On Aug. 27, a post went out to the Kingman Hall internal website stating grimly, “Bunnies: They are all dead.” On Aug. 30, another message went out, reading, “Okay, since we killed some rabbits we might as well…” together with a Web link to a video of a toad being slaughtered with a meat cleaver.
Residents of Kingman Hall slaughtered domesticated rabbits as an experiment in what is now viewed by locavores as the ultimate expression of ecological sustainability — killing animals in your backyard.
While most people think of bunnies as pets and chickens as food, the Kingman fall welcome letter encouraged new house members to introduce themselves to three animal residents — pet chickens Gabe, Bagel, and America.
The birds were allowed to live in the co-op on a trial basis as an “exclusion” to the Berkeley Student Cooperative pets policy, which previously stated, “A BSC Unit (in this case, Kingman Hall) may maintain chickens exclusively for egg production…” All reference to the Kingman chickens has since been removed from BSC policy.
The backyard chickens at Kingman Hall live in a ramshackle outdoor pen built with cinder blocks and a few metal stakes driven into the ground and wrapped with flimsy chicken wire not buried deep enough to prevent raccoons (or other mesopredators) from squeezing under it. The Kingman chickens are lacking in humane care, compared with guidelines established by Chicken Run Rescue, a leading authority on backyard chickens.
What about wildlife? A resident “whacked” a squirrel with a rock after he saw it “bothering the chickens,” according to another post on the Kingman website. Squirrels are herbivores and not a threat to chickens.
In the case of bunnies, keeping live rabbits at a co-op is against BSA rules. And you can’t slaughter pet chickens at any co-op. Given the rules and regulations, why would Kingman residents think it was okay to kill bunnies?
A member of the student group Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy raised the issue of the Kingman rabbit slaughter at the first meeting of the semester.
Anne Martin, BOAA member and Ph.D. candidate in city and regional planning, said, “I was shocked to find out that a student … slaughtered rabbits at Kingman and that no one spoke up to defend the animals and prevent this from happening. At BOAA, we encourage our fellow students to discover the joys of a plant-based, vegan diet as a way to reduce environmental impacts, cut carbon emissions, improve health and reduce animal suffering. There is simply no need for us to kill animals in our homes to further these goals.”
Kingman residents do not have the capacity to treat animals humanely. To prevent Berkeley Student Co-Op residents from causing further harm to animals, BSC policies should be updated to explicitly prohibit slaughtering or otherwise harming animals and should prohibit keeping any animal that could be misconstrued as “livestock.”
In addition, Kingman Hall should issue a collective public apology for the conduct of its residents.
Students, teachers and members of the community — join me in telling the BSC that slaughtering animals is not acceptable in the co-op system, at UC Berkeley or in the city.
I urge you to email Ruby Lee ([email protected]), the Student Conduct Committee Chair at BSC, responsible for student conduct in all the member co-operatives; and Jan Stokley ([email protected]), the Executive Director of BSC, responsible for maintaining relationships with staff, UC Berkeley, neighbors and the board.
Ian Elwood is a founding member of Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter.
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Read this to learn more about the myths of “sustainable meat”
http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/2-JCAS-Vol-VIII-Issue-I-and-II-2010-Essay-GREEN-EGGS-AND-HAM-pp-8-32.pdf
“Green” Eggs
and Ham? The Myth of Sustainable Meat and the Danger of the Local
Abstract
In the New York Times bestseller, The
Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan popularizes the idea of a ―local‖ based
diet, which he justifies, in part, in terms of environmental sustainability. In
fact, many locavores argue that a local based diet is more environmentally
sustainable than a vegan or vegetarian diet and concludes that if vegans and
vegetarians truly care about the environment they should instead eat
sustainably raised local meat. However locavores are incorrect in their
analysis of the sustainability of a local based diet and in its applicability
for large scale adaptation. Instead locavores engage in the construction of ―a
literary pastoral,‖ a desire to return to a nonexistent past, which falsely
romanticizes the ideals of a local based lifestyle. They therefore gloss over
the issues of sexism, racism, speciesism, homophobia and anti-immigration
sentiments which an emphasis only on the local, as opposed to the global, can
entail. In this manner the locavorism movement has come to echo many of the
same claims that the ―Buy American‖ movement did before it. The conclusion is
that a local based diet, while raising many helpful and valid points, needs to
be re-understood and rearticulated.
Thank you Devlin and Alli. This article is simply yellow journalism at its worst. It makes me sad to see Kingman so grossly misrepresented. As I know it, the residents of this co-op have always tried to engage in their community as ethically as possible: by composting their own food waste, by emphasizing the purchase of local and sustainable food, by implementing house-wide policies to conserve water and electricity, by trying to find humane solutions for problems such as pests… the list goes on and on. A large proportion of the house is vegan and vegetarian, and the very idea that such an act of animal violence could be perpetrated in the house (and much less bragged about in a public forum) is completely laughable.
Ian Elwood should be ashamed, and not just for his poor journalistic skills. He should be ashamed for making one of the beacons of tolerance and humanity in the Berkeley community appear to be one of the most coarse and unfeeling. The Daily Cal should also be ashamed to publish such garbage. In the real world, an organization so defamed by a newspaper could sue for libel.
