I'LL JUST SWITCH TO...

"State health officials Friday warned women of childbearing age and children younger than 15 to not eat most fish caught in the Adirondacks and Catskills -- the most expansive warning ever in New York -- because of mercury contamination. The warning says young women and children should avoid eating northern pike, pickerel, walleye, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass and larger yellow perch," says this Times-Union story. Pretty damn sweeping prohibition - note that "young children" used to mean infants and toddlers; now it's anyone under 15. Getting the message yet, folks?

STUDY: DAIRY INDUSTRY'S WEIGHT-LOSS CLAIMS ARE BOGUS

Contrary to previous claims from the dairy industry, new study findings show that "downing lots of dairy food appears to do little in the short term for young women's waistlines," according to this Reuters story. But remember, no new study will deny that dairy is chockful of IGF-I. Mmmmmm, hormonerrific.

BEANS FIGHT BREAST CANCER

"Eating beans or lentils at least twice a week may reduce a woman's risk of developing breast cancer," says this Food Navigator write-up of a study in the International Journal of Cancer. The data comes from 90,630 women who participated in the Nurses Health Study II. So it's not just your heart, after all, that beans are good for. (Via Vegan Porn)

MEDITERRANEAN BENEFIT: IT'S NOT THE FISH

This is a first, at least in my experience: An article on the benefits of Omega-3s that gives double billing to a plant food along with fish. More on the fish thing below, but another attention-grabbing thing is that it's not flax or flax oil, but soy oil that's touted for its Omega-3-based heart-healthiness. First I've heard of that... but I don't get out much.

As to the fish itself, once again, it does contain beneficial substances, but usually pretty significant harmful ones as well, in the same place - the oily fat - unlike plant sources of this same beneficial fat. And the relative benefits of the Mediterranean diet - as well as fish consumption in general - couldn't come as much from the inclusion of fish as they do from the exclusion of even worse animal products, and the inclusion of whole plant foods. That's because despite the wide variety in our diets and attendant health, the per-capita fish consumption of the US and Italy (where it seems all Mediterranean-diet stories are based) is practically the same: They eat 23 kg of fish per capita, we eat 21 kg. You're not going to tell me the health benefits of that diet are locatedin the 2-kg difference, are you? Let's not kid ourselves: It's cutting out as much meat and dairy as possible that brings you the life-extending goodness.

NOTE: I got the per-capita numbers from two different sources, as I couldn't find one page on the Web that compared them for the same time period side-by-side. If you know of such a page with more exact information, please feel free to pass it along.

ANOTHER BAD APPLE

I'm sure it's just a meaningless coincidence, but it happens that "a three-time Iditarod musher has been found guilty of animal cruelty after officers found some of his dogs dehydrated and so emaciated that their spines and hip bones showed." How ironic, right, that his hobby involved what some wild-eyed activists termed as cruelty? Bizarre.

DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA SPREADING FURTHER

"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria [campylobacter] continued to be found in chickens bought at [Baltimore] area supermarkets a year after two large poultry producers stopped using an antibiotic blamed for creating the resistant strains, Johns Hopkins researchers report. The researchers say the findings suggest antibiotic-resistant bacteria may persist in the poultry industry after the use of the antibiotics, known as fluoroquinolones, has stopped and may contaminate more poultry than previously thought." Great. So for the foreseeable future, our entire population has to live with a threat created by short-sighted meat producers, while Perdue, Tyson and their ilk pay absolutely nothing for unleashing this scourge on us.

FORMER USDA INSPECTOR: THEY'RE HIDING MAD COWS

"A scientist and former inspector for the U.S Department of Agriculture says he is willing to take a lie detector test to back his charge that the United States is covering up mad-cow disease. Lester Friedlander, now a consumer advocate, was fired from his job as head of inspections at a large meat-packing plant in Philadelphia in 1995 after criticizing what he called unsafe practices. Mr. Friedlander said U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarians sent suspect cow brains to private laboratories, which confirmed they were infected with mad cow disease. Samples from the same animals, however, were cleared by government labs. He would not reveal the names of the veterinarians, saying in an interview that they still work for the agriculture department and would be fired if identified."

Interesting. Friedlander was quoted a lot by Steve Mitchell last year, but not to the extent of this allegation. It will be interesting to see if he can back this up with anything, though.

UPDATE 4/13: Wow. Two other USDA scientists, one retired and the other apparently still on the job, tell a very similar story of bad and/or suspicious testing - dating back to 1997. Still no one else coming forward to confirm the spiked positive test, though. I gotta say, love how Canada is going after this like a pitbull, as it would "prove" the US really was the cause of Mad Cow in North America after all. Fascinating stuff.

