A Compassionate World

1. Why is factory farming such a big deal?2. Impact on our resources and environment 3. Impact on our food and health 4. Why do we need Compassion in World Farming?5. Can we feed the world without factory farming?

World renowned bay under threat

April 17th, 2013

Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States, is a stunning area of great natural beauty. It’s a privilege to be here; to see this globally renowned area for myself.

I’ve been talking to some leading figures who tell me that the Bay is under threat. One of the biggest culprits is chickens…

There are now nearly as many chickens being produced in the three States surrounding the Bay as there were across the entire country sixty years ago. The vast majority of these are factory farmed. That’s an awful lot of birds in one area.

But how do chickens locked in long, windowless sheds harm something as vast as the 200-mile long Chesapeake Bay? Through the poultry manure spread on the fields.

I spoke with Bob Martin at the Johns Hopkins Centre for a Livable Future in Baltimore. He told me how enormous quantities of waste are being spread on the surrounding farmland. This leads to nutrient run-off that often ends up in the Bay.

Carole Morison and her pasture poultry

The pollution can have a big affect on the natural life of the Bay, including periodic fish kills involving thousands at a time. It makes it harder for the once abundant oysters to grow. “Things are out of balance”, Bob told me; industrial agriculture is “the significant threat to environmental damage” in this area.

I also met up with Carole Morison, an industrial chicken farmer of 23 years, now much happier rearing laying hens on pasture. Carole was concerned about how farmers were being treated by big chicken companies, and about the environmental effects of intensive production. So she switched to what she calls “happy chickens”. Now, instead of complaints from customers, Carole has people ringing her up to say how great her hens’ eggs taste!

Read more posts from my Rachel Carson inspired journey here: ’Maryland Muck‘, ‘Silent Spring‘ and ‘A Peregrine mystery‘.

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Silent Spring

April 16th, 2013

Rachel Carson’s childhood homestead, Springdale, USA

I’m looking from the bedroom window of the late Rachel Carson, imagining what childhood eyes of one of the world’s great environmentalists may have seen. Gazing across the Allegheny valley toward the tree-covered hillside beyond, I could see two great chimney stacks reaching up from the coal-fired plants along the river basin. Was it this meeting point between countryside and industrialisation that caused the first awakenings in a young mind that would eventually go on to write a seminal work on the perils of taking an industrial approach to agriculture?

Rachel’s seminal book, Silent Spring, was the first major wake-up call about the perils of toxic pesticides; used in intensive farming to keep down insects, weeds and other pests. It was perhaps the opening salvo in the battle for the countryside; one of the earliest commentaries on industrialisation in food and farming that would lead to animals being incarcerated on factory farms and their feed grown in chemical-soaked fields elsewhere.

I started out in Pittsburgh, USA, on the start of my foray to find out how well we heeded Rachel’s warning. Later that day, I was in Maryland, standing on the shore of the magnificent Chesapeake Bay, the estuary dwarfing the vast intricate steelwork of the Annapolis bridge that crosses it. As if by arrangement, a spectacular Osprey rose through the sky into sight. Brown turns to white as it banks, hovers briefly before folding wings and a powerful plunge sends droplets raining all around. A momentary pause before broad, fingered wings lift bird and fish from the surface and away with a shake. It’s hard to imagine that this tranquil place for people and animals is under threat.

That evening, I met the executive director of the Maryland Pesticide Network, Ruth Berlin. I wanted to find out what Rachel Carson meant to her and how Chesapeake is fairing today.

Ruth told me she saw Rachel as the ‘mother’ of the modern environmental movement. How her legacy had put the issue of pesticide use in agriculture firmly on the map. But has the problem been solved? “It’s probably a bigger problem now than 50 years ago,” she told me.

I heard how pesticides are being found widely in Chesapeake Bay, but that it’s a problem far from unique to this area. A cocktail of chemical pesticides is seen as contaminating drinking water, affecting wildlife and implicated in serious public health issues.

So Silent Spring brought the issue to the world’s attention. Half a century later, it’s still the subject of furious public debate. My next stop is Johns Hopkins University to learn more. I’ll keep you posted…

Read previous posts from my Rachel Carson inspired journey here: ‘Maryland Muck‘, ‘World renowned bay under threat‘ and ‘A Peregrine mystery‘.

