Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Shooting the pets that don't get adopted

This extraordinarily cruel and inhumane treatment is how homeless pets are handled in Hinckley, Utah. Cats and dogs are held for only 72 hours in the local "shelter" and then taken to a nearby open sewer pit where they are shot. If they run out of bullets the animals are run over by a vehicle. The mayor of the community says it’s efficient and cost-effective, and perfectly legal. Neighbors have reported that the pets are not always dead when they’re thrown in the pit and some have crawled onto nearby properties to die a slow, painful death.

Go to Change.org and sign the petition.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Fatty Foods Are Addictive

(From Health.com) Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.

A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there's more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There's a system in the brain that's been turned on or over-activated, and that's driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. One of the groups was fed regular rat food. A second was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other fattening, high-calorie foods--but only for one hour each day. The third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day.

Not surprisingly, the rats that gorged themselves on the human food quickly became obese. But their brains also changed. By monitoring implanted brain electrodes, the researchers found that the rats in the third group gradually developed a tolerance to the pleasure the food gave them and had to eat more to experience a high.

They began to eat compulsively, to the point where they continued to do so in the face of pain. When the researchers applied an electric shock to the rats' feet in the presence of the food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating. But the obese rats were not. "Their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Kenny.

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

The fact that junk food could provoke this response isn't entirely surprising, says Dr.Gene-Jack Wang, M.D., the chair of the medical department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, New York.

"We make our food very similar to cocaine now," he says.

Coca leaves have been used since ancient times, he points out, but people learned to purify or alter cocaine to deliver it more efficiently to their brains (by injecting or smoking it, for instance). This made the drug more addictive.

According to Wang, food has evolved in a similar way. "We purify our food," he says. "Our ancestors ate whole grains, but we're eating white bread. American Indians ate corn; we eat corn syrup."

The ingredients in purified modern food cause people to "eat unconsciously and unnecessarily," and will also prompt an animal to "eat like a drug abuser [uses drugs]," says Wang.

The neurotransmitter dopamine appears to be responsible for the behavior of the overeating rats, according to the study. Dopamine is involved in the brain's pleasure (or reward) centers, and it also plays a role in reinforcing behavior. "It tells the brain something has happened and you should learn from what just happened," says Kenny.

Overeating caused the levels of a certain dopamine receptor in the brains of the obese rats to drop, the study found. In humans, low levels of the same receptors have been associated with drug addiction and obesity, and may be genetic, Kenny says.

However, that doesn't mean that everyone born with lower dopamine receptor levels is destined to become an addict or to overeat. As Wang points out, environmental factors, and not just genes, are involved in both behaviors.

Wang also cautions that applying the results of animal studies to humans can be tricky. For instance, he says, in studies of weight-loss drugs, rats have lost as much as 30 percent of their weight, but humans on the same drug have lost less than 5 percent of their weight. "You can't mimic completely human behavior, but [animal studies] can give you a clue about what can happen in humans," Wang says.

Although he acknowledges that his research may not directly translate to humans, Kenny says the findings shed light on the brain mechanisms that drive overeating and could even lead to new treatments for obesity.

"If we could develop therapeutics for drug addiction, those same drugs may be good for obesity as well," he says.

I'm finally back.

Sorry everyone ... I've been away for a while. I had to travel to Southern California for a few days for my job but now I'm back, it's the start of a new week and I'll be posting more soon. Also, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you may remember me mentioning that there was going to be an Austin chapter of Eating Liberally. That is a go and our first meeting will be May 20th. I haven't secured a time yet and once I do, I'll be posting the blog address, the time, the date and the location. I will also be updating my twitter with goings-ons as well as adding a new facebook page JUST for the Eating Liberally organization. Then I have another surprise, I'll be making vegan doughnuts soon for sampling. If you're local and would like to try some, let me know and I'll be giving them out on a first come, first e mail basis. The first batch will be apple cider with vanilla and chocolate frosting. So as you can see .. a lot has been happening in my corner of the world but as I said, I'll be updating the blog, twitter and facebook with all of my happenings, so be on alert.

