PANEL: VITAMINS' "PERCENT DAILY VALUE" IS WAY OFF

"The familiar 'percent Daily Value' figures included in Nutrition Facts boxes, which are required on the labels of most food products in both countries, are not based on the most current scientific information," said a federal advisory panel on Thursday. The amount of vitamins and minerals recommended as part of a healthy diet should be drastically changed to more closely resemble the needs of an average person, they said. If the FDA adopts the changes, the recommended daily values of some vitamins and minerals would change dramatically. For example, the amount of iron and Vitamin B-12 that is recommended each day would be cut by two-thirds. Vitamin D would also be reduced. The recommendations for fiber and Vitamin C, meanwhile, would increase slightly under the proposed changes. Hmmmm. What does that diet sound like?

And not only that..."Some of the strongest recommendations come in urging regulatory agencies to reduce daily allowances of cholesterol, saturated fats and trans fats to as low a level as possible and to set one combined daily limit for saturated and trans-fatty acids. That could mean recommending consumers eat as little as half the daily amount of saturated fat currently recommended." Hmmm. What kind of food is high in saturated fat? Heck, the panel may as well have come out and simply said "The average American should be striving toward veganism" and been done with it.

ANIMAL PRODUCTS: OBSTACLE TO HEALTH

Heh. "Obstacles in Way of Healthy School Lunch" is the headline on this who-knows-what-can-be-done story. Wonder what those "obstacles" might be? Oh yeah - "Two-thirds of the $939.5 million the USDA spent on lunch commodities in fiscal 2003 went toward meat and dairy products. A little more than one-quarter of the total went toward fruits and vegetables, mostly canned and frozen." The piece does give a shout-out to visionary educator Antonia Demas, director of the Food Studies Institute, mentioning her conviction that "the classroom must be part of any solution. She wants nutrition education mandated the same way New York schools are required to teach HIV prevention."

ANIMALS THINK ABOUT THINKING, HAVE PERSONALITIES

Are animals as smart as Donald Rumsfeld? The Defense Secretary's famous "gaffe" about "unknown unkowns" made a lot of people scratch their heads, though it seems perfectly lucid to me ("We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.") But it appears that animals may at least know that there are things they don't know. In an article headlined "New UB research finds some animals know their cognitive limits," it's reported that some non-humans "have shown the capacity for 'metacognition,' or thinking about thinking, considered to be one of humans' most sophisticated cognitive capacities."

At the same time, the oft-derided "anthropomorphising" that pet owners do, asserting that their dogs and cats have individual personalities has been confirmed as factual by scientific study. "Confirming dog owner suspicions, a new study reveals that dogs have personalities, and that these character traits can be identified as accurately as similar personality attributes in humans. Experts suspect that many other animals also possess unique personalities." The import of both of these is summed up by James King, professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and an expert on primates: "Tool using, culture, and language have recently been shown to not be uniquely human. Now, we are seeing that our personality and personality dimensions are also not uniquely human, but shared with non-human primates and even dogs." So once again, what is it - other than the practice of killing other animals needlessly - is it that "separates us from the animals"?

UPDATE 12/13: Don't know how this fits into the equation, but worms are genetically wired for getting drunk.

CHENEY VICTORIOUS OVER 70 FEROCIOUS BIRDS

Our vice president is "catching heat" (read: hearing two or possibly three "tsk tsks") over his brave act of facing down hundreds of pheasants and ducks in a canned hunt. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "he and nine other hunting buddies shot at 500 ringneck pheasants, killing 417 of them. The V.P. was credited with offing 70 of the birds, as well as an unknown number of mallard ducks." I've already made some salient comments about this on Metafilter, so you can go there if you want more commentary.

SOMEBODY ALERT GARY TAUBES

Gosh, it looks like the drumbeat of popular culture might actually have an effect on people's eating patterns that overrides the Power of the Pyramid: "The more television children watch the less fruit and vegetables they eat, probably because the advertising they see leaves them craving junk food instead, a study said Monday."

NATIONAL ZOO'S NEGLIGENCE KILLED 23 ANIMALS

This past weekend, the Washington Post had a nice thorough two-part series on the National Zoo's problems, showing exactly how animals died needlessly due to carelessness and/or incompetence on the part of management. "[I]ncompetence in management and veterinary medicine," says the zoo's pathologist, "has led to poor animal care, animal suffering and even animal deaths." Worse, he says records were altered as the zoo tried to cover up its fatal blunders. The zoo's director, Lucy Spelman, speaks on the record and is consistently contradicted by her own documents as to what happened when and why.

