If one conceives animals to be stupid, dirty and brutish, it may help
to ease the moral burden of killing and eating them. Pigs, along with other
food animinals, are highly intelligent. Professor Stanley Curtis of Penn
State University has taught pigs to understand complex relationships between
actions and objects in order to play video games. Pigs have been proven to
be focused, creative, innovative and equal in intellgence to chimpanzees.
Food animals are butchered by the millions. Often they are skinned,
boiled and butchered alive! Yet, if we are to eliminate the consumption of
meat entirely, the food resources of the world would be sufficient to feed
10 billion people in 1998. On the average, it takes 16 pounds of grain to
produce only one pound of beef, 6 pounds of grain to produce one pound of
pork, 3 pounds of grain to produce one pound of chicken and 5.3 pounds of
fishmeal to produce one pound of farmed fish. The same grain can be consumed
directly by humans.
The destruction of our environment caused by livestock production is a
vast expense which is not calculated into the price you pay for a pound of
flesh at the grocery store.
For example, the huge amounts of grain and grassland which are used to
sustain the world population of 1.3 Billion beef cattle. The combined weight
of domesticated cattle on Earth is more than that of all the people! Around
the world, 60 percent of pasture land is overgrazed -- the leading cause of
soil destruction and desertification. About 90 percent of US cropland is
losing soil to wind and water erosion at 13 times the sustainable rate.
Cattle disrupt ecosystems over half the world's land mass. To add to this
suicide trend, the US government subsidizes cattle ranchers on public lands
with $500 million each year!
The so-called Environmental Protection agency decided that agriculture
is exempt for the Clean Water Act in the US even though 60 percent of our
rivers and streams are considered "impaired" due to agricultural water
wastes. Hogs, for example, excrete an amazing 32 time their own weight in
feces and urine every year. In central California, 1,600 dairies produce
feces and urine of a city of 21 million people. Incredibly, five TONS of
solid manure is produced by food livestock annually for every US citizen.
That's 130 times more waste than is produced by people! This waste is dumped
into or is seeping through the soil into our fresh water supply.
There are 1.2 billion people in the world whose daily income is less
than $1.00 a day. They spend 70 percent of their income on food, yet
increasing grain prices due to competition with livestock is causing
increased starvation globally. Ironically, in 1991, the Physicians Committee
for Responsible Medicine came out with the "New Four Food Groups": they are,
Fruits, Vegetables, Whole Grains and Legumes (beans & peas). Meat and dairy
are termed "optional" and not considered necessary for good health.
A further insult to our intelligence, or lack of it, as regards eating
meat, has been revealed by the most extensive study of diet and lifestyles
ever made, called the China Project. The study found that the eating of
animal protein is linked to chronic disease! (source: "101 Reasons Why I'm a
Vegetarian" - 1998 Edition, by Pamela Rice)
The inhumane atrocities of commercial meat production combined with the
tremendous abuse and waste of our shrinking land and water resources are
thoroughly documented by John Robbins in his video film and book, entitled,
"Diet for a New America"
You may remember a science fiction movie starring Charleton Heston called "Soylent Green". In the movie the character played by Heston discovers that the green pellets being served to people as food each day were made from the recycled remains of dead human bodies, making everyone into unwitting cannibals! We may be only one step away from that reality.
Today, public relation campaigns and catchy slogans notwithstanding, we have a new food chain, which goes something like this: For reasons of efficiency and economics, many cattlemen feed their animals anything. Repeat: anything.
Environmental reporters, Satchell and Hedges, tell us: "Agricultural refuse such as corncobs, rice hulls, fruit and vegetable peelings, along with grain byproducts from retail production of baked goods, cereals, and beer, have long been used to fatten cattle."
The authors continued, "In addition, some 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes like blood, bone, and viscera, as well as the remains of millions of euthanised cats and dogs passed along by veterinarians and animal shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed - in the process turning cattle and hogs, which are natural herbivores, into unwitting carnivores."
Many of America's once proud cattlemen have not only turned herbivores into carnivores, but they've also turned their cows into cannibals!
Let's look at an article entitled "The Dark Side of Recycling" from the Fall, 1990, Earth Island Journal to learn about dead animal "rendering plants":
"The rendering plant floor is piled high with 'raw product': thousands of dead dogs and cats; heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons - all waiting to be processed. In the 90-degree heat, the piles of dead animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the carcasses.
"Two bandanna-masked men begin operating Bobcat mini-dozers, loading the 'raw' into a 10-foot-deep stainless-steel pit. They are undocumented workers from Mexico, doing a dirty job. A giant auger-grinder at the bottom of the pit begins to turn. Popping bones and squeezing flesh are sounds from a nightmare you will never forget.
"Rendering is the process of cooking raw animal material to remove the moisture and fat. The rendering plant works like a giant kitchen. The cooker, or 'chef,' blends the raw product in order to maintain a certain ratio between the carcasses of pets, livestock, poultry waste and supermarket rejects.
