Gene Baur's Farm Sanctuary

Several weeks ago, I promised a blog on the books I've been reading on animal rights.  A few of you might be wondering when the *heck* I'm gonna write about those.

I've been, of necessity, reading about status and health, epidemics and stratification, medicalization of everyday conditions, cultural interpretations of symptoms and the history of medicalizing women's lives.  (My fall class is Sociology of Health and Medicine.)

In other words, I *still* haven't finished the pile of animal rights' books I've bought and been slowly reading. 

Rather than wait to write until I've finished *all* of them -- my original plan -- I've decided to write about each one separately.

I have now read Gene Baur's Farm Sanctuary (Touchstone Press, 2008).  I suspect I read it first because the picture of the pig on the cover is so darn cute.  I also LOVE autobiographies, and although this isn't billed as one, you learn an awful lot about who Gene Baur is as a person while reading it.

Who cannot get into the story of a guy, raised in Hollywood, who majored in sociology (!) and ended up being inspired by activists Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman?  A guy who worked as an intern for Ralph Nader and was equally inspired by a talk by Carl Sagan?  A guy who spent some time hitchhiking trying to figure out what to do with his life -- something that would "match [his] values"?  A guy who stayed in a hotel across the street from the New Holland (PA) stockyard and ended up rescuing a sheep who had been abandoned in the trash?  A guy who initially funded his sanctuary by selling vegetarian hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts?  A guy who proves that "you can achieve amazing things even by the humblest means" (p. 41)?

Gene Baur is my kind of guy, and not just because he majored in sociology.

In some ways, the story of his journey starts on page 23: 

"One hot and humid Sunday in August 1986, as we walked by the dead pile, we saw

carcasses of a cow, a couple of pigs, and some sheep decaying in the heat

-- nothing unusual....  As we approached, something remarkable happened: 

the sheep lifted up her head and looked at us....

we knew we couldn't leave her on the dead pile to linger, possibly for days....

We didn't stop to think about what we were doing. 

This is how he and Lorri (then his wife) began rescuing animals discarded by the factory farming industry.  (The sheep lived, by the way.)  They established a sanctuary for animals in upstate NY (and another in CA) and when they were not rescuing animals, they were documenting inhumane conditions, illegal activities, and putting forth legislation to improve the lives of farmed animals.

The book is chock-full of statistics about factory farming, slaughtering practices, the evils of genetic modifications, environmental calamity, diseases, and the reality that animals are treated as simply objects for our use. I'm not going to reiterate all that here (except for detailing the problems with dairy and genetic engineering below), but I will say that if you've been living under a rock and *don't know* how bad the system is for animals, for the environment and FOR YOU, then you should read the book. 

If you *don't want to know* you should read it too.  Selective ignorance isn't attractive and it certainly isn't an excuse to think that it's OK to keep to traditions just because it's "culture" or "the norm". 

If after reading the book you still think that eating a vegan diet a few days a week isn't a reasonable compromise between an omnivore culture and a vegan one, then I'm not sure I can think you're a reasonable person.  Honestly.  The data is just too strong not to think otherwise.

Though he writes forcefully and convincingly, Baur advocates politeness and reasoned dialogue (p. 65) and a sensitivity to the farmers who, understandably, don't know what life they will go to if they give up what they know (p. 63).  Those are two other reasons why I love his book.  He is unfailingly polite and sensitive to how hard it is for people to change. But that doesn't mean change isn't possible, even against enormous odds.  He proves that it is.

THE PROBLEM WITH DAIRY

Committed vegans know this, but for my readers who do not, it's worth a few paragraphs.

Few people fully realize why dairy is as inherently violent a food choice as meat.  Though I have blogged in the past that there is a distinction between use of animals that involves death (meat) and use of animals that allows them to live (honey, milk, wool), it's increasingly clear to me that, unfortunately, it isn't all that clear.  I wish that it were.

As Baur writes, there is NO use for a male calf on a dairy farm (pp. 99-110).  Most male calves are taken from their mothers within days of their birth, raised in crates so small they cannot turn around, and fed a liquid diet intentionally low in iron and fiber in order to keep their flesh pale. They are then slaughtered at 20 or 24 weeks.  Some are slaughtered even earlier and end up in TV dinners.

I've greatly summarized the story of veal here in order to make clear the same point Baur does:   DAIRY IS NOT INHERENTLY NON-VIOLENT.  It's a tough lesson, and one that depresses me greatly, not just because I love dairy (I DO!) but because in the days prior to factory farming one, arguably, could have milked one's cow in the backyard and, at least for several YEARS, given that cow and her calves good lives.  (Not a vegan position, but an acknowledgement that dairy coming from an old-fashioned family farm would have definitely involved less violence than dairy from ANY source today, including...drumroll please...organic farms.)

