TRICK QUESTION

South Florida TV station asks: Dead Ducks On Beach Animal Cruelty Or Religion?

To which I can only reply, "what do you mean, 'or'?"

NUMBER OF VEG EATERIES DOUBLES

This AP article cites Dennis Bayomi of VegDining.com for the figure that "there are 1,000 to 1,200 vegetarian restaurants in the U.S., almost double the number seven years ago." Sounds credible to me, and how could I pass up the chance to link to a non-Philly article that mentions Philadelphia's best restaurant, Horizons?

"GUILT-FREE" SLAUGHTER

I loved the unintentional black humor of the headline on this NYT article from last week: Veal to Love, Without the Guilt. First of all, the inclusion of "love" in a phrase referencing an especially "cute" baby animal, but supposedly referring only to the consumption of said baby animal's carcass, is already somewhat weird, but the absolute banishing of guilt is even more darkly comic.

The guilt in question was, I guess, only over calves' hideous confinement and poor nutrition, because now the article suggests everyone dig in to "humane" veal "from calves four to six months old" without a twinge of guilt. Sure, who cares if the baby animal was needlessly torn from its mother and killed only to serve your infantile pleasure? No guilt here, nosiree.

What makes this more troubling than silly is the earnestness with which people are being told to embrace, and often embracing, this nonsensical "humane meat" phenomenon. Yes, Wolfgang Puck is on the bandwagon, even eschewing foie gras, but most of the changes involved in these initiatives have nothing to do with cutting out an entire form of exploitation and instead only massage the abuse into something a little more palatable. As the headline shows, the sleight of hand here is that "less guilt" = "no guilt!"

Unfortunately many animal groups are buying into and legitimizing this, in a way that seems pretty short-sighted and somewhat deceptive ("no, we know it doesn't really mean no guilt, but let them think so now, then we'll hit them harder later!"), but in this area I should defer to someone who has written and expostulated on this topic at length and more articulately than I can, Gary Francione.

RECALLAPALOOZA

I've been remiss in keeping this up to date over the past month or more, but you know if there's one thing that will force me back into service it's another FRIDAY MEAT RECALL.

And boy oh boy does this ever fit the bill: 367,000 pounds of beef was recalled this past Friday for E.Coli contamination. Yes, that's more than a third of a million pounds, on both the east and west coasts, and in both cases people have already fallen ill with E.Coli poisoning.

Did you hear about it yet? Wonder why?