[Obvious implications here in Canada. Language manipulation is used in every animal abusing/using industry]

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/202171/

Control debate, growers advised
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

BY DAVID IRVIN

Posted on Saturday, September 22, 2007

EUREKA SPRINGS — Stop talking about “debeaking” a chicken. Instead,
let’s call it “beak conditioning.”

That’s a suggestion from Timothy Cummings, a clinical professor and
poultry veterinarian at Mississippi State University in Starkville,
Miss., who spoke to poultry producers here Friday.

At a Turkey Meeting sponsored by the Arkansas Poultry Federation,
Cummings argued the poultry-slaughter industry must come to terms with
the power, and media savvy, of anti-meat campaigners like the People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Words like debeaking, hanging and detoeing used in the poultry industry
gives extra fodder to groups that seek its destruction, he said.
Cummings offered other suggestions:

The “backup killer” in a poultry plant — the worker who kills birds
missed by the automatic killer — should be called “knife operator.”
Rather than saying a bird has been “bled” to death, call it “exsanguinated.”

So what do the animal advocates at PETA say of these proposed changes ?

“He wants to call things what they are not, which makes sense. People
don’t like the idea that birds have their beaks seared off,” Bruce
Friedrich, vice president for campaigns at PETA, said in a telephone
interview Friday from his office in Virginia.

The national conversation about animal welfare can evolve if the
industry would curtail the blunt descriptions of slaughter, and also
select a prominent spokesman to take up their cause, Cummings argued.

“Whoever defines the issue controls the debate,” Cummings said.

Asked if PETA and other animal advocates are winning the war of ideas,
Friedrich said, “we certainly are moving in the right direction.”

Cummings also broached the idea of “sentience,” defined as an animal’s
ability to perceive the world, experience pain, anguish and anxiety.

While Cummings said he believes turkeys and chickens are sentient
beings, they have their place in the pecking order.

“The problem is, there is a range of sentience,” Cummings said. “I can
talk ugly to my dog, and he’ll sulk away. If I talk ugly to a chicken,
he’ll just look at me.

“ The bottom line is that legal rights should only be afforded to
species that can comprehend that concept.”

Friedrich said that is dangerous logic.

“If you extend that a little farther, it is acceptable to do whatever we
want to infants and people below a certain IQ level,” Friedrich contends.

Cummings said PETA and other powerful animal-welfare organizations seek
the eradication of an animal slaughter business that employs millions.

Friedrich agreed, calling his organization “abolitionist.”

What that would mean is the destruction of an industry that slaughtered
8. 96 billion chickens and 255 million turkeys in 2006. Behind those
staggering numbers are millions of line workers, contractors and other
stakeholders.

Tyson Foods Inc., the second-largest poultry producer in the country,
has contract agreements to raise chickens with about 6, 200 farmers
across the nation.

Worldwide, the Springdale meat company employs more than 100, 000 people.

Eric Gonder, a veterinarian for the Goldsboro Milling Co. in Goldsboro,
N. C., also attended Friday’s federation meeting. Gonder said he has
been tracking the advance of the anti-meat lobby since the 1970 s. He
thinks that the conversation will eventually change, as Cummings
suggests, but it will likely turn into a discussion about organic versus
conventional meat production, since Americans aren’t likely to stop
eating meat. Officials at the poultry federation expected between 50 and
75 poultry industry representatives to attend the annual conference,
which runs through today

To contact this reporter: dirvin@arkansasonline. com