THE WAR AGAINST SALMONELLA

Hey, remember that historic War Against E.Coli, where we finally eradicated dealt a severe blow to stopped talking about it until the next E.Coli outbreak? This story put me in mind of that: Salmonella strain turning up more in chicken

Exactly what does the headline mean by "more"? Well, according to the USDA, over the previous five years there was a fourfold increase in positive test results for salmonella enteritidis on chicken carcasses.

Salmonella sickens more than 40,00 Americans and kills 600 people every year, so this is a pretty serious statistic. But wait - "The research was done before the Agriculture Department started a new program to reduce positive tests for salmonella. Since then, the incidence of salmonella has fallen from 18 percent in 2005 to 10 percent today, [the agency] said." Oh, OK, see? Just like with the revolutionary new E.Coli procedures that will start paying off in real data any day now. Victory is just around the corner!

WRITE WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW

This column is nothing special - I'm just highlighting it to stand in for the overall trope that turns up more and more every year as the existence of vegetarians at Thanksgiving causes meat-eaters to get nervous.

I have to say at the outset that I don't know if the writer is a "humor" columnist or not, as there seem to be a couple sad attempts to be "wry," but in whatever case, this contains the "Tofurky trifecta" of non-vegetarians writing about vegetarians at Thanksgiving. That is, they've heard of Tofurky and decide to write a column centered around it.

* "Tofurky" misspelled as "Tofurkey"? Check.
* Seitan-based product identified as "soy-based" or "tofu-based"? Check.
* Complaint about vegetarians mimicking turkey-eaters by having a protein-based centerpiece? Check - and for bonus points, compounded by the central error of believing it is "shaped like a bird" (the headline for the whole column, in fact) instead of shaped like, well, a bag.
* Additional bonus points: Columnist describing self and rest of mainstream as "carnivores"

So to summarize, what makes this mind-numbingly typical is that the columnist blithely writes about something he clearly has absolutely no experience with and about which he can't be bothered to even fact-check, arguing from the perspective of clear ignorance about vegetarian (if not human) diets and traditions to tell us what we should do.

Not to single this one guy out - I just happened across this and found it to be a perfectly typical specimen of the genre (of which another signal aspect is that each participant seems to think he's invented the genre). So there you have it.

AFTER ALL, VEGETARIANISM IS ALL ABOUT EASE

Six of one...

McClatchy Newspapers: VEGGIE THANKSGIVING ISN'T EASY

Half-dozen of the other...

USA Today: "Thanksgiving is kind of like the final exam at Le Cordon Bleu. These [turkeys] are not easy things to cook. It doesn't get any harder."

So it looks like the basic problem here is Thanksgiving, not whether it's veggie, no?

BOGUS BILL EXPOSES PUPPET STRINGS

The ludicrous notion that businesses based on animal exploitation deserve some specific federal protection above and beyond existing laws covering vandalism, theft, racketeering, etc. - special protection not offered to any other type of business - merely shows how powerful the animal-abuse industry is in directing the activities of our elected officials.

UPDATE 11/15: With a completely non-biased headline, U.S. to Crack Down on Animal Terrorists, Science Magazine adds that "The bill is largely a response to the tactics of a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Active in both the U.K. and the U.S., SHAC has for years targeted U.K.-based Huntingdon Life Sciences, which uses animals to test drugs, food additives, and pesticides. Last year, SHAC reportedly intimidated the New York Stock Exchange into declining to list Huntingdon's parent company, New Jersey-based Life Sciences Research."

Let me make one thing clear once again: I have denounced SHAC's tactics for years and continue to argue against intimidation - whether it takes the form of phyiscal threats, harassing phone calls, bullhorns outside the house, or incendiary devices under cars - as an appropriate methodology for winning hearts and minds to the vegetarian, or pro-animal, cause. But if SHAC members do anything illegal - anything that would be illegal no matter whom they were targeting - they should be punished accordingly. If not, they should not. Just as I don't give them a free pass because I agree with their aims, so I find it offensive and ominous for the government to single them out and delineate new crimes because it disagrees with their aims.

