Eastern Shore Sanctuary Blog

On 28 May 2001, 24 multicolored roosters flew into the then very young Eastern Shore Sanctuary, setting off a chain of events that would lead the Sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones to devise a method of rehabilitating roosters used in cockfighting and to begin thinking about the role of gender in animal abuse. (Read pattrice’s reflections on that day here.)

On 28 May 2009, the Eastern Shore Sanctuary announces a major move with its roots in that colorful day so many years ago. In mid-June, the main site of the sanctuary will relocate from our small plot in poultry country to a larger site in dairy country. This move will allow us sustainably expand our operations while still staying true to our original purpose. More to the point of this story, this move will allow us to expand our rooster rehabilitation project, continue to work on the gendered exploitation of hens for eggs, and extend our work on gendered exploitation of animals to include dairy.

Although we are relocating the main sanctuary site, we will not have “flown the coop” on the Eastern Shore. In addition to continuing to work for agriculture reform on the Delmarva and other regions despoiled by factory farming, we will maintain a presence on the Eastern Shore in order to ensure that any “broiler” chicken who escapes the clutches of the local poultry industry will be taken to sanctuary.

We know that our allies and supporters will have a lot of questions about this move. Hop over to our main website for the FAQs about the move. Stick around to explore our renovated website, which is jam-packed with new essays and fresh links.

Moves cost money. While we won’t be building the birds a deluxe apartment in the sky, we will be fencing off fresh foraging yards and constructing “green” coops. If you value the work we’ve done over the past nine years and join us in looking forward to the work we will do from our new location, please chip in to help us pay for the passive solar heating system in those new coops and other costs of expansion and relocation.

Earlier this year, the Eastern Shore Sanctuary welcomed a small number of roosters and hens who had been confiscated from a squalid hole-in-the-wall where they had been held for purposes of cockfighting and, in the case of the hens, breeding. The local Humane Society that took in the birds and placed them with us made a very moving video of their journey. Watch it here. For more information about cockfighting and our methods of rehabilitating former fighters, visit the rooster rehab page on our website.

Former fighter

On 17 April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that greenhouse gases do endanger public health and welfare and, thus, carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions will be regulated from now on. As the meat industry organ Meating Place reported, “a collective shiver went down the back of animal agriculture” at that news.

Why? Because animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than any other industrial sector. Why? Because, in addition to the massive quantities of CO2 associated with the mechanics of hauling animals to slaughter factories, running the machines in those factories, and then hauling chopped up body parts to grocery stores and food processing plants that themselves emit CO2, animals themselves emit methane. Jokes about cow burps and pig farts aside, the methane released by millions of animals (not to mention massive manure lagoons) adds up to a primary cause of climate change.

According to Meating Place reporter Janie Gabbett:

If the EPA definition of air pollutants includes methane, USDA estimated that any agricultural operation of more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle, 200 hogs or 500 acres of corn would be subject to emission fees. The American Farm Bureau Federation calculated it would cost farmers and ranchers $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per beef cow and $21.87 per hog and affect more than 90 percent of the livestock industry.

Not surprisingly, the industry is already fighting back:

Within hours of the announcement, Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), a former Secretary of Agriculture under the Bush Administration, announced he is co-sponsoring legislation to protect livestock producers from regulations that might result…. The proposed legislation would amend the Clean Air Act to preclude regulation of naturally occurring livestock emissions, including methane and carbon dioxide.

Worryingly, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was on the Daily Show last week, jokingly assuring viewers that the EPA won’t be regulating cows. The comment period on the ruling stating simply that greenhouse gases shall be regulated isn’t even over and already they’ve decided to exempt the industry most responsible for methane from regulation?!?

Obviously, we all — animal advocates, environmentalists, and anybody worried about the impact of climate change on communities — ought to be just as active as the for-profit industries seeking to squirm out of regulation. Here’s how:

First, tell the EPA what you think! (Just click on the “add comment” balloon to exercise your right to participate in this public hearing.) Say that not only must greenhouse gases be regulated but also that regulation must extend to animal agriculture. You may wish to cite the UN-FAO report identifying animal agriculture as a chief cause of global warming and/or other credible sources of information concerning climate change and methane.

