vegansaurus!

Today is for the pigs!  »

Happy National Pig Day! 

Today, Smithfield “Foods” celebrates these beautiful, smart, and amazing creatures by eating them! Makes sense. Whenever I really want to express my love for Jonas, I murder him and get out the George Foreman! What? He’s delicious and that overrides all other moral obligations I have not to be a fucking psychopath. Ugh, the best/WORST part of Smithfield celebrating the animals they’re murdering is that they’re inviting the public to e-tour the cages where they keep the pigs awaiting slaughter. Seriously! They obviously think it’s acceptable to keep pigs in enclosures that I wouldn’t inflict upon my worst enemy and I have some HATE, you know? Can you imagine if people kept their kids like that? Or their dogs? And both kids and dogs are stupider than pigs! This whole thing is very confusing. What’s more, the awful place they show in their video is obviously cleaned up, so that leaves it to your imagination (or you know, the countless documented horrors) to dream up what the majority of their “farms” look like. Shudder.

In more slit-your-wrists news, CNN covers the South Korean mass burials of live animals and it’s the fucking saddest. Spread the word! Shoot me in the face!

Okay, it’s not all terrible news. Today is a day for us to celebrate pigs by looking at how cute and special they are and talking about how much we love them. Which is a lot because OMG PIGS! Maybe we can all tell at least one omnivore some pig fun facts today and let them know that their bacon had a mom, and she was FUCKING AWESOME.
That’s Mohawk! He wants you to volunteer at Harvest Home Sanctuary, where you will love him and give him scratches and snacks and you guys will be bff. 

They’re burying live pigs in South Korea  »

Seriously: 1.4 MILLION of them. Because everyone wants their cheap meat more than they want to pay for the vaccinations to keep the animals alive long enough to slaughter and eat them. I don’t really want to write much more on this because pretty soon it’ll be impossible for me to see the computer screen through my tears but I think everyone should know. I hope everyone who order their $5 Meat Lover’s pizza tonight knows that they are responsible for this.

I don’t really pray or believe in god or anything like that but I think tonight I’ll observe a moment of silence for these pigs. Afterwards, I’ll take some time to think about how I can be a better activist for all animals. Maybe everyone can do the same and we can come up with some really excellent ways to help animals? I can’t think of anything else to do. Oh wait, Marji let’s us know we can contact the South Korean Minister of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the South Korea’s American Embassy so please do that, too.

I’m sorry, pigs.

[pigs in Bodhgaya, India by mikeemesser]

Wherever you are, your government hates you  »

Not a joke. In England, after slashing health and welfare benefits, the new government is writing policy on “obesity, alcohol, and diet-related disease”; namely, “an overhaul of public health.” To advise them, the government has asked experts in different areas of obesity, alcohol, and diet-related disease, including: Cancer Research U.K.; the Faculty of Public Health; the CEO (Jeremy Beadles) of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association; Diageo; Unilever; Mars; Kellogg’s; PepsiCo; KFC; and McDonald’s. British public health policy: it’s just like ours! Which is to say, the mighty businesses get to strike all the legislation they don’t like, work in sneaky little loopholes so they can continue to sell their demon “food” unfettered by silly regulations, and do it with the approval of the government AND public health advocacy groups! Win-win-win, suckers!

Currently 30 percent of North Korean residents are “substantially undernourished,” but every single country save China and South Korea does not want to donate food because the PRK’s government is all nuked up. AHAHA sorry fellow human beings; your government eats up all your food and hordes money you will never see, makes selling or trading your own food illegal, and refuses to shut down its nuclear program despite 30 percent of you already starving! And not one wealthy country that could give you food or the supplies to grow your own will, because we’re all playing a game of nuclear-chicken with your dictator-leader! I guess you’ll just have to rely on the underfunded U.N. World Food Program.

Those lovely reuseable plastic-composite shopping bags all the grocery and drugstores sell now? Some of them are full of lead. YES. Thanks for the Q.C., government! Glad you’re looking out for us as we try to avoid using terrible animal-murdering never-decomposing plastic bags! Solution: canvas. Just use bags made of recycled canvas and you and the environment and the cotton-harvesters will be all right.

And here are your FDA recalls from last week (Nov. 9 to 13)! As the majority of these are non-vegan, maybe let your meat- and cheese-eating pals know about them. And sleep well at night knowing how much lower your risk of bacterial illness is.

• Orval Kent company recalled 23 products (listed here) containing cilantro that might have been contaminated with—Salmonella! These products were distributed nationwide.
• Whoa, do not buy any Mauri Gorgonzola cheese, vegetarians and/or omnivores! Any of this cheese with a sell-by date between Jan. 1 through 27 came from a lot that tested positive for E. coli! If you already have some, “return the cheese to the place of purchase or dispose of it in a closed plastic bag and place in a sealed trash can to prevent people or animals, including wild animals, from eating it.” Here’s the best part: it didn’t get tested until after a bunch of people got E. coli O157:H7 poisoning after an October “Cheese Road Show” at Costco stores in Colorado. Now, the Mauri Gorgonzola tested positive for a different strain of E. coli—i.e., not the one that sickened the Cheese Road Show samplers—but considering IT’S STILL E. COLI, don’t eat it.
• Oh look! A different company, Bravo Farms, has a Dutch-style Gouda cheese that ALSO “may have” tested positive (?) for E. coli O157:H7, just like the Gorgonzola!, and even better, this cheese is sold at Costco stores in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Southern California, as well as non-Costco California retail stores! Honestly, just stay the hell away from cheese, everyone.
• One more for the road: Three types of New Braunfels Smokehouse brand smoked, ready-to-eat turkey breast—2,609 pounds!—are being recalled because they may be contaminated with Listeria, the cleanest-sounding bacteria.

Thanks for strictly enforcing those safety standards, FDA! Man it is great to live in a country whose government cares so much about its citizens’ health and safety.