April-September, 1999 Vol. 3, No. 2-3
| January – March | | October – December |
Inside This Issue
Vegetarianism: A Corollary of Animal Rights
ISAR (International Society for Animal Rights) 1-717-586-2200
What is a vegetarian? A vegetarian is a person who abstains from consuming animal flesh, including that from mammals, fish and fowl. Some vegetarians choose to follow a vegan diet. Vegans avoid all foods and products derived by harming animals, including meat, eggs, dairy, leather and wool.
Ethical, Health and Ecological Reasons for Vegetarianism
Ethical Concerns
Americans consume more than nine billion animals each year. The suffering, abuse and slaying of these innocent animals raises serious ethical concerns for many people. What gives humans the right to raise animals for the sole purpose of killing them and then dining on their carcasses?
The vast majority of food animals are raised in deplorable and overcrowded conditions on factory farms where they suffer from routine abuse and neglect.
Health Reasons
There are many health reasons for choosing a vegetarian diet, perhaps most important is the estimate that approximately 60% of all deaths in the United States can be attributed to a meat-based diet. Consumption of animal products increases a person’s likelihood of developing many illnesses, including cancer, diabetes, kidney diseases, and heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. The American Medical Association states, “a vegetarian diet can prevent 90-97% of heart disease.” A vegetarian male has only 4% chance of suffering a heart attack, compared to the average American male’s risk of 50%.
Another health consideration stems from the farmer’s widespread use of chemicals in the animals’ feed. Farm animals consume vast amounts of hormones, artificial colors and other chemical additives. More than half of all antibiotics in the United States are administered to farm animals to stimulate growth and combat the diseases naturally occurring from living in substandard conditions. These chemicals are then passed on to consumers.
People who eat animal products are also at increased risk for food poisoning. Incredibly, guidelines established by the USDA last year, permit salmonella contamination of 49.9% of ground turkey and 44.6% of ground chicken. The USDA found these criteria reflect the national average found in meat processing plants.
Ecological Effects
The ecological effects of a meat-based diet are far-reaching. Meat production causes environmental destruction, extensive pollution and devastation of natural resources.
The alarming disappearance of America’s forests is often over attributed to urban expansion. For each acre cleared for highways and shopping centers, seven acres are destroyed to provide land for livestock production. Additionally, more than 30 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed every minute for the specific purpose of grazing cattle, contributing to the extinction of 1,000 rainforest species each year. Current farming methods have resulted in a loss of more than 75% of America’s topsoil.
Farm animals produce more than 20 billion tons of waste each day. This waste, along with the diseased bodies of dead animals and an array of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are released into the environment every day, polluting our land, air and water. Not surprisingly, the livestock industry is the principle cause of water pollution and accounts for half of all water used in the United States. Factory farming’s inefficient use of natural resources also contributes to world hunger. The amount of grain it takes to raise meat for just one person could provide enough food for 12 people.
The inhumane and unhealthy consequences of eating meat are entirely avoidable.
Vegetarianism — a corollary of animal rights — is a choice one can make to help prevent animal suffering. By adopting a vegetarian lifestyle, one can amply meet all nutritional needs while affording him or herself the comfort of knowing that no animals suffered to provide the meal. For more information, please request ISAR’s “Vegetarianism” fact sheet.
We encourage our supporters to purchase one of the many fine vegetarian cookbooks available and adopt healthy, humane, and responsible eating habits.
ISAR offers the following cookbooks available for purchase: #041 The Cookbook For People Who Love Animals PB 192PG $9.95; #141 Food For The Spirit HC 120PG $9.95; #267 The Compassionate Cook PB 244PG $8.99; #276 Eat More Weigh Less PB 425PG $14,00; #294 Famous Vegetarians’ Recipes PB 267PG $14.95.
Factory Farming: A Violation of Animal Rights
The information which follows will be sickening to those like we at ISAR who believe that animals have rights and thus must not be exploited for human ends. We present it here in the hope that the raw facts of factory farming will cause some readers to forego eating animals “produced” in that manner.
The vast majority of animals killed for food were raised on “factory farms.” Factory farming derives its name from the intensive, production-line nature of raising billions of animals at the lowest possible cost. The conditions are overcrowded and filthy. Denied the privilege of breathing fresh air, these animals with an acute sense of smell must endure the ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide produced by their waste while the farmers who enter the buildings wear respirators. The overcrowded and filthy conditions lead to stress behavior and disease. Abuse and neglect are routine.
CHICKENS Farmers burn off the beaks of chickens to prevent them from pecking one another, a reaction to their extreme confinement. Their faces are often burned in the process. As many as five egg-laying chickens are crammed into a single “battery cage” measuring only one square foot. At egg production facilities, newborn male chicks are discarded into plastic garbage bags. Most suffocate before they are later ground up for chicken feed and fertilizer.
PIGS Female pigs, called sows, are bred constantly. They must be strapped to the floor of their cages during birth and while nursing to prevent them from crushing their piglets in the tiny enclosure. Young pigs are raised in warehouses until ready for slaughter. Their tails are cut off to prevent “tail-biting,” a stress behavior exhibited due to the overcrowding.
BEEF CATTLE Beef cattle suffer from abusive handling in cramped feedlots. Their horns are removed to prevent damage to other cattle that could stem from the overcrowded conditions. This, as well as male castration, is performed without anesthetic.
MILK COWS Milk cows are kept almost constantly pregnant; the natural bond between mother and baby is shattered at birth so humans may drink the milk intended for calves. Female calves are raised for milking while males are generally sold for veal. Milk cows are slaughtered for human consumption when their milk production drops, usually after four or five years.
VEAL CALVES Veal calves’ brief lives are especially tragic. For four months they are confined to stalls only two feet wide and are fed only a liquid diet. They receive no water or bedding. They live in almost complete darkness to discourage movement which would develop muscle and toughen their flesh.
INHUMANE HAULING PRACTICES
En route to auctions and slaughterhouses, animals are subjected to overcrowding, thirst, hunger and temperature extremes. They are denied food and water during transport, which sometimes takes several days. Many die from heat exhaustion in the summer and freeze to sides of trucks in the winter.
Following transport, exhausted and frightened animals are hit, kicked and shocked with electric prods (to unload from trucks). The immobile and dead are dragged, sometimes by tractors, to “dead piles.” Those surviving to the slaughterhouses are prodded through their terror into their final steps amidst the ominous odor of blood and the screams of those before them.
Some are rendered unconscious before they are suspended upside down and their throats are cut. Others are fully conscious for this process, as dictated by Kosher slaughter requirements.
Animals raised on factory farms suffer from birth to death.
“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?” — George Bernard Shaw
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INTERNATIONAL CHARTER FOR HEALTH AND HUMANE RESEARCH
International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals
P.O. Box 215 — St. Albans — Hertfordshire — AL3 4RD — England
Tel: 44 1727 835386 Fax: 864356
Introduction
Every year millions of animals suffer and die in the world’s laboratories. Yet many people are convinced that it is unjust to expose any sentient and unconsenting individual to suffering, or the risk of suffering, when the only potential benefit would be to others. Such ethical considerations are strongly reinforced by mounting evidence that animal research is an unreliable means of studying, treating and curing human illness, and — as history shows — can prove dangerously misleading as well. This is vividly illustrated by the serious unforeseen side-effects associated with many animal-tested medicines. The problems arise because animals are different to people both in the way their bodies work and in their reaction to drugs. All too often experiments on animals not only produce the wrong answers but divert attention from more reliable sources of information based on the study of humans.
For all these reasons we believe that medical research should concentrate its resources on methods of more direct relevance to people. In the urgent interests of both humans and animals we therefore propose the following programme for health and humane research. This programme, summarized in the seven points below, sets out a positive framework on which to build a new approach to health which would lead to an end to the current obsession with animal research.
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Emphasis to be directed towards the prevention of ill health.
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An essential drugs policy restricting new medicines to therapeutic areas of real need, thus avoiding the production of duplicate “me too” drugs for which there is no medical justification.
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Medical research to rely on methods of direct relevance to people.
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Medical training to concentrate on the study of human beings.
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A switch to non-animal test systems to improve the safety of medicines.
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Vaccines to be produced from human rather than animal cells.
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Governments to ensure the rapid development, validation and utilization of alternative systems.
Preventing Ill Health
History shows that the dramatic increase in life-expectancy experienced by many countries over the past 100 years is chiefly due to improvements in nutrition, living and working conditions, hygiene and sanitation, with specific medical measures such as drugs and vaccines having a comparatively marginal effect. The vital contribution of public health measures in preventing disease is clearly seen by comparing the higher death rates not only in Third World countries but within poorer sections of affluent nations.
The improvements in public health were based on human epidemiological studies. These revealed that people who lived in dirty, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions with little food or clean water were much more likely to die of infectious disease. Today, the main killers in Western society are heart disease, cancer and stroke, conditions which are often difficult or impossible to cure. However, by monitoring different groups of people, epidemiologists have again identified the chief risks and shown that these diseases are also largely preventable.
In the case of heart disease, the results have been dramatic. Since the 1960s when the United States had one of the highest death rates for coronary disease in the world, mortality has fallen sharply, in line with changes in diet and lifestyle. Specific medical measures had only a small impact, at best. Similar results could be achieved with cancer where 80-90% of fatal cases are potentially preventable. The culprits include poor diet, smoking, alcohol, radiation, pollution and occupational hazards such as asbestos.
The evidence suggests that the main influences on our health — diet, lifestyle and the environment — are outside the scope of laboratory experimentation. It follows that major advances in health can only be achieved by putting the greatest emphasis on prevention.
Essential Drugs Policy
The fact that animal tests are an unsafe guide to drug safety ought to be a strong incentive to restrict new medicines to those for which there is a clinical need, so that hazards can be minimized. Yet an analysis of new medicines introduced onto the world market over a recent ten year period reveals that over 70% offered no therapeutic improvement over existing products.
Medicines which offer little or no improvement are referred to as “me too” drugs and are usually developed because they are a good financial investment. They are considered to have no major advantages over existing products. They also keep drug prices high and confuse doctors faced with a choice of many drugs all doing the same thing. Britains’s prestigious Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin states that “the existence of many apparently similar preparations seldom increases therapeutic options but greatly increases the risk of unwanted effects”. The Bulletin concludes that the use of a smaller number of medicines should increase knowledge of their reals benefits and hazards so leading to safer prescribing.
The adoption of a national medicines policy based on the World Health Organization’s concept of essential drugs could bring a dramatic reduction in drug-increased disease whilst the financial savings could be used more productively to increase the proportion spent on disease prevention. The WHO has issued a list of around 250 basic drugs to treat the majority of the world’s diseases.
Medical Research
Critics of animal experiments argue that vivisection is bad science because it tells us about animals when we need to know about people. This is because human disease can take an entirely different form in animals due to physiological and biochemical differences between the species. For instance, although rats and mice constitute 98% of the animals used for cancer research, it is acknowledged that they have a poor track record in predicting clinically useful treatments. One survey found that for every 30-40 drugs effective in treating mouse cancers, only one will work in people. Another example is the failure to induce AIDS in laboratory animals by inoculating them with HIV.
In view of the differences between species, it would indeed be surprising if animal research had contributed greatly to our health. In fact most major advances derive from human studies, methods that are directly relevant to people. These include epidemiology, where clues about disease and its prevention come from comparing the health of different groups or communities; clinical observation of patients who are ill or who have died, an approach vital to the discovery of new treatments; and studies with healthy volunteers which are essential for understanding how the body works.
