It Just Gets More Bizarre

I thought I'd read about most of the abuses of animals in the world, but this is a new one. A Chinese "farm" is home to 1,500 tigers whose ultimate end is for their bones to be used in making tiger wine bound for the Chinese folk medicine market. It's against the law in China to kill tigers, so the animals are bred and then fed just enough to keep them alive, with little or no medical care, until they die as adults. Their bones are then added to a potent rice wine to create tiger wine that sells for £60 ($92), £92 ($142), or £185 ($285) in three-, six-, and nine-year vintages. Most of the other tiger body parts are also harvested and sold for folk remedies.

I was aware of the huge market for wild animals parts for the Asian folk medicine market, but something on this scale—breeding tigers in deplorable circumstances in order to harvest their bones—was new to me. The story from London's Daily Mail, with pictures (not gory), is here.

Two Steps Forward, One (Giant) Step Back

Progress comes in fits and starts; two or more steps forward, one or more back. Here are some examples:

Two Steps Forward

(thanks to vegan.com for the HSUS links)

1. On February 17, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) published a press release regarding Harris Teeter, a southern chain of 200 grocery stores headquartered in my hometown of Charlotte, NC. Harris Teeter has announced plans to . . .

sell nearly four times the amount of cage-free eggs as the grocery industry's national average, phase-in pork from suppliers that don't use gestation crates to confine breeding pigs and dramatically increase the amount of poultry it sells from producers that use a less-inhumane slaughter system called "controlled-atmosphere killing."

Controlled-atmosphere killing is a gas chamber-type arrangement that causes the chickens to lose consciousness instead of being decapitated. (Can anything with the word "killing" in it be called progress when the subjects are guilty of nothing except existing?)

2. On February 18, HSUS issued another press release concerning Wal-Mart's announcement that all of its private label eggs are now from cage-free chickens. Wal-Mart accounts for 30 percent of grocery sales in the U.S., so this is no small matter. The press release also said . . .

Many supermarket chains have taken steps to increase their sales of cage-free eggs, including Harris Teeter, Winn-Dixie, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Safeway. National restaurant chains—including Burger King, Wendy's, Denny's, Red Robin, Quiznos, Sonic,Hardee's and Carl's Jr.—have also started using cage-free eggs.

So, kudos to companies who are changing policies. It's hard to know what prompts these changes—a combination of things, no doubt. The president of Harris Teeter said,

"Harris Teeter believes that part of being a good corporate citizen means helping to improve conditions for farm animals. It's important to us, to our customers and to animals."

It's easy to be critical of these companies for being late to the party, but I was 50 years late myself. So I'm thankful that more steps are being taken, however halting, that aligns life on earth with the values of the kingdom of God.

One Step Back

(thanks to my son David for this link)

A Feburary 18, 2010, New York Times op-ed piece, "Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free," details a bizarre new level of genetic engineering that is being explored—cut from the same cloth as the "controlled-atmosphere killing" method Harris Teeter plans to use. In other words, we're not going to stop killing billions of animals each year, so let's at least try to take pain out of the equation. Scientists have genetically engineered lab rats so that they feel pain in a way that it doesn't hurt, and they suspect it may be possible to breed cows and pigs the same way. This takes the GMO (genetically modified organisms) debate to a whole new level, from the field to the factory farm. The author of the op-ed concludes,

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

I would question his initial premise: "If we cannot avoid factor farms altogether . . . ." Of course we can avoid them! All that's necessary is for everyone who eats food raised in factory farms to stop. When the demand stops, the factory farms will stop. This is an intellectually lazy piece of opining, in my humble opinion. The author (a doctoral student in the philosophy of neuroscience and psychology) didn't say he was willing to stop, so I can only assume that he's part of the problem (being willing to live with factory farms) instead of the solution (taking a stand against eating animals raised in factory farms in order to cast a personal vote with his wallet). Such experimenting is just one more effort to allow non-thinking people to have their cake (meat) and eat it too ("It's alright; they don't feel a thing.") Geez.

Partial progress, as described in the Wal-Mart and Harris Teeter examples, is good since it acknowledges the natural characteristics of animals and takes steps to treat them accordingly. But to genetically change the natural tendency of animals (from feeling pain to not feeling pain) is a scary frontier.

As I said, two steps forward and one step back.

Salmon CAFO's

[Thanks to vegan.com for the heads-up on resources for this post.]

More than once, I have been asked by people who learn that I'm a "vegetarian" (vegan), "Do you not even eat fish?" As an organic gardener who peruses numerous seed catalogs every year, I can't remember ever seeing seeds for a bush, vine, or tree that grows fish. Why do people think vegetarians eat fish? Or, why do people think fish are any less a form of meat than a cow or chicken? Out of sight (beneath the surface of the water), out of mind, I guess. I have been interested to read recently that new scientific research is showing that fish are every bit as sentient as land-based animals whose sentiency is finally being widely acknowledged.

It's not unusual among some meat eaters to think they are acting somehow more responsibly, if not nobly, by eating "fish"—and especially salmon. (I know; I used to think that way.) It's another example of fact vs. fantasy, people being disconnected from the source of their food. What most salmon eaters don't know is that the fish on their plate has been raised in a factory farm every bit as disgusting as the CAFOs (Confined/Contained Animal Feeding Operations) in which cattle are raised, and the factory farm houses in which chickens and pigs are raised (those raised by commercial operators).

