Remembering Linda by Abstaining from Eggs for 30 Days

"The egg industry's busiest time of year is the Easter season. After the holiday passes, "sales go down, but the hens keep on laying eggs," says the American Egg Board. In an effort to boost post-holiday sales, egg producers across the country celebrate May as "National Egg Month." Compassion Over Killing is asking you to put an animal-friendly spin on this month-long industry-declared holiday by pledging to Crack the Cruelty and choose egg-free foods for at least 30 days!"

I was raised on a chicken farm and I know that chickens don't like being confined. That they like to be petted. That they will fall asleep in your arms if you hold them.

My first pet was a chicken and I was forced to eat her. No lie.
Please help me to remember "Linda" my pet chicken, by not eating eggs for this month.

It's a small sacrifice for you, but a matter of life or death for the animals.

Year-Round Halloween Kitteh Does NOT Approve

YAY! I voted for (against?) Mattel's Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie!

Reprinted without permission from an email I got this morning.

Mattel's Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie.

More than 6,000 votes were cast in CCFC's inaugural competition for the TOADY (Toys Oppressive And Destructive to Young Children) Award for the worst toy of the year. With 40% of the vote, Barbie sailed to victory over the Power Wheels Cadillac Escalade (21%), the Smart Cycle by Fisher Price (19%) Baby Alive Goes Potty (10%) and The Lego Batman Video Game (10%). The people have spoken.

Mattel didn't respond to our request for comment, but reached at her home in Irvine, Texas, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Barbie said, "Take that, Bratz! I beat out a $350 toy gas guzzler and a stationary trike hooked up to a TV. Thanks to all my friends at Mattel - I wouldn't be here without them."

For fifty years since her launch, Barbie has promoted the worst gender stereotypes to young children ("Math class is tough!" and "Lets go shopping!"), but the Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Doll sunk to new depths. Rated appropriate for age six and up, the doll comes with the shortest of short shorts, stiletto boots, and a revealing halter top. The preposterously skimpy outfit allows children to get a better view of Barbie's dangerously thin body supported by impossibly long legs. The co-branded doll sends a clear message that they belong on the sideline, not in the game.

CCFC created the TOADY award in response to the Toy Industry Association's TOTY (Toy of the Year) Awards, which celebrate the most popular brands and toys often with little regard for their impact on children's wellbeing. Each TOADY nominee was selected for epitomizing one or more of the troubling commercial trends of the toy industry, such as marketing sex and/or violence to young children, promoting brands and screen time at the expense of creative play, and encouraging excessive and conspicuous consumption.

Thanks so much to all of you who participated in the TOADY process by voting, campaigning for your least favorite toy, and letting others know about the award. Many of you were also kind enough to let us know the rationale for your vote. To see why CCFC members voted the way they did - including a fun Wordle - please visit http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/actions/whyyouvotedtoady.html.

And remember, it's only 365 days until the 2010 TOADY's. So if you see a toy you think is TOADY-worthy, be sure to let us know.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

www.commercialfreechildhood.org

Maxine's Dash

Maxine's Dash

4 min

On the night of Tuesday, September 18, 2007 a cow was spotted on the streets of Queens. She was tagged for slaughter, but escaped that fate and literally ran for her life. Police and firefighters captured her and brought her to Animal Care & Control in Manhattan. From there, Farm Sanctuary's rescue team stepped in to bring the Fugitive cow, now named Maxine, to safety at our 175-acre sanctuary for farm animals where she will live out her life in peace and comfort.

Thanks to the people who responded to help this cow in need, Maxine will have a life full of green pastures, a warm cozy barn, nourishing food and fresh water, veterinary care, a herd of cattle friends, and the love of shelter caregivers at Farm Sanctuary.

If you think it's humane to eat eggs...

Before you eat another egg, watch this video about a chain grocery store on the east coast.

Wegman's Cruelty

They are certified humane, don't forget.

Meat Processors Look for Ways to Keep Ground Beef Safe (BUT THEY CAN'T FIND ANY)

Knowing these facts, I don't understand why any right thinking person would eat ground animal flesh.
Bold type was added for emphasis, by me.

Reprinted without permission from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06meat.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5099&en=8638953f2508ce34&ex=1197522000&partner=TOPIXNEWS

LEXINGTON, Neb. — In the last decade, Tyson Fresh Meats has transformed its slaughterhouse here to combat a potentially deadly type of food poisoning, adding huge chambers to scald carcasses and wash them in acid, steam vacuums to suck away microbes and elaborate gear to test hundreds of meat samples a day.

In all, the beef industry says it spends upward of $350 million a year to keep harmful pathogens out of the meat it sells to the public. But even as expenditures keep rising, the industry appears to be losing ground.

