What would it take to make pork eaters care?

I missed the deadline on an alert to recommend tougher fire building codes for Manitoba’s farm animal facilities but want to bring up the issue of fires in pig confinement operations (factory farms).

First, could pork eaters reading this look at this photo and think about the sow shown here spending her life imprisoned in this gestation crate, a crate so small that she cannot even turn around or lay down comfortably.

Can I then ask you to imagine her being burned alive, unable to even attempt an escape, trapped in terror and agony along with thousands of other tormented sentient beings, beings that are smarter than your coddled dogs?

Most will likely opt out of watching the video.  Most will just go on smiling, continuing to sport cast iron blinkers while colluding in atrocity.

Over 30,000 pigs burned alive in Manitoba in 2008.

Further Reading:

Some coverage on a related topic, swine flu and factory farming (another down side to immoral eating)

H1N1 (Swine Flu): The Health and Welfare Implications for Humans and Animals, May 8, 2009, Factory Farming

Can Swine Flu be Blamed on Industrial Farming, May 1, 2009, Scientific American

From Wired Science, Swine Flu Ancestor born on U.S. Factory Farms,  May 1, 2009, Wired Science

From Grist, April 30, 2009, New Scientist: Swine flu stems from virus that evolved in U.S.

From Times online, After much effort, Man created swine flu, April 30, 2009

From Grain, A food system that kills: Swine flu is meat industry’s latest plague, April 28, 2009

Guardian.co.uk, The swine flu crisis lays bare the meat industry’s monstrous power, April 27, 2009 by Mike Davis

Grist Magazine, Swine flu outbreak linked to Smithfield factory farms, April 25, 2009

The Huffington Post, Swine Flu – Nature Biting Back at Industrial Farm Production? April, 25, 2009

Simmering in the Soil

A quote from an article by author Edward Hoagland, age 76, published in Harper’s Magazine, March 2009

100 reasons not to celebrate “Canada Day”

It was “Canada Day” yesterday, a national holiday celebrated by many and touted as “Canada’s birthday.”

I certainly wasn’t feeling the least bit celebratory and after reading a post from Peace, Earth and Justice, a group based out of BC, I can see that I wasn’t alone.

Here it is: Canada Day 2009: 100 Reasons Not to Celebrate

an excerpt and preamble…
“No amount of gun salutes, military fly-overs, Snow bird formations, fire works explosions, flag wavings can eclipse what has been really happening in Canada. No amount of nice sounding rhetoric such as in the minority government’s 2007 Speech from the Throne, comparing “Canada to the guiding light of the North Star”, can prevent Canada from now being perceived as an international pariah of corporatism and militarism. Canada has increasingly become and international rogue state, contributing to war and conflict, to violating human rights, to denying social justice, and to destroying the environment.”

Canada Day 2009: 100 Reasons Not to Celebrate.

Also published on Canada Day, this Toronto Star article noted our slide to last place on the G8 climate scorecard.

from the article…
Canada dead last on green list
Toronto Star, July 1, 2009 by Catherine Porter

“While countries like Germany and England have substantially cut their greenhouse gas emissions over the past two decades, Canada’s emissions are continuing to skyrocket, now 26 per cent above 1990 levels.

“We emit more greenhouse gases than half the countries in the world put together,” said Keith Stewart, WWF-Canada’s climate change campaign manager.”

You can find other reasons not to go on a a flag waving spree in a blog post of mine:
Ten reasons to boycott Canada

This country needs to wake up and wake up fast.

Elephants in Zoos: When did Toronto Zoo hire Pinocchio as a spokeperson?

I was glad to see for once Torontonians having a protest at the Toronto Zoo over the elephant enclosure. The Toronto Zoo needs to be in the spotlight more. Just because it isn’t as much of a hellhole as the other zoos in this country doesn’t mean it should miss the spotlight.

CTV covered the story (click here for the link) and I was astounded to see Eric Cole’s outrageous statements:

“Our elephants are not aggressive at all and they’ve been at the zoo for 35 years. We have no aggressive elephants,” said Eric Cole, the supervisor of the African Savanna, who has been working with the animals for more than 10 years.

