SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE LIFESAVING

Two of the "hero" dolphins in New Zealand that saved four people from a great white shark have been thanked for their efforts by being butchered by poachers. "Shocked lifeguards found them floating in a river with their tails hacked off. It is thought they drowned after becoming trapped in illegal fishing nets and were then cut loose." Come on, the poachers probably didn't know these particular dolphins were special, give 'em a break!

EATING TURKEY HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

At least it is if you eat it alongside your troubled cousin. In the article "Dispute over turkey blamed for stabbings," we find that Frank Palacios of Massachusetts was picking at the turkey with his fingers instead of slicing off pieces with a knife, and was reprimanded for doing so by his cousin and uncle. After being asked to leave and refusing to do so, Palacios "allegedly responded by stabbing them with a carving knife." It's true that family tensions at Thanksgiving dinner don't usually get this heated, and yes, this is an extreme occurrence. But just as with the hunter killing the six other hunters last week, the notable thing is that the violence arose from a dispute over, and was done with, the very implement intended for doing (ritual) violence to an animal. It's hard to imagine a vegan potluck ending this way.

GLOBAL HEALTH? WE GIVE IT THE BIRD

Well, now that America has celebrated its dominance over nature and indigenous peoples with the annual bird-killing ritual, I have to say I did see about three times as many of those "what about vegetarians?" stories as usual. There will probably be even more of them next year once the reality of this has set in: "Bird Flu Pandemic inevitable, 7 million people could die," says the WHO. I know, they keep sounding the alarm about this, louder and louder, and I keep relaying the message, yet I'm sure that as of Thursday fewer than one in a dozen Americans had any idea there was such a thing currently ravaging the Pacific Rim, much less that the World Health Organization believes a pandemic is inevitable. We'll see if that's any different by next Thanksgiving, and how much we have to be thankful for at that point.

UPDATE 11/29: Sorry, "7 million people"? More like 100 million, according to today's stories.

SENSELESS MAYHEM IN WISCONSIN WOODS

That's the hed on this editorial on Sunday's weird hunter-on-hunter serial-killing (which I would've blogged here except I thought I already had - I had actually blogged it at MeFi, where most of what I have to say about it can be read). And of course the interesting thing is that the phrase describes perfectly what's normally practiced there and elsewhere during "the season." But I'll admit this incident remains very curious, especially now that the shooter is claiming he was tauntingly shot at first. As this piece says,

[W]hile it is shameful, we don't find it hard to believe that a group of hunters - or others - are capable of spewing a few racial or ethnic slurs in a confrontational situation.

It is harder to believe that a state hunter would fire in the direction of someone - even as warning shot - given the long-ingrained emphasis on hunting safety and the credo that a gun is not to be pointed at anyone. Common sense would dictate as well that you don't do such a thing when the person you are firing at is armed.

Still, it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

Nope, it sure ain't - not when you're talking about people for whom senseless mayhem in Wisconsin woods is their idea of fine family entertainment.

ALTERNA-T-DAY

This is part of a growing journalistic trend which, predictably, the Inquirer missed on Sunday despite devoting four separate stories to changes in Thanksgiving traditions: The Alternative (Read: Vegan) Thanksgiving Story. Not that the story hasn't already been done to death, but as vegetarians and vegans continue to make their presence known and deal with the issues of "turkey day," there will only be more articles like this.

Ginnie Maurer would travel hours to spend Thanksgiving with friends, even though, as a vegan, "having a turkey as a centerpiece was hard to bear." Like many vegetarians, Maurer used to make a meal of side dishes, and she simply swallowed a lot of the ribbing that came her way from some of her dinner companions. She finally gave up after what hosts billed as a "part vegetarian" feast ended up being a dinner where the "veggies" guests were seated on one side of the table and the "carnes," or carnivores, on the other.

This article also gets two sets of bonus points: One for not misspelling "Tofurky," and one for including "Nutrition expert Suzanne Havala Hobbs" as a source. She knows her stuff... ing.

