———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Sustainable Table – info [at] sustainabletable.org
Date: Nov 14, 2006 12:58 PM
Subject: Sustainable Table and Eat Well Guide Re-Launch Today!

Sustainable Table (www.sustainabletable.org), a leading resource designed to celebrate the sustainable food movement, re-launched our website today, offering enhanced navigation of the site — making it easy to get involved and keep up-to-date with the latest sustainability news, resources, educational tools, and award-winning advocacy films.

New to the website is:

• An updated and expanded Issues section, highlighting easy-to-understand information about industrial and sustainable agriculture

• A new Get Involved section, making it simple for everyone to find out how to make their lives and communities more sustainable

• A growing focus on personal stories. Through the blog, forum, features, and new Stories section, the updated Sustainable Table site will focus on the people behind the sustainable movement, as well as the consumers involved in it.

The Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org), Sustainable Table’s free online directory of farms, stores, restaurants, and other outlets that offer sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and egg products also re-launched today with enhanced features. In addition to providing consumers an easy-to-use tool to search by zip or postal code, product, growing method, or region to find the nearest wholesome food, the Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org) now offers:

• More than 7,500 entries

• Consumer reviews of outlets in the Guide

• Expanded “My Notebook” functions where registered users can save their favorite listings and keep notes to refer to in the future

Sustainable Table also has The Meatrix and The Meatrix II: Revolting, our award-winning Flash animation films, in a new digital format, downloadable to handheld media players, video phones, and iPods — free of charge. In addition, we recently released The Meatrix II 1/2, the latest installment of the award winning Meatrix series. Produced by Sustainable Table and Free Range Studios for Participant Productions, The Meatrix II 1/2 was launched to educate consumers about problems at processing facilities and to help promote the social action campaign surrounding the Fast Food Nation movie being released by Participant Productions and Fox Searchlight on November 17th. For more information, visit www.themeatrix.com.

Read the press release about our re-launch, or visit the Sustainable Table media lounge!

Sincerely,

The Sustainable Table Team

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From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Oct 24, 2006 4:17 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times front page on humane meat labels — 10/24/06

The front page of the Tuesday, October 24, New York Times includes a story, by Andrew Martin, headed, “Meat Labels Hope to Lure the Sensitive Carnivore.”

It is a great article to see on the front page as it should provide readers with surprising information about standard meat production.

The article focuses on the new “animal compassionate” labels soon to appear at Whole Foods, and tells us, “The initiative was started by Whole Foods’ chief executive, John P. Mackey, a vegan who has been increasingly outspoken on animal-rights issues.”

While in the case of Whole Foods, the standards are driven by the CEO’s personal concern over the issues, labels are sometimes applied simply as a marketing tool to attract compassionate consumers. We read:

“For instance, the United Egg Producers provided an ‘animal care certified’ logo to its members that several state attorneys general said was misleading because it falsely suggested that the chickens were humanely raised. While denying the charges, the group recently changed the label to say ‘United Egg Producers certified.’”

We read about other concerns over humane labels:

“Others question the validity of the certification programs for animal-welfare labels because some allow farming practices like cutting the tails off pigs and allowing animals to be raised entirely indoors.”

And:

“The Animal Welfare Institute and ‘free farmed’ allow nose rings for pigs; the rings make rooting more difficult and prevent the pigs from tearing up the ground. The others do not allow rings.”

One problem with the article is that it quotes people who deliver misinformation. For example, we read of George Siemon, chief executive of Organic Valley: “He noted that the federal government’s organic standards include animal-welfare provisions, like prohibiting cages for laying hens and requiring outdoor access for livestock.”

A story on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, however, on August 20, made told us that the standards are not clear and that cows at the Horizon organic dairy farm are rarely allowed outdoors. (That article is on line at http://tinyurl.com/p68ue.)

The New York Times article includes a sidebar with some information about the different standards of different humane labels — whether they allow, for example, castration (without anesthesia) and tail docking.

You’ll find the article on line here.

The front page story provides a great opportunity for letters to the editor discussing the common treatment of animals used in the US food supply. Good sources of information, and photos, are http://www.FactoryFarming.com and the HSUS publication “Eating for the Animals.”

Or you might wish to write about the horror of under-regulated slaughterhouses, reminding readers how bad the end is for the animals no matter how they are raised. Even if slaughterhouses were better regulated it would make no difference to the hens who are exempt from the Federal Humane Slaughter Act.

