Visit The Self-sufficient vegetarian

In India food has received the status of   ‘Brahman’. A Rishi of Upnishada has introduced food as medicine. Taking food is a pleasant phenomenon, almost as good as a festival. In the process of taking food a lively contact with life is established. In breakfast or dinner on a dinning table, if in the food stuff a scream, a struggle or a shiver of fear of a dumb animal is felt, that foodstuff will not give health and comfort. When a hunter follows a deer, the deer in order to save life runs very fast and finally gets tired. If the hunter has a jeep car, the car does not get tired. At this stage the deer comes in the range of hunter’s gun. When the deer finds death just a moment away a final scream erupts from the deer’s mouth. Meat-eater in the fashionable darkness of a grand hotel, or on the shinning dinning table at home, ever listens to the death –scream of the killed animal, while relishing his dish?  Perhaps not. A living cow simply becomes ‘beef’ for him and a living hen a ‘chicken’. A living pig becomes ‘pork’. If only, just once, let man put himself in the place of that helpless animal.

Rapporterna om hur det går till i svensk svinindustri har de senaste dagarna duggat tätt. Bilder, som jag knappt har tålt att se, har jag ändå tvingats att se. Grisarna äter upp varandra.

Enligt den kinesiska zodiaken är 2009 oxens år, men i media har 2009 onekligen varit grisens år. Detta stackars djur, som fått en hel sjukdom uppkallad efter sig, vanvårdas nu av oss människor. Vi förfasas och äcklas.

Men vad blir konsekvenserna? Låter vi bli att köpa skinka på våra smörgåsar? Låter vi bli julskinkan om någon månad? Eller lever vi vidare, glada och fryntliga?

Som medvetna konsumenter har vi ett val. Men valet är inte alldeles enkelt. Ska vi tänka på klimatet och miljön borde vi äta vegetariskt i första hand, och i andra hand kyckling och i tredje hand – just det, svin. Nu är ju kanske inte kycklingindustrin heller helt fri från synd, men i medialogikens konsekvens kanske kycklingen får ett uppsving nu innan julens skinkätande.

Några tycker att vi alla borde äta mer vegetariskt, och det är ju faktiskt sant. Vi är många som borde kunna äta mer vegetariskt, även jag. Visst skulle jag kunna skära ner min egentligen redan nu lilla köttkonsumtion, ännu mer. Visst borde jag oftare kunna välja kyckling eller fisk eller skaldjur. Jag skulle kunna lägga om helt och hållet. Men jag gör det inte, mest för att jag gillar kött men också av bekvämlighet. Men mer vegetariskt, det lovar jag härmed att jag ska äta framöver!

Seven years ago on the 23rd, a seventeen year old Rachelle decided to try vegetarianism for a week. It was undoubtedly one of the best decisions I have ever made! I can guarantee you that as long as I’m alive, I will happily be

I have lived five delicious vegan years, as well; that, too, will not change. I become more in love with all animals as time progresses. The more I learn (about the environment; animals; problematic industries; and to question social norms), the more I value this lifestyle and evolve to change damaging, unnecessary behaviours.

Brightside Farm Sanctuary

- Rachelle

Last week we held a mock Thanksgiving for friends, complete with the traditional Broad-Breasted White Turkey. The 20-lb bird was a re-gifted gift that transferred from industrial farm to wholesaler to employer to employee to us. We wanted to experiment with a trial bird in the new smoker-grill, before the real day and 11 guests arrived.

In the spirit of cooking an industrially produced animal, I recently read Elizabeth Kolbert’s nuanced review of Jonathan Safron Foer’s “Eating Animals” (Little, Brown, and available here). As usual in her writing, she brings a personal context to the review, from the perspective of one who raises chickens herself. She explores the morality of industrialized food.  She focuses on the amount of money and care we lavish upon pets in this country vis a vis our apparent apathy toward the treatment of the livestock that become food on the plate.

“How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite companionable, and dogs are said to be delicious,” she writes. This is the central question to Foer’s book, and one I consider regularly as well.

Kolbert’s review captured my attention more than the book she reviews would, I think. It’s something in the matter-of-fact, near clinical listing of the facts of our  industrialized food system, and how the writing reveals a sense of wonder. She does not judge people for how they eat or their choices, but more focuses on the bewildering ironies that underlie our basic assumptions of how we relate to animals.

Of Foer she is more direct in her judgment, as a review should be. She follows his moral reasoning — that vegetarianism is the only answer — only to watch him undo this perspective by introducing the practices of a heritage breed turkey farmer he has met. He seems to want it both ways – don’t eat meat, but support a heritage farmer. She concludes,  “We are, [Foer] suggests, defined not just by what we do; we are defined by what we are willing to do without. Vegetarianism requires the renunciation of real and irreplaceable pleasures. To Foer’s credit, he is not embarrassed to ask this of us.”

Back to the bird: An enormous animal, bred to have the maximum chest size, one so large that the animal at full grown cannot support its own weight. Delicious brined, then smoked on the grill for several hours.

These ironies, in other words, surround me as well. We had our trial bird, enjoyed it, and yet knew (or could guess) the conditions that brought it to our plates.

For the actual holiday, I have purchased a heritage bird from a local farmer. I did so for several reasons, which I’ll get to later – there are morals, curiosity and research involved.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and the vegetarians are out to make us feel guilty again.  Gary Steiner has just flayed the American conscience with a powerful op-ed piece in the New York Times advocating ethical veganism.

Is it wrong to kill?  Is it wrong to inflict suffering?  Philosophers advocating veganism typically start by asking one of these questions.  These are two very different questions, and will require two very different ways of saying “Definitely not.”

So is it wrong to kill?  The answer can’t be “Yes, always.”  Most of us would agree that a Mack truck should swerve and run over a fox if necessary to avoid plowing into a busload of little children.  Arguing by degrees, we might even conclude that the Mack truck should run over ten foxes, or the last fox in the world, to save one little child.

