ANIMAL RESEARCH T A K E S LIVES
- Humans and Animals BOTH Suffer
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Farming animals for food as currently practised is becoming increasingly recognised as inefficient and disastrous as they are the victims of unreasonable environmental disasters, pollution, floods, droughts, bad-management and mis-calculations.
As farm animals are used in experiments inflicted in order to increase yields and profits, and farmers attempt to shore up their flagging industry with government subsidies (paid for by the tax-payer), carcasses and dairy products stockpile. As stated, in Australia 50 million sheep were destroyed because of overproduction.
(Wellington, Dominion, November 1 1990.)
On the Cormo Express, a re-vamped car carrier, which was, according to Elders Pastoral manager Sholto Matthews, "a state of the art vessel which has been designed with animal welfare consideration, functionality, and a fuel economy foremost in mind" (NZ Farmer, May 30 1990), 9,832 sheep died on the way to Saudi Arabia between May 29 and June 25 1990.
The November/December issue of Agscene, magazine of COMPASSION IN WORLD FARMING exposes the war between French and British farmers resulting in blockades, seizures and attacks by French farmers and meat-workers, on consignments of sheep, cattle and calves from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Though the attacks were described as outrageous and barbaric by British Agriculture Minister John Gummer he refused to use his power to end the miserable and sordid live-shipments because he thought it would be contrary to the principle of free trade.
The atrocities carried out by French farmers, who believe imported British meat and lamb are resulting in lower prices for their own animals, included poisoning whole lorry loads with Phosdrin, a powerful insecticide, hijacking consignments of calves and setting them loose in the streets, and setting fire to transporters carrying live animals. "The sheep screamed in agony as they were burned alive" (Daily Mail, August 24 1990). Another manoeuvre is to blockade the transporters of animals trans-shipped across the Continent at the Spanish and Italian borders. As lorries carrying the animals are custom-sealed, injured animals cannot be attended to. Many suffocate or die of thirst, starvation and stress.
Around the world farm animals are the victims of commercial disagreement, greed and inefficiency, and no matter how far removed, those responsible are those who create the demand.
Of modern farming practices Juliette de Bairacli Levy who spent a lifetime pioneering herbal veterinary medicine and who has many advocates and followers, writes:
"The present-day farmer has been educated to consider disease as inevitable and the only scientific cure as being in the artificial remedies of the modern veterinary surgeon, who, through over-rigid orthodox training, and himself under the influence of advertising, is too often a mere vendor of the products of the vast and powerful chemical and serum manufacturers. For the vested interests in modern medicine are stupendous. Science is proving the ruination of true farming; the only thing that I, and countless others, have noted as flourishing alongside science is disease! Disease of the earth. Disease of the crops. Disease of the animals and disease of the people who feed on the diseased produce."
Levy gained fame in 1947 when she cured a flock of over one thousand pedigree Swaledale sheep condemned as incurable by modern medicine. The Albert Howard Journal Soil and Earth published details of her treatment and the farmers' testimony. Farmers Weekly said of Levy's The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable:
"All farmers and horse-owners interested in safeguarding and restoring their animals' health by natural, safe and inexpensive methods will find it invaluable. It could help us avoid the mistakes stemming from use of chemical fertilisers, insecticides, tranquillisers, antibiotics and the like."
Abolitionists agree that diseases of farm animals can transmit to human beings thus creating grave occupational hazard and health problems to the consumer. This should be seen as a warning to change our ways and not as an excuse for vivisection. Since it is both unnecessary and wasteful of the Earth's resources to rely on the slaughter-house for our food, dietary changes, both for physical betterment and moral elevation are not only essential but long overdue.
In Animal Machines, Ruth Harrison revealed that when the U.S.A. rejected a shipment of New Zealand meat because chemical residues were above the U.S. safety-level the New Zealand Government found 130 brands of pesticides were used on livestock which "tended to leave residues". The American Journal of Digestive Diseases, (November 1953) reported that the increased use of insecticides in farming "correlates the increase of hepatitis in man and hyperkeratosis in cattle". The article goes on to say that the incidence of foot and mouth has risen, sheep have developed 'blue tongue' and 'scrapie', chickens 'Newcastle disease' and other ailments, and dogs 'hard-pad' and the highly fatal 'hepatitis X'... which were all traced to poisoning by chlorinated hydrocarbons and other aerosol insecticides, some of which cause epidemics of hepatitis in human beings. Stilbestrol injected into chickens is known to cause cancer in human beings.