Corporate Farming

[DCJenn]

In the past two days I've read two different articles from two different magazines, both that mention the impact that the large corporate animal farms are having environmentally. Essentially the run-off from the chemicals and the manure is polluting our water supply. (Self and Vegetarian Times)

I have decided (once again) to forgo any meat products that I can't source from local organic farms.

I am so skeeved out right now that I can't even contemplate a burger...

Anyone else concerned about the garbage we're putting in our bodies? or are drinking? (for those of you who don't know, DC had a HUGE issue this past year with lead in our water...that no one bothered to tell us about- and that would be BOTH the locals and the Feds. Nice, huh? People's home were found to have 3000 times the acceptable levels of lead in the water. It was from the chemicals they used to treat the sewage- it leached the lead from the ancient pipes we have here in the city)

Jenn

Jenn,

This topic really gets me going, too! That's why I became a strict vegetarian 5 years ago....although I recently went back to eating meat for this pregnancy...I know you can have a healthy baby on a vegetarian diet, but I just didn't trust myself to get enough of the right vitamins and minerals .

If you haven't already, you should definitely read Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. This book, especially Chapter 4, is what prompted me to become a vegetarian. Not only is it awful how animals are raised and killed on factory farms, but it is downright scary how many pollutants these factory farms create....not to mention the amount of resources (land and water) that go into raising animals for food...

Another book I highly recommend is Wendall Berry's The Unsettling of America.

Well, I could go on and on about this topic....but I need to get my beauty sleep...

After reading Fast Food Nation, I too have become very interested in this issue. I am appalled by the decline in the quality of food in this country (yes the US!) especially meat. I am glad to hear I am not the only one concerned! I feel like so often saying "HELLO!" This is really going on in this country and it's a BIG problem!!! Especially for our children.
Thanks for the book recommendations, I will add them to my list. If you haven't read Fast Food, it's a excellent read as well.
I buy organic as much as possible but it's not always an option. I think the treatment of animals is a valid issue but my greatest concern is with the quality of the meat that has turned me away from eating something as simple as a fast food burger. Cows are vegetarians and should not be eating dead animals like they do on the large corporate animal farms. I have a big problem with the amount of steriods and antibiotics they are given as well as the increase in food borne illnesses due to meat contaminated with ecoli, salmonella and many others. Europe has nearly eliminated salmonella from their eggs but not this country - it's on the rise.
Putting garbage into our bodies - that's a valid statement. I am afraid that the biggest health problems of our future will be those resulting in contaminating our food and water sources with all this crap that is going into our environment - all to fill the pockets of big business.

The John Robbins books are great for this, I'm not awake yet :P but his first book is more about animal welfare and the second one treats environmental issues in great detail.

The Union of Concerned Scientists have determined that one of the very most beneficial things you, as an individual, can do to positively impact the environment is to stop eating red meat, specifically beef. Industrial feedlots are a horrible polluter (did you read on CNN about the 2000 ton pile of spontaneously combusted, smoldering manure out West? they can't put it out with water because that much crap would utterly destroy the surrounding ecosystem if it washed away...)

I cut myself back to only wild-caught salmon for six months last year. A few months ago I caved and started cooking my old standbys for dinner, but meat just doesn't taste good anymore.

[fluffhead]

I spent three years at the EPA in the section that studies storm runoff, and it's a huge problem, but I'm sure it's being ignored in the current administration. I think that hog farms were one of the worst offendors.
In terms of corporate farming, the problems are by no means limited to animal farming. Monsanto and their cohorts have turned our agricultural industry into a horrible chemical mess. The whole thing gives me a stomach ache.
I gotta get my daughter to school.

[Rapunzel]

Just as a tangent: Isn't Peter Singer the prof that advocates killing children for up to a year or two after birth on the premise that they aren't productive members of society or something? Just wondering if that is the same Peter Singer who wrote Animal Liberation....

Jennifer

[Rapunzel]

I've found that when I am eating healthfully (ie when I'm NOT pregnant!) I tend to avoid eating much meat at all. I never cared for red meat beyond hamburgers - it's the consistancy and taste that I can't stand. I adore poultry and salmon, though. The idea of pork is just really, really gross to me (except when I'm pregnant ), but that may be due to the stories my mother-in-law tells of pigs growing up in Mexico (like the time an old lady living alone on a farm was feeding her pigs, fell into the pen, and her skeleton and whatever the pigs hadn't eaten yet was found a few days later ).