Implicit in any of these conclusions is the notion that life has value, and that killing should be avoided.  Why is this?  There are two radically different schools of thought to answer this question.  The first is the religious school: God says not to kill.  If we accept this idea, we may as well just go home; there’s no arguing with God.  The second school of thought says that life is an inherent good and should be preserved whenever possible.  Many proponents of this school – and we will follow them – would go so far as to say that human life is exceptionally valuable and worthy of preservation because of our capacity for abstract thought, or our ability to appreciate life, or a variety of other distinctions.  (There is a third school of thought, which suggests that the act of killing itself, as opposed to a “neutral” transition from life to death, is such a traumatic, jarring experience that it should always be avoided.  This school compounds the problems of killing and inflicting suffering, and for this reason is too complicated to deal with here.)

The “life has value” train of thought is the reason most people would have the Mack truck kill the fox instead of the busload of children.  “Life has value” is also the reason that killing animals for food, or even fun, could be morally justifiable.  What would happen if everyone in the world suddenly became a vegan?  The meat market would collapse and the brutal slaughter of animals would cease; farmers would feed their animals until they died natural, happy deaths; finally, the land would be used to plant hummus and tofu.  And there would be no more animals!  All of the animals that would have existed – that will exist, assuming we do not become vegan – would not be bred, would not experience life.  If life has value, if we wish to maximize life, we must argue forcefully for the continuation of animal slaughter.  The raison d’etre of the vast majority of domestic animals is industrial exploitation, and if this ceases, few, if any people will argue for the continued breeding of these animals simply for the sake of maximizing potential lives lived.  Continue exploitation, or accept that life is a secondary consideration to human convenience.

Another way of stating this argument is that because we give animals life, we should have the power to take that life away.  By logical extension, because a father or mother gives life to children, they should have the power to take that life away.  Indeed, in many ancient societies, infanticide was condoned, sometimes even encouraged.  As recently as the Roman Republic, the law permitted fathers the absolute power of life and death over their children – even their adult children.*

In modern society, we do not recognize this right of parents over the lives of their children.  The case for this could be made as follows: as soon as a person comes into existence, but not before,** he is endowed with a right to life.  In other words, because life has value, and because this person has life, we cannot – usually – take it away from him, thereby depriving him of this morally valuable thing that he has.

This argument does not supersede the argument that life has value and therefore we should be able to kill a fox to save children; rather, it is an extension of it.  Human life has such great moral importance, and therefore killing a human is such a great wrong, that we choose not to kill.  In essence, we give everyone a “free pass” from having their life judged insufficiently morally valuable to continue.  There are exceptions: suppose our speeding Mack truck had to choose between a busload of children and not a fox, but Hitler.  Almost everyone would choose to kill Hitler.  The reason we give all humans a free pass, a right to life, is that choices are almost never as clear-cut as choosing a busload of children’s lives over Hitler’s.  Even if we are in a situation where killing another person appears to offer substantial moral benefit to the universe, we usually consider the possibility that we are wrong, and by killing the person could merely be committing an enormous moral trespass, to be great enough that we choose not to kill.  Life has value, and therefore we choose never to reduce life by killing a person, despite merely potential future opportunities to increase life (or other moral goods) by doing so.

Phrased this way, two major differences emerge between killing a human and the ongoing industrial slaughter of animals.  First, the animals are not humans.  We ascribe moral value to their lives, perhaps even very great moral value, but we reserve the moral “free pass” for humans alone.  Second, since animals do not have a free pass, we have the ability to judge the moral value of their existence, and the conclusion, as described above, is unambiguously that these animals must die so that future animals can live.

What about suffering?  Is it okay to inflict suffering on animals so that we can eat them?  The arguments pertaining to killing apply analogously to suffering.  In broad strokes, there are situations where the infliction of suffering is justified.  One of these situations is when a little bit of suffering can be inflicted on one entity to avoid a lot of suffering for another.  In many cases, we exempt humans from such considerations because we believe human suffering to be an exceptionally great moral evil.  Animals do not get this free pass, and so when we judge whether their suffering is outweighed by the joy we generate through their exploitation, a case can be made that more joy is generated than suffering inflicted.

It is at this point in the argument that I think room for legitimate disagreement arises.  Most people assume the conclusion I just made, that the total human joy in eating is morally more valuable than whatever suffering animals experience during the course of their farming.  However, as the rising interest in free range meat shows, many people are beginning to question this assumption, or realize that animals are suffering considerably more for their enjoyment than previously thought.  I think the free range meat movement is proof that people are not “meat-crazed” egocentric hedonists, but rather utilitarians who place a high enough moral value on animal suffering that they are willing to pay to diminish it.

Free range meat has not taken over the market; clearly there is either disagreement about the precise moral value of animal suffering or about exactly how much the animals do suffer.  Whatever conclusion you have come to, happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy your turkey, whether it be free range or otherwise.  If you’re not eating a turkey, just think about all the animals that didn’t get born because of you.

[I can already hear the vegans screaming, "Yes, born to a life of suffering!"  That, alas, is where the argument gets extremely complicated.  But consider this: if you are a vegan, would you eat meat that had previously lived a brief but extremely happy life, and that resulted in more brief but happy lives following it?  If the answer is "No," then our disagreement does not lie in the complicated argument.]

*This page provides more information.

**Pro-life and pro-choice advocates, I think, are in substantial agreement here; their disagreement could probably be reduced to a debate about the precise moment when life begins, or the precise moment when the endowment with rights occurs, or in the worst case, the exact moment when the life becomes sufficiently human that the endowment with the right to life achieves moral importance surpassing the woman’s prerogative to do whatever she wants.

Wednesday, October 15th
Woke up the next morning essentially to John screaming, “ROYGBIV, WHY WOULDN’T YOU LET ME SLEEP???” Haha. Probably one of my favorite lines someone has said to me! So funny. Personally I slept soooo well, like a baby! But I guess no dice for James and John. We eat pastries and mofe at a nearby place, and I have no money really, so I’m going to eat the leftovers from IHOP the previous day, which had been in the pretty cold car, but the Nurses guys literally will not let me! I mean, it really did LOOK scary, but I’m quite certain it wouldn’t have made me sick! Because I’m Chinese! C’mon now! John insisted on giving me a half a bagel instead, though. Whatever. Busters.

