tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58397297816075038552024-02-08T07:11:35.857-08:00Ethical EatingNews and views on ethical eating by Syd Baumel, eatkind.netSyd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-17420169273148751642016-10-09T12:25:00.004-07:002016-10-09T12:37:44.691-07:00The Whole Soy Story – reviewHere's a review I wrote a decade ago of a book that became the bible of soy-bashing. <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h2>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">The
Whole Story?</span></span></h2>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Half
truths and untruths do not a whole story make</span></span></h3>
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ySw9q8VDyns/V_qbpTFEsfI/AAAAAAAAT2Q/f-oVUahGPZkXoE_pFcB4k3HOXkrzAhfUgCLcB/s1600/whole_soy_story.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ySw9q8VDyns/V_qbpTFEsfI/AAAAAAAAT2Q/f-oVUahGPZkXoE_pFcB4k3HOXkrzAhfUgCLcB/s200/whole_soy_story.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";">The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side
of America's Favorite Health Food</span></b>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"> By Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN</span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";">NewTrends Publishing, Inc.,
2005</span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";">Hardcover, 440 pages, $41.95
Cdn.</span>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">REVIEWED
by SYD BAUMEL</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"> </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">If
you've ever wondered how a slick prosecutor would throw the book at a beleaguered
health food, this book's for you. But reader beware: there's no defense
attorney in the courtroom that is <i>The Whole Soy Story</i>. Unless you're
an expert on the voluminous science of soy or have a few months to pore
through medical journals fact-checking author <i>cum</i> prosecutor Kaayla
Daniel's forty-four pages of references (and the important references she
left out), you may find it hard not to be bamboozled by her slick 394-page
indictment. But if you do know enough about the science of soy to catch
Daniel attempting to pull the wool over your eyes over and over again,
you'll write this book off as an outrageously tainted resource that can't
be trusted. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"> </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">It's
not entirely surprising, given Daniel's background.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"> </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Most
of the so-called “soy-bashing” you can find on the Internet and in print
can be traced to Sally Fallon and Sue Enig, the food activists who run
the Weston A. Price Foundation, and lately to their protegee and fellow
Weston Price board member, Kaayla Daniel. <i>The Whole Soy Story</i> is
edited by Fallon who owns the small book company that publishes it. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"> </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">According
to the Weston A. Price Foundation's <a href="http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm">website</a>,
its mission is “to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston
Price....Dr. Price's research demonstrated that humans achieve perfect
physical form and perfect health generation after generation only when
they consume nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators
<i>found
exclusively in animal fats</i>.” (Emphasis mine.)</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"> </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">For
Weston A. Price Foundation food activists, the 1930s research and speculation
of a Cleveland dentist have translated into an aggressive 21st century
bias against plant sources of fat and protein. Soy – a major competitor
with the butter, lard, pork and other animal fat and protein sources promoted
by the Foundation – is squarely in their sights. The Weston Price gang
is so determined to throw everything they can at soy and hope it sticks
that they spin and distort the evidence to the point of making their critiques
useless for consumers who hunger for a fair reckoning, for the real whole
story. Like Fallon and Enig's articles, Daniel's book teems with one-sided
errors, exaggerations and half-truths. I will give a few examples here.
For more debunking of the Weston Price Foundation's assault on soy, see
<a href="http://foodrevolution.org/what_about_soy.htm">foodrevolution.org/what_about_soy.htm</a>
by John Robbins and the wave of outraged letters to the editor provoked
by an abridgement of Daniel's book that appeared in <i>Mothering Magazine</i>
in 2004 (<a href="http://mothering.com/sections/extras/soy-letters.html">mothering.com/sections/extras/soy-letters.html</a>). </span></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<ul>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: black;">Building
her case mostly on a selective reading of animal studies (a common thread
throughout the book), Daniel suggests that the rise in soy consumption
in the West could be a cause of rising thyroid cancer rates. “Soy can almost
certainly be blamed for at least some of the increase in thyroid cancers
in that soy isoflavones [weak, estrogen-like compounds found naturally
in soy] induce both goiters and thyroid tumours,” she asserts. I searched
Medline (the index of the world's biomedical research) for an unbiased
overview of the research on “thyroid neoplasms” (benign or malignant thyroid
tumours) and “soy.” I found just three papers, none of which Daniel thought
important enough to tell her readers about (ironic, because Daniel is always
quick to accuse soy-friendly scientists and “soy apologists” of suppressing
evidence – even when they're not: for example, <a href="http://mothering.com/sections/extras/soy-letters.html">see
the letter from Dr. B. L. Strom in
<i>Mothering</i></a>). <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11011117&query_hl=6&itool=pubmed_docsum">One
study</a> found that high doses of soy isoflavones failed to increase the
effect of a thyroid carcinogen in rats. In the other two papers (<a href="http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/11/1/43">here</a>
and <a href="http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/full/12/2/144">here</a>),
researchers from the </span><span style="color: #330033;">Northern California Cancer
Center sought to find out why</span><span style="color: black;"> Southeast Asian
women living in the United States have a high rate of thyroid cancer. Soy
wasn't one of the reasons. Women who consumed the most soy had nearly half
the risk of those who consumed the least. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Daniel
cites <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=15237003&query_hl=12&itool=pubmed_docsum">a
five-year clinical trial</a> in which six out of 179 postmenopausal women
taking a very high dosage (150 mg) soy isoflavone supplement developed
endometrial hyperplasia. None of the 197 women who took a placebo did.
“Endometrial proliferation is a precursor of cancer,” Daniel warns, implying
the women can look forward to a date with the oncologist. She doesn't mention
that all of them developed the relatively benign, non-atypical form of
endometrial hyperplasia. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=4005805&query_hl=8&itool=pubmed_docsum">Research</a> suggests this condition carries a 2% risk of progressing to endometrial
cancer - little different from the 1 to 2% risk for women in general. </span></span></li>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">
Nor does Daniel reassure her readers that, a year earlier,
<a href="http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/jnci;95/15/1158">a
study published in the<i> Journal of the National Cancer Institute</i></a>
found that women who had spontaneously consumed the most dietary soy isoflavones
were 40 percent less likely than those who consumed the least to have been
diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Among the postmenopausal women in the
study (they're at highest risk), soy was associated with a 56% lower risk.
According to the authors of the study: "Only one [other] study has directly
examined the effects of phytoestrogen-rich foods on endometrial cancer
risk (<a href="http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/294?ijkey=2d82d782d321cbd3d74750b89dc325cabd22085f&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha">16</a>).
In Hawaii’s multiethnic population, greater consumption of tofu alone or
in combination with other soy products was associated with a 50% reduction
in endometrial cancer risk." </span></span>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Daniel
goes to great lengths to convince readers that soy will put them at risk
for pancreatic cancer. “As for the rising rate of pancreatic cancer,” she
writes, “scientists have known for half a century that trypsin inhibitors
in soy protein put stress on the pancreas, contributing to and possibly
causing pancreatic cancer (see Chapter 16).” In a pretense to objectivity,
she advises: “As yet, human studies do not clearly connect soy protease
inhibitors to pancreatic cancer. However....” Not included in Daniel's
“howevers” (notably, soy seems to make the pancreas secrete more digestive
enzymes) are any of the studies that have actually looked at soy consumption
and pancreatic cancer in humans. </span></span></li>
<ul>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">In a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=8872522&query_hl=26&itool=pubmed_docsum">1996
study</a> from Sapporo Medical University in Japan, people diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer were significantly more likely than healthy controls
to a) eat more “meats and animal viscera” and b) eat less “vegetables and
the traditional Japanese foods, e.g., tofu, deep-fried tofu, raw fish,
and tempura.” </span></span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Eight
years later, in a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=15016323">similar
study</a> from the same institute, the researchers found that</span><span style="color: black;">
"consumption of fish, all soybean products, tofu (bean curds), and natto
(fermented soybeans) was associated with decreased risk" of pancreatic
cancer. Comparing subjects who ate the most (top 25%) with those who ate
the least (bottom 25%), the risk reduction was approximately 50% for fish,
tofu and all soybean products combined - and 75% for natto. Moderate meat
consumption doubled the risk compared to low consumption. </span></span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: black;">Finally,
in </span><span style="color: #330033;">a
<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?itool=abstractplus&db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=3365678">1988
American study</a> that followed 34,000 healthy California Seventh-day
Adventists for seven years, "increasing consumption of vegetarian protein
products, beans, lentils, and peas as well as dried fruit was associated
with highly significant protective relationships to pancreas cancer risk."
While I've only read the abstract of this study, among Seventh-day Adventists
- a large proportion of whom are vegetarian - "vegetarian protein products"
and beans largely equate to soy. Indeed, the abstract attributes the anti-cancer
effect to "frequent consumption of vegetables and fruits high in protease-inhibitor
content." Ironically, it's these protease inhibitors - which abound in
soy - that Daniel uses weak animal and human evidence to smear as instigators
of pancreatic failure and cancer. If only she had told her readers about
the studies that "clearly [<i>fail </i>to] connect soy protease inhibitors
to pancreatic cancer."</span></span></li>
</ul>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Daniel
is constantly alleging or insinuating that scientists who publish soy-friendly
research are in the pocket of the soy industry. None of the three soy-positive
studies above for which I was able to find funding information online declared
any support from industry. Rather, all or most support came from the National
Cancer Institute of the United States.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;">Among
doctors like Andrew Weil and scientists with no axe to grind, the prevalent
view is that one, two, or even three servings of soy per day are safe,
nutritious and possibly preventive of such diseases as prostate cancer
and osteoporosis. (Some soy-friendly doctors like Andrew Weil are wary
of highly processed soy protein “isolates,” “concentrates” and similar
refined soy products. Daniel demonizes them as one step up from toxic industrial
waste.) There are only a few caveats in most scientists' minds: soy eaters
with hypothyroidism may need to up their dosage of thyroid hormone; those
who are iodine-deficient may become hypothyroid if they eat too much; and
soy may add fuel to the fire of estrogen-positive breast cancer (or it
may fight or prevent it – the jury is out).</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"><span style="color: black;">While
the vast majority of studies of soy and health are neutral or positive,
it has to be said that a small proportion of weak, preliminary or otherwise
inconclusive studies suggest soy may increase the risk of other health
disorders. These include bladder cancer; leukemia and developmental disorders
in fetuses and infants overexposed to soy; and Alzheimer's disease in adults.