Anyway, I think it is a huge concern what farmers choose to feed their livestock and how they dispose of the enormous amount of waste inherent with the care of animals. The problem I find when trying to obtain good literature on the subject is that there is too often a very political slant to the writing. That really turns me off - I want to read factual information that doesn't come to a wildly political or fantastically unrealistic conclusion. Anyone know of some unbiased books on the subject of modern farming procedures?

One of the big concerns I have about living in Boston are the lead levels. We live in a house that hasn't been deleaded and are advised periodically to run our faucets for a minute or so prior to using the water because of the lead leeching from the pipes. It's just so FUN living on the East Coast where everything is hundreds of years old and bound to kill you .

Jennifer

[fluffhead]

We live in a house that hasn't been deleaded and are advised periodically to run our faucets for a minute or so prior to using the water because of the lead leeching from the pipes.

It's the lead in the solder that's probably the problem - use a Brita or some other filter as well, and make sure not to drink or cook with water from the hot pipes.

In grad school I heard about a baby who had really high blood lead levels. They investigated the house, and found no lead in the pipes, or the paint chips. The mother had high lead, and the father and siblings had none. Turned out they had bought a samovar on a trip to Eastern Europe, which was put together with lead solder. The mother was drinking tea from it, and then was either (I forget) preparing the baby's formula from it, or nursing the baby.

Goes to show, you don't ever know.

[SueC]

I know very little on the subject, but I'm wondering how the runoff from organic farms differs from other farms or how it is handled differently. Does the fact that the animals aren't given extra "chemicals" make their runoff less toxic? If so, I could buy in to buying solely that type of meat. Unfortunately, I love a good steak way too much to become a vegetarian. I could however do without poultry--something about chicken really grosses me out so I eat it very rarely!

I know very little on the subject, but I'm wondering how the runoff from organic farms differs from other farms or how it is handled differently. Does the fact that the animals aren't given extra "chemicals" make their runoff less toxic? If so, I could buy in to buying solely that type of meat. Unfortunately, I love a good steak way too much to become a vegetarian. I could however do without poultry--something about chicken really grosses me out so I eat it very rarely!

I believe that the downfall of intensive/factory farming is some combination of the intensive feedlot environment -- animals packed in so close they can barely move (feces splattering everywhere, overloading the local ecosystem) and fed grain (which is horribly unhealthy for a ruminant and leads to ulcers, bacterial infection, and other problems that tend to be treated preemptively with antibiotics) and animal protein for bulk (including the dead of their species as much as they try to avoid that) -- and the fact that more and more land must be cleared for more and more animals to be produced. http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/nucl ... tionID=242

Organic farms can't stress their animals too much because they can't provide prophylactic drugs. Per regs, they have to feed their animals organic feed or pasture them on organic land. In my opinion the healthiest meat for people and the environment is pasture-raised meat: http://www.eatwild.com/ but beef is still chock full of saturated animal fat -- eat in moderation.

Supporting local and organic farmers will ALWAYS be a good use of resources.

[fluffhead]

Sustainable, but not necessarily organic, farming practices involve installing vegetative or other buffers which filter animal wastes before entering receiving waters, and use other methods of dealing with wastes.
Huge hog farms have lagoons for the waste, but during the floods in the south a couple years ago, all these lagoons were washed out and enormous amounts of waste entered the coastal waters. I think this enabled not only algal blooms, but also pfisteria outbreaks (a crazy organism, newly discovered, which has made not only fisherman very sick, but has even sickened the scientists who try to investigate it).