John trying to sleep in the car after not sleeping the previous day…

We stop by a truck stop and try to get poutine, butttt…………………….. we’re deciding between spaghetti sauce poutine and another kind, because we figure gravy poutine isn’t vegetarian. Turns out spaghetti sauce poutine wasn’t vegetarian here, either. Shoulda known, considering it was a truck stop. Ah, well, Aaron and I eat it anyway. Also eat some ketchup potato chips since it was the guys’ first time eating them, and 3 out of 3 Nurses agree that ketchup potato chips are fucking awesome!

We get to Toronto and I don’t really remember the rest of the trip there because I didn’t write down notes like I did for the other days. Oops. The Drake Hotel is a nice ass venue, like the fucking Doug Fir, kinda. I get a payout this evening, woo!! Eat fries and gravy for dinner next door at some place.

Their friends from Toronto — bunches of them — and some guys from fucking this one band I forget at the moment — oh yeah, Born Ruffians — are there. I run the merch table a bit. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

We eat poutine afterwards, and it’s derish. But my diet that entire day consisted of, potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes!! So horrible!!!

—

Thursday, October 16th

Aaron and I stay with Luke of Born Ruffians that evening and James and John stay with another friend. We have to meet the guys at the van at 8:00am. SOOO EARLLLLY.

Aaron’s cold morning blanket pose.

They have to load their gear and all this junk this morning… James is still rendered sickly dead in the car all the while. Haha.

So, I have the day in Toronto, and they head off to Chicago after we get some coffee. Le Loup guys happen to show up at the same coffee place!

I head over to some coffee shop and do some work and hang out for the morning. Then I start walking around. I plan my day around — having to go to the Greyhound to drop off my backpack, then going to Medieval Times in Toronto! Hail yes! Throw in some mentally destablizing events, and it was a bit of a blur of a day.

The walk to Greyhound and back is mostly unexciting, but on the way to Medieval Times was pretty decent…

This park was amazing. The lawn was like barely ever walked on, I guess, so everything was covered with teeny tiny spider webs which were gleaming in the sunlight since the sun was going down. AMAZING! Seriously, one of the cooles things I’ve seen ever, although I couldn’t document it well with photos.

This is some weird club.

Medieval Times, outside!

Medieval Times hand dryer?!

Medieval Times, inside! It was a bit weird being in Medieval Times all by myself since everyone was with groups of people, but um, whatever.

<img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/_RqrWKVC07xM/Stt3Z9rw0wI/AAAAAAAAVss/Cf-84LodrK8/s512/DSC_0360.JPG"
The yellow knight was the knight on my side of the room, and he was hilarious. His crowd was easily the loudest, but best of all, he had this dopey Keanu Reeves smile going on. LOVE IT!

KING!

Some epic shit, no?

The veggie plate I got for dinner was way better than what the meat eaters got. It had hummus and pita, a corn kabob I think, some potatoes, etc. etc. There were some girls next to me who got it but didn’t know what hummus was! WTF! MMM, craving hummus… the meat eaters got like. Ribs. And chicken wings. Like… zero veggies. It’s kinda ridiculous…

I had to leave the show early, and headed to the Greyhound to catch my late night bus to Montreal!

OTHER TORONTO POST (WRITTEN WHEN IN TORONTO) HERE!

friday, october 2nd
stopover in new york and it happens to be the day they’re having a party for jetblue all-you-can-jet passengers! woohoo! lots of free food. good thing an all-you-can-jetter who was sitting next to me tipped me off on it. fucking score. free alcohol too, and people kept tossing their extra drink tickets to my table for some reason. i didn’t drink, though.

unfortunately, the guy who tipped me off to the event had stinky breath… i could smell his breath through his exhale of his nose. blah!!! talked with jason? mike? someone else? while at the free food thing. jason is a dude from portland who works for idealist, another guy is this kinda older, cocky rich guy who does real estate in florida… ex-navy, talks about being rich and how once you make a certain amount of money you can never go back to getting mediocre money (he said something like $100,000 was not enough a year because of what he was used to). he WAS a consultant, after all.

anyway, off to san francisco after that. parents pick me up and then get into some ridiculous argument action about a detour and driving. stupid. go to bed asap.

—

saturday, october 3rd
eat breakfast at denny’s with the godparents and then nap. putz around. i have a note here that says “moon day” but i’m not sure what that means. watch “zombieland” with my brother and roxanne, and then eat japanese food for dinner at sakura with the rentals.

a church family owns the restaurant so we got massif free foodages.

continue to putz around, and then bart to sherry’s. relax.

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sunday, october 4th
go to church with sherry and tin-win. it’s whatevers, the pastor is pretty funny and amusing, and he certainly has charm, but as always, i don’t agree with the bs he spews. go to korean lunch (soondooboo! they actually have veggie soondooboo!) with one of their friends, and then i go muni to the castro st. fair.

view from sherry and tin-win’s fancy apartment.

hilarious back massager ;x is that REALLY what it is? can’t tell.

i was expecting more, unfortunately, but it was really quite tame.

this guy was dancing up a storm, though.

really awful mash-up band.

look at that stomach.

so awesome!

met up with jesse and his sister shortly thereafter and went to this really super cute tea house called salmovar that had a $65 pot of tea!!!!

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this is a tray of cookies we got. karla met up with us but it took her a while to get there. right when jesse was taking off, actually. too bad!

ate pizza buffet with sherry and tin-win for dinner, and then putzed around! it was good, but there weren’t much veggie selections, so when the workers found out i was vegetarian they kept bringing me everything ad nauseum. really nice of them!

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monday, october 5th
explored san francisco by myself, particularly the mission district.

… is it just me or does that not look like michael??

lotsa murals in the mission district.

<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_RqrWKVC07xM/SttvGlLPz-I/AAAAAAAAVno/lnFJ0waqk8Q/s720/DSC_0068.JPG"

this one particular alley had shitloads of murals!

my favorite.

found a neat market and bought this amazing! beets drink! so delicious!

went to the ferry building shortly thereafter to meet up with jesse.

found this amazing soap. i want i i want it i want it i want it. unfortunately, i broke the bottle of beets juice before i got to finish it all :/ i want more, though. someone get me some.

as i was standing in the ferry building, waiting for jesse, i caught a glimpse of the back of some girl wearing green, and she walked like jean-claire so i thought it was maybe jean-claire, so i texted jean-claire, and it WAS her, which is really weird, because if i hadn’t been looking in her direction or had looked in her direction literally five seconds later, i wouldn’t have seen her. not to mention… i met her in peru, and she’d lived in portland up until that point. so what the fuck. it was weird and random.

jesse and i went to eat mexican food and then he went back to work.

after this, i didn’t take notes, so it’s all a blur. teehee!

