• Animal Rahat: Improving the Lives of Working Animals in India
  (tags: india animalrights organization)
• Don’t mock sentiments
  An interesting piece by a Hindu recounting a visit to Dubai during Ramadan.
  (tags: eating socialsituations)

It’s been a few months since I’ve done any giveaways on the site and I want to start things back up in February. So, I’m putting out a call to all readers that are involved in a vegan-friendly business that might want to contribute some goodies to the cause. I have a few people in mind, but I know there have got to be some other people reading doing cool vegan stuff that I haven’t stumbled upon yet.

Here are the rules:

• Your product must be vegan. ie. Don’t offer up a product that has animal-based glycerin in it.
• Your business (if you have one, and not just a product) should be vegan or very nearly vegan (I’ll take the latter on a case-by-case basis).
• No item is too big or too small. We’ve given away gift certificates, chocolate, and books in the past.

You’ll get a full month featured on the right side of every page on the Veg Blog. Readers will enter and at the end of the month, you’ll help me randomly select a winner. You then send the item to them. Easy.

If you’re interested, hit me up.

• Treehugger: Vegan Clothing Explained
  I’m always happy to see the Treehugger blog take on AR issues. Too often, the green crowd finds ways to overlook animal issues. The discussion that follows, though, is pretty disheartening.
  (tags: vegan clothing wool eggs green)
• The Ground Meat Cookbook [1955] - 204 Intriguing Recipes
  So, so not vegan. Check out how they used pictures of happy pigs doing the cooking.
  (tags: cookbook scan meat creepy)

Holy cow.

I was doing a little bit of research to see what types of food some of the local public schools make available for students. After reading the article about the school in Atlanta with the amazing veggie-friendly lunch line, I had high hopes for Northern Virginia. Alas, what I came across was quite disappointing. Case in point, this document (PDF), a newsletter titled Nutrifax published by the Fairfax County Public Schools.

Being that it implies there are “fax” about nutrition, you might think that the document included helpful tips about vegetarian diets. Instead, in one page we get loads of half-truths, misinformation, and an undertone of anti-vegetarianism. If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone from the meat industry penned this, but there’s even a phone number to call a “registered dietician” for more information. Here’s a quick look at some of the main problems with this newsletter:

• It’s titled “The Vegetarian Agenda.” Right off the bat, it’s antagonistic.
• Incorrect definition of terms. Here, a semi-vegetarian = pescatarian. Semi-vegetarians just eat “less” meat, which can include any and all meat, poultry, etc. Pescatarians don’t eat beef or poultry, but will eat fish. They also refer to “lacto-ova” vegetarian. As far as I know, this is not an accepted alternate spelling for “lacto-ovo,” though it may be technically acceptable.

• False information about the “risks” of vegetarianism. They have a section about the health benefits of vegetarianism, but it’s half the length of the “risks” section. A blatant falsehood crops up here: “Animal protein is the only source of complete protein with all the essential amino acids present.” One word: quinoa. Also, the soybean has what’s considered a complete protein, though it doesn’t have all of the essential amino acids.

  The risks section continues with more subtle errors, like stating “The more restrictive the diet is
  about eating animal protein, the greater the health risks become.” They mention B12 (which actually only occurs naturally in plant sources but for humans comes primarily from animals that have ingested B12 in their feed) and that “animal protein is the major source for calcium, Vitamin D, and iron.” Remember that most of the best sources of calcium are from plant sources.

  The worst of all the errors, though comes in this paragraph:

  Many grains, legumes and seeds are good sources of protein but need to be combined with one another to become complete proteins. A grain product, another vegetable or an animal derived protein can provide amino acids that are missing in a vegetable. Examples of complementary combinations are beans and rice, peanut butter and bread, macaroni and cheese.

  This section implies that protein-combining in the same meal is required, a belief that was disproven a couple of decades ago. The current school of thought says that a.) most people get too much protein, b.) plant proteins generally don’t have the health risks associated with animal proteins, and c.) as long as you eat a decent variety of foods over the course of a day, your proteins will be plenty well combined.

There’s still a lot of work to be done in the food service industry. While a lot of the statements above may on the surface have a layer of truth, there’s a sense of “vegetarianism is bad and hard to do, so if you have to deal with it, here are some things to tell those annoying people.” We are pests, aren’t we?

If you haven’t checked out this week’s Vegan Freak podcast, make sure you do soon. The Freaks’ interview with SHAC 7 defendant Josh Harper is essential. Even if you’re not down with direct action, this case goes far beyond that, with some seriously scary implications for the future of free speech.