Doug

Monday, March 15, 2010

Meatless Mondays and Taiwan

From Change

The China Post reports that Taiwan's Ministry of Education is calling on elementary and junior high schools to provide one vegetarian lunch per week to students. The goal is to promote healthy lifestyles and help reduce global warming. According to Deputy Minister of Education Lin Tsong-ming, if everyone in the country adopted one meat-free day, carbon emissions could be reduced by 161,000,000 kg.

Will the call for a weekly vegetarian lunch in Taiwan's schools result in the same kind of weird madness as Meatless Monday has caused in the U.S.? It's doubtful.

Taiwan, like many Asian countries, has a history of vegetarianism. Many of the nation's Buddhists avoid meat completely, and vegetarian restaurants are plentiful. According to Taiwan Today, "From high-end restaurants to street vendors, there are more than 4,000 vegetarian establishments on the island catering to some 1.7 million non-meat eaters, as well as a huge variety of edibles available at supermarkets and other food outlets." It is estimated that 14 percent of Taiwanese are either "occasional or committed" vegetarians, as opposed to only about 3 percent of Americans.

The popularity of meat-free eating no doubt explains why Taiwan has what has been called the world's strictest laws on labeling vegetarian foods. Previously, Taiwan had two labeling categories to identify the content of vegetarian food. But a law that took affect in summer of 2009 added three more categories. According to Earth Times, the earlier labeling "only indicates whether food is pure vegetarian or contains no meat but egg and milk. Now added are categories separating egg and milk as well as vegan."

The call for vegetarian lunches in the schools is a recent one, so it's impossible to tell at this point whether some Taiwanese Glenn Beck (if there is such a thing) will get all up in arms about the issue. Probably not. The people of Taiwan have been eating meat-free meals since before America was a nation. I don't think they will get that upset about their kids eating one vegetarian meal a week at school.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Food Safety ... Not So Safe

(From Yahoo News)

FRESNO, Calif. – The knives at the slaughterhouse weren't properly sanitized, a government investigator said, and employees at the meatpacking plant didn't know how to test the carcasses of days-old veal calves for a dangerous pathogen. Food safety conditions were so poor at the Vermont processing facility that it should close before someone got sick, officials warned.

Instead, the plant stayed open for months. It wasn't until an undercover video surfaced with images of calves being kicked, dragged and skinned alive that the federal government ordered Bushway Packing Inc. to close last November for the inhumane treatment of animals.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at that time called the abuse "inexcusable," and vowed to redouble efforts to enforce laws aimed at protecting farm animals.

A report by the Government Accountability Office released last week, however, found that while stringent animal protections may be on the books, the federal government is doing a lax job of enforcing them.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat who has held hearings on the issue, said animal treatment is key to food safety.

"How can the public have confidence in the safety of the food they eat if inspections at plants aren't consistent or in some cases, if they're not happening at all," Kucinich said. "There is a direct connection between humane animal handling and food safety."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking further comment, but said in a written response to the GAO that it planned to use auditors' findings and recommendations to improve efforts to enforce humane slaughtering laws.

In May 2008, the Agriculture Department banned the slaughter of cows too sick or weak to stand, because so-called "downer" cows pose an increased risk for mad cow disease, E. coli and other infections.

That change came in the wake of the nation's largest beef recall, after the Humane Society of the United States released another video in early 2008 showing the abuse of downers at the Chino, Calif.-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co.

Nearly two years later, the report released by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service still has no standardized method for determining how many times a sick animal can be stunned before it constitutes "egregious" abuse.

Enforcement of humane slaughtering laws was so inconsistent that the two busiest meatpacking districts, in Des Moines and Chicago, did not suspend a single plant from 2005 through 2007, a period when 10 other districts together suspended 35, according to the GAO.

Meatpacking industry officials said leaving so much up to the discretion of individual inspectors and veterinarians also puts companies in a tight spot, because they can't anticipate how strictly the rules will be enforced.

"You want consistent enforcement in your everyday life and we're no different," said James Hodges, executive vice president of American Meat Institute, the nation's oldest and largest meat and poultry trade association. "We were the first organization to develop animal handling guidelines in the plants, but that doesn't mean everyone in the system pays attention."