THEY HUNT ON YOUR DIME

There's not much that's actually surprising in this story. It turns out that "wealthy hunters to go on big-game expeditions essentially at taxpayers' expense - an arrangement so blatant that one animal trophy appraiser advertises his services under the headline: 'Hunt for Free.'" That's because they get a huge tax write-off for donating the severed heads of their animal victims to non-profits such as natural history museums. And of course, this arrangement encourages hunters "to track down and shoot the largest, fittest and rarest of the world's animals."
Here's the hilarious part, though, carrying the "educational zoo" argument to its logical extreme: "The public benefits, hunting advocates say, because visitors get to see animals they would otherwise never encounter." So, see, your money is well spent!

ANOTHER CANCER RISK FROM MEAT

The one thing meat has plenty of, as its defenders remind us, is iron - which turns out to be a cancer risk for some: "Researchers estimate that up to 10 percent of Americans have iron stores high enough that, when coupled with excessive iron intake, could increase their likelihood of developing cancer," reports Reuters. The article continues that the problem arises when some people take in "higher-than-recommended levels of iron," which it notes is found in foods like red meat and liver. It concludes: "[T]his study suggests that people should be cautious about substantially boosting their iron intake - whether by taking supplements or going on an 'extreme diet' that's heavy in red meat, for example." Hmmmmm. Wonder what "extreme diet" that might be?

UPDATE: And before the "at least Atkins takes off the pounds" chorus chimes in, yeah maybe, but so does this. Perhaps Michael Moore could take a cue from this guy.

GOT PARKINSON'S?

If you're a middle-aged man, drinking just a glass of milk a day could raise your risk of Parkinson's disease, according to new research. "The latest study focused on 7,504 men aged 45 to 68, who were enrolled in a heart study in Hawaii. During the course of the 30-year study, 128 developed Parkinson's. The researchers found those men who consumed more than 16oz (454g) of milk a day were 2.3 times more likely to develop Parkinson's than those who drank no milk at all."

(This is, of course, not news to those of us who have been paying attention, but it is a stronger and more definite correlation than ever.)

CWD-RIDDEN MEAT SERVED AT BANQUET

Let's hope the provisional stance that eating meat from animals with Chronic Wasting Disease is safe holds true, because meat from one of the two New York deer found to have the disease was recently served at the Verona Fire Department's sportsman's banquet. In Oneida County, "Health officials want people to know the disease hasn't been found to affect humans. But they still want to hear from people who may have eaten venison at the banquet." Just, you know, to see how they liked the taste and so forth.

SHUT ALL PETTING ZOOS NOW

Yes, children love being able to pet docile animals. They don't, however, love suffering an absolutely horrific kidney disease from E. coli. Of course not all children get infected, and of those, some recover without being traumatized for life. Regardless, the benefit, namely the first sentence of this post, is simply not worth the suffering, or death, of one more child. And that's not even mentioning whether the animals think it's a good idea.

YET ANOTHER CANCER THAT PLANT FOODS FIGHT

"New research from Canada suggests that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables may help prevent pancreatic cancer, a particularly deadly type of tumor. The findings, based on a comparison of 585 pancreatic cancer patients and about 4,779 adults without the disease, suggest that the risk of the cancer declines as fruit and vegetable intake increases.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Cancer, add to a growing body of evidence on the role of diet in pancreatic cancer risk. Some research has tied higher consumption of fruits, vegetables and fiber to a lower risk of the disease, while other studies have suggested that diets heavy in" ...wait for it... "saturated fat, salted meats or dairy products may raise the risk."

PERDUE DEAD

No foolin' - Frank Perdue, who built an international corporation from the killing of chickens, and one of whose signature quotes was "the prime ingredient of success is fear," died today "following a brief illness." Well, maybe a little bit of foolin' - what was that unstated "brief illness," anyway?

1000 WORDS

"It's just horrific out there. There is blood all across the ice and seal carcasses as far as the eye can see."
- Rebecca Aldworth, HSUS.

Yep.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SAWDUST

Along with the demise of foie gras, the elimination of elephants (and next, tigers) from circus entertainment continues its inexorable march, as the public slowly becomes more and more awake to what an idiotically cruel institution it is. I don't track every single piece expressing this in every paper, but when it's in the New York Times people tend to pay attention. So in this otherwise straightforward account of a circus show, we get a digression:

Everyone gasped when six women lay down like human markers on a ruler and let an elephant named Asia navigate the small paces between them. Asia did this with great care. Elephants never lose their air of remote dignity even when they must sit on stools and raise their front legs like small dogs. I couldn't help wishing that the circus had used men in this human marker routine. What a novelty: men are rarely asked to expose themselves passively to danger. They are still the ones cracking whips as Bengal tigers (beautiful but a little fat) walk in circles, occasionally roar and run in and out of cages that look too small for them. Their trainer, Taba, did not seem worthy of them. But our consciousness has changed. We worry about how the animals are trained and treated.

