These facts are not surprising to anyone who has spent time around these social, playful animals. Pigs, who have a great sense of smell and can live into their teens, are protective of their young and form bonds with other pigs. Pigs are clean animals, but they do not have sweat glands, so they take to the mud to stay cool and ward off flies.(3,4)

Problems With Factory Farms

Only pigs in movies spend their lives running across sprawling pastures and relaxing in the sun. On any given day in the United States, there are nearly 63 million pigs in factory farms, and 104 million are killed for food each year.(5,6) Factory-farming conditions are no better in Canada, which exports more than 8 million live pigs to the U.S. for slaughter each year.(7) In 2003, managers of Canada’s largest pig exporter faced cruelty-to-animals charges after 10,000 dead and dying pigs were found on the company’s farms. Investigators found dead pigs stacked behind barns and dead piglets in manure tanks, and all the live pigs “were in some form of distress.”(8)

Mother pigs (sows)-who account for more than 6 million of the pigs in the U.S.-spend most of their lives in individual “gestation” crates.(9) These crates are about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide-too small for them even to turn around.(10) After giving birth to piglets, sows are moved to “farrowing” crates, which are wide enough for them to lie down and nurse their babies but not big enough for them to turn around or build nests for their young.(11)

Piglets are separated from their mothers when they are as young as 10 days old. Once her piglets are gone, each sow is impregnated again, and the cycle continues for three or four years before she is slaughtered.(12,13) This intensive confinement produces stress- and boredom-related behaviors, such as chewing on cage bars and obsessively pressing against water bottles.(14,15)

After they are taken from their mothers, piglets are confined to pens until they are separated to be raised for breeding or meat.(16) Every year in the United States, 50 million male piglets are castrated (usually without anesthesia) because people who eat pork complain of “boar taint” in meat that comes from intact animals.(17) Perhaps because of the tremendous pain caused by the procedure, castration is thought to have long-term negative effects on piglets. Research conducted by Europe’s food safety agency found that castrated piglets tended to spend less time with their mothers and other piglets; according to one Norwegian researcher, “Sometimes they get depressed.”(18) Norway banned piglet castration without anesthesia in 2002, and the procedure will be prohibited entirely as of 2009.(19)

Because they, too, are extremely crowded and prone to stress-related behaviors (such as cannibalism and tail-biting), farmers chop off piglets’ tails and use pliers to break off the ends of their teeth-without any pinkillers.(20) For identification purposes, farmers also cut out chunks of the young animals’ ears.(21)

Transportation and Slaughter

Farms all over North America ship piglets (called “feeder pigs”) to Corn Belt states such as Illinois and Indiana for “growing” and “finishing.” When they are transported on trucks, piglets weighing up to 100 pounds are given no more than 2.4 square feet of space, and farmers are warned that the piglets “probably will get sick within a few days after arrival.”(22) One study confirmed that vibrations, like those made by a moving truck, are “very aversive” to pigs. When pigs “were trained to press a switch panel to stop for 30 seconds vibration and noise in a transport simulator … the animals worked very hard to get the 30 seconds of rest.”(23)

Once pigs reach “market weight” (about 250 to 270 pounds), the industry refers to them as “hogs” and they are sent to be slaughtered. The animals are shipped from all over the U.S. and Canada to slaughterhouses, most of which are in the Midwest. According to industry reports, more than 1 million pigs die en route to slaughter each year.(24) There are no laws to regulate the duration of transport, frequency of rest, or provisions of food and water for the animals.(25,26) Pigs tend to resist getting into the trailers, which can be made from converted school buses or multidecked trucks with steep ramps, so workers use electric prods to move them along. There are no federal laws to regulate the voltage or use of electric prods on pigs, and a study showed that when electric prods were used, pigs “vocalized, lost their balance and tr[ied] to jump out of the loading area” and that their “[h]eart rate and body temperature was significantly higher … when compared to pigs loaded using a hurdle [movable chute].”(27) A former pig transporter told PETA that pigs are “packed in so tight, their guts actually pop out their butts-a little softball of guts actually comes out.”(28) When a transport truck owned by Smithfield Foods-the largest pork producer in the world-and loaded with 180 pigs flipped over in Virginia, many pigs were killed in the accident, while others lay along the side of the road, injured and dying. PETA officials arrived on the scene and offered to humanely euthanize the injured animals, but Smithfield refused to allow the suffering animals a humane death because it is illegal to sell the flesh of animals who have been euthanized.(29)

