THE VEGETARIAN BLOG

The Associated Press has a story about BBC reporter Justin Rowlatt , nicknamed Ethical Man, who spent six weeks traveling 6,500 miles across the United States for stories on climate change. The reports are airing on BBC America’s “BBC World News America” (7 o’clock weeknights) as well as in England.What intrigued me about the article is that it mentions the reports derived from a previous BBC series that Rowlatt made three years ago when he, his wife and their children spent a year trying to reduce their carbon footprint. The family got rid of their car, altered their heating system and briefly went vegan (my italics). The article mentions the family has stuck to some of the things they did then but doesn´t mention which ones.

Now, we all know that what we do individually will never meet the challenges posed by climate change – corporations can make a much bigger impact than we do. But that doesn´t mean we shouldn´t try. If Rowlatt was really serious about his and his family’s contribution to fighting climate change, veganism is the single most import step he could take in that direction, more relevant than giving up on a car. From a practical point of view, it’s also the easiest: it’s fairly easy to change your diet compared to not being able to go from A to B.

Once again we see an environmentalist project dodging the V word, or at least not emphasizing it enough, as if it is some kind of sacrilege going vegan. Do these people fear appearing too radical? It baffles me really, because if you’re really serious about the environment, it’s an official fact that a vegan diet is much gentler on the planet. Not to mention the animals, the number one reason to go vegan. There’s nothing ‘difficult’ about being a vegan - difficulty is merely an excuse to carry on supporting the animal exploitation industries.

The LA Times blog LA Unleashed carries a report about two types of protest that took place near UCLA on opposite corners of the intersection of Westwood Boulevard and Le Conte Avenue: on one side, the pro-vivisection lobby and on the other side, animal rights representatives asking for an end to the cruel and pointless experiments in which animals are tortured and killed so that some scientists can make a buck and pharmaceuticals protect themselves against litigation.

Now, I find it rather stupid that those who are for animal testing should take to the streets to ‘protest’. Sadly, animal experiments are legal so what are they complaining about? That some people are against it? Have they ever heard of free speech? It defies logic really, just like the notion that testing on a rabbit can yield relevant results for humans does. What they really are trying to do is to stiffle free speech with false claims made in the name of bloodied money. But I have news for them. They can never stop protest against animal testing because it is so painfully obvious that it is wrong that more and more people are going to join the fight to stop this form of clinical barbarism.

This is the week when the plight of animals in laboratories is remembered by compassionate people world over. Every year, hundreds of millions of animals are tortured and exterminated in laboratories and classrooms, victims of a backward mindset stuck in the 19th century.

Despite what the medical professional and scientists say, everyone can argue against the use of animals in laboratory on ethical grounds. It just is plain wrong to sacrifice several species to the benefit of only one. Besides, an increasing number of ethically-minded scientists are working to put an end to this cruel testing system in favor of scientifically advanced new systems such as in-vitro tests, computer simulations and cultured cells, to name but a few. The respected magazine The Ecologist has an illuminating article about animal experimentation with eye-opening data that industry and government prefer to keep out of view. Take a look at the story here.

In Defense of Animals has a dedicated website with activism suggestions and tools for this week dedicated to animals in laboratory. Apart from that, everyone can help by talking to people about the topic, boycotting companies that test on animals and looking after their health in order to avoid medication tested on animals: one great way of doing that is going and staying vegan.

Today is Earth Day and all over the world people are pay homage to this fantastic vessel we live on and how a vegan diet can mitigate our impact on this planet. One of the events that called my attention was an initiative by Takoma Park City Council where Mayor Bruce Williams signed a Proclamation officially declaring April 24 through April 30, 2009 as Takoma Park Veg Week.

In addition to recognizing the many benefits of a plant-based diet, the Takoma Park Veg Week Proclamation encourages “residents to participate by choosing vegetarian foods as a way to help protect the planet, their health, and animals and to explore the wide variety of vegetarian cuisine offered” in the city.

