So, tonight on our local news program, they did a short blurb on eating locally to save the environment. In itself, this really shouldn’t bother me. However, I find myself wondering, why, if the local news is so interested in saving the planet (yes, I’m making an assumption here)… why then didn’t they suggest eating vegan, or at the very least for people to cut down on their meat consumption?

It’s been well documented that you can make much more of a positive impact by eating vegan, than by buying local produce. We wrote about it in our post, Eating Vegan Trumps Eating Locally, where we cite the New Scientists article Food Miles Don’t Feed Climate Change, Meat Does:

To drive his point home, Weber calculated that a completely local diet would reduce a household’s greenhouse emissions by an amount equivalent to driving a car 1600 km fewer per year. He assumed the car travels 10.6 km per litre of petrol (25 mpg). Switching from red meat to veggies just one day per week would spare 1860 km of driving.

The New York Times ran an article by Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, entitled Rethinking The Meat Guzzler, in which he states:

“If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.”

Then there’s Livestock’s Long Shadow, the UN report which states:

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential of CO2. Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.

The University of Chicago published a study in 2006, stating that Vegan Diets Healthier For Planet/People Than Meat Diets:

“We say that however close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet. It doesn’t have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan. If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you’ve already made a substantial difference.”

I could go on, there’s plenty of material out there. So why isn’t the news media screaming for us to cut down on our meat consumption? (Can we say lobbies? or Powerful Corporate advertisers?) Come on people, this is the obvious solution to a very large problem, the facts are staring us all right in the face. Oh, that’s right, the earth is flat, and there be dragons here!

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We received an email message from one of our readers in Sparks, Nevada last night. She asked us if we could help her find a farmers market in her neighborhood. It occurred to us, that as spoiled Californians we take the farmers market for granted. Of course there’s one close by… more likely, there are several, and they’re not all on the same day of the week, so we have access to fresh produce any time, even in the dead of winter (when our day time highs may not even break 60°F).

Obviously, that’s not going to be the case elsewhere in the country. So, here’s a link to the USDA Farmers Market Database where you can search for a nearby market in your state, county, or city. It might be worth a look, even if you think you know all the markets in your area. You might just find a gem!

And, if you don’t already shop at your local farmers market, you may want to give it a try. There’s nothing like just-picked produce!

– We’ve had some renewed interest in our petition to Oprah, asking her to do a piece on factory farming. We will be sending this information to Oprah on Monday, 5/19. If you haven’t already signed, please consider doing so. We can all work together to make a difference.

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One of the things that I discovered after starting to read vegan literature is that “free range” doesn’t mean what I thought it did. Before going vegan, I used to buy eggs marked “free range” or “cage free” — and I felt pretty good about that. In my mind, I was eating what was basically a waste product (an unfertilized egg), produced by a chicken that was living a pretty good life. As conventional wisdom holds, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Many people believe that egg production is less abusive to chickens than other factory farming processes, and therefore a vegetarian diet is an acceptable way to boycott animal cruelty. Well, here’s some more food for vegetarian thought:

• In the U.S. there are no laws or government standards regulating the use of free-range, free roaming, or free-walking on egg cartons.
• Free-range simply means the birds are uncaged. This does not necessarily mean the birds have access to the outdoors. There is no industry standard defining how free-range hens are to be housed.
• Many egg farmers sell their eggs as free range merely because their cages are two or three inches above average size, or because there is a window in the shed where the hens are kept.
• It is common for free range hens to be debeaked, the practice of severing the tip of the sensitive beak, without anesthesia. This is done to reduce stress-pecking and fighting due to overcrowding.
• it is common for free range hens to be “force molted,” a standard commercial practice in which food is withheld from hens for up to two weeks to induce egg production.
• Egg-laying chickens don’t grow fast enough to be raised profitably for meat, so the male chicks are killed upon hatching. Typically they are ground up or suffocated.
• “Spent” hens (those which no longer produce enough eggs) are thrown into small crates and trucked to the slaughterhouse without any protection from the elements, often traveling hundreds of miles without food or water. They often suffer from broken wings and legs, and many die from the stress of the journey.
• And finally, their legs are snapped into shackles, their throats are cut, and they are immersed in scalding hot water to remove their feathers. Chickens and other birds are exempt from the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, so most are still conscious when their throats are cut open, or are still alive when they reach the feather-removal tanks and wind up being scalded to death.

