NEW YORK, NY – November 5, 2009 – Tonight’s episode of the hit FOX television show “Bones” (airing at 8 p.m./7 p.m. Central), starring vegan actress and Farm Sanctuary supporter Emily Deschanel, will prominently feature factory farming footage secured by Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, as part of a plot-line surrounding a murder that takes place at a chicken farm.

The footage, which was requested by Deschanel, will educate thousands of mainstream viewers about the cruel conditions animals are forced to endure on factory farms. The episode also features a character who rescues a pig and asks her coworkers for donations so that she can sponsor her at a sanctuary.

To further raise awareness of the horrors of factory farming, FOX is featuring a special message from Deschanel on their website (fox.com/bones/) urging people to support Farm Sanctuary by sponsoring an animal in need.

To learn more about “adopting” one of Farm Sanctuary’s rescued animals, please visit farmsanctuary.org.

Farm Sanctuary is the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization. Since incorporating in 1986, Farm Sanctuary has worked to expose and stop cruel practices of the “food animal” industry through research and investigations, legal and institutional reforms, public awareness projects, youth education, and direct rescue and refuge efforts. Farm Sanctuary shelters in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and Orland, Calif., provide lifelong care for hundreds of rescued animals, who have become ambassadors for farm animals everywhere by educating visitors about the realities of factory farming. Additional information can be found at farmsanctuary.org or by calling 607-583-2225.

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The Sunday, October 4, New York Times has an article on the front page, titled, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life.”

The piece, by reporter Michael Moss, opens with a description of a young woman permanently paralyzed after having eaten an e-coli tainted burger. It then describes the process by which the burger got to her dinner plate.

It reminds us that “hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses.”

Of the hamburger in question we learn: “The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.”

We read about cattle arriving at slaughterhouses smeared with the feces they’ve been living in at feedlots, which is often inadvertently spread to the meat as workers slice away at the carcasses or when “large clamps that hold the hide during processing sometimes slip and smear the meat with feces …”

The article makes it clear that testing for e-coli is beyond lax. We read:

“An Agriculture Department survey of more than 2,000 plants taken after the Cargill outbreak showed that half of the grinders did not test their finished ground beef for E. coli; only 6 percent said they tested incoming ingredients at least four times a year.”

And:
“Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies.”

Even after the outbreak that paralyzed the woman on whom the article focuses, we learn that Cargill, the production plant from which that meat had come, “agreed to increase testing of finished ground beef … but would not test incoming ingredients.”

We read about Department of Agriculture (USDA) investigation of Cargill and learn that “investigators discovered that their own inspectors had lodged complaints about unsanitary conditions at the plant in the weeks before the outbreak, but that they had failed to set off any alarms within the department. Inspectors had found ‘large amounts of patties on the floor,’ grinders that were gnarly with old bits of meat …’”

Moss also tells us of USDA slaughterhouse inspection reports that were released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act with blacked out details of Cargill’s grinding operation. The reporter comments:

“Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.”

That conflict of interest and the resulting danger to the U.S. food supply is covered in depth in Fast Food Nation. I also look at it, often citing Fast Food Nation, in Thanking the Monkey, pages 187-193.

You’ll find the whole fascinating New York Times article online.

Check it out, and please e-mail it to all of your friends. You can read some of the readers’ comments and post your own beneath the article. And most importantly, please send a letter to the editor. Few of the comments either discuss the treatment of the animals on feedlots and in fast-paced slaughterhouses, or note how easy and healthful it is to live without consuming them. That is ground we can cover in letters to the editor.

The New York Times takes letters at letters@nytimes.com.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be sure not to use any comments or phrases from me or from any other alerts in your letters. Editors are looking for original responses from their readers.

I send thanks to Lew Regenstein and Tim Gorski for making sure we all saw this article.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com for a fun celeb-studded promo video and information on Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of 2008.” And check out Karen’s new blog at www.ThankingtheMonkey.com/blog!

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Here’s Karen Dawn’s most recent DawnWatch Alert on the WaPo story:

The Washington Post, Wednesday, July 29, has a piece by columnist Ezra Klein titled, “The Meat of the Problem.” It discusses the enormous impact our meat-laden diets have on global warming, delivering the facts and figures in a conversational and fun manner. It is a great read and also a great article to pass onto those who are unfamiliar with the livestock and global warming link.

