Editorial
When you think about the growth of human population over the last century or so, it is all too easy to imagine it merely as an increase in the number of humans. But as we multiply, so do all the things associated with us, including our livestock. At present, there are about 1.5 billion cattle and domestic buffalo and about 1.7 billion sheep and goats. With pigs and poultry, they form a critical part of our enormous biological footprint upon this planet.
Just how enormous was not really apparent until the publication of a new report, called "Livestock's Long Shadow," by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Consider these numbers. Global livestock grazing and feed production use "30 percent of the land surface of the planet." Livestock — which consume more food than they yield — also compete directly with humans for water. And the drive to expand grazing land destroys more biologically sensitive terrain, rain forests especially, than anything else.
But what is even more striking, and alarming, is that livestock are responsible for about 18 percent of the global warming effect, more than transportation's contribution. The culprits are methane — the natural result of bovine digestion — and the nitrogen emitted by manure. Deforestation of grazing land adds to the effect.
There are no easy trade-offs when it comes to global warming — such as cutting back on cattle to make room for cars. The human passion for meat is certainly not about to end anytime soon. As "Livestock's Long Shadow" makes clear, our health and the health of the planet depend on pushing livestock production in more sustainable directions.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
AssociatedPress (AP): More than 1 million New Yorkers ask: food or rent?, 12/26/06
* "Food or rent? That is the daily choice faced by about 1.2 million of New York's 8.2 million people. Faced with that choice, mostly they pay rent and rely on emergency or charity food to survive, poverty activists say."
* "New York has perhaps the most visible income gap. While the city's Wall Street bankers are due to collect nearly $24 billion in bonuses this year, more than one-fifth of New Yorkers are battling to make ends meet below the national poverty line of $10,000 a year for an individual. About 3,800 people were living on the streets in 2006, according to New York City statistics."
* "One quarter of New York's 1.9 million children are living in poverty, 40 percent of families with children had difficulty affording food in 2005 and one-fifth of the city's children rely on free food to survive, according to a report by the Food Bank For New York City."
* "OBESITY STRUGGLE: Ironically, many people struggling with hunger are also battling the bulge, and both the Food Bank For New York City and Part of the Solution aim to provide nutritious, balanced meals. 'I get my child a hamburger, French fries and soda and they're satisfied and it's only cost me 99 cents -- I go to the supermarket and I can't even get a can of beans for that,' Cabrera said."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061226/us_nm/usa_poverty_newyork_dc
* "New York has perhaps the most visible income gap. While the city's Wall Street bankers are due to collect nearly $24 billion in bonuses this year, more than one-fifth of New Yorkers are battling to make ends meet below the national poverty line of $10,000 a year for an individual. About 3,800 people were living on the streets in 2006, according to New York City statistics."
* "One quarter of New York's 1.9 million children are living in poverty, 40 percent of families with children had difficulty affording food in 2005 and one-fifth of the city's children rely on free food to survive, according to a report by the Food Bank For New York City."
* "OBESITY STRUGGLE: Ironically, many people struggling with hunger are also battling the bulge, and both the Food Bank For New York City and Part of the Solution aim to provide nutritious, balanced meals. 'I get my child a hamburger, French fries and soda and they're satisfied and it's only cost me 99 cents -- I go to the supermarket and I can't even get a can of beans for that,' Cabrera said."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061226/us_nm/usa_poverty_newyork_dc
Monday, January 1, 2007
NYTimes: Fitness: Quick, Do You Know Your B.M.I?, Abby Ellin, 12/28/06
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/fashion/28Fitness.html?em&ex=1167541200&en=b0fae13d93f731be&ei=5087%0A
* "The B.M.I. is a mathematical calculation of a person's weight in kilograms divided by his or her height in meters squared. Since most Americans have no clue what their height is in meters (remember the failed attempt to go metric circa 1976?), it's easiest to determine an index rating by visiting a Web site like that of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi), where one can determine their index rating by entering their height in feet and weight in pounds."
* "In 1998, two branches of the National Institutes of Health created new guidelines which divided people into categories: You were "normal" if your index rating was between 18.5 and 24.9; "overweight'' if it was 25 to 29.9; and "obese" if it was 30 or higher."
* "The index also didn't distinguish between body fat and muscle mass, so athletes and bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose rating was 33 when he was Mr. Universe, were technically obese."
* "The B.M.I. is a mathematical calculation of a person's weight in kilograms divided by his or her height in meters squared. Since most Americans have no clue what their height is in meters (remember the failed attempt to go metric circa 1976?), it's easiest to determine an index rating by visiting a Web site like that of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi), where one can determine their index rating by entering their height in feet and weight in pounds."
* "In 1998, two branches of the National Institutes of Health created new guidelines which divided people into categories: You were "normal" if your index rating was between 18.5 and 24.9; "overweight'' if it was 25 to 29.9; and "obese" if it was 30 or higher."