[Rapunzel]

I'd never heard of a group calling itself the "Union of Concerned Scientists" so I did some research and this is what I found on them (other than their own propaganda):

http://www.activistcash.com/organizatio ... fm/oid/145

Union of Concerned Scientists
2 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02238
Phone 617-547-5552 | Fax 617-864-9405 | Email ucs@ucsusa.org



Committed to an “open-minded search for truth,” and armed with “unrivaled scientific expertise,” the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) “doesn’t say anything [it] can’t back up with solid evidence.” At least, that’s what its fund-raising letters say. The reality is quite different.
UCS embraces an environmental agenda that often stands at odds with the “rigorous scientific analysis” it claims to employ. A radical green wolf in sheep’s clothing, UCS tries to distinguish itself from the Greenpeaces of the world by convincing the media that its recommendations reflect a consensus among the scientific community. And that’s what makes it so dangerous. Whether it’s energy policy or agricultural issues, UCS’s “experts” are routinely given a free pass from newspaper reporters and television producers when they claim that mainstream science endorses their radical agenda.

Here’s how it works: UCS conducts an opinion poll of scientists or organizes a petition that scientists sign. Then it manipulates or misconstrues the results in order to pronounce that science has spoken. In 1986 UCS asked 549 of the American Physical Society’s 37,000 members if Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was “a step in the wrong direction for America’s national security policy.” Despite the biased wording of the push-poll question, only 54 percent disapproved of SDI. Even so, UCS declared that the poll proved “profound and pervasive skepticism toward SDI in the scientific community.”

More recently, UCS pulled a partisan, election-year stunt in 2004 aimed at the Bush Administration. The group rounded up 60 scientists to sign a statement complaining that “the administration is distorting and censoring scientific findings that contradict its policies; manipulating the underlying science to align results with predetermined political decisions.”

On issue after issue, UCS insists, the White House fails to embrace global scientific “consensus” -- and that automatically means it has “politicized” science. But UCS itself is frequently guilty of that exact sin. For instance, it works overtime to scare Americans about a whole host of imagined environmental problems associated with genetically modified food. But every authoritative regulatory agency, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization, declares that biotech food crops are perfectly safe.

UCS routinely abuses and politicizes science. Its crusade against farm animals receiving antibiotics presents guesswork as scientifically rigorous analysis, and is calculated to scare the public about risks it admits are groundless. UCS helped initiate the vicious attacks on Danish scientist (and “Skeptical Environmentalist”) Bjorn Lomborg, only to be repudiated by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology, and Industry. And in 2003, the group dressed up its “strong opposition to the US invasion of Iraq” as an exercise in science.

Like many environmental activist groups, UCS uses the twin motivators of cheer and fear. A giggly Gwenyth Paltrow and a catty Cameron Diaz headlined a series of short appeals about energy conservation that UCS produced. The two mega-stars crow that they turn the water off while brushing their teeth, switch off the light when they leave their bedrooms, and keep the thermostat at 65 degrees. “Its time for us to band together and really make every effort to conserve our natural resources,” chirps Diaz. That’s the sunny side.

But UCS is more adept at producing horror stories than chick flicks. They are fear-mongers of the first order -- turning the sober science of health and environmental safety into high drama for public consumption. For example, UCS recently warned that by 2100 the U.S. might suffer 50-80 million more cases of malaria every year if the Senate fails to ratify the Kyoto treaty. Such racy statistics are based on clumsy modeling of worst-case scenarios, and assume -- against all evidence of human behavior -- that no countermeasures whatsoever would be employed. “Not considering factors such as local control measures or health services,” in their own words. Of course, you won’t find those caveats in the press release.

Genetically Modified Science

Among UCS’s many concerns, “the food you eat” is at the top of the list. More than a million dollars went to its food program in 2001. Genetically enhanced foods -- dubbed “Frankenfoods” by opponents -- have caused worldwide hysteria even though no reputable scientific institution can find anything to be afraid of. But that doesn’t stop UCS’s “experts” from playing cheerleader to these unfounded fears.

They warn that biotech foods could result in the “squandering of valuable pest susceptibility genes,” “enhancement of the environment for toxic fungi,” and the “creation of new or worse viruses.” They scream about “Poisoned wildlife” and “new allergens in the food supply.” Biotech foods, they claim, might “increase the levels of toxic substances within plants,” “reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics to fight disease,” “contaminate foods with high levels of toxic metals,” “intensify weedy properties” and cause the “rapid evolution of resistance to herbicides in weeds,” leading to “superweeds.”

