The Veg Blog

Have you seen the piece that aired on World News Tonight and Nightline last night? Let’s talk about it a bit.

Just to get it out of the way: yes, the story has the expected issue of focusing on abuse rather than use, but I’m going to focus on the positive effect a piece like this could have. Here’s why I think that, obvious problems aside, the airing of this piece will be positive in the long run:

1. It aired on a mainstream news program (actually, programs)

This piece aired on ABC during prime time on World News Tonight and later in the evening on Nightline. The former is a news broadcast my dad watches (he’s not one for overtly political leaning newscasts in either direction). That’s mainstream. And they’re showing footage from Mercy for Animals. That’s pretty impressive. Sure, it’s happened before, but when this sort of footage gets in front of a mainstream audience, the idea of veganism seems a little more normal to these same people.

2. A dairy farmer dug his own hole

Did you catch the dairy farmer they interviewed? He started off by giving the standard “it’s in our best interest to treat them well” line and shortly thereafter was stumbling all over himself defending tail docking and horn clipping as “standard industry practice” (which it is) and saying, “Of course I wish we didn’t have to do it…” It was enough to make you feel sorry for the guy. Almost. Except for the whole exploiting animals for personal gain thing.

I don’t think too many people can get behind docking cow’s tails or cutting their horns. (Except for those who convince themselves it’s not a standard practice.)

3. The artificial insemination footage

It was only about two or three seconds long and it only aired on the Nightline version of the story, but I think the very brief shot they showed of a farmhand elbow deep, artificially inseminating a dairy cow could be the most important piece of footage. I think the majority of people still kid themselves with visions of happy bovines humping in meadows of green grass. I’m also pretty sure the sentiment that “well, the cows have to be milked” is still prevalent. This very short piece of footage, though, is like a slap in the face: no, these dairy cows are not naturally pregnant and happily giving their milk to us. We’re raping them, confining them, and then stealing the milk meant for their offspring, all so we can have our next hit of cheese.

I’m hoping that short bit of video replays in people’s minds when they sit down with a glass of milk or a bowl of ice cream.

And, yes, there are some problems…

While the majority of the piece focuses on these cruel practices that are going on every second of every day, there’s just enough of the welfare message that I can certainly imagine someone coming away with the idea that, “Hey, that’s awful, but at least they’re starting to phase out those practices. Now I can feel OK about consuming milk.” And that’s the big downside of championing welfare legislation as a victory: a marginal welfare improvement becomes marketing fodder for the dairy industry.

And in case there’s any doubt that this is the message that people are getting, one need look no further than the comment section on the web version of the story (or a blog entry from before the story aired). Skip past all of the “gee, thanks for only showing one side of the story!” comments and you get to ones like this:

“I pledge to drink water and hope everyone that reads this will do the same. We can live without milk, until the humane society can get this straightened out.”

It’s a shame, because if that quote ended after “We can live without milk,” it’d be perfectly fine. But I’m sorry to say: if you wait for the Humane Society to “straighten it out,” there’s a problem. Everyone has to stop waiting for someone else to fix the problem. You can help fix the problem right now, this instant. Stop drinking milk, stop eating cheese, stop eating ice cream, stop consuming dairy. There’s no magic welfare wand that can be waved that will make it all OK. I hope that soon people will start coming away from stories like this thinking, “That’s terrible and I’m not going to be a part of it” rather than “That’s terrible and, boy oh boy, someone should do something about it!”

(If you haven’t seen the story, here’s the shorter version that aired on World News Tonight. A longer version appeared on Nightline, but doesn’t appear to be archived online.)

“What is the essence of pig?” Virginia farmer Joel Salatin asked an audience of about 200 University students and Charlottesville residents last Thursday.

Dubbed “high priest of the pasture” by The New York Times, Salatin said life for his pigs is a “Hog Heaven.” His 550-acre farm, Polyface, Inc., is like an animal sanctuary, he said…

Sounds pretty nice, right?

Until you read the second paragraph of “Holy cow!” from The Cavalier Daily (VA) in full:

Dubbed “high priest of the pasture” by The New York Times, Salatin said life for his pigs is a “Hog Heaven.” His 550-acre farm, Polyface, Inc., is like an animal sanctuary, he said, created to produce high-quality pork, beef and poultry that his consumers can trust.

Wash my mouth out with vegan soap, but: what the fuck?

It gets worse:

As he describes in his latest book, “Holy Cows and Hog Heaven,” Salatin believes that the journey “from farm to fork” is a sacred one. Beginning the lecture with a quote from the Book of Genesis, he said the road to success in the agricultural world is rooted in Christianity. The reflection of Christian values onto the land and the happiness of the animals is one of the main focuses of Polyface, Inc., Salatin said.

A self-described “Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic-beyond-organic farmer,” Salatin promotes six principles he believes every farmer should follow: order, forgiveness, peace, relationships, honesty, humility and healing. These principles develop a peaceful, beautiful environment and a food system consumers can appreciate.

So, apparently the ideas of “peace” and “healing” involve slaughtering animals based on something in scripture and then selling it as happy meat.

“I’m in the healing industry,” Salatin said. In his opinion, healing is one of the most important and enjoyable aspects of farming, meant to nurture the land and livestock with the utmost care and respect. His ultimate goal is not to increase productivity and efficiency, but to “make an animal sanctuary.”

Dude, if you want to build an animal sanctuary, build a place where animals, you know, have sanctuary.

If he was just promoting happy meat, that probably wouldn’t even be worth mentioning here. But Salatin’s assertion that what he provides for animals is “sanctuary” is offensive to the truly compassionate people that run actual animal sanctuaries, the people that do what they do for the animals and not for the financial benefit that comes from their death.

I think I’ll close with this quote from Salatin, a question he should ask himself a little more carefully:

“There is a respectful, righteous way and an evil way to produce — which one are we feeding?” Salatin asked.

In California, some vandals spray-painted animals at the Visalia Unified School District’s farm. They:

• Covered two pigs head to tail in spray paint and tagged a third on his nose,
• Marked two heifers on their sides and rears, and
• Marked a cow’s genitalia.

But here’s the thing: the animals are being used “for show” and eventually are sold for meat. Of course the commenters on the story are saying things along the lines of “Show some respect for the animals!” Newsflash: if those animals weren’t being contained in cages at a school and used like objects, they wouldn’t be getting spray painted.

This is not to say, of course, that the kids that did it shouldn’t be caught and punished, but let’s save the holier-than-thou attitude. The confinement, use, and eventual murder of the animals is much worse abuse than the vandalism, yet the program is viewed as noble and worthy of praise and defense.

Careful — this video of the latest in “environmentally-friendly beef” might cause you to injure yourself from constant eye rolling.

The inane, low-IQ banter is too much to take. I’m not even going to provide any commentary because, really, it’s Fox News… you know what you’re going to get.

Scientific American‘s 60 Second Science recently featured another interesting animal story titled “Birds Bop to Beat.” Reporter Karen Hopkin describes how some birds, especially parrots, may be able to groove to music, suggesting that “neural circuits for vocal learning may also enable moving to the beat.” Below is the transcript.

Forget “Polly wanna cracker.” Polly wants to boogie. Or so say scientists in a pair of papers in the April 30th issue of the journal Current Biology. They found that some birds, especially parrots, can bob their heads, tap their feet and sway their bodies to a musical beat.

It’s long been thought that dancing is a uniquely human hobby. Chimps don’t move to the groove. And when was the last time you saw Fido or Fluffy shake their furry booties? But Snowball the cockatoo is another story. That bird’s got rhythm. Researchers found that Snowball can adjust the tempo of his dance moves to coincide with the speed of the music. In this study, the tune was “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys, one of the cockatoo’s faves.

But Snowball’s not the only bird who likes to boogie. In a separate study, researchers searched YouTube for videos of dancing animals. Of the 1,000 they turned up, only 15 critters actually moved in sync with the beat. Fourteen of those were parrots, one was an elephant. Pachyderms, parrots and people are all vocal mimics. So the neural circuits for vocal learning may also enable moving to the beat.

Of course, I always knew that birds could get down.

Also interesting, an article linked below the podcast, “Bird Brains: Are Parrots Smarter Than a Human Two-Year-Old?“

Winner’s death brings sad note to races

This is a local story about a horse that suffered a fatal heart attack just strides after winning a race. The account of his final moments is sad:

At the March 21 Piedmont Foxhounds Point-to-Point in Upperville, a fatal heart attack at the finish wire sent Quick Line, the winner, careening into the homestretch tailgate parking area.

Rider Noel Ryan, huntsman with Loudoun Hunt, was smiling as the 13-year-old gelding crossed the wire, ears pricked, easily in hand and clearly not distressed.

All that changed a stride later.

Attending veterinarian Ian Harrison of Harrison Equine in Berryville was standing near the finish line, watching Quick Line as he crossed the line.

“The horse finished well,” Harrison said. “I’d say he suffered a heart attack in the next stride,” lurching to the right, while Ryan struggled to keep his mount from veering into the course’s outer rail.

The gelding crashed through the plastic snow fence marking the course, landing between two parked cars. Ryan was thrown clear and — but for a cut on his cheek and a sore hand — was uninjured. The force of the falling horse toppled several spectators who had an instant before been cheering the runners.

According to several people involved, the horse was fit and suffered a heart abnormality that no one knew about.

“There is no blame to be placed on a horse that dies that way. The rider is not to blame, nor the course, nor the race. This just happens. It is terribly rare, but it happens to fox hunters, it happens to pleasure horses, it happens to backyard horses. It happens in people, and it can happen in racehorses. It is very sad, but there was certainly nothing anyone did wrong, and there was nothing that could have prevented it.”

Perhaps it’s true that the horse would have suffered a heart attack at some point in his life whether he was racing or not, but I find it hard to believe that one can claim that “there was nothing that could have prevented it” when he died a stride after finishing a race. My thought, obviously: they shouldn’t have been racing the horse and that would have prevented the horse from dying on that day, at that time. Or am I just talking crazy talk?

I’m a fan of Scientific American‘s 60 Second Science podcast. In a recent episode titled “Chickens, Bacteria and Flies… Oh My, reporter Cynthia Graber described how some recent research shows that the antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria that are coming from livestock operations may be able to be spread to the world at large by flies. Below is the transcript (emphasis is mine, as always).

Seventy percent of all antibiotics in this country go to livestock like pigs and chickens. And concern is growing about drug-resistant bacteria that sprout up in crowded livestock facilities and may spread to humans. Now researchers suggest that a vector for that spread may be the common housefly.

Scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health collected samples of both flies and poultry litter at chicken houses along the Delmarva Peninsula. That’s the region where Delaware, Maryland and Virginia meet up, and it has the highest concentration of what are known as broiler chickens in the U.S.

They isolated and analyzed antibiotic-resistant enterococci and staphylococci from both groups. The samples showed that the bacteria in both the flies and the litter have similar characteristics and genes for resistance. The researchers caution that they haven’t shown conclusively that flies are in fact spreading the diseases. But more than 30,000 flies might enter a poultry house over six weeks. And flies are known to be vectors of viral and bacterial diseases such as cholera. Another study to add to the growing pile of research suggesting our cheap meat is not as cheap as it seems.

I’m not exactly a big fan of Peter Singer, and this IndyStar.com interview with him solidifies that feeling. I didn’t realize (probably because I wasn’t paying attention) that he gives 1/3rd of his income to charity, mostly to Oxfam…

… as in the Oxfam that provides animal donations (sorry for the PETA link)? The one that allows people to give sheep, baby chicks, goats, and more as if they were just things via their online store?

I don’t like picking apart the ways a person lives to find inconsistencies with their stated philosophies (I’m sure I’ve got plenty of my own), but things like this just baffle me. If you believe in animal sentience and rights, then you don’t donate money to a group that treats animals as commodities, clear even in the wording on their own web site.

Then, of course, there’s this gem:

I remember one of my high school teachers saying I would make a good lawyer because I kept arguing with whatever he said. I’ve never had great respect for conventions, and maybe that’s something to do with my upbringing or the period in which I came of age, the ’60s.

Well, it’s a way of answering the question of what makes it so seriously wrong to kill a being. Once you get rid of the idea that it’s just being a member of a particular species, namely homo sapiens, I argue that can’t be the answer and you need to find something else. You could say it’s wrong to kill a being whenever a being is sentient or conscious. Then you would have to say it’s just as wrong to kill a chicken or mouse as it is to kill you or me. I can’t accept that idea. It may be just as wrong, but millions of chickens are killed every day. I can’t think of that as a tragedy on the same scale as millions of humans being killed.

What is different about humans? Humans are forward-looking beings, and they have hopes and desires for the future. That seems a plausible answer to the question of why it’s so tragic when humans die.

Karen Davis replies in the comments:

Peter Singer needs to retire. Whatever fire burned in him for animals in the 1970s has burned out. He repeatedly cites chickens as exemplars of animal inferiority, not based on logic or evidence, which he has constantly repudiated, but because he personally doesn’t like chickens. He has even argued that removing the wings and brains of hens is good “welfare” if by doing so they will “suffer” less in industrial conditions. This is not animal rights or even welfare. It’s the shallowest level of ethics.

And if numbers are what partly determine the “tragedy” of innocent suffering, then the millions of people in African nations and elsewhere being tortured and murdered suffer less because there are so many of them.

(… and later…)

I’d like to add to my previous comment the concern that arises over the idea that the scale and routineness of innocent suffering somehow diminishes the significance and importance of that suffering. Just think how such logic can be used to numb ourselves to victims of war and other mass killings. Like deciding that human infants matter less than human adults because the infants aren’t “persons,” in Singer’s philosophy, this line of thought is destructive and pitiless.

Creating a recipe for success: Q & A with Erik Blauberg, Chief executive of EKB Consulting

This interview with the former executive chef at the ’21′ Club is interesting for this bit (emphasis added):

What’s the first thing you look at when you work on a failing restaurant?

I walk into a place and assess the damage. First of all, the food, the menu. Engineering of menus is very important. They have to have diversity: chicken, fish, vegetables. It has to please a vast majority of people with different tastes. Vegan dishes are becoming especially important.

Vegan? Really?

It seems more and more, if there is a vegan at the table, they will dictate the order. So you need to be prepared.

I can’t say I feel like the vegan Mussolini (Get it?  Order dictator?  Har!), but I was really happy to see vegans being talked about as an actual target market and not “a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.”

(via SuperVegan’s twitter feed)

NBC4 in Washington, DC is featuring a really nice video featuring Poplar Spring sanctuary.  It’s primarily a review of Karen Dawn’s new book Thanking the Monkey (Really?  That’s the title?  And with a peeled banana on the front cover?), but it’s shot at Poplar Spring and features some great footage of the animals.  I thought the tone of this piece was particularly noteworthy, especially in contrast to the local FOX affiliates’s patronizing animal feature last month.  The NBC 4 piece doesn’t attempt any goofy wordplay, respectfully presents the issues, and even makes mention that “cage-free doesn’t mean cruelty-free.”

Of course, the sole comment on the story is completely trollish:

(August 12, 2008 11:32 PM)

What a waste. Those animals could feed homeless people and other hungry humans. These animal "rights" activists should be ashamed of themselves. There’s a place in this world for ALL of God’s creatures — right next to the beans and mashed potatoes.

I submitted a reply, which hasn’t been approved yet:

You know what else could be used to feed homeless people and other hungry humans?  Money spent on pointless wars.

Compassion for animals and compassion for humans aren’t mutually exclusive.

I know, I know, don’t feed the trolls.  And the “pointless war” thing is kind of played out, but at its most basic level, it’s still true, no?

