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Why I Am Vegan: Walter Bond’s Story September 10th, 2010

mataderos_cerdos

I found this story via Once Upon A Vegan.

“Why I am vegan”

By Walter Bond

In the winter of 1995, when I was 19 years old, I got a job with a company by the name of Dakota Mechanical. We built slaughter-houses in the Midwest, mainly in Iowa. The state of Iowa is the largest producer of pork in the nation. At the time I was employed in that evil industry there were 27 slaughter-houses for pigs alone. I helped build the IBP plant in Logansport, Indiana as well. It was a brand new plant.

I never saw an animal murdered in the 9 or so months I worked in Logansport, but it wasn’t difficult for me to get the gist of what many of those machines would do when in operation. I was primarily a forklift operator to begin with, but then worked my way to industrial plumber’s apprentice. After that factory was built there was a three month layoff.

But soon I got the call for the next job. The one that would forever change my life. It was a smaller job; we were to build an extension to the kill floor at the IBP plant in Perry, Iowa. In this fully functioning slaughter-house I saw the most grizzly mechanized murders that there are to witness. Since it was an old facility we were constantly called away from our construction work to do maintenance throughout the plant. From the pen runs, to the kill floor, to rendering, over the course of 5 months I was a confederate and accomplice to it all.

When I first started the smells, sights, and sounds were overbearing. I kept telling myself, “This is what you eat; don’t get squeamish.” Within 6 to 8 weeks I felt soul dead. For 12 hours, sometimes 15, I often worked ankle deep in gore.

Like the 3 days I worked plumbing rinse stations with 40 gallon drums of de-skinned hogs’ heads staring at me.

Or the times I would have to take the forklift behind the facility to gather raw materials, right next to which was a 25 foot pile of ‘defective’ hogs which were ‘unfit for human consumption.’ For one reason or another they were left in heaping piles, exposed to the elements and freezing to death in the Iowa cold. With all the horrors to which I was privy, it’s that pile of freezing dead that still haunts my soul.

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Then came the day that changed me. We were wrapping up all our tools and cleaning up when a hog who had been knocked out with an electric jolt, had his throat stuck, and had been hung upside down to bleed to death woke up, convulsed, and freed himself of the foot-hold. He came running off of the kill floor straight toward me and the rest of the crew. Three IBP workers gave chase. One with a pipe wrench and two with baseball bats. They began to beat the hog to death. I turned away as I thought anyone would……I was wrong. As I turned, I was face to face with the rest of my crew. While listening to the thuds and squeals of a blunt force death a mere 30 feet behind me, I watched as my co-workers whooped and cheered, high-fiving each other each time there was a thud, laughing and celebrating the violent death of a sentient being.

pigstand p

That night in my hotel room my mind raced. I was disgusted with myself. I was disgusted with humanity. I quit eating meat. A few days later my foreman approached me and asked if I need to borrow any money. I said, “No, why do you ask?” He said that he’d noticed that all I’d been eating was peanut butter and jelly and that he thought I was broke. I told him that I wasn’t broke and that I was simply done eating meat. He began heckling me and calling me a “born-again tree hugger.” I quit on the spot.

I went home and began to study Animal Rights. I went vegan and became active in a legal capacity. I spent years tabling and talking with people. I worked at animal sanctuaries and rescued animals whenever I could.

I have never felt that anything I have done or will do on behalf of our Mother Earth and her animal nations has been enough. Those machines I built back in 1996 are still murdering, even as I write this. That is my guilt and my shame; I earned them. But it is also my strength and resolve. Nothing will ever make me forget the plight of factory farmed animals and so-called free range, which is just as sick, wrong, unnecessary, and indefensible.

Like all industries of animal exploitation, the circle of abuse will end with the antagonist (humans) falling prey to its own perfidiousness. For instance, my grandfather was a hog farmer whom I never met. He died in the year of my birth, after the ammonia from hog waste destroyed his lungs. That same waste run-off from his and adjoining hog farms in the 70’s poisoned the ground water, allowing illegal levels of radium to pollute the tap water. To this day in certain areas of the Midwest you have to sign a waiver stating that the water from public works is hazardous to your health and that you are “OK” with that before they will turn your water on.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth restating. It is these industries of death that are the animal and Earth terrorists. Not those who fight against them.

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As of August 10, 2010, Walter Bond is facing a single federal arson charge for his alleged role as an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) operative known as “Lone Wolf”. “Lone Wolf” took credit for three different arsons throughout the Spring and Summer of 2010 in Denver and Salt Lake City: The Skeepskin Factory, a store selling furs and pelts; Tandy Leather Store; and Tiburon, a restaurant serving foie gras.

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Breakfast: Smoothie with mango, papaya, and pineapple
Lunch: Freebirds burrito bowl (no cheese, no sour cream, and their refried beans are vegetarian!)
Dinner: A steamed artichoke (my favorite!) and some garlic bread (made with Earth Balance buttery spread)

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Why Our Agricultural Empire Will Fall September 9th, 2010

In the midst of an obesity epidemic, surrounded by super-sized meals, and backed by half a century of agricultural overabundance, it’s hard to imagine the possibility of a food shortage. But while the US continues to overindulge, the rest of the world is facing a global food crisis.  The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is organizing a special meeting this month to tackle the current instability of the global food market and the rising wheat prices that recently caused riots in some countries (and even led to protesters’ deaths in Mozambique).

Reading about this reminded me of an interesting interview I saw with one of the authors of the book Empires of Food, Evan Fraser.  The book shows how our food system is repeating the history of doomed civilizations by tracing the rise and fall of past empires. The Romans, Mesopotamians, and medieval Europeans, for example, all had agricultural systems that, much like ours, were linked to complex technology and intricate trade networks. And each of these societies eventually failed because they didn’t account for  growing population, soil erosion, and weather changes.

In the interview, Fraser stated that his biggest concern is climate change. Most empires expand in times of good weather, then fail when the weather goes bad. The Romans specialized in wheat until around 300 AD when the weather dropped and the empire collapsed. The same thing happened in medieval Europe. In the late 14th century, the warm period ended and there were huge famines.

