6/25/2007 - Lay Waste in the studio (article?)

Jason Smutz takes a gulp of Dr. Bob out of a two liter bottle and shuffles his feet. Dr. Bob? "It's cheaper" he says. "We're spending all of our money to have these CD's pressed." After pausing a beat, he adds with a grin: "well, and I'm broke anyway." Smutz is the drummer for local metal band Lay Waste. He doesn't look like a metalhead, but his double bass technique and CD collection demonstrate otherwise.

We're at Audible Images recording studio in Port Matilda, and his band, Lay Waste, is working on mixing four tracks to release on an EP with Runyoudown Records. Bill Filer, owner and engineer at the studio (which, with its location deep in the woods outside of State College PA, feels more like a retreat than a rock haven) is deep in conversation with Nate Bayletts, the virtuosic lead guitarist and driving creative force of the band. They're discussing the tone of Bayletts's guitar, and attempting to balance it with the riffs laid down by Jake Burnheimer, the rhythm guitarist and emotional anchor for the group. Burnheimer is the only member missing from the mixing session: he's working as a bouncer at the Cell Block in downtown State College and couldn't get the night off.

The two are contrasting: Burnheimer is a hulking man with close-cropped hair and a penchant for speed picking like "Dimebag" Darryl Abbott (Pantera). Bayletts is smaller, with long and generally unwashed hair hanging into his eyes while he plays solos reminiscent of everything from Iron Maiden to Necrophagist. Despite the sometimes broad artistic differences, the two play like they were meant to be in a band together. Each of their specific passions and talents with the guitar translate into a combined sound which is as unique as it is well-rounded.

Bassist Tom Hughes, who somehow manages to laugh off all of the insults the other members affectionately throw at him, cocks his head and closes his eyes for a moment. "Wait wait wait" he yells, "there's too much reverb on that and the notes are getting messed up." As Filer turns and works the sound board to correct the problem, Hughes taps his feet and fingers his bass part in the air. His playing fills out the low end of the band's sound, complementing the drumming of Smutz and adding another layer of harmony to the guitars.

Filer completes the change and plays the recording back through the speakers surrounding the band in the small mixing room. Ben Majewsky, singer and most recent addition to the band, nods and smiles at the rest of the guys. He is perhaps the quietest presence in the room, in total opposition to the screams being pumped out of the sound system. His vocal style can be described as part Phil Anselmo (Pantera), part Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder), and all Majewsky. With growls and screams of equal intensity and passion, Majewsky is a talented man who loves music of all sorts. While many metal fans won't listen to anything but metal, he extols the virtues of The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Incubus in addition to Gwar and The Red Chord. This shy vegetarian transforms himself into a powerful (and loud) singer when he steps in front of a microphone.

As time ticks by and the jokes fly back and forth, the band displays a level of professionalism and perfectionism rare in the metal scene today. It's obvious that they want their music to sound right, or they don't want to put out the EP. Smutz' explanation of this is simple: "Well, we're not going to put out crap." In what could easily have been a stressful and tiring situation, the banter between the group members is easy, and they don't lose sight of the fact that recording is supposed to be fun. The only tense moment comes towards the end of the night, when Majewsky disagrees with a decision regarding the opening of a song. After listening to several options time and again, he ultimately concedes to the majority, satisfied that the opening is a good one, if not the one he would have preferred.

While a copy of the final mixes of the songs is being burned, talk turns to the music business and the metal scene in particular. Lay Waste has been playing shows for almost two years within Pennsylvania, despite the lack of a local venue for metal bands. In downtown State College, DJ's and cover bands rule the music scene, leaving a dearth of creativity. "The frat boys don't want to hear metal, they want to hear some shitty band screw up Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing' for the thousandth time," says Hughes. And that's a damn shame, because the talent of each of these men entirely eclipses anything you'll find at a typical bar. Playing places such as York, Pittsburgh, and Allentown, the band is having to find shows further and further from home.

Notoriously hard to break into, the metal scene today is littered with bands who tried as hard as they could to make it but got nowhere. There are also bands who would rather party than practice, bands who cave to the pressure to play more mainstream music, and those who simply fade away from the scene. And then there are the bands who somehow manage to get a record deal and a fan base large enough to support their career. Listening to the final mix of Lay Waste's EP, it's obvious that they have the talent and the dedication to make it. The artistry that they put into each note is rare for music today, and if they can find an audience smart enough to appreciate it there's no reason they won't live out their dreams.