I appreciated the diversity of comments on my Turkey D-Day post. I didn’t expect such a response and wrote the post in a more light-hearted manner than some received it. After a day of butchering I thought it would be worth some reflections.

The first time I participated in the butchering process was with chickens that had gone through their productive cycle and were not going to be sold. I primarily eviscerated the birds after they had been scalded and plucked. This alone was an intense experience, but I did not participate in the actually killing of the birds.

Today I did participate in killing two of the turkeys. This is something I and everyone at the farm takes very seriously. It is an intense emotional experience to be with any living thing that passes from life to death much less being responsible for that passage. It is a holy moment and one that can be soul wrenching and difficult. I think if it were not difficult for someone, that person should also refrain from eating meat because of their lack of respect for the life of the animal.

I will say, I respect people who refuse to eat meat for a lot of different reasons. I also respect people who choose to eat meat, but are thoughtful about where it comes from, how it is raised and how much they eat. What I (and most of the people commenting) affirm is that there are a lot of problems with the majority of meat produced in this country and responding to these issues is important for a lot of reasons.

What I don’t affirm is that people hold their opinions and convictions with a self-righteousness that condemns anyone who disagrees. There is one volunteer on the farm who was very emotional. Seeing the process affirmed her conviction to remain vegetarian. I can affirm and respect her conviction. I also think if everyone who ate meat were more involved in the process of killing and butchering we would 1) consume a lot less meat and 2) have a lot more respect for the animals that we eat.

Regardless of your convictions about eating meat, I believe seeing and being part of the process is important. It will either strengthen the convictions you have or make you rethink the way you relate to your food. Either way, that’s a good thing. The problem is more about being detached from the source of our food than whether or not we eat meat.

Thanks again for all the comments and thoughts. Enjoy your Thanksgiving with or without meat!

David Cassuto

They NYT recently featured an op-ed by Gary Steiner that lays out the challenges of ethical veganism in contemporary society.  I have my issues with the piece, which suffers from a rigidity that can be off-putting to people of all stripes.  More interesting, though, are the letters it generated.  Amid a few thoughtful exceptions (both pro and con), the same tired arguments against veganism get recycled over and over as if they were revelatory and/or had any intellectual rigor.

One writer believes that the fact that Professor Steiner lives with a cat is somehow a fatal contradiction within the vegan lifestyle.  Another argues that if one believes it ethically wrong to consume meat, to be consistent one must also believe in stopping other animals from consuming meat as well.  And the list goes on.  It is perhaps unsurprising that these views are widely held — part of the problem we face as a society is that so little thought is given to these issues.  I am just saddened by the way they routinely get a platform in the major media.

There are many ways to exist in the world and I do not believe that any constituency has cornered the market on moral behavior.  However, I do think that all of us must consume thoughtfully and understand the implications of our choices.  I can’t decide whether the Times colloquy advances this cause or not.

Very sad we were to pull out of that driveway earlier this afternoon. But we got on the road nonetheless, and after some very, very, very bad directions from my dad, we found what we were looking for (the garage he owns) and then followed him to his house.

We passed my grandmother’s house along the way. Does anyone else find that weird? I wouldn’t want to retire a half-mile from where my eighty-something mother lived, unless I had to take care of her, which Dad decidedly does not.

As we were driving through “town”, such as that goes in this part of this state, I felt myself getting more and more ashamed. This is the podunk of podunks, a town that doesn’t even have a bookstore, and I wanted to just turn around and go home before BF had the chance to meet anyone and hear their accents. I expressed this feeling to him, and he kept digging at why the shame, and I really couldn’t answer him, eventually. This place has no real bearing on who I am, I’ve been here only intermittently throughout my life. But I felt it, all the same.

A lot of this dissipated when we actually got inside my father’s new house. He has managed to get most of his belongings out of storage and hung up or laid out or whatever, and believe me when I tell you that the place is like a really large art museum: you could spend a week in it and still not see everything. He has four-foot Egyptian statues. He has Revolutionary War-era guns. He has dozens of religious icons from all over the world. He has his own photography framed and hung. He has bullets that missed him in Liberia, pictures of himself with the crown prince of Denmark, paintings and drawings of Italian city scenes, Turkish tea sets, more clocks than Doc Brown, and it just never ends, seriously, the stuff he’s collected.

However, the thing that really got me was how fucking gorgeous this house is. It’s almost a luxury house, except that it’s modestly sized; all the accent work is beautiful dark wood, and the floors are a lovely oak hardwood. There’s an indoor sauna and an outdoor full-sized hot tub. The kitchen has granite counters and a small stainless hood. The price he got it for is obscenely low, of course, because this is a rural area of a rural state, but I sort of can’t believe how beautiful this place is.

So I feel a little better about being here, because BF will be fascinated by all his stuff for at least the week that we’re here, and I’ll be wandering around being jealous of the house and its accoutrements. And macabrely wondering what the SHIT I’m going to do with all this stuff when I inherit it.

This was an op-ed I read today that I’m not quite sure how to respond to. I don’t agree with him, but I’m not altogether sure why. I’d love to write a nice long post dissecting it, either here or over at No Butts, but I find myself afraid to put down in words that I don’t agree with the moral component of vegetarianism and veganism, because every time I try to explain it to myself the reasons sound so feeble and meritless. I might give it a try just the same, and I might even end up changing my own mind. Maybe.

It’s only 8:45 but I’m sort of ready for bed. Tell the truth, I’m ready to sleep on my Tempur-Pedic again. *Long, despairing sigh* But we will be back in its arms soon enough, after a 1600-calorie meal and a lot of awkward silences.

