Farm Sanctuary - Watkins Glen NY - NYT 1/2/04

[Guest guest]

Thought this was also of interest. I post it hoping that it will not be seen as

an endorsement of attempts to accept more animals that can be taken care of.

I'm sure these folks also have an excellent fund-raising effort. Then again,

it does show how much you can do when the financial part does fall into place.

 

I'd be curious to see how many bulls or oxen they have. My impression is that

for the most part, animal sanctuaries prefer to avoid them -- but it does

mention that they have at least one.

 

ys

hkdd

 

*********

 

Where the Cows Come Home

 

January 2, 2004

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

 

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y., Dec. 30 - When the word arrived here at Farm Sanctuary that

the government had banned the butchering of cows too sick or injured to walk,

there was no time for a victory party.

 

"Most of the people here have animals, and they had to get home and feed them,"

explained Gene Bauston, a co-founder of the sanctuary and its president.

 

As if to make the point, the four dogs that he and his wife and co-founder,

Lorri, take to work each day charged through the reception area. They looked as

if they might be celebrating something - but then, four dogs headed home for

food usually are.

 

Mr. Bauston headed out for a quiet dinner at House of Hong, this town's lone

Chinese restaurant. The owner handed him the vegetarian menu without being

asked.

 

Farm Sanctuary, which runs Web sites like SentientBeings.org, NoDowners.org,

NoVeal.org, BanCruelFarms.org and AdoptATurkey.org, has been pressuring the

government since 1998 to halt the use of sick and injured cows as food, arguing

that they are "adulterated" and therefore illegal in interstate commerce under

the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.

 

Until Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture had disagreed, arguing that not

all meat from a sick cow is adulterated and that approving such cattle was

long-established practice. It denied Farm Sanctuary's petition in 1999 and

fought its subsequent lawsuit.

 

Just two weeks ago, Mr. Bauston said, a federal appellate court upheld the

sanctuary's right to sue.

 

Through the Freedom of Information Act, he said, he has amassed thousands of

"suspect cards" from slaughterhouses - records that inspectors are required to

fill out when assessing an animal unable to walk.

 

The records show that inspectors approved animals with malignant lymphoma,

hepatitis, pneumonia and gangrene. Federal regulations allow inspectors

discretion to decide which animals are fit to eat. Mr. Bauston reached into a

batch of 18,000 more cards he just received and showed one on which an

inspector had written "tox," and then crossed it out and put in "broken leg."

Toxic shock can kill dairy cows, often when mastitis, an udder infection,

spreads unchecked.

 

On another, an inspector seeing a sick animal noted that it was "sluggish,

dull, not responsive" - possible signs of disease, Mr. Bauston said, perhaps

brain disease. The diagnosis made after the kill was "broken leg."

 

Mr. Bauston said that he was "very happy, and a little bit stunned" by

Tuesday's decision to ban the slaughter of sick or injured cows for human food

in the wake of finding such a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad

cow disease, on Dec. 23. He is still waiting to see how the government will

determine which cows are classified "downers," and hopes the ban will improve

veterinary care of older cows since the incentive to sell them for meat will be

gone.

 

He finds slaughterhouse practices cruel, complaining that "in the agribusiness

industry, suffering doesn't matter." He once asked a slaughterhouse manager why

he accepted sick animals, and why farmers sold them instead of calling a

veterinarian. The joking reply, he said, suggested the manager had lost some

perspective: "He told me, `Look, if your wife was really sick, and you could

get $500 for her, would you bring her here, or would you kill her at home?'

My jaw dropped."

 

Meat industry spokesmen have said their practices are legal, killing is done

quickly and the beef supply is safe.

 

 

Mr. Bauston, who grew up in Hollywood Hills as the son of a hotelier, looks

more like someone who might play beach volleyball with Tom Cruise than like

someone who financed his early career in animal rescue by selling vegetarian

hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts.

