Via Grist:

There was a time when Eric Schlosser took his kids out for fast food. But once he started researching an article on the industry, all that changed. The article turned into a widely acclaimed book, Fast Food Nation, which has now been turned into a Richard Linklater-directed film, opening today. And his kids don’t get to eat Happy Meals anymore. Sarah van Schagen talks with Schlosser about his hopes for the new film and his dreams for a revitalized food culture, and offers her take on the film in Gristmill. In Soapbox, a former McDonald’s cook explains why he returned to his farming roots. Bon appetit!

New in Main Dish: Fast Food Damnation

New in Soapbox: Fry Away Home

New in Gristmill: A short review of the new film Fast Food Nation

Also, check out the movie’s website for tons of extra-yummy vittles!

———- Forwarded message ———-
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.)

—————————————-

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

———- Forwarded message ———-
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.)

———————–

———- 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.)

—————————————-

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Sep 22, 2006 5:44 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: NY Times op-ed points to cattle farming as cause of E.coli spinach care 9/21/06

This week, America shunned spinach after some was found to carry a deadly strain of E.coli bacteria. The Thursday, September 21, New York Times, however, included an op-ed, by Nina Planck, author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why,” who suggests that the spinach farmers are not the culprits.

In the piece titled, “Leafy Green Sewage” (pg A31) Planck writes:

“Indeed, this epidemic, which has infected more than 100 people and resulted in at least one death, probably has little do with the folks who grow and package your greens. The detective trail ultimately leads back to a seemingly unrelated food industry — beef and dairy cattle.

She explains that E. coli O157:H7 is different from most E.coli which is harmless to humans. She writes:

“Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.”

And she discusses “the contamination of ground water, flood water and rivers — all irrigation sources on spinach farms — by the E-coli-infected manure from cattle farms.”

She writes:

“The United States Department of Agriculture does recognize the threat from these huge lagoons of waste, and so pays 75 percent of the cost for a confinement cattle farmer to make manure pits watertight, either by lining them with concrete or building them above ground. But taxpayers are financing a policy that only treats the symptom, not the disease, and at great expense. There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle.”

And she concludes

“California’s spinach industry is now the financial victim of an outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E. coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy farmers.”

You’ll find the full piece on line here. It addresses a danger of factory farming from the standpoint of public health but does not mention animal welfare. Most cattle, fed on corn, live pathetic lives. Contrary to the images we remember from childhood of animals grazing in meadows, those raised for beef and milk today live in disgusting feedlots, often knee-deep in their own manure, with no protection from the elements. In 2002 the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story, ‘This Steer’s Life,’ in which Michael Pollan documented the life of a steer from birth to death. That piece is available on Pollan’s website. It is well worth reading.

Planck’s op-ed deserves some appreciative letters to the editor against factory farming. Feel free to sing the praises of a veggie diet.

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 careful not to use any exact phrases from this alert in your letters; the editors wish to receive original reactions from their readers.

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.)

—————————————-

New in Grist:

The vast majority of American schools offer highly processed, heat-n-serve school lunches — and we wonder why schoolkids feast on Play-Doh and glue. Now, the corporate world that brought mystery meatloaf, neon vegetables, and half-frozen milk to generations of young palates is hoping to conquer the potentially lucrative school-breakfast market. Tom Philpott considers how we got into this unappetizing situation, and chews over what could be done to remedy it.

You can read the whole piece here.

(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.)

—————————————-

(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.)