If you care about the treatment of calves, you shouldn't eat dairy.  It's not enough just to give up veal or meat.

GENETIC ENGINEERING

A theme throughout the book is how often the animals at the farm sanctuary suffer from physical ailments.  Some of you who eat meat will undoubtedly be thinking "Well, that's why we kill them and eat them first, before they get old and suffer!"

(Clearing throat.)  NO, that's NOT the point. As Baur writes,

"People often comment on Opie's [steer rescued as a calf] size...

A few of [the steers whose mothers were dairy cows] weigh up to three thousand pounds. 

One reason the steers are so large is that the dairy industry has genetically bred cows

for more and more milk production, which has had

the unintended result of producing bigger animals..." (p. 68).

Need another statistic?  Dairy cows now produce 53 POUNDS OF MILK PER COW PER DAY -- three times as much milk as they produced only fifty years ago (p. 113).  It's impossible not to see that the cows are treated as machines, genetically modified for OUR -- certainly not THEIR -- benefit.

What about this?  Pigs and chickens (and cows and turkeys, too) are bred to grow to "such sizes so that their bodies provide more of the parts people like to eat" (p. 137, regarding pigs).  "[B]roilers have been selectively bred to grow twice as fast and twice as large as normal" (p. 149) and have been "genetically manipulated to develop extra-large breasts" (p. 151).  Turkeys routinely suffer fatal heart attacks and are commonly lame AND are so big and shaped so oddly that they cannot mount and breed naturally (p. 160). 

Because of these realities, pigs at the sanctuary are usually unable to live out their intended lifespan and usually have to be put down at 8 or 9 years old because they are so big that they have trouble moving around (p. 137). (Wild pigs can live much longer and move around just fine.) 

Baur writes that

"[b]ecause our society mainly eats the young,

Farm Sanctuary is one of the few places in the country where it is possible

to see the long-term effects of breeding for productivity and industrial confinement.

As they age, the animals need additional care. 

Genetic alterations and the industry's standard practices

have compromised their health in irreversible ways" (p. 230, emphasis mine).

Baur has profiles of rescued animals scattered throughout the book, and many of them end up receiving special care as they age.  Perhaps it is telling that three chickens, Tofutti Cutie, Taboo, and Milky Way (p. 175) -- rescued from the carnage of Hurricane Katrina -- only get one sentence instead of an entire profile.  I suspect that, due to extreme genetic engineering inherent in chicken farms, they led short lives characterized by difficulties walking (due to heavy breasts) and breathing (also due to genetic modifications).  The sentence,

 "[they] were able to enjoy the rest of their lives with

a degree of comfort denied to their fellow Buckeye layer hens" (p. 175)

suggests that I may be right.

How sad.  And all because people like to eat white meat and want it quicker.


****
Ultimately, Baur believes that vegan is the way to go because doing it is environmentally sustainable and because it removes one from the cycle of violence inherent in ALL farming (p. 218). 


No review would be complete without a few picky criticisms.

There are a few places in the book where I wish he would have cited better.  For example, on page 212, he writes,

"...In 2005, sales of organic foods in the United States were nearly $14 billion. 

That's about 2.5 percent of the total retail market for food,

still just a fraction of the astounding $894 billion Americans spent on food in 2005." 

I don't doubt that last number as much as I wish I knew were it came from.  If you divide that number  by the (July 2009) Census Bureau US population statistic of 306,861,871, you get an annual per capita food expenditure of $2913.36.  For a family of five, that would be $14,566 per year or about $8 per day per person. If you divide $14,566 by 12, you get an expenditure of $1200 per month -- that seems a bit high to me.  I wonder how people arrived at that statistic of how much Americans spend on food.  What does that number include?  Eating out? Groceries AND other stuff you get at the grocery store, such as pet food and cleaning supplies? 

It would be good to know, but the info isn't there.

Similarly, he writes that a "noted writer" for The Washington Post has written that the cause of compassion of farm animals is "the moral calling or our time" (p. 190) and that the Slow Food movement began in Italy in 1986 (p. 217).  I'd love to read the Post article and know who that author is and I'd love to know where Baur got the date of 1986.  Alas, I'll have to do my own sleuthing to figure it out.

When thos are the worst criticisms you can lay at the feet of an author, that is pretty darn high praise.