In addition, the station’s blog entry received its own trollish comment:

Alexandria, VA

I can’t believe that in this day and age some people are still working for the “rights” of animals. My goodness — have they run out of CONSTRUCTIVE things to do? Next thing you know they’ll want legal rights for potted plants. This is what happens when overprivileged brats lose focus in life and forgot what’s truly important: watching out for the welfare of PEOPLE.

I replied to this one as well:

It’s always funny to me how people like Adam seem to assume that a person’s belief in animal rights somehow means they’re anti-human. Animal rights and human rights are inextricably connected, as they recognize (rather than ignore or capitalize on) the suffering of “the other.”

I’ve found that those that accuse others of “wasting” time on “unconstructive” things like animal rights really aren’t doing much of anything to advance any cause other than their desire to hear themselves talk.

Anyway, I’m happy to see Poplar Spring get such good coverage on local news.  And it sounds like Karen Dawn’s book has that Skinny Bitch mainstream appeal that will get new people thinking and talking about animal issues.

(For those in the DC area, two dates to mark on your calendars: First, on Monday August 18 from 5-8:30pm, Karen Dawn will be doing a signing for her book at the sanctuary. Then, on Sunday August 31, Great Sage restaurant will be donating 10% of the day’s profits to the sanctuary.  Go get some tasty eats and support the farm.)

Thanks to Chris for pointing out this puff piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In it, it describes Romney packing up the family for a summer trip:

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

I echo Chris’ sentiment of “WTF?”  Who the heck puts their dog on the roof of their car?  And we’re supposed to be all “Wow, he’s so caring about his dog!” when he builds a windshield for the carrier?

Here’s some news for Romney: dude, your dog isn’t a piece of luggage.  If the family were to get into a car accident, the dog wouldn’t stand a chance.  At least inside the car he has the protection of the vehicle’s frame.  What if the carrier came loose and fell off the car?  Again, the dog has no chance.

This is just another example of “animals as property” that so pervades our lives.  To Romney, the family dog isn’t worth space in the car.  Having him dangerously perched on the roof as they fly down the roads at 65mph is a risk that’s reasonable to him.  Would he consider that same risk with his kids?  Of course not.

Want another example of how Seamus gets treated as property?  OK.

A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Animals rarely get much respect from the oval office.  Sure, President Bush’s dog Barney gets a nicer home page than most people have, but he’s also used to create stupid White House promotional videos.  Then, of course, there’s the debacle that is the presidential turkey pardon at Thanksgiving.  But if Romney were to become president, Seamus would be the worst-treated First Dog since Warren G. Harding’s lab named Seat Cushion.  (That last sentence was said in a manner imitating Jon Stewart.  Imagine me looking coyly at the camera.)

How you treat animals is usually a good indicator of how you treat people.  Perhaps we should keep that in mind when looking at presidential candidates.

I suspect everyone with a veg-themed blog will be thwacking this terrible NY Times op-ed piece.  I know Erik has, though I haven’t had a chance to listen yet and Isa took a good shot that I read earlier this morning.  Here’s what I’ve got to add, with apologies for repeating any arguments you may have read elsewhere.

Nina Planck is the author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why.”

I wanted to start with the byline.  Please note that this was written by somebody with something to sell.  She has no formal training in nutrition (note: neither do I, but I’m not writing books about the subject).  Just saying.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

This is purely anecdotal evidence, but everyone I’ve ever met who was “once a vegan” either a.) really wasn’t a vegan or b.) did it for a couple weeks for health purposes (never mind that veganism is an ethical way of life and not just a diet).  I’d like to hear a little bit more about her stint as a vegan.  I’m really curious because she must have been doing something pretty wrong in her own diet to conclude that it was “irresponsible” to be a pregnant vegan.

There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

Source please?  I suspect it’s less a reason of a vegan diet’s adequacy and more a reason of availability, control of food production, or reliance on historical/cultural precedent.  Our current world is much different than it was even 100 years ago.

Besides, if she says a vegan diet’s not adequate in the long run, she might want to read up on Donald Watson.  I’d say mid-90s classifies as the “long run.”  And what’s interesting is that I’m still trying to find these vegans with deficiencies.  It’s a lot easier to find omnis suffering from excesses.

Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.

I believe that this idea of “first class” and “second class” proteins goes along with the outdated notion of protein combining en vogue in the 1970s.  As long as you’re eating a varied diet of primarily whole foods, protein’s not an issue.  Back in 1982, Francis Lappe updated her classic Diet for a Small Planet to note that “In all other diets [other than fruit-based, tuber-based, or junk food-based], if people are getting enough calories, they are virtually certain of getting enough protein.”

A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods;

A lot of this is due to the pesticides we use when growing vegetables, which makes them unsafe to eat unless they’re thoroughly cleaned.  However, a simple supplement takes care of this without much problem.

usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage.

Vitamins A and D as well as calcium and zinc are easy to get in a vegan diet.

Yet even a breast-fed baby is at risk. Studies show that vegan breast milk lacks enough docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, the omega-3 fat found in fatty fish. It is difficult to overstate the importance of DHA, vital as it is for eye and brain development.

Most people can properly convert the Omega-3s in flax seed into EPA and DHA, but even for those that can’t, there are a number of vegan sources.

A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals. That’s why health officials in Britain, Canada and other countries express caution about soy for babies. (Not here, though — perhaps because our farm policy is so soy-friendly.)

Again, I’d like to see a source quoted here, but I’m willing to bet it’s somehow tied to the dairy industry (as most anti-soy studies so far have been).  John Robbins has some useful info about mineral absorption and soy:

It is true that soybeans are high in phytates, as are many plant foods such as other beans, grains, nuts and seeds, and it is true that phytates can block the uptake of essential minerals, and particularly zinc. This would be a problem if a person consumed large amounts of phytates; for example, if they ate nothing but soybeans or wheat bran. But the phytic acid levels found in a plant-based diet including a serving or two of soy a day are not high enough to cause mineral absorption problems for most people eating varied diets. Furthermore, when soy products are fermented – as they are in tempeh, miso, and many other soyfoods – phytate levels are reduced to about a third their initial level. Other methods of soy preparation such as soaking, roasting and sprouting also significantly reduce phytate content.

While phytates can compromise mineral absorption to some degree, there is absolutely no reliable evidence that vegetarians who eat soyfoods “risk severe mineral deficiencies.” The complete adequacy of vegetarian diets is now so thoroughly proven and documented that even the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has acknowledged the legitimacy of meatless diets. In an official statement, these representatives of the beef industry declared, “Well planned vegetarian diets can meet dietary recommendations for essential nutrients.”

Back to Ms. Planck:

Historically, diet honored tradition: we ate the foods that our mothers, and their mothers, ate. Now, your neighbor or sibling may be a meat-eater or vegetarian, may ferment his foods or eat them raw. This fragmentation of the American menu reflects admirable diversity and tolerance, but food is more important than fashion. Though it’s not politically correct to say so, all diets are not created equal.

‘Tis true, but take a look at a whole foods vegan diet versus any of the fad diets and you’ll see one major difference: a vegan diet is sustainable for a lifetime while most others aren’t.

An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.

I think someone needs to make a t-shirt based on the quote “Babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil.”

Pieces like this one by Nina Planck seem to exist not to foster any sort of serious discussion about nutrition and diet, but for other purposes (selling books, selling papers).  Without citing any sources, it’s hard to take any claims that Planck makes seriously.  If you go out there and do the research, you’ll find that a well-planned vegan diet can be every bit as healthy as a well-planned omni diet.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

We all need to look at what we eat.  It’s not a “vegan thing.”  If you shovel food down your gullet and don’t have any concept about what’s good for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re omnivore, vegan, or breatharian — you’re going to have problems.

I’d challenge Ms. Planck or anyone else looking to cash in on the latest “VEGAN PARENTZ KILL BABY, OMG~!!” headline to debate with a dietician like Vesanto Melina or a vegan nutritionist so people can make up their minds based on facts rather than a piece of marketing fluff masquerading as an op-ed piece.

Vegans Sentenced for Starving Their Baby

ARGH.

Some variation of this story pops up about once a year in the mainstream press.  You may remember the baby that died thanks to his supposedly vegan parents that fed him cod liver oil (NOT VEGAN).  Or the fruitarian parents who were spared jail after their baby died.

The thing is, if you look at this story, the fact that the parents were raising their children vegan has no bearing whatsoever on the story.  The child didn’t die because he wasn’t eating meat, he died because he was (allegedly) fed only soy milk and apple juice.  I’ve got news for you: if you feed your child only cow’s milk and apple juice, they’re going to die, too.

Veganism is not the issue here.  It’s poor parenting.

But thanks to the obsession with making vegans look like crazy loons, readers will continue to take away the wrong message from the story.  Instead of it being a terrible tragedy (allegedly) brought on by neglectful parents, it becomes a sweeping generalization about vegans.  In fact, as I was writing this post, an e-mail came in with a link to the story, followed by this witty comment:

Save a cow …. Kill your baby!
Vegans are sick SOB’s

As regular readers surely know by now, it can be perfectly healthy to raise a child as a vegan.  In fact, all of the vegan kids I’ve met have been healthy, vibrant, and well-adjusted.  Yeah, parents need to do a little research to make sure their child’s nutritional needs are met, but that’s not limited to vegans.  Every parent needs to read up on diet and nutrition.

Unfortunately, these unfair portraits of vegan (or supposedly vegan) parents are catchy news fodder for press and pundits.  It’d be nice if the press would leave “vegan” out of the story (and here, the headline) if it doesn’t have any real bearing on the story itself, but that doesn’t generate the same kind of buzz.

(This is fair warning: I’m not going to let this degrade into a flurry of idiotic comments.  If you’re commenting on the story, bring your A-game.)

Cloning opens door to ‘farmyard freaks’

However, GM scientists are actively investigating ways to remove the stress and aggression gene from animals, effectively turning them into complacent zombies.

The professor said it might become technically possible to produce “animal vegetables” – beasts which are “highly prolific and oblivious to their physical and mental status”.

DAMN IT. Seriously. When will we stop acting like idiots trying to invent sentience-free animals and just, you know, stop eating animals that don’t want to be eaten?!

(via BoingBoing)

The current Vegan Freak podcast talks about two stories in the news recently that have really gotten my blood boiling. The first is about Tony Blair’s vocal support for animal testing and his classification of animal rights activists as “terrorists.” Blair was crafty in his use of implying a (non-existent) connection between a letter-writing campaign targeted at shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline and an isolated incident of a weirdo exhuming a someone’s corpse. We have to be very careful when things like this hit the press to remind friends and family that a.) only a select few animals rights activists (like any other group) are wacky, and b.) a significant portion of animal experimentation has nothing to do with finding life-saving answers to diseases but rather with developing drugs for things like erectile dysfunction.

A related story worth mentioning is one from Germany where researchers say that stem-cell testing can be used to replace hundreds of thousands of experiments on animals. That’s outstanding news, but may not matter much here in the United States until we (and by “we” I mean he) wisen up with regards to the use of stem cells.

The second story that raised my ire is about how animal rights activist Adam Durand was sentenced to six months in jail for a misdemeanor. The misdemeanor? Trespassing in Wegmans’ egg facility to gather the footage for Wegmans Cruelty. This is the maximum sentence Durand could have received and no one was actually expecting any jail time for him. It’s an absurd judgement and I won’t speak any more on it at this point, but I will redirect you to what I wrote about Wegmans a month or so ago. If you’d like to help Adam out or just write him to show your support, Compassionate Consumers has the information.

It’s getting more than a little scary with the government declaring animal rights’ activists “terrorists,” legal action being taken against those that do open rescues, and rights for food animals being stripped more and more. But as scary as it is, these actions wouldn’t be taken if an impact weren’t being made. The average consumer is becoming much more aware of what’s happening to make their food and that scares the industry to death. And, really, it’s not privacy matters or even property destruction the industry is most worried about… they’re worried about industry practices becoming common knowledge which can only serve to hurt them in a big way financially.

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…).

It seems that Yahoo! now has a separate news category for Animal Rights and Welfare. Even more stuff here. Even though the news feed isn’t updated very frequently and seems to focus a lot on stories about “animal rights extremists,” it’s still kind of nice… but where’s the RSS feed? (via greeniv.com)

2006 Food Forecast

The good news:

More allergy information will be included on labels, which is not only good for people with severe food allergies, but for vegans since dairy and eggs are common allergens. The best parts:

• “If there are any egg, peanut, nut, fish, shellfish, wheat or soy in a product, the label will have to say so.”
• ” Goodbye to non-descriptive words such as “artificial” or “natural” flavors, colors or additives. Labels with those ingredients also will have to specify which allergens they contain.” Whether this means that any animal-derived products in the natural flavoring will need to be labeled is not clear.
• “If “casein” is included, “milk” would be listed after it.”

Also good: trans-fat will appear on labels. As a result of having to add this to the label, many food companies have cut back significantly or eliminated trans-fat from their products.

The bad news:

There’s still no universally accepted “Vegan” symbol on food packages. This may actually be a good thing, because really there hasn’t been enough discussion on the issue. For instance, if something is produced on equipment that is also used for dairy, should it be labeled vegan? If a product is made by a company that also makes meat products, is that product vegan? There are some tricky issues.

Also bad/stupid: well, I’ll let the article do the talking:

[F]ood forecasters are predicting some provocative trends, including such possibilities as Christian-raised chicken…

Trend expert Faith Popcorn, keynote speaker at the Future of Food conference last month in Washington, and the person who predicted the “cocooning” craze of the 1990s, sees faith-friendly food showing up in the marketplace, an outgrowth of what her company calls “clanning,” or the desire to belong to groups with common ideas.

Tyson Foods, which makes chicken, beef and pork products, already has begun offering free downloadable prayer booklets on its Web site. The booklets provide mealtime prayers in a variety of faiths.

Before I comment, I love the fact that the food trend expert’s name is “Faith Popcorn.” I would have killed to be born with that name.

I hadn’t heard of the idea of “Christian-raised chicken” before, and predictably, it strikes me as pretty stupid. If you’re that concerned about how your religious beliefs coincide with how your food is raised, shouldn’t you consider just, you know, not eating meat? I suspect that this kind of falls into the same category as halal meats, but without the long-standing tradition.

And does anyone else find it hilarious — and at the same time, deeply troubling — that Tyson Foods is producing prayer booklets?

Feel free to suggest prayers in the comments that Tyson could include on their web site.

Federal Turkeys Wing It This Year

As I mentioned a few years ago, the whole presidential turkey pardon is a frustratingly annoying event. It’s meant to be this cutesy gesture, all “Hey, look, it’s so cute and funny! We’re pardoning turkeys from their death sentence! Tee-hee!” (Interestingly, as a blogger somewhere pointed out, it’s a gesture that the death row inmates in Texas rarely got…)

This year, after pressure from PETA, the turkeys won’t be going to Frying Pan Park in Herndon, VA. Many pardoned turkeys in recent years have died within a year. Frying Pan Park denies any wrongdoing and points to the unnatural weight these turkeys have to hold. I can’t say for sure whether the turkeys were treated well or not, but I know that we’ve got a number of would-have-been-Thanksgiving turkeys at Poplar Spring and all of them have lived long lives well beyond a year. This year’s birds will be flown first class to Disneyland.

Of course, this pardon doesn’t do much to bring to light the life and ultimate fate of 45 million other turkeys each Thanksgiving (that’s 15% of all turkey consumed each year in the United States). In honor of the millions of birds that wind up on Amercia’s table on the fourth Thursday of each November, some facts about turkeys and the conditions they’re raised in:

• Farm Sanctuary’s Turkey Industry Information
• PETA’s Top 10 Reasons Not to Eat Turkeys
• PETA’s information about turkeys (be sure to watch the videos, too)
• The Vegetarian Society’s Information Sheet on Turkeys
• National Wild Turkey Federation’s Wild Turkey facts – They’re a group that “preserves our hunting heritage,” but they’ve got some great information about types of wild turkeys
• Robyn’s Eastern Wild Turkey Page – “The only known web site on wild turkeys as pets.” Um, OK… still, lots of interesting info here.
• Wikipedia on turkeys
• Hybrid Turkeys – Another example of how the industry viewed farmed animals simply as units. Take this particularly cold text from the company’s “about” page: “Hybrid customers all over the world continue to profit from Hybrid’s ongoing research and development programs. Improvement in Hybrid’s well established, wide ranging gene pool ensures that various strains of turkeys are available to specifically address every market need.”

