meat is murder

Channel Five News in the UK has been exposing how the standards of Freedom Foods Farms are not so righteous as the consumer is told. These are farms given a mark of approval by the RSPCA and are supposedly not as gruesome as the rest of the modern mechanised animal production machinery.
And as always we see that there is no escape from the fact that cruelty is involved in getting meat to a plate.
And it is also worth remembering that even if these standards had been met the animals still end up terrified at the same slaughter house having their lives taken away.

From news.five.tv

Five News has uncovered more evidence of chickens being kept in horrifying conditions at an RSPCA ‘Freedom Food’ farm, this time in Somerset.
Last week, Five News reported on the appalling conditions chickens were being kept in at a farm in Norfolk. The farm was endorsed by the RSPCA’s ‘Freedom Food’ label and is now facing an investigation into their handling of chickens.In Jason Farrell’s latest investigation he has uncovered another farm failing to meet the relevant standards set by the ‘Freedom Food’ label.
Video Blog Watch how Jason Farrell uncovered this latest investigation.
Click here to watch the video blog.

The state of animals in farming is a shocking spectacle. Most people are able to live a life of deliberate ignorance and see meat wrapped in plastic or behind the glass of a deli counter and dis-associate it from the misery of the living being that was the meat before the plastic. The horror of animal farming was highlighted in today’s Independent as they were passed photographs from an Animal Aid undercover investigation.

Government vets have launched an investigation into Britain’s pig farming industry after disturbing images showing dead and diseased animals were passed to The Independent.

Pork farmers have been conducting a high-profile advertising campaign to encourage consumers to buy more expensive British produce, claiming that standards are higher than they are on the Continent. But the images, taken at farms linked to leaders of the industry, raise serious concerns about the welfare of the majority of the country’s 8 million pigs.

Vets at the Government’s Animal Health agency, which enforces welfare legislation and conducts regular inspections of farm premises, said it would investigate the findings.

Activists from the welfare group Animal Aid entered 10 farms in March and April. Two of the farms were operated by companies run by members of the industry’s governing body the British Pig Executive (BPEX), while others were linked to other senior figures in the industry. 

Animal Aid claimed its investigation showed that farmers were “falling considerably short” of the images it portrayed in its campaigning. Shot in Cornwall, Somerset, Lincolnshire, North and East Yorkshire, the footage shows pigs with sores where they have rubbed against metal bars; farrowing crates that prevent sows from moving; pigs with bite marks; collapsed and convulsing animals; pigs covered in excrement; dirty pens; and routine tail-docking.

remainder of article at the Independent

• More than nine million pigs are slaughtered annually in the UK.
• Around 450,000 sows are currently used for breeding.
• Seventy per cent of British pigmeat comes from animals reared intensively, but even ‘outdoor reared’ and ‘outdoor raised’ pigs spend half or more of their lives indoors.
• Britain’s modest advances in pig welfare have not been made alone, and this country is certainly not in the vanguard. Sweden, for example, banned tethering almost three decades before Britain. And in 1997, Switzerland banned the use of farrowing crates altogether, making nonsense of Britain?s claims that we lead the way. In Sweden, weaning takes place at 5-6 weeks, an improvement on Britain and yet still far short of the17 weeks that pigs suckle and nurse their young in semi-natural conditions. The tethering of sows is now banned across the entire EU. Sow stalls are banned in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, as well as Britain. In 2013 they will be illegal across the whole of the EU. In Sweden, all pigs must be provided with straw or other litter material ? something that British pigs are largely denied. And pigs on Swedish farms may be held in a farrowing crate for a maximum of one week. In Britain, it is four weeks. Norway will enforce a ban on the castration of piglets from 2009 ? something which, although only rarely carried out in the UK, has not been outlawed here.

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

Another day, another story about lead and the food chain.

A feed supplement for pigs which was found to be contaminated by lead has been withdrawn from sale in Australia.

High levels of lead were first found in the supplement imported from China in February.

Testing revealed pigs in six Western Australian piggeries had high levels of the metal in their systems.

Those piggeries have been put into quarantine and will remain so for at least another month.

Another 60 piggeries which also use the same feedstock are being closely monitored to ensure the pigs have not been affected.

Remainder of article at ABC

A new study shows risks to humans of lead poisoning from eating animals shot with lead bullets. The meatismurder admin team also believe that being shot with lead bullets isn’t too good for the individuals being shot either.

People who eat animals killed with lead bullets need to be concerned about lead poisoning, according to a conservation organization working to convince game hunters to switch to copper ammunition.class=”storydetail”>

Opponents, however, argue that the group’s agenda — to get the lead out of commercial ammo — rather than hard science, is the driving force behind the results of a recent study. Participating scientists say it provides proof that lead-based ammunition poses health risks not only for animals, but for people.

The Peregrine Fund, a Boise, Idaho-based conservation group that works to protect birds of prey, conducted the study in concert with scientists from Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, in which researchers examined professionally processed meat from hunter-killed deer in Wyoming.

Eighty percent of the deer killed by high-velocity lead-based ammunition produced at least some meat with metal fragments or metal “dust” in it, and 92 percent of the metal found was lead, according to the leaders of the project who presented their findings Tuesday at a conference in Boise. Separately, the North Dakota Health Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are planning to test nearly 700 people who eat wild game killed with lead bullets, to determine if there are any health risks.

The suggestion that lead bullets could make venison unsafe for humans has prompted outrage from pro-hunting groups such as Safari Club International of Somerset, N.J., and the Connecticut-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry group, after North Dakota and Minnesota in March and April instructed food banks there to pull hunter-donated venison from their shelves.

“This is one more piece of evidence that points to lead bullets as a source of contamination in our environment,” Rick Watson, vice president of the Peregrine Fund, said in a statement ahead of a presentation of the study.

The study released Tuesday comes after a Peregrine Fund board member, Dr. William Cornatzer, previously did CT scans of about 100 packets of venison that had been donated to food banks by hunters. He found 60 percent had multiple lead fragments.

Lawrence Keane, a National Shooting Sports Foundation spokesman, said he hasn’t seen the latest study. But he said initial evidence supplied by Cornatzer, a dermatologist and professor at the University of North Dakota medical school, didn’t justify a policy change or destruction of venison. Groups, including Safari Club, gave nearly 1 million pounds of venison in 2007 to food banks as part of their humanitarian efforts.

“The Peregrine Fund is an advocacy group and has an agenda,” Keane said. “We have serious questions with the so-called science by the dermatologist. It’s my understanding there’s not a single reported case that the CDC is aware of, of anyone having elevated blood lead levels from eating game harvested with lead ammunition.”

Lead poisoning has been linked to learning disabilities, behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma and death. There is no safe level of lead in blood.

Remainder of story at Jackson Hole Star Tribune