For an actually entertaining family story and one that’s not just tempered with reasonless shame and vague anxiety, head over to Kee-yim’s blog. That post made me gasp in amazement and laugh with…laughter.

Got to listen to Jeffrey Masson tonight. What a great speaker. No hardcore shock tactics, he talked about his background, his writing on animal emotions, why he doesn’t believe it is ethical for us to eat meat. Too much info to blog about. S and I were discussing why we aren’t vegetarians, comes down to habits and difficulty of dealing with change. This should be on the agenda for further investigation.

Saw several people I knew at the talk and avoided them all, couldn’t remember any of their names to start with. Did remember one guys name later in the car. Oh dear!

I don’t want you to watch this, but you have to.

This is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I’m posting the link instead of the video itself because I don’t want to have it on my blog. I’m just so shocked at what people are capable of. Didn’t he feel anything when he dropped that dog? He didn’t show any remorse, not even a tiny bit of empathy for the poor creature. And when it started weeping, god, the tears came streaming. Cruelty and violence to animals is sick, twisted, horrifying and wrong. Why people can’t seem to realize that is just crazy.

So that’s it. From now on meat of any kind will be off limits on my part. Vegetarianism, here I come! Again (The last time it only lasted for a couple of months. But not this time!).

Storefront in downtown Billings, MT

The following post is by blogger, Julia Guarino

In January of 2009, I moved from the Washington, DC area to a small city of about 100,000 residents in the middle of Montana. I came to Billings to perform a year of service with AmeriCorps, and although I looked forward to being exposed to elements of American culture that I had never encountered before, I was a little concerned about being able to maintain a vegetarian diet. After all, Montana is “beef country” (as they proclaim on billboards along the highway), and I knew from some online research that there would be no Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. Billings, although it is the largest city in Montana and several surrounding states, is just too small to attract that kind of chain. I also assumed that in beef country, where cowboy hats and pickup trucks abound, there would be little demand for tofu, seitan and other meat substitutes.

And it’s true that at times I get a strange look when I confess that I’m a vegetarian. Sometimes I get odd questions, like “Do you drink coffee, then?” or “Do you eat cookies?” For many, vegetarianism is not something they’ve witnessed first-hand; which makes sense in a place where, I’ve been told, you can get the most incredible steak even in the cheapest little places. However, I have been a life-long vegetarian, and it is something I cannot imagine ever giving up, so tofu or no, I planned to forge on.

One of my first stops after arriving in Billings, being an impoverished volunteer, was the Super Wal-Mart. I honestly don’t feel particularly good about supporting a big-box store, and try to avoid them when I can, but I was in need of inexpensive food and cleaning products, and I must admit, I was impressed. Wal-Mart had an extensive array of green cleaning products, carried recycled paper goods, and, to my great delight, had an entire case full of vegetarian meat substitutes.

Good earth Market, Billings, MT

As I began to explore Billings’ trendy and historic downtown, however, I came across a colorful building with big beautiful windows that quietly occupies a quarter block on the western edge of downtown. The Good Earth Market is, to this day, one of my favorite places in the city of Billings (and in fact competes for the best grocery store I’ve ever shopped in). Bright and spacious, with colorful displays and smiling staff, the Good Earth carries a wide variety of natural, organic, local and vegetarian friendly products (though you can get fresh local meat as well). With an incredible deli, salad and coffee bar, cafe seating downstairs or in the loft, and free WIFI, it is also a relaxing place to spend an afternoon. They even have a parking space out front, equipped with an electrical outlet, that is reserved for electric cars! Now I never grocery shop anywhere else.

Off the Leaf Coffee Shop, Billings, MT

In the time that I have spent in Billings, there is much that I have grown to love, and much that has surprised me about this small city. There are incredible pockets of world-class art, performance and music mixed in with the charming western cowboy culture, and I have learned much about another part of my own country, while never feeling deprived of the great cultural opportunities I was used to accessing in more urban areas. And it turns out that being a vegetarian in Montana wasn’t so difficult after all!

And I am not the only person who thinks that Billings has a lot to offer — the November 2009 issue of Fortune Small Business Magazine named Billings as the #1 place to start a small business!

The Huffington Post posted a slide show today titled “Thanksgiving Turkey Substitutes: The Least Appetizing Choices.”

This piece asks readers to vote on the pictures, “Rate the most outrageous turkey substitutes,” on a scale of 1: “I Eat That Daily!” to 10: “Is That Even Food?”

Now I realize that meat substitutes can be less than appealing, especially to an incredulous meat eater, but the Huffington Post’s piece was just plain offensive and in bad taste. (Excuse the pun.)

Some of the captions to the photos include, “Quorn, a substance that is meat free and soy free and made from mycoprotein, comes in these vacuum sealed bags. Kinda creepy?” and “Seitan is made out of gluten, but it looks a lot more like meat than like wheat… or maybe it just looks funky.”

The irony here is that these meals are emulating their meat counterparts. The chef’s took their inspirations from the meat eater’s kitchen; from the turkey roasts and roulades of the traditional Thanksgiving table. So in critiquing the palatability of the vegan and vegetarian substitutes, the Huffington Post is indirectly criticizing the food culture of the beloved meat eater. How is a thick slab of turkey flesh rolled around a filling any less appetizing than a grain formed into a malleable dough rolled around a similar stuffing?

Another issue with this piece is the disrespect to food culture. As we all know, food choices move far beyond the necessities of health and nutrition and into conversations of lifestyle, culture, and religion. In critiquing what or the way someone eats is an indirect, and sometimes direct, attack on that person’s integrity. Think of the racist insults that include food as an implication of degradation: fried chicken, rice, dog, etc.

The Huffington Post would certainly not post a slide show titled “Hindu Thanksgiving Turkey Substitutes: The Least Appetizing Choices,” or “All Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Meals: The Least Appetizing Choices.” Those pieces would immediately be tagged as racist and off-color.

But that’s exactly what vegetrainism and veganism are – food cultures. It’s a personal lifestyle choice; it’s a statement on morality and ethics; it’s environmentalism. So critiquing our food choices is no less acceptable than questioning the foodstuffs of any other culture.

