Tag Archives: factory farms

Animal Issues

There will be a (vegan) revolution in the new year … and … 3 so-easy veggie pasta dishes by Chef Joey

By Heather Moore

It’s time for a vegan revolution!

I mean … resolution. Each new year, countless people resolve to lose weight and eat healthfully, but many find themselves no thinner—or healthier—in July than they were in January. Perhaps this year, everyone should put some stock in the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ (AND) new position paper on vegetarian and vegan eating and resolve to ditch meat, eggs and dairy foods.

The updated AND paper, which was published in December, confirms that wholesome vegan foods “are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.” It specifically points out that people who eat plant-based meals are less likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.

According to the authors, people who go vegan reduce their risk of developing diabetes by a whopping 62 percent, of being hospitalized for a heart attack by 33 percent, of suffering from heart disease by 29 percent and of succumbing to any form of cancer by 18 percent. Men can reduce their chance of developing prostate cancer by 35 percent just by eating vegan.

And in case you weren’t listening the first time they said it, the AND reiterated its assertion that a vegan lifestyle is suitable—even beneficial—for everyone, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, babies, children, adults, athletes and your third cousin, twice removed.

And that’s not to mention anyone who professes to care about animals or the environment.

The report even includes information on the environmental aspects of eating vegan. Susan Levin, one of the report’s authors, acknowledges that the AND’s expertise is in nutrition but says that it’s impossible to ignore the evidence proving that plant-based foods are better for the planet. Research has shown that if everyone ate a plant-based diet, it would cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent and save 8 million human lives by 2050.

Going vegan spares countless animals, too, so it’s the right thing to do from an ethical standpoint. And not to sound like a teenager, but everyone is doing it. According to a Harris Interactive study, there are nearly 4 million adult vegans in the U.S. alone (and even more vegetarians). More and more companies now offer plant-based options in order to meet the growing demand. Ben & Jerry’s, for example, introduced four vegan ice cream flavors in 2016, and Unilever, maker of Hellmann’s and Best Foods, recently introduced its own nondairy mayo spread—after previously suing another company that makes vegan mayonnaise for alleged false advertising, because it argued at the time that mayonnaise must contain eggs.

In late 2016, Tyson Foods, Inc.—the largest U.S. meat company by sales—invested in Beyond Meat, a company that makes vegan meats. It was a smart move: The vegan-meat market is projected to reach $5.2 billion globally by 2020.

So, yeah, I guess a vegan revolution is taking place—an innovative one at that. A few months ago, a meat-free gastropub opened in Miami, and the city is getting a vegan butcher in early 2017. It won’t even be the nation’s first—The Herbivorous Butcher opened in Minneapolis in January 2016. A popular Mexican restaurant in Dallas made news when it switched to serving all-vegan fare, and North Dakota recently got its first vegan restaurant.

Out with the old and in with the new, as they say. If you want to turn over a new leaf, resolve to go vegan in 2017. And if you need help—and extra inspiration—check out Jackie Day’s new book, The Vegan Way. It includes 21 days’ worth of tips and encouragement that will help you be a happy, healthy vegan.

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InCityYumYumsFinal225x300
“recipes,” photos and cutlines by Chef Joey

Three vegetarian pasta dishes

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Butter and mushrooms on spinach pasta

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Tomatoes and mushrooms on spinach pasta

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Butter, mushrooms and sage on gluten-free noodles

Animal Issues

Great NYT column!

WE NEED LAWS THAT WILL ENSURE MASS AND US FARM ANIMALS ARE HOUSED/TREATED HUMANELY!   – R.T.

Animal Cruelty or the Price of Dinner?

By Nicholas Kristof

THIS month a man in Orlando, Fla., dangled a dog by the scruff of its neck over a second-floor balcony, threatening to drop it 12 feet to the ground.

Onlookers intervened and tried to rescue the dog. Someone posted a video of the dangling dog on Facebook, and the clip went viral. Galvanized by public outrage, the police combed the area and on Tuesday announced that a 23-year-old man named Ransom May II had been arrested on a charge of cruelty to animals. The arrest made news nationwide.

Meanwhile, in the United States this year, almost nine billion chickens will be dangled upside down on conveyor belts and slaughtered; when the process doesn’t work properly, the birds are scalded alive.

