Compassion in World Farming is holding a Bake with Compassion Week July 6-12th

Compassion in World Farming is holding a Bake with Compassion Week July 6th-12th.  If you’d like to take part, you can send away for their kit — the idea is to bake with cage-free eggs, raise awareness for inhumane animal farming, and educate consumers on their choices.  They suggest baking cakes and selling them at your work, or having a tea party, or a coffee morning, a baking class, or a dinner party.  They have invitations ( 89.57KB).  To take part, fill out this registration form, and be sure to send Compassion in World Farming some photos of your event to supporters@ciwf.org.uk.

AACT is holding a public rally against factory farming in Tasmania:

I wish they’d hold one here!  But anyway, Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania is holding a public rally against factory farming on Saturday 20 June from 1-2pm on the Parliament Lawns. Every day animals are confined, exploited and forced to suffer in intensive farming systems all over the world - if ever there was a time for you to speak for the animals, this is it! Animals in intensive farming facilities spend their entire lives deprived of fresh air, sunshine and freedom. Please give just one hour of your life to help save the lives of these sentient beings. Feel free to bring your own placard or banners with a pro-animal message. For further information go to www.aact.org.au.

Animal Welfare Approved Annouces Grants of Up to $5,000 to Focus on Outdoor Access, Genetics and Improving Slaughter Facilities

Animal Welfare Approved announces grants of up to $5,000 to be awarded for the sole purpose of improving farm animal welfare, with a concentration on three areas: increased outdoor access, improved genetics and improved slaughter facilities.  Current Animal Welfare Approved farmers and those who have applied to join the program are eligible, and farmers may apply for certification and for a grant simultaneously. The deadline for applying is October 1, 2009.  It is hoped that these will be useful to address challenges faced by independent livestock producers.  Farmers may submit a proposal for one project, for a total maximum grant of $5,000. Grants will be awarded based on the projects’ potential to deliver the greatest benefit to farm animals. In order to receive a grant, applicants must meet the eligibility requirements and submit an application and a budget by October 1, 2009. Eligible costs include design fees, contractor costs, materials, and project-appropriate equipment. Grants applications must be postmarked by the deadline date and will not be accepted via e-mail.  Guidelines and an application form are available at www.AnimalWelfareApproved.org. Questions may be directed to Emily Lancaster at (919) 428-1641 or Emily@AnimalWelfareApproved.org.

Humane Farm Animal Care Certifies Capriole Inc. Goat Cheese

Humane Farm Animal Care® (HFAC), a leading non-profit certification organization improving the lives of farm animals in food production, has certified Capriole Inc. (Greenville, IN) farmstead goat cheese. Founded in 1976, Capriole, Inc. is a producer of handmade fresh, ripened, and aged chevres that use only the milk of its own herd. The goats spend their entire lives on the farm and are fed a nutritious diet, largely consisting of home-grown hay and woodland pasture grass.  With over 75 acres, the herd has more than sufficient space to allow them to roam and engage in their natural behaviors.

American Humane Association Partners with Viking Cooking School

American Humane has partnered with Viking Cooking School — now students at Viking Cooking School are not only learning new ways to prepare food, but they are also learning how animals are raised for food, as part of a new partnership with the American Humane Association.  As would-be bakers learn how to separate eggs, for example, they’ll also hear that the egg in their hands comes from a chicken that has not received growth hormones and hasn’t lived its short life squashed into a horrific tiny cage.  There are 15 Viking Schools, and more soon to open, so this is a good thing!  Hopefully it will also promote humanely raised producers.

(Do you have against factory farming news?  Please email me at emilycrueltyfree@gmail.com)

There’s a sale at Dancing Dingo!  15% off with code 15NEW15.

Dancing Dingo is a lovely leaping-bunny-approved 100%-no-animal-testing company that is having a sale — it’s 15% off if you enter the code 15NEW15. Go check it out!  The code is good for Dancing Dingo and Dingo Baby products.

Dancing Dingo offers natural products such as shea butter soaps, aromatic bath essentials, facial care, etc. for the entire family — even a line of pet-grooming products!  Dancing Dingo is a bee-vegan company that has some products that contain responsibly-sourced beeswax.  Its strict vegan-vegan products display a “V” logo.  Dancing Dingo products are free of parabens, formaldehyde, mineral oil, sulphates, SLS, and phthalates.  Dancing Dingo is eco-friendly, recycles, and uses minimal and biodegradable materials in its packaging.  Dancing Dingo won the 2008 Green with ENVY Award as one of Texas Top 30 Eco-friendly companies.

