0 a>
9P
m ^ J
^ « 0
Sc SL
0 0 15
H *5
S:
Ul ,i
^ Q.'') 3
0) 3" n N
0i u> tt
p- 2 ^S: '
C- br ^ rt
2 5oS'
THe Battalion
33.2 s Friday, August 14, 1987
w ~ J
o-.ro
College Station, Texas
Vol. 82 No. 196 GSPS 045360 6 pages
^ nit
TO Q, 3*!1
a s:0 3.
° Qi 3-^
• o ro a
? 3 2
oi ro
c ^ ?
“2:2
W?
Reagan voices plea
for Bork nomination
„
ORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) —
3 President Reagan, seeking to put
: "the Iran-Contra mess” behind him,
^^p-ied his fight to win Senate con-
0 « cfirmation of Supreme Court nomi
nee Robert Bork to the nation’s
Heartland Thursday.
■‘No other issue could be more
i-Ti c
0
z Is-
0
£-2 3
L 3
3 <:
%r«xl
* L 'S
D-03:
0 »
W r
TO K
pressing” than getting the federal
appeals court judge seated before
the court convenes on Oct. 5, Rea
gan said in a speech to Nebraska
civic and community leaders at a
ranch near this western Nebraska
rail center.
The president was flying on from
Presidential hopeful speaks
,a t/ Texas AFL-CIO convention
■AUSTIN (AP) — Sen. Albert
JP>re Jr. told Texas labor union
members Thursday that Americans
C JdT w ^ ,lot to l erate another “Look Ma,
no hands” presidency.
D.) 3 £9l he Tennessee Democrat, the
1/1 ^ | first of three Democratic presi-
^.^ttdential contenders scheduled to
TO' a}speak to the Texas AFL-CIO con-
ttSflition, seemed so pleased by a
0 g ? Minding ovation at his speech’s end
S. 3 i that he strode into the audience to
- TO 3 S {
TO
_ 0) 7 SiMLater, he told a news conference
• TO he thinks the Super Tuesday south-
^ W 1 P res i ( lential primary is so crucial
Hit he will spend more time in
01 T|«
r shake hands.
Texas before that March 8 election
than the other candidates combined.
The Southern primary may be
considered politically risky, but
“when you lose 49 out of 50 states,
it’s time to start taking some risks,”
Gore said, referring to Ronald Rea
gan’s landslide victory over Walter
Mondale in 1984.
“We need to have a national mes
sage, unifying this nation, bringing
us together as a people,” Gore said.
“And as a matter of fact, the Demo
cratic Party has always taken that ap
proach. Our mission has been to lift
the fortunes of all Americans and
not just concentrate on the wealthy
few.”
Nebraska to California for a 25-day
stay in Los Angeles and at his own
ranch, north of Santa Barbara. He
and his wife, Nancy, will return to
Washington on Sept. 6.
Meanwhile, White House chief of
staff Howard Baker said Reagan had
not yet made up his mind on asking
Congress for renewed aid to the Ni
caraguan Contra guerillas. He said
Reagan would base a decision at the
end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 on
“such things as whether substantial
progress is being made” toward im
plementation of a peace plan that
calls for the Sandinista government
to institute democracy and put a
cease-fire in place.
Reagan, in a televised speech
Wednesday night that was billed as
his long-promised reaction to the
congressional Iran-Contra hearings,
said that increased cooperation with
Congress “may be the eventual bles
sing in disguise to come out of the
Iran-Contra mess.”
He also pledged in his televised
speech to concentrate now on his re
maining agenda, including confir
mation of Bork, support for rebels
Fighting the Contras and the pack
age of measures he refers to as his
“economic bill of rights.”
Hot-wired
Don Beckermann, a GTE employee, works on
splicing together a myriad of telephone wires.
Photo by Bobby Spearman
Beckermann is splicing wires from the renovated
Halbouty building into the main telephone wiring.
voice concern about treatment of animals
By Ed Holtgraver
Reporter
Laws established with well-mean-
3 ing intent often go astray in the
•.opinions of many. Laws designed to
Vegetarians and animal rights
Part two of a two-part series
protect the health of humans often
Kaw outrage from animal rights ac
tivists.
■The pretreatment of animals
killed in accordance with kosher rit
ual slaughter is an area of particular
concern for many vegetarians, as
well as humanitarians, Carmen Ma
son, a Texas A&M student, says.
Kin following with the ancient ko
sher laws practiced by Orthodox
jews, animals must be fully con
scious at the time of slaughter, she
says.
■This, combined with United
States sanitary laws that require the
animal be off the “killing floor”
when killed, produces the situation
where the fully conscious steer
hangs dangling from one leg, some
times for as long as half an hour, she
says.
feflt is difficult to cut the animal’s
I throat while it is moving about,” she
says. “A method of slaughter is to
simply gouge the animal’s eyes out.
