Despite the economic gloom circling the planet there still seems to be a place for meat in peoples’ budget. One abattoir in Australia has managed to process 24,000 goats in two weeks. The horror of that scene does not bare imagining.

From ABC News

The Western Exporters Abattoir in Charleville was forced to close earlier this year because it could not find enough workers.

It has now been able to employ more overseas workers under the 457 visa program.

Managing director Neil Duncan says it processed 24,000 goats in the past two weeks for export markets.

“Well mainly to the US, Taiwan, our normal customers,” he said.

“We should have been doing these sort of numbers years ago, we need to do that to keep up with the goat industry.

From Farmed Animal Watch

The US goat farming and slaughter industry is experiencing rapid growth in part based on increased demand from Muslims, Hispanics, Indians, and other ethnic minorities. According to the American Boer Goat Association (ABGA), goat flesh is the “fastest-growing segment in agriculture.” Indeed, total consumption of goat flesh in the US grew by 64% from 1999 to 2003 and is expected to grow by 10% per year in the short term future. The industry changed dramatically in the early 1990s when Boer goats were imported from South Africa, replacing the much smaller goats traditionally raised by US farmers. The US also ceased paying government subsidies to farmers raising goats for mohair or cashmere around the same time, prompting some farmers to switch to raising the animals for meat production.

As of January 1, 2005, nearly 2 million goats were being kept on farms for slaughter; another half-million goats were being kept for angora and milk production. This is according to the first complete annual survey of goat farming conducted by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Despite growing consumption, however, the goat industry’s total size is largely unchanged from 2002 when the same number of goats (just less than 2 million) was kept on farms for slaughter. Because of increased demand but relatively stagnant supply, the US imported 17 million pounds of goat flesh in 2003, an increase of one-third more than 2001. One increasingly popular item, especially among Hispanics, is caproetta, which is the flesh of a “baby goat that was still suckling its mother.” Several high-end restaurants in New York City are reportedly carrying the product.

1. “No Kidding; America’s Booming Goat Industry,” MeatPoultry.com / The Economist, 8/27/05
http://tinyurl.com/8yx7a (meatpoultry.com)
2. “Livestock Reports: Sheep and Goats,” USDA / NASS, 1/28/05
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/nassr/livestock/pgg-bb/shep0105.txt

It’s not often that news on meatismurder that links religion and slaughterhouses together takes any form of beneficial slant but a Jain religious festival leads to a shut down of slaughterhouses in Mumbai. Please note that any comments made about religious slaughterhouses and practices is in no way an endorsement of secular slaughter practices. Nor is this a veiled attack on religion as religious slaughter is often used by morons who approach animal rights stall holders looking for an avenue to vent their hateful bile.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s decision to shut down all city slaughterhouses during the Jain festival of Paryushan has run into opposition from meat sellers. The Brihanmumbai Hindu Khatik Samaj Sanghatna, an association of meat sellers, has decided to observe a dharna on Wednesday at Azad Maidan.

The Paryushan will be observed between August 27 and September 3 this year. Those participating in the dharna will have their mouths taped and hands tied.

The BMC, at a general body meeting of the elected representatives on April 7, decided shut down all abattoirs during the nine-day Jain festival. According to the protestors, the worst hit will be the owners and the workers of the slaughterhouses.

According to the association, there are around 1,500 BMC-owned and licensed shops selling meat in Mumbai apart from illegal ones in and around suburbs. They employ over 25,000 daily-wage workers who earn a meagre Rs 100-Rs 150 per day. The closing of the slaughterhouses for nine days would mean no income for these workers for those nine days, the association said.

Sixty-five-year-old Maltibai Eknath Kothmere, a widow, earns her livelihood in the form of rent from the slaughter shop her husband had left her. Seated in her tiny one-room house, she complained: “No money means no food. We are somehow managing with the little income that we get as rent, but now with the BMC’s resolution, I do not know how we will survive for those nine days.”

Remainder of article at ExpressIndia.com

Yippee! Cattle farmers have found a way of crossing the species barrier and causing suffering and death to other animals. Yes, it’s time to blame bovine TB not on poor animal husbandry and the movement of cattle but instead on badgers. Why spend effort on putting your own house in order - or even stop earning blood money altogether - when you can lobby the governemt to cull a protected species instead.