In our case, we’re not facing cooling, but warming is just as problematic for agriculture. The current food crisis was triggered by a persistent drought in Russia, a major producer of wheat. Because of the low yield, Russia has put a ban on exporting wheat, causing wheat prices to skyrocket.  According the the UN, “Wheat prices experienced their biggest monthly rise in almost a year in August, according to the FAO’s Food Price Index, climbing by 5 per cent following persistent drought in Russia and that country’s subsequent restriction on sales.”

Interestingly, one of the first signs that things were about to go wrong in both the medieval period and the Roman period was that food prices started to rise. Demand was going up, but yields stagnated. We have a strong parallel with that today. Between 2006 and 2008, we had a threefold rise in the price of food. The price of wheat has risen faster in the last six months than at any time in the last 32 years. From 1950 to 2000, the price of food decreased every year, but since 2000, it’s been increasing. Fraser says, “Our system looks a lot like Rome in the year 250.”

And, unfortunately, all of the safeguards we’ve come up with to combat crop failure are fossil-fuel intensive.  Chemical fertilizers, irrigation systems, dams, and transportation all take energy to produce. With a rise in oil prices (which is inevitable since oil is a finite resource), these solutions will become increasingly more expensive.

Furthermore, instead of rotating our crops, we’ve started growing the same crop over and over again on the same piece of land. This very quickly strips the soil of its nutrients. (This is why crop rotation is important.) This means that our system is already very brittle and fragile, and climate change will only weaken an already weak system.

The Mesopotamians, just like other empires, grew into an extremely developed culture because their farmers produced excess food, stored it, transported it and exchanged it in the urban marketplace. They developed cities by creating irrigation canals, which allowed them to have high yields. And they made the same mistakes that we are making today: They relied heavily on food produced during good weather and they overspecialized their farms, growing only one type of crop on each field, instead of rotating them.

The soil became infertile from the monocultures and salinized as the irrigation canals left behind a deposit of salt when the water evaporated.  During a sudden hot, dry spell, the Mesopotamians irrigated the soil even more heavily. This created a short-term yield boost, but in the long term, it was unsustainable. (The drop in crop yields led to a drop in the economy, which led to a drop in tax revenues, which led to a weakened military, which led to an overthrow.)

The modern parallel with this is our usage of chemical fertilizers. It has allowed us to boost our yield temporarily, but the underlying problem of soil erosion hasn’t been fixed.

Some argue that technology, like chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crops, have helped increase our crop yield and protect us against famine.  But, Fraser explains that “highly productive varieties” actually require more water, so now even a small drought can create an extreme food shortage.

In the US, with an overabundance of food at very cheap prices, food has become a luxurious sensory experience instead of a necessity. “In order for us to produce food locally, or use fewer fertilizers, or pay better wages, we need people to be more interested in what they’re eating and where it’s coming from. We need them to be invested in food without trivializing it,” says Fraser.

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Breakfast: Smoothie with a peach, a banana, and almond milk.
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Lunch: Black bean tacos from Taco Cabana
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Dinner: Brussels sprouts and homemade mashed potatoes (with soy milk, olive oil, garlic, and fresh chives from my balcony)
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Official FDA Inspection Reports Released August 31st, 2010

Just a quick update on the salmonella outbreak in eggs.  Here’s some excerpts from a New York Times article:

Inspection reports released by the Food and Drug Administration described — often in nose-pinching detail — possible ways that salmonella could have been spread undetected through the vast complexes of two companies. Barns infested with flies, maggots and scurrying rodents, and overflowing manure pits were among the widespread food safety problems that federal inspectors found at a group of Iowa egg farms at the heart of a nationwide recall and salmonella outbreak.

The recall, which began Aug. 13, involves more than half a billion eggs from the Iowa operations of two leading egg producers, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms. About 1,500 reported cases of Salmonella enteritidis have been linked to tainted eggs since the spring — the largest known outbreak associated with that strain of salmonella.

It was difficult to gauge from the report how extensive the problems were. Both companies operate vast facilities housing seven million hens.

The report on Wright County Egg also described pits beneath laying houses where chicken manure was piled four to eight feet high. It also described hens that had escaped from laying cages tracking through the manure.

Officials last week said that they were taking a close look at a feed mill operated by Wright County Egg, after tests found salmonella in bone meal, a feed ingredient, and in feed given to young birds, known as pullets. On Monday, officials said for the first time that they had also found salmonella at a Hillandale facility. The bacteria was found in water that had been used to wash eggs.

Wright County Egg is owned by Jack DeCoster, who has a long history of environmental, labor and immigration violations at egg operations in Maine, Iowa and elsewhere.

Both companies have stopped selling shell eggs to consumers from their Iowa facilities and instead are sending all their eggs to breaking plants where they are pasteurized, which kills the bacteria. The eggs would then most likely be sold in liquid form, possibly to food manufacturers.

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The website Animal Visuals has created a graphic regarding the salmonella outbreak. Here is a small section of it:

salmonella-risk

You can see the full image here.

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Breakfast: Toast with cashew butter. I didn’t especially like the cashew butter – it’s too sticky and doesn’t have as much flavor as peanut butter.
Lunch: Vegetarian chili and a salad from The Garden Spot
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Dinner: Taco salad

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8 Reasons to Beware of Eggs August 24th, 2010

Half a Billion Eggs Recalled, And Counting…

eggs

Over 500 million eggs have been recalled due to an outbreak of Salmonella that sickened thousands of people across the country (and many cases go unreported because Salmonella infections, which cause diarrhea and stomach cramps, often go undiagnosed). This is one of the country’s worst food safety recalls, stemming from only two farms in Iowa. These two gigantic producers distribute their eggs under brand names such as Lucerne, Albertson’s, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp (this list might not be comprehensive as the recall seems to expand daily).

