Farm Animal Industry Must Change, Says Pew Commission
WASHINGTON, DC - Animal agriculture has experienced “warp speed” growth over the last 50 years, due to cheap feed, water and energy. This has enabled Americans to eat more meat per person than any other society on the planet, but the industry will have to change as these resources become less available in the future, finds a report released today by The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. 
Beginning in 2006, 15 commissioners, each with expertise in public policy, veterinary medicine, public health, agriculture, animal welfare, or rural society, undertook an exhaustive examination on the impacts to humans, animals and the environment of intensive food animal production.
Among the numerous recommendations in its report, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America,” the Commission advocates a new system to deal with farm waste “that will replace the inflexible and broken system that exists today” and protect Americans from the adverse environmental and human health hazards of improperly handled waste.
Congress and the federal government should work together to formulate laws and regulations outlining baseline waste handling standards for Industrial Farm Animal Production, IFAP, facilities, the Commission recommends. States could choose to implement more stringent regulations if they considered them necessary.
“Our diminishing land capacity for producing food animals, combined with dwindling freshwater supplies, escalating energy costs, nutrient overloading of soil, and increased antibiotic resistance, will result in a crisis unless new laws and regulations go into effect in a timely fashion,” says the Commission. “This process must begin immediately and be fully implemented within 10 years.”
State environmental protection agencies, rather than state agricultural agencies, should be charged with regulating IFAP waste,” the Commission says.
“This would prevent the conflict of interest that arises when a state agency charged with promoting agriculture is also regulating it.”
Addressing risks to public health from intensive farm animal production, the Commission recommends creation of a Food Safety Administration that combines the food inspection and safety responsibilities of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA; the Food and Drug Administration, FDA; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies into one agency to improve the safety of the U.S. food supply.
“The current system to ensure the safety of U.S. food is disjointed and dysfunctional; for example, FDA regulates meatless frozen pizza whereas USDA has jurisdiction over frozen pizza with meat. This fractured system has failed to ensure food safety, and a solution requires a thorough national debate about how the most effective and efficient food safety agency would be constructed,” the Commission says.
Numerous known infectious diseases can be transmitted between humans and animals; in fact, of the more than 1,400 documented human pathogens, about 64 percent are zoonotic, the Commisson states.
The commissioners studied the spread of zoonotic diseases and other public health threats, environmental degradation, animal welfare concerns, and socioeconomic effects on rural communities as agriculture changed from the extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by single families to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble industrial buildings.
Commission Chairman John Carlin, a former governor of Kansas, experienced that change personally. “When I was growing up, my family operated a dairy farm, which not only raised cows to produce milk, but crops to feed the cows and wheat as a cash crop,” he writes in his Forward to the report. “When I took over management of the farm from my father in the mid-sixties, on average we milked about 40 cows and farmed about 800 acres. We were one of some 30 such dairy operations in Saline County, Kansas.”
“Today in Saline County and most Kansas counties, it is nearly impossible to find that kind of diversified farm,” writes Carlin. “Most have given way to large, highly specialized, and highly productive animal producing operations. In Saline County today, there is only one dairy farm, yet it and similar operations across the state produce more milk from fewer cows statewide than I and all of my peers did when I was actively farming.”
This change from extensive to intensive animal food production has resulted in inhumane treatment of farm animals, which in turn has consumers worried about the welfare of the animals they eat.
One of the Commission’s prime recommendations addresses the fact that consumer concern for humane treatment of food-producing animals is growing and has prompted change in the industry.
After reviewing the literature, visiting production facilities, and listening to producers, the Commission believes that the most intensive confinement systems, such as restrictive veal crates, hog gestation pens, restrictive farrowing crates, and battery cages for poultry, all prevent the animals from a normal range of movement and constitute inhumane treatment.
The Commission recommends that all these practices be phased out within the next 10 years to reduce IFAP risks to public health and improve animal well-being.
The commissioners recommend a government oversight system similar in structure to that used for laboratory animal welfare. Each IFAP facility would be certified by an industry-funded, government-chartered, not-for-profit entity accredited by the federal government. Federal entities would audit IFAP facilities for compliance.