His sociology professors should be proud. :)

Overwhelmed

It's overwhelming to change one's diet. For me, it's not so much the cultural baggage of what I'm used to eating -- though that is no small hurdle -- but rather the overwhelming -- and often contradictory -- amount of information out there about what is wrong with our food system and how easy it is to eat foods that make us sick, or at least predispose us to developing illnesses in the future. We should be OUTRAGED at how our foods are made and at the (we hope) unintended consequences that result from that. And I'm not just talking about meat and dairy, though that's part of the story here.

After I eliminated almost all dairy and all meat from my diet eight months ago, I started getting back up to speed on some older health concerns, specifically the amount of CORN in our diet (not by intent, but due to the structure of the American food "system"), and the presence of genetically modified foods (GMOs). Do you know how much work it is to make sure corn syrup or maltodextrin or any of the dozens of corn products are NOT in your food? (By the way, they're indirectly in your meat too, because that's what factory farmers -- 99% of the meat sold in the US comes from factory farms -- feed their animals.) Do you know how hard it is to make sure that the soy products you buy are only made from non-GMO seeds? Or how much more it COSTS to buy foods that meet the criteria of organic, non-GMO and non-corn? It's possible to meet these criteria, but it ain't cheap or easy. It's time-consuming and adds a lovely overlay (read that in a sarcastic tone) to the family dynamic.

Recently, I read an article in the Huffington Post which suggested that gluten sensitivity may be way underdiagnosed in the US and that it may explain the proliferation of many diseases, everything from learning disabilities to fibromyalgia. Then I re-read some stuff about peanuts and peanut butter in The China Study and remembered that aflatoxin in commonly found in peanuts (and corn, it turns out). The best peanuts are packaged for eating; the moldy ones generally end up in peanut butter. Aflatoxin, by the way, is a known carcinogen and is impressively linked in studies to liver cancer. And I LOVE peanut butter and my kids do, too. Should I even be eating it or letting them eat it? After re-reading that study, I think not. Really. NOT. I'm not even sure the organic, just-peanuts-no-corn-syrup peanut butter is much better. Who's to say that the moldy peanuts aren't in organic peanut butter too??

Then there's milk and cheese. Cheese and yogurt have been the hardest things to give up as a vegan, and I have NOT found acceptable soy or rice-based alternatives. My kids still consume some dairy. Yet, the early chapters of The China Study are all about how animal protein (but, curiously, not plant protein) has been shown in several studies to prompt cancer growth. The animal protein used in these studies was casein -- the primary ingredient in cow's milk -- and the carcinogen exposure used in these studies was aflatoxin (in the form of peanut butter). If one's concern is the potential prompting of tumor growth vis a vis animal protein stimulation, then it does NOT matter whether the milk consumed is organic or not. I really don't think any of us should be eating dairy for HEALTH reasons; forget the factory farming concerns for a minute, or even the arguably "better" organic milk. The scientific evidence linking animal protein consumption to tumor stimulation is pretty solid, but curiously, not particularly well-advertised. Do you hear the pressures of the dairy industry? I do. They really just want you to believe that milk does a body good. Or prevents osteoporosis. At the very least, I think a conservative reaction to learning this information should be to cut back -- for some people, WAY back -- on dairy consumption. In a household with three kids and a cheese-loving husband, THAT is an overwhelmingly difficult goal.

My list of "forbidden" foods is growing; I don't eat dairy, fish, eggs, or meat and now I think I should avoid peanut butter, EVERYTHING with a corn product in it, and perhaps gluten too. And I think I had better re-read those labels for all the soy products I've been buying. Holy Moly. It was SO much easier being an omnivore.

In many ways, all these health warnings and news about factory farming and the food "system" come back to a simple fact: as a society, we don't cook much anymore. We grab things on the fly, or buy things that are partially prepared so that the home prep is minimal. We grow very little of our own food. Food producers know that and so have created products that fill that need, products that often need fillers or preservatives for shipping and storage purposes.

If we get ready to yell at the farmers and the "system," we have to first remember that they're likely to be willing to provide a product if there's a demand for it. They're providing what we're buying. If we want healthier food, we have to demand it. That takes action and energy, both of which go against the largely apathetic attitude of contemporary Americans. But stop being so trusting! Literally, your trust may be contributing to your poor health.

We have to change our approach to food. It should NOT be about what's fast, though many quick-to-prepare foods are also healthy. To REALLY get away from the processed, modified, potentially harmful food, we have to spend more time preparing (and growing or raising)our own, and have to accept that eating well takes time. Shortcuts can be far too costly in the long run.


As I said, it's overwhelming.

Another Awkward Lesson in Weird Facebook Etiquette

This is a blog that might make you laugh, though I'm not laughing as a write it.

