ZOOS & ELEPHANTS: IMPERFECT TOGETHER

Are elephants just a memory for some zoos? asks the Sun-Times of Chicago, where the American Zoo and Aquarium Association is holding its annual conference. We're familiar with the recent deaths and exhibit closures in a handful of zoos, but this is rather notable: "The dropoff in elephant exhibits likely will continue," officials of the AZA admitted to the paper.

Of course the AZA immediately tried to re-spin the prediction as a small, temporary dip. But I suspect there are more stories around the country of zoo's such as Philadelphia's, which wasn't mentioned in the Sun-Times' list of troubled exhibits:
"Zoo elephants may have to leave town," says the Inquirer, "[u]nless the zoo can secure a hefty state funding commitment this fall or dramatically lower the price of its proposed $22 million elephant savanna." The fact is that zoos can no longer get away with housing elephants on a super-cruel few hundred square yards of concrete and rock - over the past couple of years the public's consciousness has been raised just enough that that's obviously wrong. The only way to keep elephants is to invest massive amounts of money, which may prove more of a stumbling block for zoo officials than any ethical argument.

FOIE GRAS FUTURE BAN ACTING NOW?

There have been some, and you know who you are, who have argued that the foie gras ban in California, which doesn't take effect until 2012, was worse than useless. And in terms of the most literal, legal effect, that may be true. But this story might make you wonder: Foie gras leaving restaurants early in face of state ban,
it's called, and it asserts that in one Califronia country, "the delicacy has all but disappeared from county restaurants after pressure from people who see its production as cruel to animals." It goes on to note that "Pamplemousse Grille in Solana Beach last February was the first area restaurant to voluntarily remove foie gras from its menu, and 13 others in the county have followed this year, according to Kath Rogers of the Animal Protection and Rescue League in San Diego." Are other counties picking up the slack, or is this a real trend?

AFTER THE FLOOD

I wish I could blame my week-long absence on Hurrican Katrina, but actually I was just really busy with other stuff. Speaking of the hurrricane, it's probably no news to anyone reading this that there are still animals trapped and starving in New Orleans and elsewhere. The Humane Society of the United States is doing heroic work finding, feeding and rescuing these animals. If you haven't donated something yet to help the hurricane's victims, or even if you have, please remember these victims as well.

NOW PLAYING: VEGCAST

Give your poor overworked eyes a break and treat your ears to the second episode of VEGCAST, the Veggie Podcast. A podcast is like a radio show you can listen to on your MP3 player (or your computer) whenever you want, and VegCast is a mix of news, interviews, commentary, and music from veggie musicians.

This is the Sounds of Summerfest edition, looking back at Vegetarian Summerfest 2005, where VegCast was first announced. In addition to sound clips from the conference, we have music from two artists who played there, namely Will Tuttle and Kyle Vincent, and an in-depth interview with Dr. Michael Greger, who is now Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States. And in Science Fact this week, a look at how a vegan diet can help stop or reverse prostate cancer.

Vegcast: Bringing you the sound of vegetarianism since July of this year.

USDA: "A BUNCH OF STOOGES"

This is a delightful phrasing, packing in both meanings of "Stooge" - a) the audience "volunteer" who's secretly working for you, and b) one of the trio of comically incompetent buffoons - and both with perfect accuracy.

The quote comes from Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who has fought the importation of young Canadian cattle over BSE concerns. His full quote was: "A few years ago, the four big meat companies, they expanded their role in this country. They bought a U.S. company called the United States Department of Agriculture. They are a bunch of stooges. The USDA crawled right into bed with them (the meat companies) and they run our internal policy and our international (beef) policy." Not often you hear a high-ranking official put it so bluntly.

Schweitzer may have been thinking of the specific stoogery of the August 19th (you'll never guess what day of the week that was) recall of 1,856 pounds of potential high-risk bone-in beef that had entered our country improperly from Canada. Even R-CALF was livid, expressing disappointment in the USDA's "failures," and in the fact that "although the processing facility, Green Bay Dressed Beef, voluntarily recalled the bone-in beef at issue, the recall was not initiated until Aug. 19, more than two weeks after this cow was processed." Yeah, that is kinda odd, ain't it?

Earlier that same week, it was revealed that "inspectors cited meatpackers more than 1,000 times over a 17-month period for violating rules concerning the removal of tissue associated with mad cow disease." While apologists try to downplay the "non-compliance" citations as trivial, the reports do indeed document "instances of meatpackers failing to properly remove 'specified risk materials' or SRMs-- brains, spinal cord tissue and other tissues that scientists say harbor the disease." Which means these entered the US food supply. 

