"Since December, 12 meatpackers in Austin and two at a plant in Indiana have reported fatigue, numbness and tingling in their arms and legs. A few are severely disabled; others have returned to work.
Indiana health officials have declined to discuss the conditions of the affected workers there or say where they were employed, citing patient privacy laws.
All 14 employees worked near powerful compressed air systems that blow brains out of pig heads at what is known as the head table. Both plants have stopped using the process.
Lynfield said investigators are now looking for anyone who has worked near Quality Pork's head table since 1997. That's difficult because the plant employs about 1,200 workers, many of them immigrants, and turnover is high."
The last book I read, "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" by Sandor Katz stated that 4 companies control 80% of the cattle market and 5 control 63% of the hog market. Their $500,000 slaughterhouses are efficient and cruel, which matches the way the animals were raised.
Most of us are meat eaters. We accept that something has to die for us to live but that doesn't mean that we condone torturing the animal, whether it be a cage, where it can't turn around, or treatment in feed lots and slaughterhouses.
Wild animals have a life with a dimension of freedom and some farmers do raise their animals humanely, even though the animals will be killed. "Real" free range animals have been shown to be healthier for us to eat but corporate farms can, and do, play fast and loose the the term "free range", until it means squat.
Normally small producers of meat can't legally sell their meat because commercial meat has to be killed in one of the aforementioned $500,000 slaughterhouses (There is an exemption for chickens.). The way around this is for the farmer to sell you part interest in the animal.
The whole idea, of course, is to keep the small producer out of the marketplace. Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms
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went so far as to send some of his chickens and some from the local market to a lab for testing and the supermarket chickens were 25 times higher in bacteria than his own!
Presently, our corporate shills (the government) are trying to separate us even further from growing our own food by implementing the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that will require every animal owner to register their animals
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The sweet part (sarcasm) is that the fee is the same for one animal or a herd of animals. (Piss and moan about this to your representatives.)
But I digress, slaughterhouses are inhuman to both animals and people.
First a story about a California slaughterhouse that tortured "downer" cattle to get them to pass USDA inspection. It's against health laws, if not against moral laws.
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lastly, from Sandor Katz's book, "How could mass production of animal products be anything but ugly? The gruesome realities of the industry that delivers cheap animal products to the supermarket are kept far from public view, but every so often a new sensational expose captures public attention. In 2003 Virgil Butler started an online blog following his firing by Tyson Foods, the world's largest poultry processor, from the job he had held for ten years at poultry processing plants in Arkansas. Butler's graphic accounts of his job ³have electrified animal-rights activists around the globe," according to the Los Angeles Times. Here is an excerpt from his blog:
Here come the birds through the stunner into the killing machine. It's time to get busy. You can expect to have to catch every fifth one or so, many that are not stunned. Remember, they come at you 182-186 per minute. There is blood every- where, in the 3' x 3' x 20' trough beneath the machine, on your face, your neck, your arms, all down your apron. You are covered in it. Sometimes you have to wash off the clots of blood, without taking your eyes off the line lest one slip by, which they will. . . . The sheer amount of killing and blood can really get to you after awhile, especially if you can't just shut down all emotion completely and turn into a robot zombie of death. You feel like part of a big death machine. Pretty much treated that way as well. Sometimes weird thoughts will enter your head. It's just you and the dying chickens. The surreal feelings grow into such a horror of the barbaric nature of your behavior.
You are murdering helpless birds by the thousands (75,000 to
90,000 a night). You are a killer. You can't really talk to anyone about this. The guys at work will think you are soft. Family and friends don't want to know about this. It makes them uncomfortable and unsure of and unsure of what to say or how to act. They can even look at you a little weird. Some don't want much else to do with you when they know what you do for a living. You are a killer. Out of desperation you send your mind elsewhere so that you don't end up like those guys that lose it. Like the guy that fell on his knees praying to God for forgiveness. Or the guy they hauled off to the mental hospital that kept having nightmares that chickens were after him. I've had those, too. (Shudder) Very creepy. You find something else to dwell on to try to remove yourself from the situation. To keep your mind from drowning in all those hundreds of gallons of blood you see. Most people who work this room and work in the hanging cage use some sort of stimulant to keep up the pace and some sort of mellowing substance to escape reality. . . .
You shut down all emotions eventually. You just can't care about anything. Because if you care about something, it opens the gate to all those bad feelings that you can't afford to feel and still do your job. You have bills to pay. You have to eat. But, you don't want chicken. You have to be really hungry to eat that. You know what goes into every bite. All the horror and negativity. All the brutality. Concentrated into every bite. . . . Welcome to the nightmare I escaped."
