Animal Person

On Yogic Food Plans

What I didn't know until I read the article was that Yoga Journal's "How to Eat Like a Yogi" was really about Ayurvedic Philosophy as it relates to your body (and mind and constitution) type and what you should be eating to keep it in balance, at least according to the Vedas.

I've had this type of "nutritional" counseling, and here's my experience, with some resources if you're interested:

• Holisticonline.com has simple, clear charts and lists regarding the three Doshas (think body type, plus): Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Many people are more than one thing. I am Pitta, and my sister is Pitta Kapha. Genetics will play a part. As a triple fire sign, in any system I'm whatever has the most fire (in this case, Pitta).
• Check out the links to pages for characteristics of each Dosha and signs of the Dosha's imbalance. For instance, Pitta aggravation often manifests as: irritable, impatient, critical, weakness due to blood sugar.
• Each Dosha has a food plan, which is where it gets really interesting if you'd like to do a little experimenting with/on yourself. Here's the plan to balance Pitta. Apparently I should be avoiding red meat and seafood, but can eat shrimp (I thought it was from the sea, oui?), chicken and turkey in small amounts. Note that there's no talk of ethics in the food plan; it's all about what is appropriate to maintain balance for the constitution.
• A general rule is that tastes you crave are probably tastes to avoid. For instance, as a fiery type, I should avoid spicy food, so I should back off the cayenne pepper, which is difficult, as sometimes I crave it.
• Results: Forget about the animal products for a moment (everyone can eat some according to Ayurveda, although Kaphas should definitely avoid dairy as it is mucous-forming and one of their biggest problems is mucous, if you must know). My experience is that the food plan for Pitta does indeed make me feel balanced and light, and my digestion is easy. I simply don't eat ghee or any of the other (few) animal products acceptable for Pitta people.

I recommend researching what type you are and spending a couple of weeks following the food plan, minus the animals of course. It's not necessary to not eliminate Ayurveda from consideration just because animal products are included. You just might find that with a little alteration in your choices of fruits, vegetables, grains, oils, beans, nuts and seeds, sweeteners and herbs and spices, you might feel better. Feel better for me also includes less mental anxiety, which is alleviated (or at least that's the plan) by daily meditation.  And yoga a couple of times a week.

I have had several practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine try to persuade me to eat ice cream, believe it or not. They said I need something cold and smooth to counter all of my edges and my fire (inside and out, as I do live 30 minutes from the Bahamas, and it's rarely cold here). I wasn't about to start drinking anybody's milk, but I did increase my consumption of frozen fruit shakes with added pea or hemp protein and almond milk and I did find that there was a positive shift in the way I felt, both physically and mentally.

I'm always in search of strategies to increase my mental and physical performance, and if you are too, I recommend at least exploring Ayurveda. For those people who used to be vegans or vegetarians (if I recall correctly there are two in the Yoga Journal article) and say that once they started eating animals again they felt better, I'd say that it's not the animals they need, but some nutrient or other, and they should try harder to obtain that nutrient rather than kill anybody.

On What We Should Do With Race Horses

I watched "Hidden Horses" a couple of nights ago on REALsports, which is an HBO series hosted by Bryant Gumbel. Here's the blurb:

Few casual horse racing fans are aware that many former racing horses are slaughtered for profit. When a thoroughbred race horse reaches the end of its career or is simply no longer profitable on the track, it is often taken directly to auction and sold for meat. Because horse slaughter is no longer practiced in this country, these thoroughbreds are now being shipped by "killer buyers" to slaughterhouses abroad, which are frequently less regulated and less humane than former U.S. slaughterhouses. Correspondent Bernard Goldberg, who recently won the 2008 Sports Emmy(r) for Outstanding Sports Journalism for his 2007 REAL SPORTS story on the NFL concussion crisis, traces the disturbing journey many of these young and healthy horses take from the track, to auctions, to slaughterhouses, and finally to the plates of European and Japanese diners who pay top dollar for the delicacy.

There wasn't any talk of not racing horses, which of course would eliminate numerous problems, both for horses and humans. And there was the usual vague disdain for anyone who would eat a horse, in addition to some fairly gruesome footage of the slaughter of horses. Meanwhile, slaughter just like it occurs hundreds of times per second--but not with horses--and the uproar about that fact is minuscule. The number of horses slaughtered per year is in the tens of thousands, which is horrible, but the outcry isn't enormously disproportionate given what occurs to non-equine sentient beings all day long.

Still, it's great to see a mainstream, manly kind of show (if sort of intellectual-manly) address this topic, as I've come to discover that most people have no idea what goes on in the horse racing industry. If that segment turned one person against horse racing (I'm not sure how it would, though), I'm happy.

Here's the real reason I'm writing about this, though. I had no idea the Preakness was yesterday, therefore at first I didn't understand why there was a flurry of news stories about what happens to horses when they lose--and even when they win. In "Hidden Horses,"as well as in "Saving Horses, One Thoroughbred at at Time" in yesterday's New York Times, and the AP's "Losing Racehorses Killed in Puerto Rico" from Friday, the focus is on the killing of horses used to race. There is no mention of how many horses are killed on the way to determining whether they ever will race, and there's no talk about the horses used in rodeos or pony rides or polo or the other ways we use horses, but at least they're covering this aspect, I thought.

Upon closer inspection (actually it doesn't even take that much effort), the real story emerges. Rescue organizations cannot keep up with the number of horses going to slaughter but they try. They try to outbid horse killers at auctions, and often succeed. They often go to sleep at night haunted by the faces of the horses they couldn't save.

Here's the rub (and these quotes are from the NYT article): The rescuers speak of "fixing the industry" (said Diana Koebel, owner and trainer at LumberJack Farm, which rescues and rehabilitates thoroughbreds). Then there's ReRun, "which prepares discarded racehorses for a second career — as jumping show horses, maybe, or just as pets — and then makes them available for adoption." Just as pets.

"But there is a lot of life left,” the ReRun president, Laurie Condurso-Lane, said. Horses can live to 30 years or longer. “They are young. So why not find them new jobs?”

In other words, there is no hint in any of the articles, or in the REALsports segment, that we shouldn't be using horses--that they might not be ours to "find jobs for." And where do they go when they're fired from their second jobs? Are the rescuers merely postponing the inevitable slaughter of the horses by filling the time with a new form of enslavement? (I don't know the answer, by the way. I'm just asking.)

In the AP article, a businessman is quoted as saying:

"A lot of times people will have good luck with one horse, that horse will make them a lot of money, and they feel they can do that with every horse. What ends up happening is this renewable resource, which is the racehorse, ends up being treated like just another raw material. When it doesn't produce, you toss it away. And that's sad."

What's sad is considering them a renewable resource or a raw material.

Finally, today the editorial board of The New York Times gives us,"The Horse, Familiar and Unfamiliar," with the stunning statement: "It becomes clear that we are human by virtue of horses and that horses are what they are by virtue of us." We are human by virtue of horses? What they really mean is that we have used horses for a long, long time, and bred them and trained them for our use. We now use them less.

"Horses are what they are by virtue of us?" Where's the virtue in enslaving sentient beings and forcing them to work for you? Where's the virtue in breeding them for the sole purpose of using them and even profiting from who they are and what you make them do?

You can try to romanticize the bloody history of the relationship between horses and humans, but the reality of what we've done to them since they were unfortunate enough to meet our acquaintance, doesn't bring the word "virtue" to mind. Yes, "by virtue of" is an idiom, but a different one--one without "virtue" could have been used.

On Why I'm Still Wary of Mark Bittman

When Angus directed me to a Mark Bittman video that's a 20-minute argument for eating less meat, I was wary. I was annoyed with Bittman back in January when I deconstructed his "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler" and, well, I'm still annoyed because he tends to present an incomplete picture. He tends to leave out a crucial component in the food equation: ethics as they relate to nonhuman animals.

