Why do we deny other species the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Most countries in the world celebrate an Independence Day to commemorate the anniversary of when their nation won sovereign statehood. In this longstanding tradition, for more than two centuries the United States has observed the Fourth of July as a national holiday to memorialize the signing of The Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was then, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, that the "Colonies" formally asserted their right to self-rule without interference from the British Empire. So it is that on July 4th Americans celebrate the freedoms we enjoy and express our commitment to upholding the ideals upon which our country was built.
The Founding Fathers originally wrote the Declaration as a manifesto to proclaim a radical affirmation of individual rights for certain classes of Americans. Since then, the U.S. has extended these rights to all citizens, regardless of race, creed or gender. According to this seminal document, "all men are created equal," and "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and "that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." However, while humans have long benefited from democratic self-determination, animals are still considered property under the law simply because they are a different species from us—essentially denying them their most basic rights.
It is a tragedy of the greatest magnitude that every year, our society imprisons and tortures billions of living, feeling creatures and ignores their cries for mercy before heartlessly taking their lives for food, clothing, "entertainment" and experiments. It is the height of arrogance to claim ourselves emancipated individuals or an enlightened society while our species heartlessly enslaves billions of sentient beings. To achieve true justice in this world, we must keep fighting for the liberation of these abused beings who, like us, want to live, be free, and pursue their own version of happiness.
Animal advocates are working to end humanity's exploitation of animals in much the same way that other political and social liberation movements throughout history have fought against the oppression of humans. Every day, millions of people participate in a worldwide revolution on behalf of other species, and we are gradually winning the war against human tyranny—one battle, one victory at a time. And yet this struggle continues with no end in sight, and though we make progress the opposition is powerful, entrenched and often ruthless in their defense of the status quo.
So, for inspiration's sake, let us start by taking the long view. Perhaps one day, decades or centuries from now—after the slaughterhouses, vivisection labs and other death dungeons are dismantled and all species live free from human-inflicted cruelty—our descendants will celebrate Animal Independence Day. Perhaps this is an implausibly Utopian vision that will forever remain merely an idealist's dream, but that does not mean it's impossible. That is, it could actually happen some day if we keep working today to bring a new and better world into being.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Friday, July 03, 2009
Delectable New Vegan Mozzarella "Cheese" Sparks Vegan Pizza Revolution
L.A.'s Cruzer Pizza's sales soar 63% within one month of introducing Daiya dairy-free cheese pies
For years, food manufacturers have searched far and wide for the Holy Grail of mainstream vegan cuisine: a non-dairy cheese substitute which stretches, melts and tastes so much like the real thing that even cheese lovers can’t tell the difference. Even though a variety of “cheeses” made from soy, nuts, rice, and other plant-based ingredients have made inroads into the lucrative vegan market in the last decade, none has excelled enough at the all-important flavor equivalency test to convince even the choosiest of cheese devotees — until now.
A new vegan cheese substitute made by Canadian company Daiya Foods, Inc. could represent the long-awaited commercial breakthrough. As the
only company in the world to make vegan “cheese” from cassava (a tropical shrub native to South America that is also the basis of tapioca), Daiya ferments the plant’s root so that it curdles the same way milk does during the traditional cheese making process, creating the supple yet chewy consistency that largely accounts for cheese’s enduring popularity. As a result, Daiya has won rave reviews from food bloggers, as well as VegNews magazine’s “Best of Show Award” at the 2009 Expo West trade show.
Daiya vegan “cheese” only became available in the United States in 2009, and the first eatery to offer it to patrons in the Western U.S. was Cruzer Pizza in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. Cruzer’s owner, Sam Khalaf, started using Daiya on pizzas after being approached by Michelle Sass, California Advocacy Organizer for Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal advocacy group. At Sass’ suggestion, Khalaf removed veal from Cruzer’s menu and simultaneously added eight new vegan Daiya “cheese” pizzas featuring toppings like tofu-based “chicken,” “ham,” “sausage,” and “pepperoni,” as well as a full range of fresh vegetables.
According to Khalaf, customer response to the change was phenomenal, unmistakable and surprisingly immediate. “Since launching the vegan menu on May 29, overall sales in our Los Feliz store have increased by 63 percent, and the vegan items have outsold everything else we make,” he reported. “Sales have been so good that we’ve decided to add vegan calzones, macaroni and ‘cheese,’ spaghetti and ‘meat’ balls, and lasagna to our menu.” Khalaf publicized Cruzer’s new menu by hanging 50,000 doorknob fliers throughout the area, and has even started making vegan pizzas at their Glendale location as well as some of the other 20 pizzerias he owns in the L.A. area bearing other names.
Meanwhile, after watching its next door neighbor’s vegan pizza sales go through the roof, upscale restaurant Desert Rose made a full one-third of its menu vegan and prominently printed Farm Sanctuary’s “seal of approval” next to the new items, which include Cruzer’s pizzas. About 150 people attended the menu launch party at Desert Rose on Saturday night, June 27, an event that was co-organized by Farm Sanctuary’s Sass and Vegan Drinks, a social networking group that promotes the vegan lifestyle by hosting monthly outings in more than a dozen U.S. cities.
Like Khalaf, Sass believes Daiya’s game-changing innovation will fuel an exploding vegan pizza demand that the smartest restaurateurs will be ready to supply. “Cruzer and other pizzerias using Daiya are on the cutting edge of a trend that is going to grow exponentially as more people get a taste of this fabulous product,” she said. “There is already a huge underserved and largely untapped consumer demographic out there comprised of vegans and millions of others who want appetizing, natural, cruelty-free alternatives to milk-based cheese. That is exactly what Daiya is, and the first companies — from the smallest storefronts to the largest global franchises — to get in on the ground floor of this budding business are going to profit the most.”
For years, food manufacturers have searched far and wide for the Holy Grail of mainstream vegan cuisine: a non-dairy cheese substitute which stretches, melts and tastes so much like the real thing that even cheese lovers can’t tell the difference. Even though a variety of “cheeses” made from soy, nuts, rice, and other plant-based ingredients have made inroads into the lucrative vegan market in the last decade, none has excelled enough at the all-important flavor equivalency test to convince even the choosiest of cheese devotees — until now.
A new vegan cheese substitute made by Canadian company Daiya Foods, Inc. could represent the long-awaited commercial breakthrough. As the
only company in the world to make vegan “cheese” from cassava (a tropical shrub native to South America that is also the basis of tapioca), Daiya ferments the plant’s root so that it curdles the same way milk does during the traditional cheese making process, creating the supple yet chewy consistency that largely accounts for cheese’s enduring popularity. As a result, Daiya has won rave reviews from food bloggers, as well as VegNews magazine’s “Best of Show Award” at the 2009 Expo West trade show.Daiya vegan “cheese” only became available in the United States in 2009, and the first eatery to offer it to patrons in the Western U.S. was Cruzer Pizza in the Los Feliz district of Los Angeles. Cruzer’s owner, Sam Khalaf, started using Daiya on pizzas after being approached by Michelle Sass, California Advocacy Organizer for Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal advocacy group. At Sass’ suggestion, Khalaf removed veal from Cruzer’s menu and simultaneously added eight new vegan Daiya “cheese” pizzas featuring toppings like tofu-based “chicken,” “ham,” “sausage,” and “pepperoni,” as well as a full range of fresh vegetables.
According to Khalaf, customer response to the change was phenomenal, unmistakable and surprisingly immediate. “Since launching the vegan menu on May 29, overall sales in our Los Feliz store have increased by 63 percent, and the vegan items have outsold everything else we make,” he reported. “Sales have been so good that we’ve decided to add vegan calzones, macaroni and ‘cheese,’ spaghetti and ‘meat’ balls, and lasagna to our menu.” Khalaf publicized Cruzer’s new menu by hanging 50,000 doorknob fliers throughout the area, and has even started making vegan pizzas at their Glendale location as well as some of the other 20 pizzerias he owns in the L.A. area bearing other names.
Meanwhile, after watching its next door neighbor’s vegan pizza sales go through the roof, upscale restaurant Desert Rose made a full one-third of its menu vegan and prominently printed Farm Sanctuary’s “seal of approval” next to the new items, which include Cruzer’s pizzas. About 150 people attended the menu launch party at Desert Rose on Saturday night, June 27, an event that was co-organized by Farm Sanctuary’s Sass and Vegan Drinks, a social networking group that promotes the vegan lifestyle by hosting monthly outings in more than a dozen U.S. cities.
Like Khalaf, Sass believes Daiya’s game-changing innovation will fuel an exploding vegan pizza demand that the smartest restaurateurs will be ready to supply. “Cruzer and other pizzerias using Daiya are on the cutting edge of a trend that is going to grow exponentially as more people get a taste of this fabulous product,” she said. “There is already a huge underserved and largely untapped consumer demographic out there comprised of vegans and millions of others who want appetizing, natural, cruelty-free alternatives to milk-based cheese. That is exactly what Daiya is, and the first companies — from the smallest storefronts to the largest global franchises — to get in on the ground floor of this budding business are going to profit the most.”
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Cheap Thrills: The Pleasures of Wildlife Voyeurism
Can’t afford cable TV? No problem: just tune in to the real nature channel!
Attempting to console weary souls unmoored by the financial system’s grand collapse, the New York Times is publishing a series of personal essays called “Happy Days” about “the search for contentment in its many forms — economic, emotional, physical, spiritual — and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead.” Today’s piece, by award-winning nature writer Richard Conniff, is entitled “The Consolation of Animals” and encourages readers to enjoy the lively inter-species entertainment being enacted right in their own backyards. (Spoiler alert: Readers may be disturbed by Conniff’s focus on his “exhilaration at the close connection to the hunt,” and his admission that he actually killed and ate one of the animals he eyed.)
As a field journalist, Conniff has traveled to the most distant lands (and waters) to write about exotic animals in their native habitats, but he notes that you can find adventure right in your very own neighborhood: in fact, it’s often waiting just outside your door. Even the most common species of urban wildlife — like rodents, birds and insects — are mesmerizing to observe, especially in interaction with each another. Not only is this simple pleasure completely free of charge, but (more importantly) it reconnects us with the solid ground of human existence, planting our metaphysical feet firmly back on Planet Earth.
Animals live very elementally, immersed in a world that is in many ways a more authentic and immediate reality than the media-saturated technocracy most of us modern humans inhabit. That helps explain why communing with other species is considered weird and even antisocial in polite society. “People who do dumb stuff like racing red-throated loons down a beach in the dead of winter are liable to get a reputation for being a little nuts,” Conniff writes, referring to the social stigma attached to his profession. “But I prefer to think of it as what makes me almost sane.”
Diagnosis: Mass Delusion
This remark also holds true for my own values, which is why I’m still perturbed (even after more than seven years as a vegan) that about 99 percent of the U.S. adult population continues to eat animal products — and that most people still think we vegans are the crazy ones! But I ask, in all seriousness, who’s really disconnected from reality here: us peaceful “gatherers” who follow a philosophy of ethical eating, or the “hunters” who stuff their mouths with the fried corpses and reproductive secretions of other species and then stick their fingers in their metaphorical ears whenever someone reminds them who they’re eating?
Personally, my greatest disappointment as a vegan and animal rights advocate has been the realization that most people are unwilling or unable to look at the world from the animals’ perspective. If they tried, and caught even the briefest glimpse of just how vast and horrendous the atrocities we commit against other species are, such an insight might be enough to spark the beginning of a transformation. Sadly, most people seem afflicted by a form of moral blindness that is perpetually reinforced by a lifetime of indoctrination — from the “four food groups” poster on the classroom wall, to the litany of fast food commercials continually inundating the airwaves.
It seems that, as children, we are instinctively enthralled with the similarities and differences between us and other species, but our attitudes about animals are shaped (and usually distorted) by what adults tell us. Remember, people are taught to fish and hunt — even if we use shopping carts rather than hooks or guns to entrap our helpless prey. We learn that in the “natural order” of the world (defined by us humans), our kind occupies the very top of the food chain, and that we must kill to survive. We are told that it is humanity’s God-given right – nay, sacred duty – to subdue all other creatures, to keep them in check and under our control lest they overturn our divinely-dispensed domination.
Incidentally, this anthropocentric arrogance has already caused the extinction of countless species — and will almost certainly bring about our own destruction someday if we don't stop it. Therefore, at this stage in evolutionary history, I believe that appreciating the complexity and intelligence of animals is not only intrinsic to the ongoing process of our becoming fully human, but the key to our very survival. Fortunately, each of us can (and must) do something concrete to bring about this paradigm shift — starting (as always) with ourselves.
