DARK DAYS FOR PROFESSIONAL KILLERS

As demand for beef continues to fall (despite the industry's incessant claims to the contrary), workers at the Greeley slaughterhouse where the feces hit the fan last summer are now suffering through "dark days," forced days off that cut their wages.
As one worker puts it, "The company says, 'Look, we don’t have the business. We’re going to have to give you a dark day.'" Oddly, this is the plant that keeps making national news for stepping up all its safety procedures and slowing down the assembly line to avoid another PR catastrophe. So if they're still producing too much supply for demand, that should tell you something. And as much as I sympathize with the quasi-laid-off workers, well, nobody's holding a gun to their head and forcing them to slit throats for a living. Take this as a sign that you're in the wrong damned line of work.
UPDATE: A British perspective on the same supply/demand quandary: Some farmers are protesting that losing livestock subsidies will "make keeping livestock uneconomic." Sez one, "We've had several years of low return in beef. If the market isn't prepared to pay a figure that will give us back costs of production, people will stop producing beef." Oh no!

THE LAWSUIT THAT WOULDN'T DIE

I kept tellin' ya that the McDonalds "fat" lawsuit wasn't a matter of one case winning or losing. After that first one was dismissed, there was a week of crowing from short-sighted pundits who thought it was all over. But already the backlash to the backlash has set in: The head of the American Tort Reform Association is pointing out that the door is wide open for modified, improved versions of the suit; CNN's law columnist explains why suing McDonalds could be a good thing - mostly because it forces them to clean up their act - as they're doing to some extent in the UK, even embracing organic milk.

But the kicker to the "frivolous" charge is that fast food is not cigarettes - there, after all, the product was addictive as well as harmful. Well, as George W. likes to say, Guess Whut? Now scientists say fast food may be addictive and are looking into the mechanisms by which the fast-food "habit" maintains itself. Time for a new strategery!
UPDATE: A longer piece in which John Banzhaf champs at the bit to refile the suit.

NO WILL? NO WAY

Making a further mockery of the notion of the USDA as a true safeguard of public health, it was revealed that the Conagra plant that sickened 27 people and killed one with feces-smeared beef had been "cited more than 300 times for violating federal food safety regulations in the last three years." Meanwhile, a couple Democratic lawmakers with some semblance of a spine are trying to install one in the USDA and give it the power to close wantonly hazardous plants such as that one. What they don't seem to get is that since the USDA is packed with meat industry sympathizers, power isn't enough: What they need is the will.

McDONALDS vs. HOSPITALS

Once again, McDonald's is winning the battle and losing the war. Just as in the McLibel verdict, the fast food giant technically won, but at a great cost to their PR strategy. Here as well, with the tossing of the first obesity suit on the basis that everybody knows fast food is dangerous, McDonalds hasn't exactly come out smelling like a rose: for one thing, New York hospitals that had the restaurant within their walls are suddenly saying "What the hell were we thinking?"

UPDATE: Beginning of the end for fast food?

"THAT'S FIVE..." "THREE, SIR!" "...THREE..."

The dairy industry has adopted the approach of "if you can't beat 'em, copy 'em." As people are finally learning (if not following) the concept of "5 a day" for fruits and vegetables, the milk folks have hijacked it with their own "3 a day" slogan, trying to convince people that they need milk at every meal. And no wonder: Word is getting around that nobody needs cow's milk, and the facade of "health" and "calcium crisis" is eroding. A recent article in Britain's Independent puts it succinctly - "The idea that milk can also be very bad for you has become almost heresy, and the fact that cow's milk was intended for baby cows, not for baby humans, seems to have been forgotten" - and relays info such as: "Researchers from the Medical University of Yamanashi in Japan looked at cancer rates and diet in 42 countries and found significant links between cheese and testicular cancer, and milk and prostate cancer. They found that those with a high consumption of dairy products also had high rates of cancers." Contrariwise, a low-fat diet cuts breast cancer risks. More studies like this keep appearing - it's almost up to 3 a day...
UPDATE: Sez one observer: "It's pretty clear that they're attempting to market their products. I say that's OK, but don't pretend to be a health campaign then."