I do mean to try Dancing Dingo products sometime in the future — they look very nice!  And just remember, by supporting a 100%-animal-testing-free company, you’re keeping money away from those people who test on animals!  And rewarding good companies that don’t.

(As you can see if you look in the righthand column, Dancing Dingo advertises on this blog.  All advertising on this blog is either a) 100%-animal-testing-free cosmetics or b) vegan food products I REALLY like — I would never allow inhumane advertisements on this site.  I am very proud to promote any Leaping Bunny companies on this site — I think that half the battle is getting consumers like myself to buy cruelty-free products, but the other half is to support the wonderful people who go to all the trouble of actually founding and running cruelty-free companies — now that is hard work!)

Today you are again privileged to read a guest cruelty-free review written by another cruelty-free-blogger friend of mine, the Glamorous Grad Student!  Owner of an AMAZING blog devoted to being a fashionista (in a cruelty-free way!) on a grad student budget.  Seriously, it’s a blog you’ll want to check regularly!

The Body Shop Coconut Shimmer Body Butter (5/5 stars)

I was so thrilled when Emily asked me to do a product review for Living Cruelty Free. Her blog is such a great resource for anyone trying to go cruelty-free and I feel really grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

First off, my Body Shop position statement. I am a long-time Body Shop fan, so the L’Oreal connection is not something I’m enamoured with. But like Emily, I’d rather see L’Oreal stop their cruel ways than see the Body Shop go out of business, so I feel that buying from the Body Shop, which is still cruelty-free, and boycotting the other L’Oreal brands is the most constructive way of sending the message I wish to send as a consumer.

Now, on to the review! The Body Shop has recently added some new additions to its divine Coconut body range in the form of a new Coconut Shimmer lotion and body butter. I got a sample of the lotion recently when I bought some other products, and later bought the body butter for myself.

I really really like this product. As I’m a fair redhead, fake tan just looks strange on me. And besides, there’s something unnatural to me about dying my epidermis, you know? But with summer fast approaching, and bare legs and arms beckoning, I’ve been on the lookout for a product that would be amazingly moisturizing and make my skin look less pasty and more porcelain.

And this is it. This body butter is really thick but absorbs really well, and leaves a long-lasting, subtle sheen on the skin. It’s lasted throughout the day for me. It doesn’t leave gritty, glittery residue on the skin like some shimmer products do, it just glows.

And the fact that it’s coconut, my favourite summer scent, is an extra bonus. I am currently layering with the coconut scrub and perfume oil. My nose must think it’s in Tahiti.

The Body Shop’s Coconut Shimmer Body Butter is £12.20, though when I bought it the combination of a special offer and my store loyalty card knocked something like £5 off the price. That said, I would totally pay full price for this product. As I say, I view it as the paler gal’s fake tan alternative, and I know I’d have saved a fortune if instead of wasting sooo much money on disappointing bronzing products over the years I’d embraced my pallor with a product like this!

Ingredients:Aqua, Cyclomethicone, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Butyrospermum Parkii Butter, Glycerin, Theobroma Cacao Butter, Glyceryl Stearate, PEG-100 Stearate, Lanolin Alcohol, Mica, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cocos Nucifera Oil, Phenoxyethanol, Parfum, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Xanthan Gum, Benzyl Alcohol, Disodium EDTA, Benzyl Benzoate, Coumarin, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Sodium Hydroxide, CI 77891, Caramel.

Good news!  The PETA UK blog reports that a ban on household product animal testing, much like the current ban on cosmetic product animal testing, is in the works!  Isn’t it fantastic?

Victory!  MPs Pledge to End Animal Testing for Household Products

In a historic victory for animals, all major political parties – despite their differences, and their current, erm, ‘issues’ – have committed to ending household product testing on animals. And it’s all thanks to the hard work of our members and supporters, who put pressure on MPs via our website, and, of course, our friends at the BUAV, who led the campaign.

The Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Tories and the Greens, have all promised to make the policy an ‘election pledge’ – which basically means when the elections have taken place and the new bodies are in their seats, it should be supported by all parties and become a full and permanent ban.

As with all animal testing, the science behind the testing of household products on animals is faulty, and the cruelty involved is inherent. Thousands of animals have languished and died over the years in tests for trivial household products, like washing-up liquid and even air fresheners. I mean, a clean house is one thing, but inflicting pain and taking the life of an animal for it is simply inexcusable.

We’ll keep you informed of its progress once the elections have taken place, so watch this space. In the meantime, also be vigilant as to what you buy when it’s time to don your rubber gloves and, if in doubt refer to this helpful little guide which will point you in the right direction for what’s safe for all animals and what’s not.

