I LUNCH N.Y.

"If state lawmakers have their way," the New York Daily News warns, "vegetarian dishes like meatless meatloaf could replace baloney sandwiches on the school lunch menu." But the interesting item is this: "But salt-craving, French fry-happy children might not bite, according to food expert Antonio Demas. 'Even if they put out the most nutritious food in the world, the kids aren't going to touch them unless they understand the effect that food has on their body,' Demas said." First, I really doubt Mr. Demas was saying it wasn't worth putting out vegetarian food - I'd like to see the full context of that quote. Second, I wonder if Mr. Demas has a twin sister

SF ZOO, COLE BROS. CIRCUS GO ELEPHANT-FREE

"The San Francisco Zoo has decided to permanently close its pachyderm exhibit amid criticism over the deaths of two of its four elephants." Meanwhile, "Faced with dwindling audiences, sliding profits and increased pressure from animal rights organizations, traveling circuses, including Cole Brothers, New York's Big Apple Circus and Missouri's Circus Flora, have sent their elephants into early retirement - canning one of the most costly acts for such shows to maintain. 'In the next 10 years, we think even zoos may no longer have elephants,' said Bob Johnson, president and chief executive officer of the Outdoor Amusement Business Association, which represents more than 4,000 circuses, carnivals and other acts in the United States and Canada." Both of these developments are welcome, even if they're largely bottom-line driven: Caging and maintaining elephants invites all kinds of extra expense and liability. As the Baltimore Sun points out, "Cole Brothers' elephants became even more of a financial burden last year, after the U.S. Department of Agriculture slapped the circus with a $2,750 fine when a trainer hit one of the pachyderms with a broom."

BEEF PACKERS MAY BE SENT TO JAIL

...but not for the reason they should - persistent animal cruelty and depravation of life. Rather, "executives at three major beef-packing companies could face jail if they don't provide financial statements by Monday to a federal committee looking into whether the industry profited from the mad cow crisis." Profit? Ya think?

I'M LOVIN' IT DYIN' FROM IT

Charlie Bell, 43, who became CEO of McDonald's two-and-a-half weeks ago when his predecessor collapsed and died of a sudden heart attack, has colon cancer, the company admitted today, and just underwent surgery for it. This comes on the same day that Slate's David Edelstein delivered a ringing endorsement of Super Size Me, which chronicles the amazingly unhealthy effects of a McDonald's diet. Edelstein's only quibble: "I don't think anyone should sue McDonald's. Just stop buying its food." OK, but why not... both?

CWD MORE DANGEROUS THAN THOUGHT

"A new study shows chronic wasting disease can spread through environmental contamination and not just animal-to-animal contact, a finding that could change the way experts fight the ailment. The study, published in the online edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, also suggests that chronic wasting outbreaks could last longer than previous models projected." Huh. Wonder if this will make people pay any more attention to "alarmists" like Stauber and Greger. I won't hold my breath.

MAMAS, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP

Heidi Prescott puts it best: "We have minimum ages for driving, voting, and drinking because we recognize that children don't have the emotional maturity to engage in those activities safely. Why should we think that children are able to make split-second decisions about firing a long-range, high-powered rifle under circumstances that have their adrenaline pumping? It's insane."

13-year-old Michael Lynn Russell was killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head late last month. "We still don't know what happened. It was an accident," said his mother of Michael's tragic bird hunting trip with an 11-year-old cousin at a ranch in Texas.

POISON CHICKENS, LYING USDA

Karen Davis published Poisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs seven years ago, but even she may not have been aware of the quantity of literal poison in this supposed food source. "A prominent researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says the poultry industry's widespread use of drugs to raise chickens is exposing people who eat them to more arsenic than previously estimated. In a paper published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Ellen K. Silbergeld said arsenic-laced drugs designed to keep the birds healthy might pose an increased risk of cancer for consumers and create manure that is contaminating Eastern Shore ground water. Silbergeld's research essentially disputed the conclusions of a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, released in the journal in January, which concluded that the drugs did not pose a serious health problem. She said the USDA underestimated the amount of arsenic found in chickens and used outdated data to estimate the health risks of ingesting arsenic. 'This paper had serious problems,' Silbergeld said of the USDA report."