SHOCKER: RED MEAT RAISES CANCER RISK

Seriously now, how many more of these studies on how many more specific varieties of cancer do we need in order to say Red Meat Causes Cancer? I've lost count of them all, and they tend to focus on one kind of cancer - this one is breast cancer (where more red meat doubled women's cancer risk), but we've seen them for almost every digestive cancer you can think of. What mainstream authority is going to take the plunge and simply tell it like it is?

STILL MORE LOW-CARB "VINDICATION"

US Journalists were largely responsible for confusing the populace into thinking diets like Atkins were effective and healthful (and that's ignoring those who were actively prosletyzing for it such as Gary Taubes). They jumped on every study showing any value in any kind of fat and spun it into the ongoing narrative of "It Turns Out Atkins is Right!" even after Atkins died of a, *cough,* slip on the ice in 2003. It wasn't until the company went bankrupt last year that the bloom was off the rose.

But an overarching narrative dies hard, and many news outlets, including, unfortunately, the Huffington Post, trumpeted this recent study as an all-new vindication for "low-carb diets," occasionally referencing Atkins or using the Atkins logo as illustration. But even a cursory glance at the data involved shows this is nonsense: Atkins was denounced by serious nutritionists largely because of his adherence to the notion that saturated fat - the kind of fat found primarily in animal products - had some mysterious weight-shedding power and did not interfere with health. This says quite the opposite: "Women who eat a diet moderately low in carbohydrates, but rich in vegetable fat and vegetable protein, can cut their risk of heart disease by as much as 30 percent compared with just following a low-fat approach..." and "The new findings, published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, underscore that eating few processed carbohydrates, such as bagels, white bread, cookies, candy and cake, and replacing animal fat with a moderate amount of healthful vegetable oils "can help reduce the risk of heart disease," said Alice H. Lichtenstein..."

The article also points out the study found no significant weight loss, but in fairness to Atkins, this diet plan has almost nothing to do with his - other than the (entirely uncontroversial) notion that donuts, cookies and cake should be consumed in extremely moderate amounts.

So let's review, shall we? Once again, the narrative says: Low-carb, high-animal-fat diets are fine; meanwhile, the data says: Replacing animal fat with vegetable fat gives a health advantage. And which one gets the headline?

MORE DANGEROUS SLOPPINESS FROM SWIFT

If you've been keeping up with Meat Facts for a while, you may remember the big 2002 ConAgra recall of millions of pounds of E.Coli-tainted beef, during which dozens of people in multiple states were sickened, including an Ohio woman who died from the illness. The main ConAgra plant in Greeley is now "Swift," and by whatever name it appears the company hasn't changed its stripes: Japan Halts Beef From 1 U.S. Meatpacker, reports CBS News (apparently having dropped the "#" symbol from before the "1" in the headline).

The Agriculture and Health ministries decided to halt shipments from Swift and Company's plant in Greeley, Colorado after a shipment from the facility arrived in Osaka without proper documentation for some of the internal organs contained within, Agriculture Ministry official Yasushi Yamaguchi said.

The Japanese government has asked the U.S. government to investigate the mishap and outline measures to prevent a recurrence, Yamaguchi said. After receiving a report from the U.S. side, the Japanese will send a delegation to the Greeley plant to review whether it is following rules for export to Japan before allowing trade to resume.

"We are very concerned about what appears to be a simple error because it comes so soon after Japan lifted its import ban," Yamaguchi said.

America's meatpackers are used to the backslapping "oversight" of our industry-stacked USDA. Their arrogance about BSE up to 2003 has already damaged US trade to the tune of millions in exports, and this shows that even after that fiasco they haven't learned their lesson.