The American egg industry was already battling a movement to outlaw its methods as cruel and unsafe, and was adapting to the Obama administration’s drive to bolster health rules and inspections. According to the FDA, the cause of the infections has not been pinpointed, but it is likely that lax safety procedures and animal overcrowding are to blame. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wrote in a letter to the Iowa Egg Council, “Confining birds in cages means increased salmonella infection in the birds, their eggs and the consumers of caged eggs.”  A single barn may house more than 150,000 birds in tight proximity, allowing infections to spread quickly and widely.

This month, the HSUS released a new white paper addressing the threat that cage confinement of laying hens can pose to food safety, as well as assessing the probabilities of Salmonella contamination among different housing systems:

salmonella_egg

Egg producers have watched in dismay as the political winds seemed to turn, largely because of growing concern about animal rights. The European Union will bar small cages for egg hens as of 2012. By public referendum, California will ban small cages in 2015, and the state will not allow the sale of eggs produced in other states in small cages. Michigan, Ohio and other states have also placed limits on future caging of hens.

But even with new legislation, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned about eggs. Here are eight:

1. Petri Dishes for Disease

Joel Salatin, a farmer whose farm Polyface is featured in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food, Inc., tells why conditions in factory farms are ideal for the spread of infection: “The propensity for a problem is magnified under the fecal particulate air in these industrial egg farms. What it does is it breaks down the immune system and creates openings for pathogens. If you were trying to design a pathogen-friendly system, you would go to a single species, crowd that species together, deny it fresh air, exercise, and sunshine, never give it a rest time—have it there 365 days a year, and feed it a diet that maximizes a minimal standard of performance, rather than maximizes nutrition or feed that is nutritionally superior. What I’ve just described is Egg Factory Farming 101. This is just symptomatic of the pathogen-friendly nature of industrial agriculture.”

2. Massive Farms Magnify Any Disease

Further compounding the risk is the tremendous centralization of the factory farm system. As Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat, points out, “these large industrial producers where if there’s a problem, it’s going to get magnified over many states and many people.” Salatin agrees, saying that “Whereas a problem in the local food system only affects a few people, a problem in a factory farm can infect, for instance, hundreds of millions of eggs and tens of thousands of people.”

3. Infection Is More Common Than We Think

When you have such massive farms, each distributing its eggs to dozens of grocery chains, any problem gets compounded. In the case of the current outbreak, William Marler, a prominent foodborne-illness litigator, points out that the CDC’s rule of thumb is that 38 people are sickened by salmonella for every case that’s reported, so the number of people infected by the current outbreak could potentially number in the tens of thousands.

4. Free-Range Eggs Are No Healthier

Many people think that free-range eggs are healthier, and they provide more peace of mind, than factory-farmed eggs. But, the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t even have a definition of “free-range” for laying hens. Factory-farmed chickens are often labeled as free-range. In the end, no one knows exactly what they’re eating. As Jonathan Safran Foer writes in Eating Animals, “I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range.”

5. Companies Avoid What Little Regulation Exists

According to Marion Nestle, legislation would help, but companies are determined to skirt regulation and the FDA lacks the clout to enforce what rules it has: “We’re dealing here with a company that’s not very interested in following rules, and they cut corners in lots and lots of ways. One of the ways they cut corners is safety. The other part is the FDA still doesn’t have the tools it needs to enforce the rules it has.” William Marler points out that legislation that might have prevented this outbreak languished for eight years during the Bush administration before being implemented on July 8, just as the outbreak began. Even then, Marler says, most of the “Egg Rule,” known officially as “Federal Register Final Rule: Prevention of Salmonella Enteritidis in Shell Eggs During Production, Storage, and Transportation,” is common-sense testing and should have been followed voluntarily.

6. Healthy Eggs Are Expensive & Cheap Eggs Sell Better

Marion Nestle, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan, and other food activists agree that the consumers must start demanding healthier eggs, even if it means paying more. Says Nestle, “The rules that are in the FDA’s egg legislation will require producers to do things differently, with some hope that they’ll move into more sustainable, reasonable practices. But as long as this country insists on cheap food, as long as that pressure is there, it’s understood that we value food for how little it costs, as opposed to how it’s produced or how it tastes, and there isn’t going to be a lot of pressure on producers to change things.”

But for those of you hoping that voting with your dollar will encourage producers to be cleaner and more humane, the polls bode ill: According to recent data from Information Resources Inc, which tracks checkout scanner transactions from 34,000 grocery stores in the U.S., we’re still buying eggs from cage housing systems 92% of the time.

7. Farms Lack Transparency

According to Michael Pollan, industrial egg farms are the worst sort of factory farms. So bad, in fact, that journalists are rarely allowed inside them. When Carole Morison let a camera crew in for Food Inc., she lost her contract and went on to co-found the Delmarva Poultry Justice Alliance.

8. Cruel Farm Conditions

Jonathan Safran Foer, in his book Eating Animals, writes of an often-overlooked trend in factory farming: food and light deprivation. One farmer described it to Foer this way: “As soon as females mature—in the turkey industry at 23 to 26 weeks and with chickens 16 to 20—they’re put into barns and they lower the light; sometimes it’s total darkness 24/7. And then they put them on a very low-protein diet, almost a starvation diet.” The result: Birds lay up to three or four times as many eggs as in nature. “After that first year, they are killed because they won’t lay as many the second year,” the farmer said. “The industry figured out it’s cheaper to slaughter them and start over than it is feed and house birds that lay fewer eggs.” Foer’s conclusion: “After learning about it, I didn’t want to eat a conventional egg ever again.”

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Breakfast: Bagel with Tofutti vegan cream cheese
Lunch: Salad with cucumber, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, hearts of palm, avocado, and vinegar and oil
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Dinner: Black bean tacos from Taco Cabana (there’s no cheese on these)

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Be Careful What You Fish For July 14th, 2010

Anyone who made it through Biology 101 knows that fish have nerves and brains that sense pain, just like all other animals. Scientists tell us that fish nervous systems closely resemble our own, even including neurotransmitters like endorphins that relieve suffering – of course, the only reason for a nervous system to produce pain killers is to relieve pain.

