Showing posts with label vegans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegans. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What Arguments Should Vegans Use to Make Their Case?



Opinion by Gary L Francione
...
In arguing for veganism, should we stay with just the moral argument
and is it somehow “wrong” or “selling out” to rely on the arguments
based on human health and the environment?

I am going to do a podcast on this in the near future but I wanted to
make one point clear now: the lines between these arguments is not as
bright as you might think in that health and environmental arguments
have moral dimensions.

When I talk about animal rights, I emphasize the moral argument based
on a reinterpretation of the western philosophical tradition. I also
discuss the spiritual component of Ahimsa or nonviolence which, for
me, has been an important part of my veganism for the past 28 years.
The spiritual component is certainly not necessary to get to an
abolitionist conclusion; I do not rely on it, for instance, in the
philosophical argument that I make in Introduction to Animal Rights:
Your Child or the Dog?. But my commitment to nonviolence is a
significant part of my thinking.
...
As I said at the outset, I will do a podcast soon. But I have to
finish the final work on my forthcoming book, The Animal Rights
Debate: Abolition or Regulation?, which Columbia University Press will
be publishing in May. So I may not be doing as much blogging, but I
should finish that up soon and be back in full force.

So, if you are not vegan, go vegan. It really is easy. It is better
for our health. It is better for the planet. But, most importantly,
it’s the morally right thing to do. We all say we reject violence.
Let’s take what we say seriously. Let’s take an important step to
reduce violence in the world starting with what we put in our mouths
or on our bodies.

--
full story:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/what-arguments-should-vegans-use-to-make-their-case

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

On becoming vegan



I became a vegetarian when I was 8 — or at least, that’s what I like
to tell people.

My father has been a vegetarian since before I was born. Though he is
very soft-spoken about his reasons, it was hard not to notice that my
parents ate different dinners every night. At the age of 8, I decided
I agreed with my father. I felt that animals have a basic right to
life. I had no excuse for killing or hurting another creature when my
life did not depend on it.

But while I was forming these ideas and calling myself a vegetarian,
my actions didn’t exactly follow suit. In truth, I began the process
of becoming a vegetarian at the age of 8, but I did not give up all
meat overnight.
...
I have now been vegan for two months. Within four days of that first
breakfast, I was gulping down the soy milk and felt disgusted at the
thought of cow’s milk, which I once loved. My eyes learned to skip
over the eggs at breakfast and the cheese at lunch or dinner. I now
feel both psychologically and physically healthier. And I no longer
feel like I am depriving myself of good foods. My tastes have changed.

I offer my story not to convert those who fundamentally disagree with
my premise, nor to condescend to those who agree with me but have yet
to renounce meat or dairy. Rather, my story is testament to how hard
becoming vegetarian or vegan can be and how long it can take — 12
years in my case. To those who support animal welfare, I encourage you
to take whatever steps toward veganism you can, if you find it too
hard to go “cold turkey.” Others may be considering going vegetarian
or vegan because of the increasing evidence that the meat industry
contributes significantly to climate change or because diets high in
meat are unhealthy. Whatever your motive, every step helps. You don’t
have to give up all animal products at once to make a difference. And
ultimately, if the other option is giving up, it’s worth taking baby
steps to achieve a goal you believe in.

Miriam Geronimus is a sophomore from Ann Arbor, Mich. She can be
reached at mgeronim@princeton.edu.

--
full story:
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/12/08/24677/


SEE ALSO:
School cafeterias expanding vegetarian options

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Quietly making the jump to a meatless existence

For years, I considered making the switch to vegetarianism. Part of me
was subtly rebelling against my parents and part was growing
increasingly aware of the moral arguments behind vegetarianism. Peter
Singer’s seminal work Animal Liberation, scanned in an afternoon at
Barnes and Noble, introduced me to new arguments for animal rights.
Yet, something always held me back from making the jump away from
omnivorous eating habits. My mother is a fantastic cook, and the
thought of giving up her lemon chicken or seared pork was
disconcerting. While I made no real effort to curb my meat
consumption, I became increasingly aware of the grave environmental
effects caused by eating meat, the compelling moral arguments that
underlie vegetarianism, and the health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

My thinking slowly changed this summer, when I stayed in D.C. instead
of going back to South Carolina, and thus began cooking for myself on
a regular basis. I was still eating meat when school ended, but that
quickly changed; as the summer wore on, I found myself eating less and
less meat, almost naturally. I never ran out of things to eat,
discovering soy breakfast sausages and creative ways of cooking tofu.
It dawned on me that my actions could match my long-held but dormant
belief that meat consumption should be avoided. I’ll freely admit that
I’m not the traditional meat and potatoes loving American, who fires
up the grill at a moment’s notice. I maintain, however, that the jump
to vegetarianism is not as difficult as most think it would be.