This weekend, an article in the Washington Post appeared titled “McNuggets of Wisdom.” The article focused on the question of whether or not chickens are as smart as dogs and takes place at none other than Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, my favorite place to spend a Saturday.

It’s a cute article, lighthearted and generally positive towards chickens. But articles like this get me thinking: we spend an awful lot of time figuring out how “smart” one animal is versus another… pigs are more intelligent than dogs and can play video games, chickens aren’t as smart as cows because their brain is smaller, etc. When all is said and done, does any of that really matter?

In the west, we place a lot of value on intelligence in animals and seem to avoid eating those that are somehow “more intelligent” like horses, dogs, or cats. I don’t think that sentience or the will to live is dictated solely by intelligence, but we tend to tie these things together and use them to determine an animal’s “value.” Besides, it’s a pretty pointless exercise trying to compare the intelligence of chickens and dogs… they’re intelligent in different ways. Sure, a chicken won’t fetch a frisbee, but the social structures they form are surprisingly complex.

Just as a person’s true value doesn’t lie in his intelligence, any other animal’s value shouldn’t either.

Last night’s piece titled “Burning Rage” on 60 Minutes was predictably uneven, as are all stories that focus on “eco terrorists” (isn’t that a term that should be reserved for people that terrorist the environment like, say, our president?). Subjects included Rod Coronado, an unnamed, masked ALF activist, and Dr. Jerry Vlasak. Needless to say that these three aren’t exactly representing the mainstream animal rights movement, but as I’ve said before: more disturbing to me than animal testing labs getting burned down is the fact that conditions exist bad enough to move people to act in this way.

While I don’t know much about the context of the quotes from Coronado and Vlasak with regards to “assassinating” people involved with corporations that conduct animal testing and such, I suspect there’s more to it than the 60 Minutes piece allowed for. I certainly hope that no AR activists act in such a way to inflict death on other humans, but rather work to directly help the animals that need it. Otherwise, it’s just misplaced energy that will do nothing to help the animals or the movement.

The most telling portion of the 60 Minutes piece is this section discussing “speciesists” (emphasis mine):

Vlasak says someone who believes that the life of an animal is not akin to the life of a human being is “species-ist.”

Species-ists, he says, are akin to racists or sexists. Animals, he says, should be accorded the same rights as human beings, despite their place on the food chain.

I yelled at the screen (an act usually reserved for the Dallas Cowboys when they’re blowing a big lead in the fourth quarter), “FUCK the food chain.” Seriously, what kind of reporting is that? The food chain “argument” is about the lamest way to justify the way we treat animals, yet here’s a supposedly respected journalist spouting the same tired nonsense we hear from, say, people on the Nuge Board.

As I figured, “Burning Rage” was frustrating, gleefully showing fires set by activists but not showing a single image of what was going on inside those labs during the day. And, boy am I glad to know that people burning SUVs are considered “the country’s biggest domestic terrorist threat.”

Some bad news on the animal sanctuary front: Ooh-Mah-Nee is closing after ten years due to financial difficulties.

Now the animals have one less place to go. We really need to support these sanctuaries financially to make sure that they can continue doing their incredibly important work.

Thankfully, places like Woodstock are popping up to fill the void.

Clone-Generated Milk, Meat May Be Approved: Favorable FDA Ruling Seen as Imminent

Yikes. I’m happier than ever to be a vegan.

Let’s take a look at this article:

Many in agriculture believe such genetic copies are the next logical step in improving the nation’s livestock.

Notice how they mention improving the livestock itself and not the conditions the livestock live in? As Erik Marcus says, animals are units.

Consumer groups counter that many Americans are likely to be revolted by the idea of serving clone milk to their children or tossing meat from the progeny of clones onto the backyard grill. This “yuck factor,” as it’s often called, has come to light repeatedly in public opinion surveys. Asked earlier this year in a poll by the International Food Information Council whether they would willingly buy meat, milk and eggs that come from clones if the FDA declared them to be safe, 63 percent of consumers said no.

Hearing things like this makes me think that Erik’s hopes for vat-grown meat as a way to reduce the amount of suffering may have trouble getting off the ground in the consumer market. Of course, to me, the “yuck factor” associated with cloned meat is on part with the “yuck factor” regular ol’, factory farmed meat.

The article also mentions how cloned animals’ milk will hit the shelves soon, but probably not the meat from the cloned animals themselves because the clones are so expensive to create. For a second I thought, “Well, at least there are no dairy cow offspring that will become veal this way, right? Maybe it’s an ever-so-slightly more compassionate glass of milk.” Turns out, not really:

[Clones would] be used as breeding stock, so the real question is whether their sexually produced offspring would be safe.

The animals don’t get cut any break here. They may be able to clone a cow, but that can’t cut out the sentience gene.

He’s a merchant of boar semen, keeping about 80 valuable animals. Rural students, usually members of 4-H clubs or the Future Farmers of America, order semen from these champion animals at $50 to $150 a vial and use it to inseminate local sows in hopes of creating a winning pig.

I really have no intelligent comment about this paragraph. I just wanted to quote “He’s a merchant of boar semen.” Wasn’t that a Shakespearean comedy, The Merchant of Boar Semen?

One recent morning, two cloned calves pranced around a field outside Austin. Their progenitors were not living animals, but rather cattle that had already been butchered and hung on a hook in a slaughterhouse. The calves were selected for cloning after receiving high grades for meat quality and yield, judgments that couldn’t have been made while the originals were still alive.

Priscilla, born in April, and Elvis, born in June, were created by ViaGen. They’re destined to be bred together in an effort to create prime stock. If it works, ViaGen will clone a large population of once-dead cattle, aiming to sell them or their offspring for breeding.

This is kind of sad. Sure, they’re “pranc[ing] around a field,” which most calves don’t get to do, but the whole idea of creating “prime stock” for breeding purposes from “once-dead” cattle comes off as a some sort of crazy zombie-cow experiment. And the cloned cows and their offspring are the only ones who suffer if something goes wrong. This doesn’t really matter to those benefitting financially, as the following quote shows:

Published research shows risks to the health of clones at all stages of their lives. But the genetic problems aren’t likely to alter the food value of clones…

“Food value.” There’s another one of those “animals are units” phrases.

As long as the industry is looking for ways to produce milk, eggs, and meat at an even cheaper cost-per-”unit,” we’ll continue to see things like this. Unfortunately, there’s no going back to family farming and the idea that we may be paying too little for our food is foreign to most people.

I have no doubt that the industry and science will continue to find ways to lower the cost of meat production. They always have. The problem is that it’s always at the expense of animal welfare. Whether it’s by cramming more hens into a cage to produce cheaper eggs or by cloning dairy cows, the animals come up on the losing end of the stick, again.

Rare white bison born in British Columbia

Blatz said the calf will remain under her care for several more months, but she is considering selling him.” It could be to the native Americans, or even if a circus or a zoo wants something rare to put in there – to draw the crowds. That would be good too, but he definitely needs more exposure than where we live.”

Um… no he doesn’t.

(via)

Scott passes on a disturbing news story out of Utah where a substitute teacher dissected a live dog in front of a high school biology class.

“I thought that it would be just really a good experience if they could see the digestive system in the living animal,” [the substitute teacher Doug] Bierregaard said.

You have got to be kidding me.

The excuse, that even the school’s principal is using?: oh, the dog’s going to be euthanized anyway. Sounds an awful lot like people’s reasoning for eating meat, “Oh, the animal would die whether I ate it or not.”

This is entirely inappropriate for a high school classroom when there are so many alternatives. If showing the digestive system in a living animal is so important to this substitute teacher, why doesn’t he, say, use a videotape?

I hope the teacher and his school are properly ridiculed and reprimanded for this.

The folks over at VeganFreaks take on Newsweek and their coverage of the battle over foie gras.

Animal cruelty is reduced to a “huge misunderstanding,” making animal rights activists look like sub-intellectual fools. And of course, the authors couldn’t resist mentioning our “struggle to the top of the food chain” (another anti-vegan/AR quip that I hear pretty often). Let’s chuck the authors in a cage with some hungry lions, and then we can talk about million year struggles to the “top” of the food chain….

This is one of the arguments from non-vegetarians that really gets me… the whole “top of the food chain” or “if we don’t eat them, they’d eat us” argument. My first question for them is: what animals do you eat?

Chicken. Ah, an herbivore.

Cow. Another herbivore.

Pig. Omnivore, but the ones you’re eating certainly aren’t out there eating snakes and worms.

Duck, deer, sheep, etc… all of the meat we eat comes from animals that are primarily plant-eating animals (though there are some exceptions). When was the last time you saw someone snacking on a tiger leg or lion foot?

The way I see it is that the reason we eat the calm, gentle animals that generally don’t eat other animals is because they’re the only ones we can physically dominate and force into factory farm situations. How quickly most of us would become vegetarian if we had a choice between attacking a bear and eating a potato.

So, yeah… “top of the food chain” my arse. (For further commentary on the “food chain” argument, see comment #16 on this post.)

While I keep hearing that annoying phrase “liberal media bias,” I think we need to be more concerned with lazy reporting, lack of research, and general disinterest in anything beyond shock value.

Paul mentioned a story that aired on the WGN news in Chicago last night, summarized here (scroll to “Vegetarians”). The summary reads:

Vegetarians may be in danger of serious bone loss. Those who eat only raw plant-derived foods have abnormally low bone mass, an early sign of the bone thinning disease osteoporosis. In a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers found the extreme raw food vegetarian diet does not provide enough calcium or Vitamin D, both crucial for bone strength. The study looked at people who ate a vegetarian diet for three years.

In this summary, and according to Paul, even more so in the broadcast, it makes it seem that the raw diet = the vegetarian diet. Look at the opening and closing sentences: “Vegetarians may be in danger of serious bone loss.” and “The study looked at people who ate a vegetarian diet for three years.” That’s just wrong.

This shock value piece makes misleading connections that many people will walk away from thinking, “Vegetarianism isn’t healthy.” Do you have any idea how infinitesimally small the number of pure raw foodists there are in this country? I don’t know the exact number, but I’m willing to bet that not a single one was watching that broadcast.

Of course, you’re unlikely to see any news stories on the studies that have shown that frequent consumers of dairy tend to have more bone breaks and a higher incidence of osteoporosis than those who eat less or no dairy. That might piss off the advertisers.

Baby hippo and adopted “mother,” a 120-year-old Kenyan sanctuary tortoise: picture one, picture two.

The hippo survived the tsunami and has been inseparable from the tortoise since then. Seriously, how cute is that?

Read more.

Nell On Earth: An interview with Nell Newman, creator of Newman’s Own Organics

An enlightening interview on Grist.com about the business of organics, but what’s up with her answer to “are you vegetarian?”:

I was a vegetarian for three years as a kid. Now I am a “flexitarian.” My friends say it’s a PC name for hypocrite. I eat a little bit of everything. Ninety percent of what I eat is organic, and any meat I buy is organic, but when I go out to dinner, I don’t always investigate the ingredients. I don’t say no when I go to a friend’s for dinner and they’ve prepared a non-organic meal.

Isn’t she answering two totally separate questions there?

That aside, Nell’s got some interesting things to say about big business/mainstream organics:

Oh, it’s good that someone’s mainstreaming this industry. Adopting big-business practices is one thing, and adopting agribusiness practices that would dilute the meaning of organic is another. On the whole, I think we’re doing a pretty good job of preserving the integrity of organic foods.

As for business practices, you have to be realistic. Even running a small organics company, I’ve got constraints. I would love to not have to ship anything and use nasty packaging, but you know what, that’s not a reality. You want to do everything regionally, and just support local small farmers regionally, and then you find out there are no good pretzel manufacturers anywhere on the West Coast, so you have to make your pretzels on the East Coast and ship them. So you do as best you can, but most of the time, it’s difficult to have those high ideals and stick to them, in terms of how you produce stuff. People would love us to put our pretzels in wax paper, but would they really like it when they bought a stale pretzel? It’s a very difficult balance.

Fur flies as mayor won’t wear robes

Councillor Linda Turton, a strict vegetarian, told Sandwell Council staff that she could not wear the robes – normally worn when the new mayor is sworn into office.

Instead, for the official ceremony in June Councillor Turton wore a “borrowed” robe that had a black material collar instead of the traditional fur collar.

Up Close & Personal Meet Chicken Plucky Amandah Povilitus

This here’s a good interview with a high school animal rights activist who works for McDonald’s, two things you normally wouldn’t think would peacefully co-exist.

They don’t get mad or make me work in the back. As long as I don’t protest them, it’s fine. I don’t fight customers or anything. I turned a couple co-workers vegetarian, and I helped reduce waste, which they love.

Here’s a cool story that’s slipped under the radar: The Father of Veganism Turns 94.

Donald Watson is the man who in 1944 coined the term “vegan.” Back then, it wasn’t so easy to become a vegan, I’d imagine.

Sixty years. That’s some serious resolve.

AlterNet has a good article titled Vegan, Head to Toe that looks at various online shops targeted toward vegan consumers (think MooShoes).

Did I mention I bought a hemp wallet recently to replace a leather one I had received as a gift? I really like it. Except it has Velcro, which I couldn’t tell from the site when I ordered it. But I’m thinking a little fabric sewn over top of it should do the trick. I can’t stand that r-r-r-r-rip! noise when I open it in a quiet store.

(via Vegan.com)

A man tries to shoot his seven puppies, but one of them shoots him. Nice.

Even though I’m embarrassed to live in a state that doesn’t even recognize civil unions, I’m at least proud that now Virginia requires alternatives to dissection for high school students who wish to “opt out” of the standard slice-and-dice curriculum. It seems pretty silly to me that dissection has been required in high school biology classes even though the majority of people in those classes will never go into anything requiring the knowledge of what a frog spleen looks like. It’s nice to see more states requiring alternatives to students that object for ethical reasons.

In addition to Virginia, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois have similar laws and New Jersey is also considering it. Argentina, India, and Israel outright ban dissection in schools.

For more information, visit the Humane Society’s page on dissection laws.

Sheep put brave face on stress

Scientists at the Babraham Institute in the eastern English city of Cambridge discovered that when sheep were isolated, showing them faces of familiar sheep helped to soothe them.

…

When the sheep were shown faces of sheep familiar to them, they became less stressed, and showed fewer signs of agitation than when they were shown goat faces or triangles, researchers found, according the UK’s Press Association.

…

The researchers were conducting more tests on the sheep by showing them videos of sheep with different facial expressions, to see what effect this has on their stress levels.

While these tests don’t sound nearly as cruel as most animal experiments, is this really something researchers need to be studying?

The new head of HSUS, Wayne Pacelle, was a guest on today’s Diane Rehm Show on NPR. I only got a chance to hear a few minutes of it in the car, but Pacelle struck me as a well-spoken, respectable guy that is determined to shake things up and put pressure on those causing the inhumane treatment of animals (including farm animals). Give it a listen.

(Interesting side note: when searching on “Wayne Pacelle” to find the above link, Google’s first result was this page… looks familiar!)

In the “Why Does This Type of Thing Even Exist” category: 105-pound woman wins the World Lobster Eating Contest by wolfing down 38 lobsters in 12 minutes.

