Getting chickens off the drugs
It seems that if you keep a rather large number of chickens inside a building and afford each chicken roughly about an A4 piece of paper’s worth of space, and feed them a very limited diet, those chickens occasionally get sick. At this point you’ve really got two choices – you could knock down the walls and lead the chickens blinking into the grassy fields outside, or you could give them a dose of antibiotics to get them through the remaining few weeks of their short lives.Â
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Christchurch teenager’s school science project has exposed multiple antibiotic-resistant bugs in fresh chicken sold in supermarkets. Jane Millar’s discovery, as a 17-year-old St Margaret’s College student… of a range of resistant bacteria in chickens that could compromise antibiotic treatment in humans [is] expected to cause similar waves in medical circles.
The key finding was that the bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics not used in the poultry industry but important for treating serious infections in humans.
So it’s good to see that Sue Kedgley has winkled $4 million out of Dr Cullen’s budget to establish a comprehensive antibiotic resistant surveillance system in
“Many antibiotics have lost their power against common bacteria. Common strains of salmonella, E. coli and staphylococcus are becoming resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics. Scientists say it is only a matter of time before antibiotics will become ineffective in treating many human diseases. If we don’t move swiftly and antibiotic resistance continues to spread at its current rate, microbiologists warn we will squander the greatest medical advance of the 20th century,�
With a bit of luck the end goal has got to be that the chickens themselves get a reprieve from their life of drugs. After all we can’t liberate them in the streets while they still have a drug problem – imagine the tagging that would eventuate.
Photo Credit: wonderferret
May 13th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Not bloody good enough Frog, you could have done a lot better than that.
Get the buggers to ban battery farming, you have the power and there is no excuse for being fobbed off by this govt, you might even had won a few votes.
I note with dismay that your latest party list will ensure that nothing is done to end battery farming or pigs in crates, please try and do something about this before your party is completely taken over by the Alliance refugees.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
I voted in vegetarians anf vegans near the top of the party list. None of them made it to the top 10. I agree with BB that the Greens could have banned factory farming. It could have been part of the 2005 agreement with labour. Labour are not fussed one way or the other over factory farming, but it is a cornerstone policy of the greens.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
BB & kiore1: I ould very much have liked to see the Greens able to do the type of deal you suggest re outlawing battery chicken farming and sow crates.
Unfortunately, Labour were able to cobble together a deal with Winston First and Peter Dunhill to for a Government without the Greens, so the Greens were left to pick up whatever scraps they could.
I don’t blame the Greens for the fact that these atrocities still occur - every Green MP (and every candidate on the list) would vote for both.
Ultimately, it is the electors who decide, and at the 2005 election they didn’t give the Greens enough votes to be able to negotiate from strength.
Animal welfare lobbyist such as you need to do more to promote the Green vote, because the Greens are the only Party in Parliament that treat animal welfare issues seriously.
Another 1300 votes nationwide for the Greens at the last election would have meant the Greens had one more MP and Winston Forst had one less. Then the Greens would have held the trump card that would allow them to negotiate animal welfare issues into a coalition agreement.
Greens are passionate about this issue, but no other Party gives a pig’s turd!
May 13th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Sounds right to me, Toad. Nice to see you standing up on behalf of the chickens BB, and if you ever plan to do something about it in person, you can count on my support.
Ethical farming has more consequences than just the moral ones- as we see here, immoral farming practices also have serious health consequences.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Actually I believe that Kevin Hague is vegetarian, though I don’t know if that is out of concern for animal welfare issues or environmental impacts of industrial farming or both.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Ari
I have had enough close shaves when it comes to taking direct action on animal abuse (although i dare say that i would still step in if I witnessed it again)
I want some of our politicians to do the right thing for a change, until then I will keep registering my protest at the supermarket when it comes to buying eggs and the like.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
kiore1 Says:
May 13th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
> I voted in vegetarians anf vegans near the top of the party list. None of them made it to the top 10.
I think Kevin Hague (no 7) and Dave Clendon (no 10) are vegetarian.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Yes, Awarua Bay, I think I’ve read something somewhere that says Kevin is vegitarian too.