 

He wears mud-covered boots and a gray sweatshirt that imitates an Army one, but

says "FARMY." In the farm office, his wife wore her purple velvet "glamour

overalls," but quickly changed to rough ones for a tour of this 175-acre farm

where about 600 animals, from turkeys to steers, live comfortably, mostly after

being rescued by police or animal control officers.

 

In the 1980's, the Baustons, who met at a Greenpeace event, traveled the

country - in, yes, a VW van - clandestinely videotaping operations, sometimes

with a buttonhole camera. They found cows unable to walk rolled into

slaughterhouses by forklifts and hatcheries where unwanted male chicks were

tossed alive onto a tractor auger that dismembered them as it carried them

outdoors to their fate - a manure spreader.

 

 

Mr. Bauston described hiding behind the rendering truck at a California

slaughterhouse with the nonchalance some veterans use about battles. "That

wasn't pleasant," he said. "But they were new guts - they hadn't been in the

sun very long. Wasn't as bad as some. ..."

 

He has been threatened and shoved, he said, but never hit. His tapes, handed to

television stations and shown to legislators at about the same time as an

outbreak of E. coli bacteria at a Jack in the Box restaurant, helped lead to

California's outlawing the slaughter of the sick and injured cattle in 1995, he

said.

 

His films of sows spending their lives caged in rows so they could be fed at

one end and hosed off at the other without ever seeing the piglets they gave

birth to led to Florida banning such "gestation crates," he said.

 

His volunteers are pushing for similar laws in other states. They also call

prominent restaurants and ask them to remove veal from their menus if it is

raised the usual way: with the calves penned in crates and fed a diet that

produces anemia to keep their flesh white.

 

About 350 restaurants, including Tavern on the Green, Lutèce, Montrachet and

the Hard Rock Cafe chain, are listed on their Web site as having agreed.

 

What first strikes a visitor to Farm Sanctuary is how enormous the animals are.

 

Farmers usually kill pigs at 250 pounds, Mr. Bauston explained. The sanctuary's

can weigh up to 800, and are the size of pygmy hippos. Their tusks must be

sawed off each month.

 

Alby is a former calf who, Mr. Bauston said, was rescued about 13 years ago

from an angry farm worker who had let 51 other calves starve to death. He

weighed less than 100 pounds; he now weighs about 2,800 and is six feet at the

shoulder.

 

Queenie, a cow who escaped from a slaughterhouse in Queens in 2000, is here. So

is Simon, a goat who was abandoned after growing up in a Brooklyn apartment.

 

Veterinarians, Mr. Bauston said, have visited to see how animals bred for the

industry can age when allowed to.

 

At the center of the farm is the grave of Hilda, the first animal the Baustons

rescued. The ewe has a granite

tombstone: "Rescued from Stockyard Aug. 3, 1986. Died of

Old Age, Sept. 25, 1997." Mr. Bauston showed a picture of the "dead pile" at a

Pennsylvania slaughterhouse where they found her.

 

"You can see a piece of another sheep's skeleton," he said. "The maggots were

literally inches deep. Then this one animal lifted her head a little. She was

still alive! We put her in the van and took her to a vet - we thought to be

euthanized. But in 20 minutes, she was walking. She had just suffered heat

exhaustion in the truck."

 

At the gravesite, Mrs. Bauston credited Hilda for Tuesday's ban. "You did it,

girl," she said. "She was the idea for this campaign. She's the founder. We're

just the muckers."

 

They moved here in 1989 because land was cheap. The Schuyler County hills look

like a frostbitten Appalachia, a rolling sea of staved-in barns and rusting

tractors, and they got 175 acres with barn and equipment for $100,000. They

have another sanctuary in Orland, Calif.

 

Now they have an annual budget of $3 million, which comes from 100,000 members

who pay $20 each and donors like Mary Tyler Moore.

 

In summers, young volunteers live in guest houses. Though he cannot sneak them

into slaughterhouses, Mr. Bauston takes them to livestock auctions to

radicalize them. "They look in the animals' eyes and see the fear," he said.

"Then they watch the buyers, who see them as pieces of meat."