Rigorous scientific analysis led UCS to this list of horrors, right? Wrong. That was merely a “‘brainstorming’ of potential harms.” So how likely are any of these to occur? “Risk assessments can be complicated,” UCS says, and pretty much leaves it at that. In other words, they have absolutely no idea.

In contrast, more reputable authorities have a very good grasp of the potential risks of genetically enhanced foods. The U.S. Environmental protection Agency says that genetically enhanced corn “does not pose risks to human health or to the environment.” The World Health Organization says that biotech foods “are not likely to present risks for human health” and observes that “no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population.” Even the European Union, which has gone out of its way to stifle food technology for political reasons, notes: “The use of more precise technology [in genetically enhanced crops] and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods.”

The Food and Environment Program at UCS is headed up by Margaret Mellon and her deputy Jane Rissler, both of whom hold Ph.Ds and have held positions at prestigious universities. So what do a couple of highly trained research scientists, armed with nothing but guesswork, ideology and a million dollar budget, do? They fight biotech food every step of the way.

Although UCS claims that it “does not support or oppose genetic engineering per se,” Mellon and Rissler in fact have never met a GM food they didn’t mistrust. That’s because they hold biotech foods to an impossibly high standard.

In 1999, UCS joined the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and the Defenders of Wildlife, in petitioning the EPA for strict regulation of corn modified to produce large amounts of the bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin. Bt is a naturally occurring insect poison that protects plants from pests like the European corn borer. UCS’s letter was part of a major scare campaign to convince the public that Bt corn posed a risk to the Monarch Butterfly.

Both the USDA and the EPA later concluded that Bt corn caused no harm to the Monarch. This reinforced the findings of federal regulators who had performed a comprehensive safety review of Bt corn before it was allowed into the marketplace. UCS remains unconvinced, even though the safest place for a Monarch larva to be is in a Bt cornfield. Rissler argued there was “insufficient data” to make such a conclusion.

Precautionary Nonsense

Of course, “sufficient” data can never exist for zealots like Rissler. She continued: “Do we assume the technology is safe… or do we prove it? The scientist in me wants to prove it’s safe.” It’s impossible to prove a negative, to absolutely demonstrate that there are no dangers whatsoever for any given product. The scientist in her knows that too, but she and her colleagues at UCS continue to be guided by the “Precautionary Principle.” This misguided maxim argues that, based on the fear that something harmful may possibly arise, we should opt for technological paralysis.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized in 2000 that The Precautionary Principle “is an environmentalist neologism, invoked to trump scientific evidence and move directly to banning things they don’t like.” It’s a big hit among anti-technology activists because it justifies their paranoia and serves to bludgeon technological progress.

Martin Teitel, who runs another misnamed activist group called the Council for Responsible Genetics, admitted as much in 2001. “Politically,” Teitel said, “it’s difficult for me to go around saying that I want to shut this science down, so it’s safer for me to say something like, ‘It needs to be done safely before releasing it.’” Requiring scientists to satisfy the Principle by proving a negative, Teitel added, means that “they don’t get to do it period.”

It should come as no surprise that UCS joined Teitel’s organization and other die-hard opponents of biotech foods in an activist coalition called the Genetic Engineering Action Network. While acknowledging that “we know of no generic harms associated with genetically engineered organisms,” UCS consistently opposes their introduction to the market on the basis of purely hypothetical risk.

Confronted with the real-world benefits of biotech foods, UCS simply changes the subject to its anti-corporate, socialist leanings. Rissler’s appearance on the PBS show Nova – on a program called “Harvest of Fear” -- is a case in point. When the interviewer suggested that “genetically modified crops are arguably much less harmful to the environment” Rissler responded: “It depends on where you want to compromise. There’s another issue here with corporate control of the food supply.”

UCS’s knee-jerk reaction to biotech foods is matched only by its animus towards agribusiness. A 1994 press release condemning FDA approval of biotech foods complained that some of the data used by the oversight agency was provided by private enterprises.

In her zeal to decry increased food production from the corporate adoption of biotechnology, Mellon has argued that it’s “not clear that more milk or pork is good.” And UCS supports a radical vision of “sustainable agriculture.” That means no pesticides or herbicides; no fertilizer (other than E.coli-rich manure); and eating only “locally grown” produce. If it’s not clear under this plan where New York City would get its rice or how Chicago would scrounge up any bananas, there’s a reason for it. They wouldn’t.

