Horrifying "U.S. Meat Animal Research Center" practices exposed

Alessandra Kelley · Jan 20, 2015

"In Quest for More Meat Profits, U.S. Lab Lets Animals Suffer" (Michael Moss, New York Times)

(This main section front page New York Times article from today's paper is behind an online paywall I can't seem to get through. All quotes are hand-typed from my physical newspaper. It's well worth reading if you can reach the article)

Today's New York Times has a front page article of its investigation into a shadowy Nebraska laboratory, the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, where in a quest to foster food safety, reduce disease, keep American meat ranchers competitive, and increase the meat supply, thousands upon thousands of animals have suffered illness, pain, and premature death for decades while veterinarians have been sneered at and excluded when they express concerns about the animals' welfare.

Pigs are having many more piglets -- up to 14, instead of the usual eight -- but hundreds of these newborns, too frail or crowded to move, are being crushed each year when their mothers roll over. Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed. (bolding mine)

Then there are the lambs. In an effort to develop "easy care" sheep that can survive without costly shelters or shepherds, ewes are giving birth, unaided, in open fields where newborns are killed by predators, harsh weather and starvation.

...

"It's horrible," one veterinarian said, tossing the remains into a barrel to be dumped in a vast excavation called the dead pit.

The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 has one "gaping exemption: farm animals used in research to benefit agriculture."

The research center has fought tooth and nail against closing that exemption even as other research centers and universities have sought out independent oversight and joined organizations that ensure reasonable wellbeing of research animals.

[T]he center -- built on the site of a World War II-era ammunition depot about two hour's drive southwest of Omaha, and locked behind a security fence -- has become a destination for the kind of high-risk, potentially controversial research that other institutions will not do or are no longer allowed to do.

The article details the experiments, which are beyond grim, revolting, and often reaching into the sadistic.

At the American Meat Science Association meeting in 2013, while other speakers discussing the slaughter of animals focused on producing the least amount of suffering, the Nebraska center speaker focused only on the relationship between using anesthesia and tenderness of meat.

The center remains resistant to any considerations of the animals' welfare or pain. The article ends with a University of Nebraska veterinarian proposing a $3,524 study to measure the stress and pain of castrating sheep and removing their tails.

The center denied her request, saying its only interests in sheep were fighting pneumonia and breeding the "easy care" sheep.

Another reason for the denial: The center said it lacked the expertise to assess the pain felt by animals.

cornflake · Jan 20, 2015

I'm shocked.

Oh, wait, I'm completely the opposite of shocked.

Was I supposed to think people involved in not just producing dead animals for consumption, but researching how to produce lots more were compassionate people, concerned with animal welfare? I did not think that.

I don't think there was a way to shock me here, nor do I for one nanosecond believe any fucking meat producer was in any way shocked or appalled.

Reziac · Jan 20, 2015

Speaking as one from farm country who is familiar with pigs, sheep, and cattle... bollocks.

Even wild pigs can have up to 20 piglets, and those much-maligned 'farrowing crates' were developed specifically to prevent piglet crush -- because piglets are small, and sows are big, and sows do not give a tinker's damn what they roll over on (they won't even notice). Even free-range sows will often crush (or eat) their piglets.

My uncle's ranch ran a couple thousand head of sheep. The ewes were brought into barns for lambing, specifically to protect the lambs from predators and the elements -- this is normal for any sheep operation in a harsh climate (in a mild climate they might lamb in the field, which is healthier for the lambs, but they'll still guard them against predators, with portable fence and a crew with dogs). If you don't take care of your lambs, they are likely to die. How the hell are you supposed to make any money if you let your crop all die in the field??

As to cows "being retooled to have twins and triplets", that is complete bullshit. Twinning in cattle happens occasionally (between 1% and 7% of the time depending on the breed and bloodline) and while it can be a positive trait in beef cattle where the vast majority of calves go to market, in dairy cattle it is extremely undesirable -- greater chance of a hard calving and complications, and the twin of a male calf is always a freemartin, which is sterile and more difficult to deal with (it behaves like a bull). How the hell are you supposed to continue your operation if your next generation of cows are all sterile? (in dairy cows, that means NO MILK. That the incidence of twinning has increased over time is regarded as a problem, not a benefit.)

