide variety of animal product substitutes available to us today.
Because of these shortcomings, I’m not sure that the article will have a large impact on individuals’ food buying decisions, which is a necessary ingredient for reform of these horrific practices. But it does sensitize readers to the subject, and that’s always a good start.
Posted by nyvegan on Mar 26, 2006 at 4:55 PM
nyvegan,
Your observations are quite on the mark! This is an issue about which I am gravely concerned as well! The environmental impact of factory farming is only one major concern among which are the inefficiency use of grain for food energy which as you point out consists of a transfer of resources from the poor to the rich as well as the ethical treatment of farm animals.
I do think that the entire issues turns less on our consumption habits or attitudes than on the role of agribusiness in the globalization of capital. The article touches on the concentration of livestock production for the national market the small number of farms producing the majority of poultry, pork, and beef. The free range, or organic ranchers, are all but squeezed out of the market. Most of the farms that produce meat for the big packing houses are an increasingly concentrated number of factory farms who are locked into long term contracts to insure those farms a steady market for their livestock. To get the contracts the ranchers take a per head cut in the “gate price” of the livestock over the term of the contract. Downward price pressure is further applied by the increase in the size of corporate owned herds which the “big four” often purchase from each other in order to artificially depress the gate prices. This causes the ranchers to overbreed and over use steroids to offset the decline in income from livestock price cuts which aggravates the negative impact of factory farming. The big four see an increase in their profit margins increasingly at the expense of the ranchers and consumers. About ten years ago a number of ranchers filed a class action suit against the illegal monopoly pricing practices of the big packing houses based on the 1921 Packinghouse and Stockyards Act which was to protect ranchers from the monopoly power of the big packers. To date it is still tied up in the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.
The issue seems to be the increased monopolization of our national food production system. Much of this is tied in with the highly profitable fast food market which sells poor quality junk but are a steady market for factory farm production. A good example is KFC and other chicken joints that buy on contract from factory farms that use steriods in the mass breeding of chickens. The same is true of beef. These practices would be far less harmful to consumers and small producers if our meat consumption dropped to healthier levels and most consumers switched to organically produced products.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 27, 2006 at 12:35 AM
A VERY good article, BECAUSE it told us, reminded us, of what we all knew already !
“”“In other words, our food system may be looking at a doomsday denouement before the middle of this century. It is becoming increasingly certain that the water will run out, the land will no longer absorb the torrent of nutrient waste spread upon it, and the over-bred, antibiotic and hormone-injected animals will eventually succumb to their natural limitations. Poole puts it this way,
Posted by frog on Mar 27, 2006 at 8:10 PM
Frog,
Since the 1990s, an increasing proportion of US livestock products are marketed outside the US mostly in East Asia. Japan was the single biggest buyer of US beef until the “mad cow” disease fear. I believe they now are purchasing our livestock products again. What is amazing is how US pork and chicken are quickly entering the growing Chinese and Korean markets where the raising of pigs and chickens are a widespread tradition. The real logic to this is to somewhat offset the trade deficit with East Asian countries. This can never really be done with US agricultural products. The US only exports about $40 billion dollars worth of food annually about 20% of which is livestock products. Most of it goes to Japan, China, and South Korea. The US won’‘t balance the trade with these countries with these products. What it will do is create a taste in the large cities of Asia for chemically loaded meat products while impoverishing both US and Asian small farmers and forcing them off the land to become cheap labor. The more this process skews the distribution of income the more there is a market for expensive US meat products. At one time these countries were self sufficient in meat which was only a minor part of the local diet at best. Now we are pushing meat slowly but surely in cultures where fish, whole grains, and fresh vegetables were the basis for the local diet. They are sure to be as unhealthy as we have become with our meat based diet.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 27, 2006 at 8:55 PM
Cabby,
As usual I learn a lot from your post;.
The competitive advantage of US production in those horrendous feedlots is due to vast economies of scale, proximity to feedstuffs, zero environmental regulation, and much of it also susidised also I guess by various Farm Bills.
I am not at all sure if there IS a logic to offset trade deficits, some flawed masterplan. More like the march of folly.
I agree this druggy system may work for a while, at the same time as similar producers such as Brasil increase production, but in the not so long term must come crashing down.
Completely mad, but I also drive a car, while waiting for the cheaper electrique bike to arrive here to diminish my car-use by 30%.
Posted by frog on Mar 27, 2006 at 9:30 PM
Frog,
One of the significant reasons that I found these trends so interesting is that the US used to import a good deal of beef from overseas mostly because it was cheaper to graze and slaughter cattle in the third world than in the US. Rising beef prices in the early 1970s began to push indigenous small holders off the land in such places as Guatemala and Brazil where much deforestation was carried out in the name of grazing land for cattle. This gave rise to political crises and ecological ones. The cattle was slaughtered and processed more cheaply in Latin America and exported to US markets with the profits pocketed by the big US meat packers and food conglomerates. Now that there is sufficient cheap labor from Mexico for US domestic factory farms , we have more domestic production and even exports to Asia. Big conglomerates have created concentrated international production and supply chains that have eliminated many small independant producers and integrated many of the large and medium size ones into these vertically integrated production chains on a dependant basis. It is really all about monopoly capital on a global scale. In the end, the export of capital and the concentration of investment is at the heart of the issue of wealth concentration and the social and other problems caused by this economic trend.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 27, 2006 at 9:53 PM
“(1) ignores the moral issue of exploiting animals for our purposes”
The bible says its okay to farm animals. Good enough for me!
“(2) pays slight attention to the shamefully cruel nature of the business of raising non-human animals for consumption (or entertainment, clothing, experimentation, and so on),”
This is also a stupid hippy statement. How do you begin to assume whether the pig enjoys standing in pig crap or not? Maybe he does, you don’t know, because he didn’t tell you. My friends do shamefully cruel things all the time to entertain themselves.
“(3) ignores the health effects on humans of eating meat vs. a plant-based diet,”
When meat, fish, poultry, dairy foods, and eggs are missing in the diet, several important nutrients could also be missing in action. Most vegetarians dont consume adequate amounts of protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamins A and D. Even though fatty meats may be limited on a vegetarian diet, a steady diet of fatty dairy products could cause the amount of artery-clogging saturated fat that is consumed to be off the Richter scale. Also, a vegetarian diet isn’t guaranteed to keep you svelte if it is a predominately junk food vegetarian diet that is loaded with high calorie cookies, cakes, candy, and sweetened drinks.
Huh?
“(4) ignores the fact that methane is the leading contributing factor towards global warming (see, for example: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm),”
Youre probably right, but today we have many scientists working on using methane produced in landfills and farms as an energy source (some already do). I can’t blame the pigs entirely, I fart too.
“(5) fails to mention that the use of grain to feed livestock is dreadfully inefficient and robs the poor of substance in order to feed the rich a steady diet of animal products, and”
There are many people working proffesionally to modify livestock feed to be more efficient. They don’t just use grain.
“(6) doesn
Posted by spayced on Mar 29, 2006 at 11:11 PM
Re Mark Winne’s Meat Industrial Complex
I thought that this was a pretty good article, but confusing in that he fails to recognize some basic differences in the chicken, dairy, hog, and beef cattle industries. I was also not clear in his definition of what constitutes a “factory farm”. The factory farm term is generally so muddled that just throwing it out there without definition is pretty useless. I have my own idea of what it is, but I can tell that he uses the term somewhat differently.
I would like to see him focus on the hog industry, which has only recently seen the rise of huge hog farms and the piglet to plate vertical integration that is central to factory farming. There may still be opportunity to reverse some of this trend…......but bundling the discussion with other types of livestock which do not “fit” logically with the issues of today’s hog farming only serves to fritter away a rapidly receding opportunity.
Posted by J Petersmith on Mar 30, 2006 at 10:01 AM
According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service over 231 million pounds of US pork were exported to foreign markets in the month of January 2006 alone. The US is the world’s pork export leader. Its two main foreign markets are Japan and Mexico. US pork exports exceed that of beef and poultry due to fears of diseases like poultry influenza (AI)and mad cow disease.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 30, 2006 at 9:50 PM
RE: Comments by “spayced”, in response to my posting of March 26.
First, our laws are based on the Constitution, not the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Talmud, the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, or any other religious scripture or work of faith says
Posted by nyvegan on Mar 30, 2006 at 11:07 PM
I think that poor countries with starving children don’t buy grain to feed them because either they don’t have the money to buy grain, or else they are using the money that they do have for other things than buying grain. If they wished to buy grain, grain merchants would show up with the grain for them regardless of the US meat consumption charts.
I would like for US hog production to revert to primarily small operator status. This would be better, I believe, for our environment, for rural communities, and for the pigs. There is enough solid data here to make persuasive, focussed arguments. To attempt to add on an animal rights argument, perhaps dragging in highly questionable or worse “facts” from animal rights sources would seem to be a hindrance to securing any progressive change….......
Posted by J Petersmith on Mar 31, 2006 at 9:08 AM
RE: J. Petersmith
Posted by nyvegan on Mar 31, 2006 at 10:32 AM
I know that livestock exports are a recent development in US agriculture. Our traditional exports have been grains particularly wheat. It could be that much of the live cattle exported to the third world is grazed on land formerly occupied by poor tenant farmers and small holders displaced in order to make way to feed cattle to be slaughtered and re-exported as meat to affluent consumers in the rich countries, This deprives the poor in the third world from adding to the local supply of food staples like corn, sorghum, barley, wheat, rice, and certain vegetables. Expensive imports from the US follow and trade deficits are followed by damaging IMF stabilization plans. This happens in Central America frequently in countries like Mexico and Guatemala. The proposed CAFTA agreement will probably worsen the situation.
I think the sudden explosion of all manner of livestock exports has to do with globalizing mass food production for fast food chains and other corporate structuring of the global food supply. In the end, as you suggest, small producers and consumers suffer as capital is globalized through a restructuring and centralization of the food distribution system.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 31, 2006 at 1:31 PM
In the seventies, the local market for wheat was near $5.00 per bushel, and wheat could be bought at the port of Houston in the $5.50 to $6.00 range. After the wheat boycot was used as a weapon against the USSR in 1979 the price crashed by about 50%. For the next 15 years, wheat could be purchased for export at the port of Houston for about $3.00 to 3.50 a bushel. I’m not sure that the cheap wheat price (and corn and other grains generally follow wheat in pricing), made much of a difference in impoverished countries. Indeed, it may have hurt their own export prices, and left them more impoverished than they were..
It’s too complicated an issue for me to understand, but there is more involved in the pricing of agricultural commodities than simple supply and demand….....And it seems to be true that hungry, impoverished countries are frequently ruled by right wing dictators who are more interested in spending the revenues of their countries for weapons, palaces, Swiss bank accounts and hot babes than in purchasing foodstuffs for their populations…..........