I know that sounds scary, but statistically one would expect one in every
20 studies to give a negative finding about soy by chance alone. Even scarier,
in my view, is a health book that persistently misleads and manipulates
readers while pretending to enlighten them. </span></span></span></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica";"><span style="color: #330033;"></span></span></i>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-16024367926820693942013-12-12T15:29:00.000-08:002013-12-12T15:30:51.876-08:00Pasture, not hamburgerIf you've done your stint as a dairy cow – and in dairies today it is, ironically, a bone-destroying occupation, with most of your calcium shunted into milk cartons, not bones (at least not yours) – you don't get put out to pasture. You get trucked to slaughter. You become hamburger.<br />
<br />
Not these cows.<br />
<br />
Thanks to compassionate animal advocates – and with the approval of the dairy farmer's tenderhearted young son – these spent cows will be getting the retirement they've more than earned. It's a joy just to see them taste freedom. And a revelation of how much like us they are.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/kUZ1YLhIAg8" width="640"></iframe>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-50424284871476823862013-09-19T20:14:00.001-07:002015-02-16T15:03:15.984-08:00Cheese. An Excellent Source of Torture. “There should be a daily dose of pleasure.”<br />
<br />
So begins a warm and fuzzy new TV ad from the Dairy Farmers of Canada, slinging cheese to the me generation. It's part of a <a href="http://www.dairyfarmers.ca/news-centre/campaigns/2013-all-you-need-is-cheese-campaign">campaign “introducing a new brand positioning for cheese: Cheese. An Excellent Source of Pleasure.”</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/p_QPqySLBHE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p_QPqySLBHE?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
If I didn't know better, I'd be salivating right on cue. Unfortunately, most people don't know better – or try not to. <br />
<br />
In the Old South, white people might have been lulled into complacency with a slogan like this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Slave-picked cotton. Because your lilly white skin deserves a lilly white dose of luxury.</i></b></blockquote>
Today, what conscientious consumers demand is a daily dose of reality. When it comes to cheese, that should be:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Cheese. An Excellent Source of Torture.</i></b></blockquote>
Sound like hyperbole? Judge for yourself. Here's the ad:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gYTkM1OHFQg" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
There are many more ads like this one out there – undercover video of other dairies, of cows and calves during long-haul transport, at livestock auctions and inside slaughterhouses. Consider these ads for another kind of pleasure:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><i>Vegan Cheese. An Excellent Source of Guilt-free Pleasure. </i></b></blockquote>
Vegan cheese used to be an excellent source of crappy imitation – crappy taste, crappy ingredients.<br />
<br />
No more.<br />
<br />
Companies like <a href="http://www.daiyafoods.com/our-products">Daiya</a> are producing 100% plant-based hard and soft cheeses that are so good – taste, feel and melt like the real thing, made from wholesome ingredients – they demand to be tried by consumers who find the daily dose of dairy reality too shocking, too unconscionable, too criminal to support.<br />
<br />
You wouldn't buy cotton picked by slaves. Cheese? Same idea.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-4786912450798762262013-08-30T23:47:00.002-07:002013-08-31T14:43:49.900-07:00Thou Shalt Not Eat AtrocitiesThis video is from the UK where animal welfare standards are assumed to be much more progressive than here in North America.<br />
<br />
And yet just look at the everyday atrocities documented here by a <a href="http://animalaid.org.uk/h/n/AA/HOME/">major UK animal rights group</a> in eight out of nine slaughterhouses they randomly chose to investigate.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/-TFdHAnpTYI" width="640"></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Or don't look.<br />
<br />
One minute of this exposé of the banality of slaughterhouse evil should be enough to persuade anyone with a sense of shame that we have no moral leg to stand on eating bacon and hamburgers, cheddar cheese and chicken wings, at the cost of such mistreatment of animals when we could be nourishing ourselves <a href="http://www.eatright.org/About/Content.aspx?id=8357">at least as adequately on a plant-based diet</a>.<br />
<br />
Nearly every craving for meat or dairy – a taste most of us acquired long before we had the ability to make a moral choice about it – can be met, with increasing satisfaction as food companies refine their products, by plant-based/vegan substitutes. Not that there's any nutritional need for them, but they're there if we crave them.<br />
<br />
To insist on eating “the real thing” when we can't be sure that horrifying cruelty and degradation of the kind we see here wasn't part of the life journey of the animal who provided it is to abrogate our moral responsibility. This is so even if we buy organic. According to the Animal Aid investigators: “‘High welfare’ plants, such as those accredited by the Soil Association, were no better than the non-organic ones.”<br />
<br />
We're grownups now. The choice is clear – and it tastes just great.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-24897916965454404232013-07-20T15:51:00.000-07:002013-11-09T20:19:42.919-08:00These little piggies went to market and nearly died for a drop of waterI really wasn't expecting to be so moved – and enraged – when I clicked “play” on this video that came up on my Facebook newsfeed via <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CETFA.News">Canadian for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals</a>.<br />
<br />
Please watch it. It's not the least bit gory. What it is is a glimpse behind the curtain that separates us from animals no different from us in the most basic ways, like being laid flat by a heat wave and dying for a drop of water. Except these animals – pigs en route to slaughter during a heat wave – commonly suffer with no relief.<br />
<br />
But not this time. In this heartbreaking video, members of a group called <a href="http://www.torontopigsave.org/">Toronto Pig Save</a> frantically administer some milk of human kindness to these chronically abused animals as they head to their undeserved fate.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1VRZ08sblVw" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In Canada, the National Farm Animal Care Council is the official body entrusted with setting standards for the livestock industry. My use of the word “standards” is made advisedly, because the NFACC doesn't regulate or police the industry. Rather it makes recommendations in the form of codes of practice. Thus, to quote from the <i><a href="http://www.nfacc.ca/codes-of-practice/transport/code">Recommended code of practice for the care and handling of farm animals – Transportation</a></i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Codes are voluntary and are intended as an educational tool in the promotion of sound management and welfare practices. </blockquote>
So if you're in the business of shipping pigs in Canada, the official code of sound welfare practice recommends that you draw the line at hauling them for more than <a href="http://www.nfacc.ca/codes-of-practice/transport/code#section5"><i>40 hours</i> without food, water or a rest stop</a>.<br />
<br />
True, the code does encourage gentler handling during extreme weather (there are people on the code drafting panels whose priority is animal welfare, but they're <a href="http://www.nfacc.ca/codes-of-practice/transport/code#appendix7">outnumbered</a> by representatives from the industry itself):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Feed, water and rest should be provided more often for animals with reduced ability to cope with the stress of transport, such as very young or old animals, and for all animals that are transported under adverse conditions, such as travel through different climatic zones and weather extremes.</blockquote>
<br />
But it's clear from videos such as these, from years of witnessing by animal advocates, from the admissions of candid truckers and from the voluntary nature of the code, that pigs – and all the other animals transported to slaughter, auction or from one farm to another – commonly suffer this way during transport and, indeed, also suffer in more seriously injurious and deadly ways.<br />
<br />
If you're reading this in the United States, <a href="https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/legacy-uploads/documents/FA-LegalProtectionsDuringTransport-081910-1282577406-document-23621.pdf">things are no better</a> – laws are so archaic and so rarely enforced that the <a href="http://www.animalhandling.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/58425">American Meat Institute</a> has become the default “recommender.” <br />
<br />
Pigs, cows, sheep and chickens have served our species for thousands of years. The best place for them today – when animal-free meat and dairy substitutes are more varied and delicious than ever – is on farm sanctuaries where we can appreciate them, not eat them.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-68939388042823535492013-07-12T22:19:00.000-07:002013-07-13T13:56:30.824-07:00REVIEW: Bringing the Ghosts in Our Machine to Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eOzxy9bCjlM/UeDWvxE6yoI/AAAAAAAAA9g/MNNILp45RME/s1600/ghosts+in+our+machine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eOzxy9bCjlM/UeDWvxE6yoI/AAAAAAAAA9g/MNNILp45RME/s320/ghosts+in+our+machine.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
There are many ways of alerting people to “the animal holocaust,” as some call it (with no argument from me), and winning hearts and minds (and hands, feet and shopping lists).<br />
<br />
Some are films and videos.<br />
<br />
And of those, some are in-your-face graphic and shocking, such as the <i>Scared Straight</i> of animal advocacy documentaries, <i><a href="http://earthlings.com/?page_id=32">Earthlings</a></i>, and PETA's classic <i><a href="http://www.peta.org/tv/videos/celebrities-vegetarianism/87206203001.aspx">Meet Your Meat</a></i>.<br />
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Others, like the award-winning documentary <i><a href="http://www.peaceablekingdomfilm.org/">Peaceable Kingdom</a></i>, mitigate hard-to-bear moments of brutal, cover-your-eyes reality with no less emotionally overwhelming oases of peace, beauty and hope.<br />
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<i><a href="http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/">The Ghosts in Our Machine</a></i> – a new feature-length documentary from Canada – is in the second category.<br />
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Directed by Liz Marshall, <i>Ghosts</i> lets us tag along with animal holocaust “war photographer” <a href="http://www.weanimals.org/">Jo-Anne McArthur</a> (to quote her sad-eyed, mordant self-description), usually undercover in places we're never supposed to see (the “machine” where so much of our food, fibre and medicine comes from), but also in places of compassion, like Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York, where many of the very same species live free, content and unmolested.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A newborn calf awaits life in a crate. <br />
Photo from the <a href="http://www.weanimals.org/photographs">online gallery</a> of Jo-Anne McArthur. </td></tr>
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It doesn't matter where McArthur finds her haunting subjects, whether abused and degraded in captivity or delighting (and delightful) in liberation. Her camera captures every individual's essence in a way that allows a fur-farmed fox or a rescued stockyard calf to speak ineffable volumes to us, eye to eye, soul to soul. And for that reason alone, <i>The Ghosts in Our Machine</i> should be required viewing for any human animal who professes to love other animals but doesn't quite walk the talk.<br />
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Marshall and McArthur bring the ghosts in our machine to life. And those animals' faces, so redolent of personhood, of naked fear, curiosity, affection and pleasure, may never stop haunting you. And that's a good thing.<br />
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View the trailer and visit <a href="http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/screenings/">the website</a> to find out where to see <i>The Ghosts in Our Machine</i>. </div>
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<br />Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-22404849206031287692013-06-21T19:59:00.001-07:002013-08-31T22:03:16.066-07:00Mother Jones on Mother PigsIt's one thing to hear about the cruel confinement conditions imposed on the millions of sows who give birth to nearly all the pigs in North America from PETA or your friendly neighbourhood vegan. It's another thing when a vivid description of the shameful truth comes from a writer who starts by admitting “I love pork.” Here's how the always exceptional food and agriculture columnist Tom Philpott <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/06/pregnant-sows-gestation-crates-abuse">spells it out</a> in the July/August issue of <i>Mother Jones</i>:<br />
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“Throughout their four-month pregnancies, many of these sows live in cages just large enough to contain their bodies. As the sows grow bigger, the tight confinement means they can lie face down but can't flop over onto their sides. The floors under these ‘gestation crates’ are slotted so that urine and feces can slip through into vast cesspits. Immobilized above their own waste, the sows are exposed to high levels of ammonia, which causes respiratory problems. Just before they deliver, they're moved to farrowing crates, in which they have just enough space to nurse.<br />
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“Once the piglets are weaned, it's back to the gestation crate for the breeding sow, which averages two and a half pregnancies per year. After three or four years, the sow is slaughtered for meat.”</blockquote>
And this, among other disturbing peeks into the world of captive sows:<br />
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“In Smithfield cages—which hold about a seventh of the breeding sows in the United States—the HSUS [Humane Society of the United States] documented sows repeatedly biting the bars of their cage, sometimes until ‘blood from their mouths coated the fronts of their crates.’”</blockquote>
As Philpott explains, years of animal activism have had an effect; the 2 by 7 foot sow stalls – already banned across the European Union and a few American states – appear destined for extinction on this continent within a decade or two (not nearly soon enough for these victimized sows who would still have to endure them, in the tens of millions, until then).<br />
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But recently there has been a backlash, as epitomized by career schmuck “Richard Berman, a notorious PR flack who recently helped Smithfield bust its unions,” writes Philpott. Berman, who specializes in running ironically named industry front groups such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom">Center for Consumer Freedom</a>, “has taken to the pages of the industry trade publication PorkNetwork to urge producers to cling to their gestation crates, which he prefers to call ‘maternity pens.’” Oh Richard, fellow member of the tribe of Israel, chutzpah can be cute. In this case it's just evil.<br />
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Though Philpott considers it unlikely, he concludes that if the backlash succeeds “it might force many of us to forswear pork—and I, for one, would really miss it.”<br />
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Well Tom (although I suspect you buy most of your pork from farmers who house their sows in groups on straw), by the same logic you might consider forswearing pork <i>right now</i>, because most of those millions of sows are still stuck in those wicked, solitary cages, day in day out, biting the bars until their mouths bleed.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-10133593135535916632013-06-13T20:20:00.001-07:002013-06-13T20:50:19.580-07:00Why Vegans Don’t Drink MilkThere are many reasons why vegans don't drink milk – the male calves who are killed at birth or raised in solitary crates to become “veal,” the brutal toll that modern intensive milk production takes on the bodies of dairy cows. But this moving video from <a href="http://www.mercyforanimals.org/menu.aspx">Mercy for Animals</a> tells a story that, in its own way, says it all. Certainly, it says all one needs to know to say “no.”<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g56DGkc2T78" width="640"></iframe>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-56744481193574925812013-06-12T20:00:00.001-07:002013-06-22T19:50:56.107-07:00Saying it with video ... and musicSix years ago, a friend and associate asked me to produce a Christmas video of a different kind – a video, using footage shot in North America and Europe by her investigative group and others of the “farm to plate” experience of countless animals we rarely see in any other context than, say, a warm and fuzzy Christmas dinner. Hence the commissioned title – “Do They Know It's Christmas?” – and the timing: it was released on YouTube on December 21, 2007.<br />
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You can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCX7f_s1CA4">view it here</a>. <br />
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Unfortunately, the version I had wanted to release was largely set to KD Lang's sublime cover of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah,” but I was unable to get permission to use it on time. In fact, the permissions people at Sony wound up doddling so much, I concluded they simply couldn't be bothered. So a year later, I uploaded that original version – slightly tweaked – without permission. So there! I also used excerpts from a couple other carefully chosen songs without even trying to get permission. I had gone rogue! The resulting video, “Hallelujah, Silent Night,” is embedded right here, below the next paragraph.<br />
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Both of these versions (and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNBFZf3qcfw">yet <i>another</i> which I set to Radiohead's aptly mournful “Exit Music [for a Film]”</a>) challenged me to present gruesome and depressing scenes of abuse and unkindness in a way that evokes something beyond horror, rage and despair – or worse, emotional desensitization – but rather emotional <i>identification </i>and an empathic resolution to walk away forever from this inbred and perversely normative vice of enslaving and brutalizing our fellow animals. The lack of distracting narration and the tightly wound integration of image and music went some distance toward achieving my goal, I hope. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Wxpr-6WztTo" width="640"></iframe>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-41406501848575081972013-06-12T17:31:00.001-07:002013-06-12T18:13:55.788-07:00The Witness – a screening and a reviewOne of the most moving – and surprisingly delightful – documentaries in the world of animal rights advocacy is now free to view online. I reviewed it when it came out over a decade ago (reprinted below). Here it is: the gripping story of a “wise guy”-style New Yorker who became a passionate animal advocate – and a never-look-back vegan.<br />