Reading through the case histories, a couple of trends become apparent: Animals sometimes die because Spelman seems to not understand their biology, and how can she for so many different kinds of animals? And animals die because the zoo staff are busy with other problem animals. These two problems are the flip-side of a zoo's appeal: A large number of a wide variety of animals grouped together in one spot for easy viewing. Additionally, there are several cases where an animal died of something internal or non-obvious because the staff was concerned with treating how the animal looked to the viewing public (e.g. Nancy the elephant and her lame foot, who turned out, after death, to have had tuberculosis - which was never tested for - or the zebras whose diet was cut in half, and who died, because Spelman thought "they looked fat"). This is another intrinsic problem with the concept of a zoo. They never exist to benefit animals, only to force animals to serve human needs for entertainment.

So a zoo rejoices when a polar bear goes from psychotically pacing one-third of the day to just one-sixth, never stepping back to say, "hey, you know what the problem might be here? Polar bears don't belong here, in this freakin' state, much less in a tiny cage!" The WashPost series, though, brings this thought that much closer.

UPDATE 12/11: MORE ANIMALS DIE AT INCOMPETENT ZOO Rat-Borne Disease Kills Zoo Monkey, Cheetah Also Infected at National Zoo.

GOT EXERCISE?

Researchers said today that girls who do regular jumping exercises around the age of 10 may add bone mass that could delay the onset of osteoporosis in later years. They should also be eating plenty of kale, of course. It's nature's perfect food.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE BLOG

If you've read Gail Eisnitz' Slaughterhouse, you know there's no shortage of disturbing stories coming out of these killing factories. Now Virgil Butler, an ex-Tyson employee, has launched The Cyberactivist, a blog chronicling some of the things he saw on the job. These are some eye-opening tales, if true, of mismanagement, discrimination, secrecy, working drunk, etc., and always at the expense of the chickens - and Americans' food safety. Check it out. Butler's story just got covered in the LA Times, but unfortunately you have to register to read their stuff. (No wait, here it is at CommonDreams.)
UPDATE 12/9: Fascinating stuff, if occasionally way-over-the-top-nightmarish/nauseating, and occasionally a little grandiose. But the entry they're "just" chickens says what I've been trying to get across for a while about how one form of inhumanity dovetails with the other: "I have heard management say, 'They are just line workers. They are a dime a dozen.' Obviously they care even less about the chickens processed every night. They don't strike a single chord on the heartstrings of this type of person. Before very long, there are no strings left to strike a chord on. This is inhumanity. This is also what happens when a person discounts the suffering of anything by saying, 'it is just' anything." Read the rest of it.

HUNTAPALOOZA PART DEUX

OK, so here's the thing: We could go on all day listing new accounts of hunters shooting people while pursuing their hobby, but the most intriguing aspect is that often these trigger-happy hobbyists seem to have little respect for the law - not just the law pertaining to their "sport" but other laws as well - stuff like car theft, domestic violence, illegal drug possession, you know, stuff we consider an actual threat to our society, especially when practiced by guys who are shooting at things.

So my question is: Why is it that this group of people, whose members routinely kill other human beings while getting their jollies, are not sanctioned as TERRORISTS, while another group is legally defined as just that for doing what? TRESPASSING on a factory farm? TRESSPASSING - something hunters also routinely do, only while looking for something to shoot and kill? Does this make sense? Of course it does - if we admit that the point of these new laws has nothing in actuality to do with our security, and everything to do with stopping stuff like this from being made public.

UPDATE 12/8: Game wardens outnumbered, outgunned and sometimes the only one sober - yes, that's the actual headline, straight from a game warden's lips. Doesn't he know he's playing into harmful stereotypes? "When it comes to game violations, Glines said they generally fall into two categories. The first are those hunters who make honest mistakes and take responsibility for their actions. The second type of violations, however, are the blatant killers. They're the people who just want to shoot something."

UPDATE 12/11: DNR says more hunters are illegally leaving deer carcasses to rot in Minnesota.

HUNTAPALOOZA

I've already posted a couple times about idiot hunters who kill themselves or other hunters as a necessary hazard of their cherished ritual. But let's not sweep all these under the rug.

Arcadia hunter shot from blind - "This is the third year in a row that a shooter fired at a running deer in Buffalo County and accidentally shot a hunter"

Hunter Dies After Floating Blind Overturns

Bow hunter shot in hunting accident - "Cabrera was shot from about 75 yards away shortly before 10 a.m. Thursday by a 17-year-old who was hunting with his father"

Sheboygan Hunter Shot, Killed

Hunter dies after shooting self in head - "The shooting happened a day after another hunter was hurt while hunting in the same woods"

Hunter killed, two others wounded on opening day of deer season

Hunter dies after shooting self

Hunter shot dead by other hunter while driving truck

Hunter killed by bullets aimed at deer he just shot

Hunter fatally shot by his 15-year-old brother
Most dangerous game, indeed...

SELLING DEADSTOCK AGAIN AND AGAIN

An Aylmer-area abattoir under investigation in August for illegally slaughtering animals was found to have done the same twice before in 1998 without serious penalty from government officials, according to documents obtained by the Toronto Star.