I think that it will be very difficult to roll the clock back on the factory farming of hogs. Perhaps the best that can be done is the passing of stringent legislation to minimize their environmental impact. But anyway, centrally, you are dealing with a few very big time pork producers and pork packers, and many potential small time pork producers. Pork chops will probably be served at lunch. I think that any message that says that eating pigs and raising pigs and training pigs are all morally wrong will go over like the proverbial lead balloon. I would at least like the chance to make my points and get out of there before you start on that…..........
Posted by J Petersmith on Mar 31, 2006 at 3:15 PM
Petersmith
You may find that animal rights and human rights have a strange way of going together ?
I recommend “Fast Food Nation” to any who haven’t yet seen it !
Posted by frog on Apr 1, 2006 at 12:13 AM
Petersmith
The dictatorships you’re mentioning do not care about the local population’s well-being - they are notorious for it and examples are numerous. Why, then, the US foreign policy traditionally supports, even installs, such unscrupulous political systems in foreign countries? Why is US policy so hysterically against Hugo Chavez’ social programs and programs for Venezuela’s national emancipation, for instance? And, mind you, Venezuela is blessed with oil unlike scores of other poor countries but still has to cope with the problem of nation-wide poverty. Why??
Your understanding of the problem of global poverty is at the level of blaming the poor, undereducated, single mothers for being the “welfare queens” - can’t be narrower than that.
Posted by citizen on Apr 1, 2006 at 11:55 PM
I was not blaming the poor in impoverished countries for being hungry, it was nyvegan who claimed that I was. I may have not been clear in my comments, and that would not be a first, but I simply meant that a simple drop in the world market for grain will not result in relief for the hungry of those countries. As I pointed out, there have been long intervals when world grain prices were ridiculously cheap, and it did not help to any marked extent. I was not at all suggesting that the poor of these countries were buying beer or cigarettes instead of food….....and yes I have heard this said about our domestic poor and hungry, but this is not my opinion or contention, so can we please get beyond this….........
I went back and re read my post of March 31, and it did kind of read that I was blaming the parents of starving children for buying other things than food for their children. A later post clarified that I was pointing out that the PTB in these countries were the ones who were spending the countries resourses for things other than food….........Again, sorry for the lack of clarity.
One of nyvegan’s links, to the Institute for Food and Development has an interesting bit on 12 myths about Hunger in the third world. These are issues that I would like to learn more about…......JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 2, 2006 at 12:20 PM
I see that we don’t do links here in this forum…........that reference was to www.foodfirst.org…............JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 2, 2006 at 12:25 PM
The more factory farming is driven by fast food and other institutional markets, the more overproduction by large-scale corporate producers lowers prices putting small scale, family based agriculture out of business in the US thus concentrating land and earnings from the sale of livestock products and field crops. Dumping in the third world logically follows such overproduction in the US and the consequences are drastic. The traditional agricultural systems in the poor countries become transformed and linked to the US food distribution system. These countries become integrated into a globalized food production chain involving the local creation of concentrated, often foreign owned and/or controlled, plantation monoculture and factory farming and ranching for export as they adopt the myriad ecological problems of pesticide toxification, manure overloads, destruction of soil bio-diversity and soil quality, and ground water and air pollution. Synthetic fertilizers also reduce the nutritional quality of field crops thus cancelling out the value of the added production yields leaving only the added expense of the fertilizer input. Small scale peasant agriculture is displaced with disasterous social and political consequences. The transformation of the local food system as a monoculture dependancy in the global food system leaves staple food deficits for the poor and balance of payments deficits for the national government which must now import food for consumption. This system only benenfits the rich in both the North and South of the world system. It is economically and ecologically harmful for all else.
Yes, Peter, it appears I misunderstood your post and was hasty to reply on top of it. My apologies.
The most recent example of multinational corporations destroying food production in foreign countries is Monsanto bringing GM, patent protected, wheat into Iraq and forbidding local farmers to use their own seed - they have to buy it from Monsanto for each new crop. It’s not even economy anymore - it’s bullying. I just wanted to illustrate what cabdriver exposed as a general, global, phenomenon.
Did you see documentary Darwin’s Nightmare? It’s another horrifying example of the mechanisms and consequences of globalization.
Thank you for a good link.
Posted by citizen on Apr 2, 2006 at 4:16 PM
Tip of the hat to citizen….....
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts on this issue. I found this article on Truthout.org, and followed their link here. I’m a wheat farmer and cattle rancher and lifelong liberal democrat, and am particularly interested in issues like factory farming. Our family has raised hogs also, in the past, and in my teens I took care of a very large hen house of ours, which produced fertile eggs that were taken to a hatchery in Paris, Texas. I would not be able to go into the hog or chicken business today, because of the cheap hogs and chickens produced by the giant agricultural machines.
I was not at all familiar with this site, but it looks interesting, and the forums seem hospitable, so you may see me hanging out for a while…......JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 2, 2006 at 5:49 PM
I must offer my little help to a democrat farmer/rancher: University of Nebraska - Lincoln’s Department of Animal Science has a web site which many a rancher had found useful: Beef Cattle Production at http://beef.unl.edu. I’m sure you’ll find their web site to be a contents rich one.
In this context, I would particularly like to attract your attention to a proceeding from the most recent Nebraska Beef Feedlot Roundtable. The proceeding’s titled Rendering Industry Changes and Implications, at http://beef.unl.edu/beefreports/roundtable200606.shtml. There you can see factory farming from inside: what and why they feed the cattle, and at what extent USA universities are in function of the factory farming. I’m not in the industry but I was still fascinated with the reading. Scared, to be honest.
Cheers!
P.S. Hmm, the first time I posted this comment it didn’t show up on the page, so I have to post it one more time, just in case.
Posted by citizen on Apr 2, 2006 at 8:28 PM
From Mark Winne’s article: “It is becoming increasingly certain that the water will run out…” No. It’s certain, period.
It’s good to see people care. It’s not good to see that the problem is capitalism, which those who care believe in. How are you going to fix this mess? Are you going to create a benign capitalism? Are you going to simply make everyone care enough? I don’t think so.
I liked the article, nevertheless. It’s certainly scary when the food we depend on for our survival is threatened in so many ways. Agribusiness is de-naturing the livestock, the seafood and the vegetable sources of food that we depend on, because that is exactly what capitalism is all about. The profit motive leaves no room for the life motive, even if idiots who see only what’s in front of their noses, for only a short time, think otherwise. They don’t even have enough sense to protect the water that all life depends on for survival.
Posted by Arby on Apr 3, 2006 at 2:07 AM
JP you missed inverted commas after ’ = ’ and at end of address
your 31march—
““I would like for US hog production to revert to primarily small operator status. This would be better, I believe, for our environment, for rural communities, and for the pigs. There is enough solid data here to make persuasive, focussed arguments. To attempt to add on an animal rights argument, perhaps dragging in highly questionable or worse %u201Cfacts%u201D from animal rights sources would seem to be a hindrance to securing any progressive change…....... “”
How ‘small’ is a small operator ?
Down the road from here, in Britanny, the water has been increasingly polluted over 25years, mostly by intensive indoor pig-farming, billions of euros have been spent with little improvement seen.
The product of these enterprises is called ‘meat’, but I rarely buy it. Watery and tastefree.
Posted by frog on Apr 3, 2006 at 2:20 AM
Arby
How are we going to fix this mess ?
Obviously we can’t make ‘everyone care enough’, but the minority of those who care is increasing worldwide.
If we extrapolate from what cabby so cogently demonstrates above, and this article, the whole world will become even more of a disaster than it is already. The same mechanisms are at work everywhere, the consequences are for the moment less obvious where we live, in the rich North.
Land Reform , sustainability, redistribution of income and wealth , somehow, are the only answers .
Citizen calls the system bullying rather than economics. Well I was always bemused in long-ago classes by the absence of references to power in most conventional economics !
Circumstances are forcing us to realise the harsh reality of such a blinkered approach.
Even Adam Smith recognised that “businessmen” had to be held in check by the State .
Posted by frog on Apr 3, 2006 at 2:24 AM
RE: nyvegan mar 31
“First, our laws are based on the Constitution”
I agree. Please point me to where the constitution refers to animals as anything other than property.
I agree with your lengthy post regarding the intelligence of pigs and their ability to feel comfort and pain. However, my point wasn’t whether the pig knew he was dirty; he knows he is dirty. We agree on this. The point was whether the pig PREFERS to be dirty or not. Some humans dont care if they are dirty, others can’t stand it.
I believe you misunderstood one of my statements. My friends are not cruel to animals. They aren’t serial killers either. They do things that may seem uncomfortable and cruel to themselves, not animals.
Cruel Example: Boxing. Boxing is a painful sport that is enjoyed by the people who participate in it. Football? Rugby? I broke my leg playing rugby, it hurt like hell, but I loved every minute of the game!
Ideas about what is cruel and what is not wasn’t decided by the pigs. You didn’t ask them, they didn’t vote. It was decided by YOU.
“The WorldWatch Institute says reducing American meat consumption by 5% could save enough grain to feed 25 million people. “
This is a tricky statement. Look carefully at how it is worded. It doesnt say whether that grain would just get thrown away, or actually make it to those 25 million people. My guess is it would just go rotten in some american farmers storage. The farmer isnt selling it for less than it costs to ship there, he’s not going to be happy to get rid of it at a net loss.
A lot of the things you brought up about starving people is all economics. I’m sorry, it’s a sad fact that economics rule the food business. This has less to do with food efficiency and more to do with shitty localized economies.
“Most citizens of poorer countries eat vegetarian food rather than meat because they are too poor to buy meat. Vegetables, rice, pasta, legumes, fruit and textured meat substitutes are generally less expensive than meat. The world
Posted by spayced on Apr 3, 2006 at 5:53 PM
RE: Spayced, April 3.
Regarding the Constitution, it was written by and for animals. Humans are part of the animal kingdom. As a reminder, humans and chimpanzees are between 95% and 98.5% genetically identical.
But, as you suggested, that similarity doesn
Posted by nyvegan on Apr 4, 2006 at 10:10 PM
RE: Cabdriverinchicago, April 2.
My turn to repay the compliment
Posted by nyvegan on Apr 5, 2006 at 9:24 PM
Here is an interesting overview of meatpacker involvement in the vertically integrated factory farming of hogs. The report is a couple of years old, but the decribed dynamics continue, and the percentage of US hog production controlled by packers has progressed.
http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2003/12/28.html
Senator Tom Harkin has introduced a bill, The Competitive and Fair Agricultural Markets Act of 2006, which attempts to correct at least some of the problems caused by factory farming of livestock, as well as grains and vegetables. Note that a wide assortment of groups are supporting this bill.
http://www.agribusinesscenter.org/headlines.cfm?id=952
..........JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 6, 2006 at 10:30 AM
oligopolywatch
agribusiness
JP Noble initiatives by tom harkin and those two republicans, but this is a helluva long way from theodore roosevelt and the now “”“disappeared”“” Anti-Trust legislation ?