McDONALD'S LOSES ANOTHER CEO TO MEAT-RELATED ILLNESS

No surprise, but USA Today reports that "McDonald's has taken yet another body blow to its battered but resilient executive suite. The fast-food giant's cancer-plagued CEO stepped down Monday, less than one year after the previous CEO was killed by a heart attack."

VEGANISM INSPIRES FASHION

That's the hed on yesterday's Inquirer "trend" piece on the growing number of fashion lines that are incorporating vegan options. "Dozens of merchants now offer wares that are labeled cruelty-free; the Web site Vegan Essentials offers hemp shoes and clothes. And Stella McCartney, long an activist for animal rights, has added shoes stamped 'suitable for vegetarians' to her collection. Her fabric-and-Lucite pumps are available at Nordstrom." It continues: "Vegan products are finding takers not only among the roughly six million Americans who call themselves vegetarians, but also among shoppers attracted to prices that are often 60 percent to 75 percent lower than leather. A spike in demand prompted Earth Shoes to introduce 15 vegan styles this year." That's all great, but I'm not mentioning it as some seismic development, only as a reminder that as options and alternatives increase, the stranglehold that animal-based products has had over our culture will continue to slip. And fewer outlets for, say, leather means higher prices for slaughterers who otherwise have to pay someone to get rid of the stuff. Baby steps...

FOX HUNTING BANNED

As all the stories stress, this is not the end, but it's certainly the beginning of the end. "The Speaker of the Commons, Michael Martin, last night invoked the Parliament Act, overriding the opposition of the House of Lords and bringing to an end almost 700 years of foxhunting in England and Wales. Within hours, the Queen gave her royal assent and the total ban on hunting with dogs will be enforced from February 18 next year." While pro-hunt thugs will continue to demonstrate, challenge in court, and generally make asses of themselves, the most they'll gain is a temporary reprieve in the form of a "compromise" for a couple years. The tide has turned, and at least on this one extreme example of animal cruelty, people have opened their eyes are are unlikely to simply close them again. The Tory leader oh-so-eloquently called for his fellow-thugs to "Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war." Typical - even when they're picking fights, they let the dogs do all the work.

MORE MAD COW IN THE USA?

Damn. I had an item ready yesterday but didn't get around to posting it: "New cases of mad cow would not be surprising, says food inspection agency" with the lede "Canada can expect more cases of the mad-cow disease that has rocked the cattle industry, officials with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday." And I had already added my comment "Hmmmmm... could that be because they've already found some?" Well, maybe not, but they might've heard that there was already another presumptive positive down here in the US. After all, Ann Veneman certainly seems to have got wind of it a couple days previous.

What's important to note, and which the mainstream stories are doing a terrible job of, is that this is not another "maybe" along the lines of the two in June that turned out, purportedly, to be negative. There have probably been any number of those since then, but they stopped telling us about them (and said so). This one involves the same initial test, but done three times, with three positives. Which leads Michael Hansen of Consumers Union to argue that the odds are 100,000 to 1 that this is correct. I don't know if it's that high, but it's certainly a lot more probable than the ones this summer.

UPDATE 11/23: It may have been more probable, but apparently not enough so to be correct, as the USDA dodges the bullet again, enabling the agency (as well as the FDA) to keep dragging its feet on doing anything substantive.

WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT? EAT MORE

We've hit on this study already, but since it was in a NYT link that's now been archived, here's a fresh link to a conference presentation on it: "Losing weight may be as simple as eating more -- eating more fruits and vegetables and less food that is "calorie-dense" such as cheese, researchers said on Wednesday" at a meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity in Las Vegas. The takeaway: Despite the media's favorite trendy explanation, it's not "portion size" that makes you fat - it's eating fattening stuff. You can actually eat bigger portions of fruits and vegetables and still lose weight.

WATCHING BLUE JAYS STILL LEGAL

Cockfighting proponents, so clearly on the losing side of history, get more and more ludicrous in their desperate attempts to put a logical face on this naked barbarity, providing better entertainment than the bloodsport itself. Today the Supreme Court turned down an appeal from cockfighting supporters in Oklahoma (who have lost both at the ballot box and in courts), rejecting it without comment.

