ONE MORE WAY TO SAY 'FECES'

"Litter." And here I thought cat litter was the stuff you paid good money for in order to provide somewhere for cat feces to go. But in this story, "chicken litter" doesn't seem to be used that way, for instance, in the phrase "The hundreds of tons of chicken "litter" produced by the poultry industry's chicken farms is leading to high rates of disease and death." But surely those two are a small price to pay for readily available McNuggets?

FRUITS, VEGETABLES FIGHT CANCER... AGAIN

In a scientific study of 40,000 people, researchers have concluded that the risk of stomach cancer - the number-two cancer killer - is reduced from 25 to 52% by eating fruits and vegetables. This isn't major news to those of us who pay attention. But I sometimes feel it's necessary to include these stop-the-presses revelations to highlight the overall dynamic of plant-based, as opposed to corpse-based, foods: Plant foods protect and fortify the body in innumerable ways; meat threatens bodily health in a plethora of ways and offers no nutritional advantage.

ANIMAL-BASED ENTERTAINMENT: WANING, COMPLAINING

On the plus side, mainstream news outlets continue to wake up to the fact that animal-abuse industries are dying. The "decline of hunting" story has now broken out from the CWD ghetto and is being acknowledged in papers across the country, albeit usually with tears shed for this "venerable tradition." It's ironic that, as specified in this Christian Science Monitor story, one of the main factors is that a lot of boys are being raised by single mothers, and so aren't having that father-son "bonding" experience that would set their lives on the proper duck-destroying path. In other words, it's men's long tradition of fatherly absenteeism and apathy that has sunk their own pathetic tradition. And in a related area, the shift has been slow but is now incontrovertible: The traditional "Circus comes to town" story now almost inevitably focuses on the protests surrounding animal acts as more people wake up to the gratuitous cruelty inherent in such an institution. This Miami Herald one is typical, including the way the reporter fails to do the slightest research to confirm the fact that Ringling's Feld has been proven to use spies to infiltrate AR organizations (ever hear of Clair George?), but instead simply parrots the company's pat denial to, you know, give "both sides" of the story.

EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EVERYONE FROM STREET!

Geez, if all the people dying over the fall from poultry-induced listeria wasn't an emergency, what is? Apparently it's when a bunch of chickens in California get an avian-specific disease that might cripple the industry. Then it's a full-blown POULTRY EMERGENCY. As the article notes, "the emergency declaration clears the way for businesses to receive financial aid," in other words, taxpayer dollars. Once again, the birds get killed, the people get ripped off, the fatcats get rewarded for investing in the death industry. Welcome to 2003.

UPDATE 1/17: POULTRY EMERGENCY spreads to Nevada

UPDATE 2/6: Arizona declares POULTRY EMERGENCY

UPDATE 2/14: Ann Veneman has formally declared an "extraordinary emergency" in all three states. About 1,600 state and federal officials are randomly stopping cars in search of infected birds. Folks. Is it just me?

VEGANS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG

As I'll be on holiday and largely inaccesible over the next week, I'll leave you with these two perspectives from England: An essay from The Guardian entitled "Why vegans were right all along," and no, the headline is not ironic; and a "peek into the future" from the BBC which is not very noteworthy (robots in 50 years? Really?) but serves as yet another assurance that food of the future, even feast food, will probably be vegetarian. Whether it's from the simple economic mathematics provided by The Guardian or due to fashion trends (or even - gasp! - people taking morality seriously), it's gonna happen. Happy New Years.

KEYSTONE KREDIBILITY

Things may be heating up in the ongoing scandal that is the USDA. Then again, they may not, considering all the smoke and mirrors this administration has become so adept at throwing around. At any rate, some members of Congress have accused the U.S. Agriculture Department on Thursday of "misleading Congress" about the big ConAgra mess this summer. Meanwhile, the follow-up listeria mess at Wampler is taking on a Keystone Kops sheen as inspectors and plant officials argue about whether the agency was informed of massive listeria contamination back during the summer - you know, before people started dying from it - because the USDA could have found it if it had looked in the right drawer. I kid you not: These are the bozos in charge of our nation's food safety.