Studies show that fish can learn to avoid pain as well. From one researcher, “Pain avoidance in fish doesn’t seem to be a reflex response, rather one that is learned, remembered and is changed according to different circumstances.” Scientists have even shown that fish feel emotional stress and “engage in a rocking motion strikingly similar to the kind of motion seen in stressed mammals.”

Whether they are farmed or fished from the ocean, what happens to fish before they end up on your plate is nothing short of animal cruelty.

Wild Fish

Overfishing

There is no doubt about it, we are overfishing our oceans and are dangerously close to eliminating many fish species.

Remember the cod, seemingly infinite in number and fished for centuries in North America? Well, the fishery collapsed in 1992 due to rapacious factory fishing and short-sightedness. The number of cod today is around one percent of what it was in the 1960s and in 2000, cod were placed on the endangered species list. Even with the North American cod fishing ban, the cod numbers are still struggling and it is unknown if the population will ever recover.

Similarly, the west-coast salmon fishery failed in 2008. The Atlantic bluefin tuna has been reduced to about 15% of pre-industrial numbers. In 2006, it was reported that 30% of the world’s fisheries had collapsed, with catches falling below 10% of the original yield. It is predicted that the remaining commercial fish species will be exhausted by mid-century, meaning no more wild fish, at all.

Mis-labeling (intentionally)

Given the dwindling supplies, consumers are now being fed a ‘bait & switch.’ Many packaged, frozen, and fast food fish are mis-labeled, substituting fish that were once considered garbage fish (like hoki), which are more abundant in numbers (for now),  for the species you think you’re getting. The FDA recently determined that 37% of fish and 13% of other seafood was mislabeled! As much as 77% of so-called red snapper is anything but.

The FDA has established guidelines for fish labeling, but thanks to industry lobbying, there are plenty of exemptions. This has led to some surreal mislabeling: Importers started selling Vietnamese catfish under the brand name Cajun Delight. The rock crab, once a garbage catch, was reborn as the peekytoe crab. The channel catfish has become the southern trout, dolphinfish is now mahi mahi, the Patagonian toothfish is now the Chilean sea bass, the Malabar blood snapper is now the scarlet snapper, and the fish known now as orange roughy used to be called the slimehead.

These less desirable fish now even finding their way into fancy restaurants because increasingly, that’s all that’s left.  So, why not switch to farmed fish, where the population is bred and sustained?  Unfortunately, farmed fish is even worse!

Farmed Fish

Health Effects

Just as with land animals, disease and parasites run rampant in densely packed fish feedlots. To combat these ailments, fish are vaccinated when young, then are continuously given antibiotics or pesticides to ward off infections. Sea lice, in particular, are a major problem. At the first sign of a sea-lice outbreak, pesticide is added to the feed.

Studies have found that farm-raised salmon contain more cancer-causing PCBs and dioxins than wild ones, typically originating in their feed. In some cases, the levels of contaminants are so high that by EPA guidelines, you shouldn’t even have one serving a month! (It’s more like one serving every 5 months in the case of some farmed salmon.) Researchers estimate that the risk of cancer from contaminants is about 3 times higher for farmed salmon compared to wild.

The Salmofan

The Salmofan

In the wild, salmon absorb carotenoids from eating pink krill. On an aquafarm, their rich pink hue is supplied by canthaxanthin, a synthetic, manufactured pigment. Fish farmers can even choose what shade of pink their fish will display from the manufacturer’s trademarked SalmoFan, a color swatch similar to those you’d find at a paint store. Without this synthetic coloring, the flesh of farmed salmon would be a pale halibut gray. Canthaxanthin is linked to retinal damage in people who use it as a sunless tanning pill, leading Britain to ban its use, but of course it’s still available in the US.

Even the good stuff in farmed salmon comes with problems. Yes, farmed salmon contain more oil, including heart-friendly omega-3, but that also includes a much higher percentage of the not-so-healthy omega-6 (up to twice as much in some farmed fish).  Farm raised fish are also fattier, not surprisingly since they circle lazily in crowded pens and fatten up on fish chow. Cultivated catfish contain nearly 5 times the amount of fat as their wild counterparts.

Environmental Effects

Fish farming is extremely rough on the environment, too. Fish farmed in open pen nets are now about 50% of the world’s source of fish (hatchery fish are about 30% and wild fish are the remaining 20%).

Open-net fish farm

Open-net fish farm

Fish hatchery

Fish hatchery

Aquafarms (often called “floating pig farms”) put a terrific strain on their surrounding environments. Uneaten feed and and waste blankets the sea floor beneath these farms, creating a breeding ground for bacteria that consume oxygen vital to shellfish and other bottom-dwelling creatures. A good sized fish farm produces the same amount of excrement as a city of 10,000 people.

The additives to the food pellets (pesticides, antibiotics, artificial coloring) drift into the ocean and pollute the natural food chain. Toxic copper sulfate, used to keep the nets algae free also drifts into the surrounding water. This pesticide and antibiotic buildup in the water has resulted in the development of resistant strains of bacteria and infections that can effect not only the farm-raised fish, but now the wild fish as well. Research shows that sea lice from fish farms kills up to 95% of juvenile wild salmon that migrate past an aquafarm.

And perhaps the most serious concern is the problem fish farms were meant to alleviate: the depletion of marine life from over-fishing. Salmon farming actually increases the depletion of marine life because, unlike vegetarian catfish which thrive on grains, captive salmon are carnivores and must be fed fish during the 2-3 year period when they are raised. To produce 1 lb of farmed salmon, 2.4 – 5 lbs of wild sardines, anchovies, mackerel, herring, and other fish must be ground up and rendered into pellets of salmon chow.  Farming fish creates a problematic redistribution of protein in the food system. Removing such immense amounts of small prey fish from an ecosystem can significantly upset its balance. This simply can not be sustained.