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/5209895">The Witness: A Tribe of Heart Documentary</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/tribeofheart">Tribe of Heart</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: x-small;"><i>from </i>The Aquarian<i>, Summer 2001<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: large;">The Witness</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Directed by Jenny Stein</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Available from the filmmakers at <a href="http://www.tribeofheart.org/shop/main.htm" target="_top">www.tribeofheart.org</a> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>Reviewed by Syd Baumel</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Judging by the shocked, wounded looks on their faces during <i>The Witness</i>'s final scenes, you’d think most New Yorkers believe fur grows on trees. But then most people act <i>as if</i> it did – along with hamburgers, chili dogs, and milkshakes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>The Witness</i> is about a man who has broken free of this mass denial of the brutal realities of commercial animal exploitation. It should be the story of all conscientious people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Eddie Lama is a successful New York architectural contractor with a Brooklyn mean-streets background and a matching accent that says "not your stereotypical bleeding-heart animal lover." He could almost pass for a goodfella, were it not for his obvious gentleness and wouldn't-hurt-a-fly eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Those stunned, tearful New Yorkers owe their rude awakenings to Lama's decision to convert one of his company's vans into a kind of moviemobile. Through an open side door, a video screen displays heartwrenching underground films of man's inhumanity to animal – of wild critters caught in leghold traps, of factory-farmed animals confined to concentration camp crates and stalls. As Lama puts it at the very beginning of this award-winning film by husband and wife director/producer team Jenny Stein and James LaVeck: "There's a school of philosophy that defines a miracle as a change in perception."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>The Witness</i> is about Eddie Lama's perceptual miracle and how he's trying to spread it around – "to reach that critical mass" – so the ultimate miracle can befall billions of defenseless animals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Though this is a film about heartbreaking tragedy, <i>The Witness</i> is infused with warmth and humour. Interspersed with his surprisingly erudite (. . . for a goodfella) tutorials on animal rights issues, Lama tells a frequently comical story of his awakening. Self-deprecatingly funny, not strident, he's an irresistable ambassador. Even when he's shocking those strolling New Yorkers, it's a sympathetic, lissen up friends voice that later thanks them for watching. After all, a few years ago Lama himself thought animals were just "ambulatory organisms."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">As Lama tells it, he inherited a neurotic squeamishness about "dirty" animals from his mother. It took an attractive woman's request that he babysit a cat to make the bachelor break precedent. "I figured I’ll get a date out of this," Lama chuckles. To his astonishment, he wound up falling for the feline. And the next time the woman asked him to foster a stray cat, the love bug bit even harder. "Moo Moo" became as precious as if it were his own child. And so it was that one evening, as the chain-smoking contractor ignited cigarette number 35 in his smoke-filled apartment, he suddenly found himself sizing up his pint-sized companion a whole new way. Comparing their relative dimensions, Lama recalls thinking, "If I’m smoking one cigarette, he’s smokin’ ten." Insights followed like a line of dominoes. "This animal had no choice. He couldn’t possibly get up, go to the door, turn the knob and say, ‘Look Eddie, I’m gettin’ outta here – it’s just too much smoke here!’ The sense that I was directly doing harm didn’t sit well with me. . . .That, with the fact that he was sitting right there looking at me. Don’t ask me if this really happened, but I could have sworn he coughed [a big laugh from Lama – one of many]. . . .I said, 'that’s it,' and the cigarette was extinguished."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It was the thin edge of the consciousness-raising wedge. One by one, the veils of denial started falling. Lama abruptly stopped eating meat when he realized the chicken legs on his brother's supper table were shaped like the gams of his cat. "I just stared at the carcass – vestiges of a bird. I saw it for what it was. <i>Plus</i>, I had another animal I was going to go home to. How was I gonna explain to him?" Today Lama would have several animals in his home and office menagerie to explain to. And at least one employee has followed her boss into vegetarianism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Thanks to <i>The Witness</i>, Eddie Lama's miracle is spreading far beyond the streets of New York. Thousands of copies have been sold, half a dozen film awards have been won, many hearts have changed, small screenings are being held all over the continent – and Stein and LaVeck still struggle to find a television network with the courage to broadcast their acclaimed hot potato to a mass audience. </span> </div>
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Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-53054674681478542882013-06-02T10:28:00.001-07:002013-06-05T12:42:16.823-07:00Little BuddhaSometimes it takes a morally precocious toddler to help us tell right from wrong.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(To watch this extraordinary video in English, view it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX4O6smZrLE">here</a> on Youtube where you can click on the transcripts icon next to "add to"</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> just </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">below the video.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The translation will then scroll below the video in real time.)</span><br />
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I must have started leaking tears around the same time the boy's remarkable mother did. How many parents just say “shut up and eat your octopus!” Flash forward five years, and this loving, fair-minded little boy may be happily chowing down on a Big Mac with his mother – such are the pressures and inducements of our meat-mesmerized culture.<br />
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Or he and his lovingly flexible mother may be helping to lead the movement against our species’ history of violence.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-1785056839320363952013-06-01T19:51:00.001-07:002013-06-04T13:04:42.512-07:00As long as I can't free you, I am bound to help you<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtk6-4pCDNs/Uaqxt4TzP0I/AAAAAAAAAyU/rVOnVGdZi4s/s1600/pig146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtk6-4pCDNs/Uaqxt4TzP0I/AAAAAAAAAyU/rVOnVGdZi4s/s400/pig146.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<i>An email exchange between a very hard working, long-time animal advocate the same age as myself and a very young</i><i> (I would bet)</i><i> idealistic one who has internalized the philosophy of Gary Francione has prompted me to try and articulate in a simple statement my view on the schism within the animal rights movement between the absolutist abolitionists and the rest of us: </i><br />
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Simple compassion and fundamental moral logic say we should strive to alleviate the unnecessary suffering of anyone who is unjustly imprisoned or exploited no less vigorously than we fight for that person's freedom. The two struggles – so-called “welfarism” and “abolitionism” in the case of animal advocacy – are neither contradictory nor incompatible. In fact, in my experience, they’re very highly correlated among the most hard-working animal advocates. Uncompromising abolitionists like Gary Francione and his followers who are hostile to all animal welfare efforts and <a href="http://eatkind.blogspot.ca/2013/05/i-have-deleted-your-comment-defending.html">even achievements</a> are among the exceptions, as are true welfarists who believe it’s acceptable for people to exploit and kill other animals for selfish human purposes as long as we’re reasonably nice to them.<br />
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Finally, in my view, when humans “possess” other animals in a benign, nonviolent symbiotic relationship, there is no need for “liberation.”Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-23741488060941147702013-05-28T16:26:00.002-07:002013-08-31T20:37:11.867-07:00Organic Foods Suck! ... says sucky study<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Last fall, one of those deliciously contrarian studies came out that grabs headlines but doesn't</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> deserve it. It turned out the flashy study from Stanford University was as much a case of false advertising as the organic foods it portrayed in that light. Annoyed by the study's flaws, I took it to task for </span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.aquarianonline.com/">The Aquarian</a></span><i style="font-family: inherit;">. Here's a tweaked version of what I wrote followed by a brief update. </i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;"><i>From The Aquarian, Winter 2012</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">Organic Foods Suck: Study</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">By SYD BAUMEL</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like a tsunami of cold water on the
good name of organic food, the story was all over the media early in September. You pretty much had to be living off the grid to miss
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/science/earth/study-questions-advantages-of-organic-meat-and-produce.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">"Stanford scientists cast doubt on advantages of organic meat and produce"</a><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>(<i>New York Times</i>)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=25227afa-e41c-423e-89c2-5e33bc34611b">"Organic foods may not be much healthier"</a> (<i>National Post</i>/Canada.com)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/03/us-organic-food-idUSBRE8820M920120903">"Organic food no healthier than non-organic: study"</a> (Reuters)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/new-study-finds-scant-evidence-of-health-benefits-from-eating-organic-foods/article4517773/">"New study finds scant evidence of health benefits from eating organic foods"</a>
(<i>Globe and Mail</i>)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stanford University's PR department had <a href="http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html">spun the study</a>
for maximum media impact. What editor or columnist doesn’t love an emperor-has-no-clothes story? And when the emperor is organic food, for some it's a feeding frenzy:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/opinion/roger-cohen-the-organic-fable.html">"The organic fable"</a> (<i>New York Times</i> columnist Roger Cohen)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/05/marni-soupcoff-stanford-study-shows-organic-food-no-safer-or-healthier-than-conventional-food/">"Stanford study shows organic food no safer or healthier than conventional food"</a> (<i>National Post</i> columnist Marni Soupcoff)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/4/study-sticks-fork-in-organic-claim/?page=all">"Study sticks fork in organic claim"</a> (<i>Washington Times</i>)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Below the <i>schadenfreude</i>
headlines, the details of the study – as spoon-fed to the media by
Stanford and the study's media-friendly authors – unfolded. An
ambitious meta-analysis (a study that pools the results of previous
studies) of over 200 studies comparing
organic and conventionally grown food mostly came up “meh.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685">The study</a> (published September 4 in <i>Annals of Internal Medicine</i>) reported scant statistically
significant evidence that organic foods are nutritionally superior.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It claimed that organic produce was
less likely to harbour pesticide residues, but only by 30%.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And it found that “the risk for
isolating bacteria resistant to 3 or more antibiotics was 33% higher
among conventional chicken and pork than organic alternatives.”
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In other words, modest benefits for
foods with less than modest price tags.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The take-home message was as
predictable as the headlines. Senior author Dena Bravata, MD, summed
up the sentiment in a much-reprinted quote from the <a href="http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html">press release</a>:
“There isn't much difference between organic and conventional
foods, if you're an adult and making decisions based solely on your
health.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It wasn't until days and weeks after
the tsunami had come and gone that well-informed critiques of the
study began to surface. But by then the story was cold. The critiques
seldom travelled further than minor blogs, low profile news releases
or alternative media. To this day, most people have heard the bad
news but not the rebuttals.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those critics included many credible
voices: <i>New York Times</i> food columnist <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/that-flawed-stanford-study/">Mark Bittman</a>, veteran
sustainability guru <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/06-12">Francis Moore Lappé</a>, <i>Scientific American
</i>“Greengrok” blogger and scientist, <a href="http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/do-organic-foods-promote-better-health/">Bill Chameides</a>. One of the
best critiques was written by <i>Mother Jones</i> food and
agriculture columnist <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/five-ways-stanford-study-underestimates-organic-food">Tom Philpott</a>. His column was my gateway drug to
the study's own emperor-has-no-clothes issues. It led me to an even
more penetrating take-down by <a href="http://www.tfrec.wsu.edu/pdfs/P2566.pdf">Charles Benbrook, Ph.D.</a>, an
agricultural economist and professor at Washington State University,
and eventually to <a href="http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685">the study itself</a>, ensconced behind an expensive
paywall.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Misleading numbers</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what was wrong with the Stanford
study? To my mind, grossly misleading numbers trumpeted to a
scientifically naive public (and media) by a major university were
the root of the study's evil.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Take those 30 percentish differences
between organic and conventional food samples.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What if I told you that in multiple
studies, pesticide residues have been found in 7% of organic food
samples and 38% of conventional food samples. Which of the following
would you consider to be the most meaningful way of
communicating that difference to you?</span></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There's a 31% difference between
organic and conventional foods (38 minus 7).</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Organics carry 18.5% of the
pesticide risk of conventional produce (7 over 38) or, conversely,
they're 82% less likely to contain pesticide residues (38 minus 7 = 31 over 38 = 81.5%).</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Conventional produce is 5.4 times
more likely to contain pesticide residues than organics (38 over 7).</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I hope you'll agree that the latter
two examples, which unlike the first one calculate the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">relative</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">
difference between food samples, give you a much better idea of the
practical, real world difference between organic and conventional
foods.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Relative differences are the default
language for reporting </span>findings in <span style="font-family: inherit;">scientific research. When you read
that patients who took Drug A enjoyed 33% fewer heart attacks than
patients who took a placebo, that's a relative difference. The raw
numbers in the study might have been 30 people out of 1000 (3%)
taking the drug had a heart attack </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">vs</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> 45 out of 1000 (4.5%) on
the placebo. If the researchers had reported the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">absolute</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">
difference in percentages – 4.5% minus 3% – the headline would
have been:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">Heart
Drug Flops</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Ceminex cuts heart attack risk less
than 2%</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But that's how the Stanford scientists chose to report their results, making big differences seem
meagre. The numbers I quoted earlier – 7% <i>vs</i> 38% – are the
actual numbers the Stanford team reported in their study. So far so good. But then they subtracted the 7 from the 38 to arrive at the absolute
difference of just 30% (not 31% because the numbers had
probably been rounded). As Benbrook – a former Executive Director
of the National Academy of Sciences's Board on Agriculture –
critically <a href="http://www.tfrec.wsu.edu/pdfs/P2566.pdf">observed</a>: “Their seemingly unimpressive finding of '30%
lower risk' corresponds to an overall 81% lower risk or incidence of
one or more pesticide residues in the organic samples compared to the
conventional samples.” Statistically, the odds of this organic
advantage being insignificant (just a chance variation) were less than 1 in 1000, as the
researchers themselves reported.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It doesn't stop there. The methodology
chosen by the Stanford team ignored any reported differences in the pesticide
<i>concentration</i> in samples (organic and conventional) that tested positive. Not having
checked the studies they reviewed, I'm ignorant too. But knowing what we
know about how liberally pesticides are used in conventional
agriculture and shunned in organic farming, it isn't a stretch to
speculate that in the 7% of organic samples that contained pesticide
residues, the pesticide concentrations were much lower than those in
the 38% of conventional samples that did. If the average contaminated orange
from a conventional orchard contained, say, a total of 10 parts per
million of two or three different pesticides, the average
contaminated organic orange might have contained just one or two
pesticide residues totalling 2 or 3 parts per million. Such
differences weren't quantified in the Stanford study. But Benbrook,
who knows the research like the back of his hand, says that when these
differences are factored in, “the potential health risk of pesticide
residues in organic foods compared to conventional foods typically
averages 10 to 20-times smaller than that in conventional foods.”
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's a long way from <i>30%</i> smaller.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sweeping superbugs under
the rug</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And so it went for most of the study's
other findings.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That 33% difference in
antibiotic-resistant bacterial contamination? <i>Absolute difference</i>.
Crunching the numbers reported in the study – 57 out of 358 (15.9%)
organic samples contained antibiotic-resistant bacteria; 166 out of
343 (48.4%) conventional samples did – shows that, <i>relatively
speaking</i>, the non-organic meats were <i>three times</i> more
likely to be contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, again
with odds less than 1 in a 1000 that the difference was due to
chance. But armed with their absolute difference of just 33%, the
Stanford team didn't even bother to comment on the health
implications. And the news release all but blew the
finding off, noting that “the clinical significance of this is ...
unclear.”
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The same release had branded the study
as a doctor's quest to better serve her patients. T<span style="color: #2d2d2d;">he
study, it stated, “stemmed from Bravata’s patients asking her
again and again about the benefits of organic products. She didn’t
know how to advise them.”</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #2d2d2d; font-family: inherit;">Well, how about
advising them they have a threefold greater risk of catching a
superbug from a conventionally produced pork chop or chicken wing? (She might also want to advise them that plant-based
meat substitutes – beans, hummus, tofu, veggie burgers, soy hot
dogs etc. – carry close to a 0% risk of being contaminated by
antibiotic-resistant bacteria.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And what about the health implications
of those “30%” higher pesticide residues? Because most of the
analyzed studies hadn't reported if or by how much the residues
exceeded regulatory safety limits, the Stanford team essentially
dismissed the clinical implications as “unclear.” But even if
pesticide residues never exceeded officially safe limits for any
single food, if every non-organic carrot, apple or bowl of soup
Johnny eats has a 38% risk of containing some pesticide residues, it
all adds up – perhaps to a level that clearly is unsafe. Ken Cook,
President of the Environmental Working Group, had some pointed words
on this subject for the Stanford scientists:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Studies that have come out in the
last two years have linked exposures to organophosphate pesticides
with increased risks of ADHD and lower IQ in children and to low
birth weight and early gestation among newborns,” <a href="http://www.ewg.org/news/news-releases/2012/09/03/organic-produce-reduces-exposure-pesticides-research-confirms">Cook said in an EWG news release</a>. “The authors of this study, for whatever reason,
decided not to focus on this new and troubling research showing that
a diet of food high in certain pesticides could pose such serious and
lasting health impacts in children. That’s a glaring omission, in
my opinion.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The other big finding in the study was
that only one nutrient of the 14 studied was significantly and
unequivocally higher in organic foods: phosphorous. The researchers
were probably right to write this difference off, because phosphorous
is abundant in any diet and I've never heard of a little bit more
equating to better health.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Stanford team also reported weaker
evidence that organic produce is better endowed with useful
phytochemicals called phenols (resveratrol, the possibly
life-lengthening compound in grapes and red wine, is a phenol), with
omega-3 fatty acids in milk
and chicken and with vaccenic acid (a
fatty acid of uncertain healthfulness) in chicken.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Based on how the nutrition data was
crunched and presented, the Stanford team reasonably concluded:
“Despite the widespread perception that organically produced
foods
are more nutritious than conventional alternatives, we did not find
robust evidence to support this perception.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But neither did they find robust
evidence that organic foods aren't more nutritious. Fourteen
nutrients is a small fraction of the beneficial compounds
found in foods. Even most vitamins and essential minerals –
including ones like selenium and zinc whose availability to plants is
dependent on the quality of the soil, an organic farming selling
point – weren't included in the study due to insufficient data.
