This is not Y2K related, but still something to be aware of.

National Public Radio today on the show "Fresh Air". You should be able to access this with real player as soon as they post it. Last time I checked it was only the info.

http://whyy.org/cgi-bin/FAlookup.cgi

Today's guest was Steven Wise, author and professor of animal rights law at Harvard Law School. This man is pushing for legal rights for animals. He wants to see chimpanzees and some other primate of which I can't remember the name, be legally recognized as "persons". At first I was amused, but the longer I listened, the more upset I became. Mr. Wise essentially stated that these primates should be afforded the same legal rights as human children. He also stated reasons for many other animals being given this "person" designation. When asked if he expected us to change to a vegeterian society, he answered that we wouldn't eat chimpanzees (or the other primate) any more than we would eat our own children. When discussing dogs that had bitten people and then been destroyed, he again likened them to children who had done something wrong and been sentenced to death. He also compared the ownership of animals to slavery. When asked about people who were offended by his comparison of animals to slaves, he quoted someone (can't remember who) as saying the people offended were defensive because they were now the master who had slaves.

This man is teaching this mode of thinking at one of our best known law schools. Am I the only one who sees this as frightening?

-- grannyclampett (notress@pass.ing), February 10, 2000

Answers

Call me a kook, but I believe that THIS is where Clinton's latest EO on "Genetic Discrimination" is going to come in. Gee...does this mean we won't be able to NOT hire chimpanzees?

-- Liz (lizpavek@hotmail.com), February 10, 2000.

Betcha a pile of canned hams Mr. Stephen Wise thinks women have the right to murder unborn babies. The more they scream at fur and put bumper stickers about baby seals on their cars, the more abortions they've supported. It's just a mechanism to see themselves as compassionate, instead of as murderers.

-- carolyn (carolyn@luvmy.hub), February 10, 2000.

Anyone who owns a Cat *knows* who 'The Real Master' is - and who the true 'Slave' is. I mean, who's going to the store, buying the Cat food, cleaning the litter box and cleaning the bowls??

All this? To on rare occasion be left a mangled mouse as a "gift"? Delivered on the living room carpet? I think this is an *outrageously cheap* 'jesture of appreciation'...and a poor exchange at that!!

I'm for strong legislation againt this kind of Tyranny! I think we've tolerated it enough...don't you?

Our Forefathers warned us to be Eternally Vigilant...and now look what their Poserity has come to! Cleaning litter boxes? They died...for THIS???

Wake up People. Sheesh!!

-- steve (WhoCare@nymore.Right?com), February 10, 2000.

Animal Rights....for Humans?>

We deserve to be treated fairly too ya know....

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore.Right?com), February 10, 2000.

Forget chimpanzee, the best is rhesus pieces!

Kook

-- Y2Kook (y2kook@usa.net), February 10, 2000.

Kook. PLEASE !!!!... it hurts when you blow beer out your nose :-)

Steve, I have two pest control employees that leave me 5 or 6 "pests" on the deck each morning.. nicely lined up :-)

-- Casper (c@no.yr), February 10, 2000.

I tell Kitty he is our slave, but frankly, I think he regards the situation as otherwise. He makes me pet him all day long. Sometimes I need to go to the bathroom or get some coffee, but still he calls and expects first-rate service.How did this happen?

Granny, actually, if people treated animals better,the world would be a happier place. Do you think chickens should have their beaks torn off or be forced to stand on wire all day long? I believe there should be laws against that type of cruelty.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), February 10, 2000.

Chicken

Think the subject of contaminated chicken has been done to death?

Think again.

Find out just how foul eating fowl can be.

Consider these realities:

The average North American eats more than 50 pounds of chicken per year roughly double the amount consumed just 20 years ago.

At least 1,000 US citizens are killed each year by contaminated chicken. As many as 80 million others are sickened.

Inspectors have about two seconds to visually examine the inside and outside of each chicken. At this rate, inspectors may examine 12,000 or more chickens in one day.

There are presently 1,370 unfilled federal meat inspector positions. In 1994 and 1995, more than 1.9 million inspection tasks went unperformed because of these vacancies.

A 3-ounce serving of chicken breast contains 75 mgs of cholesterol. A 3-ounce serving of ground beef contains 72 mgs. No plant foods contain cholesterol.

The owner of the nation's largest chicken producer Don Tyson earns about $5 million in salary, dividends and bonuses each year. Pay for workers on the poultry line are less than for any other manufacturing industry except apparel.

More than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are produced on factory farms. Roughly 7.5 billion chickens were slaughtered in the US in 1995.

In a single year, US poultry operations use enough water to meet all the domestic needs of nearly 4.5 million North Americans.

Producing one egg takes about 63 gallons of water.

Full citations for this brochure are available upon request or see www.earthsave.org.

Eating chicken is proving to be an especially hazardous enterprise...

For starters, approximately 30 percent of chicken is tainted with Salmonella and 62 percent with its equally virulent cousin, Campylobacter.

Time magazine calls raw chicken "one of the most dangerous items in the American home," and each year in the US alone, contaminated chicken kills at least 1,000 people while sickening as many as 80 million others.

It's no surprise really that chicken is decidedly foul. Desperately crowded factory farms--where more than 90 percent of US chickens and eggs are raised--are fertile breeding grounds for disease. Additionally, slaughterhouses do an excellent job of spreading pathogens from one bird to the next.

