{"id":37948,"date":"2013-12-30T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2013-12-30T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=37948"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:20:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:20:09","slug":"6-crimes-against-nature-perpetrated-by-the-food-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/12\/6-crimes-against-nature-perpetrated-by-the-food-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Crimes against Nature Perpetrated by the Food Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0horrors of\u00a0factory farming<\/a>\u00a0are multifold. Treating animals like heads of lettuce\u2014\u201cforget it\u2019s an animal\u201d says one farming magazine\u2014has created institutionalized ruthlessness toward animals, workers and the environment at the same time it harms humans who eat the products. Factory farming even damages the economy thanks to meat-related obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and greedy, short-sighted land-use policies.<\/p>\n

While many procedures on factory farms are cruel, some practices like breeding animals into mutant-like parodies of their original species and violating mother\/offspring bonds are truly crimes against nature.<\/p>\n

1. Greed-Driven Mutilations<\/b><\/p>\n

It is possible to practice animal husbandry in a way that an animal only has \u201cone bad day\u201d (the day the animal is slaughtered), but thanks to factory farming, which packs animals together over their own waste, they endure a lot of additional suffering.<\/p>\n

Chickens are \u201cdebeaked\u201d during their second week of life \u201cto prevent cannibalism and feed wastage,\u201d says an online\u00a0guide\u00a0for chicken growers\u2014though the industry\u2019s abusive battery egg cages, not the animals, are responsible for the \u201ccannibalism.\u201d Debeaking, partial or total removal of a bird\u2019s beak with a hot knife or laser while it is fully conscious, causes \u201cintense pain, shock and bleeding,\u201d says veterinarian Nedim C. Buyukmihci, emeritus professor of veterinary medicine at the University of California.<\/p>\n

A similar fate awaits pigs who respond to unnatural conditions by biting each others\u2019 tails. The factory farm solution? Cut off their tails with a pliers and no painkiller\u2014an institutionalized mutilation called\u00a0tail docking.<\/i><\/p>\n

Cows\u00a0also\u00a0have their tails docked for what factory farmers call\u00a0\u201dhygiene\u201d and \u201cmilk quality\u201d\u00a0as well as their horn buds burned off<\/i> with no painkillers. When video footage depicting both procedures at Willet Dairy in New York state aired on ABC\u2019s Nightline there were calls for laws against the cavalier cruelty. Nor are debeaking, tail docking and horn bud burning factory farming\u2019s only mutilations. Animals also endure dubbing, the removal of combs on birds, detoeing and declawing and mulesing\u2014removal of a sheep\u2019s hindquarter skin.<\/p>\n

If veterinarians practiced the same procedures on pets without painkillers, they would lose their licenses and face criminal charges.<\/p>\n

2. Fast Growth Diseases<\/b><\/p>\n

Thirty years ago pigs, chickens and cattle did not look the way they do today. Thanks to growth-producing chemicals and selected breeding, factory-farmed turkeys can barely walk and can\u2019t fly at all or reproduce because of their extreme meat-intensive physiology.<\/p>\n

Chickens grow so intensely that if they were human they would weigh 500 pounds at age 10. The frenzied growth makes them prone to \u201cflipover disease\u201d in which the metabolic strain causes sudden death. Pigs given the growth drug ractopamine, illegal in many countries, are so muscle-bound they are practically non-ambulatory. \u201cSimply, the pig will go down and not be able to get back up,\u201d said Gary Bowman\u00a0, an Ohio State Extension veterinarian with the College of Veterinary Medicine. Visitors to factory pig facilities have to wear biosecurity suits because \u201cthe immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs\u2019 immune systems,\u201d read an article in\u00a0Rolling Stone.<\/i><\/p>\n

Under the use of the Monsanto<\/a>-created genetically altered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), the udders of dairy cattle become so engorged, the animals can barely walk. The painful infections (called mastitis) the animals develop along with their shortened life spans and weakened conditions when they arrive at slaughterhouses, often as downers, are the ultimate crime against nature. Many grocery chains have renounced rBGH but some operators still use it for the \u201ccost savings.<\/p>\n

3. Crimes against Marine Life<\/b><\/p>\n

While production of the fast-growing frankenfish, the AquAdvantage salmon, has temporarily halted, greed will likely prevail in aquaculture as it has in factory farming. The salmon, created by crossing a Chinook with an ocean pout and a wild Atlantic salmon, grows twice as fast as normal salmon, reaching its full size in 18 months instead of three years. Though the fish\u2019s creators and the government say it is no different from normal fish, in studies AquAdvantage salmon had high incidences of \u201cjaw erosion\u201d and \u201cfocal inflammation\u201d (infection), low glucose levels and a possible \u201cincrease in the level of IGF-1 [insulin-like growth factor-1]\u201d compared to normal fish.<\/p>\n