Next, contact your Senator and Representative and urge them not to support any legislation that misguidedly exempts factory farms from environmental regulations. Explain that, even though “regulating cows” sounds silly, reducing methane emissions is a necessary step in arresting global warming. Yes, it may make meat more expensive. That’s good. Health experts agree: Americans need to eat less meat and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Americans eat so much meat because its so cheap; meat is so cheap because the current structure of farm subsidies facilitate factory farming. If they want to help farmers and promote public health at the same time, they could support programs that help farmers to transition to sustainable cultivation of more healthful (and lucrative) food for people, as former tobacco farmers have done.

Finally, ask Lisa Jackson to quit playing along with factory farmers by making jokes about regulating cows and, instead, use her considerable personal charm to explain to the public why regulation of animal agriculture is both necessary and in the public interest. She’s such an engaging spokesperson for environmental regulation; it would be wonderful if she would use her communicative abilities to counter rather than collude with meat industry propaganda.

Everybody knows by now, we hope, that most antibiotics are fed to farmed animals, that the antibiotics excreted by those animals end up in our water (not to mention the meat, eggs, and milk consumed by non-vegans), and that this is the primary reason for the emergence of antibiotic-resistant “super-bugs.” Now there’s a new reason to worry: Antibiotics have been found in vegetables grown in fields fertilized with manure — including organic vegetables.

Here’s how it works: 70% of antibiotics used in the United States are fed to farmed animals in order to promote rapid growth and mitigate the spread of disease in crowded factory farms. Animals excrete about 90% of the antibiotics fed to them. Farmers dump manure on fields as a cheap way to replace the nitrogen taken up by crops. And — now we know — the plants grown in those fields take up trace amounts of the antibiotics along with the water and nutrients they draw from the soil.

According to a recent Environmental Health News report, researchers at the University of Minnesota have detected antibiotics in a wide variety of vegetables grown in fields fertilized by manure:

The Minnesota researchers planted corn, green onion and cabbage in manure-treated soil in 2005 to evaluate the environmental impacts of feeding antibiotics to livestock. Six weeks later, the crops were analyzed and found to absorb chlortetracycline, a drug widely used to treat diseases in livestock. In another study in 2007, corn, lettuce and potato were planted in soil treated with liquid hog manure. They, too, accumulated concentrations of an antibiotic, named Sulfamethazine, also commonly used in livestock. As the amount of antibiotics in the soil increased, so too did the levels taken up by the corn, potatoes and other plants.

Organic crops are no safer. Many organic farmers use manure, and regulations do not prohibit the use of manure from animals who have eaten antibiotic-laced feed. So, now there’s one more reason to encourage your local CSA or organic farm to take the next step and go veganic. Veganic farmers and gardeners use techniques such as crop rotation, “green manure,” and amendments such as kelp or alfalfa meal in the stead of animal products like manure, bone meal, and blood meal.

Chicken flesh is like “light” filtered cigarettes, not as bad for you as red meat (unfiltered cigarettes), but still very unhealthy. That’s why, in addition to our empathy for the birds, we get so frustrated when people who want to be healthy swear off cow and pig flesh but keep on eating chickens.

As part of our ongoing website revitalization project, we’ve just re-posted the text of a 2003 report on the health hazards associated with consumption of chicken flesh. Check it out for more than you ever wanted to know about cholesterol, campylobacter, and heterocyclic aromatic amines.

Sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones prepared that report for the Eurasian Vegetarian Society at a time when Russia was blocking U.S. poultry imports due to salmonella. Wisely, the Eurasian Vegetarian Society decided to seize the day and educate consumers in the regions about all of the health hazards associated with poultry consumption. Since chicken flesh was scarce, due to the import ban, they also used a translation of this handout on alternative sources of protein and flavor.

As Eastern Shore Sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones reports on her blog, SuperWeed, World Health Organization officials have warned that the deadly swine flu epidemic centered in Mexico has the potential to become a pandemic. That’s because the virus is transmissible between humans and has proved deadly to formerly healthy adults. While this has been called “swine flu,” the influenza virus responsible is actually a chimerical mutation including DNA from avian, swine, and human flu viruses. Read Michael Greger’s report, Swine Flu and Factory Farms, to understand how this came to be.