Watch a video showing just how non-aggressive they are: (the pertinent footage is from the two minute to the five minute mark)

The other outrageous statement:

“There’s no ground to say elephants are prone to getting more arthritis in zoos,“ Cole said.

Apparently, the Toronto Zoo doesn’t even believe experts in its own industry on this subject:

From an In Defense of Animals (IDA) news release (scroll down):
“THE EXPERTS AGREE: ZOO CONDITIONS CAUSE FOOT AND JOINT DISEASE IN ELEPHANTS

“There is general consensus that lack of exercise, long hours standing on hard substrates, and contamination resulting from standing in their own excreta are major contributors to elephant foot problems.”
- Intro to The Elephant’s Foot, proceedings of North American conference on elephant foot care, 2001

“A zoo really isn’t conducive to the health of elephants and the feet are a large part of it. You just have to accept this as a chronic condition, because you aren’t going to cure it.”
- Blair Csuti,, zoologist who organized the first North American conference on elephant foot care in 1998, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 17, 2006

“We believe that no matter how good a foot care program is, eventually foot problems will be seen because they are the result of keeping elephants in captivity.”
Alan Roocroft, consultant who has worked with captive elephants for over 30 years and James Oosterhuis, DVM, San Diego Wild Animal Park, The Elephant’s Foot, 2001

“Foot-related conditions and arthritis are the leading cause of euthanasia in captive elephants in the United States. Activity allows the elephant to wear down the structures of the feet normally. In the wild, elephants move or walk up to 18 hours daily in search of food and water. Although captive elephants may have large enclosures, they do not need to, and sometimes they cannot or often will not, move around. This contributes to the development of foot disease and arthritis. Unyielding, hard surfaces, which are present in most elephant barns and yards, also contribute to foot diseases.
- Gary West, DVM, Oklahoma City Zoo, The Elephant’s Foot, 2001

“There are no substitutes for walking in a restricted environment, no enrichment strategies that motivate a captive elephant sufficiently, no boomer balls or tire that replace walking and no food dispensers that will create activity patterns in elephants that even come close to being beneficial to the long-term management of captive elephants. The absence of walking from an elephant program, considering the elephant is genetically programmed to move, must have a dramatic long-term effect on the elephant¹s physical and mental stability and must ultimately affect its longevity and propagation.”
­ Walking, Outline of USDA Elephant Course, Seattle, August 3, 1998

“The first, and undoubtedly the single main reason zoo elephants have so many foot problems is the universal use of concrete floors in zoo indoor elephant enclosures. . . . The number one cause of illness and premature death of zoo elephants is zoo-genic foot disease caused by decades of life spent in the traditional zoo elephant enclosure… it is by far the number one source of suffering and premature death for elephants in every zoo.”
- Dr. Michael Schmidt was Chief Veterinarian and Senior Research Veterinarian for the Portland Zoo for 25 years, specializing in the care and breeding of elephants, Jumbo Ghosts: The Dangerous Life of Elephants in the Zoo, 2001.”

Please circulate this post so the Toronto Zoo can know that its lies can be blown apart very easily.

Related Posts

• How long do elephants live?
• Winterize your elephants
• Zoos and Elephants: Sacrificing the Individual for the Species

Accomplish the Impossible or Experience the Unthinkable

It is abundantly clear that people and governments are not reacting appropriately to the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

In North America, Obama’s administration appears to be bowing to pressure and backtracking on climate action while Canada remains a moral renegade obstructing climate talks so it can continue to wallow in the filth of the Alberta Tar Sands (among other things).

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, gave a powerful fifteen minute speech about the climate crisis at the last Global Greens Conference.  Spend a very worthwhile fifteen minutes watching this video (give her a minute to switch gears from her intro).

excerpts…

“According to the World Energy Outlook, published by the International Energy Agency, if all governments maintain current commitments, by 2030 emissions will be 27% higher than in 2005…Carbon concentrations in the atmosphere will double over pre-Industrial Revolution levels at 550 ppm, making it inevitable that global average temperatures will increase by 3 degrees Celsius. And it only goes up from there — 3 degrees inevitably becomes 4, and 4 degrees triggers 5 degrees and so on in a run-away greenhouse effect.

We must avoid allowing levels to reach 550 ppm. To do this, according to the IEA, we must ensure that the year 2015 is the last year in which GHG emissions rise. They must peak and drop sharply from there.