Silbergeld, a toxicologist who won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1993, said arsenic in chicken feed creates potential problems in the meat produced and the ground water affected by the waste. In case you're not paying attention, "This is arsenic. We shouldn't lose sight of the sheer outrageousness of this," Silbergeld said.

And listen to these interesting word choices: "Tamar Lasky, an epidemiologist formerly with the USDA, now concedes that the estimates in her January study may have been low. Given its preliminary nature, she said, she may have erred on the side of caution." The side of caution! Meaning what? That they tried to keep people safe from poison? No - "We were deliberately conservative.[!] We didn't want to exaggerate the numbers and have people writing in the press that there are huge numbers, in terms of arsenic levels in chicken," said Lasky. No, that's definitely not what you'd want - truthful reports in the press about the risk of poison in a common food source. I guess the word "conservative" has been completely usurped by these idiots now.

SUSPECTED MAD COW WASN'T TESTED

Here's the source of the "rumor" mentioned in Saturday's entry: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not test a head from a cow in Texas that displayed central nervous symptoms even though such symptoms could be associated with mad cow disease, USDA officials said on [*COUGH!*] Friday. A USDA spokesman said the animal was exhibiting "central nervous signs" but for some reason it never got tested. More on this as it develops.

UPDATE 5/4: "The recent case of a Texas cow that had symptoms of mad cow disease but was not tested is not an isolated event, a federal veterinarian told UPI. The U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian who requested anonymity said cows displaying central nervous system disorders, such as the one in Texas, are often not tested for mad cow disease." Felicia Nestor of the GAO also said she had evidence that the Texas case "is not an isolated incident." More to come, I'm sure...

UPDATE 5/5: Yep. The longer, next-day UPI-branded version includes such gems as "Sometimes Veterinary Services (the USDA branch responsible for picking up brains for mad cow testing) won't even show up," a veterinarian told UPI. "If you tell them the cow is under 30 months (old), they won't bother with it." Also, since the carcass was sent to a rendering plant, it could still pose a BSE danger through the many products that are still made with cow remains - including animal feed! Michael Hansen pointed out that "blood from the Texas cow is still permitted to go into calf milk replacer, Hansen said. In addition, its brain and spinal cord -- the most infectious parts if the animal had mad cow -- can be added to chicken feed, he said. This poses a risk because chicken litter waste, which can contain some remnants of chicken feed, can be scooped up and incorporated into cattle feed."

ALSO: Only three cows have been tested for mad cow disease over the past two years at the Texas plant where federal testing policies for the deadly disease were breached last week, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture testing records obtained by UPI. The small number of tests occurred despite the fact that the plant, Lone Star Beef in San Angelo, Texas, processes older, dairy cows, which are considered to hold a high risk of being infected. Lone Star is the 18th largest slaughterhouse in the country and processed about 350,000 animals over the two-year period. ...This would make it one of the highest-risk plants in the country for receiving a mad cow, said. The low number of mad-cow tests at a high-risk plant such as Lone Star, indicates "the USDA doesn't want to find the disease," Lester Friedlander charged.

TEXAS MAD COW "STRICTLY" A RUMOR

U.S. cattle futures fell Friday on a trading floor rumor that a Texas animal was being tested for mad cow disease, but a state official said it was untrue. "It is strictly a rumor. There is no truth to it," said Beverly Boyd, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Agriculture. "They are not holding carcasses of any kind." Oh, that's good. So they're just letting the carcasses go instead of holding them... hey, waitaminit!!!