Unless you live in Alaska, Canada, the Scandinavian nations, or Scotland or Ireland, and are catching your own salmon in the icy rivers of those countries, you are not eating the romantic, pink-hued, wild salmon you think you are. You're eating a fish that was raised in a murky pen submerged in the waters off the coast of one of these countries (and others) and fed pink dye to turn its flesh pink like wild salmon (whose flesh turns pink from eating natural plankton in the wild), doused with chemicals to kill sea lice and cure anemia, and fed a chemically-based fake-food designed to fatten the fish for market as quickly as possible. And all the fish's waste, and the residue from the chemicals, flows right through the pens into the open ocean. The ocean bottoms beneath these floating cesspools are deserts, devoid of normal aquaculture life forms, both plant and animal.

Because these fish-farm pens are located on the coasts of nations in whose rivers wild salmon spawn, they are on the migratory routes of the wild salmon. The sea lice that infest the fish pens and decimate the stocks of penned salmon (and multiply rapidly in the artificial environment of the pens) also attach themselves to the wild salmon migrating nearby, and now the rapidly-shrinking wild salmon populations of the world are being decimated as well.

Like land-based CAFOs, these sea-based CAFOs are an environmental disaster. Human beings have an amazing capacity to bungle the natural systems that have ebbed and flowed successfully for millennia.

For me, the problem is two-fold: Treating sentient beings as commodities to satisfy the palates of taste-based, appetite-driven humans, and the environmental disaster that is being created in the name of profit. (One British Columbia expert in the following video notes that salmon is "not a staple food.")

The following four videos are a 20-minute film (broken into four segments), released in 2009, on the problem of ocean-based salmon fisheries, and the refusal of two giant companies, that control most of the operations, to clean up their act. It is not a sensationalistic film like some "animal rights" films are. It is science-based and thoroughly documented.

I'm posting all four segments here to encourage you to watch them one at a time if you don't have 20 minutes to devote to all four. And if you eat salmon, thinking somehow you are sparing other animals a trip to the plate and doing something to lessen the impact of animal agriculture on the planet, you definitely need to watch the videos.

NOTE: This movie was not produced from a vegetarian or animal rights perspective; rather, an environmental perspective. Activists against pen-based ocean farming are lobbying for raising the salmon in enclosed tanks to contain the chemicals and wastes, as you'll see in the fourth segment of the movie. This is obviously not an ultimate solution in that it only addresses one of the two issues I mentioned above, that of environmental damage. But it says nothing about the fish. Breeding sentient beings in a tank instead of a pen is hardly a solution for animals created to follow migratory patterns in the world's oceans and rivers. But since men are stronger than salmon, the fish aren't likely to get a vote.

If you prefer to watch the videos on YouTube, Segment 1 begins here, then you can click on the following three segments.

Segment 1:

Segment 2:

Segment 3:

Segment 4: (be sure to watch this until the end of the credits to see an example of how the Norwegian conglomerates are responding to this issue)

Acid or Alkaline?

Hallelujah Acres has posted a good overview article on the impact of the body's pH (degree of acidity or alkalinity) on health. pH is determined by what we eat. The Standard American Diet (meat, dairy, refined grains, sugar, coffee, beer, chocolate) is an acidic diet; a plant-based diet is slightly alkaline which is what the body prefers (and needs, to maintain health). Read it here.

Live Long and Laugh Loud in Boulder

Boulder, Colorado, was named the happiest, healthiest city in the U.S. Bottom of the list of 162 cities? Huntingdon, West Virginia—not surprisingly, the city chosen by TED Prize-winning chef Jamie Oliver as the American city most in need of his efforts to improve nutritional standards.

It's Not the Words of Our Enemies . . .

Heard an NPR interview today with the trail-and-trial-seasoned Holmes Brothers—three African American musicians who apparently have a strong following for their blend of gospel, blues, and R&B. I wasn't familiar with them, but see a half-dozen or so albums to their credit on Amazon. They have a new album coming out in March—Feed My Soul—one song of which is titled "Fair Weather Friend," about friends who aren't there when we need them.

The NPR commentator shared this thought about the message of the song: "It's not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends." Strong, I thought.

She said it as though it's a well-known piece of wisdom, but I had never heard it before. Is anyone familiar with this saying?

Jurassic Park Redux

All modern, domesticated cattle are descended from the mighty auroch, an extinct prehistoric "cow" that stood six feet at the shoulder—the last of which died in 1627 in a wildlife reserve in Poland.

Scientists are in the process of trying to back-breed the auroch into existence, using scraps of DNA from preserved bones, comparing it with the DNA of modern cattle, etc, until they create a genetic match. Amazing. Read about this process with the auroch and other extinct species here. I guess Jurassic Park was just a few years ahead of its time. (Picture borrowed from Wikipedia.)

Letter to Pres. Bill Clinton

In light of former president Bill Clinton's second invasive heart procedure this past week, Dr. John McDougall has written him a second letter warning him of the dangers of the protocols he is following and inviting him to begin saving his life via nutritional therapy (a la Ornish, Pritikin, McDougall, or Esselstyn). You have to love McDougall—he is not afraid to tell it like it is. And when lives are at stake, who can blame him? Read his letter here.

And I just saw these comments about Clinton's stent procedure by his doctor, Dr. Allen Schwartz: "This was not a result of either his lifestyle or his diet, which have been excellent . . . . This is a chronic condition; we don't have a cure." [How encouraging!] Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association, said, "It's important to remember that blocked blood vessels are not an event but a disease . . . ."

Gee, I wonder why so many documented cases of heart "disease" have been alleviated or reversed by patients who switched to a plant-based diet? (The evidence from doctors who have documented these results is available for anyone to see—including Dr. Schwartz.)