Late last month, the Agriculture Department announced its 20th recall of beef this year because of contamination with a toxic strain of the bacterium E. coli. That is only one recall shy of a record set in 2000 and matched in 2002.

No one knows for sure what is causing the jump in recalls, though theories abound, from the cyclical nature of pathogens to changes in cattle-feeding practices caused by the popularity of ethanol.

This much is clear: Fifteen years after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants made people aware that hamburgers could kill them, the American beef industry is still searching for a practical method to prevent the toxic E. coli strain from contaminating ground beef.

“If you gave me a million, zillion dollars and said give me a plant that doesn’t have E. coli, I couldn’t do it,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not about the will. It’s about the ability.”

What makes this year’s spate of recalls so surprising is that it comes after several years in which the number of recalls dropped sharply, to eight in 2006 and five in 2005. And it includes not just small and midsize firms with less rigorous food-safety protocols — like Topps Meat of New Jersey, which recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger because of potential E. coli contamination — but also large companies that have spent tens of millions of dollars to prevent E. coli contamination. Topps closed its doors on Oct. 5, and declared bankruptcy late last month.

Tyson Fresh Meats, for one, has had two relatively minor recalls this year; there were no reported illnesses. Cargill Meat Solutions, which has won plaudits for its efforts to combat E. coli, has had two recalls, including one in October affecting about 845,000 pounds of ground beef that had made more than a dozen people sick.

The Agriculture Department issued new guidelines in October urging the meat industry to adopt the latest technology to combat harmful forms of E. coli — essentially the measures that Tyson already has in place. But department officials acknowledge that short of irradiating the meat, there is no magic bullet to prevent E. coli contamination.

“The big challenge for them is you are dealing with people and biological systems,” said Kenneth E. Petersen, assistant administrator for field operations for the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. “To execute the program consistently every hour of every day they operate, that’s the challenge. They do a pretty good job at it. You can’t take your eye off the ball for any period of time or you get into trouble.”

The federal government says it believes that exposing meat to radiation is a safe and effective way to kill E. coli and other pathogens. But meat companies have been hesitant to use irradiation because of fears that it would make meat more expensive, change the taste and color, and provoke consumer opposition.

Escherichia coli bacteria are commonly found in the lower digestive tract of humans and animals, and they are usually harmless. But one strain, E. coli 0157:H7, produces a toxin that can make people sick, typically after eating ground beef or produce that has been contaminated by cattle feces.

It is difficult to say whether the amount of E. coli in ground beef has increased this year, since the number of recalls is an imperfect measure. Limited sampling by the Agriculture Department has found a slight increase in the level of E. coli 0157:H7 this year over recent years, though it remains lower than it was five or six years ago.

But some meat industry officials say they are sure that more E. coli is turning up in cattle this year. That impression is shared by William Marler, a lawyer in Seattle who specializes in food-borne illness and who has seen a marked increase in clients who say they became sick from eating E. coli-contaminated meat.

“This is real stuff,” he said. “It is a fundamentally different year than ’06, ’05, ’04 and ’03.”

As part of its efforts to eradicate E. coli, the meat industry is experimenting with vaccines, antibiotics and feed additives that may reduce the level of E. coli 0157:H7 in cattle intestines. But so far, those are not commercially available. To date, nearly all of the efforts to curb E. coli have focused on interventions at slaughterhouses and at grinding plants that produce ground beef

Dean A. Danilson is in charge of Tyson’s food safety.

Hamburger meat poses an elevated risk of illness because grinding can mix live E. coli bacteria throughout the meat, and consumers often undercook their hamburgers. Steaks pose less of a risk because any E. coli on the surface are likely to be killed during cooking.

Mohammad Koohmaraie, director of the Agriculture Department’s U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska, said his research had determined that most E. coli contamination came from the hides of cattle, which became matted with mud and manure in feed lots. As a result, his research has focused on ways to reduce the likelihood that manure from the hides comes in contact with a carcass during slaughter and subsequent handling.

“If you don’t do a good job of removing the hide, a whole bunch of it gets on the carcass,” Mr. Koohmaraie said. “If you do a good job, just a little bit to none gets on the carcass.”

His research, for instance, found that spraying the hides of cattle with a chemical wash immediately after they are killed drastically reduces the incidence of E. coli 0157:H7. JBS Swift & Company and Cargill are now using hide-washing procedures, which can cost several million dollars to install.

Dean A. Danilson, Tyson’s vice president for food safety and quality assurance, said that his company might install hide-washing equipment as it built new plants or retrofitted old ones. In the meantime, in the rear of the Lexington plant, a former combine factory converted to a slaughterhouse, an employee in rain gear hoses down cattle in a pen before they are slaughtered to rinse away manure and limit the amount of dust when the hide is removed.

“Keeping the dust down, knocking some of the caked-on mud and things off, any little bit helps,” Mr. Danilson said.

