ANIMALS GET A FOOT IN THE DOOR

Let's not be deceived: The passage of the Florida amendment 'protecting' pregnant pigs is a small step, as is Oklahoma's ban on cockfighting. But they are steps in the right direction. Let's celebrate, but let's get more steps marching on up the road.

THOSE JOKE LAWSUITS

Yeah, it was a joke when the first fast-food lawsuit was filed. So howcum the Washington Post has just devoted an exhaustive story to examining the serious threat they pose, and another major paper's food cover is devoted to all the recent "healthy" changes in the industry? Someone ain't laughin...

THE 'COWS OVER KIDS' PROGRAM

An anti-hunger group, Bread for the World, has slammed the $752 million bailout for ranchers ("drought relief"), saying that it takes food out of the mouths of the hungry and shortchanges child nutrition programs. Bread for the World president David Beckman criticized "this obscene 'cows over kids' program," noting that with the Bush administration's largess to cattle producers, there simply won't be enough money left for the other programs. USDA officials have yet to rebut the numbers.

STRONG SMELLERS, STRONG FIGHTERS

I'll assemble the latest listeria news into another big entry tomorrow or so. But meanwhile, another study finding plant foods to fight cancer - in this case the family that makes all food great: Garlic and Onions! Mmmmmmm, I'm hungry already...

WHICH LISTERIA IS THE 'REAL KILLER'?

This time it wasn't on a Friday, but a Saturday (same diff, really) that another recall bombshell was dropped: Another supplier of turkey and chicken deli meat has issued a big recall - 200,000 pounds, or a hundred tons of meat - related to the big listeriosis outbreak in the Northeast. The timing of this is interesting especially in light of a class-action lawsuit expected Monday against Wampler - whose products you may have a hard time finding in the future, as they're using the venerable "duck and cover" strategy of changing their brand names (as though the Pilgrims Pride/Wampler thing wasn't tricky enough) in an attempt to shake off the growing stench of death. No wonder: Local stores report the recall is dragging down their sales of deli meat. Since Congress is once again jumping on the soapbox to ask "Hey, USDA, how come such a deadly fiasco has happened yet again?" the pressure is on to exonerate Wampler and quick, but let's be clear: Whether or not one of the seven (or ten, counting fetuses) dead was killed by Wampler products or not, the exact strain that killed those people was found at Wampler's plant. And what this, along with the new recall, all brings out is that there's so much listeria, i.e. feces, on so much poultry (and other meat as well, of course) that it's near impossible to nail down a single source - consider that the CDC, in this explainer, casually mentions that during the same time as the big outbreak of this particular strain, 81 other people in the area have fallen ill with different strains of listeriosis and 20 of them are now dead. The fact that the CDC considers this other statistic normal and everyday should tell you something about the safety of your average, non-recalled meat.

NOT ENOUGH FISH IN THE SEA

That's the headline a lot of papers went with on this Reuters story, and it gets across the mind boggling fact that as huge as the oceans are, they can't compete with the size of our appetite for animal flesh. For all of you who were opposed to factory farming and were just gonna switch to fish, don't you think you owe it to the poor developing world not to eat up all their fish?

MICKEY D'S BIGGEST CRITIC: MICKEY D

You've probably heard this by now already, but just for the record, McDonald's France says you should keep kids from eating there more than once a week. McDonald's USA claims the French were mistaking the word "week" for the correct word, "minute."

BILLION-DOLLAR COWBOYS

The power of meat to destroy individual health is plain and clear. But a lot of American taxpayers are unaware that we're losing at least $128 million a year -- potentially up to $1 billion -- subsidizing cattle grazing on millions of acres of our land across the West. This is according to a new study released last week. Public lands ranching is a boutique industry, supplying less than 3% of the nations beef supply, a cute hobby for self-sufficient would-be cowboys. The notion that "in the rural West, whole towns and school systems depend on ranching," as put forward in the above article by a National Cattlemen's Beef Association flack, is handily debunked here. It's not just the money, though, and it's not just the animals - it's entire ecosystems that we're helping destroy, all without most people's knowledge. Business as usual!

SCHOOL LUNCH HITS A NEW LOW

And yet another USDA-rolls-over-for-the-meat-industry story that seems to raise no eyebrows, much less set off any alarms: Irradiated beef is headed for the School Lunch Program, at the behest of the American Meat Institute. So the USDA, after feeding our nation's children dangerous feces-laden meat, rather than stepping back, taking responsibility, looking at the big picture, instead uses this screw-up as a tacit excuse for another backscratching bailout - this time of the meat-irradiation folks - shoving even more food of dubious safety down our kids' throats! What with Consumer Reports testing burger safety and finding it woefully lacking (including in ways irradiation will not counter), it seems that the solution proposed by PCRM makes more sense - stop forcing schools to buy cruddy meat, fer chrissakes! Let kids experience something other than the heart-destroying Standard American Diet. After all, if the folks at Johns Hopkins get their way, we'll all be skipping meat at least 52 days a year. Doesn't sound like a bad idea... for a start.

LISTERIA-NEVER-FEAR-YA

It looks as though the Wampler/USDA PR strategy, which seemed so bizarre as it was unfolding, has worked - another Sunday seems to have come and gone without any real journalism being done on this incredible story of lying, mismanagement and collusion. No one seems to want to know how come the CDC said the strain of listeria tied Wampler to the fatal outbreak, while the USDA says no it didn't. No one calls them when they say "we never said it *wasn't* connected to the outbreak." Here's one more - while previous reports specified that Wampler workers were continuing to work during the closure, it now emerges that the company has laid off many of them, apparently starting with the non-English speakers among them - if this story can be believed...