Other reported environmental impacts include seabirds ensnared in netting, sea lions shot for preying on penned fish, and escaped farmed fish (about 1 million salmon have escaped through holes in nets from storm-wrecked farms) competing with wild ones for food, mating, and spawning grounds. The interbreeding of wild and farm stocks poses the threat of diluting the wild gene pool. Biologists fear that Atlantic salmon invaders will out-compete Pacific salmon and trout for food and territory. An Atlantic salmon takeover could knock nature’s balance out of whack and turn a healthy, diverse marine habitat into one dominated by a single invasive species. (Not to mention the repercussions of the genetically modified “frankenfish” escaping into the wild!)

What To Do

Obviously, the best option for everyone involved is to refrain from consuming fish. This will not only help to preserve our precious aquatic ecosystem, but will also keep you free from the carcinogens found in farmed fish.

However, if you simply must eat fish (and I do not in any way advocate this, but I feel it is better to provide the information than to allow you to continue blindly consuming unhealthy and environmentally detrimental fish), then choose line-caught Alaskan fish. The healthiest populations and habitats exist in Alaska. In fact, due to the successful efforts of conserving and protecting wild salmon habitats, the Alaskan Salmon Fishery recently received the Marine Stewardship Council’s label for sustainability. The Marine Stewardship Council’s labels are intended to guide customers to species that are not being over-harvested. (But remember, those fish did, without a doubt, feel pain.)

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Breakfast: Smoothie with banana and pear
Lunch: Indonesian peanut noodles from Noodles & Co.
Dinner: Taco salad

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Frankenfish June 30th, 2010

The FDA is eerily close to approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption.  These “AquAdvantage” fish, as the company that created them calls them, are Atlantic salmon that are genetically altered to contain a growth hormone gene from a Chinook salmon as well as a genetic “on-switch” from the ocean pout, a distant relative of the salmon. Normally, salmon do not make growth hormone in cold weather, but the pout’s “on-switch” keeps production of the hormone going year round. The result is salmon that can grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of three years. 

Two salmon of the same age, fed the same diet, one genetically modified, one not.

Two salmon of the same age, fed the same diet, one genetically modified, one not.

The company that created these mutants assures the FDA that they are the “identical in every measurable way” (no pun intended, one assumes) to traditional farmed Atlantic salmon, but this is one giant (pun intended)science experiment I’m NOT willing to be a participant in.

This growth-enhancing genetic modification is already approved in chickens and there are scientists working to develop other genetically engineered animals, like cattle resistant to mad cow disease, or pigs that could supply healthier bacon. Next in line behind the salmon for possible approval would probably be the “enviropig,” developed at a Canadian university, which has less phosphorus pollution in its manure.

 

Layer hen (front) and broiler [meat] hen (back), same age, one genetically modified, one not.

Layer hen (front) and broiler {meat} hen (back), same age, one genetically modified, one not.

Please tell me I’m not the only one that has issues with this! Why do we insist on trying to “fix” things (the environment, our health, billions and billions of years of evolution, giant corporations’ pocketbooks) by creating these difficult, dangerous, and quite frankly, creepy “solutions” instead of just reversing the thing we did in the first place to cause the problem?!

 We pump out millions of pigs per second; their massive amounts of crap are ruining our planet; so doesn’t the logical solution seem to be to stop pumping out so damn many pigs? No, apparently we think it’s better to genetically modify something that nature spent billions of years perfecting so that we can continue our gluttonous habits and possibly kill ourselves with the side effects in the future. (Or maybe we’ll just genetically modify ourselves to be resistant to the effects of digesting genetically modified pig. Because that’s the American way.)

There has not yet been a generation that’s eaten genetically modified (GM) foods for their entire life, so we have no research to show the long-term effects of this on our health (which is why 30 countries have already banned GM foods). American children are the guinea pigs.

It is likely that the GM salmon will not be labeled (no other GM foods are currently labeled), so you will have absolutely no way of avoiding the GM salmon, should you choose to eat salmon. One would assume that organic salmon guarantees no genetically modified organisms (as I’ve previously explained the strict regulations on organic labeling); however, the organic program does not currently have standards that pertain to seafood. “We may someday address aquatic species. It just hasn’t happened,” says Joan Shaffer, National Organics Program spokeswoman. Then why is there salmon with “organic” labels in our stores? The USDA regulates only the use of the organic seal, not the use of the word “organic,” so companies are free to place the word “organic” on their products whether or not they have been certified. Just another deceptive marketing tactic used by the food industry to mislead the public.

Plus, what happens when these unnatural fish get into the oceans? (And, yes, they inevitably will.) It is already speculated that they would out-compete wild fish for food and mates, spread their modified genes (which we do not know the effects of) throughout the population, and I imagine this could seriously alter some food chains.  (And surely we all know the dangers of altering seemingly unimportant food chains, right?)

How far will we take this? At what point does “playing God” become a bad idea?

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Breakfast: Smoothie with banana, mixed berries (strawberry, raspberry, blackberry) and cauliflower (strange choice, I know, but I had some in the fridge & gave it a shot – it worked out well!)
Lunch: Tomato soup and crackers
Dinner: Spaghetti with meatless meatballs

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This Is Your Milk On Drugs May 26th, 2010

I thought that by now nearly everyone had heard about hormones in milk. Yet, people continue to buy conventional milk! I’m baffled. Maybe more explanation will finally wake people up about this?!

Bovine Growth Hormone
Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH), or Bovine Somatotropin (BST), is a protein hormone that cattle naturally produce. Back in 1937, it was found that injecting this hormone (extracted from cadaver cows) increased lactating cows’ milk production by preventing mammary cell death. There was very limited use of this technique until the 1980’s when the practice began to increase.

In 1994, agribusiness giant Monsanto (one of Powered By Produce’s arch nemesises!) artificially synthesized this hormone using recombinant DNA technology and called it recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST), also called recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) .