Famous woman who I follow on Facebook (laugh here, roll your eyes) posts link to great article about factory farming, contamination and human health. I read it (duh). I like it. I cross post it to my followers.

In the article, I run across an error of sorts -- salmonella poisoning, while totally horrible and frequent enough to affect over a million Americans a year -- is actually hard to get, though the article suggests otherwise.

Why do I know this? Well, my sister (the doc) used to work in infectious diseases. And, last weekend, at her house, the kids were making a cake together and they started eating the batter. I got worried and mentioned salmonella, to which my sister said, "Actually, you have to consume SO MANY salmonella bacteria to get sick that it's one of the infections that we doctors don't worry too much about; it's actually kinda hard to get sick from eating a little raw egg. We hardly ever see anybody in the ER with salmonella poisoning, at least hardly ever due to raw eggs." OK, great. I stopped worrying and the kids ate leftover batter and nobody got sick.

Well, the article said that you could get sick by eating as few as 15-20 bacteria. Given my recent conversation with my sister, I thought that made it sound like salmonella was really EASY to get. So, I called her and told her what the article said.

Her response: "That is true of shigella, but not salmonella." She couldn't stay on the phone, but she said she'd call me later with the data; she thought you needed somewhere in the vicinity of at least 20-30 THOUSAND to get sick.

So, not wanting to wait, I went online and found the following information: "It is commonly accepted that between 1 million to 1 billion bacteria are needed to cause infection although some investigators suggest some people may be infected by far fewer bacteria" (Medicinenet.com/salmonella/page2).

(Aside: For the record,factory farming is horrible and the article in today's Huffington Post SHOULD convince you that conditions of factory farming lead to disease in animals and directly contribute to human illness. But the details about salmonella poisoning are a bit off.)

So...I went back to the original poster and commented that while the article is EXCELLENT, there is a small error. I went on to explain. I was very polite and to the point. Unlike this blog, I didn't go on and on... You can laugh again here.

She deleted my comments!

I'm totally offended. (Go ahead and laugh again -- why should I care that she deleted my comments? Right??!! Who the hell cares? It's Facebook!? Stupid Facebook!!)

In her defense, she doesn't know me. She probably thinks I'm some quack or a troublemaker. She may think any "follower" who bothers to question what she posts shouldn't follow her. Or, perhaps she's tight with the author of the Huffington Post article and doesn't want somebody challenging her. Whatever.

I'm slowly learning an unwritten rule of following the famous and semi-famous: You're supposed to AGREE with everything they do. To try to engage in a conversation -- even in a friendly way -- isn't really what they're after. They want adherents, not challengers. They want converts, not conversations.

And, honestly, I use Facebook for conversations. I've learned -- again -- only to have those with people who want the same.

The Almost Vegan

When I first started this vegan "kick," as my friend calls it, it wasn't due to a concern about animal welfare. Not that I didn't already care about animals -- I did and I do -- but my motivation to try veganism was purely selfish. I wanted to be skinnier, as the book, Skinny Bitch, somewhat promises people they will be if they turn vegan. I've recommended the book before and I still do, provocative title and all!

I'm not skinnier. Truth be told, however, I wasn't particularly heavy to begin with. I do have big legs, but then, I always have and no diet short of starvation is going to change my body build. (In fact, at my absolute skinniest -- 108 pounds, when I was going through chronic anxiety attacks, which I cannot recommend -- I STILL had big legs.) So, I've given up the dream of transforming my legs into, say, Jorja Fox's. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

But, seven months into this diet, I am healthier, at least if recent bloodwork is a good indication. And isn't health a wee bit more important than great legs? I sure hope so. I call myself an almost-vegan, meaning that I've had some dairy here and there during the past seven months, generally when I'm not at home and when, for instance, non-dairy creamer wasn't available. Sin confessed!

So now the question is: has veganism (or almost-veganism) become, for me, about animals? Well, yes and no. The more I read about factory farming (which includes dairy farming), the more I am convinced that such farming is neither ethical or sustainable. So, yes, my chosen diet is, at least in part, a way for me to take a stand against practices that I see as incredibly cruel as well as environmentally disastrous. (To read more about factory and dairy farming in MUCH more detail, read blogs on girliegirlarmy.com, the Huffington Post or the New York Times, or PETA's website, or any of the 100s of websites out there that discuss animal welfare and either vegetarianism or veganism. Ellen DeGeneres even has a bit about "Why Go Vegan" on her website. I'm not repeating here what you can read in other places. I also highly recommend the books Eating Animals and The China Study.)

