Crime 4-Fast Growth Diseases
Thirty years ago pigs, chickens and cattle did not look like they do today. Thanks to growth producing chemicals and selected breeding, factory-farmed turkeys can barely walk and can't fly at all or reproduce because of their extreme meat-intensive physiology. Chickens grow so intensely, if they were human they would weigh 500 pounds at age 10. The frenzied growth makes them prone to "flip over disease" in which the metabolic strain causes sudden death. Pigs given the growth drug ractopamine, illegal in many countries, are so muscle-bound they are practically non-ambulatory. "Simply, the pig will go down and not be able to get back up," said Gary Bowman , an Ohio State Extension veterinarian with the College of Veterinary Medicine. Visitors to factory pig facilities have to wear biosecurity suits because "the immobility, poisonous air and terror of confinement badly damage the pigs' immune systems," read an article in Rolling Stone.
Under the use of the Monsanto-created genetically-altered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), the udders of dairy cattle become so engorged, the animals can barely walk. The painful infections (called mastitis) the animals develop along with their shortened life spans and weakened conditions when they arrive at slaughterhouses, often as downers, are the ultimate crime against nature. Many grocery chains have renounced rBGH but some operators still use it for the "cost savings."
Crimes 5--Abuses Against Marine Life
While production of the fast-growing frankenfish, the AquAdvantage salmon, has temporarily halted, greed will likely prevail in aquaculture as it has in factory farming. The salmon, created by crossing a Chinook with an ocean pout and a wild Atlantic salmon, grows twice as fast as normal salmon, reaching its full size in 18 months instead of three years. Though the fish's creators and the government say it is no different from normal fish, in studies AquAdvantage salmon had high incidences of "jaw erosion" and "focal inflammation" (infection), low glucose levels and a possible "increase in the level of IGF-1 [insulin-like growth factor-1]" compared to normal fish.
Like their factory farming counterparts, AquaAdvantage salmon promoters extol the reduced carbon footprint that can be achieved by squeezing animals together. Yonathan Zohar, PhD, from the Center of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland said at FDA hearings that the fish can be grown at u p to "80 to 100 per cubic meter"-- which is bumper to bumper fish. Is it ethical for a swimming animal to spend eighteen months practically standing on its tail? In the interests of making more money? Is it ethical to expose wild fish populations to the aquaculture-generated sea lice which has all but decimated salmon farming in Chile and Norway?
Crime 6--Brave New Animals
Another brave new animal which raises ethical questions is the Enviropig, a genetically modified line of Yorkshire pigs that has the capability to digest plant phosphorus more efficiently than ordinary unmodified pigs and produce a less phosphorus-rich manure. This would reduce damage to waterways and algae blooms with no cutback in factory farming itself. Brave New scientists at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where the cloned sheep Dolly was created, have also developed chickens that produce eggs with interferon and other disease-fighting substances, functioning as living, breathing biofactories for humans. "Once you've made the transgenic birds, then it's very easy," enthused scientist Helen Sang, PhD. "You can breed up hundreds of birds from one cockerel [young male]--because they can be bred with hundreds of hens and you can collect an egg a day and have hundreds of chicks in no time."
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