How it works
An average dairy cow begins her lactation with a moderate daily level of milk production. This daily output increases until, at about 70 days into the lactation, production peaks. From that time until the cow is dry, production slowly decreases. This increase and decrease in production is partially caused by the count of milk-producing cells in the udder. Cell counts begin at a moderate number, increase during the first part of the lactation, then decrease as the lactation proceeds. Once lost, these cells generally do not regrow until the next lactation.

Farmers are recommended to make the first rBGH application about 50 days into the cow’s lactation, just before she peaks. The rBGH then sustains already-present mammary cells, limiting the rate of production decrease after production peaks. After the peak, production declines with or without application of rBGH, but declines more slowly with rBGH than without. This decrease in the rate of production decline permits dairy cows to produce more milk over the span of a lactation – at its best, this will be seen by seven to eight more pounds of milk being produced per day than would be produced without rBGH.

The controversy
Increased use of rBGH has caused health problems for the animals and has resulted in “additives” to our milk (among them: rising levels of pus, antibiotics residues, and a cancer-accelerating hormone called IGF-1).

Animals
Whenever cows are forced to produce more milk, they become more susceptible to udder infections called mastitis. Mastitis is a condition which can increase the amount of cow’s pus which ends up in the milk. (Yes, PUS IN YOUR MILK!)

Monsanto’s own data shows that there is a 79% increase in mastitis (udder infections) and a resulting 19% increase in somatic cell counts (pus & bacteria in the milk). In fact, the warning label on Monsanto’s Posilac drug (their brand name for rBGH) explicitly states: “Cows injected with POSILAC are at an increased risk for clinical mastitis (visibly abnormal milk). The number of cows affected with clinical mastitis and the number of cases per cow may increase…. In some herds, use of POSILAC has been associated with increases in somatic cell counts [pus & bacteria].” The warning label goes on to say “use of POSILAC may result in an increase in digestive disorders such as indigestion, bloat, and diarrhea…. Studies indicated that cows injected with POSILAC had increased numbers of enlarged hocks and lesions (e.g., lacerations, enlargements, calluses) of the knee…and…of the foot region.”

And true to American agricultural form, instead of removing the offending factor from the equation, we just pump more antibiotics in to the cows’ diet to combat the infections caused by the rBGH. (Really makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?) Antibiotics that leave residues in our milk. Mmmm…

Humans
The growth hormone also stimulates an increase in insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) in the cow’s milk. Recently, Eli Lily & Co, a manufacturer of rBGH, reported a ten-fold increase in IGF-1 levels in milk of cows receiving rBGH. The IGF-1 protein is identical in both cows and humans and it is not destroyed by pasteurization. (Some sources even say that the pasteurization process actually increases IGF-1 levels in milk.)  Nor is it destroyed during digestion. Instead, it is readily absorbed across the intestinal wall.  (Some research shows that it can be absorbed in the bloodstream as well.)  And while IGF-1 is naturally present in humans, research suggests that elevated levels are associated with breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

Monsanto’s own tests, conducted in 1987, demonstrated that statistically significant growth stimulating effects were induced in organs of adult rats by feeding IGF-1 at low dose levels for only two weeks. While there is no evidence that this same effect occurs in humans, the Cancer Prevention Coalition concludes that, “Drinking rBGH milk would thus be expected to significantly increase IGF-1 blood levels and consequently to increase risks of developing breast cancer and promoting its invasiveness.” The Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study found higher blood levels of IGF-1 in women with breast cancer than in those without. Studies suggest that pre-menopausal women below 50 years old with high levels of IGF-1 are seven times more likely to develop breast cancer. Men are four times more likely to develop prostate cancer.

Labels
A milk carton from Maine’s Oakhurst Dairy stating, “Our Farmers’ Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones” became the subject of controversy on July 3, 2003 when the dairy was sued by Monsanto over their labels. Oakhurst eventually settled, agreeing to add a sentence saying that ‘according to the FDA no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBGH-treated and non-treated cows.’ But this statement is simply not true. Both Monsanto and FDA scientists have acknowledged the increase of IGF-1 in milk from treated cows. Higher amounts of pus and antibiotic residues in the milk were noted are as well.

label

This misleading addition to the label was written by the FDA’s deputy commissioner of policy, Michael Taylor, previously Monsanto’s outside attorney who, after running policy at the FDA, became vice president of Monsanto. (Could this revolving door between Monsanto and the government regulators be the one of the reasons why the FDA isn’t protecting US consumers?)

Corruption
In the late 1980s, one FDA scientist was fired after expressing concerns about possible health problems related rBGH-treated cows. Other like-minded FDA scientists had been stripped of responsibilities or forced out. Remaining FDA whistle-blowers wrote an anonymous letter to Congress, complaining of fraud and conflict of interest at the agency.

In 1997, the potential link between rBGH and cancer was one of the topics revealed in a four-part news series set to air by a Tampa-based Fox TV station. Just before the series was shown, however, Fox received letters from Monsanto’s attorney, threatening “dire consequences for Fox News.” The show was postponed indefinitely. The reporters who had created the series later testified that they were offered hush money to leave the station and never speak about the story again. (They declined.)

In 1998, six Canadian government scientists testified before their Senate that they were being pressured by superiors to approve rBGH, even though they believed it was unsafe. They also testified that documents were stolen from a locked file cabinet and that Monsanto offered them a bribe of $1-2 million to approve the drug. Monsanto responded to the alleged bribe, claiming that the scientists misunderstood an offer for research money. (Eventually in 2005, Monsanto was fined for offering bribes to 140 Indonesians, as the company tried to gain approval for their genetically modified cotton.)

Progress (sort of)
Growth hormone producers were unsuccessful in banning “rBGH free” labels on a national level, so they have now taken their fight to the state level. Currently, Ohio is considering legislation that would prohibit the use of the “rBGH-free” label. Countries around the world have completely banned rBGH from being used in cows as long ago as 1990. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the whole European Union all prevent rBGH from being used in their countries (and prevent imports of dairy from the US containing rBGH). The United States is more than a decade behind and now there’s a chance that we might not even know when this drug is used in the milk we drink if this Ohio rule stands.