Save your time: don’t bother Ruby Lee or Jan Stokley. An apology from Kingman or the BSC at large will not be issued in response to falsified information. Send an email to the Daily Cal and demand an apology from THEM.
It is wicked irony that a small group of politically
concerned students, taking full responsibility for their own diet and
consumption of animal products, should be the target of this kind of fulsome
and mendacious (to say nothing of atrociously poorly written) criticism.
Honestly, was there no editor involved here? Red pen, please.
It is a plague to activism, the attitude of hysteria on show in this
op-ed. Mr. Elwood demonstrates the pure moral ignorance of a person who
can neither tell from where a problem comes nor who is an true enemy.
Even if every reader of his letter were of the opinion that the eating of meat
is wrong and to be censured, every reader would still find this opinion piece
beyond comprehension.
Be you a fan of Michael Pollan or not (and I am not), no one imagines that a
small group of college students slaughtering and eating a dozen rabbits is
symptomatic of the gross attitude toward animal welfare and food production in
the United States. The monstrosities of modern agriculture exist on a
massive scale involving hundreds of millions of animals and daily events of
cruelty across this population. It is not the case that every home in
America is personally slaughtering a pig every Wednesday, so to oppose one is
to oppose them all. This is a case of gargantuan companies giving not a
fig for animal welfare being compared with some 50 students who care a great
deal about the quality of life animals experience. Arguing for the
investigation of the latter as in sympathy with the larger problem is
insane.
These kids did nothing wrong. They did everything right (except, as Mr.
Elwood wants but won’t say, be vegan). They carefully chose where to buy
these animals, they knew first hand the conditions in which they were raised,
they met with the people who raised these rabbits, and they personally took
responsibly for all stages of the killing and butchering and cooking (and
eating) of these animals. If every family in the United States took this
kind of care with their food choices, the problems of industrial farming would
not exist. Know who your enemies are, Mr. Elwood. They are not the
people who live in Kingman Hall.
(Also, I didn’t really hit the squirrel with a rock, I just said that to scare
the vegans. Someone has to, else they’ll develop adrenaline deficiency
and wither.)
Being antagonistic toward vegans is so “frat guy”. Dumb.
”If every family in the United States took this
kind of care with their food choices, the problems of industrial farming would not exist.”And if pigs could fly we would have to tether them to the ground, else they escape and we wither from bacon deficiency.
Ahem…
Every family in the US will not raise their own animals. Raising your own animals will not make a whit of difference to alleviating the problems of industrial farming.
If every family in the US raised animals (a pie in the sky fantasy) they would not take the kind of care you did.
I think it is safe to say that the problems of industrial farming will not be solved by raising our own animals.
The problems of industrial farming will be solved by passing legislation to alleviate suffering.
Everything else is fantasy.
1. If every family (or even a small %) in the United States had food animals in their backyards, animal shelters across the country would stagger under the burden of animal dumps, escaped animals, and cruelty and neglect cases. When someone abandons their pet – they abandon one animal. When someone abandons their meat rabbits or they are confiscated they arrives in multiples of 10 and quickly overwhelm the city shelter, crowding out pets like dogs and cats and shortening their lives because there simply is no place to put them all.
How do I know this? I have volunteered at city run shelters for years.
If you want to alleviate the suffering of animals go volunteer at the Berkeley Animal Shelter.
2. Due to economies of scale and factory farming practices, meat is cheap. Raising your own animals is not cheap.
Most Americans do not have the time nor the extra money just laying around to raise rabbits for meat when a chicken in the local supermarket is 99 cents a pound. They will choose the $5 chicken over the $25 rabbit. And yeah, it costs about $25 to raise a rabbit to maturity.
I cannot think of a good reason to allow animal slaughter on campus. Not a one.
BTW, your comments and ad homenim attacks about the author are irrelevant to the discussion.
Even if, as you claim, urban farming is not applicable on a large scale, that doesn’t imply that it should be outlawed on the small scale. This incident did not occur, as you imply “on campus.” It occurred on private property, and if you wish to claim this should be illegal as well you will have to make a real argument against it.
Sure.
Your private property does not allow you to do whatever you like on your property.
I’ve always wanted to open up a disco. And a rifle range.
In my backyard.
Next door to you.
If you want to raise animals in your backyard please note that private property does not give you carte blanche to do whatever you like on your property.
Raising animals, be they rabbits, chickens, or goats all have impacts on a neighborhood and the larger community. Noises, smells, vermin like rodents and raccoons, escaped animals, abandoned, dumped and confiscated animals and the resultant pressure on the city animal shelter – all are unwanted consequences of people keeping meat animals in an urban environment.
There is a social cost to people turning their urban backyards into animal farms.
Many of our neighbors have met our chickens and are excited about the idea of having them on our block. In fact, they are not noisy and smell better than many college students. If you are one of our neighbors and have a concern, please talk to us. We would love to talk with you and hear your specific ideas and input. Otherwise, a generic, aggressive complaint is unproductive and irrelevant.
Chicken sh1t stinks and the animals draw vermin. I almost ran over an escaped chicken in West Oakland a few weeks ago.
