CRUEL SUMMER

This story is noteworthy because it's not noteworthy. Remember when the concept of a farmer being cruel to a farm animal - especially a cow - was on the outer edge of believability? It was only a few years ago. Now these charges are commonplace. Incremental change is under way, though I don't know how many farm animals exactly have benefited from it so far.

"KFC Canadian franchisee, PETA in accord"

That's the headline. And also, that's the problem, says Gary Francione.

VEGAN OF THE MONTH

Danielle Konya of Allentown. Here's the Morning Call: "Vegan Treats has long been known in vegetarian circles and its desserts frequently sweep awards at Veg News, Vegetarian Times and Satya. The bakery supplies most of the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in New York and Philadelphia, and has just entered the Washington, D.C., market, where word spread in a matter of days. In New York alone, Vegan Treats has more than 40 accounts, including kosher restaurants. Her desserts have been served at mainstream restaurants such as Tavern on the Green."

SCHOOL STOPS FORCING STUDENTS TO KILL CHICKENS

I rag on PETA enough for the many things they do wrong, especially when it comes to dealing with children, so this is a good opportunity to herald them for doing something right: Pressuring school administrators to end a program that had children raising chickens from infancy and then killing and eating them. It worked.

Of course, as some pointed out, there was hardly anything unique about this - "4-H" clubs are devoted specifically to the practice of teaching children to raise animals for slaughter, even if they don't kill them themselves. Doubtless there are plenty of other programs like this in schools nationwide. But now that this one has been ended, it provides an example for others to follow.

Oh, and enough of that "this was raising kids' consciousness to turn them vegetarian" BS. If you want to devote class time to that there are plenty more effective ways to do so that don't involve killing animals. Do the kids all need to join the army and be part of a "My Lai" incident in order to understand that war atrocities are a bad thing?

OPRAH GOES VEGAN

OK, let's not get too excited, here. After all, this is the woman who said Howard Lyman "has just stopped me from eating another burger!" some 12 years ago, and that one didn't seem to stick.

This time, however, she's not making an absolute, permanent promise, and if anything, that's probably a good model for a lot of people. Oprah is going vegan for 21 days, and in the process exposing millions of people to the specifics of this non-mainstream lifestyle. So that right there is a positive. Whatever she decides on day 22 is gravy, so to speak. Knowing that she has the option to revert once she gets though this period may help to stick to it during that period - then there's always a chance she'll return to it afterward - who knows, maybe permanently.

UPDATE 5/28:
If nothing else, it's good to see a woman whose every word so many hang on putting out verbiage like "Wow, wow, wow! I never imagined meatless meals could be so satisfying" and I'm ever more surprised at how I don't miss anything and feel so satisfied at every meal." Let's hope she doesn't sour on this later and start channeling Rick Berman or something.

ANOTHER (HUGE?) FRIDAY RECALL

Here's an interesting Friday recall to add to the massive pile: JSM Meats is recalling beef products for E.Coli. The contaminated beef went to stores in 11 states. It's a Class I (High-Risk) recall.

Now, how much meat is being recalled? The USDA says they don't know. It's an "undetermined" amount.

Excuse me? They don't know? Why not? If I were cynical and jaded through years of following the USDA's machinations to minimize and eliminate the PR damage the meat industry causes itself, I might suspect that there's a large amount of meat involved and though the agency does in fact know how much, they're not saying in the initial story. Why? Because they can let this "undetermined" story work through the news cycle, then "discover" the amount to announce halfway through the next, so it comes only as an added-detail to an existing, "old" news story. It's similar to the ploy, er, sorry, coincidental pattern of behavior, where a recall is announced for a small amount of beef, then expanded a few days later to a huge amount.

Of course, that's only if I were so cynical and jaded as to believe that. But being my own sweet, naive, cockeyed-optimist self, I know the real reason the USDA has no idea how much meat is involved in a recall they're overseeing is that they're simply a bunch of incompetent buffoons. Right?

VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE

This NYT "Freakonomics" blog entry has gotten a bit of Internet buzz, including here in the comments section of Meat Facts, with the focus being a new paper suggesting slaughterhouse workers are prone to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the nightmarish duties of their job. The interesting sidelight, though, which I missed when it came out, is a paper by Amy Fitzgerald suggesting a correlation between communities with slaughterhouses and those with high rates of violent crime. I have attempted to obtain a copy of the report but so far have only the abstract to point you to, so I can't say for sure how airtight the case is. Still an interesting, and largely common-sensical, idea worth looking into.

