This is my latest"Eating as Though the Earth Matters" "Planet Kansas" article for the Kansas Sierra Club.
Sierra
Club Planet Kansas, Spring, 2014, Issue
Eating as
Though the Earth Matters column
Under Siege—Can Hearts
Change In Time?
Iowa
is under siege. As hog farms proliferate
over the state, the threat to public health grows along with them. In Ted Genoways’ onearth article, “Hog Wild: How Factory Farms are Poisoning Iowa’s
Water,” he explains that, while the state inspector staff has been cut by 60
percent, the growing number of farms is producing so much manure that it cannot
be contained by the lagoons. So the
toxic, antibiotic, chemical, and bacteria-laden manure is being applied as
fertilizer to millions of acres. We all
know what happens then—it runs right into the rivers and streams threatening
life downstream.
Meanwhile,
ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and other dangerous gases are vented (incompletely,
of course) from the barns to pollute the air.
According to Genoways, Iowa is overrun now with more than 8,500 of these
polluting “farms” that produce over 5 billion gallons of liquid manure each
year. One of the biggest owners of hog
farms is the weirdly named New Fashion Pork.
They also own the packing plant in St. Joseph, Missouri, which kills 15,000
pigs every single day. The air and water
pollution, cruelty to animals and plant workers, and the sheer unbridled
voraciousness of such an operation is thought provoking to say the least—how
did we get into such a mess?
This
article brought to my mind some farmers who saw what they were doing to the
water, air, land, animals, and indeed their own health, and gave up everything they
knew in order to stop contributing to such destruction.
Howard
Lyman was a fourth generation cattle, pig, and poultry farmer who loved the
land, studied agriculture in college, and grew the family ranch and wealth
significantly with his knowledge and expertise.
The ranch was in Montana, and he farmed it for forty years. Following what he had been taught in school,
he used “modern methods” to increase crop and animal yields. But as the years
went by, he noticed that the flowers and birds that once graced his land were
seldom seen or heard. There was nothing
of nature left—only units of production and all the equipment and chemicals it
took to keep the profits going.
Howard,
like so many of us, loved nature, being outdoors, and appreciated the beauty of
the countryside. Yet, from his up close
and personal viewpoint, he could see that nature was being devastated by his
very actions. After recovering from a
life-threatening illness caused in part by his consumption of animal products
and his constant contact with agricultural chemicals, he and his wife made up
their minds to put an end to the business that had brought them so much
financial gain. They became possibly the
only vegan ex-cattle ranchers in Montana at the time.
Howard
went on to work as a lobbyist for the National Farmers’ Union in Washington,
D.C. and worked on legislation for the National Organic Standards Act. He has spoken internationally, appeared on
Oprah, and wrote the books, Mad Cowboy and
No More Bull.
Howard
wrote a chapter in my book The Missing
Peace. “The question we must ask
ourselves as a culture,” he wrote, “is whether we want to embrace the change
that must come, or resist it. Are we so
attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to
counter the arbitrary laws of eating …that we cannot alter the course they set
us on, even if it leads to our own ruin?
Does the prospect of standing apart or encountering ridicule scare us
even from saving ourselves?” Of course, he is referring here to the whole gamut
of destruction caused by animal agriculture, including human disease as well as
the devastation to wildlife, the soil, the air, water, ecosystems, and our own
emotional well-being. He longs for “the
sweet smell of grain and not the forbidding smell of excrement.”
Another
rancher, this one from Michigan, is Harold Brown. Like Howard he was raised on a farm where
rabbits, pigs, dairy cows, and beef cows were grown to be used and slaughtered,
and wild animals were hunted. Naturally,
he ate a lot of animal flesh, dairy products, and was taught by his family not
to get emotionally attached to the animals they were going to kill and eat. Like so many young people today, whether farmers
or not, his veins were loaded with cholesterol, and at the age of 18 he had a
heart attack. His dad had several heart
attacks and a stroke several years later.
In
reaction to his doctor’s warnings, Harold had to change the way he ate. When he discovered that he could reverse
heart disease by eating a vegan diet, he made that commitment to his own
health. However, by opening up to the
philosophy of veganism—which is to do no harm—he began to see animals, not as
commodities as he was raised to believe, but as individuals. Harold now writes and speaks in order to
encourage people to question what they have been taught about animals and to
help save the world from the ravages of animal agriculture.
John
Robbins, in his book The Food Revolution:
How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, describes a profoundly
soulful encounter with a pig farmer.
Robbins asked to tour the farmer’s pig farm for an article he was
writing. Inside the pig barn, he viewed
unimaginable suffering, stench, and pollution.
The farmer’s wife invited Robbins to dinner, and to his own surprise, he
impulsively accepted the invitation, despite his horror at the conditions for
the pigs and the damage being done to the environment by the farm.
Expecting
only small talk and a quick exit, Robbins was shocked when the farmer suddenly
raised his voice causing his wife and children to disappear into other rooms,
leaving Robbins and the farmer alone together.
Inexplicably, almost as a confession, the farmer began to tell a story
about a pet pig he had as a boy. His
father raised pigs for slaughter, but this one turned out to be a friend. The boy often slept in the barn in the summer
with the pig by his side, and they swam together in the nearby pond. But one horrible day, his father told him
that it was time to kill the pig. If he
refused, then he would no longer be his son.
So he killed his friend, and kept up the family tradition of raising
pigs, no matter the cost to his heart, the land, or the pigs.
Not
too long after that, Robbins heard from this fellow about a complete life
transformation. Because of that
emotional breakthrough, the farmer and his wife had the courage to give up
completely on the only life they knew and start over. They created a pig sanctuary and invited local school children to come and learn about
how amazing pigs are, and they support themselves with their organic vegetable
farm. Robbins commented in his book, “When I look at many of the things
happening in our world, I sometimes fear we won’t make it. But when I remember this man and the power of
his spirit, and when I remember that there are many others whose hearts beat to
the same quickening pulse, I think we will.”
When
we look at animal agriculture, animal rights and environmental activism go hand
in hand. While each movement may look at
it from a slightly different viewpoint, we all see the same devastation leaking
and blowing and carving its way into every ecosystem and into everything that
sustains life on our planet.
In
the Winter issue of “Planet Kansas,” Michael Brune delivered some great news
about solar and wind outcompeting coal and gas.
Iowa, he stated, is getting 25% of its electricity from wind now. That’s Iowa, the state that is under siege
from pig farms. Which way will we
go? He calls the fossil fuel companies
zombies because they are “already dead.”
But the pig farmers are very much alive and causing every bit as much
destruction as the fossil fuel companies do.
Brune calls for an end to pessimism, and I couldn’t agree more. The
stories told above make it clear that even those making big profits can change.
There is so much we can do, and so many
people waking up to the need to take personal responsibility and to take
immediate grassroots action. As I’ve
said before, one of the simplest, quickest, and most far reaching actions we
can all take is to boycott animal agriculture and join the millions who have
taken the vegan pledge of no harm to ourselves, the earth, and all the beings
who share the earth with us.
Note from me (not in the published article):
Please share with your friends who love the earth and air and water. We all need to work together to bring peace to earth for all beings and all of nature.