Erik Marcus has posted a great piece covering Gourmet‘s recent article about lobsters. In the magazine’s article, writer David Foster Wallace penned a lengthy piece about the cooking of live lobsters and the ethics associated with it, as well as meat eating in general. You wouldn’t expect a foodie magazine like Gourmet to print such an item, so Erik has examined the possible reasons why they’d risk alienating a large part of their audience. I’m going to try and pick up a copy of the magazine… one paragraph that Erik quoted really caught my attention:

Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole purpose of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph [about a lobster's attempts to get out of a pot of boiling water] as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?

The Washington Post has a great article on Wayne Pacelle, the new head of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The big news: he’s a vegan and he’s serious about fighting hunting and farm animal cruelty. The article is very flattering and his critics come off like bitter and angry people who love claiming about how they have a “right” to raise chickens for cockfights or to have “canned hunts.”

I have a feeling there will be a lot of vitriol towards Pacelle as well as a lot of twisted opinions and outright lies (some are mentioned and dealt with in the article). Me, I’m anxious to see what a dedicated vegan can do in a post like his. Call me crazy, but when an organization like the HSUS was serving meat at their events, I don’t quite understand how they could claim to be an advocate for humane treatment of animals. The coming years will be interesting, that’s for sure.

I’ll skip right over the puppy on a gas grill story (sorta) and go into something only slightly less painful to read about: cattle escaping from an Omaha beef packing plant. This pretty much says it all:

Three officers with shotguns fired six shots. The cow ran a little more, then collapsed.

The crowd groaned.

“We gave that one every chance we could,” said Campbell. Police decided to kill it when it became clear that the animal would not allow itself to be captured.

In other words, they gave the cow every opportunity to go back to the packing plant, be hung from its leg, catch a bolt to the skull, and then have its throat slit, but it put up a fight and they had to shoot it. Gee, imagine the cow not “allow[ing] itself to be captured.” Why in the world would the cow not “allow” that?

I apologize to you now for starting the week off with a story like this one: Woman who offered pig to lure tiger faces cruelty charge.

Linda Meredith drove from her home to C Road and Okeechobee Road with her Yorkshire pig Monday shortly after learning that the 600-pound tiger belonging to a one-time B-movie Tarzan Steve Sipek had escaped his 5-acre compound.

Meredith, wearing a tiger print and a gold lion medallion, pleaded with deputies to take the piglet named Baby by its hind legs or twist its ears to make it squeal and attract the hungry tiger.

It should be noted that Ms. Meredith transported the pig in the trunk of her car in 90 degree heat. “Even pigs transported for slaughter are required by law to be moved humanely,” Animal Care and Control Director Diane Sauve said. (Of course, we all know that the law may say that, but the reality is much different.)

I feel I should balance out that story a bit with this one: ‘Moody’ pooch alerts family in time to escape fire.

Rhonda McCrory’s friends and family members don’t really like her Pomeranian, Buddy, because of his grumpy disposition. They’ll probably change their minds now.

As flames swept through the kitchen of her Pecan Boulevard home, his barking awakened her just in time so she and her children could escape without injury.

(Both stories via Obscure Store)

Two Jailed for Eating Rare Tiger

BEIJING (Reuters) – China has sentenced two farmers to jail terms of up to nine years for eating a rare Manchurian tiger after leaving it to die in a trap, the Beijing Evening News reported Thursday.

A court in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang convicted Zhang Lichen and Gong Weisheng of killing an endangered rare species recently, the paper said.

The two men found the tiger caught in a trap in a mountain last year but did not report it to the authorities. They left the tiger to die and returned six days later to bring the beast home, skin it and eat its meat.

“The two men knew selling a tiger was a crime, but they thought eating a dead tiger’s meat did not break the law,” the newspaper said.

Bessemer lays claim to world’s oldest chicken

Matilda, a [14-year-old] bantam hen in Bessemer who has been a prop in the magic act of “Mort the Mystifying and Donna” for years, recently was designated as the World’s Oldest Living Chicken. She has a letter and a certificate from Guinness World Records to prove it.

…

[Donna] Barton noted also that Matilda receives the best of care and is petted and pampered and even tucked in at night.

“Most chickens live outside and put up with the cold, wind,’coons,’possums. … I don’t know if that chicken ever hits dirt,” she said.

Raw food diet: As a way of life, simply not so hot

This Chicago Tribune article takes a look at the raw food lifestyle. The author decides it’s not for her:

But raw, which is supposed to encourage a simple life and a return to nature, is just too complicated for its own good. It’s great in theory but has strayed seriously from its roots. Not only are pricey appliances like a juicer, dehydrator and blender helpful if you want to eat more than lettuce, but it’s also a labor- and time-intensive lifestyle that requires soaking and sprouting various foods and recognizing deadly herbs.

I think Charlie Trotter, author of Raw has it right:

“There’s nothing wrong with mixing a little raw and cooked food,” Trotter said during a cooking demonstration. “I just want great food. And by the way, I want to live to eat another day.”

Chickens injured by student prank (BugMeNot login)

Apparently a student left the chickens in a knapsack inside a locked car before the joke, leaving one of the animals close to death as a result of the excessive heat, police said.

*sigh*

It might seem odd for me to deconstruct an article in The New York Times (login info) that mentions vegetarian food in a positive light, but a number of things in this article really jumped out at me. Let’s take them one by one, extracted from the original article (which you should read first, of course):

When I hear the term “vegetarian lifestyle,” I reach for my skirt steak.

Jeez. Another one of “those people?” Why are ethical vegetarians (which who I assume he’s talking about here) so scary to some people?

No one, after all, says you have to be a committed, converted, proselytizing vegetarian to eat a diet less oriented to meat. Besides, many self-described vegetarians are not, strictly speaking, vegetarians. Today’s rules seem pretty flexible, sometimes to the point where there is not much difference between vegetarians and people who eat moderate amounts of meat.

These are those “rules” and half-assed labels I’ve complained about before. Again, any move to a more plant-based diet is A Good Thing, but to say that “there is not much difference between vegetarians and people who eat moderate amounts of meat” is to imply that, hey, vegetarians won’t mind if you give them soup with chicken stock.

We do not hear, either, that a vegetarian diet promotes weight loss, probably because studies have not been done. But I don’t know any overweight vegetarians, though maybe they are walking around hungry.

I’m going to avoid going on a long rant here, but I have a big problem when vegetarianism is promoted as the ultimate weight loss solution or some such. For one, overweight does not automatically mean unhealthy just as thin doesn’t always mean healthy. There are a lot of factors that come into play, like genetics. To me, it’s more constructive to be physically active and to try and eat a healthy, varied diet (leaving ethics aside for the moment) with a focus on whole grains, vegetables, and fruits. If you eat well and are active and are considered “healthy” by metrics other than weight or BMI, then don’t stress out about a number.

Secondly, I know a number of “overweight” vegetarians… and vegans for that matter. I also know a number of unhealthy vegetarians/vegans. Giving up meat isn’t a miracle cure that will automatically make you instantly healthy if you don’t exercise and continue to eat heavily processed snacks in place of meals.

Lastly, the “walking around hungry” part… what the hell is that even supposed to mean?

Still, it sometimes takes a bit more technique to produce vegetarian food that pleases the spoiled palate. For example, I generally make chickpea soup with chicken stock and sausage. But I found that I could create a soup with just as much flavor and body as my original version by slow-cooking the onions until they are brown; by exploiting the fact that, unlike other dried legumes, chickpeas produce a delicious broth as they cook; and by adding spinach, whose character is just as distinctive as that of sausage. Serve this with homemade croutons if you can, or at least with good bread.

Though it may have been implied, it’s something that needs to be explicitly stated for a mainstream publication: use a one-to-one replacement of vegetable stock for chicken stock. It’s easy to do and personally, I could never taste the difference. Even the powdered stuff or bullion cubes you buy in the store taste just fine.

If you visit a Chinese market, you should find prepressed tofu, often cut into strips. Also known as pressed bean curd or extra-firm tofu, it has a brown exterior and is usually packed in plastic, without water.

Extra-firm tofu doesn’t mean prepressed and the kind I’ve bought have never had a brown exterior unless they’ve been pre-cooked and marinated.

Even with all these minor annoyances, the overall message of the article is right on: the idea that vegetarian cooking is boring is extremely outdated. I can honestly say that since I’ve become vegetarian, I’ve never eaten so well. No cuisine of the world is off-limits (OK, well maybe Hungarian food because every recipe I’ve ever seen has lard, but otherwise…) and there are as many preparation styles as there are cooks. It’s always heartening to see the mainstream press confirm this for themselves.

The Washington Post is running a story about how low-carb product sales are declining, which I would never have guessed with the myriad new products claiming “low carb” on their labels, even if they never had any carbs to begin with. Really, if I never hear the abbreviation “carb” again, I’ll be happy.

The one good thing that came about from the Atkins/Zone/South Beach/etc. diets is that now it’s not so hard to find whole wheat hot dog and hamburger buns for my not dogs and veggie burgers.

(Yeah, that’s a pretty stupid title.)

Inside Triathlon is running a feature called Coast to Coast where an Oregon man named Barry Holman joins two friends for a two week, 900-mile trek from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Little Rock, Arkansas as they train for a triathlon. Barry’s vegan and has a funny story on
Day 12:

Can’t kill “The Vegan”

I’ve developed a nickname on this odyssey. It’s “The Vegan.” I don’t eat any meat or animal products (dairy, eggs, etc.). It’s not a huge deal for me; I’ve been eating like that for more than three years, and it predates my first Ironman. But it freaks out a lot of people who think I might tip over at any minute from a meat deficiency. Gordo isn’t a reactionary and was curious about my eating. I’d even call him vegan friendly because when I’m cooking he always asks, “Can you make a little extra of that? I’d like some.”

Still, he was pretty sure that at some point I’d crack from fatigue. About my fifth day he said to me, “I thought you’d blow up after the third day. That’s usually when the guys on Epic Camp [the 12-day camps he and 1988 Ironman Hawaii champ Scott Molina organize] crumble. But you’re hanging in there pretty well — better than I thought a vegan would.”

With only two full days of training left (my flight leaves at 12:30 on May 5, so I’ll only get in an early swim and run), Gordo felt as though I’d made it through enough of the training for him to give me an assessment of my strengths and the areas I need to address to improve. He started the conversation by saying, “We’ve thrown everything at you we have in terms of volume, and you just absorb it and bounce back. I’m really amazed, especially given your diet. I keep saying to Clas, ‘What are we going to do? We’ve tried everything and we just can’t kill the vegan!’”

I think I pretty well failed at concealing a big smile when he said that, because on days seven to 10, when things were feeling pretty dark, I wrote a note to myself that I was, “Carrying the weight of Vegandom.” A ridiculous self-absorbed fatigue-induced delusion, I know. I was, however, concerned that if I had a day where I simply couldn’t go on physically or mentally that it might be perceived as a weakness not as much in me as in the way I eat. The upside of that particular delusion was that it was a really great motivator and gave me something outside of the deep fatigue to focus on.

This is a good accompanying story for a piece I wrote on one of my other web sites about ultramarathons (imagine a marathon, but stretched to 100 miles) and vegan “ultramarathonner” Scott Jurek. Jurek is also featured in this month’s Herbivore.

In the “Meat as Weapon” category, a Tompkinsville, NY father has been charged with beating his son with beef jerky.

I don’t recall any Tofurky Jerky-related incidents like this one.

(via Obscure Store)

CNN recently ran an article titled Experts stress post-exercise eating, where they discuss how low-carb diets can be harmful because of the body’s need for carbohydrates during the recovery stages of strenuous exercise. I was struck by the juxtaposition of the article and banner ads for the Atkins diet, especially the first time I loaded page:

Not only is it an Atkins’ ad, but an ad featuring a woman stretching, presumably post-exercise.

Now this is just strange: Cow Caught Walking Through Bank.

According to this February news blurb, a dairy cow that was meant to be the “guest of honor” at a wedding in Wunstorf, Germany (presumably the bride was going to milk her, as is tradition) “took a detour” and wandered into a bank. She walked in, looked around a bit, and left without incident. The story above has a slideshow that includes security camera footage from the bank.

(Thanks to Amy for sending this along.)

‘Flexitarians’: Vegetarians who eat meat

I’ll say this one more time: if you eat meat, don’t claim you’re a vegetarian.

Sometimes I feel like labels and classifications just get in the way of the real issues, but if the terms vegetarian and vegan are not very clearly delineated in people’s minds, then vegetarians are going to continue to be served soups based on chicken stock in restaurants because servers or chefs don’t know any better.

To avoid being flogged by meat-eating visitors, I should also repeat this: yes, I think cutting that any effort made to cut back on meat is a good thing. It’s this ambiguous labeling that I have an issue with.

If there was ever any doubt that some people just don’t deserve to exist: Dogs go hog wild: Some object to event pitting canines against feral pigs.

The Feliciana Hog Dog Festival, like other “hog dog rodeos” across the South, features one-on-one confrontations between feral hogs and dogs trained to hunt them in the wild.

Most of the dogs entered in the competition appear to be pit bull terriers or pit bull mixtures. The hogs’ tusks are removed with bolt cutters to lessen the chance of injury to the dogs.

An interesting link culled from Vegan Porn: apparently evidence shows that Roman glaidators were vegetarian, and possibly vegan:

Karl Grossschmidt, a forensic anthropologist at Vienna University, used chemical testing on the bones [of more than 70 gladiators recently found near Ephesus, the Roman capital of Asia Minor] to reveal that gladiators stuck to a diet of barley and beans to bulk out.

It was a boring diet, he admitted. “They got enough of this food every day to make them very fat and strong,” he said. He concluded that they devised the diet primarily to protect themselves from slashing wounds and damage to nerves and blood vessels, with the layer of fat supplementing their scant armour.

So much for the stereotypical image of skinny, weak vegetarians!

A sweet guy preaches a raw message

Sure, we all knew that Woody Harrelson was vegan. Most of us probably even knew he had transitioned to a partially raw diet. But am I the only one that had no idea that the “hero of hemp farmers” had stopped smoking weed (a number of times)? Sure his attempts were short-lived and he’s mainly preaching a “moderation” message now, but I had always kind of pictured him like the modern day Bob Marley, minus the music.

A good read with some interesting thoughts on raising vegan children.

If you’ve been following the stories about avian flu in Vietnam (and now Thailand), a story from last Wednesday sets an even more potentially disastrous scenario than most people initially thought:

There’ve been nearly 900,0000 chickens that farmers have sold to the market from the beginning of January, mostly from Long An and Tine Giang,” said Nguyen Van Thong, deputy director of the veterinary department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, referring to the two hardest-hit provinces. The chickens were still alive when sold.

900,000. There’s a lot of potential there for a major health disaster, even moreso if the virus mutates, as Erik over at Vegan.com has mentioned.

This is also interesting because I’ve been to Long An. My mother-in-law’s boyfriend’s family lives there, and when I traveled to Vietnam with my wife and her mother back in 1998, we stopped in Long An a number of times. Coincidentally, Long An is where I had water with ice—the only time during my entire trip since the ice is usually chopped on the sidewalk—and I got extremely sick for three days because of it.

My mother-in-law is currently in Vietnam visiting family. I’m curious what the mood is like in Vietnam right now, but we haven’t gotten any e-mail from her since the avian flu was first discovered. We wrote to her to tell her, “Don’t eat the chicken.”

A new development today: KFC in Vietnam has switched to serving fish.

Six people have died thusfar from the flu.

This week’s “Ask Tom” (that’s Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic) feature in the Washington Post has an interesting question with regards to how he rates restaurants and how a particular restaurant’s rating is affected by their willingness and ability to deal with vegetarian requests.