A typical slaughterhouse kills about 1,000 hogs per hour.(30) The sheer number of animals killed makes it impossible for pigs’ deaths to be humane and painless. Because of improper stunning, many hogs are alive when they reach the scalding-hot water baths, which are intended to soften their skin and remove their hair.(31) The U.S. Department of Agriculture documented 14 humane-slaughter violations at one processing plant, where inspectors found hogs who “were walking and squealing after being stunned [with a stun gun] as many as four times.”(32) An industry report explains that “continuous pig squealing is a sign of … rough handling and excessive use of electric prods.” The report found that the pigs at one federally inspected slaughter plant squealed 100 percent of the time “because electric prods were used to force pigs to jump on top of each other.”(33) A PETA investigation found that workers at an Oklahoma farm were killing pigs by slamming the animals’ heads against the floor and beating them with a hammer.(34)

Health Problems Caused by Eating Pork

The consumption of pork and other animal products has been linked to cancers of the mouth, throat, colon, and stomach.(35,36,37) A study of more than 90,000 women concluded that “frequent consumption of bacon, hot dogs, and sausage was … associated with an increased risk of diabetes.”(38) However, those pork products are on the daily menu for 25 percent of kids between the ages of 19 months and 2 years.(39) According to another study, the children of pregnant women who consume cured meats on a daily basis run a “substantial risk of [growing a] paediatric brain tumour.”(40)

Every year in the United States, food poisoning sickens up to 76 million people and kills 5,000.(41) Pork products are known carriers of foodborne pathogens: One study found that more than 50 percent of the tested samples of ham were contaminated with staphylococcus, and another study determined that “traditional salting, drying and smoking of raw pork meat was not antimicrobiologically effective” against Salmonella typhimurium.(42)

Because crowding creates an environment conducive to the spread of disease, pigs in factory farms are fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics. The pesticides and antibiotics remain in their bodies and are passed on to people who eat them, creating serious human health hazards. Pigs and other factory-farmed animals are fed 20 million pounds of antibiotics each year, and scientists believe that meat-eaters’ involuntary consumption of these drugs is giving rise to strains of bacteria that are resistant to treatment.(43)

Environmental Hazards

Each factory-farmed pig produces about 9 pounds of manure per day.(44) As a result, many tons of waste end up in giant pits in the ground or on crops, polluting the air and groundwater. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, agricultural runoff is the number one source of pollution in our waterways.(45) A Missouri-based hog farm had to pay a $1 million fine for illegally dumping waste, which caused the contamination of a nearby river and the deaths of more than 50,000 fish.(46) Smithfield Foods was fined $12.6 million for polluting the Pagan River with phosphorous-contaminated wastewater from its slaughter plant.(47)

Pigs and other farmed animals are the primary consumers of water in the U.S.; a single pig may require up to 21 gallons of drinking water per day.(48) Eighty percent of agricultural land in the U.S. is used to grow food to meet the needs of pigs and other factory-farmed animals.(49) In the “finishing” phase alone, during which pigs grow from 100 to 240 pounds, each hog consumes more than 500 pounds of grain, corn, and soybeans; this means that across the U.S., pigs eat tens of millions of tons of feed every year.(50)

What You Can Do

Stop factory-farming abuses by supporting legislation that abolishes intensive-confinement systems. Florida and Arizona voters have banned the use of gestation crates, as have voters in the United Kingdom.(51,52)

Stop giving your money to pig farms and slaughterhouses. Vegetarianism and veganism mean eating for life-for your life and for animals’ lives. Call or visit GoVeg.com to order a free vegetarian starter kit.