The bottom line, for me, has become this: eating meat and dairy contributes directly to both animal cruelty and environmental harm. So, by and large, I do not.

"But I eat only grass-fed...and I buy only organic..." Yeah, I agree that those choices are better for the environment (and YOU) than the conventional ones. In fact, I still believe it's ethical for people to eat meat occasionally. Despite choosing a vegan diet for myself, I agree with Barbara Kingsolver that one can still live an ethical life by eating meat rarely and selectively. (In her superbly-written book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she writes, "However selectively, I do eat meat." And then she goes on to describe which meats, and why, and even goes into detail about her experience slaughtering her own turkeys. I highly recommend the book. Even if you come away with a different perspective on meat-eating, you will have read a thought-provoking account of one family's attempt to live a whole year raising as much of their food as possible and buying everything else that they need within a 100 mile radius of their home.)

Theoretically, if people only ate one meal a week with meat in it and say, only two or three meals a week with dairy, it would be possible to raise animals in more humane ways because the demand for their products would be so much lower. Such farming would also be sustainable. Of course, this would require MASSIVE changes to how people eat, as well as huge hikes in the prices for animal products (assuming that we want the farmers to be able to make their living).

Unfortunately, I don't see everyone jumping on the vegetarian or vegan bandwagon. I wish more people would. Without that, it's hard to put adequate pressure on farmers to raise animals differently.

If this societal diet transformation occurred, some animals would still be slaughtered, which is totally anathema to the vegan position that animals should NEVER be used for human needs. (And it is very much true that we don't NEED meat or dairy in order to be healthy.) I realize I'm taking a heretical stance, relative to other vegans, in considering the possibility that *minimal* meat and dairy consumption could be ethical. This is why I said "yes and no"to the question, 'has veganism become for me about animal welfare?' It's not, for me, entirely about animal welfare or animal rights.

That does not mean, however, that I think a farmer should be allowed to treat a cow however the hell he chooses. Or that I think that it's tolerable that chickens are raised in cages so small they can't extend their wings and end up living their entire lives basically in excrement. Holy crap! (Pardon the pun.) Who thinks that that's OK?

I also don't think it's OK that pigs get their tails chopped off (not even with anesthesia) so that they won't chew each other's tails off while living in crowded conditions. Nor do I think that male baby chicks should be ground up ALIVE because they're not going to grow up to be hens and lay eggs. Nor do I think cattle should be fed corn to grow fast (with lots of antibiotics, steroids and hormones) when the diet that's right for them is grass.

I think animals should be allowed to live as they were intended: roaming, eating what they are meant to eat, living with other animals like them, and, in the case of domesticated animals, living with the help of humans. Such "intended" lives might include, however, eventually ending up on somebody's plate.

That last part is, of course, what makes my position a non-vegan one. But I don't think I'm completely off my rocker to think it. I do not support the (usually vegan) view that animals' rights are identical to humans'.

That doesn't mean, however, that the "right" to eat animals on occasion translates into a "right" to raise them as they are currently being raised or to eat as much of them as we want whenever we want. Our insatiable greed has created the factory farming nightmare that exists. It hurts the environment; it's unnecessarily cruel; and, due to the excess of meat and dairy consumption, we're literally killing ourselves. Not to mention that we're consuming a cocktail of hormones, steroids and antibiotics contained in those animal products.

So, while I've chosen an almost vegan diet for myself, my "almost vegetarian" advice for everyone is to eat FAR LESS dairy, FAR LESS meat and pressure farmers to raise animals in ethical ways. UP your vegetable and fruit consumption (a lot); try soy or rice or almond or help or oat milk. Go a whole week without cheese. (You can do it!!) Get a soy latte instead of a regular one. Buy a vegan cookbook. Get the free vegetarian start-up kit at PETA. Look at your old recipes and figure out how to make them vegetarian or, even better, vegan. Buy Earth Balance vegan margarine; try coconut milk yogurt. Ask me for a recipe or two. Go find recipes on girliegirlarmy.com or any of the 100s (literally!) of vegan and vegetarian websites. Give up the idea that you need more protein (chances are, you don't), as well as the idea that you'll die without loads of calcium (quite the opposite, you might be helping yourself develop MORE brittle, not less brittle, bones). Go get some exercise. Donate money to an animal shelter or a farm sanctuary. Support farmers who DO raise animals ethically, without hormones, cages, cruelty or food they were not meant to consume.

Even if on occasion you eat one -- I'll "allow" you that -- let the animals live in conditions that an animal would want to live in. It's the least you can do. Even a carnivore shouldn't be comfortable with the realities of factory farming.