The most mind-blowing fact I heard in this interview: in 2003, the FBI spent used money and resources investigating animal rights groups (who collectively have caused exactly zero fatalities in the last three or more decades) than they did Al-Qaeda (anyone have a source for that? I’d love to link it up…).

• Animal Writings: Wegmans Lies As Disgusting As Their Egg Farm
  Well said, Gary. I was equally disgusted by their response.
  (tags: wegmans eggs animalcruelty)
• New COK Investigation Leads to Criminal Charges of Animal Cruelty
  COK continues to do great work exposing cruetly in the egg industry. This time, it’s a Pennsylvania facility.
  (tags: eggs animalcruelty pennsylvania undercover cok)
• Zen Chef - Natural foods, vegetarian cooking recipes
  About the least zen web design I’ve ever seen, but there are some nice Buddha-inspired recipes here.
  (tags: zen buddhism recipes vegetarian vegan)
• Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs
  Holy. Crap. (via Scott)
  (tags: freakingweird pigs news)

• Cat Killer Avoids Jail Term
  “A man convicted of stomping a [14-year-old] cat to death walked free Tuesday morning after the judge ordered him to undergo a mental evaluation and prohibited him from ever owning a pet.” Nice to know someone like this gets off with a “mental evaluation
  (tags: animalcruelty news)
• Sustainable Energy in Motion Bike Tour of the Portland Peace and Justice Center
  Bike tours with organic, locally sourced, vegan meals provided. Nice! (via Vladislav Davidzon)
  (tags: bicycle vegan tours)

With all of the vegetarian/AR-themed blogs out there now, sometimes I worry that the ground I cover has already been covered elsewhere or that certain topics are getting boring for regular readers. But I think I can safely assume that the topic of this post is not one that you’ll be seeing elsewhere, unless it somehow manages to spark some weird discussions that I’m not expecting.

A lot of my passions and interests conflict with each other, at least on the surface. For instance, I run a small hip-hop label, but I’m also a tea geek. I’m big fan of classic diners and diner architecture even though there’s rarely anything I can eat at those greasy spoons. But perhaps the biggest conflict comes with my lifelong interest in horror movies and my firm beliefs in animal rights. I kid around and tell people, “I like blood on the screen, but not on my plate,” but this weird juxtaposition of interests and beliefs actually does cause some inner conflict for me.

The first thought that probably pops into your head is, “But horror movies are fake and always say, ‘No animals were harmed in the making of this film.’” In most cases, you’d be correct, but there are a couple of issues that come up.

First is the more common issue of special effects artists using animal leftovers for their effects. You’ll see this frequently in zombie movies where the zombies are munching on someone’s intestines… they’re usually pig intestines. Filmmakers don’t consider this in their “no animals were harmed” statement since the intestines are by-products. Of course, since vegans concern themselves with by-products or anything associated with animal exploitation, this is an issue. Sure, intestines are generally cast-offs from the slaughter process and, actually, are often obtained directly from slaughterhouses, but the fact remains that these things wouldn’t exist without the suffering of an animal. Even Larry Fessenden, whose movies have actually focused on animal rights, used an actual liver in a scene in Habit. It’s really common.

This issue’s a little tricky. If we were to really concern ourselves with that level of detail, we wouldn’t be able to watch any movie with good conscience for fear of supporting the exploitation of animals. Isn’t using slaughterhouse cast-offs less offensive than a meat-centric lunch being served to everyone involved in a nine month movie shoot? Surely the production of a movie like Lord of the Rings involved more use of animals (for food) than a small budget horror film that shoots for a few weeks and uses a bag or two of pig intestines. Right?

Maybe, maybe not. The answer’s not really clear. Ideally, more filmmakers would apply Fessenden’s idea of “low impact filmmaking,” and I think that’s something that we can encourage as moviegoers and is where we should focus our attention. More effects are being done with CGI these days rather than exploiting animals in one way or another, which is good, so I think there’s probably some advancement being made in that respect. And even with the use of digital video versus film, there’s potential for film to eventually be phased out. However, DV has a long way to go before it ever gets the proper film “look” that’s so important for a movie.

The second thing I think about is a much smaller issue in the grand scheme of things, but it’s bothered me much more. My key interest in horror focuses on Italian horror of the 1970s. While the majority of those films don’t have any more or less involvement with animals than any other horror films, there’s one subgenre of that that period that does: the Italian cannibal movie.

You may be surprised at how many cannibal films were shot by Italian filmmakers in the 1970s and early 80s thanks to directors like Ruggero Deodato, Jess Franco, Joe D’Amato, and Umberto Lenzi. The problem with most of the movies in this subgenre is that the animal violence in these films is real. And not just “National Geographic”-leopard-eating-an-antelope real, either. Since these films are based in jungle settings, the directors chose to show exactly how “savage” the cannibals were by also showing truly disturbing scenes involving torturous deaths of animals.