Prescription: Animal Therapy
From time immemorial, ancient shamanic traditions from around the world have incorporated animal archetypes into their spiritual teachings and practices, which psychotherapy pioneer Carl Jung drew on for inspiration in formulating his own revolutionary theories of the mind. Later in the 20th century, an ecopsychology subspecialty known as wilderness therapy emerged that maintains watching wildlife is just what the doctor ordered. Today, an array of studies tout the effectiveness of a thriving psychotherapeutic treatment called animal assisted therapy (AAT), which links “therapy animals” (mostly dogs) with people suffering from mental/emotional maladies for the purpose of human healing.
The point of all these examples is that humans have always looked to animals as a way of figuring out who we are and how to live, and becoming more familiar with the ways of animals has proven an invaluable method of mending the rift we’ve created between ourselves and nature, the symptoms of which manifest in both the wounded environment and the alienated human psyche. But one need not hire a counselor or medicine man to benefit from “the consolation of animals” — just go anyplace there are critters living free (like your backyard, a neighborhood park, a wilderness preserve, or a marine ecosystem), and have at it. You may want to bring a camera to capture all the action!
And, if you can, visit a farm animal sanctuary, where you can meet animals who were raised as “livestock” for slaughter but rescued from abuse, suffering and a horrific death. Ultimately, animal advocates’ best hope for changing the world may be to provide people with unique opportunities to unlearn speciesist beliefs and embrace new values based on our original fascination with all of creation’s creatures. So be sure to bring along a friend (or your sweetheart, if you have one) to share this special experience!
Attempting to console weary souls unmoored by the financial system’s grand collapse, the New York Times is publishing a series of personal essays called “Happy Days” about “the search for contentment in its many forms — economic, emotional, physical, spiritual — and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead.” Today’s piece, by award-winning nature writer Richard Conniff, is entitled “The Consolation of Animals” and encourages readers to enjoy the lively inter-species entertainment being enacted right in their own backyards. (Spoiler alert: Readers may be disturbed by Conniff’s focus on his “exhilaration at the close connection to the hunt,” and his admission that he actually killed and ate one of the animals he eyed.)
As a field journalist, Conniff has traveled to the most distant lands (and waters) to write about exotic animals in their native habitats, but he notes that you can find adventure right in your very own neighborhood: in fact, it’s often waiting just outside your door. Even the most common species of urban wildlife — like rodents, birds and insects — are mesmerizing to observe, especially in interaction with each another. Not only is this simple pleasure completely free of charge, but (more importantly) it reconnects us with the solid ground of human existence, planting our metaphysical feet firmly back on Planet Earth.
Animals live very elementally, immersed in a world that is in many ways a more authentic and immediate reality than the media-saturated technocracy most of us modern humans inhabit. That helps explain why communing with other species is considered weird and even antisocial in polite society. “People who do dumb stuff like racing red-throated loons down a beach in the dead of winter are liable to get a reputation for being a little nuts,” Conniff writes, referring to the social stigma attached to his profession. “But I prefer to think of it as what makes me almost sane.”
Diagnosis: Mass Delusion
This remark also holds true for my own values, which is why I’m still perturbed (even after more than seven years as a vegan) that about 99 percent of the U.S. adult population continues to eat animal products — and that most people still think we vegans are the crazy ones! But I ask, in all seriousness, who’s really disconnected from reality here: us peaceful “gatherers” who follow a philosophy of ethical eating, or the “hunters” who stuff their mouths with the fried corpses and reproductive secretions of other species and then stick their fingers in their metaphorical ears whenever someone reminds them who they’re eating?
Personally, my greatest disappointment as a vegan and animal rights advocate has been the realization that most people are unwilling or unable to look at the world from the animals’ perspective. If they tried, and caught even the briefest glimpse of just how vast and horrendous the atrocities we commit against other species are, such an insight might be enough to spark the beginning of a transformation. Sadly, most people seem afflicted by a form of moral blindness that is perpetually reinforced by a lifetime of indoctrination — from the “four food groups” poster on the classroom wall, to the litany of fast food commercials continually inundating the airwaves.
It seems that, as children, we are instinctively enthralled with the similarities and differences between us and other species, but our attitudes about animals are shaped (and usually distorted) by what adults tell us. Remember, people are taught to fish and hunt — even if we use shopping carts rather than hooks or guns to entrap our helpless prey. We learn that in the “natural order” of the world (defined by us humans), our kind occupies the very top of the food chain, and that we must kill to survive. We are told that it is humanity’s God-given right – nay, sacred duty – to subdue all other creatures, to keep them in check and under our control lest they overturn our divinely-dispensed domination.
Incidentally, this anthropocentric arrogance has already caused the extinction of countless species — and will almost certainly bring about our own destruction someday if we don't stop it. Therefore, at this stage in evolutionary history, I believe that appreciating the complexity and intelligence of animals is not only intrinsic to the ongoing process of our becoming fully human, but the key to our very survival. Fortunately, each of us can (and must) do something concrete to bring about this paradigm shift — starting (as always) with ourselves.
Prescription: Animal Therapy
From time immemorial, ancient shamanic traditions from around the world have incorporated animal archetypes into their spiritual teachings and practices, which psychotherapy pioneer Carl Jung drew on for inspiration in formulating his own revolutionary theories of the mind. Later in the 20th century, an ecopsychology subspecialty known as wilderness therapy emerged that maintains watching wildlife is just what the doctor ordered. Today, an array of studies tout the effectiveness of a thriving psychotherapeutic treatment called animal assisted therapy (AAT), which links “therapy animals” (mostly dogs) with people suffering from mental/emotional maladies for the purpose of human healing.
The point of all these examples is that humans have always looked to animals as a way of figuring out who we are and how to live, and becoming more familiar with the ways of animals has proven an invaluable method of mending the rift we’ve created between ourselves and nature, the symptoms of which manifest in both the wounded environment and the alienated human psyche. But one need not hire a counselor or medicine man to benefit from “the consolation of animals” — just go anyplace there are critters living free (like your backyard, a neighborhood park, a wilderness preserve, or a marine ecosystem), and have at it. You may want to bring a camera to capture all the action!
And, if you can, visit a farm animal sanctuary, where you can meet animals who were raised as “livestock” for slaughter but rescued from abuse, suffering and a horrific death. Ultimately, animal advocates’ best hope for changing the world may be to provide people with unique opportunities to unlearn speciesist beliefs and embrace new values based on our original fascination with all of creation’s creatures. So be sure to bring along a friend (or your sweetheart, if you have one) to share this special experience!
Monday, May 04, 2009
Vegan Vulcan: "Live Long and Prosper – Go Veg!"
A tribute to TV's first vegan character, Star Trek's Mr. Spock
Listen to this as a podcast episode
With the much-hyped Star Trek prequel set for an international summer blockbuster premiere in theaters this weekend, I figured this would be a good time to honor television's first vegan character — Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1969. As an imaginary avatar from a more peaceful, enlightened world (that I'd still like to think is not unthinkable), Spock inspired legions of unrepentant nerds (myself not least among them) to re-envision humanity's present plight in light of a more promising future.
For those unfamiliar with classic Star Trek lore, Mr. Spock (portrayed by vegetarian actor Leonard Nimoy) was the Science Officer aboard the United Federation of Planets' starship Enterprise in the 23rd century. He was born to a human mother and a father who was Vulcan (i.e., a race of pointy-eared humanoid extraterrestrials dedicated to living strictly by the laws of logic). The Vulcan way of life also incorporates an ideal towards non-violence: as succinctly expressed in the words of The Master himself, “It is illogical to kill without reason.” As such, a central tenet of Vulcan philosophy includes commitment to veganism (though hardcore Trekkers will surely protest that some Vulcans were pescetarians).
As a Vulcan serving aboard the Enterprise, Spock was second in command only to Captain James Tiberius Kirk, and superior in physical strength, as well as mental acuity, to his human shipmates. Spock also possessed uncanny psychic powers that allowed him to “mind meld” with others, giving him direct access to people's thoughts, memories and experiences. Notably, this unique ability parallels the characteristic empathy that many vegans display in their choice not to eat their fellow planetarians. To quote Spock yet again (from the novel Spock's World), "I would remind you, though, that the word for 'decide' is descended from older words meaning to kill; options and opportunities die when decisions are made. Be careful what you kill."
Several years ago in an article examining the potential sociological implications of lab-grown meat, I wrote that, “As a literary genre, science fiction often attempts to envision realities before (or as) they come into being. While most of these futuristic visions remain in the realm of pure fantasy, some prove eerily prescient.” Similarly, veganism has often been presented in the universe of Utopian science fiction as the preferred diet of the most advanced species and societies, whether human or alien (with Star Trek being perhaps the most well-known example of this). So, fellow vegan travelers, take heart in knowing that many of the world's most forward-looking sages have foreseen an animal-friendly future — and I'm not just talking about science fiction writers, but some of the most influential figures in all of human history.
For example, over twenty-five hundred years ago, Pythagoras (who was the first philosopher and vegetarian in the recorded history of Western Civilization) said, “For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Centuries later, the quintessential Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci, was famous even in his own day for being far ahead of his time — and for refusing to eat meat on ethical grounds. With such an auspicious lineage, we vegans today are the inheritors of a long and proud tradition that stretches back many generations into the past — and, perhaps, into the distant future, with Mr. Spock guiding us toward a bold new frontier of compassion for all species.
With the much-hyped Star Trek prequel set for an international summer blockbuster premiere in theaters this weekend, I figured this would be a good time to honor television's first vegan character — Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1969. As an imaginary avatar from a more peaceful, enlightened world (that I'd still like to think is not unthinkable), Spock inspired legions of unrepentant nerds (myself not least among them) to re-envision humanity's present plight in light of a more promising future.
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| Illustration by Mark Middleton |
As a Vulcan serving aboard the Enterprise, Spock was second in command only to Captain James Tiberius Kirk, and superior in physical strength, as well as mental acuity, to his human shipmates. Spock also possessed uncanny psychic powers that allowed him to “mind meld” with others, giving him direct access to people's thoughts, memories and experiences. Notably, this unique ability parallels the characteristic empathy that many vegans display in their choice not to eat their fellow planetarians. To quote Spock yet again (from the novel Spock's World), "I would remind you, though, that the word for 'decide' is descended from older words meaning to kill; options and opportunities die when decisions are made. Be careful what you kill."
Several years ago in an article examining the potential sociological implications of lab-grown meat, I wrote that, “As a literary genre, science fiction often attempts to envision realities before (or as) they come into being. While most of these futuristic visions remain in the realm of pure fantasy, some prove eerily prescient.” Similarly, veganism has often been presented in the universe of Utopian science fiction as the preferred diet of the most advanced species and societies, whether human or alien (with Star Trek being perhaps the most well-known example of this). So, fellow vegan travelers, take heart in knowing that many of the world's most forward-looking sages have foreseen an animal-friendly future — and I'm not just talking about science fiction writers, but some of the most influential figures in all of human history.
For example, over twenty-five hundred years ago, Pythagoras (who was the first philosopher and vegetarian in the recorded history of Western Civilization) said, “For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” Centuries later, the quintessential Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci, was famous even in his own day for being far ahead of his time — and for refusing to eat meat on ethical grounds. With such an auspicious lineage, we vegans today are the inheritors of a long and proud tradition that stretches back many generations into the past — and, perhaps, into the distant future, with Mr. Spock guiding us toward a bold new frontier of compassion for all species.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Explore Farm Sanctuary's Virtual Experience
Tour shelters & investigate slaughterhouses from your computer
For over a year now, I've been working as a writer/editor for Farm Sanctuary, North America's first and still largest rescue and shelter organization for “food” animals. In fact, about two weeks ago, I relocated from San Francisco to New York so I could be present at the organization's headquarters in Watkins Glen and get personally acquainted with some of the hundreds of rescued farm animals who reside there. Though I don't actually have a place to live yet and I'm currently lodging with my folks on Long Island, I'm hoping that this enhanced proximity will add new layers of depth to my writing — and perhaps make me a better person, too.*
I chose to make my move in April not only for weather-related reasons, but also because springtime marks the beginning of Farm Sanctuary's annual tour season. Every year from May to October, thousands of people from around the globe visit the non-profit's shelters in upstate New York and northern California to meet & greet rescued farm animals face-to-face. It's not hype or hyperbole to say that these lucky cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and rabbits live in a pastoral paradise that may be about as close to Utopia as farm animals can get on this mortal coil.
Virtually Veg
Farm Sanctuary's 2009 tour season is even more special than it would be during an average year because we recently launched an innovative new project called the Virtual Experience that allows anyone to visit the
organization's shelters (as well as different kinds of factory farms and slaughterhouses) online anytime. In this synthesized electronic environment, you'll find photos and videos of some of the animals who live at Farm Sanctuary, along with text (written by Yours Truly) that conveys heartwarming rescue stories, details about animals' individual personalities, and fascinating facts concerning each species' unique habits and abilities. You'll also see vividly-rendered versions of the barns, pastures and ponds that comprise Farm Sanctuary's gorgeous grounds.