And, lest this point needs to be underscored - These are the people we're trusting to keep our own food safe?

MINDLESS EATING

This is a cute "offbeat" story about a guy studying eating habits, headlined: Prof asks: Why do we eat mindlessly, and what would help us stop? Simple, snarky answer: We eat mindlessly because we don't want to think about where what we're eating came from, if it's from a dead animal, which it tends to be, one way or another. And what would help us stop? Hmmmm. I'd have to say, stopping doing so.

Sure, it's snark, but it's more applicable than you might think:

Eating a wrap sandwich for lunch on campus, he can't help noticing a label on his mayonnaise packet: "As always 0g carbs."

"I love it!" he said with a laugh.

The packet doesn't mention that a single serving has 10 grams of fat and 90 calories.

The article doesn't mention that the label plays into one of the great "mindless" fads of all time, the "low-carb" craze, and attempts to soothe the consumer's health consciousness while slamming them with saturated fat and cholesterol from animal products.

There are a lot of reasons, in short, for mindless eating, but we'll never be mindful unless we're willing, as a culture, to pay attention to what our food really is.

GREGER'S BIRD FLU BOOK

The indefatiguable Michael Greger has completed his book "Bird Flu: A Virus of our Own Hatching," and though those of us who are familiar with his efforts should buy the thing anyway, Dr. Greger has made the whole thing available online at this site. And after I gave him so much grief about the non-linked "20th-century style" footnotes on his Atkins Exposed site, I gotta say, he's really done a great job with these, linking you right from the citation to its source through the magic of the Web. Check it out!

SHOCKER: ELEPHANTS ARE SELF-AWARE

A recent test at the Bronx zoo showed self-awareness for elephants: Researchers tested put an 8-foot-square mirror on a wall and found that the elephants "exhibited behavior typical of other self-aware animals. They checked out the mirror, in some cases using their trunks to explore what was behind it, and used it to examine parts of their bodies. Of the three, Happy then passed the critical test, in which a visible mark was painted on one side of her face. She could only tell the mark was there by looking in the mirror, and she used the mirror to touch the mark with her trunk."

While this is welcome proof of another animal's capacity for self-cognition, we're still in the dark ages for understanding animal intelligence: "Awareness can be tested by studying whether the animal recognizes itself in a mirror," the article notes. "Many animals fail this exercise miserably, paying scant attention to the reflected image." So because we've come up with one test that we think measures self-awareness, an animal that doesn't behave as we does must by definition lack such awareness. Uh huh. Just as these elephants lacked it before we tested them.

VEGCAST 17

Here's the latest Vegcast. There's more talk about animal sanctuaries (see Vegcast 16 for the first part of this), this time with David Cantor of Responsible Policies for Animals. Cantor has an idea for transforming animal agriculture programs in higher learning institutions away from preparations for animal exploitation and toward animal care. Also music from Green Beings and a Science Fact.

PARTIAL RECALL

The hooplah over spinach and E.Coli would be funny but for the gastro-intestinal distress and death involved. But for those of us who have been paying attention it's especially ironic that SPINACH = BAD has blanketed all forms of news media, with only verrrrry rarely any context given that the sickening agent is almost certainly from cow feces from a nearby farm. If it turns out that the spinach spontaneously generated its own E.Coli, though, I promise to eat some.

DEER HEAD

This is one of those I wanted to get to at the time but couldn't: Please note that the type of person who believes it is appropriate to harass unknown black people for being black is, coincidentally, the type of person who has a deer head handy because he's on his way back from a hunting trip.