References

1) “New Slant on Chump Chops,” Cambridge Daily News 29 Mar. 2002.
2) “The Millennium List,” The Times 9 Jan. 2000.
3) M.K. Holder, “Smart Puzzle #3 Pig,” Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behaviors, Indiana University, 1999.
4) Meg Meier, “Oink, Moo, Quack,” Star Tribune 27 Aug. 2002.
5) National Agricultural Statistics Service, “USDA Quarterly Pigs and Hogs Report: September 2006,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, 29 Sep. 2006.
6) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Pigmeat, Slaughtered/Production Animals (Head) 2002,” 1 Dec. 2006.
7) Lisa Anderson, “Canada Livestock and Products Semi-Annual 2006,” USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Gain Report 1 Feb. 2006.
Kelly Pedro, “Pigs Found Dead, Dying. Seven Men Have Been Charged Over the Grim Discovery Involving 10,000 Animals,” The London Free Press 15 Sep. 2003.
9) National Agricultural Statistics Service, “USDA Quarterly Pigs and Hogs Report: September 2006,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, 29 Sep. 2006.
10) Marc Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern,” The Washington Post 18 Jun. 2001.
11) Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern.”
12) A.J. Zanella and O. Duran, “Pig Welfare During Loading and Transportation: A North American Perspective,” I Conferencia Virtual Internacional Sobre Qualidade de Carne Suina, via Internet, 16 Nov. 2000.
13) Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern.”
14) Zanella and Duran.
15) Kaufman, “In Pig Farming, Growing Concern.”
16) Glenn Selk, “Managing the Sow and Litter,” Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, Jul. 2003.
17) Joellen Perry and Mary Jacoby, “These Little Pigs Get Special Care From Norwegians,” The Wall Street Journal 6 Aug. 2007.
18) Perry and Jacoby.
19) Guro Å. Skarstad and Svein O. Borgen, “Norwegian Pig Producers’ View on Animal Welfare,” Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Mar. 2007.
20) Selk.
21) L. Michael Neary and Ann Yager, “Methods of Livestock Identification,” Purdue University Department of Animal Sciences, Dec. 2002.
22) John C. Rea and George W. Jesse, “Managing Purchased Feeder Pigs,” Department of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1 Oct. 1993.
23) Zanella and Duran.
24) “Research Looks at Transport Losses,” Feedstuffs 17 Apr. 2006.
25) Dennis A. Shields and Kenneth H. Mathews Jr., “Interstate Livestock Movements,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jun. 2003.
26) Zanella and Duran.
27) Zanella and Duran.
28) Carla Bennett, “The Joy and Sorrow of Pigs,” Animal Times Fall 1996.
29) Linda McNatt, “25 Hogs Die in Smithfield Truck Accident,” The Virginian Pilot 30 Mar. 2004.
30) Lance Gay, “Faulty Practices Result in Inhumane Slaughterhouses,” Scripps Howard News Service, Feb. 2001.
31) Joby Warrick, “‘They Die Piece by Piece’; In Overtaxed Plants, Humane Treatment of Cattle Is Often a Battle Lost,” The Washington Post 10 Apr. 2001.
32) Warrick.
33) Temple Grandin, “2001 Restaurant Audits of Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef and Pork Slaughter Plants,” 2002 Meat Institute Animal Handling and Stunning Conference, Colorado State University: Department of Animal Sciences, 2002.
34) Marc Kaufman, “Ex-Pig Farm Manager Charged With Cruelty,” The Washington Post 9 Sep. 2001.
35) F. Levi et al., “Food Groups and Risk of Oral and Pharyngeal Cancer,” International Journal of Cancer 77 (1998): 705-9.
36) F. Levi et al., “Food Groups and Colorectal Cancer Risk,” British Journal of Cancer 79 (1999): 1283-7.
37) P.A. van den Brandt et al., “Salt Intake, Cured Meat Consumption, Refrigerator Use and Stomach Cancer Incidence: A Prospective Cohort Study (Netherlands),” Cancer Causes and Control 14 (2003): 427-38.
38) M.B. Schulze et al., “Processed Meat Intake and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Younger and Middle-Aged Women,” Diabetologia 24 Oct. 2003.
39) T.A. Badger, “Infants, Toddlers Developing Bad Eating Habits, Study Finds,” Associated Press, 26 Oct. 2003.
40) J.M. Pogoda, “Maternal Cured Meat Consumption During Pregnancy and Risk of Paediatric Brain Tumour in Offspring: Potentially Harmful Levels of Intake,” Public Health Nutrition 2 (2001): 1303-5.
41) Paul S. Mead et al., “Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 5.5 (1999): 607-25.
42) P.L. Mertens, “An Epidemic of Salmonella Typhimurium Associated With Traditional Salted, Smoked, and Dried Ham,” Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd 143 (1999): 1046-9.
43) Jeff Donn, “Contaminated Meat Spurs Concern. Study Finds 1 in 5 Market Samples Contained Drug-Resistant Bacteria,” Associated Press, 18 Oct. 2001.
44) “Rains Swell Waste Lagoons at Four Hog Farms,” Associated Press, 1 Dec. 2006.
45) Sen. Tom Harkin, “Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem,” U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, Dec. 1997.
46) “Cargill Fined $1 Million for Dumping Hog Waste in River,” Associated Press, 20 Feb. 2002.
47) Bob Piazza and Rex Springston, “Smithfield Is Fined $12.6 Million,” Richmond Times-Dispatch 9 Aug. 1997.
48) Theo van Kempen, “Whole Farm Water Use,” North Carolina State University Swine Extension, Jul. 2003.
49) Marlow Vesterby and Kenneth S. Krupa, “Major Uses of Land in the United States, 1997,” Statistical Bulletin No. 973. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1997.
50) John Carlson, “Evaluation of Corn Processing By-Products in Swine Diets,” Western Illinois University, 3 Apr. 1996.
51) “Arizona Says ‘No’ to Gestation Crates,” PigProgress.net, 9 Nov. 2006.
52) John J. McGlone, “Current Status of Housing and Penning Systems for Sows,” Pork Industry Institute, Texas Tech University, May 2002.

