vegansaurus!
11/09/2012
It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! »
It’s Paul Shapiro’s weekly dose of all things animals! Yes!
Pork Magazine editorialized this week about what a “tough year” HSUS created in the US with its “laser focus on pork production.” Pork’s editor concludes: “Now, HSUS won’t go away; in fact it has gained strength. It has the formula down and will replicate its strategies within the pork sector as well as across the agriculture sector.”
Related: Metz Culinary Management is the latest major pork buyer to demand that its pork suppliers end their use of gestation crates…
On the other side of the world, Forbes has a sobering yet hopeful look at the challenges the animal movement faces in China and how Humane Society International is working to move the ball forward there. This interview is really worth the read.
Finally, check out this interesting new article on how the rise in demand for vegetarian food is largely coming from meat-eaters who are reducing the number of animals they’re eating.
Six years ago this week, Arizona voters made their state the first in the US to ban veal crates, and second to ban gestation crates. And four years ago this week, Californians banned both of those practices, as well as cramped cages for laying hens. Congratulations and happy anniversary to the thousands of awesome animal advocates who labored so tirelessly on those campaigns!
Video of the week: Ever feel like someone else is freeloading off your hard work? This cat may feel the same!
∞ posted at 10:30 by laurahooperb 
05/17/2012
Paul Shapiro presents: Is pork the new veal? »
It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! Yay!
Denny’s became the latest national food retailer to send shockwaves through the pork sector by jointly announcing with HSUS that it’s going to phase out pork from gestation crate confinement operations. Amazingly, the pork industry’s leaders still defend this archaic practice, leading to the question: Is pork becoming the new veal?
The latest HSUS gestation crate undercover investigation made headlines across the nation. While there are too many pieces to enumerate here, this Forbes story on it was particularly interesting. (And about a quarter million people have watched the video online in the first week since release.)
The NY Times’ Mark Bittman has a potent piece asserting that if you care about climate change, you really ought to be eating fewer animals. Check it out.
Video of the week: I’ve never wanted an iPad as much as now.
Can’t see the video? Watch it on Vegansaurus.com!]
Bonus article of interest: Did you know cockroaches “form closely bonded, egalitarian societies, based on social structures and rules”? I didn’t either.
∞ posted at 09:47 by seriousmeaveness 
05/03/2012
Paul Shapiro presents: debating ducks, changing climate, and funny felines! »
It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! Yay!
Amazingly, even though they’ve had more than seven years to find an alternative to force-feeding, a small gaggle of foie gras enthusiasts in California are trying to repeal the upcoming July ban on the force-feeding of ducks for foie gras (and the sale of products from force-fed animals). I did a 20-minute debate about this on Southern California’s NPR affiliate yesterday, and an hour-long debate on Northern California’s NPR affiliate today.
Speaking of feeding, as far as what we’re feeding ourselves, the title of the Forbes article says it all: “Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change, Say Experts.” Meatless Monday recipes, anyone?
Some good news: HSUS’s Smithfield exposé video yesterday won a 2012 Webby Award! (The Webbys are kind of like an Oscars of online content.) We’re psyched.
Finally, last week’s video was the double-dutching dog. This week it’s the treadmill-loving cats.
∞ posted at 08:34 by seriousmeaveness
03/26/2012
News flash: Veggies are cheap! »
My cheapness—ahem, frugality—has been well-documented. I’ve even defended veganism’s monetary cost (read: It can be really cheap to be vegan). Now Forbes, the New York Times, and others agree with me: Veggies are cheaper than a fast-food dinner. In your FACE, people who say they can’t afford to be vegan!
The Forbes article cites data from the USDA’s Economic Research Service. Researchers examined 94 vegetables in the study; Turns out, more than half of them cost less than 50 cents per one-cup serving, and none of them cost more than $2.07 per serving.
People who say they can only afford junk food don’t need to switch to “free-range” chicken, artisanal cheeses, and grass-fed beef. They really just need to eat something besides fries, Doritos, and McNuggets, such as kidney beans (protein!), sweet potatoes (vitamins!), and carrots (fiber!).
Yeah, a lone cup of veggies is obviously not as filling or macronutrient-dense as a pr0n-approved cheeseburger. But throw a few convenient foodstuffs together—frozen rice, some of those frozen peas/carrots/corn/green bean concoctions, a can of chickpeas, and a bottled curry sauce, for example—and BAM! Dinner is served quickly, cheaply, and healthfully.
The flip side? You have to actually do some work yourself. Boo-fuckin’-hoo. Did I mention that the article says frozen veggies are often cheaper and more nutritious than even fresh ones? Get a freezer, a microwave, and a copy of The Garden of Vegan, and learn to cook something already! Your wallet and the animals will thank you.