The last Green conference was actually vegan catered, and the next one will be too.
This is not denying people choice of what they eat - carnivores can byo, or go to a nearby takeway.
But it is an acknowledgement that avoiding animal food products is the most sustainable food choice option, and that much of the commercial chicken and pork production industries are the ultimate in animal exploitation.
Personally, I will eat chicken and pork (probably much to the horror of kiore1), but I will only eat them if they are certified as organic, which usually means they are not a go at a restaurant.
So I probably don’t live up to my political expectations of myself, but it is difficult to be politically pure.
Sorry if I am offensive to kiore1 and the vegans here, but to me nothing tastes better than an organic pork roast. So I do one occasionally, out of pure selfishness, because I enjoy it. I know the deceased pig doesn’t enjoy it, any more than I would if I were eaten by an animal.
But I don’t think humans (like dogs, who can also survive on a vegetarian diet) are genetically designed to be exclusively vegetarian. Some of us, like me, don’t have the biochemistry to make our own vitamin D.
My choice is to eat meat, take a manufactured vitamin supplement, or contract rickets and eventually die from that disease.
I’ve decided eating meat (particularly oily fish) is the more natural way to go for me.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Toad
We also eat meat, having said that I have changed the way we source our meat from these days, like you i refuse to eat anyting that is farmed in cages, I also cannot handle the idea odf
May 13th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Opps..let me try that again
May 13th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Toad
We also eat meat, having said that I believe that any animal farmed for human consumption has a right to die a quick, painless and UNEXPECTED death.
For that reason we now purchase from a company that does farm killing, anybody who has seen the torture that the poor beasts go through at meat works will understand why I have made this choice.
I also refuse to purchase chicken or pork unless it is organic
May 14th, 2008 at 5:16 am
I totally support the idea of a ban on battery farming and pigs in crates.
I have also made the choice recently to stop eating dairy and beef.
The other night I made lasagna with organic ground turkey and organic goats cheese instead of beef and dairy, it was wonderful.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
what’s your beef with beef?
May 14th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Okay so Hague and Clendon may be vegetarian, but it was not mentioned on the profile handed out to the GP. I would have voted for Hague had I known. I also remember Clendon being rather hostile to the idea of GP catered events being vegetarian when it was first brought up. Some meat eaters were more supportive. This is one of the reasons I did not rate Clendon very highly in my vote.
To answer the question on beef.
1. Cows are sentient animals. Their lives mean as much to them as mine does to me. So if it is wrong to kill anyone whose life has meaning then it is wrong to kill cows. Even if they are bred to be killed. Humans were often bred to be slaves but nobody saw that as reason to kill them or enslave them.
2. Cows suffer from painful mutilations (dehorning and castration), legally performed without anaesthetic.
3. Cows are transported to slaughterhouses in cramped and inhumane conditions. With more regional slaughterhouses being closed down, cows are now transported further distances.
4. Slaughterhouses themselves do not kill animals humanely. At the line speeds they are forced to adopt, they cannot. Read Eisnitz’ account of US slaughterhouses or see the undercover footage in “Earthlings”. And I am not so anti-American as to think the Land of the Free has the monopoly on barbarism. According to ACC figures, slaughterhouse worker was the most dangerous occupation in NZ, more so than SCUBA diver, jockey or forester. So if this is the way the humans are treated, what chance is there for the animals
5. Cows, like all grazing have been responsible for intense habitat destruction, which is the main factor behind extinction and greenhouse gas emmissions. Most of New Zealand’s Kahikatea forests have gone, cut down for cattle. The Hauraki plains and the Horowhenua, once totally forested are now just boring monoculture full of cows and sheep.
6. Cows use grain or prime land that could go into feeding humans directly. Feeding grain to cows that could go to humans is a major facotr in world hunger.
7. Red meat is extremely bad for you, and every new medical study seems to show something else nasty that is caused by red meat. I am not convinced that humans are designed to be omnivores. If we were then we would not be so unhealthy when we eat meat. Recent genetic research in fact indicates that humans owe their survival more to eating starchy foods.