The head of a steer, being quite
large, affords no sure grip accept for
the eye sockets. The steer is then
killed by slitting its throat. . .”
V When animals are killed by ritual
slaughter, they are not made
I unconscious before the killing, Ma
son says.
I They are alive until they bleed to
death, she says.
Meat not packaged as kosher does
not necessarily mean the animal the
meat came from was not killed in
accordance with the method of ritual
slaughter, Mason says.
“A lot of the time, only a portion
of the animal that was killed by the
kosher method is used for kosher
purposes,” she says.
“The rest of the animal is pack
aged and sold normally,” she says.
“That means a lot of the meat people
buy is killed by the kosher method,
but they don’t know it.”
Perhaps the crudest treatment is
reserved for the calves used to make
veal, she says.
Taken from their mothers the day
of birth, the calves are immediately
placed on a “skim milk, fat and su
gar” diet, she says.
This diet is what gives the veal its
tender, white color that gourmets
desire, Mason says.
The calves are fed this diet for 15
weeks, without any solid food what
soever, she says.
Any amount of time much longer
than this results in the calves dying
from anemia, diarrhea and other in
fections brought on by the all-liquid
diet, she says.
Also, the calves are placed in stalls
that measure no more than 2 feet
wide by 4 * 1 * * * V /2 feet long by SVz feet
high. Mason says. This is to prevent
any movement at all by the calves,
which would excercise the muscles
and tend to damage the soft texture
of the veal which gourmets desire,
she says.
“Any way you look at it, it is truly
an unbearable existence and not
something any living animal should
have to go through, especially just to
satisfy the taste buds of humans,”
Mason says.
Ari Rozycki, an A&M student,
who considers herself a lacto-ovo
Photo by Tracey Streater
Jesus Reyes, a worker at the Meat Sciences and Technology Lab,
cuts a side of beef before packaging it Thursday.
vegetarian (a vegetarian who eats
eggs and milk products) says eating
animals is barbaric.
“It’s my personal opinion that I
think it’s kind of barbaric that it’s
necessary to have to eat dead ani
mals in this day and age,” Rozycki
said.
Mason asks, “Why do people love
animals called pets, but eat animals
called dinner?”
Rozycki says, “Because they’re al
ready packaged.”
Mason says, “I look forward to the
day when humans take animals into
their hearts, rather than onto their
dinner plates. Animals have a value
independent of their usefulness to
others.
“The whole point is not whether
animals can think, or whether they
can reason, but whether they can
suffer.”
Rozycki replies, “And obviously
they can.”
The other major area of concern
for vegetarians is the bad health ef
fects associated with the eating of
meat.
“Meat is an extremely overrated
source of protein,” Mason says.
Protein consists of 22 amino acids,
all but eight of which can be man
ufactured by the body itself, she
says.
These eight essential amino acids
are all found in eggs, as well as most
dairy products, she says. Even ve
gans (strict vegetarians) can find
these eight other amino acids by
carefully combining legumes and
grains, she says.
“It is far better to get the protein
you need from legumes and grains,
rather than red meat, which has so
much fat and cholesterol/* she says.
Dudley Giehl, author of the book,
“Vegetarianism — A Way of Life,”
points out that numerous studies
have shown cholesterol and satu
rated fat, abundant in large amounts
in red meat, lead directly to heart
disease.
The United States has the highest
E er capita intake of red meat, and
eart disease is America’s number
one killer, he says.
It is worth noting, Mason says,
that vegans have absolutely no cho
lesterol in their diets, since choles
terol is found only in animal foods.
Another problem with eating
meat, she says, is the extreme waste
fulness of feeding grain to cattle.
The grain would be better off being
used as food for humans who need
it, she says.
“One major contributor to ineffi
cient food production is the use of
land to raise cattle as a food source,”
Mason says. “Extensive grazing in
various countries has resulted in se
vere erosion or a general deteriora
tion in the quality of the land used
for this purpose.
“Grazing cattle not only lowers the
availability of land, it also lowers the
quality of the land.
“A reduction in meat consump
tion would relieve the strain on agri
cultural resources, improving the
quality and quantity of crops that are
available.”
She says she has heard all the ar
guments against vegetarianism, but
has not heard any that could change
her mind.
“People tell me humans were
meant to eat meat, but the earliest
known ancestors of man lived pri
marily on a vegetarian diet,” she
says. “People tell me humans were
meant to eat meat because we have
canine teeth. But the gorilla has
huge canines, and of course gorillas
are vegetarians.”
Mason’s roommate, graduate stu
dent Lisa Holland, says living with a
vegetarian has been informative.