We always had to deal with abandoned chickens at the shelter which was obviously not set up to deal with farm animals. We also got pygmy goats on occasion.
The shelter was built to deal with pets, not farm animals.
My neighbor told me to F off and that he would kick my ass when I told him his animals woke me up at 5 am. He staggered drunk back into his house and slammed the door.
He was not interested in my specific ideas or input.
I know of someone who lives next door to people with goats.
They listened all night to a dying goat.
They are also not interested in their input.
Leaving the issue of backyard animal raising up to neighbors hearing “ideas and input” cedes authority over how a community should be set up to each individual.
This is also known as anarchy.
Your negative experiences have no relevance to the question of whether our chickens are a problem. This is not a question of anarchy- the chicken setup in fact follow all local ordinances regarding care of chickens. Our chickens are neither legally a problem nor a nuisance to our neighborhood, so unless you can speak to anything besides your personal experience, please don’t conflate us with your asshole neighbor.
Rabbit aficionado Ian Elwood seems to prefer the bleak
reality of industrial factory-farmed meat to the promising alternative of urban
rabbit farming, thereby placing greater importance to his beloved spirit animal
than to the health and safety of other animals, humans, and planet Earth as a
whole. He writes, “While many argue that this practice [of small-scale
urban animal farming] is better for the environment than factory farming,
questions remains. Is it better for the animals? Is it necessary at all?” [http://www.archive.org/details/FarmersWhoCare].
Ian even calls those of us who choose to source our meat in a responsible
manner by eating “locally organic raised meat”
[http://oaklandnorth.net/2011/06/17/you-tell-us-an-argument-against-urban-animal-agriculture/]
as “do-it-yourself slaughter hobbyists” [http://noslaughter.org/] who
raise rabbits for “nothing more than gastronomic gratification” [http://oaklandnorth.net/2011/06/17/you-tell-us-an-argument-against-urban-animal-agriculture/].
Nothing could be further from the truth. Sourcing meat in this manner allows
consumers the transparency necessary to make ethically conscious decisions on
the humane and ecological implications of meat consumption – a level
transparency impossible with commercial meat sources, even organic ones. And
yet Ian ironically argues that “No one should look down their nose at
regular people who buy food at the grocery store. Consumers may be
‘disconnected’ from their food source, but is that really their fault?
Should we judge them?” [ibid.]. No
Ian, we shouldn’t judge them. But we should take the time and effort to inform
our community about the egregious violations of human health, environmental
destruction, and animal cruelty currently perpetrated by the “the food
system itself” [ibid.],
which even you recognize as “the real problem” [ibid.].
There is no promising alternative urban rabbit farming alternative to industrial meat production.
It will never catch on to any measurable degree where it might actually make a difference.
The answer is not to raise our own meat in urban environments but to affect change in industrial farming through legislation.
The public is ready for this as evidenced by the recently passed prop 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_2_(2008)
We cannot go back in time to raising our own meat. There will be some middle class affluent families that will play farmer in their backyards but that is as far as it will go.
Factory farming will go on. It is here to stay. What we can do is legislate protections for these animals so they can live and die as free from suffering as is possible.
Encouraging people to raise their own animals will be like throwing a baseball into a deep fryer. It will make a mess and make enforcement of laws against cruelty impossible to enforce.
Who and with what funds will we enforce laws protecting all these local animals?
Yeah, nobody.
wait, wtf? I ate there once and like half those hippies in kingman are vegetarians and shit. But good idea brah, my frat might kill some bunnies for a pledge event.
Where did Kingman residents get the bunnies from? HOW long did the bunnies actually live? I highly doubt they got it from a source that was humane….a backyard breeder? Hah.. at least get it from a licensed breeder who actually knows how to properly care for a bunny. AND I doubt they know anything about killing a bunny humanely. Kingman residents are no different from industrial people. You feed the bunnies kitchen scraps?? That’s not even in their diet. Sustainable meat isn’t going to be affordable any time soon. Kingman residents are not too different from those companies that try to make MEAT affordable, e.g. factory farms..in the wrong ways. If you are going to raise an animal for slaughter, at least CARE for it right. The biggest problem of all is that the bunnies weren’t even allowed in the co-op. “ethically conscious decisions” yeah right.
Before speculating and slanderizing, please do some research
I wonder how much scrap hay these rabbits ate…
I remember my college diet. Timothy hay all day long.
Good times.
As
the chickentenders of Kingman Hall – that is, the students
responsible for the well-being of our chickens – we feel that it is
appropriate that we respond to some of Ian’s comments. In short,
his article was slanderous, inaccurate, and motivated solely by
ideology, not fact. For a discussion of the ideological issues at
stake here, we encourage you to read the editorial posted by our
kitchen manager, Gabe Schwartzmann. Our concern here is with the
inaccuracies and misrepresentations of Mr. Elwood’s article.
We
would like to address a few specific concepts. First of all, a large
portion of the “facts” presented in Mr. Elwood’s article is based
on information he gathered from our internal house website. Ian
quoting our entire house via this blog – which is an anonymous
forum consisting mostly of inside jokes and inaccurate gossip– is
an abdication of a journalist’s responsibility to verify the
accuracy of their sources. Most of these posts are neither a
representation of material reality nor of the sentiment of any large
part of Kingman, and to present them as such in an editorial is
unfair and inaccurate.