People are understandably worried. Virulent influenzas like this can cripple economies and communities by killing their most productive citizens. The 1918 influenza pandemic, which was caused by exactly this kind of virus, killed millions worldwide. In some cities, bodies were stacked in the streets because the young adults who would usually care for and bury others were the ones dying.

People want to know what to do. The pork industry is eager to tell them: “Keep on eating pig meat.” Public health officials are focused on arresting the immediate spread of the disease rather than addressing its etiology. Their message is, appropriately: “Wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you sneeze.” Unless animal advocates step up, nobody’s going to say: “Quit being the market for the products responsible for this crisis.”

People want to know, “Can I get swine flu from eating bacon?” Our answer should be, “Yes!” While swine flu is not transmitted by bacon or any other kind of meat, eating bacon, pork chops or even chicken wings creates the circumstances that lead these chimerical bird-pig-human viruses to evolve and flourish.

Tuberculosis. Measles. Smallpox. The influenza pandemic of 1918. The ongoing AIDS emergency. All have their roots in zoonoses — animal-based diseases. How do we get these diseases? By confining, hunting, and butchering animals. According to Plagues and Peoples by William McNeil, “Most and probably all of the distinctive infectious diseases of civilization have been transferred to human populations from animal herds.”

Furthermore, factory farming — which crowds thousands of animals together in unsanitary conditions — has led to an upsurge in the evolution and virulence of novel viruses such as the swine-bird-human flu virus at the center of the current crisis. As Michael Greger reports in his extraordinarily well-researched book, Bird Flu (free full-text available), “Since about 1975, previously unknown diseases have surfaced at a pace unheard of in the annals of medicine —more than 30 new diseases in 30 years, most of them newly discovered viruses.” The genesis of these new diseases is almost always zoonotic, tracing back to either factory farming or habitat destruction.

Animal advocates have a unique opportunity to seize on concern about pig flu to educate the public about all of the ethical, environmental, and public health hazards associated with factory farming in particular and meat consumption in general. We call on vegetarian and animal advocacy organizations to seize the day, spread the word, and widely share any handouts or other materials used to do so.

This message was brought to you by the “Education Center” side of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center. There are big changes on the horizon at the sanctuary, including relocation to a larger and more sustainable property and expansion of the research and strategic analysis services we have provided to the animal advocacy movement. Watch for announcements and please give generously, as we will not be able to make these moves without support.

San Francisco radio hosts plan to chase chickens around the studio on Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day, thereby terrifying the birds and making a mockery of the day.

According to the KITS LIVE 105 (San Francisco) website,

Tuesday Morning: Tony (dressed in a chicken suit) will be chasing and trying to catch two chickens in the LIVE 105 studio! Plus The Woody Show wants to find out if chickens will eat….chicken.

Without doubt, being carted to and then chased around a radio station will be extremely distressing to the birds in question. Moreover, mockery is a means by which people distance themselves from animals, in order to make their abuse less ethically troubling. Thus, this event, if allowed to go forward, will not only harm the two birds but also contribute to the callous disregard for animals that facilitates both everyday and extreme abuses of animals.

There are still more troubling components to the allegedly light-hearted on-air tormenting of living beings. Mockery is a means by which people debase not only animals but also people whom they wish to control or exploit. From abusive husbands who make snide public jokes about the women they batter behind closed doors to interrogators who torture detainees by placing under-garments on their heads or making them do “dog tricks,” perpetrators of all manners of violation use mean-spirited mockery as a way to degrade their victims. Public pranks like the one planned by KITS LIVE 105 injure communities by hardening the hearts of all who laugh along.

There is, of course, one more cause for concern about this particular event. Why, on the day that our nation’s first African American president will be inaugurated, will radio hosts be making jokes about eating chicken?

Don’t wait to protest after the fact. Stop this event before it happens. Call the producers of LIVE 105 at (415) 478-5483 and insist that in-studio animal abuse is not funny, on Inauguration Day or any other day.

Update: You can also email The Woody Show at WTR@Live105.com and email the producer Dave Numme at Dave@Live105.com.

A few fun facts about the environmental impact of Delmarva’s poultry industry, from this 1999 Washington Post article:

Poultry’s Price: The Cost to the Bay

* Perdue, the country’s second-largest chicken producer, trucks millions of gallons of waste a year from its Delaware slaughterhouses into Maryland, where the loads are injected into fields.