Whoops, I forgot to mention this earlier — I’m very pleased to have written up a review of a pair of flip-flops over at StilEtico, the Italian blog devoted to cruelty-free shopping reviews — go read it!  I’m very excited to support such a great cruelty-free site, and have my review translated into Italian — though, if you don’t speak Italian, you can click on the large button that says “English” in the top lefthand column of the site.

What is Herbivore?  Herbivore is a vegan restaurant chain in the San Francisco Bay area.  It has three locations — 983 Valencia in the Mission, 531 Divisadero, and 2451 Shattuck in Berkeley.  It’s a great place to go if you are vegan, vegetarian, or trying to minimize your support of factory farming.  (Or — I’m going to come out and say it — if you’re an omnivore who’s trying to be healthy for an evening.)

The good things about Herbivore — the portions are large, pretty inexpensive (for San Francisco!), and there’s a great deal of choice.

The bad things about Herbivore.  First, the food is not gourmet.  There are no delicately balanced flavor.  Most of the food is pretty uninspired (though quite edible — with a few exceptions).  Herbivore gets many negative comments over at the gourmet discussion community at Chowhound.com.  Herbivore ravioli is not handmade.  The pasta sauce is from a can.  (There are some exceptions — Herbivore’s $7.95 green salad with the $2 optional “vegetables” topping is fantastic — the salad is huge, the dressing is really good, and the $2 vegetable topping is also huge and is not just vegetables but roasted vegetables which are incredible!)  Second, the waitstaff can be a little holier-than-thou.  Third, Herbivore does not make its own desserts, and the desserts are usually either a) old, or b) not available.

That being said, I really enjoy going to Herbivore.  What, you ask?  After all those criticisms?  Yes!  I really do enjoy going to Herbivore as a non-gourmet experience.  I go at least once a week, and I can usually convince my omnivore friends to come with me (especially the ones who are trying to be healthy!).  The combination of large portions and a cheap pricetag can get even the most omnivorous of people in there.  (Though one of my omnivorous foodie friends still resents the ravioli he ordered there.  Let’s just say it was uninspired.  I feel he was being a tad ambitious ordering ravioli at a non-gourmet restaurant that also had Indonesian dishes on the menu.)  As I mentioned before, the green salad with the $2 vegetables topping is fantastic. The smoothie with seasonal fruit, bananas, pomegranate juice, mint, and fresh squeezed orange juice is STUNNING ($4.25).  (It really amuses me that the Chowhound review I linked to above is titled “Just order the salad and the smoothie at Herbivore” — I swear I’d never read that review before, but I agree completely.)  Even better, if you’re in the Berkeley area, the Berkeley Herbivore has a FULL BAR with some great mixed drink specials made from seasonal fruit juice — you can eat vegan food and drink incredible mixed drinks relatively inexpensively for this area.  It’s heaven, I tell you!

Dear Emily,

You can certify that it is humanely raised and handled, but how can you certify it is humanely slaughtered? Those sadists in the slaughterhouses are the ones I truly worry about!

Hello,

Well, I respect your opinion on slaughterhouses — I don’t think anyone would say they are places of joy and light. They’re kind of horrific. For me though, I figure the slaughterhouse is just one day out of a farm animal’s life — and in well-run slaughterhouses, the animals are kept very calm and killed in seconds. (Temple Grandin, one of my personal heroes, has written some amazing books on designing slaughterhouses so that the farm animals go through them in a stress-free manner and are killed humanely — she works for the slaughterhouse industry, but she has made the lives of billions of farm animals much more comfortable right before they’re killed.)

But it really appalls me more that some farm animals are kept in agonizing conditions for the entirety of their lives — years spent in cages they can’t turn around in. It breaks my heart to think of adorable calves unable to turn around for the entire 13 months they’re alive, after which they are slaughtered for veal (there are 1 million calves in the U.S. sold for veal a year according to Californians for Humane Farms). I think those calves should at least be able to turn around and frolic for those thirteen months before being killed quickly and humanely. At least the slaughterhouse is a quick death. For me it’s the far lesser of two evils. So it’s more important to me that animals are raised humanely rather than not exposed to slaughterhouses. Though of course, in the best of all possible worlds, animals would never be exposed to inhumane living conditions or slaughtered. Come the revolution . . .

Though of course, I’ve heard of horrible inhumane slaughterhouses, and I HATE the people who are responsible for them. How anyone could commit those kinds of atrocities astounds me. I think those people should be taken out and shot. Actually that might be far too good for them.

Have a cruelty-free question for me?  Please email emilycrueltyfree@gmail.com.