Graphic artist Sephanie Gelish – who has studied everything from video game design and 3D modeling to digital photography – built the Virtual Experienc
e in Adobe Flash, an exceptionally versatile software suite that enables programmers to integrate interactive animation with embedded audiovisual elements for enhanced realism. Others who contributed to the project include Farm Sanctuary Video Coordinator Erin Howard, who gathered all of the photos and video, and Communications Manager Natalie Bowman, who edited and guided the whole enterprise to fruition. With an enthusiastic avatar always ready at the click of a mouse to snap photos of animals on 14 distinct levels representing different sections of Farm Sanctuary's shelters, the Virtual Experience is a place where you can go to learn, explore...and just have fun! Be sure to encourage your friends to pay the animals a visit as well!
The Dark Side
The fortunate few rescued animals living at Farm Sanctuary account for only an infinitesimal fraction of the tens of billions who are callously killed for food each year around the globe. As such, these individuals act as ambassadors whose gentleness and affection awakens compassion, transforms consciousness, and inspires people to make more humane die
tary choices. While you'll meet these beloved animals on the first leg of the Virtual Experience, those inhabiting the second are condemned to lifelong torture and pain that ends in violent death well before their natural time.
The factory farm section of the Virtual Experience exposes the disturbingly harsh reality that animals raised for beef, pork, poultry, dairy, veal, and foie gras are subjected to for their entire lives. Here you become an intrepid investigator witnessing the routine cruelty perpetrated behind a curtain of deception, and see actual photos and videos from more than two decades of Farm Sanctuary investigations documenting standardized animal abuse in the agribusiness industry. Incidentally, I wrote the text for this part of the Virtual Experience as well, so I hope you'll find it informative and engaging.
Between Heaven and Hell
It's normal to be revolted by the horrors taking place every day in stockyards, factory farms and slaughterhouses: if seeing these atrocities makes you feel frightened, anxious or outraged, then rest assured that you have a healthy conscience which identifies with others who are suffering, and recognizes how wrong it is to inflict pain and death on innocents. It is this empathic impetus that drives all of us at Farm Sanctuary to imagine a future (perhaps many generations hence) when humanity stops murdering members of other species to please our palates. A visit to one of Farm Sanctuary's facilities, or a spin around the shelter segment of the Virtual Experience, can provide an enlightening glimpse of what such a world might be like.
Yet, if animal advocates are to have any hope of realizing the vision of peace and harmony that burns within our hearts, we must look both to the candle flame that Farm Sanctuary and others have tended as a beacon of illumination and also at the repugnant abominations that most people instinctively turn away from in disgust. Directly facing our fears empowers us to overcome them, and in the case of farm animals, billions upon billions of lives literally depend on our courage to take action. The Virtual Experience adds another side to Farm Sanctuary's already multifaceted efforts to end the exploitation of intelligent, emotionally-complex living beings, and will greatly increase the number of people who are able to “visit” and befriend the amazing animals who call their shelters home.
* Farm Sanctuary laid me off from this job in October 2009, and I moved back to San Francisco in January 2010: whether this cross-cross-country move has made me a better person or not is still a matter of some debate within my own mind.
For over a year now, I've been working as a writer/editor for Farm Sanctuary, North America's first and still largest rescue and shelter organization for “food” animals. In fact, about two weeks ago, I relocated from San Francisco to New York so I could be present at the organization's headquarters in Watkins Glen and get personally acquainted with some of the hundreds of rescued farm animals who reside there. Though I don't actually have a place to live yet and I'm currently lodging with my folks on Long Island, I'm hoping that this enhanced proximity will add new layers of depth to my writing — and perhaps make me a better person, too.*
I chose to make my move in April not only for weather-related reasons, but also because springtime marks the beginning of Farm Sanctuary's annual tour season. Every year from May to October, thousands of people from around the globe visit the non-profit's shelters in upstate New York and northern California to meet & greet rescued farm animals face-to-face. It's not hype or hyperbole to say that these lucky cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and rabbits live in a pastoral paradise that may be about as close to Utopia as farm animals can get on this mortal coil.
Virtually Veg
Farm Sanctuary's 2009 tour season is even more special than it would be during an average year because we recently launched an innovative new project called the Virtual Experience that allows anyone to visit the
organization's shelters (as well as different kinds of factory farms and slaughterhouses) online anytime. In this synthesized electronic environment, you'll find photos and videos of some of the animals who live at Farm Sanctuary, along with text (written by Yours Truly) that conveys heartwarming rescue stories, details about animals' individual personalities, and fascinating facts concerning each species' unique habits and abilities. You'll also see vividly-rendered versions of the barns, pastures and ponds that comprise Farm Sanctuary's gorgeous grounds.Graphic artist Sephanie Gelish – who has studied everything from video game design and 3D modeling to digital photography – built the Virtual Experienc
e in Adobe Flash, an exceptionally versatile software suite that enables programmers to integrate interactive animation with embedded audiovisual elements for enhanced realism. Others who contributed to the project include Farm Sanctuary Video Coordinator Erin Howard, who gathered all of the photos and video, and Communications Manager Natalie Bowman, who edited and guided the whole enterprise to fruition. With an enthusiastic avatar always ready at the click of a mouse to snap photos of animals on 14 distinct levels representing different sections of Farm Sanctuary's shelters, the Virtual Experience is a place where you can go to learn, explore...and just have fun! Be sure to encourage your friends to pay the animals a visit as well!The Dark Side
The fortunate few rescued animals living at Farm Sanctuary account for only an infinitesimal fraction of the tens of billions who are callously killed for food each year around the globe. As such, these individuals act as ambassadors whose gentleness and affection awakens compassion, transforms consciousness, and inspires people to make more humane die
tary choices. While you'll meet these beloved animals on the first leg of the Virtual Experience, those inhabiting the second are condemned to lifelong torture and pain that ends in violent death well before their natural time.The factory farm section of the Virtual Experience exposes the disturbingly harsh reality that animals raised for beef, pork, poultry, dairy, veal, and foie gras are subjected to for their entire lives. Here you become an intrepid investigator witnessing the routine cruelty perpetrated behind a curtain of deception, and see actual photos and videos from more than two decades of Farm Sanctuary investigations documenting standardized animal abuse in the agribusiness industry. Incidentally, I wrote the text for this part of the Virtual Experience as well, so I hope you'll find it informative and engaging.
Between Heaven and Hell
It's normal to be revolted by the horrors taking place every day in stockyards, factory farms and slaughterhouses: if seeing these atrocities makes you feel frightened, anxious or outraged, then rest assured that you have a healthy conscience which identifies with others who are suffering, and recognizes how wrong it is to inflict pain and death on innocents. It is this empathic impetus that drives all of us at Farm Sanctuary to imagine a future (perhaps many generations hence) when humanity stops murdering members of other species to please our palates. A visit to one of Farm Sanctuary's facilities, or a spin around the shelter segment of the Virtual Experience, can provide an enlightening glimpse of what such a world might be like.
Yet, if animal advocates are to have any hope of realizing the vision of peace and harmony that burns within our hearts, we must look both to the candle flame that Farm Sanctuary and others have tended as a beacon of illumination and also at the repugnant abominations that most people instinctively turn away from in disgust. Directly facing our fears empowers us to overcome them, and in the case of farm animals, billions upon billions of lives literally depend on our courage to take action. The Virtual Experience adds another side to Farm Sanctuary's already multifaceted efforts to end the exploitation of intelligent, emotionally-complex living beings, and will greatly increase the number of people who are able to “visit” and befriend the amazing animals who call their shelters home.
* Farm Sanctuary laid me off from this job in October 2009, and I moved back to San Francisco in January 2010: whether this cross-cross-country move has made me a better person or not is still a matter of some debate within my own mind.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
White Housebroken
First Family finally adopts a First Dog
More than five months after being elected President of the United States, Barack Obama has finally delivered on one of his most highly-publicized campaign promises: to get a dog for daughters Sasha and Malia.
Bo is an adorable six-month-old Portuguese water dog with both a purebred bloodline and a dynastic pedigree: that is, his original guardian was Senator Ted Kennedy, whose professional animal trainers had provided etiquette lessons “at a secret, undisclosed location outside Washington.” All this canine charm schooling paid off when Bo met the Obama girls at the executive mansion, where he reportedly followed them around, didn’t chew on any furniture, and avoided any potty faux pas.
The announcement has already rankled animal rescue advocates who wanted the Obamas to choose a mixed-breed dog from a shelter, maintaining that this would have set a positive example for the nation and the world that would ultimately save millions of homeless animals’ lives. President Obama had expressed interest in adopting a mutt last year, and an Associated Press poll conducted in January showed that more than two-thirds of Americans wanted the First Dog to be a mutt. However, in the end the Obamas decided to go with a porty because 10-year-old Malia is allergic to dogs, and this particular breed has been genetically selected to be hypoallergenic.
Purebred puppy proponents, on the other hand, maintain that the choice of a porty reflects the Obama family’s needs, and that they should be commended for doing the research necessary to ensuring their daughter’s health. “It's long past time to stop apologizing for owning purebred dogs,” wrote a dog trainer called Gaelen on her blog, Life Out Loud! “Dog ownership advocates, let's help the Obamas by supporting their choice. Let's put animal rights activists – who do little for the welfare of domesticated animals, and are primarily focused on their own anti-pet-owning agendas* – on notice: owning purebred dogs is a choice of which the Obamas, and everyone else who owns a purbred (sic) dog, can be proud.”
Symbolism and squabbling aside, here’s hoping the First Family is happy with their newest four-legged member. Neither Barack nor Michelle Obama have ever had dogs, and this will be Sasha and Malia’s first companion animal, so the experience may well open them all to a new way of relating to non-human species. Now that the doggy decision has been made, perhaps the nation will move on to weightier matters…although Bo is so cute, he may wind up stealing some of the President’s spotlight for many years to come!
* Click on the "Comments" below to read my response to this false accusation.
More than five months after being elected President of the United States, Barack Obama has finally delivered on one of his most highly-publicized campaign promises: to get a dog for daughters Sasha and Malia.
Bo is an adorable six-month-old Portuguese water dog with both a purebred bloodline and a dynastic pedigree: that is, his original guardian was Senator Ted Kennedy, whose professional animal trainers had provided etiquette lessons “at a secret, undisclosed location outside Washington.” All this canine charm schooling paid off when Bo met the Obama girls at the executive mansion, where he reportedly followed them around, didn’t chew on any furniture, and avoided any potty faux pas.
The announcement has already rankled animal rescue advocates who wanted the Obamas to choose a mixed-breed dog from a shelter, maintaining that this would have set a positive example for the nation and the world that would ultimately save millions of homeless animals’ lives. President Obama had expressed interest in adopting a mutt last year, and an Associated Press poll conducted in January showed that more than two-thirds of Americans wanted the First Dog to be a mutt. However, in the end the Obamas decided to go with a porty because 10-year-old Malia is allergic to dogs, and this particular breed has been genetically selected to be hypoallergenic.
Purebred puppy proponents, on the other hand, maintain that the choice of a porty reflects the Obama family’s needs, and that they should be commended for doing the research necessary to ensuring their daughter’s health. “It's long past time to stop apologizing for owning purebred dogs,” wrote a dog trainer called Gaelen on her blog, Life Out Loud! “Dog ownership advocates, let's help the Obamas by supporting their choice. Let's put animal rights activists – who do little for the welfare of domesticated animals, and are primarily focused on their own anti-pet-owning agendas* – on notice: owning purebred dogs is a choice of which the Obamas, and everyone else who owns a purbred (sic) dog, can be proud.”
Symbolism and squabbling aside, here’s hoping the First Family is happy with their newest four-legged member. Neither Barack nor Michelle Obama have ever had dogs, and this will be Sasha and Malia’s first companion animal, so the experience may well open them all to a new way of relating to non-human species. Now that the doggy decision has been made, perhaps the nation will move on to weightier matters…although Bo is so cute, he may wind up stealing some of the President’s spotlight for many years to come!
* Click on the "Comments" below to read my response to this false accusation.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Congress Ponders Livestock Antibiotic Ban
Bill to preserve human health would also elevate animal welfare
Thanks to antibiotics, you are 20 times less likely to die from a simple infection in 2009 than you would have been if you had lived before the discovery of antibiotics less than a century ago. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be discovered, and was not even known to be medically useful until World War II. Since then, this revolutionary "miracle drug" has saved millions upon millions of lives. But now, reckless agribusiness policies could render penicillin and other antibiotics all but useless if we don't stop them.
Today, doctors can prescribe hundreds of different types of antibiotics to treat everything from skin infections and food poisoning to tonsillitis and STDs. But you know what happens when we use antibiotics when we don't really need them? Bacterial organisms evolve and become resistant to antibiotics, effectively neutralizing medicine's power to fight disease. And today, because of the irresponsible overuse and misuse of antibiotics, we face a crisis of epidemic proportions with the development of mutant superbugs — extremely hazardous bacterial strains that, through natural selection, have survived and grown so powerful that they cannot be stopped using conventional antibiotics.
