text:
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Reprinted from
The Ecologist
Date Published: 26/11/03
Author: Robert Kennedy Jr and Tracey Worcester
Fields covered
with faeces, children vomiting at school, plastic bins stuffed
full of dead pigs. Robert Kennedy and Tracy Worcester experience
firsthand the reality of life in Smithfield's Poland.
Ignoring Smithfield's 'no
entry' sign, we clambered over wire barriers and wrenched open
the ventilation shaft of one of three vast concrete and
corrugated iron sheds. The noise was deafening. Five thousand
squealing pigs were crammed into strawless compartments inside
the recently opened pig factory near the town of Szczecinek in
the northwestern Polish province Zachodnio-Pomorskie.
Back outside, effluent from
cement cesspits had over-flowed – sending a small stream of
brown, stinking liquid into the lake below, which had then
frozen over. In a large plastic bin we found 20 dead pigs. When
we'd looked the night before, it had been empty.
It seems that the entire
operation is illegal. During the communist era, the state farm
had employed 44 locals. Officials told us that Prima (a Polish
company now owned by Smithfield) had only been given a permit to
renovate the derelict farm on condition it guaranteed 15 local
jobs. Instead, no locals were employed and 5,000 pigs arrived in
the dead of night. Villagers only grasped what had happened when
the company began illegally dumping liquid faeces on the
snow-covered fields.
People were angry and
frightened, but village and township officials told us they were
powerless to defend their community as the local government had
taken Prima's side.
'If you had informed us of
Smithfield's record six months earlier,' they told us, 'we would
have refused all permits and prevented Prima from gaining a
foothold.' Now they could only ask for our help in challenging
the company on environmental grounds.
A few miles north we visited
Prima's factory farm at Nielep, where 30,000 pigs are confined.
We were met at the compound gate by a tall man in a surgical
face mask. Removing the mask, he identified himself as the
manager and demanded that we kept away. Responding to our
questions about animal welfare, he claimed that although there
was no bedding for the pigs, the factory had all the appropriate
permits and required number of employees. However, he refused to
say exactly how many pigs were impounded, how many died each day
or what mix of chemicals were pumped into them. Admitting that
he had been taken to Smithfield installations in North Carolina
for training, he mouthed the standard company line: 'Our local
and national opponents are selfishly concerned with animal
welfare instead of feeding the world'.
Local resistance
In a nearby village, a meeting
had been convened for local farmers and authorities to hear Tom
Garrett of the animal rights advocacy group the Animal Welfare
Institute (AWI) describe Smithfield's record in the US. People
sat in stunned silence as they tried to grasp the impending
destruction of their livelihoods and community.
When Garrett had finished, the
audience erupted. Many demanded that the local authorities in
Poland take control of the country's former state farms and give
tenancies to former employees rather than foreign
transnationals. Desperate and angry, one old lady confirmed what
we had already seen: 'The company has been spreading effluent
over snow-covered fields,' she explained. 'People have developed
rashes and stomach upsets.' The stench from the effluent had
caused vomiting, which threatened the closure of the local
school and the destruction of local businesses. To raucous
applause, a local politician declared: 'Smithfield must be
kicked out.'
This same cry is now being
heard all over Poland, with locals signing petitions and farmers
forming blockades to get Smithfield out. Across the provincial
border from Zachodnio-Pomorskie is Wieckowice, a beautiful
village of brick and wooden homes, shrines and long stone barns
in the region of Wielkopolska. There we found several dozen
local activists carrying signs outside a former state farm owned
by Smithfield's Polish subsidiary Animex. The facility has
permits for only 500 cows and 500 pigs. It has been reported
that it houses 17,000 pigs. The farm is 40 yards from an
elementary school where residents say their children get sick
and vomit because of the pig odours.
Among the protesters was Irena
Kowalak, a dignified woman who served as village mayor for 35
years. She told us she had resigned recently because of
intimidation by Smithfield. Andrzej
Nowakowski is the governor of
Wielkopolska. Nowakowski said that the local population was
unanimously and adamantly opposed to Smithfield and that he
refused to give the company permits when it bought the farm two
years ago. But six months later Poland's environment ministry
overrode him.
Nonetheless, thanks to the
governor, Smithfield has not been able to get permits for liquid
manure. So the farm uses straw bedding and has not yet devised a
plan for disposing of its waste. Fields of wheat surround the
pig barns, but they are never harvested because Smithfield is
not interested in agriculture. To Smithfield, these fields are a
place to dump the notorious wastes of industrial meat
A convoy of indignant
Wieckowice residents took us out to see the giant pile of pig
manure. On the side of a 1,000-acre wheat field was a mountain
of pig waste 150 metres long, four metres high and 50 metres
wide. 'Seventeen thousand pigs for six months,' a young man
said, nodding at the pile. Local authorities have been ordering
Smithfield to move the illegal pile for six months, but the
company has refused. The night before our visit Smithfield
covered its pile with a giant black tarpaulin, which was already
inflated and writhing with the internal pressure of methane gas.
Half a mile downhill from the
pile, villagers had created a public beach on a 1,500-acre lake
where umbrellas shaded dozens of families swimming and playing
on a steamy 90º day. Manure residues festered on the shores of a
nearby bay into which Smithfield's waste pile drains. An old man
with twinkling blue eyes stuck his hand into the water, smelled
his fingers and offered us a whiff. 'Smithfield Foods,' he
Governor Nowakowski told us
that there is another Smithfield factory, in Sedziny, that has
4,500 pigs but a permit for only 1,000 cows. He said his
assistants were now inspecting the facility. 'But,' he
explained, 'the legislation is very difficult for the local
government to enforce [without state support].' Unfortunately,
the federal government is not supporting the Wielkopolska
Nowakowski is not the only
local politician begging for federal help. Zofia Wilczynska is a
deputy in the Sejm, the lower house of Poland's national
parliament. Wilczynska has complained to the federal government
that a Smithfield operation in Polczyn Zdroj is endangering the
northern Polish town's 400-year-old health spa. Right over by
Poland's northeastern border with the Russian Federation enclave
of Kaliningrad (former East Prussia) another health spa, in
Goldap, is also threatened by pollution and odours from a
Smithfield site.
The day after our visit to
Wieckowice, a member of a parliamentary agriculture committee
told us that the Polish government had recently conducted an
investigation of 16 Smithfield farms (14 owned by the
corporation and two owned by front groups it controlled). The
agricultural ministry found that every one of the farms had
broken Poland's veterinary, health and construction laws. Yet
when Smithfield lacks proper permits, or is caught breaking the
law, it is fined, laughably, just a few hundred dollars.
Sometimes Smithfield just buys
officials off. A hundred miles north of Wieckowice, the mayor of
the Western Pomeranian village Wierzchowo gave Smithfield
permits for two enormous farms after the company paid his wife
approximately $4,000 to perform the environmental impact
Local communities devastated
The economic impacts of
Smithfield's production methods are devastating local
communities and markets. When Smithfield took over Animex, the
latter's three principal farms near Goldap employed 60
employees. Following the farms' conversion to automated pig
factories, only seven of these workers remain.
Smithfield says it wants to
produce 6 million pigs in Poland each year. Polish peasants
currently rear 20 million pigs per year, and a quarter of them
will have to lose their livelihoods to make way for Smithfield.
The corporation is already squeezing the small farms. In Western
Pomerania we found that the region's small slaughterhouses had
already been closed, and that the remaining Smithfield-owned
slaughterhouse would not slaughter pigs from small farms. The
same will soon apply to the rest of Poland. Once Smithfield
controls the slaughterhouses and has eliminated local markets,
it will be able to control prices and, ultimately, the farms.
Avoiding the monoculture in
Instead of reinventing itself
to mimic the failed systems in Europe and the US, Poland should
celebrate its assets and sell them to the world. Polish meat
tastes much better than factory meat. Polish sausage is world
famous. Consumers like knowing that their meat is from animals
that were humanely raised in ways that are good for the
environment, supportive of family farms, and free of dangerous
hormones, antibiotics and chemicals. But all these things make
quality meat more expensive than factory meat. And when the
consumer sees free-range pork that does not look much different
to a Smithfield cut, they will choose the cheaper product. The
answer is branding.
When Europe opens its markets
to Poland, the Poles should establish a market for their produce
by using branding to draw attention to their traditional values.
The AWI has offered the Polish government to help brand the
country's pork internationally. The institute specialises in
helping small farmers by finding consumers who are willing to
pay a premium for produce that is healthy and raised humanely
and without the use of antibiotics and hormones.
Anybody who pays a premium for
Polish meat will be getting a good deal. Some of the meat and
sausage that we gorged on in Poland was among the best we've
tasted. Pork of the kind produced by traditional Polish farms is
widely recognised to be tastier and juicier than confinement
pork of the sort produced by Smithfield.
If Poland is going to flourish
rather than flounder, the nation needs to recognise its enormous
strengths and start believing in itself. The words 'produced in
Poland' should become a standard for high quality. This is no
easy challenge. But the easy way out, signing a contract with
Smithfield, is not the solution.
A last bastion of tradition
in Poland
Poland is an oasis of
traditional farming in a world dominated by agribusiness
multinationals. Around 2 million Poles, about 18 per cent of the
country's population, are farmers or members of farming
families. That's as many as the rest of central Europe put
The Polish landscape is not yet
marked by the vast monocultures of row crops that are typical of
the US. Currently, Poland is a country of picturesque farm
villages, with farms that average five hectares and modest homes
of wood, timber and fieldstone. Typically, each farmer has a
horse, a couple of cows and some pigs and chickens. Animals are
raised free range and humanely. And Polish farmers rotate a
variety of crops in the traditional way that fosters healthy
Many Polish farmhouses still have occupied stork nests on their
roofs. The country hosts 25 per cent of the world's white stork
population – some 50,000 pairs. – more than the whole of western
Europe combined. Elsewhere in the continent the bird has been
exterminated by modern agriculture practices: liquid manure and
pesticides effectively wipe out the fish, frogs, crabs and
insects that storks eat. In Denmark, for example, there are only
six pairs left.
Poland has large stands of
timber as well as the last sanctuaries of European bison and
Europe's last clean-flowing unregulated rivers. It has purer
soils than anywhere else in Europe. Its land is uncontaminated
by pesticide and fertiliser residue and almost entirely free of
the heavy metals caused by industrial smokestack pollution
throughout the rest of Europe.