The New York Times takes letters at letters [at] nytimes.com.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published. And please be sure to share you own thoughts and not to use any of my words or references in your letters.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi. You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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Tagged: animals animal+rights action+alerts dawnwatch meat food+labeling certified+humane eggs animal+compassionate whole+foods animal+care+certified

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From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Sep 25, 2006 8:24 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Artificial hormones in cows’ milk on Boston Globe front page — 9/25/06

The Monday, September 25 Boston Globe has a front page story headed, “2 Dairies to End Use of Artificial Hormones; Hope to Compete with Organic Milk.”

It opens:

“The region’s biggest dairies are rushing to rid their bottled milk of artificial growth hormones in a bid to draw back customers who have switched to organic milk.

“Dean Foods, which operates the Garelick plant in Franklin, and H.P. Hood, which operates a plant in Agawam, are demanding that regional farmer cooperatives supply them with milk from cows that haven’t been injected with synthetic hormones that boost milk production.

“Over the next few weeks, jugs of Hood and Garelick milk with labels pledging ‘no artificial growth hormones’ should start filling supermarket shelves a strategy the dairies hope will satisfy the chief concern of consumers going organic and do so at less than half the retail price of organic milk.”

Demonstrating that artificial growth hormones are not the only concern of organic milk buyers, we read:

“But Nasser Hussain, a teacher from Boston, said he buys organic milk largely because he opposes industrial farming. ‘Organic to me means they let the cows out of the pen,’ he said.”

(Note: Unfortunately that is somewhat misleading. An August 20 front page story in the Chicago Tribune shared complaints that cows on large organic dairy farms are hardly able to graze. It referred to guidelines being sought by the Organic Standards Board that would organic require dairy cows to get about one-third of their diet from pasture four months out of the year — i.e. one ninth of their diet from pasture. See http://tinyurl.com/mz56s for more on that Tribune story.)

You’ll find today’s front page Globe story online here OR http://tinyurl.com/o6blp

It opens the door for letters about the treatment of cows on dairy farms, and from those who have found happy substitutes for cow’s milk.

A nice source of information is http://www.dumpdairy.com

The Boston Globe takes letters at letter [at] globe.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Sep 25, 2006 8:11 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times editorial condemns pig industry consolidation 9/23/06

The Saturday, September 23, New York Times, included an editorial (the paper’s official editorial opinion) headed “The Ultimate Agricultural Efficiency.”

It opens:

“Any American history of pork — the meat, that is — shows a steady concentration of more and more hogs in the hands of fewer and fewer producers. That is what modern agricultural “efficiency” looks like. It’s good for the bottom line of the big industrial players, but bad for farmers, hogs, the environment and, ultimately, consumers. That history took another step in the wrong direction when Smithfield Foods — the biggest pork packer — agreed to buy the second biggest pork packer, Premium Standard Farms.”

The piece explains that as pig farming operations are increasingly consolidated, small farms are dying out, and pig farmers are becoming “janitors in confinement barns across rural America where the packers’ huge herds of pigs are crammed in stalls to live out their short lives.”

The reference to pigs being crammed into stalls points to the cruelty of factory farming, but the piece doesn’t focus on it, which is why letters to the editor can help. Since it was photographs of pigs living in individual in stalls so small that they cannot even turn around that first piqued my interest in animal rights, I urge anybody who has not seen those photos to check out the photo gallery at http://www.FactoryFarming.com .

You can read Saturday’s New York Times editorial on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/opinion/23sat3.html.

You can send a letter to the editor describing the cruelty of modern farming or singing the praises of Fakin Bacon. (Not literally — in your own words please.)

The Times takes letters at letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Aug 16, 2006 7:40 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: LA Times lead ‘Food’ article on books about ethical eating 8/16/06

The Food section of the Wednesday, August 16, Los Angeles Times has a cover story (Pg F1) on the rush of books about ethical eating, headed, “Voting with their forks.”

It opens:

“In the last couple of months a choir of disparate voices has been sending the same message through books, magazines and the Internet that advocates of farmers markets and eating locally have been preaching for years: The cost of industrialized food is too high, both literally and environmentally. And the thought is sinking in.

“At least four ambitious books connecting the dots between what we eat and how it affects the world have been published recently, and the most insightful of them, Michael Pollan’s ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ has been a bestseller…. The reasons behind this sudden consciousness-raising are myriad, but Pollan summarizes them most succinctly. In an e-mail, he says Americans are starting to understand ‘just how important the food issue is — how it is linked to energy and global warming (17% of our fossil fuel use goes to feeding ourselves); to environmental pollution (farming is the single biggest source of water pollution); health (obesity and diabetes turned attention to the way we produce food); world trade, the federal budget and the welfare of animals.’”

