From: FARM - [email protected]
Economic colonialism imposed on developing countries by
transnational meat conglomerates will be the target of the 19th annual
observance of World Farm Animals Day on October 2.
Thousands of activists in all 50 states and a dozen
other countries are arranging marches, vigils, memorial services,
leafleting, lectures, exhibits, and information tables in hundreds of
communities including the nation's capital. Scores of governors and
mayors are issuing special proclamations. In addition, the Global Hunger
Action Coalition is planning massive demonstrations promoting
plant-based solutions to world hunger at the World Food Summit to be
held in Rome in November.
Several US meat companies are growing into transnational
conglomerates by acquiring domestic and foreign firms and by pushing
policies and trade agreements that would vastly expand their production
capacity and markets in developing countries. Most of this expansion
would involve massive factory farming operations that would eventually
breed, raise, and slaughter as many as 100 billion animals per year.
Such operations would devastate the local food supplies, environmental
resources, public health, and economic infrastructures. The associated
vertical integration and contract farming would exploit indigenous
farmers in a form of 'meat colonialism.'
This year's observance comes at a time of growing
challenges to the US meat industry:
* The Foot-and-Mouth and Mad Cow epidemics have devastated the European
meat industry and threaten to have a similar effect in the US.
* Growing awareness of the adverse health consequences of meat
consumption is driving consumers to meat alternatives offered by
mainstream producers in local supermarkets.
* A budget-conscious Congress has reduced some of the massive subsidies,
even as the US market for animal products has become saturated and less
predictable.
* The relentless takeover and vertical integration of the industry by
large conglomerates has displaced independent producers and farm workers
and alienated affected communities.
* Several agricultural states are restricting the size of and discharges
from factory farms, and EPA is starting to enforce discharge
regulations.
* A recent survey indicates that 93 percent of consumers disapprove of
mistreatment of farm animals, and several states have enacted
legislation protecting sick and injured animals.
FARM is a national public interest organization
promoting plant-based eating and humane treatment of farmed animals.
FARM operates from the nation's capital through a world-wide network of
local groups and individual activists.
Thank you for making Animal Rights 2001 a truly
millennium event!
Now let's start planning for World Farm Animals Day on October 2.
Go on to NIH Pulls
Plug On Chimpanzee Lab Bailout
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