Smithfield's Tasteless
Millions of years of natural
selection have endowed pigs with back fat to regulate their body
temperature. But Smithfield gets more money from meat than from
fat, so the company has bred its own strain of super-lean pigs
with almost no back fat. They are highly-strung and unable to
survive normal outside temperatures.
Food professionals say this
extreme leanness has dramatically diminished the quality of US
pork. Food magazine Saveur described the pigs of modern
confinement agriculture as being so skinny that they look 'like
dachshunds'. While applauding traditional farming methods of the
kind used in Poland, The New York Times Magazine stated: 'The
pork industry has managed to engineer a pig with almost no fat
at all. And this is why most modern recipes for pork involve
some kind of liquid – putting the meat in a marinade before
cooking, basting it while cooking or braising it in broth. If
you simply grill a mass-market pork chop, it becomes inedibly
dry.' The Times went on to say that free-range pork 'is rich
when sliced and sautéed, fine textured and robust in flavour. It
needs nothing more than seasoning with salt'. The dryness and
poor taste of confinement pork have become so bad that many
major pork companies are now 'enhancing' their pork: adding
water, flavoured liquids, or even stock to their tray-pack and
prepared meats, and using red food colouring to improve its drab
Financing the Slaughter
Financial institutions like the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) use EU
taxpayers' money to subsidise companies like Smithfield. The
result? Small farmers disappear, food quality deteriorates,
animal welfare suffers. Although it claims to be
'environmentally sensitive', the EBRD has joined with the Polish
banks BRE and Rabobank Polska to provide a $100m loan to
Smithfield's Polish subsidiary Animex.
The EBRD's 'project summary'
states: 'Follow-up investigations of [EBRD] environmental staff
and discussion with Smithfield management responsible for such
issues demonstrated that the [Animex] facilities comply with the
national requirements for environment, health and safety.' Yet
the evidence suggests that the EBRD is consciously and
deliberately backing a corporate takeover of Polish agriculture.
The bank's press releases and 'transition impact' statements are
full of talk about 'restructuring Poland's agribusiness and food
industry'. The EBRD refers, for example, to the 'restructuring
of the meat-processing sector' and 'the consolidation of the
agribusiness sector'.
The reality is that Poland,
like the rest of the modern world, is about to bury an ancient
culture based on community living, family and land stewardship
for the benefit of future generations. As Tom Garrett of the
Animal Welfare Institute has lamented: 'There is no salvation to
be found in industrial agriculture owned and controlled by
foreign multinational corporations. There is only damage.'
For more information about the
EBRD's involvement in Poland:
As Smithfield buys local
companies to front their operations, it is difficult to trace
its products. The surest way of avoiding them is not to buy from
supermarkets but to buy organic or locally produced pork from
local butchers or farmers' markets instead. To find information
about local producers, visit:
www.localfood.org.uk or
In the UK Smithfield's pork
products are marketed under the brand name PEK. However, it is
more than likely that Smithfield meat is also ending up in
mass-produced products like pizzas. So, while not buying
PEK-branded products is good, not buying anything containing
non-organic pork is better.
Contribute to or join the AWI
(www.awionline.org/membership); it is the only humane
organisation fighting the cruelty of pig factory farming in
Poland. But the International Coalition to Protect the Polish
Countryside is also doing important work. See its website at
Robert Kennedy Jr is the
president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an international
grassroots coalition dedicated to protecting water systems from
pollution; Tracy Worcester is the associate director of the
International Society for Ecology and Culture (www.isec.org.uk),
a non-profit organisation that aims to protect cultural and
biological diversity
Northfield, MN -- The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, famous for bringing world-renowned musicians and romance to the rural Midwest, will be the site of an unprecedented gathering on Friday, April 5, 2002. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President of Waterkeeper Alliance, will be the keynote speaker during an all-day program on the urgent need to revitalize a culture of humane, environmentally-sound, independent family farming in Iowa, Minnesota and throughout the U.S.
The "Summit for Sustainable Hog Farming", sponsored by the non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance, with support from the Animal Welfare Institute and other organizations, brings together family farmers, scientists, attorneys, animal welfare advocates, fishermen, environmentalists, religious and labor leaders and public health activists, as well as citizens who suffer from living near animal factories.
At the special invitation of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), Professor Bo Algers, Head of the Department of Animal Health and Environment at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, will focus on Sweden's experience in his presentation "Animals in Food Production: Sustainability and Democracy". Sweden captured the world's attention in 1986 when, at the request of Swedish farmers, it prohibited the routine use of antibiotics in raising animals for food, and again, in 1988, when Sweden required that all animals, including those used for food, be allowed to behave naturally. These statutes hastened Sweden's phase out of systems that impose extreme confinement and deprivation on animals used for food, and Sweden's progress toward a safe, ethical and sustainable food production system.
To help combat the extreme and unnecessary cruelty inherent in pig factories, the Animal Welfare Institute has established humane husbandry standards for raising pigs. Niman Ranch, a California-based marketing company famous for supplying high quality meat to fine restaurants, requires that the farmers from whom it buys pigs adhere to the Animal Welfare Institute standards. Bill Niman, co-founder of Niman Ranch, will discuss his company's mission and successful marketing to hundreds of restaurants and stores nationwide. Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle Mexican Grill, uses Niman Ranch pork exclusively in his restaurants. Mr. Ells will discuss Chipotle's philosophy and experience with marketing the products of healthy husbandry in his presentation "How a Simple Burrito Can Make A Difference."
Iowa pig farmers Paul Willis and Colin Wilson will describe their family farms, managed according to principles of humaneness and sustainability. Mr. Willis, who also serves as manager of the Niman Ranch Pork Company of Iowa, and Mr. Wilson, along with 180 other independent family farmers, adhere to AWI's husbandry standards and market pigs for a premium to Niman Ranch. Minnesota farmer Paul Sobocinski, program organizer with Land Stewardship Project, will discuss grassroots efforts to fight concentration in agriculture and promote humane, sustainable pig farming.
Registration for the Summit commences at 8:00 a.m. and the formal program begins at 9:00 a.m. The registration fee of $25.00 includes all programs and meals. Mr. Kennedy's address, at 7:00 p.m., will be free and open to the public. For more information, call Waterkeeper Alliance attorneys Nicolette Hahn or Jeff Odefey at 914-422-4410 or Animal Welfare Institute Farm Animal Advisor Diane Halverson at 507-645-8434, or visit the Waterkeeper Alliance website at www.waterkeeper.org. The Animal Welfare Institute website can be found at www.awionline.org. The full agenda for the Summit is attached.
The following is a complete list of the Hog Summit speakers, listed in the order they will appear:
Ms. Nicolette G. Hahn, Senior Attorney, Waterkeeper Alliance
Brother David Andrews, Executive Director, National Catholic Rural Life Conference (Iowa)
Mayor Kirk Kraft, Mayor, Clear Lake (Iowa)
Ms. Janice Weber, Producer/Director, JWCreative Solutions, Ltd.(New York)
Dr. Mike Duffy, Professor of Agricultural Economics, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University (Iowa)
Dr. Kendall Thu, Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University (Illinois)
Dr. Melva Fager Okun, Coordinator, North Carolina Keep Antibiotics Working campaign (North Carolina)
Mr. Robert Cook, Citizen activist and former hog confinement worker (Iowa)
Dr. David Wallinga, Director, Antibiotics Resistance Project, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) (Minnesota)
Dr. Michael Appleby, Vice President for Farm Animals and Sustainable Agriculture, Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) (Washington, D.C.)
Dr. Michael R. Burkhart, Associate Professor Department of Geologic and Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University (Iowa)
Dr. John Downing, Professor of Limnology, Department of Animal Ecology, Iowa State University (Iowa)
Ms. Martha Noble, Senior Policy Analyst, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (Washington, D.C.)
Mr. Ken Midkiff, Director, Sierra Club, Clean Water / CAFO Campaign (Missouri)
Mr. Paul Sobocinski, Farmer and Program Organizer for Land Stewardship Project (Minnesota)
Mr. Tom Frantzen, Hog Farmer for Organic Valley (Iowa)
Mr. Charlie Speer, Partner, Payne & Jones (Kansas)
Mr. Daniel E. Estrin, Counsel, Kennedy & Madonna (New York)
Ms. Anne Wiowode, Director, Mackinac Sierra Club (Michigan)
Mr. Harlan Hansen, Former hog farmer and County Supervisor, Humboldt County (Iowa)
Mr. Hugh Espey, Rural Project Director, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa)
Dr. Stephanie Seemuth, Family Physician (Iowa)
Dr. Jan Flora, Professor, Iowa State University (Iowa)
Mr. David Osterberg, Associate Clinical Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Iowa (Iowa)
Ms. Diane Halverson, Farm Animal Advisor, Animal Welfare Institute (Minnesota)
Dr. Bo Algers, Professor, Swedish University of Agricultural Science (Sweden)
Ms. Theresa Marquez, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Organic Valley (Wisconsin)
Mr. Steve Ells, Founder & CEO, Chipotle Mexican Grill (Colorado)
Mr. Bill Niman, Founder, Niman Ranch (California)
Mr. Terry Spence, President, Family Farms for the Future and cattle farmer (Missouri)
Mr. Gary Hoskey, Hog farmer and President, Iowa Farmers Union (Iowa)
Ms. Marlene Halverson, Farm Animal Economic Advisor to Animal Welfare Institute (Minnesota)
Mr. Colin Wilson, Hog farmer and Immediate Past President, Practical Farmers of Iowa (Iowa)
Mr. Paul Willis, Hog farmer and Manager, Niman Ranch Pork Company of Iowa (Iowa)
Mr. Jim Braun, Citizen activist and former hog farmer (Iowa)
Mr. Bryan Burgess, Citizen activist cattle rancher (Alabama)
Mr. Don Webb, Citizen activist and former hog farmer (North Carolina)
Mr. Chris Petersen, Citizen activist and former hog farmer (Iowa)
Ms. Lisa Bechtold, Citizen activist and farmer (Alberta, Canada)
Mr. Kurtis Kelsey, Citizen activist and farmer (Iowa)
Ms. Karen Hudson, Citizen activist and farmer (Illinois)
Mr. Gary Bierschenk, Citizen activist and crop and hog farmer (Iowa)
Mr. Rick Dove, Waterkeeper Alliance Southeast Representative (North Carolina)
Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President, Waterkeeper Alliance
Nesting behavior of hens includes nest investigation,
scratching and pecking at the nest material, choosing a particular nest and
entering it, forming a hollow, laying an egg, rolling an egg under the body, and
Hens prefer to lay their eggs at sheltered places where manipulatable
materials are available. During the pre-laying phase, the hen leaves the flock
and looks for an adequate nesting place. She investigates different places or
nest boxes before deciding where to lay her eggs. A hollow is formed at the
chosen nesting place. After 10 to 30 minutes, the hen gets up and lays an egg
which she rolls under her body. She stays in the nest for a short period of time
before joining the group again.