--
full story:
http://www.georgetownvoice.com/2009/11/12/quietly-making-the-jump-to-a-meatless-existence/

Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Rise of Non-Veggie Vegetarian

Vegetarianism used to be simple - its protagonists foreswore the flesh
of any dead animal. Today there are "veggies" who eat fish, and people
who eat no meat but don't call themselves vegetarians. What happened?
...
The conversation usually goes something a bit like this:

"Yeah, I'm a vegetarian."

"But that looks like fish you're eating."

"Oh yeah, I eat fish."

Confusion, perplexity and occasionally heated debate can follow as the
"vegetarian" and their interrogator cover the issue of what is an
animal and whether fish feel pain. But the Vegetarian Society, which
has acted as the custodian of British vegetarianism since 1847, has a
simple definition.

"A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish or
crustacean, or slaughter byproducts," it says. They can make that even
more pithy: "We don't eat dead things."

The society tackles the issue of fish-eating vegetarians with a page
headed in red capitals: "VEGETARIANS DO NOT EAT FISH."

Juliet Gellatley, director of the vegan and vegetarian group Viva, is
also clear on the issue of whether fish eaters can use the term
vegetarian.

"They cannot. The definition is very clear. It's someone who doesn't
eat anything from a killed animal.
...
Fish-eating vegetarians used to have their own term - "pescetarian" -
although it seems not to be in common use today. But, Ms Gellatley
says, there is a rise in the use of a new term for the
part-vegetarian.

"The name 'flexitarian' is coming into use. It's fairly meaningless really."

But for vegetarian activists, anybody taking on the vegetarian badge
can be a positive, even if they fall short of the strict definition,
says Ms Gellately, alluding to a virtual vegetarian escalator.

"People are moving along a pathway - the positive thing is that they
see vegetarianism as aspirational."