With the spread of information about rBST, there has been a widespread consumer demand for hormone-free milk. Many large corporations (WalMart, Starbucks, Kroger, Dannon, and Yoplait, for example) have completely removed hormone treated milk due to consumer demand. This goes to show that consumers are still at the top of the food chain. We can dictate the direction of this fight!

What you can do

  • - Look for “rBGH-free” labels on all of your dairy products.
  • - Purchase USDA certified organic milk. To be certified organic, cows can not be treated with growth hormones.
  • * (It is important to note that “rBGH-free” and “organic” labels have absolutely nothing to do with humane treatment of the animals.)
  • - Choose dairy alternatives such as soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, or hemp milk.
  • - Let your grocer/coffee shop/deli/ice cream parlor know that you want hormone-free dairy products!

*Note* Throughout this post I solely referred to “milk” but the truth is that effects of rBGH apply to all dairy products including cheese, yogurt, butter, and ice cream. (Imported European cheeses are rBGH free because the EU has banned rBGH.)

____________________
Breakfast: Strawberries and cherries
Lunch: Amy’s burrito and more cherries (I love cherry season!)
Dinner: Mini pizza made on a whole wheat tortilla with tomato sauce and Daiya vegan mozzarella. After I took the picture, I added some dried basil & oregano.

food 002 food 006 (2)

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By The Numbers May 20th, 2010

Travel for another wedding, immediately followed by illness, led to a lack of posts this week.  Although I’m not fully recovered, I’m back to the grind today.

—

Sometimes numbers speak louder than words. I find these numbers absolutely shocking.  And I am glad I no longer contribute to them.

(All numbers below are from the book Gristle.)

per year

per month

per week

per day

per hour

per minute

per second

The food choices you make every day determine the difference between life and death for these animals. Each day, you can make a choice that either supports cruelty to animals, or helps to end it. You have the power to save animals from miserable existences on factory farms and painful and terrifying deaths in slaughterhouses with nothing more than your choice of what to eat. Please make compassionate food choices.

____________________
Breakfast: Cantaloupe
Lunch: Vegetable Pho (pronounced “fuh”), a Vietnamese soup with noodles, broccoli, carrots, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, basil, and tofu
Dinner: Soy chorizo tacos

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Lies May 6th, 2010

This article is from CNN.com, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Beyond the unhealthy influence that our demand for factory-farmed meat has in the area of food-borne illness and communicable diseases, we could cite many other influences on public health, most obviously the now-widely recognized relationship between the nation’s major killers — heart disease, No. 1; cancer, No. 2; and stroke, No. 3 — and meat consumption.

Or, much less obviously, the distorting influence of the meat industry on the information about nutrition we receive from the government and medical professionals.

In 1917, while World War I devastated Europe and just before the Spanish flu devastated the world, a group of women, in part motivated to make maximal use of America’s food resources during wartime, founded what is now the nation’s premier group of food and nutrition professionals, the American Dietetic Association.

Since the 1990s, the group has issued what has become the standard we-definitely-know-this-much summary of the healthfulness of a vegetarian diet. The association takes a conservative stand, leaving out many well-documented health benefits attributable to reducing the consumption of animal products. Here are the three key sentences from the summary of the relevant scientific literature.

One: Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence, and for athletes.

Two: Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folate, carotenoids, flavonoids and other phytochemicals.

Three: Vegetarians and vegans, including those who are athletes, “meet and exceed requirements” for protein, the paper notes elsewhere.

And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggest that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

Finally, we have the really important news, based not on speculation, however well-grounded in basic science such speculation might be, but on the definitive gold standard of nutritional research: studies on actual human populations.

“Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease” (which alone accounts for more than 25 percent of all annual deaths in the nation), “lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index” (that is, they are not as fat) “and lower overall cancer rates” (cancers account for nearly another 25 percent of all annual deaths in the nation).

If it’s sometimes hard to believe that eschewing animal products will make it easier to eat healthfully, there is a reason: We are constantly lied to about nutrition.

Let me be precise. When I say we are being lied to, I’m not impugning the scientific literature but relying upon it. What the public learns of the scientific data on nutrition and health, especially from the government’s nutritional guidelines, comes to us by way of many hands. From the start, those who produce meat have made sure that they are among those who influence how nutritional data will be presented to the likes of you and me.

Consider, for example, the National Dairy Council, a marketing arm of Dairy Management Inc., an industry body whose sole purpose, according to its Web site, is to “drive increased sales of and demand for U.S. dairy products.”

The council promotes dairy consumption without regard for negative public-health consequences and even markets dairy to communities incapable of digesting the stuff. As it is a trade group, the dairy council’s behavior is at least understandable.

What is hard to comprehend is why educators and government have, since the 1950s, allowed the dairy council to become arguably the largest and most important supplier of nutritional-education materials in the nation. Worse, our present federal “nutritional” guidelines come to us from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the very same government department that has worked so hard to make factory farming the norm in America.

The USDA has a monopoly on the most important advertising space in the nation, those little nutritional boxes we find on virtually everything we eat. Founded the same year that the American Dietetic Association opened its offices, the USDA was charged with providing nutritional information to the nation and ultimately with creating guidelines that would serve public health. At the same time, though, the USDA was charged with promoting industry.

The conflict of interest is not subtle: Our nation gets its federally endorsed nutritional information from an agency that must support the food industry, which today means supporting factory farms. The details of misinformation that dribble into our lives (like fears about “enough protein”) follow naturally from this fact and have been reflected upon in detail by writers like Marion Nestle.

As a public-health expert, Nestle has worked extensively with government — on “The Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health,” for one — and has had decades of interaction with the food industry. In many ways, her conclusions confirm what we already expected, but the insider’s perspective she brings has lent a new clarity to the picture of just how much influence the food industry, especially animal agriculture, has on national nutrition policy.

She argues that food companies, like cigarette companies, will say and do whatever works to sell products. They will “lobby Congress to eliminate regulations perceived as unfavorable; they press federal regulatory agencies not to enforce such regulations; and when they don’t like regulatory decisions, they file lawsuits. Like cigarette companies, food companies co-opt food and nutrition experts by supporting professional organizations and research, and they expand sales by marketing directly to children.”