Badgers are set to be killed in an attempt to stamp out tuberculosis in cattle.

They are a protected species in the UK but have a bad reputation with some farmers.

Bovine TB is proving a big problem in Wales with over 8,000 affected cattle having to be killed over the last year

Bovine TB is proving a big problem in Wales with over 8,000 affected cattle having to be killed over the last year.

Farmers are blaming the spread of the disease on badgers and in response the Welsh Assembly has made a controversial decision to test how widespread the problem is by setting up a pilot cull zone.

While many farmers have welcomed the decision, the RSPCA described it as going against sound scientific judgement.

Officials say bovine TB is out of control in Wales, but conservation groups insist a badger cull will not stop it spreading.

The method and a site with suitable natural or man-made boundaries have not be chosen. Other areas could be considered after the pilot is reviewed.

In a statement Wales’s Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones said: “This is a difficult decision to take and it has not been taken lightly. I am very aware of the strong views on this issue.”

She made clear that badgers would remain a protected species and said she had given “due consideration to the divergence of scientific and political opinion”, adding “illegal action will not be tolerated.”

Ms Jones said she wanted to reform the compensation system for farmers whose infected cows were slaughtered to “encourage herd owners to comply with legal and best practice requirements”.

Last year, 7,905 cattle were put down in Wales, up from 669 in 1997. A compensation bill for affected farms of £15.2 million in 2007 would grow to more than £30 million by 2012 if it continued at the present “unsustainable” rate, she added.

Source of article above was ITN

Please see stopwaronbadgers and badger-killers for arguments aginst the cull of badgers.
A sample argument is given below.

Badgers are being scapegoated by DEFRA (formerly the Ministry of Agriculture) to placate the farming lobby, whose own intensive production systems are the direct cause of increasing levels of disease in cattle, including bovine TB. There is no plausible evidence to suggest that badgers are transmitting bovine TB to cattle. The reverse is probably the case.

The persistent focus on badgers distracts from the serious health problems faced by intensively managed cattle in Britain. Many other diseases, such as pneumonia, E. coli, coccidiosis (a fatal diarrhoea), salmonella and mastitis, are also increasing in British cattle herds.

Bovine TB is caused by intensive farming methods, >NOT badgers!

Background - In 1973 a dead badger was found on a farm in Gloucestershire that had recently suffered an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) within its cattle herd. Upon post-mortem examination the badger revealed a large number of lesions throughout its body, which tested positive for bTB. MAFF (now DEFRA) first started to kill badgers (using cyanide gas) as a means of ‘controlling’ Bovine TB (bTB) in 1975. But since 1982 badgers have been cage-trapped in Britain where they remain until operatives return to shoot them. In Ireland they are caught in cruel snares.

Since then the badger has become a farming and government scapegoat for what is a bovine disease and over *30,000 badgers have been killed in unfruitful, pointless ‘experiments’. (*Up to 1995) And once again starting in 1998 badgers were killed…

Farmers insist that badgers transmit the disease to cattle, and yet not even farmer-friendly DEFRA has produced any convincing evidence. During the past 28 years, DEFRA (and formerly MAFF) has up to now killed more than 40,000 badgers in a failed effort to halt bovine TB outbreaks. In fact, TB in cattle has been increasing since 1986, including in areas where badgers have been eliminated, or where they have been shown to be free of the disease.

Murdering animals in terrifying conditions because people have not realised what goes on in their name is something we are all sadly used to. People are unaware of or scared of alternatives and so continue to eat the products of the mass production meat industry. Using animals in entertainment is again something that we are sadly all used to seeing. But to combine these two practices and use bodies as clothes for a vapid entertainment show seems like a lurch even further away from any form of natural order.
And yet that is what happended on the 2008 series of ‘America’s Next Top Model’.

Another occassion where we learn that those in the meat industry are perhaps not always entirely trustworthy. Who would have thought that those involved in murder for a living can sometimes be moved to other slips of moral fibre.