Consumers could look for the third-party certification as proof that the production process meets federal farm animal welfare standards, the Commission recommends.
Human health of workers and consumers is addressed with a recommendation that the federal, state, and local governments should begin collecting data on air emissions, ground and surface water emissions, soil emissions, and health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease, heart disease, injuries, and allergies.
The Commission recommends that these data be tabulated and combined with existing data in a national IFAP data clearinghouse that will enable agencies to keep track of air, water, and land emissions from IFAP facilities and evaluate the public health implications of these emissions.
Currently, federal agencies each keep extensive records for different industries as a way to track changes and regulate each industry. The clearinghouse would consolidate all IFAP data.
“Large-scale industrialized farms create a variety of social problems for communities,” the Commission states.
One recommendation to address these problems suggests that states, counties, and local governments should implement zoning and siting guidance that fairly and effectively evaluate the suitability of a site for these types of facilities.
“Distances from schools, residences, surface and groundwater sources, churches, parks, and areas designated to protect wildlife should all be factored into the proposed location of a food animal production facility. Waterways are particularly crucial as any waste that seeps into water sources may travel great distances,” the Commission says.
Another major recommendation concerns the routine use of specially formulated feeds that incorporate antibiotics, other antimicrobials, and hormones to prevent disease and induce rapid growth.
Saying that the use of low doses of antibiotics as food additives facilitates the rapid evolution and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and the resulting potential for “resistance reservoirs” and interspecies transfer of resistance determinants is “a high priority public health concern,” the Commission recommends that their use be restricted.
At the same time, a flexible risk-based system for food safety from farm to fork should be developed to improve the safety of animal protein produced by IFAP facilities, the Commission recommends.
The industry must attack food safety issues at their source, instead of trying to fix a problem after it has occurred, by instituting better sanitary and health practices at the farm level, the Commission says.
Environmental issues, particularly waste handling, received intense examination by the Commission, which had a number of recommendations beginning with the enforcement of existing federal, state, and local regulations.
“Adequate mandatory federal funding” must be provided to enable states to hire more trained inspectors, collect data, monitor farms more closely, educate producers on proper manure handling techniques, write Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plans, and enforce regulations, the Commission states.
However necessary, many of these recommendations may make life difficult for producers, the Commission acknowledges.
“There have been some serious obstacles to the Commission completing its review and approving consensus recommendations,” writes Robert P. Martin, the Commission’s executive director, in his Preface to the report. “The formation of this Commission was greeted by industrial agriculture with responses ranging from open hostility to wary cooperation.”
“In fact, while some industrial agriculture representatives were recommending potential authors for the technical reports to Commission staff, other industrial agriculture representatives were discouraging those same authors from assisting us by threatening to withhold research funding for their college or university,” writes Martin.
“We found significant influence by the industry at every turn: in academic research, agriculture policy development, government regulation, and enforcement,” he writes.
“Among the many changes likely in the next 50 years, we believe the following three will be especially challenging to the U.S. industrial food and agriculture system: the depletion of stored energy and water resources, and changing climate,” writes Fred Kirschenmann, PhD, on behalf of the Commission in his chapter of the report.
A Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University, and a North Dakota rancher, Kirschenmann points out that the emerging market for biofuels has changed that equation because “the value of corn and other commodity crops is now tied to their energy value, often resulting in higher prices.”
“The real energy transition will have to be from an energy input system to an energy exchange system,” he writes,” and this transition is likely to entail significant system changes in the U.S. production of crops and livestock.”
To read the Pew report, “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America,” click here.
© Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008
I broke a tooth on a pork bone fragment a while back. The ensuing root canal was more than enough to finally push me over the edge. I’d been against it for a long time, but damned, I feel better! If I catch a fish, I’ll probably eat it. But for ecological reasons, meat consumption must make an about-face.
And for moral fairness and equality-one must give up meat.
You cannot say you are against war and injustice and eat meat.
It really waters down your case.
“Yeah war is wrong! unnecessary killing is wrong! exploitation is wrong! but I just cant give up my steak–I need protein you know?”
