Guest Editorial: Who is speaking out for pigs & who is eating them
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2011:
South Korean quarantine officers throw live piglets, taken from a farm suffering from an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, into a hole prior to burying them alive in Ansung, in this 2002 file photo.
Mercy for Animals, having already produced more shocking undercover videos of mistreatment of animals on factory farms than all other U.S. animal advocacy organizations combined, on June 29, 2011 shocked television and web viewers yet again with footage from inside an Iowa Select Farms facility in Kamrar, Iowa.
Iowa Select Farms supplies Swift, one of the biggest names in meatpacking.
Agricultural trade journals also devote much page space to discussion of manure storage and disposal, air and water quality, and pesticide use to control the insects typically infesting livestock and poultry barns. These are all issues to which farmers must respond, for farming to be profitable, albeit that the most profitable approach is usually to respond as little as possible.
Of course few agricultural trade journals editorially recognize having anything in common with animal and environmental advocates, even though they are detailing and exposing the same problems. Most agricultural trade journals denounce animal and environmental advocacy as fervently as revivalist ministers rail against sin.
one of the leading Chinese agricultural trade journals. That he was invited to address the June 2011 Asia for Animals conference in Chengdu was a bit of a surprise, though the conference was held in his home city.
PETA-South Korean activists protest treatment of animals in factory farms.
There were hints in the abstract that Wang Qian had a unique perspective, considering his role, but he spoke toward the end of a long afternoon session which had already left much of the audience numb. So-Yeon Park of Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth in the opening presentation aired video clandestinely obtained in December 2010 near her home in Pocheon, South Korea, near the North Korean border, showing pigs being buried alive by the truckload in a futile effort to contain foot-and-mouth disease.
In all, 3.5 million pigs were buried alive between October 2010 and April 2011. This atrocity resulted from the combination of overcrowded and filthy conditions on factory farms plus the longtime stubborn refusal of the South Korean government to vaccinate livestock against foot-and-mouth disease, since vaccinated livestock cannot be distinguished from livestock actually incubating infection and therefore may not be exported.
Killing was unnecessary
Most of the six million British livestock who were killed during a 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease were killed out of ignorant panic, as were most of the 3.5 million pigs who were killed in South Korea, and most of the countless millions of other animals who have been killed during foot-and-mouth outbreaks worldwide, all because in the 114 years since foot-and-moth disease was first discovered to be of viral origin, no one had previously conducted a simple experiment to discover the etiology of transmission.
Even had her presentation been less visually shocking and emotionally charged, So-Yeon Park might have been a difficult act to follow. Three times in eight months her dramatic initiatives on other animal advocacy fronts have drawn global media notice. So-Yeon Park has also attracted more favorable publicity within South Korea lately than the oligarchic South Korean media have ever extended to campaigners before her, including the sisters Sunnan and Kyenan Kum, founders in 1982 and 1997, respectively, of the Korean Animal Protection Society and International Aid to Korean Animals.
So-Yeon Park, 40, has steadily sharpened her media skills and political savvy since abandoning a stage and singing career in 2000 to promote animal rights. Founding the CARE shelter in 2004, So-Yeon Park waged a successful campaign for passage of a law against animal hoarding in 2005. She developed a depth of knowledge about South Korean agribusiness while monitoring response to the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak of 2006-2007. In 2008-2009 So-Yeon Park exposed poor conditions at government dog pounds throughout South Korea and won passage of national pound regulations. So-Yeon Park emerged as a media star in November 2010, venturing to Yeonpyong Island to rescue animals who were left behind when the residents fled North Korean shelling that killed two South Korean marines.
Sudden celebrity helped So-Yeon Park to expose the live pig burials more intensively than any animal welfare issue has ever before been exposed in South Korea. Her efforts may have been politically aided by circumstantial evidence that the South Korean foot-and-mouth disease outbreak apparently spread from North Korea, hitting first a pig farm near Pocheon.
Wang Qian discussed the suffering of pigs on factory farms. He mentioned the loss of dignity among both pigs and pig farmers that he perceives inherent in factory farming conditions. But, true to the outline of his speech, Wang Qian spoke most about how pigs are fed, as compared to how they ought to be fed to maintain good health. Wang Qian described disease outbreaks, such as foot-and-mouth and the mysterious blue ear disease that killed more than 20 million Chinese pigs in 2007. Proper nutrition and exercise, Wang Qian suggested, could enable pigs to better withstand infections that fell whole herds in close confinement.
Other international animal advocacy organizations with offices in China have addressed factory farming in various ways, among them ActAsia for Animals, the Animals Asia Foundation, Compassion In World Farming, Humane Society International, International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the Royal SPCA of Britain.
The pro-vegetarian and pro-vegan message at Asia for Animals 2011 was amplified by speakers from a variety of pro-vegetarian and vegan societies, chiefly headquartered in India and South Korea. The major international organizations were conspicuously quiet about the whole matter.
Amid hundreds of vegetarian and vegan delegates from more than 25 Asian nations, and others in Europe and North America, some representatives of the major international animal charities were observed eating pork sausages and bacon in the breakfast hall.
Several speakers from the floor expressed profound disappointment in this behavior at the closing session, among them Asian Animal Protection Network founder John Wedderburn, M.D .
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Merritt Clifton is a world-renowned ecoanimal journalist and editor in chief of ANIMAL PEOPLE, based near Seattle, WA. Kim Bartlett, also prominent in animal questions, serves as publisher for the periodical.
Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960 | Clinton, WA 98236
Telephone: 360-579-2505
Cell: 360-969-0450
Fax: 360-579-2575
E-mail: anmlpepl@whidbey.com
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