Klein cites the UN report that revealed that the livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions and he cites the University of Chicago report that “estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius.” He writes the following for localvores: “A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week.”

Klein then suggests, “Telling people to give up burgers doesn’t poll well.” But he notes that changing one’s diet, or at least adjusting it, is significantly easier than some of the other earth-saving tasks people attempt.

Check out the terrific piece online at http://tinyurl.com/kt2fa9.

You can post a comment on that page, or send an appreciative e-mail to Ezra Klein at the address given there. And please help keep the discussion alive on the Washington Post editorial page by sending a letter to the editor. If you are living beautifully on a plant-based diet, please write and sing its praises.

The Washington Post takes letters at letters@washpost.com.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.

My thanks to Nandita Shah and Rebecca Wittman for making sure we saw this piece.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com for a fun celeb-studded promo video and information on Karen Dawn’s book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of 2008.” And check out Karen’s new blog at www.ThankingtheMonkey.com/blog!

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WATKINS GLEN, NY – April 29, 2009 – Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading
farm animal protection organization, today released a new report that
thoroughly evaluates the animal welfare claims made by agribusiness
industry groups, food retailers and third-party certification
organizations. As the most comprehensive report of its kind, “The Truth
Behind the Labels: Farm Animal Welfare Standards and Labeling Practices”
analyzes the criteria used to define such commonly-used marketing
phrases as “humane,” “free range” and “naturally raised.”

As more consumers have learned about the animal welfare concerns related
to factory farms, they have increasingly demanded that farm animals
receive better treatment. They have also shown that they are willing to
pay a premium for meat, milk and eggs from so-called “humane” farms.
This growing demand has led to the creation of more than a dozen animal
welfare assurance schemes sponsored by industry groups, food retailers
and third-party organic and humane certification organizations.
Government-regulated animal welfare labels and marketing claims have
also emerged and expanded.

According to Farm Sanctuary Co-founder and President Gene Baur, “Most
people will be surprised to learn that even the most stringent standards
often fail to meet their expectations about how animals should be
treated. For example, in many of these labeling schemes, ‘free range’
birds still spend their entire lives tightly packed together in sheds,
physical mutilations like de-beaking and tail docking are still allowed,
and there are no requirements for outdoor access for some species. We
developed this report to provide the facts and increase the transparency
of the labeling process so the public knows what they are purchasing.”

The handsome Warren, my adopted rabbit, now deceased

“The Truth Behind the Labels” is an updated and expanded version of a
2005 Farm Sanctuary report entitled “Farm Animal Welfare: An Assessment
of Product Labeling Claims, Industry Quality Assurance Guidelines and
Third-Party Certification Programs.” Farm Sanctuary’s labeling reports
remain the only comprehensive analyses of animal product labeling
schemes ever published to help today’s consumers understand the process.
The creation of this report has led to the launch of Farm Sanctuary’s
Truth Behind Labels campaign which serves to educate consumers about the
reality of these labeling schemes and to advocate for transparency in
animal welfare standards.

Farm Sanctuary has produced two versions of “The Truth Behind the
Labels” to meet the needs of different audiences. One is a 16-page
summary booklet designed for consumers, and the other is a 68-page
report for academics in university agriculture departments and other
specialists (such as government officials working for the USDA and the
Food and Drug Administration) who are studying these issues for the
purpose of policy formation.

Farm Sanctuary’s summary booklet and report entitled “The Truth Behind
the Labels: Farm Animal Welfare Standards and Labeling Practices,” is
available at http://www.farmsanctuary.org/issues/campaigns/truth_behind_labeling.html.
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About Farm Sanctuary
Farm Sanctuary is the nation’s leading farm animal protection
organization. Since incorporating in 1986, Farm Sanctuary has worked to
expose and stop cruel practices of the “food animal” industry through
research and investigations, legal and institutional reforms, public
awareness projects, youth education, and direct rescue and refuge
efforts. Farm Sanctuary shelters in Watkins Glen, N.Y., and Orland,
Calif., provide lifelong care for hundreds of rescued animals, who have
become ambassadors for farm animals everywhere by educating visitors
about the realities of factory farming. Additional information can be
found at www.farmsanctuary.org or by calling 607-583-2225.