Washington, D.C.: Hey Tom: Do you ever include a vegetarian companion, or request a veggy option, while reviewing a restaurant? It seems to me that the way a chef deals with a vegetarian customer can be a good, shorthand way to distinguish good kitchens from truly great ones. Many very expensive places can muster only some variation of pasta primavera or a mix of their side dishes for the evening. Truly great places (I’m remembering specific meals at The Inn, Elysium, La Grenouille in NYC) see it as a challenge and often devise something so wonderful that other diners leave wishing they had ordered a veggy option. Should a kitchen get the coveted 4th star if they lack the flexibility and imagination to cook something amazing without meat or fish?

Tom Sietsema: I eat from the full range of a restaurant’s menu, so if there are vegetarian options available, chances are, I’ll try them. All the restaurants that I consider to be worthy of four stars can do amazing things without meat or fish.

“All the restaurants that I consider to be worthy of four stars can do amazing things without meat or fish.” I like that.

Another source of Mad Cow news worth keeping an eye on: Organic Consumers Association (though an RSS feed would be nice).

Also, something I learned from Vegan Porn: hot dogs in the United States can include cow brains. Apparently, brains have been banned in all UK meat production but they’re still allowed in by-products like hot dogs in the States. See this Reuters report for more information.

‘You Don’t Eat Meat? Then You Don’t Eat!’

In this story from the Pacific News Service, a 23-year-old Iranian-American discusses the difficulty of being vegetarian after growing up as part of a very meat-centric culture. Her story is probably familiar to us in one way or another when we’ve had to explain why we’re vegetarian or what being vegetarian means to those close to us that just don’t understand.

I was raised on jeegar (cow tongue), kabob (beef or chicken cooked on a skewer) and mahi (fish). I can’t name a single dish I ate as a child that didn’t contain meat. Almost no vegetarian Iranian dishes exist. Even lubia polo, which is Spanish-style rice and string beans, contains little pieces of ground beef. That’s why, to my 75-year-old grandmother, not eating meat just doesn’t make sense.

Jeez, I go away for a few days and mad cow is discovered in the United States.

To get up-to-date, I suggest visiting VegSource.com and Vegan.com, both of whom have kept track of recent events on their front pages. In addition, I’ve added a temporary “mad cow” feed to the news feeds page.

Hope you all had a happy holiday. I was working my way through a nasty cold, so my Christmas dinner was a bowl of miso soup and some tasty sides from my family’s main meal.

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Falsely Diagnosed as Malnutrition from Vegan Diet

Erik at Vegan.com pointed out this frustrating and saddening article about a family whose young child died of what was originally thought to be malnutrition due to a vegan diet but was later proven to be caused by carbon monoxide poisoning from an exhaust vent. Unfortunately, the state of Utah is ignoring this “clear case of carbon monoxide poisoning” and is taking one of the couple’s other children away because the state is still convinced that the baby’s vegan diet was to blame for its death.

Unbelievable.

A Killing Floor Chronicle

He once shot a man to death in the parking lot of a bar. He served in the American invasion of Panama and recalled killing enemy soldiers at close range. That is not the violence that drives him to his keyboard.

He is haunted, instead, by the nine years he made his way in the world by slaughtering chickens.

This Los Angeles Times article talks about Virgil Butler‘s life as an employee at a chicken slaughterhouse. The article and his blog are worthwhile reads. It’s a rare case where slaughterhouse stories are not being told by an infiltrator or someone who’s interviewed employees, but by a long-time employee himself.

Tyson’s (his former employer) stance on his stories is that he’s “a disgruntled worker who invented tales of slaughterhouse horror only after he lost his job.”

I have no reason to point out this article except for this sentence fragment:

An activist animal “rights” group says vegan food has gone mainstream…

Why is “rights” in quotes? Is this some smart ass way of implying that animals don’t have rights? Or is it just poor journalism? Probably both.

Battling the Bird

A wild turkey is an unwelcome visitor at a California mobile home park. The bird chases cars, leaves its droppings about, and generally annoys the residents. If you were a believer in stereotypes, you’d think that someone would have come out of their mobile home and taken a shot at the turkey, particularly with Thanksgiving approaching. But if you know better, than you won’t be surprised at this:

[Gloria] Wagner tried calling every agency she could think of, attempting to find someone who will catch the turkey and return it to a natural environment. She does not believe that a Thanksgiving plate is a suitable alternative.

“I’m a vegetarian. I would just like it returned to the wild.”

Unfortunately, the agencies she’s called haven’t responded.

One final amusing note: the last sentence of the story starts with, “To report a turkey problem…” That’s just not a phrase you read very often.

Did you see the cow with six legs? The cow, who is being taken care of by monks at a Buddhist pagoda in Cambodia, has an extra pair of legs protruding from her back. Her name is “Cham Leck,” which means “Strange” in Khmer.

Notice the headline? “Rare Cow is a Sixy Beast.” Those folks at Sky News have a sense of humor, alright.

‘Bleating Hearts’ to rescue

This Rocky Mountain News article talks about the Colorado-based sanctuary for farm animals, whose owners were inspired by the Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. Good spawns good.

(Related: Rocky Mountain Animal Defense)

Do you think McDonald’s in the United States will take notice of this somewhat surprising trend in Australia’s McDonald’s?:

McDonald’s Australia Ltd chief executive and managing director Guy Russo said the salads, yoghurt and vegetarian burgers introduced alongside the restaurant chain’s Cheeseburgers and Big Macs two months ago had proven to be a hit.

…

“Customers are buying the products – we have probably in the first four weeks sold what we thought would take three months to sell.”

What more proof could McDonald’s need that a veggie burger should be added to their menu?

Man I get frustrated when I read articles like “Study surprise: Low-carb dieters eat more, lose weight.” It’s another in a series of recent “hey, low-carb diets actually help you lose weight!” studies. But take note of several things here:

1. This is “a small but carefully controlled study.” How small? 21 people.
2. The point of the study was that the dieters on a low-carb diet were given 300 more calories, yet they didn’t gain weight because of it. However, the only health-related mention (remember, health and weight don’t always map one-to-one) is that the low-carbers didn’t raise their cholesterol levels. But there’s a lot more that needs to be considered, particularly with the high levels of saturated fat that many high-fat diets involve.
3. This one’s the most important. We all know that there has yet to be a worthwhile long-term study of the effects of a low-carb diet on the body. This skimpy study, somehow worthy of almost 800 words on CNN, ran for a mere twelve weeks.

As far as I’m concerned, this “study” is worthless.

On the other side of the coin, Time is featuring a much better (but not perfect) article titled “How to Eat Smarter.” A kind of funny quote from the article regarding the Mediterranean diet:

“The Mediterranean diet works well in the Mediterranean,” says Yale’s [David] Katz. “My concern about it in the U.S. is that people will continue to go to Burger King but just dump olive oil over their French fries.”

While the article doesn’t even bring up a vegetarian or vegan diet as a possibility, it does lean toward the “more vegetables, less meat” message.

According to this article, the “jerky market” (as in beef and its various flavor variations). Strange. And gross.

The article says that “the growing popularity of low-carbohydrate diets has boosted sales.” More proof that people will believe whatever they want to about nutrition.

There’s no word on any changes in the Tofurky Jurky market.

(via Obscure Store)

The Veal Deal

Get past the annoying trying-to-be-clever questions and this is actually a good interview Kari Nienstedt, the Arizona spokesperson for Farm Sanctuary. Among other things, she discusses a topic not often talked about, animal rights activist burnout:

[Farm animal rights activist burnout is] a big problem, and there’s no organization in place to address it. It happens when you start thinking about how many people on the planet eat meat, and how your family doesn’t understand your position, and pretty soon you’re depressed and ready to go back to eating meat.

Mfume weighs in on animal rights

“We’re delighted and not at all surprised that he supports animal rights and justice,” [PETA director of vegan outreach Bruce] Friedrich said. “I am deeply impressed that someone who is so busy working on human justice issues [, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume,] would take some time out for the chickens as well.”

The Washington Post ran a great piece the other day about Compassion Over Killing, a local organization that takes the friendly (but not easy) route to spreading the vegetarian word.

“We need to stop looking at this as all or nothing, black or white,” says Paul Shapiro, 24, who founded Compassion Over Killing as a high school club at Georgetown Day School in Northwest Washington. “For most people,” giving up meat and dairy “might be a daunting endeavor. What if we convert two people to be vegetarian half the time? That’s the same as converting one person to be vegetarian all the time, and it’s probably easier.”

Time for a link dump to catch up on some stuff in the news. Let’s start with:

Study Reports Increase in Portly Pets

If you haven’t gotten enough of the “America’s so fat!” message recently, here’s a study pointing to the increase in the site of our companion animals. The reason I mention the story, though, is that they mention vegetarian diets for cats and dogs:

Cats, the report notes, are descended from carnivores and their digestive system is designed for absorbing nutrients from animal-based proteins and fats.

Cats should not be fed a vegetarian diet because it could result in harmful deficiencies of certain amino acids, fatty acids, and vitamins, the report stresses.

While dogs prefer animal-based food, they can survive on a vegetarian diet as long as it contains sufficient protein and other nutrients, the report adds.

A question for Veg Blog readers: if you’re vegan or vegetarian and have a cat or dog, what do you feed them? I’d like to hear some different thoughts on if and how vegetarians’ beliefs affect how they raise their pet, especially ethical vegetarians.

In this Washington Post article about Gary Coleman and his tongue-in-cheek run for the California governor’s office, there’s one moderately interesting nugget that’s quickly glossed over. Apparently Coleman is in a recently-filmed independent movie titled A Christmas Too Many, which Coleman describes only as being about “a dysfunctional family who has a vegan Christmas.” It will also feature Mickey Rooney, Marla Maples, Clint Howard, Andrew Keegan, Austin O’Brien, Sean Young, and Ruta Lee. From the scarce information available online, it looks like this movie is scheduled for release in 2004.

Two arrested trying to save beached whale in Oregon

Bystanders tried to help a beached whale get back to sea, but were unable to as the animal thrashed about. Police came and got everyone out of the water for safety reasons, but they had to arrest a man after he pushed past police and went past a police rope in an attempt to get back to the whale. A woman who “interfered” with police after the incident was also arrested.

Penis in stew turn her veggie

[Sixty-year-old Sophie Matala, an employee at the Pretoria (India) Medforum Hospital] said that her ordeal started on May 11, 1999 when she sat down for lunch at the hospital canteen and ordered her favourite plate of goulash and began to take a few bites of the meat.

Matala said she found the meat slippery and could not cut it with a knife. She then placed it in her mouth but the meat was so tough that she could not bite it.

She then took the meat out of her mouth and inspected it with her colleagues. To her horror she found that it was a piece of penis …

Matala was so traumatised that she vomitted for the rest of the day and from that day was put-off by meat. She had since become a vegetarian.

Yeah, I would think unexpectedly finding a penis in your food might be a good impetus to go veggie.

The Washington Post has frequent online live food chats as part of their “What’s Cooking” series. Today’s edition is a vegetarian chat and has a lot of Q&A-style discussion. Among the topics discussed: soy milks, vegan butters, egg replacer, and the requisite “How can i get my protein?” question.

Vegan.com points out this opinion piece that denounces Paul McCartney, Jason Alexander, and Alec Baldwin for taking an interest in animal rights. The piece ends with the obnoxious statement that “Human children growing up in Soweto, Chechnya and Haiti should have pals like Paul, Jason and Alec, don’t you think?” implying that these celebrities should pay attention to starving children instead of animals.

What is with this inane argument against animal rights? As if we have some sort of limit on compassion and that if we send some love the animals’ way, we’re somehow taking attention away from human suffering? Come on now.

A bunch of animal stories in the news this week…

Man pleads guilty in deer’s death… In Asheville, NC, a man admitted to killing a deer that had been “adopted” by a herd of cattle. An officer wrote in a report of the incident: “Two men went into the cows and picked up a deer that was lying in the middle of the cows and were carrying it to the bank where we were standing… During which, all the cows followed the two men carrying the deer.”

Man should get maximum for torturing, killing cat on videotape… “During his trial, Power’s lawyer told court the art student and one-time vegetarian intended the video [of the torturing and killing of a cat] to be an art project showing that it was hypocritical for society to allow the killing of some animals for their meat but not others.”

And, finally, one with a happy ending: Curiosity saved the cat, a 13-year-old saved a cat being tortured by other teenagers and resucitated it with mouth-to-mouth.

The Observer has a great two-part article about Ingrid Newkirk, one of PETA’s founders. It’s a great read, a very balanced article that really focuses on the sometimes crazy passion that Newkirk has for animal rights. Sure, PETA’s “extreme” (but not nearly as extreme groups like ALF or SHAC), but hey… real change would never come if everyone was a moderate, right?

On a semi-related note, PETA is currently running their sexiest vegetarian poll for 2003. Man, their list of celebrities is exhaustive… everyone from Jeru the Damaja to Apu from the Simpsons to G. Gordon Liddy (!). I was particularly surprised that there were so many more men than women on the list… the general perception is that there are more female vegetarians than male (which may be true).

Arby’s sandwich had blood on it, man says

“Schapson, 43, said Tuesday he did not notice the blood until after eating the entire sandwich.

“I looked down at my hand and my hand is covered in blood, the wrapper is covered in blood.”

When you’ve eaten a whole sandwich without realizing there’s blood in it, it might be time to give up meat.

The Vegan Blog asks a good question: why does Dennis Kucinich, a vegan congressman/presidential hopeful, promote kielbasa on his page? It harkens back to his late-90s congressional run where he prescribed “polka, bowling, and kielbasa as the answer to civilization’s downfall.

Kucinich, a former Cleveland mayor, isn’t doing terribly well in his bid for the Democratic nomination, but is reportedly considering a run with the Green Party (former presidential candidate John Hagelin of the Natural Law Party has decided not to run this year and has thrown the party’s support behind Kucinich). His campaign should be interesting to watch, as he’s one of the few (only?) candidates in recent memory that’s been an outspoken animal-rights, vegan advocate. And he seems to be quite a character, to boot.

More information about Kucinich can be found on Politics1.com.

The Sacramento Bee is running a surprising article on freegans. “Freegans?” you say? Yup…

Freegans are essentially vegans that will eat something non-vegan as long as it’s free/scavanged for. This means that they’ll dumpster dive and have a non-vegan pastry. For freegans, it’s more about making a conscious effort to not support the meat/dairy/egg industries than it is to simply not eat something. Can’t say I’d ever go dumpster diving, but I guess the general philosophy behind what they do makes some sense.

What’s most interesting is that the article doesn’t take the easy route and make freegans seem like freaks, but actually presents a relatively balanced look and focuses on why they do what they do.

Reader Jen passed me a story seems to be making its rounds about a meat tree:

Fruit from the new Meat Trees, developed by British scientists using gene-splicing technology, closely resembles ordinary grapefruit. But when you peel the large fruit open, inside is fresh beef.

Of course, this shouldn’t be believed any more than a baby human with three heads born to a male cow… the story is in Yahoo!’s news and entertainment section, but is actually culled from the infamous Weekly World News. Still, it’s a funny concept.

If you’re interested in keeping up with the latest mad cow news now that it’s hit North America (c’mon, we all knew it was just a matter of time), use this Google News link and keep an eye on Veg Source, which has always done a good job at tracking this particular topic.

Rebecca Blood links up to “Neighbors of Vast Hog Farms Say Foul Air Endangers Their Health” in The New York Times. If the phrase “cesspools the size of football fields belonging to the industrial hog farm” whet your appetite for a little anti-factory farm reading, dig in…

Apparently, in India there are tens of thousands of housing co-operatives that were built to help eliminate housing discrimination based on caste or religion. However, it seems that some are discriminating based on diet, as mentioned in “Where’s the meat in the Veg-Only argument?.” Some opponents are arguing that this type of discrimination goes against the very integration that the housing co-ops stand for. “Compulsory vegetarianism goes against integration” makes for some good arguments against the idea of this form of housing discrimination.

