Pig Business - More 4 tonight 2200

The flurry of important environmental events at short notice continues apace.

The latest is Pig Business, a film by Tracy Worcester, which is being shown tonight on More 4 at 2200.

Tracy did a brilliant job chairing the launch of the groundbreaking and quite possibly historic Wild Law research paper last Tuesday, by all accounts. More on that later.

While if all of us had her commitment to building a better world, just imagine how much better things would be. Here's what she does according to Wikipedia - amongst other things.

In 1989, Tracy Worcester began working with Friends of the Earth. Since then, she has been active in green politics as Patron of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, a Trustee of the Gaia Foundation, the Schumacher Society and the Bath Environment Centre, Patron of the UK's Soil Association, and as a member of the advisory board of The Ecologist magazine and a member of the International Forum on Globalisation.

And still has time for making movies!

Pig Business exposes the unconscionable costs of bringing home the bacon on four fronts:

- animal rights

- destroying small farmers - at an astonishing rate as the market is globalised by multi-national farming conglomerates

- polluting the environment - in a big way...

- jeopardising our lives


For example on the environment (my bolding throughout, other than titles)

'One-third of the world’s total cultivable land is dedicated to growing cereal and soya to feed livestock, while a further 7% is used for grazing animals. Eighty per cent of the world's soya beans and 60% of its maize and barley are grown for livestock feed.

'Much of this land is acquired by destroying forests, a major cause of CO2 emissions and loss of biodiversity. Between 2004 and 2005 around 1.2 million hectares of rainforest were cut down as a result of soya expansion, almost entirely for animal feed and livestock pastures.

'How livestock production contributes to 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions

Source: McMichael et al. (2007) Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. The Lancet, 370(9594), 1253-1263

'In Latin America the land devoted to soya crops doubled between 1994 and 2004, and deforestation, particularly of the Amazon rainforest, now accounts for around 75% of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. Soya cultivation in Brazil to date occupies an area of land the size of Great Britain.'

On the threat to our lives:

'Because of the crowded and unnatural conditions in which factory farmed animals live, they are frequently given antibiotics to prevent disease or bolster their weakened immune systems. Across the world half of all the antibiotics used are administered to livestock. Around 80-90% of all antibiotics used for humans and animals are not fully digested or broken down, leaving them to pass through the body and enter the environment intact through waste.

'Evidence suggests that this over-use of antibiotics is helping to spread drug-resistant strains of diseases such as MRSA and E. coli, which can cause humans serious illness and death. The transfer of MRSA from pigs to humans is already recognised in the Netherlands, and it is feared this new strain of MRSA affecting pigs in some countries will spread to the UK, exacerbating the existing problem.

'Workers at risk
'... at least a quarter of factory farm workers consistently suffer from respiratory diseases, including bronchitis, mucous membrane irritation, asthma-like syndrome, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

'A deadly environment
'Studies repeatedly show that air and water quality are threatened in and around factory farms. Noxious gases in the atmosphere from manure containing hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, and dangerous pathogens cause ill health not only to those working with the animals but those living nearby. Many local residents report unusually frequent headaches, eye irritation, excessive coughing, nausea and asthma. Hydrogen sulphide may cause nausea, blackout periods, headaches and vomiting, and breathing in too much ammonia can cause severe respiratory damage.

'Excessive spraying of faecal material onto fields results in run-off into nearby lakes and rivers, poisoning the water table, eco system and drinking water. The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources has discovered that 1 in 10 drinking-water wells near factory pig farms contains unsafe levels of nitrates, which has been linked to risk of blue-baby syndrome. Six-month-old infants, pregnant women and adults with immunity deficiencies are especially vulnerable.

'President George W. Bush, in one of his last acts before he leaves office, has proposed to free industrial-scale pig and cattle farms from the Clean Water Act if they declare they are not dumping animal waste in lakes and rivers.

'Exploiting the poor
'In the US, intensive pig farms are clustered typically in non-white areas near low-income communities where people are extra vulnerable to the hazards of factory farms because of existing problems of poor health, poor housing, low income, and lack of access to medical care.

After all that, one may ask why not go the whole hog, keep the poor old hog whole, and just go vegan? George Monbiot came to that conclusion, at least intellectually, in this article last April:

Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat A food recession is under way. Biofuels are a crime against humanity, but - take it from a flesh eater - flesh eating is worse

While there are some telling environmental arguments put forward by the Vegan Society here and in the side links dealing with land, water and energy.

Perhaps most telling, particularly for those inclined to blame climate change on the growing human population is this:

'World meat production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and livestock now outnumber people by more than 3 to 1. [2] In other words, the livestock population is expanding at a faster rate than the human population.'

And consuming a substantial proportion of the available resources, particularly land, food and water.

More than enough said.