Chef Stefano Frigerio braces himself when he puts rabbit on the menu at Mio. It's only a matter of time before someone complains.

Labels: Letters

Labels: animals in entertainment, horses, Letters, PETA, sports

Hi, SheKnows editors and producers.

Thank you for focusing on vegetarian eating ("Meatless Complete Proteins")!

I am concerned, however, by how the article misrepresents modern nutritional science right from the top (" The vegetarian way to get complete proteins") by suggesting that one needs to consume complete proteins at each meal in order to be healthy, which has been known to be false for many years now.

While humans do need a variety of essential amino acids over the course of time, there is no need to eat all of these proteins in any one meal. To suggest that this is true is incorrect and possibly harmful.

If anything, Americans eat too much protein, and vegan diets in particular balance this out to an appropriate amount. If one consumes a healthy, plant-based diet rich in variety, one will acquire all the amino acids one needs for proper health, as recognized by no less an authority than the American Dietetic Association.

For more well-researched vegan health information written by a registered dietician, please visit http://veganhealth.org/sh. Of particular note is a page on protein that will get you up to speed for correcting this misleading article:

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/protein

Kind regards,

Thank you for the frank discussion about what goes on inside slaughterhouses ("Upton Sinclair, Now Playing on YouTube" 3/12/2008). Just a couple of points I wanted to contribute:

1) HSUS is an animal welfare organization, hence their focus on the treatment of cows in the Hallmark/Westland plant, as opposed to their moral right not to be treated as property. Animal rights proponents seek to secure this right, rather than merely regulate their treatment.

2) It is understandable that the industry would want to keep animal slaughter behind closed doors. As more and more people come to understand that animals are sentient beings like us, it is only natural that "if someone is not used to seeing the slaughter process it would be unsettling." People must desensitize themselves or depersonalize animals in order to kill them, so eventually it becomes more routine. For the rest of us, however, it is a shock to see animals being treated as commodities, and rightly so.

When a vegan diet is as accessible and attractive as it is today, it is no wonder that people object to using animals at all. It doesn't take much to realize that our convenience and pleasure are insufficient justification for exploiting and killing other beings.

Dear editors,

Thank you for your March 12 editorial, "Animals have rights, too".

I could have written the opening sentence myself, and I applaud you for bringing up the urgent discussion people need to have regarding the conflict between rights holders and those that own them. It is heartening that human beings are beginning to awaken to the fact that the suffering of animals should supersede the sensitivities of owners. However, I think you need to follow through further on this thought and question the ownership of animals altogether.

You claimed in your editorial that "The only way to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring again is by allowing animal protection officers the right to follow up with those who have proven -- even just once -- that they have troubles properly providing for animals in their care." But no amount of regulation will ever sufficiently protect animals from harm. Realistically, as long as animals are considered property, their interests will necessarily be subservient to their owners, so the only way to permanently prevent such tragedies from occurring is to give animals the basic right not to be treated as property. Only then will the headline, "Animals have rights, too" have any meaning.

Labels: activism, Letters

Labels: animal rights, Letters

This Thanksgiving, when millions of people across the country reflect on what to give thanks for over the past year, consider the centerpiece of your meal. While in times past a carved turkey or ham on one's table may have signified that a family had enough financial security to celebrate a special occasion with a feast fit for kings, these days animal products symbolize excess consumption and cruelty.

Doesn't it make sense to give thanks for what we have without doing so at such a great cost to others? Animals are individuals, sentient beings whom we all too often treat with indifference, except perhaps for our own animal companions. But turkeys and pigs are morally no less relevant than our furry friends. And, while we've known for some time that consuming animals is unnecessary, many of us don't take the time to think about why we continue to breed and kill them, as if the taste of their flesh and secretions somehow trump the intrinsic value of their lives. Thanksgiving offers the perfect opportunity to reconsider this imbalance.