Appropriate housing for chickens must take the animals' species-specific
behaviors into account. A room may be readily transformed to suitable housing
for chickens by placing a wire-mesh covered dropping pit on one side of the room
and installing perches along the wall at different heights over the pit. The
horizontal distance between two perches
should be at least 35 cm (13.8 in.). The total perch-length is determined by
the number of chickens and should be no less than 18 cm (7.1 in.) per
A scratching are is an imperative to allow chickens to exhibit
species-typical foraging behavior. A thin layer of sand covered by approximately
10 cm (3.9in.) of chopped straw provides a suitable substratum for this purpose.
The scratching area should take up at least half of the floor area of the hen
Hens need adequate nest boxes, preferably with manipulatable material, like
oat husks or chopped straws. One nest box should be provided for each 5 hens.
Its dimension should be approximately 40x40cm (16x16 in.). If larger family
nests are used, a nesting area of 1 m² (10.8 sq.
ft.) per 50 hens is recommended.
Group size should not exceeded 80 animals, as chickens are only able to
distinguish between 40 to 80 members of their own species. Stocking density
should not exceed 5 birds per square meter (10.8 sq.ft.) of available surface
area to avoid stress from overcrowding.
A variety of food should be offered to the chickens. If only meals or
pellets are fed, the animals consume their ration too fast and do not spend
enough time foraging. Bad habits such as feather pecking can easily develop
under such conditions. To prevent this, grain should be provided in racks or in
baskets hanging from the ceiling, so that the animals can pull and peck at the contents and keep busy.
Chickens should have access to a box filled with sand so that they can take
dustbaths. Dustbathing is a social activity which is usually performed by
several chickens at the same time. The sand box should therefore be relatively
spacious, i.e., 80x80 cm (31x31 in.).
A bad-weather run should be provided so that the chickens have exposure to
natural daylight and seasonal temperature variations throughout the year. The
run should have a roof so that chickens can have access to it even in bad
weather, and wire-mesh walls so that the animals are protected from predators.
It should be about half the size of the hen house and have a concrete floor
covered with a layer of straw and sand.
Colorado Senator Wayne Allard and Minnesota Congressman CollinPeterson have introduced legislation to eliminate a loophole inthe federal Animal Welfare Act which allows fighting birds tobe shipped from states where cockfighting is illegal to stateswhere the cruel "sport" is still allowed, Only threestates permit this inhumane, bloody activity: New Mexico, Louisianaand Oklahoma.Currently, law enforcement officers have a difficult time crackingdown on illegal cockfights in the 47 states where it is banned.When confronted, cockfighters merely claim that the fighting birdsin their possession are destined for shipment to a legal cockfightingstate. Prosecution of these unscrupulous cockfighters would befacilitated if the Allard bill (S. 345) and the Peterson bill(H.R. 1275) become law.
Cockfightingis a centuries-old bloodsport in which two ormore specially hired roosters are forced into a pit to fight surroundedby gambling onlookers. Often, one or both birds die as a resultof the fight because their feet are fitted with razor sharp steelknives. The birds may end up with punctured wings, broken bonesand pierced eyes. Even the battle's "winner" may ultimatelydie from injuries sustained inthe fight. And birds that survive but are deemed unfit to fightagain are either killed by their owner or simply thrown in a garbagecan to suffer and die.Independent of Senator Allard's federal legislative initiative,there is a move underway in Oklahoma to prohibit cockfightingwithin the state, joining Missouri and Arizona which just bannedcockfighting through citizen ballot initiatives last November.Oklahoma State Representative Charles Gray has introduced legislationto ban cockfighting specifically. Cockfighters in the state Suchas Walt Roberts, however, object to people trying "to endthe sport because it is not within their definition of what ishumane" according to Oklahoma's Tulsa World newspaper.
But Representative Gray is not alone in hisopposition to this horrible fighting. A statewide poll sponsoredby the Tulsa World revealed 2 to 1 opposition to cockfighting:if a cockfighting ban were put to a vote, 65 percent of Oklahomanswould vote in favor while only 30 percent would vote against.As long as there is powerful and vocal rural opposition in thestate, however, it is unlikely that the legislature would voteto end the cruel practice of cockfighting. This makes passageof Senator Allard's federal legislationall the more important.
AWI Quarterly, Spring 1999, Vol. 48, No.2, p. 10
by Tom Garrett
In 1998, the proliferation of hog factories, which has embroiledstate legislatures and county commissions for much of the decade,reached center stage as a national issue. On November 3, in thewords of the Wall Street Journal's Bruce Ingersoll, "Pigpolitics became big politics."
In the two states where the hog factory came directly beforethe people, the verdict was unequivocal. In Colorado, Initiative14, which places hog factories under moderately severe regulation,was approved by over 60% of the electorate. South Dakota AmendmentE, which bans corporate farming in the state altogether, gained59% of the popular vote despite a massive infusion of corporatecash and opposition from the state's Republican governor.
Lauch Faircloth was defeated by JohnEdwards (D, NC). Faircloth, according to CounterPunch (November1-15, 1998) "was part owner of Coharie Farms, the 30th largesthog producer in the country. Faircloth owned more than $1 millionworth of stock in two slaughterhouses. In Congress he attendedto the interests of the pig men as chairman of the Senate Subcommitteeon Clean Water, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety."Environmentalists and small farmers across the state worked hardto defeat Faircloth. The Sierra Club flooded the airwaves withads linking Faircloth to water pollution and pfiesteria.
In Iowa, where hog factories haveblighted northern counties and driven most of Iowa's traditionalhog farmers out of business, the hog issue played heavily in DemocratTom Vilsack's crushing upset of Republican gubernatorial candidateJim Lightfoot. In neighboring Minnesota, Reform Party candidate,Jessie "The Mind" Ventura's victory sent a seismic shockthrough the American political establishment. The governor-electsupports a temporary moratorium on new hog factories.
Factory farming was also a factorin the unexpectedly severe defeat of anti-environmentalist Republicancandidate Ellen Sauerbrey by Maryland's incumbent governor, ParrisGlendening. Glendening received high marks for his crackdown onMaryland's huge chicken farms following the 1997 pfiesteria outbreakin the Chesapeake Bay area. Environmental protection was a definingissue in the campaign.
Despite political setbacks, the industryblitzkrieg shows no sign of abating. With the producer price ofhogs as Iowa as 9 cents a pound – the same price it was inthe Depression Era – the last of America's family hog farmersare being driven from the business, while corporations are engagedin a brutal battle for control of the hog market. In the meantime,thousands of citizens, from the New Melloray Monastery in Iowato Owyhee County, Idaho, are threatened by the insensate drivefor more, and still more, hog factories.
"It's ironic when you think about our heritage in South Dakota, "said Johnson, 41, who took over the family farm when his father had a stroke in 1981. "'Our ancestors left the landlords and kings in Europe to come here for their economic freedom, and now we're making the big corporations the new feudal rulers ... Sometimes I think nobody is paying attention while the big corporations are just taking over the whole farm economy and destroying an American way of life. " [Charlie Johnson a farmer from Madison, South Dakota]
The article quotes another farmer: "The feed comes from out of state, the hogs come from out of state and the hogs are shipped out of state for slaughter, " said Don Hoogestraat, who turned his third-generation family farm over to his son eight years ago. "That leaves us with nothing but the manure, and the farmer becomes a hired hand on his own farm. "
Hoogestmat, a former president of the South Dakota Pork Producers Council who is now critical of the council support of corporate-backed farming, accused big hog-producers of engaging in "planned overproduction" to temporarily drive pork prices down and force more family farms into contract feeding agreements. Earlier this month the price of hogs dropped to a 27-year low of 15 cents a pound in Sioux Falls – half of what it costs to produce – and in some parts of the country prices have dropped to less than 10 cents a pound.
Traditional farming operationstreated animals as individuals. A farmer knew the personalitiesof his milk cows as well as he did those of neighboring farmers.I knew which of my sows liked to have her back and ears scratched– and which one would try to viciously bite if I approached.When ewes rejected their lambs, we brought them into the houseand fed them from a bottle. As a small child, I knew which ofthe old roosters would attack me (some roosters are just damnedmean) and which could be carried around in my red wagon.
Somewhere between my childhood inthe 1940s and the 1970s, something went terribly wrong in foodproduction. Schools of agriculture and the USDA, taking theirmarching orders from agribusiness implement and chemical companiesstarted preaching the adoption of the Industrial Model. Get bigor get out. Volume of production is more important than quality.
A diversified, sustainable systemof integrated crops and animal production was abandoned in favorof monocultures. Farmers became specialists. Some grew only cornand soy beans. Others developed huge dairy or beef feedlot operations.This move had nothing at all to do with needing to feed the world,and everything to do with concentration of food production, andprofits, into the hands of a few large corporations. Market controlwas the goal. Not many more hogs or chickens are being grown todaythan in the past – only the methods have changed.
Poultry was the first to totallyconvert to the industrial model. Today there are almost no independentpoultry growers, all are either owned by or under contract withlarge corporations. The hog industry is going the same direction.
So what? Well, animals are now raisedin huge confinement structures, crammed in small pens or cages,given antibiotics to combat diseases (that can run rampant insuch stressful conditions). One conveyor brings in food, anothersystem transports out excrement. From a rather idyllic existenceon the family farm to a unit of production, packed in with thousandsof other units of production, animals are now treated as onlya product – much as any other industrial product. Just widgets.
Chickens raised for broilers for massconsumption are now grown in confinement structures that containup to 22,000 birds. Hatching to slaughter is only eight weeks.Those drumsticks at Kentucky Fried Chicken are from a two-monthold chicken. The methods of production are nasty, brutish, andshort.
