Pebbles spent eight years bearing litters at a Minnesota puppymill, before being sold at the Ohio Dog Auction. Photo by Konstantin Vasserman.

We’ve got three ‘02-model females,” the auctioneer began.

A seated crowd of bonnets and wide-brim hats peered down into the auction pit, where three small white dogs stood on a rug-covered table. A teenage boy held each one in place.

In lots 73-75, three Bichon Frises registered under the names Mandy, Crystal, and Pebbles were shaking.

Maybe they felt cold, or maybe they felt scared. It was a January morning, their curls had been shorn off and until that moment they had been tasked with bearing litters of puppies in a large breeding facility known for its small cages, where they had probably never felt so many human eyes upon them.

Mandy’s ears froze into an odd crimp, as the auctioneer announced the starting price for her. There were no takers. The price dropped, then dropped again several times, and he gave up. Crystal, a runt, fared the same. The third, Pebbles, whose short legs bowed awkwardly around her tomato-shaped body, fetched a single bid: $5.

The three mothers were among 301 dogs who rode 900 miles last January inside cage-stacked semi tractor-trailer trucks, from Clearwater Kennel in Cushing, Minn., to the Farmerstown Sale Barn in the Amish town of Baltic, Ohio.

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SAEN co-founders Karen and Michael Budkie. Photo courtesy of Dina Kourda

“That’s not exactly the Sunday comics,” says the 52-year-old from Milford, who has a degree in Animal Health Technology from the University of Cincinnati, and another in Theology from Xavier University.

After poring through medical histories and U.S. Department of Agriculture reports, Mr. Budkie, his wife Karen Budkie, 52, and a small investigative team comprising the nonprofit Stop Animal Exploitation Now (SAEN) aim their stones at several Goliaths of American industry.

Their goals: Hold accountable the defense, pharmaceutical and medical industries for their violations of the Animal Welfare Act. And let the public know what happens in animal labs.

In October SAEN unearthed records showing that a dozen musk oxen had died of starvation at a University of Alaska research facility. And last month the group released a list of the 20 U.S. research facilities that subject the greatest number of animals to painful experiments without anesthesia. In the middle of this list is Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus-based nonprofit company that does contract work for the Department of Defense (DOD), among others.

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Screen shot of protestors at Piatt Park, shortly before 1am on October 21. Livestream at www.livestream.com/occupycincy

After midnight this morning, Cincinnati police arrested about twenty members of Occupy Cincinnati before a crowd of several hundred supporters, according to eyewitnesses.

The growing group of residents had been demonstrating against a system of “corporate welfare”–exemplified by the bank bailouts of 2008 and 2009–that they say tramples the interests of 99 percent of the U.S. population, while catering to the demands of the wealthiest and most politically influential one percent.

About twenty members of the non-violent, democratically-run group were arrested and their tents dismantled, four days after the movement filed a federal injunction against the City for the $105 tickets repeatedly issued to each occupier, nightly since the demonstration began.

One occupier, who was running the livestream, said police behaved respectfully during the arrests.

“Even though they’re following unlawful orders, they’ve been very polite the whole time.” he said.

“They didn’t come in riot gear, they didn’t drag people around, they just escorted them onto the bus.”

According to the demonstrator addressing the livestream at the moment of this writing (who may have identified himself earlier during the feed) those arrested were taken to the Price Hill police station in District 3.

To follow the protest through its own eyes, visit http://www.livestream.com/occupycincy

Horses driven through Prague with a tourist carriage

I am rolling out of Dresden on a quiet train, halfway between Prague’s ICAS conference on “Reconfiguring the ‘Human’/'Animal’Binary” and Berlin, where I’ll spend a night before flying to Sweden for tomorrow’s “Zooethnographies” papers.  It has been a gorgeous weekend, filled with sun and busty wood pigeons.

In the old, wood-and-light-filled Faculty of Arts at Prague’s Charles University, most of the 50+ presenters directly addressed the meeting’s theme: finding more nuanced and constructive new ways to look at human-animal relationships.