Learn about our shelter residents and take action on their behalf –
sign up for our alerts and online newsletter today!
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/member/

Farm Sanctuary
Rescue, Education, Advocacy
www.farmsanctuary.org
A compassionate world begins with you.

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FarmSanctuary.

There is stunning news in the animal advocacy world, particularly for those of us who have been working in the field for years and remember the days when it was hard to find a news story that even touched on the cruelty to animals being documented by activists. This coming Monday, March 16, HBO will premier a documentary called “Death on a Factory Farm.” According to the HBO synopsis, “‘Death on a Factory Farm’ follows the undercover investigation of Wiles Hog Farm by the animal rights group The Humane Farming Association (HFA), and the resulting court case against it.” The industry magazine, “Pork,” reports with apprehension that the documentary will run on HBO 20 times through till April 1.
You’ll find the full schedule at http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet — just enter the documentary title into the search line on that page.

The Time Magazine Web site currently has a terrific story on the issue — an interview with, and photo of, ‘Pete,’ the undercover investigator and animal advocacy hero, who worked at the farm and videotaped the horrors. Many of us already know him from his previous undercover work that formed the basis of an earlier HBO documentary, “Dealing Dogs.” The interview with Pete is online at http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1883742,00.html.

News outlets pay close attention to which stories get the most clicks and forwards, so please check it out and then go the bottom of the page where it says “Connect to this Time Story” and click on “E-mail,” and e-mail the page to all of your friends. You can also leave a comment on that page. Please do.

The HBO home page for this documentary is:
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/deathfactoryfarm/index.html. It includes links to pages where you can watch a brief preview video, read an interview with the multiple award-winning producers of the documentary, and read a synopsis of the film. The opening lines of the synopsis make the point that the film apparently drives home beautifully:

“Each year, 10 billion animals are raised for consumption in the U.S., mostly on sprawling, industrialized farms, where virtually no federal laws mandate how the animals are treated – though guidelines exist – and state laws are ineffective. As a result, animals are frequently subjected to what many consider cruel treatment and inhumane conditions in the interest of economic efficiency.”

We learn about the undercover video:
“Over the course of six weeks, Pete secretly filmed numerous disturbing scenes, including piglets being tossed into crates from across a room, impregnated sows held in pens that don’t allow them to move, an unhealthy piglet being slammed against a wall to euthanize it, and a sick sow being hung by a chain from a forklift until it choked to death.”

Will you forgive my turn of phrase if I write that the factory farming industry folks are crapping themselves in anticipation of this movie? (I did edit myself slightly.) The industry’s general position is that the cruelty on this farm was an aberration. But while we don’t yet have video from other farms of pigs being hung to death or slammed against concrete floors, some of the chronic cruelty, such as keeping the huge and intelligent animals in tiny individual pens too small to let them turn around or even lie down with their legs outstretched, is standard industry practice. Such cruelty is not limited to the pork industry — most of us know about battery cages and veal crates, for example. Beef Magazine therefore reports at http://tinyurl.com/d3cfbc (my thanks to Mary Finelli for that link):

“For any of us the agriculture industry, this documentary sends shivers down our spines … To put things into perspective, HBO has an estimated 35 million subscribers, and a premier program on HBO can reach between 1 to 3 percent of that audience, or about 500 thousand to 1.5 million people.”

Woohoo!

The Beef Magazine writer recommends to readers:
“I encourage all of you to tune in to this documentary, and follow up with letters of response to the producers and to HBO.”

I always stress the importance of letting media outlets know how much we, the audience, appreciate their animal friendly content. With the meat industry calling for mobilization against HBO on this one, appreciative feedback from the audience becomes doubly important. Please send HBO a supersized thank you. Comments on HBO documentaries should be submitted at http://tinyurl.com/d6og4.

You can also make sure that everybody who reads your local paper knows about the show. Some of the smaller papers publish close to 100 percent of letters they receive. The five minutes it takes you to send a quick note could help teach thousands of people in your area about the horrors of the modern food production system. As the show will air through the rest of the month you still have time to write now. Why not?

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews and see a fun celeb-studded video and an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn’s new book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals,” which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the “Best Books of 2008.”

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That’s right, folks. If you’re eating factory-farmed carcass then you’re eating shit (and a host of other bacteria-laden nasty stuff). YUMMY.