Copies of Lay Waste's EP will be available for $5 by the middle of July. For now, you can hear their music at www.myspace.com/laywasteband

5/11/2007 - Enter the Chicken Shed

Enter a typical chicken shed and you will experience a burning feeling in your eyes and your lungs. That's the ammonia - it comes from the birds' droppings, which are simply allowed to pile up on the floor without being cleaned out, not merely during the growing period of each flock, but typically for an entire year, and sometimes for several years. High ammonia levels give the birds chronic respiratory disease, sores on their feet and hocks, and breast blisters. It makes their eyes water, and when it is really bad, many birds go blind. As the birds, bred for extremely rapid growth, get heavier, it hurts them to keep standing up, so they spend much of their time sitting on the excrement-filled litter - hence the breast blisters.

chickens have been bred over many generations to produce the maximum amount of meat in the least amount of time. They now grow three times as fast as chickens raised in the 1950s while consuming one-third as much feed. But this relentless pursuit of efficiency has come at a cost: their bone growth is outpaced by the growth of their muscles and fat. One study found that 90 percent of broilers had detectable leg problems, while 26 percent suffered chronic pain as a result of bone disease. Professor John Webster of the University of Bristol's School of Veterinary Science has said: "Broilers are the only livestock that are in chronic pain for the last 20 percent of their lives. They don't move around, not because they are overstocked, but because it hurts their joints so much." Sometimes vertebrae snap, causing paralysis. Paralyzed birds or birds whose legs have collapsed cannot get to food or water, and - because the growers don't bother to, or don't have time to, check on individual birds - die of thirst or starvation. Given these and other welfare problems and the vast number of animals involved - nearly 9 billion in the United States - Webster regards industrial chicken production as, "in both magnitude and severity, the single most severe, systematic example of man's inhumanity to another sentient animal."

Criticize industrial farming, and industry spokespeople are sure to respond that it is in the interests of those who raise animals to keep them healthy and happy so that they will grow well. Commercial chicken-rearing conclusively refutes this claim. Birds who die prematurely may cost the grower money, bit it is the total productivity of the shed that matters. G. Tom Tabler, who manages the Applied Broiler Research Unit at the University of Arkansas, and A.M. Mendenhall of the Department of Poultry Science at the same university, have posed the question: "Is it more profitable to grow the biggest bird and have increased mortality due to heart attacks, ascites (another illness caused by fast growth), and leg problems, or should birds be grown slower so that birds are smaller, but have fewer heart, lung and skeletal problems?" Once such a question is asked, as the researchers themselves pointed out, it takes only "simple calculations" to draw the conclusion that, depending on the various costs, often "it is better to get the weight and ignore the mortality."

Breeding chickens for rapid growth creates a different problem for the breeder birds, the parents of the chickens people eat. The parents have the same genetic characteristics as their offspring - including huge appetites. But the breeder birds must live to maturity and keep on breeding as long as possible. If they were given as much food as their appetites demand, they would grow grotesque fat and might die before they became sexually mature. If they survived at all, they would be unable to breed. So breeder operators ration the breeder birds 60 to 80 percent less than their appetites would lead them to eat if they could. The National Chicken Council's Animal Welfare Guidelines refer to "off-feed days;" that is, days on which the hungry birds get no food at all. This is liable to make them drink "excessive" amounts of water, so the water, too, can be restricted on those days. They compulsively peck the ground, even when there is nothing there, either to relieve the stress, or in the vain hope of finding something to eat. As Mr. Justice Bell, who examined this practice in the McLibel case, said: "My conclusion is that the practice of rearing breeders for appetite, that is to feel especially hungry, and then restricting their feed with the effect of keeping them hungry, is cruel. It is a well-planned device for profit at the expense of suffering of the birds."

The fast-growing offspring of these breeding birds live for only six weeks. At that age they are caught, put into crates, and trucked to slaughter. A Washington Post journalist observed the catchers at work: "They grab birds by their legs, thrusting them like sacks of laundry into the cages, sometimes applying a shove." To do their job more quickly, the catchers pick up only one leg of each bird, so that they can hold four or five chickens in each hand. (The National Chicken Council's Animal Welfare Guidelines, eager to avoid curtailing any practice that may be economically advantageous, says "The maximum number of birds per hand is five.") Dangling from one leg, the frightened birds flap and writhe and often suffer dislocated and broken hips, broken wings, and internal bleeding.

Crammed into cages the birds then travel to the slaughterhouse, a journey that can take several hours. When their turn to be removed from the crates finally comes, their feet are snapped into metal shackles hanging from a conveyor belt that moves towards the killing room. Speed is the essence, because the slaughterhouse is paid by the number of pounds of chicken that comes out the end. Today a killing line typically moves at 90 birds a minute, and speeds can go as high as 120 birds a minute, or 7,200 an hour. Even the lower rate is twice as fast as the lines moved twenty years ago. At such speeds, even if the handlers wanted to handle the birds gently and with care, they just couldn't.