It is the first of many steps that Tyson employs to reduce the chances that pathogens like E. coli survive processing. Once the animal is killed, the hide is removed, first by knives and then by machines, in a manner intended to keep it away from the exposed carcass, starting near the anus and hind legs.

After each cut is made to remove the hide, a worker follows behind with a steam vacuum to kill and suck away microbes. The carcass, pulled along on an overhead rail, is then sent into a cabinet with pivoting nozzles that soak it with water at about 185 degrees.

After the head is removed and before the animal is gutted, the carcass is sprayed with a mild acid wash, again to reduce the level of microbes. Besides removing the hide, one of the most critical steps to prevent E. coli 0157:H7 comes when the animal is eviscerated and its internal organs are removed.

The workers who remove the organs are careful not to cut the bowel, which could spread manure, and a worker looks over the internal organs to make sure the intestines are intact. The carcasses are then sawed in half, and the cut line is steam vacuumed.

In one of the most important interventions, the split carcasses are sent into a 30-foot-long, hissing stainless-steel cabinet, where rows of nozzles spray them with steam for at least 13 seconds before they enter a second chamber that douses them with a disinfectant for at least 15 seconds.

The last step comes after the carcasses have been cut into steaks and roasts and leftover scraps, with the latter tossed into 2,000-pound bins for grinding into hamburger meat. Workers are assigned to cut at least 60 four-inch by one-half-inch strips from each lot of trimmings; a lot is five 2,000-pound bins.

Those samples are then ferried to a laboratory, where they are mixed with solution that encourages E. coli 0157:H7 to grow. After incubating for eight hours, the samples are tested, and if positive for the germ, that lot is diverted from being used as ground beef. Instead, it is used in cooked products or otherwise processed to kill the microbes.

“I wish I had a silver bullet. We have done a lot, and it’s a continuing ongoing process to look for more,” Mr. Danilson said. But he acknowledged that it was impossible to create a perfect system for stopping E. coli 0157:H7. “Taking a dirty animal and turning it into food — from the time of the cave man, that has not been an easy process.”

I belive that there should be vegan options offered in public school

And I don't just mean pb&j on white bread, iceberg lettuce and carrot sticks.
It isn't that hard, or that much more expensive to cook meals for the children, in the school, rather than serve them canned and frozen crap, or worse, fast food and soda pop, day after day

Read people's opinions, cast your own opinion and vote:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/vegan_school_lunch_options

Then go read some animal rights literature.

http://animalrights.change.org/



Think about this:

Why are some people vegan and some not? We all know that animals have to suffer die to make meat, eggs and milk, so why are some people bothered enough by these facts to go against everything they were ever taught was right and stop eating other beings, even if it alienates them from everyone they know, at least on some level, and some people just say, "oh, well, it's just a dumb cow/pig/chicken/rabbit/turkey/fish/bee", etc?

It isn't intelligence (well, not in every case). There are amazingly intelligent people, many of whom are activists for animal rights, still eat beings with a central nervous system.

It isn't creativity. Many stunningly creative people won't wear fur or buy things from sweat shops, yet they still eat mammals and birds that show intelligence and try to avoid pain.


Mary Martin asks this question far more eloquently in her blog.

Peaceful Protest. I Does It

I was out for my walk last night and there were helicopters all over the sky.

I went to Valencia Whole Foods and bought a coconut water. You could feel the energy, every one was buzzing. It was very intense.
I ran up the hill to Dolores Park and ran around the top, like I do.
It was crowded, there was dance music playing. People were holding signs and the energy was blasting. I stood at the top of the hill and I could see the energy rising above the crowd and hovering.
I listened to the speaker for a while and I got interviewed on CAMERA by a lovely woman who seemed sincerely interested. I should look foolish for that. dang.
I walked through and around the crowd, down to Dolores street. Then the man said MARCH! and so I did. Hey, I need the exercise and if I have motivation, mores the better! And, hey I am all for gay marriage. Civil Rights is Civil Rights and Gay is the new Black. Did you know that a few years back it was against the LAW for a black and white person to marry? THE LAW!!! So I marched.
"Go north on Dolores to 18th then left to castro and all the way to city hall!!" Ok, im good. It seems sort of round about , but I get your point.
I got my flip flops flappin and before I knew it I was at the beginning of the march, leading chants. "2-4-6-8 separate church and state"" did not go over well, but out of the bars and into the streets", they liked that one.

The march was good, it felt good. There was a lot of police presence and while there was ONE person I saw call a cop an asshole and was basically not polite, most people were very amicable with the police and I saw one of the sisters of perpetual indulgence thanking a female officer for her presence.
I have a slew of photos in my phone that i will email to this blog. They should be pretty crappy but you will get the point

There is no feeling like marching and chanting. It made me think of you, PVT HELL!