The meatpacking industry has long opposed animal welfare advocates' efforts to draw a link between the treatment of farm animals and public health. The industry contends consumers shouldn't be worried about eating contaminated meat.

Kucinich, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that is monitoring USDA's oversight efforts, quizzed Obama administration officials at a hearing last week about how they planned to improve the agency's enforcement standards.

"We are deeply committed to the humane handling of livestock," Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary Jerold Mande testified. "If (companies) don't have control of their humane handling processes it raises the question of how they can have control of their food safety processes."

Dean Wyatt, a USDA veterinarian who witnessed the mishandling of calves at Bushway Packing in Grand Isle, Vt., said the two processes were intertwined, and that his supervisors should have listened to his warnings before the video recorded by the Humane Society of the United States surfaced.

Three times last year, he called for the plant to suspend operations for abuse of male veal calves, including an incident in which a weak and injured calf was dragged across a holding pen. But after each suspension his supervisors allowed the plant to reopen, he said.

An enforcement investigator from the Albany district office also found 23 violations of food safety laws there, including improper E. coli testing procedures and faulty sanitizing processes for slaughter knives, according to e-mails provided by Wyatt. But FSIS supervisors in Albany later ordered those noncompliance records to be rescinded even though officials "could not determine if the food produced and shipped by the establishment is safe," the e-mails show. The USDA did not immediately comment on the incident.

Peter Langrock, a Middlebury, Vt. lawyer who represents Bushway, said company officials had worked to correct problems and hope to reopen the facility and enter into a consent decree with the USDA to settle a criminal investigation in the next few weeks.

"These are really good country farmers who never intended in any way to inhumanely handle an animal," Langrock said. "This was a case of somebody looking only to find problems."
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This is the same plant that a report back in 2009 said this:

U.S. Department of Agriculture records show Bushway Packing Inc. of Grand Isle was shut down for a day in May and again in June after an inspector cited it for inhumane treatment of animals.

But remember ... these are just really good country farmers and pointing out that they're breaking a law ... well that's just "somebody looking ... to find problems."

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Austin turning Town Lake into a No Kill Shelter

Here's the story from KVUE news:



Austin City Council Thursday approved a plan that will begin to turn the Town Lake Animal Center (TLAC) into a no-kill shelter.

The vote was months in the making. In November, the council agreed to create a city animal advisory committee. Thursday morning, council members met again to approve the plan that committee developed.

Dozens of people showed up at Austin City Hall to support the plan. It gives the Town Lake Animal Center two years to ensure that 90 percent of the animals at the shelter leave the shelter alive.

It's a process advocates say is long overdue.

“We should not be so behind in the nation we should be leading the nation in no-kill. We have so many animals that can get homes and we have the homes available -- there absolutely are,” said Idette Quintana.

Last year, shelter officials say they euthanized 32 percent of the more than 2,200 animals at TLAC. Twenty-two percent of the animals were adopted.

The proposed plan the council approved Thursday morning does not include budget details. The committee will meet again to determine the exact costs and savings that the program will provide.

Mayor Pro-Tem Mike Martinez also requested a regular update from the shelter in the implementation process.

The State of Food in the US

Just some facts for you to think about before you go shopping for food:

- Four companies process more than 85% of U.S. beef cattle.
- Two companies sell 50% of U.S. corn seed.
- One company controls 40% of the U.S. milk supply.
- Five firms dominate the grocery sector, ensuring that low prices paid to farmers aren't passed along to consumers at the store.

I'll be posting more on the WONDERFUL news about Austin becoming a No Kill City as soon as a news report runs with the story. This vote happened earlier today and there are no news stories reporting it right now.

I'll also be posting more on the information above along with a petition that you can sign urging Congress to break up the Big Ag control of our food supply. I'll update both stories either today or tomorrow.