Compassion Over Killing, a Takoma Park-based animal advocacy charity, applauded the Mayor for issuing this Proclamation, which expresses the compassionate and environmental sentiments shared by many community residents and businesses. Several local restaurants are participating in Veg Week by offering extended vegetarian menus or discounts on meatless options.

The week-long celebration will start on April 24, and includes a Veg Week Kick-Off Party with special guest Senator Jamie Raskin (D-20) who will share his plans to go vegetarian for the week: “As a lifelong carnivore, I will be kicking off a week of ‘experimental vegetarianism’ to see if I have what it takes to live on a nonviolent diet like the most ethically evolved people in the community.”

Every year in the U.S., more than 10 billion birds, pigs, and cattle are killed for food. Most of these animals are raised on massive, mechanized factory farms that are responsible for causing a tremendous amount of animal suffering as well as severe environmental degradation.

Choosing plant-based foods not only helps protect animals and the planet, but it’s also been shown to help protect our health. As stated in the Takoma Park Veg Week Proclamation, “the American Dietetic Association recognizes that a vegetarian diet decreases our risk of various ailments, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and various cancers.”

“As a growing number of people are choosing to leave animals off their plates,” says Compassion Over Killing Executive Director Erica Meier, “restaurants and grocery stores are responding by stocking up on more vegetarian items, making it easier than ever to find delicious meat-free fare in Takoma Park, and all around the D.C.-area.”

For more information about the benefits of vegetarian eating and to learn more about Veg Week, visit www.TakomaVegWeek.com

Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, is coordinating a series of nationwide events for Earth Day (April 22) that will encourage people to “eat green” by reducing or eliminating their consumption of meat and other animal products. The group will be involved in nearly two dozen outreach and education events from coast to coast raising awareness about factory farming’s negative impact on the environment, and that choosing a plant-based vegan diet is the most ecologically sustainable way for people to eat. As it’s been widely reported, the animal exploitation industry is cruel to animals and very harsh on the environment.

* Resource Depletion: Raising billions of animals for meat wastes massive amounts of resources because feeding plants to animals raised for food is many times less efficient than feeding plants directly to people. Overall, the animal agriculture industry consumes more than half the water and over one-third of the petroleum used in the United States. In addition, two-thirds of the planet’s land surface is used by the agriculture industry to house, graze and grow grain for farm animals, driving the extinction of endangered species.

* Climate Change: A 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report indicated that about 18 percent of total greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere are produced by animal agriculture — more than all the cars, trucks, trains, planes, boats, and other forms of motorized transportation combined. Livestock also generate large amounts of methane and nitrous oxide, and methane is 23 times more potent than CO2, while nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times as potent as CO2.

* Pollution: Every year, farm animals excrete half a billion tons of manure, which is three times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population. This waste is typically stored in gigantic lagoons that leach toxic substances (such as nitrogen, phosphorous and heavy metals) into ground and surface water. According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, farm animal excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

According to Farm Sanctuary President and Co-Founder Gene Baur, there is an unmistakable connection between factory farms’ exploitation of the environment and abuse of animals. “The system of industrialized animal agriculture is based on maximizing short term profits,” said Baur, “and producers that raise and process animals in the cheapest, fastest way make the most money, while animals and the environment pay the price. People need to know how their food choices impact the planet, so during Earth Day, Farm Sanctuary will be getting the word out, and promoting vegan lifestyles as a key part of the solution to our environmental crisis.”

Farm Sanctuary is coordinating volunteers around the country to leaflet and table at Earth Day festivals and celebrations, where they will speak with people about meat’s devastating impact on the environment and hand out literature promoting a healthy, sustainable vegan diet. Attendees will also get a taste of vegan fare, as volunteers distribute coupons for Tofurky products from Turtle Island Foods, and soy jerky donated by Vegan Dream. Other events include lectures and workshops presented by Farm Sanctuary staff members. Details about these events can be found at www.farmsanctuary.org/get_involved/actionalerts.html.