Much research can be carried out in the test tube and almost any useful drug effect can be identified in this way using cells, tissues and enzymes from the body. Whilst these often originate from animals killed for the purpose, human material could be used to advantage. Tissues can be obtained from volunteers, biopsies, surgical waste and post-mortems. An example is the development of anti-cancer drugs using tumor tissue from patients. Computer simulation of biological systems can also aid drug discovery: based on the idea that medicines must be the correct shape to trigger their effects on the tissues, scientists are employing computer graphics to design new treatments.
Medical Education
The basic rationale behind animal experiments is that lives can only be saved by sacrificing others. The use of animals in medical training inevitably reinforces this primitive view with the danger that doctors may become desensitized to suffering in their human patients. It is reported that Canadian neurologists who chose to spend a year of their training experimenting on animals, had so hardened themselves to animal suffering that they were incapable of recognizing suffering in their patients for quite a while after returning to clinical work.
The use of animals is not only undesirable but unnecessary, and in the United States, animal laboratories are no longer required by any civilian medical school for teaching purposes. In some of these medical schools the use of animals is optional; in others the procedures have been discarded altogether: Surgeons traditionally learn their basic skills by work with human bodies in the mortuary, then by observing senior surgeons at work, and finally by operating under the close supervision of experienced colleagues.
In the case of microsurgery, pioneering work at Britain’s Frenchay Hospital in Bristol has led to the development of the normally discarded human placenta as an alternative to animals. The placenta contains tiny vessels which can be sewn together as a means of practice.
Animals are sometimes used to illustrate the effects of drugs but there are many sophisticated video recordings and computer simulations which can be used instead. Such alternatives can give a higher standard of learning performance than work with animal tissues. Ultimately whatever “alternatives” are available, medical students will acquire far more relevant information by the careful observation of human patients, as Hippocrates taught.
Safety of Medicines
Comparisons between human and animal test data show that most drug side-effects occurring in people cannot be predicted by animal experiments. Reliance on animal tests as a guide to safety can therefore be dangerously misleading. For instance, Opren and Eraldin are examples of animal-tested drugs withdrawn from the British market after serious, and in some cases fatal, side-effects in patients. The Lancet medical journal acknowledges that “animal tests are very imperfect indicators of human toxicity,” and goes on to say that “only clinical experience and careful control of the introduction of new drugs can tell us about their real dangers.
Whilst clinical trials are the most valid test of a new medicine, some preliminary testing using humane alternatives is essential to identify the most toxic substances. In fact hundreds of test tube methods have been developed for the purpose. These include bacteria to test mutagens and carcinogens, yeast to measure photo toxicity, and human tissues to predict skin and eye irritancy. Indeed, tests with human tissue promise better protection since results are directly relevant to people. For instance, chloramphenicol, phenylbuta-zone, mianserin and thalidomide are examples of medicines whose harmful effects can be identified by human tissue tests but were missed by the original animal experiments. As researchers at Britain’s Lister Hospital point out, these tests give a degree of reassurance not provided by experiments on animals.
Human tissue tests can be supplemented by advanced theoretical techniques which use computer programme to predict a new drug’s toxicity on the basis of its chemical structure. This approach compares the molecular shape of the test substance with that of drugs and chemicals whose toxic effects are already known.
Vaccine Production
Vaccines against diseases caused by viruses have traditionally been made from animals. This has often proved a dangerous approach as contaminants from animal tissues have produced fatal results in people. For instance, in 1967 a previously unknown virus — the Marburg agent — killed 7 people handling monkeys or their tissues for vaccine production. In 1972 Stanford University vaccine researcher Leonard Hayflick pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people had been inoculated with SV40 virus found in polio vaccine made form monkey kidney cells. It is thought the SV40 virus can cause cancer. The preparation of vaccines using cells from dogs, chicks and ducks is also thought to be hazardous as cancer-causing viruses have been found in each case.
The cancer-causing viruses such as SV40 which contaminate tissues from primates, only become dangerous when they cross the species barrier, so the use of human cells to make human viral vaccines must be the safest approach. Today vaccines for many viral diseases including polio, rubella, measles, smallpox, rabies and diseases caused by arboviruses such as yellow fever, can all be produced more safely from test tube cultures of human cells. In Britain, Sabin’s polio vaccine is made from human cells, yet despite the dangers, most of the polio vaccine used throughout the world is still derived from African green monkeys and in some countries from rhesus monkeys. And although Salk’s polio vaccine is traditionally made from monkey kidney tissue, research by the National Bacteriological Laboratory in Stockholm shows that this too can be produced from human cells.
Incentives for Reform
Those who defend vivisection claim that without animal experiments, research would grind to a halt. Yet experience shows this is not the case because scientists quickly devise new techniques to achieve their objectives. For instance, Britain’s former prohibition on the use of animals to practice microsurgery led to the development of human placental tissue as a viable substitute.
Developing humane technologies depends very much on attitudes prevalent within the scientific community, and some tests continue long after they are considered essential because scientists do not feel strongly about the unnecessary loss of life. Although public pressure has been partially successful in persuading companies to adopt alternative strategies, there is much that governments can do to stimulate positive attitudes. Even if unwilling to immediately prohibit animal experiments, they can set target dates after which specific tests would no longer be permitted; they can mandate a continuing and substantial annual decline in the use of animals; and they can insist that drug companies improve safety profiles by always subjecting new products to human tissue tests. At the same time government funding agencies can provide incentives by giving priority to grant applications featuring methods of direct relevance to people, such as clinical, epidemiological and human tissue studies. And by establishing national, co-ordinated networks of tissue banks, they can overcome the shortage of human material for research and testing.
But the alternative to many experiments is simply not to embark on the research in the first place. The development of genetically engineered (transgenic) animals, for instance to improve farm animal productivity, is unwarranted because health studies stress we should be reducing our intake of animal products. And the use of pig or monkey organs for human transplant operations should be halted to avoid the possibility of animal viruses producing deadly new plagues.
It is clearly in the interests of humans and animals that vivisection is stopped so the energy and skill of scientific investigation is directed into better and safer channels. Only then can we expect medical science to achieve its full potential.
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Sharing Vegetarianism With Family and Friends
Carol M. Coughlin, R.D. — Vegetarian Journal — May/June 1997
We are vegetarians. It is not just our diet, but a way of life for us. How can we share our enthusiasm without turning people off? Let everyone know you are a vegetarian. Be specific. Simply state: “We do not eat meat, fish, chicken, milk, eggs, gelatin, gravy, broth.” Then tell them what you do eat. This eliminates embarrassing situations.
Have you ever been invited to dinner only to be served fish? Has someone brought a dish of Rice Krispie treats as a snack for your child’s playgroup and then not understood why you will not eat any? Most people do not realize that gelatin, chicken broth, and other foods are animal derived.
Focus on what you have in common. Everyone should strive to eat a plant-based diet. Look at the food pyramid. The base of it is grains. The next largest portion is vegetables and fruits. Animal products are supposed to play a minimal role. This is the best place to start. I always do a fruit and vegetable themed talk for pre-school and lower elementary kids. If someone says their child likes macaroni and cheese or pizza, share that you eat those foods too only slightly different. Then invite them over to try some cheeseless pizza or nutritional yeast macaroni and “cheese.”
Whenever the neighborhood children come over, feed them vegetarian foods such as soyamilk, tofu hot dogs, veggie burgers, and pasta with veggie sauce, etc. You may find that other parents will purchase these items because their kids started asking for them.
Talk About What You Eat
When you bring a lunch to work, offer to share some. Or put a dish of vegan cookies next to the coffee pot with a stack of recipe cards. If parents enjoy vegetarian dishes, they’re more likely to serve them to their own children.
Consider giving gift subscriptions of vegetarian publications to your school’s or town’s library. Donating vegetarian books helps too. Most libraries have limited budgets. Imagine if every vegetarian family donated one book or journal to their library!
Keep in mind that if someone is on the defensive, his or her mind is closed and he/she will not hear you or learn a thing. Look for the teachable moment. The day after a news story on an E coli outbreak from eating burgers might be a good day for a veggie burger BBQ. But it might not be a good day to approach the subject if a family member was affected by the outbreak. The middle of Thanksgiving dinner is probably not the best time to discuss turkey production, unless you are specifically asked why you do not eat turkey. Use your best judgement.
Some people become vegetarian all at once. Others move toward the goal one recipe at a time. And we have to admit that some will never change their way of eating. I lived in a cooperative housing situation at college with a guy whose philosophy was “If it is warm and not moving, I will eat it.” Move on. Use your positive energy where it will do some good.
Be active. Take the scout troop to a health food store, tofu factory, or other veggie food maker for a field trip. Do cooking classes at your child’s school.
If you read a review of a restaurant that has some veggie dishes on the menu, write a letter to the editor stating that the review was right on target because the vegetarian chili there is first rate!
Becky Turner edits her family cookbook. She includes vegan versions of some of the meat dishes. It can be as easy as changing a written recipe to “1 cup soy or skim milk.” Many people always use the first choice, or would not have thought to try a non-dairy alternative.
Nothing succeeds like success. People will see that you thrive on a vegetarian diet and that you do not have to scrub your kitchen with antibacterial soap to kill the bacteria in the “juice” from the meat thawing on the counter. They will see that you do not have to wash out greasy pans. They may just notice that you are not on a first name basis with the pharmacist. Your healthy and happy family is a living testament to the vegetarian way of living. You share the vegetarian lifestyle just by being an example.
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The Vegetarian Athletes
Adapted from “Diet for a New America” by John Robbins
Numerous studies, published in the most reputable scientific and medical journals, have compared the strength and stamina of people eating different diet-styles. According to these studies, all of them rigorous, the common prejudice that meat gives strength and endurance, though plastered on thousands of billboards, and drummed into us since childhood, has absolutely no foundation in fact.
THE LAB RESULTS SPEAK
At Yale, Professor Irving Fisher designed a series of tests to compare the stamina and strength of meat-eaters against that of vegetarians. He selected men from three groups: meat-eating athletes, vegetarian athletes, and vegetarian sedentary subjects. Fisher reported the results of his study in the Yale Medical Journal. His findings do not seem to lend a great deal of credibility to the popular prejudices that hold meat to be a builder of strength.
“Of the three groups compared, the . . . flesh-eaters showed far less endurance than the abstainers (vegetarians), even when the latter were leading a sedentary life.”
Overall, the average score of the vegetarians was over double the average score of meat-eaters, even though half of the vegetarians were sedentary people, while all of the meat-eaters tested were athletes. After analyzing all the factors that might have been involved in the results, Fisher concluded that:
“. . . the difference in endurance between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers (was due) entirely to the difference in their diet . . . There is strong evidence that a . . . non-flesh . . . diet is conducive to endurance.”
A comparable study was done by Dr. J. Ioteyko of the Academie de Medicine of Paris. Dr. Ioteyko compared the endurance of vegetarians and meat-eaters from all walks of life in a variety of tests. The vegetarians averaged two to three times more stamina than the meat-eaters. Even more remarkably, they took only one-fifth the time to recover from exhaustion compared to their meat-eating rivals.