Humans and their destructiveness.. At least it blows back on them too.
Life would be really unfair if it didnt.
Fishing is wrong too.
Someone, please tell these Idiots that this ‘waste’ is a valuable-Resource for Fertilizer (whereas, almost ‘anything’ from Monsanto/Dow IS a deadly Industrial-waste).
[Which is to advocate the ‘proper use of a precious organic-Surplus’, not to advocate the unhealthy/non-sustainable and wasteful meat/dairy-Complex — particularly the ‘factory-farm’ variants that they so-crave and Advocate in neo-Lib D.C., and at the U.N. or Oxford/Yale/U of Chi]
kelmer,
passionate, but not thought all the way through…. Explain that to the Inuit Nation
Vegetarian diets are healthy, being typically high in fibre and low in fat, and devoid of meat borne toxins as well as meat linked food poisoning, while vegetarian cuisine is tasty and diverse, visit any top class Greek, Indian or Thai restaurant.
The poor can benefit from a vegetarian diet being cheaper than a meaty one, while vegetarianism is better for the environment, as meat production requires far more land and animal manure pollutes waterways, and methane from meat production exacerbates climate change. Vegetarian diets will help end world hunger as meat production is an inefficient method of producing food.
Carnivores naturally eat meat and it would be wrong to stop them, but the human digestive system more closely resembles that of herbivores so vegetarianism is an excellent choice. Hopefully this short synopsis will not be construed fascist by touchy meat eaters.
I totally agree with Andrew.
Why can people not see what we are doing to this one and only poor planet we all share. The land and oceans are all being depleated and polluted beyond measure. Millions of acres are required to raise cows, overfishing is now causing salmon and crabs to dissapear.
Has anyone thought what the purpose of a crab
in the ocean is ? They are a clean up crew.
NO clean up crew, now we have a dirty ocean
Cows are a major cause of pollution.
WHAT DOES SOCIETY NEED TO HEAR TO UNDERSTAND
WHAT WE NEED TO DO TO SAVE THIS ONE AND ONLY PLANET??
Industrialized farming needs to change. Check out Polyface Farm in Virginia http://www.polyfacefarms.com/principles.aspx
Their techniques produce healthy animals and increased fertility on their pastures. Their basic premise is that cows aren’t healthy when fed grain. Cows are grass eaters. And we aren’t healthy when we eat the standard grain fed cows. Their methods increase the productivity of their land by between 2 and six times compared to their neighbors. They follow the cows in the pastures three days later with chickens who spread the manure and eat the fly larvae and other parasites. Their system leaves the manure where it belongs, on the pasture. Granted we will need to reduce the amount of animal protein we eat as we adjust to our overconsumption of the world’s resources.
Also we need to consider our American refined foods diet. Check out
http://www.westonaprice.org/ This website reports on the work of Dr. Weston Price, who studied the effect of refined foods when they were introduced in indigenous populations. “Dr. Price’s research demonstrated that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation after generation only when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators found exclusively in animal fats.” He showed that refined foods led to physical deformities in the first generation of children of parents fed refined foods. One can only imagine the further degeneration of our species as we introduced massive amounts of chemicals, plastics, massive amounts of corn syrup, etc. etc.
Considering that the Weston Price Foundation is anti-veg and anti-soy, I wouldn’t be publicizing their findings.
Andrew Taynton,
Very well said! I’m a vegetarian in a redneck provincial subculture. Most people’s smirking reaction to my vegetarianism as if my only reason for it was a gross sentimentality for animals. My sympathy for livestock is only one of my reasons. If every one would at least eat less meat, there’d be so much less strain on food resources and the environment. However, I recently learned that my consumption of mangoes, bananas, oranges, etc… is killing songbirds. I learned a long time ago that my coffee habit may be enslaving Guatemalan farmers. No wonder I stand in the aisles of my local supermarket with a bewildered countenance. How do I eat without killing or harming myself or others? I feel like the character in Eric Bogosian’s, “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee”, who concludes that the only option left to him is to drop out of society and head for the wilderness.