* Some scientists believe the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicida – which bloomed two years ago on the Pocomoke River, prompting its closure as a health hazard – also feeds on excess nutrients and algae. The Pocomoke drains much of Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore and southern Delaware, emptying into the Chesapeake.

* Throughout chicken country, as many as one-third of all wells exceed EPA safe drinking water standards for nitrate, a form of nitrogen concentrated in chicken waste that seeps into groundwater, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

* USGS has also found trace amounts of arsenic in the Pocomoke, the likely residue of the arsenic added to chicken feed to kill harmful parasites and promote growth.

* Poultry on the lower shore sends more than four times as much nitrogen into the bay as the biggest nonagricultural source – leaky septic tanks and runoff from developed areas – and more than three times as much phosphorus as the second-largest nonfarm source, sewage treatment plants. And that’s before factoring in other ways chicken waste reaches water – through slaughterhouses discharging treated waste water and burying sludge, a mud-like leftover scraped from treatment plants.

* Every working day, a dozen slaughterhouses slice the necks of more than 2 million birds, using more than 12 million gallons of water to flush away more than 1,600 tons of guts, chicken heads, fat globules, feathers and blood. The slaughterhouses treat the water before they release it to creeks, but it still contains some pollution.

* “The good Lord only gave us three ways to deal with our problem,” said Perdue’s manager for environmental services, John K. Chlada, in a speech before the Maryland Coastal Bays Program Citizen Advisory Committee. “We can put it out in the air, put it out in the water or put it out on the land. Where do you want me to put it?”

* Near the town of Rehobeth, Md., on the lower Pocomoke River, chicken houses outnumber all other structures, stretching like freight trains across the land.

* chicken houses necklace the Nanticoke River, sending more pollution toward the Chesapeake

* Lands drained by Indian River Bay and Little Assawoman Bay – harder hit by nutrient pollution than the Chesapeake – have enormous surpluses of chicken manure, the University of Delaware study found.

* Big storms send pulses of pollution through rivers. A rainy winter can increase pollution for the whole year. A drought can have the opposite effect.

* A 1997 Maryland Environment Department survey of the St. Martin’s River, the largest tributary to the state’s coastal bays, found “many large piles” of chicken litter, “ranging into the hundreds of tons,” near ditches and creeks that feed the main stem.

* The team stopped at the headwaters of Kings Creek, outside the town of Princess Anne, less than a mile above the bend where pfiesteria broke out. Three chicken houses, each 300 feet long, stood gleaming in the sunshine alongside the creek, a ribbon of chocolate-brown water. “It’s clear where the nutrients are coming from,” Summers said, gesturing at a narrow ditch draining the fields near the chicken houses. It passed through a grove of maple trees, then emptied into the creek. “I don’t know how much more evidence they need.”

* A “phosphorus sink,” is how some scientists speak of the Chesapeake region.

* Maryland surveys of the Pocomoke, Transquaking and Manokin river systems, where pfiesteria first entered the local lexicon, concluded that 70 percent to 87 percent of all nutrients reaching those waters came from farms.

* the surface of Allen Pond in April, hoping to land a fish, the soupy brown water spoke of the hundreds of chicken houses upstream.

* ammonia gas – a form of nitrogen particularly favored by algae – floats off piles of manure, with some settling into nearby ditches and creeks. A recent Dutch study found that as much as 30 percent of the nitrogen in a manure pile can land in water this way.

* A USGS survey released in January found trace amounts of arsenic in the lower Pocomoke River in Maryland in four of five samples taken during a survey in September 1997.

* Nitrates contaminate one-third of all groundwater in Delmarva’s agricultural areas, according to a USGS study during the late 1980s. Many of the samples contained three to four times as much nitrate as the EPA considers safe for drinking water.

* 10 percent to 15 percent of all wells tested in Sussex County exceeded federal nitrate standards.

* Although roughly half of Delmarva’s 600,000 residents draw their water from private wells, the three states barely oversee their safety.

* a well driller in Seaford, Del., said that more than one-third of the time, the water samples he collects reveal nitrates in excess of federal health standards

* Contaminated groundwater adds to the nutrient pollution reaching rivers and bays

* Irrigation nozzles send more waste into groundwater, spraying more than 3 million gallons of treated waste water daily on fields surrounding processing plants, hatcheries and rendering plants.

