RPA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational nonprofit organization. |
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RPA is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational nonprofit organization. |
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A Call for Expert Assistance
Dear Instructor, Administrator, Author, Produce Farmer, Other Practitioner, Student ... Thank you for visiting this public-service web page. Here, Responsible Policies for Animals (RPA), a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization, explains how a small part of our higher-education system causes big problems for people, animals, and ecosystems. We think you will agree it is important that we work together to solve these problems. If your training, expertise, experience, and values enable you to assist RPA in solving these problems, please contact me at your earliest opportunity. Without your express permission, RPA will not divulge your comments or the fact that you contacted us. RPA … … promotes responsible policies for nonhuman animals that are also responsible policies for people and ecosystems; … has no paid staff or director and no formal affiliation with any other organization or entity; and … opposes all violence and criminal or antisocial behavior in the name of its cause. From 2003 to 2007, RPA sent all 50 states' leading land-grant universities (LGUs) and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) more than 300 letters, 150 factsheets, and 50 books explaining why our LGUs should stop serving the meat industry through "animal science" programs in our colleges of agriculture. RPA continues to explain this important and urgent matter to LGU administrators, trustees, legislators, and other people of influence. No one has been able to refute any of our assertions. But we don't see definite progress toward phasing out "animal science." Many books have been written about conflict of interest in the academy in the past decade. Most fail to mention the most egregious example: "animal science," which is really meat-industry technology, not the study of animals. Training in technology is not just academic. The public should have a voice - particularly where programs affect health, ecosystems, crucial resources, and the treatment of animals. Experts of conscience can help ensure that our LGUs will serve the public interest as they are supposed to. I hope you will choose to be one of them. RPA does not claim authors we quote or paraphrase endorse RPA or its work, unless so noted. We believe their findings are consistent with RPA's positions regardless of whether they share our positions. RPA's work is based on decades of reliable research in many fields. Please feel welcome to have us support our assertions beyond the sources that follow. Thank you for considering our request for your expert assistance in this crucial matter. I hope you will find the brief explanation below helpful. Do not hesitate to ask me any questions you might have. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely,David Cantor Executive Director Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. RPA4all@aol.com 215-886-RPA1 (-7721)
 The "animal science" problem at a glance:
If the world's expanding population is to be fed and clothed at a reasonable cost and without further degradation of the natural resource base or environmental quality, then … more sustainable ways to produce food … must continually be sought. The Committee did not even explore fundamental questions such as whether it is in the public interest for our land-grant universities (LGUs) to serve the meat industry or whether it is inhumane to use animals for food. And ... - Almost every member of the Committee represented the meat, milk, egg, or feed-crop industry.- Almost every member of the Committee held an agribusiness-related degree from, taught at, or had other connections to at least one LGU. - No member of the Committee was a nutritionist, a public-health practitioner, an environmentalist, an animal advocate, or any other kind of public-interest professional. - The Committee's list of published sources did not include any of the numerous works documenting serious problems and recommending change in nutrition, health, environment, or the treatment of animals. Our LGUs were chartered by Congress starting in 1862 to serve the public interest by serving farmers. More than 50 percent of Americans made their living farming in 1862. Today about 0.7 percent do. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry (1977), Broken Heartland: The Rise of America's Rural Ghetto by Osha Gray Davidson (1990), The Meat You Eat: How Corporate Farming Has Endangered America's Food Supply by Ken Midkiff (2004), and Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money by Erik Marcus (2005) are among many sources revealing how our LGUs' service to big agribusiness - the meat, milk, egg, feed-crop, agrichemical and pharmaceuticals industries - rather than to farmers harms the public interest. "Animal science" at our LGUs, not self-generating popular demand for meat, milk & eggs, is the primary driving force behind the meat industry's enormous threat to people and Earth's other beings. LGUs award degrees to a large number of people who become influential members of society: officials, executives, reporters, physicians, attorneys, educators, and others. Important things they are taught and not taught about food production due to their schools' "animal science" programs hinder progress in health, environmental protection, and the treatment of animals.
That human beings are natural herbivores is basic textbook stuff. Human beings have all anatomical & physiological traits of herbivores, no food-related traits of omnivores or carnivores. This is briefly but thoroughly explained in ... "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating" by Milton R. Mills, M.D. - www.eatveg.com/vegstuff/anatomy.htm Study after study has shown links between chronic diseases that kill millions of Americans each year and meat, milk & egg consumption. High costs of drugs used to treat those diseases are the main cause of soaring medical-insurance costs. The fats in meat, milk & eggs have long been a known culprit, but now animal protein is, too – see Cornell nutrition scientist T. Colin Campbell's The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted (2005). Dr. Campbell authored or co-authored more than 350 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and sat on many important nutrition panels in his decades-long research & teaching career. Growing up on a dairy farm and anticipating a career improving cow nutrition, he followed the research data to recommend an all-plant diet. It is difficult for the public to learn the truth about nutrition and health when industries as influential as meat, milk, egg & feed crops wield enormous lobbying, advertising, and public-relations budgets. LGU "animal science" programs' billions of dollars' worth of service to those industries enables them to determine people's food choices decade after decade. As Dr. Campbell explains, as well as New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle in Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002), the meat, milk, egg & feed-crop industries act in concert while the hundreds of different produce industries – providing the foods human beings need for health & wellbeing – treat each other as competitors. It's
not just academic! Having
analyzed for decades the state of
Earth's resources and relationships
between human beings and the environment,
the World Watch Institute concluded
meat production is not sustainable.