Phactory Pharming
Shockingly, most antibiotics in the U.S. are not given to sick people, but to animals on factory farms. It is estimated that 70% of all antimicrobials administered in this country (about 25 million pounds a year) are fed to livestock who are then eaten by people, making the population at large more vulnerable to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and less responsive to treatment. And it's not just meat eaters whose health and safety are compromised by the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture — vegans are vulnerable too, because pathogens and pharmaceutically-active compounds can be transmitted to us through animal feces that winds up in our food and water.
Why are farmers feeding antibiotics to herds and flocks of ostensibly healthy animals raised for meat, milk and eggs anyway? Well, because farm animals who start out healthy when they are born tend to get sick after spending some time densely packed together in dark, sunless cages or sheds wallowing in their own feces. Many farm animals are not born healthy because their genetic codes have been modified to give them physical characteristics that are market-friendly but inherently debilitating. These include chickens whose bodies grow so fast that their legs break underneath the weight; "designer" cows with massive swelling udders who produce ten times as much milk as their unmodified sisters; and humongous "double-muscled" cattle who look like they've been taking steroids. Factory farmers also administer antibiotics as a preventive measure against disease caused by farm animals' unnatural diet of pesticide-ridden corn and soy.
So farmers force animals to live in sickening conditions to increase profitability, and put antibiotics in their feed for two reasons: to accelerate their growth, and prevent them from simply dying of the infectious bacterial diseases that profligate in these darkened dens of feculence. And then, of course, when animals really do get sick, antibiotics no longer work properly because they've been taking them for so long that their bodies have developed an immunity.
Over time, factory farms become virtually perfect laboratories for the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains: ideal breeding grounds where microbes can adapt and become totally new and more potent forms. One of the most deadly permutations brewed so far on the factory farm is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a disease transmitted from pigs to humans which now claims more lives in the U.S. — approximately 18,000 victims a year — than the AIDS virus. Symptoms of MRSA include massive pimples (that most commonly sprout on the face, under the arms, behind the knees, and on the butt), as well as fatal heart failure.
Ban the Insanity
To address the myriad problems described above, U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter introduced a bill last week called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009 (PAMTA for short). If passed, it would prohibit the sub-therapeutic use of seven classes of antibiotics on farm animals by amending the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. In addition to making antibiotics more effective in the treatment of human disease, decreasing the frequency and duration of hospital visits, and perhaps preventing a future superbug from causing the next Black Plague, PAMTA would save the U.S. an estimated $4 to $5 billion a year on healthcare costs.
Plus, it would force factory farms to treat their animals somewhat better, because without the convenient crutch of antibiotics to lean on, producers will have to improve living conditions for livestock just to get them to market. Like other industries, the meat-dairy-egg consortium has calculated "acceptable losses" into their financial equations. That is, it's much cheaper to crowd animals together and have a certain percentage of them die from stress, injuries and diseases than it is to make their environment more humane. Currently, 8.6% of farm animals die before slaughter: downed cows, pigs killed by swine flu, chickens dead from heart failure because their bodies grew too fast, so on and so on. That's 875 million animals a year.
If it were economical for factory farmers to lower that number, they would. And if they could make even more money by crowding even more animals together in smaller spaces and feeding them even more antibiotics, they would do that too. However, agriculture accountants know that there is a point of diminishing financial returns because, when too many animals die, it eats into profits.
Studies have proven that simply providing animals with a more sanitary environment does at least as much to prevent bacterial infection as the routine administration of non-therapeutic antibiotics. But if sub-therapeutic antibiotics were banned in agriculture and factory farms didn't improve animal welfare, many more of their "livestock" would die before slaughter. The industry will therefore have to provide animals, for all practical purposes, with healthier food and better living conditions based purely on fiscal considerations.
Use this Pew Charitable Trusts alert to urge your congressional representative to co-sponsor and support PAMTA. To have the most impact, customize the sample letter using your own words, and follow up with a quick phone call or letter to your legislator.
Thanks to antibiotics, you are 20 times less likely to die from a simple infection in 2009 than you would have been if you had lived before the discovery of antibiotics less than a century ago. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be discovered, and was not even known to be medically useful until World War II. Since then, this revolutionary "miracle drug" has saved millions upon millions of lives. But now, reckless agribusiness policies could render penicillin and other antibiotics all but useless if we don't stop them.
Today, doctors can prescribe hundreds of different types of antibiotics to treat everything from skin infections and food poisoning to tonsillitis and STDs. But you know what happens when we use antibiotics when we don't really need them? Bacterial organisms evolve and become resistant to antibiotics, effectively neutralizing medicine's power to fight disease. And today, because of the irresponsible overuse and misuse of antibiotics, we face a crisis of epidemic proportions with the development of mutant superbugs — extremely hazardous bacterial strains that, through natural selection, have survived and grown so powerful that they cannot be stopped using conventional antibiotics.
Phactory Pharming
Shockingly, most antibiotics in the U.S. are not given to sick people, but to animals on factory farms. It is estimated that 70% of all antimicrobials administered in this country (about 25 million pounds a year) are fed to livestock who are then eaten by people, making the population at large more vulnerable to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and less responsive to treatment. And it's not just meat eaters whose health and safety are compromised by the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture — vegans are vulnerable too, because pathogens and pharmaceutically-active compounds can be transmitted to us through animal feces that winds up in our food and water.
Why are farmers feeding antibiotics to herds and flocks of ostensibly healthy animals raised for meat, milk and eggs anyway? Well, because farm animals who start out healthy when they are born tend to get sick after spending some time densely packed together in dark, sunless cages or sheds wallowing in their own feces. Many farm animals are not born healthy because their genetic codes have been modified to give them physical characteristics that are market-friendly but inherently debilitating. These include chickens whose bodies grow so fast that their legs break underneath the weight; "designer" cows with massive swelling udders who produce ten times as much milk as their unmodified sisters; and humongous "double-muscled" cattle who look like they've been taking steroids. Factory farmers also administer antibiotics as a preventive measure against disease caused by farm animals' unnatural diet of pesticide-ridden corn and soy.
So farmers force animals to live in sickening conditions to increase profitability, and put antibiotics in their feed for two reasons: to accelerate their growth, and prevent them from simply dying of the infectious bacterial diseases that profligate in these darkened dens of feculence. And then, of course, when animals really do get sick, antibiotics no longer work properly because they've been taking them for so long that their bodies have developed an immunity.
Over time, factory farms become virtually perfect laboratories for the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains: ideal breeding grounds where microbes can adapt and become totally new and more potent forms. One of the most deadly permutations brewed so far on the factory farm is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a disease transmitted from pigs to humans which now claims more lives in the U.S. — approximately 18,000 victims a year — than the AIDS virus. Symptoms of MRSA include massive pimples (that most commonly sprout on the face, under the arms, behind the knees, and on the butt), as well as fatal heart failure.
Ban the Insanity
To address the myriad problems described above, U.S. Representative Louise Slaughter introduced a bill last week called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2009 (PAMTA for short). If passed, it would prohibit the sub-therapeutic use of seven classes of antibiotics on farm animals by amending the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. In addition to making antibiotics more effective in the treatment of human disease, decreasing the frequency and duration of hospital visits, and perhaps preventing a future superbug from causing the next Black Plague, PAMTA would save the U.S. an estimated $4 to $5 billion a year on healthcare costs.
Plus, it would force factory farms to treat their animals somewhat better, because without the convenient crutch of antibiotics to lean on, producers will have to improve living conditions for livestock just to get them to market. Like other industries, the meat-dairy-egg consortium has calculated "acceptable losses" into their financial equations. That is, it's much cheaper to crowd animals together and have a certain percentage of them die from stress, injuries and diseases than it is to make their environment more humane. Currently, 8.6% of farm animals die before slaughter: downed cows, pigs killed by swine flu, chickens dead from heart failure because their bodies grew too fast, so on and so on. That's 875 million animals a year.
If it were economical for factory farmers to lower that number, they would. And if they could make even more money by crowding even more animals together in smaller spaces and feeding them even more antibiotics, they would do that too. However, agriculture accountants know that there is a point of diminishing financial returns because, when too many animals die, it eats into profits.
Studies have proven that simply providing animals with a more sanitary environment does at least as much to prevent bacterial infection as the routine administration of non-therapeutic antibiotics. But if sub-therapeutic antibiotics were banned in agriculture and factory farms didn't improve animal welfare, many more of their "livestock" would die before slaughter. The industry will therefore have to provide animals, for all practical purposes, with healthier food and better living conditions based purely on fiscal considerations.
Use this Pew Charitable Trusts alert to urge your congressional representative to co-sponsor and support PAMTA. To have the most impact, customize the sample letter using your own words, and follow up with a quick phone call or letter to your legislator.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Lab-Grown "Shmeat" on The Colbert Report
"Is inescapable future of humanity," says commie scientist
Like so many other Americans, I keep up with current events by watching satirical news shows such as The Colbert Report. On last night's program, in a new segment called "Stephen Colbert's World of Nahlej," the popular parodic pundit explored the topic of lab-grown meat with predictably comic effect:
After marveling that South Korean researchers have actually invented glow-in-the-dark fluorescent cats, Colbert hailed "commie" scientist Dr. Vladimir Mironov as a pioneer in the emerging technology of creating edible meat from animal tissue cultures. According to Mironov, cultured meat "Is inescapable future of humanity," and when it will hit the marketplace is primarily a matter of "when if you have all necessary money." That's where PETA president (and "total drama queen") Ingrid Newkirk comes in: the animal rights group is famously offering a $1 million reward "to the first team of scientists that can develop a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro (lab-grown) chicken meat."
One new factoid I learned tonight: some people now refer to lab-grown meat as "shmeat" — which, as Dr. Mironov explained, stands for "combination of shit and meat." Ironically, in meatro is grown in sterile environments and therefore contains no feces, whereas the same certainly cannot be said for meat from animals raised on factory farms and butchered in slaughterhouses!
Learn more by reading my feature article iMeat: How Lab-Grown Meat Could Revolutionize Vegetarianism and the World from the May 2007 issue of VegNews magazine.
Like so many other Americans, I keep up with current events by watching satirical news shows such as The Colbert Report. On last night's program, in a new segment called "Stephen Colbert's World of Nahlej," the popular parodic pundit explored the topic of lab-grown meat with predictably comic effect:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| World of Nahlej - Shmeat | ||||
| ||||
After marveling that South Korean researchers have actually invented glow-in-the-dark fluorescent cats, Colbert hailed "commie" scientist Dr. Vladimir Mironov as a pioneer in the emerging technology of creating edible meat from animal tissue cultures. According to Mironov, cultured meat "Is inescapable future of humanity," and when it will hit the marketplace is primarily a matter of "when if you have all necessary money." That's where PETA president (and "total drama queen") Ingrid Newkirk comes in: the animal rights group is famously offering a $1 million reward "to the first team of scientists that can develop a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro (lab-grown) chicken meat."
One new factoid I learned tonight: some people now refer to lab-grown meat as "shmeat" — which, as Dr. Mironov explained, stands for "combination of shit and meat." Ironically, in meatro is grown in sterile environments and therefore contains no feces, whereas the same certainly cannot be said for meat from animals raised on factory farms and butchered in slaughterhouses!
Learn more by reading my feature article iMeat: How Lab-Grown Meat Could Revolutionize Vegetarianism and the World from the May 2007 issue of VegNews magazine.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
President Obama Announces Downed Cattle Ban
Decision is a milestone victory for animal welfare and food safety
Today, President Barack Obama announced in his weekly video address that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will finally ban the slaughter of all downed cows for food. This is a major win for animal protection and consumer health advocates that has been in the making since the early 1990s, when organizations like Farm Sanctuary and HSUS started pushing the government to pass legislation prohibiting
producers from dragging sick, crippled cattle to the killing floor for processing. Significantly, Obama took action on this important issue only 54 days into his still-young presidency, sending the message that he takes food safety and animal welfare seriously.
Elected and appointed officials must (or should) know by now that downed animals are far more likely than their ambulatory counterparts to carry diseases such as mad cow and bacteria like E. coli that can be fatal to humans who eat their meat. During one of the eight congressional hearings held last year following the largest beef recall in U.S. history, many of them would have also seen HSUS’s undercover video exposé showing workers at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company packing plant in Chino, California abusing downed cows by ramming them with forklifts and shocking them with electric prods. Nevertheless, the USDA has allowed producers to process cattle who become downed after reaching the slaughterhouse since 2007. The ban Obama announced today will close this legal loophole by permanently prohibiting the slaughter of all downed cattle for food, no matter when they become disabled.