In 1968, a Danish team of researchers tested a group of men on a variety of diets, using a stationary bicycle to measure their strength and endurance. The men were fed a mixed diet of meat and vegetables for a period of time, and then tested on the bicycle. The average time they could pedal before muscle failure was 114 minutes. These same men at a later date were fed a diet high in meat, milk and eggs for a similar period and then re-tested on the bicycles. On the high meat diet, their pedaling time before muscle failure dropped dramatically — to an average of only 57 minutes. Later, these same men were switched to a strictly vegetarian diet, composed of grains, vegetables and fruits, and then tested on the bicycles. The lack of animal products didn’t seem to hurt their performance — they peddled an average of 167 minutes.
Wherever and whenever tests of this nature have been done, the results have been similar. This does not lend a lot of support to the supposed association of meat with strength and stamina.
Doctors in Belgium systematically compared the number of times vegetarians and meat-eaters could squeeze a grip-meter. The vegetarians won handily with an average of 69, whist the meat-eaters averaged only 38. As in all other studies which have measured muscle recovery time, here, too, the vegetarians bounced back from fatigue far more rapidly than did the meat-eaters.
I know of many other studies in the medical literature which report similar findings. But I know of not a single one that has arrived at different results. As a result, I confess, it has gotten rather difficult for me to listen seriously to the meat industry proudly proclaiming “meat gives strength” in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
WORLD RECORDS
On the athletic field, as in the laboratory, the endurance and accomplishments of vegetarians makes me question whether we need animal products for fitness. The achievements of vegetarian athletes are particularly noteworthy considering the relatively small percentage of vegetarian entrants. Athletes after all, are not immune from the cultural conditioning that meat alone gives the required strength and stamina. Yet some have adopted vegetarian diets and the results invite scrutiny.
Dave Scott, of Davis, California is a scholar-athlete who is well acquainted with the scientific literature on diet and health. He is also universally recognized as the greatest triathlete in the world. He has won Hawaii’s legendary Ironman Triathlon a record four times, including three years in a row, while no one else has ever won it more than once. In three consecutive years, Dave has broken his own world’s record for the event, which consists, in succession, of a 2.4 mile ocean swim, a 112 mile cycle, and then a 26.2 mile run. Dave’s college major was exercise physiology, and he says he keeps up on the latest developments in the field by reading “an incredible amount” of books and journals. He calls the idea that people, and especially athletes, need animal protein a “ridiculous fallacy.” There are many people who consider Dave Scott the fittest man who ever lived. Dave Scott is a vegetarian.
I don’t know how you might determine the world’s fittest man. But if it isn’t Dave Scott it might well be Sixto Linares. This remarkable fellow tells of the time:
“. . . when I became a vegetarian in high school, my parents were very very upset that I wouldn’t eat meat . . . After fourteen years, they are finally accepting that it’s good for me. They know it’s not going to kill me.”
During the fourteen years that Sixto’s parents begrudgingly came to accept that his diet wasn’t killing him, they watched their son set the world’s record for the longest single day triathlon, and display his astounding endurance, speed and strength in benefits for the American Heart Association, United Way, the Special Children’s Charity, the Leukemia Society of America, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association. So deeply ingrained, however, is the prejudice against vegetarianism that even as their son was showing himself possibly to be the fittest human being alive, his parents only reluctantly came to accept his diet. Sixto says he experimented for awhile with a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet (no meat, but some dairy products and eggs), but now eats no eggs or dairy products and feels better for it.
It doesn’t seem to be weakening him too much. In June, 1985, at a benefit for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Sixto broke the world record for the one day triathlon by swimming 4.8 miles, cycling 185 miles, and then running 52.4 miles.
Robert Sweetgall, of Newark, Delaware, is another fellow who doesn’t just sit around all day. He is world’s premier ultra-distance walker. In the last three years, Robert has walked a distance greater than the 24,900 mile equatorial circumference of the earth. He says he is a:
“. . . vegetarian for moral reasons; there’s enough food on earth for us not to have to kill animals to eat.”
Though not chosen for its health value alone, Sweetgall’s vegetarian diet doesn’t seem to put him at too much of a disadvantage. After walking a 10,600 mile perimeter around the United States, he set out on a loop that would take him, via about 20 million footsteps, through parts of all 50 states within a year.
Then there is Edwin Moses. No man in sports history has ever dominated an event as Edwin Moses has dominated the 400 meter hurdles. The Olympic Gold Medalist went eight years without losing a race, and when Sports Illustrated gave him their 1984 “Sportsman of the Year” award, the magazine said:
“No athlete in any sport is so respected by his peers as Moses is in track and field.”
Edwin Moses is a vegetarian.
Paavo Nurmi, the “Flying Finn,” set twenty world records in distance running, and won nine Olympic medals. He was a vegetarian.
Bill Pickering of Great Britain set the world record for swimming the English channel, but that performance of his pales beside the fact that at the age of 48 he set a new world record for swimming the Bristol Channel. Bill Pickering is a vegetarian.
Murray Rose was only 17 when he won three gold medals in the 1956 Olympic games in Melbourne, Australia. Four years later, at the 1960 Olympiad, he became the first man in history to retain his 400 meter freestyle title, and later he broke both his 400 meter and 1500 meter freestyle world records. Considered by many to be the greatest swimmer of all time, Rose has been a vegetarian since he was two.
You might not expect to find a vegetarian in world championship body-building competitions. But Andreas Cahling, the Swedish body builder who won the 1980 Mr. International title, is a vegetarian, and has been for over ten years of highest level international competition. One magazine reported that Cahling’s:
“…showings at the ‘Mr. Universe’ competitions, and at the professional body-building world championships, give insiders the feeling he may be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Another fellow who is not exactly a weakling is Stan Price. He holds the world record for the bench press in his weight class. Stan Price is a vegetarian. Roy Hilligan is another gentlemen in whose face you probably wouldn’t want to kick sand. Among his many titles is the coveted “Mr. America” crown. Roy Hilligan is a vegetarian.
Pierreo Verot holds the world’s record for downhill endurance skiing. He is a vegetarian.
Estelle Gray and Cheryl Marek hold the world’s record for cross-country tandem cycling. They are complete vegetarians, not even consuming eggs or dairy products.
The world’s record for distance butterfly stroke swimming is held jointly by James and Jonathan deDonato. They are both vegetarians.
If you wanted to be an evangelist for the “meat gives strength” cult, and were looking for a 97-pound vegetarian weakling to pick on, you’d probably be better off staying away from Ridgely Abele. He recently won the United States Karate Association World Championship, taking both the Master Division Title for fifth degree black belt, and the overall Grand Championship. Abele, who has won eight national championships, is a complete vegetarian, who eats no meat, eggs, or dairy products.
The list goes on and on. Toronto, Canada, is the home of a national fitness institute that tests all the top athletes in that country. For a number of years tennis pro Peter Burwash consistently ranked between 50th and 60th. Then as an experiment, he switched to a vegetarian diet, though he thought at the time that vegetarians were emaciated, unhealthy creatures. Now, however, he knows better. One year after making the switch, Peter Burwash was tested at the institute and found to have the highest fitness index of any athlete in any sport in the entire country of Canada.
Another man you might have a hard time convincing that a meat diet-style yields superior physical performance is Marine Captain Alan Jones of Quantico, Virginia. I would never have believed that one could be a vegetarian Marine, but Jones is managing to do it, and his health doesn’t seem to be suffering too much for his efforts.
Although crippled by polio when he was five years old, Jones is another candidate for world’s fittest man and has amassed a record of physical accomplishments unmatched by any human being that ever lived. Not only does he hold the world record for continuous situps (17,003), but in one particular 15-month period he accomplished possibly the most remarkably array of physical achievements ever attained by a human being:
September, 1974 — Lifted a 75-pound barbell over his head 1,600 times in 19 hours
February, 1975 — Made 3,802 basketball free throws in 12 hours, including 96 out of 100
June, 1975 — Swam 500 miles in 11 days through the Snake and Columbia Rivers, from Lewiston, Idaho to the Pacific Ocean
September, 1975 — Skipped rope 43,000 times in five hours
October, 1975 — Skipped rope 100,00 times in 23 hours
November, 1975 — Swam over 68 miles in the University of Oregon swimming pool, without a sleeping break
December, 1975 — Swam one-half mile in 32F (0C) water, without a wet suit, in the Missouri River near Sioux City, Iowa
January, 1976 — Performed 51,000 situps in 76 hours
Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese are every bit as serious and fanatic about baseball as are Americans. So, in October 1981, when Tatsuro Hirooka took over as manager of a professional team who had finished in last place the previous season, he knew some changes had to be made. But the changes he made were not the ones most of us would expect. He told the players on the Siebu Lions that meat and other animal foods increase athletes’ susceptibility to injury, and decrease their ability to perform. Therefore, said the new manager, like it or not, they were all going on a vegetarian diet.
The Lions took quite a ribbing during the 1982 season. One rival manager sneered they were “only eating weeds,” and made some rather derogatory remarks about their masculinity. But the sneerer had to eat his words when the Lions beat his team for the Pacific League Championship, and then went on to defeat the Chunichi Dragons in the equivalent of our World Series. Lest anyone think this was a fluke, the vegetarian Lions came back the next year, and once again trounced the opposition, winning again both the League and National Championship.
Please note that I have not provided this listing of athletic accomplishments of some vegetarians because I think this in itself proves the vegetarian diet superior. It doesn’t. It proves only that for these given individuals, with their specific biochemical individualities, a vegetarian diet worked superbly at a particular time.
But when we couple the experiences of Dave Scott, Edwin Moses, Murray Rose, Alan Jones and all the rest, with the data from systematic laboratory research published in reputable scientific journals, then, perhaps, we might have serious grounds to doubt the widely held prejudice that assumes greater weakness as an inevitable consequence of a vegetarian diet.
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What’s the Beef & Who Pays?
How livestock are Threatening our Planet
EarthSave International 1-800-362-3648 444 NE Ravenna Blvd, # 205; Seattle, WA 98115
[email protected] http://www.earthsave.org
EarthSave International educates, inspires and empowers people to shift toward a diet centered on fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes — food choices that are healthy for people and the planet.
Despite growing alarm over the enormous and grave problems we face on the global level, scant attention has been paid to one of the prime causes of these problems: the fundamental shift in world agriculture during this century from food grains to feed grains. This shift is caused by the change in Western eating habits to ever-increasing animal product consumption — a shift enabled by the industrialization and mechanization of farming practices.
Few people understand the extensive and devastating ramifications of this dietary shift. In fact, many of the world’s problems are directly related to the heavy toll of modern animal agriculture on the planet.
The data here are a sampling of the growing body of literature based on current research which documents the pivotal role that livestock production plays in a number of global crises.
Not included here is further data about livestock’s detrimental effects such as: the economic suffering of small farmers whose livelihoods have been replaced by multinational corporations, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions of most slaughterhouses, the diseased meats processed by these houses, the inhumane treatment of all the animals, the mechanisms of disease caused by over-consumption of animal products, the shaping of our history by our appetite for animal foods, and other social and economic imbalances.
Our relationship to livestock goes back thousands of years: For example, the root meaning of the Sanskrit and Vedic words for war is “desire for more cows.”
Land Usage & Grain Consumption
5.4 billion humans inhabit the Earth along with 1.28 billion cows, whose number has been doubled in the past 40 years. Cattle now outweigh humans by 2 to 1 in terms of total biomass.
There are a total of 4 billion cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, buffaloes and camels and 11 billion fowl. The fowl population has grown from 3 billion to nearly 11 billion since mid-century.
All these animals graze on one-half of the total land mass.
Grain consumption by livestock is growing twice as fast as grain consumption by people.