Posted by frog on Apr 6, 2006 at 11:31 AM
JPTook me an “edit” to get the second one right, but perseverence !
The delights of broadband have arrived in this Normandy province, thanks to Euros from local government. So now I can watch GWB saying “fellas, I didn’t want to be a War President”, at the same time as I can read Mick Smith who exposed the Downing Street Memos.
Thanks for the links, goodstuff. But rolling back that oligopoly power is going to be a fight, so must have grassroots .
nyvegan Thankyou for the very good Chomsky quote on the virtual senate. We all already knew it, but it sums up so brilliantly the Globalista situation we all are seeing.
20years ago, I fattened two wild-boar cross pigs outdoors here, they had an enjoyable but short life, rolling over when they saw me to have bellies scratched , but we ate them. Country life.
Don’t know if I’d do it again, but I am not yet a vegan. I do notice that my “meat”-consumption is declining, due both to the lack of quality in the product and disgust at the production methods.
If I lived your side, I would also strongly consider the inhumane treatment of humans in this Globalisa system. one victim,duane mullin, and fast food nation is a good read too
So what are we going to DO ?
My personal way, here, is to favour local small producers of bread, camembert and goat-cheese, eggs and chicken, veg I do myself, support the Confederation Paysanne ( a very minority farmers Union), get out on the streets, and spread the word.
Conventional hi-tech farmers here are a very powerful lobby, for the moment, but they actually are becoming increasingly unpopular. New intensive methods, increasing pollution by them, mean that ordinary country people are beginning to look twice.
When the 18year lease to a farmer ran out on his field, my neighbour decided to take it back. I’ll plant trees, to heat my kids when oil goes higher, and anyway, all he does is spray, spray, spray.
Obviously, your situation on land ownership is far more advanced than ours in france . We have all seen or read the Grapes of Wrath.
Seems to me that all sorts of people, from traditionally and ‘ideologically’ different backgrounds, like nyvegan and jp , might find common ground, somewhere….....
Posted by frog on Apr 6, 2006 at 12:22 PM
Yes, Frog, dining on locally made bread and cheese, perhaps washed down with a fresh local wine…........I think that making one’s point doesn’t get much better than that…......Is Cherbourg in your neighborhood? I always wanted to go there and get me one of those umbrellas…......JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 6, 2006 at 3:42 PM
Before my heart attack five years ago, I loved to sink my teeth into meat. Now I realize we can live quite a comfortable life without it. I crave meat once in two or three months, with no dairy products consumption whatsoever. It occurred to me that our olds would have meat on a rare occasion.
Meat eating nowadays is a cultural, not a nutritional, thing. Meat industry built the cult of meat eating as a symbol of good life and wealth, so much so, that factory farming corporations talk today about “value added” meat: better cut, better marbled beef, or more lean (younger) pork. It’s obscene.
With FDA generously supporting the industry, it is hardly possible to change this culture, if at all. I saw in my rehabilitation program sixteen years old kids with heart attack, but even that is not going to change anything without a massive campaign under the auspices of our governments.
Posted by citizen on Apr 6, 2006 at 6:16 PM
JP—missed the film, but all my neighbouring farmers young in the 1960’s went to Algeria, and 200+ from this region were killed.
Cherbourg is just 60miles north of here . They now build nuclear submarines.On a more positive note, the municipality took back the water utility from one of our infamous multinationals last year. It was robbing the french consumers with high prices, same as in africa, latin america. This is a growing trend, where local initiatives have global implications.
Please excuse me if I was rabbiting on too long about our seemingly idyllic country life, but the serious points remain !
With FDA generously supporting the industry, it is hardly possible to change this culture, if at all. I saw in my rehabilitation program sixteen years old kids with heart attack, but even that is not going to change anything without a massive campaign under the auspices of our governments.
Citizen None of our Northern world governments are going to do anything sensible soon !
Well, not until we get organised and make them.
Posted by frog on Apr 7, 2006 at 12:18 AM
RE: Citizen, Apr. 6.
Please visit http://www.vegsource.com/esselstyn/ . Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, one of the leading cardiovascular surgeons/researchers from the The Cleveland Clinic, the leading clinic for cardiac care (per US News & World Report), has had the most successful results ever recorded in the reversal of coronary disease, and his treatment includes low or no statin medications.
Patients become “heart attack proof” (Dr. Esselstyn, American Journal of Cardiology, 8/99) by getting cholesterol levels to below 150 (the avg vegan cholesterol level is 128), the level below which no one has ever been documented as having died from a heart attack. A plant-based diet with less than 10% fat will prevent coronary disease from developing, halt the progress of existing disease, and even reverse the disease in many patients. Good luck.
RE: dairy, your abstinence from this stuff is wise. Humans are the only species to drink milk from the mother of another species. Who drives by a field of grazing cows and thinks,
Posted by nyvegan on Apr 7, 2006 at 2:38 PM
nyvegan,
Thank you so much for an avalanche of useful information! I was out of town these days so I couldn’t respond earlier, as a civilized person would be supposed to.
Now buckle up: my first meal in hospital after my angioplasty was mashed potatoes (starch) with a generously sized pork chop! Nutritionists in our rehab program told us we could consume up to 30% of average daily fat consumption. Our exercising was reduced to 15 mins of treadmill plus ten to fifteen mins of sluggish stretching. When I look back now, from a five years distance, I suspect those guys were not interested in healing people. It appears their motivation was to have recurrent patients, so impertinent their program was. Luckily, I realized after a month of compulsory program that what they were doing was not nearly enough for a healthy human being, let alone for people jeopardized with cardiovascular diseases.
From my current perspective, what Dr. Esselstyn’s doing sounds perfectly reasonable even not taking into account raw data supporting his concept. I can contribute my personal experience to support his program:
Right after my heart attack, my HDL level was 38, my LDL/HDL ratio was 2.9. As time went by, I spontaneously needed less and less meat, to end up with a diet very similar to what Dr. Esselstyn recommends. My diet was reduced to a pinto and lima beans stew, plus lentils and spices, of course. My snacks are fresh veggies and fruits. The only difference between Dr. Esselstyn’s recommendations and my personal experience is my regular daily consumption of 12 g. fish oil (twelve 1000 mg capsules); cooking with olive oil; and a bottle of Mediterranean red wine a day. The final result: HDL 78, LDL/HDL ratio 0.7, with my sum total cholesterol level 147! I would like Dr. Esselstyn to comment this data.
One more relevant thing is my exercising: I do 5 miles power walk a day (65 mins), 5 to 6 times a week, plus half an hour of honest stretching with deep breathing. When I first began my exercising, I could do only fifteen push-ups, to end up with 48 these days. All disturbing pains in my hands and feet disappeared. I would say I’m a healthy person now. Believe it or not, I’m doing two marathons a week now - I walk about 26 miles on Saturdays and Sundays. Even if I’m to die these days, I’ll die feeling myself a healthy man. Oh, I almost forgot: I still smoke more than a pack a day - I’m a meek man.
But I’m not talking about myself - I’m talking about confirmed by personal experience ways for the people out there to improve their health. How are we to disseminate the news? I would love to take my part in a campaign for promoting a healthy living. If you have any ideas, or if you know someone who could start such a campaign, I would be happy to contribute as much as I can.
Posted by citizen on Apr 10, 2006 at 12:36 AM
RE: Citizen, April 10.
In Albert Einstein
Posted by nyvegan on Apr 10, 2006 at 9:29 AM
From the Independent, a leading British paper, we see another group attributing the spread of avian flu to factory farms:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article356440.ece
So add bird flu to the list of negative externalities such as chronic diseases, world hunger, global warming, malnutrition, and the poisoning of bodies and our ecosphere that are brought to us by factory farms. The disjuncture between marginal and social costs is not solved by the free market, as is clearly evidenced when consumers buy
Posted by nyvegan on Apr 10, 2006 at 2:39 PM
This will be a little off track from what nyvegan has been discussing, but I have gotten somewhat of a burr under my saddle, and want to see if this makes any sense at all to the rest of you.
First of all, I don’t care for McDonalds. I consider it a third rate cafe that I only grab a burger there if I’m on the interstate and there is not much of any other choice.
That said, I have sat idly by while a long line of bullies has beaten up McDonalds for transgressions real or imagined or maybe just because they can. McDonalds is like some obnoxious rich kid who is beaten up daily and never fights, just wants what to know what to give them so they will leave him alone until tomorrow. As time goes on, even though I don’t really like him, I get tired of his crying and whining, and the laughter of his tormentors.
Now this week I read, first, that McDonalds is being extorted by the same mob that squeezed some major bucks out of Taco Bell to send to the tomato pickers in Florida. They also now want to make the rounds to McDonalds and pick up some weekly cash in a plain envelope. This will also go to the underpaid employees of the Greater Everglades Tomato Ranch.
Then I read that Greenpeace is upset over rainforest acres being illegally cleared for soybean agriculture, and that the said soybeans are being bought by Cargill, and are being shipped to Europe and then distributed to many different places for many different purposes. Greenpeace’s plan to do something about this outrage? That’s right…......go fuck with McDonalds.
Can we please do better than this? If the Everglades Tomato Company underpays its workers can we please go and throw rocks through the CEO’s windows, or pelt his family with rotten tomatoes. Or how about if Greanpeace summons up the fortitude to fight the big boys. I sent them a link to the addresses of Cargill corporate offices in Europe. And leave McDonalds alone unless they deserve it , and in these cases they don’t And don’t give me crap about it being in a good cause, or about it being effective, or that McDonalds is, after all, a wimpy little shit that nobody likes. All that may be true, but it doesn’t matter. It still is not fair…......JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 10, 2006 at 5:15 PM
JP
McDo certainly does fight when it thinks it can win, and then can be as big a bully as you could imagine ! Check out the McLibel case in the UK, which lasted nearly 20years, the full might of McDo against two penniless individuals. The guy was a postman, forget the girl’s occupation, but both poor .
However, I do get your point, though ‘fairness’ has nothing to do with it ! This is about effectiveness.
McDo is still one of the big shits, though I believe no longer expanding quite so fast.
I have already recommended Fast Food Nation, which starts with McDo, but covers the gamut of agribusiness. I do so again !
One example cited is the slowing down of line-speeds in slaughterhouses, due to pressure on McDo from animal rights activists. McDo was the right target, because as a huge customer they could impose policy back up the chain. The benefit to human workers was enormous, as horrible accidents are caused by line-speed. Google “duane mullin” for one.
Another example is that when beef exports to Europe were resumed, line-speeds were slowed down, because european health inspection standards are far higher, and would have rejected the quantities of shit and general infection which the American consumer eats !
I have no particular sympathy for Greenpeace, but any pressure applied anywhere does serve to increase awareness. After all, if we disagree with the tactics of a particular campaign but share the objective, our job is to do it better, surely ?