Pigs, Chickens and Cows, Oh My!

Hogging It, a UCS report published in 2001, argues that the use of antibiotics in farm animals could result in human diseases that are resistant to conventional treatments. The report received a great deal of press attention, and UCS is not afraid to brag about it. “We developed the numbers that everyone uses when talking about… overuse of antibiotics,” trumpets a fund-raising letter. But how did they go about developing those numbers? “Rigorous scientific analysis”? Hardly. While the livestock industry actually calculates the amounts of antibiotics administered to farm animals using hard sales figures, UCS guesses at average drug dosages and then multiplies by the total number of animals. That’s “brainstorming.” Not science.

The real experts, like David Bell, coordinator of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s anti-microbial resistance programs, aren’t impressed by Hogging It. Interestingly, UCS admits the weakness of its evidence. The executive summary of Hogging It complains about a “gaping chasm” in the data. Nevertheless, the authors are proud to produce the “first transparent estimate” of livestock antibiotic use in America.

Estimate? That’s right. “The numbers everyone uses” are just estimates. Moreover, UCS measures antibiotic usage in total tonnage. But is that relevant in any way? UCS concedes that it’s not. The activist group wants the FDA to track antibiotic usage by “type,” since most antibiotics used in animals are unlike those used in humans.

Consumer Reports quotes Margaret Mellon saying, “We know nothing. We are flying blind.” No wonder the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Coalition for Animal Health also reject Hogging It’s findings. But none of that stops UCS from scaring the wits out of the public. Mellon warns of an “era where untreatable infectious diseases are regrettably commonplace.” That might be worth getting “Concerned” about, if only it were based on good science.

Unfortunately, political science masquerading as real science can have real-world consequences. In July 2003, identical bills introduced in the U.S. House and Senate threatened to ban the routine use of eight entire classes of antibiotics in livestock. Keep Antibiotics Working (KAW), a slick PR coalition of activist groups, was especially pleased with the news because its favorite statistic became the legislation’s main factual “finding.” Namely: “An estimated 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the United States are fed to farm animals.”

Guess who “estimated 70 percent” for KAW? The Union of Concerned Scientists, a long-time coalition member. UCS admits that this estimate was created from mere guesswork, saying on its own website that “data to answer [the following] questions are not available”:


What is the total amount of antibiotics used each year in the United States?
How much of this is used to treat human disease?
How much is used in animal agriculture?
How much is used to treat sick animals and how much to promote their growth?
How much of each major class of antibiotics is used as supplements to animal feed or water?
Is agricultural use increasing? By how much?
Which agricultural uses are most likely to contribute to problems in treating human disease?
For a group facing so many unanswered questions, answers seem to come remarkably easily. While freely admitting that no good science exists to determine the effect (if any) of livestock antibiotics on human health, UCS managed to convince members of Congress otherwise. At the same time, UCS activists protested outside fast-food restaurants, holding giant “pillburgers” (prop hamburgers stuffed with oversized drug capsules) and chanting “Hey hey -- ho ho -- Drugs in meat have got to go.”


The Union of Concerned Scientists was born out of a protest against the war in Vietnam. In 1969, a group of 48 faculty members at MIT -- the original “union” -- sponsored a one-day work stoppage of scientific research. A conference that coincided with the strike included appearances from such notables as Noam Chomsky (who is now recognized as a leader of the 21st Century “hate-America left”); Eric Mann, who led the 1960s terrorist Weather Underground; and Jonathan Kabat, who argued: “We want capitalism to come to an end.”

Later that year, when the founding document of the Union of Concerned Scientists was formalized, the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union was featured even more prominently than environmental issues. Three of the five propositions in the founding document concern political questions of the Cold War -- a topic about which even the brightest physicists and biologists can claim no particular expertise.

UCS continues to involve itself in issues where scientific credentials carry little weight. For example, the group opposes urban sprawl, disputes a war in Iraq, and supports abortion. While these positions may be perfectly legitimate in themselves, they are hardly the product of “rigorous scientific analysis.”

