Dairy - Wholesome Goodness or Wholesale Corruption?

The dairy industry loves to sweet talk its consumers about how beneficial its products are. Meanwhile, it's trying to gain approval to add the questionable chemical aspartame to its liquid poison -- and without additional labeling, mind you! As a weaned adult, I find this move by the dairy industry troubling at best. See http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/aspartame-in-milk-without-label-big.html

And as a weaned taxpayer, I find the Milk Income Loss Contract Payments even though they're legal -- objectionable as well. Why should my money go to support an industry that has trouble keeping its products marketable? Hum? 

Meanwhile Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) is in court over allegations that it manipulated trading in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Cheese Spot and Milk Futures markets to drive up the price of dairy products across the US. Again there was trickery because there was an unwanted "excess" of their "cheese" products: http://www.dairyreporter.com/Manufacturers/Dairy-Farmers-of-America-facing-court-over-alleged-manipulative-dairy-trading

As if those questionable activities aren't bad enough, what about the deceit on the farms regarding the employment of illegal workers? A legal case involving a Michigan dairy, filed in 2007, just came to a close. The investigation revealed that the Bad Axe dairy operation employed 78 different illegal aliens from approximately 2000 to 2007, which constituted almost 75 percent of its workforce over that time period. 

And in Idaho the dairy industry admits that between 75% to 90% of employees are here and employed "illegally". Bro Jeb Bush is on the task force, along with a bishop with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento to create a "compassionate approach to foreign workers." I imagine the tasks are vile and the pay is low. Luckily these immigrants found kind "overseers" who supplied them with the work no one else wanted. I suppose picking cotton was once like that too. :/

            

Courtesy of New York Historical Society

Also, in case you didn't know, The DairyHerd Network reports that Illinois is the 4th state to allow undocumented workers driver's licenses. It's for the good of everyone on the road don't you know?

Now here's the big question: If cow's milk is in such "demand" (enough to create cows that "yield" almost 13 times more than her calf could ever drink)... If dairy is such a "vital" part of the economy... If "cheese" eating is all that "powerful," then why all the underhanded practices and seedy shenanigans? Why not pay legal employees a proper wage? Why all the wholesale corruption? 

If you're still drinking cow's milk and you're wondering what other things this industry has lied about...
There's abundant good reason to Dump Dairy. The black-and-white fact of it is... Milk isn't wholesome at all!

Art Work by Sarah Kiser

Holocaust on a Conveyor Belt - Assembly Line of Death

Holocaust on a Conveyor Belt - Assembly Line of Death



Scenes taken from the film Samsara

The Holocaust to nonhumans as explained by Gary Yourofsky.

"Before they reach their end, the pigs get a shower, a real one. Water sprays from all angles to wash the farm off of them. Then they begin to feel crowded. The pen narrows like a funnel; the drivers behind urge the pigs forward, until one at a time they climb onto a moving ramp. The ramp's sides move as well as it's floor. The floor is cleated to give the pigs footing. The sides are made of blocks of wood so that they will not bruise, and they slant inward to wedge the pigs along. Now they scream, never having been on such a ramp, smelling the smells they smell ahead. I do not want to over dramatize, because you have read all this before. But it was a frightening experience, seeing their fear, seeing so many of them go by. It had to remind me of things no one wants to be reminded of any more, all mobs, all death marches, all mass murders and extinctions, the slaughter of the buffalo, the slaughter of the Indian, the Inferno, Judgment Day, complicity, expensive races, races living at the expense of the race."
~ Richard Rhodes from Watching the Animals 

There is a more civilized way to live... Live Vegan.

Agriprocessor - The Under Belly of the Meat Industry

This story will help further expose the under belly of the meat industry -

This is what happened at the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa. As usual, it's always the exploitation of the lowliest people hired to do the lowliest of jobs... These people, like the animals - are all "disposable".

From the accounts of one of the employees: "Americans want to go to the supermarket and find their meat neatly packaged. They don't want to hear about the 14-year-old girl from Guatemala who worked 12 hours a day, or the woman who was raped by her supervisor at the meat packing plant. They don't want to hear about the mothers who have "kill" water thrown on them or hear a young girl crying from the pain in her hands from operating power meat cutting shears."

And yes, the management of the slaughterhouse were arrested. Some serving prison time for bank fraud and others on probation for aiding and abetting a pattern of hiring undocumented aliens and violating child labor laws.

So there were human rights violations... as well as animal "abuse" ... But hey, it's a slaughterhouse! Does anyone really think these animals get romanced to the kill floor?

See Courting Dairy Cows - Then Eating Them - Rapacious Husbandry

And so to the consumer of these products... The flesh had from murder and made from the toil of the destitute - Do you understand now what the cost "cheap meat" is?