In the United States, in contrast to other developed nations, the law does not require that chickens (or ducks, or turkeys) be rendered unconscious before they are slaughtered. As the birds move down the killing line, still upside down, their heads are dipped into an electrified water bath, which in the industry is called "the stunner." But this is a misnomer. Dr Mohan Raj, a researcher in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Science at the University of Bristol, in England, has recorded the brain activity of chickens after various forms of stunning and reported his results in such publications as World's Poultry Science Journal. We asked him: "Can the American consumer be confident that broilers he or she buys in a supermarket have been properly stunned so that they are unconscious when they have their throats cut?" His answer was clear: "No. The majority of broilers are likely to be conscious and suffer pain and distress at slaughter under the existing water bath electrical stunning systems." He went on to explain that the type of electrical current used in the stunning procedure was not adequate to make the birds immediately unconscious. Using a current that would produce immediate loss of consciousness, however, would risk damage to the quality of the meat. Since there is no legal requirement for stunning, the industry won't take that risk. Instead, the inadequate current that is used evidently paralyzes the birds without rendering them unconscious. From the point of view of the slaughterhouse operator, inducing paralysis is as good as inducing unconsciousness, for it stops the birds from thrashing about and makes it easier to cut their throats.

Because of the fast line speed, even the throat-cutting that follows the electrified water bath misses some birds, and they then go alive and conscious into the next stage of the process, a tank of scalding water. It is difficult to get figures on how many birds are, in effect, boiled alive, but in the United States alone, it could be as many as three million a year. At that rate, 11 chickens would have been scaled to death in the time it takes you to read this paragraph. But the real figure might be much higher. An undercover videotape made at a Tyson slaughterhouse in Heflin, Alabama shows dozens of birds who have been mutilated by throat-cutting machines that were not working properly. Workers rip the heads off live chickens that have been missed by the cutting blade. Conscious birds go into the scalding tank. A plant worker is recorded as saying that it is acceptable for 40 birds per shift to be missed by the backup killer and scalded alive.

If you found the last few paragraphs unpleasant reading, Virgil Butler, who spent years working for Tyson Foods in the killing room of a slaughterhouse in Granis, Arkansas, killing 80,000 chickens a night, mostly for Kentucky Fried Chicken, says that what we have described "doesn't even come close to the horrors I have seen." On an average night, he says, about one in every three of the chickens were alive when they went into the scalding tank. The missed birds are, according to Butler, "scalded alive." They "flop, scream, kick, and their eyeballs pop out of their heads." Often they come out "with broken bones and disfigured and missing body parts because they've struggled so much in the tank." When there were mechanical failures, the supervisor would refuse to stop the line, even though he knew that chickens were going into the scalding tank alive or were having their legs broken by malfunctioning equipment.

In January 2003, Butler made a public statement describing workers pulling chickens apart, stomping on them, beating them, running over them on purpose with a fork-lift truck, and even blowing them up with dry ice "bombs." Tyson missed the statement as the "outrageous" inventions of a disgruntled worker who had lost his job. It's true that Butler has a conviction for burglary and has had other problems with the law. But eighteen months after Butler made these supposedly "outrageous" claims, a videotape secretly filmed at another KFC-supplying slaughterhouse, in Moorefield, West Virdinia, made his claims a lot more credible. The slaughterhouse, operated by Pilgrim's Pride, the second largest chicken producer in the nation , had won KFC's "Supplier of the Year" Award. The tape, taken by an undercover investigator working for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, showed slaughterhouse workers behaving in ways quite similar to those described by Butler: slamming live chickens into walls, jumping up and down on them, and drop-kicking them as if they were footballs. The undercover investigator said that, beyond what he had been able to catch on camera, he had witnessed "hundreds" of acts of cruelty. Workers had ripped off a bird's head to write graffiti in blood, plucked feathers off live chickens to "make it snow," and suffocated a chicken by tying a latex glove over its head. Evidently, their work had desensitized them to animal suffering.

The only significant difference between the behavior of the workers at Moorefield and that described by Butler at Grannis was that the behavior at Moorefield was caught on tape. Unable to dismiss the evidence of cruelty, Pilgrim's Pride said that it was "appalled." But neither Pilgrim's Pride nor Tyson Foods, the two largest suppliers of chicken in America, have done anything to address the root cause of the problem: unskilled, low-paid workers doing dirty, bloody work, often in stifling heat, under constant pressure to keep the killing lines moving no matter what so that they can slaughter up to 90,000 animals every shift.

(excerpt from "The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter" by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. 2006)