Mother Earth News recently ran a story by Laura Sayre titled “The Hidden Link Between Factory Farms and Human Illness.” You must read the entire story to learn how the meat you eat is making you sick and can even kill you. Here are some highlights:

• Factory farms are breeding grounds for virulent disease, which can then spread to the wider community via many routes — not just in food, but also in water, the air, and the bodies of farmers, farm workers and their families.
• A 2008 report from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, a joint project of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concludes that “Factory farm production is intensifying worldwide, and rates of new infectious diseases are rising. Of particular concern is the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant microbes, an inevitable consequence of the widespread use of antibiotics as feed additives in industrial livestock operations.”
• The Infectious Diseases Society of America has declared antibiotic-resistant infections an epidemic in the United States. The FAO recently warned that global industrial meat production poses a serious threat to human health.
• Confined livestock operations in the United States produce three times as much waste each year as our country’s entire human population — and yet all that manure is much more loosely regulated and handled than human waste. Antibiotic-resistant microbes, as well as the antibiotics themselves, are now widely present as environmental contaminants, with unknown consequences for everything from soil microorganisms to people.
• And then there’s methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Previously confined largely to hospitals, MRSA is now killing more people in the United States each year than HIV/AIDS. A series of recent studies in Europe have demonstrated a strong causal link between MRSA and intensive pig farming in the Netherlands, Germany and France. Little or no data are available on MRSA in animals in the United States, but the bacterium is widely present on pig farms in Canada, which sells millions of live pigs to the United States annually, so it seems pretty likely it’s in U.S. pig factories, too.

Remember a post I wrote a while back about cefquinome? A last-defense antibiotic for humans that the FDA approved for use in cattle back in March of 2007? Here’s what Sayre wrote about cefquinome:

The pending approval of an antibiotic called cefquinome to treat respiratory diseases in cattle offered a recent test case. Cefquinome is similar to cefepime, a last-resort antibiotic used to treat serious infections in people. (Both are fourth-generation cephalosporins, one of the small number of new antibiotics developed in recent years.) The FDA’s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association, recommended against approval, warning that using cefquinome for animals would almost certainly render cefepime less effective for humans. But the FDA has apparently caved to industry pressure, claiming it lacks the authority to deny the drug companies’ request.

That means when you contract MRSA or that nasty strain of E.coli found in dead cow meat, there won’t be any antibiotics left to treat you because we’re so busy feeding them to the animals we slaughter and grind up for hamburgers. Enjoy.

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Here’s a synopsis from the HBO site for “Death On A Factory Farm:”

Each year, 10 billion animals are raised for consumption in the U.S., mostly on sprawling, industrialized farms, where virtually no federal laws mandate how the animals are treated – though guidelines exist – and state laws are ineffective. As a result, animals are frequently subjected to what many consider cruel treatment and inhumane conditions in the interest of economic efficiency. DEATH ON A FACTORY FARM chronicles an investigation into alleged abuses that took place at a hog farm in Creston, Ohio. This shocking documentary is produced by Tom Simon (a seven-time Emmy® winner) and Sarah Teale, producer of the 2006 HBO special “Dealing Dogs,” which received two Emmy® nominations, including Best Documentary.

Three years in the making, DEATH ON A FACTORY FARM follows the undercover investigation of Wiles Hog Farm by the animal rights group The Humane Farming Association (HFA), and the resulting court case against it. The organization received a tip from an employee at the farm that animals were being abused, including a claim that hogs were being hung by chains and strangled to death as a form of euthanasia. HFA then turned to an undercover investigator (also featured in “Dealing Dogs”) going by the name “Pete,” who wore a hidden camera while he worked as a farmhand at Wiles.

Sick sow killed by hanging on Wiles Hog Farm

Over the course of six weeks, Pete secretly filmed numerous disturbing scenes, including piglets being tossed into crates from across a room, impregnated sows held in pens that don’t allow them to move, an unhealthy piglet being slammed against a wall to euthanize it, and a sick sow being hung by a chain from a forklift until it choked to death. Having obtained this key evidence, Pete concluded the investigation and quit his job.

HFA brought the footage to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department, which subsequently raided the farm. Prosecutors filed ten criminal charges of animal cruelty against Ken Wiles (the owner of the farm), his son Joe, and Dusty Stroud, a farm employee who participated in hanging the sow.