If the object of raising livestock is to make money, why would anyone do crap that achieves a financial loss?? If you don't have a live crop, you not only have nothing to sell, you've also pissed away the cost of keeping the parents for the whole previous year. Does going in the hole on purpose make any sense? How the hell does that jive with the accusations of greed??

Animal rights propaganda plays fast and loose with the truth, counts on the good-hearted ignorance of folks with no farm and ranch experience (which at this point is 98% of the U.S. population), and is not above staging something ugly to 'prove' their point. But ask yourself if the article's claims even pass the logic test: Can you make money doing things this way? The answer is a resounding NO, so why do it??

Brutal Mustang · Jan 20, 2015

Alessandra Kelley said:
Cows, which normally bear one calf at a time, have been retooled to have twins and triplets, which often emerge weakened or deformed, dying in such numbers that even meat producers have been repulsed.

This is bull.

I live in the heart of beef country, near a few feedlots (one with 98,000 head). And one of the biggest slaughter houses in the US resides in the nearest town. Twice a year a 300 head cattle drive goes down my road. Many people I know work in the beef industry, and I myself have toyed with becoming a pen rider. Most days I just have to look out a window to spot at least 100 black Angus cows. So I'd consider myself somewhat intimately familiar with the industry.

I see a lot of calving beef cows every spring, but honestly, I don't think I've EVER seen twin calves in person. Funny, that! I know it happens naturally. I've just never seen it. Or maybe I have seen it, but it wasn't that noticeable, because the calves tend to nurse off of different mothers.

That said, yes, a lot is wrong with the meat industry.

Alessandra Kelley · Jan 21, 2015

I have found a version of this article that my ipad can read, although my regular computer still hits the paywall. I strongly recommend reading it:
www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/dining/animal-welfare-at-risk-in-experiments-for-meat-industry.html?_r=0

Reziac said:
Speaking as one from farm country who is familiar with pigs, sheep, and cattle... bollocks.
...

Brutal Mustang said:
This is bull.

...

This is the problem with trying to convey a very long and nuanced article when I have to type out all the quotes myself.

The article agrees with both of you.

Ranchers and meat producers don't want twin cows. They know they are harmful to the animals. They've said so.

They have pushed back against this research in many ways.

They don't want this.

But the Nebraska research goes on anyway.

(To be fair, the center has also produced useful research into disease prevention and healthier meats. But without much in the way of oversight it has also branched into these troubling cases.)

This is a case where ranchers, farmers, animal welfare specialists, researchers, the meat industry, and just caring people in general ought to be on the same page.

Ranchers know that twins are bad for cows.

But the Nebraska researchers didn't care. They argued that 50% more beef by weight when all survivors were counted was worth the birth defects, pain, and death.

They bred cows for twins by genetic selection, crossing cows whose line had borne twins with surviving bulls from twin births, for decades until they had cows who bore twins 55% of the time and sometimes triplets, with horrific results.

Ranchers wouldn't buy the cows or the sperm.

It's amazing how long the center tried to push multiple-birth cows against the wishes of people who knew what they were doing and cared about their animals.

And look, this place is really a horrorshow. It has no veterinarians with degrees currently on staff, and scientists without medical degrees are performing surgery.

A veterinarian tells how a scientist years ago cheerfully mocked a pig that was insufficiently anesthetized before an operation.

A veterinarian who used to work there tells of being called to aid a cow who had her head locked in a cage to immoblize her in a field with six bulls for a full day to test their libidos. Similar experiments at more humane labs use a single bull and last no more than fifteen minutes. By the time the vet was called, "Her back legs were broken. Her body was just torn up." He was not allowed to euthanize her because the scientist in charge could not be reached, and the cow eventually died in agony.

Newborn lambs are left to die in fields in the hope of eventually finding a mother ewe who will take care of hers spontaneously in the wild (we've taken thousands of years to domesticate sheep to this). A visiting student from Brazil tells of being ordered to gather up the dead lambs and leave the crying ones to die in the fields. On a single day last May when a reporter visited 110 lambs had died.