Bill wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@sn-indi.vsrv-sjc.super news.net:
ah well, i went to college with him at UNH. he was supposed to be a business major & switched to art. i was an aggie major. he talked about Millville *all* the time. lee
Millville is famous for three things that I know of. One is it was the home of holly world which encouraged American Hollies. It had a museum devoted to holly which is as hard as ebony. Was bought by a media corporation and then fell into neglect. I have a few hollies about my home Dr. Kelsan and another one or two whose name fails me.
Glass as art and beauty is #2 and Wheaton Village is worth a look .
Had the highest rate of VD at a local during WW2 is #3
Gary Snyder spoke on breaking the body. This a sacred act.
I like the poem in which the chicken and he are two but that night they are one.
"Real work" comes to mind but no one seems to to know of that vision here as it internal. So things are such as they are. Got some seeds today Malabar and others.
The chicken would really have to be down with poetry to enjoy that one.
Pretty much got seeds for three times what I have in gardening space. I've planed and re-planed the garden four times now. I'm getting antsy and it is only February. At least it is a short month. At least we shouldn't have any ordinances restricting water. We ave about twice normal rain fall now and the snow pack in the Sierras is deeper than normal.
Not that familiar with him but he and Ginsburg were very big here in the late 50's early 60's. I heard that Gary lived for once by going to the docks and sweeping up rice spilled from cargos. Boy is that time long gone.
Malabar is sort of like spinach that doesn't bolt and grows as a vine. There are two types I know of one is green the other reddish. Very tasty !
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or
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"Green Malabar Spinach (Basella rubra)
Heat loving, frost sensitive. Vigorous climbing vines grow through summer into fall. Glossy, thick, savoyed leaves resemble spinach. Mild Swiss chard taste. Use leaves and young stems sparingly in salads or stir-fries. Direct seed 1-2" apart,
1/4" deep, or start indoors and transplant outside after danger of frost. Thin to 6" between plants, rows 12" apart. Provide trellis. Avg.
16,300 seeds/lb. Mini: 100 seeds.
Days to Maturity or Bloom: 85"
My flower gardening effort is more devoted to shade with a few exceptions. Think hosta, Japanese maples, ferns, Day lilies etc. We used to food garden at my dads as he had more light but he is selling. So our food garden will be smaller and have less light here. Looks like micro gardening with the sun an issue. We have Chinese chives and other herbs scattered about the flower gardens and basil is planted yearly.
I'd guess the flower garden is 85% perennial and surrounds our home.
Let me know how it does for you. Sun is also a issue in my garden. The best I can do is 1 - 6 hours full Sun and because of an oak and bay canopy, much of the yard gets no full Sun.
Last year. I grew Tromboncino (Zucchetta Rampicante), a kind of climbing zuch, that tastes vaguely like artichokes.
I'm sure that I don't know why this is in this group but I'll bite anyway.
The writer needs to go out into the bush, with very little food, and spend a week hiking or something that involves a lot of physical activity, as I have. There is a difference between being hungry, and I mean really hungry, and merely "politely interested in the dainties of one's larder"
You will find out 2 things if you do this:
1) The human body can thrive on far, far, less food that we are normally used to eating - all you need is water and exercise.
2) When you get truly hungry, and I mean truly hungry, you will find out that you will have absolutely no compunction about ripping the head off any animal you come across and cooking it and eating it. And it will taste really, really good.
The only thing that separates human civilization from human barbarianism is a full stomach.
The reason is that this group is not just about boxwood hedges but food production as well (gardens). As such the subject of nutrition as well as industrial food production have had a place in this group. You will also find farm animals occasionally referred to as sources of manure or garden damage.
If you read the entire post, you will see that it had to do with the abhorrence and, illegality, of torturing your food.
Survivalism wouldn't seem to have much relevance to gardening either, since gardening is a civilized endeavor far removed from the life of a hunter-gatherer, even if the practice of the former did arise from the habits of the latter. Personally, I'd rather contemplate a freshly sliced garden tomato, topped with a couple of basil leaves and a slice of mozzarella. Whatever spins your wheels I guess.
Very testosterone of you Ted. I'll walk down this path with you long enough to reflect with you on the fate of the Donner party. Even when down to eating their belts and shoes, some of them kept diaries. Reflecting upon seeing a naked foot print in the snow, one of them wrote, "If you wouldn't eat an Indian, you've never been hungry". It apparently wasn't a great leap from that moral stance to eating your traveling companions. As far as I know, though, they just ate them. They didn't torture them first.
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