∞ posted at 13:06 by sarahmsmart 
02/29/2012
Guest Post: Your tax money pays for capturing wild horses! That sucks! »
It’s tax season! Hooray! Unless you owe the government money, in which case, boo!
In honor of this wonderful/horrendous season, I’ll be taking an occasional look at some of the excellent and also awful programs your tax money supports. Doesn’t that sound fantastic/terrible?
Have you heard of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)? It is a section of the Department of the Interior that manages 245 million acres of public land across the country. On about 26 million of these acres live wild horses, which the BLM occasionally rounds up, imprisons, and sells off to private buyers in an effort to “maintain the integrity of the land” on which the horses live, graze, and mate. Those that are not sold are kept in holding pens for the rest of their lives, often separated from their herd and forced to live in captivity. What’s up with that? According to this story on Forbes.com, the BLM claims that there are an “excessive” number of wild horses, and these gathers are necessary to the health of the land for other uses, like recreation, cattle and sheep grazing, and mining and energy companies seeking grazing, water, and mineral rights on the land the horses and burros have roamed for hundreds of years. However, photos from a 2011 gather show cattle ranchers moving in their cows to graze on the very same land from which wild horses were removed only a day earlier.
How exactly is grazing cattle helping to maintain the health of the land, you ask? Shocker of the century: many of the decisions made by the BLM are recommended by an advisory board “largely composed of livestock permittees.” Oh, and there’s also that tiny business of installing a $3 billion dollar, 675-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from Wyoming to Oregon across the herd’s habitat. Wouldn’t want horses getting in the way of THAT.
Worst of all, these gathers are traumatic and dangerous to the horses. Low-flying helicopters frighten the horses into running into traps. Horses have died as a result of the gathers, despite the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1971, which stipulates that “it is the policy of Congress that wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death; and to accomplish this they are to be considered in the area where presently found, as an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.”
An average of 10,600 animals are removed from the land each year at a cost of between $70 and $90 million. Million, people! That’s a pretty good chunk o’ tax money, much of which is delegated for helicopter operators, private land owners and horse sterilization. And according to the BLM’s own estimates, there will be at least twice as many wild horses (57,000) living in holding pens this year than roaming free.
Want to tell the government where they can shove your tax money that you oppose your tax money being used for the capture of wild horses? Visit the Cloud Foundation to find out great ways to take action! And while you’re there, check out these photos of Cloud, the wild horse who inspired this organization! So majestic and awesome!
Rachel Gary is from Connecticut, where she spends most of her time hiking, reading, tricking her family into eating delicious vegan baked goods, and avoiding doing laundry. As her responsible adult alter ego, she is an editor for an environmental and engineering firm.
∞ posted at 12:38 by laurahooperb
01/24/2012
Animal News You Can Use: a Paul Shapiro production! »
It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! Yay!
Like good news? Here you go: Americans are eating 12 percent less meat than we were just five years ago. For real. Interesting takes by Mark Bittman and Forbes on the issue.
Not so good news: Six states—Florida, New York, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, and Nebraska—now have “ag-gag” bills pending in their legislatures; the bills seek to criminalize whistle-blowing at factory farms. See what Wayne Pacelle’s got to say on the topic.
In better news, did you see that Martha Stewart’s speaking out for farm animals? Check her out.
Back to bad news: In a sickening display of the foxes guarding the hen house, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture leaked confidential info about an upcoming cruelty raid on a Butterball turkey facility in advance. Weak.
And finally, some really good news: Video of the week: Rat and cat sharing. I’ve seriously watched this thing like five times now. It’s just amazing.
∞ posted at 11:57 by youtalkfunny 
09/10/2009
» Here is a Professor at Texas State telling an old rich white dude media outlet to stop eating meat. Remind us what's so radical about a vegan diet?
In this editorial in Forbes, James McWilliams (author of Just Food: How Locavores Get it Wrong And How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, a book whose cover you want desperately to judge because looks exactly like every other paperback bestseller containing your newfound food philosophy) clarifies his position on locavorism (locavoreness? locavoraciousness? okay sorry.) And that is basically, not eating meat is more environmentally responsible by a large margin than the perceived virtuousness of eating strictly locally grown, locally sourced. Real talk.
This is topical because it’s not the first time in recent history a mainstream media outlet has published an editorial outright advocating a vegetarian diet to a rather unlikely target audience. Also, it’s significant that the science behind the assertion that meat production and consumption is environmentally the shittiest worst is so unequivocal it’s now fit for FORBES and the WASHINGTON POST. I mean, dang.
