Disclaimer: In all these diaries, I speak as a mother. I am horrified by what I am learning about Monsanto and about what it is doing to farmers and to food. Harking back to women's role over millennia, I have a familial and a societal (society being the larger family) obligation to warn. In that role, I am free to err in the direction of too much caution but I may NEVER err in the other direction - acceptance of things as safe if there is ANY signal at all that suggests there even MIGHT be a problem. Common sense trumps the nitpicking parsing of science in this obligation. Illogical things, greedy things, cruel things, massively controlling things, send up flares. And for those, mothers warn.
Monsanto is pushing the USDA to institute NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, which is a global tracking system for every farm animal in the country. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/...
How should anyone who loves animals feel about this?
Looking closely at what Monsanto is doing to animals already may help add some clarity.
Monsanto makes Posilac, or rBGH, or BST, a genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.
Last night as we were sleeping, how many millions of "industrialized" cows were standing on concrete (which an organic farmer told me their legs can't bear for long), filled with a hormone that forces them to produce milk at such an increased rate it wears them out many years early. It causes mastitis and sometimes death. They are given antibiotics to deal with the illness from using the drug.
"In 1989, Monsanto was aware that cows in test herds treated with the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone developed sores and lesions on their udders that were collectively called mastitis. Milk from rbST-treated cows contained increased levels of pus, blood, and virulent bacteria.
In order to deal with the problem, Monsanto's top dairy scientist, Margaret Miller, left the firm and became FDA's Monsanto "plant." Once at FDA, Dr. Miller arbitrarily changed the existing antibiotic standard. She increased by 100 times the allowable level of antibiotics that farmers could put into milk."
http://www.psrast.org/bghsalmonella.htm
Think for a moment how lousy it feels to be on an antibiotic. Then, think of an animal's body working in some massively increased hormonal way, while also on 100 times the normal amount of antibiotics.
"Under rBGH treatment cows are kept in a perpetual cycle of gestation and lactation which wears out their bodies quickly, cutting the normal life span of 20 to 25 years to five or less."
http://www.albionmonitor.net/...
And in "wearing out" early, the cows are also slaughtered and ground up early. And in being ground up early, any Mad Cow disease they might have been harboring has had no time to express itself so dairy farmers might notice the animal was ill and not allow it to be used for meat.
In addition,
"An earlier onset of puberty is thought to be caused by the already increased use of hormones in cows, and girls who menstruate before the age of 12 have a higher risk of contracting breast cancer later.
The increase in antibiotic use in animals also adds concern about increased antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Cows injected with rBGH produce much more of an insulin-like growth factor, IGF-1, whose molecular structure is the same in humans and cows, increasing the likelihood of transmission through milk and meat consumption. In humans, IGF-1 is linked to acromegaly, a disease involving the abnormal enlargement of the hands, feet, nose and chin. Increased levels of IGF-1 have also been linked to colon tumours and cancer, particularly breast cancer in women."
To Dr. Samuel Epstein, Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago, "IGF-1 is a growth factor for human breast cells, maintaining their malignancy, progression, and invasiveness."
http://www.albionmonitor.net/...
Last night, as we were sleeping, organic farmers' cows were sleeping, not filled with a hormone forcing their body to painful extremes of "production" but a normal sleep, in a normal body. The farmer and family, the ones who may have even delivered that cow into the world, and all of its calves, were sleeping not far away.
Last night, as we slept, a literal holocaust of industrialized animals across this country was going on - chickens squeezed into cages so small their legs grow through the wires and must be cut off to get them out, cattle crammed into feedlots, filled with so much steroids and grain to fatten them for more money, that their organs can fall out and then need to forced back in by hand and the animal stitched shut, cows in pain and sick from rBGH.
On this particular ranch, thousands of cattle had been corralled into a
series of steel pens, called feedlots, around 200 to each.