STINK ABOUT IT

More and more people are becoming aware of the massive damage being done by factory farms, and more are fighting the all-powerful corporations who are blighting our world with them. This $33 million award in a "pork nuisance suit" is not as rare as it seems: across the country, and across the world, neighbors are banding together to stop the installation of large confined-animal operations. After one too many complaints that animal feces are destroying peoples' quality of life in multiple ways, the EPA has finally promised to get tough on factory farms' pollution in compliance with the Clean Water Act. But some observers are skeptical, pointing out that, as Reuters puts it "Manure Curbs Don't Go Far Enough." Time will tell, right?

McDONALD'S AT A LOSS

McDonald's stock price hit a new 7-year low when the company announced it would post its first-ever quarterly loss. Meanwhile, organic-friendly chain Whole Foods is doing so well it will be added to the NASDAQ-100 index. I'm just sayin, is all.

UPDATE 2/14: Once again, on the same day, in a notable way, Whole Foods grows, McDonalds shrinks.

MILK SHAKES

Add Parkinson's Disease to the growing list of maladies proven to be caused by cow's milk. A comprehensive study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that dairy products increase mens' risk of Parkinson's. And although the story backpedals this association like crazy, it turns out this is not a new idea... this basic Parkinson's FAQ, among many others, suggests reducing animal protein in general and dairy products in specific and this page from parkinson.org warns that milk "can be very troublesome for some people with PD" and interferes with anti-PD drugs.

WAR IS BLECCCHHH

One week after more than 100 soldiers in Afghanistan came down with food poisoning from bad turkey stuffing on Thanksgiving (didn't they hear all the warnings?), close to 300 are now ill from food-poisoning in Kuwait with the source of the current outbreak unknown. Sounds like it's time to have the whole military go vegan, lest we lose World War III due to our stubborn addiction to meat.

SAME OLD SONG

Once again, it emerges that inspectors' warnings of contamination problems at a meat processing plant were ignored by both the plant and its PR agent, the USDA, until people started getting sick, and in fact, for some time thereafter. Meanwhile, a citizens' group is advocating a proposal that is entertaining if only for the degree to which it must scare the bejeezus out of meat suppliers: Consumers should get double their money back as an incentive to return recalled food according to Safe Tables Our Priority. Nope, it won't happen, but it's fun to picture the meat industry even worrying about whether it could.

NO LAUGHING MATTER

As I pointed out back when the first "fast-food lawsuit" was filed, it was considered a frivolous joke, but would soon evolve into a serious issue. Esteemed columnist Ellen Goodman has just made the same point, asking us to mark her words: "This is just the beginning of a big, fat food fight." And chiming in on the concept that despite all knee-jerk dismissals, this is something we're gonna hafta take seriously is the NY Post's Gersh Kuntzman. Still laughing?

DOLPHINS UNSAFE

If you buy "dolphin-safe tuna," thinking you're being so eco-correct, think again. It turns out that at least 3,000 dolphins are killed yearly by fishing in eastern tropical Pacific alone according to a Commerce Department report. Word is the Bush administration doesn't want to publicly release the report because that would undermine the government's attempt to help Mexico and other countries label their tuna as "dolphin-safe." So think again, and again, if you think fish is a thoughtful entree.

MCDONALD'S FLAMING OUT?

Maybe the company isn't at death's door, but individual stores are certainly seeing some heated debate. I told you how some workers were fed up with global anti-McDonald's sentiment and were fighting back, assaulting customers in New Zealand. The next phase, it seems, is to put razor blades into pies in New Orleans - to teach people to keep their mouths shut, I guess. But these violence breeds violence, and soon came word that another McDonald's has been firebombed, killing three. Not to be outdone, McDonald's itself blew up its own restaurant (via faulty air conditioning - or so they say), injuring 17 people. It's gotten so bad that Mickey D's is now pulling out of Bolivia for good, and the article on this mentions the chain "will be survived by Burger King." Gosh - survived? Isn't that the kind of language you use when something's... er... dying? No wonder CEO Greenberg decided to bail the hell out of this fiasco. Who can blame 'im?
UPDATE 12/12: Forget Bolivia - will Japan be next? McDonald's profits there just fell an unprecedented 95 percent!