Hogs are raised in arguably worseconditions. Mortality rates are very high. Sows in gestation stallsand farrowing crates cannot turn around. In the "finishinghouses" where pigs are fed from around 55 pounds to slaughtersize, there are from 1,200 to 2,500 hogs in a building. Emissionsof hydrogen sulfide and ammonia from excrement and urine are sostrong that large exhaust fans must run constantly to remove thetoxic gases from the houses. If the fans shut off for more than15 minutes, hogs begin succumbing to the gases.
In the heat of summer, the overcrowdedconditions in poultry operations lead to massive die-offs. Duringthe record breaking heat-wave last year in Texas, Oklahoma andArkansas, millions and millions of hens and broilers suffocatedin their packed cages. All the media focused on was the monetarylosses were to the owners and growers, not to the miserable deathsof millions of living creatures.
Chickens also suffer from the misfortunesof their owners or growers. In southwest Missouri, a bankruptpoultry house owner simply walked away and left 12,000 hens tostarve and die. Two years later, the skeletons of thousands ofhens remain packed in their little cages in a crumbling poultryhouse overgrown with weeds. A horror story in the best StephenKing tradition – and one that pretty much sums up industrial-strengthhog, chicken and egg production.
Ken Midkiff, formerly a hog farmer,now is the Director of the Missouri Sierra Club
In 1958, following overwhelming publicsupport, the Humane Slaughter Act was adopted. In 1978, the FederalMeat Inspection Act was amended to empower USDA inspectors tostop the slaughter line on the spot if any cruelty is observed.Once the line has stopped, slaughter may not legally recommenceuntil deficiencies, whether of equipment, or of abuses by personnel,are corrected. Since that time the public has assumed that thelaw has been enforced. Gail Eisnitz' s 1997 book, Slaughterhouse(see AWI Quarterly Fall 1997), was a rude awakeningto the fact that deregulation had caused enormous speed-ups inthe slaughter line so that animals were no longer being slaughteredin conformity with the law. On the contrary, the book revealedthat fully conscious pigs and cows were being beaten, strangled,scalded, skinned and dismembered in the nation's slaughterhouses.
Two government reports, "Surveyof Stunning and Handling in Federally Inspected Beef, Veal, Pork,and Sheep Slaughter, Plants" January 7, 1997) and "SpecialSurvey on Humane Slaughter and Ante-Mortem Inspection" (March1998) provide further documentation of the failure of slaughterplants to handle and kill animals humanely. Many apparent violationsof federal law were found despite the fact that the these inspectionsof slaughter plants were announced in advance, providing ampleopportunity for plant managers to cover-up.
The 1997 report documented excessiveuse of electric prods, slippery floors and hazardous ramps, citing64% of the slaughter plants visited for ineffective use of captivebolt stunners to render animals unconscious and insensible. The1998 report noted that "it is considered inhumane to allowan animal to regain consciousness after the stunning procedure,so the bleeding should be done as quickly as possible after stunning."Yet, 57.6% of the plants permitted a lengthy period of time betweenstunning and bleeding. The report concludes that 28% of the plantsvisited have "serious problems." A detailed resolutioncalling for strong enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act waspresented to the United States Animal Health Association's AnimalWelfare Committee by AWI's Director Cathy Liss. The USAHA representsfederal and state regulatory veterinarians throughout the nationand has done so since its founding in 1897. Seeking to quash attentionto this issue, a representative of the Livestock Marketing Associationobjected to virtually all of the text claiming it could not besubstantiated. The industry representative even objected to textcited from the two government studies, claiming that these studies,too, could not be substantiated. In the interest of obtainingthe necessary votes to adopt a resolution in support of the HumaneSlaughter Act, a compromise version was agreed. The final resolution,which appears in the box, was adopted by the Animal Welfare Committeeof the USAHA. On the following day it was adopted by the fullboard of the Association.
THE UNITED STATES ANIMAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION ENCOURAGES STRONG EN- FORCEMENT OF THE FEDERAL HUMANE SLAUGHTER ACT BY USDA's FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE TO PREVENT ABUSES TO ANIMALS PROTECTED UNDER THE ACT.
(The mission of USAHA is to be a forum for communication and coordination among state and federal governments, universities, industry and other groups on issues of animal health and disease control, animal welfare, food safety and public health.)
As of January, four widely used growth-enhancingantibiotic drugs will be banned for use in the European Union.
Unlike therapeutic or medicinal drugs,sub-therapeutic drugs are not used to help a sick animal recover,but rather to induce rapid and unnatural growth or keep a stressedanimal from dying while in cruel factory farms. Up to 80 percentof all Europe's cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are given sub-therapeuticantibiotics.
Britain, Sweden, Germany, and Franceled the campaign to exclude the use of the drugs as growth-enhancers.Three nations, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium abstained from thevote, arguing that the ban will push up the price of meat. Denmarkand Sweden already enforce a unilateral ban on sub-therapeuticdrugs.
Several large agencies, includingthe World Health Organization, The British House of Lords, andthe British National Consumer Council have spoken out againstsub-therapeutic drugs. The Soil Association, representing Britain'sorganic farmers, reports that the use of antibiotics had increasedby up to 150 times in the past 30 years. Their press release reads,"We must create a new climate in which animals are kept inmore natural, less stressful conditions and are routinely treatedwith respect, rather than antibiotics."
Controversy over the labelling of organicanimal products was resolved by a January 14, 1999 decision ofthe US Department of Agriculture. By early spring, stores willhave USDA certified products. The organic label means that animalshave not been confined to the dreadful factory farms wherethey are virtually immobilizedin tiny cages andstalls during their entire lives of painful imprisonment.Instead, the animals must have access to pasture, fresh air andsunshine and not be given growth hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics.
AWI Quarterly Fall/Winter1998-1999, Vol. 47/48, No. 4/1
Emily the cow was on her way to a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton,Massachusetts in November 1995, when she evidently decided shewould rather be free. The three-year-old, 1,400-pound holsteinheifer bravely leaped over a five-foot fence. For 40 days and40 nights following her daring escape, she managed to live inthe woods around the town, foraging for food and hobnobbing witha herd of deer.
As the escaped cow cleverly evaded capture, people began rootingfor her. Emily's partisans left out hay for her and shielded herwhereabouts from authorities and from the slaughterhouse's employees."Like some bovine pimpernel," reported People magazine,"she was sought everywhere but never captured."
Emily's story excited the interest of animal lovers Meg and LewisRanda, who have given many animals sanctuary at their Life ExperienceSchool, a school for children with special needs in Sherborn,Massachusetts. The A. Arena & Sons slaughterhouse ended upselling Emily to the Randas for $1, reasoning that the cow hadrun off much of her value.
Meg Randa, who took great care to assure Emily that she and herfamily were vegetarians, coaxed the elusive heifer into a trailerwith a bucket of feed. The Randas had their Christmas dinner outsidein the barn with Emily, who now lives, and serves as a teacher,at the Life Experience School.
This cow-rageous Holstein has become quite famous, as her storyhas appeared in countless newspaper and magazine articles, aswell as coverage by CBS and a forthcoming children's book. Thereare rumors of a film being planned, but Emily is keeping quietabout whether she is destined to become a ruminant movie star.
Emily has become something of a cult figure, as sympathizers havepledged in her presence to stop eating meat. She has also beenbovine-of-honor at a human wedding that took place in the Randas'barn.
AWI Quarterly Winter 1996, Vol. 45, No. 1, p. 12.
by Viktor and Annie Reinhardt
It is commonly believed that calves must be artificially weaned so thatthe cow gives birth at the most frequent possible intervals. We had theunique opportunity to question the justification of this belief by comparingthe reproductive performance of 18 cows who were allowed to raise theircalves beyond the age of natural weaning with the reproductive performanceof 96 other cows who were subjected to the traditional forced weaning managementsystem. Both categories of cows lived on the same ranch, in herds of approximately50 animals including two mature bulls per herd.
The calves of the "managed" cows were taken away from theirmothers at the age of about eight months and raised in separate groups.Shortly thereafter, the mothers were also removed from the original herdand re-grouped in other herds. These artificial disruptions of social relationshipswere extremely disturbing for the animals, and it took several days oreven weeks until they calmed down again and established new relationshipswith the members of the new groups.
The calves of the "semi-wild" cows were naturally weaned bytheir mothers: female calves at the age 7-12 months, male calves at theage of 9-14 months. The weaning did not impair in any way the affectionatebond between mother and calf. In fact, the mother-calf bond was the foundationof the herd's cohesive social structure (see photo).
The performance of cattle is usually assessed by calculating the timelapse between two births. This so-called calving interval averaged 388days in the semi-wild cows, versus 494 days in the managed cows.
The difference of 106 days was statistically significant, indicatingthat the performance was enhanced when the calves were allowed to staywith their mother rather than when they were artificially weaned by beingtaken away from the maternal herd.
The better performance of the semi-wild cows could not be attributedto different climatic or nutritional conditions. In contrast to the managedcows, however, the semi-wild cows lived in a stable social environment.It was probably this stability of the social environment that accountedfor the animals' better reproductive performance. Artificially breakingnot only the bond between mothers and their still nursing calves but alsofriendship relationships between the mothers and other herd members, apparently,constituted a severe stress situation for the managed cows which resultedin a depression of their reproduction.
Our observations challenge the inertia of tradition, demonstrating thatreproduction of beef cattle is enhanced rather than reduced whencows are allowed to wean their calves at the biologically determined age.Interfering in biological processes may satisfy man's ambition to havecontrol over them, but this is bound to have unforeseen repercussions ifthe biological process is not properly understood. Interfering in the naturalweaning process of cattle not only inflicts avoidable emotional pain butit also unnecessarily diminishes the animal's natural reproductive potential.
AWI Quarterly Spring/Summer 1997, Volume 46, Numbers 2 &3
by Marlene Hoefner, Marion Staack and Detlef W. Foelsch
Neither thousands of years domestication nor the recent extreme selective breeding for productivity have fundamentally altered the behavior of chickens. This has to be kept in mind when suitable housing for chickens is designed. The different behaviors shown by chickens can be categorized as follows:
Foraging behavior includes searching and finding food, scratching, and drinking.