Regarding U.S. government recommendations that tend to encourage dairy consumption in the name of preventing osteoporosis, Nestle notes that in parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures than Americans do. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods.

In a striking example of food industry influence, Nestle argues that the USDA has an informal policy to avoid saying that we should “eat less” of any food, no matter how damaging its health impact may be. Thus, instead of saying “eat less meat,” which might be helpful, it advises us to “keep fat intake to less than 30 percent of total calories,” which is obscure to say the least.

The institution we have put in charge of telling us when foods are dangerous has a policy of not (directly) telling us when foods, especially if they are animal products, are dangerous.

We have let the food industry craft our national nutrition policy, which influences everything from what foods are stocked in the health-food aisle at the local grocery store to what our children eat at school.

In the National School Lunch Program, for example, more than half a billion of our tax dollars are given to the dairy, beef, egg and poultry industries to provide animal products to children, despite the fact that nutritional data would suggest we should reduce these foods in our diets.

Meanwhile, a modest $161 million is offered to buy fruits and vegetables that even the USDA admits we should eat more of. Wouldn’t it make more sense and be more ethical for the National Institutes of Health, an organization specializing in human health and having nothing to gain beyond it, to have this responsibility?

The global implications of the growth of the factory farm, especially given the problems of food-borne illness, antimicrobial resistance and potential pandemics, are genuinely terrifying.

India’s and China’s poultry industries have grown somewhere between 5 and 13 percent annually since the 1980s. If India and China started to eat poultry in the same quantities as Americans — 27 to 28 birds annually — they alone would consume as many chickens as the entire world does today.

If the world followed America’s lead, it would consume more than 165 billion chickens annually, even without an increase in population. And then what? Two hundred billion? Five hundred? Will the cages stack higher or grow smaller or both? On what date will we accept the loss of antibiotics as a tool to prevent human suffering? How many days of the week will our grandchildren be ill? Where does it end?

____________________
Breakfast: Cereal & rice milk
Lunch: Medley of stuff from the lunch buffet accross the street: noodles, rice, tofu, and two veggie salads
food 057
Dinner: Bean burrito and Cheesy rice & bean burrito from Taco Bell (I was in a rush, starving, and in an unfamiliar neighborhood!)

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A Breif History Lesson April 29th, 2010

At the end of WWII, our munitions plants were morphed into plowshare factories and began turning our ammonium nitrate surplus into chemical fertilizers (if you follow that link, start reading about half-way down, at the paragraph that starts with “Unfortunately…”). Fertilizers and machinery are not the only things linked to war. Most chemical warfare is actually pesticide in a much stronger dose (if you follow that link, read the”WWII” section). Some chemical warfare agents were discovered when trying to create pesticides and some pesticides were discovered when trying to create chemical weapons. We are eating this stuff!

Between ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nerve gas pesticide, the corn and soybean yields skyrocketed shortly after WWII. Some politicians saw this as a valid reason to dismantle the New Dealpolicies that had helped farmers weather economic uncertainties inherent in their business. Over the next few decades, nudged by industry, the government re-wrote farm policy on commodity subsidies (corn, soy) so that these funds no longer protect the farmer, but instead guarantee a cheap supply of corn and soybeans.

These 2 crops, formerly food for poor people and animals, became something entirely different: a standardized raw material for industry, not very different from logging or mining. Mills and factories, as complex as those turning iron and aluminum ores into cars, soda cans, and antiperspirants, were developed. But, these were turning piles of corn and soy into high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and thousands of other starch and oil based chemicals.

Cow, pigs, and chickens were brought in off the pasture into Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where corn and soy (which is not part of these animals’ natural diet) are used to cheaply and quickly fatten them. Corn and soy now run all the way down our industrial pipeline into soft drinks, burgers, and all the other processed foods on which our nation runs (or sits on its butt, as the case may be).

This is how 70% of all our Midwestern agricultural land shifted into single-crop corn or soybean farms, each one of them, on average, the size of Manhattan.

Thanks to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, genetic modification, and highly mechanized production systems, US farmers now produce 3,900 calories per US citizen per day. That’s twice the amount we need and 700 more calories per day more than they grew in 1980. Commodity farmers can only make ends meet by producing their maximum yields, so they do.

And here is the shocking plot twist: as farmers produced all those extra calories, the food industry figured out how to get them into the bodies of people who didn’t really want to eat 700 more calories a day. That is the well-oiled machine we call Late Capitalism.

Most of the calories that enter our mouth are hardly recognized as corn or soy or even vegetable: lecithin, citric acid, maltodextrin, sorbitol, and xanthan gum (for example) are all manufactured from corn. So are beef, eggs, and poultry, in a different but no less artificial process. Soybeans also become animal flesh, or else an ingredient called “added fats.” Remove every product containing corn or soybeans from the grocery store and it would look more like a hardware store (though the light bulbs would not be in boxes since many packaging materials now contain cornstarch).

With so many extra calories to deliver, food packages have gotten bigger. The 8 ounce Coke bottle of yesteryear morphed into 20 ounces of high-fructose corn syrup and carbonated water. As serving sizes increased, so did the American waistline. US consumption of  “added fats” has increased by one-third since 1975 and HFCS consumption is up by 1,000%.

True, no one held a gun to our head and forced us to super-size it, but humans have a built-in weakness for fats and sugar that evolved from caveman days of sparse food sources and a necessity for survival. Food marketers know these weaknesses and have exploited them to no mercy. Obesity is generally viewed as a failure of personal resolve, with no acknowledgement of the genuine conspiracy in this historical scheme. People actually did sit in a meeting room and discuss ways to get all those surplus calories into people who did not need them nor want them.

____________________
Breakfast: Bagel with jelly
Lunch: Tofurkey sandwich
Dinner: Veggie burger, homemade mashed potatoes, and cantaloupe
megan & rob's wedding 033

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