An early petition from UCS argues: “A new ethic is required -- a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth… This ethic must motivate a great movement.” So activists with lab coats are now presuming to instruct us on matters of ethics and politics.

Among its ethical appeals that have nothing to do with science, UCS’s approach to farming stands out. The activist group advocates “a sustainable approach, based on understanding agriculture as an ecosystem.” They call it an “agroecosystem,” and label it “holistic.” They call it “science”; the rest of us call it Zen.

At UCS, politics drives science -- not the other way around. “We undervalue our scientists and agriculturalists if we accept today’s productive, but highly polluting agriculture,” UCS claims. Of course, UCS advocates organic-only agriculture, the widespread adoption of which (at today’s anemic levels of production) would result in mass starvation. So in this instance, some form of technology will surely have to save the day, even for organic farmers. But when it comes to something UCS opposes -- like missile defense -- they argue that the technology will never work.

Respectable scientists operate by considering a question, developing a methodology to answer that question, and only then arriving at a conclusion. They disdain political interference, and go to the media only when their conclusions warrant immediate public attention. The Union of Concerned Scientists stands this process on its head. It develops a press strategy first, and then conducts politically tainted and methodologically flawed analysis. After all, it’s getting harder to convince the media that your environmental scare is more lurid than the next guy’s. You need good PR. That’s why UCS partners with slick Washington PR firms -- to get attention, whether or not there’s good science behind the sound bites.


By any real scientific yardstick, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a lousy track record. Their predictions are often laughably, and sometimes tragically, wrong. A few examples:


In 1997 UCS organized a petition that warned of “global warming” and advocated U.S. ratification of the Kyoto treaty. It was signed by 1,600 scientists, and so UCS declared that “the scientific community has reached a consensus.” But when a counter-petition that questioned this so-called “consensus” was signed by more than 17,000 other scientists, UCS declared it a “deliberate attempt to deceive the scientific community with misinformation.”

UCS invested significant resources in “a multiyear effort to protect Bacillus thuringiensis, a valuable natural pesticide, by bringing high visibility to a preliminary report on the toxic effect of transgenic [biotech] corn pollen on the Monarch Butterfly.” Unfortunately for them, both the USDA and the EPA have concluded that Bt corn is only a threat to the crop-devastating insects it’s supposed to kill.

Based, we suppose, on some “science” or other, UCS’s Margaret Mellon predicted in 1999 that American farmers would reduce their planting of genetically enhanced seeds in the year 2000, saying it “probably represents a turning point.” What happened? Just the reverse. Planting of biotech crops has increased in 2000, 2001 and 2002 -- and shows no sign of slowing down.

In 1980 UCS predicted that the earth would soon run out of fossil fuels. “It is now abundantly clear,” the group wrote, “that the world has entered a period of chronic energy shortages.” Oops! Known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas have never been higher, and show every sign of increasing.

To improve fuel efficiency, UCS argues for lighter tires on SUVs. But lighter tires are blamed -- even by Ralph’s Nader’s Public Citizen -- for tread separation. 148 deaths and more than 500 injuries were attributed to tread separation in Firestone tires alone.
UCS apparently hasn’t learned from its many, many mistakes. But if at first you don’t succeed, scare, scare again.

Profile:
Union of Concerned Scientists


Websites
http://www.actgreen.com
http://www.keepantibioticsworki...
http://www.ucsaction.org
http://www.ucsusa.org




Copyright © 2005 Center for Consumer Freedom. All rights reserved.

[Rapunzel]

And, here's what I found on John Robbins (who I also had never heard about):

John Robbins

Biography
Falling somewhere between vegetarian activist and new-age religious guru, John Robbins was once heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune. Instead of claiming his inheritance, he walked away from the money and wrote a book attacking the source of his family’s income (1987, Diet for a New America). After enjoying success as an author, he created EarthSave to promote his beliefs and provide an activist outlet to his newfound followers.
More recently, Robbins is the author of The Food Revolution, a book that Library Journal criticized for Robbins’ “zealous advocacy of plant-based nutrition,” and his “refusal to consider the need for animal products in human nutrition.” In addition to keeping busy with his aggressive book-promotion tour, Robbins is also on the national council of the Farm Animal Reform Movement.