The only really SUSTAINABLE form of growing food and rearing animals is organic farming because it works in synergy with nature not against it. Organic farmers (and before the rise of the agrochemical industry all farmers were kind of organic…) know that preserving soil fertility must be the top priority and that animals are not just production machines for meat, milk or eggs.
Intensive chemical farming has increased output but this is not a success because energy input has even more increased: (10 calories are needed to produce 1 calorie of food now, at the turn of the (19th/20th) century the ratio was 4:1) and if the ECOLOGICAL COST (loss of biodiversity, loss of soil fertility (mineral contents and trace elements are steadily going down so we have to eat more to get the same amount of calcium, iron or copper than before the “green revolution”) is factured in, we realize that this system is no improvement in productivity, just for ripping off farmers..
Minerals and trace elements are very important for our health, especially our immune system, so producing high yields of plants which are in effect (also genetically)inferior to older varieties and contain residues of persistent toxic chemicals are the result of a short-sighted, naive trust in “progress” as sold to us by the likes of Monsanto who are the only winners in this game of agribusiness…(transgenic plants as the magic solution to all problems of food production are of course the latest PR-scam…)
Treating animals like machines is a crime but the punishment is arriving regularly with yet another outbreak of epidemic diseases caused by viruses or bacteria which could not hope for a better breeding ground than the hundreds or even thousands of suffering animals (especially pigs and poultry) cramped together in dark buildings, with no sunlight and no room to move, standing in their own shit and between the rotting carcasses of animals that did not survive this brutal treatment. (I would suggest that all those who want just cheap meat and do not care about how it was produced should be visiting these places.. I guarantee they will remember for the rest of their lives the horrible stench and the stress noises …)
“70% of the grain crop of American agriculture goes to the livestock that replaced the bison (that ate no grains at all but had excellent meat), and one wonders, what is agriculture for.”
Richard Manning author of “Grassland”
As many others in this forum have pointed out before, meat production is the least efficient way of producing food because for 1 calorie of meat on average 7 plant calories are needed and of course the “modern” way of feeding / fattening cattle with grain is a kind of madness because cattle are ruminants, their impressive stomach system was designed to process fibrous vegetables so they should be eating a mixture of grass and wild herbs (thus insuring high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the milk) not grains which cause a kind of chronic (acid) indigestion.
Besides, these proteins would feed millions of people!
We do not all have to become vegetarians but eating meat only once a week would be a good idea and of course only from organic farmers. This way we could “kill even 5 birds with one stone”:
1- protect the environment (also reducing the negative effects of industrial farming on the climate),
2 - prevent cruelty to animals
3 - get healthier meat of premium quality
4 - the grain could feed millions of people (or be replaced by pulses and other traditional plants that were grown before the mad idea of “cash-crops” for export was born…
5 - by paying premium prices for organic products farmers need not depend heavily on subsidies - production prices must reflect the true cost of food production and are not to be decided by the financial markets!
For more information see 2 excellent books:
WE WANT REAL FOOD by Graham Harvey
STUFFED AND STARVED by Raj Patel
Switch to vegetarian. Eat organic. If you must eat red meat, limit it to once a week at most. Consider growing your own vegetables and fruit, as much as possible. There are many ways each of us can make a difference by the intelligent choices we choose to make, both individually and collectively as responsible inhabitors of this ever more imperiled planet we live on.
Let’s compare the progressive and capitalist approaches to dairy production. The progressive approach is to keep dairy operations at a small scale. In a small scale dairy operation using permaculture methods, the animals are well-kept, they are well integrated in their local ecosystem, with a complete, sustainable biological cycle. These are happy cows and their milk is most nutritious. The operation uses minimum external inputs so it does not add significantly to damage to other ecosystems/societies.
The progressive approach does utilize more human labor than the capitalist approach. But more labor is a benefit, not a liability. The capitalists promote the class hierarchy by trying to shame laborious occupations. But a laborious occupation in a clean, natural setting, with adequate compensation, and free time for intellectual, creative, cultural, social, civic and recreational pursuits is perhaps the ideal scenario for most people because we need physical exercise for our health, and balance in our activities.
