My Visit to Local Farms that Kill Animals but Claim to Be "Humane"

This is my latest article for the Kansas Sierra Club Planet Kansas, reporting on my visit to three local farms that claim to be "humane."  What I found, sadly. but not surprisingly, was a total lack of ethical concern for the animals themselves.  Using and killing is justified if it makes money and pleases the human beings, according to the farmers I interviewed.   

Sierra Club Planet Kansas, Winter, 2015/16, Issue

Eating as Though the Earth Matters column

Sierra Club Encourages Plant-Based Diet,

But What About Local “Humane” Farms? 

           

In the film “Cowspiracy,” which I mentioned in my fall column, the evidence became clear that so-called “humane” farms, as opposed to factory farms, will not and cannot help prevent further environmental destruction.  Some of the farmers who were interviewed in the film agreed.  If all animals were raised in such a way that they are not painfully confined, and if people continued to consume animal products at the current rate, there simply is not enough land on the planet to pasture the billions of animals and grow their feed.  And when we consider the rate at which the human population is growing, the situation is dire indeed for both people and all animals, both wild and domestic.

In response to the threat of animal agriculture, whether factory or “free-range”, our Sierra Club has published the following statement in the Sierra Club Agriculture and Food Policy (http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/agriculture): “Personal dietary choices that minimize or eliminate meat and animal products should be encouraged due to their many benefits, including reducing greenhouse gas impacts, water pollution and inhumane treatment of animals.”  Of course, we know that those are just a few of the dreadful effects of animal agriculture.  To that short list, we can add desertification, rainforest destruction, assassination of rainforest protectors, air pollution, oceanic dead zones, wildlife habitat destruction, indigenous peoples’ home and land destruction, species extinction, and human hunger and starvation, to name just a few. 

Many socially and ecologically conscious people now opt for “free-range,” “humane,” labels, not realizing that, not only are most of the labels false, but also, if indeed the animals really are raised with some amount of room to turn around, the earth is not big enough to pasture that many animals.  

Nevertheless, I wanted to be able to see some of these “free-range” farms with my own eyes.    So I  took part in the 2015 Kaw Valley Farm Tour in October of this year.  The first stop was the Iwig Dairy in Tecumseh.  They sell milk, butter, and ice cream made from their herd of 65 milk cows.  Obviously conscientious, the Iwigs, sell their milk in recyclable, BPA free, glass bottles.  In spite of the vast research linking dairy products to obesity, early onset of puberty, osteoporosis, etc., they claim their products are healthy, and they seem to love what they do. 

They very kindly answered my questions.  I learned, for example, that their cows are impregnated every 12 to 15 months in order to keep milk production high.  The first time they are impregnated by a bull, but after that they are raped and artificially inseminated.  If that sounds inflammatory, the dairy industry itself, refers to the process as being on a “rape rack.”  These cows cannot live only on pasture, they explained.  If they did, they would only produce enough milk for their babies.  So their normal way of eating is out of a trough full of grain, side by side, in a long row. Only then can they produce the enormous and unnatural amounts of milk that is demanded of them.  So the term “free range” or “pasture raised” dairy loses its glamour when we understand that most of the dairy cows’ lives are spent at a trough full of grain or confined to a milking machine.    

Of course, they must take the babies from the mothers immediately or at most within one day.  When asked if that doesn’t cause the mothers and babies to grieve, the answer was “Well, not all cows are good mothers.”  The implication, of course, is that the “good mothers” do grieve.  And the babies do cry for their mothers.  The Iwigs sell their male calves to be raised for slaughter.  The female calves have the same fate as their mothers.   Dehorning takes place without pain killers.  The Iwigs said that dehorning when the cows are young isn’t as bad as it is when they are older, but there were a group of older youngsters who still had not been dehorned.  Even though the Iwig’s cows have names and they say they love them, once a cow stops being as productive as necessary or gets sick, she is sent to slaughter.  They admitted that they do get attached to the cows and hate to move them to slaughter, “but it’s a business.” 