Cattle and other livestock consume over 70% of all the grain produced in the United States.
About 1/3 of the world’s total grain harvest is fed to livestock while 1.3 billion people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition, and 40-60 million people die each year from hunger and related diseases.
66% of US grain exports goes to feed livestock rather than hungry people.
Millions of acres of land in poor, non-industrialized countries are being used solely for grain production for European livestock consumption.
In 1984 when thousands of people there were dying daily from famine, Ethiopia continued growing and shipping millions of dollars’ worth of livestock feed to the United Kingdom and other European nations.
To feed the world’s current population an American-style diet would require 2 ½ times as much grain as the world’s farmers produce for all purposes.
It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second and third world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat.
Health
Disease and Death from Malnutrition or Over-consumption
While millions of human beings go hungry, millions more in the industrialized countries suffer and die from diseases caused by consuming an excess of animal foods which have a high content of protein, fat and cholesterol and absence of fiber.
Despite tremendous advances in medicine and hygiene, Western nations, which consume most of the world’s livestock and dairy products (the average American consumes the meat of seven 1100 pound steers in his or her life), have ever-escalating medical costs and much higher incidences of the following diseases than predominantly vegetarian nations:
Arthritis Gallstones Obesity
Asthma Heart Disease Osteoporosis
Breast Cancer Hemorrhoids Peptic Ulcers
Colon Cancer Hypertension Prostate Cancer
Constipation Hypoglycemia Salmonellosis
Diabetes Impotence Strokes
Diverticulosis Kidney Disease Trichinosis
Our present lethargy of acceptance of atherosclerosis and other chronic diseases as inevitable is no longer tolerable in light of current knowledge, which can prevent this and many other diseases of affluence. The present band-aid approach of no red meat and taking the skin off chicken, is a meaningless insult to scholars of nutritive science.
Protein Requirements
Our need for protein is greatest during infancy when our body weight doubles in 8 months. Nature’s optimum food for infants is mother’s breast milk which contains 5% of its calories as protein. Adults, who are no longer increasing their body mass like an infant, need less than 5% of their calories as protein.
No adult mammal in the wild eats food that contains more protein than its mother’s milk. The average Westerner who consumes meat, fish and dairy products gets 3 to 5 times the amount of protein that adult humans need. The human body compensates for this excess, causing physical imbalances which contribute to many of the diseases listed above.
Health Costs
The US national health bill consumes 12% of its Gross National Product and threatens the foundation of medical care as we know it today.
While the US debates about the billions of dollars needed for national health insurance, it ignores the Surgeon General’s report that 68% of all deaths are diet related and does little to recommend and support healthy food choices.
If people are falling over the edge of a cliff and sustaining injuries, the problem could be dealt with by stationing ambulances at the bottom, or erecting a fence at the top. Unfortunately, we put far too much effort into the provisioning of ambulances and far too little into the simple approach of erecting fences.
Rainforests
Since 1960 more than 25% of Central American rainforests have been cleared to create pastureland for cattle.
By the late 1970s, two thirds of all the agricultural land in Central America was utilized for livestocks, which was destined for export to North America.
Cattle ranching has destroyed more rainforest in Central America than any other activity.
For every quarter-pound hamburger that comes from a steer raised in Central or South America, approximately 165 pounds of living matter have been destroyed, including some of 20-30 different plant species, perhaps 100 insect species, and dozens of bird, mammal, and reptile species.
While peasant agriculture can often sustain a hundred people per square mile, the average rainforest cattle ranch “employs one person per 2,000 head of cattle and this…amounts at best to one person per twelve square miles.” It has been the decision to use the land to create an artificial food chain, the most inequitable in history, that has resulted in misery for hundreds of millions of human beings around the world.
Topsoil Loss
85% of US topsoil lost from cropland, pasture, rangeland and forest land is directly associated with raising live-stock.
Each pound of feedlot steak costs about 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.
An inch of topsoil takes between 200 and 1,000 years to form under natural conditions.
The direct and indirect costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US exceeds $44 billion a year.
Topsoil depletion has been the cause for the demise of many great civilizations.
Desertification
The United Nations Environmental Program defines desertification as impoverishment of arid, semiarid and subarid ecosystems by the impact of man’s activities. This process leads to reduced productivity of desirable plants, alterations in the biomass and in the diversity of life forms, accelerated soil degradation, and increased hazards for human occupancy.
Cattle production is the primary factor in all five causes of desertification: over-grazing of livestock; over-cultivation of the land; improper irrigation techniques; deforestation; and prevention of reforestation.
Each year nearly 1.5 million acres of land around the world are virtually lost to desertification. 52 million more acres become so eroded that they can no longer be grazed or cultivated.
Desertification of the world’s rangeland, forests, and fields has spawned the greatest mass migration in world history. By the turn of the century, over half of humanity will live in urban areas.
Dwindling Fresh Water Supplies
50% of all the water consumed in the US is used to grow feed and provide drinking water for cattle and other livestock.
Producing a pound of beef protein often requires up to 15 times more water than producing an equivalent amount of plant protein.
Water tables in the Midwest and Great Plains states are fast being depleted, and shortages are requiring industrial, commercial and residential sectors to fundamentally alter water-use patterns.
Reports by the General Accounting Office, the Rand Corporation, and the Water Resources Council have made it clear that current water use practices threaten to undermine the economies of 17 Western States. These states receive limited precipitation, yet their water supplies could support an economy and population twice their current size. But most of the water goes directly or indirectly to produce livestock.
Pollution
Cattle and other livestock account for twice the amount of pollutants as come from all US industrial sources.
The organic waste generated by a typical 10,000-head feedlot is equivalent to the human waste generated in a city of 110,000 people.
The nitrogen from cattle wastes is converted into ammonia and nitrates and leaches into ground and surface water, where it pollutes wells, rivers, and streams, contaminating drinking water and killing aquatic life. Nitrates can cause irreversible nervous system impairments, cancer, and “blue baby” syndrome.
Manure nitrogen also escapes into the air as gaseous ammonia, a pollutant that causes acid rain and other forms of acid deposition. The ammonia that the livestock industry discharges into the air is the single largest source of acid deposited on Dutch soils — doing more damage than the country’s cars or factories.
Energy
Oil is used in the livestock industries for fuel for transport and tractors, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides; so much, in fact, that animal products could be considered petroleum byproducts.
To produce a pound of grain-fed beef in the US takes the equivalent of one gallon of gasoline.
To produce one calorie of protein from beef takes 78 calories of fossil fuel. To produce one calorie of protein from soybeans takes two calories of fossil fuel.
Global Warming
The grain-fed cattle complex is now a significant factor in the emission of three of the four global warming gases — carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides and methane.
Carbon Dioxide: Much of the biomass burned in the world today is to support the worldwide cattle-ranching industry. Millions of acres of tropical forests are burned each year, releasing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Every fast food hamburger made of rainforest beef adds 500 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere from the burning of forests.
The yearly beef requirements of an average family of four meat-eaters requires the expenditure of more than 260 gallons of fossil fuel. When that fuel is burned it releases more than 2.5 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — as much CO2 as the average car emits in 6 months.
Nitrous Oxides: In the past 40 years, the use of chemical fertilizers has increased dramatically: 14 million tons in 1950; 143 million tons in 1989.
Nitrous oxide released from fertilizer and other sources now accounts for 6% of the global warming effect.
US corn fields — 80% producing live-stock feed — consume about 40% of the country’s nitrogen fertilizer.
Methane: The world’s 1.28 billion cattle emit approximately 100 million tons, or 20% of all the methane released into the atmosphere — about 3% of global warming from all gases.
Pesticides
The proportion of crops lost to pests has increased nearly 20% since chemical pesticides came on the scene after World War II.
61% of all herbicides used in the United States are sprayed on corn and soybeans, which are used primarily as feed for cattle and other livestock.
Meat is the major source of pesticide residues in the Western diet. Of the 10 foods most likely to cause cancer from herbicide residues, beef is number one.
The direct and indirect cost of pesticide use is from $2 to $4 billion per year.
Government Subsides of Livestock
Subsidies and special arrangements for livestock production prevail in many countries, often expanding the efforts to increase profits and consequently worsening the inevitable environmental impact. Subsidies take the form of guaranteed minimum prices, government storage of surpluses, feed and irrigation subsidies, import levies, and product insurance.
In 1990 government programs in the European nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development provided subsidies to animal farmers and feed grower worth $120 billion.
The World Bank lends livestock projects $100 million annually.
The US government subsidizes irrigation water to animal feed growers for $500 million to $1 billion annually. Often the market value of the feed is less than the cost incurred by federal government in providing the water to grow it.
Agriculture programs in Western nations tend to support animal and feed farms more than fruit and vegetable growers — despite the health guidelines of Western governments advising citizens to eat fewer animal products and more fruits and vegetables.
Are We Willing to make Changes?
Physicians at the First National Conference on the Elimination of Coronary Artery Disease in 1991 agreed resoundingly with nutritionist Colin Campbell, Ph.D., when he said, “Why must we be reticent about recommending a diet which we know is safe and healthy? We, as scientists, can no longer take the attitude that the public cannot benefit from information they are not ready for. I personally have great faith in the public. We must tell them that a diet of stems, seeds, flowers, fruit and leaves is the healthiest diet and the only diet we can promote, endorse and recommend!”
People everywhere can help restore animal agriculture to sustainability by changing their diets. Personal habits, just as national policies, can shift dramatically when enough people say “enough.”
Please join with other caring and committed people by making a shift in your diet now and sharing this information with others — family, friends, associates, local newspapers and radio stations and your government officials.
— “Beyond Beef, the Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture”, “Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment”, and “Diet for a New America”
“FOODS THAT FIGHT PAIN”, PCRM and Dr. Neal Barnard
An Introduction by Audrey Nickel
From The Grapevine, Summer 1998 (Triangle Vegetarian Society, Chapel Hill, NC — www.ivu.org/tvs )
“You are what you eat.” That’s what my mother always told me. I doubt even she realized just how true that statement is. Every day, it seems, we hear another report on how our food choices affect our overall health, our susceptibility to certain diseases, our longevity. Every day we come closer to the conclusion that the secret to a healthy life lies not in some far away laboratory, but right at the ends of our forks.
Renowned health activist and physician Dr. Neal Barnard has taken this conclusion one step further in his new book Foods that Fight Pain: Revolutionary New Strategies for Maximum Pain Relief (1998, Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, $25). Most of you have probably heard of Dr. Barnard in his role as President and Founder of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and editor-in-chief of its excellent periodical, Good Medicine. He is an active clinical researcher and author of numerous scientific publications. You may even have read some of his other books, such as Eat Right, Live Longer and Food For Life.
In his new book, Dr. Barnard explores how food choices can be used to fight or even prevent pain — from backaches and migraines to post-surgical pain and even cancer pain. For example, did you know that:
The book includes a selection of vegan menus and recipes by Jennifer Raymond, designed by her to fit in with Dr. Barnard’s pain-fighting plan. The recipes sound delicious and easy to prepare, and most can be made with ingredients found in any well-stocked supermarket.
PCRM, founded in 1985, is a nationwide non-profit organization of over 5,000 physicians and 100,000 laypersons that promotes preventative medicine and addresses controversies in modern medicine. PCRM is involved in advocacy and education about the relationship between diet and health, and conducts research, including a recent breakthrough study showing a new approach to diabetes that can actually get many patients off their medication. PCRM is currently planning research on using diet to help improve survival rates in cancer patients.