The capitalist will argue that the small scale dairy operation has low efficiencies and thus to meet high demand will result in excessive plunder. True, a large-scale replication of small scale dairy operations will encroach on wild habitats and strain the ecology (e.g. excess methane) with such an imbalance. But the capitalist’s large scale operations are reliant on external inputs, mostly petroleum-based, that have huge hidden costs to the society. The progressive approach does in fact minimize required inputs of every type except land/labor and limit those and maintains ecological balance by regulating the number of dairy operations.
So excess demand for dairy products will simply go unmet, but the people are fine with this. The people are fine with ecological balance. It is only the greed-stricken capitalist who is not. People can have fewer clogged arteries and live healthier lives. Having fewer children is another great idea. So the progressive approach accommodates universalist ethics and the realities of human nature and biosphere ecology, a general approach practiced in many cultures across time. It’s nothing new.
Finally, somebody is hearing us!
GO VEGGIE!!!!!
All very good ideas!
Please consider boycotting factory farmed meat. I’m mostly vegetarian, and I’ll occasionally eat meat or dairy products, but only from local organic farms and co-ops. As more people speak out with what they buy, the big companies will feel the pinch, and have to change their ways.
Our elected officials also have to drastically change the funding practices in U.S. farm aid, as most of the money goes to these highly intensive agribusiness operations, with very few resources provided for family farms. Call your elected officials and tell them to stop subsidizing huge agribusiness and shift that money to family farms.
“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be wars.”
Leo Tolstoy
Needs to be fixed in 10 years? In a country where we are mostly reactive, it won’t be fixed until a number of people die. The only time we hear about a problem in the meat industry is when it is already in the markets (or school cafeteria). When was the last time we heard a news story about 1 million pounds of beef caught by an inspector at a packaging plant? I guess when they catch it early enough they can cook it down and make hot dogs, spam or Mc Nuggets.
Do yourself a favor, ween yourself from Elsie, Porky and Chicken Little.
Are you a speciesist? Watch the documentary and find out. Earthlings.
If the projection that the world needs to produce as much food during the next 50 years as it produced in the past 10,000 years in order to feed the growing global population at current standards is true, there is no way that there will be enough meat production to serve a significant % of the world’s population in the not too distant future.
The cost of meat will increase to the point that only the wealthiest people will be able to afford it. Fish supply will be even tighter and pricier as the world’s fisheries are being depleted at a rapid rate. Farmed fish will be the only option and that will be expensive.
It’s pretty simple, no matter which way we spin it:
The most basic tenet of ethics: imposing suffering on another is wrong.
imfedup, are you listening?
It’s obvious that we humans at this stage in our collective development realise this. It’s just that sometimes it is convenient for us to recognise that animals feel - that happens when in certain circumstances that suit us we call them “cute”. Sometimes we prefer to ignore their feelings - like savage beasts we mutilate them telling ourselves every fiction imaginable (or hide from ourselves the reality of what we are doing) to justify our own utmost selfishness.
Ethics = compassion = don’t hurt others = leave no stone unturned in order to abide by this unassailable principle.
mmmooo,
I’m listening.
I challenge anybody to work in a slaughterhouse for one day and still eat the meat produced by them. If you somehow are able to finish the day without caring about animals, you will definitely not be able to put that carrion into your own body ever again.
When younger I would participate in butchering the hog. After being shot in the head with a .22 rifle, his throat was cut (my family took seriously the prohibitions in the old testament about not eating blood).
After he bled out the body was dragged behind a tractor to a nearby tree where wash pots of boiling water were waiting.
It was an all day event involving all the members of my extended family; part ritual sacrifice, part food production, part home grown carnival.
If you want to eat meat, that’s the way to do it. I’ll just pass thank you.
I lived on a farm as a child, and saw the inevitable suffering of animals (though they were much better cared for than today). If you are going to eat meat, you should have to look into the animal’s eye as you kill it. If you can do that and not be bothered by it, then you deserve yourself.