This
is indicative of a larger issue with Mr. Elwood’s article, which is
his failure to interview or contact Kingman Hall regarding many of
his allegations. He implies that Kingman’s chickens are no longer
allowed under BSC policy, which is an untrue claim that would have
been corrected instantly had he contacted anyone involved in either
the BSC or Kingman. Similarly, despite making allegations regarding
our care of the chickens, he did not contact us nor anyone else in
Kingman. If he has actually does have any knowledge of our chicken
coop, it seems that he must have skulked around on our property
without our knowledge- not exactly the height of journalistic
integrity. Had he only contacted us, we would have been glad to
discuss the health and care of our chickens with him. In fact, the
offer still stands. If Mr. Elwood has legitimate criticism of our treatment of the chickens, we would be glad to hear it.
Furthermore,
the specific accusations against the well-being of our chickens are
both troubling and inaccurate. He claims the chicken wire is not
buried deeply enough to prevent predation; a cursory examination of
the coop is all it would take to dispel that claim. We take the
health and happiness of our chickens very seriously, and maintain a
feeding routine and coop setup that goes above and beyond standards
for urban chickens. As chickentenders, we invite members of the
Berkeley community to come visit our chickens and see that they are
very well cared-for. Multiple members of our house have extensive
experience working on organic farms that featured egg-laying hens. We
are familiar with national, state, and local standards about
chicken-keeping and are continuously developing new methods for maintaining their happiness.
The
bottom line is that Ian’s article is both misleading and
disingenuous. This is ultimately not about a problem Mr. Elwood has
with our actions in particular, but with keeping animals and eating
meat in general. While he has the right to hold these opinions, to
slander our house in particular because of his general convictions is
intellectual dishonesty of the highest order.
Chickentenders,
Kingman Hall,
Alli
Yates and Devlin Mallory
Bunnies? Bunnies? Way to not take your argument seriously. What theater.
A new low definition of “Animal House.” These students don’t eat rabbits unless it’s at MacDonald’s or on a pizza.
wtf are you talking about
It’s ridiculous that that BOAA will go after and criticize residents of Kingman Hall for humanely and sustainably killing and eating rabbits, when they could be focusing on reducing the unsustainable meat consumption that occurs by probably greater than 80% on campus. Why not an editorial targeting Subway across the street from campus, or the general student population for eating McDonalds?
What these kids did at kingman, while perhaps problematic in some aspects, doesn’t deserve this extreme criticism
Putting the slander and poor journalistic tactics aside – a point needs to made about some of the statements here about meat eating vs. pet keeping. I think if we called on any omnivore
to speak of his/her own relationships with pets, we would discover that
animal-human relationships are not simple and dualistic. It is not a save-them-or
kill-them binary, in my eyes. Animals, like humans, are complex creatures – and implying that all human-animal relationships are
static and monolithic is an idea that is both reductionist and naïve. Meat
eating and pet keeping are not mutually exclusive, especially if both practices
are based in foundations of respect and sustainability.
“Meat eating and pet keeping are not mutually exclusive, especially if both practices are based in foundations of respect and sustainability.”
Well cool. I’ll just go ahead and perform a nice little cervical dislocation on “my” dog and slit her throat. I totes respect her!
Here’s something simple – animals like to live. So if you don’t have to slit the throat of an animal, you shouldn’t. There isn’t anything magically complex about that. And unless I’m missing that these kids were marooned on a frozen tundra with only domestic bunnies running loose to kill…well, these kids didn’t need to be pretend “farmers” and slaughter pets…oh, I mean MEAT PETS (not mutually exclusive if I say that in a seriously respectful tone, amirite?!?)
Plants like to live too. Otherwise they wouldn’t have defense mechanisms to prevent them from getting eaten by animals.
Thank you People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants, I am always so happy when you show up in the comments section.
I understand that in order to stay alive, something has to to die, which is why I eat meat as well as plants. I don’t quite understand why people with such a reverence for animals would not feel the same way for all living things, whether or not they are cute and cuddly.
Because an apple cannot feel pain, that is why. An orange cannot suffer, that is why. When a baby plant is taken from its parent plant, it does not mourn or cry or pace or exhibit stereotypic behavior.
I can have respect for the preservation of an ecosystem or reverence for biodiversity but it’s a big stretch to compare a non-sentient carrot with a sentient pig. More than that, it’s offensive.
Why? Honestly, why? I think you’re an idiot, but if I’m going to bother to engage you on your level then I have to point out that you have know knowledge about how plants or animals experience the world at all. You have no idea AT ALL the animals “like” being alive.
You say, “Oh yes I do, because they avoid death!” But so do plants, joker!
Who does not love to engage “on any level” with someone who calls them an idiot?
There is sufficient scientific data that disproves your illogical and irrational belief that animals don’t have a biological, emotional and behavioral drive to live. The middle one is something plants don’t have, yo.