But this is also topical because it brings up other issues. Issues we Bay Area liberals hold very dear, like how amazing and righteous and change-making we are for supporting our local coffee roasteries and community gardens, turning up our noses at restaurant servers who can’t tell us what cutely named farm in the Santa Cruz mountains our dinner came from, and riding our bikes to our many farmer’s markets, eco-friendly cotton shopping bags from Etsy.com (OMG stop it so cute someone buy me this) in tow.
I am making fun of you, but I am also making fun of me, and many of my friends. And this is what is so important about James McWilliams’ editorial. There is a disparity between the common wisdom of “slow food” and the idea that eating meat can be at all “green” or sympatico with reforming a broken food system. It simply can’t. Not when the inputs of production (water, energy, land, processing) so far outstrip plant foods in terms of resource usage. Choosing veg over meat is the “green” equivalent of choosing bike over Hummer. If you believe in the science of climate change, if you are an advocate for reducing carbon emissions and saving energy and composting, then meat consumption is inherently illogical.
And let’s be real: “locavore” is an ideal more than a reality for most of the people who subscribe to it. For every Novella Carpenter who is walking the walk by ACTUALLY consuming what she grows in her own backyard in Oakland, there are 100 people in San Francisco who feel good because they belong to a CSA and compost their leftovers, but are still driving to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s for packaged food from nowhere close by, and Niman Ranch meat. And this is a good illustration of food marketing and the powers of obfuscation, but also a disturbing cultural adherence to a status quo regardless of rational conclusions. In a recent New Yorker article, James Surowiecki (who is my total hero and did you know is also surprisingly young and attractive??) highlights this annoying tendency to ignore rational conclusions in favor of the status quo as it relates to the healthcare debate. And logically, this is very related: despite clear evidence of systemic failure of the health insurance system, Americans are so afraid of change they’ll waver in their support for reforms (even if their own coverage is inadequate or tenuous!)
Likewise, the blind refusal of the Slow Food movement to consider vegetarian and/or veganism the course of action most in-line with their values is totally illogical. And this is what I believe is bothering people about James McWilliams’ message. There have been some interesting criticisms, which make me more interested in reading Just Food. The Christian Science Monitor is having a really hard time with the Real Talk. But the primary opposition seems to center around his delivery, not that the message itself is off the mark.
And a lot of points he raises won’t be received kindly on the ears of the CSA set: locavorism is not scientifically a viable solution to feeding a growing world population. Even foodie darling Michael Pollan, in his address to the Long Now Foundation, acknowledged that it would be impossible to feed the growing world using strictly traditional farming techniques. Yes, reforming the fucked up agricultural system in the U.S. is a paramount need, but in order to ensure equal access to nutrition worldwide, we will also need to leverage new production technologies and realize massive economies of scale. I very much appreciated McWilliams’ mention of economies of scale, which is a key issue that locavorism either misses the mark on, or is viewing from a fundamental place of privilege.
If you are able to source all of your food from small producers, and you can afford to pay the premium associated with that (assuming you aren’t growing all your own food yourself), then you are a member of a privileged class. If you are doing this in a metropolitan area, where there are still dense groups of people living without access to any fresh vegetables at all, then you are still more privileged. (Novella Carpenter described her neighbors in Oakland’s Ghost Town neighborhood covertly “stealing” from her garden, and instead of being resentful or territorial, feeling glad to be able to provide fresh foods to a population whose other food procurement option was the corner liquor store.) By simple fact of resource allocation, there is no way that meat production and consumption can ever be egalitarian, on a national or global scale.
And I don’t mean to entirely villify the locavore ideal, which has admirable aspirations, to most of which I personally subscribe. I do think it’s excellent that people with resources have chosen to try to eat subversively and outside the framework of the awful agribusiness supply chain. I am not going to stop shopping at my favorite farmer’s market, because I am lucky to have access to fresh, seasonal foods and I’ve chosen to spend more of my food budget on them than I might otherwise at a mainstream grocery chain. But, I also owe a debt of gratitude to my life circumstances, and feel like it’s important to expand awareness and access to populations who are more reliant on traditional food delivery systems than I am.
Moving to a plant-based diet (vegan is obvs best!) is such a fundamental, important aspect of leveling food inequity and being environmentally responsible, and it’s both frustrating to unnecessarily divide efforts between vegetarians and locavores, and encouraging to see it gaining traction in mainstream media. While I think a media outlet like Forbes probably has sinister intentions of undermining pesky liberal objectors to agribusiness by publishing an anti-locavore editorial, McWilliams is able to make a big statement to a group of people who may not otherwise be receptive, and that’s exciting.
“If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmer’s market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian.”
∞ posted at 10:38 by meganallison-deactivated2012021 
