Follow up to VFR 97:  Soy and Sperm Count
26 July 2008

There’s a response on Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s blog Disease Proof to the study that links soy and infertility that we discussed in Vegan Freak Radio 97: 

Disease Proof: Does Soy Really Lower Sperm Count?

Dr. Fuhrman points out that more likely mitigating factor for low sperm count was the obesity of the test subjects, and that the study used highly processed soy, rather than tofu or soy beans themselves.  I like how he emphasizes staying away from highly processed foods rather than soy itself, as well as reminding people to eat a variety of legumes rather than just relying on one.

  Posted by Jenna Torres    Permalink    Filed under: Food | News | 
The Human Cost of Meat
26 July 2008

According to this piece in the New York Times labor abuses were rampant at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse. According to the article, underaged workers sometimes worked as long as 17 hours a day, and worked while injured:

“‘My work was very hard, because they didn’t give me my breaks, and I wasn’t getting very much sleep,’ he said. ‘They told us they were going to call immigration if we complained.’

Elmer L. said that he was clearing cow innards from the slaughter floor last Aug. 26 when a supervisor he described as a rabbi began yelling at him, then kicked him from behind. The blow caused a freshly-sharpened knife to fly up and cut his elbow.

He was sent to a hospital where doctors closed the laceration with eight stitches. But he said that when he returned, his elbow still stinging, to ask for some time off, his supervisor ordered him back to work.

The next day, as he was lifting a cow’s tongue, the stitches ruptured, Elmer L. said, and the wound bled again. He said he was given a bandage at the plant and sent back to work. The incident is confirmed in a worker’s injury report filed on Aug. 31, 2007, by Agriprocessors with the Iowa labor department.”

It is important to note that these abuses are the necessary by-product of the cheap meat that consumers rely on and demand. A giant disassembly line, slaughterhouse work is dangerous, violent, dirty, and exhausting, as workers are often butchering animals that are still alive, and often still kicking, mooing, or otherwise resisting. This work must be done quickly, as the contemporary slaughterhouse relies upon quickly moving animals in one side and animal flesh out the other. Illegal immigrants are often chosen for this work, for two reasons: first, they work cheap; and second, they are less likely to complain to authorities about abusive and dangerous work situations. Like every other sector of the animal economy, profit is the motivating factor:

Another Guatemalan, Joel R., who gave his age as 15, said he dropped out of school in Postville after the eighth grade and took a job at Agriprocessors because his mother became ill. He said he worked from 5.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. in a section called “quality control,” a job he described as relatively easy that he got because he speaks English.

But he said he and other workers were under constant pressure from supervisors. “They yell at us when we don’t hurry up, when we don’t work fast enough for them,” said Joel R. He and Gilda O. did not want their last names published because they are illegal immigrants and they were not arrested in the raid.

Animal rights activists often say that there’s a little veal in every glass of milk. By this, they mean that the production of milk relies on the production of veal. Similarly, it appears there’s also a little blood in the meat. It is the blood not only of the slaughtered animal, but of the exploited, abused, and powerless worker who suffered to bring that meat to market.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under: News | 

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