Tags: industrial agriculture, industrialisation. Posted in General | 1 Comment »

A Peregrine mystery

April 11th, 2013

binoculars For more than three decades, I have carried with me a sense of inadequacy. I remember clearly how it started.

It was the late 1970s. I was a young teenager reading something that fired my imagination. It led to years of gazing out of windows, a habit that got me into trouble with a string of teachers. It was a sixties classic called, ‘The Peregrine’, by J. A. Baker. I was enthralled, inspired, filled with a sense of nervous wonder. I read his vivid and meticulous descriptions of the falcons he watched near his home in Essex, England. I dreamed of seeing them too. With eyes filled with wonder, I eagerly scrutinized every Kestrel I saw, just in case.

It would be some years before I saw my first one. Majestic, enthralling, and when they close their wings in a stoop, said to be the fastest animal on the planet, hurtling at speeds of 200 kilometres per hour.

I’ve seen many since; in Britain and in many other countries. But that sense of inadequacy has never quite gone away. You see, after countless encounters, I’ve just not been able to see them so vividly, so close or for so long as Baker did in his book. Was I doing something wrong? For thirty five years, that question has remained unanswered; until this year.

I was on my annual winter trip to North Wales with my wife, Helen. We always call in at the wonderful RSPB reserve at Conwy. Situated on the banks of the estuary, with magnificent views of Snowdonia and Conwy castle, it is a spectacular place to while away an afternoon.

This year’s weather was particularly foul, which meant less time out on the waterfront and more time in the shop surrounded by bird paraphernalia, not least books. As a budding author myself, I scanned the shelves and picked one up by Bloomsbury, my soon-to-be publisher. ‘Silent Spring Revisited’ was the title, by Conor Mark Jameson, exploring the legacy of the environmentalist, Rachel Carson, who raised the alarm over the perils of pesticides sweeping across Britain and America as farming industrialised.
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Return to China’s River of Pigs

April 10th, 2013

Nearly a month after I first wrote about China’s River of Pigs, important questions remain unanswered. Potentially dangerous new developments are also emerging.

The latest report from the BBC is that at least 16,000 dead pigs have been pulled from the Huangpu River. The river is a major supplier of tap water to Shanghai (population at least 23 million) and the surrounding area in east China.

Also, in what appears to be an unrelated incident, some 1,000 dead ducks were reportedly retrieved from the Nanhe River in the Sichuan province in southwest China.

Added to this, according to The Guardian, at least 20,000 chickens and ducks have been killed in an attempt ‘to halt the spread of an infection (H7N9 avian influenza) that has killed six people’ in Shanghai. The Government also ordered the closure of all live poultry markets in Shanghai.

Although there is reportedly no evidence so far of human-to-human transmission of the virus in this case, it’s a real concern to think that it may only be a matter of time before we see the next influenza pandemic transmitted from animals to humans, caused by the way animals are raised and killed for food.
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Introducing Leopoldine

April 8th, 2013

Leopoldine Charbonneaux, Director of CIWF France

Leopoldine Charbonneaux, Head of CIWF France

Whether its laws and regulations, farming practices and food manufacturing, or factory farming and world hunger, we must expand Compassion’s presence internationally to be effective at the global level, while not forgetting that everything locally also matters.

Our new Strategic Plan for 2013-2017 sets our sights on achieving major impact for animals in Britain, Europe and beyond. In particular, we aim to drive European legislation to achieve better standards of animal welfare through advocacy and campaigning.

The big problem we face now is that the voting numbers are against us. During the ‘golden age’ of animal welfare reform in Europe during the 1990s, there was a two to one voting majority in favour of better legislation. Now, the situation has turned on its head, with those countries generally opposed to new reforms being in the majority. How did this happen?; largely due to EU expansion around the turn of the century.

With its EU-wide bans on barren battery cages, veal crates and the like, Europe is a major influence on global farm animal welfare. We are proud of what we’ve achieved already in Europe, but there is still much more to do. Achieving new reforms and using this leverage internationally is an important next step.

This is why, in addition to our international head office in Surrey and our branch in the USA, we’ve also set up campaign branches in continental Europe; in the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and France; countries that we believe hold the key to a better future politically.