There was no shade, no shelter and no grass on the ground, only dust. On
one side of each feedlot was a trough containing herbicide- soaked grain.
All of the cattle were enormous the result of the grain diet and a series
of steroid hormone implants inserted under the skin behind their ears. At
least one of the hormones is feared to cause cancer in humans.
Because the cattle were carrying so much weight, and because their
digestive systems are designed for grass not grain, some of the cattle's
internal organs had fallen out. And because it would be too expensive to
call a vet out to treat these problems a couple of sweating, panting farm
hands in cowboy hats were going from cow to cow prising their organs back
inside and stitching up the cows.
As Howard Lyman, a rancher, explains: 'You get paid by the pound, after
all. And cattle don't win any prizes for keeping their figures.
'I spent countless hours stuffing 25lb of cow back inside the animal and
then sewing the wound, the whole force of a 600lb heifer straining against
me.'
http://www.global-reality.com/...
"At roughly the same time that the two Montana cowboys were going about
their unedifying task, a herd of dairy cows 900 miles to the east in Cedar
Falls, Iowa, was undergoing its fortnightly injection of a
genetically-engineered growth hormone called bovine somatotropin (BST).
Some research claims the hormone has been blamed for wiping out almost 20pc
of some herds. The cows' immune systems become impaired, increasing their
vulnerability to severe bladder and udder infections.
It is also claimed that BST also weakens their skeletons by draining
calcium from their bones. Many cows which survive are unable to stand
because their bones are too weak.
BST, which manufacturer [ Monsanto ] insists is safe, is another drug that
has been linked to cancer in humans.
However, it boosts milk production by up to a quarter. And when the cows
have been pushed to the limits of their endurance, the farm hands follow up
the hormone jabs with large doses of antibiotics to try to ward off
infection."
http://www.global-reality.com/...
Already, cows are overproducing milk. In 1930, the average cow produced 5 kilograms of milk per day, but by 1988, milk production was at 18 kg a day. With rBGH injections it rises to 22 kg per day.
http://www.albionmonitor.net/...
Right now, millions (billions?) of animals are living hellish lives for the sake of money and much of it related to Monsanto's drugs (rBGH, steroids, ...). Monsanto, a large part of the industrialization of animals, treats animals as though they were machines to squeeze every single atom of production value. They have created a on-going horror for millions of animals, through the drugs they fill them with to force them to fatten grossly unnaturally, or function at obscene and cruel speeds, biologically.
Monsanto is behind pushing for NAIS, touted by the USDA as a food safety issue.
Monsanto in favor of food safey? Based on what?
I believe NAIS is likely a significant move in the direction of total control over animals by Monsanto, just as it is already gaining totalitarian control over GE-seeds, spying on farmers by helicopter http://www.patentprofits.com/... and Pinkerton agents, and suing them even for accidental cross pollination of their fields from GE-crops. (Published on Thursday, March 20, 2008 by The Globe and Mail (Canada) Grain Farmer Claims Moral Victory in Seed Battle Against Monsanto)
Monsanto has no record of interest in food safety
but the opposite of which this diary gives evidence.
And it has shown ZERO interest in and no connection whatever to farm animals. Whereas the farmers who are furious about NAIS, deal with animals daily as part of nature, letting them live at a normal biologic speed, producing naturally, and under conditions that give not only the animals but all of us who see them out in fields, joy.
Instead, Monsanto's treatment of animals through its destructive drugs is so removed from anything one might call normal, from natural, from sane even, that Monsanto and industrial agriculture are apparently willing to do anything to animals, and in the process, seems oblivious to or disinterested in the downstream impact on them or on people.
And once one is blinded by profit, other things follow in that wake.
"The practice of feeding rendered animal parts to livestock started later in the United States than in Britain, but it is now conducted on a far larger scale here than anywhere else. Of approximately 90 million beef cattle in America, some 75 percent are routinely given feed that includes rendered animal parts. In 1989, Britain produced 398,000 tons of rendered animal protein; every year, the United States produces 3.3 million tons. That protein doesn't only come directly from slaughterhouses, either: Euthanized pets, road-kill, outdated supermarket meat and the fat and grease from restaurants are all reused and recycled in this way."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/...
