USDA CONTINUES SEARCH FOR COJONES

Remember that War on E.Coli? Still not won, I guess. Turns out that 60 percent of the largest U.S. meat plants fail to meet federal food safety regulations. And the USDA can't seem to make them clean up their act. Wonder why?

NATURE VS. TORTURE

A handy rationalization meat-eaters fall back on is that farm animals are raised for food, so we shouldn't worry about the ethics of killing & eating them. These two stories show that same ridiculous logic in non-eating industries: Greyhound racing, in which slow dogs are killed by hanging to teach 'em a lesson ("Greyhounds are for racing. What else are you going to do with one?") and cockfighting, which is such a venerable tradition that it's become part of nature itself ("Game cocks are a very unique breed. Over thousands of years, they have been bred to fight. It's their nature.") What's that saying... Nitwits Think Alike?

IN THE NAVY

Australia is leading the charge to include regular vegetarian options in mess hall meals - but I know what you'll say when you look at this: What the hell do you expect of a military branch where the sailors wear silly-lookin' shorts? Really, now.

ELEPHANT MEAT?

Though not strictly a meat fact, this is consistent with the mentality: Abuse animals routinely, continually, institutionally, and you'll be fine as long as the mainstream public doesn't see it. But more people are noticing the no-brainer that elephants do not want to perform circus tricks and only physical violence, combined with intense psychological trauma, can force them to do so. And more people will be exposed to this as the previously dismissed suit against Ringling Bros., for just those activities, was restored this week by a federal appeals court.
UPDATE 2/24: Portland Press Herald says "Performing circus pachyderms make for bad showmanship" and calls for the entire state of Maine to outlaw elephants in circuses.

POISSON / POISON

In a remarkable admonition that few health-conscious yuppies have probably noticed, the state of New Jersey has now added to its previous warnings about tainted fish by listing types that are so contaminated with PCBs that they can't be safely eaten more than ONCE A YEAR, and NEVER by pregnant women or small children. Well, at least this time it's PCBs and not more mercury... oh wait, though, here comes - yep, more mercury. Hope you're not "hooked"... hyuk, hyuk

THE WHITE STUFF

It's funny how here in America, milk is nature's perfect food, while people elsewhere seem to have a lot of trouble ingesting it. Maybe the death of a 5-month-old in England - due to cow's milk allergy, one of the commonest kid's allergies - can be written off as an isolated incident. But it's also odd that in Thailand this week, 50 students fell ill after drinking school milk. "We can't say what went wrong," an administrator said. "The milk was fresh. It's pasteurized, refrigerated all the time and was days away from the expiry date," he said. Well, yeah... but it's COW'S MILK! Could this be a clue that maybe Thai kids aren't built the same as cows? Oh, and the same might go for New Zealanders, where dairy products have been clearly linked to heart disease and diabetes. Yeesh, what are they putting in the stuff down there? Oh yeah, just the proteins that come with all cow's milk. Hmmmmmm.

PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN

One indicator of the trend toward taking animals seriously (I said toward - we're nowhere near it yet) is an increase in discussion of the fact that there's a terrible, gruesome reality behind America's animal-based diet, one that most of us are too cowardly to confront. This, for example, from an AP story on possible reforms: "As millions of Americans sit down for dinner each night, no one wants to think about the waste-filled sheds, crammed cages and electric stun baths that were part of the chicken's life before it became a delicious drumstick, nugget or wing." Funny thing is, the more these get mentioned, the harder it is to dismiss them as some extreme phenomenon animal activists happen to have caught on tape. Especially when regular non-AR workers quit in disgust over the constant animal abuse they're expected to participate in. Times are a-changin' - slowly.

DYING FOR PRIVACY

Hey, remember that sick joke from last year where the National Zoo refused to give the Washington Post access to records of animals' illnesses and deaths because it would violate the animals' privacy? Well, now we know what those animals were so embarrassed about: the fact that so many of them are dying at the hands of incompetent zookeepers. "The latest in a string of deaths," as the Washington Post puts it, were two red pandas, an endangered species - killed by rat poison intentionally planted in their caged area to keep those pesky critters down. What makes this sick joke even sicker is not just that people set up these massive areas that are doubtlessly a vermin's paradise, nor that their killing methods backfire so hideously and predictably - no, it's that this is in no way a unique story. Zoo animals around the world are constantly dying horrific deaths as a result of incredible mismanagement. Oh well - at least they have their privacy.

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.