So we have to ask ourselves if there is anything humane about such a dairy, and if this method is not humane, then imagine the suffering on factory dairies.  But what about the sustainability of an operation that actually allows the cows to spend at least some time on pastures?  When asked the answer was the same as that of the dairy man in Cowspiracy.  There is no way the amount of milk products currently being bought can be produced sustainably if all cows and all other “food” animals are given free range.  The odds against it increase as well with each birth of a new human.  As we veer toward 8 billion people and counting, clearly we have to question everything about what we eat. 

I also visited the Vesecky Family Farm in Baldwin City, Kansas, where they claim to raise poultry on pastures. While families enjoyed hay rides around the farm, I visited with a gentleman in charge of the turkeys.  These birds were kept in a small fenced enclosure.  They had a place to roost partially out of the weather.  There was no “pasture,” just dirt, in the enclosure, of course, since there were so many birds there.  However, they were able to get out of the enclosure through various turkey-made holes.  Sometimes they had to be helped to re-enter, and sometimes they found their own way back.  He does not breed turkeys but receives the baby turkeys in the mail from a commercial breeder.  He admitted that they don’t all survive since they are tossed about, exposed to extreme temperatures and have no water, food, or comfort from a mother.  When asked if it was hard on him to see the turkeys trucked away to slaughter, he smiled and said rather cheerily that it wasn’t hard.  Instead that was the best day of all, because that was when he got paid. 

Clearly no one gives hay rides at factory turkey farms, so there is the illusion of “humaneness” at this and similar farms.  But with just a few questions, we uncover the cruelty that occurs even on farms such as these.  While it is sometimes regretted by some of the farmers, it is a necessary part of their business model, which requires animals to be manipulated, separated from their babies, and ultimately die, in order for the business to live. 

My next stop was Amy’s Meats just north of Lawrence, Kansas.  Their vision is to “produce everything we eat and share the abundance with you.” Amy is an engaging and enthusiastic young woman who appears to love her business.  She has created a feeling of an old fashioned farm where children can come for camp activities and people can reconnect to their food.  The chickens, pigs, and cows are indeed on small pastures and not confined in cages as they would be on factory farms, but Amy agreed that the world population could not eat animals raised in this way, because of the simple fact that there is not enough land to do it.  So while we might find it easier on our consciences to eat the secretions and meat of animals who have had some room to roam, as activists we must face the fact that this can only be available to a select few people who have the money and time to buy these products.  When asked how her animals are slaughtered, Amy said that her family kills them with the help of the children.  I asked her if it upset the children who may have grown attached to an animal, and she replied that it does not, because she has explained to them that they have to do it.  When I pressed her on why they have to do it, knowing now, as we do, that people do not require meat to be healthy, she stated that she likes the taste and does not want to give up that pleasure.           

In her December article for One Green Planet (onegreenplanet.org), “Why choosing plant-based is the most powerful action to fight climate change,” Malorie Macklin quotes Nil Sacharias, Editor-in-Chief of One Green Planet: “The real war against climate change is being fought on our plates, multiple times a day with every food choice we make…” He goes on to say that “one of the biggest challenges facing our planet, and our species is that we are knowingly eating ourselves into extinction, and doing very little about it.”

  

As author and activist, JoAnn Farb, has said, “All social justice movements work to overcome these same objections: It’s normal. It’s natural.  It’s necessary.”  It is indeed normal and natural for people to go into a grocery store and pick out a few neatly cellophane-wrapped packages of meat.  It feels right.  It’s what our parents did.  It seems necessary.  But when we look behind the scenes at how that package got there—the terrible cost to the earth, the animals, the hungry, and to human health, it suddenly seems no more normal than slavery was, even though that was considered normal and necessary at the time.