There are other good quotes from Pollan such as:

“My hunch is that, at a time when world problems seem so dire and intractable, food represents one area where people feel they can actually make a difference, here and now. As I tell audiences, if you feel your tax dollars are going to support practices you find deplorable, you can’t withdraw your support for those practices without going to jail. But if you feel that your food dollars are supporting morally or ethically objectionable practices — brutal factory farms or environmental pollution — you can withhold your support, and vote with your fork for a better alternative.”

The article comments on the shift of consciousness into the mainstream:

“Unlike the last revolution in food, in the ’70s, the movement toward change is not coming from the fringe and cannot be easily written off as the pipe dreams of a bunch of vegetarian hippies. The right stuff is no longer segregated in health food stores and co-ops; it’s gone mainstream.

“And that may explain one more sea change in the Summer of Food: Priorities have shifted. Americans concerned about how their food is raised now know they can make a difference. Hence the ’scandale’ over lobsters (Whole Foods promised to stop selling them live to give them a finer quality of life) and the growing movement to outlaw foie gras on the grounds that it represents cruelty to ducks.”

The article ends with recommendations of five books on the topic. Though the author favors “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” those particularly interested in animal issues should pick up another of the five, “The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter,” by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. (You’ll find information about that book and some reviews at http://tinyurl.com/qdmds where you can also purchase it.)

You’ll find the whole Los Angeles Times article on line here OR at http://tinyurl.com/qbsfj

It does not concentrate on animal cruelty issues but provides a great opportunity for letters that do. www.FactoryFarming.com is a good source of information.

The Los Angeles Times takes letters at letters [at] latimes.com.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Aug 14, 2006 5:00 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: “Meat Eaters Without The Guilt” in Washington Post 8/14/06

The Monday, August 14, Washington Post has a thoughtful piece by Tamar Haspel headed, “Meat Eaters Without The Guilt.” (Pg A13)

It opens:

“It’s almost a movement. Sustainable agriculture — David to factory farming’s Goliath — is capturing the eating public’s imagination with its contented cows, bucolic landscape and its practice of leaving the environment intact.

“With an assist from some recent books describing the miserable lives of animals under big agriculture, the small farmer’s message that we should care about the lives of our livestock is getting traction. As it does, it gives those of us with a concern for animals, but also a fondness for pork chops, a place to hang our hats.

“Until relatively recently, when grass-fed beef and free-roaming pork began arriving in stores, consumers had to be one of three things: carnivore, vegetarian or hypocrite. If you didn’t care about your pork chop’s quality of life, you could be a carnivore. If you did, you could either renounce it and be a vegetarian or eat it anyway and, well . . .

“Vegetarians had a good claim to the ethical and environmental high ground. Factory farms abuse animals and devastate the environment, and a world where we all eat plants is clearly better than that. When you put the vegetarian vision up against a system of small, sustainable farms, though, the equation changes.

“Ecologically, vegetarians focus on efficiency. If humans eat animals that eat plants, it takes much more land to feed us than if humans just eat the plants. That seems like a quaint concern, though, in this era of abundance. Besides, what would we put on freed-up farmland? Gated communities? Wal-Mart?”

Haspel mentions a farm where the animals are well treated (until they are killed) and the manure from the animals makes growing the vegetables possible, but then writes:

“None of this would matter if the livestock suffered. Sustainability couldn’t excuse keeping pigs in such close confinement that they chewed each other’s tails off. But the beauty of the sustainable farm is that the pigs root, roam and wallow. Of course, you still have to kill them, and there are people who find that unacceptable under any circumstances.”

“But there’s a strong case that giving a farm animal a happy life making a constructive environmental contribution and slaughtering it humanely to feed people is ethical. Even animal rights hard-liner Peter Singer, in ‘The Way We Eat’ (co-authored with Jim Mason), can’t condemn ‘the view that it is ethical to eat animals who have lived good lives and would not have existed at all.’ He concludes that it’s ‘more appropriate to praise’ this relatively enlightened view than to criticize it for not being the veganism he prefers.”

Haspel then mentions that “vegetarians are undoubtedly healthier than meat eaters,” but she writes, “no study has compared a wholly vegetarian diet to a largely vegetarian diet that includes some grass-fed beef, free-rooting pork or cageless poultry.”