“I’ve learned something from liv
ing with her,” she says. “It’s made
me think twice sometimes about eat
ing meat. (But) I don’t feel she has
subjected me to any pressure to
change my diet.”
Mason says she knows only a
handful of other vegetarians on
campus.
“Well, as you know, this isn’t the
period of enlightenment,” she says.
Mason recalls the statement of a
farmer who said a vegetable diet
could never be acceptable, because it
does not furnish anything to build
strong bones.
But, she says, the same farmer
spent nearly all year plowing his
fields, walking all the time behind
his vegetable-fed oxen, which jerked
him and his lumbering plow
through all his fields, in spite of ev
ery obstacle.
Eight people arrested
on weapons charges
in drug-related cases
BROWNSVILLE (AP) — Law
officers arrested eight people
Thursday on federal weapons
charges, most of them stemming
from alleged narcotics trafficking
along the Texas-Mexico border.
The eight people were among
16 indicted by a federal grand
jury Tuesday.
| Thirteen of the indictments
Were handed up against people
with prior narcotics convictions
or who were involved in drug tra
fficking during prior arrests, said
Phillip J. Chojnacki, special
agent-in-charge of the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm’s
Houston district.
I “There are a lot of guns
around here,” said Chojnacki,
whose district includes South
pexas.
Weapons cases along the bor
der often involve either drug tra
fficking from Mexico or gun
smuggling from the United States
into Mexico, Chojnacki said.
He said the district has written
339 cases since last month. One-
third of those cases involve sus
pects in the Rio Grande Valley,
one of the principal drug-traf
ficking areas of the United States.
Christ Heart, agent-in-charge
of ATF’s Brownsville office, said
the crackdown is an effort to en
force a recent amendment to the
Gun Control Act of 1968, provid
ing for stiff penalties for drug
traffickers using firearms.
“Traditionally, narcotics traf
fickers are very well-armed be
cause of the amounts of money
they handle,” Heart said.
Thursday’s arrests were the
first to result from an Operation
Alliance investigation that began
six months ago with the coordina
tion of federal, state and local au
thorities, he said.
City Council hears complaints
about alcohol sold at Northgate
By Clark Miller
Staff Writer
Alcohol-related problems in the Northgate
area was the big issue at the College Station City
Council meeting Thursday night.
Members of the Wesley Foundation, a group
associated with the United Methodist Church,
requested that the alcoholic beverage license
held by Rocco’s club be revoked because of
parking problems and property damage at the
church.
The United Methodist Church is directly be
hind Rocco’s.
The Rev. Melvin Brinkley told the Council
members that since December of 1986, the Wes
ley Foundation has reported ten incidents to
College Station Police.
Since January of 1987, more than 40 cars
have been towed from their parking lot.
Brinkley also complained that empty beer
bottles are littering the church property and are
being used to break windows of one of the
buildings and a bus on the premises.
Dub Summers, manager of Rocco’s, said that
the club has reimbursed the church for all the
damages church officials have told him about.
Summers also said that Rocco’s strictly en
forces the law that prohibits patrons from leav
ing the club with any container. Because Rocco’s
has a license to serve liquor, no open containers
can leave the premises.
He said that Rocco’s is being blamed for litter
left by people who purchase their beer from
convenience stores or other places that serve
beer in the Northgate area.
However, Brinkley said that in the three years
before Rocco’s opened, there were only six inci
dents reported to police, while there have been
ten since Rocco’s management took over the
building.
Recent incidents have included broken win
dows, a church lot with stuck cars and rutted
turf and a person urinating on a church build-
ing.
Michael Workman, chairman of the board of
directors for the Wesley Foundation, told the
council members that the foundation tried
many other ways of solving the problem but that
nothing has worked.
“We’re not here to cause trouble,” Workman
said. “We’re just here to see that trouble doesn’t
get out of hand.”
This is why they want the city to take action to
revoke the license, he said.
College Station Mayor Larry Ringer said that
issuing liquor licenses is the Texas Alcoholic
Beverage Commission’s responsibility, but that
the city would report the complaint to the
TABC.
Summers said after the meeting that he did
not think that Rocco’s would lose its liquor li-
“I talk to the
le from the TABC every
e said. “They’re aware of
peop
two or three days,” h<
the complaints.”
Summers said that the Wesley Foundation is
the only organization in the Northgate area that
has complained about the club.
Representatives from the St. Mary’s Catholic
Church and the Presbyterian Church, both in
the Northgate area, also told the Council that lit
ter, parking and public urinating have been a
problem at their churches.
“We’re just incompatible neighbors,” Sum
mers said.
Brinkley agreed, saying the group was fin
ished searching for solutions and looxed to the
liquor-license vote to provide an answer to the
problem.