* "The index also didn't distinguish between body fat and muscle mass, so athletes and bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose rating was 33 when he was Mr. Universe, were technically obese."
Rolling Stone: Boss Hog by Jeff Tietz, 12/14/06
update (3/29/07): From NYTimes article "Burger King Shifts Policy on Animals":
And in January, the world’s largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, said it would phase out confinement of pigs in metal crates over the next decade.
"America's Top Pork Producer (Smithfield Foods) churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish, and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat."
* "Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is 50% heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of NY, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Philladelphia, Phoenix, S.A., San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Lousiville, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City, and Tucson.
* "Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan."
* "The excrement of Smithfield hogs is ... probably closer to radioactive waste than organic manure." ... "Smithfield's pigs live by the hundred or thousands in warehouselike barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens." ... "Forty fully grown 250-lb male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into the catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets, accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs - any thing small engouh toe fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits."
* "Factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds - oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin - disease would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat."
* "The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. ... Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria." This shit makes it into holding ponds or lagoons. "The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink." This shit has the ability to seep through the liners and spread and ferment. This can seep into nearby waters and kill fish. ... "A river that receives a lot of waste from an industrial hog farm begins to die quickly. Toxins and microbes can kill plants and animals outright; the waste itself consumes available oxygen and suffocates fish and aquatic animals; and the nutrients in the pig shit produce algal blooms that also deoxygenate the water."
* The 67yo Chairman of Smithfield Foods, Joseph Luter III, lives on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
* "The industry has long made generous campaign contributions to politicians responsible for regulating hog farms. ... North Carolina "has consistently failed to employ enough inspectors to ensure that hog farms are complying with environmental standards."
* "Studies have shown that lagoons emit hundreds of different volatile gases into the atmosphere, including ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. A single lagoon releases many millions of bacteria into the air per day, some resistant to human antibiotics. Hog farms in North Carolina also emit some 300 tons of nitrogen into the air every day as ammonia gas, much of which falls back to earth and deprives lakes and streams of oxygen, stimulating algal blooms and killing fish."
And in January, the world’s largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, said it would phase out confinement of pigs in metal crates over the next decade.
"America's Top Pork Producer (Smithfield Foods) churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish, and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat."
* "Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That's a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is 50% heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of NY, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Philladelphia, Phoenix, S.A., San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Lousiville, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City, and Tucson.
* "Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan."
* "The excrement of Smithfield hogs is ... probably closer to radioactive waste than organic manure." ... "Smithfield's pigs live by the hundred or thousands in warehouselike barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens." ... "Forty fully grown 250-lb male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into the catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets, accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs - any thing small engouh toe fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits."
* "Factory pigs are infused with a huge range of antibiotics and vaccines, and are doused with insecticides. Without these compounds - oxytetracycline, draxxin, ceftiofur, tiamulin - disease would likely kill them. Thus factory-farm pigs remain in a state of dying until they're slaughtered. When a pig nearly ready to be slaughtered grows ill, workers sometimes shoot it up with as many drugs as necessary to get it to the slaughterhouse under its own power. As long as the pig remains ambulatory, it can be legally killed and sold as meat."
* "The drugs Smithfield administers to its pigs, of course, exit its hog houses in pig shit. ... Each gram of hog shit can contain as much as 100 million fecal coliform bacteria." This shit makes it into holding ponds or lagoons. "The area around a single slaughterhouse can contain hundreds of lagoons, some of which run thirty feet deep. The liquid in them is not brown. The interactions between the bacteria and blood and afterbirths and stillborn piglets and urine and excrement and chemicals and drugs turn the lagoons pink." This shit has the ability to seep through the liners and spread and ferment. This can seep into nearby waters and kill fish. ... "A river that receives a lot of waste from an industrial hog farm begins to die quickly. Toxins and microbes can kill plants and animals outright; the waste itself consumes available oxygen and suffocates fish and aquatic animals; and the nutrients in the pig shit produce algal blooms that also deoxygenate the water."
* The 67yo Chairman of Smithfield Foods, Joseph Luter III, lives on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
* "The industry has long made generous campaign contributions to politicians responsible for regulating hog farms. ... North Carolina "has consistently failed to employ enough inspectors to ensure that hog farms are complying with environmental standards."
* "Studies have shown that lagoons emit hundreds of different volatile gases into the atmosphere, including ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. A single lagoon releases many millions of bacteria into the air per day, some resistant to human antibiotics. Hog farms in North Carolina also emit some 300 tons of nitrogen into the air every day as ammonia gas, much of which falls back to earth and deprives lakes and streams of oxygen, stimulating algal blooms and killing fish."
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