The feature article "Meat:
Now, It's Not Personal! But Like
It or Not, Meat-Eating Is Becoming
a Problem for Everyone on the Planet"
in the July/August 2004 World-Watch
magazine is definitive. The World-Watch editors cited or quoted 12 national & international organizations and 20 experts regarding the flesh, milk & egg industries' significant contributions to "virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future." Some of the experts quoted in the World-Watch article teach at LGUs. Countless additional authorities agree. For decades, nothing has been done despite LGU and government knowledge of extensive and worsening environmental problems caused by "animal science." "Animal science" has made the meat industry more and more dangerous and has helped Big Meat extend its reach worldwide. "Animal science" gives Big Meat political influence that helps it receive huge subsidies and avoid scrutiny, skepticism and regulation. It's
not just academic!
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service indicates more than 10 billion animals are killed by the U.S. food industry each year – 10 times more than in 1940. In Eating with Conscience: The Bioethics of Food (1997), Dr. Michael Fox, who holds a veterinary degree, a Ph.D. in medicine, and a D.Sc. in ethology/animal behavior, describes intense, long-term suffering of most animals used for food today. Books documenting factory-farming horrors are many and go back several decades – see Animal Machines by Ruth Harrison (1964), Animal Factories by Jim Mason & Peter Singer (1980), and others. Animals raised for food live very small fractions of their species' natural lifespans, and the vast majority suffer terribly throughout their short lives. Our LGUs' "animal science" programs, to maximize meat-industry efficiency developed inhumane methods that dominate today's system. And "animal science" trains thousands of people each year to run that system. The capacity to experience a life, including pain and pleasure, is much too complex to have emerged in human beings first. It has been an evolutionary advantage shared by other animals for hundreds of millions of years. Minimizing suffering and maximizing comfort & pleasure enhances animals' chances to survive and reproduce. In addition, just about every mental capacity attributed to human beings has been found in some form and in some degree in other animals. There is no justification for failing to give nonhuman animals equal consideration for equal interests. Animal-cruelty laws cannot prevent suffering inflicted in a legal & economic system where animals are property. Scholars, attorneys, and others have published conclusive arguments that all sentient beings have moral rights and that humane treatment of animals – a universal human value – will not be possible until all sentient beings possess basic legal rights. See http://www.rpaforall.org/rights.html, Introduction to Animal Rights by Gary Francione (2000), Speciesism by Joan Dunayer (2004), The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan (1983), and others. Teaching that it is appropriate for people to eat from animals contradicts that nonhuman animals have moral rights that should be established in law. "Animal science" teaches – and some instructors and officials teach explicitly – that nonhuman animals have no moral rights and can have no legal rights. There is no factual basis for such claims. In 1997, agencies within the U.S. Department of Agriculture collaborated in compiling Animal Welfare Issues Compendium: A Collection of 14 Discussion Papers for our LGUs' "animal science" programs. Many of the papers have more than one author. Twenty-seven authors from 21 LGUs took part, as did one USDA agency and a "swine center" in Canada. Most authors are "animal science" or veterinary instructors. All work in professions funded by inhumane treatment of animals. All of the Compendium's papers are public relations for the authors' professions. Many misrepresent animal-rights arguments by quoting literature out of context and arguing against what the literature does not say. The Compendium was clearly designed to dismiss legitimate criticism of animal exploitation that threatens the authors' and facilitators' careers and professions – and to keep students from thinking logically about animal exploitation. That is the opposite of what all universities are supposed to do. Universities exist primarily to promote critical thinking. Teaching "animal science" violates basic principles of academic and intellectual integrity, putting industry profits above education and universities' obligation to search for the truth. Thomas Lickona's award-winning book Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (1991) is one of many that emphasize humane treatment of animals. "Humane" means kind and it is never kind to use animals. In short, "animal science" promotes inhumane treatment of animals even though Americans believe in treating animals humanely and even though using animals is harmful to people and the planet all beings need. It's
not just academic!
Our LGUs refuse to make the needed changes on their own, so RPA and others must demand change. In the interests of the humane treatment of animals, human health & wellbeing, and ecosystem protection, RPA demands an end to "animal science." But decision-makers must hear from more experts. Please support this crucial effort in any way you can. RPA is be glad to recommend steps you can take. And useful addresses and campaign letters & factsheets are available at ... http://www.rpaforall.org/tenthousand.html ... and at the address, phone number, and e-mail address below. Thank
you for considering this important
and urgent request! We look forward
to hearing from you!
Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. P.O. Box 891, Glenside, PA 19038
215-886-RPA1 Revised February 2008
© 2008 Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc. |
In 1996, the Agriculture Committee
of the National Academy of Sciences'
National Research Council wrote
in Colleges of Agriculture at
the Land Grant Universities: Public
Service and Public Policy,