And a couple days later, the Stooges admitted - only after a specific inquiry on this from the Associated Press -- that they had done no test other than IHC on at least 9,000 cows. You may remember IHC as the test that falsely cleared a Mad Cow back in November, an error we didn't find out about -- and wouldn't have, if the USDA chief had his way - until June of this year. Now, how exactly did that happen, again?

Funny you should ask. And even funnier that you expect the Stooges to provide an answer. After their lengthy taxpayer-funded investigation into that embarrassing and suspicious snafu, the final answer is... "Gosh, we just dunno!" Duh... Klonk!!! Whoop-whoop-whoop... Why I oughta...

It's hilarious, except that these knuckleheads are in charge of an industry that has literal life-and-death consequences for all of us.

THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE GRAVE-ROBBING?

OK, first of all, as in any such case there may be allegations flying that are not 100% confirmed, so I will preface this whole thing with a big "IF TRUE..."

But that said, the reported SHAC-like tactics of activists who have successfully shut down a guinea-pig farm in the UK must be condemned, loudly and publicly, by anyone who takes veganism seriously. When Pat Robertson calls for a foreign leader's assassination, it's damning that the Republican leadership with whom he fraternizes and works is silent. And it's the same thing with our movement. This stuff is beyond the pale, and if we don't disclaim it our ideology seems to collapse into it by default.

So you'll hear no applause from this quarter on this "victory" in the war over lab animals. "The Hall family at Darley Oaks Farm in Staffordshire said in a statement they would return to traditional farming in the hope that the remains of a relative would be returned to her grave. The family have also endured a paedophile smear campaign, the cutting of electricity and phone lines and regular protests. Farm workers and their families have also been targeted." This is shameful, and the perpetrators behind such stuff (other than "regular protests" of course) should understand that they are helping to destroy the credibility of all vegetarians with their violent zealotry. Grave-robbing extremists force family to close guinea pig farm goes one headline, and while it's sensationalist, it's unfortunately accurate. Great job tarring our peace movement as one of mindless violence, you cretins.

CATCH-UP SMORGASBORD

Here are a bunch of quick unrelated items that occurred during the past couple weeks, which I just wanna get off the plate sooner rather than later, so let's rip through 'em...

Tuna sales are off an estimated $150 million, or 10 percent, in the last year after a joint FDA/EPA advisory that children and pregnant women should not eat more than a can of tuna a week due to the risks of mercury in tuna. So that industry is explicitly following in the footsteps of the dairy industry, creating a bogus campaign to bamboozle consumers into paying for more of their toxic product.

More animals join the learning circle - Once again animals turn out to be smarter and more like us that previously thought, as it's found that killer whales and chimpanzees both pass on "traditions" to other members of their group. The findings add to evidence that cultural learning is widespread among animals.

Zoo elephants have no educational value, expert says in Chicago, while here in Philadelphia it turns out that our Zoo elephants may have to leave town unless PA taxpayers are willing to cough up millions of dollars for major expansion of the animals' prison cells.

OK, it looks like these others are gonna need posts of their own. Thanks for coming back for more Meat Facts, folks.

BACK FROM VACATION

Pressing national events have forced me to end my blogging vacation one day early as I rushed back to MeatFactville to get this word out to you. Geez, what a disaster down south, but I'm not going to go on about it because there are plenty of blogs where that's relevant, and right now, it isn't here.

ON VACATION

There won't be any more posts till the end of August, as I'm away from a computer, and only able to enter this now through the graces of the Panama City Beach Library.

Till then, go hang out at Vegan Freaks. I'm reading their book, and will have a full report when I get back. Take it easy!

MORE QUESTIONS ON SUPPOSED 'SWINE FLU'

The mysterious virus in China has now killed 38 people and infected 206, and answers on how to stop it, or even what it is, seem to be more elusive than ever. The World Health Organization has recommended that further testing be conducted to nail down the identity of the pathogen, and Steve Mitchell reports that some experts are suggesting it could actually involve Ebola or Bird Flu. Whatever it is, two things are clear: 1) It's not good, and 2) The Chinese government is acting recklessly in actively blocking critical information and knowledge about exactly what's going on in Sichuan province.

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS FOR KILLERS

"Faster, faster, get that product out the door!" is the industry byword. The results are cuts, amputations, skin disease, permanent arm and shoulder damage, and even death from the force of repeated hard cutting motions. When injured employees seek workers' compensation claims for their juries, they are told, "You got hurt at home, not on the job."