THE WHOLE STORY

In this article on nutrition research, it's mentioned that "study after study links lifelong diets high in plant foods to lower cancer rates." So what do our nutrition leaders do with that knowledge of how the whole diet affects the metabolism? Tell people to eat lifelong diets high in plant foods? Of course not! The answer is to launch yet another study focusing on specific nutrients as if they operated in a vacuum! Meanwhile, a more comprehensive study found that a plant-based diet reduces cholesterol dramatically, possibly eliminating the need for cholesterol-lowering drugs. Heh heh - I can't wait to see what the pharmaceutical companies find to throw at this.

FISH UPDATE: MERCURY TRUMPS OMEGA-3s

This is a point I've been making myself for a while by juxtaposing news stories, and this study is far from definitive, but I thought it was worth linking to the first appearance I've seen of the basic concept spelled out for all to see: The mercury found in fish may counteract the benefits of omega3 fatty acids on the heart. In other words, no matter how heart-healthy fishes' Omega-3 fatty acids are, the mercury most fish has in it is that unhealthy and more. The story also claims that "warning(s) on mercury exposure should not be confined to high-risk groups like pregnant women, or those of child-bearing age who may become pregnant, as previously thought."
ALSO: This LA Times story on the devestation caused by salmon farming puts another ugly gouge in fish's "healthy" or "small-footprint" patina.

I'LL JUST SWITCH TO SHEEP

I don't usually post news reports relating to animal tests, given all the problems there are with that industry - both ethical and pragmatic - but I'll make an exception here because of the gravity of this news, and because it's centered on the animals themselves: It turns out that more people may have the human form of mad cow disease than previously thought - that is, people who have "ordinary" or "sporadic" CJD may be among those whose illness was caused by BSE. Previously only "new variant" CJD cases, which don't occur as frequently, were linked. The agent of this increase is sheep. And worse, a recent attempt to protect sheep from BSE failed miserably as a "resistant" sheep contracted mad cow disease in laboratory tests. The scientist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for nailing down how prions work is now saying every person in Britain should be tested for CJD and every cow and sheep in the country should be tested for BSE, and stresses that "eating meat may still pose a serious health risk." These developments show how little we understand these diseases and how imperative it is that we eliminate their breeding grounds immediately, i.e. modern animal agriculture. Although that won't happen anytime soon, it may be hastened by more people wising up and staying away from sheep, beef and other likely agents for this deadly illness.

I'LL JUST SWITCH TO FISH - EAST ASIAN EDITION

It's bad enough when people here in the West eat fish, given that it's almost always packed with insoluble toxins. But at least it's not like in Shangai, where a fish monger is now in prison for coating every fish he sold with deadly poison "to make it look shinier and more attractive."
And over in Vietnam, a half-million people are estimated to be plagued by worms from eating raw fish. That's parasite worms, not nightcrawlers. But hey, isn't that ironic? Getting worms from eating fish? No. What's ironic is the concept of fish as a "healthy" food.

BIG MAC ATTACK

Finally fed up after all the beating it's taking on the stock exchange, all the burnings and bombings, all the lawsuits, and the general bad attitude shown toward the company by various constituencies, McDonald's is fighting back! That's right. Three workers at a New Zealand Mickey D's are accused of assaulting customers who were acting up too much. One guy is still in touch-and-go condition: "According to one witness, he was picked up off the ground and dumped on his head." Did somebody say... you talkin' to me? You talkin' to ME?

TOUGHER THAN BEEF CARCASSES

Dunno if you heard - I didn't until Tuesday - but there was another moderate-sized E. Coli recall - 320,000 pounds of beef, or 160 tons of dead animal. You might not have gotten wind of it, see, because ONCE *COUGH* AGAIN, the USDA thoughtfully scheduled this disclosure for a Friday afternoon! But don't worry, the all-new War-Against-E.Coli USDA is getting reeeeeeally tough now. For instance, that Conagra plant that caused the second-biggest recall ever, last summer? The one that had been cited dozens of times before that? The one that was subsequently closed down after 19 new citations for fecal contamination? Well, they better watch their step, because now they can only have FIVE feces-smeared carcasses per hundred before getting a citation, and only a handful of citations before they're (threatened with) shutdown. Yeah! We sure are kicking butt now!