Existing “binary” notions like master-pet, hunter-quarry, consumer-resource, and intellectual-instinctual, were dismantled or dismissed for many of the same reasons that Gender Studies scholars have fought against the limitations wrought by using crude dichotomies like “virgin/whore” to define a person.

The quotation marks inside the conference’s title nod to the imprecision of defining ourselves in opposition to animals, as many doctrines have done, when we in fact are animals.

Czech philosopher Radim Belohrad gave a particularly lucid challenge to the idea that our most “essential” defining traits are those that distinguish us from other animals, in his paper titled “Are We More Than Animals?  In Defense of the Biological Theory of Personal Identity.”  While we can continue to exist even after losing our human qualities like language or self-reflection, he argued, if we lose our animal qualities like life and metabolism, we cease to exist.  According to Belohrad we are essentially animals–and people only incidentally.

Within the conference’s loose framework of questioning the human-animal boundary, I heard two specific themes arise, both of which aimed in different ways to clarify the work of animal protection activists.

Several scholars tried to build coherent arguments for why animal activists should either intervene or step away, when they see violence among other animals.   And many others sought a key to unlock the mystery of human indifference to animal cruelty.

Responding to violence in “nature”

“Innocent Threats and the Moral Problem of Carnivorous Animals” was philosopher Rainer Ebert’s relentless sequence of logical syllogisms, which aimed to poke a hole in animal rights pillar Tom Regan’s claim that we are obligated to protect prey animals.  Ethicists Cátia Faria and Beril Sözmen wrestled with the same problem in their joint paper “Resisting Violence in Nature,” given their commitment to intervene on behalf of both humans and animals in any other situation of violence.

And after a gruesomely fascinating discussion of the arguments for technological “animal enhancement” in the service of humans (like the human-milk-producing cows debuted by the China Agriculture University this summer), tech ethicist Arianna Ferrari examined one philosopher’s call to attack the other end of violence, by engineering pain-free humans and animals.  Ferrari’s work was titled “Resisting the Rhetoric of Animal Enhancement.”

On human indifference to violence

The efforts to understand indifference/complicity in violence toward animals were so dense and challenging for me, that I will list those papers now, but return later in the week to revisit my video footage and try to understand how the insights of these three talks may bear on one another:

“How is it possible to explain people’s indifference towards the violence against animals?”  by Marcel Sebastian

“Affective Dimensions of the Animal Industrial Complex in Derrida’s ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)’” by Richard Twine

“Discursive Analysis of the Objectification of Laboratory Animals in the Czech Republic” by Teresa Vandrovcová.

Signing off from Uppsala,

Fabien.

Residents at an Aug. 16 public hearing wore green to express their support for the Office of Environmental Quality.

Among a standing-room-only crowd at a former Catholic church in South Cumminsville, a swath of green t-shirts materialized Aug. 16 on residents opposing a budget proposal that would dismantle Cincinnati’s Office of Environmental Quality (OEQ).

The public hearing of City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee began with City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr.’s presentation and defense of his proposal, and concluded only after 36 residents had responded before the committee. Council will vote on the plan Aug. 31.

Among those who addressed council, 18 spoke in support of continuing to fund OEQ, with two using the phrase “penny-wise and pound-foolish” to describe the proposal; none defended it.

“Why on earth are you even considering dismantling an office whose effect on the budget alone is positive, in excess of 25 times its cost?” William Messer demanded of Council.

City statistics reveal the single OEQ project of overhauling Cincinnati’s recycling program this year will save more money — $930,731 in 2011 — than the city expects to save by eliminating the office, which is estimated at $225,030 by 2012.

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Aliya Rahman was contacted by a whistleblower from within the American Legislative Exchange Council, hours after organizing a Cincinnati protest in April.

Within two hours of helping stage a loud protest outside a spring convention of conservative policymakers, Over-the-Rhine resident Aliya Rahman got a telephone call that has now triggered a media groundswell.

“I have information about ALEC,” said a voice.