Sound familiar? Yes, of course, it's meatpacking, the most dangerous factory job in America, which once again has caused hand-wringing among the pundit class because workers are treated so terribly. Never mind how animals are treated - for some reason that's an unexamined given, but the abuse of people is a separate, newsworthy phenomenon. "The meatpacking industry has shown little inclination to respect its workers' rights on its own. Congress and the Bush administration should take decisive steps to protect the lives and well-being of these men and women. But they are unlikely to act until consumers demand meat that is not tainted by workers' blood, sweat and fear."

Uh, yeah. And how soon are consumers gonna demand that? Probably right around when they demand food that's not tainted by animals' blood, sweat and fear - which is to say, never, unless a great many people in this country suddenly wake up. Does this writer for Human Rights Watch really not get the fact that Americans refuse to think about how "meat" got from being an animal to being on their fork? Does this writer really not grasp that it's exactly that strained, desperate apathy among the public that enables meat companies to get away with the worst human-rights abuses of any top-tier industry? Cruelty begets cruelty, folks. Secrecy begets ignorance. An honest, transparent, fair system for those whose job is to needlessly kill sentient beings is as likely as a war without death. Ain't gonna happen.

ANIMALS SACRIFICED TO WYETH'S HOT AIR

An air-vent problem at one animal-testing lab has pointed to a disturbing problem with the industry as a whole. More than 500 mice died horrible suffocating deaths when a ventilator failed in 90-degree heat. Unless told otherwise, we can assume some if not most of these mice were current test subjects, meaning those tests are now ruined, meaning many more mice will have suffered and died for absolutely nothing. "Unfortunately, they had to be sacrificed," said the Wyeth spokesman. Yep, sacrificed to your company's incompetence. Sacrificed to your apathy. Note that Wyeth didn't even admit to the fiasco until asked by a reporter, tipped off by animal rights activists.

But the bigger news is in this shrug-it-off quote from the "private laboratory accreditation group" that's supposed to be monitoring conditions in animal-test labs: "I would not say this kind of thing happens frequently, but it does happen," said John H. Miller. Oh, does it? "He declined to disclose other cases, citing confidentiality agreements with member labs, but did say Wyeth's reported number of deaths was not unusual." Oh really? So 500 animals needlessly dying from simple human errors is common in this industry - as is, obviously the lack of true concern or accountability among the people responsible. Apparently the only unusual thing here is the public finding out about it. Shameful.

ATKINS CO. "SLIPS ON THE ICE"

Well, as "consumers have tired of the once-sizzling fad", the Crash Diet That Didn't Work files for bankruptcy, stiffing its creditors just as it did nutritionally to its own bandwagon-jumping acolytes. Partly this is because "the low-carb trend has sort of died on the vine," or more accurately, decayed off the bone, yet I do wonder how much the Atkins-smashing Carbophobia!, which appeared early this year, helped that process along.

But by pressing ahead as a run-of-the-mill shake and power bar company, Atkins first of all exposes itself to continued legal/market trouble, as PCRM vows to press their lawsuit forcing Atkins to put warning labels on its products, but it also loses the one thing even critics like PCRM and Dr. Greger conceded Atkins was right about: The importance of consuming whole, natural foods rather than processed foods. Well, OK, good luck selling your processed foods line, folks - at least you still have that iconic scarlet "A" to work with.

SHHHHHH... RECALL 'EXPANDED'

Heyyy, remember this post last week about the 15-state recall nobody heard about? You know, with the chicken products and listeria? Well, just like I bet they had slipped that one by you, I'll also wager you didn't get notice that the size of the recall was just expanded by three thousand percent - now not 3 but 90,000 pounds of potentially contaminated chicken.

Look: Every time a recall is expanded it means something went wrong in the recall process. If the 90,000 pounds are all suspect right now, they were all equally suspect back when the recall was issued at only 3,000 pounds. So the initial recall, if handled properly, should have been a 90,000-pound recall. Yet this kind of thing is far from rare with meat recalls. Who keeps screwing up and endangering lives? Why is that not explained - why does there seem to be no public accountability when this happens again?

Could it be because it's all part of a planned strategy? So far this one seems to be following the 2003 Pilgrims Pride recall playbook, if on a slightly smaller scale. Are these expansions a pattern of incompetence, or a savvy way of playing the "public safety" media for credulous chumps? After all, this announcement of 90,000 pounds of dangerous meat isn't a MEAT RECALL - it's just an EXPANSION of a previously-announced recall, which is hardly a big story. I mean, come on. It's old news. Move on, right?