Background
Founder, EarthSave International; National Council member, Farm Animal Reform Movement; Baskin-Robbins ice cream heir; author, Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution


http://www.activistcash.com/biography.cfm?bid=1313


Here's what I found on EarthSave International which Robbins founded:

EarthSave International
1509 Seabright Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Phone 800-362-3648 | Fax 8314231313 | Email information@earthsave.org



EarthSave began in 1988 as a pet project of John Robbins, one-time heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune. His book Diet for a New America had just been published, and he intended for the new organization to pick up where his writing left off. Just as Robbins’ book outlined an ideological connection between food activists (vegetarians/animal rights zealots) and the more “mainstream” environmentalism (what used to be known as “ecology” and “conservation”), EarthSave sits at the nexus of these two worlds.
Ex-Montana-cattle-rancher Howard Lyman is currently EarthSave’s president, and its incoming chairman is Jeffrey Armour Nelson, heir to the Armour meatpacking empire. Add Robbins to the mix, and you have a triumvirate with one common link: they came from “the other side,” and they constantly remind their followers of this (as though the fact of their conversion should grant their ideology instant gravitas and validity).

EarthSave’s web site is hosted by Jeff Nelson’s “VegSource.com” empire, and its board members overlap heavily with the animal rights activists and dispensers of questionable dietary advice that “VegSource” features daily. A few examples:

Diet book author Dean Ornish, an EarthSave board member, claims that a completely vegan diet can reverse prostate cancer and shrink or eliminate cancerous tumors. Ornish has not published these findings, and no peer review has been conducted, but the claims are presented as fact.
EarthSave member Alan Goldhamer co-authors a medical advice column in which he promotes fasting as a “cure” for high blood pressure. No mention is made of the fact that most physicians consider fasting a horrible idea for individuals who are underweight, pregnant, or nursing, or who suffer from fatigue, mental illness, cardiac arrhythmia, nutritional deficiencies, ulcers, or immunodeficiency problems.
EarthSave board member Dr. Douglas Graham (his degree is in chiropractic) takes veganism one step further, insisting that only completely raw foods are truly good for you. He claims that “it is not possible for cooked foods to supply our needs for either optimum nutrition or ethical integrity.” Graham’s ethical considerations include the claim that “heat produced from cooking, and from heating water for cleaning pots pans and dishes [sic], contributes significantly to global warming.” In an unbelievable leap of logic, Graham goes on to allege that the consumption of cooked food “is linked to almost every eating disorder, many learning disabilities, and practically every disease known to man.” Other EarthSave spokespersons have claimed specific health risks are associated with eating meat, drinking milk, and consuming caffeine.

There’s big money in this sort of issue advocacy; with Jeffrey Armour Nelson at the helm, EarthSave is positioned to reap a huge windfall. As with any political movement, a bigger tent means a larger pool of potential contributors. No wonder, then, that EarthSave’s major goal so far has been to bring animal-rights fanatics and militant vegetarians into the mainstream environmentalist movement. Its central piece of propaganda is that Planet Earth will suffer dire consequences if we continue to rely on animals for our dietary fat and protein. Nonsense? Certainly. But it has galvanized disparate factions into one very malleable political force. It’s a young movement, and it practically lives on the Internet; this will make Nelson (the proprietor of http://www.VegSource.com) EarthSave’s golden child in coming years.


Within EarthSave International can be found any number of snake-oil salesmen, often making a quick buck from a gullible segment of the public. A great example is Dr. John McDougall, founder of California’s “McDougall Program,” a 12-day live-in weight-loss clinic. When McDougall claimed in a recent article for EarthSave that “obesity is a American ‘epidemic’” and promoted his own expensive weight-loss solution, he took extra care to claim that dieters on high-protein alternatives like Zone, Protein Power, and Atkins diets are “risking their health.” Protein, remember, comes most frequently from meat products. McDougall demonized the competition by threatening its adherents with constipation, heart disease, mental sluggishness, cancer, and even osteoporosis (“Protein washes your bones into the toilet”). Meanwhile, the article touts McDougall’s books, his audio tapes, his web site, and (of course) his expensive clinic.

