WaPo: When Animals Suffer, So Do We

[LeftyMom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101511.html

By Kelly Overton
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A17

Do the animal rights nuts know something we don't?

As we observe the growing number of avian flu cases worldwide, bide time until the eventual large-scale outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States and hope what the world experienced in 2004 wasn't just a dress rehearsal for SARS, the time has come to reconsider humanity's treatment of nonhuman animals -- if only for the repercussions to our own health.

In past decades we have removed animals from pastures, sunshine and fresh air to stack them on top of each other in petri-dish-like buildings. As wild animals lose more and more of their habitats, they are forced to live on the perimeters of cities and towns and in a proximity to humans that increasingly appears to be detrimental not only to their health but also to ours.

Our health is being put at risk by our demand for low food prices. In the past decade consumers have chosen low prices over quality in the products and services we purchase -- but animals aren't products that can be endlessly manipulated for lower food costs. As a society it is time to ask ourselves if we are willing to trade our health and the health of our land, air and water in return for cheap milk, eggs and meat.

Because factory farms are legally recognized as farms -- not the industrial sites they are -- they are exempt from many of our most important environmental laws. The communities surrounding most factory farms have become wastelands from the constant flow of toxic emissions and waste polluting the air, ground and water. Inside the farms, safety and human health also take a back seat to profit. Animals too sick or diseased to stand are dragged or bulldozed to slaughter and into our food supply. Mad cow disease was born of such recklessness and greed -- a desire by corporations to minimize financial losses by using the remains of diseased animals to feed the animals that enter our food supply.

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Continued at link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101511.html

[rpannier]

1. Good article

Thnaks

[adriennui]

2. i don't demand lower food prices

and neither should anyone else at the expense of our humanity or purity of our food intake.

we treat our pets as members of the family, yet don't care about how our "food" is treated. how i wish i had the discipline to be a vegetarian.

[MasonJar]

3. I am a vegetarian (who eats seafood, which I am moving away

from slowly) and I find it so easy. Just remember how most animals are treated and killed and eating meat becomes a real no-no.

[LeftyMom]

4. I don't find that meat tempts me either

After a few months as a vegetarian, I really stopped percieving it as potential food and started seeing it the way I'd see a needle on the sidewalk or a unscooped dog deposit- as a nasty thing I want nothing to do with.

[Lindacooks]

5. Excellent article, and very true.

That's what the anti-enviornmentalists don't get. Humans are at the top of the food chain, and everything that goes on in the food chain ends up affecting us.

[Matilda]

6. The article speaks the truth.

I just don't want to eat food that comes from animals that have been ill-treated, but even if we
look at it from a self-serving point of view, it's still valid. If we cherish the earth and all
its creatures, it will continue to nurture us. If not, we will disappear along with the animals,
birds and fish that we treat so shamefully.

We are the custodians of this planet, not its owners.

[OneBlueSky]

7. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED . . . the truth about how humans treat . . .

animals is long overdue as a major area of concern . .. it's all part of what humankind is doing to our environment, i.e. our own home . . . even the lowest animals on the chain refrain from fouling their own nests . . . we could take lessons from them . . .