Even if chicken was pathogen-free (clearly an unsafe assumption for any shopper to make), it would hardly qualify as wholesome. Not only is chicken nearly devoid of health-promoting compounds found only in plant foods--things like complex carbohydrates, antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber--it also contains other suspect ingredients rarely recommended as part of a healthy diet.

Cholesterol. You'll find just as much artery-filling cholesterol in chicken as in beef and pork. Cholesterol is found exclusively in muscle tissue and can't be trimmed away.

Protein. People can meet or exceed their protein requirements simply by choosing a varied plant-centered diet and eating ample calories, says the American Dietetic Association. No animal foods are necessary. Many North Americans already eat twice the protein they need, and excessive protein has been linked to osteoporosis, kidney disease and other medical problems.

Antibiotic Residues. Roughly half of all antibiotics used in the US are fed to farm animals. If meat contains drug residues, it's highly unlikely to be detected, as these tests are rarely conducted.

Mystery Feed. Each year billions of pounds of slaughterhouse leftovers are made into animal reed, much of it for chickens. Chickens are also sometimes fed manure, which may contain pesticides, drug residues, pathogens, heavy metals, hormones and microbial toxins.

If you took a raw chicken and dropped it in a cow pile or in a pile of chicken manure, would you pick it up, wash it off and cook it for dinner? That's just about what's happening at these plants. -- Pat Godfrey, Inspector Tyson's chicken processing plant, Springdale, Arkansas

Despite millions of people falling ill each year, the US Department of Agriculture (the government agency responsible for meat safety) continues to stamp every thigh, breast and wing with its seal of approval, prompting many to ask, "Who's minding the henhouse?" Sadly, USDA has historically placed the interests of the influential poultry industry ahead of those of the poultry-consuming public. A new, more- scientific governrnent meat inspection system has been agreed upon in principle, but tangible improvements remain years away.

A poultry plant is not a good place to work. When you miss a day they punish you. If you're sick they punish you. The supervisors holler at you, but you can't say anything. They treat you like a child. -- Wonder Sims, 23, poultry worker.

The horrors found routinely inside chicken slaughterhouses are not limited to grisly scenes of disassembled chickens. They also include treacherous working conditions and dismally low wages. In 1994, a Wall Street Journal writer described the work he experienced first-hand in several slaughterhouses as, "faster than ever before, subject to Orwellian control and electronic surveillance, arid reduced to limited tasks that are numbingly repetitive, potentially crippling and stripped of any meaningful skills or chance to develop them... The work was so fast-paced that it took on a zany chaos, with arms and boxes and poultry flying in every direction."

Chicken production also exacts a steep environmental toll. It takes up to 700 gallons of water, six pounds of grain, and the equivalent of about one-fifth a gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of chicken. In addition, manure from the chicken industry is directly responsible for wide-spread pollution of waterways and groundwater.

Unless we dramatically curb our appetite for chicken, the future seems grim. We can expect more people hospitalized and killed by contaminated chicken, and more families mourning the loss of loved ones. We can look forward to more rivers ;and drinking water fouled with manure, more workers facing perilous tasks and lousy pay, and much more animal suffering. Despite the present horrors and bleak forecast, however, consumers continue to sleepwalk through the checkout line with shopping carts full of fowl. One can only wonder, when will we awaken from this nightmare?

For references and more information on this subject, please see: http://www.earthsave.org/ chicken.htm

-- ... (...@...com), February 11, 2000.

Mara,

Agreed. Some of the "experiments" done on animals for "research" can be done by other, non-intrusive methods. What some of these animals go thru is nothing but torture. (A baby monkey's skull cap is opened and diodes were placed on it's brain, etc...)

Animals feel pain too, people. If you wouldn't want it done to yourself, don't do it to others, especially to those who can't defend themselves or represent their own interests.

Eating animals is one thing, putting them in prolonged agony is another.

-- Deb M. (vmcclell@columbus.rr.com), February 11, 2000.

Give me a break. Children have no rights. Anybody been in a family courtroom recently? Children are PROPERTY. Animal rights people are usually more than willing to do their fair share of consuming products and services which have benefited from animal research. How many of them leave their children home alone (with the pets) on a daily basis? This would be laughable if it wasn't so stupid.

If I discovered I'd been paying for Mr. Wise (what an oxymoron) to 'teach' my kids......I'd demand a refund. Higher education my ass.

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), February 11, 2000.

hmmmm...

...@... awesome post. Thanks for the important info for sure.

As far as the other ideas here...everything makes sense that each person is saying. I don't think anyone is "all right" or all "wrong". The gentleman in the opening post is making some good points on principle. The common element in every post here is one thing "CARING". And we need to care and be responsible to each other, to our Children, to the Animals and ALL species...that is the point of all this, at least to me. So I don't see any conflict in what anyone has said here, not really.

Yes, when i read the opening post...my impression was this guy was doing even better than Jesus walkin' on 'de Water. I thought the guy above was walking on AIR! But...us humans do have a way of mis- treating animals, and i think that is the drift of what The Professor was getting at. But they way the article is stated, you'd think the guy was clueles as to what is happening to our chidren, domestic abuse, Kosovo, the environment, etc. So I see both levels there.

that's my 2 cents. I think everyone here made great points. Ahhh...those poor chickens...no?

-- steve (WhoCares@nymore.Right?com), February 12, 2000.

Women and children are killed in Africa with machetes. I guess that does not have anything to do with this thread however ...

-- Doug Fletcher (dflet@succeed.net), February 12, 2000.