Hmm. So scaring one dog stirs more reaction than far worse treatment of billions of chickens.

Look, I don’t believe in reincarnation. But if I’m wrong, let’s hope you and I are fated to come back as puppies and not as chickens.

CLICK HERE to read the entire column!

Animal Issues

In 2016, eat like you mean it!

By Jennifer Bates
 
2016 is here, and if you’re like millions of others, you’re looking for a way to start the new year off right. You’re mulling over a diet to lose those holiday pounds or finally quitting a bad habit.

But what if your resolution were something life-changing and life-affirming? What if your resolution positively affected not just your life but the lives of millions? What if you finally went vegan in 2016?
 
You care how animals are treated. You may even have an animal in your life you love dearly. You hate the thought of dogs in China bludgeoned and skinned to make leather. You can’t stand hearing about cats who are tortured and killed by cruel people.
 
You likely already know that animals raised for their flesh, eggs and bodily secretions are intelligent and sensitive. Pigs can understand a simple language of symbols. Chickens can count and plan for the future, and cows play games with their friends.
 
And you probably also know that these animals are violently abused and traumatized from birth to death. Turkeys are bred to grow breasts so large that their legs often break under their own enormous weight. Farmed fish have to live in crowded, filthy enclosures full of their own waste. And each year, nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are still alive and conscious when they’re immersed in the scalding-hot water of feather-removal tanks.
 
But chances are, you still eat foods that come from animals. You tell yourself that it can’t be that bad.
 
For years I did this, too. I told myself that cows were happy as I downed their milk—milk that I had access to only because calves had been torn away from their mothers to be turned into veal or cheap beef. And, despite the fact that scientists have determined that fish do, in fact, feel pain, as all animals do, I told myself that they didn’t, even though I surely would’ve rushed to the aid of any fish who had washed up alive on the beach.
 
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that animals should have legal protection, and nearly 75 percent of us believe that we should work to eliminate all forms of cruelty to animals and animal suffering. We’re a nation of people who “love” animals.
 
But we’re also a nation of people who pay others to slaughter animals. We’re a nation of people who devour our “loves” at every meal.
 
As the number of Americans who say they care about animals increases, so, too, does the number of animals we eat. More than 9 billion land animals are raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. each year—and that figure doesn’t even include all the sea animals we eat. All told, we’re slaughtering billions more animals than we were 50 years ago.
 
What’s stopping us from bringing our dinner plates in line with our values? 
 
As shown by the countless compassionate people who have opted to say no to SeaWorld, bringing our actions in line with our values is nothing more than making a conscious decision to change.
 
We all make dozens of decisions every day, many of which give us the opportunity to choose kindness. In the grocery store, you already swing by the dairy aisle—try adding almond milk, nondairy coffee creamer and soy cheese to your cart instead of milk-based foods. In the frozen food section, pick up vegan chicken tenders and veggie burgers instead of animal-based ones. Try beans and tofu, squash and mushrooms, rice, pasta, fruit and salads. The animal-free options are endless, not to mention healthier—and delicious. 
 
Will 2016 be the year you start eating in line with your values? Your new beginning is just a grocery store away.

Animal Issues

Calves are born into a world of abuse

I’ve made some sections bold. -R.T.

By Dan Paden
 
Many consumers don’t realize (probably because they’ve never really thought about it) that cows produce milk for the same reason that human mothers do: to feed their babies.

Given the opportunity, cows are excellent mothers. They’re smart, sensitive animals, and their maternal instinct is just as strong as ours.
 
But on dairy farms, they are repeatedly impregnated and then forced to watch helplessly as their terrified babies — whom they carry for nine months, just like us — are torn away from them again and again.

In order to squeeze as much milk as possible out of them, dairy farms keep them almost constantly pregnant. They give birth to calf after calf, year in and year out.
 
This is just one reason why PETA urges consumers to ditch dairy products. Our latest eyewitness exposé of the dairy industry provides several more.
 
Daisy Farms, a Texas-based milk supplier to Daisy Brand sour cream and cottage cheese—which can be found in supermarkets all over the U.S.—claims that it has the “best cared-for cows on the planet.” It refers to them as “princesses,” “queens,” “our babies” and “our pets.” 
 