Tyska Der Spiegel har presenterat denna tabell från Foodwatch nyligen.
Att vegansk kosthållning har minst miljöpåverkan på växthuseffekten har varit känt sedan länge, men det är alltid trevligt och nyttigt att se sådana här tabeller som visar på skillnaderna mellan olika kosthållningar.

From the email:

Animal Welfare Trust is currently seeking applicants for our 2010 Student Grant Program.  The grant provides up to $5000 per recipient for graduate students to work on an independent research project under faculty supervision or for an unpaid position within an established organization.  Internships can be for a summer, semester, or year-long duration.  Details about the grant program, the application process, and information on past recipients can be found on our website at www.animalwelfaretrust.org under “student internships.” The deadline for this grant opportunity is March 1, 2010.

Our particular areas of interest are farm animal welfare, humane education and pro-vegetarian campaigns (though by no means are we limited to these areas).  Please pass this announcement on to any students you think may be interested and feel free to cross post as well.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you!

Ali Berman
Animal Welfare Trust
141 Halstead Avenue, Suite 301
Mamaroneck, NY 10543

(914)-381-6177 ext 102
ali@animalwelfaretrust.org
www.animalwelfaretrust.org

Yesterday a very sad thing happened. Very sad indeed. Jake and I were grocery shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner and I had my traditional list of items. My mom always makes this broccoli cheese thing that I absolutely love! I’ve made it every holiday since I got out on my own (that is like only 3 holidays btw). It is broccoli and cheese on the bottom and stuffing mix on the top. All ingredients include: broccoli, cheese, stuffing, milk and flour. It is delicious. Well, I’m going through Walmart yesterday picking up all the stuff I need. Broccoli? Check. Velveeta? Check. Flour? Check. Milk? Check. Stuffing? Whoa whoa whoa. Stop right there.

Did you know that stuffing (even the ones that aren’t chicken, turkey or whatever… have meat in them? I know, I was shocked too. How come they just taste like breadcrumbs and sage if there’s meat in it? huh? huh? Answer me that! Well, I pick up a box of every kind of Stove Top stuffing that doesn’t have meat right in the name and sure enough on the back of the box it says: COOKED CHICKEN AND CHICKEN BROTH. On every single one. I go to a different brand I look at one box, at two boxes at three boxes and… COOKED CHICKEN AND CHICKEN BROTH. I’m getting frantic at this point. No stuffing means no broccoli & cheese casserole thingymabob. NO STUFFING MEANS NO BROCCOLI & CHEESE CASSEROLE THINGYMABOB! What is a girl to do without broccoli & cheese casserole thingymabob for Thanksgiving??

I calm down. I find another brand. I’m reading the ingredients on the back of the box and I can feel myself start to smile as my eyes search and find nothing with meat… but then near the bottom I see it: COOKED CHICKEN AND CHICKEN BROTH. For crying out loud why doesn’t it taste like there is cooked chicken in there? I put the box down and I walk away. I slowly put the unneeded ingredients back on their shelves. Being a vegetarian means no broccoli & cheese casserole thingymabob this year… or any year for that matter. So long, stuffing… I’ll miss you.

Today is turkey D-Day. About 40 birds will be prepared for the Thanksgiving Day table… in other words butchered. Tomorrow about 40 more will meet their maker and become someone’s dinner. I recently “talked” on facebook with a friend of mine from Fort Hood and shared about my transition to farmatarianism, eating only meat that you know personally. I was a vegetarian for eight years. I wasn’t a really good vegetarian, whatever that means. I was more concerned about the way meat was produced and what was in it. I was also concerned about the effects of excessive meat consumption on our bodies and the planet. I wasn’t concerned that animals should never be killed for food.

Anyway… it was probably strange for my friend to hear that I would be helping slaughter some 80 birds and what’s more I would happily eat them given the chance. I still don’t eat a lot of meat. It’s not often an option at the farm, but when it is I appreciate the life of the animals that we eat. Our turkeys are free range in every sense of that word. They roam free all day, foraging for food and stretching their legs. Our goats and cows also spend the majority of their time in pastures eating their meals straight from the soil. That is worlds apart from how your Big Mac or even grocery store meat is produced.

So, every year Cargill (God bless ‘em!) donates about 100 turkeys to the farm along with their bedding and feed. We raise them and sell them for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We could ruminate on why Cargill would donate these birds to a farm that teaches methods of agriculture directly opposed to large industrial-scale production. Perhaps it’s a form of penance, an attempt at reaching some sort of redemption. Perhaps someone in the company has a subversive ironic streak. Regardless, it is a good things for these birds and the people that buy them.

Clearly, these turkeys have been bred for one thing and one thing only… meat. These are dumb animals. These birds see a large predator (aka me or Edwina, the wayfaring farm dog) and think to themselves, “Hey let’s all go check that out! Guys come over here! Look a predator! Let’s all go say hi!” Needless to say they would not last long in the wild. Unfortunately they also don’t last that long on the farm. One turkey randomly had a heart attack one day and became dinner. It seems they are looking for ways to die. Apparently it is not really true that turkeys can drown from looking up at the rain, but they’re so dumb it seem plausible.

Barbara Kingsolver’s account of trying to get her turkeys to reproduce and hatch eggs is a riot. The reason industrial turkey sex is so funny is because it simply does not happen. Imagine a couple of full grown adults who are supposed to be well versed in the birds and the bees, stumbling over what’s what and what goes where like a couple of pimply teenagers. Add to the lack of knowledge the fact that these guys are bread to be a tub o’ meat on toothpicks. They are no longer physiologically shaped for reproduction. In case this hasn’t been made abundantly clear let me say it. The turkeys you buy in the store do not have sex. They all have to be artificially inseminated in order to reproduce. That in itself is not humane.

There are heritage breed wild turkeys out there that you can buy. Those guys are smart and they know how to have sex. So, think about the life of turkeys this holiday season when you’re sticking that Butterball in the oven or deep fryer. Support turkey sex and happy turkeys this year and buy your bird from a farmer.