22 TONS OF BEEF RECALLED FOR E.COLI

This was supposedly released last night, so I guess it doesn't quite qualify as a Friday recall, but it's sure close. Serial offender Excel Corp. (a subsidiary of Cargill) has recalled 45,000 pounds of beef when some of it tested positive for E.Coli. The meat was "sold to distributors in Kansas, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Alabama, Illinois, Texas and Minnesota" and from there, who knows? "Because of the repackaging, consumers will not be able to check lot numbers to determine whether their purchase is part of the recall. They will need to ask their grocers whether any of their product is involved in the recall." Oooh, hope you heard about this so you can take the initiative to ask your grocer. If not, good luck!

SAUSAGES AND THE LAW

There's that old saying that laws and sausage are two things you don't want to see made. The latter, of course, is because we want to deny what sausage is. Or to put it another way, too much intimate knowledge about meat could leave consumers queasy about their meal, as a new study has just confirmed, adding that "care should also be taken when presenting information such as traceability and origin of meat." Another thing it's disgusting to watch is a Sausage King trying to weasel out of his responsibility in cold-bloodedly killing three food inspectors at his San Leandro linguisa plant. The only defense his team can muster is that it wasn't cold-blooded, it was hot-blooded, because, get this, one of the "meat cops" provoked him into a homocidal rage. "To blame Jean Hillery for what happened is beyond offensive," said prosecutor Jack Laettner, but I guess "beyond offensive" is your only legal gambit when the evidence against you is "a surveillance camera video tape showing Alexander gunning down the inspectors and finishing each off with shots to the head." After the defense made it clear that blaming the victim was going to be the strategy, "USDA spokesman Daniel Puzo said the defense attorney was victimizing the slain inspectors anew with a 'most vicious and vile type of slander.'"
UPDATE 5/3: In the midst of a shooting binge that left three meat inspectors dead and a fourth dodging gunfire, Stuart Alexander calmly told a neighbor he was being robbed. Read that again: Not right after his shooting binge - in the midst of it. He said this, then walked back to his plant and shot the wounded in the head. Not only is the hot-blood-sausage-king defense hideously offensive, it's also patently absurd. This loser deserves whatever can possiblly be doled out to him.

UPDATE 5/6: Interesting tidbit from today's testimony: Mary Evans had just bought sausage there moments earlier and was heading for her car when Alexander began shooting, and she "hurried to her car and drove home." Now get this: "Police later identified her by the check she used to purchase linguisa." Yeah, she just saw a homocidal maniac come running out of his plant after murdering three people, attempting to take down the fourth, and she drives home and doesn't call the police on her own accord. No doubt she was afraid of this guy, BUT: Do you suppose she ate the linguisa? I mean, couldn't be anything wrong with that, could there, just because this guy was willing to kill people who were trying to get him to comply with food safety rules? I'll give you ten to one she ate it; it's exactly the kind of warped-logic world meat-eaters live in, and of which these killings are just an extreme extrapolation.

FOIE GRAS BAN MOVES FORWARD

"A (CA) Senate panel approved a bill Monday that would ban the production and sale of foie gras, a delicacy derived from the livers of force-fed geese and ducks -- a practice that animal rights groups decried as inhumane." Because, you know, it's all a matter of opinion...

USDA VETS FORCED TO FAKE FORMS

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials pressure their veterinarians to sign documents that falsely certify food items are safe for export, UPI's Steve Mitchell reports, adding that vets say "management officials in USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service have intentionally created an atmosphere of fear and harassment designed to intimidate employees into blindly following supervisors' orders -- even if those orders involve signing fraudulent documents" and that "former veterinarians said the practice has been condoned in the agency for up to 20 years." For those who don't get why this is crucial, Mitchell notes that "The accusations also might have parallels to an ongoing investigation by the USDA's Office of Inspector General into the mad cow case. The OIG is looking into allegations the USDA veterinarian involved in the case was pressured by management to alter an inspection sheet that indicated the cow was a downer after it tested positive.