Animals typically become downers because of the way they are raised on factory farms: genetically bred for fast growth, crowded together or confined in cages or crates, mutilated without anesthetic, and fed garbage, the only reason that any factory farmed animals can actually walk to their own deaths is that they are routinely pumped up with non-therapeutic antibiotics. Because downed animals are already suffering greatly when they get to the slaughterhouse, current laws must be reformed to require timely euthanization of cattle deemed unfit for human consumption in order for the ban to actually prevent animals from lingering in pain. I assume that such a provision will be put in place (but cannot presently find any corroborating details), and that some kind of enforcement mechanisms will be implemented.
Political Prognostications and Appointees
In September 2008, I wrote a blog post analyzing Obama’s record on animal issues, concluding that he would be far more likely to support and promote animal causes than his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, based on their respective legislative histories. In January, I wrote my monthly column for The Animal World magazine about Tom Vilsack, Obama’s appointee to Secretary of Agriculture, examining his public service career and speculating as to whether he would challenge Big Ag's mistreatment of animals. Well, it seems like the administration is on the right track so far: here’s hoping they keep up the momentum and accomplish even more for animals in the coming four years.
Secretary Vilsack called the downed cow ban "a step forward for both food safety and the standards for humane treatment of animals," which is a brave statement for someone in his position, given that most previous Secretaries of Agriculture have been unwilling to even acknowledge farm animal welfare as a legitimate concern for fear of blowback from powerful agribusiness interests. For his own part, President Obama also made some bold assertions in his video address. For example, after qualifying that "the United States is one of the safest places in the world to buy groceries at a supermarket," he called the nation’s food safety inspection system a "hazard to public health," noting that the annual number of contaminated food outbreaks in the U.S. today is more than triple what it was just 15 years ago.
Alerting viewers to the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been so underfunded that it can only inspect about 5% of the nation’s food processing facilities every year, President Obama promised that his new pick for FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, will change all that — and start by hiring more inspectors. "Dr. Hamburg brings to this vital position not only a reputation of integrity," Obama said, "but a record of achievement in making Americans safer and more secure." There’s absolutely no question about it, Hamburg's résumé is impressive, so it’s not surprising that both public health advocates and food industry groups are praising the pick. According to Obama, the work of Hamburg and her Deputy Commissioner at the FDA, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, "will be part of a larger effort taken up by a new Food Safety Working Group" that will advise the president "on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them."
Pigs: The Other Downed Animals
The downed animal ban announced by President Obama applies only to cattle, leaving downed pigs, sheep, goats, and other farm animals to suffer the cruelty inherent in dragging, pushing or otherwise coercing large animals onto the kill floor. Pigs are also known to carry transmissible diseases from which humans have died and approximately 100,000 downed pigs go to market each year, yet for the foreseeable future, these animals will continue to suffer cruelty while the pork-eating public remains at risk. And don’t forget that salmonella poisoning kills about 1,500 humans every year, and that approximately 15% of chickens sold in the U.S. are contaminated with salmonella.
People who eat meat must understand that as long as agribusiness corporations insist on treating animals like interchangeable biomachines instead of individual living creatures, meat will be swarming with bacteria from feces and other unsanitary substances that are part and parcel of the assembly-line factory farming system. That is, improvements in animal welfare and food safety are intimately connected — and you can’t have one without the other. So please, urge your legislators and President Obama to expand the downed animal ban so that it protects all farm animal species.
Today, President Barack Obama announced in his weekly video address that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will finally ban the slaughter of all downed cows for food. This is a major win for animal protection and consumer health advocates that has been in the making since the early 1990s, when organizations like Farm Sanctuary and HSUS started pushing the government to pass legislation prohibiting
producers from dragging sick, crippled cattle to the killing floor for processing. Significantly, Obama took action on this important issue only 54 days into his still-young presidency, sending the message that he takes food safety and animal welfare seriously.Elected and appointed officials must (or should) know by now that downed animals are far more likely than their ambulatory counterparts to carry diseases such as mad cow and bacteria like E. coli that can be fatal to humans who eat their meat. During one of the eight congressional hearings held last year following the largest beef recall in U.S. history, many of them would have also seen HSUS’s undercover video exposé showing workers at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company packing plant in Chino, California abusing downed cows by ramming them with forklifts and shocking them with electric prods. Nevertheless, the USDA has allowed producers to process cattle who become downed after reaching the slaughterhouse since 2007. The ban Obama announced today will close this legal loophole by permanently prohibiting the slaughter of all downed cattle for food, no matter when they become disabled.
Animals typically become downers because of the way they are raised on factory farms: genetically bred for fast growth, crowded together or confined in cages or crates, mutilated without anesthetic, and fed garbage, the only reason that any factory farmed animals can actually walk to their own deaths is that they are routinely pumped up with non-therapeutic antibiotics. Because downed animals are already suffering greatly when they get to the slaughterhouse, current laws must be reformed to require timely euthanization of cattle deemed unfit for human consumption in order for the ban to actually prevent animals from lingering in pain. I assume that such a provision will be put in place (but cannot presently find any corroborating details), and that some kind of enforcement mechanisms will be implemented.
Political Prognostications and Appointees
In September 2008, I wrote a blog post analyzing Obama’s record on animal issues, concluding that he would be far more likely to support and promote animal causes than his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, based on their respective legislative histories. In January, I wrote my monthly column for The Animal World magazine about Tom Vilsack, Obama’s appointee to Secretary of Agriculture, examining his public service career and speculating as to whether he would challenge Big Ag's mistreatment of animals. Well, it seems like the administration is on the right track so far: here’s hoping they keep up the momentum and accomplish even more for animals in the coming four years.
Secretary Vilsack called the downed cow ban "a step forward for both food safety and the standards for humane treatment of animals," which is a brave statement for someone in his position, given that most previous Secretaries of Agriculture have been unwilling to even acknowledge farm animal welfare as a legitimate concern for fear of blowback from powerful agribusiness interests. For his own part, President Obama also made some bold assertions in his video address. For example, after qualifying that "the United States is one of the safest places in the world to buy groceries at a supermarket," he called the nation’s food safety inspection system a "hazard to public health," noting that the annual number of contaminated food outbreaks in the U.S. today is more than triple what it was just 15 years ago.
Alerting viewers to the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been so underfunded that it can only inspect about 5% of the nation’s food processing facilities every year, President Obama promised that his new pick for FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, will change all that — and start by hiring more inspectors. "Dr. Hamburg brings to this vital position not only a reputation of integrity," Obama said, "but a record of achievement in making Americans safer and more secure." There’s absolutely no question about it, Hamburg's résumé is impressive, so it’s not surprising that both public health advocates and food industry groups are praising the pick. According to Obama, the work of Hamburg and her Deputy Commissioner at the FDA, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, "will be part of a larger effort taken up by a new Food Safety Working Group" that will advise the president "on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them."
Pigs: The Other Downed Animals
The downed animal ban announced by President Obama applies only to cattle, leaving downed pigs, sheep, goats, and other farm animals to suffer the cruelty inherent in dragging, pushing or otherwise coercing large animals onto the kill floor. Pigs are also known to carry transmissible diseases from which humans have died and approximately 100,000 downed pigs go to market each year, yet for the foreseeable future, these animals will continue to suffer cruelty while the pork-eating public remains at risk. And don’t forget that salmonella poisoning kills about 1,500 humans every year, and that approximately 15% of chickens sold in the U.S. are contaminated with salmonella.
People who eat meat must understand that as long as agribusiness corporations insist on treating animals like interchangeable biomachines instead of individual living creatures, meat will be swarming with bacteria from feces and other unsanitary substances that are part and parcel of the assembly-line factory farming system. That is, improvements in animal welfare and food safety are intimately connected — and you can’t have one without the other. So please, urge your legislators and President Obama to expand the downed animal ban so that it protects all farm animal species.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Anarchy in the UC
Four California activists arrested under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it
I wanna destroy passerby
'Cause I wanna be Anarchy
- The Sex Pistols, from "Anarchy in the UK"
The FBI recently made the first arrests for violations of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) by charging four animal rights activists with using threats and physical force to intimidate University of California (UC) biomedical researchers into abandoning their animal experimentation careers. Here are the basic allegations against the accused:
- Holding protests with other activists outside the homes of UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz vivisectors, where they marched and chanted slogans.
- Trying to force their way inside a researcher’s house and throwing an unidentified "object" at him while shouting verbal threats.
- Producing and distributing fliers with the names, addresses and phone numbers of UC animal experimenters. The FBI found the fliers right before the homes of two UC Santa Cruz researchers were firebombed.
Note that the four arrested activists have not been charged with the firebombing, nor for physically injuring anyone, but mainly for actions that could potentially provoke someone to commit acts of violence. While these actions fall within Americans' First Amendment rights, each defendant could spend up to five years behind bars if convicted. Now, if you think the prospective punishment for these crimes seems harsh, it is, relatively speaking: consider, for example, that under California state law, assault and battery is punishable by a stint in jail "not exceeding six months," and the average prison sentence served by a child molester in the U.S. is about three years.
Perhaps sentencing under the AETA is more severe because it is the only law of its kind, in that it applies exclusively to the animal exploitation industry. That is to say, if you used these activists’ exact tactics against, say, the executives of a logging company that was clear-cutting an ancient forest, you would not be penalized as strongly as you would be if your target was a fur farm. No other industry enjoys such legal protection and privilege.
What Happens at UC, Stays at UC
The ktvu.com news article from which I first learned of the activists’ arrest reads like a self-congratulatory FBI press release, and conspicuously fails to mention any of the animal experiments taking place at UC Berkeley/Santa Cruz that so enraged the accused. Referring, for example, to the activists as "extremists" three times in the text is just biased journalism. Sadly, such selectively partisan coverage is typical of the mainstream media, which just loves sensationalistic story arcs with clear-cut heroes, villains and victims (cops, criminals & upstanding citizens), but is consequently incapable of treating this subject in an objective, balanced manner.
Apparently, the mainstream media mentality holds that merely questioning the ethics and efficacy of biomedical research on animals amounts to rewarding those who took illegal action against it — then, supposedly, the "terrorists win" in some way. That kind of moral blindness misrepresents reality by omission of a crucial perspective. That is to say, even if the vast majority of the populace is disgusted by how the "extremists" expressed themselves, that does not make the cause they speak for any less just or crucial, and yet the media is shirking its responsibility to inform the public about the legally-sanctioned cruelty being perpetrated at public institutions of higher learning under the guise of scientific progress.
To fill in some of the missing facts, here’s a brief overview of UC Berkeley’s animal research program. About 40,000 animals are used in experiments at the school’s Northwest Animal Facility every year. These largely taxpayer-funded projects include, for example, such "medical advances" as implanting electrodes and other devices in the brains of captive and clinically-controlled primates, cats and songbirds. Meanwhile, Berkeley is in the process of building a new $266-million Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences (complete with an expanded underground vivisection lab) that will more than double the current facility’s size. And remember, Berkeley is only one of ten UC campuses, and hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in research every year throughout the UC system.
Helpless Despair
As an animal advocate, I identify with the arrested activists’ frustrations and motivations, but disagree with their alleged approach because, on a psychological level, actual or perceived threats only galvanize sentiment for those targeted by intimidation while reinforcing existing negative prejudices against the animal advocacy movement. I subscribe to Carol Adams' view that intimidation tactics are driven by traumatic knowledge of the vast scale of animal suffering caused by humanity, and that projecting our subsequent rage onto others is counterproductive and generally unhealthy for everyone involved. I strongly believe that coercion rarely (if ever) brings about a positive outcome, but violence is so ingrained in our society that some people feel making threats is the only way they can effect change in the world.
Yet media bias paradoxically bolsters the "extremist" position by holding a tight spotlight on a small fraction of "outlaw" activists while blacking out the much larger community of law-abiding activists who perform the groundwork of public outreach and education. Mainstream news stories about animal rights "violence" against vivisectors are common, but reporters are nowhere to be found when people gather legally and peacefully at demos against UC’s use of animals. So apparently, animal advocates are only worth paying attention to when we break the law.
Still, it was heartening to see more commendable media coverage last year of other major animal stories, including the Proposition 2 victory in California, the Chino slaughterhouse scandal, and Michael Vick’s conviction for dog fighting. The common thread between these three stories is that they all centered on either enforcing the law or creating new ones. So, in pragmatic terms, working the law rather than breaking it seems to be having a better actual impact on how animals are viewed and treated by humans, especially over the long term.