WASHINGTON — The president of a slaughterhouse at the heart of the largest meat recall denied under oath on Wednesday, but then grudgingly admitted, that his company had apparently introduced sick cows into the hamburger supply.

He then tried to minimize the significance.

The executive, Steve Mendell of the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company of Chino, Calif., said, “I was shocked. I was horrified. I was sickened,” by video that showed employees kicking or using electric prods on “downer” cattle that were too sick to walk, jabbing one in the eye with a baton and using forklifts to push animals around.

The video was taken by an undercover investigator from the Humane Society of the United States. One tape showed a worker using a garden hose to try to squirt water up the nose of a downed cow, a technique that Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who conducted the hearing where Mr. Mendell testified, referred to as waterboarding.

Testifying before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Mendell, who appeared only after being subpoenaed, assured lawmakers that despite his lack of knowledge about conditions at the plant, sick animals were not slaughtered for food, so no safety issue existed.

But Mr. Mendell retracted the statement when shown a second video in which a “downer” cow was shocked and abused by workers trying to move it to the “kill box,” then finally shot with a bolt gun and dragged by a chain to the processing area.

When Mr. Mendell told the committee he was unaware of the abuses, Mr. Stupak asked him, “What’s your curiosity, as president and C.E.O. of the company you’re responsible for?”

Mr. Mendell replied that after he had seen the first video, he concluded that “it was a regulatory violation, for sure, it was inhumane treatment, for sure,” but that he did not believe it was a food safety issue until he saw the second video on Wednesday.

Mr. Stupak asked if one could conclude from the video that the cow dragged into the killing area had gone into the food supply.

“That would be logical, sir,” Mr. Mendell replied.

Article continues at nytimes.com

Front page news today in the Independent -

Exposed: The long, cruel road to the slaughterhouse

Millions of animals are suffering unnecessarily at the hands of meat traders by enduring cruel, drawn-out journeys across the world to be slaughtered on arrival.

The alarming evidence of their suffering has been revealed after a secret investigation by 10 major animal charities, including the RSCPA, Compassion in World Farming and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). In shocking footage, animals including horses, pigs, sheep and chickens are seen being transported thousands of miles across the world, when they could as easily be carried as meat.

Thousands of animals die en route from disease, heat exhaustion, hunger and stress. The others escape the intolerable conditions only to confront, immediately, the butcher’s knife.

The video is the product of the Handle With Care coalition, which has united animal charities to campaign against the abhorrent practice. The coalition, which is lobbying for change in the countries concerned, unveiled an international campaign yesterday in countries including Brazil, Australia, the US, Spain and Italy.

Spain to Italy: Horses driven for 46 hours before slaughter

Across the world, more than a billion live animals are transported every week, many over long distances. The video reveals the horror of five particularly gruesome journeys. Australia, the world’s largest exporter of live animals, sends more than four million live sheep every year to the Middle East. Shipped in cramped, poorly lit dens, the journey takes 32 days. Three sheep are crammed per square metre in the ship’s hold, causing many of the animals to die of suffocation before encountering the slaughterhouse weeks later.

Those sheep that do arrive are fattened before being killed in accordance with Halal butchery laws. Eighty per cent of Australia’s abattoirs are Halal-certified, raising the question of why they could not be slaughtered in Australia and transported frozen.

Pigs

Crammed together in the dark, the animals are condemned to a 4,500-mile journey to Hawaii. They suffer from exhaustion, hunger and vomiting caused by motion sickness.

Cattle

Zebu cattle are forced to live in their own excrement during this appalling journey; some of the 2,500 animals on board die on the way from heat stroke or respiratory disease. The rest are killed on arrival.

Horses

The animals are squeezed into lorries for this sweltering journey. They are denied adequate rest, food and water. And all so the meat can be marketed as being of “traditional Italian” origin.

Goats

15,000 animals a week are packed into trucks for the 2,500-mile journey with nothing to eat or drink. Temperatures exceed 40C, and many of the animals die from dehydration.

Sheep

Australia sends four million live sheep every year on the barbaric journey to the Middle East. They are transported in such cramped conditions that many die of suffocation on the way. On arrival, they are killed according to Halal butchery laws.

Canada to Hawaii: Pigs transported for nine days

Remainder of story at the