I’d have to say I agree with the two quoted articles on the issue, though, admittedly, I don’t have too much in the way of background information on the subject. It just seems to me that the way to spread the word about anything, whether it’s vegetarianism, a religious belief, or a political stance, exclusion isn’t going to help your cause. Nevertheless, this will be a news story worth following (which you can do through this Google news link).

A vegetarian teen in the UK has reportedly died from the human form of “Mad Cow Disease”:

The family say they can’t understand how Jorawar contracted the disease when he was brought up in a vegetarian household and rarely ate beef. They believe the answer could lie in gelatin—a meat protein used in yoghurts, sweets and other food products.

Death-defying dog

A dog is hit by a car, a cop shoots her in the head to put her out of her misery, and the dog is put into a body bag in a freezer. A few hours later, an animal control worker opens up the freezer and the body bag is standing up… the dog was still alive.

A really amazing story. (via Alex)

According to the Vegan Blog, the Drug Enforcement Agency is continuing its battle against hemp. Not marijuana specifically, but hemp. The same hemp that contains high levels of healthy Omega-3 fatty acids, that can be made into more recyclable paper, and whose fibers are longer, stronger, more absorbent, and more mildew-resistant than cotton. Keep in mind that while hemp contains THC, the levels are so infinitesimally small that it would be nearly impossible to get any sort of “effect” from ingesting them.

It’s an absurd fight with no end result that can’t be obtained in a more logical way. The fight against marijuana (in my opinion, at least) is misdirected, but the fight against mere hemp seeds is akin to trying to ban the use of cameras because child pornography is illegal (though, obviously, child pornography is on a whole different level than marijuana).

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal is running a nice piece titled “Furless Venture,” a look at how Vegan Essentials has grown to a $30,000 per month mail order business. Courtney Ernster and Ryan Wilson discuss changes in their own eating and lifestyle habits as well as how they’ve managed to use a niche business to make a difference in the world while making a living.

Another odd Obscure Store story from Eugene, OR: Customers never tire of free beef, tofu.

For the past 40 years, the Les Schwab tire store chain has given away beef with the purchase of tires. As a spoof, a nearby bicycle store has been running ads for the last ten years offering a pound of tofu with the purchase of bike tires. Oddly, Les Schwab never even realized there was a spoof campaign and, to top it off, didn’t know what tofu was.

A kind of funny story by way of the Obscure Store: Fishy Story Tests Chasidic Town’s Beliefs.

At a fish market in New Square, NY, several workers are clamining that a carp has talked to them in Hebrew, telling them he is the reincarnation of a Jewish person back to perform “tikkun,” or healing. The fish jumped into a barrel, though, and when it couldn’t be found, it was eventually sold with the rest of the fish.

Whoever tries to fry up that fish will be in for a surprise…

And one final quick news story: “It’s amazing”: Cat missing for seven years comes back.

If you want a good laugh, check out this Time article about the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s attempt to make meat eating “cool” amongst teen girls. As you might expect of a cattlemen’s attempt to look “cool” to a young crowd, their site, Cool-2B-Real fails miserably. Apparently, you can only be “real” (and healthy) if you eat beef.

I would have loved to sit in on the meetings between the NCAB and the site’s designers… imagaging the archetypal Texas cattleman, donning a cowboy hat, telling the designer, “No, no, son… I think we need lots more pink. Yeah, pink. And girls building pyramids. And don’t forget the flowers!”

I guess it’s only natural to feel frustrated sometimes when you’re part of a minority of any sort, whether it’s one by birth (race) or by choice (diet/beliefs). I mean, while articles like Is the meat-free diet for the chop? (an article about the decline of vegetarianism in Scotland which includes choice quotes like “There is a feeling that vegetarianism isn’t such a big deal any more. I’ve noticed a lot of people turning back to meat.”) are a dime a dozen and just serve to show that if you look at vegetarianism as a trend or a quick-fix diet rather than a life-long change, you’ll eventually “get tired” of it. Whatever. Articles like this one are just nonsense filler with no real point or, forgive the term, meat.

What really gets me frustrated is in-fighting. I’ve been seeing in it amongst all sorts of groups, including some you’d never expect there to be such anger being tossed around. An appropriate example to share here is the hot topic in the vegetarian movement: the disbursement of money from the McDonald’s beef-flavored-fries lawsuit amongst “vegetarian groups.” The long argument made short: some vegetarian activists were angry at how the money was being distributed, with certain organizations getting a lot and some other worhty organizations getting none. There’s also controversy about the ethics of the lawyers involved, but I’ll leave it to you to read the full story on the link above. The VegSource folks have struck hard at McDonald’s and groups like the Vegetarian Resource Group (one article VegSource wrote was titled “Sleeping with the Enemy”) for their stance in the issue and their own willingness to accept such a large sum of money for themselves.

I get frustrated because all this fighting, mudslinging, and name-calling takes away focus from what’s really important: getting information out to the public that speaks well for the vegetarian movement. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not taking sides here. I think Jeff Nelson has a point and he articulates it well, and I also think that the manner in which the lawsuit was handled is shady. But when I visit web sites to read about vegetarian food, animal rights issues, or battles against big business, I don’t want my attention to be drawn to in-fighting amongst groups that should be on the same side, you know?

Anyway.

As all that was getting me riled up, Erik posted a link on Vegan.com to a well-written op-ed piece in a University of Texas at Arlington school paper titled Thought Food: Alternative eating habits not only save animals but save on the bottom line. Taking a pro-vegetarian stance in Texas takes some guts. Of course, when the rebuttal uses the incredibly tired “animals exist for human use and consumption, which is simply proven by the fact that every human being possesses carnivorous incisors in their mouth” argument, a pro-vegetarian stance will make sense to all but the most staunch meat-eaters.

So do me a favor: find some “happy news” or share some information about good food you’ve been eating. Let’s brighten things up around here…

A pair of interesting cow-related stories in the news this week…

The first story comes from Vietnam, where seven cows wandered onto a Danang runway, delaying two flights and cancelling two others. The cows belonged to army units in the area and had broken free from their corrals. (via VP)

The second story involves a two-headed calf. In this rare physical anomaly, the calf was born with two faces,one brain, and three eyes. When the calf eats with one side of his mouth, the other moves as well. “Little Bud” would likely have died shortly after birth, but 17-year-old Bethany Goodermote took care of the newborn calf. Most calves with this deformity die, but Little Bud is doing well a month later and may survive, doctors say. (via OS)

Good news: according to Habitat for Horses, Nevada has extended the deadline from today to February 5th. Thusfar, over 600 of the 800 horses have been adopted/saved. Looks like the efforts of the horse rescue organizations are really paying off!

Female Providers: Researchers Begin to Doubt Early Man’s Hunting Role

According to some new anthropological research, the idea of early man hunting to provide food for his family may not be all that accurate. “The key roles in nourishing the evolution of people’s ancestors may have been played by females—mothers and grandmothers.”

In addition, the idea that high-protein meat eating is what helped mankind’s brain evolve may also be incorrect. “I think the brain change associated with meat-eating is overrated,” says James O’Connell, director of the Archaeological Center at the University of Utah. Rather, various finds lead researchers to believe the high risk and low return of hunting large game only paid off once a month or so, not enough to feed a family. Hunting may have been done more to elevate social status within a tribe rather than provide the main food source for a family.

It’s an interesting criticism of conventional wisdom that early man hunted meat to provide for his family, when in reality it’s possible that neither meat nor man played nearly as important of a role as initially thought.

Clock ticks on national effort to rescue horses

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that 800 wild horses roaming public land in Nevada are scheduled to be slaughtered by Thursday if they aren’t claimed. The United Equine Foundation and more than a dozen other horse rescue organizations are trying to get people to adopt these wild horses and save them from death. Hopefully they’ll be successful and can find homes for the majority of the horses.

More information is available at Habitat for Horses.

Here’s an odd story: fruit has been banned in a Los Angeles County prision. Why, you ask? Pruno.

Pruno, “cellblock wine,” is made of fruit, sugar, and cafeteria punch. “It is potent, easy to brew and has been around for ages,” the article says. Starting in October, the prision stopped serving fresh fruit in the boxed lunches given to prisoners to make pruno production more difficult, with the end result being to lessen violence and substance addiction in the prison. State corrections officials are considering a state-wide ban on fresh fruit.

“Prisons already are prohibited from serving three popular pruno ingredients — oranges, raisins and sugar packets. But a state report determined that creative prisoners can make pruno from yams, flavored gelatin, honey, hard candies — anything with sugars that can be converted into alcohol in the fermentation process.” … “‘Some institutions have tried, and they’ve found that about the only thing they can serve is meat,’ [state corrections spokesman Russ ] Heimerich said. ‘You can make [pruno] out of ketchup. Some inmates were even using the frosting off of cakes. It’s pretty much an unwinnable battle.’”

Fruit is still served in the cafeteria during breakfast and dinner.

Tattoos linked to risk-taking behaviour

The general theme of this article is kind of interesting, if not terribly enlightening: “teens with body piercing and tattoos are risk takers who are more likely to be involved with cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana than teens without piercing or tattoos.” And within those two groups, the teens with tattoos live closer to the edge than those with just piercings. The study says that teens with tatoos are “64 per cent more likely to believe marijuana should be legalized.”

However, included in the so-called “risk-taking behaviour” is a vegetarian diet: “Teenagers with tattoos are … 53 per cent more likely to be vegetarians.” I realize this is likely presented as more of a “Hey, look at these kids, they have tattoos and they shun the societal norm of eating meat! They’re wacky!,” but with the headline as it is, vegetarianism is lumped in with drinking alcohol, smoking, and doing drugs. Oh, and with listening to all that crazy “Goth, Punk, Metal and Electronica” music.

<sarcasm>The kids today are just amazing with their wild music and weird dietary choices, aren’t they?</sarcasm>

Boy will get award for saving pups

A nine-year-old boy will be recognized as a hero next week in his Santa Cruz community after saving two small puppies’ lives. He spotted the puppies in the back seat of a car with the windows barely cracked on a 90 degree August day. The boy grabbed his Super Soaker and shot water into the car, cooling the pups off until police and animal control could come and rescue the dogs. Both puppies have since been adopted.

Ever wonder what happens to the millions of pounds of meat that are recalled? Slate Answers: among other things, it’s set aside for “rendering into nonhuman protein sources� i.e., dog and livestock food.”

If you’re interested in reading more about Listeria, the food-borne bacteria that can be found in meat or on vegetables, see About-Listeria.com and the USDA’s site.

Another interesting fact about this most recent recall: according to Vegan.com, this particular recall “amounts to over two million birds slaughtered and thrown away.”

Man shoots monkey that was nursing its baby.

Monkey dies, man’s arrested, but the baby won’t let go of the mother.

Police take dead monkey and baby to the police station.

Thirty monkeys swarm the station. A couple of them sneak in and take the baby. Wow.

(via Vegan Porn)

Jason R., a Vegan.com reader, passed along a great story from my former neck-of-the-woods: En route to healthy living aboard his trusty bicycle.

70-year-old Bill Cotton is an avid bicyclist that recently rode 340 miles in 40 hours, all in one trip. Cotton coverted to an almost entirely vegan diet about four years ago and rides about 100 miles a week. “My barbecue ribs are the best in the world, but I don’t cook them anymore” … “Instead, he satisfies his palate with cheesecake and bread pudding made from tofu.”

Surely, an inspiring story of someone who eats well and takes care of himself, even in old age.

Vegan.com pointed out this great article from the Detroit Free Press: Hungry for Vegetarian: Vegan lifestyle satisfying. It’s an unusually positive spin on veganism, showing that it is a reasonable way to live and raise a family, if it’s done right. I smiled when I read the seven-year-old daughter’s comments about kale: “I don’t think anyone in the whole school knows about kale, and they should. It’s soooooooo good. The water goes into the kale when you cook it, and when you eat into it, it ruuuuuuns down your face. I love it! It’s great!”

If only everyone could be so enthusiastic about eating their vegetables!

The Salt Lake Tribune has an interesting story titled “Meat Eaters Try Martian Fare and Learn to Like Lentil Loaf,” which discusses a Cornell University experiment where researchers were looking to create a diet for the first human inhabitants of Mars. The diet was dairy and meat free (and presumably egg-free as well), consisting largely of beans, grains, and setian. All of the participants were omnivores who lost weight, but steadied at their new weight, on their new vegetarian diet. Not surprisingly, they returned to their previous weight when they returned to their normal diet.

Though the article doesn’t really present anything we didn’t already know about vegetarianism’s health benefits, it takes a look at the issue from a unique perspective.

TIME Magazine‘s cover article this week is “Should You be a Vegetarian?.” Of course, my answer to this thought-provoking question is “Hell no! Why would you want to do something like that?” :)

Their look at veganism, unfortunately, will do nothing to erase the misconception that you’re vegetarian if you eat chicken or fish, but otherwise is a relatively balanced look at the issue. One quote I like: “It takes constant vigilance and a thick skin.” Yeah… especially when reading quotes like this: “We would never have evolved as large, socially active hominids if we hadn’t turned to meat.”

Overall, a good take on things. One thing I would like to have seen more of: a discussion of the better vegetarian, vegan, and raw restaurants and a few recipes for newbies to try.

And a final interesting note: on the site’s poll, 3/4 of the takers believe that a “well-balanced vegetarian diet” is healthier than a meat-based diet.

Comforting fact of the day: Hispanics, Blacks, and White Women Care About Vegetarian Eating, The Environment, Farmed Animals, Says Zogby Poll.

Guess who doesn’t?

White males. “Sixty-two percent of blacks, 62 percent of Hispanics, and 55 percent of white women said that they were more likely to stop drinking milk after hearing that male dairy calves are sold to the veal industry. In contrast, only 31 percent of white men were moved by this revelation.”

(via Vegan.com)

The Salon interview with Ted Nugent that everyone seems to be linking to is interesting: both sides seem to consider it a great article because it proves their point. While his arguments against factory farming are familiar to ethical vegetarians: “Chickens are incarcerated; some are more feces-pecking, deathrow toxic than others”, his opinion on vegetarians is also made painfully clear: “Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians — except for the occasional mountain lion steak.”

At least he plants trees, though, right? … Right?

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately, so let me play catch up and pass along a handful of links I’ve been meaning to post:

Vegan Blog: The (Eco)Logical Weblog… Aside from the bird noises that greet you when you open the page, this new blog is very thorough and full of news and opinion. My only concern: there’s so much new content every day, will he be able to keep up the pace? It doesn’t matter—even 25% output on this blog would still be great reading.

Mediterranean Pasta Salad… I really enjoyed Christiane’s recipe over on Haught Cuisine. It was easy, fresh tasting, and tasted great the next day. Click through and read the comment about my basil blooper.

Africa ‘needs GM crops to survive’… This BBC story was passed along by Veg Blog reader Ann C. Many African scientists are looking at the widespread starvation and disease on the continent and are convinced that GM crops are the only solution. “At a cost of maybe five cents we could have distributed vaccine in a food easily eatable by most of the people in this country who normally would not have access to it.”

A Better Way to Feed the Hungry… Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé (of Diet for a New Planet fame) argue against the (Bill) Gates Foundation’s funding of fortified processed foods as a way to fight malnutrition. “Gates seems to believe we don’t have time to address the complex social and political roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus, top-down, technical intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people he wants to help.” Also passed along by Ann.

Fast Food Nation: An Appetite for Litigation… And one more from Ann. Attorney John Banzhaf (the first person to sue the tobacco companies in the mid-60s) now plans to prosecute the junk food industry for making Americans obese. Interesting tactic, but a wasted effort, I think. I’d much prefer to see the money that will be spent fighting this out going towards health-education campaigns promoting whole, unprocessed foods.

