crash course in the mechanics of feedlots, confinement pens and manure lagoons,

[Guest guest]

*If you want a crash course in the mechanics of feedlots, confinement

pens and " manure lagoons, " [Nicolette Hahn Niman?s /Righteous Porkshop/)

is a good place to start, though you're sure to learn things you'd

rather not.*

 

* Will it surprise you, for instance, that when researchers from the

University of Maryland sampled packages of ground meat, they found

salmonella in 16 percent of the pork, 24 percent of the turkey and 35

percent of the chicken? *

 

* Did you know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has apparently

decided that chickens aren't really animals, since they're not covered

by laws relating to humane slaughter? Consequently, Niman tells us,

" spent hens are frequently vacuumed up into trucks and dumped into a

rotating blade chopper while still alive and conscious. " *

 

* Perhaps quite a few people are already aware that cattle, natural

herbivores, are fed the bones, organs and skin of other animals, along

with beef tallow, but surely it's a shock to discover that agribusiness

is addressing the problem of excess manure production in cattle by

feeding it back to them. *

 

 

 

GEOFF NICHOLSON (British journalist and author of /The Lost Art of

Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism//,

/2008), ?On Factory Farms, It?s Far from Hog Heaven,? /San Francisco

Chronicle,/ 8 March 2009