Deepening Awareness
So we don’t need to threaten or intimidate others to have a real and sustained impact for animals. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is an excellent exemplar of holistic and peaceful social activism, and right now I’m reading one of his many books, which is entitled Healing Anger: The power of patience from a Buddhist perspective. His teachings about the need to cultivate a disciplined temperament and channel anger appropriately in the face of adversity are based on the Bodhisattva vow, which means dedicating one's life toward the welfare of others. As an example, here is one excerpt that explains our responsibilities to our "enemies" (say, those practicing vivisection):
"One of the reasons there is a need to adopt a strong countermeasure against someone who (causes harm) is that if you let it pass, there is a danger of that person becoming habituated to extremely negative actions, which in the long run will cause that person’s own downfall and is very destructive for the individual himself or herself. Therefore, a strong countermeasure, taken out of compassion or a sense of concern for the other, is necessary. When you are motivated by that realization, then there is a sense of concern as part of your motive for taking that strong measure."
As a Bodhisattva-wannabe, I want to save as many animals as I can and "enlighten" as many people as possible about the need to respect all forms of life. That entails emotionally engaging the anger, outrage and despair I feel over humanity’s crimes against animals, and hopefully taking "strong countermeasures" grounded in kindness that will ultimately (in Buddhist terms) benefit all beings. Basically, in order to stop demonizing people who know not what they do to animals and themselves, I must first reconcile with my own demons, for only universal compassion has the power to transform consciousness.
If you live in the Bay Area and want to join an established grass-roots effort against animal research, check out Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy (BOAA) online or attend one of their weekly Wednesday evening meetings.
I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
Don't know what I want
But I know how to get it
I wanna destroy passerby
'Cause I wanna be Anarchy
- The Sex Pistols, from "Anarchy in the UK"
The FBI recently made the first arrests for violations of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) by charging four animal rights activists with using threats and physical force to intimidate University of California (UC) biomedical researchers into abandoning their animal experimentation careers. Here are the basic allegations against the accused:
- Holding protests with other activists outside the homes of UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz vivisectors, where they marched and chanted slogans.
- Trying to force their way inside a researcher’s house and throwing an unidentified "object" at him while shouting verbal threats.
- Producing and distributing fliers with the names, addresses and phone numbers of UC animal experimenters. The FBI found the fliers right before the homes of two UC Santa Cruz researchers were firebombed.
Note that the four arrested activists have not been charged with the firebombing, nor for physically injuring anyone, but mainly for actions that could potentially provoke someone to commit acts of violence. While these actions fall within Americans' First Amendment rights, each defendant could spend up to five years behind bars if convicted. Now, if you think the prospective punishment for these crimes seems harsh, it is, relatively speaking: consider, for example, that under California state law, assault and battery is punishable by a stint in jail "not exceeding six months," and the average prison sentence served by a child molester in the U.S. is about three years.
Perhaps sentencing under the AETA is more severe because it is the only law of its kind, in that it applies exclusively to the animal exploitation industry. That is to say, if you used these activists’ exact tactics against, say, the executives of a logging company that was clear-cutting an ancient forest, you would not be penalized as strongly as you would be if your target was a fur farm. No other industry enjoys such legal protection and privilege.
What Happens at UC, Stays at UC
The ktvu.com news article from which I first learned of the activists’ arrest reads like a self-congratulatory FBI press release, and conspicuously fails to mention any of the animal experiments taking place at UC Berkeley/Santa Cruz that so enraged the accused. Referring, for example, to the activists as "extremists" three times in the text is just biased journalism. Sadly, such selectively partisan coverage is typical of the mainstream media, which just loves sensationalistic story arcs with clear-cut heroes, villains and victims (cops, criminals & upstanding citizens), but is consequently incapable of treating this subject in an objective, balanced manner.
Apparently, the mainstream media mentality holds that merely questioning the ethics and efficacy of biomedical research on animals amounts to rewarding those who took illegal action against it — then, supposedly, the "terrorists win" in some way. That kind of moral blindness misrepresents reality by omission of a crucial perspective. That is to say, even if the vast majority of the populace is disgusted by how the "extremists" expressed themselves, that does not make the cause they speak for any less just or crucial, and yet the media is shirking its responsibility to inform the public about the legally-sanctioned cruelty being perpetrated at public institutions of higher learning under the guise of scientific progress.
To fill in some of the missing facts, here’s a brief overview of UC Berkeley’s animal research program. About 40,000 animals are used in experiments at the school’s Northwest Animal Facility every year. These largely taxpayer-funded projects include, for example, such "medical advances" as implanting electrodes and other devices in the brains of captive and clinically-controlled primates, cats and songbirds. Meanwhile, Berkeley is in the process of building a new $266-million Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences (complete with an expanded underground vivisection lab) that will more than double the current facility’s size. And remember, Berkeley is only one of ten UC campuses, and hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in research every year throughout the UC system.
Helpless Despair
As an animal advocate, I identify with the arrested activists’ frustrations and motivations, but disagree with their alleged approach because, on a psychological level, actual or perceived threats only galvanize sentiment for those targeted by intimidation while reinforcing existing negative prejudices against the animal advocacy movement. I subscribe to Carol Adams' view that intimidation tactics are driven by traumatic knowledge of the vast scale of animal suffering caused by humanity, and that projecting our subsequent rage onto others is counterproductive and generally unhealthy for everyone involved. I strongly believe that coercion rarely (if ever) brings about a positive outcome, but violence is so ingrained in our society that some people feel making threats is the only way they can effect change in the world.
Yet media bias paradoxically bolsters the "extremist" position by holding a tight spotlight on a small fraction of "outlaw" activists while blacking out the much larger community of law-abiding activists who perform the groundwork of public outreach and education. Mainstream news stories about animal rights "violence" against vivisectors are common, but reporters are nowhere to be found when people gather legally and peacefully at demos against UC’s use of animals. So apparently, animal advocates are only worth paying attention to when we break the law.
Still, it was heartening to see more commendable media coverage last year of other major animal stories, including the Proposition 2 victory in California, the Chino slaughterhouse scandal, and Michael Vick’s conviction for dog fighting. The common thread between these three stories is that they all centered on either enforcing the law or creating new ones. So, in pragmatic terms, working the law rather than breaking it seems to be having a better actual impact on how animals are viewed and treated by humans, especially over the long term.
Deepening Awareness
So we don’t need to threaten or intimidate others to have a real and sustained impact for animals. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is an excellent exemplar of holistic and peaceful social activism, and right now I’m reading one of his many books, which is entitled Healing Anger: The power of patience from a Buddhist perspective. His teachings about the need to cultivate a disciplined temperament and channel anger appropriately in the face of adversity are based on the Bodhisattva vow, which means dedicating one's life toward the welfare of others. As an example, here is one excerpt that explains our responsibilities to our "enemies" (say, those practicing vivisection):
"One of the reasons there is a need to adopt a strong countermeasure against someone who (causes harm) is that if you let it pass, there is a danger of that person becoming habituated to extremely negative actions, which in the long run will cause that person’s own downfall and is very destructive for the individual himself or herself. Therefore, a strong countermeasure, taken out of compassion or a sense of concern for the other, is necessary. When you are motivated by that realization, then there is a sense of concern as part of your motive for taking that strong measure."
As a Bodhisattva-wannabe, I want to save as many animals as I can and "enlighten" as many people as possible about the need to respect all forms of life. That entails emotionally engaging the anger, outrage and despair I feel over humanity’s crimes against animals, and hopefully taking "strong countermeasures" grounded in kindness that will ultimately (in Buddhist terms) benefit all beings. Basically, in order to stop demonizing people who know not what they do to animals and themselves, I must first reconcile with my own demons, for only universal compassion has the power to transform consciousness.
If you live in the Bay Area and want to join an established grass-roots effort against animal research, check out Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy (BOAA) online or attend one of their weekly Wednesday evening meetings.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Turd Sandwich
Why are there bugs, rat hairs and feces in our supposedly "vegan" food?
Hold onto your gag reflex before reading "The Maggots in Your Mushrooms," an Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times which points out that insects, rodent fur, "foreign matter" like cigarette butts, and ot
her barfworthy ingredients are all commonly present in the foods we eat — even though you won’t find them listed on the labels. That's because the USDA doesn’t especially consider these nauseating items health hazards, but rather unavoidable "aesthetic" defects, and has established standards to regulate the amounts of detritus that various foods can legally contain before being deemed unfit for human consumption. For instance, tomato juice can include 10 or more fly eggs per glass, 25 grams of curry powder can have over 100 bug fragments, and up to 2,500 plant lice may be swimming in a bottle of beer. These government-sanctioned criteria leave the average person scarfing down two to three pounds of bug-hair-crap-matter every year.
Yuck, to be sure (even though insects are considered delicacies in some cultures), but the real gross-out factor here for vegans is the fact that even many supposedly vegan foods are not really vegan because they contain parts of dead bugs and other animals (that just happened to get mixed in there during the manufacturing process). While we vegans like to think that our diet is "pure" (in the sense that we don’t eat any creature that crawls, flies or swims), there is certainly no guarantee of this, especially if we purchase packaged foods or patronize restaurants. The good news is that we can avoid most of these unsavory contaminants by preparing fresh produce, grains, beans, etc. at home from scratch.
Meat Is Murder — And Icky!
Notably, the Times piece doesn't even mention the revolting substances found in meat, milk and eggs. Of course, as a vegan, I find the idea of eating animal flesh or secretions to be just as repugnant as ingesting bugs, if not more so — which is why I can continue eating what I do, even knowing what (and who) is actually in it. I figure most meat eaters must rely on a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance just to prevent themselves from being aware that the organisms they’re devouring were once actually living, breathing creatures made up of blood, veins, intestines, and other internal organs that produce things like piss and shit…which, by the way, are far more prevalent in meat, dairy and eggs than plant-based edibles. Food-borne pathogens such as salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli can certainly wind up on tomatoes and spinach, but the primary source of these dangerous bacteria is animal feces.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are around 75 million cases of food-borne illness in the U.S. every year, about 5,000 of which are fatal. Food contaminated with animal feces (whether by direct contact or agricultural runoff) is the number one cause of these infections, and meat is the main agent by which they spread. That is because animal flesh is exposed to fecal matter during every step of the production process — from the crowded factory farm, where animals live in their own filth, to the slaughterhouse kill floor, where the fetid contents of their bowels can spill into the "product" when their stomachs are eviscerated from their still-warm carcasses.
A person infected with even the most miniscule amount of E. coli may, for example, suffer seizures, neurological damage or a stroke — all from eating a little bit of shit. Unfortunately, modern industrial production methods only make the problem more widespread. Hamburger meat, for instance, is processed by the ton in gigantic grinders before being shipped all over the country, meaning that a single fast food burger may contain flesh from dozens or even hundreds of different animals, and a single diseased animal can taint over 16 tons of beef. Yet the E. coli bacteria is so resilient that it can survive freezing and direct temperatures exceeding 150 degrees, so if you do still eat meat (though I’m ethically against it), definitely cook it thoroughly before consuming.
But (you may protest) the meat industry, and government regulatory agencies, are always looking out for our best interests, right? Well, let me tell ya, they have a way of dealing with this disgusting and life-threatening dilemma...but you might not like it. Their solution: irradiate meat products, which disrupts the bacteria’s DNA so they can’t reproduce but doesn’t kill them. In other words, if you eat irradiated meat, you’re still eating shit, even if the massive number of microbes feeding on it can no longer get busy. But then this leads to more shit in your food, because if producers can just blast meat with radiation to make it "safe" (forget palatable), why should they even bother trying to keep fecal matter out of it?
OK, Life Itself is Kinda Gross…
It is not possible to exist without harming or ingesting bugs, as it were, since the vast majority of them are microscopic, and live on and within us by the billions. In fact, scientists claim that our bodies are composed of about ten times as many microbes as human cells. That means that in terms of each person's biomass (i.e., the total volume of living cells in a body), approximately 10% is human, and the other 90% or so is "other" (so to speak). Just think about it: there are about three pounds of bacteria in your digestive tract alone, and many, many more microbes crawling in and around your body at any given moment than there are humans on the Earth.
These single-celled organisms are (evolutionarily speaking) about 3.5 billion years older than humans, and have a symbiotic relationship with every living creature on the planet. As a result, not so surprisingly, they basically control all of our essential biological functions, from maintaining the surface of our skin to breaking down the food we eat. If it weren’t for these tiny, virtually weightless entities, our bodies would literally just fall apart — and yet, without us, they would do just fine.
Which is precisely why the future of medical science may very well depend on a more complete knowledge of these fascinatingly mysterious life forms. David A. Relman, a microbiologist at California’s Stanford University and chief of infectious diseases at the VA hospital in Palo Alto, believes that "A better understanding of the indigenous microbiota of the human body will lead to much more prudent strategies for maintaining and restoring health." This may (or may not) be putting it mildly: in his book Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, futurist and speculative fiction writer Bruce Sterling predicts that microbial medicine will soon become the very foundation of all health care.