Just in case you thought I was kidding about factory farming causing swine flu — here’s an article written by Dr. Michael Greger, the star of the AMAZING movie I wrote about two days ago — Bird Flu – telling the world about how the Center for Disease Control has confirmed that swine flu came from US pig factory farms. Apparently swine flu has been traced specifically to a North Carolina pig factory farm. North Carolina is the home of the world’s largest germ factory pig factory farm, the densest pig population in North America, and more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factory farms as any other state in the U.S.

Remember — if you’re buying animal products from grocery stores, only buy humanely raised animal products — do not contribute to supporting those factory farm germ-incubators! If you’re going out to eat, do not order chicken, pork, or anything that uses eggs — nothing breaded, nothing with an egg-based sauce, no egg-based desserts — no mayonnaise, no bechamel, no aioli, no cornbread, no muffins, ice cream, cakes, or cookies.  All the eggs in restaurants are factory farmed.  If you’re going to order meat — order beef, lamb or fish.  I don’t think they factory farm cows or sheep (yet . . . ).  For more information, read my post on How to Become a Humane Omnivore.

CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories

May 3, 2009

	Crowded conditions on factory farms create breeding grounds for new viruses. ©iStockphoto

By Michael Greger, M.D.

Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

This genetic fingerprint, first released by Columbia University’s Center for Computation Biology and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,[1] has now been reportedly confirmed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and virologist Ruben Donis, chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Robert Webster, the director of the U.S. Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization, and considered the “godfather of flu research,”[2] is reported as saying “The triple reassortant in pigs [first discovered in the U.S. in 1998] seems to be the precursor.”

Plaguing People and Pigs

The worst plague in human history was triggered by an H1N1 avian flu virus, which jumped the species barrier from birds to humans[3] and went on to kill as many as 50 to 100 million people in the 1918 flu pandemic.[4] No disease, war or famine ever killed so many people in so short a time. We then passed the virus to pigs, where it has continued to circulate, becoming one of the most common causes of respiratory disease on North American pig farms.[5]

For media interviews with Dr. Michael Greger, please contact Liz Bergstrom at ebergstrom@humanesociety.org or 301-258-1455. ©The HSUS

In August 1998, however, a barking cough resounded throughout a North Carolina pig factory in which all the thousands of breeding sows fell ill.[6] A new swine flu virus was discovered on that factory farm, a human-pig hybrid virus that had picked up three human flu genes. By the end of that year, the virus acquired two gene segments from bird flu viruses as well, becoming a never-before-described triple reassortment virus—a hybrid of a human virus, a pig virus, and a bird virus—that triggered outbreaks in Texas, Minnesota, and Iowa.[7]

Within months, the virus had spread throughout the United States. Blood samples taken from 4,382 pigs across 23 states found that 20.5% tested positive for exposure to this triple hybrid swine flu virus by early 1999, including 100% of herds tested in Illinois and Iowa, and 90% in Kansas and Oklahoma.[8] According to the current analysis, published April 30 in the journal of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, it is from this pool of viruses that the current swine flu threat derives three-quarters of its genetic material.[9]

Tracing the Origins of Today’s Virus

Since the progenitor of the swine flu virus currently threatening to trigger a human pandemic has now been identified, it is critical to explore what led to its original emergence and spread. Scientists postulate that a human flu virus may have starting circulating in U.S. pig farms as early as 1995, but “by mutation or simply by obtaining a critical density, caused disease in pigs and began to spread rapidly through swine herds in North America. [emphasis added]“[10] It is therefore likely no coincidence that the virus emerged in North Carolina, the home of the nation’s largest pig production operation. North Carolina has the densest pig population in North America and reportedly boasts more than twice as many corporate pig mega-factories as any other state.[11]

The year of emergence, 1998, was the year North Carolina’s pig population hit ten million, up from two million just six years earlier.[12] Concurrently, the number of pig farms was decreasing, from 15,000 in 1986 to 3,600 in 2000.[13] How can five times more animals be raised on almost five times fewer farms? By crowding about 25 times more pigs into each operation.

In the 1980s, more than 85% of all North Carolina pig farms had fewer than 100 animals. By the end of the 1990s, operations confining more than 1,000 animals controlled about 99% of the state’s pig population.[14] Given that the primary route of swine flu transmission is thought to be the same as human flu—via droplets or aerosols of infected nasal secretions[15]—it’s no wonder experts blame overcrowding for the emergence of new flu virus mutants.