I am delighted therefore to introduce you to our Head of France, Leopoldine Charbonneaux.

Philip: How did you become involved in animal welfare?

Leopoldine: I was brought up in a family which believed animals were important. Respect for animals was always part of my education. They should be looked after well. We were responsible for the animals we lived with. My father, who wanted to be a farmer all his life, and one of my aunts bred Charolais cattle. But he eventually became an arable farmer. He did not like seeing his cattle go for slaughter. My mother is an artist. Most of her subjects were animals!

Also, another one of my aunts was Princess Elisabeth de Croy. She was a pioneer in animal welfare in France, and very active throughout the world with many organisations, including Compassion. I learned a lot from her. I also volunteered at an animal sanctuary she founded. I was its President and Trustee for several years. I helped with the transition after her death and the development of education programmes that she felt were the way forward. It is called the Refuge de Thiernay, which is near Nevers in central France. So, animals have always been a big part of my life.
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Easter chicks

March 29th, 2013

Philip at home with ex-battery hen, Huckle

Easter Bank Holiday Weekend is a meaningful time of the year for me.

Not only is it an important moment in the Christian calendar with the Resurrection, but it also marks the end of winter, and the clocks moving forward to British Summer Time.

Notwithstanding the persistent current spell of bitterly cold weather, spring is on its way! The daffodils in our village tell me so, with yellow peaking through.

In cultures throughout the world, eggs often represent spring, fertility, and new beginnings. Of course, we have our own tradition of chocolate Easter eggs.

But how eggs are produced and how chickens are treated in today’s agriculture is something far from deserving celebration.

Please spare a moment this weekend to think about the plight of chickens.

More than 50 billion chickens throughout the world are reared annually, mostly in intensive farms, as a source of food, for both their meat and their eggs.
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Bill Gates and innovation on a plate

March 25th, 2013

Microsoft magnate, Bill Gates, is the latest big name to enter the debate on how we’re going to feed the world of the future. In his opening remarks to the latest ‘Gatesnote’, The Future of Food, Gates explains how meat consumption is set to double by 2050 but is resource hungry, with “substantial environmental impact”. He concludes that, when it comes to producing meat, we “need more options” that won’t deplete natural resources.

But what sort of ideas does Gates have in mind? He talks about re-inventing the meat market with technological inventions that look and taste like meat and eggs, but aren’t. He cites two companies, Beyond Meat and Hampton Creek Foods, as being amongst those developing plant-protein sources for the mass market. “I couldn’t taste the difference between Beyond Meat and real chicken”, he writes before exploring the science behind these coming innovations.

Best-selling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, explains three good reasons why reducing meat consumption is a good idea – health, environment and animal welfare. On the latter, he goes on to say, “the animal factories that produce most of our meat and milk are brutal places where animals suffer needlessly”.

It’s great to see someone as influential as Bill Gates getting stuck into how we can broaden our food horizons in a way that serves the future. Over the past year or so, during the course of writing a book on the global food system, I’ve been talking to others with ideas worth listening to. For example, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands are developing ways of producing food and fuel on a grand scale from humble algae and seaweed. Algae protein could be used to feed pigs, poultry or farmed fish currently fed on soya or fishmeal. It’s already happening on an experimental basis. It could also be a high-protein ingredient for people too.
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China’s river of pigs

March 19th, 2013

As the UK continues to deal with the horsemeat scandal, another food and farming crisis is developing, this time in China. Thousands of dead pigs have been found floating down Shanghai’s largest river, the Huangpu; a major source of drinking water for the area.

Only a week ago (March 11), The Guardian reported the number to be nearly 6,000. Talking today with Jeff Zhou, Compassion’s representative in China, I learned that the official number of dead pigs found in the river had reached nearly 10,000.

With no end in sight, it’s horrifying to think of how many more will be found in China’s river of dead pigs.

Pig carcasses are supposed to be disposed of by burying. However, land is limited. It’s not unusual for farmers to dump unwanted dead animals into rivers. One Chinese news source states the “dumping of dead pigs in rivers is common among Jiaxing villagers due to over expansion of the hog industry and a lack of burial sites”.
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