"Once the mass is cut into small pieces, it is transported to another auger for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour. The continuous batch cooking process goes on non-stop 24 hours a day, seven days a week as meat is melted away from bones in the hot 'soup.' During this cooking process, the soup produces a fat of yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are sent to a hammermill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens sift out excess hair and large bone chips. Once the batch is finished, all that is left is yellow grease, meal and bone meal.
"As the American Journal of Veterinary Research explains, this recycled meat and bone meal is used as 'a source of protein and other nutrients in the diets of poultry and swine and in pet foods, with lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle and sheep. Animal fat is also used in animal feeds as an energy source.' Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons of this 'food enhancer' to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.
"Rendering plants have different specialties. The labeling designation of a particular 'run' of product is defined by the predominance of a specific animal. Some product-label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fish meal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat.
"Rendering plants perform one of the most valuable functions on Earth: they recycle used animals. Without rendering, our cities would run the risk of becoming filled with diseased and rotting carcasses. Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread uncontrolled through the population.
"Death is the number one commodity in a business where the demand for feed ingredients far exceeds the supply of raw product. But this elaborate system of food production through waste management has evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering plants are unavoidably processing toxic waste.
"The dead animals (the 'raw') are accompanied by a whole menu of unwanted ingredients. Pesticides enter the rendering process via poisoned livestock, and fish oil laced with bootleg DDT and other organophosphates that have accumulated in the bodies of West Coast mackerel and tuna.
"Because animals are frequently shoved into the pit with flea collars still attached organophosphate-containing insecticides get into the mix as well. The insecticide Dursban arrives in the form of cattle insecticide patches. Pharmaceuticals leak from antibiotics in livestock, and euthanasia drugs given to pets are also included. Heavy metals accumulate from a variety of sources: pet ID tags, surgical pins and needles.
"Even plastic winds up going into the pit. Unsold supermarket meats, chicken and fish arrive in styrofoam trays and shrink wrap. No one has time for the tedious chore of unwrapping thousands of rejected meat-packs. More plastic is added to the pits with the arrival of cattle ID tags, plastic insecticide patches and the green plastic bags containing pets from veterinarians.
"Skyrocketing labor costs are one of the economic factors forcing the corporate flesh-peddlers to cheat. It is far too costly for plant personnel to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled T-bone steaks. Every week, millions of packages of plastic-wrapped meat go through the rendering process and become one of the unwanted ingredients in animal feed.
"Rendering plants have become a silent partner in our food chain. Do you wonder how much rendered flesh gets fed to the animals that people will eventually eat? A 1991 USDA report states that "approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat and bone meal, blood meal and feather meal [were] produced in 1983." Of that amount, 34 percent was used in pet food, 34 percent in poultry feed, 20 percent in pig food and ten percent in beef and dairy cattle feed. Scientific American cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987.
Let's just consider possible health reasons for not feeding rendered remains to the animals that eventually become human fare.
"In 1990, the USDA and FDA convened a committee dominated by the cattle, dairy, sheep, and rendering industries. They launched a 'voluntary ban' on feeding rendered cows to cows. This was simply a PR maneuver. A similar voluntary ban failed miserably in Britain. The feeding of ruminant protein to cows continues at a rate of millions of pounds per day.
One final indignity. The cattle that so many folks eat every day not only fatten on the flesh of their fellows, but they also feed on the manure of other species. Feast your eyes on this information from the U.S. News and World Report: "Chicken manure in particular, which costs from $15 to $45 a ton in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa, is increasingly used as feed by cattle farmers despite possible health risks to consumers... more and more farmers are turning to chicken manure as a cheaper alternative to grains and hay."
The same story quotes farmer Lamar Carter, who feeds to his 800 head of cattle a witches' brew of soybean bran and chicken manure: "My cows are as fat as butterballs. If I didn't have chicken litter, I'd have to sell half my herd. Other feed's too expensive."
Reporters Satchell and Hedges indicate: "Chicken manure often contains campylobacter and salmonella bacteria, which can cause disease in humans, as well as intestinal parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and toxins are passed on to the cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat beef contaminated by feces during slaughter."
"Animal-feed manufacturers and farmers also have begun using or trying out dehydrated food garbage, fats emptied from restaurant fryers and grease traps, cement-kiln dust, even newsprint and cardboard that are derived from plant cellulose. Researchers in addition have experimented with cattle and hog manure, and human sewage sludge. New feed additives are being introduced so fast, says Daniel McChesney, head of animal-feed safety for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that the government cannot keep pace with new regulations to cover them." (Hallelujah Acres Online Opinion No. 6 - September 11, 1997 "From Cow to Cannibal...Beef! It's What's for Dinner. Or is It?" by Chet Day)
Cattle and hog manure and human sewage sludge are among the possible foods for the animals eaten by human beings.
Cattle are often fed hundreds of pounds of CEMENT DUST to increase their weight before going to the slaughter house. Once the cow has been killed, the carcass is dipped in sodium sulfite to kill the stench of decay and turn the meat red instead of the gray of dead flesh. Americans eat more than 300 million dead cows which have been handled like this every year! (Ref.: Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, "Fit for Life", 1985)