Factory farming's negative reach

The following few paragraphs need no editorial comment:

. . . “According to reports by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and others, factory farming has made animal agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global warming (it is significantly more destructive than transportation alone), and one of the Top 2 or 3 causes of all of the most serious environmental problems, both global and local: air and water pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity . . . Eating factory-farmed animals – which is to say virtually every piece of meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in restaurants – is almost certainly the single worst thing that humans do to the environment.

“Every factory-farmed animal is, as a practice, treated in ways that would be illegal if it were a dog or a cat. Turkeys have been so genetically modified they are incapable of natural reproduction. To acknowledge that these things matter is not sentimental. It is a confrontation with the facts about animals and ourselves. We know these things matter.

“Meat and seafood are in no way necessary for my family. . . . And we are healthier without it. . . . ”

(from “Against Meat: Or at least 99 percent of it” by Jonathan Safran Foer, The New York Times Magazine (The Food Issue), October 11, 2009, pp. 68+.)

"Look out!"

“Leopard behind you!” Does that sound like a common warning among humans? Of course not. But in her (NYTimes) blog, Olivia Judson discusses the kinds of alarm calls (non-human) animals use to alert one another to danger.

And some of those warning sounds can be surprisingly predator-specific. For instance, Judson says, vervet monkeys make different sounds to warn of snake or eagle; at the first sound, the monkeys look to the ground, while at the other, they look up. At “leopard,” they head for the trees.

Other animals do much the same, distinguishing among predators with the sounds they make. She details the alarms issued by Gunnison’s prairie dogs, meerkats and black-capped chickadees – some so subtle as to differentiate between what’s coming and how close it is, and how dangerous a resting predator is.

Possibly more surprising, Judson reports that “animals of one species often respond to the alarms of another.” That can include choosing to ignore an alert if it’s a threat only for the caller, but not the “overhearing” animal. And of course, predators can hear the warning calls too, and may decide since their cover’s blown, they’ll quit for now.

Whether animals do all this because of innate intelligence, personal experience or watching what happens to others is not yet known. One theory is that positive reinforcement – when young animals sound the right alert, adults join in – plays a part.

(http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/leopard-behind-you/)

All of which may prompt us to think about how we signal danger to other people; whether our words are as specific as some animal warning sounds; whether those beyond our intended audience listen and act too – and how we learned do any of this in the first place.

(All this talk of animal warnings recalls Ogden Nash's famous alert; it's irresistible here: . . . “if called by a panther/don’t anther.”)
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Lions and tigers and bears

"And now for something completely different": comments on the current Discovery channel series, "Nature's Most Amazing Events," which consists of 6 hour-long (counting far too many commercials) programs starring animals of all kinds -- narwhals and sardines to polar and grizzly bears and lion prides. birds of all kinds. breathtaking nature shots -- aka, habitat!

One creature that comes out a hero is the salmon, which nourishes more life on the planet than any other animal, or words to that effect. This fish feeds predators of all kinds during the annual salmon run, and then, in death, it fertilizes the forests where its body's often taken by those predators -- trees grow taller, grass grows greener . . . so in turn the life cycle is supported. One surprising fact: the Pacific salmon, featured in this show, dies after laying its eggs, while the Atlantic salmon does not. The narrator said this difference is a mystery to scientists.

Sardines by the millions are shown moving up the coast of Sourth Africa, drawn by the cold water they must have. En route, they attract dolphins, which drive them upward for the waiting gannets, which then "plunge dive" as deep as 30-60 feet for sardine sandwiches. Besides dolphins, the 8-inch long fish are also pursued by sharks and a 40-foot whale whose name sounded like "Brutus whale," but couldn't have been! For that creature, one "bite" means millions of sardines. And still, half of them survive the trip north only to turn around and head south when the cold water there beckons.

Tonight, I'm expecting (hoping for) elephants. After yesterday's circus demo, it's time to see more of them, this time in potentially happier circumstances. However rough their life might seem -- as with the seasonally starving animals in earlier segments -- at least they're with their kind, their community, and in their natural habitat.
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"They can't say 'no'"

As I write this post, a circus show is underway in Trenton. With a few others, I was there earlier today for the first of 3 shows, hoping to change ticket holders' minds about attending because of the horrible ways circus animals are treated and must live. But I doubt we did any good at all for the animals, all involuntarily involved.

First, we were "penned in" -- literally behind bars at 2 sites near the arena but not near the crowd heading to the entrances. We could hold signs and one woman used a bull horn, but I had to wonder who could read the signs or hear the horn. George, another demonstrator, was late arriving because, despite telling the police about his rights, he'd been arrested. (He was given a summons after sitting in the back of the police car for 20 minutes, then released.)

Anyway, for the 2nd time, I've decided that it's pretty much a waste of time to demonstrate against the circus under present conditions. (I've asked Kim, who headed it up, if it's possible to get a permit ahead of time, which might also alert the police to our plans and maybe even make a few friends.)

Once home, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Trenton Times. The way local newspapers print circus stories with nary a reference to animal-free circuses or the existence of demonstrators against treatment of circus animals or the current trial of Ringling Bros. for animal cruelty . . . is a great source of irritation. There's no depth/investigative reporting going on with circus stories; newspapers seem merely to take dictation/reprint circus promos.

In the letter-writing process, I re-checked circuses.com, a PETA site about the horrors of circuses. At the top, a drawing of an elephant shedding big tears with the words "They can't say 'no'" grabbed my attention. Those words summarize much of the purpose of this blog: to speak for animals, who can't speak for themselves. (Yes, sometimes they do "speak," by refusing to obey or acting out; the current trial of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey indicates what happens to such animals.)

Circuses are only one of the awful things that people do to/with animals -- non-human animals, that is. The PETA site also included a quote from Desmond Morris that I'll reprint here. It pretty well sums up my objection to circuses.

"The idea that it is funny to see wild animals coerced into acting like clumsy humans, or thrilling to see powerful beasts reduced to cringing cowards by a whipcracking trainer is primitive and medieval. It stems from the old idea that we are superior to other species and have the right to hold dominion over them." —Dr. Desmond Morris, anthropologist, animal behaviorist, author
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