Intensive Crowding and Long-Distance Transport

Starting in the early 1990s, the U.S. pig industry restructured itself after Tyson’s profitable chicken model of massive industrial-sized units. As a headline in the trade journal National Hog Farmer announced, “Overcrowding Pigs Pays—If It’s Managed Properly.”[16] The majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each. A veterinary pathologist from the University of Minnesota stated the obvious in Science: “With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm.”[17]

In a study published in 2008 in the journal Zoonoses and Public Health investigated the relationship between farm size and risk of Eurasian lineage swine flu infection. The researchers concluded: “Pigs from larger farms (>5000 SPP [standing pig population]) appeared to have a significantly higher risk for SI [swine influenza] H1N1 infection compared to pigs originating from smaller farms. The odds of H1N1 in pigs from those farms were five times more as compared to small farms (i.e. <1000 SPP).” The same result was found for another strain of swine flu: “Pigs from bigger farms (i.e. SPP 1000–5000 and >5000) were about twice and nine times more likely, respectively, to have SI H3N2 infection as compared to pigs from farms with SPP <1000.”[18] A recent study of pig farms in North America similarly concluded: “Increasing the number of finishers [fattening pigs] by 1000 increased by 4.4 the adjusted odds of a finisher herd being positive [for classic H1N1 swine flu].”[19]

Researchers also found that when farms were packed close together, as is increasingly the case in high pig-density areas of North America and Europe, pigs appeared to have up to 16.7 times the odds of testing positive for swine flu. “Close location,” they write, “enhances the possibility for windborne, personnel, and fomites disease transmission from one farm to another.”[20] The “spread of pig slurry [urine and feces]” on nearby land may also play a role.[21]

This new research confirms earlier work suggesting that increasing the number of pigs per pen or per municipality can significantly increase swine flu risk. A 2002 review found 26 studies linking respiratory disease with herd size.[22] A higher number of pigs per municipality “may facilitate airborne transmission [of swine flu] between the herds” and crowding more pigs per pen “allows more opportunities for direct nose-to-nose contact or for aerosol spread of the [swine flu] virus between penmates. Furthermore, a large number of pigs per pen creates physiological stress, which in turn can alter the immune system and predispose pigs to infection.”[23]

Dr. Robert Webster, one of the world’s leading experts of flu virus evolution, blames the emergence of the 1998 virus on the “recently evolving intensive farming practice in the USA, of raising pigs and poultry in adjacent sheds with the same staff,” a practice he calls “unsound.”[24] North Carolina is also one of the nation’s largest poultry producers, slaughtering nearly three-quarters of a billion chickens[25] and confining enough hens to produce nearly 3 billion eggs.[26]

Once the new viral mutant appeared in 1998, the rapid dissemination across the country has been blamed on long-distance live animal transport.[27] In the United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They can be bred in North Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and slaughtered in California.[28] While this may reduce short-term costs for the pork industry, the highly contagious nature of diseases like influenza (perhaps made further infectious by the stresses of transport) needs to be considered when calculating the true cost of long-distance live animal transport.

“A Recipe for Disaster”

The remaining two gene segments of the H1N1 swine flu virus now spreading in human populations around the world appear to come from a swine flu viral lineage circulating in Eurasia, where similar conditions may be to blame. “Influenza [in pigs] is closely correlated with pig density,” said a European Commission-funded researcher studying the situation in Europe.[29] As such, Europe’s rapidly intensifying pig industry has been described in Science as “a recipe for disaster.”[30] Some researchers have speculated that the next pandemic could arise out of “Europe’s crowded pig barns.”[31] In Europe in 1993, a bird flu virus had adapted to pigs, acquiring a few human flu virus genes and infected two young Dutch children, displaying evidence of limited human-to-human transmission.[32]

The European Commission’s agricultural directorate warns that the “concentration of production is giving rise to an increasing risk of disease epidemics.”[33] Concern over epidemic disease is so great that Danish laws have capped the number of pigs per farm and put a ceiling on the total number of pigs allowed to be raised in the country.[34]

No such limit exists in the United States or in Mexico. The fact that one of the first confirmed human cases of swine flu appeared in close proximity to the largest pig factory in Mexico, which slaughters nearly a million pigs a year (out of a country-wide total of 15 million), may not have been a coincidence. In Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, scientists from the University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases published the 2006 article “Confined Animal Feeding Operations as Amplifiers of Influenza,” in which they concluded, “A human influenza epidemic due to a new virus could be locally amplified by the presence of confined animal feeding operations in the community.”