Austin is one step closer to becoming a No Kill City

The City Council of Austin unanimously passed the resolution today to make Austin a No Kill City. Thank you City Council members of Austin.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Plastics Kill



Rise Above Plastics

Help to Make Austin A No-Kill City

From Fix Austin:

This is perhaps the biggest news in the No Kill world since Reno, NV, went No Kill in 2007. This Thursday, March 11, the Austin City Council will decide whether Austin, Texas, will join the ranks of America's No Kill cities. The Council is considering a plan of proven methods to produce No Kill success: (1) low-cost and free spay-neuter programs; (2) a comprehensive adoption program including off-site adoptions; (3) keeping open the downtown shelter once the city's new shelter opens outside of the city center; and (4) a large-scale foster program.

The No Kill plan has now been posted on the City Council's website in Agenda Item #21.

If you want to help make Austin a No Kill City, we ask that you please send an e-mail to the Austin City Council members asking them to pass the plan. Their e-mails are: lee.leffingwell@ci.austin.tx.us, mike.martinez@ci.austin.tx.us, laura.morrison@ci.austin.tx.us, chris.riley@ci.austin.tx.us, randi.shade@ci.austin.tx.us, bill.spelman@ci.austin.tx.us, and sheryl.cole@ci.austin.tx.us.

THANK YOU for your help!

The FixAustin.org Team

Friday, March 5, 2010

Salmonella Outbreaks Cause Recall

WASHINGTON — A wide range of processed foods – including soups, snack foods, dips and dressings – is being recalled after salmonella was discovered in a flavor-enhancing ingredient.

Food and Drug Administration officials said Thursday that the ingredient, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, is used in thousands of food products, though it was unclear how many of them will be recalled. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said no illnesses or deaths have been reported.

The officials said the recall, which dates to products manufactured since Sept. 17, is expected to expand in the coming days and weeks. It only involves hydrolyzed vegetable protein manufactured by Las Vegas-based Basic Food Flavors Inc., which did not return a call for comment Thursday.

The agency said Thursday it collected and analyzed samples at the Las Vegas facility after one of the company's customers discovered the salmonella, an organism that can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children and others with weakened immune systems. The FDA then confirmed the presence of a strain of salmonella in the company's processing equipment.

Jeffrey Farrar, associate commissioner for food protection at the FDA, said Thursday that many products that contain the ingredient are not dangerous because the risk of salmonella is eliminated after the food has been cooked. Many of the foods involved in the recall are ready-to-eat items that are not cooked by the consumer.

"At this time we believe the risk to consumers is very low," Farrar said.

A list of more than 50 recalled foods on the FDA Web site includes several dips manufactured by T. Marzetti, Sweet Maui Onion potato chips manufactured by Tim's Cascade Snacks, Tortilla Soup mix made by Homemade Gourmet and several prepackaged "Follow Your Heart" tofu meals manufactured by Earth Island.

The FDA said the contamination was discovered by a new tracking system implemented to improve tracing of foodborne illnesses.

Department of Ag Whistleblower speaks on CNN

A Department of Agriculture veterinarian alleges officials at the agency failed to act on reports of illegal and unsafe slaughterhouse practices and just didn't want to deal with the trouble.

"They said there was no way that I could have seen what I actually did see. In the end, they told me I either had to transfer or I would be terminated. I was told to immediately leave the plant, to never come back, " Dr. Dean Wyatt testified on Capitol Hill today about one such incident.

Wyatt said he saw clear violations of food safety violations, such as butchering of calves that were too weak or sick to stand.

When meat from sick animals gets in the food supply that's how you can get sick. Food-borne illnesses cost the U.S. $152 billion a year, according to a new study released today by a former Food and Drug Administration economist.

The research suggests 76 million food-related illnesses each year, leading to 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Eating Locally won't save the Planet ... and here's why

From Forbes Magazine - 2007 (emphasis added is mine)

Buy local, shrink the distance food travels, save the planet. The locavore movement has captured a lot of fans. To their credit, they are highlighting the problems with industrialized food. But a lot of them are making a big mistake. By focusing on transportation, they overlook other energy-hogging factors in food production.