"Plant owners were never fined and the plant was never shut down after the two 1998 hearings. The plant is now the subject of an investigation by police, federal and provincial officials for the illegal butchering of dead cows at night when inspectors were not present."

Boy, good thing that kind of stuff only happens in Canada...

WEASEL WOBBLE DU JOUR

I've commented before on the habit of craven journalists to ascribe facts as quotes to activists, even when those facts are incontrovertible, if they may be seen as controversial. I call this the "weasel wobble." This one's a doozy...

"According to animal rights activists, the hormone Premarin is made from urine from pregnant mares" ... no! Why would they say a thing like that?

WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING

In a move that could have dramatic repercussions in the future for factory farms and other habitual polluters, a federal judge in Owensboro, KY said that Arkansas-based Tyson Foods shares responsibility for air pollution from three factory-scale farms it helps to operate in Western Kentucky. Tyson wanted to keep reaping the profits from the farm while disavowing any connection to the pollution. A teaspoon of common sense that might - I said might - go a long way.

NEVER FORGET

On World AIDS Day, let's not forget how humans originally picked up HIV: By killing apes for food. But this is far from the only scourge our species has acquired through our addiction to animal-killing.

MEDDLE MANAGEMENT

There are plenty of people who find fault with the USDA - but you usually don't hear such screeds from meatpackers. In this story of how one guy's family business (cue violins) was destroyed by USDA incompetence, he notes that the agency's "real policies imperil the consumer. The USDA doesn't want that out." He also observes that "The USDA could care less about the health of my grandkids." Hey, pal, join the club.

PRE-THANKSGIVING TURKEYS

Yes, it's kind of a "dog bites man" story, but stop and think for a moment how Thanksgiving will be for the families of these two who found it more important to go out shooting animals than to be around for their loved ones.

THANKS FOR THE DISCLOSURE... NOT!

"Is your Thanksgiving turkey crawling with germs?" asks WebMD. "Nobody knows" is the disturbing answer given. Last year, the USDA put out a list of 38 turkey plants they'd tested. In the worst plants, one-fourth to one-half of all turkeys carried Salmonella, a dangerous food-poisoning germ. Salmonella poisoning makes 1.3 million Americans sick, leading to 15,000 trips to the hospital -- and more than 500 deaths -- every year. "The list ruffled feathers by naming the good and bad turkeys by brand name," notes WebMD, which is apparently why this year, there's no list available! So... good luck!

BOMBSHELL: MEAT, COW'S MILK ALIEN TO HUMAN BODIES

In an astonishing University of California study, researchers have isolated a molecule, Neu5Gc, that we are singularly predisposed against, which comes to us through eating meat and drinking milk. The findings suggest "that everyone who doesn't follow a vegan diet is regularly inviting a foreign invader to reside permanently in their bodies, one that sometimes ends up in cancerous growths." But how would our species have thrived with such a time-bomb in our system? "Early humans lived much shorter lives than we did, so any risks involved in eating red meat may not have been important. 'They may have been there all along, but who cares if you are only going to live for 50 years,' says Dr. Johns, an expert in evolution and diet. The dangers of meat may be more significant now that humans are living much longer, he says."

MOFORD: WEAN YOURSELF OFF MILK

OK, the SFGate columnist is known for going off on a rant now and again. But I found it interesting that his screed against corporate junk food consumption casually tossed off that piece of advice - here it is in context: "Begin to shun fast food. Wean yourself off milk and refined sugar and excess floury gunk, and seek out organics, start moving in that direction, tune your awareness little by little. Buy a few books. Or just one. Fast Food Nation or Mad Cowboy or The Food Revolution or even Eating Well For Optimum Health."

ATKINS VICTIMS SPEAK OUT

While the long-term effects of Atkins are still up in the air, some feel the diet has contributed to their serious health problems and to the deaths of loved ones. At a press conference calling on the CDC to investigate, PCRM reported two deaths. "One," said Dr. Neal Barnard, "is the 16-year-old girl who wanted to lose some weight and went on a popular low carb, high fat, high protein diet, collapsed in school and died suddenly. Autopsy showed a massive abnormality in the heart. Another case, a 41-year-old man, no prior history of heart disease, collapsed suddenly and the same thing, the autopsy showed a massive heart malfunction. A third case, a man happened to have a heart scan prior to going on the diet and he got a clean bill of health, but after about two years on this popular low-carb diet, developed chest pain, had stress test changes and angiogram that showed a massive blockage in the heart." The man's arteries had clogged and his cholesterol shot up in the time he was on Atkins. News coverage has duly noted that "many doctors and the American Heart Association have warned that the diet could be dangerous," but not that it's utterly condemned by the health profession in Britain and banned in British hospitals. On the upside, though, this version of the story (Reuters) remained on the front of Yahoo.com for at least two hours this afternoon.