LUNCH CRUNCH

The idea that children in public schools should be fed something that's good for them instead of whatever's lying around the warehouse (i.e. tons of surplus meat and dairy commodities) is finally pervading the mainstream, as pundits in various districts take up the cry. The New York Times finally got on board on Monday, with an overview of the latest trends, pointing out the fights over vending machines, the imperative to get kids to eat more plant-based, and less animal-based, foods and some groundbreaking efforts to connect school cafeterias to small farmers. But like most such reports, this one merely scratches the surface, throwing up a bunch of possibilities then throwing up the hands: Who knows what the answer is? Meanwhile, researchers in the latest Preventive Medicine magazine confirm that it's not our imagination - U.S. schools are failing in nutrtition. For example, the average school lunch contains as much saturated fat as is recommended for a whole day's worth of eating. And the poorer the school district, the more fat in the food. But again, this only describes the symptoms of the problem. Mother Jones, typically, gets more directly to the root: "School lunches are loaded with fat -- and the beef and dairy industries are making sure it stays that way." The article, only a portion of which is online, explains how the problem is at the core of the mission of the National School Lunch Program, which in addition to feeding schoolkids "is designed to subsidize agribusiness, shoring up demand for beef and milk even as the public's taste for these foods declines." Yes, your taste for it may decline, but yet again, the amount you pay to perpetuate this dying institution remains as high as ever.
UPDATE 1/17: Britain urged to follow Italy's example and serve high quality organic food to school kids. Maybe we could do some urging here...

ONE MORE WAY TO SAY 'FECES'

"Litter." And here I thought cat litter was the stuff you paid good money for in order to provide somewhere for cat feces to go. But in this story, "chicken litter" doesn't seem to be used that way, for instance, in the phrase "The hundreds of tons of chicken "litter" produced by the poultry industry's chicken farms is leading to high rates of disease and death." But surely those two are a small price to pay for readily available McNuggets?

FRUITS, VEGETABLES FIGHT CANCER... AGAIN

In a scientific study of 40,000 people, researchers have concluded that the risk of stomach cancer - the number-two cancer killer - is reduced from 25 to 52% by eating fruits and vegetables. This isn't major news to those of us who pay attention. But I sometimes feel it's necessary to include these stop-the-presses revelations to highlight the overall dynamic of plant-based, as opposed to corpse-based, foods: Plant foods protect and fortify the body in innumerable ways; meat threatens bodily health in a plethora of ways and offers no nutritional advantage.

ANIMAL-BASED ENTERTAINMENT: WANING, COMPLAINING

On the plus side, mainstream news outlets continue to wake up to the fact that animal-abuse industries are dying. The "decline of hunting" story has now broken out from the CWD ghetto and is being acknowledged in papers across the country, albeit usually with tears shed for this "venerable tradition." It's ironic that, as specified in this Christian Science Monitor story, one of the main factors is that a lot of boys are being raised by single mothers, and so aren't having that father-son "bonding" experience that would set their lives on the proper duck-destroying path. In other words, it's men's long tradition of fatherly absenteeism and apathy that has sunk their own pathetic tradition. And in a related area, the shift has been slow but is now incontrovertible: The traditional "Circus comes to town" story now almost inevitably focuses on the protests surrounding animal acts as more people wake up to the gratuitous cruelty inherent in such an institution. This Miami Herald one is typical, including the way the reporter fails to do the slightest research to confirm the fact that Ringling's Feld has been proven to use spies to infiltrate AR organizations (ever hear of Clair George?), but instead simply parrots the company's pat denial to, you know, give "both sides" of the story.

EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EVERYONE FROM STREET!

Geez, if all the people dying over the fall from poultry-induced listeria wasn't an emergency, what is? Apparently it's when a bunch of chickens in California get an avian-specific disease that might cripple the industry. Then it's a full-blown POULTRY EMERGENCY. As the article notes, "the emergency declaration clears the way for businesses to receive financial aid," in other words, taxpayer dollars. Once again, the birds get killed, the people get ripped off, the fatcats get rewarded for investing in the death industry. Welcome to 2003.

UPDATE 1/17: POULTRY EMERGENCY spreads to Nevada

UPDATE 2/6: Arizona declares POULTRY EMERGENCY

UPDATE 2/14: Ann Veneman has formally declared an "extraordinary emergency" in all three states. About 1,600 state and federal officials are randomly stopping cars in search of infected birds. Folks. Is it just me?

VEGANS WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG

As I'll be on holiday and largely inaccesible over the next week, I'll leave you with these two perspectives from England: An essay from The Guardian entitled "Why vegans were right all along," and no, the headline is not ironic; and a "peek into the future" from the BBC which is not very noteworthy (robots in 50 years? Really?) but serves as yet another assurance that food of the future, even feast food, will probably be vegetarian. Whether it's from the simple economic mathematics provided by The Guardian or due to fashion trends (or even - gasp! - people taking morality seriously), it's gonna happen. Happy New Years.

