WATER WE DOING?

The Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) reports on Orange County's massive construction of a water purification system so they can get going on drinking their own (treated) sewage as tap water. This would be tragic if it weren't so funny - because there's plenty of water in California; it's just that half of it goes toward FEEDING LIVESTOCK, and of the half that's left, a great deal of it (especially Orange County's) is POISONED by LIVESTOCK WASTE by the time it comes out into your drinking glass. "State and federal inspectors suspect that a majority of California's 2,400 dairies are illegally allowing manure to pollute water," sez the LA Times, by way of example.
So cry me a river as wide as the Rhine: If Californians - and other Americans - would stop being so childishly greedy about nuances of taste, and cut way back on the number of feedlots and dairies in the state, clean water would be quite a bit more plentiful. Plant agricultre uses only a fraction of the water of animal agriculture. And this way, everybody wins. Except, of course, for losers.
And if you only take away one fact from today, remember, cryptosporidium is just another word for ... animal ... feces.
Thankyouverymuch.

THE KIDNEY TAX

I won't wade into the new "Now we're REALLY confused about what to eat!" syndrome surrounding the NYT Magazine's misleading and recklessly biased cover story alleging that Atkins and his lo-carb hi-protein snake-oil brethren have achieved some kind of nutritional credibility, except to point out the indisputable: These diets are bad for your long-term health, ergo bad nutrition. I'll only point to one of the many stories detailing the effects (here it's taxed kidneys and weakened bones) of such reckless eating patterns, but it seems a new one comes out every couple weeks.

AUTISM & ANIMAL PROTEIN

The last day of Summerfest a friend came up to me and said she had a contender "for your blog." That's the first time someone's said that to me - though I've said it to myself many times. Anyway, the item was a good one (thanks!): this rather basic story from ABC news on searches for ways to treat autism, one that mentions a possible trigger. Taking one autistic boy off of cow's milk got him talking again. Hello? Parents, did you ever stop to wonder why you have to keep after kids to drink milk? Maybe there's a reason they don't like it. The London Times Magazine seems to think so - they did a report on milk which was appropriately and rather directly entitled, "Is there a time bomb in your diet?"

A DANGEROUS POSSIBIITY

Rick Berman (below) and his ilk are trying real hard not to pay attention to the troubling developments in the CWD epidemic. CNN asks if it's jumped from animals to humans, and an NIH scientist says there's a study needed to learn if humans can carry the disease. John Stauber, the author of Mad Cow USA, says simply, 'I think CWD can kill people.' Well, unless you're the head of a "foundation" whoring yourself out to tobacco fatcats to maintain the junk-culture status quo, you can probably see that even the slim possibility of this, given our lack of knowledge about these interrelated brain-wasting diseases, is something we need to look at verrrrrry carefully and thoroughly.
Remember, you can't spell "TSE" without "transmissible."

BLOWING SMOKE

What do Joe Eszterhas and his recent near-deathbed conversion to the anti-smoking cause have to do with Meat Facts? For one thing, Joe's admission that "I told those lies" paints a clear picture of how easy it is to defraud and victimize people as long as you're not on the short end of it. But there's a more specific connection: Rick Berman's so-called Center for Consumer Freedom was founded on money from Philip Morris, (at least $900,000) whom Berman begged for help to fight "attacks from anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists." The joke's on PM: These days, the CFCF doesn't talk much about that wonderful "freedom to smoke" - but it's in quite a lather over the first Fast-Food lawsuit, brought by the same legal team that initiated the first anti-smoking lawsuits. Predictably, Berman bends over backward to ridicule anti-meat sentiment, as in this sparkling essay assuring us that lettuce, not animal feces, is the hidden source of deadly E.Coli.
But the reason I bring all this up is because of the recent "Quorn" brouhaha. The attacks by CSPI on the safety of Quorn are completely consistent with their somewhat alarmist history, yet I had an inkling that this "Nanny Culture" (Berman's favorite phrase) crusade to demonize a consumer product, to REMOVE consumers' CHOICE to decide what is or isn't safe for them, would not get one peep of criticism from Berman, because in this case, it's a vegetarian product. Feel free to search the CFCF site for any mention of the word. Meanwhile, Rick, maybe you should have a talk with Joe - before it's too late.

LISTERIA HYSTERIA

Hey, remember those hot dogs Sara Lee sold, knowing they were tainted with listeria - the ones that killed 20 people outright and sickened more than a hundred? (Don't worry, the company had to pay a whopping $200,000 for causing all those deaths!) Looks like other companies have seen the light - the green light - to go ahead and freely dump Listeria-filled animal products on the nation's consumers. Just in the past couple weeks, that includes separate recalls involving more hot dogs, sausage products, pork loaf, chicken salad - sorry, I mean, A TON of chicken salad, cheesecake, and plain ol' cheese.
Listeria - not a very nice word, but at least it sounds better than "feces," eh?

MEAT FACTS IS BACK -- WAYYY BACK!

The staff of Meat Facts has returned from vacation. If you notice links to stuff that's a week or so older than the posting date, well, that's why.