BACK FROM THE TRENCHES

Just got done with a major project in NYC that consumed all of my free time and then some. Will catch up on some of the September stories tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

SIX NORTH AMERICAN MAD COWS JUST THIS YEAR

Last week was a busy one as you might guess from the (in)frequency of posting, so I missed this, and maybe you did too: Yet another Mad Cow in Canada. Even the U.S. rancher lobby group R-CALF considers this alarming: "R-CALF has been saying all along that it appears the prevalence of BSE in Canada is a lot higher than anybody anticipated. This raises a tremendous amount of concern, especially in light of the fact that it does not appear Canada's meat and bone meal ban, or feed ban, was effective." The sick joke is that for some unknown reason they think ours was, and that everything will be OK if we pretend that Canada's and the United States' cattle industries are not heavily intertwined in multiple ways.

The key news here, though, is in the numbers: Out of eight Canadian cases since 2003, five have occurred this year. Out of eleven North American cases (that's right, folks, we're already in the double digits!) over the past four years, the majority of them have shown up this year - which is barely three-quarters done. Care to chart that on a graph and figure out the trend?

VEGAN FOOD

Here's another cool site someone tipped me to via email - VeganFood.net - check out the recipe selection by category (hey, there's a whole page for The Joy of Soy), or pick a random recipe. It's going in the sidebar, just wanted to highlight it so's you know.

DEATH BY MEATBALL

This story is by no means unique or, unfortunately, all that rare. But it's a stark example of how in thrall our culture is to a food source that literally deals death to unsuspecting consumers. A 73-year-old woman died Sunday of complications from an E. coli infection after she ate contaminated food at a church supper in July. The E.Coli in this outbreak sickened 30 other people.

The source was - surprise! - the ground beef in meatballs at the supper, which also cross-contaminated other foods.

And note this part: "The investigators eventually traced the contamination to E. coli that had been discovered during a routine federal inspection of a Nebraska meatpacker. A distributor bought beef from that plant and sold it to a Longville grocer, who in turn sold the beef to a local restaurant and to the organizers of the church event. The victims who weren't infected at the church all had eaten at the same restaurant, Schultz said."

OK, so let's leave the restaurant nameless - they're practically at the end of the food chain. Even the Longville grocer and the distributor might deserve a little anonymity. But who the hell is the "Nebraska meatpacker" whose sloppy production sickened 30 people and killed someone? Nope, mustn't let that name out, bad for business, you know. That part of the story is standard practice, and it's infuriating.

SKITTISH ABOUT IRRADIATED MEAT?

Then try virus-laced luncheon meats instead! This was a tip from the inimitable Joan Zacharias, and as she points out, it's not just that meat producers again want to further contaminate their useless product in order to fight the fecal contamination that is endemic to it, but that again, consumers will have no idea which hot dogs are or are not virus-free, as there will be zero requirement to label them as such.

Actually, Joan didn't mention the fecal contamination, but I had to get that in - it's my specialty around here.

STILL MORE SILENT RECALLS

Every once in a while I remember to check for meat recalls that have gotten no coverage. Often I find one or two that are limited to one region or are only a few hundred pounds, and I don't bother saying anything about them because it's not suprising I wouldn't have heard about them, and I have no evidence that the communities involved went uninformed. But just as often I find recalls that came and went involving thousands and thousands of pounds of meat, with the comensurate potential to incapacitate or kill hundreds to thousands of people.

Here are just a couple cases in point. Within a couple days, one company in Tennessee, Southeastern Meats, recalled more than four thousand pounds of beef and another company in Texas, Plains Meat Co, recalled more than 13,000 pounds of beef - yes, that's over six tons of beef - and in both cases, of course the culprit was our own war nemesis, E.Coli.

In a break with tradition, the more damning recall was announced by the USDA not on Friday, but on Saturday.

ANOTHER INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Props to E Magazine for that headline, which sprang to mind for me (and probably a lot of other people) when I heard the buzz about Al Gore's movie. The article Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue lays out the facts pretty nicely, including dragging in such inconvenient truths as "the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future — deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease."

Of course, what makes this truth all the more inconvenient for many is that there's something decisive we can do about it right now, today, which requires so little of us in comparison to the stakes involved that it's doubtless embarrassing to contemplate.