Let's deconstruct:

• The fact that Bittman isn't a vegetarian is appropriate because once again, though there may be en ecological ethic that ties his points together, there is no ethic that includes the premise of eating nonhuman animals when you don't need to. In fact, he does believe we don't need to eat animals, and he even says that "We eat animal products not for nutrition, but for an odd form of malnutrition."
• Bittman (like Michael Pollan) thinks we should be eating fewer animals (though Pollan's language is that we should be eating "less meat"). However, Bittman also says, "Let's get the number of them we're eating down, then worry about how we're treating the rest of them." He finds the factory farming system unacceptable, but he has no ethical problem eating animals. I am taken aback by the way he casually relegates the suffering of animals to an afterthought.
  
• He takes on the food pyramid, which is helpful, and notes that Americans eat twice as much protein as the FDA suggests (1/2 pound per week is the suggested amount). There isn't a vegan on the planet who hasn't been asked to justify their protein sources and intake, and it's nice to have an omnivore tell the truth about protein.
• He describes what it was like in 1950 in America, when people were real locavores and ate real food (and there were no Skittles or TV dinners and corn wasn't in just about everything), which is interesting, but again, no question about the ethics of food.

The positive aspect of this particular speech is that it's not a commercial for happy meat. Bittman's message isn't to stop buying animal products from factory farms and buy only from "free range" or family farms. His message is to cut down drastically on your meat intake (he also says animal products once or twice). He doesn't tell you to replace all the cow flesh you're eating with chicken flesh (and certainly not farm-raised or "organic" salmon. After he describes them, you wouldn't want to eat them.). In a way, then, part of his message is similar to ours. We say: Start by eating vegan meals one day a week (or even one meal), then increase from there. Though Bittman uses the word vegan only once--and he doesn't lump it with vegetarian, which is thoughtful and accurate--it appears that the sentiment (or something like it) is there. He provides health and environmental arguments for cutting down on the consumption of animal products.

Of course, the part of his message that is dissimilar to ours is that he says he'll never stop eating animals and I assume he doesn't believe there is any kind of massive injustice to nonhuman animals as long as we use them for food.

I'll try anything to get people to examine their beliefs about nonhuman animals. And if watching this 20-minute video gets someone to start going vegan a day or two a week because Bittman has convinced them of how detrimental the production of animal products are both nutritionally and environmentally, I guess that's a step in the right direction. But I'm skeptical.

It's difficult to forget who the messenger is: Just another guy who doesn't want to give up his animal products, despite all of the arguments he just presented against eating them.

Do-Something Friday

Several comments from the past couple of days have provided great suggestions if you happen to have some time for a little unplanned activism today.

First, Terry Cumming alerted us that Ron Reagan Jr. will be featuring Eight Belles' death and the cruelty of horse racing on his radio show on Air America TODAY (12-3pm Pacific time). You can call in with comments.

Next, Emily wrote that:

The current issue of Yoga Journal has a prominent story called "How to Eat Like a Yogi" (page 35)? It compares several different diets ranging from ethical vegan to conscientious omnivore. As a vegan, I found the article troublesome, though I certainly understood that the magazine's editorial team was in a very delicate position and couldn't risk alienating thousands of readers and advertisers. I run up against this problem myself constantly as a public relations person trying to place a veg-friendly article in mainstream papers.

I hope that vegans who read the article will send a polite letter to the magazine. You can also go to yogajournal.com/foodvalues to post your responses about how your own yogic values have affected your thoughts on diet.

As a long-time meditator and yoga practician, I find the eating of animals to be in direct opposition to my daily practice. What's odd to me is that if your practice is at all Hinduism- or Buddhism-based, you'd view the eating of animals as the ingestion of suffering, which wouldn't exactly provide you a boost in the karma department.

I happen to have to run out to several health-food stores today. (With all that is available to me, and so close by, I have yet to find a store that offers everything I need/want. At least they're all within blocks of each other so I haven't created a new environmental problem for myself.) I'll purchase Yoga Journal, read the article, and write a letter this afternoon.

And then I'll catch (and record) Ron Reagan's show for listening later.

Next, Bea had mentioned that horse racing is subsidized in the recently passed Farm Bill. The New York Times' editorial board lets our illustrious lawmakers know exactly what they think about the bill in "A Disgraceful Farm Bill" (a title which leaves no room for suspense). My favorite quotes are:

• Congress has approved a $307 billion farm bill that rewards rich farmers who do not need the help while doing virtually nothing to help the world’s hungry, who need all the help they can get.
• The bill includes the usual favors like the tax break for racehorse breeders pushed by Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader. But the greater and more embarrassing defect is that the bill perpetuates the old subsidies for agriculture at a time when the prices that farmers are getting for big row crops like corn, soybeans and wheat have never been better. Net farm income is up 50 percent.

(For the record, I don't think tax breaks for horse breeders are any less embarrassing than subsidies for farmers.)

Maybe today's a good day to see how your representatives voted, and make a note of that for the next election. Go here and follow the links in "House Passes Farm Bill."

Finally, "Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership," by Leslie Kaufman, is the most e-mailed article from The New York Times at this moment. It's about a Buddhist couple who are teachers who live in a yurt in Arizona and are celibate. That's a dramatic oversimplification, as my point comes from the Audio Slide Show, where the Michael Roach, the male half of the couple, says:

We're trying to sell an idea. And the idea is that everything in your world is coming from how you treat other people. And if that's true, then you could control your future. Then you could design your own world. You could decide what kind of world you want. And then just do that to other people.

I was profoundly disappointed to hear a Buddhist omit the earth and its nonhuman inhabitants. I'm sure he means well, but his language sent the message that people are the only ones that matter. The way you treat people determines what your life looks like.

Obviously, I disagree. I think the way we live, and that includes our choices regarding people, nonhuman animals and our planet, determines what our life looks like.

What does your life look like today?

On Delusional Authors

I was actually going to let this one go because I knew I would write about the snubbing of Peaceful Prairie yesterday, but Bea (in the comments of this post) just couldn't stand by and have it go unnoticed.

What, you ask? An article about yet another book from Susan Bourette about how great it can feel to have animals killed for your meals. This one is called MEAT: A LOVE STORY. The article, "For Meat-Eating Authors, a More Tender Approach," by Jane Black of the Washington Post, features a photo of a smiling Catherine Friend, author of "THE COMPASSIONATE CARNIVORE" (which is a "warm and witty" book that tells you how to "reduce your hoofprint and still eat meat"), holding two sentient beings whom she apparently has no problem killing, or having someone kill for her.

The article is rife with delusion, as it merely describes books that are rife with delusion. At first, I thought, "Wow, these people have great publicists." But whether or not that's true, the real story is that the American reading public wants to have "experts" of any kind (or authors of any kind) provide them with ways to make the using and killing of animals sound acceptable, or even beneficial (for farmers, for instance, whom Friend wants to save).

"People are worried, but they still want to eat meat," says Roger Horowitz, author of "Putting Meat on the American Table" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), which charts historical patterns of meat consumption. "So there's a great market opportunity for people to talk about what really happens when you eat meat and tell people that it's okay."

So you can kill animals, but in a nice way and maybe after snuggling with their cuteness, and you can save small farmers at the same time. Plus, because the small farmers don't pollute on the scale of factory farms, you help the planet too. It's a win-win-win-win, right?

No, it's not. It's never--I repeat, never--a win for the animals. That's impossible, and that's why I call these authors delusional. They are not being honest with themselves or with their readers when they provide excuses for them. I haven't read the books and I don't know what the excuses are (but I can guess). What they are denying is the reality that whatever their equation is, it cannot be in the best interest of the animals. Period. No matter how you treat a nonhuman animal you created to use and kill, what you're doing cannot be called ethical because of the very premise of creating a nonhuman animal to use and kill. Why does that fact elude so many otherwise intelligent people? (I think the answer rhymes with: speciesism.)

This article has the obligatory and absurd:

"To be a real carnivore, a true carnivore, you have to be conscientious and discerning," Gold says [author of THE SHAMELESS CARNIVORE]. "Eat good meat and source it well. Acknowledge where it comes from. And respect the fact that the animal died for your dinner."

I think he's used that quote before and I even think I referred to it. Regardless, acknowledging you've paid someone to kill someone isn't respect. The animal didn't just die--she was slaughtered for you and you paid for the convenience of not having to do it yourself.