Like their factory farming counterparts, AquaAdvantage salmon<\/a> promoters extol the reduced carbon footprint that can be achieved by squeezing animals together. Yonathan Zohar\u00a0from the Center of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland said at a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearings that the fish can be grown at up to \u201c80 to 100 per cubic meter\u201d\u2014which is bumper-to-bumper fish.<\/p>\n

Is it ethical for a swimming animal to spend 18 months practically standing on its tail, in the interests of making more money? Is it ethical to expose wild fish populations to the aquaculture-generated sea lice which has all but decimated salmon farming in Chile\u00a0and\u00a0Norway?<\/p>\n

4. Brave New Animals<\/b><\/p>\n

While cloning was once the next big thing, it has lost its luster because of a problem called \u201cepigenetic dysregulation\u201d which causes up to 90 percent of cloned offspring to die. In fact, so many animals die to make one surviving clone that the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies said \u201cthe current level of suffering and health problems of surrogate dams and animal clones\u201d renders it not \u201cethically justified.\u201d Cloned offspring \u201ctend to be large for their breeds, and often have abnormal or poorly developed lungs, hearts, or other affected internal organs (liver and kidney), which makes it difficult for them to breathe or maintain normal circulation and metabolism,\u201d says an\u00a0FDA report. The problems are so common in cloned cattle and sheep, they are called Large Offspring Syndrome.<\/p>\n

Still, scientists at the University of Missouri, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Harvard Medical School have a clone product they are pretty proud of. They have developed \u201cWhite piglets with muscle tissue larded with omega-3 fatty acids,\u201d that can lead to \u201chealthy pork,\u201d reports the\u00a0New York Times,<\/i> because such fatty acids are linked to a lowered incidence of heart disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can continue to eat their junk food,\u201d rhapsodized Harvard\u2019s Alexander Leaf. \u201cYou won\u2019t have to change your diet, but you will be getting what you need.\u201d Aren\u2019t animals great?<\/p>\n

5. Veal and Bob Veal Calves<\/b><\/p>\n

Male calves are an unwanted byproduct of the dairy industry to keep cows pregnant and yielding milk. Calves to be sold for \u201cbob veal\u201d arrive at slaughterhouses weak and injured testified a federal meat \u00a0inspector to Congress.\u00a0After their truck journey, they are forced to endure \u201cyet another 12-18 hours without food, when already they had been deprived of sustenance for perhaps days, since they were usually removed from their mothers immediately after birth,\u201d said veterinarian Dean Wyatt. \u201cIt always broke my heart that employees would carry the bodies of these dead baby calves out of the pen because they died of dehydration and starvation.\u201d Male calves not sent to slaughter at birth are grown for marketed veal products in crates in which they can\u2019t turn around or in\u00a0outdoor sheds.<\/p>\n

Such treatment is tolerated because the allegedly dumb animals don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening to them or suffer psychologically. But undercover videos clearly show mother cows rushing after their babies\u00a0as they are taken away for veal. And the haunting bellows of mother cows deprived of their young are so loud, they\u00a0regularly inspire people living near the farms\u00a0<\/i>to call the police. The newborn calves also know their loss. Calves being sold at Cambridge Valley Livestock Market for $40 a head, some with their umbilical cords still attached, swarmed a\u00a0Rolling Stone\u00a0<\/i>reporter who entered their pen. \u201cSince being ripped from their mothers, they\u2019ve barely been fed and will nurse anything resembling a teat,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey find one, of sorts, in my leather jacket. Its worn-in hide must taste like love.\u201d<\/p>\n

6. Newborn Chicks<\/b><\/p>\n

Like male calves in the dairy industry, male chicks are unwanted byproducts of the egg industry because they won\u2019t turn into laying hens. While the egg industry regularly disputes the mistreatment of grown laying hens documented on many videos\u2014sick, infected, featherless hens sometimes standing on dead cage-mates\u2014they do not dispute the fate of newborn male chicks: they are ground up alive in a process called maceration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is, unfortunately, no way to breed eggs that only produce female hens,\u201d said spokesman United Egg Producers Mitch Head to the Associated Press after release of video showing the newborns being fed\u00a0into the blades. \u201cIf someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we\u2019re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other egg-related industry tactics, while not as cruel, are just as shocking. In 2008, USDA caught Tyson injecting antibiotics \u00a0directly into the eggs\u00a0of future laying hens, despite its \u201cno antibiotics\u201d advertising claim. Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said the vaccinations with the human antibiotic gentamicin are \u201cstandard practice,\u201d though the drug is far from harmless and comes with a rare black\u00a0box FDA warning for renal, auditory and vestibular toxicity. Eggs with embryos are also sprayed with ammonia, phenolics and peroxides.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter and the author of <\/em>Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health\u00a0(Prometheus Books).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ecowatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Treating animals like heads of lettuce\u2014\u201cforget it\u2019s an animal\u201d says one farming magazine\u2014has created institutionalized ruthlessness toward animals, workers and the environment, harming humans who eat the products thanks to meat-related obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer, and greedy, short-sighted land-use policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}