Chickens spend 35 to 50% of the day scratching and pecking for food. A lot of different food items such as seeds, fruits, grass, insects, worms and berries are consumed by chickens if they are available to them. If the animals do not spend a major portion of the day foraging because of freely accessible standardized food, such as meal or pellets, they tend to peck, pull and tear at objects or conspecifics , and often develop feather pecking behavior.
Locomotive behavior includes walking, running, flying and wing flapping.
Studies have shown that hens walk about 1 to 1.5 km (0.6-0.9 mi.) per day and that they fly to and from elevated places if they have the opportunity to do so.
Resting behavior includes standing, lying, sleeping, and dozing. Chickens prefer to sleep on elevated places rather than on ground. Therefore, they should always have access to perches.
Maintenance or Comfort behavior includes preening, stretching, flapping, dustbathing, sunbathing and body shaking. To keep their feathers in good condition, chickens must be able to preen themselves and take dustbaths. They will frequently sunbathe if they are given the opportunity. Daylight controls and triggers may of their physiological processes. It also stimulates their metabolism, plays an important part in the formation of red and white blood cells and vitamin D, and promotes the secretion of hormones necessary for growth and reproduction.
Social behavior includes conspecific-oriented pecking, threatening, chasing, kicking, fighting, avoiding, crouching, vocalizing, and reproductive behavior.
In the wild, hens and cocks of different ages lie in small groups and form a cohesive community. One cock lives in a group with about seven hens. The social structure of a flock depends on physiological, psychological and physical state of each member and is influenced by the appearance of the individuals-for example, whether the hen is ill or injured, is moulting, is brooding or has chicks. A stable rank order is formed within a small group of chickens on the basis of personal preference, threat and avoidance behavior, and factors such as age and the size of the comb.
Social interactions can be friendly (positive), for example a cock calling his hens to a food source, or they can be agonistic (negative), for example one hen chasing another hen away from a limited food source.
by Henry Spira
Does the recent announcement of sweeping new changes to meat inspectionopen opportunities to push the farm animal welfare issue onto the nationalagenda? Harmful bacteria kill more than 4,000 people a year and sickenfive million. The new policy calls for a more scientific approach to detectingE. coli and salmonella in meat and poultry. But just like the old policy,the focus remains on dealing with effects and ignoring causes. It coversup the consequences of the stressful conditions in which this country'sfarm animals are raised.
Today's endemic disease in farm animals is not the natural order ofthings. One need only see the filthy and cramped environments in whichtoday's chickens, turkeys, pigs and veal calves are raised to see the reasonfor the epidemic. When living beings are crammed indoors on a thick bedof fecal waste and forced to spend a lifetime choking on ammonia fumes,is it so surprising that the end result is diseased meat?
As the intensity of confinement has increased, so has the prevalenceof food borne diseases. The direct relationship between stress and diseaseis well documented. In humans and other animals.
There's an urgent need to focus on the causes of these illnesses andon prevention. It is universally recognized that prevention is more costeffective and more conducive to promoting well-being than treating diseasesafter the fact.
Such a prevention campaign could begin by examining the connection betweenthe escalating abuses of intensive confinement systems, the parallel demiseof animal health and the increase of food borne illnesses in humans whoeat them.
While our ideal is the non-violent dinner table, we recognize that eatinghabits tend to change slowly. As long as people continue to consider animalsas edibles, we need to relentlessly pressure industry and government todevelop, promote and implement humane standards in the rearing, transportand handling of farm animals. Reducing farm animal suffering would benefitboth the public and the animals.
There's another critical defect which remains unaddressed in the newprocedures. The USDA is mandated, by law, to both assure the safety ofmeat and at the same time promote the meat industry.
The futility of the government taking on conflicting roles was recentlydemonstrated by the ValuJet disaster. Just as in the case of aviation,the government cannot be an advocate for food safety while simultaneouslypromoting the meat industry.
Why the government should spend taxpayer dollars to market meat productsfor a multi-billion dollar industry defies logic. The health risks associatedwith a meat-centered diet are increasingly well documented. Would governmentmoney not be better spent in protecting public health? Current thinkingseems to be that the government should get out of the business of promotingthe airlines. It doesn't belong in the business of promoting meat either.
Henry Spira, Coordinator of Animal Rights International, was awardedAWI's 1996 Albert Schweitzer Medal .
AWI Quarterly Spring/Summer 1996, Volume 45, Numbers 2 &3
For decades, the well-being of farm animals has been a largely ignoredissue. So it may come as a surprise that most Americans want animals tobe protected from cruelty. This is the overall finding of a recent telephonesurvey of 1,012 adults by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton,New Jersey, for Animal Rights International.
The survey found that 93% of US adults agreed that animal pain and sufferingshould be reduced as much as possible even though the animals are goingto be slaughtered anyway.
Nine out of ten adult Americans also disapprove of current methods ofraising food animals in spaces so confining that sows and calves can'teven turn around and that laying hens are unable to stretch their wings.
With these concerns, it's hardly surprising that more than eight outof ten people think the meat and egg industries should be held legallyresponsible for protecting farm animals from cruelty. And that 91% thinkthe US Department of Agriculture should be involved in protecting farmanimals from cruelty.
What may well alarm corporate executives is that on top of this, 58%of the public also believes that fast food restaurants and supermarkets,who profit from factory intensive farming, should be held legally responsiblefor protecting farm animals from cruelty.
Too often, in the past, animal protectionists have ignored the 95% ofanimals who do not necessarily rank high in popularity. But, this studyshows that the American public cares about all vulnerable animals. And,as demonstrated by the recent successful campaign to abolish the face brandingof cattle, they are ready to confront and challenge abuses in animal agriculture.
As the public focuses on the horrors of factory farming, smart-thinking,image-conscious corporations, who profit from animal agriculture, woulddo well to respond swiftly and pro-actively. The alternative will almostcertainly be a consumer backlash as animal protectionists begin to launchpublic awareness campaigns. In this connection, we have begun to use thesurvey to talk with major companies such as Campbell Soup, Heinz and PepsiCoabout setting humane animal standards for themselves and their suppliers.This was the successful formula which energized Revlon and the whole cosmeticsindustry in the 1980s.
Pressures on the meat-industrial complex will continue to intensifyfrom all directions. In addition to farm animal well-being issues, intensiveconfinement systems will be increasingly challenged on the grounds of publichealth, protecting the environment, feeding the starving millions and leavingsome quality of life for future generations.
AWI Quarterly Fall 1995, Volume 44, Number 4
"If, as Mahatma Gandhi states, 'The greatness of a nation and itsmoral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated', the UnitedStates is being left behind by much of Western Europe." So says DavidWolfson in a soon to be published study documenting the fact that presentlaws are of no help to the cruel realities suffered by seven billion farmanimals. Wolfson, an attorney in a major international law firm, suggeststhat while farm animals have no real legal protection, society perceivesthat they do.
As outlined by Wolfson, laws give the perception of protecting farmanimals but, in reality, provide little or no protection. Federal law failsto provide any protection to farm animals on the farm. Moreover, whilemany state cruelty laws still cover farm animals in theory, they are rarelyif ever applied. And most disconcerting is the trend of farm animals beingincreasingly excluded from the reach of state cruelty laws.
At present, 25 states exclude "accepted farming practices"from the reach of such cruelty laws. Nineteen states amended their statutesin the last twelve years. Eleven of these amended their statutes in thelast six years and in just the past year, two states amended their statecruelty statutes to exclude accepted animal agricultural practices. Theresult is that any "accepted farming practice" is legally permitted-- no matter how cruel. Obviously, there would be no need to amend statecruelty laws were there not the fear that accepted practices would be judgedcruel. In effect, Wolfson states, animal agriculture has been left to regulateitself.
Consequently, our legal system appears to acquiesce to dragging a halfdead cow, chained around her hind leg, through the stockyards and keepingcalves deliberately anemic by depriving them of the most basic foods andwater while imprisoning them in wooden crates for their entire short, utterlymiserable lives. "The reality in the US", says Wolfson "isthat our society, through its laws, seemingly condones cruelty to animals."
Is this how the American public wants farm animals to be treated? Muchhas happened in the past few years to suggest that not only are increasingnumbers of people opposed to the routine and needless misery inflictedon seven billion farm animals each year, but that industry and governmentare finally beginning to respond to the public's concerns
Encouraging developments include USDA's rapidly halting the face brandingof Mexican cattle in the wake of widespread public outrage. And the USDAthen following through by placing the issue of farm animal well-being ontheir agenda. Earlier, the American Meat Institute issued groundbreakingguidelines promoting the humane handling and transport of animals. MajorAmerican slaughter houses have recently replaced the shackling and hoistingof large conscious animals. And fast food giant McDonald's has told itssuppliers to adhere to guidelines for more humane treatment of farm animals.
These reforms are encouraging. Still, life for farm animals has neverbeen more miserable. Today, the only limits to increasing the confinementand trauma of farm animals are economic. The only reason they don't crammore laying hens into a cage is because the increased mortality would makeit less profitable. The same thing holds true for the pigs and veal calvesroutinely denied the most basic freedoms to turn around, lie down, andextend their limbs.
The enormous response to our recent campaign to end the face brandingof Mexican cattle suggests that the public will not tolerate animal abuseif it is made aware of the facts. But, as Wolfson notes, the public believesthat "although we eat animals, there are laws which prevent theseanimals from being treated cruelly." In reality, farm animals arebeing subjected to ever more stressful confinement systems and have nolegal protection.
How do we proceed? The public may want to replace or reduceits consumption of meat. At a minimum we can all agree that as long asthe public eats meat, there's a need to refine current methodsof animal agriculture. But in order to make informed choices, we need toknow the realities of confinement systems, transport, handling, and slaughterof farm animals. We also need to understand the lack of legal protectionfor farm animals and the need for a farm animal protection bill. The USDAand producer groups must be encouraged to promote the well-being of farmanimals. Users of the products of animal agriculture need to enforce morehumane standards for their suppliers.
Until the seven billion farm animals do have legal protection, agribusinessesneed to respond rapidly and substantively to emerging public concerns.If they don't, let's place them in the unenviable position of having topublicly defend their right to be cruel.