I spent the Easter holiday with a friend in a lovely beach house in a small village in Brazil. The place is a perfect mixture of greenery and seaside, and the tree-roofed unpaved streets are a joy to walk on, barefoot. Unsurprisingly, most restaurants serve fish in their menu which makes eating out somewhat challenging for a vegan. But … where there’s a will there’s a way and I soon met the Italian manager of a gorgeous open-air restaurant who created a delicious vegan past dish for me and even allowed me to bring my dog to the place, as the garden area is so spacious and exuberant that Dylan wouldn’t bother anyone (in fact, he became the star of the place). What is the moral of the story? Wherever you go, you can take your veganism with you. It’s a pleasant form of vegan activism: you get to talk about it - people are always curious - and set an example to other people who otherwise might never have been exposed to it. It’s always worth the time because you never know where the seeds will land.

I often support the work carried out by Mercy for Animals as we need bigger organizations to expose the rotten-ness of the animal exploitation industry. Last week one of New England’s major egg operations was exposed with undercover footage showing the gruesome nature of their business. Now Radlo Foods says it will convert from the battery system to the free-cage system over a period of ten years..

Some animal advocates believe that giving a few more square centimeters to chickens in egg operations will represent a major improvement in their lives, but sadly the cage-free reality is not as rosy as it seems. For one, male chicks are still ground alive at one day of age, as they are not useful to the egg industry. Chickens are still debeaked in order to stop them hurting each other out of stress. Their food is full of chemicals. And they are killed at the end of their productive life. Does it sound like anything resembling a minimally decent life? I don’t think so.

That’s why going vegan is the only way to counter the egg, milk and meat industries because so-called improvements will only benefit the exploiter and the consumer looking for a dose of guilt-relief. Still, watch the video below and see for yourself what an egg really contains.

As a gay man I have always disliked the idea of gay rodeos. For one, it comes from this strange obsession that some gay men have with bullies. Cowboys are a symbol of machismo and although may be valid as a kind of sexual fantasy, acting out the fantasy in rodeos is simply not on. Rodeos involve great cruelty to animals because they can only behave in the aggressive way they do if they are hurt before being unleashed on the arena.

This usually involves spurs, tail-twisting and bucking straps cinched tightly around their abdomen and groin . It is especially ironic that a segment of society that is a target of abuse promotes events involving abuse of the most vulnerable among us.

Thus, it’s a good thing that Animal Rights Foundation of Florida activists demonstrated outside a gay rodeo taking place at Bergeron Rodeo Grounds in Davie a few days ago. It would be good to see criticism coming from the main gay rights groups as well, though.

Earlier this week several media outlets announced with alarmist headlines that vegetarian diets can cause eating disorders. Of course, those who bother to read full articles, found out that the ‘study’ was not sure whether vegetarian people with alleged disorders had developed the problem before they had become vegetarians or not. But who cares in the hype-obsessed media landscape? The trouble with that sort of flash-in-the-pan approach to reporting is that the information in the headline is the one most people tend to retain while scanning the news, ignoring the details and nuances of an article. The damage is done and not repaired, given most people’s minuscule attention span these days.

The study was published by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association and concerns with teen eating behavior. It included 2,500 females aged 15 to 23 and concluded that self-proclaimed vegetarians presented a higher rate of behavior associated with eating disorders. The study also found that the vegetarians also had better eating habits and healthier weight.

If we probe the report a little deeper we find that a high percentage of the girls who said they were vegetarians were not really since they also ate chicken and fish (a common misconception). Besides, previous studies have shown that girls with eating disorders sometimes adopt a ‘vegetarian’ diet in order to cover up suspicion-raising food habits.

A vegetarian diet has many benefits for women, including a lower rate of breast cancer, and of course, this is just one bonus of a plant-based diet since the animals and the environment benefit immensely from it as well. There are more effective tell-tale signs of eating disorders and these are not linked to what people eat, but how they eat.