Here in france Monsanto had the courts sequester the bank accounts of the Confederation Paysanne, a small union of small farmers opposed to the stranglehold of agribusiness. That is bullying.
As in the McLibel case, we have to find ways of publicly shaming the huge corporations—the question is how.
nyvegan the Independent article now paying, costs a GBP !
Local vets here are tasked with controlling backyard flocks, when the real disease problem is worldwide intensive factory-farming.
Seem to remember that 00000’s of tons of poultry in UK come from Thailand . Much of it to ASDA, a Walmart company. Crazy !
Posted by frog on Apr 11, 2006 at 1:01 AM
It may be naive to maintain that an outmoded concept like fairness has some relevance in today’s world….....but of course I’m naive….....I never said that I wasn’t.
After 9/11, when Bush invaded Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with it, I was telling folks that this was, among other things like crazy, unfair. Even some liberals, like Thomas Friedman, were maintaining that even though it seemed unfair, that it was important to get the message over to the Muslim world that If They Fuck With The Bull, They Get The Horn…......This was going to be effective, so they thought, and fairness had nothing to do with it. But as it’s turned out, unfairness has blanketed that country, and the effectiveness of their aggression is an elusive dream….......
The campaign by SHAC against the use of animals in medical research reeks of unfairness…......but it is justified because it is “effective”. I guess I am not as big a fan of effectiveness as I am of fairness and justice, even though I have my own causes that are important to me….....
Back to McDonalds (and, BTW, at least after 9/11 Bush did not invade McDonalds), in this McLibel thing, I think that they wanted to be a bully, and they went into the ring with these two poor Britons with both fists swinging, and when the dust cleared the Britons were untouched and McDonalds was reeling and bleeding from hundreds of self inflicted punches. Some bully….......JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 11, 2006 at 4:47 PM
shac7
So if I say I think animal -testing centres should be closed, I’m a Thought Terrorist. Unfair, and unjust.
Posted by frog on Apr 11, 2006 at 7:06 PM
Frog, of course I don’t think what a person thinks is ever unfair or unjust. If you think that animal-testing centers should be closed, that’s just an opinion, as good as anyone else’s, not terrorism in any way…...
My point in using this example is to say that targeting a medical researcher’s babysitter’s mother’s coworker’s aunt for abuse is unfair and unjust, even if it results in the researcher being unable to get a sitter on the night of a big event.
I realize that this example is off topic, and really does not have any thing to do with factory farming, but is an extreme case of a campaign of harrassing (or worse) secondary targets peripheral to the real target. Whether these Bush laws are a productive approach to their mischief, I don’t know. Incompetent politicians tend to construct incompetent laws.
For what it’s worth, my opinions wrt SHAC were largely shaped by this recent article in Salon…......
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/02/07/thugs_puppies/index.html
Still, my concerns presented here had to do with McDonalds, and not
to do with the targets of SHAC….............JP
Another attempt at a link….....
<a >Thugs for Puppies</a>
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 11, 2006 at 8:22 PM
JPyou are missing the ” after the = and before the > at end of link. Edit function a great help.
Thanks for your link.
Sure is a nasty campaign.
Similar to the targeting and even murder of US docs who did abortions.
HLS also looks like a nasty company, in a nasty and increasingly unnecessary business. I did not look at the videos, but they were bad enough to get the company fined, obviously.
Unfair is a word that brings back childhood—- “its not fair !”
I wouldn’t call Friedman a liberal, just another warmongering hack for the neo-cons . I tried to read Earth is Flat, which a traveller left here—too heavy for the plane—and it’s absolute rubbish !
The invasion of Iraq was more than unfair, cruel , callous and immoral.
I reckon McDonald is big enough to look after itself . Big enough to scare the Press on many occasions, but not those two .
We have similar objectives, and try to be effective , but always within the framework of what we consider ethical. Fair enough ?
Posted by frog on Apr 11, 2006 at 11:10 PM
Frog…......
Fair enough….........JP
Posted by J Petersmith on Apr 12, 2006 at 8:24 AM
A friend asked me if unfertilized eggs from free-range chickens are
Posted by nyvegan on May 24, 2006 at 9:01 PM
Hi NY Vegan,
I have posted on this thread too. Right at the top.
Organic free range eggs.
The organic egg and poultry farmwhere I buy fresh eggs allows the chickens free run of a large field and they go in and out of the barn as they please. Their beaks were not trimmed and they can strectch their wings all they want.
1. I do not believe that eating an animal is morally wrong. Animals eat other animals. It is a simple fact of life. It may be that some people and industries exploit animals and treat them cruely, which I would agree is morally wrong, but eating an animal is not.
2. The egg farm I choose to buy my eggs and poultry at prides itself on their humane treatment of their chickens. Not every chicken farmer is a slavering barbarian mistreating chickens.
3. Saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol, has been demonized for some time. I use organic virgin coconut oil, loaded with saturated fat, and am quite confident it is good for me. Eggs are too. I eat eggs fried in coconut oil on a regular basis for years and have very healthy cholesterol levels/ratios.
4. Yes. I grew up on a farm. We always added the manure from the chicken coop to the compost and dug it inot the garden every fall. I wish the chicken and egg industry was as conscientious.
5. Yes. Inefficient. I am aware of the realities of the food chain and know that we could be doing a better job of feeding the starving people of the world.
6. We don’t need eggs to survive but I do not believe that a vegan diet is better than a diet that includes animal products. There are pros and cons to both. One is not right and the other wrong.
7. I like bananas, and buy organic ones, and use flax seeds and flax meal, organic too, on a regular basis.
I may have some links on the other computer that you may find interesting reading. About saturated fat and such. I will try to find them and post them here for you.
I like talking about food and diet and nutrition. Thanks for talking with me.
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 10:07 AM
Oh ... and you mentioned unfertilized eggs. What are your thought on fertilized eggs?
Back in high school I had a friend and I was visiting at her farm and we were looking in the fridge for something to eat. I saw the eggs and suggested we eat eggs but she assured me I probably wouldn’t want to eat those eggs as they were fertilized, her parents ate them. Some of them you could actually see the chick inside. Freaky. We ate something else.
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 10:18 AM
RE: David, 5/25
1. We are animals. Is it OK for all animals to eat all animals? Some human cultures practice cannibalism. Since they do it, is it morally
Posted by nyvegan on May 25, 2006 at 2:54 PM
Hi NY Vegan,
Thanks for your reply.
We are more than animals, such is my understanding at least, otherwise your argument is over before you began.
If I am eaten by a wolf, or a cannibal, the next time I go camping I wouldn’t be angry with the wolf or cannibal. They are just doing what wolves and cannibals do.
I would like to share a beautiful little story with you.
There was this man. He had a dog. He loved the dog more than his wife.
His wife would say “You love that dog more than me.” and the man would reply “Yes, but the dog loves me more than you do.” The answer frustrated her.
The man liked to go hiking in the mountains, the wife did not, but the dog enjoyed hiking too. The man and the dog were out on a hiking trip in the mountains together when the man lost his footing. He slipped and tumbled violently down the rocky and jagged mountain face.
When he awoke he was at the bottom of the mountain. He was mortally injured, broken bones and bleeding, his insides hanging out of gaping wounds in his belly, and knew he was going to die. The dog was there too. Unhurt, sitting and watching him. The man and the dog stared at one another.
Finally, as the man felt death approaching the dog stood up and came close to him, laid down and began to eat the man’s spilled intestines, all the while staring into the man’s eyes.
The man, gasping his last breath said “Thank God. At least one of us won’t starve!”
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 7:42 PM
Hi NY Vegan - David here again. Back to your points.
1. See above. But I will add that even plants have some subjective awareness of their own life. And, if I may be so bold as to ask, are you pro-life or pro-choice when it comes to abortion.
2. My farmer is in a relatively small farming community in Canada, same as I am. I believe my farmer’s claim that he treats his animals humanely is not false. And I take a little bit of umbrage at your assertion that such a claim is always false , I don’t care what Tom Regan says. Collectivist statements like that smack of complete intolerance. My farmer and others like him, I am sure there are some, started up an organic free range poultry farm in order to be more humane to the chickens as well as the people who eat the chickens.
3. Cognitive problem? Confirmation bias? I could say the same about your bias against eggs. But I won’t. But I just did. Oh well.
Confusing cause and effect? You mentioned eggs as sources of saturated fat and cholesterol. I mentioned that I eat eggs and other saturated fats as well and do not have any health problems from doing so. Please explain how I am confusing cause and effect?
Please excuse me if I sound prickly but you are coming across as condescending. Please don’t patronize me. Am I subhuman because I eat an egg?
I will also add that I do not expect any health problems from eating eggs and saturated fats. Quite the contrary. In a well planned and balanced diet that includes small amounts of animal proteins, like eggs, poultry and a few others on occasion, I have excellent health and expect the same for many years to come.
4. Unfortunate. Agreed. Since eliminating it entirely would seem impossible, would you agree that lessening the quantities and dealing with the matter in a responsible manner, like organic farming practises, legislation and reguation to compel corporate farms to do better, would be better than the staus quo.
5. Being in a minority is nothing new to me. I have a couple vegan friends. Nice people. They have tried to convert me but have not succeeded. My sister was a vegan for many many years and I had a small part in bringing her back to eating some animals. I truly believe she is better off for it.
6. “Cons” to a vegan diet? You just named one or two. Zinc and vitamin D deficiencies also leap to my mind. Anemia and hyperthyroidism are possible problems of vegan or vegetarian diets that are not well planned and researched so as not to be deficient in all the necessary proteins and nutrients just as there are problems for poorly planned diets that include meat too.
I am happy to see you mention that babies don’t have to be vegan.
A mother’s mammory glands produce milk with saturated fat after all ;)
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 7:48 PM
Are efforts to eat less animals and making wise choices when people do eat animals worthy of any merit to you.
Does it have to be all or nothing?
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 7:50 PM
My only defense, in one word.
PERMACULTURE.
Mitigating at least?
Posted by Rabbit on May 25, 2006 at 8:46 PM
An excellent defence it is.
Thanks and well said Rabbit. I find you ....... Not Guilty.
Go forth and be happy eating animals in a conscientious and thankful manner.
You too NY Vegan. You are free to go forth and be happy not eating animals in a conscientious and thankful manner. I admire and respect your position on the matter.
Posted by David in Canada on May 25, 2006 at 10:01 PM
RE: David, 5/25
Biologists, the authorities on the animal kingdom, would disagree that we are
Posted by nyvegan on May 26, 2006 at 9:03 AM
Hi NY Vegan,
Just a quick note to thank you for your reply.
The next time I need eggs or a chicken I will try to tell my farmer that you are happy about his efforts and I hope to ask the farmer those questions the next time I need eggs or a chicken and let you know.
And when I do let you know about the answers, I may explain why I think that if we are not more than animals then it invalidates your arguement that it is immoral for a (human) animal to eat an animal.