This article was reprinted from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA)

It’s obvious now: Severe damage is caused by humanity’s penchant for treating the planet as our storehouse, and all living beings as our personal stock. As public awareness grows, companies sense a need to adjust. But they’ve managed, perversely, to use the need for change as a means to avoid it. Thus the rise of “greenwashing” – the appearance of cultivating ecological awareness in hopes of getting a higher profile for whatever they happen to be selling us.

Harrogate Spa, a bottled water company, says it will sell its water in lighter bottles to save plastic – avoiding the issue that we might reconsider our love for water in plastic altogether. Boeing is taking orders for what some call “green aircraft,” as though we could keep flying while the profit-driven aircraft industry solves, or at least ameliorates, the ecological damage.

Ranchers, too, are learning public relations techniques.

We know animal agribusiness plays a major role in global warming, and the resultant refugee emergencies and mass extinctions. Surely this means animal advocates are approaching their heyday as political leaders for our time. After all, who better suited to advise a concerned public on shifting our culture away from its current reliance on meat and dairy products?

Alas. Mainstream advocates aren’t taking the cue. On the contrary, they’ve made themselves a party to a new and ominous form of greenwashing. Allowing supposedly kinder, gentler animal farms to appear attractive, they have invented a new PR trend. One words fits: hogwashing.¹

British and U.S. pig breeders are phasing out their smallest crates as they wrap their bacon and sausages in packaging that tells us how decent they are; and Waitrose, one of Britain’s major grocery chains, touts its milk as benefiting wildlife.² Whole Foods Market boasts of concocting a non-profit “Animal Compassion Foundation” – and now presents sales of animal flesh as tantamount to a charitable undertaking, with the endorsement, no less, of 17 animal-advocacy groups. Similarly, advocates are promoting the use of “cage-free” eggs (a technically undefined term, usually meaning “expensive”) everywhere from the Google corporation to your local school. The eggs are so popular now that there’s reportedly a national shortage.

Ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s drew plenty of hype as the first major food manufacturer to announce it would (in a few years, anyway) use only “cage-free” eggs. At the same time, many chicken farmers say that popularizing the cage-free idea will likely mean crowding thousands of hens on shed floors, possibly leading to hunger, even cannibalism. Advocates may prefer to picture a victorious step to animal nirvana; yet all the while, plenty of animal-friendly companies produce desserts with no eggs – and, for that matter, no milk. The last thing such ethics-based firms need is competition from pious dairy vendors endorsed by animal advocates.