Ethics and Vegetarianism… The author of this paper, Deepak Tivedi, dropped me a note to let me know about this “technical work in Applied Ethics.” It looks to be a good read and has been published by Green Planet.

Research at Great Lakes meeting shows more vitamin C in organic oranges than conventional oranges… There hasn’t been much research done about whether or not organic produce has more nutrional benefits than conventionally grown produce. One researcher set out to prove that organic oragnes would be lower in vitamin C content than conventionally grown ones because of the smaller size. However, he found that organic oranges—even though they are half the size of their conventionally grown counterparts—contain up to 30% more vitamin C! This is something to keep an eye on. (via Vegan.com)

Some good news from the NCAA: from now on, they’ll use non-leather basketballs made of synthetic materials, at the request of PeTA. “The production is much simpler and it doesn’t involve raising animals which is a very costly procedure,” said NCAA spokeswoman Jane Jankowski. Next stop: the NBA. (Vegan.com)

After the so-called “vegan” parents (who used cod liver oil) neglected their child, now the accused murderer of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is being identified as a vegan animal-rights activist, even though it doesn’t seem to have any relevancy to his motive. Interestingly, according to this AP article, he doesn’t sound like a super-hardliner and Fortuyn had “reasonable views on the bio-industry… Fortuyn believed that new agricultural policy needed to be animal friendly.”

I never really noticed it before, but there is a pretty disturbing media bias in reporting anything to do with veganism.

Striking close to home: Avian Flu Outbreak Forces Slaughter of 3.2 Million Chickens, Turkeys

We read last year about the destruction of 16,000 chickens in Connecticut for the same thing. The article stresses that “birds with the virus pose no health threat to humans, but it stunts the birds’ growth and limits their capacity to lay eggs, hurting market value.” To top it all off, one of the recent tornados in the area tore apart one of the turkey houses beyond any possibility of being salvaged.

Remember this story about the high school gym coach that bit a live sparrow’s head off in front of his wrestling team and claimed it was “innocent fun” and that “If I can kill one sparrow, one time, and it have a positive impact on 15 kids, in my mind it’s worthwhile”? Well, the charges against him have been dropped. He could have faced a maximum $5,000 fine and a year in prison, but instead served only a two-week suspension without pay imposed and was suspended indefinitely from the Cloverdale Police Department, where he is a reserve officer. The charges were dropped in exchange for two whole days (yeah, that was enough) of community service.

Atkins diet author home after cardiac arrest

He says his cardiac arrest is not related to his high-protein, low-carb diet, but rather to cardiomyopathy, a non-coronary condition. “I want the public to know the truth, not every condition affecting the heart comes from a blockage. A controlled carbohydrate lifestyle really prevents risk factors for heart disease,” said Atkins.

Oh, by the way, in case you hadn’t heard: Atkins has never had a single peer-reviewed article published. Interesting for a doctor in any field, eh?

(via VegSource)

Why Hitler Was Not a Vegetarian

Some information to debunk the long-standing, popular myth.

“Under the headline, ‘Don’t Put Hitler Among the Vegetarians,’ the correspondent (Richard Schwartz, author of Judaism and Vegetarianism) pointed out that Hitler would occasionally go on vegetarian binges to cure himself of excessive sweatiness and flatulence, but that his main diet was meat-centered.”

The “Mad Cowboy” Howard Lyman was on Politically Incorrect on Monday with Tom “My 15 Minutes are So Past” Green, Florence Henderson, and Humberto Fontova (who?). The transcript is available online.

The entire show was devoted to discussing meat and the health and environmental issues associated with it. Unfortunately, the transscript is a frustrating read with three of the four guests attacking Lyman’s stance without giving him much of a chance to respond. Bill Maher, the host, was surprisingly quiet during the discussion, despite his well-known status as a vegetarian and his support of PETA.

The biggest news for the vegetarian community in the last few days has been the debut of the Burger King Veggie Burger. It’s a big step—while some fast food restaurants offer veggie burgers, it appears this is the first that will be served nationally. On top of that, it’s considered a “permanent addition” to the menu and Burger King plans to actually advertise the burger on television. If the burger does well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other fast food joints following suit.

I’ll be honest: this isn’t going to make me a Burger King customer. I may try the burger once to show some support for the product, but I’m not going to be driving through any more often than I am now (that is to say, never). I don’t think I’m the target audience, though. I think that having a veggie burger right alongside their beef burgers will help elevate the veggie burger in the eyes of the general public.

A few notes… while the burger was originally planned to be vegan and served on a vegan whole wheat bun, that’s only partially the case. The burger itself is vegan safe, but the bun isn’t whole wheat and has trace amounts of dairy in it (“natural and artificial butter flavorings,” confirmed to be animal-derived by Vegan.com’s Erik Marcus). If you’re lacto-vegetarian, than it’s not an issue, but it’s something to be aware of if you’re vegan. Personally, I think it would have been great if they made it a whole wheat bun, just from a health standpoint. The fast food diet is severely lacking in whole grains, and this would have been the perfect time to introduce a whole wheat bun as an option.

The new burger is served with a newly-introduced low-fat mayo (which you can ask them to hold) and, here’s the big one, vegetarians of all types should ask BK to microwave the burger rather than have it cooked on the same surface at their beef burgers (thanks to Erik for mentioning these suggestions).

While the fact remains that Burger King’s business exists mainly to sell meat products, I applaud Burger King’s decision to launch this product and put some advertising muscle behind it. I hope for it to be a hit, if only to give a long-term boost to non-meat sales in fast food restaurants and elsewhere.

Today, the Washington Post took a good look at the attitudes of meat-eaters, vegetarians, and vegans (link via Alex). It starts with a brief overview of how, apparently, meat-eaters see vegetarians (as “wan and undernourished” people that “can’t understand why everyone won’t make allowances for what essentially is their own choice”) and vice-versa (“Meat eaters are rude… They think animal products are the only way to get protein”).

The article then discusses the stand-offish attutide of cookbook authors from each camp. Anthony Bourdain refers to vegans as “a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn” while Carol J. Adams says of meat-eaters, “I truly believed that when they asked about vegetarianism, they really wanted answers. I was wrong.”

Things conclude with a roundtable discussion with six DC-area vegans.

I think it’s a shame how this article seems to take the “us versus them” attitude of some people from both camps and really amplifies it. While I have run into meat-eaters that take absolute offense to even the most passive vegetarians, the majority of people I’ve talked to are understanding, respectful, and interested. At the same time, I’ve met a few “militant vegans,” but even among the misunderstood vegan community, the majority that I’ve met haven’t been the aggressive, self-righteous type, but rather laid back, intelligent people who made a choice for “compassion over killing.”

I think among the meat-eaters that do get offended by a vegetarian’s very existence, the problem tends to be that they feel threatened. They feel threatened that “we” are somehow going to take away their right to eat a fat steak and force them to eat a tofu gluten bulgur burger with a side of kidney beans and flax seeds. But that’s not the case. I know that I’d love it if family members became vegetarian, but I realize it’s a personal choice. And while I’d love for everyone I know to read about the horrors of factory farming practices and the political shadiness in the dairy, meat, and poultry industries, I know that forcing information on them won’t do any good. I wasn’t ready to hear it five years ago when I was eating cheeseburgers for lunch everyday, but when I was ready, that’s when the information made a difference in my life.

The best we can do is to answer questions and set a good example. Let people look at you and see your positive attitude, your good health, and your compassion for living things. Don’t let them see the bitter “I’m-right-you’re-wrong” attitude that some people associate with vegetarians. It’s the old idea of “lead by example.”

We can only change our own lives, but we can influence others’ without saying a word.

If you haven’t heard, some insurance firms in the UK are giving discounts to vegetarians because they’re likely to “take health matters more seriously and are less likely to be taken ill…” See “Veggies travel cheaper” for an overview of one company that’s discounting their travel insurance for vegetarians.

The most interesting part of this article, though, talks about what could be dubbed “falling coconut insurance.” Yup: they’ll insure you against falling coconuts. According to the article, each year 150 people are killed by falling coconuts and another 1,000 are injured.

Remember the suit against McDonald’s for their use of beef tallow in cooking their fries? Well, it’s just about settled. The proposed settlement, according to a “confidential draft” calls for McDonald’s to pay $6 million to vegetarian charities, $2 million to Hindu/Sikh groups, $1 million to promote children’s hunger relief, and $1 million to support kosher dietary practices. The settlement also calls for apologies in various magazines and for McDonald’s to form an advisory board to counsel the company on vegetarian issues. Beyond that, $2.4 million would go to the plaintiff’s attorneys. It’s important to note that McDonald’s “does not admit to any wrongdoing.” (Thanks to Paul for pointing this out.)

Meals, minus the beef: More colleges branching out into vegan, vegetarian cuisine

“At Smith and Bowdoin colleges, dishes like tempeh cacciatore… have become standard fare.” Wow… tempeh at college. When I was in college, I didn’t even know what tempeh was.

According to the article, Smith and Bowdoin colleges, both in New England, are two of the top ten vegetarian-friendly colleges, according to PETA. Other colleges on the list are New York University, University of California-Santa Cruz, Columbia University, Indiana University, College of Wooster (Ohio), Virginia Tech, Vassar College, and Elmira College.

Though I wasn’t vegetarian when I was in college, I can definitely say that the food service folks didn’t cater towards vegetarians. And all the vegans I knew opted out of the food plan all-together. I don’t ever remember seeing a tofu dish anywhere. The best chance for vegetarian meals came on rare theme nights where they would serve up ethnic dishes. It’s curious, though, since a large percentage of college students are vegetarian (the article says 20 percent, though that seems a bit high, from my own experience). Of Smith College’s 1900 students, 200 are vegan and 300 are vegetarian.

My cousin, who just entered college, has been vegetarian for almost ten years. She said that there aren’t exactly many vegetarian options at her school either, which is kind of surprising, as she attends a major university.

I think if I were back at college now and living off of the meal plan, I’d raise an issue with the food plan. Vegetarian college students need more options than cheese pizza and vegans need more choice than side dishes.

Runaway cow captured in Ohio

In this Queenie-type story, a cow in Ohio escaped the Ken Meyer Meats slaughterhouse and had avoided capture for a number of days. The cow has “earned clemency” and will not be slaughtered.

Board suspends coach for biting sparrow’s head off

Aron D. Bright, head wrestling coach at Avon High School in Indianapolis has been suspended for two weeks after biting off a live sparrow’s head in front of his wrestling team. Bright insists it was “innocent fun.” “Looking back, it was unprofessional,” Bright said, but “nobody was hurt.”

I guess the headless sparrow doesn’t count. (via Obscure Store)

The LA Times ran an article on raw food Chef Lesa Carlson. While raw foodism as a diet and lifestyle seem somewhat restrictive to me, I must admit that I am mighty curious about how to make pizzas without cooking anything over 120 degrees. I would imagine that dehydrators and food processors get a lot of use in a raw food kitchen. In any event, it’s interesting to see the LA Times running such an article.

The Living and Raw Foods site has a large number of recipes ranging from Beta Bergers (which is heavy on the yams) to mock tuna to “Yummy Goop.”

An interesting fact: some raw foodists eat fish.

Just because you’re a vegetarian doesn’t mean that you’re automatically aligned with every other vegetarian on the planet, and nothing makes that plainer than the current battle between VegSource and John Robbins and the “NotMilk guy” Robert Cohen.

While the whole article is interesting, this series of e-mails between Robbins and Cohen is particularly telling. Cohen took extreme offense when Robbins asked him to remove an article from his site and rather link to the original article on the Food Revolution web site. For some reason, this flipped Cohen out, thinking it was an agressive, self-serving ploy by Robbins. It seems to me that Mr. Cohen (whose site is, if I may say, painful on the eyes) overreacted big time. Linking to an original article simply ensures that readers who stumble across the link are always provided with the most up-to-date, corrected version rather than a “cached” version that may contain typos or inaccuracies that were later corrected.

This isn’t to take away from what Mr. Cohen’s done—he’s been a visible opponent of the dairy industry—but the tone in his letters to John Robbins is just plain childish.

So you have both sides of the story, here’s a link to Robert Cohen’s take on things.

French Activist Gets Jail for McDonald’s Attack

The activist is “for many French a symbol of their proud food and farming traditions.” (Thanks to Veg Blog reader Anne for passing this on.)

Japan breeds pigs with spinach

If this is what it’s going to take to get people to eat their greens, I think the world is in big trouble.

Mixed Marriages: When Only One of You is a Vegetarian

Though a lot of the ideas seem like common sense to me, this article is worth reading if you’re in a relationship where one person is an ardent meat-eater and the other is a vegetarian or vegan. I’ve been lucky in that respect, as my wife eats meat but has absolutely no problem eating the vegetarian meals I make at home. We almost never have meat in the house, and when we do, it’s usually leftovers from one of her meals at a restaurant. But I can imagine that other people aren’t as lucky… either the vegetarian is very aggressive in promoting their belief or the non-vegetarian feels like they’re being attacked by their significant other’s choice to abstain from animal products. I like the line that advises non-vegetarians to “recognize that if you eat vegetarian food you are not compromising any principle or belief, while your spouse would be doing so if she/he ate meat.”

Interesting fact: John Street, mayor of Philadelphia, is a vegetarian. It’s surprising considering he’s mayor of a city known for its cheesesteaks.

Some Sabot Publishing employees were feeling a little bummed because they were downsized and facing their final days with their respective magazines. But something managed to make them laugh: a wild turkey on their stoop. What makes this story interesting, though, are the magazines published inside the office: Better Nutrition and Vegetarian Times. The turkey must have known it was safe. :) Read more…

John Robbins takes on the anti-soy brigade. (via VegSource)

Page Six is reporting that Britney Spears may bare it all for PETA in an anti-fur campaign and may model for PETA’s pleatheryourself.com. The only reason this is the least bit interesting is that just a few months ago, PETA was criticizing the singer for wanting to use four live cheetahs at her MTV Video Music Awards performance. While this turned out to be partially false, she did perform with a tiger and a snake.

If you thought that KFC’s “Vegetable Twister” was vegetarian-safe, you’d be wrong.

I think the majority of vegetarians understand that the standard fast food places are not their friends. Or at least I hope they understand…

Trader Joe’s has decided to avoid GMOs in their store brand products. The anti-GMO trend seems to be gaining popularity, which is good news for all of us. Perhaps the US government will get the hint and start requiring labeling of GE foods. (via johanna)

NPR has a pair of great stories on biotech (the kind, PR-like term for “genetically modified foods”): Biotech Food Industry Filled with Promises, Pitfalls: Despite Benefits, Biotech Crops Remain Steeped in Controversy and Biotech Genes Found in Wild Maize in Mexico.

While I’ve been a definite supporter of labeling GMO foods (something that the biotech industry has lobbied strongly against), I feel even more strongly after having read the section on biotech in John Robbins’ The Food Revolution. Monsanto has an unbelievable amount of power, but I honestly believe that they are doing very little good for the world. Every move they make seems to be a PR move to convince the world that biotech is the way to go, when really all it’s doing is lining their own pockets. Roundup Ready crops: spray ‘em all you want with herbicides to kill weeds and the crops won’t die! Oh, but wait… it only works with Monsanto’s herbicides. So… “We’ll sell you crops that can withstand our herbicide. Buy our herbicide, and lots of it!” Ugh. Corporate self-interest posing as public service… nothing makes me more sick to my stomach.