I haven’t had any animals or animal products since Wednesday. Tomorrow is Saturday and I will be making french onion soup and will use some butter and chicken broth. The ingredients, onions, butter and broth, all organic I might add. Even the sea salt claims to be organic.
As you said every little bit helps. Until next time ... Be well.
Posted by David in Canada on May 26, 2006 at 6:57 PM
And I like your Snickers bar analogy. But an egg is better for you than a candy bar.
Posted by David in Canada on May 27, 2006 at 3:41 PM
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Reader Comments
Oink ... Moo ... Hotdogs and Hamburgers.
Meat and meat byproducts like lips and assholes.
Yummy?
They use everything,
but the squeal and the moo,
for real, they even use the poo.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat a hotdog for many years.
When I was a kid we lived on a small farm and I thought nothing of it , or almost nothing, when my dad chopped the head off a chicken every now and then. I collected eggs every day from our little flock of chickens. Ahh ... the idyllic innocence of youth, but it never bothered me until I had the opportunity to see larger commercial farms and the conditions that they kept the animals in to ‘feed the city people’ as they explained it to me. After seeing the wholesale slaughter it did make the individual slaughter back at home a subject for more serious reflection, especially when it became my chore to chop a chicken eevry now and then.
Now I live in town but we have a small organic free range poultry farm nearby for fresh eggs and poultry. Even the grocery stores have organic products available. It’s a better and more responsible choice. Not only for poultry and eggs but fruits, vegetables, rice and beans too.
These days I make an effort to eat less animals and make better choices when I do and try to remember to be thankful to be at the top of the food chain.
... and doesn’t the piggy in the picture at the top of the article look sad?
One of the points this writer tries to make about factory farms is the environmental damage they cause and how they monopolize vital resources like water causing cost increases for the community. They mostly exist because of the monopolization of the market for poulty, pork, and beef by four big food processing and packing conglomerates who control between 65 and 80% of the market for these products. These big conglomerates pressure the intermediate factory farms (called Consolidated Animal Feedlot Operations-or CAFOs by the industry and the USDA) by downward monopsonist pressure on the “gate prices” of their livestock thus forcing more intensive breeding and use of anti-biotics, steroids and growth hormones, and other such inputs to compensate for the squeeze applied by the “Big Four.” There has been a great shift in the proportion of the food dollar going to factory farm intermediaries over to the big packing houses and mega-retailers like the Walmart Supercenters. Even the factory farmer is being sqeezed out and those remaining have become less independant ranchers than an intermediary link in a global agribusiness chain controlled by the big packing monopolies.
Often this creates uneconomic and wasteful activity like independant free range ranchers in Iowa for the first time having to ship beef at big losses over long distances instead of to an IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) packing house nearby because companies like IBP now own their own herds and don’t need to pay the local ranchers much. The price to the consumer keeps increasing though the unit cost to the big packing houses declines as do the prices to the independent ranchers and CAFOs. This issue is the concentrated and monopolized market for highly processed food by big business and the social impact they have on the industry and local communities in general. The organic food, farmers market, and sustainable agriculture movements seem to have some goog answers.
The author, Mark Winne, does a fair job of covering the environmental issues, and articles like this are, of course, always welcome. But the article does suffer from some shortcomings. To name a few, it
(1) ignores the moral issue of exploiting animals for our purposes,
(2) pays slight attention to the shamefully cruel nature of the business of raising non-human animals for consumption (or entertainment, clothing, experimentation, and so on),
(3) ignores the health effects on humans of eating meat vs. a plant-based diet,
(4) ignores the fact that methane is the leading contributing factor towards global warming (see, for example: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm),
(5) fails to mention that the use of grain to feed livestock is dreadfully inefficient and robs the poor of substance in order to feed the rich a steady diet of animal products, and
(6) doesn’t discuss the wide variety of animal product substitutes available to us today.
Because of these shortcomings, I’m not sure that the article will have a large impact on individuals’ food buying decisions, which is a necessary ingredient for reform of these horrific practices. But it does sensitize readers to the subject, and that’s always a good start.
nyvegan,
Your observations are quite on the mark! This is an issue about which I am gravely concerned as well! The environmental impact of factory farming is only one major concern among which are the inefficiency use of grain for food energy which as you point out consists of a transfer of resources from the poor to the rich as well as the ethical treatment of farm animals.
I do think that the entire issues turns less on our consumption habits or attitudes than on the role of agribusiness in the globalization of capital. The article touches on the concentration of livestock production for the national market the small number of farms producing the majority of poultry, pork, and beef. The free range, or organic ranchers, are all but squeezed out of the market. Most of the farms that produce meat for the big packing houses are an increasingly concentrated number of factory farms who are locked into long term contracts to insure those farms a steady market for their livestock. To get the contracts the ranchers take a per head cut in the “gate price” of the livestock over the term of the contract. Downward price pressure is further applied by the increase in the size of corporate owned herds which the “big four” often purchase from each other in order to artificially depress the gate prices. This causes the ranchers to overbreed and over use steroids to offset the decline in income from livestock price cuts which aggravates the negative impact of factory farming. The big four see an increase in their profit margins increasingly at the expense of the ranchers and consumers. About ten years ago a number of ranchers filed a class action suit against the illegal monopoly pricing practices of the big packing houses based on the 1921 Packinghouse and Stockyards Act which was to protect ranchers from the monopoly power of the big packers. To date it is still tied up in the 11th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.
The issue seems to be the increased monopolization of our national food production system. Much of this is tied in with the highly profitable fast food market which sells poor quality junk but are a steady market for factory farm production. A good example is KFC and other chicken joints that buy on contract from factory farms that use steriods in the mass breeding of chickens. The same is true of beef. These practices would be far less harmful to consumers and small producers if our meat consumption dropped to healthier levels and most consumers switched to organically produced products.
A VERY good article, BECAUSE it told us, reminded us, of what we all knew already !
“”“In other words, our food system may be looking at a doomsday denouement before the middle of this century. It is becoming increasingly certain that the water will run out, the land will no longer absorb the torrent of nutrient waste spread upon it, and the over-bred, antibiotic and hormone-injected animals will eventually succumb to their natural limitations. Poole puts it this way,
Frog,
Since the 1990s, an increasing proportion of US livestock products are marketed outside the US mostly in East Asia. Japan was the single biggest buyer of US beef until the “mad cow” disease fear. I believe they now are purchasing our livestock products again. What is amazing is how US pork and chicken are quickly entering the growing Chinese and Korean markets where the raising of pigs and chickens are a widespread tradition. The real logic to this is to somewhat offset the trade deficit with East Asian countries. This can never really be done with US agricultural products. The US only exports about $40 billion dollars worth of food annually about 20% of which is livestock products. Most of it goes to Japan, China, and South Korea. The US won’‘t balance the trade with these countries with these products. What it will do is create a taste in the large cities of Asia for chemically loaded meat products while impoverishing both US and Asian small farmers and forcing them off the land to become cheap labor. The more this process skews the distribution of income the more there is a market for expensive US meat products. At one time these countries were self sufficient in meat which was only a minor part of the local diet at best. Now we are pushing meat slowly but surely in cultures where fish, whole grains, and fresh vegetables were the basis for the local diet. They are sure to be as unhealthy as we have become with our meat based diet.
Cabby,
As usual I learn a lot from your post;.
The competitive advantage of US production in those horrendous feedlots is due to vast economies of scale, proximity to feedstuffs, zero environmental regulation, and much of it also susidised also I guess by various Farm Bills.
I am not at all sure if there IS a logic to offset trade deficits, some flawed masterplan. More like the march of folly.
I agree this druggy system may work for a while, at the same time as similar producers such as Brasil increase production, but in the not so long term must come crashing down.
Completely mad, but I also drive a car, while waiting for the cheaper electrique bike to arrive here to diminish my car-use by 30%.
Frog,
One of the significant reasons that I found these trends so interesting is that the US used to import a good deal of beef from overseas mostly because it was cheaper to graze and slaughter cattle in the third world than in the US. Rising beef prices in the early 1970s began to push indigenous small holders off the land in such places as Guatemala and Brazil where much deforestation was carried out in the name of grazing land for cattle. This gave rise to political crises and ecological ones. The cattle was slaughtered and processed more cheaply in Latin America and exported to US markets with the profits pocketed by the big US meat packers and food conglomerates. Now that there is sufficient cheap labor from Mexico for US domestic factory farms , we have more domestic production and even exports to Asia. Big conglomerates have created concentrated international production and supply chains that have eliminated many small independant producers and integrated many of the large and medium size ones into these vertically integrated production chains on a dependant basis. It is really all about monopoly capital on a global scale. In the end, the export of capital and the concentration of investment is at the heart of the issue of wealth concentration and the social and other problems caused by this economic trend.
“(1) ignores the moral issue of exploiting animals for our purposes”
The bible says its okay to farm animals. Good enough for me!
“(2) pays slight attention to the shamefully cruel nature of the business of raising non-human animals for consumption (or entertainment, clothing, experimentation, and so on),”
This is also a stupid hippy statement. How do you begin to assume whether the pig enjoys standing in pig crap or not? Maybe he does, you don’t know, because he didn’t tell you. My friends do shamefully cruel things all the time to entertain themselves.
“(3) ignores the health effects on humans of eating meat vs. a plant-based diet,”
When meat, fish, poultry, dairy foods, and eggs are missing in the diet, several important nutrients could also be missing in action. Most vegetarians dont consume adequate amounts of protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12, calcium, and vitamins A and D. Even though fatty meats may be limited on a vegetarian diet, a steady diet of fatty dairy products could cause the amount of artery-clogging saturated fat that is consumed to be off the Richter scale. Also, a vegetarian diet isn’t guaranteed to keep you svelte if it is a predominately junk food vegetarian diet that is loaded with high calorie cookies, cakes, candy, and sweetened drinks.
Huh?
“(4) ignores the fact that methane is the leading contributing factor towards global warming (see, for example: http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm),”
Youre probably right, but today we have many scientists working on using methane produced in landfills and farms as an energy source (some already do). I can’t blame the pigs entirely, I fart too.
“(5) fails to mention that the use of grain to feed livestock is dreadfully inefficient and robs the poor of substance in order to feed the rich a steady diet of animal products, and”
There are many people working proffesionally to modify livestock feed to be more efficient. They don’t just use grain.
“(6) doesn
Re Mark Winne’s Meat Industrial Complex
I thought that this was a pretty good article, but confusing in that he fails to recognize some basic differences in the chicken, dairy, hog, and beef cattle industries. I was also not clear in his definition of what constitutes a “factory farm”. The factory farm term is generally so muddled that just throwing it out there without definition is pretty useless. I have my own idea of what it is, but I can tell that he uses the term somewhat differently.
I would like to see him focus on the hog industry, which has only recently seen the rise of huge hog farms and the piglet to plate vertical integration that is central to factory farming. There may still be opportunity to reverse some of this trend…......but bundling the discussion with other types of livestock which do not “fit” logically with the issues of today’s hog farming only serves to fritter away a rapidly receding opportunity.