The World Energy Outlook concluded with this warning: “The primary scarcity facing the planet is not natural resources or money, but time.”

…

We must accept the challenge of doing the impossible. The alternative is unthinkable.”

While we may hear about arctic permafrost melting and “methane time bombs”, less consideration is given to the climate change disasters already occurring in semi-arid places like Africa where people increasingly cannot grow food and do not have access to water and where wildlife is dying from thirst and starvation.

Those who hail from the global north have been carelessly killing off people and wildlife in the global south, one way or another either through lifestyle habits causing desertification, colonization or resource exploitation (these days by unchecked Canadian mining companies), for centuries. Nothing seems to change except our accelerated path to catastrophe along with the depth of our utter complacency and collusion.

Back to May’s speech in which she refers to the consensus statement of the first international scientific conference on climate change, held in 1988:

“Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war.”

Twenty-one years later and we haven’t done a thing except to make everything worse.

Vegan cheese is just as inhumane as dairy cheese

A fabulous guest post from co-blogger Nothoney

That’s right, vegans. If you’re going ga-ga over the new vegan cheeses such as Teese and Daiya, you’re just as guilty of animal cruelty as if you were eating blocks of dairy cow cheese. Not to mention the negative effects on human health …

Vegan cheeses are mostly oil, which makes them just as bad for your health as dairy cheese. Look at the ingredients for the new vegan cheese craze, Daiya: “Purified water, natural whole ground cassava and/or arrowroot flours, high oleic sunflower and/or safflower and/or identity-preserved high oleic canola oil, coconut oil and/or palm fruit oil, pea protein, salt, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin, natural vegan flavors (derived from plants), xanthan gum, sunflower lecithin, natural vegan enzymes, natural vegan bacterial cultures, citric acid, natural color.”

Here’s the ingredient list for Teese, mozzarella style, the other OHMYGODITMELTS vegan cheese: Organic soymilk (filtered water, organic soybeans), corn maltodextrin, soybean oil, palm oil, sea salt, carrageenan, vegan natural flavors, corn derived lactic acid, natural vegan color.

The ingredients for Sheese, mozzarella style: Filtered Water, Vegetable Oil, Soya Concentrate, Salt, Spirit Vinegar, Flavourings, Lactic Acid (dairy-free), Thickeners: Xanthan Gum & Carrageenan, Yeast Extract.

Finally, the ingredients for Cheezly, mozzarella style: Water, non hydrogenated vegetable oil, tofu, soya protein, rice starch, thickeners: carrageenan, locust bean gum; salt, dried yeast, tricalcium phosphate, spirit vinegar, acidity regulator: trisodium citrate, raw cane sugar, flavouring, yeast extract.

An ounce of dairy mozzarella cheese contains 6 grams of fat, 3.7 grams of saturated fat, 22 grams of cholesterol, and 6 grams of protein. That’s 28 percent of the calories from fats.

An ounce of the Daiya cheese is about 50 percent fat. It’s WORSE for human health than dairy cheese. Coconut and palm oils contain the highest percentage of saturated fats of all oils.

Also, when you buy some products that list “vegetable oil” as an ingredient, you have no idea the source of that oil. It’s likely palm oil.

So, if you decided to try a vegan diet because it’s healthier and you love the taste of the new-and-improved vegan cheeses … FAIL.

However, if you chose a vegan lifestyle because you want to minimize your negative effects on the planet and on non-human animals, and you’re indulging in vegan cheese and other products that contain palm oil … BIG FAIL.

I am regularly frustrated by vegans who are concerned only with preventing cruelty to farmed animals and don’t consider wildlife. Oil palm plantations in Indonesia are destroying wildlife habitat, specifically that of our red-haired cousins – orangutans. Rainforests support 500 times more species than North American forests. Elephants are regularly poisoned when they raid oil palm plantations for food because they are starving due to habitat loss. These elephants often take up to a month to die from the poison.

The UNEP estimates that an area of Indonesian rain forest the size of six football fields is cut down every minute of every day. The palm oil and timber industries are guilty of truly horrific ecological atrocities, one of which is the systematic genocide of orangutans. When the forest is cleared, adult orangutans are generally shot on sight. In the absence of bullets they are beaten, burned, tortured, mutilated and often eaten as bush meat.