They avoid death and pain. They experience joy. Many species engage in play, which is behavior that has little to do with survival on the most basic level but does point to enjoyment of life. I mean, how can you – with a straight face – seriously argue that a dog or pig or cat or cow or chicken doesn’t avoid pain, suffering, death and that they, you know, like to be alive.
You seem to think that’s crazy talk, but you don’t have anything to back up your claim except ad hominem attacks.
I’d love to know what contrary evidence you have. Oh wait, let me offer it up for you! “So do plants, joker!” Classic.
Oh come on, you know they’re all just messing with you. Their point is: your moralistic/compassionate argument against meat consumption is NOT going to compel everyone in the world to become vegan, just as advocating for abstinence is not going to prevent every teenage kid from having sex. A more realistic approach to these issues is to encourage those who choose to eat meat to do so in a humane and sustainable way, like these guys (sex-ed parallel: teach kids to about condoms and consent).
Also, since like half of Kingman is already vegetarian or vegan on principle, your time would really be better served preaching to a different crowd.
I think that plants can suffer even if they are not exhibiting the behaviors which humans associate with suffering and are able to empathize with. I think expanding the criteria for which organisms deserve our compassion is a good idea.
Also, I don’t think that suggesting that all living organisms deserve our compassion is more offensive than suggesting that the students at Kingman Hall took pleasure in killing these rabbits.
Please, I’d love to read up on the evidence available that plants suffer and experience pain. I mean, I have not read any such thing in a peer-reviewed journal, but you seem to have valid evidence to the contrary. You just aren’t sharing it?
I never suggested anyone took pleasure in killing the rabbits. I suggest that comparing the “suffering” of lettuce to that of a rabbit is offensive, at best.
I hope you are not serious.
If you are, I would encourage you to research nociception and the importance of a central nervous system.
PETP always shows up in the comments, they clearly haven’t looked into the science and always make disingenuous arguments about how they want to save plants.
So they can’t kill their own rabbits for food – because its too personal – but if the animals are anonymous, packaged, and cleanly derived from Whole Foods, it’s all good? The point is: if you are going to eat meat, know where it’s coming from. If you’re against killing animals for food. Don’t do it. And don’t eat meat.
That was sarcasm, just fyi.
you’re pretty bad at sarcasm if that was your intent
Did you honestly get from my original comment that it was okay to kill animals?
You’re pretty bad at knowing what “sarcasm” means.
Thanks for not answering the question.
“And unless I’m missing that these kids were marooned on a frozen tundra
with only domestic bunnies running loose to kill…well, these kids
didn’t need to be pretend “farmers” and slaughter pets…”. Don’t side-step. My comment was about your over-all point – that Kingmans way of killing meat is unfair but other, less jarring was is acceptable – which is illogical. But thanks for the sarcasm. Also thanks for teaching us what sarcasm means, it was a good touch.
There is nothing humane about “dead.”
actually,
hu·maneadjective /(h)yo͞oˈmān/
humaner, comparative; humanest, superlativeHaving or showing compassion or benevolence- regulations ensuring the humane treatment of animalsInflicting the minimum of pain- humane methods of killing
aw man, the formatting was lost in copy-paste! But the important part is the inclusion of the line “Inflicting the minimum of pain; e.g., ‘humane methods of killing’”
I’m sorry, I didn’t know “bunnies” represented Cal…
As an alumnus, I am shocked that this was tolerated and hope that the UC is investigating this disturbing student behavior.
In what way should the UC be involved? This did not take place on UC property, not everyone involved was a student at a UC, and the UC is neither an investigative entity nor an animal rights protection group.
“Locavores” should consider the carbon footprint of raising small animals for meat or eggs, even if they can’t bring themselves to care about the completely needless suffering they are visiting on the animals they attempt to keep. The food they need to give to the animals doesn’t just come from nowhere, and the breeding of food animals is itself a cause of much ecological destruction as well as animal suffering.
This doesn’t make sense. When you create your own source for meat, your carbon footprint DECLINES. Also, keeping animals does not equate animal suffering. Finally, Kingman sources all of its food – that is, the food they eat as well as the food they feed their animals – from local, ecologically-sound, or organic sources. Read some Michael Pollan here.
“Also, keeping animals does not equate animal suffering.”
Slaughtering animals does equate to animal suffering, and I’ve yet to see even the most enthusiastic Pollan reader attempt to argue that point (nor, of course, does Pollan himself).
And as for the ecological impact, no matter where you’re “sourcing” your feed (and I really have to wonder what sort of person is able to “create your own source for meat,” what does that mean, exactly?), it can’t change the basic caloric input/output loss game of feeding food to an animal which you then eat. I would leave it to those much more suited than myself to speak to the specifics of this issue, namely Adam Merberg, author of this excellent blog
http://saywhatmichaelpollan.wordpress.com/
and PhD Candidate in Mathematics at UC Berkeley. One might also wish to consult the United Nations and their Study “Livestock’s Long Shadow” for information on the ecological impacts of animal agriculture. Thanks,
While I can’t say about the specifics of carbon footprints in relation to raising animals for food, I can say as someone with knowledge both of the chickens and the rabbits at Kingman that these animals were raised on mostly on scraps from the kitchen. I’m confused how transforming waste into protein in such a manner could increase the carbon footprint in a significant way beyond the waste products of the animals themselves.