W. Churchill: “You know a society by the way it treats it’s children.”
M. Gandhi: “You know a society by the way
it treats it’s animals.”
One of the great principles coming from Eastern religions is ‘ahimsa/non-violence: = love every living being as inherently Divine, and therefore, give as little pain to life as possible.
FINALLY….All beings are miraculously created and deserve to be treated as such…no one is above another…when WE really learn this one…no doubt there will be a great change in how we view the world and how we treat our beautiful planet…
mmmooo and kelmer,
Still waiting for an answer. I know this is an extreme and isolated example, but do you condemn an entire tribe that lives above the Arctic Line where there is a very limited range of plant foods usable by humans? There primary sources of food and clothing come from what they can hunt.
Their definition of ethics may be a little different than yours given the environment they live in.
Gottalove the term food animal production facility really shows how much care and comsideration the animals get.
Carnivours are destorying the planet and causing hundreds of creatures to suffer we all should know that.
Unfortunatly vegetarinism seems to be frowned upon and made to sound like it is hard to do and just for hippies.
GO VEG !! is easy and saves lives and the planet
Excellent question JohnR:
JohnR “However, I recently learned that my consumption of mangoes, bananas, oranges, etc… is killing songbirds. I learned a long time ago that my coffee habit may be enslaving Guatemalan farmers. No wonder I stand in the aisles of my local supermarket with a bewildered countenance. How do I eat without killing or harming myself or others?”
My response is grow what you can yourself, buy local, buy organic, and buy ‘fair trade’.
I hope others respond with their thoughts as well.
Man is the crown of creation. Not to lord it over the lesser animals but to act as enlightened caretakers of the earth and it’s inhabitants.
When I became a vegetarian back in the late 60’s I had never knowingly met a professed vegetarian. I’m sure I must have met some vegetarians but if I did they were more of the closet type, not exposing their dietary choices. We have come a long way in 40 years but conversely many groups who used to eat meat more as a occasional condiment, now with increased wealth are imitating the west and becoming more carnivorous.
What I think applies to all people whether vegetarian or meat eater, inuit or pigmy, is to become more conscious about what we eat and in general put in our bodies, whether burgers, apples or medicines. Once you go from from unconscious habits (eating, drinking, relationships, etc.) you start on a path to some type of virtue depending on who you are and where you start from. Not all people will be the same as they have a variety of experiences, locations and histories (like the Inuit), but if consciousness is employed then there will be movement and refinement toward individual/group relativistic perfection.
If you must eat meat, please do it only occasionally. You don’t need much of the frightful stuff, if any. Your wallet, health, and more pleasant trash can will thank you too.
Ever heard of Tempeh? There’s your B12.
We are a limited omnivorous family and buy meat on occasion from our farmer at the local farmer’s market and fish. we treat our meat more like Jefferson, as a “condiment” to the meal. Summer is approaching and we won’t be eating meat again for several months.
This eating pattern has not gone over well witht he iin-laws who were dairy farmers and raised steer for years. To this day, my husband won’t drink milk.
imfedup wrote: Explain that to the Inuit Nation
We are not talking about the Inuits. We are talking about Iowa, Nebraska, Canadian plains, Ukrainian steppes, etc. 99.99999% (I made that up, but it’s close enough for Govt. work) of the world’s population lives below 60 degrees latitude. Let’s solve their problems before worrying about the fringe.
MeAlsoToo
FECAL MATTER IS NOT — REPEAT NOT — FERTILIZER . . . !!!!
************************************************************
ESPECIALLY WHEN MANY OF THESE ANIMALS ARE FED OTHER ANIMALS, EVEN ROAD KILL!!!
*****************************
“Violence begins at the end of the fork” . . . Ghandi
Also — don’t overlook the spiritual value of stopping your individual exploitation of animals and the universal effect.
Spread a load of turkey shit on your lawn, wait a month, and then say it’s not fertilizer.