...but this shit doesn't just "happen"
When the USDA says that the presence of fecal matter and other contaminants in our food is "unavoidable," what they really mean is that it would cost producers (and therefore consumers) more to ensure that our food is safe and consistent with our cultural standards. OK, so tens of millions of people get sick, and about 5,000 people (mostly children and the elderly) die every year from food-borne pathogens, while fundamentally repugnant stuff is made an inherent part of our food supply: that’s just the cost of doing business…and of making a hefty profit. Sarcastically speaking, we can’t seriously expect the multi-billion dollar food industry to uphold higher quality standards: I mean, they might make less money!
Essentially, contamination of food (whether vegan or otherwise) is not unavoidable: the USDA merely refuses to hold companies accountable for harming their customers. But there are still ways that you can help reduce the number of food-borne pathogens in our food:
- Go vegan: This will lower your own chances of contracting a meat-borne disease while also diminishing the number of animals on factory farms, thereby decreasing the volume of feces produced by livestock (and thus the incidence of food-borne illness).
- Encourage legislators to pass food safety laws: Visit the Center for Science in the Public Interest Web site to see what laws are being considered, then contact your legislators urging them to support those you agree with.
Hold onto your gag reflex before reading "The Maggots in Your Mushrooms," an Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times which points out that insects, rodent fur, "foreign matter" like cigarette butts, and ot
her barfworthy ingredients are all commonly present in the foods we eat — even though you won’t find them listed on the labels. That's because the USDA doesn’t especially consider these nauseating items health hazards, but rather unavoidable "aesthetic" defects, and has established standards to regulate the amounts of detritus that various foods can legally contain before being deemed unfit for human consumption. For instance, tomato juice can include 10 or more fly eggs per glass, 25 grams of curry powder can have over 100 bug fragments, and up to 2,500 plant lice may be swimming in a bottle of beer. These government-sanctioned criteria leave the average person scarfing down two to three pounds of bug-hair-crap-matter every year.Yuck, to be sure (even though insects are considered delicacies in some cultures), but the real gross-out factor here for vegans is the fact that even many supposedly vegan foods are not really vegan because they contain parts of dead bugs and other animals (that just happened to get mixed in there during the manufacturing process). While we vegans like to think that our diet is "pure" (in the sense that we don’t eat any creature that crawls, flies or swims), there is certainly no guarantee of this, especially if we purchase packaged foods or patronize restaurants. The good news is that we can avoid most of these unsavory contaminants by preparing fresh produce, grains, beans, etc. at home from scratch.
Meat Is Murder — And Icky!
Notably, the Times piece doesn't even mention the revolting substances found in meat, milk and eggs. Of course, as a vegan, I find the idea of eating animal flesh or secretions to be just as repugnant as ingesting bugs, if not more so — which is why I can continue eating what I do, even knowing what (and who) is actually in it. I figure most meat eaters must rely on a considerable amount of cognitive dissonance just to prevent themselves from being aware that the organisms they’re devouring were once actually living, breathing creatures made up of blood, veins, intestines, and other internal organs that produce things like piss and shit…which, by the way, are far more prevalent in meat, dairy and eggs than plant-based edibles. Food-borne pathogens such as salmonella, campylobacter and E. coli can certainly wind up on tomatoes and spinach, but the primary source of these dangerous bacteria is animal feces.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are around 75 million cases of food-borne illness in the U.S. every year, about 5,000 of which are fatal. Food contaminated with animal feces (whether by direct contact or agricultural runoff) is the number one cause of these infections, and meat is the main agent by which they spread. That is because animal flesh is exposed to fecal matter during every step of the production process — from the crowded factory farm, where animals live in their own filth, to the slaughterhouse kill floor, where the fetid contents of their bowels can spill into the "product" when their stomachs are eviscerated from their still-warm carcasses.
A person infected with even the most miniscule amount of E. coli may, for example, suffer seizures, neurological damage or a stroke — all from eating a little bit of shit. Unfortunately, modern industrial production methods only make the problem more widespread. Hamburger meat, for instance, is processed by the ton in gigantic grinders before being shipped all over the country, meaning that a single fast food burger may contain flesh from dozens or even hundreds of different animals, and a single diseased animal can taint over 16 tons of beef. Yet the E. coli bacteria is so resilient that it can survive freezing and direct temperatures exceeding 150 degrees, so if you do still eat meat (though I’m ethically against it), definitely cook it thoroughly before consuming.
But (you may protest) the meat industry, and government regulatory agencies, are always looking out for our best interests, right? Well, let me tell ya, they have a way of dealing with this disgusting and life-threatening dilemma...but you might not like it. Their solution: irradiate meat products, which disrupts the bacteria’s DNA so they can’t reproduce but doesn’t kill them. In other words, if you eat irradiated meat, you’re still eating shit, even if the massive number of microbes feeding on it can no longer get busy. But then this leads to more shit in your food, because if producers can just blast meat with radiation to make it "safe" (forget palatable), why should they even bother trying to keep fecal matter out of it?
OK, Life Itself is Kinda Gross…
It is not possible to exist without harming or ingesting bugs, as it were, since the vast majority of them are microscopic, and live on and within us by the billions. In fact, scientists claim that our bodies are composed of about ten times as many microbes as human cells. That means that in terms of each person's biomass (i.e., the total volume of living cells in a body), approximately 10% is human, and the other 90% or so is "other" (so to speak). Just think about it: there are about three pounds of bacteria in your digestive tract alone, and many, many more microbes crawling in and around your body at any given moment than there are humans on the Earth.
These single-celled organisms are (evolutionarily speaking) about 3.5 billion years older than humans, and have a symbiotic relationship with every living creature on the planet. As a result, not so surprisingly, they basically control all of our essential biological functions, from maintaining the surface of our skin to breaking down the food we eat. If it weren’t for these tiny, virtually weightless entities, our bodies would literally just fall apart — and yet, without us, they would do just fine.
Which is precisely why the future of medical science may very well depend on a more complete knowledge of these fascinatingly mysterious life forms. David A. Relman, a microbiologist at California’s Stanford University and chief of infectious diseases at the VA hospital in Palo Alto, believes that "A better understanding of the indigenous microbiota of the human body will lead to much more prudent strategies for maintaining and restoring health." This may (or may not) be putting it mildly: in his book Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, futurist and speculative fiction writer Bruce Sterling predicts that microbial medicine will soon become the very foundation of all health care.
...but this shit doesn't just "happen"
When the USDA says that the presence of fecal matter and other contaminants in our food is "unavoidable," what they really mean is that it would cost producers (and therefore consumers) more to ensure that our food is safe and consistent with our cultural standards. OK, so tens of millions of people get sick, and about 5,000 people (mostly children and the elderly) die every year from food-borne pathogens, while fundamentally repugnant stuff is made an inherent part of our food supply: that’s just the cost of doing business…and of making a hefty profit. Sarcastically speaking, we can’t seriously expect the multi-billion dollar food industry to uphold higher quality standards: I mean, they might make less money!
Essentially, contamination of food (whether vegan or otherwise) is not unavoidable: the USDA merely refuses to hold companies accountable for harming their customers. But there are still ways that you can help reduce the number of food-borne pathogens in our food:
- Go vegan: This will lower your own chances of contracting a meat-borne disease while also diminishing the number of animals on factory farms, thereby decreasing the volume of feces produced by livestock (and thus the incidence of food-borne illness).
- Encourage legislators to pass food safety laws: Visit the Center for Science in the Public Interest Web site to see what laws are being considered, then contact your legislators urging them to support those you agree with.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Experience the Virtual Battery Cage
See a factory farm through the eyes of an egg-laying hen
It is often difficult for people to truly comprehend the suffering that animals on factory farms are subjected to on a daily basis. Facts and figures are informative but can be abstract and intangible compared to actual reality, while videos documenting the conditions animals endure usually show their suffering from the human angle — from outside the cage, so to speak.
Fortunately, there’s an innovative new interactive tool called the Virtual Battery Cage (VBC) to help fill the perspective gap. Crea
ted by artist, web developer, and animal rights advocate Mark Middleton, the VBC was modeled and textured in Blender 3D, and uses Adobe Flash and Papervision 3D to create an experience like a QuickTime Virtual Room (QTVR). Such "spherical panoramas" have been around for a number of years now, but this is the first time anyone has used this emerging technology to expose animal exploitation.
Middleton says he created the Virtual Battery Cage "to compel viewers to empathize with caged hens by seeing their world from their point of view, and to show that chickens are not just things, but actual living beings whose feelings matter. I also wanted to make something interactive and interesting that would attract viewers to the facts about the misery that chickens suffer just so humans can eat their eggs."
Many of these facts are included on Middleton's animalvisuals.org website, complementing the audiovisual sensory experience. For instance, an estimated 95% of egg-laying hens raised in the U.S. (about 300 million birds a year) are intensively confined in battery cages, with each cage holding 5 or 6 birds on average, but sometimes up to 10. The cages are so small that the hens wouldn't be able to spread their wings even if they were individually caged, but the average amount of space given each bird is only about two-thirds the size of a standard sheet of paper. This is barely enough to even sit in, yet this is where laying hens spend their entire lives.
Crammed together in battery cages for months on end, chickens are prevented from engaging in even the most basic natural behaviors, like nesting, perching, scratching, foraging, dust-bathing, exploring, and stretching. Their intensive confinement contributes to serious health problems, including respiratory diseases, and broken bones and foot disorders from constant contact with wire floors. Though chickens can live for more than 15 years, their egg output starts to wane after about two years on factory farms, so they are sent to slaughter, but not all of them even survive that long. Use your mouse to scroll around the VBC environment, and you'll find a dead chicken lying on the ground among her living cage-mates.
So, whether or not you still eat eggs, visit the VBC to get a glimpse of what it's like to be inside a battery cage on a factory farm. When you see the sights and hear the sounds that comprise a lifetime of suffering, you may be inspired to act, whether by foregoing eggs or educating others about factory farming cruelty. Here's an easy way to start: forward the VBC to your family and friends and encourage them to take a look around.
And check out my 8-page feature article The Road to Vegetopia: (Re)Imagining the Future of Food with illustrations by VBC designer Mark Middleton, from the March 09 issue of VegNews magazine!
It is often difficult for people to truly comprehend the suffering that animals on factory farms are subjected to on a daily basis. Facts and figures are informative but can be abstract and intangible compared to actual reality, while videos documenting the conditions animals endure usually show their suffering from the human angle — from outside the cage, so to speak.
Fortunately, there’s an innovative new interactive tool called the Virtual Battery Cage (VBC) to help fill the perspective gap. Crea
ted by artist, web developer, and animal rights advocate Mark Middleton, the VBC was modeled and textured in Blender 3D, and uses Adobe Flash and Papervision 3D to create an experience like a QuickTime Virtual Room (QTVR). Such "spherical panoramas" have been around for a number of years now, but this is the first time anyone has used this emerging technology to expose animal exploitation.Middleton says he created the Virtual Battery Cage "to compel viewers to empathize with caged hens by seeing their world from their point of view, and to show that chickens are not just things, but actual living beings whose feelings matter. I also wanted to make something interactive and interesting that would attract viewers to the facts about the misery that chickens suffer just so humans can eat their eggs."
Many of these facts are included on Middleton's animalvisuals.org website, complementing the audiovisual sensory experience. For instance, an estimated 95% of egg-laying hens raised in the U.S. (about 300 million birds a year) are intensively confined in battery cages, with each cage holding 5 or 6 birds on average, but sometimes up to 10. The cages are so small that the hens wouldn't be able to spread their wings even if they were individually caged, but the average amount of space given each bird is only about two-thirds the size of a standard sheet of paper. This is barely enough to even sit in, yet this is where laying hens spend their entire lives.
Crammed together in battery cages for months on end, chickens are prevented from engaging in even the most basic natural behaviors, like nesting, perching, scratching, foraging, dust-bathing, exploring, and stretching. Their intensive confinement contributes to serious health problems, including respiratory diseases, and broken bones and foot disorders from constant contact with wire floors. Though chickens can live for more than 15 years, their egg output starts to wane after about two years on factory farms, so they are sent to slaughter, but not all of them even survive that long. Use your mouse to scroll around the VBC environment, and you'll find a dead chicken lying on the ground among her living cage-mates.
So, whether or not you still eat eggs, visit the VBC to get a glimpse of what it's like to be inside a battery cage on a factory farm. When you see the sights and hear the sounds that comprise a lifetime of suffering, you may be inspired to act, whether by foregoing eggs or educating others about factory farming cruelty. Here's an easy way to start: forward the VBC to your family and friends and encourage them to take a look around.
And check out my 8-page feature article The Road to Vegetopia: (Re)Imagining the Future of Food with illustrations by VBC designer Mark Middleton, from the March 09 issue of VegNews magazine!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Liam Neeson Inserts Hoof In Mouth
Actor disses activists trying to stop carriage horse cruelty in NYC
Being an avid fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I was greatly disappointed that tonight’s guest, acclaimed Irish actor Liam Neeson, spent several minutes mocking the attempts of animal advocates to ban the horse-drawn carriage industry in New York City. Watch the interview here (5th segment).