As President of PCRM, Dr. Barnard has been instrumental in reforming federal dietary guidelines. In his published research, he has shown how poor diet is responsible for up to $60 billion every year in health care costs. His interest in healthy eating evolved over many years. His family background includes both doctors and cattle ranchers — two groups that are increasingly at odds over health issues. Before going to medical school, he worked as an autopsy assistant, observing first-hand the deadly effects of poor diet, including heart disease and colon cancer.
For more information about Dr. Barnard and PCRM, you can reach PCRM at 5100 Wisconsin Ave., Suit 404, Washington, D.C. 20016, (202) 686-2210, or on the web at www.pcrm.org. PCRM is a great group to join, and membership gives you a copy of their quarterly Good Medicine magazine.
Web Sites of Interest
If you are interested in the relationship between diet and health, in addition to the PCRM site, you might enjoy some of the following web sites:
Dr. Charles Attwood (well-known vegan pediatrician): www.vegsource.org/attwood
Dr. Michael Klaper (author of Pregnancy, Children and the Vegan Diet): www.vegsource.org/klaper
Dr. John McDougall (Founder of The McDougall Plan for Healthy Living): www.drmcdougall.com
Dr. Ruth Heidrich (author of A Race For Life): www.vegsource.org/heidrich
Book Review — by Dilip Barman, President, Triangle Vegetarian Society ([email protected]) Top
“FOODS THAT FIGHT PAIN”:
Revolutionary New Strategies for Maximum Pain Relief
by Neal Barnard, M.D., 1998, Harmony Books, ISBN 0-609-60098-2.
As mentioned above, Foods That Fight Pain provides sometimes surprising connections between pain and particular foods. The book is “based on the premise that foods have medicinal value” [p.xi]. It suggests, for example, that back pain can be alleviated by a low-fat vegetarian diet with minimum salt, Vitamin B6, exercise, and simple painkillers; oat products, because of their soluble fibers, lower cholesterol; and that vitamins B6 and B12, along with folic acid can help prevent heart attacks (beans, vegetables, and fruits are rich in folic acid and vitamin B6).
Foods that Fight Pain has short chapters, each easy to read in a single sitting, that cover back and chest pains, migraines and other headaches, joint pain, digestive problems, fibromyalgia, menstrual and breast pains, cancer pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, herpes and shingles, sickle-cell anemia, and kidney stones. Short final chapters discuss exercise, rest, and a set of foods that most often trigger problems. This set surprised me — meat, eggs, dairy products, caffeine; but also wheat, citrus, corn, nuts, and tomatoes. None of these potentially troublesome foods was part of the diet when humans first appeared millions of years ago, it is posited, and “there is little evolutionary pressure to adapt to anything unless our ability to reproduce hangs in the balance” [p.212]. However (thankfully!), if any of these foods don’t cause problems for a person, then there is no reason for that person to avoid them.
The book concludes with menus and recipes by Jennifer Raymond, all of which are low-fat, no-cholesterol, and vegan. And that is the unifying thread behind to book — eat a low-fat diet based entirely on non-animal products.
I carefully read a bit more than the first 100 pages before I got to a chapter on fibromyalgia, which had no relevance to me. I then picked the remaining chapters that might have some pertinence. That is probably the best way to read this book — read the very short introductory material then read the chapters of specific interest to potential or real health problems you may have.
I would have enjoyed a longer introductory section focusing on the benefits of a good vegan diet, and possibly discussing topics such as eating what’s in season (and the macrobiotic approach), cooking foods (in line with the anthropological discussion, fire was discovered relatively recently in human existence; should we be cooking foods?), organic produce, and cross cultural food discussion. It would have been good to have strongly made the point for low-fat vegan diets, and then suggested that another advantage is their consistent appearance in all of the chapters as the base for pain fighting. The book would also profit from longer discussions of exercise (its chapter is 2 pages long) and rest (5 pages).
Why is it that “people are fed by the food industry which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry which pays no attention to food”? Maybe this book will help bridge the communities. Foods that Fight Pain is worth referencing as preventive medicine, and is definitely a good resource for people suffering from one of the many kinds of pain covered.
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Can a Vegan Diet Cure Diabetes?
By Andrew Nicholson, M. D. — PCRM’s “Good Medicine” — Winter, 1997
Diabetes is not necessarily a one-way street. Early studies suggest that persons with diabetes can improve and, in some cases, even cure themselves of the disease by switching to an unrefined, vegan diet. Unfortunately, none of these studies included a comparison group. So the Diabetes Action and Research Education Foundation provided a grant to PCRM to perform a carefully controlled test.
Working with Georgetown University, we compared two different diets: a high-fiber, low-fat, vegan diet and the more commonly used American Diabetes Association (ADA) diet. We invited persons with non-insulin-dependent diabetes and their spouses or partners to follow one of the two diets for three months. Caterers prepared take-home lunches and dinners so participants could simply heat up the food at home.
The vegan meals were made from unrefined vegetables, grains, beans, and fruits, with no refined ingredients, such as vegetable oil, white flour, or white pasta. These meals averaged just 10 percent fat (as a percentage of calories) and 80 percent complex carbohydrate. They also offered 60-70 grams of fiber per day and had no cholesterol at all.
The comparison (ADA) diet contained somewhat more plant-based ingredients than the average American diet, but still relied on the conventional chicken and fish recipes. That diet was 30 percent fat and 50 percent carbohydrate. It provided about 30 grams of fiber and 200 milligrams of cholesterol per day.
Participants in both groups came to the University two evenings per week for group sessions covering nutrition, cooking, and support.
There were several challenges in planning the study. Would persons with diabetes — and their partners — volunteer for the study? Would they change their eating habits and maintain the study program for the full three months? Could we find caterers who would dependably prepare and deliver attractive vegan and ADA meals?
The first of these worries was quickly dispelled. On the very first day that our advertisement appeared in the newspaper, more than 100 people responded. The participants who were accepted for the study threw themselves into it with enthusiasm. One said, “I was amazed at how powerful the vegan diet was right from the beginning. The blood sugars and weight just started falling off.”
Some subjects were pleasantly surprised at how well they adapted to the experimental diet. One said, “If anyone had told me 12 weeks ago that I would be satisfied with a totally vegetarian diet, I would not have believed it.” Another participant needed more time to adjust: “In the beginning, it’s not an easy diet. But I managed to lose, at last count, 17 pounds. I am no longer on medication for diabetes, and I am no longer on medication for blood pressure. So, actually, it’s been a very, very positive result for me.”
Some found unexpected benefits: “My asthma has really improved. I’m not taking as much asthma medicine because I can breathe better. The overall mental outlook on how I feel about myself as a diabetic is much more hopeful now, as I am self-sufficient with a diet that makes sense for me.”
Both groups did an overall great job in adhering to their prescribed diets. However, the vegan group clearly had the edge in many of the results. Fasting blood sugars decreased 59 percent more in the vegan group than in the ADA group. And, while the vegans needed less medication to control their blood sugars, the ADA group needed just as much medicine as before. The vegans were taking less medicine, but were in better control.
While the ADA group lost an impressive 8 pounds, on average, the vegans lost nearly 16 pounds. Cholesterol levels also dropped more substantially in the vegan group compared to the ADA group.
Diabetes can cause serious damage to the kidneys, resulting in protein loss in the urine. Several of our subjects already had significant protein loss at the beginning of the study, and the ADA group did not improve in this respect. In fact, their protein losses actually worsened somewhat over the 12 weeks of the study. The vegan group, on the other hand, had a large reduction in protein losses.
Encouraged by the strong results of this pilot study, we are planning a much larger study for next year. We also owe a great debt to these volunteers who generously gave their time to help us learn how to improve our treatments for diabetes.
THE LATEST IN DIABETES
More Evidence Against Milk
A new research report adds more evidence linking cow’s milk to diabetes in children. A milk protein causes an immune reaction in diabetic children, according to a study in The Lancet. It is believed that this reaction can result in the destruction of the body’s insulin-producing cells.
The protein culprit, beta-casein, also exists in human milk, but in a different molecular configuration and in much lower amounts than that in cow’s milk. Breast-fed infants have a measure of protection against diabetes.
In 1993, PCRM held a press conference to alert parents to potential risks to their children from milk consumption. Benjamin Spock, M.D.; Frank Oski, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University; and others pointed to evidence that cow’s milk could increase the risk of diabetes, iron deficiency anemia, and other serious problems.
While the dairy industry dismissed these concerns, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that exposure to cow’s milk protein may indeed be an important factor in the development of diabetes. Based on the more than 90 studies that have addressed the issue, an Academy panel reported that avoiding cow’s milk exposure may delay or prevent the disease in susceptible individuals.
An editorial in The Lancet stated that the new findings were particularly telling because they involved T-cells, “the key players” in the cause of diabetes.
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Milk and Breast Cancer
By Neal D. Barnard, M.D. — PCRM’s “Good Medicine” — Winter, 1997
When researchers examine the differences in breast cancer rates in various countries, a surprising factor lurks in the background. In addition to the factors already under suspicion — dietary fat, alcohol, hormone treatments, and chemical exposures — several studies have implicated milk and other dairy products as possible contributors to breast cancer risk. It is just not the grease dripping out of a cheese pizza that is under scrutiny. Even skim milk is implicated.
Jessica Outwater of Princeton University looked into why milk might cause cancer. In her research at PCRM, she found that cow’s milk is veritable cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals. Her report, published in Medical Hypotheses in December, explains these surprising, potentially lifesaving findings.
The First Clues
Milk is designed by nature to help infants grow. Human milk brings an infant to the stage where he or she can eat solid food. Cow’s milk nurtures a baby calf until he or she is big enough to graze. Just as an old-fashioned choke adjusts the gasoline mixture to help an automobile get started, mother’s milk helps a tiny body to grow rapidly. And just as a car’s choke is harmful at highway speeds, it may be that the growth factors in milk can be risky for adults, perhaps even encouraging the growth of cancer cells.
Many human population studies have shown that dairy product use correlates with breast cancer rates. One interesting example comes from Seventh-day Adventists. Nearly all Adventists avoid tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine, and are generally health conscious. But about half are vegetarians and half are not. As you would expect, the vegetarians have much lower rates of many diseases, including some forms of cancer. But breast cancer rates are about the same for the both Adventist group — vegetarians and non-vegetarians.
These vegetarians, however, are not generally vegans. While they avoid the animal fat in burgers and fried chicken, they will get much of it back in a cheese casserole. When breast cancer rates among Adventists are compared to dairy product consumption, a pattern emerges: the more dairy a woman consumes, the higher her risk.
Most other population studies show the same pattern. The higher the dairy product consumption, the higher the breast cancer risk. In some of these studies, the higher risk remains even when the effect of fat is removed, suggesting that the animal fat in milk may not be the only problem. Rather estrogens, chemical contaminants, and a growth-promoting peptide called IGF-I are the prime suspects in breast cancer investigations.
Estrogens in Milk
Farmers impregnate dairy cattle every year because a pregnant cow produces more milk. (When the calves are born, needless to say, the females join the dairy herd; males end up on the veal counter.) A pregnant cow produces extra estrogens that end up in her milk. Farmers actually look for these estrogens in milk as a sign that the impregnation was successful.
Excess estrogen is well-known for making breast cancer cells multiply, which is why doctors avoid prescribing estrogen supplements to cancer patients. Drugs that counter estrogen’s actions, such as tamoxifen, are important in breast cancer treatment.