YOUR LATEST FRIDAY RECALL

Here's the latest USDA meat recall that you won't hear anything about - and why should you, it's only 34 tons of beef potentially contaminated with deadly E.Coli.

I'm declaring it a Friday recall because even though Reuters says the USDA released the information "late on Thursday," their own story is time-stamped 9:24 a.m. this morning and it's the earliest one I've been able to find (I also checked the AP wires). So yeah, Friday. Excellent work, USDA.

FOOD ANIMAL ABUSE: 'THIS IS UBIQUITOUS'

The HSUS put out another video of downed / abused cattle - this time at livestock auction houses, and though it won't make anywhere near the splash of the first one, it confirms what the USDA and meat producers continue to deny: That what we saw in that first video is not an aberration but Standard Operating Procedure.

Even meat-eaters are slowly opening their eyes to the reality:

"Denise Clendening said she was surprised to see the new footage - shot this month at auction houses in Texas, Maryland, New Mexico and Pennsylvania - given recent heightened government scrutiny on the meat industry.

'It's appalling this is still occurring,' Clendening said. 'One of the auction house owners interviewed said he was aware of the heightened scrutiny, so even with his awareness it's still occurring, which makes you realize this is ubiquitous.'"

ANOTHER HORSE "CHAMPION" DIES TO SERVE GAMBLERS

Ed Berliner, a pretty well known sports journalist who has covered horse racing on many occasions, issues a scathing condemnation of the entire institution and all but calls for its elimination after Eight Belles follows in Barbaro's footsteps as a high-profile 'winner' of a horse that trips and must be killed.

UPDATE 5/4: Berliner's not alone... Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass? is asked in the New York Times.

EXPERTS: FACTORY FARMING MUST GO

This is almost as big a bombshell as the Humane Society video, though it won't hit with the same force, because, why? No pictures. But it's still big.

Factory farming takes a big toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock, concludes an independent, 2 1/2-year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.

The report, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and released Tuesday, finds that the "economies of scale" long used to justify factory-farming practices are largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for associated costs.

Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and the degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

Read the whole story - while the 10-year "phaseout" is predictably wussy, there are still some pretty breathtaking recommendations, considering the (very staid, mainstream) source. They even call for an end to forced feeding of poultry to produce foie gras, which should have repercussions in cities across North America where activists are pressing that fight.

ADVANTAGE: EDDIE LAMA

If you've seen The Witness, you know what this is about. You also know that it's just one method, as part of an ongoing barbaric industry, that's being eliminated. But it is an important step. "New York has become the first state in the nation to ban the electrocution of animals in a particularly gruesome way to harvest their fur. The law bans the practice of anal and genital electrocution of fur-bearing animals, including mink, foxes, chinchillas and rabbits."

VEGAN OF THE MONTH

It's many months now since one has been named, but the name remains the same. Just worth citing for those who persist in believing a vegan diet renders the human body weak or unfit: "Tim VanOrden will do whatever it takes today to get his body to the top of a 62-story skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles before hundreds of others.
But unlike his competitors, he is only fueled by fruits and vegetables, some nuts and some seeds, and he eats them only in their natural state: uncooked, unprocessed and unrefined. He is a raw vegan athlete and has been for the past three years."

TAIWAN TODAY, HERE TOMORROW

Mark my words, this will come to our illustrious nation as well. But we'll doubtless drag our feet about it and be in the back of the pack as usual.

"Taiwan, for religious and health reasons, plans to require food manufacturers to provide detailed identification of vegetarian food, the Department of Health said on Thursday. Under the new rule, food manufacturers must identify the content of the veggie food according to five categories on the outside of the food package.

The five categories are pure veggie, milk veggie, egg veggie, egg/milk veggie and plant veggie."

Dunno if we'll go all the way to labeling "plant veggie," which deals specifically with Buddhist spice restrictions, but still, it's gonna happen.