According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service over 231 million pounds of US pork were exported to foreign markets in the month of January 2006 alone. The US is the world’s pork export leader. Its two main foreign markets are Japan and Mexico. US pork exports exceed that of beef and poultry due to fears of diseases like poultry influenza (AI)and mad cow disease.
RE: Comments by “spayced”, in response to my posting of March 26.
First, our laws are based on the Constitution, not the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Talmud, the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, or any other religious scripture or work of faith says
I think that poor countries with starving children don’t buy grain to feed them because either they don’t have the money to buy grain, or else they are using the money that they do have for other things than buying grain. If they wished to buy grain, grain merchants would show up with the grain for them regardless of the US meat consumption charts.
I would like for US hog production to revert to primarily small operator status. This would be better, I believe, for our environment, for rural communities, and for the pigs. There is enough solid data here to make persuasive, focussed arguments. To attempt to add on an animal rights argument, perhaps dragging in highly questionable or worse “facts” from animal rights sources would seem to be a hindrance to securing any progressive change….......
RE: J. Petersmith
I know that livestock exports are a recent development in US agriculture. Our traditional exports have been grains particularly wheat. It could be that much of the live cattle exported to the third world is grazed on land formerly occupied by poor tenant farmers and small holders displaced in order to make way to feed cattle to be slaughtered and re-exported as meat to affluent consumers in the rich countries, This deprives the poor in the third world from adding to the local supply of food staples like corn, sorghum, barley, wheat, rice, and certain vegetables. Expensive imports from the US follow and trade deficits are followed by damaging IMF stabilization plans. This happens in Central America frequently in countries like Mexico and Guatemala. The proposed CAFTA agreement will probably worsen the situation.
I think the sudden explosion of all manner of livestock exports has to do with globalizing mass food production for fast food chains and other corporate structuring of the global food supply. In the end, as you suggest, small producers and consumers suffer as capital is globalized through a restructuring and centralization of the food distribution system.
In the seventies, the local market for wheat was near $5.00 per bushel, and wheat could be bought at the port of Houston in the $5.50 to $6.00 range. After the wheat boycot was used as a weapon against the USSR in 1979 the price crashed by about 50%. For the next 15 years, wheat could be purchased for export at the port of Houston for about $3.00 to 3.50 a bushel. I’m not sure that the cheap wheat price (and corn and other grains generally follow wheat in pricing), made much of a difference in impoverished countries. Indeed, it may have hurt their own export prices, and left them more impoverished than they were..
It’s too complicated an issue for me to understand, but there is more involved in the pricing of agricultural commodities than simple supply and demand….....And it seems to be true that hungry, impoverished countries are frequently ruled by right wing dictators who are more interested in spending the revenues of their countries for weapons, palaces, Swiss bank accounts and hot babes than in purchasing foodstuffs for their populations…..........
I think that it will be very difficult to roll the clock back on the factory farming of hogs. Perhaps the best that can be done is the passing of stringent legislation to minimize their environmental impact. But anyway, centrally, you are dealing with a few very big time pork producers and pork packers, and many potential small time pork producers. Pork chops will probably be served at lunch. I think that any message that says that eating pigs and raising pigs and training pigs are all morally wrong will go over like the proverbial lead balloon. I would at least like the chance to make my points and get out of there before you start on that…..........
Petersmith
You may find that animal rights and human rights have a strange way of going together ?
I recommend “Fast Food Nation” to any who haven’t yet seen it !
Petersmith
The dictatorships you’re mentioning do not care about the local population’s well-being - they are notorious for it and examples are numerous. Why, then, the US foreign policy traditionally supports, even installs, such unscrupulous political systems in foreign countries? Why is US policy so hysterically against Hugo Chavez’ social programs and programs for Venezuela’s national emancipation, for instance? And, mind you, Venezuela is blessed with oil unlike scores of other poor countries but still has to cope with the problem of nation-wide poverty. Why??
Your understanding of the problem of global poverty is at the level of blaming the poor, undereducated, single mothers for being the “welfare queens” - can’t be narrower than that.
I was not blaming the poor in impoverished countries for being hungry, it was nyvegan who claimed that I was. I may have not been clear in my comments, and that would not be a first, but I simply meant that a simple drop in the world market for grain will not result in relief for the hungry of those countries. As I pointed out, there have been long intervals when world grain prices were ridiculously cheap, and it did not help to any marked extent. I was not at all suggesting that the poor of these countries were buying beer or cigarettes instead of food….....and yes I have heard this said about our domestic poor and hungry, but this is not my opinion or contention, so can we please get beyond this….........
I went back and re read my post of March 31, and it did kind of read that I was blaming the parents of starving children for buying other things than food for their children. A later post clarified that I was pointing out that the PTB in these countries were the ones who were spending the countries resourses for things other than food….........Again, sorry for the lack of clarity.
One of nyvegan’s links, to the Institute for Food and Development has an interesting bit on 12 myths about Hunger in the third world. These are issues that I would like to learn more about…......JP
I see that we don’t do links here in this forum…........that reference was to www.foodfirst.org…............JP
The more factory farming is driven by fast food and other institutional markets, the more overproduction by large-scale corporate producers lowers prices putting small scale, family based agriculture out of business in the US thus concentrating land and earnings from the sale of livestock products and field crops. Dumping in the third world logically follows such overproduction in the US and the consequences are drastic. The traditional agricultural systems in the poor countries become transformed and linked to the US food distribution system. These countries become integrated into a globalized food production chain involving the local creation of concentrated, often foreign owned and/or controlled, plantation monoculture and factory farming and ranching for export as they adopt the myriad ecological problems of pesticide toxification, manure overloads, destruction of soil bio-diversity and soil quality, and ground water and air pollution. Synthetic fertilizers also reduce the nutritional quality of field crops thus cancelling out the value of the added production yields leaving only the added expense of the fertilizer input. Small scale peasant agriculture is displaced with disasterous social and political consequences. The transformation of the local food system as a monoculture dependancy in the global food system leaves staple food deficits for the poor and balance of payments deficits for the national government which must now import food for consumption. This system only benenfits the rich in both the North and South of the world system. It is economically and ecologically harmful for all else.
Yes, Peter, it appears I misunderstood your post and was hasty to reply on top of it. My apologies.
The most recent example of multinational corporations destroying food production in foreign countries is Monsanto bringing GM, patent protected, wheat into Iraq and forbidding local farmers to use their own seed - they have to buy it from Monsanto for each new crop. It’s not even economy anymore - it’s bullying. I just wanted to illustrate what cabdriver exposed as a general, global, phenomenon.
Did you see documentary Darwin’s Nightmare? It’s another horrifying example of the mechanisms and consequences of globalization.
Thank you for a good link.
Tip of the hat to citizen….....
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts on this issue. I found this article on Truthout.org, and followed their link here. I’m a wheat farmer and cattle rancher and lifelong liberal democrat, and am particularly interested in issues like factory farming. Our family has raised hogs also, in the past, and in my teens I took care of a very large hen house of ours, which produced fertile eggs that were taken to a hatchery in Paris, Texas. I would not be able to go into the hog or chicken business today, because of the cheap hogs and chickens produced by the giant agricultural machines.
I was not at all familiar with this site, but it looks interesting, and the forums seem hospitable, so you may see me hanging out for a while…......JP
I must offer my little help to a democrat farmer/rancher: University of Nebraska - Lincoln’s Department of Animal Science has a web site which many a rancher had found useful: Beef Cattle Production at http://beef.unl.edu. I’m sure you’ll find their web site to be a contents rich one.
In this context, I would particularly like to attract your attention to a proceeding from the most recent Nebraska Beef Feedlot Roundtable. The proceeding’s titled Rendering Industry Changes and Implications, at http://beef.unl.edu/beefreports/roundtable200606.shtml. There you can see factory farming from inside: what and why they feed the cattle, and at what extent USA universities are in function of the factory farming. I’m not in the industry but I was still fascinated with the reading. Scared, to be honest.
Cheers!
P.S. Hmm, the first time I posted this comment it didn’t show up on the page, so I have to post it one more time, just in case.
From Mark Winne’s article: “It is becoming increasingly certain that the water will run out…” No. It’s certain, period.
It’s good to see people care. It’s not good to see that the problem is capitalism, which those who care believe in. How are you going to fix this mess? Are you going to create a benign capitalism? Are you going to simply make everyone care enough? I don’t think so.
I liked the article, nevertheless. It’s certainly scary when the food we depend on for our survival is threatened in so many ways. Agribusiness is de-naturing the livestock, the seafood and the vegetable sources of food that we depend on, because that is exactly what capitalism is all about. The profit motive leaves no room for the life motive, even if idiots who see only what’s in front of their noses, for only a short time, think otherwise. They don’t even have enough sense to protect the water that all life depends on for survival.
JP you missed inverted commas after ’ = ’ and at end of address
your 31march—
““I would like for US hog production to revert to primarily small operator status. This would be better, I believe, for our environment, for rural communities, and for the pigs. There is enough solid data here to make persuasive, focussed arguments. To attempt to add on an animal rights argument, perhaps dragging in highly questionable or worse %u201Cfacts%u201D from animal rights sources would seem to be a hindrance to securing any progressive change…....... “”
How ‘small’ is a small operator ?
Down the road from here, in Britanny, the water has been increasingly polluted over 25years, mostly by intensive indoor pig-farming, billions of euros have been spent with little improvement seen.
The product of these enterprises is called ‘meat’, but I rarely buy it. Watery and tastefree.
Arby
How are we going to fix this mess ?
Obviously we can’t make ‘everyone care enough’, but the minority of those who care is increasing worldwide.
If we extrapolate from what cabby so cogently demonstrates above, and this article, the whole world will become even more of a disaster than it is already. The same mechanisms are at work everywhere, the consequences are for the moment less obvious where we live, in the rich North.
Land Reform , sustainability, redistribution of income and wealth , somehow, are the only answers .
Citizen calls the system bullying rather than economics. Well I was always bemused in long-ago classes by the absence of references to power in most conventional economics !
Circumstances are forcing us to realise the harsh reality of such a blinkered approach.
Even Adam Smith recognised that “businessmen” had to be held in check by the State .
RE: nyvegan mar 31
“First, our laws are based on the Constitution”
I agree. Please point me to where the constitution refers to animals as anything other than property.
I agree with your lengthy post regarding the intelligence of pigs and their ability to feel comfort and pain. However, my point wasn’t whether the pig knew he was dirty; he knows he is dirty. We agree on this. The point was whether the pig PREFERS to be dirty or not. Some humans dont care if they are dirty, others can’t stand it.
I believe you misunderstood one of my statements. My friends are not cruel to animals. They aren’t serial killers either. They do things that may seem uncomfortable and cruel to themselves, not animals.
