As I ponder my post challenge life (a mere week away), I am reconsidering my secret goal of becoming a lacto-ovo vegetarian. Newly acquired knowledge of the life of a laying hen in an industrial egg operation, and the demise of her male offspring, has left me traumatized.

In factory egg farms, laying hens are housed in facilities where up to 100,000 birds are stacked in rows of bare wire cells called “battery cages”. Four to six laying hens are placed into each cage where they are unable to stretch their wings or move about freely. To reduce stress-induced pecking and fighting, the hens’ beaks are severed at the tip using a hot knife or a guillotine-like device. A 10% mortality rate is reportedly common in the egg laying shed from this and the stress of over crowding. To aggravate matters, hens are evidently “force molted” by removing nourishment and light, which stimulates egg production.

I am saddened to report another problem inherent with egg production which involves the disposal of unwanted male chicks. Because males don’t lay eggs and egg-type strains of chickens don’t grow fast enough to be raised profitably for meat, the male chicks are discarded shortly after hatching. Hence, male chicks are dispatched by the least expensive and efficient method available. Unbelievably, this may include live maceration (i.e., grinding).

How can I practice Lacto-Ovo vegetariansim and be complict with anything remotely related to the above?

Tomorrow: A broiler meats its end

This article, “The 247 lb. Vegan”, was in today’s Wall Street Journal. Thanks to Rita from ASPH for the heads-up.

Dave

Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, summed it up nicely. “Equality is a moral idea”. We at Loma Linda University pride ourselves on being enlightended around the issues of equity and justice. Loosely translated, everyone’s opinions should receive equal consideration independent of their inherent intellectual abilities or other factors such as academic degree, age, height, weight, race, or religion. Extending the idea further, we don’t consider ourselves better than those that may have been born with or acquired mental or physical disabilities. I believe most of my colleagues and students would buy into this argument.

“If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another to use for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans for the same purpose” queries Singer. Ouch. Author Michael Pollan expands on this idea : “…if humans no longer need to eat meat to survive, then what exactly are we putting on the human side of the scale to outweigh the interests of animals?”

I am disturbed by these questions. If meat consumption is simply a choice, what is the justification for a so called enlightened person (me) to perpetuate the suffering of animals confined in miserable living conditons?

Tomorrow: More thoughts on the ethical dilemma

I think everyone who is awake and reading is getting the point related to the environmental impacts of corporate animal husbandry practices. I am not referring to locally grown and consumed free range meat products. I do want to be clear however, I could spend the next two weeks waxing on about the negative consequences of a meat eating diet from the ecological perspective. The toxic marine organism Pfisteria and its relationship to intensive hog farrming practices on the east coast is worthy of a couple blog nights alone. Nonetheless, this is my last environmental aspects and impacts hurrah.

Some meat eating fun facts for the USA:

• 41% of all irrigated crop land is used to feed livestock
• 17 trillion gallons of water is used on the crops simply to feed livestock
• It takes 5 times as much water to grow crops to feed farm animals as it does to grow fruits and vegetables.
• 4,500 gallons of water is consumed in producing ¼ pound of raw beef
• 1 pound of fertilizer is required to produce 3 pounds of beef
• 22 billion pounds of fertilizer is used annually to grow feed grains for American livestock
• The amount of fertilizer used in support of livestock food is sufficient to provide energy for 1 million Americans for an entire year
• 35 gallons of oil is consumed bringing one cow to market using CAFO approaches.

Tomorrow: Ethical Considerations of Vegetarianism