She suggests that by supporting sustainable farms, we “might be able to change the nature of American agriculture.”

You can read the whole piece on line at http://tinyurl.com/o5p3a.

Haspel clearly has a concern for animal welfare that should be commended. However those tempted to believe that raising animals on sustainable farms, where they are well treated, negates the problem of cruelty should read another article from the Washington Post, (April 10, 2001, front page) titled “They Die Piece by Piece.” It is available on line at http://tinyurl.com/d2mtm.

It describes undercover footage taken from a slaughterhouse that shows cows, improperly stunned, moooing, kicking and blinking as they make their way down the slaughter line being hacked to pieces.

Today’s article presents a great opportunity for letters that sing the praises of plant-based diets. The Washington Post takes letters at letters [at] washpost.com and advises, “Please do not send attachments; they will not be read. Letters must be exclusive to The Washington Post, and must include the writer’s home address and home and business telephone numbers.”

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — and please leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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Wow! It seems as though food, particularly the ethical/environmental aspects of organics, meat, etc., has been in the headlines quite a bit in the past month or so. Here’s another DawnWatch alert on the subject.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 19, 2006 2:10 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Washington Post on ethical eating 7/19/06

The Wednesday, July 19, Washington Post includes an article, by Candy Sagon, on the cover of the food section, headed, “Is There Anything Left That We Can Eat?; With All the Conflicting Headlines, No Wonder We Can’t Decide What to Buy.”

Sagon opens:

“I can’t decide what to eat. I don’t mean which recipe to make, or what restaurant to go to. I mean when I go grocery shopping, I’m paralyzed with indecision. Everything, it seems, is either ethically, nutritionally or environmentally incorrect. Guilt is ruining my appetite.

“Take the other day when I went to buy eggs. Sounds easy, but this is the dialogue that played in my head as I stared at six shelves of egg cartons:

“‘Should I buy the omega-3 eggs that are supposedly good for my heart? But wait, they’re not organic. Maybe I should spring for the $3.50 organic eggs from Horizon, even though I read that the company has gotten so huge, it’s driving out the smaller organic farmers. Perhaps I should get the cage-free eggs from a small farm in Pennsylvania? Or the brown eggs from vegetarian-fed, free-roaming hens?

“‘Oh, never mind. I need to save money. So what if the hens are living a miserable existence in the poultry version of the state pen. The eggs are only 79 cents. I have bills to pay.’

“(Note to PETA: Don’t worry. I couldn’t live with the guilt. I ended up buying the brown eggs from free-roaming happy hens, so don’t write to me.) ”

“The point is, choosing what to eat and drink has become hard work. It’s not simply a case of taste or price. Now we have to ask ourselves: Is this good for my health? Have animals suffered? Is it local? Organic? Bad for the planet? Harvested by child workers? ”

Sagon discusses wild caught vs farm-raised salmon, the treatment of both workers and animals in slaughterhouses, and also issues of human health and environmental impact.

You can read the whole article on line here OR http://tinyurl.com/jdqjo

It presents the perfect opportunity for letters to the editor on the horrors of factory farming and/or singing the praises of a plant-based diet.

Send letters to letters [at] washpost.com. The paper advises, “Please do not send attachments; they will not be read. Letters must be exclusive to The Washington Post, and must include the writer’s home address and home and business telephone numbers.”

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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Still catching up on all that email (!)…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 10, 2006 2:44 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Discover Magazine on lab-grown meat — July 2006 edition

The July edition of Discover Magazine has an article under “Blinded by Science” headed, “The Way of All Flesh. Bringing home the bacon may become a thing of the past when we can grow our own.” (p 28.)

It opens with a discussion of a proposed meat machine, and suggests that “in the future we’ll be sprinkling a few ’starter cells’ into our meat machine before we go to bed and adding a cup or two of ‘growth medium.’ The next morning we’ll awake to an appetizing, fully formed lump of pork or beef or poultry, ready to be fried up with breakfast…”

It tells us that this new meat will be healthier for humans:

“The steaks and chops we use to fill our faces will have the fat content of mere salmon. Nor shall we submit any longer to disease. Salmonella, mad cow, E. coli . . . these will be consigned to the dustbin of meat history and the name pool of heavy-metal bands.”