The language that The Delusional Carnivores use cannot be allowed to continue without commentary and correction. Friend writes a "Letter to the Lambs" in her book that says:

"Tomorrow morning, when we load you onto the trailer for your trip to the abattoir, we will be thinking about the life you've lived on this farm -- running around the pasture at dusk, sleeping in the sun, and grazing enthusiastically for the tenderest bits of grass. We will say out loud, 'Thank you.' "

Thank you? Did they have a choice? Did they do anything for her? No. All she did was take from them--there was no giving. She shouldn't be expressing gratitude, she should be begging for forgiveness.

Check out the comments and/or add your own, or write a letter to the editor.

Peaceful Prairie Snubbed

Michele Alley-Grubb from Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary updated me yesterday about her purchase of ad space for "Milk Comes From Grieving Mothers" and "Can You Tell the Difference?" (between battery and free-range hens).

After Michele spent dozens of hours placing and negotiating the ads, the contact person at Yoga Journal said:

"I am so sorry but we are unable to take your ad.  It is a very strong message and we carry a lot of dairy/cheese advertisers plus only a small % of our readers are vegan and dairy-free."

Perhaps if readers of Yoga Journal knew more about dairy and egg production, a larger percentage of them would become vegans. How are they supposed to make that decision if no one is willing to educate them? Note that the magazine's publisher also publishes Vegetarian Times, Better Nutrition and Optimal Wellness, and use phrases like: "22.8 million people say they largely follow a vegetarian-inclined diet." Largely? Inclined?

I'm not surprised that the magazine didn't run the ads--I'm shocked they so enthusiastically led her to believe that they would run them, thereby wasting her valuable time. She's saving lives every day, while they're collecting ad revenue and kowtowing to animal exploiters, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

The other magazine that was going to run the ads, which I had never heard of, was PINK, which is geared toward successful business women, ages 25-54, who control the bulk of $3.3 trillion in consumer spending. The contact person was passionate about placing the ads and they had given Michele a great price. Moments before the deadline, Michele received this message:

"As much as we would love to help you get your message out there, our sales department has determined that we can not run these ads."

In an e-mail to me, Michele wrote:

The truth is terrifying,especially to those whose complicity in unimaginable abuse is exposed so honestly. They don't realize it, of course, but their reaction to the ads, prove our point of just how effective these ads are. They have also simultaneously insulted the intelligence and maturity of their "empowered professional women" readership. If they think that the readers are too soft headed to process the honesty and compelling presentation of this subject matter,  shame on them.

Of course, Michele is already exploring other options, and if you have any ideas, pass them along. Finally, Michele wrote:

All liberation struggles throughout history have been met with ignorance, fear, aggression, and resistance, but the abolitionists will prevail.  No matter what they do to us, the animals' experience is so unacceptable, that we cannot ever let these cowards stop us from getting the truth to the masses.

I'll keep you informed of how we decide to proceed - and we WILL proceed!

If you'd like to send an articulate e-mail to Yoga Journal, please, please be kind. Here's the page you can use to access the e-mail form at PINK. Publishers and editors need to know that they are doing their readers a disservice by intentionally preventing them from getting information that might dramatically change the way they live their lives for the better, in addition to saving the lives of nonhuman animals. It might be an uncomfortable message for them to hear, but it is a necessary one.

On "Neural Buddhists"

In today's New York Times, Op-ed columnist David Brooks writes about "The Neural Buddhists," which likely would include yours truly, but I'm pretty sure you won't catch me using the term. I've been calling myself a quasi-Buddhist for a while, which is a term not nearly as descriptive as Brooks'. I say quasi because I have no interest in the rituals or in the texts as anything other than literature. I'm in it for the ethics (and because its focus is not the worship of a god), which just happen to be as close to what I believe as anything that could be called a "religion" will ever get.

Brooks says he's trying to "anticipate which way the debate is headed," but the debate about god, spirituality and consciousness has been moving for quite a bit of time in the direction he is anticipating. Brooks writes:

[M]y guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.

But with The Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris) and their books about religion and god, it appears to me that the challenging the faith in the Bible part has been dealt with handily. (YouTube has both parts of The Four's conversations, if you're interested.)

As for "undermining faith in God," that's inaccurate. What the scientists at the Mind and Life Institute, which Brooks never mentions, or even those within the Transcendental Meditation camp  have been studying for years (decades in the case of the TM people) is that there are levels of consciousness that humans can attain by doing certain things (like meditating) that produce the same or similar chemical and electrical reactions in the brain as people who are in what religious people might call states of ecstasy. In other words, what some call God is more accurately a real state that is occurring in their brain that they have created. Cognitive scientists aren't undermining faith in any god, they're merely explaining that the feelings associated with god might not come from outside us. Perhaps when he mentions Andrew Newberg this is what he means to say, but he never actually says it (unless this is what he means when he writes: "God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments [of transcending boundaries], the unknowable total of all there is").

In addition, these scientists also study the effects of meditation on brain function and have found it to increase hemispheric coherence, help with pain control, aid in concentration, improve learning, and of course improve mood and control/aid in the processing of emotions. Regular meditation actually alters the way the brain is wired just like regular exercise will alter the health of your body as well as physically modify it.

What I don't understand is why Brooks doesn't mention Sam Harris. Brooks writes:

The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

Harris has already gone in that direction (minus the "sacred"), as have the organizations mentioned above. If I were to anticipate the direction the debate is headed, I would say look to Marc Hauser, whom Brooks does mention, and the nature of moral judgment (and also Steven Pinker). Here is where we might find that religion and god are not as necessary as we have been conditioned to think (but we experience them as necessary, as evidenced by the fact that they won't go away). Then maybe we can finally dispense with piffle such as: God put animals on the Earth for humans to use.

On "King Corn"

"King Corn" is:

a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation. In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat-and how we farm.

Yes, the film features Michael Pollan, but you'll get over that. And his "Americans are corn chips with legs" quote is verified when the filmmakers get their hair analyzed and find out the dominant ingredient in their make up is indeed corn.

The oddest thing about the film is that after having visited feedlots and seen the conditions cows are forced to live in, and been within inches of a cow's diseased stomach (while she's alive and in a contraption that holds her still while a researcher reaches into her stomach through her side), they still have no qualms about eating meat (or anything else, for that matter). There is one moment at the end where they enter a convenience store (which they do often in the film) and realize there isn't one thing they can purchase that doesn't have a corn-based ingredient in it (they look through the products to check). You think there's going to be some commentary--some hint that the young men have changed as a result of their journey.  And maybe they have. But if so, I missed it. That moment in the convenience store was ambiguous, and perhaps as documentary filmmakers they didn't want to comment. But let's face it, with every frame of them eating another hamburger, they're commenting.

Check out PBS' Independent Film arm, Independent Lens, which has an interactive section dedicated to King Corn. It provides behind the scenes details, clips from the film, an "eating challenge" (Can you go a week without eating corn?), corn facts, and of course a page on Cows and Corn. I found the Learn More page useful, particularly for its sources.

Though this film addresses the eating of animals, it in no way--no way--makes a statement that eating them should stop for any reason or is terribly unhealthy. In fact, in the section of the film where corn syrup is addressed, soda is painted as the real evil, causing obesity and diabetes. And when medical experts are consulted regarding diabetes and they talk about diet and exercise, they at no point mention any particular foods as being unhealthy (except soda and other sweetened drinks). If I were an average American, this film might scare me into exploring "sustainable" meat (which is more expensive, and it's our requirement for cheap food that largely got us into this mess) and eliminating soda from my diet, but that's about it.

King Corn is great for enviros, though most I know are already familiar with the story. For those of you who are filmmakers, there's make a statement about food contest that closes on May 30. You make your own short using clips from the film and your own clips (and the Eyespot tool), and you can win $1,000 and lots of other prizes.

I wouldn't recommend using this film as a tool for conversion to anything other than meat produced someplace other than a factory farm. There are several clips of cows--and calves--meandering across grassy fields on sunny days that would make the average person run to Whole Foods because, you know, the meat they sell there comes from places like that, which makes it okay to eat. Oh, and healthier. In that sense, this film is a 90 minute commercial for grass-fed beef. However, it's not to be completely dismissed because of its treatment of the history of corn (and farming and subsidies) in America, which every American needs to know.

