Tag: Miscellaneous

Karen Davis Promotes Radio Show Highlighting Her Claim That 9/11 Was a Good Thing

On Friday, August 27, the Howard Stern show repeated a show from April 10, 2002 in which United Poultry Concerns’ Karen Davis defended her comments that the 9/11 terrorist attacks may have reduced net suffering by sparing many chickens. For those who missed her comments the first time, in a letter on Dec. 26, 2001 to Vegan Voice, Davis said,

Doubtless the majority, if not every single one, of the people who suffered and/or died as a result of the September 11 attack ate, and if they are now a life continue to eat, chickens. It is possible to argue, using (Peter Singer’s) utilitarian calculations, that the deaths of thousands of people whose trivial consumer satisfactions included the imposition of fundamental misery and death on hundreds of thousands of chickens reduced the amount of pain and suffering in the world.

Davis has also claimed that Jewish victims of the Holocaust who ate meat were the moral equivalents of their Nazi persecutors (emphasis added),

It’s been said that if most people had direct contact with the animals they consume, vegetarianism would soar, but history has yet to support this hope. It isn’t just the Nazis who could see birds in the yard, slaughter them and eat them without a qualm, and in fact with euphoria. In this respect, the persecuted Jewish communities were no different than their persecutors.

The odd thing is that Davis herself was promoting the re-broadcasting of the Stern show on the UPC web site. Hey, good for her — more people should know that animal rights leaders like Davis think that it could be argued that the 9/11 terrorist attack was a good thing or that Jewish families who ate chicken were just like the Nazis.

Davis is now writing a book length treatment of these bizarre beliefs, The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities, to be published in 2005.

Source:

UPC President Karen Davis Talks about Chickens on The Howard Stern Show. Press Release, Untied Poultry Concerns, August 27, 2004.

Activists Protest Outside Glaxo CEO's Home

About 30 animal rights activists associated with a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania group called Hugs for Puppies demonstrated outside the home of GlaxoSmithKline chief executive officer Jean-Pierre Garnier. Garnier was out of town at the time.

According to the London Telegraph, about 30 protesters chanted and marched on the street outside Garnier’s home while police looked on.

Organizer Alexandra Deyo told The Telegraph that the protest was a response to Garnier’s recent characterization of activists as cowards. Deyo said,

He’s only been speaking to the British media against animal rights groups and has been speaking like he’s a victim when he actually lives in the US.

Deyo is apparently referring to a July interview that Garnier gave to the Telegraph in which he said,

I take it [animal rights violence] extremely personally. When your general counsel has to go into hiding in some apartment and has to move out of his house with his young children because he has been threatened, you do take that personally.

Apparently empathy for other people is an alien emotion to activists like Deyo.

Deyo, by the way, is one of the activist who was arrested in June and charged with criminal conspiracy, harassment, disorderly conduct and child endangerment in connection with a protest she organized that targeted an executive with Johnson Matthey Pharmaceutical Materials.

Source:

Animal rights stand-off at Garnier home. Dominic White, The Telegraph (London), August 23, 2004.

A Holocaust of Animals Every Year?

The New Jersey Express-Times reported that Diane Davison, president of the Northampton County SPCA, organized a candlelight vigil to mark National Homeless Pets Day.

At the vigil Davison said that as many as 5-6 million animals are killed at animal shelters, adding,

That’s a holocaust of animals every year in the wealthiest country in the world.

Source:

Animal lovers hold vigil for pets. Alyssa Young, The Express-Times (New Jersey), August 22, 2004.

More Evidence that Human Meat Eating Goes Back Millions of Years

In September, New Scientist published research providing additional evidence that members of the Homo genus likely began eating meat at least 2.5 million years ago.

According to New Scientist, in 1999 researchers discovered cut marks on bones about 2.5 million years old suggesting meat eating, but there was no proof that the marks were made by hominids nor that hominids that far back had teeth suitable for meat eating.

Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas decided to tackle the last part of that problem, examining and comparing the teeth of Homo to those of A. afarensis. According to New Scientist’s summary of Ungar’s findings,

Eating meat requires teeth adapted more to cutting than to grinding. The ability to cut is determine by the slope of the cusps or crests. “Steeper crests mean the ability to consume tougher foods,” Ungar says. He has found that the crests of teeth from early Homo skeletons are steeper than those of gorillas, which consume foods as tough as leaves and stems, but not meat.

But the crests of teeth from A. afarensis are not only shallower than those of early Homo, they are also shallower than those of chimpanzees which consumes mostly soft foods such as ripe fruit, and almost no meat.

“Ungar shows that early Homo had teeth adapted to tougher food than A. afarensis or [chimpanzees]. The obvious candidate is meat,” says anthropologist Richard Wrangham of Harvard University.

Source:

Meat eating is an old human habit. New Scientist, September 3, 2003.

Downed Animal Amendment Narrowly Defeated in U.S. House

In July an amendment that would have banned the sale of “downed” livestock was once again narrowly defeated, this time around on a 202-199 vote in the U.S. House.

In 2002 a similar amendment was passed by both chambers of Congress, but was subsequently removed in a conference committee to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the bill.

The amendment would make it illegal to sell livestock that cannot stand and walk on their own. The debate over the bill centered largely on whether the sale of such livestock to slaughter poses any health risks to human beings.

On one side were those like Rep. Mary Kaptur (D-Ohio) who complained that few downed animals were tested for mad cow disease saying, “We shouldn’t be sending these animals to slaughterhouses.”

On the other side were like Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) who argued that banning the sale of downed animals would simply send the practice underground where U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors would be unable to monitor food safety. “You will drive this whole process literally underground,’ Goodlatte said, “The animals will be buried on the farm, and perhaps put in the food chain illegitimately.” Goodlatte said USDA inspectors should decided whether an animal is genuinely sick, or simply unable to walk but otherwise healthy, rather than create a blanket ban on the practice of slaughtering “downed” animals.

According to the Associated Press, the USDA estimates that about 130,000 “downed” animals are slaughtered for food every year.

Farm Sanctuary has been pushing for a “downed” animal bill for 15 years, and its president Gene Bauston was dismayed at the latest rejection of the amendment, telling the Associated Press,

It’s just depressing. Animals are going to be suffering, and people will be put at risk for mad cow disease.

The full text of the Downed Animal Protection Act is available here.

Source:

House narrowly defeats ban on sale of ‘downed animals’. Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press, July 14, 2003.

EPA Ban on Human Pesticide Data Overturned

In 2001 the Environmental Protection Agency issued a moratorium on using data from human tests to formulate acceptable levels of exposure to pesticides. EPA chief Christie Whitman defended the moratorium at that time saying that the human exposure data could not be used until the EPA had thoroughly investigated the ethical and scientific acceptability of such tests.

Representatives of pesticide producing industries sued arguing that the EPA could not issue such a moratorium without first issuing a public notice of its plans and inviting public feedback. On June 3, a federal appeals court agreed and ordered the agency to accept human test data on a case-by-case basis until it establishes a new regulation under existing procedures.

EPA spokeswoman Lisa Harrison told the Associated Press that the decision would not really change much at the EPA as the agency is already on track to create new regulations related to human clinical trials of pesticides. “It actually doesn’t impact us all that much, because we were proceeding on that track,” Harrison told the Associated Press.

Although clinical trials of pesticides are done with willing volunteers, environmental groups generally oppose them as being unethical and instead want pesticide manufacturers to focus exclusively on animal toxicity tests. Animal rights groups, on the other hand, want the EPA to reduce the number of animal tests involved in testing chemicals.

Richard Wiles of the Environment Working Group told the Associated Press,

We hope that the EPA bans the use of human studies by regulation. It’s completely unethical to directly dose humans with pesticides to see what the toxic effects are. We think that’s self-evident.

Source:

EPA told to weight human pesticide test data. Elizabeth Shogren, The Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2003.

EPA halt of human test data overturned. Associated Press, June 3, 2003.