vegansaurus!

Vegans rejoice! U.S. meat consumption has been falling since 2004!  »

Per Parke Wilde at U.S. Food Policy blog, we as a country have been eating fewer cows, chicken, and pigs since peak meat-eating in 2004 (chicken-eating peaked in 2006). The vegans are winning! Sort of.

Beef consumption peaked in 2002 and has fallen about 12 percent since then.  Pork consumption peaked in about 1999 and has fallen about 11 percent since then.  And I had not realized that chicken consumption peaked in about 2006 and has fallen almost 5 percent since then.

Total combined consumption of beef, pork, and chicken peaked in about 2004 and has fallen more than 6 percent since then.

But, Wilde says, it’s probably as much (or more) to do with the recession and the cost of dead animals than it is people’s actual desire to stop eating them. Still, that’s something to be pleased about. If only it were 16 percent instead of 6.

Get more details at U.S. Food Policy blog, and check out the data at the USDA.

[Photo by Tambako the Jaguar via Flickr]

Debating the scientific merits of a vegan diet with the Wall Street Journal  »

When even Rupert Murdoch’s favorite news producer wants an excuse to be vegan, you know we’ve arrived. The Wall Street Journal invites two professors of nutritional science, the delightful T. Colin Campbell and Nancy Rodriguez, to argue for and against a vegan diet.

Key points:

The dairy industry has long promoted the myth that milk and milk products promote increased bone health—but the opposite is true. The evidence is now abundantly convincing that higher consumption of dairy is associated with higher rates of bone fracture and osteoporosis.

It’s also worth noting that the government recommendations for certain population groups to increase their protein and iron consumption come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an agency long known to be subservient to the meat and dairy industries.

I’ve always been a welfare vegan, but it’s nice to have science on our side, for the humanists.

[photo by John Hritz via Flickr]

It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use!  »

It’s Paul Shapiro’s Animal News You Can Use! WOOHOO!

Good news: A judge has rejected the foie gras industry’s attempt to put a hold on California’s new law banning the force-feeding of ducks (and selling products from force-fed ducks).

More good news: North America’s largest foodservice distributor, Sysco, is the latest food giant to come out against gestation crate confinement of pigs.

In response to the gestation crate debate, the National Pork Producers Council’s communications director was seriously quoted in the National Journal this week saying: “So our animals can’t turn around for the 2.5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets…I don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around.” (No, this isn’t a quote from 30 years ago—it’s July 24, 2012. Seriously. Yes, I know.)

Amazingly, USDA put out a newsletter this week including a mention of the health and environmental benefits of Meatless Monday. This of course drew immediate outrage from the meat industry and its allies in Congress (Rep. Steve King from Iowa tweeted that it was “heresy”), prompting USDA to immediately remove the newsletter and announce that it wasn’t properly vetted. Lots of coverage on this, though the national AP story put it best when it aptly concluded, “The USDA often promotes the beef industry by encouraging Americans to eat meat.” (NPR and NY Times had good coverage, too.) 

Video of the week: Best way to prevent dog shedding… (Or, if you want to upset Rep. King, feel free to share HSUS’s fun Meatless Monday video online today!)

USDA retracts support of Meatless Mondays, is beef industry’s puppet  »

Man, this is so gross. Even more proof that the governmental agencies put in place to protect us only care about appeasing the big money$$$. 

From the USDA Twitter:

You can just imagine how that went down. Like, lower level people at the USDA were all, “sure, Meatless Monday, that’s cool, Americans should eat several fewer pounds of shit-laced meat a day!” and then the beef industry bigwigs saw it and freaked the fuck out because, “OMG AMERICANS EATING FEWER DEAD ANIMALS THAT’S UN-AMERICAN!! AND ALSO, HOW WILL WE GET RICHER AND MAKE EVERYONE ELSE SICK AND POOR???” and then they called the USDA bigwigs who—shocker!—are some of their bff’s/former employees and BAM, Meatless Monday retracted.

What. a. bunch. of. bullshit. LITERALLY.