On "The Edukators"

It's Mother's Day weekend, so I'm allowed to do whatever I want and everyone has to do what I say and I make all the decisions. One of my decisions was that we would watch "The Edukators," which is in German, and because my husband played golf all day he was barely able to read and I ended up reading the entire movie to him.

Off to a great start. Happy Mother's Day to me.

The Edukators won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2004 and a slew of other awards and though it's far from perfect and it includes that seemingly-ubiquitous Jeff Buckley song (written by Leonard Cohen), Hallelujah, it's definitely interesting commentary of the political, social and psychological kinds. It's a love story, yes, but it's also about three young people (2 male, 1 female) whose anti-establishment idealism and activism collide with their opposite.

Under cover of darkness, the two young men break into the homes of wealthy people, rearrange their furniture (often by piling it up to the ceiling) and leave a note saying: "Your days of plenty are numbered" or "You have too much money." The girlfriend of one of them gets involved, for all the wrong reasons, and the trio ends up abducting a wealthy man to whom the girlfriend owes 94,000 euros for totaling his Mercedes-Benz. She falls in love with her boyfriend's best friend, and cliches abound.

Oh, and the man they abduct was an SDS member in the late 60s, and when we discover that tidbit, irony takes over.

Here's what the film brings up for me:

I fail to understand the targeting of wealthy people. No one has too much money, in my mind. And no one should be judged as being part of the problem because they have more money than you.  In my mind, shopping at WalMart and Target is worse, morally speaking, than having $300 shirts custom made. Yet the person whose clothes are made-to-measure is more often ridiculed, and that's certainly true when the ridiculer is anti-capitalist. What you do with your money is your business, but it would be nice if you gave at least 15% to some kind of charitable cause. Hating people--abusing people--because of their wealth is mere scapegoating.

Now, if someone makes their money by hurting people, the animals or the planet, ridiculing what they do is definitely reasonable. You should be sure you know what they do first, though, as assuming that harm is involved just because wealth is involved is not reasonable.

According to a recent study, the idea that young people are idealistic because they have heart, but later become conservative because they have wisdom (or something like that) isn't true, and people get more liberal as they grow older. This film represents the conventional wisdom that we get more conservative as we age, and our ideals make way for the realities of homeownership, families, careers and retirement (which makes sense to me and I must say I see that more often).

When you deconstruct all of the messages sent in this film after you've gotten past the fluff, you are left with questions such as:

• What is the best way to make a point?
• Is it property damage justified to make a point? If so, are there certain kinds of points this doesn't apply to?
• If you've committed a crime, should you be prosecuted, or does that depend on whether the crime you committed is worse than the one you perceive is being perpetrated by your victim?
• What is the definition of "terrorist" or "vandal?" (I recommend Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, edited by Steven Best and Anthony J. Nocella, II, and Will Potter at GreenIsTheNewRed for exploration of such issues.)

Finally, and related to Friday's post, you can find out if your mutual funds are terror-free with the Terror-Free Calculator, which is not a joke. I'll write more about this, as well as bills for making state pensions terror free tomorrow, as I'm still getting over the fact that they exist.

Check out The Edukators, and let me know what you think.

On Closing Labs and Throwing Away Food and Stuff

Roger forwarded me the following:

Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:11 AM

It has been announced that the Novartis Vienna lab is closing down in  June. There are 24.863 animals still in the lab - 23,000 mice, 1.700 rats, 93 pigs, 52 rhesus and javan monkeys and hamsters. New animal protection laws ban the killing of animals for no good reason and   Vienna city council has informed activists of the VGT that the animals cannot legally be killed so homes need to be found, or the animals are being taken to Novartis labs in Basel, Switzerland.

This is the last primate lab in Austria.

I Googled the situation and found many articles, some dating back six months, about the impending closing, and none of them had anything to do with animals. ("The Swiss drugmaker, which wants to focus its activities in auto-immune research at its headquarters in Basel, Switzerhand, does not rule out some dermatology activities in Vienna," according to Forbes.com.)

Here's my question: Novartis will take its show on the road, to Basel. And perhaps some of the animals will go with them. And other animals will be used in Basel. Do you consider the closing of the Vienna lab a victory? If so, what kind of victory? If not, why not? Wouldn't you rather see Novartis deciding to not use animals?

What are your thoughts?

And as for throwing away food, apparently Britain is also disposing of food amid the global food crisis.

According to WRAP [Waste & Resources Action Programme], an organisation aimed at helping individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, the government-backed study states that the annual total of wasted products adds up to a record £10 bln (€12.7 bln; US$19.6 bln). The study concludes that each day, the following is wasted: 220,000 loaves of bread, 1.6 mln bananas, 550,000 chickens, 5.1 mln potatoes, 660,000 eggs, 1.2 mln sausages, 4.4 mln apples and 440,000 ready meals.

It is also reported that government researchers have established that most of the food waste is made up of completely untouched food products, typically whole chickens that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being discarded.

There's only so much you can control as an individual. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but trash of all kinds adds to your ecological footprint.

This is costing consumers three times over. Not only do they pay hard-earned money for food they don't eat, there is also the cost of dealing with the waste this creates. And there are climate-change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin. Preventing waste in the first place has to remain a top priority.

We should all be mindful of what we're purchasing, where it came from, how long we plan to use it and how we plan to dispose of it. For more on that, check out The Story of Stuff, a fabulous 20-minute film that will remind you of everything you already know but sometimes don't act on. You might even learn something. (I did!) Forward it to someone in need of a user-friendly vehicle for your message. (One of my favorite parts is: "The Third World, which is a fancy way of saying Our stuff that got onto somebody else's land." Then of course there's: "In this system, if you don't own or buy a lot of stuff you have no value." Oh, and: "Toxics in, toxics out." And one more: "Distribution means selling all the toxic, contaminated stuff as quickly as possible." No seriously, one more: "Incinerators are really bad.") Enjoy!

On Blue Marbles and Vegan Stories

As you may know, I've ghostwritten several dozen books, a dozen of which are about personal finance, and several of which were New York Times bestsellers. Furthermore, my husband is a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) who manages the money of a bunch of families in addition to my measly retirement accounts. Measly, as in, if I weren't married to him I wouldn't be able to invest my money with him because I don't have enough.

Vegan and otherwise-activist friends constantly ask me for investment advice, which of course I am not qualified to dole out, but I can sometimes point them in a helpful direction. I must first say that I think everyone should have a financial planner who communicates with them about their goals and needs and time horizons (i.e., when you'll need what money), and of course their principles.

Principles are what cause most problems for vegans regarding investing, as there are few options for the (financially) average person. When you eliminate all of the industries you don't want to support, and when you consider that most funds have many companies in them, most funds will have a company or two (or ten) that you don't want to support, not to mention the exact companies (though not the general make-up) of the fund are not static. This is not even close to an ideal situation.

Another thing that trips up many vegans--in my experience--is that their anti-capitalism stance translates into not appreciating money or how necessary it's going to be when they reach 65. I know I've said this before, but needing money for retirement is real. Most of us are going to reach an age when we are not as appreciated as when we were younger, and that will be reflected in our dwindling opportunities for income generation (again, this won't happen to everyone, but it is most often the case). How are you going to take care of yourself after you're 60 or 65? Do you know how much money you'll need for food, health insurance, a home, a car, and the insurances they require?

Recently a couple of people close to me who have gone vegan and are unabashed capitalists, noted (and this is just one quote that expresses the sentiment): "What's with all these vegan people wearing their poverty on their sleeve?" Granted, that's a judgment from a person entirely on the outside, who has peeked in for all of three hours (he went to his first vegan gathering), but there is a grain of truth in it, at least from what I've seen in 20 years.

Okay, enough of the lecture. Today I bring you Blue Marble, a "Socially Active Investment Firm" that "specializes in services that serve green and social investors with SRI accounts such as: Retirement, College, Trust, Estate, Business, Non-Profit and Charity." (SRI means socially-responsible investing, by the way.) The site has great calculators in the "info kiosk," and you can invest with under $10,000 (I pretended I wanted to start an IRA with under $10,000 to see if that was possible, and it was), which doesn't happen too often when it comes to highly-specialized investments. There are also helpful and informative articles, graphics and slideshows, and I found that nothing was condescending.