KEYSTONE KREDIBILITY

Things may be heating up in the ongoing scandal that is the USDA. Then again, they may not, considering all the smoke and mirrors this administration has become so adept at throwing around. At any rate, some members of Congress have accused the U.S. Agriculture Department on Thursday of "misleading Congress" about the big ConAgra mess this summer. Meanwhile, the follow-up listeria mess at Wampler is taking on a Keystone Kops sheen as inspectors and plant officials argue about whether the agency was informed of massive listeria contamination back during the summer - you know, before people started dying from it - because the USDA could have found it if it had looked in the right drawer. I kid you not: These are the bozos in charge of our nation's food safety.

STINK ABOUT IT

More and more people are becoming aware of the massive damage being done by factory farms, and more are fighting the all-powerful corporations who are blighting our world with them. This $33 million award in a "pork nuisance suit" is not as rare as it seems: across the country, and across the world, neighbors are banding together to stop the installation of large confined-animal operations. After one too many complaints that animal feces are destroying peoples' quality of life in multiple ways, the EPA has finally promised to get tough on factory farms' pollution in compliance with the Clean Water Act. But some observers are skeptical, pointing out that, as Reuters puts it "Manure Curbs Don't Go Far Enough." Time will tell, right?

McDONALD'S AT A LOSS

McDonald's stock price hit a new 7-year low when the company announced it would post its first-ever quarterly loss. Meanwhile, organic-friendly chain Whole Foods is doing so well it will be added to the NASDAQ-100 index. I'm just sayin, is all.

UPDATE 2/14: Once again, on the same day, in a notable way, Whole Foods grows, McDonalds shrinks.

MILK SHAKES

Add Parkinson's Disease to the growing list of maladies proven to be caused by cow's milk. A comprehensive study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that dairy products increase mens' risk of Parkinson's. And although the story backpedals this association like crazy, it turns out this is not a new idea... this basic Parkinson's FAQ, among many others, suggests reducing animal protein in general and dairy products in specific and this page from parkinson.org warns that milk "can be very troublesome for some people with PD" and interferes with anti-PD drugs.

WAR IS BLECCCHHH

One week after more than 100 soldiers in Afghanistan came down with food poisoning from bad turkey stuffing on Thanksgiving (didn't they hear all the warnings?), close to 300 are now ill from food-poisoning in Kuwait with the source of the current outbreak unknown. Sounds like it's time to have the whole military go vegan, lest we lose World War III due to our stubborn addiction to meat.

SAME OLD SONG

Once again, it emerges that inspectors' warnings of contamination problems at a meat processing plant were ignored by both the plant and its PR agent, the USDA, until people started getting sick, and in fact, for some time thereafter. Meanwhile, a citizens' group is advocating a proposal that is entertaining if only for the degree to which it must scare the bejeezus out of meat suppliers: Consumers should get double their money back as an incentive to return recalled food according to Safe Tables Our Priority. Nope, it won't happen, but it's fun to picture the meat industry even worrying about whether it could.

NO LAUGHING MATTER

As I pointed out back when the first "fast-food lawsuit" was filed, it was considered a frivolous joke, but would soon evolve into a serious issue. Esteemed columnist Ellen Goodman has just made the same point, asking us to mark her words: "This is just the beginning of a big, fat food fight." And chiming in on the concept that despite all knee-jerk dismissals, this is something we're gonna hafta take seriously is the NY Post's Gersh Kuntzman. Still laughing?

DOLPHINS UNSAFE

If you buy "dolphin-safe tuna," thinking you're being so eco-correct, think again. It turns out that at least 3,000 dolphins are killed yearly by fishing in eastern tropical Pacific alone according to a Commerce Department report. Word is the Bush administration doesn't want to publicly release the report because that would undermine the government's attempt to help Mexico and other countries label their tuna as "dolphin-safe." So think again, and again, if you think fish is a thoughtful entree.

MCDONALD'S FLAMING OUT?

Maybe the company isn't at death's door, but individual stores are certainly seeing some heated debate. I told you how some workers were fed up with global anti-McDonald's sentiment and were fighting back, assaulting customers in New Zealand. The next phase, it seems, is to put razor blades into pies in New Orleans - to teach people to keep their mouths shut, I guess. But these violence breeds violence, and soon came word that another McDonald's has been firebombed, killing three. Not to be outdone, McDonald's itself blew up its own restaurant (via faulty air conditioning - or so they say), injuring 17 people. It's gotten so bad that Mickey D's is now pulling out of Bolivia for good, and the article on this mentions the chain "will be survived by Burger King." Gosh - survived? Isn't that the kind of language you use when something's... er... dying? No wonder CEO Greenberg decided to bail the hell out of this fiasco. Who can blame 'im?
UPDATE 12/12: Forget Bolivia - will Japan be next? McDonald's profits there just fell an unprecedented 95 percent!