While “scraps from the kitchen” may supplement the diet of chickens or rabbits, being fed “mostly” in such a manner hardly qualifies as the healthy and happy treatment which has been implied thusfar. One wonders if the animals are recieving adequate veterinary care if this is truly the diet they are being given, which in all honesty I doubt very much.
Also, supporting the rabbit and chicken breeding industry by purchasing animals to raise for meat also contributes to an industry which, apart from being unquestionably cruel and wasteful, also is harmful to the environment.
Male layer hens have zero value to breeders, in and out of the industrial egg producing setting and are killed at birth. So for every “happy” back yard layer hen, you can feel free to picture an equal number of worthless male layer chicks ground up alive, or tossed aside to die in garbage bags full of their brothers. Not trying to bum you out or derail the discussion from the environmental side of things, just something to think about.
Do you really think that you or Kingman will reduce the carbon footprint of mankind by raising their own animals?
Really?
Will the collective smallerizing of the carbon footprints of all the locavores stop one chunk of ice from calving into the ocean?
Will humanity embrace backyard rabbit raising and save humanity from global warming?
If they did (and it takes a suspension of reality to believe this will happen) would it make a difference?
All the people of Berkeley could locally source their food and eat Frog Hollow organic peaches at $3 a pound and nothing will change. Not a damn thing.
This is a hobby.
If this is how you feel, I am sorry for you and also for your community. Cynicism will only run you into walls. If you do not want to make pro-active and informed choices – fine. But please don’t bash those that are trying to engage in what they perceive as purposeful actions for change.
I have volunteered for over 10 years for animals in the Bay Area.
I have spent thousands of dollars taking care of other people’s mistakes and changes of mind.
Encouraging people in the East Bay to raise animals for meat makes no sense for a variety of reasons including price, impact on costs to the city, and simply for the fact that we are in an urban area. I can hear my neighbors blink. The last thing I want is my neighbors raising animals in the backyard next to mine.
If you want to play animal farmer – move.
dear boaa,
stop it with the vegan agenda. look at bigger pictures and think of cultural context.
What cultural context are you trying to refer to?
The culture of bored, white, college students killing things!
Most “bored, white college students” are responsible, through their choices as consumers, for the painful death of a huge number of mistreated, miserable animals. The fact is that these students took well-treated, humanely raised animals and gave them as quick and painless a death as possible. Had the coop simply ordered 12 rabbits from a factory farms, the amount of animal suffering would have been incalculably higher. If you have a problem with eating animals, that’s fine, but to point out these students as in any way especially cruel because they took these actions personally is idiotic.
You have no idea what you are talking about and are clearly altogether uninformed, not to mention that your comment is racially insensitive.
Yeah, us Kingmanites kill stuff when we’re bored. Right. Not like the humane killing of the rabbits was a very labor-intensive process that took some 8 hours until they were cleaned and processed into consumable food form (oh wait!… it was!). Yeah, and that’s also why we make lots of our own yogurt and hummus, do on-site composting, grow oyster mushrooms on pasteurized coffee grounds, and raise chickens for eggs. Boredom, sheer boredom. You know us all to well.
BALCK FOLK EAT MEAT TOO. And Mexicans. Haven’t you seen Babel?
Ian Elwood, you are an extremist, and as such, you do more harm to your cause– and to others– than good.
The rabbits that some Kingman residents killed for food were raised and killed in a manner far and away more humane than any of the meat you buy in a supermarket. That is the relevant point in all of this. Yes, you think eating animals is wrong, but the fact is, people are not going to stop eating meat– not anytime soon, at least. Keeping this fact in mind, a shift towards making more humane, ecologically sustainable choices would do so much more to lessen animal cruelty than anything you could hope to achieve in your lifetime.
Also, this article is less an argument about why what some Kingman residents did is wrong, and more a collection of charged, and (probably intentionally) misleading statements. Not very effective, or impressive.
“In the case of bunnies, keeping live rabbits at a co-op is against BSA rules. And you can’t slaughter pet chickens at any co-op. Given the rules and regulations, why would Kingman residents think it was okay to kill bunnies?”
Seems pretty specific and clear-cut to me.
First, as per BSC policy, warm blooded animals are not allowed to be kept as pets. The rabbits were neither raised at Kingman nor were they here for longer than a day, nor were they pets. We were not “keeping live rabbits at a co-op”. It is not breaking policy to have warm blooded animals on the premises, just for members to own them as pets.
Second, the chickens are not being raised for slaughter, but as a means of supplemental egg production.
So you’re saying it’s okay because they were only alive on the co-op premises until you killed them. Don’t you see that this is pretty screwed up? It’s okay to kill warm blooded animals, just don’t be kind to them. I don’t think that is the intent of the BSC policy.
As a matter of fact, any visitor to any student resident will notice the large numbers of rat traps selectively placed about the premises. The killing of warm blooded animals is a matter of course in student housing, as well it should be.
