Press release from D.E.L.T.A. Rescue:
You're Eating Cats and Dogs for Thanksgiving!
Board of Supervisors Requests State Department of Food and Agriculture
Investigate Rendering Issue
GLENDALE, Calif., Nov. 22, 2004 — As millions of Americans feast this
Thanksgiving, they have no idea what their turkey ate before ending up in
the supermarket.
It is unimaginable to consider that our holiday main course may have been
fed the bodies of dead pets, but according to actor and animal welfare
activist Leo Grillo, rendered animals end up in the feed lots of the
nation's livestock and poultry industry.
Rendering is the gruesome practice of "cooking" the bodies of euthanized
pets from animal shelters, veterinary offices, horses, other livestock, and
"road kill" to produce animal protein meal and "yellow grease". These
products are then either sent to Asia (where they are used as feed for farm
salmon, eel or shrimp returning to the US for human
consumption) or used as a dietary supplement in the poultry and livestock
facilities across the country.
And the chemicals used to euthanize the animals, the drugs used to treat the
animals if they were sick, may ultimately find their way back into the human
food chain too.
"Don't forget the diseases those poor animals died from, the cancers ... the
bacteria and toxins in their decomposing bodies ... and we wonder why we
have so much cancer," said Grillo. "What we as consumers don't understand is
that the food we eat, from hamburgers, to fish and shrimp, to milk and
cheese; contain the bodies of our dead pets and the chemicals, drugs and
diseases that they took with them."
...
There are over 350 rendering plants in this country. The remains of millions
of animals are sent to rendering plants every year. In Los Angeles County
alone, the bodies of over 80,000 animals a year end up on the floor of West
Coast Rendering.
It's stuff like this that makes me really glad I'm already a vegetarian. :-)
Laura K. Lawless
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Article comments
1 - Mac Diva
Even though I am semi-vegetarian, I wish people would not publish material like this. Mainly because the allegations are not true. Most fowl are fed grains exclusively. It is illegal to include tainted stockyard debris, though that occurred in the past. Renderers mainly process large animals, such as cows and horses. Since the last Mad Cow Disease outbreak, including the bodies of dead animals in feed is no longer allowed, either. The claim that Thanksgiving turkey eaters will be dining on Lassie and Whiskers is fatuous.
Furthermore, such material ignores two important things:
~ People are naturally carnivorous. That is not going to change, though a minority will choose to be vegetarian.
~ People have much of their autonomy stripped from them in modern society. They should be free to make their own decisions about what to eat.
2 - LKL
I agree that people should be free to make their own decisions - I have never tried to convince anyone to change their eating choices.
However, I think that people should make their decisions in an informed manner. I don't know if this press release is true, but if it is, people should know about it.
Your statement that humans are naturally carniverous is interesting, as I have read just the opposite. There are certain characteristics that set apart carnivores and herbivores, such as how they sweat (carnivores sweat through their tongues while herbivores sweat through their skin) and other characteristics. If you go by those, humans fall fully into the herbivore category.
Again, I'm not on some personal quest to make people vegetarian, but people have both a right and a duty to know what they are eating and where it came from, imo.