WALL OF EXPLOITATION BEGINS TO CRUMBLE

A primary reason our animal-destroying culture persists is that the different forms inherently support each other. Hunters tell tender-hearted meat-eaters, hey, at least I kill my own meat. And "entertainment" animals reinforce the concept that these beings are mere objects to serve us in whatever way we desire. But the unified front is cracking under separate attacks. Hunting has already suffered a right uppercut from CWD concerns, which are only compounded now that CWD-infected deer have escaped from a quarantined farm. And voters in Florida and Oklahoma will decide whether to continue two "traditions," sow crates and cockfighting, respectively, that were untouchable only a few years ago. You want a more visible crack? Here's a director of a major zoo blasting the institution of animal circuses, raising completely valid points about the ignominy of the latter while ignoring the former (and the historic alliance between the two). Meanwhile, in England, the previously lightweight RSPCA has boldly stated that Elephants Should Not Be Kept in Zoos. Ever. And a lawsuit from a parent in San Francisco aims to stop their school from sending schoolkids to a rodeo to watch big he-men abuse terrified calves. Other SF parents are complaining about a "McTeacher's Night," where McDonald's enlists schoolteachers to promote brand awareness and loyalty among their students. Granted, no one of these protests or turnarounds is a major event in itself. But it's a good sign that wall can't stay up forever.

HAPPY DAYS ARE THERE AGAIN

While it's still in the basement, or at least on the basement steps, McDonald's stock price has inched up over the last couple days, probably because of this news, which investors always seem to love: McDonald's is supposedly about to lay off hundreds of people! First those healthy fries, now this - how can they go wrong? The company states that "McDonald's management team is focused on increasing sales, growing our business and building shareholder value." Right, it's job one!

THREE WEEKS TO BETTER HEALTH

Now, even I am a little cautious about this one, but apparently, University of California researchers have found that a low-fat, high-fiber diet combined with an hour of walking a day not only caused participants to lose weight, but dramatically improved their health. In just three weeks, their blood pressure dropped, so did their cholesterol, and insulin levels were almost cut in half. That last fact is particularly noteworthy for low-carb zealots, given what the subjects were eating: While there's no mention of meat, "they could eat all the whole-meal bread, pasta, fruit and vegetables they wanted." That's right - they said "pasta." Go figure.

CARELESS

Another tale, with obligatory "local angle," of a family fighting for meat regulations after losing a child to the careless practices of Big Meat. Careless = uncaring. The meat industry is uncaring almost by definition. After all, if they don't give a damn about the billions of terrified animals they're killing every year, why would we expect them to care about our kids - or give our children's lives higher priority than a wad of cash?

DEER, DEER

Salon reports on the continuing CWD crisis and pulls no punches in stating that "game farms played a key role in spreading the illness" and finger "the growing use of supplemental feeding by deer farmers who want to induce the growth of big antlers to increase game animals' value as trophies." It's a good piece, but doesn't answer the question of what to do. If wholesale slaughter is not going to contain this disease, and nobody can eat the slaughtered animals, why bother? In fact, why bother having state game agencies whose income is based on underwriting "sporting" slaughter at all? The 2001 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Association Recreation shows that in some states, non-hunting animal enthusiasts spend more than hunters! Well, at least hunting keeps the wild population numbers down. Oh, wait...

SERIOUS LISTERIA MYSTERY TWISTS

Just when you thought that all parties had come clean and were ready to move on with their lives, Wampler now denies its meat caused any problems for anybody in the massive Northeast outbreak of listeria. Well, sure, they want to have the strongest case against the inevitable lawsuits - but guess what? Our old friend the USDA is backing them up, contradicting the evidence gathered by themselves and the CDC. It was the latter who established the eating patterns and matched the samples that clearly fingered this plant, but the USDA apparently can't give up their role as official PR firm for the meat industry. Wampler is also disputing charges from an anonymous inspector who said USDA officials "told the inspection team they could no longer touch the carcasses of the birds when checking them for abnormalities that could indicate they were contaminated. In another e-mail, the anonymous inspector noted that salmonella tests at the plant stopped months ago. Listeria also is prevalent 'in the chiller at our plant,' the inspector wrote." But now the AP says the inspector didn't work at the Philly-area plant, but at another Wampler plant! Oh, OK. What a relief. I'm sure that listeria is not one of the dangerous strains.

MORE COLLIDING WITH THE ROTARY OSCILLATOR

As the news filters down to Joe Average that we've just had the largest recall in US history, the tangents are beginning to multiply. Some of the tainted meat, it turns out, was fed to kids in School Lunch Programs, and some went to Snow Ball Foods, which today issued its own recall of about 300,000 pounds of Executive Chef Homestyle Oven Roasted Turkey Breast. Executive Chef sounds about right - if it's an Enron Executive. Speaking of CEO-bashing, Molly Ivins gets right to the point with the title of her column, Poop on poultry. She fails, unfortunately, to see the connection between reactionary, careless meat profiteers and progressives' continual bankrolling of them by purchasing their products. She does of course call for stricter regulations, which is just what USDA chief Ann Veneman promised today in an excuse-laden speech (oh, it was the risk assessment that was slowing you down? What was the risk that was greater than killing people with contaminated meat?) headlined here as "USDA to whomp up Listeria testing in wake of recall."

But let's not forget listeria's partner in crime, E.coli, which parents of sickened and dead children have been raging about to congress, demanding tighter rules. While most Americans are clueless about the feces in their meat, one parent sums up what's wrong with the current attitude: "The meat companies let cow manure get in the meat, and then they tell the victims that if we had only cooked it to 160 degrees my child would not have died." The grammar's not perfect, but you try doing a better job when it happens to you. And it's happening to more and more people, as the Emmpak/Cargill recall (a mere 3.3 million pounds, remember?) seems to have sickened at least seven people in Michigan. Hey - this stuff happens.