SIX FOOTBALL FIELDS OF RAINFOREST DESTROYED EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. FOR PALM OIL.

So, my fellow vegans, let’s reconsider our choices and do some research and be certain that what we’re eating is sustainable and humane. We’re setting a poor example for the people we hope to convince to become vegans when we eat such non-foods as vegan cheese (among others). What does it say about our movement if we can’t set an example of living healthy with whole foods and not all this processed crap? What does it say about our hope to make more vegans in the world when we can’t even steer ourselves away from craving things that remind of us of carcass?

Palm oil isn’t just in vegan cheese, it’s found in everything. READ LABELS. Know where your foods come from so you can determine if the label lists ingredients specifically. Read labels on personal products and cleaning products and stop buying those that contain palm oil.

There are many issues connected with palm oil: the extinction of orangutans, Bornean sun bears, and other wildlife; palm oil as biodiesel fuel; the negative climate effects of deforestation, etc.

Here are some links about palm oil that you may find helpful:

• Orangutans and Palm Oil: What’s the Connection?
• The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
• Halt climate change. Halt forest destruction. Halt plantations.
• Recession forcing Europe to opt for cheaper non-certified palm oil
• NASA photos reveal destruction of 99% of rainforest park in Rwanda
• A tiger in your tank … and an orang-utan too

Sir, may I recommend our special for tonight: PCBs in a Brominated Flame Retardant sauce?

The Toronto Star published an article stating that the Governor General’s chowing down on a raw seal heart has given Inuit leaders hope that southern palates will take a shine to arctic meats such as seal, caribou and muskox.

With 58% employment in the region (stated in the article) who can blame them for having such thoughts.

Here is the article
GG’s seal snack inspires dreams of Inuit food industry (by Alexander Panetta)

These lines stand out for me:

“We have all these wonderful, highly nutritious foods,” Premier Eva Aariak said in an interview.
“It’s straight from the land. No preservatives.”

It seems obvious that the Premier and the reporter left out some crucial information that clearly warrants further study, i.e., the high levels of contamination from pollutants in the arctic which impact health in communities, adding a unique sort of “preservative” to arctic meats such as mercury, PCBs and Bromelated Flame Retardants (BFRs)s.

Links providing information on contamination in arctic communities and in arctic mammals:

From Seaweb (click link for details)
“The contamination of Arctic wildlife has resulted in extremely high pollutant levels in some native human populations. Infants receive significant loadings via breast milk and, in some northern regions, children have levels of various industrial chemicals as much as 10 times higher than in those children living in the more southerly industrialized regions. Levels in adults can be as much as 20 times higher than their counterparts to the south. The main human health concerns center around effects on neurological development, the reproductive and immune systems, and cancer development and promotion.”

This site also goes into the causes for why contamination is so high in this region.

Mercury Levels In Arctic Seals May Be Linked To Global Warming, May 2009
from Science Daily
“Gary Stern and colleagues note in the new study that Canadian Arctic ringed seals, like many Arctic marine animals, have relatively high levels of mercury.”

Chemicals spark Arctic alert (2002)
from the BBC
“…levels of the brominated flame retardants (BFRs) were rising, in bears, seals, foxes and glaucous gulls.”

Toxic chemicals poison Inuit food, 1998
from the Ottawa Citizen

Belugas, Narwhals, and Arctic People Victims of Pollution
from International Marine Mammal Project (no date)

It is very sad that the Canadian government does nothing to help the Inuit fight this environmental and health crisis and only worsens the problems through projects such as the Alberta Tar Sands.

Continuing to ignore contaminants in the arctic will not help the Inuit build a sustainable future, nor will killing off what is left of arctic wildlife to fill greedy southern gullets.

Act now to save an entire herd of elephants from being gunned down

Seventy elephants in a large herd consisting of adults and babies in Malawi will be shot due to human-elephant conflict unless funds can be raised to move them to a wildlife reserve.

International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is working to raise the funds to relocate the herd to Majete Wildlife Reserve, a protected park, one hundred miles away. The Malawi Department of Parks and Wildlife is partnering with IFAW on the project but there is very little time.