You won't agree with everything or all of their choices, but if you're looking for a way to invest or even for some venture philanthropy opportunities that might return some cash (that's the way I look at some investments), Blue Marble might be a good match for you.

And finally, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine needs your vegan success story.

Have you been able to improve your health with a vegan diet?

Have you lost a significant amount of weight from being on a vegan diet and kept it off? Have you had success in treating diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, migraines, acne, or some other condition with a vegan diet? Well, we need you!  

Please share your experience with us so we can share it with others. We often hear from journalists looking for success stories and we may want to put them in touch with you, feature you in one of our publications, or post your experience to our Web site. If you have a compelling story you're willing to share with the press, please submit your story here.               

Thank you and we look forward to hearing about your success story soon. Due to the large number of submissions, we will be unable to contact each person individually.

Questions can be sent to success@pcrm.org.

Appreciate our "tiny, lovely, and fragile blue marble" today, and every day.

On Racehorses and Ignorant Neighbors

Jane Shakman's Letter to the Editor under "The Welfare of Horses" in today's New York Times is about welfare rather than abolition, however its other points are worth recognition:

• "But let us also give thought to the thousands of horses that are bred every year for racing and don’t make the cut or outlive their usefulness to the investors and owners." Ah, if she only wrote "who" are bred I would have been more thrilled. Then again, the editor would likely have "corrected" her.
• "Most wind up auctioned off for a few dollars each and sent to the foreign slaughterhouses to be made into pet food or dinner for someone overseas. Even the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand ended up in a Japanese slaughterhouse because he wasn’t proving his monetary value as a stud."
• "It’s not just the injured horses that suffer. It’s the thousands of faceless colts and fillies we never see that suffer from this so-called sport."

Most Americans are ignorant about the process that creates a horse, and then what happens after the horse no longer wins. When I let my thoughts about the Derby known to a neighbor who invited me to his Kentucky Derby party (few people in my community know I'm a vegan, and the others don't even know what it means), he told me that "those horses live better than we do," and that of course they love racing.

Now, this is a 60-year old man who has a green grill shaped like an alligator, that is longer than a pick-up truck (and is in fact hitched to one). Every weekend he shovels coal into it and, in his driveway, he grills hundreds of pounds of nonhuman animal flesh, and I have to close my windows so I don't spend the day with the stench of charred corpses. (I live 100 yards away and it feels like the grill is in my living room.) I'm not sure what he does with all of the meat, but I do know he isn't supposed to be doing it according to our association rules (he's not even allowed to have the 8-foot high, 15-foot long grill-gator shaped or not), but he's in law enforcement and therefore apparently above all kinds of laws.

I tell you this because this man is the last person who would ever understand veganism. He still goes to the track to watch Greyhound racing, and whenever he sees me he asks about the racing careers of my dogs. And every time I tell him that none of that matters to me, that they have to be rescued for a reason, and that I don't think we have any right to breed them and race them. It's like Groundhog Day whenever I see him. He doesn't hear a word I say, and it's not as if I'd ever make an impact anyway, so my attempts are admittedly half-hearted.

I was particularly annoyed with this man as I walked past his house on Saturday, complete with a huge Kentucky Derby flag (another thing we're not permitted to have). I said that perhaps if he knew everything involved in horse racing, he might not find it worthy of a party, and he promptly demonstrated that he knew nothing and was in fact gravely misinformed. I told him I didn't believe we had the right to create and use horses, at which point he looked at me with a blank face. I had no desire to talk to him and was late for an event already, and said: Look, I don't want to hurt anybody if I don't have to. I don't want to kill anybody if I don't have to, I don't want to eat anybody if I don't have to, and I don't want to bring anybody into this world just so I can try to make a buck off of them. Enjoy your party.

I walked about twenty yard then turned toward my house, and out of the corner of my eye I could see he was still standing, motionless, staring at me. Within two hours, Eight Belles was dead.

When I walked by the grill-master's house yesterday with the dogs, he very sheepishly said hello, and said nothing about Greyhound racing or horse racing.

On Defining Ourselves as Most Intelligent

Did you read "Lots of Animals Learn, But Smarter Isn't Better," by Carl Zimmer in yesterday's New York Times? It begins with:

Why are humans so smart?” is a question that fascinates scientists. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, likes to turn around the question.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.

The odd thing is that intelligence appears to be defined as the ability to learn. You know, like how we have learned that smoking is deadly, yet many of us still do it, or that many animal products are very unhealthy yet most of us still eat them.

Reuven Dukas, a biologist at McMaster University spends his days breeding generations of fruit flies so he can experiment on them and demonstrate how well they learn (according to him) and what the cost is for that learning. Supposedly, as his knowledge of "intelligence" in "nature" increases, he "will understand more about humans' gift for learning."

“Humans have gone to the extreme,” said Dr. Dukas, both in the ability of our species to learn and in the cost for that ability.

This begs the question: How smart are we if we continue to do things that put us, individually, or as a species, in mortal danger? And why would you need to breed and manipulate generations of fruit flies to ask or answer that question?

In today's NYT, Verlyn Klinkenborg asks similar questions in "The Cost of Smarts." He begins with:

Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are.

And he ends with:

Research on animal intelligence also makes me wonder what experiments animals would perform on humans if they had the chance. . . . I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

What irks me, but what many (including scientists!) do not appear to notice, is that the definition of intelligence--and even of learning--is based on what we have and do, and which of our behaviors or traits we want the "subject" to manifest. It's completely speciest. We should leave other species alone, and try to figure out why, if we're supposed to be so smart, we're such a mess and we've irrevocably abused our own home. What is this intelligence we're so proud of?

On Reactions to Eight Belles

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke and was left with a condition called Locked-In syndrome, where he was fully conscious and aware of everything around him, but was almost completely paralyzed and couldn't speak. He realizes in the first scene of the film that he thinks he is talking, but no one can hear him. It's like one of those dreams where you're screaming as loud as you can yet no one reacts at all.

This is how I've been feeling about Eight Belles, and about animal rights in general. There are these people from an organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have become the voice of animal rights on Planet Earth, yet they don't represent animal rights as I understand it and live it. And the world is listening to them and judging me according to what they say.

Furthermore, people who have chosen livelihoods that center on the exploitation of nonhuman animals for profit, like Eight Belles' owner, Rick Porter, are not stopped in their tracks when they say things like:

“I support horse racing 1,000 percent. There are some ugly parts of it, obviously. There are also some spectacular parts of it. There are ugly parts of every sport. There are people who get paralyzed in football. This is a tragedy that happens in horse racing. It’s hard to put the blame any particular way. It’s part of horse racing.”

First, "1,000 percent" is a pet peeve of mine, but I'll concentrate on something more important, like the absurdity of comparing people who choose to play football and end up paralyzed, with horses who in no way give their consent to race, and then are raced to their death. In addition, to say "it's hard to put the blame any particular way," is inaccurate. It's easy. Mr. Porter bought (or bred) Eight Belles with the hope of winning money from her body and her running. He put her in the race, and she was killed. He owned her, dominated her, controlled her and exploited her, and her blood is on his hands. If she had won the race, I bet Mr. Porter wouldn't find it so difficult placing credit or glory somewhere--like in his own hands.

Now, without a society where nonhuman animals are commodities and most people blithely go through their days giving no thought to the realities of the enslavement and slaughter of sentient nonhumans for no good reason, Eight Belles wouldn't exist to be killed. But we do live in that kind of society, and it's up to each individual, each day, at each meal and with each purchase or donation, to change the way our society views nonhuman animals.

It's also necessary that we're honest about what we want. PeTA states:

Eight Belles' death is yet another reminder that these horses are raced when they are so young that their bones have not properly formed, and they are often raced on surfaces that are too hard for their bones—like the hard track at Churchill Downs. Eight Belles' jockey whipped her mercilessly as she came down the final stretch. This is no great surprise, since trainers, owners, and jockeys are all driven by the desire to make money, leaving the horses to suffer terribly. 

Though I don't disagree with any of that, that is not an animal-rights argument. And the litmus test is: What are they proposing? What do they want to see?