Profile:
EarthSave International


Websites
http://www.earthsave.org




Copyright © 2005 Center for Consumer Freedom. All rights reserved.

[Rapunzel]

I researched Peter Singer as well and he is, indeed, the same Peter Singer I had read about in the past.

Here's what I found on his own website:

http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html

II. Animal Liberation


Q. I’ve read that you think humans and animals are equal. Do you really believe that a human being is no more valuable than an animal?

A. I argued in the opening chapter of Animal Liberation that humans and animals are equal in the sense that the fact that a being is human does not mean that we should give the interests of that being preference over the similar interests of other beings. That would be speciesism, and wrong for the same reasons that racism and sexism are wrong. Pain is equally bad, if it is felt by a human being or a mouse. We should treat beings as individuals, rather than as members of a species. But that doesn’t mean that all individuals are equally valuable – see my answer to the next question for more details.

Q. If you had to save either a human being or a mouse from a fire, with no time to save them both, wouldn’t you save the human being?

A. Yes, in almost all cases I would save the human being. But not because the human being is human, that is, a member of the species Homo sapiens. Species membership alone isn't morally significant, but equal consideration for similar interests allows different consideration for different interests. The qualities that are ethically significant are, firstly, a capacity to experience something -- that is, a capacity to feel pain, or to have any kind of feelings. That's really basic, and it’s something that a mouse shares with us. But when it comes to a question of taking life, or allowing life to end, it matters whether a being is the kind of being who can see that he or she actually has a life -- that is, can see that he or she is the same being who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future. Such a being has more to lose than a being incapable of understand this.
Any normal human being past infancy will have such a sense of existing over time. I’m not sure that mice do, and if they do, their time frame is probably much more limited. So normally, the death of a human being is a greater loss to the human than the death of a mouse is to the mouse – for the human, it cuts off plans for the distant future, for example, but not in the case of the mouse. And we can add to that the greater extent of grief and distress that, in most cases, the family of the human being will experience, as compared with the family of the mouse (although we should not forget that animals, especially mammals and birds, can have close ties to their offspring and mates).
That’s why, in general, it would be right to save the human, and not the mouse, from the burning building, if one could not save both. But this depends on the qualities and characteristics that the human being has. If, for example, the human being had suffered brain damage so severe as to be in an irreversible state of unconsciousness, then it might not be better to save the human.



III. The Sanctity of Human Life


Q. You have been quoted as saying: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." Is that quote accurate?

A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future. As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living. That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do. It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.
Sometimes, perhaps because the baby has a serious disability, parents think it better that their newborn infant should die. Many doctors will accept their wishes, to the extent of not giving the baby life-supporting medical treatment. That will often ensure that the baby dies. My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support – which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby’s life swiftly and humanely.

Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?

A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it. And that’s a good thing, of course. We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby. It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child. Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.

Q. Elderly people with dementia, or people who have been injured in accidents, may also have no sense of the future. Can they also be killed?

A. When a human being once had a sense of the future, but has now lost it, we should be guided by what he or she would have wanted to happen in these circumstances. So if someone would not have wanted to be kept alive after losing their awareness of their future, we may be justified in ending their life; but if they would not have wanted to be killed under these circumstances, that is an important reason why we should not do so.

Q. What about voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide?

A. I support law reform to allow people to decide to end their lives, if they are terminally or incurably ill. This is permitted in the Netherlands, and now in Belgium too. Why should we not be able to decide for ourselves, in consultation with doctors, when our quality of life has fallen to the point where we would prefer not to go on living?

Interestingly, I read that Mr. Singer's mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and later died. It's worth considering when reading his apparent departure from his philosophy when it applies to the elderly with dementia or, in other words, after having lost their awareness of their future. Mr. Singer did not have her euthenized.

Overall, I find his opinions curious and far too easy too easy to punch with holes.

Jennifer

[DCJenn]

You know, crackpots like him can certainly detract from any kind of decent argument, huh?

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has for a number of years researched the myriad of reasons why the crabs and oysters are dying- and have found that a lot if it is nitrogen run-off from the huge chicken farms on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Yuck, yuck, yuck!


Jenn