But after receiving a disturbing tip from a whistleblower who reported that many calves on this farm were visibly ill—coughing, trembling and/or unable to stand—we took a look ourselves and found that Daisy Farms is just a plain old, run-of-the-mill factory farm.
 
The cows are confined to massive sheds and some had no choice but to stand and lie down in their own waste.

PETA’s eyewitness saw workers put a rope around one cow’s head and pull her off a resting area. She slipped and fell on her udder on the slick feces-coated floor before being led away to be milked. 
 
Cows were kicked, whipped and jabbed with pens and a knife—even while they were in labor.

Workers twisted their tails, which can cause the animals severe pain and even break the bones inside.

Two cows with severe lacerations on their tails were not treated by a veterinarian, to the knowledge of PETA’s observer, including one whose wound was seen bleeding more than three weeks after her tail was severed.

Some sick cows were finally shot, while others were killed by injection to induce a heart attack—while they were fully conscious.
 
When cows at this farm had difficulty giving birth, workers used chains to drag their calves out of their wombs, causing them to cry out and defecate. The calves were not even allowed to nurse, because their mothers’ milk is sold for human consumption. Instead, they are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth. Some are force-fed milk taken from another cow. Several newborn calves drowned when workers shoved tubes down their throats and milk was forced into their lungs instead of their stomachs.
 
Newborn calves also had holes punched into their ears and numbered tags clamped onto them, and their heads were smeared with a caustic paste to destroy their sensitive horn tissue—all without any painkillers. Nearly all cows born on dairy farms have tissue that will develop into horns if left alone, but most are cruelly “dehorned”—either via caustic paste, as in this case, or by other harsh methods such as gouging out the tissue with a sharp metal scoop as they struggle and cry out in pain.
 
When cows’ bodies wear out from constant pregnancy or lactation—after about five years—they are slaughtered.
PETA has said it before, but it’s worth repeating: The only way to ensure that no animals suffer for your sour cream, cheese, milk, ice cream and yogurt is to go vegan. By choosing kinder, plant-based options, like almond and soy milk, vegan cheese and sour cream, coconut-milk coffee creamer and cashew-milk ice cream, we can let animals live in peace.

Animal Issues, InCity Feature

Wanna lose the fat? Feel healthier? Go veggie! Within a year you’ll lose 20 pounds – without even trying!

And you’ll be oh so proud of yourself knowing you’re not part of the factory farm hell where animals live in tortuous conditions, before being slaughtered. Why kill all those animals just to clog up your arteries and raise your cholesterol level? Why induce all that SUFFERING when there are so many protein-rich foods to put on your plate?!

Here’s a two-week veggie starter plan for you! Click on the days of the week in the blue bars and the blue words to see the yummy recipes and learn more!

And if you can’t make a 100% commitment, CUT BACK on your meat/ poultry consumption!  Every good deed counts/saves an animal!

From PETA.ORG

– R. T.

 

Two-Week Vegan Meal Plan

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Do you consider yourself “culinarily challenged”? Well, no worries! Our Two-Week Sample Vegan Menus below are designed for new vegans who are not sure what to eat and for longtime vegans who are looking to shake up their current diet and try something new. The recommendations focus on two types of dishes: easy-to-prepare meals with a balance of fresh ingredients and tasty heat-and-serve options.

Week 1

Monday

Breakfast

Oatmeal with walnuts and raisins (most commercial oatmeal is vegan)
Fresh fruit

Lunch

Avocado Reuben
Sumptuous Spinach Salad With Orange-Sesame Dressing

Dinner

Tofu-Spinach Lasagne
Fresh tossed salad

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Week 2

Print the Two-Week Sample Vegan Menus.

Want more options? Check out these resources from PETA:

How to Go Vegan

Accidentally Vegan

Our Favorite Products

Making the Transition

VegGuide.org

Snacks

Try these delicious vegan options or check out our shopping guide for other great suggestions.

 

Animal Issues

Milk makes you fat and doesn’t live up to its nutritional hype

CAM00343
 A blast from the past! This milk bottle and m b caddy can be had for a song at UNIQUE FINDS ANTIQUE AND VINTAGE GIFTS SHOP, 1329 Main St., Worcester. Open until 7 p.m. seven days a week! Great shop bursting with funky treasures! BEST PRICES!  – R.T.