We each can feed ourselves just as economically - getting all the necessary calories, nourishment and "protein" from a plant based diet. For these reasons... And so many others -

Please, Go Vegan.

Buddhist Refugees Find Slaughterhouse Jobs

CHEAP LABOR = CHEAP MEAT

As our economic woes seem to worsen... and unemployment rates continue to rise - It's interesting to note that the JBS USA meatpacking plant will be hiring refugees from Myanmar (a small country the size of Texas, on the outskirts of China). These newcomers are scheduled for a meeting that will discuss their language, beliefs and culture. 85% of Myanmar citizens are Buddhist. In 2007 there was a peaceful protests which ballooned over several weeks, and Buddhist monks joined the throngs of protesters when government troops used force and wrongfully imprisoned demonstrators. So doesn't it figure - that these ravaged and disadvantaged people should make their way here to find jobs in slaughterhouses? I know there are those that will say that at least it's better than where they were... but how "fair" is it here anyway... working in a meat packing plant? According to the National Average Wage Index the average person earns $40,405.48/year. Contrast this with the offerings of any slaughterhouse - which is $17,820 per year. I don't know why they just don't call it "minimum wage"... unless of course it's even less than minimum wage after deductions are made for the worker's clothing, equipment and safety supplies. And although the industry claims it prefers to hire high school grads... it's doubtful that these refugees from thousands of miles away will even speak English - but they are hired nonetheless. A meat packer's job would include the use of several kinds of knives, cleavers, and saws... they might be "stunners" or "stickers".... Or they might be further down the bleed rail where they will pressure steam the animal in an attempt to remove e-coli bacteria from the hair before evisceration. Other chemical are also used in this stage including acid washes, sodium chloride, chloride dioxide, potassium lactate... but these are used sparingly as they are damaging to floors... oh yeah, and also to the workers using these chemicals. But this is what it takes to get cheap meat to the plate... Willing desperate workers, fair wages slave labor, and happy animals captive, terrified, murdered beings. Two kinds of people work these jobs... the ones who have no choice because they are impoverished... and those who actually enjoy it. Either way, if you're eating meat, they are in your employment. End the cycle of exploitation... Be mindful... Go Vegan.

On Slaughterhouses - Meat is Murder on Workers Too

On slaughterhouses - and what the truth really is(n't): Here's where I get confused with the double speak often heard from the meat industry: According to this article: slaughterhouses were not removed to circumvent fair labor practices - they were shifted to more rural areas because that's where the livestock are:

"Janet Riley, a vice president of the American Meat Institute, acknowledged that her industry relies heavily on immigrant labor. She said that's partly because most meatpacking plants are in rural areas, where American-born workers tend to be scarce. "Foreign-born workers are eager for labor, and they're willing to move to rural areas," she said. Decades ago, most meatpackers were in cities. Even then, Riley said, many of their workers were immigrants looking for a place to start. She disputed many labor activists' contention that the plants moved to the countryside to avoid unions. "They moved out because it made more sense to go out to where the livestock are," she said."

Then we have this conflicting information:

"...just about all of Alabama's 577,000 beef cows will someday be trucked to feedlots and processors more than 1,000 miles away. Some 15,000 cows pass through the Robertsdale Livestock Auction each year, most of them headed for feedlots in Georgia and the Carolinas, the others headed to local farms, where they'll be fattened up and later resold, said manager Harry Bryant."

So which is it? My guess might be best explained here because in truth it has everything to do with not only exploiting the animals but the workers as well... And it's not only the beef industry guilty of worker abuses - the poultry/pig industries are vicious jobs too. To sum up: 1. Most slaughterhouse workers are immigrants - The industry uses the lowliest of people to do the lowliest of jobs on the lowliest of animals... 2. Slaughterhouses prefer to be in rural areas where employees may be picked from a large pool of disadvantaged and *undocumented workers*. 3. Slaughterhouses choose such locations because decent paying jobs are rare thus insuring cheap, non-unionized labor. So - even if you don't care about Animal Rights - even if you think *taste* justifies the killing of billions of sentient beings for epicurean pleasure (as unhealthy as consuming flesh may be)... Do you care about human rights violations? Do you care about fair and equal pay - Do you care about corruption within an industry overseen by FSIS and the USDA? Do you care about repeated offenses ignored by the Department of Labor and the Department of Immigration? Next time you indulge in your *cheap* 99cent burger - you might want to ask yourself is it consistent with your values? Does it reflect honestly with what moral ethics you support? Are you trading compassion for man (and animals) for a pound of flesh? And if all this is incongruent - if you realize that your health suffers, that resources are being wasted, that human and nonhumans are suffering - why not go vegan and align your values with your deeds?