A liter of milk contains 4 to 14 nanograms of 17-b-estradiol. Whether these hormone traces have biological effects remain unclear. In addition, the fat in milk — like fat in any food — rapidly causes excess estrogen to be produced in a woman’s body. The effect is rapid. Within a few weeks of increasing or decreasing the fat content of the diet, the estrogen level in the blood stream is readjusted higher or lower. Milk also has no fiber at all, and fiber is part of nature’s way of eliminating excess estrogens.
IGF-I
Of even greater concern is a compound called insulin-like growth factor, IGF-I. As its name indicates, IGF-I stimulates growth in a child’s body. The amount of IGF-I declines as years go by.
Unfortunately, IGF-I not only encourages growth of normal cells; it also encourages breast cancer cells to multiply. Mixed with cancer cells in the test tube, it causes them to reproduce; IGF-I is even more potent in this regard than estrogens. A little IGF-I goes a long way. Growth-promoting effects occur at concentrations of just one microgram per liter. IGF-I may also be able to cause normal cells to transform into cancer cells.
There are about 30 micrograms of IGF-I in a liter of cow’s milk, although the amount varies with the stage of pregnancy. It is identical to human IGF-I and is not destroyed by the process of pasteurization.
Little is known as to the extent to which humans absorb IGF-I from cow’s milk. While it was once thought that protein fragments were completely broken apart during digestion, it is now known that proteins and peptides are often absorbed intact. In fact, several different proteins from cow’s milk are known to pass from the digestive tract into the blood stream and even into the breast issue of women who drink milk. Similar compounds, such as epidermal growth factor, are not destroyed by stomach acid and are apparently absorbed, suggesting that the same is true of IGF-I.
IGF-I is a normal part of mother’s milk and of infants’ diets prior to weaning. However, milk consumption after the age of weaning means prolonged intake of IGF-I.
If IGF-I is a problem, bovine growth hormone (BGH) will make it worse. BGH is used by some dairy farmers to increase milk production. BGH-treated cows produce two to four times more IGF-I, with a corresponding increase of the peptide in milk.
When the Food and Drug Administration approved BGH for use, it was aware of its tendency to increase IGF-I concentration, but approved the hormone anyway because IGF-I did not seem to cause a major effect on the body weight of rats. The experiments, however, had little relevance to humans.
As for BGH itself, traces of it are found in cow’s milk even after pasteurization. Needless to say, financial interests overwhelmed both science and good sense when BGH was approved. BGH manufacturer Monsanto made payments to the American Dietetic Association and the American Medical Association, both of which issued favorable statements about BGH on the same day.
Organochlorines
Because pesticides and industrial chemicals tend to dissolve into fat, they end up in the mammary gland’s fatty tissues and easily pass into milk. This is true for human breast milk and also for cow’s milk. When three carcinogens found in Israeli milk (DDT, a-BHC, and g-BHC) were banned in that country, breast cancer deaths dropped. While this may be a mere coincidence, evidence for a casual relationship comes from the fact that organochlorines have estrogen-like effects. Moreover, the tissues surrounding human breast cancers have been found to have higher concentrations of organochlorines than other tissues.
We have looked at the link between milk and cancer of the ovary, which appears to result form a breakdown product of the milk sugar, galactose. Other parts of dairy products may exert damaging effects to other parts of the body.
It may be that the weaning process has an important biological function — that of stopping the exposure to compounds that help during infancy but are dangerous on long-term exposure.
Healthy Calcium Balance
With all the criticism milk has earned for its artery-clogging fat and sensitizing proteins, the dairy industry rests its case on one last selling point: calcium. Yet that supposed benefit is suspect as well.
True, milk contains calcium. But only 30 percent of it is absorbed by the human body, less than for typical green leafy vegetables. In fact, green vegetables and beans provide plenty of calcium, along with vitamins, fiber, complex carbohydrates, and essential fatty acids that milk lacks.
Surprisingly, population studies show that a high calcium intake does not insure against osteoporosis. Countries with a high calcium intake, such as Sweden or Finland, tend to have much higher fracture rates than Asian countries where milk is not commonly consumed.
The most important step in maintaining calcium balance is to stop calcium losses caused by these five factors:
Animal protein. Eliminating animal proteins from your diet can cut your calcium losses in half.
Excess salt. Cutting your sodium intake in half can reduce the daily calcium requirement by about 160 milligrams.
Caffeine. If you have more than two cups of coffee per day, drink decaf.
Tobacco. Smokers increase their hip fracture risk by over 40 percent.
Lack of exercise. Sedentary people lose bone tissues.
Don’t forget vitamin D, which is important for healthy bones. Ten minutes of summer sun on the face, hands, and arms two or three times per week produces all the vitamin D you’ll need. For those who get infrequent sun exposure, any common daily multivitamin provides adequate vitamin D.
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Kosher and Vegetarianism
“Ahimsa” by American Vegan Society — Malaga, NJ — (609) 694-2887
We are occasionally asked by concerned vegetarians or vegans, about the various Kosher symbols used on packages of food, and what value they might have as reliable guides to acceptability for vegie or vegan use.
For a study of the variety of Jewish teachings of kindness to animals over several thousands of years, see Judaism and Animal Rights (edited by Roberta Kalechowski), and Judaism and Vegetarianism (by Richard H. Schwartz), or contact your nearest Jewish Vegetarian Society.
In keeping with certain injunctions there arose a system designed partly to spare food-animals unnecessary suffering, partly for human health, and partly for ritual reasons. It may be regarded as a considerable advance, given the considerable advance, given the conditions of those times. But Judaism is a living, evolving religion, and most of our Jewish vegetarian and vegan friends seem to recognize that those early teachings were made as a compromise with human failings, and do point to vegetarian or even vegan practice as a great further improvement over what people were (in some instances) merely permitted or tolerated to do at that time de to the “hardness of their hearts” or other human frailties and short-comings.
In regard to the injunction against eating meat and dairy items together, Schwartz (ibid, p19) cites three identical references, forbidding boiling “a kid [young goat] in the milk of its mother.” (Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21.)
Schwartz continues: “Commenting on Exodus 23:19, Rashi notes that the repetition of this prohibition in three different biblical passages implies a three-fold ban: milk and meat must not be eaten together; they must not be cooked together; and it is forbidden to benefit from food containing a mixture of milk and meat.
“Some Torah commentators saw the above law as a rejection of an ancient pagan practice. Ibn Ezra viewed boiling a kid in its mother’s milk as an example of extreme barbarism. The Rashbam (1080-1174) considered the practice as denoting gross insensitivity and cruelty.”
In their beautiful work of The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook, Kalechowsky and Rasiel lament on “Modern Realities: Some Unpleasant Facts” about the complexities of modern shopping:
“…. Today many of us feel that we need an advanced degree in chemistry to go shopping. Moreover, trust in the labels — when you can decipher them — has broken down because the rules change constantly as the processing systems change, and as food becomes more technologically engineered. Trust in the foods we eat has all but evaporated. We do not know what is `safe’ and `not safe,’ much less ‘clean’ and `not clean.’ There are over a hundred different kosher labels listed by Kashrus Magazine (November, 1994). Rabbi Lipschutz’ compilation and designation of food additives is forty pages long (Kashrut: a Comprehensive Background and Reference Guide to the Principles of Kashrut).
“For Jews, living in urban centers as most people in industrialized societies do, a label of `kosher’ no longer simplifies, but adds to the complexity, for the label, particularly when it comes to meat, does not necessarily reflect any more health, safety or mercy than other labels. `Kosher’ meat reflects a technical ritual determination of how the animal was killed and whether there we certain proscribed blemishes on its lungs. A `blemish’ defined halachically, does not convey information about the hormones and pesticides that were fed to the animal, and whether or not the animal was irradiated or genetically altered. Kosher food animals, except for a few Jewish farming communities who raise their own animals, are raised the same way that all commercially raised food animals are.” (pp 11,12)
In Defining Vegetarian, Vegan, Pareve, they note that “Vegan foods may often be the same as pareve foods, but not always. They may overlap, but they are not synonymous. It is possible for a processed vegan food which has no animal products in it to have been prepared in pots that contained animal products so that it is not pareve. On the other hand, some products could be pareve, but not acceptable to a vegan.
“For instance marshmallows made from gelatin produced from animal bones which may not have been ritually slaughtered, can be considered Pareve, because the bones have been so altered in the manufacturing process that the definition of kosher no longer applies to them.” (ibid. p184)
We think it is pertinent to note in passing, that confusion among meanings is not confined to any single dietary system. The book above states that its recipes “all are vegan…” (p.16), but includes honey in some, a fairly common problem that ranks it among the many other “near-vegan” cookbooks.
It is clear that the various Kosher symbols have no specific relation to ethical vegetarianism or veganism, but are designed partly to certify that animals meet certain standards of slaughter, and largely for keeping the meat and dairy products in separate meals, not primarily from a desire to avoid them altogether.
Moreover, the degree of strictness certified by the symbols is far too lax to be dependable for vegetarian or vegan purposes. For example, in the Kosher system, fish and fish products are not considered “animal” and thus can be included where you might not expect animal products. (This may or may not also be true of egg derivatives, perhaps even chicken if birds were seen as on a par with fish; not sure about this. It would surely be as reasonable to consider the proverbial chicken soup as “meatless” — if not exactly a pharmaceutical product — as is the belief of perhaps 90% of Americans who “consider themselves vegetarian” including that legendary dietary ingredient “justalittlechickenandfish.”)
Just as bad (as Kalechowski and Rasiel do state), when an ingredient or product that is clearly of animal origin has passed through some degree of processing, it may be considered acceptable. Thus, JELL-O brand of animal gelatin is passed as “Kosher-Pareve” because it isn’t quite “meat” as such, and therefore can be eaten with meat or dairy dishes.
The manufacturer is happy to enlighten us on the reasoning:
“Source and Processing of Gelatin: Popular JELL-O Brand Gelatin is a fruit flavor gelatin product, manufactured to strict specifications in General Foods plants.
“The production of the gelatin starts with the refinement of collagen-bearing tissues of any animal that was raised and slaughtered for food purposes. The principal collagen-bearing tissue used is hide trimmings. Theses materials are carefully soaked in alkalies and/or acids and washed in clean water to remove almost all non-collagen constituents, including meat. During this soaking period the collagen is converted to gelatin. The treated materials are than cooked gently in pure water to extract the gelatin, which is further refined by filtration. The gelatin extract is then evaporated and dried to produce gelatin of the highest grade. (Contrary to common belief, gelatin is not manufactured from horns or hooves or meat of animals, for these do not contain the necessary collagen).
“It is interesting to note that during the manufacture of gelatin, chemical changes take place so that, in the final gelatin product, the composition and identity of the original material is completely eliminated. Because of this, gelatin is not considered a meat food product by the United States government. The plant is under supervision of the Federal Food and Drug Administration. If the government considered gelatin a meat food product, the plant would operate under the Meat Inspection Branch of the Department of Agriculture.
“JELL-O Brand Gelatin is certified as Kosher by a recognized orthodox Rabbi as per enclosed RESPONSUM. In addition to being kosher, JELL-O is also Pareve, and can be eaten with either a meat meal or a dairy meal.
“NOTE: The most important use of plain gelatin in the food industry is in the manufacture of gelatin desserts. It is also used by bakers in cake icings, in the manufacture of chiffon-type pies, for candies, marshmallows, and ice cream. Substantial quantities of gelatin are also used in the manufacture of medicines, for coating pills, making capsules and other preparations.”