As for the killing of cold blooded animals, that is a disgusting and inhumane practice that must be stopped at once. For every fly swatted and mosquito obliterated and spider subdued there are a thousand virgin souls sent to burn in the fires of Mount Uranass.
There will be no wholesale shift towards raising one’s own backyard animals.
Factory farming will continue.
It is irrelevant how well these rabbits were cared for. There is no point to this activity.
If it encourages more people to engage in this activity there will be an inevitable increase in pressures on the city of Berkeley and the Bay Area animal shelters. Animals will escape, animals will be abandoned, animals will be confiscated because of the inevitable cruelty and neglect cases.
Have you ever been to the Berkeley Shelter? It’s tiny. They are full. All the time.
Tax revenues are down across the city, state, and nation. There is no more money.
The ridiculous idea of raising animals in an urban area will inevitably burden the city.
It will cost money. My tax dollars.
If you want to raise animals, move to the country. City zoning laws years ago sensibly zoned animal raising to rural areas.
Michael Pollan should eat a dose of reality. Perhaps a stint at a local city run animal shelter will temper his enthusiasm for urban animal raising.
You are really not going to get off this animal shelter soap box, will you? Please take this argument somewhere else. This is not about eating meat or not. It is about doing it sustainably or not. Just as cogent birth control arguments – for example – do not simply ask : “should they have sex or not?!?!”, we need to be realistic and work with current trends rather than push an extreme and unrealistic position. The most practical and realistic way to deal with societal issues is to assume that the controversial action will occur, because current trends clearly depict that is occuring in large numbers (in this case- meat consumption) – and then to provide the means to be as safe and respectful as possible. In otherwords, accept meat consumption as a reality (whether you agree with it or not), and collaborate on methods to engage with it realistically and sustainably. We get that you are against raising animals in the city. We get that you are probably against all meat consumption. THAT IS NOT THE DISCUSSION AT HAND. Bottom line is that bridging the gap between humans who CHOOSE to eat meat and the meat itself is better for society as a whole. Would you rather have meat consumption continue in its anonymous, disjointed form? If people are going to choose to eat meat, wouldn’t you prefer that they are conscious of the process that goes into it? In this same vein, many people who are exposed to the realities of meat preparation end up being vegetarian or vegan. Perhaps this can be your goal – but people need to be informed and allowed access to such practices in order to make conscientious decisions. In addition, if a community embraces urban farming, there will be more public attention and policy to promote better animal care – thus preventing the very real problems of animal cruelty that sometimes do manifest in farm environments. I understand you are angry, but please choose your battles here. People are going to eat meat, so accept it. And if you really care about animals, look at the bigger picture in order to promote the well being of animals - even if they ARE involved in an urban farming environment.
I don’t care if you eat meat.
I eat meat. I always have, albeit less than I used to – for health reasons.
99% of the population eats meat. Vegetarianism is not catching on (%s of vegetarians to meat eaters have been static for the last 30 years) and as the developing world develops they eat more meat.
Unless governments prohibit meat eating this trend will continue.
You got it wrong. Completely wrong. Not sure where you got the idea that I am lobbying against meat eating. It certainly was not from anything I have written here.
So.
The only thing you got right was that I am against raising meat in the city, in people’s backyards.
I have seen what people do to animals they consider as their pets.
I have also seen what people do to animals that they have other uses for, such as eating and fighting.
None of this is pleasant, to say the least. I have seen the worst aspects of how people treat animals and sadly it is just the tip of the iceberg. The idea that people are promoting animal raising and killing in backyards will magnify the problems I have seen in city shelters by many times.
Simply, more animals in the city will mean more animals suffering in the city.
There will be no enforcement to protect these animals without the expenditure of city tax income and since this amount of money is not infinite and is actually shrinking that money to enforce good animal husbandry would have to come from somewhere else – probably from money which would have gone to city animal shelters.
Thus, raising animals will in the Bay Area will invariably shorten the lives of other animals – namely our abandoned and lost pets.
The public is ill prepared to deal with raising animals for food and city services are not prepared for this.
From what I have read here the animal tenders fed the rabbits mostly scraps. I assume scraps of carrots and lettuce and other vegetables.
A rabbit’s diet should first and foremost be comprised of hay, not kitchen scraps or lettuce or whatever unwanted vegetables are left over from making your own food.
So the Berkeley rabbits which are the subject of this discussion were apparently incorrectly cared for. And I don’t care if these folks had them for a few weeks or days or months.
This is the kind of example which would be repeated a thousand times.
In Oakland some nimrods were feeding rabbits a diet exclusively comprised of white rice. Yeah, it was a disaster.
The public is not going to connect with meat and how it is raised. To be conscious about how animals are raised one does not have to raise animals oneself.
To know how bread is made, do I need to grow my own grain and mill it?
Should the millions of people who live in the Bay Area grow their own wheat and grind it into flour and make their own yeast and smelt the metal to make the oven and mine the coal or drill the oil so they can have energy to cook their food?
Did you see the current Safeway ad on TV where a woman has a grain silo in her house and some guy is cutting wheat with a scythe in the living room?
The idea that we need to raise our own animals so that we can connect to our food sources is the same level of absurd.
I don’t want to connect to a pig. I want to eat it.