Yes we do. Now it's time to go beyond worrying and do something about it.

UPDATE: Just ran across this related story: Elephants are the only land mammal other than primates that can undeniably copy sounds - an imitative skill based in their intensive social bonding.

SURPRISE: NO MILK = HEALTHY BONES!

Yeah, it's a big "surprise," all right. Some coverage of this study has focused only on the strict numbers on bone mass, missing the bigger picture, which the Globe, at least, gets: In a piece headlined "Strict vegetarians -- surprise -- have healthy bones," they report that "People who adhere strictly to raw food vegetarian diets are thin but have surprisingly robust bones, US researchers reported yesterday. Although nutritionists and the food industry have warned that a diet without dairy foods can lead to the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, the team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found the vegans they studied had many of the signs of strong bones." The study, appearing in this week's Archives of Internal medicine, compared "18 average Americans with 18 strict raw food vegans ages 33 to 85. All ate a diet that included unprepared foods such vegetables, fruits, nuts, and sprouted grains."

But wait, there's more: "Fontana expected the vegans to have low vitamin D levels because they avoid all animal products including dairy. But in fact their vitamin D levels were 'markedly higher' than average." Huh? Why would that be? "These people are clever enough to expose themselves to sunlight to increase their concentrations of vitamin D," Fontana said. Oh, so raw veganism doesn't just help your bones, it makes you smarter - to the point that you get enough sun not only to make up for all the Vitamin D you're missing from dairy, but enough to give you more than milk-drinkers! It's either that or dairy foods make you stupid, and we know that's not possible, right?

GIVING UP THE GOOSE

"Foie Gras" is still a mainstay of gourmet dining in the United States, but it's becoming clear that its days as such are numbered. Anti-foie gras legislation is being considered in Oregon, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. Get this: "Some bills would make it a criminal act even to possess the delicacy." Uh, yeah, I'll hold my breath till that happens. The article also follows up with more detail on that Pittsburgh post from a few weeks back: "Activists recently persuaded about 10 restaurants to stop serving foie gras in Pittsburgh." Great job!

UPDATE 4/7: Chicago fight picks up steam: Alderman wants foie gras off menus. Stay tuned...

FAST FOOD: GIVING YOU THE FINGER

I will grant right away that this story is exceptional, wayyy out of the ordinary - at least I hope like hell it is! - but as with all "bad" meat stories it has a certain perverse relevance. A woman eating Wendy's chili, expecting only the "regular" form of meat, found herself biting into a severed human finger: "The woman scooped up a mouthful of the steamy stew and bit down on the digit before spitting it out." Think that's as gross as it can get? "Health officials said the fingertip is approximately an inch-and-a-half long. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured nail." Ewwwwww. Who wants to eat a human finger with a nail still attached? Wouldn't you much rather be munching on the normal fast food meat components, like good ol' hog anus?

UPDATE 4/24: While the perverse relevance of the claim remains, law enforement officials are now saying the finger-in-chili story was a malicious hoax and have arrested the woman. So don't worry, folks, the chili's human finger-free - it's only grade-A hog anus in there!

WHAT IF IT LED TO A CURE FOR CANCER?

That's the question some people like to bring up about animal testing - after all, "a cure for cancer" is the holy grail of both science and rhetoric, used as a trump card in many hypothetical scenarios across many topic areas. But what if it's already here, it's just a cure people don't want to take? There is at the very least some interesting anecdotal evidence that might make the more serious-minded among us take a closer look at that question.

In the story "Heather: Vegetarian diet saved me from cancer" we hear that "Heather Mills McCartney claims a vegetarian diet may help cure cancer. The former model has joined husband Sir Paul in extolling the virtues of a meat-free lifestyle." She relates that after trying all sorts of drugs to treat her condition, "In desperation, I went to the States. The moment I arrived they took me off all my medication... Just 10 days of a strict vegetarian diet, wheatgrass juice and placing garlic poultices on my wound (Owwww!) and I was healed - as were scores of people around me, from addicts to cancer sufferers and non-insulin dependent diabetics." She added: "I managed to stay meat and fish-free for years. When I briefly went back to eating it, it coincided with my contracting cancer of the uterus. I vowed from then on that vegetarianism was the healthy lifestyle for me."