By Michelle Kretzer

Let’s just clear this up: No one needs to drink cow’s milk. Ever.

It’s a calorie-rich, nutrient-poor beverage that’s been linked to numerous illnesses, and consuming it hurts both humans and bovine mothers.

So what about all the health claims for milk that we’ve been hearing ever since we could walk? The story of milk seems to have involved a lot of whitewashing:

During the dairy surplus of World War I, the “Dairy Division” of the Department of Agriculture began promoting milk in order to increase consumption. It worked.

Since then, our understanding of the impact of cow’s milk on human health has improved greatly. But the dairy industry is still spending millions of dollars every year to promote milk as a health food through a powerful lobby, the educational materials it sends to schools, and ads on TV, in print and online. And that incomplete and misleading information causes problems for parents and kids.

Despite the hype, cow’s milk actually robs our bones of calcium. Animal protein produces acids when broken down, and since calcium is an excellent acid neutralizer, you can see where this is going. Our bodies can use the calcium in milk, but they also take some from our own body stores to neutralize the acid before it’s eliminated. So every glass of milk we drink leaches calcium from our bones.

The dairy industry also promotes milk as a source of vitamin D, but this nutrient doesn’t occur in milk naturally and is only added later, in the same way that soy milk, orange juice, and cereals, bread and other grain products are fortified.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reports that milk has also been linked to colic, anemia, food allergies and digestive problems. And since cow’s milk is designed to suit the nutritional needs of calves, who gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, it also encourages the development of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

And dairy farming isn’t kind to bovine mothers or their calves, either.

Cows produce milk for the same reason that human women do: to feed their babies.

In order to make mother cows keep producing milk, dairy farmers repeatedly artificially inseminate them and then take their babies away from them within 24 hours, which traumatizes them both. Female calves are killed immediately or are fed milk replacers (so that humans can steal the milk meant for them) and sentenced to the same fate as their mothers. Male calves are often sold to the veal industry, where they’re chained inside tiny stalls and kept anemic so their flesh will stay pale.

Cows have been known to escape from their enclosures and travel for miles trying to find their missing babies. One cow, Clarabelle, was just hours away from being slaughtered after her milk production had waned when she was rescued by a sanctuary. The sanctuary’s volunteers soon discovered that Clarabelle was pregnant. This loving mother had had her babies taken away from her so many times that this time, when she gave birth at the sanctuary, she hid her calf in a tall patch of grass a distance away. Of course, no one took that baby away. But the story for most cows on dairy farms doesn’t have a happy ending.

With mounting evidence that milk is a product of cruelty that actually does a body bad, it’s not surprising that consumption has dropped by 25 percent since 1975.

Nondairy milks, such as soy, rice, almond and coconut milks, meanwhile, have been flying off the shelves, averaging annual sales growth of 10.9 percent since 1999.

Many nondairy options are fortified with calcium and other vitamins, and several offer a lot of protein with fewer calories than dairy milk.

And of course, they’re all free of the saturated fat, cholesterol and cruelty associated with dairy products.

Uncategorized

We don’t give a fig about football …

… so we’ll be taking a road trip to eat a yummy late lunch. But we do give a fig about animal rights. … If you’re into Tim Brady and amigos and are gonna throw a party, why not forgo the meat and try some healthy veggie eats, courtesy of PETA.ORG?

Before we get to the snacks … here are some NFL players who love and stand up for animals!

From PETA:

We’re this close to the Super Bowl, and football is on everyone’s minds. So we thought we’d satiate our yard-line yearnings with a look at some of the super studs who are scoring one for animals. PETA’s brand-new compilation video features gridiron guys who show no mercy to their opponents or to animal abusers.

Take it from some of the toughest guys around: Real men are kind to animals.

CLICK HERE to see PETA’S FAVE NFL PLAYERS! 

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YUM YUMS

CLICK HERE to see all the recipes!

 Perfect Vegan Pizza

Vegan Fried Chicken Sandwiches

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog, Uncategorized

Labor Day cook-outs on the horizon …

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… Let’s skip the animal torture (American factory farms – where most of our meat comes from) this long weekend.

Here are the 10 Best Vegan BBQ Recipes from PETA … CLICK HERE to see them!

