carrot & stick

Vegetarian Times, March, 2001 by Abigail Chipley

A CARROT to the United Kingdom for making history by becoming the first nation to pass a ban on fur farming. Thanks to years of campaigning by animal rights groups, including the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Fur Farming Prohibition Bill passed the House of Commons last year. The new law mandates that the remaining fur farms close their doors by January 2003. Though the last fox fur farm went out of business back in 1992, 13 mink farms are still in operation. To drive home the reality of the cruel conditions on these farms, animal activists convinced several members of Parliament to climb into tiny cages approximating the spaces the mink spend their short lives in. But they didn't have to work hard to sway the general populace: A poll commissioned last year by the RSPCA found that 74 percent of Britons supported a ban on fur farming and 86 percent wouldn't consider donning a real fur. If only we Yanks could be as civilized.

A STICK to General Electric (GE) for trying to get out of cleaning up the mess it left behind in New York's Hudson River. For 30 years, the company legally dumped PCBs--cancer-causing chemicals used in the manufacture of many electrical products--into the river. As a result, a 197-mile stretch of the Hudson has been designated a Superfund (or hazardous waste) site. Now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants the company to make amends. Last December, the EPA ordered GE to dredge 100,000 pounds of PCBs from a 40-mile stretch of the scenic waterway, at an estimated cost of $490 billion. But GE says that dredging would create a worse ecological mess and argues that the toxic chemicals are being buried naturally by river sediment. In fact, it went so far as to challenge the constitutionality of the Superfund law, which mandates the cleanup of the nation's most hazardous toxic waste sites. GE lawyers argued that the law gives federal regulators the authority to order "intrusive" cleanup remedies of "unlimited scope." In our opinion, damaging the ecosystem of one of the country's most important rivers is what seems "intrusive."

A CARROT to Pope John Paul II and leaders of the Reform Judaism movement for questioning the ethics of genetically engineered (GE) crops. In a speech last November, the Pope urged the tens of thousands of farmers crowded into St. Peter's Square in Vatican City to "resist the temptations of productivity and profit that work to the detriment and the respect of nature." He went on to say that biotechnology "cannot be evaluated only on the basis of immediate economic interests. It is necessary to subject it in advance to rigorous scientific and ethical checking." The Jewish leaders went even further, adopting a formal resolution last November calling for the mandatory labeling of GE food products. Beyond obvious worries that these foods could trigger allergic reactions in people who aren't aware of what's in the products--as well as be less nutritious and harm the environment--the group expressed concern that people who observe kosher law or follow vegetarian diets will unwittingly consume plants containing genes from animals. Amen to that.

A STICK to certain upscale retailers like Neiman Marcus and Macy's East for continuing to sell fur items made from fetal and new-born broadtail lambs. Last December, Dateline NBC aired a Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) investigation into this business. Fur industry representatives interviewed for the program maintain that the fur is only a "by-product" of animals that have been slaughtered for their meat, but evidence gathered by HSUS investigators on a fur farm in Uzbekistan showed otherwise. Posing as a fur buyer, one investigator videotaped tiny day-old lambs being killed--hardly enough to make a meal. Even more gruesome, HSUS staff witnessed workers beheading a ewe to cut the fetal lamb from her womb. Coats made with the fur of day-old lambs cost about $5,000, but that's chump change compared with what a coat made with the fur of fetal lambs can bring in. With a texture that designers liken to silk or crushed velvet, these coats sell for a whopping $25,000. But because the lambs are so tiny, it takes about 30 animals to make just one coat. At press time, only Bloomingdale's had halted sales of broadtail lamb. To put the pressure on other retailers, email offices@neimanmarcus.com and macysmaildesk@fsd.com.