Six weeks earlier, 29-year-old Rahman had been a Miami Univeristy Ph.D. student and labor organizer who wondered why an Ohio budget clause threatening to deregulate wages and class sizes at her school, was coming so close upon the heels of a similar proposal in Virginia.

Then a link on Facebook got her attention.  A Wisconsin history professor had proposed that conservative bills arising simultaneously in multiple states, like those aimed at reducing workers’ bargaining rights, were rolling quietly out of a nonprofit group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

And ALEC was coming to Cincinnati.

Continue reading the full story in CityBeat »

A piglet at Iowa Select Farms' Kamrar, IA facility. Photo courtesy of Mercy for Animals

Three years ago, floodwaters engulfed Iowa and swept hundreds of pigs down the Mississsippi River, sparking a rescue effort that moved over 60 survivors to new lives on sanctuaries. Last week Iowa’s levees burst again, and its pigs took the national spotlight once more, to tell a different story.

A hard-to-watch undercover video from the Chicago- based group Mercy for Animals (MFA) was released on June 29, showing live piglets getting sliced, slammed and thrown across a building in a small Iowa town.

A former Iowa Pork Princess became its unwitting star, by assuring the undercover camerawoman that “pigs are very bouncy,” and then describing their flights through the air as “a rollercoaster ride for piglets.”

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ALEC members convene privately; image from an organizational brochure.

Courageous members of the American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC), peeked out of the hotel’s grand entrance during their recess, to survey the opposition.  Until now, their organization of 2000+ state legislators and corporate executives has stayed under the public radar, while crafting 1000+ items of legislation each election cycle since 1973.  *Numbers reported by ALEC.

Their goal: an economic climate friendlier to corporations.  This year’s anti-collective-bargaining bills in Ohio and Michigan were two recent triumphs.

“Legislators welcome their private sector counterparts to the table as equals, working in unison to solve the challenges facing the nation,” reads a membership brochure.

But as the group’s annual Spring Task Force Summit convened yesterday, so did journalists and activists from across the Midwest.  And during a two-hour protest and 19 public “teach-ins” across downtown Cincinnati, speakers described a group bent on bloating corporate profits, at the expense of taxpayers and jobs.

Indianapolis-based Daily Kos journalist Bob Sloan told an audience at the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center about a growing ALEC-supported movement to provide cheap inmate labor to corporations, by criminalizing immigration, relaxing child-labor laws, and abolishing “prevailing wages” rules for working inmates.

Proponents of these bills, such as the Ohio Prison Industries Reform Act, argue that manufacturing programs allow inmates to develop useful job skills.  But Sloan cited instances of businesses collapsing in communities where large corporations have “insourced” factory jobs to a captive workforce.  While corporations save money by paying workers partial wages and no benefits, he said, taxpayers foot the bill.  And when those jobs disappear into prisons, former inmates with new skills can find themselves at loose ends.

At Buddy’s Place, a Section 8 housing complex on Vine St., Michigan activist Bruce Fealk gave a morning talk on “outing” ALEC in the corporate media; in the afternoon, that sector was silent.  (The Enquirer is one of 82 newspapers owned by the publicly-traded Gannett Company.)

Although ALEC has non-profit status, it appears to behave more like a political action committee, with its member list and model legislation texts both kept under wraps.  But with the election of Governor John Kasich, who was a founding member of ALEC, the promotion of Boehner to Speaker of the House, and a 25% ALEC ticket discount offered by the Reds, Ohio may feel like receptive territory this year.

Also active from Ohio are Senator Bill Seitz, Chair of the Civil Justice Task Force, and Rep. John P. Adams (R-78th), ALEC’s Ohio state Chairman.  Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder sits on ALEC’s Board of Scholars, and Reps. Andrew O. Brenner (R-2nd) and Danny Bubp (R-88th) were both tweeting from the summit.

Legislative members of ALEC pay $50 in annual dues.  But corporate members who participate in one of the nine task forces that met yesterday, pay between $2500 (to weigh in on educational policy) and $10,000 (to help write legislation affecting International Relations).

ALEC literature calls the creation of model legislation the “centerpiece” of its activities–and its state-by-state fill-in-the-blank formula has proven effective at sweeping the country.

