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.