“Sound Science” or Just “Sounds Like Science”? |
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March 13, 2008
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| The HSUS's expertise in farm animal issues is getting attention in the scientific community. © USDA |
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The Humane Society of the United States' Farm Animal Welfare team of scientists continues to make important inroads into the academic community. Building on previous efforts to publish cutting-edge scientific thought in the scholarly literature, two more articles have been published in peer-reviewed medical journals just this month.
Reaching out to Health Care Providers
The March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine featured The HSUS's "Health Professionals' Roles in Animal Agriculture, Climate Change, and Human Health [PDF]," co-authored with the president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and other medical colleagues. The scientific article reviewed the devastating effects [PDF] of the production and consumption of animals, and encouraged health providers to promote more humane, healthier, and environmentally sustainable diets.
Exposing The Folly of Foie Gras
In the International Journal of Food Safety, Nutrition, and Public Health, we published an article on the apparent mad cow disease-like food safety risks associated with consumption of foie gras, French for "fatty liver" and produced by force-feeding ducks and geese unnatural amounts of corn mash. "Amyloid Fibrils: Potential Food Safety Implications [PDF]" summarizes research that shows that eating foie gras can trigger amyloidosis, a serious and potentially deadly disease.
The article concludes that the stress of confinement and other abusive practices can lead to the build-up of amyloid deposits in the tissues of a variety of animals raised for food—which has "tremendous food safety implications"—and determines that foods like foie gras should be banned on public health grounds alone for certain groups of consumers at risk for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or Alzheimer's disease. The award-winning online science portal ScienceDaily covered the article with the story "Potential Health Risks Associated With Stressed Foodstuffs Such As Foie Gras," but more important than positive press coverage or laudatory reviews of our work in prestigious scientific [PDF] and medical journals, is the referencing of our work by other researchers.
Spreading The Science
The sine qua non of scholarly effort is not only to publish one's work in the peer-reviewed literature, but to then have other scientists refer to and build off of it. In 2008 alone, our scientific publications were cited by academic heavyweights such as Emeritus Professor Tulsi Das Chugh in the Journal of Biosciences, the official journal of the National Academy of Medical Sciences in India; Professor Eric Faure at the University of Provence in France; and Professor Mary Elizabeth Wilson at the Harvard School of Public Health in Medical Clinics of North America, a widely read and highly esteemed clinical journal.
This is what Dr. Wilson wrote, for example, in an article referencing our work:
The expansion of concentrated food animal operations in the United States, and increasingly in other countries, means that large concentrations of genetically similar animals are living together in close proximity, a milieu that could allow the rapid spread of a pathogenic microbe. These sites also may be the setting for the emergence of resistance genes and microbes that can infect humans.
Industry Scientific Misconduct
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| Animal agriculture industries try to mislead consumers about their inhumane practices. © Farm Sanctuary |
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Like the tobacco industry before it, however, the meat, egg, and dairy industries have misused science to justify their indefensible practices. Case in point: Proposition 2 in California, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which won by a landslide victory in November 2008 to phase out the cruelest instruments of confinement: veal crates for baby calves, gestation crates for pregnant pigs, and battery cages for egg-laying hens.
During the Prop 2 fight, both sides simultaneously argued on food safety grounds. "Yes on Prop 2" proponents pointed out that science overwhelmingly showed [PDF] that cage-free eggs are safer, while opponents to the measure asserted the opposite—despite the scientific evidence showing that eggs from battery-caged hens are not safer.
The egg industry has since come forth and admitted that it unscrupulously misled voters in California and, indeed, consumers across the country. In December 2008, one month after the election, the editor of the industry trade journal, Egg Industry, wrote, "We should recognize that the strategy based on food safety...was invalid and unrealistic from the outset. [The food safety argument was] unconvincing, unsupportable and [was] easily refuted."
The industry-funded opposition to the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act had the audacity to call itself Californians for Safe Food, yet now admit its baseless scaremongering was invalid and unsupportable. Both opposing campaigns had scientists on their side, but only one had science on their side.
