Animals As Food

See also Chickens, Cows, Ducks, Fish, Geese, Goats, Horses, Pigs, Sheep, Turkeys, Whales

Whale Sharks and Callous Anthropcentrism
Mike Jaynes — June 2008
The Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus) is the largest, and perhaps the most peaceful, fish on the planet. And it is nearing extinction as a result of the horrendous practice of shark finning which provides shark fins for soup and other delicacies in Asian countries...

Kill It, Cook It, Eat It
BBC, Prime Time — February 2008
Video series that follows the journey of farm animals from the pasture to the plate...

CAFOs: Cloning and GMO Engineering Livestock
Progressive Convergence, feature — April 2007
The underlying cause for the sudden explosion of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) is for the purpose of establishing a seamless infrastructure for genetically engineered animals...

What the Egg Was First
Marian Burros, The New York Times, article — February 2007
In plain English, these are eggs that have not been laid and are sometimes discovered when an elderly laying hen is slaughtered. The chef’s mind flashed back to his own farms and the 1,300 laying hens that provide his kitchens with eggs. When their production slows down they are slaughtered and sold at a farmers’ market as stewing hens, complete with eggs. He was embarrassed, he said, to think how he had been wasting them...

42-Day Wonders
Tom Horton, Washingtonian Magazine, feature — September 2006
Like all the Rieley children, Megan, 16, helps raise and care for the chickens. "I really hate killing 'em, but you gotta do what you gotta do"... the profit in raising chickens now lies in volume. A new grower who doesn't raise half a million or more a year probably can't make it...

Nearly Half of All Fish Eaten Today are Farmed, Not Caught
FAO (Food and Agriculture organization of the United Nations), feature — September 2006
Aquaculture only way to meet surging demand, but challenges to future growth loom...

Killing Us Softly?
Satya Magazine, feature — September 2006
Eventually we will see animal products sold in Whole Foods with the Animal Compassion logo on them. What does it mean when body parts of dead animals are emblazoned with some of the words most precious to the animal rights movement? Humane. Compassion.

Stuffed Animals
Jeffrey Steingarten, Men's Vogue, feature — August 2006
Is foie gras the height of gastronomic pleasure or murder most fowl? Jeffrey Steingarten wades into deep deep water...

Are We Nicer to Dogs than the Chinese?
Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle, article — August 2006
Was the avian flu poultry slaughter any less horrible than what's now happening to the dogs? More justifiable because of the potential for human loss? Maybe so. Or maybe it's simply because we love fuzzy cute dogs more than ugly dumb chickens...

Whistleblower on the Kill Floor — The Satya Interview with Virgil Butler and Laura Alexander
Satya Magazine — February 2006
When I first started killing me, it really bothered me... The more I did it, the less it bothered me. I became desensitized. The killing room does something to your mind...

Mustering Sheep with a Click of the Mouse
Daniel Lewis, Sydney Morning Herald, feature — February 2006
The technology involved in the e-sheep project lets a farmer — without even leaving the farmhouse — draft animals based on weight, age, sex or wool thickness, using automated gates. In drought it lets a farmer instantly pick which animals are losing condition, so they can be given extra food or sold...

Salmon That Grow Up Fast
Business Week, feature — January 2006
Aqua Bounty Technologies has created a breed of salmon that grows twice as fast as normal farmed salmon, because they carry part of the genetic code of another type of fish, the ocean pout...

Red Dye Made of Insects May Soon Get on Label
Andrew Bridges, AP, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, feature — January 2006
The Food and Drug Administration has proposed requiring that manufacturers flag the presence of cochineal extract and carmine in their products. The red colorings are extracted from the ground bodies of an insect exploited since the time of the Aztecs...

Chicken Hawker
Joseph Nocera, NY Times, feature — December 2005
Between 1971 and the mid-1990's, [Frank] Perdue was one of the most ubiquitous figures on television, hawking Perdue chicken in memorable commercials that always ended with a tag line we still remember: "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken"...

Avian Influenza: Action Alert
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns, essay — November 2005
If there is any doubt that the human species has violated the privilege of sharing the earth with the other creatures, the spread and handling of avian influenza dispels it. People ask,  what can we do? The answer is, we can stop eating birds and their eggs and we can try to help as many birds as we can...