 

He wants a change in law to get rid of the food industry's exemption from all

animal cruelty laws.

 

Although he does not eat meat, eggs or milk, he does not like being lumped with

groups the meat industry dismisses as fanatics, "seeking a vegetarian society."

 

"We encourage a vegetarian lifestyle, but we don't demand it," he said. "But

when it comes to cruelty, we go to the wall."

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/02/nyregion/02COW.html?ex=1074087186&ei=1&en=f0f

407614a07f888

[Guest guest]

> Now they have an annual budget of $3 million, which comes from 100,000

members

> who pay $20 each and donors like Mary Tyler Moore.

 

If ISKCON had 10,000 donors each giving $20 a year, we could be breeding 20

cows a year and be assured of lifetime protection for the cow and it's calf,

IMHO. Maybe more, if managed properly.

[Guest guest]

S S wrote:

 

>One year ago farm sanctuary had a total of 34 cows and

>bulls, in addition to other animals.

>

Thanks. I suspected it was not too many.

 

ys

hkdd

 

>--- "Noma T. Petroff" <npetroff (AT) bowdoin (DOT) edu> wrote:

>

>

>>Thought this was also of interest. I post it hoping

>>that it will not be seen as

>>an endorsement of attempts to accept more animals

>>that can be taken care of.

>>I'm sure these folks also have an excellent

>>fund-raising effort. Then again,

>>it does show how much you can do when the financial

>>part does fall into place.

>>

>>I'd be curious to see how many bulls or oxen they

>>have. My impression is that

>>for the most part, animal sanctuaries prefer to

>>avoid them -- but it does

>>mention that they have at least one.

>>

>>ys

>>hkdd

>>

>>*********

>>

>>Where the Cows Come Home

>>

>>January 2, 2004

>> By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

>>

>>

>>WATKINS GLEN, N.Y., Dec. 30 - When the word arrived

>>here at Farm Sanctuary that

>>the government had banned the butchering of cows too

>>sick or injured to walk,

>>there was no time for a victory party.

>>

>>"Most of the people here have animals, and they had

>>to get home and feed them,"

>>explained Gene Bauston, a co-founder of the

>>sanctuary and its president.

>>

>>As if to make the point, the four dogs that he and

>>his wife and co-founder,

>>Lorri, take to work each day charged through the

>>reception area. They looked as

>>if they might be celebrating something - but then,

>>four dogs headed home for

>>food usually are.

>>

>>Mr. Bauston headed out for a quiet dinner at House

>>of Hong, this town's lone

>>Chinese restaurant. The owner handed him the

>>vegetarian menu without being

>>asked.

>>

>>Farm Sanctuary, which runs Web sites like

>>SentientBeings.org, NoDowners.org,

>>NoVeal.org, BanCruelFarms.org and AdoptATurkey.org,

>>has been pressuring the

>>government since 1998 to halt the use of sick and

>>injured cows as food, arguing

>>that they are "adulterated" and therefore illegal in

>>interstate commerce under

>>the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.

>>

>>Until Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture had

>>disagreed, arguing that not

>>all meat from a sick cow is adulterated and that

>>approving such cattle was

>>long-established practice. It denied Farm

>>Sanctuary's petition in 1999 and

>>fought its subsequent lawsuit.

>>

>>Just two weeks ago, Mr. Bauston said, a federal

>>appellate court upheld the

>>sanctuary's right to sue.

>>

>>Through the Freedom of Information Act, he said, he

>>has amassed thousands of

>>"suspect cards" from slaughterhouses - records that

>>inspectors are required to

>>fill out when assessing an animal unable to walk.

>>

>>The records show that inspectors approved animals

>>with malignant lymphoma,

>>hepatitis, pneumonia and gangrene. Federal

>>regulations allow inspectors

>>discretion to decide which animals are fit to eat.

>>Mr. Bauston reached into a

>>batch of 18,000 more cards he just received and

>>showed one on which an

>>inspector had written "tox," and then crossed it out

>>and put in "broken leg."