BIG MEAT'S ABOUT-FACE ON DOWNERS

This is pretty big: "In a significant reversal, major meat and dairy industry groups on Tuesday backed a total ban on so-called downer cattle from entering the food supply. Calls for such a ban have come from watchdog groups and some lawmakers in the wake of the massive beef recall from a Southern California slaughterhouse in February, but industry had resisted." Looks like the ban will go forward now, as it was Congressional pressure that supposedly led to the shift in stance.

UPDATE 4/30: Ha! How naive of me - the USDA, it seems, is fine with standing up to Big Meat as long as the agency is completely on the wrong side of the issue: USDA isn't on board with beef industry's downer cow ban

BACK ON THE CASE

Well, that was another little blogging hiatus, wasn't it?

I did prepare some posts during that interim but didn't manage to get them into Blogger, so I'll put them in first as they occurred before proceding with May posts.

MORE SLAUGHTERHOUSE PROBLEMS FOUND IN PROBE

A federal audit of slaughterhouses licensed to provide beef to the nation's schoolchildren found animal-handling problems at four of the 18 plants, including one that was shut down briefly.

Still, the very fact that it wasn't 18 out of 18, in an audit that was publicly announced in advanced, leads the USDA hack Schafer to say "Based on the findings of the audit, we do not believe this was a widespread practice or issue. It seems to be confined -- the downer cow issue -- to the Chino facility."

What a sick joke. Why don't you check with your own agency's Inspector General to see if there are other cases of downers being wrongfully slaughtered?

ELEPHANT ABUSED GRAPHICALLY DESCRIBED BY FORMER RINGLING TRAINER

"With a bull hook in her hand and tears in her eyes, Archele Hundley told horrified Chicago aldermen that she once saw the head elephant trainer at the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus swing the device 'with all his might . . . like a baseball bat' against the ear and legs of a chained elephant that refused a command to lie down. It happened in 2006 during a two-week layover in Tulsa, Okla. 'It was the worst beating that I have ever, ever seen in my life. . . . She bled profusely. She screamed and she shrieked in pain as blood just dripped down her ear. This beating lasted for about 35 to 45 minutes, Hundley said."

Not surprisingly, "Feld Entertainment, producer of Ringling Brothers, flatly denied Hundley's cruelty claims. Circus officials called her a 'sponsored witness of an animal-rights group' whose allegations were investigated and dismissed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture."

Yeah, that USDA, they're always right on the ball in detecting animal abuse, aren't they?

The only problem, though, with this kind of focus is that it presumes there's a kinder, gentler way to exploit elephants. Putting elephants in a circus is abuse. Period. Everything else is gravy.

APRIL FOOLS ROUNDUP

Putting this post up as April 1, since that's when I rounded these stories up for posting, but didn't actually get them online then. Tough. Gotta clear these out before I can get to the more recent stuff. So a bunch of semi-random quick hits...

3/24: Beef recall case: Cattle abuse wasn't a rare occurrence "More than 10% of the humane-slaughter violations issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the 18 months ended March 2004 detailed improper treatment of animals that couldn't walk - mostly cattle... The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a 2004 report that humane violations are likely under-reported because USDA inspectors miss them."

3/28: Italy recalls contaminated mozzarella cheese Italy ordered a recall on Friday of mozzarella cheese potentially contaminated with cancer-causing dioxin, as a widening health scare tainted the reputation of one of its best-known culinary products.

3/30: Impact of meat recall beginning to show "The full costs of the biggest beef recall ever are beginning to emerge six weeks later and they are hitting retailers, meat processors, other businesses and the government." And by "the government," they of course mean, "by you, the taxpayer."
And: "The USDA says it will seek restitution from Westland/Hallmark. The firm has laid off its 200 workers and isn't expected to reopen." Uh huh. And so the firm is going to come up with that restitution, the money it owes us taxpayers, how exactly?

3/26 Buried lede: "Roughly 1.4 million American children younger than 18 - and 11 percent of girls between 13 and 17 - identify themselves as vegetarians or vegans, according to the American Dietetic Association." Don't remember seeing this stat before. More than one in ten teenage girls is vegetarian. Interesting.

DOGS AS LIVESTOCK

What a crazy idea, huh? "Seoul City Administration recently decided to put dogs into the category of livestock." Those barbaric Koreans! How can they confuse animals that are thinking, feeling, suffering and exulting members of our families with animals that are just unfeeling machines? I mean, come on, it's not as if they're treating the dogs with the respect they deserve, like we do...