In the most well-known cannibal film, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, a live box turtle is gutted with a carving knife, a squealing pig is shot in the head, a muskrat has its throat slit, a snake is decapitated, and the top of a monkey’s skull is cut off. This brutal, disgusting, and wholly unnecessary footage was used to make up for Deodato’s small budget and lend an air of authenticity. In reality, it’s just abhorrent real life violence that simply cannot be justified.

Of course, Deodato tried. He said, “But we ate the turtle afterwards!” which didn’t satiate anyone. It was still, at its core, the torture of an animal for entertainment. Deodato has also apologized and said it’s the one thing about the movie that haunts him the most. He says he would never do it again.

Whatever the case, the violence is there in a very visual and visceral way. It’s made even the most hardcore meat eaters say, “Now that’s just wrong” and the scenes with the animals are generally considered to be the most disturbing parts of the movie. Of course, as this thoughtful review points out:

One doesn’t have to be Peter Singer to realise that our attitudes towards other animals are inconsistent. How many of those who object to Deodato’s film will happily eat meat, wear leather and place a bet on the Grand National?

I’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust a half-dozen times, including on the big screen. Shoot, I’m even in three of the extras on the recent DVD release. But I can tell you that every time I watched this movie, I’ve turned away during the scenes of animal violence. A lot of people do. While the movie intends to show man’s inhumanity towards his fellow man, it unintentionally shows man’s (specifically, the filmmaker’s) inhumanity towards non-human living beings.

To add an interesting twist, the aforementioned deluxe DVD release includes an “animal cruelty free” version, which skips right past all of the gratuitous animal violence. Needless to say, I’ll be using this option during any future viewings of the movie. While there may be an argument that this ruins the director’s original intent, this is one of the few times where I don’t care. I’m somewhat heartened that the animal violence is seen by enough people as “wrong” to warrant this type of extra treatment on a DVD release. It gives some sort of hope that the animals that were killed didn’t die completely in vain.

I won’t go into the other cannibal movies that use animal violence, but I will note that it goes even deeper in Umberto Lenzi’s atrocious Cannibal Ferox, a movie both so despicable and poorly made it’s entirely unworthy of the film it’s printed on.

I’m having a harder and harder time justifying my enthusiasm for these movies that have exploited animals, but at the very least, they caused enough of a stink over the years that on-screen animal violence is something you just won’t see anymore.

I’d really like to hear what others have to say about this, especially those of you that have a similar love for movies and filmmaking (horror or otherwise).

Last night I made a potato and brocolli soup recipe from The Frugal Vegan’s Harvest and Holiday Survival Guide, a cookzine I picked up in New York last year. The zine itself is nicely laid out with lots cheap, tasty recipes and fun commentary and gift ideas. This recipe in particular was perhaps the easiest soup recipe I’ve ever made and may become a good go-to dish when time or patience is short. The base recipe was a bit salty, probably due to the vegetable stock (in this case, a Better Than Bullion base). Otherwise, it was a thick and creamy soup worthy of repeat performances. I’ll post the recipe shortly.

As a side note, I’m not that enamored with the Better Than Boullion vegetable base. Sure, their slogan (”You’re in for a Treat! It’s the Bouillon Made from Meat.”) sucks, but it’s more that the flavor really doesn’t offer anything over a decent low salt powder. (Time to come clean: I rarely make vegetable stock from scratch. I know I lose points and may be kicked out of the vegan club.)

• High School Opens Vegetarian Lunch Line
  “I get the vegetarian meals because they have a decent selection you can choose from,” said ninth-grader Jessica Fortney, 15. “Otherwise, I would have to eat the disgusting pizza every day.”
  (tags: vegetarian school lunches health)
• Fiesty cow that escaped slaughterhouse may not be doomed after all
  Well, that’s good. But this line is baffling to me: “I probably won’t become a vegetarian because of it, but it probably deserves to live. When one breaks out of the pack, it’s so touching.” Believe me, Ms. Garde, they all want to break out.
  (tags: animalrights news escapinganimals)
• An Animal-Friendly Life: Writer risks losing her veg credentials; film at 11
  A great post from Eric about vegetarians that may not have developed a total revulsion towards the smell and sight of animal products. He says everything I’ve been thinking recently on the issue.
  (tags: food meat vegetarians blog commentary)
• Dinosaur fish pushed to the brink by deep-sea trawlers
  (via BoingBoing)
  (tags: fish extinction news)