USDA Reviews Livestock Care and Handling atNation's Stockyards
In October, the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Packers and StockyardsAdministration announced completion of its review of handling practices,services, and facilities in US stockyards. USDA conducted the review inresponse to public complaints of cruel treatment of downed animals at stockyards."Downers" are animals who are unable to walk or stand withoutassistance.
USDA sent warning letters to 52 markets, citing practices that mustbe corrected or discontinued immediately. Eighty one downed animals wereobserved at 66 markets. A total of 1,415 markets were inspected. USDA issuedadministrative complaints against two stockyards for the manner in whichthey handled downed animals. In addition, seven warning letters were sentto markets for failure to provide proper care and handling of downed animals.
Downers suffer horribly, particularly during transport. When callingfor support of a 1992 Senate bill requiring the humane euthanasia of downedlivestock, the Eau Claire, Wisconsin Country Today stated: "Withthe exception of a rare injury during trucking to a livestock auction houseor slaughterhouse, an animal that cannot walk off a truck when it arrivesat an auction point or slaughterhouse is an animal that was too ill tobe shipped in the first place."
Henry Spira, who has been active in human and animal rights movementsfor half a century, has coordinated successful campaigns to promote alternativesto the use of animals in laboratories. He has been a merchant seaman, autoassembly line worker, Journalist, teacher, and an activist for civil rightsand trade union democracy. He is now focusing on the plight of seven billionfarm animals and plans to write a column regularly for the AWI Quarterly.
AWI Quarterly Winter 1995, Volume 44, Number 1, p.11
The 42nd Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology will be held at University College Dublin, Ireland from 5-9 August 2008. Our aim is to make the congress dynamic with a new approach to workshops that will facilitate the exchange of ideas between participants. For more information, click here.
Trenton, NJ (July 11, 2007) - New Jersey's Supreme Court has granted a petition to hear a landmark case challenging the state's "humane" standards for the treatment of farm animals. These regulations currently permit numerous inhumane practices, including housing pregnant pigs for months at a time in cramped gestation crates, tethering and confining calves raised for veal until they are sent to slaughter, and performing mutilations without anesthesia—including castration, de-beaking, de-toeing and tail docking.
The Animal Welfare Institute is part of a broad coalition of humane organizations, farmers, veterinarians, and environmental and consumer groups that petitioned the court in April 2007 to reverse a lower court's February 16, 2007 ruling upholding the New Jersey Department of Agriculture's (NJDA) approval of some of the most egregious factory farm abuses as "humane." The appeal goes beyond any previous legal action taken on behalf of farm animals in that it seeks a judicial declaration that many common factory-farming practices are inhumane under New Jersey law.
Please visit www.AnimalWelfareApproved.org, the new website for the Animal Welfare Approved standards program.
Please Help These Chickens
You may think you're looking at rabbits. But according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), you're looking at chickens. And chickens, says the USDA, are not really animals.
Animal Welfare Institute and Humane Farming Association release new video footage entitled "Scenes from USDA Inspected Slaughterhouses" To view video click here.
© 2016 All rights reserved. Animal Welfare Institute, 900 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Washington, DC 20003. Phone: (202) 337-2332


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Spiderman - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
in Satellite Imagery Oddities
Amazing Adventures of Spiderman - Featured on Virtual Globetrotting the Satellite oddity Website. The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man a motion-based 3D dark ride located at the Islands of Adventure, Orlando, Florida.
posted by: veritas vita
location: Florida
date approved: 4/10/2016
last visited: 4/10/2016
One Fish, Two Fish - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
'One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish' - featured on the Virtual Globetrotting, Satellite Oddity Website. 'One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish' One of the most popular kid rides at Seuss Landing, Universal Orlando, Florida, USA.
Irish Merchant Navy Memorial - City Quay, Dublin, Ireland
The Irish Merchant Navy Memorial lies alongside the River Liffey in Dublin. It is located at City Quay at the junction with Lombard Street East. A broken anchor stands in front of the granite pillar that displays the names of those killed.
posted by: Master Mariner
location: Dublin, Ireland
last visited: never
Triumphal Arch - Custom House Quay, Dublin, Ireland
This triumphal arch was built in 1813 and until 1998 stood in Amiens Street in Dublin. It was relocated to the newly redeveloped Custom House Quay area in 1998. A plaque attached to the arch indicates that the arch is dedicated to Pat O'Shea.
The Great Famine Memorial - Custom House Quay, Dublin, Ireland
These statues commemorate the Great Famine of the mid 19th century. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island's population to fall by between 20% and 25%.
last visited: 5/1/2016
OLDEST - Church in Guysborough, NS
in Superlatives
Dedicated on August 28, 1858 as a Methodist Church, this was the second Methodist church to be built in Guysborough and is now the oldest active church in Guysborough.
posted by: BK-Hunters
location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Universal Links for Human Rights - Amiens Street, Dublin, Ireland
This sculpture, by Tony O'Malley, was commissioned by Amnesty International in Ireland. It is entitled "Universal Links for Human Rights" and contains an eternal flame. It is located on a traffic island adjacent to Amiens Street.
O'FANAL. -Lachute. -Québec.
in Elevated Everyday Objects
O'FANAL. -Lachute. -Québec.
O'FANAL. -Lachute. -Québec.
posted by: colibris7
location: Quebec, Canada
date approved: 4/9/2016
XXXL-Stuhl - Friedrichshafen, BW, Germany
in Giants of Commerce
There's the red chair, a 22 meter high colossus and trademark of the furniture store XXXLutz, located in Friedrichshafen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
posted by: [somnambulist]
location: Baden-Württemberg, Germany
The Sorcerer's Hat - Anaheim, CA
A giant hat marks the entrance to the Disneyland Hotel from Downtown Disney.
posted by: bluesnote
location: California
Angel's Beacon - San Pedro, CA
One of many art sculptures in downtown San Pedro.
Orpheous - Los Angeles, CA
in Epic Beings and Creatures
One of many sculptures on the grounds of LACMA.
WWII Bunkers - San Pedro, CA
Hidden up and down this steep hill are WWII bunkers, the first line of defense if an attack came from the Pacific.
last visited: 3/11/2016
Point Fermin Light - San Pedro, CA
A small light house in an extremely large suburban area.
James Connolly Statue - Beresford Place, Dublin, Ireland
The statue of James Connolly, in front of the Starry Plough, was unveiled on the 80th anniversary of Connolly's execution for his part in the Easter Uprising. It was at this location that Connolly frequently addressed political & trade union rallies.
St Mary's Pro-Cathedral - Marlborough Street, Dublin, Ireland
St Mary's Pro-Cathedral is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland. It was consecrated in 1825 by Daniel Murray the Archbishop of Dublin. The architect was George Papworth and was constructed in a Neoclassical style
Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane - Dublin, Ireland
Located in Dublin's city centre, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, originally called The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, houses one of Ireland's foremost collections of modern and contemporary art.
Circus McGurkus - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
Circus McGurkus Café - Featured on Virtual Globetrotting the Satellite Oddity Website. Circus McGurkus Café, a giant tent like structure, located at Universals Island of Adventure, Orlando, Florida.
Pharos Lighthouse - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
The Iconic Islands of Adventure Lighthouse featured on the Virtual globetrotting Website as 'Islands of Adventure Tower' also known as 'Pharos Lighthouse' marks the entrance to the Island of Adventures theme park, Universal Orlando, Florida.
Cat in the Hat - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
Cat in the Hat Ride - featured on the Virtual Globetrotting the satellite Oddity Website. The Cat in the Hat ride is located in the Dr. Seuss themed area at Islands of adventure, Universal Resort, Orlando, Florida, USA.
OLDEST -- Disney Owned Hotel - Anaheim, CA
This was the oldest hotel to be owned by the Disney company.
date approved: 4/8/2016
Schiefstes Hotel der Welt - Ulm, BW, Germany
in Guinness World Records
There's the most lopsided Hotel of the world, built in the 14th century and located in the historic center of Ulm, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
last visited: 10/30/2011
OLDEST Olive Tree & Grapevine -- Mission San Gabriel Archangel, San Gabriel CA
A sign at a 160-year-old olive tree details its history and that of an ancient grapevine growing nearby in this part of the Mission San Gabriel garden
posted by: Benchmark Blasterz
last visited: 3/10/2016
St Michael's Church - Trinity Street, Cambridge, UK
There was a church here in the 12th century that was re-built in the 1320s and is largely what can be seen today. The spire was removed in 1818 and the building was restored by Gilbert Scott, after a fire, in 1849-50.
location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Grumman HU-16C Albatross - Satellite Oddity - Orlando, Florida, USA.
Grumman HU-16C Albatross - Featured on Virtual Globetrotting the Satellite Oddity Website. The Seaplane named 'Hemisphere Dancer' was once flown by Jimmy Buffett in the Caribbean. Now Located at Margaretville, CityWalk, Orlando, Florida, USA.
last visited: 4/12/2016
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subset: commoncrawl


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Caleb set for Crows return
Rising Star midfielder set for return, plus the latest on Hunter, Liberatore and Tom Boyd.
5:31pm May 2, 2016
Where there's a Will, there's a way
Altona man's life back on track after Will Minson introduces him to Sons of the West men's health program.
3:41pm May 2, 2016
Women's team can be next generation heroes: Stevenson
A team in the national women's league is one step closer after the Bulldogs submitted an official application to the AFL on Friday.
2:46pm May 2, 2016


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SmartScore 99
SmartScore 99
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Here's the question you clicked on:
Measuring the height of a mountain can be very difficult as you cannot measure your horizontal distance to the point right below the top of the mountain. So you take two measurements, make a system of equations and solve the system. Here's your scenario. You are looking at a mountain and sight the top with an angle of elevation of 55 degrees. Then you walk 500 feet towards the mountain and take another measurement. This time, the angle of elevation is 65 degrees. Find the height of the mountain assuming that you are 5 feet tall.
|dw:1359694208693:dw| so... You can solve the length of side 'c' using sine law: \[\frac{c }{ \sin 115 } = \frac{500}{\sin 10}\] \[c \approx 2609.6 ft\] You could try using pythagorean's theorem to solve for the mountain height, but there is still an unknown distance to the base of the mountain. Instead, just use plain old sine trig equation: \[\sin \Theta = \frac{opposite}{hypoteneus}\] \[2609.6 \sin 55 = height of mountain\] but since we took our measurements off the ground, don't forget to add 5 ft to the height. : )
so 2609.6 plus five?