This is against every protocol that every other animal research lab follows. And it appalls sheep ranchers, who care about their animals.

This place just keeps going, with its insulated, protected, unwanted, unregulated research.

veinglory · Jan 21, 2015

Indeed. What are people disagreeing with? The article is not against farming, it is against research that is not undergoing formal ethical review, does not involve any veterinarians (because they left in disgust), and is creating deformed animals that suffer necessarily. I think we can all agree that is a bad thing?

Jamesaritchie · Jan 21, 2015

cornflake said:
I'm shocked.

Oh, wait, I'm completely the opposite of shocked.

Was I supposed to think people involved in not just producing dead animals for consumption, but researching how to produce lots more were compassionate people, concerned with animal welfare? I did not think that.

I don't think there was a way to shock me here, nor do I for one nanosecond believe any fucking meat producer was in any way shocked or appalled.

I think you really have no clue whatsoever about how all this works, how people feel, or why they feel that way.

Jamesaritchie · Jan 21, 2015

Alessandra Kelley said:
"In Quest for More Meat Profits, U.S. Lab Lets Animals Suffer" (Michael Moss, New York Times)

(This main section front page New York Times article from today's paper is behind an online paywall I can't seem to get through. All quotes are hand-typed from my physical newspaper. It's well worth reading if you can reach the article)

Today's New York Times has a front page article of its investigation into a shadowy Nebraska laboratory, the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, where in a quest to foster food safety, reduce disease, keep American meat ranchers competitive, and increase the meat supply, thousands upon thousands of animals have suffered illness, pain, and premature death for decades while veterinarians have been sneered at and excluded when they express concerns about the animals' welfare.

The Animal Welfare Act of 1966 has one "gaping exemption: farm animals used in research to benefit agriculture."

The research center has fought tooth and nail against closing that exemption even as other research centers and universities have sought out independent oversight and joined organizations that ensure reasonable wellbeing of research animals.

The article details the experiments, which are beyond grim, revolting, and often reaching into the sadistic.

At the American Meat Science Association meeting in 2013, while other speakers discussing the slaughter of animals focused on producing the least amount of suffering, the Nebraska center speaker focused only on the relationship between using anesthesia and tenderness of meat.

The center remains resistant to any considerations of the animals' welfare or pain. The article ends with a University of Nebraska veterinarian proposing a $3,524 study to measure the stress and pain of castrating sheep and removing their tails.

The center denied her request, saying its only interests in sheep were fighting pneumonia and breeding the "easy care" sheep.

That entire report is pure BS, written by someone who has NFC.

Alessandra Kelley · Jan 21, 2015

Jamesaritchie said:
That entire report is pure BS, written by someone who has NFC.

Do you have cites for that?

The article's cited sources -- some of which include the USDA, University of Nebraska-Lincoln veterinary science professors, a Cornell professor of animal science, a professor emeritus of animal and poultry sciences at Virginia Tech, a scientist and veterinarian working for a cattle nutrition company, a Wisconsin beef farmer, a New York cattle rancher, a New Zealand cattle expert, the University of Georgia's director of research compliance, the veterinarian director of the Biomedical Resource Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, the chairman of the behavior and welfare unit at the Department of Animal Science at Michigan State University, Tyson Foods, and Whole Foods -- all seem reliable.

veinglory · Jan 21, 2015

The report has an angle but it is accurately reporting what is happening at that site which is exempted from the ethical oversight most research works under due to being government run. I am a former animal scientist and meat eater and so not against farming meat or researcher on animals -- but this place truly is a nightmare as I have heard from multiple sources, and the salient facts are being accurately reported.

IMHO government facilities should not be exempted from having a functioning IACUC (ethical review committee) and proper veterinary staff.

Reziac · Jan 21, 2015

Assuming it's all true (and the article is curiously nonspecific) -- are you sure it's not a false flag operation? even if it didn't start that way, it may well be one now.

Because AR interests would indeed go that far (and have the funds and political clout to do so) to 'prove' that ranching is evil. To them, the ends justify the means (and they have so stated many times).