If the elephants are not moved by June 5th, they will be shot.

Please click here to read the full story from IFAW and to donate whatever amount you can.

“This is your once-in-a-lifetime chance to save an entire herd of elephants from being gunned down.”

Follow the rescue story on the IFAW blog.

Canada’s Governor General Michaelle Jean… don’t know much about geography

Today in the news, our Governor General Michaelle Jean was in KUGLUKTUK, Nunavut (in Canada’s far north arctic region)  speaking to students and while there she helped skin a seal and ate a piece of its heart, “raw,” as per this news item from the Canadian Press.

Then she “expressed dismay that anyone would characterize the Inuit seal hunt as inhumane.”

I guess Michaelle Jean needs to brush up on her facts.. and her geography. For one thing, she wasn’t in Newfoundland talking to white men. She was in the arctic talking to Inuit kids in Nunavit whose cultural tradition of using seals for subsistence living has never been in question with the seal protests and EU ban.

This quote from a New York Times article on the same story clarifies the point:

“The new EU rule offers narrow exemptions so Inuit communities from Canada, Greenland and elsewhere can continue traditional hunts, but bars them from large-scale trading of their pelts and other seal goods in Europe.

“Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International Canada, said Jean’s actions were misleading and offensive because of the exemptions.

”Inuit people are protected in the legislation. To suggest otherwise is deceptive on the part of the Canadian government..”

Map of Kuglugtuk, Nunavit

Map of Newfoundland

I’ve included map links so you can see just how many thousands of miles the GG veered off course on this issue. But she is not entirely to blame for confusing the use of seals by Inuits versus the Newfoundland annual massacre as she was merely spouting government propaganda.

Meanwhile since research shows Arctic seals with high levels of mercury linked to vanishing ice from climate change, it is too bad that the government won’t take an interest in these kids’ futures through cleaning up horrors like the horrendous greenhouse gas-producing Tar Sands projects (which are also causing rare cancers in First Nations communities up river.)

On the subject of the hearty snack, a European Union spokeswoman called the GG’s actions ”too bizarre to acknowledge”. (New York Times)

New Related Post
Sir, may I recommend tonight’s special: PCBs in a Brominated Flame Retardant sauce?

Furadan: Wildlife killing pesticide banned by the EPA being considered for ban in Canada

Last year we were all horrified to learn about lions in Kenya’s Mara Triangle with paralyzed limbs dying in agony from poisoning by a cheap American pesticide called Carbofuran (Furadan) produced by FMC Corporation.

Lion poisoned by Furadan after eating poisoned hippo

I posted about this crisis on my old blog

A campaign was started through Wildlife Direct on the Stop Wildlife Poisoning blog, conferences held and campaigns run to stop the use of the chemical in Kenya.  Richard Leakey called for a ban on Furadan.

And in April of this year, 60 Minutes ran a show highlighting this crisis.
Watch it here.

Wildlife Direct was thrilled to learn that after the airing of the 60 Minutes segment, FMC pulled the chemical from Africa, a major achievement and a rare piece of good news for wildlife.

Fabulous news followed hot on the heels of this breakthrough as in May, the EPA banned the use of the chemical in the United States.

Next on the list is to get it banned in Canada. Stop Wildlife Poisoning has featured today’s Globe and Mail story by Mark Hume that Canada is now considering banning the use of the chemical due to the EPA decision.

an excerpt from the Globe article…

“But the move comes decades after Canadian government officials first
learned carbofuran was wiping out everything from flocks of songbirds in
the Prairies to eagles in British Columbia.

One of the first warnings about the pesticide came in 1984 when a
Saskatchewan farmer went to inspect a canola field he’d treated with
carbofuran.

“He returned to find the bodies of several thousand Lapland Longspurs
dotting the field,” according to a report on the incident by the Canadian
Wildlife Service.

The Lapland Longspur is a sparrow-like songbird that breeds in the Arctic
and winters in open fields across southern Canada and the United States.”

In the article, Michael Fry, director of conservation advocacy for the American Bird Conservancy, says that between 17 million to 100 million birds are killed annually by Furadan.

Thank you to the conservationists at Wildlife Direct in Kenya for raising the alarm on this issue and for achieving such incredible results.
I will post further updates on Canada.