—————————————-

<sarcasm>
I’m sure this never happens in America.
</sarcasm>

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1417438.ece

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Jul 31, 2006 4:38 PM
Subject: DawnWatch LA: Vegan diet control of diabetes in LA Times 7/31/06

Angelenos:

Sally Squire’s article on vegan diets controlling diabetes (from last week’s Washington Post) is in the Monday, July 31, Los Angeles Times (see below). It offers a great opportunity for those who enjoy a plant-based diet to sing its praises. The Los Angeles Times takes letters at letters [at] latimes.com

Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2006 Monday
HEALTH; Features Desk; Part F; Pg. 7

THE LEAN PLATE; Need to control blood sugar? Carbs might help

Sally Squires, Special to The Times

People with Type 2 diabetes are advised to limit carbohydrates because of worries these foods could overtax the body’s dwindling insulin production and lessen its ability to process glucose. Now some scientists are asking if a diet rich in healthful carbohydrates — whole grains, beans, fruit and vegetables — and with just 10% of calories as fat might be another option.

The idea borrows a lesson from heart disease research, which has shown that very strict vegetarian diets quite low in fat and very high in carbohydrates can help reverse blockages — if people stick with them.

“A diet can be wonderful for you, but if it can’t be practically applied, it can’t do much,” says Robert Eckel, president of the
American Heart Assn.

In May, Dr. Dean Ornish, a proponent of the very-low-fat approach for reversing heart disease, reported that this regimen helped people afflicted with both diabetes and heart disease. Not only did they lose weight, but their blood cholesterol improved and they didn’t show a rise in unhealthy fats known as triglycerides, as some researchers feared. Another key finding: Twenty percent of participants who stuck with the diet for a year were either able to cut their insulin and other glucose-lowering medication or eliminate it.

Similar results were reported from a National Institutes of Health-funded study headed by David Jenkins of the University of
Toronto and Neal Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a pro-vegetarian group. The four-month trial studied 99 people with Type 2 diabetes. Some were asked to follow the standard dietary advice from the American Diabetes Assn. The others were asked to adhere to a very strict, low-fat vegan diet, devoid of meat, fish, eggs, dairy or any other animal products.

Both groups improved blood sugar control and LDL cholesterol levels. Both lost weight, but the vegan group shed an average of 15 pounds compared with 6 pounds for the group that adhered to the ADA guidelines. Like the Ornish study, the vegan group showed no harmful changes in either triglyceride levels or in high-density lipoprotein (HDL), a protective form of cholesterol. Results of the study were published in the August issue of the journal Diabetes Care.

The findings offer more evidence that eating a very-low-fat regimen with a lot of healthful carbohydrates may not be as harmful as once thought for those with Type 2 diabetes and could prove to be another treatment option.

HDL and triglycerides “are often windows of concern, and they were not modified adversely by this,” says the heart association’s Eckel. “If this more radical approach in diabetes can be tolerated better long term, then we may be on to something here.”

Learning to go vegan takes effort, time and some sacrifice, as Vance Warren, 36, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer found. “I know the difference between a Morton’s steak and a tofu steak,” says Warren, who lost more than 70 pounds while participating in the study and was able to reduce the medication he takes to control his blood sugar. “It’s like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. The hardest thing for me was giving up the chicken wings … but I really don’t miss them now.”

Experts caution that the findings are not likely to change current recommendations for diabetes until much more research is conducted with larger groups of people. “It’s great that the low-fat vegan diet improved glycemic [blood sugar] control,” says Karmeen Kulkarni, president of health care and education for the American Diabetes Assn. “But we had 50 people here. We have to see if this is palatable in a bigger scheme of things on an ongoing basis.”

In the meantime, there’s wide agreement about how to control or prevent diabetes, as well as heart disease and many types of cancer:

* Eat more plant-based foods. The more varied, the better.

* Easy on the fat. Gram for gram, it contains more than twice the calories as protein or carbs. Being overweight or obese are major risk factors for diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Whatever fat you eat, make it healthy. Reach for fish (not fried), healthy oil such as canola or olive oil, nuts, avocados and seeds.

* Get active. The Diabetes Prevention Program, a large federally funded study of people who are just a step shy of developing diabetes, found that daily exercise (walking is fine) was important to prevent diabetes. How much? Thirty minutes daily. But that half-hour can be broken down into 10-minute increments.

——————–

(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.)