Consider too that the current head of APHIS is, for all practical purposes, an HSUS plant.

veinglory · Jan 21, 2015

It is a known government facility. People have been muttering about it for many years. It "proves" nothing about farming or research being an unregulated aberration repulsive to both communities.

Myrealana · Jan 21, 2015

Wow. The whole article is even more disturbing than I had expected.

Dr. Keen approached The Times a year ago with his concerns about animal mistreatment. The newspaper interviewed two dozen current and former center employees, and reviewed thousands of pages of internal records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
That reporting shows that the center’s drive to make livestock bigger, leaner, more prolific and more profitable can be punishing, creating harmful complications that require more intensive experiments to solve. The leaner pigs that the center helped develop, for example, are so low in fat that one in five females cannot reproduce; center scientists have been operating on pigs’ ovaries and brains in an attempt to make the sows more fertile.

Even routine care has fallen short. Of the 580,000 animals the center has housed since 1985, when its most ambitious projects got underway, at least 6,500 have starved. A single, treatable malady — mastitis, a painful infection of the udder — has killed more than 625.

Certainly, the production of meat is a rough enterprise. Yet even against that reality — raising animals to be killed, for profit — the center stands out. Some of its trials have continued long after meat producers balked at the harm they caused animals.

What benefit to science was derived from allowing animals to starve?

And in a move that surprises no one, the government stops these kind of practices when done by private researchers, but not here

Its parent agency, the Agriculture Department, zealously enforces the welfare act, investigating animal abuse in private medical research. In 2013, the department intervened in a surgical trial for pain medicine at a laboratory two hours from the center, ordering researchers to be more rigorous in trying to alleviate the pigs’ suffering.
But the agency gives only a broad-brush review to the center’s work, which is exempt from the law. Details of the experiments are left for the center itself to evaluate, said Laurence D. Chandler, the agency’s director for the Great Plains area.

veinglory · Jan 21, 2015

Although not general as tightly regulated as research institutes, any farm with those outcomes would also probably be shut down.

This is what happens when the government decides its own rules do not apply to it.

cornflake · Jan 21, 2015

Jamesaritchie said:
I think you really have no clue whatsoever about how all this works, how people feel, or why they feel that way.

Based on what, exactly?

RichardGarfinkle · Jan 21, 2015

Jamesaritchie said:
That entire report is pure BS, written by someone who has NFC.

Mod Note:
This is way beyond RYFW. If you don't accept the contents of a post, dispute it properly.

Reziac · Jan 21, 2015

The article says, "raising animals to be killed, for profit" -- that is standard animal rights rhetoric, the object being to make raising livestock sound inherently evil by using the most inflammatory language possible.

Of course meat animals are going to be killed, and people like to get paid for their work whatever that may be, but this phrasing is the equivalent of saying "parents sell their children to collect dowries".

Point is, this phrase alone is enough to redflag the motivation here -- which as I read the article, is not to shut down this facility, but rather to convince the public that ranchers would support this research and therefore are driving it (and therefore are the real bad guys).

If they want me to believe the article is valid and true, they shouldn't use the emotional rhetoric of a fringe movement whose major goal is the elimination of animal agriculture. Give me names, facts, and a money trail. Don't do "might" and "could" accusations. Show me documentation that was obtained not solely by the 'whistleblower' and has not been 'edited for television' (PETA has staged slaughterhouse incidents, so I want impartial witnesses, or I can't consider the documentation valid).

Reziac · Jan 21, 2015

veinglory said:
Although not general as tightly regulated as research institutes, any farm with those outcomes would also probably be shut down.

No one would have to shut it down, cuz it would go broke. Very quickly.

veinglory said:
This is what happens when the government decides its own rules do not apply to it.

Now that is the absolute truth, and one of the foundations of tyranny.

Alessandra Kelley · Jan 21, 2015

Reziac said:
The article says, "raising animals to be killed, for profit" -- that is standard animal rights rhetoric, the object being to make raising livestock sound inherently evil by using the most inflammatory language possible.