Yet, this rendering is thought to be how Mad Cow developed.
"[T]he irony is that Britain at least banned the practices that caused BSE years ago ...whereas in this country those same practices have continued to be used. Given the relative size of the cattle herds in the U.S. and Great Britain, I'd say the risk of contamination right now is even greater over here than over there."
http://www.encyclopedia.com/...
There seems an uncanny balance between the cruel rapaciousness of which animals are victim, and what is happening to humans.
Clinton appointed
Michael R. Taylor the FDA's deputy commissioner for policy, [where he] wrote the FDA's rBGH [Monsanto's product] labelling guidelines. The guidelines, announced in February 1994, virtually prohibited dairy corporations from making any real distinction between products produced with and without rBGH." To keep rBGH-milk from being "stigmatized" in the marketplace, the FDA announced that labels on non-rBGH products must state that there is no difference between rBGH and the naturally occurring hormone. In March 1994,
Taylor was publicly exposed as a former lawyer for the Monsanto corporation for seven years. While working for Monsanto, Taylor had prepared a memo for the company as to whether or not it would be constitutional for states to erect labelling laws concerning rBGH dairy products. In other words. Taylor helped Monsanto figure out whether or not the corporation could sue states or companies that wanted to tell the public that their products were free of Monsanto's drug.
Taylor wasn't the only FDA official involved in rBGI-1 policy who had worked for Monsanto. Margaret Miller, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Animal Drugs was a former Monsanto research scientist who had worked on Monsanto's rBGH safety studies up until 1989. Suzanne Sechen was a primary reviewer for rBGH in the Office of New Animal Drugs between 1988 and 1990. Before coming to the FDA. she had done research for several Monsanto-funded rBGH studies as a graduate student at Cornell University. Her professor was one of Monsanto's university consultants and a known rBGH promoter."
http://www.psrast.org/...
But the insanity of dealing with cows as machinery was only one piece of what happened to animals and our food under the Clintons, through their exceptional closeness to Monsanto.
Under the Clinton administration, the Monsanto-run FDA allowed "known TSE-positive (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy - Mad Cow Disease) material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed." While Monsanto's GE-hormone wears out dairy cows extremely early, which increases the risk sick cows in whom the disease had not time to be detected, are entering the US food chain.
http://www.consumersunion.org/...
Monsanto is pushing NAIS. The excuse you will hear is "food safety."
But
A July 1993 petition filed by the Washington-based Foundation on Economic Trends (FET) calls on the USDA and the FDA to mandate a halt to the feeding of rendered animal parts to livestock as a vital step to limit the risk of mad cow disease breaking out in the United States. According to the petition, five years after Britain banned the practice, the FDA continues to permit the use of sheep products in cattle feed, despite the fact that sheep in the U.S. have been infected with scrapie for at least 40 years.
The FDA was under Clinton's then and Monsanto ran it.
Industrialized cruelty goes hand in hand with Industrial sized filth and disease. NAIS is not about food safety, but about spying on small family farmers whose cows eat grass and are not filled with hormones, and whose cattle don't have organs falling out from steroids, whose feed is grass and organic corn. Those farmers have been sued by Monsanto. For? Not using rBGH and telling the public that truth. www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4923.cfm
Monsanto and a Clinton have been a horrendous combination for farmers and animals and health risks to the public through allowing a GE-hormone associated with cancer, through allowing KNOWN TSE-material in the food chain. NAIS is the next disaster for farmers and animals.
Food safety depends on ending the industrialization of animals. To hand over NAIS is increasing the power and control of a corporation that has been terrifying in its disregard for the health of animals and of the public, and its massive control over farmers already.