BLOOD IN THE BASEMENT

We could probably load up this page with one or more of these stories every week, but I try to stick to ones that are especially noteworthy, because it's always basically the same story. Huge animal operation moves into town, trashes environment, breaks laws, makes entire area unlivable, and then claims the residents are just whining too much. "Don and Deloris Letcher said that since Bridgewater Quality Meats opened in February 1999, blood from the plant runs into their yard and once backed up into their basement." Lovely. Oh, and "Bridgewater Quality Meats opened on Main Avenue five years ago and within a year was warned about its procedures. The attorney general sued the plant last October on behalf of the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, with potential fines of $10,000 a day." Really? Yes: "A May 2000 memo from Paula Huizenga, an engineer with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said the plant's discharge overloaded the city's wastewater lagoons, made them septic, turned wastewater pink and caused odor. She said hair from animal hides and pieces of meat turned up in the collection system." Albert Spangler of the DENR complained: "During my June 6, 2001, visit to your site, I found blood entering the alley from a side door of your facility. This is not acceptable." Well, uh... if not, why are those folks still in business?

JOHNS HOPKINS: STAY AWAY FROM MEAT

"The American habit of eating large amounts of meat is a major threat to human health, the environment, small communities and farmers," according to experts at Johns Hopkins University. A conference at the Bloomberg School of Public Health covered "the tremendous public health ramifications of the American addiction to meat, which results mainly from meat's high saturated fat content" as well as "an anthropological account of America's obsession with meat. Dr. Sidney Mintz, a professor emeritus of Hopkins' anthropology department, showed that "meat eating is not an instinctive behavior, but a learned one. The increase in meat consumption in America may be explained by the fact that military personnel in World War II were served meat three times a day." Dr. Benjamin Caballero, professor and director for the university's Center for Human Nutrition, "dealt with the question of whether or not humans need animal protein in their diet. Caballero said that animal protein isn't specifically required by the body." Well, what do these people know? I mean, they're only the top academic experts in their fields, not the National Cattlemen's Department of Agriculture or anything.

USDA'S BSE TEST PLAN "SCIENTIFICALLY UNSOUND" ACCORDING TO ITSELF

As you'll recall, the USDA rejected the Creekstone Farms testing plan on the grounds it was scientifically unsound. USDA spokeswoman Alisa Harrison told UPI the agency's rationale for prohibiting Creekstone from testing younger animals is "the scientific evidence is there that you can't find it (mad cow disease) in animals under 30 months." But Steve Mitchell has found a funny detail - "In 2002, the agency tested 999 animals under 30 months old, including one as young as 3 months. The bulk, 841, were 24 months old, but 40 were 20 months, 31 were 18 months, 52 were 12 months and there were single cases of cows as young as 9, 8, 6 and 3 months old. In addition, in 2002, of the approximately 20,000 cows tested, 111 animals have no age listed at all and more than 11,000 are classified only as adults with no specific age given." In other words, the USDA's own testing policy includes thousands upon thousands of tests that it says are a waste of time. One ranchers advocate remarked that "To test that many young animals does not appear to reflect an agency that is actually after the high-risk population." Asked why the agency tested thousands of animals under that age, Alisa Harrison replied, "I don't know."

See, that's why she gets the big bucks: Grace under pressure.

LOWER CALORIES = LONGER LIFE

Some will see this and say, this is news? Well, it is on this blog, where I've largely ignored the preliminary tests, because they only showed that lifespan could be increased in organism such as mice and fruit flies. But the longer-life phenomenon has now been confirmed in humans: A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found "profound and sustained beneficial effects" in 18 people from the United States and Canada who had been eating very low calorie diets for three to 15 years. Those on low-calorie diets had much lower levels of "bad" cholesterol, much higher levels of "good" cholesterol, lower levels of triglycerides and very low blood pressure. Tests of their arteries showed they looked more like those of children than middle-age adults. In addition, their blood sugar levels were very low and their body's response to insulin was extremely high, indicating they were at very low risk for diabetes. So what's this got to do with meat vs. vegetables? Well, if you're going to go lo-cal, you still need vital nutrients, so you want to get the best nutritional bang for your calorie buck. And guess what that means.