I was poring over the quotes, trying to spot the inflammatory language you cited. Eventually I realized it was probably in the article headline. I am afraid it went right by me as a seemingly innocent term.

I did not realize that "profit" was a code word. I had thought that it referred to the Nebraska center's mission to increase American meat producers' profits and the profitability of the animals raised in the US for food.

Indeed, I found the mention of the economic aspects of meat animals in the article to be among the least inflammatory, compared to the descriptions of the experiments, the suffering of the animals, and the reactions of the staff to any breath of oversight over the years.

Even if no potential profits were involved I would find conditions at the Nebraska center disgraceful.

If "profit" is an inflammatory word, what would have been an acceptable alternate way for the article to refer to how the laboratory's entire reason for existence is to make raising meat more economical and to the fact that meat is sold to earn ranchers a living?

Reziac · Jan 21, 2015

Alessandra Kelley said:
I am afraid it went right by me as a seemingly innocent term.

I did not realize that "profit" was a code word.

It's the way it's phrased, not the individual words.

I say this as one who has been following AR shenanigans for a long time. There are certain concepts (and phrasing) they've found resonate with the ag-ignorant but well-meaning public. And yes, "OMG using animals for profit" is therefore one of their core memes -- that ANY potentially-profitable use of animals is 'evil'.

I realised just how bad the ag-ignorance is when (about a decade back in SoCal) twice I met nominal adults who did not know beef comes from cows. Boiled down, the conversations went like this:

Them (munching hamburger): Killing cows is wrong!
Me: So where did you get that burger?
Them: McDonalds.

:Headbang:

Brutal Mustang · Jan 21, 2015

Reziac said:
Them (munching hamburger): Killing cows is wrong!
Me: So where did you get that burger?
Them: McDonalds.

veinglory · Jan 21, 2015

Article headlines are often chosen by paper staff with no input from the writer. Thus the tend to be pretty unrelated to the writer's actual angle and often unnecessarily inflammatory.

Alessandra Kelley · Feb 6, 2015

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/loca...tend-research-protections-to-farm-animals.ece

Yesterday a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and Members of the House of Congress introduced legislation to protect farm animals used in federally-funded meat industry experiments.

Sponsors of the new legislation, called the AWARE Act, said they had been prompted by a Jan. 19 article in The New York Times ...

“As stewards of taxpayer dollars, we felt a responsibility to present a legislative fix that holds the USDA to the same humane standards that countless research facilities across the country are held to,” said Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., referring to the Agriculture Department.

Fitzpatrick sponsored the bill with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. The Senate sponsors include Cory Booker, D-N.J., who wrote on Twitter last month that the article spoke “to a level of cruelty to animals that is unacceptable.” The bill has been endorsed by the Humane Society of the United States and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Since the article was published, Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, has ordered increased protections for farm animals used in research at the center and other agency facilities. The department named an ombudsman to hear internal concerns about animal welfare, and started a review of its research.

heza · Feb 6, 2015

That's encouraging.

Reziac · Feb 10, 2015

That may be encouraging, but be cautious of the real motives here. When the devil saves a baby, consider what he wants from it in the end.

Tom Vilsack was recommended for Secretary of Agriculture by the HSUS Legislative Fund. Vilsack then hired Sarah Conant, former HSUS lawyer, as director of APHIS (Animal Plant Health Inspection Service) enforcement.

You may want to ignore the tone of the hosting site (and the comments), but this article hits the high points, including HSUS's $500,000 campaign supporting Christie Vilsack's candidacy in Iowa. There was muttering of a Congressional investigation because of all this, but far as I recall it didn't go anywhere.

Also be aware that the Animal Welfare Act has already expanded from protecting laboratory animals (its original intent) to forbidding the sale of pets except under certain conditions (when you have to personally travel across the country to find the dog of your dreams, as is now the case for animals intended as pets, blame this latest feature-creep). Imagine this same expansion as applied to the animals we rely on if we want to continue to eat -- what if cattle buyers had to travel to the ranch and meet each and every steer first?? Mark my words, that will prove to be the ultimate intent of this whole episode. The devil is patient.

Horrifying "U.S. Meat Animal Research Center" practices exposed

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