Listen to this: 'Attorney Larry Oliver, in filings at the court, said that the law was so vague that people could be arrested for watching blue jays fight in their back yard. "All birds fight by nature," he wrote. "This Oklahoma statute was drafted by radical animal rights people who exacted a constitutional overkill in their pursuit to ban everything associated with cockfighting."' Uh huh. Right, Larry. Arrested for watching blue jays. Dissenting from this view, Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General Sherry Todd said, "The right to conduct cockfights is not a fundamental right," adding that the law "does not criminalize the enjoyment and/or observation of the natural activities of birds in their natural habitat." Phew! Pass the popcorn, I'm gonna go watch some jays!

MORE NAILS IN ATKINS' PIANO-CRATE COFFIN

"Trend" stories and their damning statistics are now making it official that the backlash has begun against the ridiculous 'low-carb' claptrap promulgated by Atkins & co., and now a judge has cleared the way for "the nation's first anti-Atkins lawsuit, filed by 54-year-old Jody Gorran, who said two years on the diet left him with arteries so clogged that only emergency angioplasty saved his life. Gorran seeks little money, and instead wants the court to force Atkins Nutritionals, the firm behind the diet, to print warning labels saying the diet may be 'hazardous to your health' on its books and products." Such a label would be on-target, according to experts who warn that millions of Americans on a low-carb regimen are missing out on fiber-rich foods essential to healthy hearts. And "popping a fiber supplement won't change that," one adds, "because it isn't just the fiber that helps us--it's fiber-rich foods" - something Atkins' saturated-fat-happy diet has in short supply.

The kicker is that the one thing Atkins is supposed to do well - take weight off - is proven over and over again to be a temporary blip; a low-fat diet works better for keeping weight off, in addition to being much healthier. A study just announced yesterday confirms this. "People who started eating more fat... regained the most weight over time," said Suzanne Phelan of Brown Medical School. So if you want to gain weight while endangering your heart (i.e. increasing your chance of "slipping on the ice"), by all means, go the Atkins route.

MORE MAD COW MYSTERY

Researchers in the current issue of Science say they may have found a new and different form of Mad Cow, a finding which is consistent with previous theories that BSE-linked CJD may be misdiagnosed as "sporadic" CJD. "The human version of mad cow disease may look different in different people, depending on their genetic make-up, experts reported on Thursday, raising the possibility the disease could be circulating undetected." And as always, Steve Mitchell is checking into that possibility, raising questions about a California man who died from "what tentatively was diagnosed as a rare brain disorder, but his brother said the patient's neurologist is concerned the man was infected with the human version of mad cow disease." While there's no corroborating quote from the neurologist, the brother straight-out says, "I'm concerned he got it from beef."

Similarly, there's been some interesting action in New York, where state officials currently are looking into a cluster of five cases of CJD. Turns out that New York recorded 23 cases of CJD in 2003 and 28 in 2001, which is about four and nine more, respectively, than would be expected based on the state's population size. "Although UPI had requested to see a breakdown of the cases by county, New York officials refused to release the information." And note that "The area where the southern New York cases occurred is just two counties away from a northern New Jersey area that saw five CJD cases within 15 months.

There is perhaps one silver lining in these stories of death and gloom: The son of one victim "noted that his dad was a 'huge beefeater' and that he can no longer bring himself to eat ground beef. 'Every time I look at ground beef, I want to throw up now,' he said." Well, at least you're looking at meat in a logical frame of mind.

UPDATE 11/16: VENEMAN RESIGNS AS USDA HEAD We'll see who replaces her, but I doubt it'll be more than a case of "Meet the new boss..."

UPDATE 11/18: Let's look back at that article from Tuesday: The lede is that her resignation "caught many in the farm community by surprise." Now why is that? "Veneman had campaigned tirelessly for President Bush in key farm states in the run-up to the recent election. At a teleconference with reporters last Tuesday, she sidestepped a question about her future, saying only that 'the president will be making decisions on personnel.' But in a letter to Bush just three days later, she declared that 'now is an appropriate time for me to move on to new opportunities.'" Yes, I guess it is.