Just a year earlier, researchers from the University of Newcastle
analyzed pretty much the same literature and <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07352689.2011.554417#.UaUtD2TEKi4">reported</a> that organic
produce is approximately 12% more nutrient-dense than non-organic –
a small, but real (statistically highly significant) difference.
Looking over the raw numbers reported in the Stanford study, one
finds an echo – undiscussed by the Stanford team – of the
Newcastle results. To begin with, although the differences in the
Stanford study weren't statistically significant in most cases,
organic foods were better endowed with 10 of the 14 nutrients.
Non-organics beat on just 3 (there was a tie for potassium).
Similarly, while 133 nutrient comparisons between organic and
conventionally produced foods favoured the conventional samples, 199
favoured organic. Advantage organic: 50%.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5839729781607503855" name="__DdeLink__487_2120924684"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5839729781607503855" name="__DdeLink__1317_2120924684"></a>
So, in terms of nutrient density, the jury is still out on whether
organic food is trivially or significantly superior to non-organic.
Meanwhile, the pesticide advantage is confirmed. As for the
credibility of the Stanford study, the jury is in.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><b>Syd Baumel</b></i><i> is editor
of </i>The Aquarian<i>.</i> <i>He often pays extra for organic food,
but mostly for the social and environmental benefits.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>_______________________________</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>UPDATE, May 2013.</b> </span>In its February 19 issue, <i>Annals of Internal Medicine</i> published reader feedback to the Stanford study. All five letters were by scientists and one clinician, including Charles Benbrook and Kirsten Brandt (lead author of the Newcastle study described above), and all were critical. Among the new wrinkles:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="p1">
Sari Lisa Davison, MD, wrote:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As an internist who relies on the Annals to publish articles that are free from bias and for which authors’ potential conflicts of interest are clearly stated, I was dismayed that Smith-Spangler and colleagues’ article on organic food did not indicate that some of the authors are affiliated with Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which receives funding from agribusiness and agricultural chemical companies, such as Cargill and Monsanto.</blockquote>
<div class="p1">
In their response, the study's authors denied any funding from or financial relationship to organizations "that could be perceived to influence our published work."</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Preston K. Andrews, Ph.D, of Washington State University wrote:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The authors also neglected to include a 2010 study (3) that compared organically and conventionally grown strawberries in California in which cultivar and environmental factors were meticulously controlled. This study found increased concentrations of vitamin C and total phenolic compounds, as well as higher antioxidant capacity, in organic strawberries. (For the sake of full disclosure, I am a coauthor of this study.)</blockquote>
<div class="p1">
The authors attributed the omission to a coding error on their part. But they questioned that the vitamin C difference in the other study would have been big enough to change the results of their meta-analysis, which found no significant difference in vitamin C concentration between organic and conventional produce. </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-2816564735425415152013-05-28T10:12:00.000-07:002013-05-28T10:12:15.663-07:00Facing the Hunter<span style="font-family: inherit;">To nonvegans, a vegan diet typically sounds like the culinary equivalent of a medieval hair shirt or a masochistic vow of chastity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"You can't even drink milk or eat eggs???" (It's always framed as "can't," as if we're doing penance or have joined some fundamentalist religion*). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No, we can't - I mean won't. But the surprising thing is how bloody great (no pun intended) a vegan diet can be, even for a guy like myself who a) loves to eat, b) loves almost all animal foods and would happilly eat them if they grew on trees, and c) mostly eats his own cooking (I have no training, I don't follow recipes). Thirteen years on, my enjoyment of my vegan diet just keeps getting better as I explore more and more vegetables and other plant-based foods, not to mention the ever-improving variety of faux animal products. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I digress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At least hypothetically, a vegan like myself could at some point in his life be faced with the choice of eating meat or starving, or becoming seriously ill. This is not so hypothetical for me. Were it not for the supplement L-carnitine - a nonessential nutrient mostly found in red meat, but easily produced from other dietary nutrients by most vegetarians, but not me - I'm quite sure I would be a basket case. That is what I start to become - a human rag doll - every time I stop taking the supplement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">But what would I do if there were no carnitine supplements and no one, not even the best vegan dietitians and doctors in the world, could keep me vegan and healthy? What to do if I crash-landed in the Arctic Circle, in a post-Apocalyptic world, and all I could eat was seal? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">First, there's a possibility that my conscience would stop me from doing it, especially if I continue to have no dependents (beyond a couple of adoptable cats) and to continue not getting any younger. Why am I more important, more worthy of life, than the many** animals who would eventually die to sustain me for the rest of my life? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But more likely I would bite the bullet and do what I must to survive, </span>at the expense of other lives<span style="font-family: inherit;">. After all, I - and all other vegans - do already. Even our food is come by at the expense of many mice, rabbits, lizards and other field animals where the crops that feed us grow (but not nearly as many, it must be emphasized, <a href="http://www.veganoutreach.org/enewsletter/matheny.html">as are killed to produce an omnivorous diet</a>). The inescapable reality is that we all leave a footprint of animal death and suffering. Rational veganism means avoiding or minimizing as much of that harm as we possibly can. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So if I couldn't survive or be healthy without eating meat, where would I get it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My first go-to choice would be meat from the most humanely treated animals available (in this thought experiment we're imagining that animal byproducts like milk and eggs, as well as fish and seafood, are unavailable or won't suffice). I've been to small humane-oriented farms near where I live where the animals, to all appearances and based on my trust of the farmers (fellow travellers in the war against factory farms), have a really good life - a life worth living, as the expression goes. Most of them are killed young (that's the nature of commercial meat production in today's world) and typically in small slaughterhouses where humane handling may not be a sure thing (the big slaughter plants often are caught in the act of abusing animals, whether deliberately or as a byproduct of their relentless high-speed disassembly practices). Still, this is a distinctly lesser evil for anyone who <i>must</i> eat meat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But there's another option I would find comparably acceptable: the meat from hunted animals. Not just any animals hunted by anyone with a rifle. But if someone like Canadian author David Adams Richards does the hunting (or even me, having learned to do it his way), I could accept that too as a distinctly lesser evil. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A couple years ago I was asked by the <i>Winnipeg Free Press</i> to review a small book - an extended autobiographical essay, really - in which Richards' makes a case for his traditional brand of hunting, the kind, he says, practised by all the respectable hunters in his native rural New Brunswick. Here it is. Judge for yourself. </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/fyi/you-have-to-hunt-for-richards-message-132369563.html" style="font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 22, 2011 J9</span></a><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You have to hunt for Richards' message</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Reviewed by Syd Baumel</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Facing the Hunter</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reflections on a Misunderstood Way of Life<br /><br />By David Adams Richards<br /><br />Doubleday Canada, 224 pages, $30<br /><br />Unless you're an avid reader of the author's Governor General's Award-winning fiction, it's not until the very last sentence that you learn where his title comes from. It's an enigmatic choice.<br /><br />But then this is an enigmatic piece of non-fiction. In this era of animal activism and embattled Atlantic sealers, one might expect a spirited intellectual defence by the New Brunswick-bred David Adams Richards of his beloved yet "misunderstood way of life."<br /><br />But there's little of that in this slim volume, and what there is is personal and repetitious.<br /><br />Rather, this is a defence by storytelling: story after New Brunswick hunting story, as if told to mates around a campfire in a rambling stream of consciousness.<br /><br />This vivid immersion in Richards' woodland passion does rub off, assuming you're game to wade through thickets of hunter-speak.<br /><br />Even a vegan if compelled to eat meat to survive might prefer the conscientious way of hunting practised by Richards and the hunters he respects to stalking factory-farmed animal parts at the supermarket.<br /><br />It's a hunt, Richards insists, that takes no pleasure in taking life; that would rather miss bagging that elusive 20-point buck if it might turn out to be the female of the species with dependent young or if that risky long shot might wound without killing, condemning the prey to a slow and painful death.<br /><br />It's a hunter's code that commits to "hunting the wounded down" (to quote a title of a Richards novel) even if it takes days, so the animal doesn't suffer and the meat isn't wasted.<br /><br />Richards' problem -- and he's wounded and dangerous about it -- is that ignorant city-slickers, including fellow literati, look at conscientious hunters like himself and see a stereotype: the redneck taking potshots between swigs of beer, the trophy hunter with a heart of stone. But Richards despises hunters like these and tells a few stories at their expense.<br /><br />Poor man: it's as if urban cultural warriors are preying on endangered woodland sportsmen.<br /><br />But Richards doesn't draw that ironic parallel. Indeed, there's little facing of the hunter in the mirror here.<br /><br />Not even when recalling his earliest boyhood kills does Richards describe his emotions when sighting his prey, pulling the trigger and watching an innocent die by his hand.<br /><br />There is only a parenthetic aside where he confesses to once killing a doe: "I never felt good about it, and I mention it because I never felt good about it." Instead, it's always fast-forward to "dressing" (cutting and gutting) the prey or tracking it, if wounded.<br /><br />But this is glossed over, too. Not a word about what it's like to finish off a gasping deer, not a whiff of ripped open belly and steaming entrails or the pathos of a great carcass hauled from its woodland home.<br /><br />But Richards does face the supermarket hunter -- with relish. Three times he throws down the gauntlet: "those who eat meat should be morally obligated to kill at least once in their lives that which they eat."<br /><br />He doesn't mean fire a captive bolt into the skull of a cow or pig, hoist its unconscious body, slash its throat, bleed it, saw and chop it.<br /><br />Nor does he suggest that urban meat-eaters (like Richards himself, a 60-year-old Torontonian now, he thinks his hunting days may be over) be morally obligated to witness how their shrink-wrapped prey are raised (the battery cages, the sow stalls, the feedlots) and shipped to slaughter (the densely crowded truck rides without food, water, heat or AC, sometimes lasting days, sometimes deadly in themselves).<br /><br />But that kind of reality check might be too disturbing even for a hunter to face.<br /><br /><i>Winnipeg writer and editor Syd Baumel is the creator of eatkind.net and a vegan hunter of faux meats.</i><br /><br />*Okay. You got me. For some people veganism <i>is</i> like a fundamentalist religion.</span>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-89282709780546188622013-05-24T19:24:00.000-07:002013-05-28T09:45:35.685-07:00The Way We Eat - by Peter Singer and Jim Mason<span style="font-family: inherit;">In case you haven't noticed, I'm straying ever so slightly from the 24-hour news-cycle imperative in order to rehouse some of my earlier work, no longer available on the new website of <i>The Aquarian</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So in that self-serving spirit, I give you a review from 2006 of one of the first - and best - books on ethical eating. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>from </i>The Aquarian<i>, Fall 2006</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="background-color: white;">The Way We Eat</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: black;">Why Our Food Choices Matter</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">By Peter Singer and Jim Mason</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">Rodale, 2006</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white;">Hardcover, 328 pages, $34.95 (Canada), $25.95 (U.S.)</span><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">available at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157954889X/sydbaumeshomepag" target="_top">Amazon.com</a> | <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/157954889X/sydbaumeshomepag" target="_top">Amazon.ca</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reviewed by SYD BAUMEL</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1975, ethicist Peter Singer's classic, <i>Animal Liberation,</i> helped fuel the modern ethical vegetarian and vegan movement. In its second edition – published in 1990 – it still does. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Our notions of ethical eating have grown much more complex since then; so it's fitting that one of the world's preeminent logicians of moral complexity<i> </i>has returned to the field with an enlightening addition to the current first crop of books on ethical eating.*</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you've ever found yourself stuck to the floor of a grocery aisle not knowing which product to buy lest some animal, farmer, patch of land or body of water should suffer more if you buy product A than product B, C or D, this book's for you. Singer and co-author Jim Mason – himself the author of 1980's seminal <i>Animal Factories</i> – take an admirably impartial look at the moral questions that haunt today's food shelves. And while that impartiality sometimes leads to ethical uncertainties that may leave you as stuck to the floor as ever, at least your worry lines will grow deeper and wiser.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Take the "locavore" imperative – the conventional food-politics wisdom that local food is a more ethical and sustainable choice than imported food. Singer and Mason affirm the virtues of minimizing greenhouse gas emissions from food transportation and supporting local family farmers and rural communities. But when they bring out their slide rules and factor in the ethics of importing fairly traded, sustainably produced foods from the world's poorest farmers, the conventional wisdom becomes conditional. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Much of this conditionality hinges on the fact that "transporting a given amount of food by plane uses the most energy per mile, almost twice as much as road freight and 20 times more energy than sending it by ship or rail," as Singer and Mason write.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The implications can be startling. For example, "taking the average car just five extra miles to visit a local farm or market will put as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as shipping 17 pounds of onions halfway around the world, from New Zealand to London."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then there's the energy and resource cost of producing locally. Singer and Mason give a few examples to show how that local greenhouse tomato or bag of rice (if you live somewhere like California) can come at a resource toll (fossil fuels to heat the greenhouse, water to irrigate the rice field) that dwarfs the low-input production methods of most smallholder, developing-world farmers and the food-miles lite of shipping from port to port. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Finally there's the question of who benefits more from your shopping dollar: a local farmer who may (a big may) be living well above the poverty line or an impoverished farmer in the developing world for whom your dollar is equivalent to a day's earnings. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the things I like about this book is that, whatever the subject – farm animal welfare, overfishing, GMOs, big corporate retail <i>vs</i> small independent – Singer and Mason ask you to learn and reason along with them. Their process (aided by reference throughout to three American families who span the ethical-eating spectrum) is scrupulously transparent, a model of how we might think our way through these dilemmas ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Getting back to the relative merits of local, imported and fairly traded food, Singer and Mason conclude that there is no across-the-board moral prescription. "However, there is a strong case for buying from the least developed countries, at least when it comes to products transported by ship rather than plane and when a significant proportion of the purchase price is likely to end up in the hands of low-income farmers." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's the stuff. Spocklike logic on subjects where most ethical eaters have feelings to spare. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5839729781607503855" name="books"></a>*I know of at least six others: <i>Fast Food Nation</i> (2001) by Eric Schlosser,<i> The Eco-Foods Guide</i> (2002) by Cynthia Barstow, <i>Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating</i> (2005) by Jane Goodall, <i>Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen</i> (2006) by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry,<i> The Ethical Gourmet</i> (2006) by Jay Weinstein and <i>The Omnivore's Dilemma</i>(2006) by Michael Pollan. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="background-color: white;">Aquarian co-editor <b>Syd Baumel</b> is the publisher of </i><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://eatkind.net/" target="_top">eatkind.net</a><i> which is cited in </i>The Way We Eat<i> as "a useful Website for those interested in more compassionate eating."</i></span></span>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-72829150386346047162013-05-18T16:21:00.000-07:002013-09-18T21:26:55.125-07:00I have deleted your comment defending "the compassionate efforts of welfarists."Several weeks ago, a Facebook page I like shared <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&theater">this status update</a> from the page of the influential animal rights legal scholar and philosopher, Gary Francione.<br />