Cruel Example: Boxing. Boxing is a painful sport that is enjoyed by the people who participate in it. Football? Rugby? I broke my leg playing rugby, it hurt like hell, but I loved every minute of the game!
Ideas about what is cruel and what is not wasn’t decided by the pigs. You didn’t ask them, they didn’t vote. It was decided by YOU.
“The WorldWatch Institute says reducing American meat consumption by 5% could save enough grain to feed 25 million people. “
This is a tricky statement. Look carefully at how it is worded. It doesnt say whether that grain would just get thrown away, or actually make it to those 25 million people. My guess is it would just go rotten in some american farmers storage. The farmer isnt selling it for less than it costs to ship there, he’s not going to be happy to get rid of it at a net loss.
A lot of the things you brought up about starving people is all economics. I’m sorry, it’s a sad fact that economics rule the food business. This has less to do with food efficiency and more to do with shitty localized economies.
“Most citizens of poorer countries eat vegetarian food rather than meat because they are too poor to buy meat. Vegetables, rice, pasta, legumes, fruit and textured meat substitutes are generally less expensive than meat. The world
RE: Spayced, April 3.
Regarding the Constitution, it was written by and for animals. Humans are part of the animal kingdom. As a reminder, humans and chimpanzees are between 95% and 98.5% genetically identical.
But, as you suggested, that similarity doesn
RE: Cabdriverinchicago, April 2.
My turn to repay the compliment
Here is an interesting overview of meatpacker involvement in the vertically integrated factory farming of hogs. The report is a couple of years old, but the decribed dynamics continue, and the percentage of US hog production controlled by packers has progressed.
http://www.oligopolywatch.com/2003/12/28.html
Senator Tom Harkin has introduced a bill, The Competitive and Fair Agricultural Markets Act of 2006, which attempts to correct at least some of the problems caused by factory farming of livestock, as well as grains and vegetables. Note that a wide assortment of groups are supporting this bill.
http://www.agribusinesscenter.org/headlines.cfm?id=952
..........JP
oligopolywatch
agribusiness
JP Noble initiatives by tom harkin and those two republicans, but this is a helluva long way from theodore roosevelt and the now “”“disappeared”“” Anti-Trust legislation ?
JPTook me an “edit” to get the second one right, but perseverence !
The delights of broadband have arrived in this Normandy province, thanks to Euros from local government. So now I can watch GWB saying “fellas, I didn’t want to be a War President”, at the same time as I can read Mick Smith who exposed the Downing Street Memos.
Thanks for the links, goodstuff. But rolling back that oligopoly power is going to be a fight, so must have grassroots .
nyvegan Thankyou for the very good Chomsky quote on the virtual senate. We all already knew it, but it sums up so brilliantly the Globalista situation we all are seeing.
20years ago, I fattened two wild-boar cross pigs outdoors here, they had an enjoyable but short life, rolling over when they saw me to have bellies scratched , but we ate them. Country life.
Don’t know if I’d do it again, but I am not yet a vegan. I do notice that my “meat”-consumption is declining, due both to the lack of quality in the product and disgust at the production methods.
If I lived your side, I would also strongly consider the inhumane treatment of humans in this Globalisa system. one victim,duane mullin, and fast food nation is a good read too
So what are we going to DO ?
My personal way, here, is to favour local small producers of bread, camembert and goat-cheese, eggs and chicken, veg I do myself, support the Confederation Paysanne ( a very minority farmers Union), get out on the streets, and spread the word.
Conventional hi-tech farmers here are a very powerful lobby, for the moment, but they actually are becoming increasingly unpopular. New intensive methods, increasing pollution by them, mean that ordinary country people are beginning to look twice.
When the 18year lease to a farmer ran out on his field, my neighbour decided to take it back. I’ll plant trees, to heat my kids when oil goes higher, and anyway, all he does is spray, spray, spray.
Obviously, your situation on land ownership is far more advanced than ours in france . We have all seen or read the Grapes of Wrath.
Seems to me that all sorts of people, from traditionally and ‘ideologically’ different backgrounds, like nyvegan and jp , might find common ground, somewhere….....
Yes, Frog, dining on locally made bread and cheese, perhaps washed down with a fresh local wine…........I think that making one’s point doesn’t get much better than that…......Is Cherbourg in your neighborhood? I always wanted to go there and get me one of those umbrellas…......JP
Before my heart attack five years ago, I loved to sink my teeth into meat. Now I realize we can live quite a comfortable life without it. I crave meat once in two or three months, with no dairy products consumption whatsoever. It occurred to me that our olds would have meat on a rare occasion.
Meat eating nowadays is a cultural, not a nutritional, thing. Meat industry built the cult of meat eating as a symbol of good life and wealth, so much so, that factory farming corporations talk today about “value added” meat: better cut, better marbled beef, or more lean (younger) pork. It’s obscene.
With FDA generously supporting the industry, it is hardly possible to change this culture, if at all. I saw in my rehabilitation program sixteen years old kids with heart attack, but even that is not going to change anything without a massive campaign under the auspices of our governments.
JP—missed the film, but all my neighbouring farmers young in the 1960’s went to Algeria, and 200+ from this region were killed.
Cherbourg is just 60miles north of here . They now build nuclear submarines.On a more positive note, the municipality took back the water utility from one of our infamous multinationals last year. It was robbing the french consumers with high prices, same as in africa, latin america. This is a growing trend, where local initiatives have global implications.
Please excuse me if I was rabbiting on too long about our seemingly idyllic country life, but the serious points remain !
Citizen None of our Northern world governments are going to do anything sensible soon !
Well, not until we get organised and make them.
RE: Citizen, Apr. 6.
Please visit http://www.vegsource.com/esselstyn/ . Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, one of the leading cardiovascular surgeons/researchers from the The Cleveland Clinic, the leading clinic for cardiac care (per US News & World Report), has had the most successful results ever recorded in the reversal of coronary disease, and his treatment includes low or no statin medications.
Patients become “heart attack proof” (Dr. Esselstyn, American Journal of Cardiology, 8/99) by getting cholesterol levels to below 150 (the avg vegan cholesterol level is 128), the level below which no one has ever been documented as having died from a heart attack. A plant-based diet with less than 10% fat will prevent coronary disease from developing, halt the progress of existing disease, and even reverse the disease in many patients. Good luck.
RE: dairy, your abstinence from this stuff is wise. Humans are the only species to drink milk from the mother of another species. Who drives by a field of grazing cows and thinks,
nyvegan,
Thank you so much for an avalanche of useful information! I was out of town these days so I couldn’t respond earlier, as a civilized person would be supposed to.
Now buckle up: my first meal in hospital after my angioplasty was mashed potatoes (starch) with a generously sized pork chop! Nutritionists in our rehab program told us we could consume up to 30% of average daily fat consumption. Our exercising was reduced to 15 mins of treadmill plus ten to fifteen mins of sluggish stretching. When I look back now, from a five years distance, I suspect those guys were not interested in healing people. It appears their motivation was to have recurrent patients, so impertinent their program was. Luckily, I realized after a month of compulsory program that what they were doing was not nearly enough for a healthy human being, let alone for people jeopardized with cardiovascular diseases.
From my current perspective, what Dr. Esselstyn’s doing sounds perfectly reasonable even not taking into account raw data supporting his concept. I can contribute my personal experience to support his program:
Right after my heart attack, my HDL level was 38, my LDL/HDL ratio was 2.9. As time went by, I spontaneously needed less and less meat, to end up with a diet very similar to what Dr. Esselstyn recommends. My diet was reduced to a pinto and lima beans stew, plus lentils and spices, of course. My snacks are fresh veggies and fruits. The only difference between Dr. Esselstyn’s recommendations and my personal experience is my regular daily consumption of 12 g. fish oil (twelve 1000 mg capsules); cooking with olive oil; and a bottle of Mediterranean red wine a day. The final result: HDL 78, LDL/HDL ratio 0.7, with my sum total cholesterol level 147! I would like Dr. Esselstyn to comment this data.
One more relevant thing is my exercising: I do 5 miles power walk a day (65 mins), 5 to 6 times a week, plus half an hour of honest stretching with deep breathing. When I first began my exercising, I could do only fifteen push-ups, to end up with 48 these days. All disturbing pains in my hands and feet disappeared. I would say I’m a healthy person now. Believe it or not, I’m doing two marathons a week now - I walk about 26 miles on Saturdays and Sundays. Even if I’m to die these days, I’ll die feeling myself a healthy man. Oh, I almost forgot: I still smoke more than a pack a day - I’m a meek man.
But I’m not talking about myself - I’m talking about confirmed by personal experience ways for the people out there to improve their health. How are we to disseminate the news? I would love to take my part in a campaign for promoting a healthy living. If you have any ideas, or if you know someone who could start such a campaign, I would be happy to contribute as much as I can.
RE: Citizen, April 10.
In Albert Einstein
From the Independent, a leading British paper, we see another group attributing the spread of avian flu to factory farms:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article356440.ece
So add bird flu to the list of negative externalities such as chronic diseases, world hunger, global warming, malnutrition, and the poisoning of bodies and our ecosphere that are brought to us by factory farms. The disjuncture between marginal and social costs is not solved by the free market, as is clearly evidenced when consumers buy
This will be a little off track from what nyvegan has been discussing, but I have gotten somewhat of a burr under my saddle, and want to see if this makes any sense at all to the rest of you.
First of all, I don’t care for McDonalds. I consider it a third rate cafe that I only grab a burger there if I’m on the interstate and there is not much of any other choice.
That said, I have sat idly by while a long line of bullies has beaten up McDonalds for transgressions real or imagined or maybe just because they can. McDonalds is like some obnoxious rich kid who is beaten up daily and never fights, just wants what to know what to give them so they will leave him alone until tomorrow. As time goes on, even though I don’t really like him, I get tired of his crying and whining, and the laughter of his tormentors.
Now this week I read, first, that McDonalds is being extorted by the same mob that squeezed some major bucks out of Taco Bell to send to the tomato pickers in Florida. They also now want to make the rounds to McDonalds and pick up some weekly cash in a plain envelope. This will also go to the underpaid employees of the Greater Everglades Tomato Ranch.
Then I read that Greenpeace is upset over rainforest acres being illegally cleared for soybean agriculture, and that the said soybeans are being bought by Cargill, and are being shipped to Europe and then distributed to many different places for many different purposes. Greenpeace’s plan to do something about this outrage? That’s right…......go fuck with McDonalds.
Can we please do better than this? If the Everglades Tomato Company underpays its workers can we please go and throw rocks through the CEO’s windows, or pelt his family with rotten tomatoes. Or how about if Greanpeace summons up the fortitude to fight the big boys. I sent them a link to the addresses of Cargill corporate offices in Europe. And leave McDonalds alone unless they deserve it , and in these cases they don’t And don’t give me crap about it being in a good cause, or about it being effective, or that McDonalds is, after all, a wimpy little shit that nobody likes. All that may be true, but it doesn’t matter. It still is not fair…......JP
JP
McDo certainly does fight when it thinks it can win, and then can be as big a bully as you could imagine ! Check out the McLibel case in the UK, which lasted nearly 20years, the full might of McDo against two penniless individuals. The guy was a postman, forget the girl’s occupation, but both poor .