Eggs: Battery or Free Range?
The Independent, feature — October 2005
The cruelty of intensive chicken-farming is turning many consumers against battery eggs but, as Hester Lacey explains, 'free range' may not be the natural paradise you think it is...

UPC Reviews Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns' book review —  August 2005
Grandin says she loves animals, especially cows, but fully upholds the human right to own, control, manipulate, mutilate, buy, sell, inseminate, incarcerate, and slaughter animals, ship them into outer space, and have sex with them for business purposes...

Japan Lying About Whaling: Cousteau
Jonathan Moran, The Advertiser, feature — July 2005
The son of the late diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau also believes Blue Whale, the largest species on earth listed as endangered by Australia, is being sold in Japanese fish markets...

Mercury and Tuna: U.S. Advice Leaves Lots of Questions
Peter Waldman, The Wall Street Journal, investigation — July 2005
A neurologist ordered tests. They showed Matthew's blood was laced with mercury in amounts nearly double what the Environmental Protection Agency says is the safe level for exposure to the metal. Matthew had mercury poisoning, his doctors said. The Davises had pinpointed the suspected source: tuna fish...

What We Owe What We Eat
George Will, Newsweek, commentary — July 2005
Why, Matthew Scully asks, is cruelty to a puppy appalling and cruelty to livestock by the billions a matter of social indifference?...

The Battle Over Welfare vs. Rights
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns, essay — June 2005
Are we really representing a caged hen's wishes when we say that she would reject a touch of comfort short of total liberation? And who, under any circumstances, would reject a less inhumane death for themselves or for someone they loved?...

Fear Factories: The Case for Compassionate Conservatism
Matthew Scully, The American Conservative, feature — May 2005
Setting aside the distracting rhetoric of animal rights, that's usually what these questions come down to: what moral standards should guide us in our treatment of animals, and when must those standards be applied in law?...

Group Targets 'Animal Care Certified' Label
James Drew, Toledo Blade, feature — February 2005
But last year, the national advertising division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus referred the Animal Care Certified logo on egg cartons to the Federal Trade Commission for possible law-enforcement action...

More than Meats the Eye
Laura Spinney, The Guardian, feature — 2005
You may scoff at the idea of an emotional cow, but the latest research suggests animals might have feelings just like ours...

Treating Man's Best Friend as an Enemy:
Korea's Moran Dog Market
Steve Kuack, investigation — January 2005
Although a common expression asserts that dogs are a man’s best friend, the way various Koreans treat some of these precious animals makes one feel that they must be sworn enemies. A brief visit to the rural Moran Market on the outskirts of Seoul is a walking nightmare for any reason-minded human...

You're Eating Cats and Dogs for Thanksgiving
E-Releases, investigation — November 2004
Rendering is the gruesome practice of "cooking" the bodies of euthanized pets from animal shelters, veterinary offices, horses, other livestock, and "road kill" to produce animal protein meal and "yellow grease"...

Libby's Story
Judy Woods, Pigs Peace Sanctuary, essay — Winter 2004
She walks off snacking on bites of sweet clover and having a care free day. From the moment she wakes up she is off deciding how her day will be spent...

Chopping Off Cow Tails
Robert Cohen, feature — September 2004
A tail is nature's perfect built-in fly swatter. Without her tail, the [dairy] cow lives an uncomfortable life of being eternally pestered and bugged...

The Life of One Battery Hen
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns — August 2004
The two-way communication between themselves and a mother hen — the continuous interaction which they are genetically endowed to expect, and which they need — has not occurred. The mother hen's heartbeat is missing, and she does not respond to the embryos' calls of distress or comfort them with her soft clucks...

The Not-So-Good Shepherd
Animal News Center, commentary — 2004
They died of starvation, heatstroke, dehydration, or when their bodies could no longer take the stress of being locked in darkness amidst thousands of pounds of their own excrement, 100-plus degree heat, and no ventilation...

Could Mad Cow Disease Already be Killing Thousands of Americas Every Year?
Michael Greger, MD, investigation — January 2004
The incubation period for human spongiform encephalopathies such as CJD can be decades.74 This means it can be years between eating infected meat and getting diagnosed with the death sentence of CJD...

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