Fortunately, the wholesome staples of a vegan diet--grains, legumes, fresh vegetables and fruits--are widely available and, as consumers have become more conscientious about what they put in their mouths, grocery stores have begun catering to the rising demand for vegan convenience foods, including specialized products for Thanksgiving. These products are no longer consigned solely to natural food stores. Even Shaws has gotten into the action. Prefer to cook from scratch? Simply Google "vegan Thanksgiving recipes," and start browsing! You'll find an astonishing array of festive recipes that will have you salivating.

There are not many opportunities for the average person to make a difference in their world, but veganism is a powerful statement for peace that one can make at every meal, including one as full of resonance as Thanksgiving dinner. By removing the violence from our plates--meat, eggs and dairy products--we consciously choose to cultivate a more compassionate society, one in which animals' interests are taken seriously, and that is something to be thankful for.

Make your Thanksgiving a compassionate one. Choose vegan.

Labels: Letters, Thanksgiving

Your article asks, "You wouldn't keep a dog in a cage so small it couldn't turn around, so why do we think it's all right to do it to pigs?" But the question doesn't go far enough. The question ought to be: "You wouldn't breed dogs for food and eat them, so why do we think it's all right to do it to pigs?"

Pigs are morally no less significant than dogs. If people don't see a practice as acceptable for one animal, than surely they shouldn't see that same practice as acceptable for any other animal.

In regards to Chris Cosentino's quote in your article, “An animal is giving its life for you to eat,” need I remind your readers that the animals do not willingly give their flesh to us? It is taken from them, along with their lives. Rather than eating unconsenting animals, we ought to consider eating a plant-based diet. To quote Cosentino, “It’s just the right thing to do.”

Labels: animal ethics, Letters, magazines

The Weekly Dig elected to publish my letter in reply to a nasty letter that was sent in response to my initial letter a few issues back. Are you following all this?

To recap: The Dig had published a An Edible Compendium from A-Z, placing two vegan restaurants--TJs and Grasshopper--under "U" for Union Square in Allston, rather than "V," where readers instead came across a recommendation to eat "happy veal." Here's my initial letter, with some editorial snark inserted for good measure. I had to scan it and upload it because, for some strange reason, it was never included in the Letters section on their website.

The following week, a hater in Jamaica Plain had a vituperative response published (this one was posted online). I saw this as an opportunity to further educate readers about the reasons for veganism and to use the hate as a call for peace, but I missed the cut-off date for the very next issue.

Fast forward to today, and the current issue of The Weekly Dig (10.31.07 - 10.7.07) includes not just my letter, but also Sarah Poulette's. Thanks for writing in, Sarah! Here are those letters online at The Weekly Dig.

And no editorial snark! 

Labels: Boston Vegan Association, Letters, vegan, veganism

As an alumni of UCLA, I was embarrassed to read Kenneth Hurst's opinion ("Animals vital to research") in Friday's Daily Bruin.

Hurst's callous disregard for the lives of animals and their physical well-being -- "animals should be treated no differently than any other tool at a scientist's disposal" -- is alarming, morally bankrupt, and completely unethical.

His assertion that "the only truly ethical treatment of animals is to use them for our benefit" is a truly twisted and deranged defense of an inhumane mindset. If a serial killer were to defend his actions with this sort of statement, the insanity of it would be much more readily apparent to the mainstream. Look no further than the torture of animals by kids that grow up to commit violence toward other humans if you want to see the continuity.

I would go so far as to suggest that Hurst be legally barred from keeping companion animals. Further, I would personally keep my own pets and children away someone so pathologically disturbed as to be unable to feel our commonalities with animals, instead seeing them as no different than the tools used to give them alien diseases and to vivisect them in university laboratories.

I would also be suspicious of anyone who asserts that the millions of animals used in laboratories every year promise a cure for diseases we have been fighting for decades, especially when so many diseases can be prevented through lifestyle and dietary choices, and when the vast majority of these animal lives are expended for tests that do not save human lives, like drugs meant to enhance erections. When did life become so cheap?

Our treatment of animals as a society betrays much about ourselves, and thus animals deserve our consideration as much for their own desires as for our own good. After all, as the great Mahatma, Mohandas K. Gandhi, asserted, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." On that count, our nation rates an F.

Labels: animal testing, Letters