However, I do get your point, though ‘fairness’ has nothing to do with it ! This is about effectiveness.
McDo is still one of the big shits, though I believe no longer expanding quite so fast.
I have already recommended Fast Food Nation, which starts with McDo, but covers the gamut of agribusiness. I do so again !
One example cited is the slowing down of line-speeds in slaughterhouses, due to pressure on McDo from animal rights activists. McDo was the right target, because as a huge customer they could impose policy back up the chain. The benefit to human workers was enormous, as horrible accidents are caused by line-speed. Google “duane mullin” for one.
Another example is that when beef exports to Europe were resumed, line-speeds were slowed down, because european health inspection standards are far higher, and would have rejected the quantities of shit and general infection which the American consumer eats !
I have no particular sympathy for Greenpeace, but any pressure applied anywhere does serve to increase awareness. After all, if we disagree with the tactics of a particular campaign but share the objective, our job is to do it better, surely ?
Here in france Monsanto had the courts sequester the bank accounts of the Confederation Paysanne, a small union of small farmers opposed to the stranglehold of agribusiness. That is bullying.
As in the McLibel case, we have to find ways of publicly shaming the huge corporations—the question is how.
nyvegan the Independent article now paying, costs a GBP !
Local vets here are tasked with controlling backyard flocks, when the real disease problem is worldwide intensive factory-farming.
Seem to remember that 00000’s of tons of poultry in UK come from Thailand . Much of it to ASDA, a Walmart company. Crazy !
It may be naive to maintain that an outmoded concept like fairness has some relevance in today’s world….....but of course I’m naive….....I never said that I wasn’t.
After 9/11, when Bush invaded Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with it, I was telling folks that this was, among other things like crazy, unfair. Even some liberals, like Thomas Friedman, were maintaining that even though it seemed unfair, that it was important to get the message over to the Muslim world that If They Fuck With The Bull, They Get The Horn…......This was going to be effective, so they thought, and fairness had nothing to do with it. But as it’s turned out, unfairness has blanketed that country, and the effectiveness of their aggression is an elusive dream….......
The campaign by SHAC against the use of animals in medical research reeks of unfairness…......but it is justified because it is “effective”. I guess I am not as big a fan of effectiveness as I am of fairness and justice, even though I have my own causes that are important to me….....
Back to McDonalds (and, BTW, at least after 9/11 Bush did not invade McDonalds), in this McLibel thing, I think that they wanted to be a bully, and they went into the ring with these two poor Britons with both fists swinging, and when the dust cleared the Britons were untouched and McDonalds was reeling and bleeding from hundreds of self inflicted punches. Some bully….......JP
shac7
So if I say I think animal -testing centres should be closed, I’m a Thought Terrorist. Unfair, and unjust.
Frog, of course I don’t think what a person thinks is ever unfair or unjust. If you think that animal-testing centers should be closed, that’s just an opinion, as good as anyone else’s, not terrorism in any way…...
My point in using this example is to say that targeting a medical researcher’s babysitter’s mother’s coworker’s aunt for abuse is unfair and unjust, even if it results in the researcher being unable to get a sitter on the night of a big event.
I realize that this example is off topic, and really does not have any thing to do with factory farming, but is an extreme case of a campaign of harrassing (or worse) secondary targets peripheral to the real target. Whether these Bush laws are a productive approach to their mischief, I don’t know. Incompetent politicians tend to construct incompetent laws.
For what it’s worth, my opinions wrt SHAC were largely shaped by this recent article in Salon…......
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/02/07/thugs_puppies/index.html
Still, my concerns presented here had to do with McDonalds, and not
to do with the targets of SHAC….............JP
Another attempt at a link….....
<a >Thugs for Puppies</a>
JPyou are missing the ” after the = and before the > at end of link. Edit function a great help.
Thanks for your link.
Sure is a nasty campaign.
Similar to the targeting and even murder of US docs who did abortions.
HLS also looks like a nasty company, in a nasty and increasingly unnecessary business. I did not look at the videos, but they were bad enough to get the company fined, obviously.
Unfair is a word that brings back childhood—- “its not fair !”
I wouldn’t call Friedman a liberal, just another warmongering hack for the neo-cons . I tried to read Earth is Flat, which a traveller left here—too heavy for the plane—and it’s absolute rubbish !
The invasion of Iraq was more than unfair, cruel , callous and immoral.
I reckon McDonald is big enough to look after itself . Big enough to scare the Press on many occasions, but not those two .
We have similar objectives, and try to be effective , but always within the framework of what we consider ethical. Fair enough ?
Frog…......
Fair enough….........JP
A friend asked me if unfertilized eggs from free-range chickens are
Hi NY Vegan,
I have posted on this thread too. Right at the top.
Organic free range eggs.
The organic egg and poultry farmwhere I buy fresh eggs allows the chickens free run of a large field and they go in and out of the barn as they please. Their beaks were not trimmed and they can strectch their wings all they want.
1. I do not believe that eating an animal is morally wrong. Animals eat other animals. It is a simple fact of life. It may be that some people and industries exploit animals and treat them cruely, which I would agree is morally wrong, but eating an animal is not.
2. The egg farm I choose to buy my eggs and poultry at prides itself on their humane treatment of their chickens. Not every chicken farmer is a slavering barbarian mistreating chickens.
3. Saturated fat, and dietary cholesterol, has been demonized for some time. I use organic virgin coconut oil, loaded with saturated fat, and am quite confident it is good for me. Eggs are too. I eat eggs fried in coconut oil on a regular basis for years and have very healthy cholesterol levels/ratios.
4. Yes. I grew up on a farm. We always added the manure from the chicken coop to the compost and dug it inot the garden every fall. I wish the chicken and egg industry was as conscientious.
5. Yes. Inefficient. I am aware of the realities of the food chain and know that we could be doing a better job of feeding the starving people of the world.
6. We don’t need eggs to survive but I do not believe that a vegan diet is better than a diet that includes animal products. There are pros and cons to both. One is not right and the other wrong.
7. I like bananas, and buy organic ones, and use flax seeds and flax meal, organic too, on a regular basis.
I may have some links on the other computer that you may find interesting reading. About saturated fat and such. I will try to find them and post them here for you.
I like talking about food and diet and nutrition. Thanks for talking with me.
Oh ... and you mentioned unfertilized eggs. What are your thought on fertilized eggs?
Back in high school I had a friend and I was visiting at her farm and we were looking in the fridge for something to eat. I saw the eggs and suggested we eat eggs but she assured me I probably wouldn’t want to eat those eggs as they were fertilized, her parents ate them. Some of them you could actually see the chick inside. Freaky. We ate something else.
RE: David, 5/25
1. We are animals. Is it OK for all animals to eat all animals? Some human cultures practice cannibalism. Since they do it, is it morally
Hi NY Vegan,
Thanks for your reply.
We are more than animals, such is my understanding at least, otherwise your argument is over before you began.
If I am eaten by a wolf, or a cannibal, the next time I go camping I wouldn’t be angry with the wolf or cannibal. They are just doing what wolves and cannibals do.
I would like to share a beautiful little story with you.
Hi NY Vegan - David here again. Back to your points.
1. See above. But I will add that even plants have some subjective awareness of their own life. And, if I may be so bold as to ask, are you pro-life or pro-choice when it comes to abortion.
2. My farmer is in a relatively small farming community in Canada, same as I am. I believe my farmer’s claim that he treats his animals humanely is not false. And I take a little bit of umbrage at your assertion that such a claim is always false , I don’t care what Tom Regan says. Collectivist statements like that smack of complete intolerance. My farmer and others like him, I am sure there are some, started up an organic free range poultry farm in order to be more humane to the chickens as well as the people who eat the chickens.
3. Cognitive problem? Confirmation bias? I could say the same about your bias against eggs. But I won’t. But I just did. Oh well.
Confusing cause and effect? You mentioned eggs as sources of saturated fat and cholesterol. I mentioned that I eat eggs and other saturated fats as well and do not have any health problems from doing so. Please explain how I am confusing cause and effect?
Please excuse me if I sound prickly but you are coming across as condescending. Please don’t patronize me. Am I subhuman because I eat an egg?
I will also add that I do not expect any health problems from eating eggs and saturated fats. Quite the contrary. In a well planned and balanced diet that includes small amounts of animal proteins, like eggs, poultry and a few others on occasion, I have excellent health and expect the same for many years to come.
4. Unfortunate. Agreed. Since eliminating it entirely would seem impossible, would you agree that lessening the quantities and dealing with the matter in a responsible manner, like organic farming practises, legislation and reguation to compel corporate farms to do better, would be better than the staus quo.
5. Being in a minority is nothing new to me. I have a couple vegan friends. Nice people. They have tried to convert me but have not succeeded. My sister was a vegan for many many years and I had a small part in bringing her back to eating some animals. I truly believe she is better off for it.
6. “Cons” to a vegan diet? You just named one or two. Zinc and vitamin D deficiencies also leap to my mind. Anemia and hyperthyroidism are possible problems of vegan or vegetarian diets that are not well planned and researched so as not to be deficient in all the necessary proteins and nutrients just as there are problems for poorly planned diets that include meat too.
I am happy to see you mention that babies don’t have to be vegan.
A mother’s mammory glands produce milk with saturated fat after all ;)
Are efforts to eat less animals and making wise choices when people do eat animals worthy of any merit to you.
Does it have to be all or nothing?
My only defense, in one word.
PERMACULTURE.
Mitigating at least?
An excellent defence it is.
Thanks and well said Rabbit. I find you ....... Not Guilty.
Go forth and be happy eating animals in a conscientious and thankful manner.
You too NY Vegan. You are free to go forth and be happy not eating animals in a conscientious and thankful manner. I admire and respect your position on the matter.
RE: David, 5/25
Biologists, the authorities on the animal kingdom, would disagree that we are
Hi NY Vegan,
Just a quick note to thank you for your reply.
The next time I need eggs or a chicken I will try to tell my farmer that you are happy about his efforts and I hope to ask the farmer those questions the next time I need eggs or a chicken and let you know.
And when I do let you know about the answers, I may explain why I think that if we are not more than animals then it invalidates your arguement that it is immoral for a (human) animal to eat an animal.
I haven’t had any animals or animal products since Wednesday. Tomorrow is Saturday and I will be making french onion soup and will use some butter and chicken broth. The ingredients, onions, butter and broth, all organic I might add. Even the sea salt claims to be organic.
As you said every little bit helps. Until next time ... Be well.
And I like your Snickers bar analogy. But an egg is better for you than a candy bar.
And I would like to share this perspective : It’s Not Enough to Be a Vegetarian .
And, another perspective, Freegans.
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