I’m a bit enlightened so I would rather that the pig was raised humanely and allowed to live without fear and to enjoy what time it has.
And the public is with me on this – that’s why prop 2 passed with over 60% approval in 2008.
If people are interested in the process to make our food they can read about it or watch a video. The information is out there.
Throughout history we have eaten animals and tried to make peace with our consciences for killing another sentient living being – hence prayers thanking the animal for giving it’s life, indigenous cultures recognizing their part in the environment, kosher law and other similar religious edicts surrounding raising and killing animals, and today, attempts to alleviate the suffering inherent in factory farming.
We are not at the hunter gatherer stage nor are there isolated settlements of humans dotting the map.
There’s a veritable sh1tload of us and in cities we are packed in like sardines.
We can’t all raise our own animals and most cities have long ago banned raising and slaughtering animals for food in urban areas.
Factory farming is here to stay. There simply is not enough land for us all to make our own meat. It’s not possible. And if we did there would be animal fecal waste dotted throughout our cities. It would be a huge health issue.
Then there’s the ever present possibility of animal to human disease transmission – zoonotic disease vectors.
The idea of everyone raising their own meat would be a disaster.
The current buzzwords are sustainability, locally sourced food, carbon footprints, etc.
It’s pretty much a bunch of crap. The toothpaste is out of the tube. There are a bajillion of us, and given that, the only way we are going to feed all of us is by employing economies of scale. This means industrial farming. This is the market speaking.
The public is more than willing to vote for laws to protect animals from cruel and inhumane farming practices.
It can’t happen too soon.
And this is where the energy and desire for change should go – to legislating humane practices for animal husbandry to businesses which can be held accountable and regulated – and not to localizing meat production to everyone’s backyard where it would be up to the goodwill and common sense and humanity of all of us to do the right thing for those animals in our backyard which need feeding, watering, cages cleaned day after day after day and do not care how tired you are or that Dancing With The Stars is on or you are piss drunk.
I still disagree. I think said legislation is important, but personally I think there are more, immediate actions that can be taken - ones that can go beyond investments in policy and bureaucracy without contradicting them. But I lack your rhetorical stamina. Also your apparent anger. Also…I think I could only watch Dancing With the Stars if I simultaneously WAS very, very ‘piss drunk’ – so, for the sake of my animals’ well-being, I will certainly avoid such rich forms of entertainment.
I’m not angry, I have just thought this through.
America, Gabe, and Bagel, all grown up and in the Daily Cal… so proud.
Brings a tear to my eye to see my babies so famous.
Wow….. this is extremely blown out of proportion.
Then bring it back into “proportion”, please!
The BOAA suggestion that everyone should abide by vegan dietary restrictions is unrealistic and unnatural. People eat meat. The amount of meat that the average American eats is far too much, but perhaps if people (such as the students living at Kingman Hall) were to raise and kill their own food, they would think twice about eating it every day, or even every week. To suggest that these students raised these animals for food because they enjoy killing is rude and erroneous. I commend the students at Kingman for taking this courageous step to take responsibility for the life and death of the food that they eat.
I know. These kids should be immortalized in epic poems. It obviously takes a heroic individual to slit the throat of a rabbit. *eye roll*
Actually, they broke their necks. No slitting involved.
Apparently you want to be playing with their cervixes, though. Weird, bro.
Oh, these were magical bloodless rabbits! Throat slitting is generally how you exsanguinate an animal.
Cervix, haha, what a crack up you are! It couldn’t be because you never learned what cervical dislocation means.
Also, I am not your bro.
yeah, totally! ok, how does this sound: “And they all stood round them saying their prayers, and using young oak-shoots instead of barley-meal, for there was no barley left. When they had done praying, they killed the cows and dressed their carcasses; they cut out the thigh bones, wrapped them in two layers of fat, and set some pieces of raw meat on top of them. They had no wine with which to make drink-offerings over the sacrifice while it was cooking, so they kept pouting on a little water from time to time while the inward meats were being grilled; then, when the thigh bones were burned and they tasted the inward meats, they cut the rest up small and put the pieces upon the spit.” Oh wait, i feel like some other guy already stole the theme. Oh well.
One Kingmanite who participated in the humane killing of the rabbits has in fact become a vegetarian after the event. Rather, he cites prior cognitive dissonance on meat eating as being crystalized in the event itself and inclining him towards vegetarianism. This individual told me all of this personally, and without taking any objection to the means by which the rabbits were killed. He simply doesn’t want to kill animals to nourish himself anymore period. So yes, proximity and transparency does breed ethically conscious decision-making, as Alyssa has noted.
I’d also like to note that as a house Kingman consumes meat at communal meals never more than 3 times per week. Not to mention that our house is 46% vegetarian and 5% vegan, as indicated by statistics compiled from a food preference survey distributed at the beginning of this semeseter.
And for others it will produce callousness. Such are the vagaries of the human experience.
It’s courageous to kill an animal?
Perhaps in a fair fight. You with a stick versus some tiger.
Good luck. I commend any student for taking this courageous step.
[/sarcasm]
Seriously folks, killing a rabbit in your college years will not make a whit of difference in your lives.
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