VEGETABLE OILS = HEART HEALTH

I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but the studies keep coming in, confirming that plant foods are a great benefit to the heart. Vegetable oils found in leafy green vegetables, nuts and flaxseed reduce a woman's risk of dying from heart disease, researchers have reported. This article even starts to tease out that fact so hard for most journalists to grasp - There's. No. Good. Reason. To. Eat. Fish. "The study, presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association, offers an alternative to women worried about getting mercury in fish and fish oil supplements that have also been shown to lower heart risk. Dr. Christine Albert of Harvard Medical School said of the plant fats (alpha-linolenic acid): "During the 16 years of follow-up, women who had higher ALA intake had a significantly lower risk of dying from sudden cardiac death or coronary heart disease."

FRUITS AND VEGGIES = HEART HEALTH

Another study, this one a big larger than most, confirms that a plant-based diet is your best bet for heart health: "A multiyear study involving more than 100,000 participants provides added support that eating lots of fruit and vegetables is good for the heart. The report supports the American Heart Association's recommendations to consume at least five servings of fruit and vegetables per day, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health. For cancer, the report said, 'The protective effect of fruit and vegetable intake may have been overstated.'" Maybe - or maybe it was just misstated: The protective effect vis-a-vis cancer would probably be that of not eating so much toxic meat that gives you cancer. Just a theory, of course.

'TIS THE SEASON...

For troglodytes with weapons to go out and shoot each other, as well as other humans, which is to say, any animals of whatever stripe that get in the way of their big manly guns. And true to form, there they go: A Virginia man was fatally shot by a hunting companion, and two other hunters survived shootings in separate accidents over the weekend. Meanwhile in Colorado, a guy named Cory Ruchti was shot by his hunting buddy, who mistook him for an elk the two were tracking. And not to ignore the kiddies and their need for personal expression with high-powered weapons, a teen hunter in Virginia mistook another hunter for a deer - the latter was carrying a tree stand, which apparently made him a dead ringer for same - and shot him in the stomach, wounding but not killing him. Not so lucky was James Griffin Jr., of Maine, who died in the woods as a result of a gunshot wound to the torso, fired by a fellow gunslinger from his own hunting party. And David Williams of Florida told investigators he thought the two men on horses approaching him in the dark were wolves, which is why he started firing, blowing a hole in the arm of his own hunting guide. That one we can understand - because wolves are so scary they can make a lot of people do irrational things.

MEAT CAUSES DIABETES - CONFIRMED AGAIN

I could swear we've already covered this, but it appears to be a new study, from the Archives of Internal Medicine, November 8, 2004, confirming once again, one last time, once and for all, that "Red meats and processed meats such as hot dogs appear to increase the risk of diabetes, as does a heavily 'Western' diet." OK? Got that? Don't make me tell you again.

E.COLI OUTBREAK IN NORTH CAROLINA GROWS

An outbreak of E. coli infections linked to a state fair is larger than previously thought, with more than 100 additional cases under review and 31 infections confirmed. CNN says: "The most common link among victims is that some visited a petting zoo at the fair. Many children were infected, including three who developed a serious complication that can cause kidney failure." Add "petting" to the categories of zoo that are more trouble - for animals and people - than they're worth.

VEGAN FOODS MAY REPLACE MEDICINE

I don't know if this guy is considered a crackpot down under, but an Australian newspaper is reporting on "Superfoods," which as I've noted before, tend to be the same as "Vegan Foods," and a scientist in Sydney. The fellow in question, Rod Markam, Head of the Australian Centre of Neuropsychotherapy, actually comes out and says it: "The future of medicine will be found in superfoods provided to us from the ground. We will eventually be largely vegetarian because we will have realised the health benefits."

DOG CALLS 911, SAVES WOMAN'S LIFE

Faith, a 4-year-old Rottweiler, phoned 911 when Leana Beasley fell out of her wheelchair and barked urgently into the receiver until a dispatcher sent help, then unlocked the front door for the police officer. Not that incredible, since this is largely what the dog was trained to do. But note that the dog also tried to warn Beasley of a liver problem detected by her super-sensitive nose. More animal brains in the news.