As we evolve in consciousness, we begin to realize what an enormous impact our species has on this precious planet and all the other species on it.  As activists, we are all acutely, even painfully aware that we must act quickly to lighten our heavy footprint.  Solar panel sales are up; we see Priuses everywhere, and we’re starting to see more electric cars on the road. In fact, we just bought a plug-in electric Chevy Volt, and we love it. We are all taking shorter showers, recycling, using our own bags at stores, and celebrating stores that ban plastic bags.  But there is that nagging feeling that those things just aren’t enough. 

So I always like to end with the supremely good news that there is something absolutely huge that each of us can do—something that will immediately save water, reduce pollution, feed the hungry, and stop violence to animals, people and the earth; something far more impactful than solar panels and electric cars; something that takes no extra time or money.  Those of you who have read my column before know what it is.  Eating as though the earth matters is a dedication to a plant-based diet.  Eliminating animal products from our diets, whether those animals lived in pastures or in cages, is, I believe, the most powerful thing we can do to heal the earth.  If we can question everything we think and do and, in so doing, come into alignment with our highest values of compassion and care for all the living, we will be able to turn this ship around and bring balance and harmony back to our precious earth.          

© 2015, Judy Carman, M.A., is author of Peace to All Beings: Veggie Soup for the Chicken’s Soul and co-author of The Missing Peace: The Hidden Power of our Kinship with Animal;  2014 winner of the Henry Spira Grassroots Animal Activist award; and owner of a truck and a car powered by used veggie oil and an electric car and house powered by solar. Her primary websites are circleofcompassion.org and peacetoallbeings.com.   

Can Bill Gates Help Us Eat As Though the Earth Matters?

This is my latest article for the Sierra Club Planet Kansas, Fall, 2015, Issue 

My column is entitled "Eating as Though the Earth Matters"

Can Bill Gates Help Us Eat As Though The Earth Matters?

And not just Bill Gates, but also Google co-founder Sergei Brin, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and many others.  These wealthy individuals are willing to invest in companies that could help people transition to foods that are being developed to help end environmental devastation.  They are investing millions in companies such as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Hampton Creek, Modern Meadow, and Muufri.  These visionary companies are using modern technology to create plant-based milk that tastes like animal milk, plant-based meat with the taste and texture of animal meat, and pea-derived eggs that taste like eggs.  These are not your basic bean burgers and soy milks.  These are foods that are mimicking meat, eggs, and dairy so well that billionaires are investing in them and expecting them to succeed. 

Josh Balk, co-founder of Hampton Creek, states, “Many socially conscious investors, including high-profile multi-billionaires, are seeking business solutions to climate change, food insecurity, disease, and other serious global problems.”  They believe, says Balk, that “moving to a plant-based system is vital to that effort.” They also believe that they are offering something different from vegan brands like Tofurkey and Gardein.  They have developed and continue to create foods that mimic the taste of animal products so well that most people cannot tell the difference.   

As we’ve discussed in this column over the years, animal agriculture is a major driving force behind deforestation; overuse of water; air, water and soil pollution; erosion; species extinction; habitat destruction; human starvation and disease, and the unrelenting violence involved in raising and killing millions of animals every single day.  These investors want to do something about all that.  But they, along with all of us, have realized that the progress we’ve made so far is too slow if we are to stop the rampant destruction of this precious planet upon which we all depend.  The U.S. population is about 7% vegan and vegetarian.  That is up from a decade ago, but the numbers are still too low. 

The next level of plant-based food—making everyone happy, not just vegans.  So these companies are taking the plant-based solution to the next level by creating food that tastes like animal foods to omnivores.  There has been a reluctance to try “vegan” foods because they seem too different and not what we are used to.  The idea of not having actual meat as the main course has kept many an omnivore from taking the plunge.  But with these new foods available, we can truly eat as though the earth matters and not miss the taste, texture, or appearance of meat, milk,  and eggs.  In addition to Beyond Meat and the others creating new versions of plant-based alternatives that taste like animal products, some giant food companies such as Pinnacle Foods (producer of Birdseye) are seeing that plant-based foods are rapidly going mainstream.  They are buying such established vegan companies as Gardein and getting them into a much broader range of stores.  As these companies succeed and people agree that they can indeed enjoy meals of only plant-based meat and radically cut down on their footprint, we will begin to see real healing taking place,   

