At Animal Person we have a blog entry called Cognitive Dissonance at the Niman Ranch that intelligently deconstructs the linguistic gymnastics employed by Niman Ranch's Nicolette Hahn Niman in a New York Times Op-Ed.
The Guardian also has an important piece, Film shows neglect of pigs, turkeys and ducks sold under ethical label, that further exposes the sham that is "humane" meat (ThisIsLondon.co.uk also covers the story, with Undercover film shows a farmer punching a duck). The articles, published yesterday, refer to footage that aired on a program last night criticizing the RSPCA's popular "ethical" Freedom Food labelling scheme meant to reassure consumers of high animal welfare standards. The video (included with the ThisIsLondon.co.uk story) depicts scenes of neglect and, yes, ducks being punched, kicked and thrown around by staff. There's your "humane" foie gras...
Perhaps this will give pause to people in the U.S. hoping to assuage their guilt over consuming animal flesh by purchasing products labeled Animal Compassionate or the like. After all, as this story amply demonstrates, comfier cages and labeling are not enough. If you want to avoid contributing to animal suffering and exploitation, the clear choice is to simply not consume them.
Holy segues, Batman... With You Call Yourself a Progressive -- But You Still Eat Meat? at AlterNet today, Kathy Freston caps off a series of articles on vegetarianism that began at The Huffington Post with Vegetarian is the New Prius. See also: One Bite at a Time: A Beginner's Guide to Conscious Eating and A Few More 'Inconvenient Truths'. Today's AlterNet piece, even more so than her HuffPost blogs, has stirred up a flurry of comments.
If you're interested in promoting a flesh-free lifestyle, it's not too late to look up local Meatout events and plan how you're going to spend your Meatout Day this coming Tuesday, March 20th. For all things Meatout 2007 (it's no longer just the Great American Meatout, haven't you heard?), visit FARM's meatout.org website.
Speaking of lifestyle changes, New Scientist reminds us that a popular pastime (skiing used to be one of my personal favorites) is not so good for wildlife, in Snowboarders may be stressing alpine wildlife. Appears we're stressing out the native species, with numbers declining by up to a half in some areas close to ski resorts. Of course, nobody's doing this on purpose, but it's one of those side effects that comes with encroaching into natural habitats. This article is certainly more incentive to find less impactful ways of enjoying nature. After all, if you're destroying nature while you're enjoying it, there won't be much left to enjoy for long.
I'm out of time, so I'm just going to bang out these last few links from MSNBC that got my attention:
- Readers willing to pay up to keep pets healthy
- Dynamite fishing tracked with listening devices
- Eaten in Asia, East Coast turtles to be protected
Labels: animal cruelty, companion animals, events, humane meat, pets, veg*nism, wildlife