In the trial that followed, prosecution and defense waged a tense battle over the legality and morality of practices rarely seen by the public and described by the presiding judge as “distasteful and offensive,” but defended by Ken Wiles and other members of the tight-knit Ohio farming community as the commonplace reality of producing livestock for consumption.

Do you eat meat? Then it’s your RESPONSIBILITY to know what happens to the animals you choose to eat as food. WATCH.

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News flash, people! Dairy cows do not live in big pastures, happily chewing grass until it’s time for milking by the kindly farmer. They spend their lives hooked up to automatic milking machines, their male babies are dragged away from them at birth to be ground up into hamburger or chained in a box to be veal, most of the dairy cows you get your milk, butter and cheese from are afflicted with mastitis in their udders which produces blood and pus that GETS INTO YOUR MILK; and when they can no longer produce milk they are taken to slaughter.

So now farmers are going to slaughter an extra 1.5 million dairy cows this year because they only see them as a monetary unit, not as sapient, sentient animals who feel pain and sorrow and joy JUST LIKE YOU DO.

According to Farm Sanctuary’s new blog, Sanctuary Tails, “… many people do not realize that ALL dairy cows are sent to slaughter once their milk production drops – most between four and six years of age. We have rescued dairy cows at our sanctuaries who have lived well past 20 years of age, meaning that young dairy cows are being sent to slaughter every day. The massive culling of these dairy cows means that fewer replacement heifers will be going into these herds. The cycle continues, but on a smaller scale. To an extent, this article was a wake up call to all those who believe that dairy consumption is somehow less cruel than meat consumption.”

Get a clue, vegetarians, and get off the dairy.

You think this slaughter is being done according to industry standards? WRONG. The AP reports:

Some dairymen have become so desperate that they are not even bothering to haul to feedlots the newborns whose births keep milk flowing at higher levels.

Investigators in San Joaquin County are trying to determine who dumped 30 dead bull calves on country roads to avoid rendering costs or hauling them to auction, where they fetch $5 each but cost hundreds and hundreds more to bottle feed special formula. The group Farm Sanctuary is offering a $2,000 reward for the culprit.

“Apparently it was someone trying to save money who just dumped them,” said Susie Coston, the group’s national shelter director.

You want to change your world for the better and not participate in the cruelty of dairy farming? Then go veg. Do it now. We’re running out of planet to support your stupid cheese habit.

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According to Vegan.com, a reporter is making some revealing blog posts about the conditions the mentally disabled men were kept in at the farm. They were promised a ranch in Texas when they retired; no ranch exists. There were also some dogs kept on the property, perhaps as pets for the workers, that have been rescued by the sheriff’s office. No word on what happened to them after the rescue.

As Mindy commented on my previous blog post, it’s high time everyone understood the connection between human and non-human animal abuse. This story is a horrible example of that connection.

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This looks to be a blockbuster story. It’s so appalling there’s almost nothing I can add. Here are some key paragraphs, but the whole article is a must-read:

Since the late 1970s, Henry’s Turkey Service has been shipping mentally retarded men from Texas to Iowa to work in the West Liberty plant. Henry’s has acted as the workers’ employer, landlord and caregiver — paying the men a reduced wage for their work at the plant and then deducting from their pay the cost of room, board and care. Payroll records indicate the men are left with as little as $65 per month in salary.

“My God, this is an embarrassment to the state of Iowa,” said Sylvia Piper of Iowa Protection and Advocacy, a federally funded group that oversees services for the disabled. “This should not be happening in our state.”

Typically, their days began at 2:30 a.m., when they were awakened. At 4:30 a.m., they were taken into the still-dark yard and loaded into passenger vans for the six-mile drive to the West Liberty plant. Once there, they donned protective clothing and went to work “on the line,” cleaning turkeys. Gene Berg, a 53-year-old cancer patient, has worked there as a “gut puller.” Billy and Robert Penner, two brothers in their 60s, have pulled guts and plucked feathers.

State officials say the 21 men who were at the bunkhouse Saturday have worked for Henry’s for at least 20 years. Keith Brown, 57, has lived there since 1979. His sister, Sherri Brown, said her brother has $80 in the bank after working 30 years for Henry’s.

Kenneth J. Henry, who runs Henry’s Turkey Service, declined to comment. “I’m not going to answer any of your questions,” he told The Des Moines Register on Friday.

Time and again, the most despicable employment practices are found in the meat industry. Link. (Thanks, Bea.)

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