PWNED!

Sorry, but this headline just made me chuckle: Animal linguistics: In Racine, pets are still 'owned' If you've hung out with gamers, or with people who have hung out with them, you know that "owned" (or more properly, "pwned") is a synonym for "defeated" or "bested." The hed gives me the image of a guy playing checkers with his dog, and upon winning, jumping up, dancing and pointing at the dog, saying "Haaaa!!! OWNED!!!!!"

LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE JAILHOUSE

Reuters reports on that fast-food lawsuit that was so laughable when it was filed: "A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived part of the widely-watched obesity suit against McDonald's Corp. that accuses the world's biggest fast-food company of using misleading advertising to lure children into eating fattening, unhealthy foods. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a trial judge wrongfully threw out certain portions of the complaint in September 2003 on grounds that it lacked information linking the plaintiffs injuries with eating McDonald's foods." Keep laughing, folks - laughing past the stockyard...

SMOKIN' S***

There's been a lot of hype lately about manure, a "byproduct" of animal farming, as a fuel source, as though this now justifies exploiting and killing the animals who produce it. But it's worth keeping in mind that this byproduct can also be fuel for other things, such as the 2,000-ton pile of burning cow manure in Milford, Nebraska that's been going for more than two months now.

As often happens, the catchy lede to the article verbalizes the cognitive dissonance required of meat-eaters, even as it attempts to downplay it: "Urban dwellers who enjoy dining on filet mignon at five-star restaurants would probably just as soon not know about David Dickinson's dilemma. Bad for the appetite, you know." David Dickinson's dilemma is "a dung pile measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet high and 50 feet wide that began burning about two months ago and continues to smolder despite Herculean attempts to douse it. While city folks might have trouble imagining a dung pile of such proportions, they are common sights in rural states." Common sights... and smells!

ANOTHER CANCER TROUNCED BY FRUITS & VEGETABLES

The latest is kidney cancer. According to researchers in the International Journal of Cancer who studied 61,000 women aged 40-76 for 13 years, fruits and vegetables - especially bananas, root vegetables, white cabbage and "salad veg" - offered strong protection against the most common form of kidney cancer.

Still waiting for any study showing meat to lower the risk of any form of cancer. (Via Vegan Porn)

MAD COW STILL ON THE MARCH IN BACKGROUND

The more North American Mad Cows are found, the less attention the issue seems to get. Now that the latest Canadian cow has been completely dissected, BSE issues are again on the back burner. You may not have heard that some of the Mad cow's fellow herd members are still being tracked - in the United States, or that there's "New concern over the spread of CJD" as prions are again found outside of the muscles and tissues we're always assured are the only "high-risk" areas, or that BSE has for the first time been found in a goat. Don't worry your pretty little head about any of these, though. (BSE - it's what's for dinner...)

DEER "CULLING" DOESN'T WORK

That is, the most common spin on "culling" - i.e. mass-murdering - deer, which is that there's a population crisis that has to be dealt with once and for all with this extreme measure, is utterly bogus. The only way the death-based system works is by applying it over and over and over again, shooting more and more deer in a constant killing cycle, because in the short term "culling" achieves the opposite effect of that advertised.

Animal activists already know this, but it's good to see it spelled out so clearly in this article: Tim Thompson, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources in Iowa, is quoted as saying "I was amazed at how high it rebounded," and explaining that "as the deer herd in an area is thinned, diminished competition and a greater food supply can create an ideal habitat for the remaining population." The piece goes further to point out that hunters are not an efficient population-control mechanism ("Hunters don't do as good a job as they think," says a USDA wildlife biologist specializing in deer) and even further than that to explain why game officials continue to rely on killing rather than sane, safe and effective population-control approaches like contraception: "In fact, some officials would rather encourage hunting because they see deer as a resource that contributes to a lucrative hunting industry." Yep. Not news to the rest of us, but a nice change of pace to see it in "the news."

ANOTHER VACATION?

No, I was just completely consumed with a particular project, which is now completed. But I was keeping track of stuff that was happening, so you'll see some backlogged stuff here over the next few days. Sorry for any inconvenience to longtime, rabid Meat Facts fans.