A review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” appeared in the New Yorker book criticism section on November 9^th, 2009. The reviewer, Elizabeth Kolbert, seemed to describe Foer as pushing vegetarianism with a moral curling broom. At times she made Foer seem hypocritical “arguing for vegetarianism as the only moral course” while not being completely vegetarian. Foer’s book was also described as postmodern, interspersed with personal vignettes, illustrations, changing typography, et cetera. The author offered her own vignette half way through the review, perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek. She raised chickens, happy chickens. They arrived through the mail in a cardboard box and spent their days pecking, laying eggs, and “shitting on the walkways” of her property. She hoped that having the chickens, along with the eggs, would allow her children to “learn what it’s like to raise what you eat.” She soon learned that the chickens preferred to eat other animals over their given grain, pecking at the ground for newts and even cornering, to no avail, a small, frightened rabbit under a car.

The author presented the chicken anecdote right before describing an argument pro eating meat. The argument’s punch line was that “different animals have different diets” – humans happen to eat pigs and cows.  After all, we are only animals, animals that like to eat meat. “Our ancestors certainly liked a nice bone to gnaw on” and those same ancestors evolved and grew their brains by eating meat. It seemed the author meant to connect this argument with the chicken story. Chickens eat worms, rabbits if they could. What’s the big deal if people get their teeth around a chicken? It wasn’t clear if this argument was her own doing or if she was paraphrasing Foer or someone else. In any case, the argument was as ridden with shit as her walkways or the industrial animal farms that Foer and his activist friends broke into to shed tears over.

Our ancestors lived some 200,000 years ago. What an up-to-date comparison! I, for one, refuse the comforts of indoor plumbing and, like the chickens, love to shit outdoors. And when five of my best friends and I get together we corner wild animals, our fondest hobby. Also, freezing to death and dying of hunger are great ways to go and at 34 years of age there’s never been a better time to die. Right? No. It is completely irrational to justify any action with the fact that our ancestors did it. Ethical systems change with the evolution of society and caveman ethics and contemporary ethics are as different as can be. Most things our ancestors did we no longer do or even deem acceptable to do. Furthermore, our brains aren’t going to get any bigger because of increased protein from meat. There aren’t any selective pressures to facilitate that process. Nobody is picking out young adults with smaller brains and slaughtering them before they have the chance to reproduce. Besides, animal protein is identical to plant protein. The amino acids are not any different in plants and if our ancestors had ample access to tofu the brain growth results would have been identical. Foer’s vegetarian brain would have reached the same size as meat-eating Kolbert’s if we had raised them as otherwise identical populations in an experiment of evolution.

It isn’t as though the act of ingesting meat is unethical (perhaps you could make the argument but it would be difficult). The only things we can ascribe ethical value to are the acts that lead up to the consumption of meat. There are three essential points where an anti argument can be produced: the death of the animal, the way the animal is slaughtered, and the environmental effects that result from animal farming. There is no need to delve into environmentalism and the industrial “cowschwitz” as these topics as they are extensively discussed by authors like Singer, Schlosser, and Foer himself. What may be added on the ethics of animal slaughter is how it is relates to evolution. Humans and other animals have evolved to persist. The proof for this lies in their present existence. We, just like all animals, have an evolved, innate thirst for life and we are prepared to do anything in our power to continue living. Hence, we exist presently. We eat anything at hand when we are starving; we thrash around when we are drowning; we drink our own urine if we find ourselves desiccating in the desert. And this life-thirst emerged very early in our evolution. The great-grand ancestors of our common ancestors must have had the same desire to live as we do now. Chickens absolutely have it too. And when we slaughter and eat them we are ignoring this fact, sharing the same thirst for life but being entirely unsympathetic. While this may not be the most pressing of arguments or the most pragmatic it should not be ignored. Imagine throwing a cow into a lake and listening to its horrified, primal screams at the precipice of death. The resulting cheeseburger would seem a lot less appetizing knowing that if it was you in place of the cow you would have felt the same.  Even if the cow was killed “humanely” and had no idea of the impending end, he still had to die against his will for life. Human beings exert every possible effort in order to prolong their existence and cows would follow suit if they could. Even though the dreamless sleep is painless it is still the black end for people and cows the same. Knowing this, should we not be a little bit more sympathetic? There must be a little room for improvement in the life condition of cows as thousands of them are destined for the death-rod each day.

An unintentionally hilarious article from the New York Times, arguing the virtues of veganism as we approach the annual Great Turkey Holocaust. Or as those of us guilty of mass-turkicide call it, Thanksgiving. Not that I have anything against vegetarianism; people have the right to eat whatever they please. Whether Big Macs or tofu. It’s the people who want to ban Big Macs that you have to watch carefully. Like this guy.

Here are some of the more ridiculous quotes, with commentary:

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption.

Well, it could be worse. At least we don’t eat them alive.

And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder.

That’s because equating society’s treatment of animals with mass murder is stupid and deserves to be mocked. One hopes the author can distinguish between a chicken farm and, say, Dachau.

And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare.

Well, they taste good. Plus it turns out that people actually need protein and fat to live. Whodda thunk?

Many people soothe their consciences by purchasing only free-range fowl and eggs, blissfully ignorant that “free range” has very little if any practical significance. Chickens may be labeled free-range even if they’ve never been outside or seen a speck of daylight in their entire lives. And that Thanksgiving turkey? Even if it is raised “free range,” it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher’s knife.

Are the lives of wild turkeys any better? They get eaten, a lot, and often starve to death and die in great pain. And what about the coyotes, cougars, and eagles that eat wild turkeys? We must stop them! They’re guilty of murder, of genocide…a TURKEY genocide!

How can intelligent people who purport to be deeply concerned with animal welfare and respectful of life turn a blind eye to such practices?

Because meat, when eaten in proper quantities, is actually quite good for you. And delicious!

And how can people continue to eat meat when they become aware that nearly 53 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for human consumption?

Yeah! All those stupid hungry people! Why don’t they just do us a favor and starve to death? If they are want to die, then let them do it, and decrease the surplus population!

What were once the most straightforward activities become a constant ordeal…To be a really strict vegan is to strive to avoid all animal products, and this includes materials like leather, silk and wool, as well as a panoply of cosmetics and medications. The more you dig, the more you learn about products you would never stop to think might contain or involve animal products in their production — like wine and beer (isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish bladders, is often used to “fine,” or purify, these beverages), refined sugar (bone char is sometimes used to bleach it) or Band-Aids (animal products in the adhesive). Just last week I was told that those little comfort strips on most razor blades contain animal fat.

