Gate's heifers - this article will make you ill

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/rosenberg07122008.html


What Happens to Bill Gates' Dairy Cows?

Why Heifer International is Rolling in Dung


It almost sounds like a joke. Set up dairy enterprises in rural African villages with no refrigeration, electricity, veterinary care or passable roads for a population that can't drink milk because it's 90% lactose intolerant.

But the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation didn't think it was a joke when it announced the gift of $42 million to Heifer International at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January--the biggest gift the Little Rock, AR-based Christian charity which sends live animals to poor countries has ever received.

Using cherubic, 4-H/Unicef style advertising-- kids hugging the animal "gifts" they will also dispatch--Heifer pledges to stamp out world hunger in poor countries using the grain, water and grazing land they don't have to raise animals.

To get around the lack of rural electricity for the proposed dairy operations in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, Heifer will create "chilling plants" with their own backup power generators according to a press release where the milk will be stored for pickup by "refrigerated commercial dairy delivery trucks"-- both of them.

Farmers will artificially inseminate cows, perhaps by candlelight, with "high-production dairy animal semen"--more backup generators required to keep it frozen?--and increase milk quality through providing "improved animal nutrition" to the cows with the food they don't have.

Got that?

Because of children's natural love of animals, Heifer International is a popular charity project in elementary schools--though it stresses it cannot reveal the fate of individual animals it sends overseas so don't ask.

But teachers who go on Heifer sponsored junkets to recipient nations can come back with disturbing stories.

Like Donna Sosnowski, a fourth-grade teacher at Virginia Palmer Elementary School in Sun Valley, NV who discovered children were sleeping with their Heifer animals to keep them from being stolen on a tour of Honduras this summer, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.

-snip-

Then there’s Heifer International's Global Village program in Perryville, AK where school kids who vote that they want meat for dinner will witness the teacher break a rabbit's neck, chop off its head, skin it and cook it.

Last year one unidentified mother emailed Arkansas' Fox 16 TV station to say her son still talks about hearing the rabbit scream as its neck was broken when he attended a Global Village as a 5th grader.

-snip-

Despite gender dressing--Heifer claims most dairy operations are run by women--experts say animal based agriculture misuses land and resources, promotes high fat Western diets and jeopardizes human and animal health by inviting zoonotic diseases like Avian flu.

Programs like Heifer also betray a "Caucasian bias" by ignoring lactose intolerance Dr. Hetal Karsan, a gastroenterologist at Atlanta's Emory University, told the Associated Press. Maybe pharma will send Lactaid supplements.
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its a rich man's world

[Glorfindel]

1. Truest saying ever: "No good deed goes unpunished"

Second truest: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." As for this being a rich man's world, alas, it's true. A beggar approached an English lady and told her he hadn't eaten a bite in three days. "Foolish man that you are!" She exclaimed. "You must try! If need be, you must force yourself!"

[Hekate]

2. When I donated to Heifer it was with the belief they'd send culture-appropriate animals...

Which, by the way, get eaten if they're not laying eggs, okay? Rabbits aren't pets to 3rd world people -- nor are guinea pigs. They are food.

Many adult Africans (and adult Eastern Europeans) may indeed be lactose intolerant, but in Africa the Masai and the people of Botswana prize their cattle. They eat them.

Perhaps the Gates' -- and I -- misunderstood the ability of Heifer International to direct culture-appropriate animals to those who need them. But I, at least, understand that to people without supermarkets most animals are food.

Hekate

[pitohui]

4. you didn't misunderstand anything, this is just a shitty hit piece in my view

some people aren't happy unless they're crapping on somebody who is actually accomplishing something

[pitohui]

3. the masai of kenya are not lactose intolerant, milk is a part of their traditional diet

this seems to be a poorly researched hit piece with little or no factual basis

i love to hate on mr gates as much as anyone but this particular piece is a load of horseshit

somehow the masai have been able to raise cattle, including dairy cattle, in rural kenya for untold generations as in hundreds of years so to pretend that they can't do this without modern refrigeration is just silly

why is a "staff cartoonist" writing a poorly researched hit piece on heifer international? i would ask if she has ever stepped foot in africa, yes, many african peoples are lactose intolerant, but you don't assume that all of them are, SOME african peoples like the masai beef/dairy is their traditional diet and the possession of beef/dairy cattle a measure of the personal wealth

sounds like an ignorant vegan or vegetarian who has never stepped foot in kenya and so is happy to pontificate on matters she knows nothing about

also, as far as her slam against the goats, there are many areas in kenya where the soil is gone and the only practical source of edible protein for humans is the goat -- why, because the goat can eat thorns and turn it into food, the soil in these areas simply doesn't support vegetable crops -- i've seen this with my own eyes

[izquierdista]

5. Easy to throw stones

I wonder if their "Caucasian bias" is a problem with the work they are doing in Poland and the Ukraine. They have been helping in those countries as well, again with dairy goats and cattle.
http://www.heiferfoundation.org/waystogive/country/europe/_HannaAndGailStefanskaFundForPoland.cfm
http://www.heiferfoundation.org/waystogive/country/europe/_DemchenkoFamilyFundForUkraine.cfm

And in Africa, aren't there tribes who measure wealth by the number of cattle a person owns? And isn't the main diet of these people based on the blood taken from the cattle?

Easy to bitch at a charity when you sound like a vegan with an axe to grind.

[jwirr]

6. You may be right about most of it but I would like to know why they

need to use modern tech to raise farm animals? Our ancestors were farmers long before there was electricity. One cow - drink the milk immediately. I was raised on a farm that did not have electricity until I was 10 years old. We survived nicely. Heifer does have better things to offer than just cows: chickens, goats, trees, bees, etc. I think they send the appropriate gift to fit the region.

[pitohui]

7. seems pretty clear the author of the article is an idiot

if you read her qualifications, she is a cartoonist -- sounds like the lady doesn't know where food comes from or that people raised livestock for centuries without benefit of refrigeration

[jwirr]

8. Absolutely. But she does have one good point. Many of us sponsor

children through organizations but do not really understand how to help them in their own culture. I sponsor a child in Tanzania and would like to do more - do you, who have been to Africa - have suggestions on how to find out what the best help is for a certain area?

[Ian David]

9. The Gates Must Be Crazy!

If the author had any sense, she would have thought of that headline before I did.

[northzax]

10. as for global village

I personally see nothing wrong with humane killing of animals for food. It shouldn't always be a sterile, invisible thing. Guess what? Meat comes from animals, even cute animals. And we eat it. I knew that at ten, I had killed dinner by then (at least fish) and got a better appreciation of just where dinner comes from. I appreciate ever bite of meat I eat because I know something died for my consumption. Waste not. And I spent a summer working on education with migrant farmworkers, makes you appreciate a tomato a bit more. There's really nothing wrong with it.

[Hekate]

11. Amen to that. nt