Uses for slaughtered Animals accelerate killing of Animals

26/05/2009

Maneka Gandhi

(Bihar Times) Every year the vegetarian movement claims to be growing and when I read the figures of people who have stopped eating meat, I feel that my life had had some meaning. But the latest figure that the meat eaten in 2008 was the most ever eaten on this planet , has made me feel so useless that I feel like stopping my column.The statistics say that it is not a larger number of people eating meat, it is people eating more meat that has created this figure. This, in spite of medical and government warnings about meat causing animal related disease, illness, cancers and global warming. Are we the stupidest species on the earth ?
It is not just the eating of meat that makes me despondent, it is the increase in the number of uses we find for slaughtered animals.
In 2003 a company called Ebonex Corp asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow the use of pulverised cow bones to be made into a black pigment that could be used in cosmetics. In June 2007 the FDA gave permission to use bone black .
It is now used in eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara and face powder. It is known as D& C Black No 3. or Ivory Black and has a matte finish. Bone black is put upon the market under all sorts of names, such as ivory black, ebur ustum, Frankfort black, neutral black, etc.
The pigment is made from cattle bones that are heated to 700°C. and then pulverised , rinsed and dried.
The FDA noted that the pigment may contain low levels of potentially carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH).
Cattle that are fed meat develop a disease called Mad Cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy ) and people who eat this meat or absorb it run the risk of a brain meltdown that is irreversible. The FDA, while giving in to this multinational’s demands recognized that safety concerns may arise surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Their lame response was to order that the cattle bones used to create the pigment should be checked to see that they did not carry “a high risk of transmitting the agent. “ – something which is impossible to do unless every “fresh” bone has a tag on it identifying the killed cow and giving its medical background.
It has also been allowed for wood stains, colored plastics artist colors, paper products, paints and lacquers, leathers and vinyls.
Bone char is burnt cow bones. This is now being used by some bottled water companies. Bottled water is in any case a scam with so many health and environmental implications that I will devote another article to it but suffice to say that many companies do not use fresh spring water but ordinary tap water which is then filtered and bottled. In England , one of the popular brands is Scottish water. Now it has been discovered that that they are using bone char filters. Even worse, the charred bones come from India where cow slaughter is illegal. The rationale is that the cows killed illegally in India are older than the two year olds killed in England , so their bones are denser. On 1998 it was found that cow bone char was being used by municipal authorities in Northern England to filter municipal water. The authorities called it “ activated carbon” so that it escaped public attention. The hue and cry that ensued supposedly stopped the practice but now I learn that it is commonly done by many municipalities in the west. I am going to hunt for the Indian exporting companies so that I can take the matter up and I know it still masquerades as “activated carbon” or “ abaiser”.
In fact , according to a major information site on bone char , most bone char used for water and sugar refining comes from the bones of cattle from Afghanistan, Argentina, India and Pakistan. The sun-bleached bones are bought by Scottish, Brazilian, and Egyptian marketers.
Sugar refining ? Did you not know that the sugar industry uses huge amounts of bone char ? The cow bones are heated to high temperatures (in the range of 400 to 500 °C) in an oxygen-depleted atmosphere till they become grey brown ash.
It is used in the sugar refining industry for decolorizing and whitening sugar made from sugarcane- a process invented in 1812 . Sugar made from sugarbeet is not.. .
Another use for bone char has been recommended in 2008 by “ scientists” of the
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore ( An Institute which has been repeatedly caught for its mistreatment of monkeys as test animals )
They recommend the use of bone char in concrete instead of river sand.
In this time of global warming, the survival of our species depends on phasing out the forcible growth of meat animals. The more useless uses we find for dead animals, the more animals will be forcibly grown and killed. Is this too difficult for the consumer to understand ?