Warnings Unheeded

The public health community has been warning about the risks posed by factory farms for years. More than five years ago, in 2003, the American Public Health Association, the largest and oldest association of public health professionals in the world, called for a moratorium on factory farming.[35] In 2005, the United Nations urged that “[g]overnments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming,” which, they said, combined with live animal markets, “provide ideal conditions for the [influenza] virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form.”[36]

Last April, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released its final report. The prestigious, independent panel chaired by a former Kansas Governor and including a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, former Assistant Surgeon General, and the Dean of the University of Iowa College of Public Health, concluded that industrialized animal agriculture posed “unacceptable” public health risks: “Due to the large numbers of animals housed in close quarters in typical [industrial farm animal production] facilities there are many opportunities for animals to be infected by several strains of pathogens, leading to increased chance for a strain to emerge that can infect and spread in humans.”[37]

Specific to the veal crate-like metal stalls that confine breeding pigs like those on the North Carolina factory from which the first hybrid swine flu virus was discovered in North America, the Pew Commission asserted that “[p]ractices that restrict natural motion, such as sow gestation crates, induce high levels of stress in the animals and threaten their health, which in turn may threaten human health.”[38] Unfortunately we don’t tend to “shore up the levees” until after the disaster, but now that we know swine flu viruses can evolve to efficiently transmit human-to-human we need to follow the Pew Commission’s recommendations to abolish extreme confinement practices like gestation crates as they’re already doing in Europe, and to follow the advice of the American Public Health Association to declare a moratorium on factory farms.

A “Reservoir of Viruses” in the U.S.

With massive concentrations of farm animals within whom to mutate, these new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an evolutionary fast track, jumping and reassorting between species at an unprecedented rate.[39] This reassorting, Webster’s team concludes, makes the 65 million strong U.S. pig population an “increasingly important reservoir of viruses with human pandemic potential.”[40] “We used to think that the only important source of genetic change in swine influenza was in Southeast Asia,” said Christopher Olsen, a molecular virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Now, “we need to look in our own backyard for where the next pandemic may appear.”[41]

Dr. Michael Greger is director of public health and animal agriculture for The Humane Society of the United States.

I just watched this AMAZING video — Bird Flu by Dr. Michael Greger, the Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States.  A friend (You know who you are!  Thanks!) lent me the video, and it’s basically about how factory farming caused swine flu.  Yes!  I always knew factory farming was bad because hello, it’s horrible and unethical.  But — it’s also bad FROM A MEDICAL PERSPECTIVE.  It’s actually along the lines of why preschools are breeding grounds for germs — you put a bunch of preschoolers together, and BOOM! the number of flus, colds, etc., go off the charts.  Similarly, you put a bunch of pigs or chickens (the most commonly packed together animals in factory farms — sometimes there can be up to 100,000 chickens packed into 7×9inch slots right next to each other, living in their own feces in one warehouse,) a virtual petri dish for any type of virus, so the viruses spread and thrive, and eventually mutate to be able to infect humans.

Can you imagine up to 100,000 chickens packed into 7×9inch slots right next to each other, living in their own feces in one warehouse?  Yuck!  That’s what you’re buying if you spring for the cheap chicken at the supermarket.  Are you one of those people who won’t eat catfish because they’re bottom-feeders?  You should probably stop eating chickens as well — they live in and ingest some of their own waste.

Right — so, you get 100,000 chickens together packed side by side, and they become this amazing breeding ground for germs.  You can’t create a better breeding ground for bacteria or viruses.  They’re in heaven.  It’s like preschool germ factory to the nth power.  Factory farmers routinely dose these poor animals with 25 million pounds of antibiotics per year to keep the situation sort of in control, but eventually the germs mutate and become antibiotic-resistant, and we get superstrains of viruses!  Yes!  Up to 4 million chickens died in 2002 in Virginia from a recent flu superstrain mutation.  Due to the increase in number of factory farms this past decade alone, the number of bird flu outbreaks this century alone — all 9 years of it —  already outstrips the number of flu outbreaks throughout the ENTIRE twentieth century. But the really bad news — from a human perspective at least — is that eventually one of these viruses mutates and becomes able to infect human hosts.  The Spanish flu of 1918 mutated from infecting birds to being able to infect humans, and it killed 50-100 million people worldwide in weeks.  That’s why doctors get so riled up about flu shots every year — yes, usually the flu kills 1-2 people out of the 60 million people it infects every year, and the flu shots are a joke, but what if something like the 1918 flu hits again? Then we get a pandemic!  At a 2.5% death rate like the 1918 flu, and since bird flu is spread by coughing and is thus really contagious, that would be 1.5 million Americans dead in weeks.  Nice, huh?   So, factory farming is the source of our future pandemics.  Yet another reason to only buy humanely certified meats/eggs/dairy!