PETA is calling on the racing industry to suspend the jockey and trainer, to bar the owner from racing at the track, and, at the very least, to stop using young horses who are so susceptible to these types of horrific injuries. We're also demanding that the industry stop racing horses on hard tracks and switch to softer, synthetic surfaces, which would spare horses' bones and joints, in addition to calling for a permanent ban on the use of whips. Help PETA call for an end to cruelty masquerading as sport by using the form below to take action today.

Although Eight Belles' death, like Barbaro's before hers, made headlines, countless lesser-known horses suffer similar fates—their broken legs and battered bodies are simply hidden from public view. Most racehorses end up broken down or cast off or are sent to Europe for slaughter.

Please use the form below to join PETA in demanding that the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority institute sweeping reforms that would stop needless, preventable suffering and cruelty in the racing industry.

Please use this form to . . . institute sweeping reforms that would stop needless, preventable suffering and cruelty in the racing industry. This is a classic welfarist strategy: use the horses differently so only the suffering and cruelty that are necessary remain--like breeding, training, drugging and racing them against their will. Oh, and their ultimate slaughter.

I'm feeling like Jean-Dominique Bauby, yelling "No, no, that's not what I want! That's not animal rights! The Humane Society of the United States would probably ask for the same thing, and they don't even pretend to care about animal rights! I want to see an end to the breeding of horses for use by humans. Period. That's the only way to prevent all suffering and cruelty at our hands."

If I want to maintain my integrity, I must propose what I want. Even if no one can hear me.

On AFTERSHOCK, by pattrice jones

I finally read pattrice jones' AFTERSHOCK: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World-A Guide for Activists and Their Allies, and found multiple points of entry, probably the most significant being the trauma of being lied to about nonhuman animals. Not just by my parents, but by my American "culture," by my teachers, and even by my therapists (one of whom asked me at age 15: You seem upset that the animals are being killed for food. Why is that? She did her best to make me feel mentally unstable for wanting to stop eating animals.).

Sure, there have been other traumas, such as from being a witness to extreme poverty in Haiti or the annihilated towns and orphaned children with missing limbs (or with limbs intact) in Bosnia. Or visiting a slaughterhouse. But being lied to and made to feel crazy for being cursed/blessed with experiencing the pain of nonhumans and the planet, is a wrong that is not easily forgotten. ("Any idea that creates or maintains an unnatural division both makes trauma more likely and makes recovery from trauma more difficult" [19]).

Let's get to my favorite passages (and they are all quotes, but all of the quotation marks were maddening so I removed them):

• One of the myths of human superiority is that we can transcend our feelings, while other animals are bound by theirs. This goes along with the idea that we can and should supercede our bodies, while animals are always bound to theirs (14).
• Like me, you may not entirely understand how your body managed to break food down into energy and mass for you to use to live and grow. But, if you think about it, you can see that your body--your self--is literally made up of things that used to be outside of you . . . . The interactions between nature and nurture begin before you are born, multiplying each other so that their effects cannot be untangled (33).
• People who enjoy privileges rooted in the violent exploitation of others are likely to use violence in defense of their pleasure. Activists who actually succeed in redistributing wealth or power run the greatest risk of backlash. That's why the government has cracked down so hard on earth and animal liberationists (who have cost exploitative industries hundreds of millions of dollars) while leaving antiwar activists (who have not yet lightened the pockets of war profiteers) to stage their marches and rallies in relative peace (42).
• I live at a chicken sanctuary in an area dominated by the poultry industry. If our neighbor who operates a factory farm were to come onto our property without permission in order to takes pictures of the birds at our sanctuary, he could be charged with trespassing. If I were to go onto his property without permission in order to take pictures of the birds locked on his farm, I could be charged with a kind of terrorism (57).
• Activists working within aboveground organizations have more people to talk to and more overt support, but they sometimes must grapple with unhealthy group dynamics. . . . [such as] highly professionalized non-profit organizations that have embraced corporate culture and the highly hierarchical political parties that expect their members to subordinate themselves and their identities (92).
• Movement norms about what is and is not permissible to do, feel, or talk about can exert as much if not more pressure on people to conform (93).
• [V]egans, unlike flesh-eaters, never stop noticing the violence inherent in meat (149).
• As any grade-school friend of family member of a dedicated activist can tell you, it's not always pleasant to be in a real relationship with a person who is always thinking and doing things about problems that most people would rather forget . . . . Every vegetarian who has ever attended a family dinner at which meat is served knows that all you have to do is sit there quietly not eating meat for people to feel attacked about their own food choices (158).
• Memory is a kind of connection. Like trauma survivors, traumatized communities and cultures constantly struggle with the conflict between remembering and forgetting. Most often, the most powerful forces are aligned on the side of forgetting. Often, their very power depends on forgetting. That makes the task of remembering that much more difficult and that much more important (185-6).

We have all been traumatized by the lies we've been told about our relationship to nonhuman animals and the Earth. We have all been conditioned to be disconnected from "nature," and empathy with any being who is not human isn't exactly encouraged (except in the case of cats and dogs, which is simply another layer of dishonesty, as if cats and dogs aren't like chickens and cows).

Activists and their allies are in need of support. We need to listen to one another and tell our stories. Some of us need to write and be read as a way of dealing with trauma.

You all know people who are, to some degree or another, engaged in activism that drains them, angers them, frustrates them, and leaves them vulnerable (which is also how they started). Be gentle with yourselves and kind to one another. We're such a tiny minority in this world, and to spend a lot of time attacking one another is to give exploiters an easy path to destroying us.

On Barbaro and Eight Belles

This is Eight Belles, a filly who fractured both of her front ankles, moments before she was killed on the track at yesterday's Kentucky Derby. My first Animal Person post, on May 22, 2006, was called "Barbaro Made Me Do It." Six months later I wrote "Barbaro, The Final Chapter," which garnered the obligatory "horses love to run" comment.

As I mentioned yesterday, I didn't care if the race when swimmingly. I don't care if the horses live at the Taj Mahal. Horses shouldn't be made (as in both bred and forced) to race for humans--for profit or otherwise. The New York Times' "Filly's Death Casts Shadow Over Big Brown's Derby Victory," by Joe Drape, is remarkable in its lack of emotion (but second to "Triumph, Tragedy at Derby," by Mark Blaudschun, who mentions Eight Belles exactly once, saying she "broke down after finishing second, breaking both front ankles, which necessitated her being euthanized."). Drape writes:

Big Brown hit the wire nearly five lengths ahead of Eight Belles, but moments later, there was heartbreak. While Kent Desormeaux was galloping out Big Brown, Eight Belles fell.

She had fractured both of her front ankles, said the Derby’s on-call veterinarian, Dr. Larry Bramlage, and was euthanized on the racetrack.

Later he writes:

It was a sorrowful end note to what had been 2 minutes 1.82 seconds of scintillating horse racing, punctuated by the bravura performance of Big Brown.

And here's what Big Brown's jockey had to say about Big Brown:

He’s intelligent. That’s the difference. He’ll stand like a statue if I ask him to.

Oh, you do what I want you to do = you're intelligent. That's a new definition for me.

As expected, Drape presents questions about track surfaces, racing fillies against colts, and breeding. As if all of that will solve the problem. As if any of that is the problem.

Eight Belles was driven to her death--literally--in 2.182 seconds. Drape writes:

For Jones [her trainer] and the grooms and exercise riders who had cared for Eight Belles, it was a devastating end to what had been a wonderful weekend. . . . “She went out in glory,” he said, his voice breaking. “She went out a champion to us.”

She didn't go out in glory. She went out in vain.

A better article in the NYT is "Race Illustrates Brutal Side of Sport," by William C. Rhoden, who writes:

Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass? Is it the tradition? The millions upon millions invested in the betting?

Why isn’t there more pressure to put the sport of kings under the umbrella of animal cruelty?

The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting. . . .

But this isn’t about one death. This is about the nature of a sport that routinely grinds up young horses.

Rhoden gives us a different lens to watch trainer Larry Jones through:

But even through the grief, Jones instinctively toed the industry line about racing. . . . He also refused to concede the point that horse racing is an extremely dangerous sport, saying that these types of injuries occur in any sport.