Versions of the “Freedom in Choice and Health Care Act” that were designed to unravel last year’s health care reform bill, have been enacted separately in 10 states and are pending in 30 more.

In a press release last month Christie Herrera, director of ALEC’s Health and Human Forces Task Force, wrote:

“ALEC congratulates the states for their successful fight against ObamaCare.  Their resilience and determination have paid off: ObamaCare is failing.”

Perhaps that was what inspired one middle-aged man at the protest to carry a sign reading, “Screw us and we’ll multiply!”

Not to be outdone, those inside the meeting retaliated via Twitter.

@PamelaGorman, identified on Twitter as “Conservative former Arizona State Senator & Congressional Candidate. I dig States Rights, 2nd Amendment, Limited Govt. I’m Pro-Life, Christian, & my son’s mom! http://citizengorman.blogspot.com” yawned, “Lamest protest today at ALEC mtg in Ohio. No fun. Drummer had no rhythm and chants were not catchy. All the good hired mobs taken?”

And @jennifer_butler, “EVP of State Policy Network & hearts liberty http://www.spn.org,” goaded, “Living on the wildside by wearing my ALEC badge outside on CVS run. Come and get me protesters!”

The two sides will have another opportunity to face off this August, when the board holds its annual meeting in New Orleans.

Jeff Wuebker, a pork producer and member of the Livestock Care Standards Board, deliberating.

Responding to pressure from veal farmers, the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board voted last week—by a 6-5 margin—to erase a new standard that would have granted veal calves enough space to turn around in their stalls.

The vote has jeopardized a delicate compromise between the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and agricultural trade groups.  Now, the board has until April 5 to reach a consensus, and is accepting public comments on veal standards until Tues. March 15, at ecomments@agri.ohio.gov.

Last June’s “Buckeye Compromise” charged the board with legislating a ban on the now-common use of stalls that immobilize calves for the duration of their lives, and breeding sows during pregnancy. In exchange, the HSUS agreed not to submit a ballot referendum that would have offered wider-reaching reforms to Ohioans.

If the agreement falls apart, the board will be free to modify or remove any of the animal welfare reforms from the new “Livestock Care Standards” document. And the HSUS will be free to wage a campaign that places the worst conditions of farm animals squarely in the public eye, a battle that both sides agree could hurt Ohio’s farmers.

According to Karen Minton, Ohio’s State Director for HSUS, the current standards now “absolutely fail to meet the compromise.”

But she is optimistic that the board will rework their decision, which was opposed by both its chairman, Director of Agriculture Jim Zehringer, and Ohio State Veterinarian Tony Forshey.

Since 2006, tethers and individual stalls have become illegal in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, and Michigan.  Strauss Veal, the nation’s largest producer, has chosen to eliminate both practices from its business.  Overseas, the UK banned the use of veal crates in 1990, and the European Parliament followed suit in 2007.

Background

For nearly a year, the board has been chewing through 20+ pages of legalese, defining and debating words like “distress,” “clean,” and “humane” in pursuit of a tricky balance: satisfy the agreement with HSUS, while making the required changes as easy as possible for Ohio’s livestock producers and protecting them from animal cruelty charges.

The board was moving steadily toward a complete document, despite missing the December 2010 deadline laid out in the compromise.  Veal calf standards were approved in November: both tethering and confining calves to small crates would become illegal effective 2017, the date by which the American Veal Association recommends the entire industry convert to group calf housing.

But at the February 22 meeting, veal subcommittee member Bob Cochrell addressed the board on behalf of farmers that he said represented over half of the veal production in Ohio.  They had signed an affidavit rejecting the standards as they stood:

“In the event that this proposal becomes rule in the state of Ohio, I, the undersigned, below do not anticipate continuing to raise veal in the state of Ohio, past 12/31/2017.”

The next week, board member Jeff Wuebker moved to remove the document’s requirement of turn-around space, for calves younger than ten weeks.  He presented the motion as a compromise, as it preserved a ban on neck tethers, and on individual stalls for calves ten weeks and older.

