In article
,
Billy wrote:

In article
,
Bill wrote:

CDC report: http://tinyurl.com/2h3f6x

................

Taste from Salon.

"Since December, 12 meatpackers in Austin and two at a plant in Indiana
have reported fatigue, numbness and tingling in their arms and legs. A
few are severely disabled; others have returned to work.

Indiana health officials have declined to discuss the conditions of the
affected workers there or say where they were employed, citing patient
privacy laws.

All 14 employees worked near powerful compressed air systems that blow
brains out of pig heads at what is known as the head table. Both plants
have stopped using the process.

Lynfield said investigators are now looking for anyone who has worked
near Quality Pork's head table since 1997. That's difficult because the
plant employs about 1,200 workers, many of them immigrants, and turnover
is high."

The last book I read, "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" by Sandor
Katz stated that 4 companies control 80% of the cattle market and 5
control 63% of the hog market. Their $500,000 slaughterhouses are
efficient and cruel, which matches the way the animals were raised.

Most of us are meat eaters. We accept that something has to die for us
to live but that doesn't mean that we condone torturing the animal,
whether it be a cage, where it can't turn around, or treatment in feed
lots and slaughterhouses.

Wild animals have a life with a dimension of freedom and some farmers do
raise their animals humanely, even though the animals will be killed.
"Real" free range animals have been shown to be healthier for us to eat
but corporate farms can, and do, play fast and loose the the term "free
range", until it means squat.

Normally small producers of meat can't legally sell their meat because
commercial meat has to be killed in one of the aforementioned $500,000
slaughterhouses (There is an exemption for chickens.). The way around
this is for the farmer to sell you part interest in the animal.

The whole idea, of course, is to keep the small producer out of the
marketplace. Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms
(http://www.polyfacefarms.com/) went so far as to send some of his
chickens and some from the local market to a lab for testing and the
supermarket chickens were 25 times higher in bacteria than his own!

Presently, our corporate shills (the government) are trying to separate
us even further from growing our own food by implementing the National
Animal Identification System (NAIS) that will require every animal owner
to register their animals (http://www.nonais.org/). The sweet part
(sarcasm) is that the fee is the same for one animal or a herd of
animals. (**** and moan about this to your representatives.)

But I digress, slaughterhouses are inhuman to both animals and people.

First a story about a California slaughterhouse that tortured "downer"
cattle to get them to pass USDA inspection. It's against health laws, if
not against moral laws.
http://www.latimes.com/news/educatio...,5209685.story

And lastly, from Sandor Katz's book, "How could mass production of
animal products be anything but ugly? The gruesome realities of the
industry that delivers cheap animal products to the supermarket are kept
far from public view, but every so often a new sensational expose
captures public attention. In 2003 Virgil Butler started an online blog
following his firing by Tyson Foods, the world's largest poultry
processor, from the job he had held for ten years at poultry processing
plants in Arkansas. Butler's graphic accounts of his job ³have
electrified animal-rights activists around the globe," according to the
Los Angeles Times. Here is an excerpt from his blog:

Here come the birds through the stunner into the killing
machine. It's time to get busy. You can expect to have to catch
every fifth one or so, many that are not stunned. Remember,
they come at you 182-186 per minute. There is blood every-
where, in the 3' x 3' x 20' trough beneath the machine, on your
face, your neck, your arms, all down your apron. You are covered
in it. Sometimes you have to wash off the clots of blood, without
taking your eyes off the line lest one slip by, which they will. . . .
The sheer amount of killing and blood can really get to you
after awhile, especially if you can't just shut down all emotion
completely and turn into a robot zombie of death. You feel like
part of a big death machine. Pretty much treated that way as
well. Sometimes weird thoughts will enter your head. It's just
you and the dying chickens. The surreal feelings grow into such
a horror of the barbaric nature of your behavior.

You are murdering helpless birds by the thousands (75,000 to
90,000 a night). You are a killer. You can't really talk to anyone
about this. The guys at work will think you are soft. Family and
friends don't want to know about this. It makes them uncomfortable
and unsure of and unsure of what to say or how to act. They can even
look at you a little weird. Some don't want much else to do with
you when they know what you do for a living. You are a killer.
Out of desperation you send your mind elsewhere so that you
don't end up like those guys that lose it. Like the guy that fell
on his knees praying to God for forgiveness. Or the guy they
hauled off to the mental hospital that kept having nightmares
that chickens were after him. I've had those, too. (Shudder)
Very creepy. You find something else to dwell on to try to
remove yourself from the situation. To keep your mind from
drowning in all those hundreds of gallons of blood you see.
Most people who work this room and work in the hanging cage
use some sort of stimulant to keep up the pace and some sort
of mellowing substance to escape reality. . . .

You shut down all emotions eventually. You just can't care
about anything. Because if you care about something, it opens
the gate to all those bad feelings that you can't afford to feel
and still do your job. You have bills to pay. You have to eat. But,
you don't want chicken. You have to be really hungry to eat
that. You know what goes into every bite. All the horror and
negativity. All the brutality. Concentrated into every bite. . . .
Welcome to the nightmare I escaped."


It doesn't have to be like this.

Gary Snyder spoke on breaking the body. This a sacred act.

I like the poem in which the chicken and he are two but that night they
are one.

"Real work" comes to mind but no one seems to to know of that vision
here as it internal.
So things are such as they are. Got some seeds today Malabar and
others.

Weird world no?

Gary is a fav of mine.

Bill

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Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA
ICAO = KMIV Millville Weather