BAD ZOONOSES IN ASIA

Let's just get the ledes on these, shall we?

32 Dead as China's Pig-Disease Crisis Escalates: The official Xinhua News Agency reports thirty-two villagers have died so far in a southeastern province in China that has been hit by an outbreak of a pig-borne disease. According to the report, Sichuan Province has documented 163 cases of swine streptococcus suis, among them 112 confirmed cases and 51 suspected ones.

UPDATE 8/1: "Sichuan authorities have ordered local journalists to stay away from locations where the disease has surfaced, and told newspapers to carry only stories as issued by the official New China News Agency." Well, that's a good sign, right?

Bird Flu Kills Two in Vietnam; Toll Now 60 The World Health Organization has repeatedly warned that avian influenza could mutate and become easily spread from person to person, sparking a global pandemic that could kill millions. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds.

Russia: Bird flu can infect humans Investigators have determined that a strain of bird flu virus infecting fowl in Russia is the type that can infect humans, the Agriculture Ministry has said. In a brief statement, the ministry identified the virus as avian flu type A H5N1. "That raises the need for undertaking quarantine measures of the widest scope," the statement said.

AND IN BETTER ZOONOTIC NEWS...

FDA Finally Bans Use of Baytril in Poultry Margaret Mellon, director of food and environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the FDA's move was "a big deal. It's the first time FDA has withdrawn a veterinary drug on the basis of antibiotic resistance concerns, fearing that use of the drug in animals is going to erode the effectiveness of the drugs in human medicine."

Great. Let's just hope it's not too late to do any good, and that the FDA follows up by banning other livestock antibiotics sooner rather than later.

PREMARIN: CANCER

Not exactly a bombshell given that it's been clear to most observers for over a year, but the UN's cancer agency has put its official stamp on the fact that hormone replacement therapy, taken by millions of women around the world, causes cancer. The reports so far have neglected to mention that the chief form of this therapy is pregnant mare's urine.

MORE TAINTED CHICKEN

3,000 pounds of "Ready-To-Eat Chicken Products" that were distributed to Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania Virginia, and Washington, D.C. have been recalled by the USDA due to potential listeria contamination. Anybody out there hear about this potentially deadly chicken before reading it here? Anybody?

UPDATE 8/1: Expanded to 90,000 pounds.

ANOTHER MAD COW, ANOTHER RIDICULOUS MISTAKE

I just posted this to MetaFilter, so I'll rerun the wording here:

"I... Forgot."

Upon the death of a possible BSE cow, "the unidentified doctor preserved the brain stem sample in formalin... but then 'simply forgot' about it until mid-July." That's the reason why we're only hearing about it now. Any questions?

More to come on this, I'm sure...

UPDATE 7/28: Here's a story that I only came across today, but which came out a few hours before the new "possible" Mad Cow was announced: Do regulators [USDA] protect market or consumers when it comes to releasing Mad Cow tests? asks the Houston Chronicle. Though no one seems to have pressed govt. spokespeople on the fantastically coincidental "Friday" effect, we do get an admission in this story that the USDA does routinely delay announcements of bad meat-related news - at least until the end of the day: "USDA spokeswoman Amy Spillman said the department makes announcements after markets close whenever an animal tests inconclusive." The issue, of course, is that the Texas agriculture department wants them to keep consumers in the dark about their own safety even longer. Don't mess with Texas!

THE GREENING OF MCDONALD'S

This story I came across today provides an opportunity to say something I had been meaning to mention: Is it just me (i.e. Philadelphia) or are McDonald's ads radically changing? I've noticed that over the past year, the predominant color of McDonald's billboards and such has been... green. Not a color the beef-slinging fast-food chain has usually been associated with. This article says that it's part of a strenuous effort by the company to re-brand itself as a "healthy" eating choice. Good luck on that, Mickey. As long as you're still basing your menu around meat, you're just the same sad old whore who thinks the latest flashy negligee will suddenly make her attractive again.

17 DEAD FROM HOGS IN SW CHINA

What the heck is up with this? "Mysterious disease kills 17 in southwest China" says this Reuters story: "Authorities in southwest China are investigating a mysterious disease that has killed 17 farm workers and left 41 others ill after they handled sick or dead livestock, state media said on Monday." But local authorities and the WHO are pooh-poohing the concept that this could be bird- or swine-flu related. "The deaths were probably caused by a bacteria that spreads among pigs, the state-run China Daily quoted Zeng Huajin, a senior official with the Sichuan provincial health department, as saying." I sure wish I could trust the state-run China Daily any more than I trust the USDA...