Board humane society representative Harold Dates pointed out that ten weeks constituted half the lifespan of typical veal calves, who are slaughtered between 16 and 26 weeks of age.

Following Wuebker’s proposal, four independent veal farmers gave testimonies in support of the modification.  Over a dozen Amish men were also present at the meeting, though none spoke before the board.  Two of them told Sentient Cincinnati they were considering raising veal calves, and had come to the meeting to find out what kind of barns they would need to build.

The farmers who addressed the board cited an estimated cost of $30,000 to convert a barn for group housing, as prohibitively expensive.  They said that the number of calves they could fit into their barns would drop by as much as a third, under the new requirements.  And they challenged the belief that calves were better off in group housing, arguing that male calves were too rowdy to be housed together, prone to sucking harmfully on each others’navels, and inclined to spread disease by defecating on each other.

The lone veal industry dissenter was Gaylord Barkman, Sales Director for Buckeye Veal.  A private company, Buckeye markets about 55,000 calves per year, or a bit over half the calves raised in Ohio, according to Barkman.  He said the company began transitioning to group housing four years ago, as per the American Veal Association’s recommendation and “what we saw was the preference of our clientele.”  Barkman named Costco as one example of a large customer that only purchases “never-tethered veal.”

Twenty five percent of Buckeye Veal’s calves are reportedly now in group housing without tethers.  Barkman said the company incentivizes its producers to make the transition, by offering a 10-cent premium per pound (or about $27 more per animal) for group-housed calves.  Also, the majority of Buckeye’s producers choose to operate through a “labor-lease” program, in which farmers use their barns and labor to raise calves owned by Buckeye Veal.  Barkman says the company gives those farmers 50% of the profits earned if they use group housing, versus only 25% to those who continue using tether stalls.

When Barkman spoke before the board, tension rose audibly among the other farmers, who argued that they could not remain profitable and independent if they took the same risks as Buckeye Veal.

The board voted with eleven members present.  Six voted in favor of removing the ban and five voted to preserve it; the provision for turn-around space for young veal calves was removed from the standards.

A new proposal

Amid this deliberation, board member Dr. Leon Weaver proposed a new idea that he said would both protect veal producers from out-of-state competition, and hasten the disappearance of veal crates.  Weaver, a veterinarian-turned-dairy-farmer, argued for legislation that would require Ohio’s producers to transition to group calf housing not by a set date, but within two years after a third-party auditor had determined that at least 60% of the nation’s calves were already in group housing.

Weaver emphasized the importance of bringing market forces behind the change.

“Because it would be more sudden and more forceful, it would put economic value in the production chain,” he said.

Weaver’s idea is rooted in a confidence that organizations like HSUS will continue to drive veal production changes from the purchasing end, by convincing large buyers (like Costco) to demand veal from non-crated calves.  Echoing the concerns of some farmers, he explained that this approach would enable affluent veal consumers to shoulder some of the cost of conversion.

“This is a niche industry,” he said.  “The high end is driven by 45-year-old upper-scale males. Do they really care what the cost of meals is?  No, they’re on a cruise ship.”

“In the model we’re on, where HSUS is focusing their activities on ballot states, knocking them off one by one by one, they will achieve their goal.  But in the meantime the growers in the early-chosen states will go out of business.”

Despite reservations about the proposal’s lack of an end date, and uncertainty over who could perform a timely nation-wide audit of veal facilities, the board voted to accept Weaver’s proposal to develop this idea before its April 5 meeting.

Seeking public comment

The Livestock Care Standards Board’s discussions frequently touch upon the importance of understanding and reflecting public preferences for the care of animals.  To that end, they are seeking specific input on veal calf housing, through tomorrow, March 15.  To let the board know what you would would like to see change or remain unchanged in the care of veal calves, email ecomments@agri.ohio.gov.

Under particular debate right now are 1) whether or not calves younger than 10 weeks should be given enough space to turn around, and 2) whether proposed changes should be made by a fixed date, or depend on the national pace of change.

Readers are also welcome to submit their suggestions in the comments section below this article.