Interestingly enough — did you know that a lot of diseases come from animals?  Usually they’re not that dangerous to the animal host, but they mutate really fast and spread to people and kill them.  Measles — which killed 200 millions of people long ago before becoming a childhood disease because only those with a genetic mutation that made them resistant to measles survived — came from domesticating cattle.  Influenza comes from ducks — it spreads to chickens, usually when wild ducks are killed and sold in markets — in ducks influenza is a mild disease that spreads through water, but in chickens it mutates to be spread by coughing because there is no water in most chicken cages/hutches.  Whooping cough comes from caged pigs.  Typhoid fever comes from domesticated chickens.  Amazing, huh?

The other interesting thing is that the domestication of animals 10,000 years ago caused a huge increase in disease.  We wouldn’t have gotten measles, leprosy, whooping cough, etc., if we hadn’t domesticated these animals in the first place.  Putting small groups of animals together in a barnyard, and concentrating a large number of them in a town, leads to some increase in disease spreading among animals and from animals to humans.  This is why the Native American population was wiped out by measles, smallpox, whooping cough, etc, after making contact with Europeans in the 1500s — those are nonfatal childhood diseases to the Europeans who spread those viruses, but fatal viruses to the Native Americans who caught the viruses.  The Native Americans had no domesticated animals, thus no history of epidemics, and thus no resistance to a concentrated dose of many virulent viruses — measles, smallpox, whooping cough, etc.

Oh hey, so you may ask — why not just institute biosecurity measures to keep germs inside these warehouses full of chickens/pigs?  Wouldn’t that lead to keeping pandemics at bay, yet still allow us to have factory farming?

Nope, you’d have to have really tight biosecurity.  Basically, you’d have to keep the flies out, and make sure everyone who goes into and out of the warehouses is decontaminated.  The only way to do that is to decontaminate the warehouses all the time, have air locks, people showering before they go in, people showering before they come out, people wearing hazmat suits, sealing and waterproofing the floors and ceilings, incinerating all wastes — it’s just completely infeasible from a farming standpoint.  And the poultry/pig industries are doing 0 percent of this kind of containment.

You may also ask, if all this is true, why isn’t there more press about it?

I don’t know — I think the poultry/pig industries are so powerful they keep all this stuff out of the press and magazines.  One factory farmer is quoted in the movie as being less concerned about the risk of millions of Americans dying, and more concerned that the remaining live Americans won’t have enough chicken to eat.  However, very trustworthy sources have condemned factory farming — the American Public Health Association has called for a ban on factory farming.

Anyway, it’s a great video with a lot more interesting information than just the stuff on why factory farming is causing pandemics.  There’s stuff on why suburbanization and deforestation of rainforests also spreads disease from animals to people that’s quite fascinating.  I highly recommend it!  You can also read Dr. Greger’s book on Bird Flu, which is available for free online here.  He also gives talks around the country — here are his speaking engagements.

You may also ask, how should I go about avoiding supporting factory farming?

If there’s one thing you should get from this, it’s to not buy factory farmed eggs, chicken, or pork.  Seriously.  When you go out to eat, do not order the chicken or the pork.  Don’t order anything breaded — that uses eggs.  No egg-based sauces.  No mayonnaise.  No bechamel.  Don’t order ice cream, cakes, cookies, muffins, or cornbread — no eggs, seriously.  All the eggs in restaurants are factory farmed.  If you’re going to order meat, which I’d highly recommend against — order steak, lamb, or fish.  I don’t think they factory farm cows or sheep (yet . . . ).

Hi,

I really like your site and I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions on a few things that I have questions on and a few things that I can’t seem to find info on.

I was wondering if Avon, Elf, V05, and Tresseme are cruelty free. I don’t see them on your site, but on other sites, they say these are fine. I am not sure.

Also, do you have any suggestions on who I can purchase q-tips, paperplates, or sandwich bags (ziplock) from? I am trying to learn to make everything I buy cruelty free, and I don’t want to buy something that I think is ok, but then it is actually a branch of another company. It gets frustrated sometimes in trying to convert, and it is hard when I regularly purchased affordable products and now in converting, I am having trouble finding affordable products to replace my old items. If you have any suggestions, I would appreciate it.

Thank you for your time and I really do like your site. Good links and a lot of info!!

Thanks,

Serious Cruelty-Freeist

Hello!

Aww, you like my site!  That’s always nice to hear.

And good questions!  I’m so glad to hear you’re looking for cruelty-free products and that my blog has been of help to you!  I’m so impressed by your dedication to going cruelty-free too!

Regarding your question about whether Avon, Tresemme VO5, etc., are cruelty-free because some sites say they are and some sites say they aren’t:

Basically you have to remember that there are 50%-animal-testing-free products, and 100%-animal-testing-free products.  50%-animal-testing-free products are products that are made by companies that don’t perform any animal testing, but who don’t police their suppliers to make sure they don’t test on animals as well.  100%-animal-testing-free products are made by companies that not only don’t perform any animal testing, but they also ask their suppliers to not perform any animal testing as well.  So 100%-animal-testing-free products are the best way to go if you don’t want any animals to suffer for you.  My list of cruelty-free products only contains 100%-animal-testing-free companies.  Any product on my list, you can be sure is 100%-animal-testing-free, and you should only buy ones listed there.