Vegan athletes – strong, fast and healthy

I was reading over on Food Headlines about a new vegan cookbook with an introduction by Carl Lewis. In it, Lewis said that he never felt better than the year he was on a vegan diet (whether or not he’s still on one, I’m not sure). This article expands on the idea of being a vegan athlete and the misconceptions about getting enough calories on a vegan diet or about animal protein being better than plant protein. For a large paper, they did a good job of covering a story about a pretty specific segment of society.

Raw Foodists Make Vegans Look Like Debauchers

This is a surprisingly thorough look at the more “extreme” versions of vegetarianism, complete with recipes. While I personally disagree with the raw foods philosophy, it’s an interesting article, nevertheless.

One of the most ridiculous holiday traditions in America is the presidential turkey pardon that takes place each Thanksgiving. The President “pardons” a pair of turkeys from the day’s festivities and keeps them from being butchered. “For this turkey and his traveling companion, this will not be their last Thanksgiving,” Bush said. “By virtue of an unconditional presidential pardon, they are safe from harm.”

The most telling paragraph, though, is this one, which underscores the awful treatment that turkeys (and other food and dairy animals) undergo on an everyday basis:

Actually, the birds may not see another Thanksgiving. They have been so fattened up they can’t get around well, and their hearts and lungs are overtaxed. The comfortable retirement compound waiting at Frying Pan Park in Herndon was empty yesterday morning—because the last two Clinton birds are dead, as were the previous two by Thanksgiving a year ago.

Cooking Light Online’s take on a vegetarian Thanksgiving… some unique ideas worth checking out.

It looks like both New Zealand and India have or may soon have laws regarding labeling of all animal-related ingredients on food labels. Let’s hope the US follows suit on this one.

Baby death parents spared jail

In the UK, a fruitarian couple was feeding their baby a strictly fruitarian diet. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding fruitarianism, as it’s an extremely limited diet that almost certainly does not provide the necessary nutrients when followed strictly, especially for infants. Unfortunately, this couple learned the hard way, at the expense of their child’s life.

In my opinion, the judge was too easy on them, claiming that the death of their child was punishment enough. They consistently went against doctor’s orders. They knew the risk they were putting their child at and must have noticed how malnourished their daughter was. A sad case…

The current issue of the Vegetarian Journal is the best one I’ve seen thusfar. There’s a good article on eating vegan on college campuses, one on the benefits of flax seeds (the best source of Omega-3s for vegetarians), and a set of recipes with chickpeas as the main ingredient. The only thing better would be if they incorporated horror movies into it somehow… oh, wait… they did! There’s a feature on 80s scream queen Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), who’s been a vegan for 14 years.

Bravo, VRG for an outstanding issue from cover-to-cover.

Bernie Goetz is using vegetarianism as a major part of his mayoral platform. Whether this is a step forward or backwards, I’m not quite sure…

McDonald’s to be more explicit about flavoring sources

McDonald’s is now going to be more specific about what “natural flavoring” means in their ingredient listings. There, now that didn’t hurt too much, did it, McD’s?

USDA Proposal for Meat Labeling Draws Criticism

This is disturbing. The USDA wants to get rid of mandatory nutrional labeling on meat, allowing posters and brochures to take their place. Their reasoning? “Because there are more than 3,300 cuts of beef alone (when you differentiate among products of different grades and trim levels) sold at retail, it would be extremely difficult to label each product from every species with nutrition information.” Oh, boo-friggin-hoo.

Just more proof that the USDA does not have the American public’s interest at heart (want more?).

Am I the only one who doesn’t really care that Paul McCartney says vegetarianism gives him more energy?

White Wave sues Dean Foods over merger

White Wave, who makes Silk soy milk, is suing Dean Foods over a possible merger with Suiza Foods, who makes Sun Soy, Silk’s biggest competitor. (Paul on the assist)

The vegan who came to dinner

This good article from philly.com discusses how to handle the situation if one of “those people”—you know… “those vegans”—show up at your barbecue. Well-written.

The Secret of Life

The people of the island of Okinawa, Japan have the longest life-spans in the world. In addition to averaging a five-year longer life than Americans, they also have a higher percentage of inhabitants over the age of 100. And of 32 of those centenarians surveyed, only four were living in a nursing home.

“Generally, people have genes that should be getting them to their to their mid-80s. … In our country, we live about 10 years less than that on average because of terrible health habits,” explained one American doctor. The longer life spans are connected with the very limited part that meat plays in the Okinawan diet as well as the high-carb, low calorie nature of it. They eat a good amount of soy, Omega-3′s, and at least seven servings of vegetables a day.

One of the blogs on my daily reading list (I forget which) linked up to this edition of “This American Life” about people who perpetrate hoaxes so deeply that they end up believing the lies themselves. Of particular interest is the story of one guy who claims to be vegetarian to impress friends. Very strange.

As I’ve said before, sometimes I agree with PETA, sometimes I don’t. But articles like this make me yawn every time.

Vegetarian wedding fare pro and con

Since I’m in the midst of wedding planning right now with my non-vegetarian fiancee, this clip from Ann Landers was interesting.

My take on the subject: if the bride and groom choose to serve a vegetarian meal at their wedding, they have the full right to do so. While taking your guests’ preferences into account is important, there are plenty of ways to satisfy guests’ appetites with non-meat meals. In our case, we compromised: we’re having a couple of chicken/fish dishes but will also have a good vegetarian option. We’ve also spoken with the cook and she’s willing to make a couple of the vegetarian meals vegan by leaving out the dairy and eggs.

The most interesting quote, I found, was this: “Many meat-eaters see vegetarianism as a moral judgment on their own dietary choices.” And I think that’s true… but if somebody else serving you a vegetarian meal makes you feel like you’re being judged, then doesn’t that indicate that you’re not comfortable enough with your own dietary decisions?

Faux Filling

Los Angeles has vegetarian Vietnamese restaurants sprouting up quite a bit, apparently. Though meat is a staple in the Vietnamese diet, the vegetarian offerings at most restaurants are quite good. As far as I know, though, in the Vietnamese-populated Northern VA area, there’s only one vegetarian (vegan, actually) Buddhist-run restaurant over in Eden (formerly Little Saigon) in Falls Church, VA. I haven’t eaten there yet, but hope to this summer.

PETAs unethical treatments

The author here may have some points, but is something like this worthy of printing in the Chicago Sun-Times? It looks like it was written for a middle school writing assignment the morning it was due.

Green sprouts: vegetarian baby boom in U.S

Not much new information here, nor is there much in the way of hard numbers, but trends seem to show that more children are being raised vegetarian or vegan. I suspect the number is still probably quite low (based on Vegetarian Resource Group polls), but rising, nevertheless.

The Vogue is Vegan

This is a good article on raising children as vegans. It provides a bunch of good information and encouragement for parents who are attempting to raise their children without animal products of any sort. This article was written in honor of “World Vegan Day” (which is, apparently, today).

For Vegetarian Travelers, Finding Meatless Meals Can Be Tricky

I had thought about how it might be difficult traveling in Vietnam as a vegetarian when I go back, and this article confirmed the possible problems (like telling somebody that you don’t eat seafood could still get you clams on your plate).

Reading through Suite101.com’s Vegetarian section led me to this article covering why people become vegetarian.

A few of the comments bothered me, but most of them came from this paragraph:

Some people have tried a vegetarian diet and decided it wasn’t for them. Jodi wrote, “I tried leading a vegetarian life, and felt utterly unsatisfied with tofu burger substitutes and unfilling vegetables. Veggie living was not for me. I missed the steaks and trips to McDonald’s. Being a vegetarian, and doing it right, is hard work. And if you’re not educated about proper food substitution, you can become malnourished and ill. I admire those who commit themselves fully to the vegetarian lifestyle. For me, the decision to try out vegetarian living had nothing to do with animal rights (and I think you can wholeheartedly support animal rights and still eat meat), it was for curiosity’s sake. I tried it, and it wasn’t for me. Eating out became a chore (and for someone like me who doesn’t cook, eating out is a must). In smaller towns, like the one I’m from, it’s hard to find restaurants that cater to non-meat-eaters, and I became frustrated. I didn’t give up, I opted out. And though I still don’t eat a lot of meat, I do enjoy the occasional burger or steak.”

“Being a vegetarian, and doing it right, is hard work.” Yes, and so are most things worth doing. But I also agree with a quote later in the article from Karen: “I think being a vegetarian is really easy, but being vegan is harder.”

“And if you’re not educated about proper food substitution, you can become malnourished and ill.” I’d bet that being not educated about proper eating is even more dangerous if you do eat meat. Few people die from an excess of fruits and vegetables.

“I didn’t give up, I opted out” Nonsense, Jodi. You did give up; vegetarianism isn’t a mailing list. If you’re from a small town and find the restaurants you go out to don’t have many options, then here’s the solution: eat in. Make your own dinners.

“I think you can wholeheartedly support animal rights and still eat meat” Sure you can, but aren’t you just sweeping animal rights issues under the carpet as you chomp on your Big Mac?

As I’ve said before, I don’t look down on meat-eaters. Vegetarianism is a personal choice and I’m not going to shove it down anyone’s throat. But people like Jodi are the type that say they “tried being vegetarian” but then try to discount it with lame excuses like the ones listed above. If you’ve tried it and it’s not for you, fine, but look at your reasons and make sure they’re not just empty justifications.

Another quote I had problems with:

I, too, heard many arguments on what defines a vegetarian or vegan. Susan considers herself a vegetarian but does eat fish. “I read somewhere that what I really am is a ‘pescatarian’,” she wrote, “but I still consider myself a vegetarian.”

for reasons I’ve stated before, but also was a bit discomforted by this one:

Laura, a very strict vegan, wrote, “If you eat sugar, which is processed through animal bones, you are not vegan, nor vegetarian. If you eat eggs you are in absolutely no way a vegetarian – ovo-vegetarian is a ridiculous term! Eggs are basically unborn chickens – if you eat them, you eat meat and that’s that. As for dairy eaters, where do you think milk comes from? An animal. It’s an animal product and again, if you eat animal products you aren’t vegetarian. If you wear leather, fur or wool, please don’t even try to call yourself a vegetarian. It’s insulting to those of us who are. I don’t know what you should be called, but I know what you shouldn’t.”

This quote is reflective of the problems that Dr. Sapon discusses here of the vegan-vegetarian rift.

Another update to a previous story: Subway and Vegan Cafe settle. Good.

As an update to an earlier story, ads are pulled from Bubba’s show where a live boar was slaughtered as a gimmick on the show.

Indian vegetarian gets $215 for finding bone in airline meal

One interesting part of last night’s 60 Minutes II report (full report now transcribed online) is that GE foods are a much bigger controversy in Europe than in the United States. Apparently some stores will refuse to carry any products that have any genetically engineered ingredients, and it’s not unusual for there to be protesters in the street over the subject.

The UK Mad Cow scare has lots of Europeans becoming vegetarian. According to this article, the number of Germans describing themselves as vegetarian has more than doubled in just three months.

Of course, in the same article is the following quote:

“I won’t eat beef for a long time, for maybe 10 or 15 years,” said one man. “Until then I think I will eat only chicken, turkey or vegetables.”

Hopefully that guy doesn’t consider himself a vegetarian.

It seems that Kellogg’s has decided to recall their GM corndogs. Good for them.

On tonight’s episode of 60 Minutes II (CBS, 9pm) there will be a report on genetically engineering foods.

There’s a great interview on Salon with Dr. Neal Bernard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It’s an informative read and very pro-vegetarian in tone.

Earthsave has a good article about GE foods and their dangers.

I came across this interesting anti-vegetarian article. It sounds relatively well thought-out, until you read strange articles like this on the same site.

EPA Urged to Issue Regulations for Biotech Crops

This press release from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (who publishes the excellent Nutrition Action newsletter) discusses a number of groups’ efforts to move along the EPA’s biotech regulations in a way that does not “[undermine] public confidence in biotechnology and in the Agency’s scrutiny” the way the current absence of formal regulations does.

Tests find unapproved corn in veggie corn dogs

Morningstar Farms’ veggie corn dogs have been found to have the Starlink GM corn in their ingredients. Kellogg’s is not planning a recall.

Subway Versus the Vegan Caf�

This article provides a pretty good case against Subway (or at least the one particular Subway in question). Apparently a Michigan Subway store is fighting to put a new vegan tea/juice/sandwich shop out of business. Subway claims that the vegan shop, Atom’s, violates a no-compete clause for that particular shopping center and that this new shop would steal business away from Subway.

Hm… considering that Subway only has ONE vegan sandwich (their veggie sandwich if you have them leave off the cheese and mayo), how can they claim that they’ll lose business to this new shop? Vegans aren’t eating at Subway in the first place.

In addition, Subway is trying an even more rediculous ploy by saying that the vegan shop’s “portrayal of these items as ‘the healthiest’ directly competes with [Subway's] marketing of the nutritional value of its menu, especially the ’7 Subs With 6 Grams of Fat Or Less’ campaign.” Since when can nutritional facts be claimed as a marketing campaign?

This is a sad case of a mega-corporation trying beat down the little guy (in this case the first green restaurant in Michigan).

Great French Chef Goes Vegetarian at Michelin Three-Star Restaurant in Paris

Sounds like the decision has garnered some backlash, especially from other nearby cooks. I applaud the move, but probably wouldn’t eat there (at $150 for dinner, it’s a tad outside of my price range).

Fox 5 did yet another special report of interest this evening about genetically modified foods. It didn’t provide any new information, but gave a relatively balanced report on the issue.

In case I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now: I’m not a scientist and I certainly can’t say whether or not GE foods are healthy or unhealthy. However, I will say that the fact that these “foods of the future” (???) are being tested only by the people that are doing the engineering bothers me. Let’s get some third parties in there doing the testing and keep a close eye on these foods’ long term effects. And until some sort of conclusion can be reached, let’s label the foods. Considering that the government actually outlawed labeling of foods that weren’t GE, I think someone needs to shake things up at the FDA.

Two links from the broadcast: GE Food Alert and Thyme Square Cafe (an almost all-organic restaurant in Bethesda).

The aforementioned report on Fox 5 news was actually not too bad. It was a generally positive spot about vegetarianism and veganism in teens, and any negative commentary made on the subjects was countered with facts from dieticians and such.

One site they mentioned in the report was VegDC.com. The site’s run by a local teenager and is really quite a good look at vegetarian life in the DC area.

The broadcast had one especially disturbing image of cows and pigs in a slaughterhouse that really bothered me… and it was a pretty tame shot.

If you live in the DC area, tonight on the 10 O’Clock News on Fox 5 will be a report on vegetarianism and veganism in teens. The forboding voice-over used words like “popular among teens,” “fad,” and “NO MEAT!” Sometimes Fox 5 will do OK investigative reports, but sometimes it’s clear that they’re just trying to fill up their one-hour timeslot. We’ll see tonight which this report will be.

Basinger sandwich goes down badly

The actress has complained because a New York deli has put her name on a sandwich containing meat. Probably not the best move on the restaurant’s part.

Vegan Iceman had a taste for wild goat

This is an interesting article discussing how “Oetzi the Iceman” (a 5,300 year old cadaver) was not a vegan during his lifetime, but had a taste for wild goat.

According to VegSource, the United Way of Los Angeles is taking shots at vegetarian/environmental charities. While their Free the Asparagus campaign video was stupid, it wasn’t really offensive. The group also took out a half-page “Save the Asparagus” ad that said “Each day, they face an enemy more deadly than insects, rodents, or drought: vegetarians.” Again—stupid, uncreative, and poorly targeted… but offensive? I didn’t think so.

When the kids become vegetarians

Interesting article about kids making the choice to become vegan or vegetarian. My cousin, who is now 16, has been vegetarian since she was 7 1/2 by her own choice. That’s just incredible to me—I tried a few times when I was a teenager with absolutely no success. My sister was a vegetarian for a while as well—about five years, I believe, and she started when she was about 12.