Parenthetically, we realize that the U.S. Government is kindly disposed toward agribiz interests, though their supervision and inspections leave much to be desired; and they inspire little confidence when it comes to keeping the consumer’s best interests at heart. Regulations on labeling seem designed to permit all sorts of swill to slip in under such euphemisms as “natural flavorings,” “certified colors,” etc.
(On the other hand, the Emes Co. uses neither animal-gelatin nor bone-refined sugar in their marshmallows etc. but labels its agar-gel as simply “Kosher Gelatin” to reach a wider market. Their phone is 630-627-6204.)
When we investigated beef-bone char used to filter most refined cane sugar, a sugar-firm executive was very understanding about our concerns. Jewish himself, he assured us that bone char is accepted in the Kosher system as “non-animal” because it is sufficiently processed-animal, although he agreed it wouldn’t meet ingredient standards of strictness largely sought and practiced by vegetarians and vegans.
It is rather like the advocates of organic bone-meal tablets who, some years ago, advised with a straight face that “vegetarians can rest assured that all the meat has been removed before the bones are ground up”!
Presumably much of the arsenal of ingredients that may be processed from meat or milk (or egg) derivatives (such as the mono and diglycerides, lactates, stearates, lecithin, etc.) might slip into the “neither meat nor milk” category, and be Kosher certified as acceptable for use with meat or dairy.
Clearly, for vegie/vegan purposes, a Kosher symbol of any type, is at best a vague signpost for you that a prepared food might be non-animal, and may bear further examination. It still requires a very close reading of the ingredients, exactly what we recommend doing as a start in each instance anyway; and even this might not reveal the ultimate origin of some of the esoteric but widely-used stuff.
In that case you can simply leave it alone, or contact the individual manufacturer with your inquiry about a specific ingredient — and make sure that they understand that animal-once-removed is not the same as non-animal, for your purposes.
Is it possible to do good and do well at the same time?
The Cruelty-Free Value Fund thinks it has the answer
An Interview by David A. Kodner, Editor, Cruelty Free Investment News
with Robert J. Henrich, Jr., Managing Director of the Beacon Cruelty Free Value Fund
Starting a mutual fund from scratch is no small task. Lawyers, accountants, investors, the SEC, marketing people, brokers, and advisors all have to be kept happy. Add a restrictive screen for ethical concerns, and you’ve got a fund manager’s nightmare…
“We’re going to make money without harming animals! Who’s going to object to that?” is how Rob Henrich summarized the new fund’s approach when Cruelty Free Investment News met with him.
We don’t know if the fund is going to be successful, but that kind of attitude isn’t going to hurt. Neither is the support of Zurich Investment Management and Dreman Value Advisors, the Sub-Advisors to the fund. Zurich has been in the investment management business for 48 years and currently have $80 Billion under management.
David A. Kodner
Subscribe to Cruelty Free Investment News, and get this very valuable service regarding investment advice in companies that fulfill your desire of earning without harming animals. I myself have recently taken a hard stand on this issue, and invested in the above mutual fund.
Another such mutual fund founded on the principles of green investments I learned of from CFIN is Rocky Mountain Humane Investing Home. I will cover that Fund in a future issue, after learning more about it.
Narendra B. Sheth
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Cruelty Free Investment News:
What’s the primary investment objective of the fund?
Henrich: The fund’s primary objective is capital appreciation by investing in value-oriented stocks of small cap companies with market caps from $100 million to $1 billion. But we’re going to achieve that objective by investing in companies that don’t harm animals.
Q. How do you define ‘cruelty-free’?
A. At the fund’s inception, we worked with Dr. Alex Hershaft of Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM) and David Faber of the Animal Legal Defense Fund to define the criteria for screening companies, which we list in the fund’s prospectus. However, in its simplest terms, ‘cruelty-free’ means ‘does not harm animals.’
Q: And what do you mean by ‘value’?
A: When we say ‘value’, we mean ‘value’ in a financial sense: low price-to-earnings or price-to-book ratios and/or high dividends. Bargains stocks, not high-flying growth companies.
Q: What’s the benchmark against which to measure performance of this fund?
A: We’ve been tracking to within 1/10th of a point of the Russell 2000 Index [of small company stocks].
Q: How is this fund different from other funds that screen for animal rights?
A: Most funds that say they screen for animal rights are really just screening for animal testing. We screen for that too, but our mission is much broader. Let me give you an example. We had a company we were considering. They have a subsidiary that makes binoculars. No problem there. But they also make scopes for hunting rifles. So we won’t buy them.
Q: How do you pick stocks and how do you decide which are cruelty-free? Do you start with lists of “cruelty-free” companies and decide which are good investments, or do you start with a list of “good investments” and decide which are “cruelty free”?
A: Here’s how it works. First we get a buy list from the investment advisor. We turn it over to a research analyst who’s been doing ethical stock screening for 15 years. She categorizes the companies as “unacceptable” or “possibly unacceptable.” We take a look at her recommendations and make our final decisions. If we say “no” then it doesn’t get purchased. But we’re different from other folks who say they’re doing this. We’re not just buying “animal friendly” companies. We’re buying companies that don’t harm animals. We’re committed to making money but we’re not going to limit ourselves to companies that claim to be pro-actively helping animals. If a company is not harming animals in any way, they receive a very strong endorsement from us.
Q: What size companies does the fund invest in?
A: Although we can hold some mid-sized companies, we’ll probably have 60 to 80% in small caps. We can also have some short sales, but there’s a 25% limitation on that, so we won’t do much of it.
Q: What are the risks of the fund? Is the fund more appropriate for high or low risk investors?
A: While we expect performance to continue to track the Russell 2000 Index, as a result of the value-orientation, we expect the fund to have less risk than the index. We currently have about 15% of the fund in cash, so that helps to reduce volatility as well.
Q: Where do you expect to find the best stocks? Do you focus on US-based companies?
A: We can buy ADR’s, but we expect to focus on US-based companies. At present, out holdings are pretty much evenly distributed across 33 or so companies, mostly in financial services, leisure, and technology.
Q: What are the biggest holdings?
A: As a small-cap fund, holdings are pretty evenly spread out. The complete list appeared in the semi-annual report we just published. [Some of the more recognizable names are Airborne Freight, Fedders Corporation, Haggar Corporation, Scientific Atlanta. Call the fund at 703-883-0865 for a complete copy of the Semi-Annual Report.]
Q: Does your approach tend to result in concentration in particular industries or sectors?
A: Not really, but at the moment, we probably have a little bit of an extra weighting towards financial services, in particular small regional banks. That’s just a natural by-product of the value-orientation. These banks can be purchased for a reasonable price and are prime takeover candidates. Sort of a no-brainer.
Q: What would prompt you to sell a stock?
A: Zurich can sell any stock at any time for financial reasons. They don’t even have to ask us. But if we find out that a current holding violates the cruelty-free factors, we sell it the next day, end of discussion.
Q: What’s your track record in money management?
A: We have access to one of the best minds in the business [David Dreman]. Kemper-Dreman Small Cap is a Five-Star Fund. We’re very happy with Zurich and Dreman. (Over the three year period ending December 1996, K-D Small Cap returned an average annual return of 23.6% and received the Five Star rating from Morningstar, the mutual fund rating service].
Q: What would you say are the primary advantages of your fund as opposed to holding individual stocks in cruelty-free companies, say those listed as “cruelty free” by animal rights organizations?
A: Well, we’re currently paying about five cents a share in commissions. You can’t beat that on your own. But we offer more than that. The advisor knows when to sell a stock, and when to rotate sectors, which is really the key to investment success. This is especially important when you’re following a value-style of investing. You want to be able to sell when the stock becomes fully valued. Zurich takes care of this for us by selling the stock at the right time. That’s what the fund investors are paying them for.
Q: What are the sales charges and annual expenses for the fund? Is there a minimum investment?
A: There are no sales charges and the annual expenses are capped at 1.95%, including any 12(b)-1 fees that we might pay to a fund supermarket for example. The minimum investment is $1,000, but it’s going to take a lot of $ 1,000 dollar investors to succeed.
Q: Will you hold bonds as well?
A: We’ve been talking about a cruelty-free fixed income fund, but that would be a separate fund. We really don’t want to manage a “balanced” fund.
Q: Your prospectus states that you will donate a percentage of the profits to animal rights organizations, after the fund reaches $20 million. When do you expect that to occur?
A: We don’t know when it’s going to happen but we have all the groundwork in place. We’ve established the necessary connections and have set up the foundation. All we need now is the money and it will happen.
Q: This may be stretching the point a bit, but do you think it’s possible, through your investments, to actually influence companies to act in a cruelty-free manner?
A: Well, maybe if we were a billion dollar fund we might have that kind of power, but let’s get realistic. It is our belief that the only way we’re going to influence people is through education. That’s why we’re going to donate a percentage of our management fees to fund projects that directly help animals and raise public awareness of animal related issues [after the fund reaches $20 million].
As we were wrapping up the interview, Rob mentioned that he was “off to save some tigers.” That sounded like an ambitious task for a hot July day in the nation’s capital, so I had to ask one more question, “Save some tigers?” I asked. “Well, I got this call from Tiger Rescue. They have 90 tigers on a refuge in California, which has to be moved. I thought I’d start by calling the public relations director at Exxon.” How many Managing Directors of mutual funds are trying to save anything…except maybe their jobs? When Beacon says they’re going to save the tigers, they sound convincing. Hopefully they can make a lot of money too. A great management team, a top track record, and a dedication to not harm animals along the way. Indeed, who can argue with that?
The Cruelty Free Value Fund can be reached at 1-800-662-9992, or visit website www.crueltyfree.com.
Copyright@1997 Cruelty Free Investment News, 11160-F South Lakes Drive, Suite 285, Reston, Virginia 20191. Email: [email protected]. Visit the website at http://members.aol.com/CFINews. Call (703) 401-5445.
Samir Sanghani, Sugar Land, TX, is devising an another innovative scheme for investing as a group of family and friends into such cruelty free stocks. We will cover that in a future issue. If you have any ideas, please share them with all of us. If anyone has any experience with Cruelty Free Value Fund, or Rocky Mountain Humane Investing Home, please share your experiences with all of us.
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White-Tailed Deer: Creatures or Crops?
Because of increased conflicts between deer and people, many urban and suburban communities are leaning toward hunting. This fall, we need caring people like you to speak up on behalf of the deer. Attend public meetings and tell people the truth about hunting. We hope the following information will give you the tools you need to stop your local deer hunts. “Speak for those who can’t.”
The Fund for Animals — (301) 585-2591
Q: Don’t we need hunting to keep deer from overpopulating ?
A: Hunters and wildlife agencies are not concerned with reducing deer herds, but rather with increasing or maintaining the number of targets for hunters and the number of potential hunting license dollars. Hunters and wildlife managers talk about deer overpopulation merely as a smokescreen to justify their recreation to the public. The New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife states that “the deer resource has been managed primarily for the purpose of sport hunting,” and a Michigan hunting columnist readily admits, “deer hunters want more deer and more bucks, period.”
Q: But we need some management, don’t we?