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It epitomized my worst impressions (from a distance) of this intolerant, my-way-or-the-highway abolitionist (not all abolitionists are, by any stretch). As you can see in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&theater">the Facebook update</a>, Francione jeers the successful efforts of <a href="http://www.animalsaustralia.org/"><span class="s1">Animals Australia</span></a> to save over two million animals (and counting) from the well-documented horrors of <a href="http://www.banliveexport.com/">live export</a>. This is the practice of exporting animals from Australia via long ship journeys to be bred or slaughtered overseas, often where farm animal welfare standards are horrifying, as opposed to merely appalling. Many of these cattle, sheep and goats die enroute - a greater horror than they would likely have experienced if they'd been shipped to slaughter back home; a lesser horror than probably awaited them at their overseas destinations, judging by the investigative work of groups like Animals Australia. </div>
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Rather than jump right into the fray, I read the comments first. Among all the (mostly) sycophantic "right ons," I found one that echoed my own reaction. The writer, after paying respects to the Master and the Community ("Totally agreeing with what everyone's saying. They're going to end up dead, however it happens…."), meekly voiced her concern that live transport might indeed be problematic in its own right: </div>
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"Obviously, slaughter is slaughter, wherever it happens. I do think a long boat journey without food and water beforehand must be particularly horrific though (if it's possible for anything to be more horrific than it already is). Is it welfarist to think this?" </div>
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She ended her comment by writing "Someone may tell me I'm wrong!"<br />
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<a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=638210825&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pauline.wooding" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Pauline Wooding</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">Totally agreeing with what everyone's saying. They're going to end up dead, however it happens. Just mentioning that part of the point was not just that they're going to another country to be slaughtered by foreigners, etc., etc., but that they spend </span></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]">so long on the boat without food and water. There was the instance a little while back when a boat going to Pakistan was caught in a big storm, or there was a problem with the boat or something and I think it was sailing around for a couple of months (again, without checking back on the precise details). When it eventually landed, thousands of sheep were just dumped, and there was nowhere to put them, so many that hadn't already died ended up dying in the sun. This was the case that seemed to get a lot of people agitated - but may well not be typical, and should not obviously detract from the main point, I know. </span><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[1]" /><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[2]" /><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[3]">Obviously, slaughter is slaughter, wherever it happens. I do think a long boat journey without food and water beforehand must be particularly horrific though (if it's possible for anything to be more horrific than it already is). Is it welfarist to think this? I've always felt doubly sorry for the animals that travel from the UK across Europe in terrible conditions without food and water, which isn't anything to do with the countries they're going to, just the conditions they have to endure during the long journey.</span><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[4]" /><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[5]" /><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[6]">I suppose it's a bit like the rape and being beaten while being raped analogy. Just a question of the degree of suffering. </span><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[7]" /><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[8]" /><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[9]">Someone may tell me I'm wrong!</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0]"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&comment_id=2065755&offset=0&total_comments=20" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><abbr class="livetimestamp" data-utime="1365178233" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0].0" style="border-bottom-style: none;" title="Friday, April 5, 2013 at 11:10am">April 5 at 11:10am</abbr></a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[2][0]"> · </span><a ajaxify="/ajax/edits/browser/comment?comment_token=579897345363357_2065755" aria-label="Show edit history" class="uiLinkSubtle" data-hover="tooltip" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&theater#" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[2][1]" rel="dialog" role="button" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Show edit history">Edited</a></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[1]"> · </span><span style="color: #3b5998;"><span style="cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; white-space: nowrap;"><i class="UFICommentLikeIcon" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[0]" style="background-image: url(https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yj/r/vVoydMN5wsx.png); background-position: -253px -4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: auto; display: inline-block; height: 9px; margin-right: 3px; width: 10px;"></i></span></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[1]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;"><a ajaxify="/ajax/browser/dialog/likes?id=579910732028685" aria-label="You, Josie Lazo, Courtney Alexandra and Tayebeh Alirezaee like this." class="UFICommentLikeButton" data-hover="tooltip" data-tooltip-alignh="center" href="https://www.facebook.com/browse/likes?id=579910732028685" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2065755}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2]" rel="dialog" role="button" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">4</a></span><br />
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That was my opening. I responded that I believed she wasn't wrong and that the bottom line for me is "what would the animals want?" If I was one of them, I wrote, I would gratefully lick the hand of any human who lightened my load (an animal "welfarist," in other words) <i>and</i> of any human who fought to remove my burden and my children's burden altogether (an abolitionist, or liberationist), even if he or she failed. I would not be so well disposed toward humans who sought to undercut each other in these efforts to benefit me and mine.<br />
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A few minutes later, I heard a Facebook chirp. When I returned to Facebook, I was stunned to see the following two replies:</div>
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<a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=1276017580&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/sarahkwoodcock" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Sarah K. Woodcock</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=671308624&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/syd.baumel" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Syd Baumel</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[1]">, I have deleted your comment defending "the compassionate efforts of welfarists." While they may be motivated by compassion, the effects of their efforts are devastating for animals. Please review our Terms of Use (FB page) and also Professor Francione's website (</span><a class="" href="http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[2]" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">www.abolitionistapproach.com</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066191}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]">). Thanks.</span></span></span></div>
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<a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=156275557725540&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/abolitionistapproach" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Gary L. Francione: The Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=638210825&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pauline.wooding" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Pauline Wooding</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[1]">; Syd Baumel: Sorry, but animals in Australia are, like animals in other countries, transported long distances to Australian slaughterhouses. Many animals are killed or maimed in domestic transport. This idea that Australian slaughter is</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> some "gift" to farm animals shows how deeply confused our thinking has become.</span><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[1]" /><br id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[2]" /><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[3]">It is a tragedy that groups like Animals Australia and their counterparts in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere partner with industry to promote "happy" exploitation in various forms. The animal movement should be clear: veganism is the *only* rational response to the recognition that animals matter morally. Animal advocates should never be partnering with industry to try to make the process of exploitation "better." The economic reality that animals are property will always constrain and limit welfare reform to measures that, as a general matter, improve production and are rational for industry to pursue. If the movement spoke with a unified vegan voice, industry would respond with welfare reforms anyway to try to assure the public that veganism was not necessary and that animal products were produced in a "humane" way. When animal advocates partner with industry, the message that is sent to the public is that they can be "compassionate" consumers. That is a message that industry loves. It should never be a message promoted by animal advocates. There is no such thing as "compassionate" consumption. There is veganism and there is direct participation in animal exploitation.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0]"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&comment_id=2066204&offset=0&total_comments=20" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">April 5 at 4:34pm</a></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[1]"> · </span><a ajaxify="/ajax/browser/dialog/likes?id=580004635352628" class="UFICommentLikeButton" data-hover="tooltip" data-tooltip-alignh="center" data-tooltip-uri="/ajax/like/tooltip.php?comment_fbid=580004635352628&comment_from=156275557725540&cache_buster=0" href="https://www.facebook.com/browse/likes?id=580004635352628" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2]" rel="dialog" role="button" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;"><i class="UFICommentLikeIcon" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[0]" style="background-image: url(https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yj/r/vVoydMN5wsx.png); background-position: -253px -4px; background-size: auto; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; height: 9px; margin: -5px 3px -5px -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; width: 10px;"></i><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2066204}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[1]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;">9</span></a></div>
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<div class="p8">
To which I replied:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'm astounded - jaw-droppingly so - and appalled that my comment was deleted. It's never happened to me before on any forum, any subject, and I've been around for a while. What does this action say about the ability of your wing of the animal rights and welfare movement to tolerate civil disagreement and to be willing to discuss issues in a public forum without suppressing dissenting points of view? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I'll save this comment because presumably you'll have to delete it too, "bury the evidence." My previous comment - my valued intellectual property, modest as it was - has now been arbitrarilly destroyed by you, Sarah, based on ... what "term of use" was that? Thou shalt not dissent? Stunning. Absolutely stunning. BTW, Gary, what's the point of my responding to your well-considered comment under conditions like this? Or of anyone responding, unless it's to agree? </blockquote>
<div class="p2">
Sure enough, my second comment was gone within 20 or 30 minutes. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
On reflection, it occurred to me that Francione and his Facebook fans were behaving like a cult. So I did what I always do at times like this: I typed "Francione cult" into google. As expected, I wasn't the first person to draw this comparison. Another animal rights person who had drawn the ire of Francione and been banned from his other, website-based forum (since closed) detailed his experience <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/banned-by-fellow-vegans">here</a>. Other survivors of Francione narcissism - typically having been "banned" too - weighed in in the comments section. The similarities were striking, right down to some of their word choices, such as describing how "sycophants" are reduced to saying little but "right on!", ironically using the word "master" to describe the repressive autocrat and "This man is a supreme narcissist and this is clearly a cult of personality" (from a commenter who also had her comment deleted on Facebook just two months before). </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I added a comment myself:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Count me among the Facebook deleted. It happened just yesterday, and I was (and still am) so incensed, I'm drafting a blog post to "get even," or, more constructively, add my two cents to the greater subject of how not to participate in a human/animal rights/welfare movement or "Gary Francione has the soul of a totalitarian." Honestly, I've always had a negative reaction to him, but from a distance, not having studied his work, only having read dribs and drabs. I'm a pragmatic abolitionist-welfarist myself and a longtime vegan. But it wasn't the excessively esteemed professor's extreme, polarizing beliefs that turned me yesterday from Francione - meh, to Francione - feh. It was the astoundingly poor character he and his hatchet girl displayed on Facebook. I see from this welcome article and comments - a google search for "Francione" and "cult" brought me here - that he leaves a long wake of such damage behind him. </blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<b>Epilogue:</b> A few weeks later, I returned to the scene of the crime and discovered that a week after the initial Francione-approved comments had run their course, someone else had the last word. Perhaps the thought police didn't notice it:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
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<b>Suzy Baranski</b> I am a vegan and I support the work of Animals Australia. I don't want animals being subjected to the horrors of a long boat journey and the even bigger horrors of going to a middle eastern country (I assume you know what happened in Pakistan). I also give them full support in their campaign to end factory farming. This is all part of the journey towards freedom. Awareness. I know many committed vegans who support Animals Australia </div>
<div class="p1">
April 13 at 10:13am</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
And now I've returned again and yet another dissenting view has eluded the censors:</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Denise Danninger</b> I'm sorry, but I don't agree. The exposure, awareness and public outcry over the plight of animals as a result of the groundbreaking work of Animals Australia is unprecedented. And that's what catapulted me into veganism. If you look at the statistics, less animals destined for consumption are being bred in Australia for live export. And that's a logical consequence when live export is reduced (and hopefully one day completely banned). Do you actually believe that through banning live export the number of animals being bred for consumption won't drop? I don't follow you. AA are NOT the bad guys. I find your rubbishing of them disappointing and non-constructive. They are making consumers question their choices. It appears to me that they are guiding people to veganism far more effectively than some others are doing it.</div>
<div class="p1">
May 10 at 3:57am · Edited</div>
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<div class="p1">
Enjoy the "photographic evidence" while it lasts: </div>
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<a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=100003612824154&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/susie.baranski.9" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Suzy Baranski</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">I am a vegan and I support the work of Animals Australia. I don't want animals being subjected to the horrors of a long boat journey and the even bigger horrors of going to a middle eastern country (I assume you know what happened in Pakistan). I also</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> give them full support in their campaign to end factory farming. This is all part of the journey towards freedom. Awareness. I know many committed vegans who support Animals Australia</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0]"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&comment_id=2083279&offset=0&total_comments=20" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;">April 13 at 10:13am</a></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[1]"> · </span><a ajaxify="/ajax/browser/dialog/likes?id=582953395057752" aria-label="Denise Danninger likes this." class="UFICommentLikeButton" data-hover="tooltip" data-tooltip-alignh="center" href="https://www.facebook.com/browse/likes?id=582953395057752" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2]" rel="dialog" role="button" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; margin: -5px; padding: 0px 5px 4px; text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap;"><i class="UFICommentLikeIcon" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[0]" style="background-image: url(https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yj/r/vVoydMN5wsx.png); background-position: -253px -4px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: auto; display: inline-block; height: 9px; margin-right: 3px; width: 10px;"></i><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2083279}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[2].[1]">1</span></a></div>