2609.6*sin 55 = 2137.7ft then add 5, lol
my mistake, thank you very much.
no problem, : )


text:
Education for Action
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New book: Citizen-led Innovation for a New Economy showcases innovation in Canada and the United States
From poet to social justice advocate: Meet graduate Nadjet Bouda, program officer, Equitas, Middle East North Africa Region


text: Home > Medical > HIV/Aids > Management of HIV/Aids Management of HIV/Aids Management-of-HIV-AIDS Giving babies antibodies promptly may eliminate HIV Treating infant monkeys quickly with antibodies completely cleared the HIV virus after exposure, according to a new study. Resistance to HIV drug continues to grow In sub-Sahara Africa, up to 15 percent of HIV patients treated with tenofovir-based drug combinations will develop resistance to tenofovir in the first year of treatment, researchers estimate. HIV+ patients should not use cancer bush New research from Stellenbosch University shows that Sutherlandia, the cancer bush, may exacerbate inflammation of the central nervous system in HIV+ patients, rather than providing relief. South Africa urged to pursue HIV self-testing The South African National AIDS Council has urged South Africa to promote HIV self-testing to reduce the rate of infection. Is there or isn't there a shortage of ARVs in South Africa? One rural doctor insists that despite government's consistent denial, the country is experiencing an antiretroviral drug shortage and that many South Africans are falling through the gaps when it comes to treatment. Vaginal ring offers partial HIV protection A vaginal ring that slowly oozes an experimental HIV virus-blocking drug named dapivirine into the surrounding vaginal tissue is being tested in Africa. Resistance to HIV drug growing in Africa In sub-Sahara Africa, up to 15 percent of HIV patients treated with tenofovir-based drug combinations will develop resistance to tenofovir in the first year of treatment. Genvoya – a safer HIV/Aids drug or just a way to maintain profits? A new antiretroviral (ARV) HIV drug, produced by US pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, promises fewer side effects for patients, but some critics have questioned the motivation behind its release. HIV-prevention pill appears to be working Truvada, a daily pill, may reduce the risk of HIV infection by as much as 92 percent, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Results from two major trials may revolutionise how HIV is treated For those living with HIV, earlier antiretroviral treatment can have significant health benefits, according to the results of START and TEMPRANO, two major trials load more From our sponsor Tips for dating someone with HIV HIV transmission: how to avoid infecting your partner Ask the Expert HIV/Aids expert Dr Sindisiwe van Zyl qualified at the University of Pretoria before working for an HIV/AIDS NPO in Soweto for many years. She was named one of the Mail & Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans in 2012. Ask a question Questions posted to HIV/Aids expert questions answered by the expert Q: HIV postive posted on 28-04-2016 Q: HIV blood to wound risk? posted on 28-04-2016 Q: 5 hiv tests but still think im infected posted on 27-04-2016 Q: Lancet prick posted on 27-04-2016 Q: Is there a link between HIV and cancer? posted on 27-04-2016 Q: Anal Cancer posted on 27-04-2016 Q: do you know any excellent hiv doctor in Centurion? posted on 25-04-2016 Q: The kind of hiv antibody test you use posted on 22-04-2016 Q: Can I go off the medication? posted on 22-04-2016 Q: Reliability of Hiv/ Aids picking tests posted on 22-04-2016 2 comments Q: Need for additional testing? posted on 22-04-2016 Q: accuracy of p24 duo test posted on 22-04-2016 Q: I missed my tribus for 3 weeks, should I continue to take after that period of time posted on 21-04-2016 Q: Risk of HIV after cutting hand posted on 21-04-2016 Q: Do i have a high chance of getting HIV? posted on 20-04-2016 load more × Still have a question? Get free advice from our panel of experts Your question More detail Your name (optional) The information provided does not constitute a diagnosis of your condition. You should consult a medical practitioner or other appropriate health care professional for a physical exmanication, diagnosis and formal advice. Health24 and the expert accept no responsibility or liability for any damage or personal harm you may suffer resulting from making use of this content. I agree * You must accept our condition To prevent spam please solve this simple math problem: Forum Rules


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The effects of sorafenib on the portal hypertensive syndrome in patients with liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma – a pilot study
Article first published online: 27 OCT 2011
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2036.2011.04896.x
© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics
Volume 35, Issue 1, pages 83–91, January 2012
Additional Information
How to Cite
Pinter, M., Sieghart, W., Reiberger, T., Rohr-Udilova, N., Ferlitsch, A. and Peck-Radosavljevic, M. (2012), The effects of sorafenib on the portal hypertensive syndrome in patients with liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma – a pilot study. Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 35: 83–91. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2036.2011.04896.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 9 DEC 2011
- Article first published online: 27 OCT 2011
- Publication data Submitted 22 July 2011 First decision 30 August 2011 Resubmitted 3 September 2011 Accepted 3 October 2011 EV Pub Online 27 October 2011
- Abstract
- Article
- References
- Cited By
Aliment Pharmacol Ther 2012; 35: 83–91
Background Increased intrahepatic vascular resistance and hyperperfusion in the splanchnic circulation are the principal mechanisms leading to portal hypertension in cirrhosis. Several preclinical studies have demonstrated a beneficial effect of the multikinase inhibitor sorafenib on the portal hypertensive syndrome.
Aim To investigate the effect of sorafenib on hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG), systemic hemodynamics and intrahepatic mRNA expression of proangiogenic, profibrogenic and proinflammatory genes.
Methods Patients with liver fibrosis/cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma were treated with sorafenib 400 mg b.d. HVPG measurement and transjugular liver biopsy were performed at baseline and at week 2. Changes in HVPG and intrahepatic mRNA expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), RhoA, tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) and placental growth factor (PlGF) were evaluated.
Results Thirteen patients (m/f = 12/1; Child–Pugh class A/B = 10/3) were included. The most common aetiology of liver disease was alcohol consumption (n = 7). Eleven patients had an elevated portal pressure, including eight patients with clinically significant portal hypertension. A significant decrease of HVPG (≥ 20% from baseline) was observed in four subjects. In HVPG responders, we observed mRNA downregulation of VEGF, PDGF, PlGF, RhoA kinase and TNF-α, while no substantial mRNA decrease was found in nonresponders in any of the five genes. In two of the four HVPG responders we observed a dramatic (43–85%) mRNA decrease of all five investigated genes.
Conclusion Larger controlled clinical trials are needed to demonstrate any potential beneficial effect of sorafenib on portal hypertension in patients with cirrhosis.


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text: MercatorNet: promoting human dignity Conjugality Connecting Demography Family Edge Reading Matters Sheila Reports Harambee PopCorn Careful! Above Public Policy Discovering the value of home Carolyn Moynihan | 05 November 2012 | FEATURES | tags: home, Home Renaissance Foundation, public policy A conference next week may hold the key to the recovery of Europe in the longer term. MOST READ IN WEEK How Elton John has changed marriage The hidden dualism of transgenderism New same-sex parenting study: more anger, irritation Transforming the right to privacy I thought it was all about homophobia until I watched this video Surrogacy is exploitation – regulation will not change that The rise and rise of natural family planning On 'living in the present' A 6-year-old punched an 8-year-old and what happened next is sheer lunacy Prince: from pop star to spiritual phenomenon Tweets by @mercatornet Follow MercatorNet Facebook Twitter subscribe to newsletter Sections and Blogs Harambee PopCorn Conjugality Careful! Family Edge Sheila Reports Reading Matters Demography Is Destiny Bioedge Conniptions (the editorial) Connecting Above Information contact us our ideals our People our contributors Mercator who? partner sites audited accounts donate advice for writers New Media Foundation Suite 12A, Level 2 5 George Street North Strathfield NSW 2137 Australia email@example.com +61 2 8005 8605 skype: mercatornet © New Media Foundation 2016 | powered by Encyclomedia | designed by Elleston


text:
|By PR Newswire
Article Rating:
|February 21, 2013 01:31 PM EST
For the first time ever, Canada is participating in the search for the world's best bartender shining the spotlight on Canada's thriving cocktail culture
TORONTO, Feb. 21, 2013 /CNW/ - Fifty countries, 15,000 bartenders, 100,000 cocktails. The quest for the world's greatest bartender has begun and for the first time ever, Canada is being represented on the global cocktail stage.
Known as the Oscars of the Cocktail world, Diageo World Class is an international ground-breaking cocktail training program for bartenders that celebrates the craft of bartending including creativity, flair and skill.
The Canadian debut is generating international attention and attracting cocktail legends from across the globe to Canada, including world renowned experts and sought after speakers Steve Olsen and Tony Abou-Ganim. Canada will also host internationally acclaimed Global Mixologists, previous Diageo World Class winners and Brand Icons who will impart their knowledge on Canada's bartenders and support the country's thriving cocktail culture.
According to Diageo World Class judge and American Cocktail Expert, Gary Regan, "from all that I've seen from Canada's bartenders, there's absolutely no doubt that Canada is not only ready, but also willing and able to join World Class. You know it makes sense."
"Now in its fourth year, we're thrilled that Diageo Canada is participating in World Class, giving our Canadian bartenders the opportunity to showcase their talents in the world's largest international cocktail event," said Maggie Lapcewich, president of Diageo Canada. "Fifty of the most elite bartenders will vie for the coveted title of Diageo World Class Bartender of the Year, and for the first time, we're proud that a Canadian will be among them."
Canadian bartenders have been anxiously anticipating Diageo World Class since the program's inception. According to Vancouver bartender Shawn Soole, "Diageo World Class Canada gives us the opportunity to work with the greatest names in the business and attract a larger and more global clientele who want to be served by the best bartender in the world."
Before a Canadian can become the best bartender in the world, they first have to prove they are Canada's best! To embark on this journey, bartenders must submit a video of themselves, explaining why they love being a bartender, then complete a series of three educational modules scoring a minimum of 80% on each. Finally, they must create one cocktail using the finest spirits from Diageo's Reserve brands which include: ZACAPA® rum, BULLEIT ® bourbon, JOHNNIE WALKER® Blended Scotch Whisky, KETEL ONE® vodka, TANQUERAY® #TEN™ gin, tequila DON JULIO® , Classic Malts and GRAND MARNIER®. Bartenders can complete these tasks by registering at www.diageoworldclasscanada.com.