Yes, becoming a joyless scold is really a lot of work. Why don’t people respect that the way they should?

Is it O.K. to eat dinner with people who are eating meat?

It’s actually kind of funny how so many secular ideologies inevitably devolve into legalistic religion. Like, can you shake hands with someone who eats meat? Or would that make you ritually unclean? Or what if the shadow of someone who eats meat falls upon you? Are you ritually unclean then?

Let me be candid: By and large, meat-eaters are a self-righteous bunch.

That’s because we’re, you know, right. And healthier, too!

These uses of animals are so institutionalized, so normalized, in our society that it is difficult to find the critical distance needed to see them as the horrors that they are: so many forms of subjection, servitude and — in the case of killing animals for human consumption and other purposes — outright murder.

And this is where we descended from joyless scoldhood to outright craziness. So much for distinguishing the turkey farm from Dachau.

Here’s the bottom line: there’s nothing wrong with a vegetarian diet, or a vegan diet, if you’re sufficiently obsessed and need a fashionable hobby. But it is way wrong to say that killing an animal is equivalent to killing a human, because if you follow the logic, that means that killing a human is about the same as killing an animal. In other words, humans are animals, and it’s a lot easier to convince people that certain other groups of people are animals than it is to talk people out of killing animals. And if you’ve got no problem with killing animals, and people are really animals, that means you can kill a lot of inconvenient people. By the truckload! As history has demonstrated. Over and over and over again.

One final point. Vegans are frequently “childfree” types who go on and on about how kids track enormous carbon footprints all over a weeping Mother Nature’s pristine white environment, so we should all stop reproducing right now. I think we’ll let this little quote from Dr. House have the final word:

Dr. House: She has gone from the 25th weight percentile to the 3rd in one month. Now I’m not a baby expert, but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to shrink.

Dr. House: Raw food… If only her ancestors had mastered the secret of fire. Babies need fat, proteins, calories. Less important: sprouts and hemp. Starving babies is bad and illegal in many cultures. I’m having her admitted.

Yes, if only our ancestors had mastered the secret of fire! Then we could hunt and kill animals and not bother with this vegan stuff.

Oh, wait. They did!

-JM

For approximately 5 years now, I, Jordan-Alicia, have been a stead-fast vegetarian. While this lifestyle is deemed inadequate by many, I find it both invigorating and fulfilling.  In many ways, my desire to respect animals as both precious and equally deserving of life on this planet has allowed me to abstain from eating meat with overall ease.  While I do not intend to reinstate my role as an active member of PETA, nor do I intend to obtrusively impose my viewpoints on anyone, the text that follows is, if nothing else, food for thought.

By now, we’re all well aware of the harsh realities today’s factory-farmed animals face.  Cows, pigs, and poultry varieties are born into a world of torture with no chance of escape.  According to PETA-affiliate GoVeg.com’s projections, over 45 million turkeys are raised and slaughtered for  26 November alone.

These turkeys, like so many other creatures bred for human consumption, are never granted the freedom to live full, productive lives prior to their appearance on our tables.  Instead, they are genetically modified to grow too fast in too little time.  This renders them utterly incapable of flight. Not that it matters much, as they’re generally kept cooped up in small cages, anyhow.  In fact, for a vast majority of these animals, their single opportunity to bask in the sunlight and breathe fresh air lies in the very moment they’re being transported into large trucks for deportation to slaughterhouses.

In its article entitled “The Hidden Lives of Turkeys,” GoVeg offers the following description of turkeys in their natural environment:

• Ben Franklin had tremendous respect for their resourcefulness, agility, and beauty—he called the turkey “a bird of courage” and “a true original native of America.” Franklin even suggested naming the turkey, instead of the eagle, as our national bird.
• Turkeys have been genetically modified to gain weight rapidly because fatter turkeys mean fatter wallets for farmers. But in nature, the turkey’s athletic prowess is truly impressive. Wild turkeys can fly at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour and run at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour. The natural lifespan of the turkey is between 10 and 12 years, but on factory farms they are slaughtered when they’re just 5 months old.
• Male turkeys, or “toms,” are bigger and have more colorful plumage than female turkeys, or “hens.” The males attract females with their wattles, colorful flaps of skin around their necks, and tufts of bristles that hang from their chests.
• Turkeys are born with full-color vision just like our own, and in nature they stay with their mothers for up to the first five months of their lives. These gentle birds are very bonded to their young—in the wild, a mother turkey will courageously defend her family against predators.
• Many respected researchers have spoken out on behalf of this intelligent, social bird. Oregon State University poultry scientist Tom Savage says, “I’ve always viewed turkeys as smart animals with personality and character, and keen awareness of their surroundings. The ‘dumb’ tag simply doesn’t fit.”
• Even a popular turkey-hunting guide admits that turkeys are far from feather-brained. According to the Remington Guide to Turkey Hunting, turkeys will “test your wits as they are rarely tested in modern life.”
• Erik Marcus, the author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, has spent a considerable amount of time with turkeys on farm sanctuaries. He reports, “Turkeys remember your face and they will sit closer to you with each day you revisit. Come back day after day and, before long, a few birds will pick you out as their favorite and they will come running up to you whenever you arrive. It’s definitely a matter of the birds choosing you rather than of you choosing the birds. Different birds choose different people.”

In his new book, Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer delivers an even more in-depth and comprehensive exposé on just how atrocious these factory farms really are.  Foer acknowledges that in addition to the injustice done to other living creatures, these farms are detrimental to the environment, as well. Thus, regardless of which way your moral pendulum swings when it comes to animal welfare, the issue of animal consumption is relevant to all of us, as residents of Planet Earth.

My bottom line aligns quite perfectly with that of Foer’s book:  Celebrate as you will this holiday season, but do so with conviction.  Explore your options and make informed decisions about what’s placed atop your table.

For more, visit Talk Turkey.

In addition, for the herbivorically inclined out there:
Here is a composition of AMAZING Thanksgiving recipes!