Mat Thomas, author of “Green Giants,” (Veg News, September-October, 2015) quotes David Benzaquen, founder of PlantBased Solutions: “I don’t care whether more people identify as vegans or not, as long as animals aren’t killed, the environment is saved, and fewer people suffer from disease…”

Shorter showers aren’t enough. For decades now, people of conscience have been riding bikes and buses, taking shorter showers, composting, using their own bags at grocery stores, and doing as many things as possible to make a difference, but it obviously hasn’t been enough to turn the tide.  Podcaster Rich Roll comments that “When it comes to conservation and ecological responsibility, the dialog generally focuses on fossil fuels. A big issue, of course; and worthy of our attention. But here’s a truth that all too often gets quietly swept under the rug: the deleterious environmental impacts of animal agriculture dwarf the impacts of fossil fuel demand in every single category across the board.” 

In one of his podcasts he interviews Keegan Kuhn and Kip Anderson, the makers of the documentary “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” which has now gained Leonardo DiCaprio as an Executive Producer.  DiCaprio has helped get the film on Netflix because he believes everyone on earth should see it. So if you have Netflix, please take the time to watch it, and if you don’t, you can purchase it at cowspiracy.com.  . 

. 

 “Cowspiracy may be the most important film made to inspire saving the planet.”

Loui Psihoyos, Director of “The Cove”

This thought provoking film challenges us all to understand that there is something huge, transformative, and powerful we can each do to heal the earth.  And that something takes less effort than riding a bike to work—it is simply to stop eating animals and their eggs and milk.  Now that these new companies are producing plant-based meat, dairy and eggs that are indistinguishable from the products that are taken from suffering animals, it is easier than ever to take this next important step and eat as though the earth matters. .

The heart of veganism is the passionate desire to do no harm and as much good as possible in every area of life, not just in what we eat.  As such, it includes dedication to all environmental  and social justice causes  When we look deeply at all the justice movements, we see the same desire.  It is the desire to stop the violent and relentless destruction caused by profit and power-driven companies devoid of ethics. Each one of us must question everything we’ve been taught and even our own thoughts.  In that way, we can stop our own participation in and support of these destructive companies.  By boycotting animal agriculture, we stand in solidarity with nature, animals, and all people.  We could never take enough short showers to equal the impact of our switching to a plant-based diet. Eating as though the earth matters just got a whole lot easier, so let’s get started.  There’s no time to waste.   

 © 2015, Judy Carman, M.A., is author of Peace to All Beings: Veggie Soup for the Chicken’s Soul and co-author of The Missing Peace: The Hidden Power of our Kinship with Animal;  2014 winner of the Henry Spira Grassroots Animal Activist award; and owner of a truck and a car powered by used veggie oil and house powered by solar. Her primary websites are circleofcompassion.org and peacetoallbeings.com.   

"The Backwards Brain Bicycle:" Clues to Changing Minds and Stopping Extinction

Here is my summer article for "Planet Kansas," the Kansas Sierra Club magazine

Sierra Club Planet Kansas, Summer, 2015, Issue

Eating as Though the Earth Matters column

"The Backwards Brain Bicycle:"

Clues to Changing Minds and 

Stopping Human-Caused Extinction

One extinction every seven minutes

What caused the extinction of the great dinosaurs?  No one knows for sure, but we do know it’s not the same cause that is currently leading to one species of plant or animal becoming extinct every 7 minutes.  That’s the figure we hear from the United Nations Environment Programme.  And this time we are the cause.      

Meanwhile, the G7 Summit committed to reducing fossil fuels by the end of the century.  The Environment News Service in their June 8, 2015 article “G7 Leaders promise ‘urgent’ climate action,” stated “Leaders of the G7 nations today pledged to take ‘urgent and concrete action’ on climate change this year, including a new legally-binding climate agreement to be hammered out at the UN Climate Summit in Paris in December.