(remember: you can click on the link to the right, on this website and find – PETA.ORG where you’ll see more recipes, stories, videos etc from this remarkable orgnization. Go, PETA, go!

– R. Tirella

Uncategorized

Breeding bacteria on factory farms

From The New York Times. – R. T.

By MARK BITTMAN

The story of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in farm animals is not a simple one. But here’s the pitch version: Yet another study has reinforced the idea that keeping animals in confinement and feeding them antibiotics prophylactically breeds varieties of bacteria that cause disease in humans, disease that may not readily be treated by antibiotics. Since some of these bacteria can be fatal, that’s a scary combination.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are bad enough, but now there are more kinds; they’re better at warding off attack by antibiotics; and they can be transferred to humans by increasingly varied methods. The situation is demonstrably dire.

Two of the examples highlighted in a Food and Drug Administration report are that about 10 percent of all chicken breasts sold at retail are contaminated with a form of salmonella that’s resistant to at least one antibiotic, and nearly half of all chicken that’s sold is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant campylobacter. Some of the antibiotics in question are used to treat sick people but are also used daily in raising livestock. And it seems that these livestock, especially ones raised by contemporary industrial means, are a breeding ground for making these and other bacteria more resistant [1] . …

To read entire piece, click here!

 

 

 

 

 

InCity Letters, InCity Voices

Time to ban foie gras

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By Alisa Mullins

With California’s foie gras ban poised to take effect in less than two months, some of the Golden State’s chefs are scrambling to mount a last-minute campaign to overturn the ban. Birds raised for foie gras are force-fed up to 4 pounds of grain and fat every day via a pneumatic tube that is rammed down their throats—a process that former California Sen. John Burton colorfully describes as “doing the equivalent of waterboarding.”

California should uphold its ban on foie gras—and the rest of the U.S. should follow the state’s progressive lead.

Burton, who spearheaded California’s ban and built in a seven-year grace period specifically to allow California’s lone foie gras producer, Sonoma-Artisan Foie Gras, to come up with an alternative to force-feeding birds, has no patience for the chefs’ last-ditch appeal.

“They’ve had all this time to figure it out and come up with a more humane way,” he said. “I’d like to sit … them down and have duck and goose fat—better yet, dry oatmeal—shoved down their throats over and over and over again.”

Force-feeding causes the birds’ livers to swell to as much as 10 to 12 times their normal size, resulting in a painful disease known as hepatic steatosis (which makes foie gras a diseased organ and therefore illegal to sell in the U.S., according to a lawsuit filed this month by several animal protection groups). The birds often suffer from internal hemorrhaging, fungal and bacterial infections, and hepatic encephalopathy, a brain disease caused when their livers fail. They can become so debilitated that they can move only by pushing themselves along the ground with their wings.

A journalist who visited Sonoma-Artisan Foie Gras in 2003 reported that force-fed ducks “moved little and panted” with the effort, and an employee admitted that “[s]ome [ducks] die from heart failure as a result of the feeding, or from choking when they regurgitate.”

A recent undercover investigation at the farm revealed filthy, bedraggled birds (failure to preen is a sign of illness or distress), birds panting and struggling to breathe, birds who were too ill to stand, and even the bodies of dead birds among the living. An average of 20 percent of ducks on foie gras farms die before slaughter, 10 to 20 times the average death rate on a regular duck farm.

Force-feeding birds has been denounced by every expert in the field of poultry welfare. Dr. Christine Nichol, a tenured poultry husbandry professor at the University of Bristol, believes that foie gras production “causes unacceptable suffering to these animals. … It causes pain during and as a consequence of the force-feeding, feelings of malaise as the body struggles to cope with extreme nutrient imbalance and distress ….”

Foie gras production is so cruel that it has been banned in more than a dozen countries, including Israel, the U.K., Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland, and it will be outlawed throughout the European Union by 2020.

Really, the only people defending foie gras are those who produce it and cook with it, and with thousands of other delectable ingredients available, it’s hard to imagine why chefs are fighting tooth and, er, bill to hang onto this deadly “delicacy.” Their objections should be filleted, puréed, flambéed and stuffed. Surely, any creative chef worth his or her artisanal sea salt can make do without a tortured duck’s liver.