>>Toxic shock can kill dairy cows, often when

>>mastitis, an udder infection,

>>spreads unchecked.

>>

>>On another, an inspector seeing a sick animal noted

>>that it was "sluggish,

>>dull, not responsive" - possible signs of disease,

>>Mr. Bauston said, perhaps

>>brain disease. The diagnosis made after the kill was

>>"broken leg."

>>

>>Mr. Bauston said that he was "very happy, and a

>>little bit stunned" by

>>Tuesday's decision to ban the slaughter of sick or

>>injured cows for human food

>>in the wake of finding such a cow with bovine

>>spongiform encephalopathy, or mad

>>cow disease, on Dec. 23. He is still waiting to see

>>how the government will

>>determine which cows are classified "downers," and

>>hopes the ban will improve

>>veterinary care of older cows since the incentive to

>>sell them for meat will be

>>gone.

>>

>>He finds slaughterhouse practices cruel, complaining

>>that "in the agribusiness

>>industry, suffering doesn't matter." He once asked a

>>slaughterhouse manager why

>>he accepted sick animals, and why farmers sold them

>>instead of calling a

>>veterinarian. The joking reply, he said, suggested

>>the manager had lost some

>>perspective: "He told me, `Look, if your wife was

>>really sick, and you could

>>get $500 for her, would you bring her here, or would

>>you kill her at home?'

>>My jaw dropped."

>>

>>Meat industry spokesmen have said their practices

>>are legal, killing is done

>>quickly and the beef supply is safe.

>>

>>

>>Mr. Bauston, who grew up in Hollywood Hills as the

>>son of a hotelier, looks

>>more like someone who might play beach volleyball

>>with Tom Cruise than like

>>someone who financed his early career in animal

>>rescue by selling vegetarian

>>hot dogs at Grateful Dead concerts.

>>

>>He wears mud-covered boots and a gray sweatshirt

>>that imitates an Army one, but

>>says "FARMY." In the farm office, his wife wore her

>>purple velvet "glamour

>>overalls," but quickly changed to rough ones for a

>>tour of this 175-acre farm

>>where about 600 animals, from turkeys to steers,

>>live comfortably, mostly after

>>being rescued by police or animal control officers.

>>

>>In the 1980's, the Baustons, who met at a Greenpeace

>>event, traveled the

>>country - in, yes, a VW van - clandestinely

>>videotaping operations, sometimes

>>with a buttonhole camera. They found cows unable to

>>walk rolled into

>>slaughterhouses by forklifts and hatcheries where

>>unwanted male chicks were

>>tossed alive onto a tractor auger that dismembered

>>them as it carried them

>>outdoors to their fate - a manure spreader.

>>

>>

>>Mr. Bauston described hiding behind the rendering

>>truck at a California

>>slaughterhouse with the nonchalance some veterans

>>use about battles. "That

>>wasn't pleasant," he said. "But they were new guts -

>>they hadn't been in the

>>sun very long. Wasn't as bad as some. ..."

>>

>>He has been threatened and shoved, he said, but

>>never hit. His tapes, handed to

>>television stations and shown to legislators at

>>about the same time as an

>>outbreak of E. coli bacteria at a Jack in the Box

>>restaurant, helped lead to

>>California's outlawing the slaughter of the sick and

>>injured cattle in 1995, he

>>said.

>>

>>His films of sows spending their lives caged in rows

>>so they could be fed at

>>one end and hosed off at the other without ever

>>seeing the piglets they gave

>>birth to led to Florida banning such "gestation

>>crates," he said.

>>

>>His volunteers are pushing for similar laws in other

>>states. They also call

>>prominent restaurants and ask them to remove veal

>>from their menus if it is

>>raised the usual way: with the calves penned in

>>crates and fed a diet that

>>produces anemia to keep their flesh white.

>>

>>About 350 restaurants, including Tavern on the

>>Green, Lutèce, Montrachet and

>>the Hard Rock Cafe chain, are listed on their Web

>>site as having agreed.

>>

>>

>>

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