* Townsends’s plant in Millsboro, Del., spray-irrigates the 2 million gallons of waste water it generates a day, rather than discharging it toward the nutrient-polluted Indian River as in years past.

* In 1995, state tests found that the wells supplying drinking water for Allen’s plant workers contained more than twice as much nitrate as the EPA deems safe.

In a New Year’s Day letter to the editor published in the Daily Times of Salisbury (Md), Eastern Shore Sanctuary co-founder pattrice jones calls for economic diversification of the Delmarva peninsula, which is currently dominated (and despoiled) by the poultry industry:

We need a diversified economy with an agriculture sector divided between production of healthy food for local consumption and sustainable cultivation of high-value cash crops well-suited to local conditions. Since this kind of farming is labor-intensive rather than capital-intensive, this would create jobs while reducing local farmers’ vulnerability to corporate agribusiness.

Let’s start by demanding Delmarva’s share of state or federal financial stimulus goes not to bail out the poultry giants that have crushed local farmers and wrecked our environment, but rather to the kinds of programs that have helped communities in other states get out of tobacco farming and into more profitable, ecological endeavors.

(Read the whole letter here. Join the answering dialogue if you like.)

What we didn’t have a chance to say due to space constraints is that farmers elsewhere have successfully transitioned from unhealthy dependence on conventional crops sold for a pittance to big agribusiness to more profitable and environmentally sustainable cultivation of healthy food for people. For example, farmers in Kentucky have transitioned from tobacco to organic vegetables. As Brian Halweil explains,

The shift underway in this rail end of a state renowned for its flavorful tobacco is representative of a trend throughout the United States and the world, as farmers beset by failing prices, and tired of dealing with chemicals, switch to organic crops to protect their livelihoods.

Governmental and non-governmental programs such as the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project help farmers and their communities to make such transitions. Even without such aid, a few farmers in our region have begun Community Supported Agriculture projects. The state of Maryland does provide some support for farmers who want to grow food for local people through its Maryland Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program and its participation in the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program. The University of Maryland at College Park has set up an “online farmer’s market” that connects consumers with growers. We’d like to see many more such projects concentrated on the Eastern Shore with the explicit aim of improving the public, economic, and environmental health by getting local farmers out of industrial poultry production and into ethical and sustainable agriculture.

We got some good news yesterday, via Mary Finelli at Farmed Animal Watch: High feed prices are, as we predicted in our Strategic Action Memo on the subject, driving down poultry industry profits.

The big publicly traded poultry companies - Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms and Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. - have all seen their stock prices tumble in the past 52 weeks.

Sanderson shares have fallen 21%, Tyson shares 68%, and shares of Pilgrim’s Pride have plummeted 99%.

…

If anything has constrained the poultry industry, it has been sky-high feed prices. Record-high prices for corn and soybeans have caused very stiff economic challenges for growers and processors. Next to that poultry processors and farmers are also paying more for fuel and electricity.

In the wake of this good news, we renew our call for both national and grassroots animal advocacy organizations to seize the day and work together within a multifaceted strategy intended to drive the meat industry out of business by decreasing profits so sharply that the capital on which these enterprises depend is no longer available to them. Family farms, not factory farms, brought the United States out of the Great Depression. Sustainable production of food crops for local consumption (rather than animal feed and “livestock” for export) can save the economy and feed the world.

Meanwhile, it’s Thanksgiving Day here at the Eastern Shore Sanctuary. As usual, we’ll be treating the birds to our version of “pumpkin pie” — pureed pumpkin mixed with healthy brown rice, topped with chopped kale and served in pie plates — as a symbolic way of countering the gluttony and bigotry the traditional Thanksgiving holiday celebrates. We hope that our supporters will join us in honoring the alternative holiday, Buy Nothing Day, tomorrow.

We had our first snow of the winter this past week. Cold weather means that birds need more calories. The downside of the good news about declining poultry industry profits is that high feed prices take a big bite out of sanctuary budgets too. We hope that friends of animals will remember the birds here, and all of the rescued animals at other shelters and sanctuaries, during what promises to be a long, hard winter.