Rhoden is no animal rights advocate, but what I do like about him is that he appears to believe that horse racing should end because it is as brutal as, well, let him tell you:

Why do we refuse to put the brutal game of racing in the realm of mistreatment of animals? At what point do we at least raise the question about the efficacy of thousand-pound horses racing at full throttle on spindly legs?

This is bullfighting.

Eight Belles was another victim of a brutal sport that is carried, literally, on the backs of horses. Horsemen like to talk about their thoroughbreds and how they were born to run and live to run. The reality is that they are made to run, forced to run for profits they never see.

Finally, "Is Horse Racing Breeding Itself to Death?" by Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post, makes me want to scream, "No, horse racing is racing horses to death!" Jenkins begins with:

The camera cut away from her, but it should have stayed on her. Eight Belles had run herself half to death yesterday, and now the vets were finishing the job as she lay on her side, her beautiful figure a black hump on the track.

What Jenkins wants I agree with: Everyone should have been required to watch as Eight Belles was killed (NBC cut away from her after she fell). If Jenkins were calling for an end to horse racing, she would have said so. But she's concerned with the "moral crisis" that thoroughbred racing is in and how to remedy it. The surfaces need to be changed and the way the horses are bred and trained must be changed ("A Kentucky Derby horse has to run a mile and a quarter on a dirt track around two turns by the age of 3. It is the horse equivalent of asking a college kid to play in the Super Bowl.")

She writes, "They need to be given the bodies to accommodate their hearts." After all, we "give" them bodies; we create them for our use. And that, Ms. Jenkins, is the real problem.

I'm sure that every publication will be flooded with letters. Remember to keep it short (under 150 words), include your full name, address and phone number, and don't rant. You can send letters regarding the referenced articles to: letters@nytimes.com, opinions@washingtonpost.com and the Boston Globe has a form for your e-mail message at the end of the article.

Here's the NBC footage, on the Huffington Post, which already has eight pages of comments. Watching the owners of the winner in ecstasy over "their" win, is, I warn you, not a pretty sight.

Comment on Kentucky Derby Stories

Every newspaper in the US will have a story about the Kentucky Derby today and then tomorrow. Regardless of whose leg gets broken, who wins, who has to be "put down" either today or weeks from now, or if the race is uneventful, it needs to be stopped. Abolished. I don't care if everything goes swimmingly today, as that's not the point.

I read a Huffington Post comment about the derby by Purple Girl who wrote:

Although an awesome race, a historical tradition. I am still one who is concerned that these young horses are pushed to their limits before they are physically capable of really handling it.
Granted more is being done to care for those who don't cut the mustard. but often they have been broken down so early in life by merely the training they spend their lives in pain and discomfort.
I wish the TB racing commision would consider pushing the ages up for these horses- when they have reached a more physically mature age for such grueling work.
Arabians don't even start training young horse until they are late into their 2nd year and then it's ground work first - then saddle, walk, trot, canter. Often not seeing a show ring until they are well into their 3rd yr.
I love to stand at the fence when the horses run by- but I know how many Others have been unable to hold up to the intense training.

This is exactly the type of comment I don't want to see. I do not think it is "an awesome race" and the fact that it is a tradition is no excuse for using horses to race. Horses have been used by humans, nonstop, since shortly after they were unfortunate enough to meet our acquaintance.

Yes, there are culls. And yes, making babies race their underdeveloped bodies is cruel. (And remember, horses, like Greyhounds, may love to run, but they don't love to race. Just ask my defiant boy Charles who refused to race for The Man and was discarded, and if he wasn't so gorgeous he would've been killed. Other animals are more easily "broken," a word which I don't need to explain).

Purple Girl is not an animal rights advocate, or at least I hope she isn't as her strategy is primed for backfiring. We should wait to race them. We shouldn't push them too hard. But watching them race is "awesome." We must find a way to use them a bit differently so we can still get what we want from them (notice how I don't say what we "need," as we don't need anything from them) without so many of their bodies breaking. Fewer broken bodies would be better.

The way to fewer broken bodies is clear and waiting for us to choose it. Stop breeding horses. Stop killing ("culling") horses. Stop racing horses.

I love to stand at the fence of my local horse sanctuary and watch the horses run by, if they are so inclined. And I love to see them stop when they feel like stopping.

Go online to your favorite publications and comment. Write letters to newspapers. The derby is once a year, and there will be people writing about cruelty and killing (they'll say "culling") and changing the surface or the training schedule or whatever. But there won't be as many people saying that we have no right to create horses and make them race. This "tradition" is nothing to be in awe of. It's domination and enslavement for profit, period.

Help Peaceful Prairie Spread the Word

Michele at Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has the opportunity to purchase ad space in a mainstream magazine for the following two ads that would run side-by-side (2 pages total). The ads are also ready for easy and inexpensive duplication if you'd like to hand them out (you can even do a two-sided handout!). I'm going to send a handful to my friends who are vegetarians and who find meat disgusting and don't see any connection between meat and their beloved pizza or eggs Benedict.

Michele needs to raise $15,000 immediately. I know it's a lot, but it's also a great deal.  I've sent a check for $1,000 (the original amount was $16,000). Please circulate this ask widely in the hope that the milk-drinking, egg-eating world will be confronted with the reality that a vegetarian diet isn't any less cruel than an omnivorous one.

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

I had never seen the dairy ad before and my heart broke at the sight of it. I look forward to the responses of the handful of people who have asked, "What's so bad about pizza?" The egg ad you've probably seen in one form or another.

Please note that the line at the bottom, about the ad being sponsored by Libra Max, is there because the exact copy I present here was in the Genesis Awards program. The magazine ad won't have that copy, unless of course one or a couple of people fund the entire remaining $15,000 and wish to have their names on the ads.

On Desperate Times and Intelligent Measures

In "Clipping, Scrimping, Saving," by Jane Black in today's Washington Post, we meet Marti Tracy, who is feeling the effects of the global food crisis.

Let's deconstruct:

• How is the impact of the crisis manifesting itself in the life of this woman, you ask?
  
  • She has given up organic meat and is buying organic milk only for her 2-year old son rather than for the whole family. If she only knew her son doesn't need milk, she'd be able to cut her spending even more!
  • She has also stopped buying single-size packs of food or juice and stopped going to multiple stores. I think that's great, as the packaging of those convenience items is dumped in landfills, and being more efficient in your shopping is smart and saves energy and is better for the planet. Every little bit counts.
  • "I find the whole thing a huge hassle, but I've reached a tipping point," said Tracy, a government human resources specialist who is pregnant with her second child. If she were pregnant with her third, I'd have something to say about population growth, but alas, I can say nothing. I can say something about "hassles," though, and that is that Americans are finally realizing what the rest of the world has long known: That decisions that are the best for the planet usually involve some "hassle," and we're so spoiled and feel entitled to live the most comfortable, easy, convenient lifestyles, that we complain about having to change a habit, even if it wasn't a particularly positive habit. Some people are smartening up, which is great. But they're doing it while kicking and screaming and acting resentful.
• The prices of eggs, milk, white bread and ground chuck are up 35, 23, 16, and 8% respectively.
  • "And while the total rise is far less drastic than elsewhere around the world, the sharp hike for staples means everyone is feeling the pinch." I beg to differ. For those of us who don't eat eggs, milk, white bread and ground chuck, there is no such pinch. To say "everyone" is inaccurate. Perhaps an alteration in both eating and shopping habits would ease the "pinch."
  • "We are in shocking new territory," said Todd Hale, senior vice president of consumer shopping and insights at Nielsen Consumer Panel Services. "With the exception of the very affluent, everyone is looking to save by altering where they shop, how they shop and the brands they buy." And with the exception of vegans, I'd imagine. My grocery bill and shopping habits haven't changed at all. (But I could be the exception--how about you?)
    
• But wait, there actually is an acknowledgment that changing what you eat is possible.
  • "The crunch for American shoppers pales compared with the challenges faced by those in the developing world. Americans spend just 9.9 percent of household income on food, according to the Agriculture Department. Compare that with poor countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh, where it's not uncommon for families to spend 70 percent. Diets also are more varied here: If the price of milk or flour jumps, shoppers can opt for other items." Yes, and this might be a great time to opt for bulk quinoa, millet, barley, lentils and beans, and lots of fresh fruits and veggies!