The article suggests that some vegetarians will be thrilled:

“Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, informs me that she has been following Dr. Mironov’s career and the glacial progress of the ‘lab-grown meat’ movement since its inception. Newkirk is salivating in anticipation of the day she finally gets to eat a chunk of meat that nothing had to suffer to produce-not least because the flesh won’t contain the vast quantity of ‘rectums and nose-skin bacteria’ she assures me I’ve been eating a lot of.”

It continues:

“But Newkirk is the right sort of vegetarian: the rational sort. She concedes that not all of her pale fellow travelers share a commonsensical enthusiasm for the coming revolution.”

It then goes on to discuss, in amusing detail, the kinds of vegetarians the author imagines won’t be pleased, those whose “decision not to eat meat was inspired less by the contemplated suffering of animals than by the contemplated prolonged suffering of parents forced to cook two sets of meals….”

You can read the whole article on line at:

http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-06/departments/blinded/

It presents a fabulous opportunity for letters about the current methods of bringing meat to dining tables.

Discover takes letters at editorial [at] discover.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info.)

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 27, 2006 9:37 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times write-up on “The Way We Eat” 6/27/06

The Health section of the Tuesday, June 27, New York Times (pg F5) has a positive write-up on two new similarly named books, “What to Eat,” by Marion Nestle and “The Way We Eat,” by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. The article’s headline reads, “On Special At Your Local Supermarket: Moral Choices.”

The review explains that Nestle’s book “focuses on how much food we need, what kind, and how to find it” while in their book “Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton, and his co-author, Jim Mason, an animal rights activist, make the case that food choices are ethical choices.”

We read:

“Dr. Singer and Mr. Mason organize their book around food shopping by three very different households: an Arkansas family eating ‘the Standard American Diet,’ much of it bought at Wal-Mart; a Connecticut family striving to eat only organic food; and a Kansas family of vegans who eat nothing animal-based, not even cheese or eggs.

“Both books end up in the same place on a number of issues.

“Both advise eating organic food. Not because it’s better for you — though it might be — but because it’s better for the environment and far kinder to animals. And both pile up evidence that profit pressures in agribusiness are detrimental to society at large.

“The examples the authors use to bolster their arguments are not for the weak of stomach. Dr. Singer’s and Mr. Mason’s gruesome description of industrial pig farming ought to turn any sentient reader away from anything but organic bacon. As Dr. Nestle puts it, ‘If you think too much about what is involved in the raising and killing of animals, you may find meat hard to eat.’

“In ‘The Way We Eat,’ the description of industrial chicken production actually comes with a warning that it may be ‘disturbing to some readers.’”

The review discusses the impact of the glut of corn syrup on the market, and touches on the environmental impact of factory farming. We read:

“For example, any doubt that industrial pig farming can have disastrous environmental impacts was removed a few years ago, with the failure of a so-called lagoon holding vast amounts of manure from a North Carolina hog factory. The resulting pollution was widespread and long lasting.”

And it returns to animal cruelty issues:

“Dr. Singer and Mr. Mason dismiss the cost argument as insufficient to justify what they regard as chronic cruelty, much of it inflicted on highly intelligent creatures…. And, while it is true that if a pig’s tail is chopped off, another pig cannot gnaw it off, and that chickens whose beaks are seared off cannot peck one another to death, the authors say these steps are unnecessary when pigs are allowed to forage and nest naturally and chickens are not crammed into sheds where each has less than 80 square inches of space — an area smaller than a sheet of typing paper — as is typical in chicken production sheds.”

You can read the whole piece on line at

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/health/27book.html

It presents a nice opportunity for veg-friendly letters to the editor. The New York Times takes letters at letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

You can read other reviews and buy Singer and Mason’s book on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/qdmds. I highly recommend it.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info)

Returning from vacation with an old-ish email from DawnWatch. Vaca pics coming soon!

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jun 25, 2006 11:49 AM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times on animals raised for food — “It Died For Us” 6/25/06

This Sunday, June 25, The New York Times Business section (page 2) has an article that discusses the Whole Foods decision to stop selling live lobsters and tells us of a new invention called the “CrustaStun,” which electrocutes crabs or lobsters in a matter of seconds. See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business/yourmoney/25goods.html for that article.

“The Week in Review” section, also includes an article, on its cover, inspired by the Wholefoods decision. Titled “It Died for Us,” the piece, by Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni, takes a broader look at the raising of consumer consciousness with regard to the treatment of animals sold for human food.

