PETA: Milk Kills

Clip recap:

Normally when babies are born, their mothers will care for them, protect them, and watch them grow up. But for mother cows used by the dairy industry, their babies are often taken away within minutes and sold into the veal industry. The mother's milk that was meant for her baby will be sold on grocery store shelves. Both mother and baby will eventually end up in the slaughterhouse.

Paul McCartney - Meat Free Monday

Stereogum recaps:

Meat Free Monday is a campaign to convince people who eat meat to skip eating it one day of the week to help reduce their carbon footprint. As any self-respecting Beatles fan knows (or Simpsons fan for that matter), Paul McCartney is a guy who skips eating meat seven days of the week. He once wrote a song titled “Meat Free Monday” to encourage people to take that pledge, and now it’s resurfaced with a new video. The campaign released a new lyric video for the track featuring photos sent in by fans who took the pledge. It was posted this week as global leaders flock to the UN headquarters in New York for the first major discussion on climate change since the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Sharon Needles For PETA

Hay Pride

It's a clever pitch for vegetarianism.

Born into the swine class destined for an urban luau, Stinkerbell and Tiptoes fortuitously stepped in shit, and wound up living high on the hog in Malibu. Never forgetting their roots, they were determined to bring home the bacon by emancipating their fellow factory porkers whose squeals futilely echo through the slaughterhouse chambers. They knew the deep-rooted corporatocracy among the Donkeys and Elephants would make the two-party system impossible to reform. Poised for mudslinging, they hatched the Pig Party, stumping for peas on earth, a free range economy, hay rights and white meat equality, under the banner "root for change."

Quote Of The Day - Morrissey

"Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies." - Vegetarian and pop singer Morrissey, speaking to the Guardian.

Morrissey later expanded on his remarks: "If anyone has seen the horrific and unwatchable footage of the Chinese cat and dog trade – animals skinned alive – then they could not possibly argue in favour of China as a caring nation. There are no animal protection laws in China and this results in the worst animal abuse and cruelty on the planet. It is indefensible."

Poisonous Veggieburgers?

Mother Jones reports that some brands of veggieburgers contain a poisonous neurotoxin.

In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein. Says Cornucopia Institute senior researcher Charlotte Vallaeys, "If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane." If you've heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline—the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible for two-thirds of our national hexane emissions. Hexane is hazardous in the factory, too: Workers who have been exposed to it have developed both skin and nervous system disorders. Troubling, then, that the FDA does not monitor or regulate hexane residue in foods. More worrisome still: According to the report, "Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted."

Hit the link for the brands that have hexane in them. The one brand I can bear, Boca Burger, is on the list, of course.

UPDATE: Readers point to this Boing Boing story debunking the Mother Jones piece. Does this mean I can go back to enjoying my delicious Boca Burgers? Mmmm, hexaney.

Would This Be An Ate Crime?

This is how they roll in the strange "anarchist-vegan" world.

An ex-vegan who was hit with chili pepper-laced pies at an anarchist event in San Francisco said Tuesday that her assailants were cowards who should direct their herbivorous rage at the powerful - not at a fellow radical for writing a book denouncing animal-free diets. Lierre Keith, a 45-year-old Arcata resident, was attacked at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at the 15th annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair while discussing her 2009 book, "The Vegetarian Myth." A 20-year vegan, Keith now argues that the diet is unhealthy and that agriculture is destroying the world. As Keith stood at a lectern at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, three people in masks and black hooded sweatshirts ran from backstage, shouted, "Go vegan!" and threw pies in her face. While they fled, some in the audience cheered or handed out leaflets.

How does one hold an anarchist convention?

Daily Grumble

Yesterday was World Vegetarian Day and we missed it. And here I'd planned a delicious banquet of adorable bunnies, kittens, and endangered turtles. Dammit!

Keep Being Awesome

The latest from Passive Aggressive Notes.

(Tipped by JMG reader Vincent)

Only Homos Don't Eat Meat

A straight and married Wall Street trader is suing his former employers, saying that they tormented him for his vegetarianism and told him that only homosexuals don't eat meat.

Ryan Pacifico is suing Calyon in the Americas, charging that his one-time boss at the French financial firm presided over a testosterone-fueled trading desk, where he was mocked for avoiding meat and wearing snug-fitting shorts during triathlons. "A trading floor is certainly a manly man's world," Pacifico said. "I just never expected someone to think it's gay to be a vegetarian or to constantly poke fun at me." The 28-year-old Long Island man worked as a junior foreign-exchange trader in Manhattan for the firm from 2005 until he was fired last March. Pacifico's discrimination lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, contends the firm cooked up lies about his job performance to fire him - when the real factors were that he was a vegetarian who was perceived to be gay by boss Robert Catalanello. "They associated being a vegetarian with being gay," said Rick Ostrove, a lawyer for Pacifico. "It's a ridiculous male stereotype that only real men eat meat."

Pacifico says at one time his boss taunted him with "You don't even eat steak, dude. At what point in time did you realize you were gay?"

Food Is Love

The worst kind of mixed-marriage:

Sharing meals has always been an important courtship ritual and a metaphor for love. But in an age when many people define themselves by what they will eat and what they won’t, dietary differences can put a strain on a romantic relationship. The culinary camps have become so balkanized that some factions consider interdietary dating taboo.

No-holds-barred carnivores, for example, may share the view of Anthony Bourdain, who wrote in his book “Kitchen Confidential” that “vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”

Returning the compliment, many vegetarians say they cannot date anyone who eats meat. Vegans, who avoid eating not just animals but animal-derived products, take it further, shivering at the thought of kissing someone who has even sipped honey-sweetened tea.

Have you ever not dated somebody because of their dietary restrictions?