Today is a call in day for the Humane society.The toll free Capitol switchboard is 866-338-1015 ask your congresscritters to support The Downed Animal And Food Safety Protection Act.H.R.661/S.394 ,The Downed Animal Enforcement Act S.2770,The Food Safety Recall Information Act. H.R. 5762
The acts see that animals unable to stand are euthanised humanely and don’t end up in the food supply.They will also release the names of retailers,and schools that may have recieved meat from “downers” in the past.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 34 years and have worked with Cows and other farm animals,they are sweet souls and don’t deserve all the abuse industrial farming puts them through. Do it now call and ask your Sens. and Reps. to co-sponsor or at least vote yes. peas in
conscience:
Fecal matter IS fertilizer, provided it isn’t laden with antibiotics. It’s an EXCELLENT fertilizer, and it has been for billions of years. Of course, if you want to put it on your vegetable/fruit garden, you’d be better off letting thermophyllic bacteria tone it down a bit first. But even humanure is fantastic: I’ve had some pretty tasty peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and papaya grown with nutrients from finished humanure compost.
Hanuman:
P. Morehead: “You know a society by the way it treats ALL life.
WTF and (by proxy) imfedup and kelmer
imfedup posted a perfectly reasonable objection to kelmer’s absolute edict. If consumption of any kind of animal food is suggested to be “wrong” by any and all humans under any and all circumstances (such is the impression I have from faithfully, appreciatively, and tolerantly reading many months of kelmer’s posts on the topic of vegetarianism), then the submission of examples of glaring exceptions of such an overarching statement is saliently relevant.
While I don’t personally find traction in moral arguments against the consumption of animals, I do strive to point out that the difference between killing a cabbage and killing a chicken exists only along the lines of which species (or Kingdom, as Linnean nomenclature classifies) is deemed worthy of the patently emotional and provisionally hypocritical designation of worthiness as a life form.
We wreak destruction on Nature in both (animal and plant) ways: monoculture bean fields, or cattle pastures too bucolic to include the horrific scenes of the slaughterhouse. And this is completely aside from the level to which we impinge so-called “non-important” species’ ability to thrive, whether you’re talking about bacteria, mycoplasms, fungi, “weeds,” insects, birds, or other rightful inhabitants of the lands we invade to farm.
So kelmer, I applaud your vegan choice. But when you either abandon or fully extend your “moral”-based approach to the rest of the world’s choice of what to eat, the Inuits will (and SHOULD) continue to eat animal flesh. Displaced people will continue to harvest “bush meat” to meet their protein requirements. And if I’m deep in the Quetico miles away from any other human being and I want to catch a lake trout and cook it up for my dinner and the next day’s breakfast and lunch (plantain leaves and wild berries steamed with fiddleheads make a great companion to lake trout, by the way!) then I damned well will do so. You can go ahead and eat other life forms while they’re still alive, like that salad you had for dinner.
Oh ain’t it fun to be a heterotroph?
All great ideas, but how do we implement this program? Do we make it illegal to let animals breed until their numbers are reduced so the remainder can be pets, or should we just let nature take it`s course and let the animals wander wherever they want as was the practice in India? What do the people that are now making their living with animal production do then, as that would be thousands to compete for jobs in other fields? Just wondering what the procedure should be.
If you eat beef or pork, you must not care about global warming.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/story?id=2723201
‘…livestock is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas problem.’
‘The FAO says grazing takes up 26 percent of the land on Earth that is not covered by ice — 30 percent if you count the land used to grow feed for the animals.’
ChangeB42Late,
Good thing the early settlers nearly wiped out those 70 million Buffalo in the 19th century. With there size almost twice that of a domestic cow, the greenhouse gas level would have been horrific! Sorry the warped side of me had to let loose.
Kernal May
You are obviously a slow learner.
Buffalo have a higher protein level and much less fat, not to mention all the other uses for an animal that sustained an entire population without pollution. They were ecologically suited to thier environment too. It’s actually Bison…or Tatanka.
These are not natural environments for cows, they are scienfically created environments that meet corporate policies…and they are inhumane.
Treefrog,
No sense of humor.
imfedup
Probably not, not on this subject anyway.
Treefrog,
That’s cool. Have a nice day!