BARNARD 1, TAUBES 0

Let's remember what Gary Taubes so snidely said about junk-food junkiedom:

The orthodox and ubiquitous explanation is that we live in what Kelly Brownell, a Yale psychologist, has called a "toxic food environment" of cheap fatty food, large portions, pervasive food advertising and sedentary lives. By this theory, we are at the Pavlovian mercy of the food industry, which spends nearly $10 billion a year advertising unwholesome junk food and fast food. And because these foods, especially fast food, are so filled with fat, they are both irresistible and uniquely fattening. [But] to buy this logic is to accept that the copious negative reinforcement that accompanies obesity—both socially and physically—is easily overcome by the constant bombardment of food advertising and the lure of a supersize bargain meal.

Well, Gary? Can you accept that now? Because more data has come in suggesting that Neal Barnard was right and you were - on this point like so many of your others - dead wrong:

People who say they are addicted to chocolate or pizza may not be exaggerating, U.S.-based scientists said on Tuesday. A brain scan study of normal, hungry people showed their brains lit up when they saw and smelled their favorite foods in much the same way as the brains of cocaine addicts when they think about their next snort." Food presentation significantly increased metabolism in the whole brain (by 24 percent) and these changes were largest in superior temporal, anterior insula, and orbitofrontal cortices," they wrote. These areas are associated with addiction.

The study, published in the April issue of the journal NeuroImage, may support the argument that food advertising is helping drive the U.S. obesity epidemic.

And please remember, Gary, that although the headlines love to focus on chocolate, the vast majority of the items specified as addictive (even counting "hamburger with cheese" or "bacon-egg-cheese sandwich" as one item) are animal products: "The favorite food items most frequently selected by the subjects were bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, cinnamon bun, pizza, hamburger with cheese, fried chicken, lasagna, Bar-Be-Que rib, ice cream, brownie, and chocolate cake."

MCDONALD'S CEO, 60, DIES OF HEART ATTACK

Jim Cantalupo, chairman and CEO of McDonald's, died "suddenly and unexpectedly" of a heart attack today at an restaurant owners convention in Orlando, Fla. I think that's all that needs to be said about that right now.

ATKINS CO. NOW OFFICIALLY RUNNING SCARED

I've ignored a lot of the stories declaring the low-carb boom to have peaked, since they always seem to be attached to, or promoted by, bread, pasta or snack manufacturers. But a lot of cute little pieces piled up today. Contrary to a while ago when it looked like some reputable scientific studies might emerge confirming some health advantage to the high-protein lifestyle, those never materialized (as of yet!) while other studies continue to show that low-carb is a pointless fad. "Wisdom of low-carb, other fad programs questioned," proclaims this pairing of two studies, one which found that "men and women who ate three or more daily servings of whole grain foods were the least likely to be overweight or obese," and in the second, "people who ate a variety of foods were more likely to get the recommended levels of vitamins and other nutrients than people who stuck to a few favorite foods." In case that "variety of foods" is too ambiguous, they spell it out: "People who meet nutritional guidelines through food - mostly by eating plenty of fruit, vegetables and whole grains - have lower rates of cancer and heart disease."

More to the point for Atkinites, a report last Wednesday from Morgan Stanley said low-carb dieting has reached its peak and begun a slow decline, so the company is de-emphasizing the garbagy fare that attracted people to it in the first place - steaks, bacon, burgers. "They are pressed to reinvent the public perception that the Atkins Diet is not synonymous with bacon cheeseburgers," said Dean Rotbart, editor of the online industry newsletter LowCarbiz. Gosh, how would the public have arrived at that "perception?" Let's ask Gary Taubes, in the third paragraph of his "Big Fat Lie," still prominently displayed on Atkins' own site: 'Atkins allowed his readers to eat "truly luxurious foods without limit," as he put it, "lobster with butter sauce, steak with béarnaise sauce...bacon cheeseburgers"' [his ellipsis] I think it's safe to say that not a lot of low-carbers are subsiting on lobster with butter sauce, nor steak with béarnaise sauce, so what is it they're gonna think Atkins is synonymous with? It was true of the dieters, of Atkins himself, and soon, of the company: Live by the bacon cheeseburger, die by the bacon cheeseburger.