Take lamb. A 2006 academic study (funded by the New Zealand government) discovered that it made more environmental sense for a Londoner to buy lamb shipped from New Zealand than to buy lamb raised in the U.K. This finding is counterintuitive--if you're only counting food miles. But New Zealand lamb is raised on pastures with a small carbon footprint, whereas most English lamb is produced under intensive factory-like conditions with a big carbon footprint. This disparity overwhelms domestic lamb's advantage in transportation energy.

New Zealand lamb is not exceptional. Take a close look at water usage, fertilizer types, processing methods and packaging techniques and you discover that factors other than shipping far outweigh the energy it takes to transport food. One analysis, by Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, showed that transportation accounts for only 11% of food's carbon footprint. A fourth of the energy required to produce food is expended in the consumer's kitchen. Still more energy is consumed per meal in a restaurant, since restaurants throw away most of their leftovers.

Locavores argue that buying local food supports an area's farmers and, in turn, strengthens the community. Fair enough. Left unacknowledged, however, is the fact that it also hurts farmers in other parts of the world. The U.K. buys most of its green beans from Kenya. While it's true that the beans almost always arrive in airplanes--the form of transportation that consumes the most energy--it's also true that a campaign to shame English consumers with small airplane stickers affixed to flown-in produce threatens the livelihood of 1.5 million sub-Saharan farmers.

Another chink in the locavores' armor involves the way food miles are calculated. To choose a locally grown apple over an apple trucked in from across the country might seem easy. But this decision ignores economies of scale. To take an extreme example, a shipper sending a truck with 2,000 apples over 2,000 miles would consume the same amount of fuel per apple as a local farmer who takes a pickup 50 miles to sell 50 apples at his stall at the green market. The critical measure here is not food miles but apples per gallon.

The one big problem with thinking beyond food miles is that it's hard to get the information you need. Ethically concerned consumers know very little about processing practices, water availability, packaging waste and fertilizer application. This is an opportunity for watchdog groups. They should make life-cycle carbon counts available to shoppers.

This is a simplistic analysis. Obviously buying local from a factory farm isn't helping change how food grows. Searching and buying local from farmers who raise grass-fed/pasture raised animals does....

Until our food system becomes more transparent, there is one thing you can do to shrink the carbon footprint of your dinner: Take the meat off your plate. No matter how you slice it, it takes more energy to bring meat, as opposed to plants, to the table. It takes 6 pounds of grain to make a pound of chicken and 10 to 16 pounds to make a pound of beef. That difference translates into big differences in inputs. It requires 2,400 liters of water to make a burger and only 13 liters to grow a tomato. A majority of the water in the American West goes toward the production of pigs, chickens and cattle.

The average American eats 273 pounds of meat a year. Give up red meat once a week and you'll save as much energy as if the only food miles in your diet were the distance to the nearest truck farmer.

If you want to make a statement, ride your bike to the farmer's market. If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, become a vegetarian.


Well stated indeed.

Vegan Cheeze

There is much to be said for vegan cheese. Most of it bad. I've tried several different types over the years and been sadly disappointed by most of them, BUT if you want to get to try some pretty decent vegan cheese, Chicago Soy Diary makes a vegan alternative called Teese. They're giving away free product. All you have to do is go here give them your e mail address and they give you a coupon you can print and take to your favourite purveyor of all things vegan.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Religious Group wants to Stone Killer Whale to Death

From the Huffington Post:

The American Family Association, a religious right group, is urging that Tillikum (Tilly), the killer whale that killed a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, be put down, preferably by stoning. Citing Tilly's history of violent altercations, the group is slamming SeaWorld for not listening to Scripture in how to deal with the animal:
Says the ancient civil code of Israel, "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable." (Exodus 21:28)

However, the group is going further and laying the blame for the trainer's death directly at the feet of Chuck Thompson, the curator in charge of animal behavior, because, according to Scripture,
But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn't kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, "the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death." (Exodus 21:29)

SeaWorld has no plans to execute Tilly.


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I've said this before and I'll say it again, as long as people continue to treat captive wild animals like domesticated ones, this will continue to happen. Remember ... they are still WILD animals and can and will kill.