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<a class="UFICommentActorName" data-ft="{"tn":";"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/hovercard.php?id=530239342&extragetparams=%7B%22hc_location%22%3A%22ufi%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/denise.danninger.5" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][0]" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Denise Danninger</a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][1]"> </span><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2]"><span class="UFICommentBody" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[0].[0]">I'm sorry, but I don't agree. The exposure, awareness and public outcry over the plight of animals as a result of the groundbreaking work of Animals Australia is unprecedented. And that's what catapulted me into veganism. If you look at the statistics,</span></span><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3]"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0"><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[0].[0][2].0.[3].0.[0]"> less animals destined for consumption are being bred in Australia for live export. And that's a logical consequence when live export is reduced (and hopefully one day completely banned). Do you actually believe that through banning live export the number of animals being bred for consumption won't drop? I don't follow you. AA are NOT the bad guys. I find your rubbishing of them disappointing and non-constructive. They are making consumers question their choices. It appears to me that they are guiding people to veganism far more effectively than some others are doing it.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0]"><a class="uiLinkSubtle" data-ft="{"tn":"N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&comment_id=2143647&offset=0&total_comments=20" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0]" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;"><abbr class="livetimestamp" data-utime="1368176241" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[0].0" style="border-bottom-style: none;" title="Friday, May 10, 2013 at 3:57am">May 10 at 3:57am</abbr></a><span id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[2][0]"> · </span><a ajaxify="/ajax/edits/browser/comment?comment_token=579897345363357_2143647" aria-label="Show edit history" class="uiLinkSubtle" data-hover="tooltip" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=579897345363357&set=a.393908680628892.94280.156275557725540&type=1&theater#" id=".reactRoot[0].[1][4][1]{comment579897345363357_2143647}.0.[1].0.[1].0.[1].[0].[2][1]" rel="dialog" role="button" style="color: grey; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Show edit history">Edited</a></span></div>
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<br />Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-19925733679543688072013-05-18T14:35:00.000-07:002013-06-13T16:40:59.052-07:00"Because we can" is no excuse <span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Because we can.”</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Because we always have.”</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Because it's legal.”</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“Because it's normal.”</i></span><br />
<br />
These are not excuses for behaviours that challenge us as moral beings <i>now</i>, <i>today</i>.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/28430572" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/28430572">THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE [DEMO]</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/theghostsinourmachine">THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
I haven't seen <i><a href="http://www.theghostsinourmachine.com/">The Ghosts in Our Machine</a> </i>yet. But this new documentary looks like a game-changer to me, much as <i><a href="http://www.peaceablekingdomfilm.org/">Peaceable Kingdom</a></i> was for so many who saw it and - as one friend dragged there by his daughter reacted - immediately transformed how they ate (my friend became a vegan, and some 7 or 8 years later he hasn't looked back).<br />
<br />
Check out all the moving HD previews of this new film <a href="https://vimeo.com/theghostsinourmachine">right here</a>. Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-613362935998716322013-05-16T18:38:00.001-07:002013-06-12T17:00:10.423-07:00Indecent Eggsposure: How Canada's Eggs are LaidThis is a story I wrote for <i><a href="http://www.aquarianonline.com/">The Aquarian</a></i> back in 2006. At the time, Canadian consumers exposed to gruesome exposés of factory farming south of the border commonly took comfort in the assumption that "we're Canadians. We do things different up here." Animal advocates knew better. Today, many Canadian exposés later, that illusion is starting to crumble.<br />
<br />
<i>from The Aquarian, Summer 2006</i><br />
<div>
<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">INDECENT EGGSPOSURE </span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">How Canada's Eggs are Laid</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">By</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">SYD BAUMEL</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">It looks like news-at-six video of a puppy mill bust. Except in this case the filthy, neglected animals are hens, and the setting is a modern industrial-strength egg barn near Guelph, Ontario.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The camera sweeps across a long aisle lined high on both sides with “batteries” (stacks) of wire cages, then slowly pans across a single tier. The hens inside are packed so tight they can barely move. They are a pathetic sight. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Where there should be ivory-white feathers, there are spiky quills and tattered grey coats. The birds in the lower tiers are caked with feces from the cages above. Below the towers of cages, a displaced hen squats helplessly on a manure pile. Another lies dead in the aisle. Everything is cloaked in filth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“This is a life sentence with no parole. Their only escape is slaughter,” the video's titles conclude.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Viewable on the website of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA), <a href="http://humanefood.ca/batterycagevideo.html" target="_top">humanefood.ca</a>, “The Truth About Canada's Egg Industry” is produced by CCFA and the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS). The grainy footage was shot by an anonymous university student who snuck into the barn last summer and broke the story in his student newspaper. In October, a media blitz by CCFA and VHS briefly brought the story to national attention.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Animal scientists and veterinarians quoted on CCFA's website were appalled by the footage. Mohan Raj, a prominent poultry scientist at the University of Bristol, was shocked that such “extreme cruelty to layer hens” could exist in Canada.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“Considering the fact that birds appear to be featherless and fecal ammonia is an irritant and it can burn the skin, I would consider this as a serious welfare problem,” Raj wrote. “The dead bird in the aisle could have escaped from the cage and, after prolonged suffering, died due to deprivation of food and water.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Debra Probert, Executive Director of VHS, thinks the video, like similar shockers shot south of the border, should be a wake-up call for Canadians. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“Government and industry are constantly reassuring consumers that things are better for farm animals here in Canada,” she tells Canadian Press (CP) in October. “We have long suspected that's not the case and now we have the proof – this footage shows filthy, disgusting, hideously abusive conditions.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Particularly disturbing is the pedigree of the farm. The owner, Lloyd Weber, is a veterinarian and a member of the Dean's Veterinary Advisory Council of the University of Guelph, one of Canada's foremost agricultural colleges. His barn, LEL Farms, is a tour site for agriculture students. “It’s difficult not to speculate that if this farm, with such esteemed connections, is so bad, what are other farms like across Canada?” the VHS comments in its newsletter. “We have no reason to believe this is not the norm.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Weber and the egg industry defend themselves in national news stories. Conceding that a dead bird may have been left in an aisle, the veterinarian insists he lives up to the closest thing Canada has to laws governing how farmers should treat their animals: the Canadian Agri-food Research Council's <i>Recommended Codes of Practice</i>. “The [stocking] density does meet the [Code's] guidelines for housing birds in cages,” he tells CP. An Ontario Egg Producers spokesperson tells CP: “We encourage producers to live up [to the codes]. A happy hen is a producing hen.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Code of Practice or License to Abuse?</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The bitter irony for Canada's 26 million egg-laying hens (three million in Manitoba), 98 percent of whom live in large battery-cage operations like Weber's averaging over 17,000 hens per barn, is that Weber's self-defense is probably valid. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“The LEL farm is not that different from other battery hen farms. Pretty much status quo,” according to Stephanie Brown, a director of CCFA. “Might be a tad dirtier, and the cages are old, but it's battery-hen reality.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Brown is a former president of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the only animal welfare organization ever permitted by the Canadian Agri-Food Research Council (CARC) to participate in formulating the <i>Recommended Codes of Practice</i>. CARC is an NGO funded by government and industry and comprised mostly of representatives of the regulated industries themselves (50 percent), government and academia. There is little about the conditions at LEL Farms that would run afoul of those Codes (which can be read on the <a href="http://www.carc-crac.ca/english/codes_of_practice/index.htm" target="_top">CARC website</a>). In Ontario, where the Codes' recommendations for treatment of animals on the farm are just that – recommendations – as they are in every province except New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Manitoba, no charges have been laid against LEL Farms. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The primary code for Canada's 1000+ registered egg producers (producers who have 500 or more hens – almost all the hens in Canada) is the 2003 <i><a href="http://www.carc-crac.ca/common/Code%20of%20Practice%20-%20Polutry%20Layer%20English.pdf" target="_top">Recommended Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pullets, Layers and Spent Fowl</a></i>. It gives producers the green light to house their hens in wire-mesh battery cages without litter and just 67 square inches of floor space per four-pound bird. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Look down at the outspread pages of <i>The Aquarian</i>, 22 inches by 15.5 (341 square inches). The Code would allow you to house five hens on that area, day-in, day-out, until their egg production wanes – typically 12 months – and then kill them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Because chronically overcrowded, stressed-out chickens – especially the genetically high-strung White Leghorns that lay most of the industrial world's white eggs, and at three times the rate of their ancestors – can easily peck each other to death, the Code allows egg producers to cut off the pointy, nerve-rich ends of their beaks (“debeaking”), without anesthetic or painkillers. Some leading poultry scientists believe the mutilated birds suffer “phantom limb pain” for the rest of their lives. Regardless, for a chicken, losing its beak is like losing a right hand for a human. And they still peck each other anyway: pulling out feathers and exposing bare skin to infections and ammonia burns from the barn's abundant chicken waste. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The Code's acceptance of the now universal battery cage production system first introduced in the 1940s, perpetuates what poultry scientists and bioethicists commonly regard as an animal welfare disaster. As American philosopher and animal scientist Bernard Rollin, summarizes the problem: “Virtually all aspects of hen behavior are thwarted by battery cages: social behavior, nesting behavior, the ability to move and flap wings, dustbathing, space requirements, scratching for food, exercise, pecking at objects on the ground.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">According to the experts, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">the hens</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> pay a serious price for such major deprivations as:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Not being able to fully stretch or flap their wings.</b> The average hen needs 144 square inches to stretch her wings; 303 to flap them. The Code gives her 67. She will try to flap her wings anyway. Temple Grandin, a renowned farm animal welfare scientist, <a href="http://www.grandin.com/welfare/corporation.agents.html" target="_top">described the consequences</a> at a large battery egg operation: “Egg layers bred for maximum egg production and the most efficient feed conversion were nervous wrecks that had beaten off half their feathers by constant flapping against the cage.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Not being able to build and lay their eggs in a nest.</b> “The worst torture to which a battery hen is exposed is the inability to retire somewhere for the laying act,” the Nobel prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz wrote in 1980. “For the person who knows something about animals, it is truly heartrending to watch how a chicken tries again and again to crawl beneath her fellow cagemates to search there in vain for cover.” She must relive this ordeal every 30 hours.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Not being able to perch and roost above ground.</b> Perching above ground and roosting in the shelter of a tree are a fixtures of the chicken's natural repertoire and exercise activity. Entire flocks roost together at night to stay clear of predators. Neither perching nor normal exercise are possible in a battery cage, which is so low the birds can't even adopt their standing alert posture. According to Scottish poultry scientist, Michael Baxter, “The fact that hens are restricted from exercising to such an extent that they are unable to maintain the strength of their bones is probably the greatest single indictment of the battery cage. The increased incidence of bone breakage which results is a serious welfare insult.” Those broken bones are never treated. Neither is the osteoporosis that gradually consumes most battery hens.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><b>Not being able to establish a pecking order.</b> According to Baxter: “When crowded together this regulatory system [pecking order] breaks down and the hens appear to be in a chronic state of social stress, perpetually trying to get away from their cagemates, not able to express dominance relations by means of spacing and not even able to resolve social conflict by means of aggression.” </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Inhumanity in the egg industry begins in the hatchery. Layer chickens are bred to produce eggs, not flesh. The male chicks – seven million a year in Manitoba alone – are nothing but a garbage disposal problem. The humane solution favoured by the Code is to feed them, live, into a high-speed macerator (grinder) – the industrial equivalent of a kitchen garburator. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">The female chicks may legally meet the same fate after their year of service. “To my knowledge,” Penny Kelly, General Manager of Manitoba Egg Producers, informs me, “several high-speed macerators are in use locally.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“I have very serious welfare concerns,” writes Mohan Raj in an email. “Some birds may try to escape from being macerated while their legs are caught between the blades of the macerator leading to severe pain and suffering.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Who's Minding the Hens? </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">As permissive as it is, the Recommended Code of Practice is law, not recommendation, in Manitoba. Unfortunately, enforcement is strictly complaint-driven, according to the province's spokesperson,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Gus</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Wruck, a veterinarian in the Office of the Chief Veterinary Officer of Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives. Those complaints arrive in Wruck's office via a confidential</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">"</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Animal Care Hotline</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">"</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">: (204) 945-8000.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In an industry that exists in windowless rural buildings where neither the public, the media nor animal protection groups are welcome, such complaints can only come from insiders or break-and-enter activists. There has only been one complaint in five years, Wruck writes in an email interview. But he does point out that “registered egg farms in Manitoba are randomly inspected a minimum of once a year under the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency’s (CEMA) Animal Care Certification Program. The third party inspectors are the same individuals who conduct inspections under the national on-farm HACCP-based food safety program, Start Clean–Stay Clean<sup>TM</sup>. This program has been accredited by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.” (HACCP stands for “hazard analysis critical control points,” a widely used inspection protocol.) The program, Wruck elaborates, is based on the 2003 Code of Practice. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">But Wruck's replies leave many of my questions unanswered. CEMA ignores my emailed requests for information, and when I call, their spokesperson, Bernadette Cox, refuses to talk to me – “because you're a known animal rights activist.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“Is that information available to anybody?” I ask her. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“It's available to our producers.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“I see. It's not available to the public?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“Yeah. That's all I'm gonna say to you, Syd.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">With help from Google and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), I do learn that – contrary to the impression given by Wruck's statements – CEMA's program is voluntary and not accredited or overseen in any way by CFIA (a government agency). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Turning to Manitoba Egg Producers, my questions are met with the same ambiguous descriptions of the program as Wruck's. In fact, General Manager Penny Kelly's language is virtually identical, as if government and industry are reading from the same playbook.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Kelly does, however, disclose that “99 percent” of the province's registered egg producers participate in the Program – and all have passed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">But in a 2003 story in the <i>Manitoba Cooperator</i> about CEMA's then new Animal Care Program I read: “There's no actual pass or fail, but a benchmark score to establish a satisfactory level of care will be developed, said Kelly.” So I ask Kelly what “passing” means today – perfect score? “E” for effort? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“'Passing' means just that,” she replies cryptically. “The Program is subject to ongoing review and will continue to evolve. Similar to implementation of the national on-farm food safety program, I expect the 'bar' will continue to be raised to encourage excellence in animal care.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I press for clarification about where that bar now stands. “Would the registered barn secretly videotaped near Guelph last summer – LEL Farms – have passed?” I ask. “If not, what would have given it a failing grade?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I have pressed too hard. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">“I have attempted to address your questions in a straightforward and factual manner,” Kelly replies, “and see no merit in further dialogue.