ANTIBIOTICS DESERVE A BREAK TODAY

McDonald's goes from goat to hero, for a day, anyway, in taking a stand against overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture. Though the Meat Institute keeps claiming that the science isn't there, it is. Although the outward threat is to the potency of antibiotics in humans, an AP article suggests the threat to McDonald's was that people are becoming more aware of how their food is made, and not surprisingly, are turning away from factory farmed products in droves.

100-YEAR-OLD VEGETARIAN

OK, she's only one of four 100-year-old women, but Mollie Carbert credits her longevity to turning vegetarian 50 years ago. Something to think about, anyway.

HYPOCRITE LECTER?

Will the so-called "lower primates" become the wedge between humans and their unthinking animal exploitation? The recent re-classification of chimpanzees as part of our genus is already having repercussions, such as the realization that if so, then Eating Apes is Almost Cannibalism. Apes "display traces of humanlike intelligence, language skills, and humor. Killing and eating them amounts to killing and eating animals shockingly close to human." Right you are. Now check out some of these animals shockingly close to apes. Et cetera.

GOVERNOR CHICKENS---

Though the EPA "has called livestock pollution the greatest threat to American waterways," Maryland's Gov. Ehrlich doesn't much care "to stanch the flow of millions of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorous into the [Chesapeake] bay and the rivers and streams that feed it," according to the Washington Post. The GOP's Ehrlich, after pocketing $15,000 in campaign contributions from the poultry industry, has essentially let them off the hook for massive environmental damage.
Meanwhile in Kentucky, a little further afield from the big-spender lobbyists, a jury has found a Tyson chicken "farm" to be a "nuisance," fining the heavily-confined-chicken houses a pittance for ruining their neighbors' lives with relentless stench.

TAME ANIMAL ADVOCACY

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got a lot of ink over saying some very tame things, tame at least compared to last year's naming of hog farmers as "a greater threat than Bin Laden." At least somebody's bringing up fascism in connection with the animal food industry, even if he is only using it rhetorically. Similarly, this Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial is a pretty tame response to the idiot running Buckeye Egg... "Additional rules are needed to make mega-farms liable for fouling the air and the water, and for monitoring and preventing accidents. Companies that stubbornly refuse to improve their operations should get no slack." It's not a call to arms, just plain common sense, but you know, it's better than nothing.

HEY METHANE BREATH

20% of greenhouse gases caused by cows - isn't that a cute little factoid? This is on Yahoo as "Offbeat News" but it's not offbeat enough to suggest, even lightheartedly, the obvious solution: STOP BREEDING COWS FOR FOOD!

A SLICE WITHOUT SO MUCH RAT IN IT?

Rat-infested factory sold diseased meat for food, says the UK's Indpendent. The bargains "included poultry that was dead on arrival and potentially infected with dangerous diseases. Some of the meat showed signs of disease including hepatitis and the food poisoning bug E.coli. Other chickens and turkeys had been dropped on the floor, had broken bones or were bruised," the paper reports. (via Vegan Porn)
UPDATE 6/20: In Chicago, a cold storage company and three executives were indicted on conspiracy charges after federal agents seized more than 22 million pounds of contaminated food from a rat-infested warehouse. At the core of the indictment are charges that the defendants lied to customers who stored food in the warehouse, saying goods were damaged because of forklifts or faulty packaging rather than rats that had overrun the warehouse.