Oh, I see, Alex. You are talking about your very close buddy and alter ego, Bleonard, when you speak of fish. I am talking about, well, do you remember the two girls at my daughter's school who were a couple? The children made up a song about them, and part of it went "Smells like fish, make a wish!" So anyway I was not casting aspersions on Bleonard, okay? I was talking about fish in a female sense.
Now, about that program on pregnant mares. You HRT my feeling!!!!! I watched it, and thought it was fair, balanced and non-sensational in its approach. It seems that pregnant mares stand all day and all night in very small stalls, with apparatuses (apparati?) wrapped around their hind ends a little like diapers, so that all of the urine is collected, to be eventually made into the active hormonal ingredient in Premarin. Most of this happens in Manitoba, Canada, incidentally, for reasons that are still unclear to me after watching the program.
One farmer did not want to be filmed or interviewed, but another was semi-willing. He commented that although it may seem particularly cruel to take the foals which are born as a byproduct of the hormone production, and sell them to be slaughtered for meat, we do the similar things in search for hamburger, etc., which could be perceived as quite barbaric. And while the horses were quite confined, on the farm they filmed they did have adequate food and water.
I suspect this process is probably cruel enough that most vegetarians would be pretty repulsed, perhaps enough to choose not to take Premarin. Meat-eating women have already made decision on some level that animals are to be used by humans, and would probably not have as many moral qualms.
Incidentally, pondering pregnant mares, and the ways we treat animals in general, there is a new book out about the animals we eat. This review is from the San Francisco Chronicle:
'Slaughterhouse' a Grim Study of
Meatpacking Industry
Bill Wallace
Monday, January 26, 1998
SLAUGHTERHOUSE
By Gail A. Eisnitz Prometheus; 310 pages; $25.29
With the Texas beef industry's libel suit against talk
show host Oprah Winfrey in the news, this may not
be the safest time to write a critical book about the
conditions under which American meat is
produced.
Don't tell that to Gail A. Eisnitz. In
''Slaughterhouse,'' her probe of the American
meatpacking industry, she has put together a
scathing broadside about exactly what the animals
on our dinner plates went through to get there.
''Slaughterhouse'' makes no pretense of objectivity.
Eisnitz works for the Humane Farming Association,
an organization dedicated to protecting U.S. farm
animals, and the group holds the copyright to her
book. But propagandist or not, Eisnitz marshals her
factual evidence effectively while telling an engaging
true-life detective story.
Eisnitz's first-person narrative follows her inquiry
into conditions at Kaplan Industries of Bartow,
Fla., based on a U.S. Department of Agriculture
inspector's tip that the plant's operators were
literally skinning beef cattle alive in violation of the
federal Humane Slaughter Act.
As Eisnitz tracks down sources, digs up
incriminating documents and follows leads to
scandals in the pork and poultry industries, she
learns that she has developed cancer and is forced
to undergo debilitating radiation and chemical
therapy.
Her battle with a life-threatening disease becomes a
sort of metaphor for the American meat industry, in
which animals are sometimes scalded, skinned and
eviscerated while still conscious, and worker and
public health concerns are often sacrificed to
greater profitability.
Although her writing style is sometimes raw and
naive, Eisnitz constructs a story that carries the
reader along.
Consider Tommy Vladak, who realized too late
that the stress of working in a John Morrell pork-
packing plant in Sioux City, Iowa -- ducking live
hogs falling from the chain hoist above and trying to
keep up with the ridiculously fast pace the
operators had set -- was making him crazy enough
to abuse his wife and kids. Vladak, previously a
ringer for movie star Brad Pitt, was horribly
disfigured after a hog that was supposed to have
been stunned unconscious kicked a razor-sharp
''sticking'' knife into Vladak's face.
''The chain (that hauls animals through the
processing line) will just keep going,'' Vladak told
Eisnitz. ''Because people need a job, and they're
willing to do anything they can to keep their job. I
proved it by sticking (jabbing with a knife to drain
their blood) live animals. . . . Today, if somebody
gave me a choice of going without a job or working
for John Morrell's, I'd go without a job.''
Using quotes like these from taped interviews with
''killing floor'' workers, Eisnitz paints a brutal,
horrifying picture of American meatpacking
practices, interspersed with stories about the
gruesome -- and sometimes fatal -- effects of eating
food prepared in grossly unsanitary conditions.
She also demonstrates how regulators from the
federal Department of Agriculture, hamstrung by
conflicts of interest and the agency's incestuous
relationship with the meat industry, fail to ensure
that animals are slaughtered humanely and under
safe, sanitary conditions.
At the end, it will be hard for the reader to disagree
with Eisnitz'sconclusion that the American
meatpacking business ''is a giant, corporate system
that only permits speed and productivity, and
penalizes those who would take the time to do the
right thing.''
c1998 San Francisco Chronicle Page D4
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