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">A few years ago in the United States, CEMA's counterpart, the United Egg Producers, also instituted a voluntary animal care certification program based on minimal welfare standards – including 67 square inches of floor space per hen. Animal protection groups complained to the Better Business Bureau that the industry's “Animal-Care Certified” logo was deceiving consumers. The BBB agreed, and so did the Federal Trade Commission. The logo now reads “United Egg Producers Certified.” </span><br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Putting the Chicken Before the Egg </span> </h3>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">In 1999, following years of public and scientific opposition to battery cages, the European Union began to phase them out. They will be illegal in 2012. In the United States, animal protection groups from the Humane Society of the United States on down have persuaded a growing number of foodstore chains, restaurants, college campuses, cafeterias and corporations to boycott battery eggs. In Canada, the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA) and the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) are leading the charge to make life easier for the hardest working animal in agribusiness. In addition to publicizing the exposé of LEL Farms, they have: </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;">asked CFIA to adopt another EU policy and force retailers to label all battery eggs as “eggs from caged hens” and not greenwash such products with comfort words like “farm fresh” and “natural.” </span> </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;">launched a campaign to persuade foodsellers – beginning with grocery giant Loblaw (owner of the Real Canadian Superstore, Loblaws and other chains) – to voluntarily make these labelling changes and to sell at least 50 percent of their eggs from noncaged hens. To pressure Loblaw, CCFA and its members (which include the Winnipeg Humane Society and my own Eatkind.net) and allies (locally, AnimalWatch Manitoba and the Winnipeg Vegetarian Association) are distributing 100,000 “Put the Chicken Before the Egg” postcards to Canadians to send to Loblaw's president. The postcard can be seen on CCFA's website at humanefood.ca/docs/Loblaw-postcard.pdf and ordered free for bulk distribution from CCFA. </span> </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;">created a splashy educational website, chickenout.ca, and a scholarly monograph on battery egg production viewable at humanefood.ca. </span> </li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia;">launched an action alert email list on Canadian farm animal welfare issues. (To subscribe, send your name and email address to John Youngman, jcy@mts.net.) </span> </li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">There are kinder alternatives to battery eggs. The best places to find them are natural foodstores and other conscientious sellers, such as those listed in The Aquarian's “Ethical Food Market” (aquarianonline.com/guide.htm). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Knowing how to read labels is key. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">If the label says “free run” and the egg producer follows the Recommended Code of Practice, the hens live indoors with access to nesting boxes. But they may “run” on as little as a square foot (144 square inches) of space per bird on a litterless, wire grid floor in flocks of thousands. With so many birds so densely housed, these free run hens may also need to have their beaks trimmed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">If the label says “free range” and the producer follows the Code, the hens are free run (as above) with access to a well-protected outdoor area. But that access can consist of a single “pop-hole” in a barn full of thousands of hens that leads onto a tiny, grassless paddock. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Short of firsthand information about a particular egg farm, the best assurance of humane animal care is third-party certification, whether certified organic, certified humane or both. Eggs that are certified organic by the Organic Producers Association of Manitoba (OPAM) or the USDA come from farms that must provide their hens a “sufficiently” generous free-range lifestyle. Unfortunately, the requirements are general – “sufficient room to move around,” “sufficient fresh air and daylight” – and make no mention of specific needs, such as nests and perches.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Humane-society certified eggs are available in Manitoba and at least one other province, BC. Hens that lay WHS Certified (Winnipeg Humane Society) eggs must have at least two square feet (576 square inches) each, uncaged of course, and while outdoor access isn't required, “birds should be able to engage in natural behaviors such as dust bathing, wing flapping, preening, perching and nesting” with “access to well maintained litter.” Beak trimming is allowed if “all other efforts to control problem behavior have proven unsuccessful.” Nature's Farm, a Steinbach company, produces two lines of WHS Certified eggs: “Free Run” and “Organic Omega3.” According to the company's website, the hens live in “free-run ‘birdhouse’ aviaries....[that] incorporate natural features such as sheltered, darkened nest boxes, scratching and dustbathing areas, and elevated multi-level perches that enable the birds to roost, fly freely, and to ‘populate’ the vertical dimension of the birdhouse.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Unfortunately, even the most humanely produced commercial eggs involve needless killing of the newborn male chicks and the laying hens when they are no longer productive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Arguably, the only truly humane eggs come from backyard flocks or sanctuaries where the birds, like companion animals, are treated kindly all their natural lives. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Aquarian co-editor <b>Syd Baumel</b> is a known animal rights activist with close ties to the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals, AnimalWatch Manitoba, the Winnipeg Vegetarian Association, Eatkind.net and the Winnipeg Humane Society.</span></i></div>
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Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-56420817989762046292013-04-16T18:37:00.000-07:002013-04-17T09:44:01.444-07:00Ethical Eating, circa 2003This is an editorial I wrote for <a href="http://http//www.aquarianonline.com"><i>The Aquarian</i></a> back in the fall of 2003. As far as I can tell, it's one of the first times the term "ethical eating" was used to describe the then nascent movement. It was also the theme of the issue. Recently, <i>The Aquarian</i>'s website was overhauled. Very little pre-2008 content made the transition, including my precious editorial! For now, at least, this will be its new forever home online.<br />
SB<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Aquarian, Fall 2003</span></i></div>
<span style="font-size: x-large;">Ethical Eating </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It's time to extend our sphere
of moral concern to include
the lives that sustain us</span><br />
<br />
By Syd Baumel, Editor<br />
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A little over a year ago, two years into my transition from mild-mannered vegetarian to in-your-face vegan, I came to the conclusion that most people don't want to buy what I have to sell. I was failing in my would-be mission as an advocate for the nearly 50 billion farm animals slaughtered every year around the world. The goal posts of vegetarianism, much less vegansim, were set far too high for most people – and some questioned the goal itself.<br />
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Might there be a better way, I wondered, for my ethical vegetarian colleagues and I to reach the resistant masses? It has always been anguishingly obvious to people like us that most nonvegetarians do love animals; yet . . . they still eat them.<br />
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I found myself meditating on this challenge at the lake that summer, and quickly a vision of another strategy took shape.<br />
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<i>Compromise. Tell people any change is better than no change at all. </i><br />
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Get people and organizations of influence – movie stars, political and spiritual leaders, scientists, intellectuals – to speak up with one voice for ethical eating. Reframe the message from all-or-nothing veganism to anything-is-better-than-nothingism and the-more-the-betterism. As I was later to write in <a href="http://www.io.com/~mvb/cats/lobsterhorror.htm">a letter to The New York Times Magazine</a>, the opposite kind of all-or-nothing reasoning by the magazine's food columnist – that "if you cannot be merciful to all edible animals, you needn't be merciful to any" – "is a recipe for moral indifference. Every act of mercy is a sufficient act of kindness unto itself."<br />
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In other words, I wanted myself, my activist colleagues, and others not yet even involved in this inclusive mass movement to send people an alternative message about food: you don't have to be ethical all the time (or according to other people's standards) to be ethical. You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to be a good guy – indeed, even the Dalai Lama eats meat every other day.*<br />
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You're probably not a vegetarian either. Only about 4% of Canadians are. But I bet you're concerned about issues related to your dietary choices – issues like protecting the environment, supporting farmers and other people in the food production chain, being kind to animals, and eliminating world hunger.<br />
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Perhaps you're buying organic food more often because it's better for the environment, for farmers and public health, and typically for animals too.
Perhaps you're eating more humane-certified, free range, or grazed/pastured animal products because you believe any animal that puts food on your table ought to be treated with at least a little compassion.<br />
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Perhaps you oppose genetically modified crops because you believe they pose a threat to biodiversity – and therefore to the world's food security – or because you worry that GMOs threaten public health.<br />
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Perhaps you drink fair trade coffee or tea or eat fair trade chocolate so as not to support the exploitation of impoverished farmers in the developing world – even <a href="http://www.stopchildlabor.org/internationalchildlabor/chocolate.htm">child slaves, in the case of chocolate</a>.<br />
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Perhaps you give generously to aid agencies or donate to food banks so that others can eat too.<br />
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If you do any of these things, you're part of a burgeoning, spontaneous, and so far nameless movement (I would call it the ethical eating movement, a subset of ethical consumerism) of people who strive to eat not just what's good for number one, but what's good for everyone. You are extending your sphere of moral interest to include the very food chain that sustains you. You are co-authoring a new chapter in the moral awakening of humanity. Ethical eating, like ethical living, is not about absolutes. It's about doing the best you're willing and able to do – and nurturing a will to keep doing better.<br />
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This issue of <i>The Aquarian</i> encompasses much of the spectrum of complementary and conflicting views about ethical eating.<br />
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In "Elk Spirit," Michele Murray expresses a conviction shared by many that a spiritual communion between human predator and animal prey sanctifies the eating of meat "to live another day."<br />
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In a letter to the editor, Bettie Malofie, whose love of animals prevents her from thinking of killing the spent egg-laying hens in her small, home-based sanctuary, undergirds that position with her view that it's hard for people to be healthy on a vegan diet. Speaking personally, I have yet to meet or hear of an "at-death's-door vegan" (to use Malofie's vivid expression) who had also taken care to ensure an adequate dietary and/or supplemental intake of the nutrients that can be low or absent on an animal-free diet (the usual suspects: vitamin B12, vitamin D, iron, zinc, protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and carnitine; omnivores are more likely to be deficient in such nutrients as folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin K, and fibre, and to eat too much saturated fat, retinol, and cholesterol). My own "at death's door" experience as a vegan (a couple weeks of profound, chronic energy failure) was promptly cured by a vegetarian-source supplement of carnitine, a nonessential nutrient found mostly in red meat. I consider this a very small price to pay (though I have to mail-order it from the US!) and am no more bothered by its "unnaturalness" than I am by central heating or reading glasses.<br />
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Also in this Food for Thought issue, Michele Murray's deeply felt refrain about eating prey "so we can live another day" finds its opposite echo in vegan ex-cattle rancher Howard Lyman's avowal that "the thing that gives me the greatest joy in the world is to be able to say to you that no animal has to die for me to live."<br />
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What would <i>The Aquarian</i>'s advice columnist Ajna have to say about such conflicting views among ethical eaters? I asked her. She answered thoughtfully; but, being the editor, I muscled in with my own answer too (call me "Ahimsa"). Perhaps you would have answered differently. Or maybe you have other views about ethical eating that you'd like to share. Send them to us. We need to talk about this.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*The Dalai Lama tried being a vegetarian in the 1960s, <a href="http://www.tibet.ca/wtnarchive/1996/9/20_2.html">developed jaundice</a> (hepatitis), and was ordered by his doctors to eat meat again. This is not known to be a complication of vegetarianism and may have been coincidental or the result of an unbalanced vegetarian diet: <a href="http://www.satyamag.com/july99/sat.60.edit.html">reportedly</a>, the Dalai Lama had subsisted mostly on nuts and milk. In <a href="http://www.ivu.org/oxveg/Talks/longtermhealthveg.html">large, controlled, long-term studies</a>, vegetarians and vegans have tended to be slightly healthier and possibly longer-lived than comparable nonvegetarians. The American Dietetic Association and the Dietitians of Canada have <a href="http://www.eatright.org/Public/Media/16041.cfm">consistently endorsed</a> the safety and healthfulness of a well-planned vegetarian or vegan diet. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>UPDATE, December 2004</b>: In a <a href="http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/magazine/dalai.htm"><i>Reader's Digest</i> interview</a> this year, The Dalai Lama said he is now entirely vegetarian, except when he's on the road. "My kitchen is now totally vegetarian," he said. "But when I visit places, occasionally I take non-vegetarian..."</span>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-39585416870428999312010-09-16T20:12:00.000-07:002010-09-16T20:17:26.190-07:00Farmuseum Raided: Meat Trafficking SuspectedSeptember 16, 2036<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Farmuseum Raided: Meat Trafficking Suspected</span><br /><br />By Justin Terranova, The Canadian Press<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">WINNIPEG</span> - Residents of a quiet Winnipeg suburb are in shock today after police raided a Registered Farm Animal Preserve, uncovering evidence of an illegal meat trafficking operation.<br /><br />Police were tipped off by an unidentified employee of the Crescentwood Heritage Farm Animal Preserve and Education Centre, one of 175 nationally accredited farmuseums in Canada.<br /><br />“We discovered a hidden onsite abattoir and the remains of at least half a dozen animals, including cows, pigs and poultry,” said Winnipeg police spokesperson Darius McIntyre. “Our informant claims the meat is being sold into the illegal meat market, and we are vigorously pursuing her lead.”<br /><br />Cassandra Chernowski has lived near the Crescentwood centre since 2029. “This is a cherished family place, a wonderful farmuseum where my children have spent many, many happy hours with some of nature’s dearest creatures," Chernowski said. "I am so sickened that some of these animals were being murdered for their meat.”<br /><br />Non-medicinal meat has been illegal in Canada since 2025 when parliament passed Bill 725, banning the killing of animals for food or fibre, except for medical necessity, subsistence or survival. Although a dozen small medicinal meat farms were licensed by the federal government, only a handful remain.<br /><br />“Because of the health adequacy for most Canadians of meat, fish, dairy and egg substitutes, nutritional supplements and medicinal eggs and dairy products from no-kill farmuseums, only seven animals were legally killed for meat in Canada last year,” the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in a statement released today.<br /><br />In the United States, which passed similar legislation in 2024, 37 animals were legally killed for meat last year. Worldwide, the number of countries where the non-medicinal production of meat is still legal has shrunk to 24. In 2029, the historic Animal Rights and Welfare Declaration of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly condemned the practice, although the declaration is not yet legally binding.<br /><br />Since 2029, processed human waste, or humanure, has become the most widely used agricultural fertilizer in Canada and most other countries, all but replacing animal-based fertilizer and largely replacing artificial fertilizers, too, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.<br /><br />“We used to buy eggs from the Crescentwood farmuseum every Christmas,” said Ms. Chernowski. “They’re very expensive, but my grandparents love them. We always assumed the hens were lovingly cared for. But now... The children are so upset.”Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-47352504193611193552009-12-06T15:48:00.000-08:002009-12-06T16:21:48.561-08:00Humane HumanureOne of the foundational arguments for animal farming is that livestock provide free, organic manure - manure that even vegans need if they want their foods to be organically produced. The argument is especially key among advocates of organic animal farming. While I support humane organic animal farms (not all are particularly humane, but they exist and I've visited some of them) as an alternative to factory farms, I don't accept the argument about manure.<br /><br />For one thing, nitrogen-rich cover crops can be used as "green manure." That may or may not be as efficient as tapping into the brown manure of a mixed farming system. But no one can argue that we already are sitting on a vast reserve of untapped animal manure. Our own.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1945764,00.html">A story last week in <span style="font-style: italic;">Time Magazine</span></a> is a fresh (no crude wordplay intended) update on the status of the "humanure" alternative, with the emphasis on its use in urban gardening. There's no reason, however, why modest technological innovations couldn't efficiently convey vast quantities of humanure from town to country in order to reduce agriculture's dependence both on artificial fertilizers and on the manure of captive food animals.<br /><br />In my humanure-powered vegan utopia, all those farm animals we've loved since childhood still exist. Indeed they thrive as never before. That's because we breed them in small numbers on no-kill farms where we can visit and appreciate them alive, not dead, and even enjoy their milk, eggs, wool and skins, because now we come by these animal products nonviolently instead of in the abusive and murderous ways we did before.Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-35213485421291948882008-12-18T13:49:00.000-08:002008-12-18T15:50:17.900-08:00Gone YouTubeOver the past few years I've created and been involved in the making of a number of films and videos, most of them centering on the subject of this blog. A few days ago, I began uploading my videos to YouTube. You can access them from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/homersimpsonIV">here</a>. <div><br /></div><div>The one below is most apropos the holiday season. It's a none-too-subtle attempt to get viewers to take a pass on foods borne of animal abuse during this "good will to men" time of year ... and all year (New Year's resolution, anyone?). The great <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Albert Schweitzer</span> - a deeply spiritual Christian whose Christmas celebrations likely were vegetarian or very close to it - famously said:<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;"></span><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace."</span> (Pardon the sexist language. This is an <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">old </span>quote.)</blockquote></div><div>Extending our circle of compassion to animals who are so much like us and who are barely distinguishable from our companion animals is what this video is about. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to watch YouTube's highest quality stream of the video (recommended - it's <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">much </span>better), please view it directly on YouTube, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxpr-6WztTo">here</a>, and select "watch in high quality" at the bottom right, below the video.</div><div><br /><div><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wxpr-6WztTo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wxpr-6WztTo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></div></div></div>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-24261526608771906332008-12-08T13:12:00.000-08:002008-12-09T13:51:39.212-08:00Take a bite out of the global grain crunch<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >In his latest column, the ever insightful progressive Canadian columnist <a href="http://www.gwynnedyer.com/">Gwynne Dyer</a> sounds the alarm about a potentially catastrophic global grain crunch brought on by climate </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zxxkALfnCKU/ST2VEDuUkzI/AAAAAAAAAAw/Udzv4fAp8Yk/s1600-h/Dyer.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 165px; height: 210px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zxxkALfnCKU/ST2VEDuUkzI/AAAAAAAAAAw/Udzv4fAp8Yk/s320/Dyer.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277538235299697458" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >change.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >To my pleasant surprise, the ever environmentally regressive editors of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >Winnipeg Free Press</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span><a style="font-family: georgia; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" href="http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/Its_worse_than_you_think.html">published</a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" > Dyer's column </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >today</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" >. I couldn't resist sending a letter to the editor pointing out a solution to the grain crisis which Dyer didn't mention:</span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Re: "It's worse than you think," Dec 7</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >The simplest, most sensible thing we can do to take a crippling bite out of the global grain crunch is to eat less meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals – or eat none at all. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Currently nearly 40 per cent of global grain production is fed to farmed animals, squandering eight pounds of plant protein (on average) to produce one pound of animal protein. </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >It's not that the animals should be denied their food. Most of them, born and raised in confined feeding operations, or factory farms, would be better off having never been born at all. It is we who breed them into a world of pain.</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >By eating more grains and beans instead of meat, eggs and milk, we can achieve four social goods: </span> </p> <ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;"><li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span lang="en-CA"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Make more grain available to the global poor at cheaper prices. </span></span></span></span></span> </p> </li><li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;" lang="en-CA"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Improve human health and longevity (as the research shows). </span> </p> </li><li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span lang="en-CA"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Reduce global warming (livestock production generates far more greenhouse gases than plant production). </span></span></span></span></span> </p> </li><li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" ><span lang="en-CA"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And save animals from the abuse that is the hallmark of modern livestock production. </span></span></span></span></span> </p> </li></ul> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" >Syd Baumel</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:georgia;font-size:100%;" ><br />Winnipeg</span>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-65748903228696404262008-12-03T15:43:00.000-08:002008-12-03T16:03:16.272-08:00Prop 2 for Canada long overdue<span style="font-size:85%;">Originally published in <a href="http://aquarianonline.com/">The Aquarian</a>, Winter 2008</span><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"><span style="font-size:150;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >A Modest Proposition</span><br /></span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"><i>California has illegalized cruelty to farm animals. Why can't we?</i></span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">By SYD BAUMEL</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">It wasn't just hope that got a new lease on life on November 4<sup>th</sup>. As California voters clinched the deal for Barack Obama, they also voted nearly two to one to ban some of the most unconscionable acts of animal cruelty. (Ironically, they voted against gay marriage while they were at it.)</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">Thanks to the passage of Proposition 2:<i> The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act</i>, on January 1, 2015 it will no longer be legal in the Governator state to house sows in cages barely bigger than their bodies, to stuff egg-laying hens into cages so crowded they can't even stretch their wings or to lock baby calves into closet-sized stalls for the rest of their lives as veal-in-waiting.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">Thank God Californians have finally caught up to Canada, eh! </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">Well – not so fast. It's we who have to catch up to California, not to mention several smaller states that have passed similar legislation ... and the entire European Union. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">Remarkably, the country that thinks of itself as a bastion of progressivism, a gentle, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly neighbour to the land of sharp elbows, still issues “Recommended Codes of Practice” to the livestock industry that condone everything California just banned. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">It gets worse. While the EU imposes a limit of 8 hours on the amount of time farm animals can be transported without water on their way to auction or slaughter, and the United States thinks 28 hours without food, drink or rest is as bad as it should get, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) clings to antediluvian legislation that says it's just fine to haul farm animals in unheated, un-air-conditioned trucks through whatever weather Canada can throw at them for up to 52 hours without any relief: no food, no water, no rest stop. (The 52-hour limit is for cows and other ruminants. Non-ruminants like pigs, poultry and horses, have it good: they only have to endure 36 hours. Millions of these animals are exported to the U.S. and sometimes farther. When they cross the border, the clock is reset to zero.)</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">The Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals (CCFA) – the closest thing our hundreds of millions of farm critters have to a lobbyist in Ottawa – has been trying to buttonhole our national Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food about these matters, but Gerry Ritz, they say, only has time for the industry that mistreats the animals. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span lang="en-CA">Mr. Ritz has no apparent interest in promoting the welfare of farm animals,” CCFA stated in a news release a couple days after California passed Proposition 2. “His department’s new five-year, $1.3 billion agriculture policy, </span><span lang="en-CA"><i>Growing Forward Framework Agreement</i></span><span lang="en-CA">, includes no reference to animal welfare.”</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">If Ritz won't listen to a coalition of humane societies (including Winnipeg's) and other animal welfare groups, perhaps he'll listen directly to voters. That's what CCFA hopes. “To ask him how he is planning to improve conditions for farm animals in Canada,” they suggest, “call 613.995.7080 or visit www.gerryritz.com.”</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">Here in Manitoba, the Winnipeg Humane Society's Quit Stalling campaign has tried for years to get our provincial leaders to ban the use of 2 x 7 foot cages as living quarters for hundreds of thousands of pregnant sows (one of the practices to be outlawed in California). They too are finding that Ritz's provincial counterpart, Rosann Wowchuk, has a tin ear for farm animal cruelty. Perhaps she'll take the issue seriously if you call her at work at 945-3722. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA">While we're waiting for our leaders to figure out if cruelty to farm animals is an issue worth bothering about, we all can vote for Proposition 2 by refusing to eat anything that is the product of legalized animal cruelty.<br /></p><br /><i>Aquarian co-editor Syd Baumel is a cofounder of AnimalWatch Manitoba and the publisher of Eatkind.net. Both are members of the Canadian Coalition for Farm Animals. </i><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"><b>LEARN MORE</b></p> <ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"><a href="http://animalwatch.ca/">animalwatch.ca</a></p> </li></ul> <ul><li><a href="http://quitstalling.ca/">quitstalling.ca</a></li></ul> <ul><li><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://humanefood.ca/">humanefood.ca</a> (CCFA)</p> </li></ul> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;" lang="en-CA"><br /></p>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5839729781607503855.post-2925336083697193862007-08-12T11:10:00.000-07:002007-08-12T12:15:37.574-07:00A sustainable harvest for Central America<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >While the developed world is increasingly embracing sustainable agriculture and ethical eating, a nagging worry is that the developing world – where agriculture is growing at a much faster pace – will continue to imitate the unsustainable Western industrial model: factory farms, vast monocrops addicted to petrochemical inputs, and so on. (It's a lot like the climate change predicament where countries like China and India threaten to become the new global centres of dirty coal power production – especially if certain Western superpowers continue to build new coal plants themselves.) </span><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; font-family: georgia;" lang="en-US"> </p> <p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;font-family:georgia;" lang="en-US"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Last month, I received an email from<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style=""> Jessica Schessler,</span></span></span></span></span> a young American student who is interning this summer for Sustainable Harvest International, a small nonprofit organization that is trying to buck this agricultural trend. I asked Jessica (that's her below, drinking - I think it's a safe bet - a cup of fair-trade java) what motivated her to get involved with SHI. She replied:</span></p> <p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; font-family: georgia;" lang="en-US"> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zxxkALfnCKU/Rr9QPeGWicI/AAAAAAAAAAM/0lEpB4nfoKg/s1600-h/Jessica.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 245px; height: 285px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zxxkALfnCKU/Rr9QPeGWicI/AAAAAAAAAAM/0lEpB4nfoKg/s320/Jessica.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097881529914657218" border="0" /></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >“As a college</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" > student, I was looking for summer work and really wanted something different than retail, sales, etc.. I've always wanted to do something that made me feel like I made some sort of difference....Now, I've learned so much about what they do, about the environment, and about how we impact the world that I've started to change my everyday habits for the better. I certainly wouldn't expect all of that would've happened working fast food or customer service!”</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:georgia;"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Jessica asked me if she could write about SHI in the Ethical Eating blog. After visiting the SHI website and being very impressed with the kind of work they do (and their 4-star rating from Charity Navigator), I agreed. Here's what Jessica wrote:</span><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Becoming green and saving the environment has become quite the hot topic. Plenty of people and organizations try to remedy these issues at home and abroad as well, but where some fall short is making sure that the programs they place are not just good for the Earth, but for the people in the area as well. Sustainable Harvest International is heading straight for one source. This small non-profit organization “has worked with nearly 1,000 families and 900 students in Honduras, Panama, Belize and Nicaragua implementing alternatives to slash-and-burn farming, the leading cause of rainforest destruction in the region.” Malnutrition is a huge problem in this area of the world, and many vegetables are considered a luxury item. SHI teaches new farming </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);font-size:100%;" ><u><a href="http://www.sustainableharvest.org/techniques.cfm">techniques</a></u></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> to the local families, such as </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);font-size:100%;" ><u><a href="http://www.sustainableharvest.org/AlleyCropping.cfm">alley cropping, </a><a href="http://www.sustainableharvest.org/OrganicGardens.cfm">organic vegetable gardening</a></u></span><span style="font-size:100%;">, and seed saving and storage. </span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Since 1997, SHI has successfully:</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/52230845_d33a2beb67.jpg?v=0"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 251px; height: 376px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/30/52230845_d33a2beb67.jpg?v=0" alt="" border="0" /></a></p> <ul style="font-family:georgia;"><li><p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Planted more than 2,000,000 trees.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Converted 6,000 acres to sustainable uses, thereby saving 30,000 acres from slash-and-burn destruction.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Improved nutrition through the establishment of more than 200 organic vegetable gardens.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Increased farm income up to 800%.</span></p> </li><li><p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Built 165 wood-conserving stoves (saving 1,650 trees per year)</span></p> </li></ul> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Cruz Alcidez has worked with SHI for 5 months, “I began working with SHI because I wanted to learn new planting techniques and also to learn about sustainability. I am especially thankful to SHI because I now have timber-yielding trees that will remain forever on my farm. The benefits for my family are many, because SHI supplied me with many seeds including beans, cabbage, beets, and soy beans. As you know, this last one (soy) can be used to prepare a lot of different foods, including <i>cuajada,</i> a type of soy cheese, which is very nutritious for my family.”</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">What better way to stop slash and burn than with education in alternative farming techniques? SHI’s programs not only help out the farmers and their families, but the environment as well. </span></p> <p style="margin-top: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0.19in;font-family:georgia;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Now, did you know that it’s possible to eat yogurt, help these farmers, save forests, and get free organic chocolate and tea all at the same time? Stonyfield Farm is featuring SHI along with two other non-profits on their yogurt lids this summer. Vote for your favorite non-profit and help direct funds their way, while getting cool prizes!</span></p> <p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" lang="en-US"> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Visit </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);font-family:georgia;" ><u><a href="http://www.sustainableharvest.org/yogurt/">http://www.sustainableharvest.org/yogurt/</a></u></span><span style="font-family:georgia;"> for more information on SHI and Stonyfield’s “Bid With Your Lid” program.</span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; text-align: right;" lang="en-US"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;">Jessica Schessler</span></span></span></span></p><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; text-align: center;" lang="en-US">_______________________________<br /></p><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" lang="en-US">I do have to point out the irony that yogurt made from milk from nonorganic dairies is being used to promote and (hopefully) help finance the ethical agricultural efforts of SHI. Stonyfield Farm's yogurt is rBST-free, which means the cows in the dairies they source their milk from are not fed a growth hormone that would make them more productive at the expense of their health and well-being (and possibly the health of people who eat it). But those dairies aren't organic, which means the cows are probably treated as milk machines - <a href="http://www.aquarianonline.com/Wellness/HighPrice_brief.html">essentially slave labour</a>.<br /></p><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" lang="en-US">On the positive side, Stonyfield also offers organic yogurt. The cows in certified organic dairies are treated better and may even be treated very well in some, but most of their newborn calves are ripped away from them within days of birth to be sold to the veal industry - nothing pretty or respectful of life there. Much more hearteningly, Stonyfield's <span style="font-style: italic;">O'SOY </span>yogurt, which is made from organic soybeans and other organic ingredients, is also sporting a "bid with your lid" this summer. That one gets my bid.</p><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; text-align: right;" lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: italic;">Syd Baumel</span><br /></p><p style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;" lang="en-US"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,serif;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span> </span></span></span> </p>Syd Baumelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13591137559434848207noreply@blogger.com2