“In a communique issued at the end of the G7 meeting in Kruen, the leaders said they are committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 70 percent by 2050, compared to 2010 levels, and decarbonizing their economies by the end of the century.”  So let’s see, at the rate of one species every 7 minutes for the next 85 years, who will remain?  What species will still be here?  Can human beings even survive with nature so out of balance?

Clearly, we cannot sit back and wait for big Gov and big Industry to save us.  While we are applauding them for their efforts, we have to proceed with the belief that we can, ourselves, turn this ship around. But how do we convince the general population that they have the power to do this?

What can we do to stop it?

I recently watched a Youtube called“Backwards Brain Bicycle”—a video produced by “Smarter Every Day.”  It’s short and well worth the time to watch.  In it Dustin challenges himself to learn to ride a bike that is modified so that if you turn the bike handles to the left, the wheel turns to the right.  He thought it would be a cinch to learn how to ride it, but it took him 8 months to alter his neural pathways through practicing 5 minutes each day.  He talks about learning a “deep truth” through this experiment.  He proposes that our thinking becomes very rigid especially as we grow older.  We may want to change something in our thinking, but it takes tremendous effort, and we have to really want to change.  Something has to make us think it is worth it to go to the effort to change.  Simply put, Dustin says, “Knowledge is not understanding.” We often think we understand when in fact we are simply operating from pre-programed assumptions that we haven’t yet questioned.  What we think seems like the truth, but is it?

 “Truth is truth no matter what you think about it.”

For example, millions of people may “know” that the rate of extinction is astronomically high, but they may not “understand” that.  As Dustin puts it, “Truth is truth no matter what you think about it.”  So one of the reasons we have so much trouble convincing people to take personal actions to save the planet and all who live here is because of these rigid neural pathways that lead people to contribute to planetary destruction and refuse to acknowledge our part in it.  On my walks on country roads I find broken beer bottles, half eaten burgers in paper bags, half empty pop in plastic glasses with straws, and, of course, plastic grocery bags—all tossed out windows of cars speeding down the road.  And I see new tossed trash every day. Most of these people are young enough to have heard the “Don’t Litter” message in grade school.  What happened?  Maybe it’s a rigid thought pattern from pre-industrial, pre-plastic-bag tribal days when your only discards were nut shells, fruit peelings, ropes made from vines, and temporary biodegradable dwellings. Drop it anywhere and who cares! But one thing we know—it is definitely a deeply furrowed pathway in brain pathways that says it’s still ok to litter.

What people do (and can stop doing) to cause extinction

As important as the littering problem is, especially to the animals who die eating it, it pales in comparison to the impact of eating products from animal agriculture. Let’s think about habitat destruction and extinction of species while considering these facts:

•   In the “developed” world 65% of total agricultural land is used for livestock feed according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO).

•  When you combine pasture and feed acres, we are up to 80% of total agricultural land. (FAO)

•  Sixty percent of U.S. pasture is being overgrazed and, therefore, eroding.  It takes 500 years to replace one inch of soil lost to erosion, according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. They also point out that 90% of cropland in the U.S. loses soil at 13 times the rate that would be sustainable. 

•  The EPA reports that agriculture in the U.S. has impaired the water quality of 59% of all rivers; 31% of all lakes, ponds and reservoirs; and   15% of all estuaries.  The damage is coming from siltation, pathogens, toxic herbicides, toxic fertilizers, mountains of manure, and oceans of ammonia from animal urine. Manure contains oxygen demanding substances, ammonia, disease, odorous compounds, salts, metals, antibiotics, pesticides and hormones, to name a few.  In their “Potential Environmental Impacts of Animal Feeding Operations” they state, “Manure’s oxygen demand and ammonia content can result in fish kills and reduced biodiversity…” along with “salinization and disruption of the ecosystem.”      