Then there’s Niman Ranch. This outfit exhorts us to “[s]erve with pride the world’s finest natural beef, pork and lamb” and had the audacity to show up and speak at a gathering called “Taking Action for Animals 2007.” Billed as the largest national conference of the animal-protection movement, Taking Action exemplified the trend to restyle agribusinesses as animal-welfare societies when “approved” purveyors of animal flesh held the microphone. A charitable organization called the Animal Welfare Institute evidently paid $10,000 to present this infomercial.³

In short, hogwashing offers the customer a chance to eat animals and advocate for them in the same bite. It need not mean people are eating less of the older, unholier products. Unsure if this trend is boosting the industry? Consider this: Wolfgang Puck’s branding consultant introduced the celebrity chef to the president of the world’s wealthiest animal charity.⁴ The branding expert, who formerly ran Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, saw animal husbandry as the key to a profile boost for Puck. Within a year, Puck unveiled a new handling plan for the animals who will wind up braised with a side of sautéed Spätzle.

Ultimate Betrayal

Viewing animals as commodities, even well-handled commodities, isn’t animal protection. The ultimate betrayal of an animal is especially stark after the being has been treated almost like a pet (like the animals at Niman Ranch, who, we’re told, are walked into slaughter by someone who knew them by name).⁵ To take animals’ interests seriously is to opt out of animal agribusiness.

When animal advocates acquire too much “maturation and sophistication” for that, they’re praised by the mainstream media for gaining “influence”⁶ – praised, that is, for accepting their culture’s corporate values so well. “Instead of telling it like it is, we’re learning to present things in a more moderate way,” one farm rescue activist told the New York Times. So only foie gras is off-limits (for now; an award-winning “ethical” foie gras is on the way). Every other animal product, it seems, is acceptable, under the “mature” advocates’ guidance. Even veal can pass these days – yes, there’s an uncrated version of little dead cows, as Wolfgang Puck was quick to ascertain, and activists now praise Puck for renouncing cruel veal producers.

Granted, “telling it like it is” won’t give you instant popularity. For the authoritative remark on that, the New York Times quotes the CEO of a cattle ranchers’ group who declares that people opposing meat are “so off the wall” no one pays attention to them. Unfortunately, when mainstream advocacy groups seek wealth and easy public acceptance at the expense of core values, they too consider anyone committed to those values as inconvenient.

Here, then, is an inconvenient truth: While some advocates play footsie with wealthy steakhouse owners, ice cream vendors and ranchers, the annihilation of the world’s free animals – caused largely by the dairies and ranches of the world – runs out of control. Wouldn’t a true animal-protection movement consistently support work that attempts to conserve water and wilderness and avoid boosting that which deforests and pollutes it? Another popular animal protection group has called Burger King’s “preferential option to chicken plants that slaughter animals in a controlled atmosphere” (that means slaughterhouses that contain gas chambers) “praiseworthy.” Gee. Wouldn’t a true animal-protection movement promote, say, juice bars?

Ah, but roughly 97% of the potential donors to animal charities eat chickens.⁷ Thus, few organized groups choose to risk their growth potential as the world’s forests are cut down for animal farms and animal feed. It’s easier for the heads of charities to maintain that a return to something like the old family farm will restore an “ethic” to our relationship with the planet and its life. And that’s how Niman Ranch managed to style itself as “taking action for animals.”

Setting a Precedent

Environmentalists rightly warn that the chemicals and pathogens which plague mechanized farms can also contaminate soil, water, animal products, and our own bodies. But ecological problems aren’t limited to high-volume producers. A cow on a pasture is still a cow, needing plenty of water and food – and somewhere to eliminate it all. All forms of animal agribusiness demand large quantities of fossil fuels and generate a potent mix of greenhouse gases. The free-range movement just spreads it around more. Nevertheless, some who are vegetarian for reasons of conscience or politics are “beginning to take that activism and shift it towards eating sustainable meat,” Reuters recently declared, quoting a chef who avoided meat for 20 years but now thinks the “grass-fed movement is the new vegetarianism.”

Such bizarre statements can easily find their way into print, given our culture’s traditional willingness to maintain our life-or-death authority over other animals. The least convenient truth of all? We must question our own authority if we would heal our relationship with our planet. We must learn reverence for life before life as we know it is gone.

Our present course is expected to extinguish half of all plant and animal species by 2100, according to biologist Edward O. Wilson. Even as you read this, free-living animals are being wiped out for companies such as Niman Ranch, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, and Whole Foods Market. Their habitat will be converted to hold living commodities, scheduled to die in a place where human workers are driven to perform dozens of soulless acts throughout the hours of their days.