Bruni’s piece opens by questioning whether oysters eaten alive feel pain, then comments:

“These questions seem less ridiculous than they once did. This month Whole Foods announced that it would no longer sell live lobsters, saying that keeping them in crammed tanks for long periods doesn’t demonstrate a proper concern for animal welfare. The Chicago City Council recently outlawed the sale of foie gras to protest the force-feeding of the ducks and geese that yield it. California passed a similar law, which doesn’t take effect until 2012, and other states and cities are considering such measures.

“All of these developments dovetail with a heightened awareness in these food-obsessed times of what we eat: where it came from, what it was fed, how it was penned, how it perished. If the success of best sellers like ‘Fast Food Nation’ and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and stores like Whole Foods is any indication, more Americans are spending more time mulling the nutritional, environmental and, yes, ethical implications of their diets.

“They prefer that their beef carry the tag ‘grass fed,’ which evokes a verdant pasture rather than a squalid feed lot, and that their poultry knew the glories of a ‘free range,’ a less sturdy assurance than many people believe.

“But these concerns are riddled with intellectual inconsistencies and prompt infinite questions. Are the calls for fundamental changes in the mass production of food simply elitist, the privilege of people wealthy enough to pay more at the checkout counter? Does fretting about ducks give people a pass on chickens? Does considering the lobster allow seafood lovers to disregard the tuna?”

Great questions! And Michael Pollan, author of ”The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is quoted:

”Foie gras and lobster are not at the heart of the real tough issues of animal welfare, which are feed lots and pigs and cattle and chickens and how billions of animals are treated….On the other hand, the fact that we’re having this conversation at all — that we’re talking about ethics in relation to what we’re eating every day — strikes me as a very healthy thing.”

The article also shares thoughts from Jay Weinstein, author of a new book ”The Ethical Gourmet’.”

We read:

“While the lives of ‘free-range’ chickens are hardly ideal, the lives of other chickens are even worse, Mr. Weinstein said. The birds’ feet are lacerated by the wire they are forced to stand on, while their beaks are clipped so they can’t peck at each other in the tight quarters they occupy. He questioned whether any of that was less offensive than the force feeding of ducks.”

The article also includes quotes by a chef, Eric Ripert of ‘Le Bernardin’, who kills lobsters with a knife before boiling them, to save them suffering.

But we read:

“But where do the restaurant’s lobsters await their appointment with the knife? For as many as 24 hours, as many as 40 lobsters inhabit a container that’s just 3-feet long by 1-foot wide, he said. It doesn’t sound much comfier than a Whole Foods holding tank.”

Ripert is quoted:

“When you think about treating animals in a humane way, it’s unlimited. If you start with the lobster, then next month you should think about the clam, and then you have to think about the fish, which is suffocating outside the water after we catch it.”

The reporter, Bruni, adds:

“Even before it suffocates, a hooked or netted fish flails in a doomed effort to avoid its fate. The process is traumatic enough that David Pasternack, a fisherman and co-owner of the Manhattan seafood restaurant Esca, noted that ‘you can see the struggle in the flesh of a fish.”’

Bruni then asks, “Does that struggle deserve as much heed as the grisly realities of the abattoir?”

He answers:

“Maybe not. Ample scientific evidence suggests that various creatures have varying levels of consciousness.”

He quotes Pollan again, ”There really is a difference between the sentience of an oyster and the sentience of a lobster and the sentience of a cat. These lines really can be drawn.”

And Bruni writes:

“And advocates of animal welfare argue that some lines are better than none, that inconsistencies are better than inaction.”

A nice comment — of course inconsistency is better than inaction. The article, however, might inspire animal advocates to question drawing lines between animals when there are so many nutritious vegetarian choices available. You can read the full article on line at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/weekinreview/25bruni.html and send letters to the editor to letters [at] nytimes.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published, and that it is important not to use any of my phrases or those from other alerts. Sample letters (or alerts that recommend specific talking points — much the same as sample letters) are counterproductive when dealing with the media since many papers will avoid publishing letters that appear to be part of a campaign. Yet still, many letters about the same article show great reader interest in the topic, and will ensure that some letters are published and also that the topic gets more coverage. So it is important to write — but to write short original notes.

Most importantly, please keep an eye out for related articles in your local media — you might use any article on food as a jump-off point for an animal friendly letter. Some of the smaller papers publish close to 100% of the letters they receive, so why not write?

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.dawnwatch.com/cgi-bin/dada/dawnwatch_unsubscribe.cgi
You are encouraged to forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts but please do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)

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(Crossposted at easyVegan.info)