If the government thinks we should eat more vegetables, why don’t they put cash money behind it?  »

Veganism is more accepted than ever, and vegetarianism is downright mainstream, but I’m a realist: Herbivores are still in the minority. Further, we North Americans aren’t ingesting as many veggies as we ought to, and major health bodies have made statements to the effect that we should all give up processed meats and cut our red meat consumption considerably, at least for the sake of our health. So why is that so difficult? Money.

I’m sure you all saw the Myplate food diagram that was released by the USDA earlier this year as an update to the food pyramid. On the plus side, it recommended that people fill fully half of their plate with veggies, which is an impressive goal for anyone—vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore. The problem is that though the government tells people to choose vegetables often—definitely more often than now, since Americans eat about 50 percent more dairy products a year than veggies—they aren’t backing that suggestion up with money. Particularly in regard to agriculture subsidies, which play a huge role in what gets grown—and therefore eaten—around the country.

As the Washington Post explained recently, agriculture subsidies began in the 1930s to help farmers weather the Great Depression. It was an incredibly hard time for a lot of people, and food production was not globalized in the way it is today. What American farmers grew was, by and large, what American people ate.

Today the subsidies seem less useful, especially when you consider what they’re supporting—$200 billion was spent to subsidize commodity crops in the U.S. from 1995 to 2010, and about two-thirds of that went to cotton, tobacco, and crops used to feed animals. I think we can all agree that tobacco is not a crop that people need to live. Cotton is not a food crop either. Growing crops to feed livestock raised for food is far less efficient than growing crops to feed directly to humans. Farmers growing fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts don’t get direct subsidies at all. And a not-insignificant portion of the crops that are subsidized go towards uses like corn and other things grown to make sweeteners—again, directly opposite to the goal of getting people to eat more vegetables.

And yet, last week leading researchers, published in Nature, advised people to eat less meat if the world is going to have enough to eat. The researchers pointed out that even eating just one or two meatless meals a week will have an impact. I can see why people are confused: scientists say we need to eat less meat, the government says we need to eat more vegetables, but the dollars support meat and dairy, and give fruit, vegetables, beans, nuts, and whole grains the shaft. The best way around this is to exercise your consumer-power: Spend your money on vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, and whole foods.

If you’re looking to add more vegetables to your diet—an excellent goal!—check out this vegan food pyramid for guidance.

Your government hates you: the feds spent taxpayer money to buy surplus dead chickens!  »

So, you know that OUR GOVERNMENT with OUR MONEY bought $40 MILLION worth of chicken that nobody wanted? Because the chicken industry is killing more birds than ever, even though demand for dead birds is slightly waning. UGH YOU CANNOT WIN AGAINST PURE EVIL AND STUPIDITY.

Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society of the United States (we love him!) wrote up a piece about this over at VegNews. He writes:

As demand for chicken meat remains far below the number of birds who are actually being raised and killed, rather than allowing the market to adjust to basic supply and demand principles, the federal government Monday announced it will buy $40 million of unwanted chicken products that will be dumped on our nation’s school kids and others in federal food programs.

In short, chicken-meat companies have continued increasing the number of birds they raise for food while demand has remained flat. Normally, in a free market, an industry that produces beyond what consumers want will contract. But not the poultry industry. It instead relies on regular government support in times like these—and by that I mean nearly all the time.

Read the rest here! And then GET PISSED! By being vegan, I like to think that I’m affecting the market because my money isn’t going toward these fucks, and because the industry doesn’t slow down to keep pace with the declining demand, the government just buys the surplus. It makes me SO MAD. I’ll never stop being vegan, and I’ll never stop rejecting that disgusting industry, but this really makes me want to live off the grid and not pay a single fucking cent in taxes and become an anarchist and just cook out of my trashcan and live in a hobbit hut and call it a day. I don’t know what good that’d do anyone but the point is IT MAKES ME CRAZY.

PCRM makes a good point  »

New nutrition guidelines:

Breakdown of government food subsidies:

As PCRM points out, maybe they should match up a little more?

The USDA even spells out their essential point: “Key Consumer Message: Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.”

But when I look at the subsidies pie chart, something is amiss!