• According to the USDA, there were 60,200 hog and pig operations in 2012 in the U.S.  We all know what that means.

• We all know that bison, elks, prairie dogs, wolves, coyotes and many other animals are being mercilessly killed because they interfere with the profits of agricultural operations, many of whom use public lands for their business. Even if they somehow escape the ranchers’ guns and poisons, still their habitat is terribly compromised by the overuse and destructive nature of animal agriculture. 

As Always—the Good News

As I’ve said in every article I’ve written for this column, animal agriculture is one area in which we human beings can have the most massive and immediate impact on saving the earth, the species who are facing extinction, and—oh yes--ourselves. We can gain knowledge from reading those statistics, but can we understand what is really happening here?  More importantly, can we change our rigid brain patterns and help others do so along with us, and can we do it in time?  It is hard to change those brain pathways that have been passed along by genes, traditions, and lifestyles for generations.  But it can be done. Whether we are learning to ride a Backwards Brain Bicycle or understanding that animal agriculture is so destructive that it must be stopped—we have the capacity to do it.    This profit-driven behemoth is exterminating millions of species; polluting land, water, and air; and causing immense suffering to the farm animals themselves, the wild animals whose habitats are invaded or destroyed, and to us because of all the illnesses caused by animal agriculture and by eating its products.

Imagine freeing up 80% of total “agricultural” land from animal agriculture and eliminating the pollution, erosion, desertification, deforestation caused by it. If we look at this chart, we see that we can obviously grow enough plant food for people on a lot less than that 80%.  If you figure you can feed an average of 15 people a plant based diet on 2.5 acres and only one on a meat based diet on the same amount of land, then we would need only one fifteenth of the land to feed people. The rest of that land can be returned to its natural state and provide healthy ecosystems for those who need them so desperately if they are to survive.  

Number of people whose food energy needs can be 

met by the food produced on 2.5 acres of land.  For

example, 23 people can be fed on 2.5 acres of land producing 

cabbage, whereas only one person can be fed by 

2.5 acres devoted to raising cows.

Statistics from John Robbins' The Food Revolution

. 
On Vox.com a National Geographic Map (2014) shows that “55 percent of the world's crop calories are actually eaten directly by people. Another 36 percent is used for animal feed. And the remaining 9 percent goes toward biofuels and other industrial uses.” However in the United States, only 27 percent of crop calories are eaten by people, while more than 67 percent of crops are fed to farmed animals. Ethanol and other biofuels make up some of the remainder.  Twelve calories of a chicken require 100 calories of grain.  The same amount of grain produces only 3 calories of meat from a cow.

Reading these facts and figures is part of creating new neural pathways, new ideas, innovative ways to save the earth, and most importantly, a desire to do so.  As activists, we need to share what we know.  When people argue or deny what we are saying, they are responding to brain pathways that have been laid down for generations.  It’s hard to try new things, to ride a different kind of bicycle, but if we are going to stop this destruction dead in its track, we can.  Adopting a plant based diet is the simplest, most far reaching, and most powerful action we can take.

Yes, it helps the earth for us to ride our bikes more (even backwards bikes) and not to litter, but the benefits to causing the extinction of the T-Rex of Animal Agriculture are vastly more far-reaching and healing.

Let’s cause the extinction of destruction instead of the extinction 

of living beings who share this earth with us.        

© 2015, Judy Carman, M.A., is author of Peace to All Beings: Veggie Soup for the Chicken’s Soul and co-author of The Missing Peace: The Hidden Power of our Kinship with Animal;  2014 winner of the Henry Spira Grassroots Animal Activist award; and owner of a truck and a car powered by used veggie oil and house powered by solar. Her primary websites are circleofcompassion.org and peacetoallbeings.com.   

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on

the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of

compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this

complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it

destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and

places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this

gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this

spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in

however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think

human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself

a marvelous victory.”

Howard Zinn