Heifer International is a Little Rock-based Christian charity that “ends hunger and poverty” through sending live animals to poor people overseas. Despite its Unicef style photos of cute kids hugging cute animals which will soon be dinner, its projects have ended in sickness and death for the animals.
In fact, its charity does not even pass the intelligence test: How do countries that lack veterinarians, paved roads, health systems, education, food and refrigeration for animal products, keep animals alive and prevent animal-to-human disease transmission? If the countries had the food and resources to care for the animals, they wouldn’t need the animals.
Last year’s Heifer International’s catalogue told donors, “Before receiving a gift of ducks from a Heifer supporter, Pham Thi Nguyen from Vietnam remembers, ‘In the past, my children would be sick often. Now we have more money to improve our house and send our children to school.’” In Heifer’s spin-doctored world, animals don’t get sick or stolen or need shelter and resources—they are maintenance-free. Nor do they spread diseases like BSE, SARS, Ebola and Avian Flu!
Heifer joins Big Pharma in wanting to spread “high quality” meat-based diets to poor countries. Many suspect the motive is the money in livestock drugs, food processing and biotech/GMO technology. Certainly, world hunger organizations do not “feed the hungry” with steak and cheese which elevate heart disease and diabetes in poor countries that adopt fatty diets. Thanks for nothing! In a recent documentary, Cowspiracy, even dairy CEOs and feedlot managers say animal agriculture is too resource and land intensive to feed the world.
Two teachers who Heifer sent on a tour to a Honduras community that received live animals saw the true side of Heifer’s “gifts.” A “disease killed off all the chickens in a particular village,” and children were sleeping with the animals to keep them from being stolen, they reported. Heifer recipients are also reported to be feeding their animals over their children because it is a better return on investment, according to some anecdotal reports. Thanks for helping hunger, Heifer.
Heifer International domestic animal poverty projects have also failed big time. The charity set up an aquaculture operation in a Chicago housing project in the 1990s so “at risk” youth could sell fish to area restaurants and develop promising livelihoods. But in 1999 all the fish froze to death when the heat and power went off. Two years later, the same thing happened only this time the air conditioning went out because of a storm. The fish leaped “out of their barrels trying to escape accumulating ammonia and rising temperatures,” said the Chicago Tribune. If these mishaps happen in the richest country in the world, what happens in poor countries?
A report from Heifer International’s Global Village program in Perryville, Ark., also raises questions. According to an unidentified mother who emailed Arkansas’ Fox 16 TV station, school kids at the Village who voted for meat for dinner witnessed the teacher break a rabbit’s neck, chop off its head, skin it and cook it. The mother said her son still talks about the rabbit’s horrible screams as its neck was broken. He was a 5th grader at the time.
A few years ago, Heifer International received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to open dairy operations in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, replete with chilling plants, backup power generators and “refrigerated commercial dairy delivery trucks.” In addition to the huge carbon footprint of such operations, is the Western diet really an upgrade for recipients with its links to heart disease, obesity, diabetes and even cancer?
It would not be too much of a surprise if Heifer International is funded by Big Pharma and biotech giants like Monsanto because of the huge profit that exists in livestock hormones, antibiotics, vaccines and growth promoters. In fact, a recent brochure from drug giant Eli Lilly’s animal division, Elanco, proclaims how it is going to use just such chemicals to feed the world.
Read more investigative journalism in Martha Rosenberg’s expose “Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health,” available from Random House, at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon. It makes a great holiday gift and supports independent journalism.
Good article. I especially agree with raising questions about who benefits from the introduction of animal intensive diets and agriculture. Follownthe money, and view the longterm big picture, and it backs up your suspicions of big pharma. One criticism, the Arkansas rabbit anecdote is only illustrative of how divorced people are from the reality behind meat consumption. I believe the grade five class actually benefited from being exposed to the process of butchering the animal they wanted to eat. Therefore it becomes an example of Heifer doing something good for a community. Small point, I know, but an important one.