From February 20th to April 30th 2013, the nationwide search for Canada's best bartenders will be underway, with Global Ambassadors and Master Distillers meeting Canadian bartenders to share their wisdom in their quest to find the best. Global World Class Mixologist Philip Duff from Ireland and Global Tanqueray Brand Ambassador Angus Winchester from England, will narrow the field of entries down to ten, and Canada's top ten finalists will meet in to Toronto for the Diageo World Class Canada finals on June 10, 2013.
To win the title of Diageo Canada's World Class Bartender of the Year, finalists must complete three challenges that require them to create six original cocktails. The bartenders and their cocktails will be judged by an esteemed panel of judges including Cocktail Luminaries Steve Olsen and Tony Abou-Ganim, along with last year's World Class USA winner Ricky Gomez and Canadian author and journalist, Jacob Richler.
The bartender with the highest score will be crowned Diageo Canada's World Class Bartender of the Year and go on to represent Canada in the Global Final aboard the Azamara Club Cruise Ship Azamara Journey from July 4th - 9th setting sail along the French Riviera in Nice and Monte Carlo. Only the 50 best bartenders in the world will be selected to compete to earn the coveted title of Diageo Reserve World Class Bartender of the Year.
Be World Class. Always Mix Responsibly.
About Diageo
Diageo (Dee-Ah-Gee-Oh) is the world's leading premium drinks business with an outstanding collection of beverage alcohol brands across spirits, beer, and wine. These brands include Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, J&B, and Bushmills whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Baileys, Captain Morgan, Jose Cuervo, Tanqueray and Guinness, Beaulieu Vineyards and Sterling Vineyard Wines.
Diageo is a global company, with its products sold in more than 180 countries around the world. The company is listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (DEO) and the London Stock Exchange (DGE). For more information about Diageo, its people, brands, and performance, visit us at Diageo.com. For our global resource that promotes responsible drinking through the sharing of best practice tools, information and initiatives, visit DRINKiQ.com.
Celebrating life, every day, everywhere.
SOURCE Diageo Canada
Increasing IoT connectivity is forcing enterprises to find elegant solutions to organize and visualize all incoming data from these connected devices with re-configurable dashboard widgets to effectively allow rapid decision-making for everything from immediate actions in tactical situations to strategic analysis and reporting. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Shikhir Singh, Senior Developer Relations Manager at Sencha, will discuss how to create HTML5 dashboards that interact with IoT devic...
May. 1, 2016 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 945
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to massively disrupt IoT. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, AJ Abdallat, CEO of Beyond AI, will discuss what the five main drivers are in Artificial Intelligence that could shape the future of the Internet of Things. AJ Abdallat is CEO of Beyond AI. He has over 20 years of management experience in the fields of artificial intelligence, sensors, instruments, devices and software for telecommunications, life sciences, environmental monitoring, process...
May. 1, 2016 09:45 AM EDT Reads: 907
Peak 10, Inc., has announced the implementation of IT service management, a business process alignment initiative based on the widely adopted Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. The implementation of IT service management enhances Peak 10's current service-minded approach to IT delivery by propelling the company to deliver higher levels of personalized and prompt service. The majority of Peak 10's operations employees have been trained and certified in the ITIL frame...
May. 1, 2016 09:30 AM EDT Reads: 947
SYS-CON Events announced today that Peak 10, Inc., a national IT infrastructure and cloud services provider, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Peak 10 provides reliable, tailored data center and network services, cloud and managed services. Its solutions are designed to scale and adapt to customers' changing business needs, enabling them to lower costs, improve performance and focus inter...
May. 1, 2016 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 1,083
Much of the value of DevOps comes from a (renewed) focus on measurement, sharing, and continuous feedback loops. In increasingly complex DevOps workflows and environments, and especially in larger, regulated, or more crystallized organizations, these core concepts become even more critical. In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Andi Mann, Chief Technology Advocate at Splunk, will show how, by focusing on 'metrics that matter,' you can provide objective, transparent, and meaningfu...
May. 1, 2016 08:45 AM EDT Reads: 586
SYS-CON Events announced today that Ericsson has been named "Gold Sponsor" of SYS-CON's @ThingsExpo, which will take place on June 7-9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York, New York. Ericsson is a world leader in the rapidly changing environment of communications technology – providing equipment, software and services to enable transformation through mobility. Some 40 percent of global mobile traffic runs through networks we have supplied. More than 1 billion subscribers around the world re...
May. 1, 2016 07:30 AM EDT Reads: 915
There is an ever-growing explosion of new devices that are connected to the Internet using "cloud" solutions. This rapid growth is creating a massive new demand for efficient access to data. And it's not just about connecting to that data anymore. This new demand is bringing new issues and challenges and it is important for companies to scale for the coming growth. And with that scaling comes the need for greater security, gathering and data analysis, storage, connectivity and, of course, the...
May. 1, 2016 07:00 AM EDT Reads: 798
SYS-CON Events announced today that DatacenterDynamics has been named "Media Sponsor" of SYS-CON's 18th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 7–9, 2016, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. DatacenterDynamics is a brand of DCD Group, a global B2B media and publishing company that develops products to help senior professionals in the world's most ICT dependent organizations make risk-based infrastructure and capacity decisions.
May. 1, 2016 06:30 AM EDT Reads: 2,480
Between the mockups and specs produced by analysts, and resulting applications built by developers, there exists a gulf where projects fail, costs spiral, and applications disappoint. Methodologies like Agile attempt to address this with intensified communication, with partial success but many limitations. In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Charles Kendrick, CTO & Chief Architect at Isomorphic Software, will present a revolutionary model enabled by new technologies. Learn how business and devel...
May. 1, 2016 04:15 AM EDT Reads: 1,736
You think you know what's in your data. But do you? Most organizations are now aware of the business intelligence represented by their data. Data science stands to take this to a level you never thought of – literally. The techniques of data science, when used with the capabilities of Big Data technologies, can make connections you had not yet imagined, helping you discover new insights and ask new questions of your data. In his session at @ThingsExpo, Sarbjit Sarkaria, data science team lead ...
Apr. 30, 2016 10:45 PM EDT Reads: 726
So, you bought into the current machine learning craze and went on to collect millions/billions of records from this promising new data source. Now, what do you do with them? Too often, the abundance of data quickly turns into an abundance of problems. How do you extract that "magic essence" from your data without falling into the common pitfalls? In her session at @ThingsExpo, Natalia Ponomareva, Software Engineer at Google, will provide tips on how to be successful in large scale machine lear...
Apr. 30, 2016 10:00 PM EDT Reads: 1,124
If there is anything we have learned by now, is that every business paves their own unique path for releasing software- every pipeline, implementation and practices are a bit different, and DevOps comes in all shapes and sizes. Software delivery practices are often comprised of set of several complementing (or even competing) methodologies – such as leveraging Agile, DevOps and even a mix of ITIL, to create the combination that's most suitable for your organization and that maximize your busines...
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Struggling to keep up with increasing application demand? Learn how Platform as a Service (PaaS) can streamline application development processes and make resource management easy.
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In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Klein, CEO and Co-founder of Rachio, will discuss next generation communities that are using IoT to create more sustainable, intelligent communities. One example is Sterling Ranch, a 10,000 home development that – with the help of Siemens – will integrate IoT technology into the community to provide residents with energy and water savings as well as intelligent security. Everything from stop lights to sprinkler systems to building infrastructures will run ef...
Apr. 30, 2016 05:30 PM EDT Reads: 729
Whether your IoT service is connecting cars, homes, appliances, wearable, cameras or other devices, one question hangs in the balance – how do you actually make money from this service? The ability to turn your IoT service into profit requires the ability to create a monetization strategy that is flexible, scalable and working for you in real-time. It must be a transparent, smoothly implemented strategy that all stakeholders – from customers to the board – will be able to understand and comprehe...
Apr. 30, 2016 04:45 PM EDT Reads: 1,070


text:
Kid Icarus
A series based on the classic NES game, Kid Icarus!
The Lloyds
A family of retards on a collision course with slapstick wackiness!
My GOD, Robots!
A crazy world of robots!
Download the preloader.
Community and Downloads.
But i can't add.
default paint colors...
isnt that the shotgun from l4d1 wow it couldve been better and it needs a preloader
I can't create a preloader.
I don't like people on my lawn either. It's rude.
use a black stroke over your font to make readable contrast.


text:
Third Front will form next government at Centre, says Mulayam
Mainpuri: Third Front will form the next government at the Centre and a beginning has been made during the last month`s meeting of 17 regional parties in Delhi, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said on Thursday.
Terming the upcoming Lok Sabha polls as a major challenge for his party, Yadav said that Third Front "will now form its government at the Centre."
"As part of the exercise, leaders of 17 parties held a meeting recently," Yadav said, adding that, "it is only when the Samajwadi Party has a role at the Centre that there would be a change in the country."
On October 30, several regional parties including Left, JD(U), AIADMK, BJD and UPA ally NCP came together at the convention with their leaders pitching for unity among them to defeat the "threat" from fascist and communal forces.
"Samajwadi Party aims to win all the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and emerge as the largest party in amalgam," he said.
The SP leader said that all the leaders opposed to Congress and BJP are keen on the Third Front.
He also termed the BJP`s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as a media hype. "Modi is seen only on television or in Gujarat and no where else," he said.
Warning against "danger posed by China", Yadav said that ignoring it could prove "very costly" for the country.
Stressing on the need for providing free foodgrains to poor, Yadav said after coming to power at the Centre, instead of giving it for Rs 2 to Rs 3 per kg, SP would provide it free of cost.
- Kerala Assembly Elections: BJP president Amit Shah cancels poll visit
- Deaths in rehabilitation home: Raje govt suspends erring officials
- IPL 9: Gujarat Lions vs Kings XI Punjab – Probable playing XIs; players to watch out for
- WATCH: You ripper! Unplayable magic ball leaves master batsman VVS Laxman completely exposed!
- IPL 2016, Match 30: Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Kolkata Knight Riders - Preview


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At some point all the weak-sisters or people that cant wait will be gone , smart money will then take this back up.........summer still has 35 days at least to go , i hv faith , and if im wrong on my timing , """ im going to be the ist one to type it here, i wont hv to be reminded !!! """
Sentiment: Strong Buy