“I hate how the horse-drawn carriage industry is being attacked nowadays,” he said during the interview segment. “Animal activists, you know, (say) the horses are being treated cruelly because they’re pulling a carriage around half a mile. I mean, these are the fittest, well-fed (sic), best kept
horses I’ve ever seen.” And Neesom goes on like this for awhile, raving about how great the horses supposedly have it, and that he knows this because he's visited their luxurious stables and talked to the drivers, and because he’s been “a horse rider and lover for many years.”
A horse lover? Really, Liam? Well, I have to say that willfully denying the overwhelming evidence of tragic suffering endured by equines on the streets of New York City seems a strange way to love horses. And the reason we animal advocates are fighting this infernal industry is not because the horses are “pulling a carriage around half a mile” — to characterize and minimize our valid concerns in this way is offensive to both us and the victims of injustice we are sincerely trying to help. To back up my assertion that New York City's carriage horses are indeed suffering greatly, here are some disturbing facts that Mr. Neesom apparently doesn’t know, or perhaps thinks are irrelevant:
According to an audit by the City Comptroller, the horses used to pull carriages in New York City are subjected to some of the worst conditions of any working animal. In summertime, they are forced to walk on burning asphalt and don't have access to enough fresh water, making heat exhaustion and other more serious problems common. They often trudge along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, breathing exhaust fumes all day long, which causes serious respiratory problems, and constantly walking on hard concrete also contributes to hoof and leg disorders. Horses are often left standing in their own filth due to insufficient drainage systems, and are routinely whipped by drivers to make them move.
In addition, there is no mandatory retirement age for carriage horses, so they can literally be worked to death. Yet most don’t live that long: the average lifespan of a carriage horse in New York City is only 4 years, compared (for example) to 15 years for a mounted Manhattan police horse. This is mostly due to the harsh conditions described above, but also partially because horses are so easily frightened by the loud noises and sudden movements of speeding motor vehicles, and have consequently caused numerous traffic accidents, many of which resulted in horses dying. Finally, when carriage horses are too broken down or injured to work anymore, many are sent to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada where they are killed for meat.
It is for these reasons that a coalition of animal advocates has formed behind legislation introduced by Queens Council Member Tony Avella that would finally ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City. “The romanticized idea of enjoying a carriage horse ride through the streets of Manhattan can no longer justify the risk of serious injury or death to these animals or to the public at large,” said Councilman Avella. “It is time to put the horse driven carriage industry out to pasture.”
A Tradition of Exploitation
Back in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, before New York City's streets were paved and teeming with cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles, the horse-drawn carriage might have been considered an essential form of transportation, sort of like hailing a cab is today. But it’s the 21st century, and carriage horses are now nothing more than an anachronistic tourist attraction in a densely-populated and technologically modernized urban center.
Other major cities around the world — including Paris, London and Toronto — long ago banned horse-drawn carriages from their streets. Yet according to Neesom, we should keep making horses pull carriages in New York City because “they have been there for a hundred years” and “they’re an iconic part of New York.” In a recent letter to the City Council, Neesom also wrote that he is “deeply disturbed by the unnecessary and misguided political and extreme rhetoric against the horse-drawn carriage industry.”
When one considers all the facts, animal advocates are clearly anything but “misguided” and “extreme” in their claims or actions. However, given Neesom's insistence on the matter, I have to wonder: has he researched this issue at all, or is this self-styled “horse lover” just talking out of his ass? I mean, really: how can anyone seriously profess to love horses while actively defending an industry that so egregiously abuses them? Has Neesom no shame, or is he just woefully ignorant? Has he no compassion for suffering animals, or is he merely blind to their misery? For my own and the horses’ sake, I’d very much like to know.
Please attend the City Council Consumer Affairs Committee’s public hearing on Councilman Avella's two bills concerning carriage horses, and consider providing two minutes worth of testimony in support of this humane legislation. The meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday, January 30, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. on the 2nd floor of City Hall.
And if you can’t attend the meeting:
- Please ask Mayor Bloomberg to support the ban on horse-drawn carriages in New York City.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Tel: 311 (outside NYC: 212-NEW-YORK)
Fax: (212) 788-2460
Webmail
- New York City residents: Also contact your City Council member and politely urge them to support Avalla's proposed ban on horse drawn carriages in New York City.
- Post a comment on The Daily Show Web site expressing your opinion of Neesom's performance.
- The horse-drawn carriage industry is mainly supported by tourists, so when friends and family visit New York City, please don't let them get taken for a ride!
Being an avid fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I was greatly disappointed that tonight’s guest, acclaimed Irish actor Liam Neeson, spent several minutes mocking the attempts of animal advocates to ban the horse-drawn carriage industry in New York City. Watch the interview here (5th segment).
“I hate how the horse-drawn carriage industry is being attacked nowadays,” he said during the interview segment. “Animal activists, you know, (say) the horses are being treated cruelly because they’re pulling a carriage around half a mile. I mean, these are the fittest, well-fed (sic), best kept
horses I’ve ever seen.” And Neesom goes on like this for awhile, raving about how great the horses supposedly have it, and that he knows this because he's visited their luxurious stables and talked to the drivers, and because he’s been “a horse rider and lover for many years.”A horse lover? Really, Liam? Well, I have to say that willfully denying the overwhelming evidence of tragic suffering endured by equines on the streets of New York City seems a strange way to love horses. And the reason we animal advocates are fighting this infernal industry is not because the horses are “pulling a carriage around half a mile” — to characterize and minimize our valid concerns in this way is offensive to both us and the victims of injustice we are sincerely trying to help. To back up my assertion that New York City's carriage horses are indeed suffering greatly, here are some disturbing facts that Mr. Neesom apparently doesn’t know, or perhaps thinks are irrelevant:
According to an audit by the City Comptroller, the horses used to pull carriages in New York City are subjected to some of the worst conditions of any working animal. In summertime, they are forced to walk on burning asphalt and don't have access to enough fresh water, making heat exhaustion and other more serious problems common. They often trudge along in bumper-to-bumper traffic, breathing exhaust fumes all day long, which causes serious respiratory problems, and constantly walking on hard concrete also contributes to hoof and leg disorders. Horses are often left standing in their own filth due to insufficient drainage systems, and are routinely whipped by drivers to make them move.
In addition, there is no mandatory retirement age for carriage horses, so they can literally be worked to death. Yet most don’t live that long: the average lifespan of a carriage horse in New York City is only 4 years, compared (for example) to 15 years for a mounted Manhattan police horse. This is mostly due to the harsh conditions described above, but also partially because horses are so easily frightened by the loud noises and sudden movements of speeding motor vehicles, and have consequently caused numerous traffic accidents, many of which resulted in horses dying. Finally, when carriage horses are too broken down or injured to work anymore, many are sent to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada where they are killed for meat.
It is for these reasons that a coalition of animal advocates has formed behind legislation introduced by Queens Council Member Tony Avella that would finally ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City. “The romanticized idea of enjoying a carriage horse ride through the streets of Manhattan can no longer justify the risk of serious injury or death to these animals or to the public at large,” said Councilman Avella. “It is time to put the horse driven carriage industry out to pasture.”
A Tradition of Exploitation
Back in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, before New York City's streets were paved and teeming with cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles, the horse-drawn carriage might have been considered an essential form of transportation, sort of like hailing a cab is today. But it’s the 21st century, and carriage horses are now nothing more than an anachronistic tourist attraction in a densely-populated and technologically modernized urban center.
Other major cities around the world — including Paris, London and Toronto — long ago banned horse-drawn carriages from their streets. Yet according to Neesom, we should keep making horses pull carriages in New York City because “they have been there for a hundred years” and “they’re an iconic part of New York.” In a recent letter to the City Council, Neesom also wrote that he is “deeply disturbed by the unnecessary and misguided political and extreme rhetoric against the horse-drawn carriage industry.”
When one considers all the facts, animal advocates are clearly anything but “misguided” and “extreme” in their claims or actions. However, given Neesom's insistence on the matter, I have to wonder: has he researched this issue at all, or is this self-styled “horse lover” just talking out of his ass? I mean, really: how can anyone seriously profess to love horses while actively defending an industry that so egregiously abuses them? Has Neesom no shame, or is he just woefully ignorant? Has he no compassion for suffering animals, or is he merely blind to their misery? For my own and the horses’ sake, I’d very much like to know.
Please attend the City Council Consumer Affairs Committee’s public hearing on Councilman Avella's two bills concerning carriage horses, and consider providing two minutes worth of testimony in support of this humane legislation. The meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday, January 30, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. on the 2nd floor of City Hall.
And if you can’t attend the meeting:
- Please ask Mayor Bloomberg to support the ban on horse-drawn carriages in New York City.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
Tel: 311 (outside NYC: 212-NEW-YORK)
Fax: (212) 788-2460
Webmail
- New York City residents: Also contact your City Council member and politely urge them to support Avalla's proposed ban on horse drawn carriages in New York City.
- Post a comment on The Daily Show Web site expressing your opinion of Neesom's performance.
- The horse-drawn carriage industry is mainly supported by tourists, so when friends and family visit New York City, please don't let them get taken for a ride!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Critical: Tell Gov. Schwarzenegger NO VET CARE TAX!
Animal guardians should not have to pay “luxury tax” on veterinary visits
My fellow Californians: first the bad news, then the other bad news. Our state faces a $41 billion budget deficit over the next 18 months, and to make matters worse, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger propounds paying it off by sticking animal guardians with the bill. How? By taxing veterinary care as a “luxury” item — literally equivalent (in the governor’s proposal) to other discretionary activities he now wants to tax like going to an amusement park, attending a sports event, playing golf, having your furniture repaired, or taking your car to a mechanic.
Arnold
TheCalifornia
My fellow Californians: first the bad news, then the other bad news. Our state faces a $41 billion budget deficit over the next 18 months, and to make matters worse, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger propounds paying it off by sticking animal guardians with the bill. How? By taxing veterinary care as a “luxury” item — literally equivalent (in the governor’s proposal) to other discretionary activities he now wants to tax like going to an amusement park, attending a sports event, playing golf, having your furniture repaired, or taking your car to a mechanic.
Schwarzenegger's short-sighted solution to solving California's debt crisis by imposing a “sales tax” of up to 10.5% on vet services (including routine checkups, vaccinations and prescription medications) is offensive enough. However, on top of that — adding linguistic insult to economic injury — he also wants to redefine taking a sick or injured animal companion to the vet as an optional extravagance (as opposed to a personal, family or moral obligation) that should be factored into your entertainment and household maintenance expenses. This regressive “Fido Fine” will surely force many financially-strapped guardians to choose between repairing the car and “fixing” the cat.
Terminator Tax
If anyone deserves a break in this tough economy, it’s animal guardians, who account for more than half the state’s population and spend about $2.7 billion a year on vet care. Unemployment is officially over 7% right now, so many people without jobs must (metaphorically) tighten their pets’ belts along with their own. Meanwhile, veterinary care is already too expensive for many families to afford, and the added tax would leave them even less able to provide for their own adopted animal family members, surely forcing some to surrender their animal companions to shelters for lack of funds.
Animal shelters, underfunded as they already are, would also have to pay more for essential veterinary services, including spay and neuter operations that reduce pet homelessness and euthanasia. Many large municipal shelters already spend several million dollars a year on such expenses — and would have to shell out hundreds of thousands more under Schwarzenegger’s plan. Every extra dollar allocated to veterinary care is a dollar taken away from animals who desperately need food, shelter, and every chance they can get to find loving guardians — meaning that shelters would no longer be able to feed, house, and save as many animals.
In the original (1984) Terminator movie, Arnold (the actor) was a cold, murderous cyborg, but in the blockbuster sequel released seven years later, he played a good Terminator — a bodyguard transported back through time who is programmed to protect the life of a vulnerable boy. Similarly, Schwarzenegger (the governor) has also taken on these dual roles when dealing with animal protection issues — alternately playing the callous politico, then the compassionate leader.
For instance, while (at first) he called the proposal to ban the sale and production of foie gras in California
Governor Schwarzenegger has shown concern for animals, so how can he not see how wrong and unfair it is to make caring people fork over more money for essential and life-saving services — especially when there are so many animal abusers who should be “paying” for their crimes? And so, I give you my plan for enabling California
The
The easiest way to oppose this unjust tax is to send an automatic email to these elected officials through HSUS’s Humane Alert on this issue. But to have the maximum impact, use this contact info to follow up with postal letters, phone calls, faxes, or personal emails:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento , CA 95814
Phone: 916/445-2841
Fax: 916/445-4633
Email the governor
Phone: 916/445-2841
Fax: 916/445-4633
Email the governor
Please also let your animal-loving family and friends in California
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