And now that biofuels, along with animal feed, vie for space with food crops, we’re headed for a serious food shortage. This crisis will be exacerbated as the effects of climate change hinder crop growth, leading to riots and political instability. Given all this, what kind of precedent do activists in well-off regions set? Imagine what the planet would look like if everybody ate as much meat and dairy as North Americans.

Indeed, within just nine years, people in developing economies will expectedly eat 30% more cowflesh, 50% more pig meat and 25% more domesticated birds. Hogflesh and animal fats in general make up a quarter of the average caloric intake in China, compared to just 6% two decades ago.⁸ China’s now the world’s third dairy producer, and that’s a population that has long considered dairy products distasteful. Although research has linked the switch to a Western diet with heightened breast cancer risk, Xinran, author of What the Chinese Don’t Eat, says the “dairification” of China may involve admiration for Western customs. Even India, with its substantial vegetarian population, has seen chicken consumption nearly double since 2000. What appears to market analysts as an economic-development success story is actually a strain on our grain crops, Newsweek has acknowledged, because seven kilograms of feed go into every kilogram of cattle flesh.

We the people of the already affluent world, who have been able to make time for activism, ought to provide rational advocacy models, in which the point is not to accept animal use. Excellent models are available, from community gardens and co-operative vegan-organic farming projects to educational and culinary fairs exemplified by the tremendously popular London Vegan Festival.

Last year, the University of Chicago News Office announced the work of assistant professors Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin – work that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization soon accepted as a key study – with the headline “Vegan Diets Healthier for Planet, People Than Meat Diets.” These researchers have shown how vegans spare the atmosphere about a ton and a half of greenhouse gases per person per year, compared to omnivores eating the same number of calories. The university press office distributed its release accompanied by photos of the two scientists preparing fruit and vegetable salads on a kitchen-style countertop amidst their bookshelves – offering an inspiration to others to put conscientious culinary interests right in the middle of their work and thinking. Notably, Eshel was once a cattle farmer, but now cultivates an organic vegetable farm. Everyday activism like this will start people thinking that the fertile plains of North America, and the rain forests to the South, should be reclaimed from the feedlots and the vast monocultures of corn and soybean feed crops. As demand wanes and ranches are phased out, the pressure we exert on populations of free-living horses and burros, elk and bison, and the big carnivores too, will begin to ebb, while we cultivate something we’ve long missed: a feeling of living harmoniously with the rest of our biocommunity.

How tragic if we fail to see the opportunity. How tragic if the up-and-coming activists of China and elsewhere come to see animal advocacy as purporting to treat commodified cows humanely. Worldwide, the space used by six-point-six billion humans is vastly expanded as animals are bred into existence to be food. There is nothing sustainable, let alone kind, about it. So let us stop fantasizing and get to the point. What animal agribusiness is selling, we don’t need.

1. James LaVeck, in “Compassion for Sale?” (Satya, September 2006), defined “hogwashing” as “the practice of generating the public appearance of having compassion for animals while continuing to kill millions of them for profit.” #
2. Stonyfield Farm has partnered with various non-profits, beginning with Jane Goodall. Using packaging that described African habitats and animals, the company assured children they could be “planet protectors” by caring for the environment – presumably, in part, through Stonyfields’s dairy products. #
3. According to the website of “Taking Action for Animals 2007, the largest national conference of the animal protection movement,” sponsors of $10,000 and above received the “[o]pportunity to organize one event or conference session” as well as two “premium exhibit spaces at Conference.” #
4. See Kim Severson, “Bringing Oinks and Moos Into the Food Debate,” New York Times and International Herald Tribune, July 25, 2007. #
5. Nicolette Hahn Niman, Taking Action for Animals, Washington, D.C. (July 2007) (audio on file with author). #
6. See “Bringing Oinks and Moos Into the Food Debate” (note 4 above). #
7. A series of surveys by the US-based Vegetarian Resource Group shows between two and three percent of respondents consistently avoid eating flesh products, and about 1.4 percent of the total population is vegan, avoiding all animal products, including eggs and dairy. #
8. “Revenge of the Pork,” China Economic Review, July 2007. #

Lee Hall is legal director for Friends of Animals, an animal-rights advocacy group founded in New York in 1957. Lee can be reached at: leehall@friendsofanimals.org. Read other articles by Lee, or visit Lee’s website.

Reprinted from Dissident Voice.