There's a lot more in the article about people changing the way they do things and the reality that food is relatively inexpensive for us (because of subsidies, although that goes unsaid), although I don't think most Americans understand that their food, even with the increases, is still inexpensive. One final quote, by a senior citizen, was stunning:

"We're that older generation that feels we need to have food to feed half the block if they happen to get hungry. I am not stuffing the freezer anymore. I just buy what I need when I need it, or I try to use up what I already have. That's a form of cutting back I haven't done in the past."

I guess for older people that might in fact be a form of cutting back. But it is very odd--and telling--that buying what you need and using what you have would be considered cutting back.

On Industry-Funded Studies

Here's the link to the Wall Street Journal article. And here's the Pew report.

On a Petition That Worked and Property Rights

If you are a member of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, you probably know (via Good Medicine, their magazine) that just south of me, in Broward County, Ashley Capps, a 10th grader at Everglades High School, circulated a petition that was signed by 100 of her classmates to persuade the administration to offer more vegetarian and vegan options.

At the request of a Broward County school board member, PCRM nutritionists helped the district's food service department  . . . . [and] PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D., visited each school to speak to parents and administrators about the healthfulness of vegetarian options (13).

The article also notes that according to a recent Harris Interactive Poll, the number of vegetarian teenagers has tripled in the last 10 years.

If you want to work toward more options in your district's schools, PCRM's Healthy School Lunches campaign will help you with the process. I continue to support PCRM because they have few issues, and they tackle them well. They want people to go vegan because it's healthy. They want animals out of labs (largely) because it's bad science and there are alternatives. They're organized, professional and rational (i.e., not hysterical) in the way they present their messages, they have free, helpful material for all of their campaigns, and they always provide quick, as well as not-so-quick actions you can take.

With regard to property rights, on the New York Bird Club discussion board, marilyn asked:

I wanted to know since animals are on the law books (from my understanding as propert)-who is in charge of changing such a law so that cruelty to animals is not taken so lightly with not much punishment. The laws need to say that animals are sentient creatures and that cruelty is a felony with many years jail time. Anyone have information for me. thanks.

You don't have to be a member to chime in, so if you're inclined, go for it!

On THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS

THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and  Empathy--and Why They Matter, by Marc Bekoff, is similar to Jeffrey Masson's ALTRUISTIC ARMADILLOS, ZENLIKE ZEBRAS (which I reviewed last year) and PLEASURABLE KINGDOM, by Jonathan Balcombe (which I wrote about in 2006) in that it's a useful tool to combat speciesism.

Without ever using the word "speciesism," Bekoff demonstrates that the emotions we are so certain are unique to humans are indeed not (e.g., love, grief, joy, embarrassment, jealousy), and also some cognitive capacities, such as thinking about the future and living by a moral code, are not unique to humans either.

Before I list some of my favorite quotes, I must say that Bekoff does not believe we should be using animals, however in the interim he believes we should work to improve their welfare and their living conditions while we are using them (135). Also, there are many instances of calling an animal "it" (18, 33, 150),  and euphemisms such as "put to sleep" (16).

And now, to the favorites:

• It's because animals have emotions that we're so drawn to them; lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication (15).
• Rather than presuming that fish feel less than mice and that mice feel less than chimpanzees, or that rats aren't as emotional as dogs or wolves, or in general that animals feel less (and know less and suffer less) than humans, let's assume that numerous animals do experience rich emotions and do suffer all sorts of pain, perhaps even to a greater degree than humans (22).
• [H]umans can be selfish, unfair, and uncaring, and their moral codes can sometimes be self-servingly hypocritical. Just take a cursory glance at the front page of the newspaper: the murder of a family during a robbery is considered unacceptable, but not so killing in self-defense or as part of a distant, "justified" war. Humans can lie, steal, and cheat, and they can justify their actions so they never feel "wrong." At times, indeed, it can be hard to imagine how anyone could consider humans morally "above" any other animal beings (91).
• [I]t is becoming clear that many moral behaviors originate in emotional centers in the brain--a neural architecture that humans share with other animals (104).
• [The] "survival of the fittest" mentality, which pervades so much thinking and theorizing, is increasingly not supported by current research as being the prime mover in evolution. . . . Animals certainly still compete, but cooperation is central in the evolution of social behavior, and this alone makes it key for survival (107).
• Cognitive ethology  . . . relies on anecdotes, analogy, and anthropomorphism to reach its conclusions. They have traditionally been "dirty words" in science, since they smack of the subjective and the personal . . . . But are people who resist these A words themselves reacting out of personal or professional bias? (113).
• No longer do researchers have to clean up their language and sanitize their prose by using quotation marks around words such as happy, sad, jealousy or grief. Animals don't merely act "as if" they have feelings; they have them (120).
• [W]e all recognize and agree that animals and humans share many traits, including emotions. Thus we're not inserting something human into animals, but we're identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe. . . . Claims that anthropomorphism has no place in science or that anthropomorphic predictions and explanations are less accurate than more mechanistic or reductionistic explanations are not supported by any data (125-6).
• We must not simply continue with the status quo because that is what we've always done. What we know has changed, and so should our relationships with animals (133).
• [T]he precautionary principle . . . maintains that a lack of certainty should not be an excuse to delay taking action. Sometimes we have to act based on our best judgment, because we may never have "all" the facts, and if we wait for absolute certainty, we might never do anything . . . . We may never know everything that goes through an animal's mind and heart, but we don't need to (137).
• I could no longer abide the killing of any animal, no matter how humane the process, simply for it to become my meal (150). Please note that on the same page, Bekoff promotes mitigating the worst abuses on farms and promotes free-range chickens and livestock.
• [Z]oos operate with two express purposes: one is to educate the public about animals and conservation, and the other is to help preserve species. These are laudable goals, but they rest on two shaky premises. One is that zoos can actually succeed at them, and the other is that zoos can adequately care for their charges. As for their goals, there is insufficient evidence to know the extent to which zoos actually educate visitors or if zoos play any significant role in species protection . . . . So if zoos don't really educate and aren't important for species survival, can they at least be trusted to nurture their animals? Unfortunately, too often the answer is no (152-3).
• If we continue to allow human interests to always trump the interests of other animals, we will never solve the numerous and complex problems we face (162).
• The separation of "us" (humans) from "them" (other animals) engenders a false dichotomy (162).
• No one is an object or an other; we are all just us (163).

As you can see, Bekoff walks the line between his personal belief that we shouldn't be using animals, and his prescription to care more about their welfare when the rest of us use them. I would recommend the book for all animal rights activists to bolster their information regarding the emotional and cognitive capacities of other species, as such ammunition comes in handy, particularly with people who own and claim to love dogs (and that's a significant part of his argument--that dogs aren't unlike us in many ways, but likewise other animals aren't unlike dogs in many ways). However, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to someone as a way to help them change the way they live their life, as that could easily backfire into the world of humane veal and providing more enrichment to animals being tortured in labs. Though Bekoff does speak of use, he speaks far more of suffering and ways to reduce it, and that concerns me.

On the Saving of Individuals

Deb Durant and I have written (her far better than I) about the mountain lions at the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona for months, and I'd like to ask everyone a favor.

I talk a lot about seeing animals as individuals who have an interest in their own lives, free from the domination and torment (to say nothing of the slaughter) that occurs when we humans find a use for them or decide that they're in our way.

We have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of, at most, a handful of mountain lions at Kofa. That difference, for them, is that between life and death, as the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) has decided the cougars (/pumas/mountain lions) should being collared and killed ("lethally removed") because the population of bighorn sheep is lower than it was in 2000, yet higher than it was last year. (Yes, you read that right.)

If you're thinking that it makes no sense to vilify and kill natural predators, particularly when their prey population has actually increased, and you must be missing something, you indeed are missing something: that tags for the hunting of bighorn sheep are a source of revenue for the AGFD, so they want to have as many bighorn sheep on the Kofa NWR as possible . . . . so people can kill them. You don't see AGFD calling for a decrease in people killing mountain lions. . . .

Hunting:

The 2008 season will commence on December 1, 2008, and run through the month.  Th