A: The current system of wildlife mismanagement has been directly responsible for the rise in conflicts between deer and people. While some forms of nonlethal management may be appropriate, managing deer herds for the sole interest of providing enough targets for sport hunters has wreaked havoc on deer and on the animals who share their ecosystems. For example, Michigan has a “Deer Range Improvement Program” (DRIP) that earmarks $1.50 from each deer hunting license sold into a fund specifically designed to increase deer reproductivity and to maximize sport hunting opportunities. According to a 1975 Detroit Free Press report, three years after the DRIP program began, “The DAR’s Wildlife Division wants to keep clear-cutting until 1.2 million acres of forest land — more than a third of all of the state-owned forest — have been stripped . . . the wildlife division says it is necessary because a forest managed by nature, instead of by a wildlife division, can support only a fraction of the deer herd needed to provide for half a million hunters.” Since that prophetic 1975 report, the number of hunters in Michigan has doubled and the state’s deer herd has tripled.
Q: Doesn’t hunting keep deer numbers down?
A: While it is indisputable that hunting removes some animals from the population, it does not keep deer populations at a continually reduced level. While the average fall hunting season may remove 20% to 30% of the deer from a population, surviving deer will have less competition for food and increased nutritional health. Scientific studies indicate that better-nourished deer have higher productivity, lower neonatal mortality, increased conception rates, and increased pregnancy in yearlings. In hunted populations, does are more likely to have twins rather than single fawns, and are more likely to reproduce at a younger age, thus helping the population grown even faster. A Florida study even indicated that “twinning was 38% on hunted and 14% on non-hunted” deer populations. Because hunting pressure is focused on bucks, hunting skews the sex ratio of deer herds and leaves more females to reproduce (there have been reports of “does outnumbering bucks by as much as 30-1”). In these skewed sex ratios, a single buck can impregnate every doe in the population. Since hunting may cause the reproduction rates of a deer population to double or triple, hunting is not a solution to a problem, but is rather a commitment to a permanent problem.
Q: Won’t deer starve to death if they are not hunted?
A: Hunters do not search for starving animals. They either shoot animals at random, or they seek out the strongest and healthiest animals in order to bring home the biggest trophies or largest antlers. While Michigan hunters, for example, killed more than 400,000 deer during the 1995 hunting season, state officials estimated that 200,000 deer starved to death the following winter. Clearly, hunting is not stopping starvation, but may in fact be adding to the problem by triggering increased productivity in the deer population. Even a Michigan hunting columnist condemned “the risk taken to build up the state deer herds to unrealistic levels in order to satisfy hunters and to sell more hunting licenses each year.”
Q: Don’t we need hunting to stop deer from invading suburban areas?
A: Urban and suburban communities tend to lean toward bowhunting or muzzleloading weapons because they fear the use of firearms in residential areas. Yet, these two cruel and primitive methods of hunting do not effectively reduce deer populations because of their extremely high crippling rates. Dozens of scientific studies indicate that bowhunting yields more than a 50% crippling rate. For every animal dragged from the woods, at least one animal is left wounded to suffer. Muzzleloading equipment, because of the lengthy amount of time it takes to reload, also yields a high incidence of crippling. Hunter education manuals indicate that while a deer shot with a rifle may take 5-10 minutes to die, an animal shot with a muzzleloader may linger for 60-70 minutes. Bowhunting and muzzle- loading deer hunts may be psychologically soothing to landowners, but killing and wounding animals at random does little or nothing to stop conflicts between deer and people.
Q: Doesn’t hunting stop deer from eating flowers and endangered plants?
A: Killing some deer because we want to protect certain vegetation does not stop the surviving deer from eating those same plants. What we need are site-specific mitigation measures that have proven to be both humane and effective. With high-tensile wire fencing, electric fencing, and the planting of vegetation that is unpalatable to deer, nearly every deer problem can be resolved or reduced. The California Department of Fish and Game distributes “A Gardeners Guide to Preventing Deer Damage,” and the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife donates materials to farmers and homeowners who report deer damage — including barbed wire and high-tensile electric fencing, and repellents such as “Hinder” (a liquid) and “Deer Away” (a granulated powder.)
Q: Doesn’t hunting reduce automobile accidents?
A: While public officials tend to blame an increase in deer-vehicle collisions on an increase in the deer population, such collisions are more often the result of more roadways being built, more people driving, and roadways bisecting deer habitat. Killing some deer does absolutely nothing to prevent the surviving deer from crossing the exact same roadways at the exact same “deer hot spots.” Michigan hunters, for example, killed 330,980 deer in 1993, and Michigan drivers collided with 47,813 deer that same year. In 1994, Michigan hunters killed 362,490 deer and drivers hit 56,666 deer. Clearly, an increase in deer killing does not solve the problem of deer-vehicle collisions. In fact, there is evidence that suggests a direct correlation between higher deer-car accident statistics and the onset of hunting season. Hunting season has a disruptive effect by startling deer and putting them more “on the run.” With nonlethal and effective mitigation measures such as driver education, reduced speed limits, improved fencing techniques, lining the roads with vegetation that is unpalatable to deer, and the use of roadside reflectors to deter deer from crossing roads, some communities are actually reducing the number of deer-vehicle collisions. Several scientific studies applaud the use of Sprinter-Lite Reflectors (formerly called Swareflex Reflectors) that, when installed and maintained properly on the sides of roadways, can reflect light from a vehicle’s headlights and stop deer from crossing. The Washington State Department of Transportation recorded an 88% reduction in deer-vehicle collisions after installation, and Minnesota officials recorded a 91% decrease.
Q: Doesn’t hunting stop the spread of lyme disease?
A: Although deer are a primary carrier of the adult Ixodes scapularis tick — the “Lyme disease tick” or “black -legged tick” — many wildlife species carry the larval and nymph stages of the tick which are actually the most infectious to humans. The tick can be found on 49 bird species and is commonly carried by a variety of mammals, including white-footed mice, chipmunks, grey squirrels, voles, foxes, rabbits, and opossums. When deer numbers are reduced, ticks tend to congregate at higher densities on the remaining deer or switch to alternate hosts. Even during a study in which all the deer were eradicated from as island, the number of adult ticks actually increased. Lyme disease is easily treatable if it is caught in time, and nearly every state wildlife agency and physician’s office offers free brochures on how to protect yourself from Lyme disease ticks when spending time in the woods.
Q: Deer contraception isn’t really an option, is it?
A: With the vast surge in immunocontraceptive technology over the past few years, the deer contraceptive dart known as “porzine zona pellucida” (PZP) is a viable option. The contraceptive, when injected into female deer, stops reproduction for one to two years. The National Park Service tested PZP on Fire Island National Seashore off the coast of Long Island and reported a 95% success rate. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is now using PZP at its 575-acre campus in suburban Washington, DC. If wildlife agencies did not spend billions of dollars on hunter education, enforcement of hunting regulations, and other hunting activities, that money could be better spent on more research and implementation of contraceptive programs.
Let’s Appreciate
PETA Magazine, “Animal Times”
“Beastie Boy” Adam Horovitz-a.k.a. Ad-Rock — for wearing PETA’s “Animal liberation, Human Liberation” T-shirt on the cover of the U.S. music magazine Spin. Send thank-yous c/o Steve Martin, Nasty Little Man, 72 Spring St., 11th Fl., New York, NY 10012.
Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth for giving real fur the royal brush-off. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said the Queen still wears ceremonial robes trimmed with fur, but that’s all.
Singer Olivia Newton-John for showing that crustacean liberation rocks in her recent “I honestly Love You” video. In the clip, Olivia liberates a lobster who’s about to be boiled alive. Send thank-yous c/o Jason Padgitt, Rogers & Cowan, 1888 Century Park E., Los Angeles, CA 90067-1709.
Southwest Airlines for refusing to transport animals in the cargo holds of its planes because it is “not… in the best interest of the animal.” Animals flown in airplane cargo holds are often exposed to extreme weather conditions and painful jet noises. Please send thank-yous to Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines Co., Love Field, P.O. Box 36611, Dallas, TX 75235-1611 — and ask other airlines to adopt similar policies…
The British army for suspending its participation in NATO’s “Danish Bacon” exercise, in which young pigs are strung upside down, shot with high velocity weapons, operated on and killed. Please ask British Armed Forces Minister John Reid to permanently end the army’s participation in this barbaric exercise. Write: MOD, Whitehall, London SW1A 2HB.
Pearl Jam basssist Jeff Ament for speaking out against the slaughter of buffalo in Yellowstone national Park. Jeff says to mass killing of buffalo to appease ranchers “affected me pretty deeply. I have a great respect for these animals.” Send thank-yous c/o Curtis Management, 1423 34th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122.
Let’s Protest
Film star Claire Danes for modeling a fox stole in Morgue, er, Vogue, magazine. Please ask Claire to be an animal friend and forgo fur. Write c/o Cari Ross, BWM, 9100 Wilshire Blvd., 6th Fl., West Tower, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.
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THE VICTIMS OF IGNORANCE
This is a message to acknowledge the victims of ignorance, the nonhuman animals. This is for the kittens who were drowned in alcohol, future specimens for Biology students. This is for the mother hamster who was thrown into a trash can because she devoured her young. This is for the puppy who was left in the car during August just a bit too long. This is for the fledgling who was beaten to death by a group of teenagers. This is for the 3 lambs, 11 cows, 45 turkeys,1,097 chickens, and 1 calf that each meat-eating American will consume in an average lifetime. This is for the 240 million male chicks who are killed annually. This is for the dog who was stolen for laboratory experimentation. This is for the 6.5 million dolphins who have been killed by tuna fishermen. This is for the rabbit who was force fed your favorite shampoo. This is for the frightened infant monkey whose “mother” was a cloth “monkey” scheduled to shock him on command. This is for the ducklings who were electrically shocked to prove that electrical shocks can immobilize. This is for the animals. The exploited nonhuman animals. There are people out there who care. There are people out there working to save you. You haven’t been forgotten.
FOR JUST ONE DAY
By Guila Manchester on Internet
I would like to be God for just one day, I’d give all my creatures a chance to play. I would bring to the suffering quick release, I’d give to the frightened comfort and peace. And those that were suffering would hunger no more, I would heal all the wounded, bleeding and sore. I’d close all the doors where sadists reign, With their tests and their knives so ready for pain. I would open the doors of the cages wide, And offer their freedom to those inside. I would throw out the traps that lie in wait, For a small furry creature, a cruel fate. I would close all the bullrings and break every spear, And the rabbit no longer the greyhound would fear. I would clean all the oil from out of the sea. I would let all the fish in the nets go free. I would throw out the arrows that pierce so deep, I would give to the tired the blessing of sleep. I’d close all the tracks where the races are won, By horses abused to make them run. I would teach little children that birds are frail, And puppies and kittens…….don’t hold by the tail. And the bunnies and chicks and ducklings so small, I would not let stores have for sale at all. I would free all the animals raised for fur, I would tear down the ranches where they were. I would open the pens that are stacked so high, So legs could run free and wings could fly. I would silence the sound of the hunters guns, I’d give speed to the legs of the fox that runs. I would break every rope by the rodeo used, I would comfort the cattle the cowboy abused. I would make all the streams run pure and sweet, I’d show mercy to animals used for meat. I would offer green grass to the worn out nag, I would throw out the snares in the hunters bag. I would break all the clubs that batter their prey, I would take all the poison and throw it away. I would close the arenas and bloody pits, Where roosters and dogs are torn to bits. I’d find homes for the homeless in cities and farms, I would gather the strays in my loving arms. I know it’s not given to mind of man The workings of God to understand, But oh how I long for the day to come Bringing help for the helpless, tortured and dumb. And I mean no irreverence because I say
I would like to be God for just one day.
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