And I haven’t even talked about the rampant salmonella.

It’s like what your parents always said, there’s no such thing as a free (range) lunch.

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Jane and I had the opportunity to attend WorldFest 2008 yesterday. As you might expect, the weather was perfect, sunny and warm with just the slightest breeze. We arrived in time to hear Karen Dawn talk about her new book, Thanking the Monkey. She’s promoting the book as a way to introduce animal rights issues to your non-vegan family/friends. It sounds like a worthwhile read!

Then it was off to the food court. We’d heard that the food would be all vegan, and we were excited by the prospect of being someplace with multiple vegan options. Jane headed straight for the Rahel Ethiopian restaurant booth. We don’t get to their restaurant nearly as often as she’d like, so she didn’t even want to consider looking at any of the other vendors. I had Indian food, something I’m always happy to indulge myself with. There were places serving Thai food, and others offering Samosas. Whole Foods had a booth selling Gardein Chicken sandwiches. Tofurkey also had a booth and they were selling a variety of different sandwiches. One of the vendors was making grilled sausage sandwiches which smelled delicious, and there was a raw food booth too. It was a vegan’s dream… many food choices!

After we finished eating, we sat in on one of the talks, given by Lorri Bauston, of Animal Acres. She mentioned a number of reasons to go vegan, from animal welfare to environmental issues. She gave some horrific statistics about the impact factory farming has on the environment, and how much water is both wasted and polluted by agri-business. Nothing we hadn’t heard before, but Ms. Bauston is an engaging speaker, and we enjoyed her talk.

There were a number of exhibitors at WorldFest, too many to talk about here. But there was information on everything from animal welfare, to environmental issues, to green energy solutions. We picked up a ton of literature to read, and talked to a few people. And, of course, there were shopping opportunities. We wound up buying Nutiva Coconut Oil and Hemp Protein Powder, which we haven’t tried yet.

At one point we made our way back to the main stage to listen to some music. People were dancing, flowers were dancing, but the main stage was right next to the beer garden, so that might have had something to do with it! (Not really, there were two flowers wandering around the festival on stilts.)

The best part of the day was Gene Baur’s talk on animal rights issues and factory farming. Gene Baur is the co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, and author of Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food. I’m looking forward to reading this book, if it’s written as well as Gene spoke yesterday, it will be a worthwhile read.

– We’re getting ready to close down our petition to Oprah, asking her to do a piece on factory farming. If you haven’t already signed, please consider doing so. We can all work together to make a difference.

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If you’re in the Los Angeles area and looking for something to do tomorrow, why don’t you consider visiting the WorldFest in Woodley Park in Encino. According to their website, “WorldFest is a solar-powered celebration of music, the environment, animals, and humanity. We’re helping people learn what they can do for the Earth and its inhabitants.”

The festival is Saturday, May 10th, 2008 from 10AM - 6:30PM at Woodley Park in Encino, CA (Map).
Admission: $7 / Seniors $5 / Kids under 12 - Free! / Pets Welcome

One of guest speakers will be Gene Baur, author of Farm Sanctuary, another will be Rory Freedman, co-author of the hugely popular Skinny Bitch, there will also be representatives from the Humane Society and other animal and environmental protection groups. Looking through the activities scheduled, it certainly seems like there will be something there for everyone –from music, to meditation, to lectures on composting and “vegan green,” and talks on health and nutrition, and animal welfare.

– We’re getting ready to close down our petition to Oprah, asking her to do a piece on factory farming. If you haven’t already signed, please consider doing so. We can all work together to make a difference.

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