The 50%-cruelty-free companies are kind of a joke — I’ve likened 50%-cruelty-free companies before to a farmer buying nonorganic 4 week old tomato plants grown in a chemically-laden environment, raising them for another 4 weeks in organic conditions, and then selling the 8-week old plants with an “organic” label.  Are those tomato plants organic since they spent four weeks in organic soil despite spending their first four weeks in chemically fertilized/pesticided soil?  Purists would say no.  In the same way, is your 50%-cruelty-free shampoo really cruelty-free if the raw oils it was made with were tested on animals, but the company that bought those oils and turned them into shampoo didn’t test that shampoo on animals?

Other sites don’t care about the supplier issue as much as I do, so they list various companies as being “cruelty-free” despite the fact that those products may have ingredients that were supplied by suppliers who test on animals.  Avon, VO5, and Tresemme are all in that camp.  They are 50%-animal-testing-free (if not 0%-animal-testing-free).  If you only want to buy products that are 100%-cruelty-free, don’t buy those.  ELF, however, is 100%-cruelty-free — you’ll see on my list of 100%-cruelty-free companies it’s listed under the Australian upholder of the Humane Cosmetics Standard, ChooseCrueltyFree.org.au — why it isn’t registered by the U.S. upholder of the Humane Cosmetics Standard, leapingbunny.org, I do not know.

Regarding your question about finding cruelty-free paper/plastic products:

Oh gosh, I hate to tell you this, but while paper/plastic products are not tested on animals in and of themselves — thank God! — all the popular brands of paper/plastic products are owned by the evil animal-testing corporations Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and the third major evil corporation I can never remember.  I know it starts with a C.  Colgate-Palmolive?  Maybe.  So if you buy a popular brand of paper/plastic product, you’re supporting an evil company.

So — every paper/plastic product at major grocery/drug stores is made by evil animal-testing companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, etc.  Every single one.  You know how there are 40 different brands of every single cleaning product at Safeway?  In reality, all those 40 “brands” are owned by 3 companies, max.  The numerous brands just provide an illusion of variety and choice — this way we don’t think we’re living in a Communist regime with only one choice of detergent.  So, the one and only way to be sure you’re not supporting those evil companies is to only buy paper/plastic products from health food stores or Whole Foods.  Whole Foods carries a lot of very nice non-animal-testing brands of q-tips and plastic bags made by real ethical companies and not fake Procter & Gamble “brands”  — and those products are probably far safer for you than anything made by Procter & Gamble, who always seem to include dangerous chemicals in their plastics.  I’d especially recommend any paper products by Seventh Generation — Seventh Generation makes 100%-cruelty-free cleaning products, so you know they’re a good brand.  (Unfortunately, Seventh Generation paper towels kind of suck.  Just to warn you. I gave up Viva papertowels — owned by evil Kimberly-Clark Corporation that PETA lists as animal-testing! — and I really, really miss them . . . )

How to minimize the expense of buying cruelty-free products:

I feel your pain on trying to convert from inexpensive cruel products to expensive cruelty-free ones!  Go slowly — you want to ease that expense over time.  (Gosh, I should review some of the Whole Foods/health food store plastic products I’ve bought!  I’d never thought of that before — thanks for writing in about this!)   I’d highly recommend buying expensive cruelty-free paper/plastic products, and then using less of them.  Buy a bunch of absorbent “bar” towels you can throw in the wash and use those instead of paper towels on simple spills, buy a giant stack of washcloths for $2.99 at Target and use them instead of sponges (cheaper and more hygienic!).  You really can save a lot of money that way.  You can also use the Bag-E-Wash — this really cuts down on my ziploc bag use, though I would be the first to admit you really only get three washes out of a plastic bag, and even then I wouldn’t put my lunch in a thrice-washed bag. :)  Dog treats, on the other hand . . .

I’m so glad to hear you’re fired up about never buying cruel products ever again — but I’d really recommend that you start replacing your cruel products as they run out, and if your replacement q-tips don’t work for you as well as your former cruel q-tips, go back to the cruel q-tips for a bit, and then try a different brand of cruelty-free q-tips and try again later!

I hope I’ve clarified some things for you. If anything is still unclear, please let me know. 

Regards,

Emily

Have a cruelty-free question for me?  Email me at emilycrueltyfree at gmail.com