--
full story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8341002.stm

Monday, October 12, 2009

CAROL J.ADAMS on ACTIVISM,VEGANISM and MODELS for CHANGE

Carol J. Adams on Activism, Veganism and Models for Change
Posted: 11 Oct 2009 09:45 PM PDT
As with many animal activists, my path to advocacy has been crisscrossed with life-changing intersections and punctuated by important milestones. One of the most influential landmarks in my road to activism was Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, which compares myths about meat-eating with myths about what it means to be a man. Reading Carol’s book, it is impossible to ignore how a patriarchal society has marketed eating animal flesh as manly and debased women along the way. She’s also the author of many other books, including Living Among Meat Eaters: The Vegetarian’s Survival Handbook, and co-editor of The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Carol about animal activism. Our conversation ranged from using social networks to whether activists need to watch disturbing undercover video footage. Not surprisingly, Carol began with a topic that’s close to her heart.
“We’ve got a problem with sexism in the movement, so that the people who traditionally have cared, who are women, are not always heard as well as male philosophers are,” she said. “The male philosophers the animal rights movement has held up are really wonderful people, but they draw on a male-based philosophy — that of rights or Utilitarianism — and this assumes the individual is autonomous, and it’s a male model, emphasizing rationality over caring and autonomy over interdependence. One thing the animal rights movement needs to do is to become more alert to incorporating feminist attitudes throughout the movement. So instead of having nearly-naked women saying, ‘Stop harming animals,’ we should have a variety of people saying, ‘I care about animals, and I’m a better person for that.’ Not, ‘I’m a better person than you, but maybe a better person than I was.’ Instead of being absolutely confrontational, so that we allow other people to take their unease with emotions and bring it out of themselves and blame us for making them feel uncomfortable, we can find a variety of ways to help people sit with their feelings and learn how to listen to those feelings.”
Carol, who has devoted much of her writing to exploring the links between species oppression and gender oppression, said the animal rights movement often disowns women and disowns emotions that are equated with women. “So I feel like we have to evolve the movement to lift up caring and lift up the people who care — i.e., women — rather than sexualizing them, and appealing to socialized men who have been taught that maleness equals not caring.” She believes that when it comes to animals, many otherwise caring people keep their feelings at arm’s length. “When someone tells me, ‘I don’t want to know what’s happening to animals; I’m afraid to care,’ I often say, ‘Tell me about your childhood relationships with animals.’ I want to know what kinds of scars there are from a time when they might have cared and what happened to that caring. I’ve looked at how families handle the death of a pet in the United States, and they do it really terribly — ‘Oh, it was only a pet,’ ‘We can get a new one,’ ‘Oh, stop crying’ — so that part of the movement to adulthood is putting down the feelings that are associated with being a child. But those are really good and honest feelings. That’s why in my own writing I’ve written prayers that speak in the voice of a child who’s lost a beloved companion animal to provide a way to show that grief is part of what we are going to feel if we care about animals, and to model how to move through grief.”
Yet in responding to the plight of farmed animals, Carol said, female animals are often overlooked. “It’s this abuse of female reproductivity that disappears from the radar so often. I mean, I know that animal rights groups are lifting it up more and more, but I still think that the fate of the dairy cow and the egg-laying hen is one of the most serious issues for us to address. If we eliminated forcing cows to get pregnant, you’d eliminate 50 percent of hamburgers, too.” She noted that meat-eating would not exist if female animals were not exploited. Yet, she observed, meat-eaters still manage to take credit for the presence of animals on Earth. “Meat-eaters argue, ‘Well, the animals come into life, into existence, because we want to eat them. The animals owe us their lives.’ No, the animals come into existence and owe their mothers their lives. It’s the mothers who are being the most oppressed because they’re going through constant pregnancy.”
As our conversation turned to the use of hidden cameras to capture graphic images that can be used to educate consumers and activists alike, Carol said she worries that the animal rights movement might focus too narrowly on these upsetting videos. “I think that sometimes that’s not necessarily going to be the best way to change people. I don’t want to just shock people. I know some people are changed that way. I remember when I used to go to AR conferences they’d have this one room that just showed a film with one horrible image after another. The young people coming out of that room were weeping and feeling so powerless. In terms of change, I know there’s a new Mercy For Animals video that’s tied to the egg industry. I appreciate their work, but I can’t watch these anymore, and I think it’s OK to say to people, ‘You don’t have to watch these. What we’re looking for is consciousness.’ We don’t need, necessarily, to have these images burned on our retinas.”
When I mentioned that some activists feel we owe it to the animals to watch such videos, she said, “Again, it’s a male model of change versus a feminist model of change. It’s not about owing. It’s about asking, ‘How can I nurture the best relationship possible for all animals?’ I’m an animal, too. I do not need to inflict suffering on myself if the consciousness of what’s going on is already there. I think women often are going to be more obedient to these exhortations because, again, of the sexism in our society. But if a lot of women already are socialized to care, then our experience of those videos may be drastically different, and I think that needs to be acknowledged. Extraordinary expectations do not need to be laid down on animal activists. We’re already there. We should ask, ‘What’s the best I can do as an individual linking up with others?’ Everyone answers that differently, but our answers become part of a chorus that’s the same.”

Carol J. Adams
Besides videos, then, what tools for change does Carol recommend? “In Living Among Meat Eaters I ask, ‘How do we know how change happens? Why do we think there’s one model for change?’ I think we fail to recognize that the right brain can also bring about change. That you can incubate and you can be stimulated by art to change. I think because activists are often more likely to be left brained and rational, they fail to take account of the way the right brain can be enlisted to help people change. In the book I say that meat-eaters are perfectly happy eating vegan meals, as long as they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. What I mean by that is people hate being self-conscious about what they’re eating. Eating is supposed to be directly experiential — it’s not supposed to have a theory to it. People think vegans are going to examine everything. One of the most important things I think we do is just having vegan meals for people. They leave and think, ‘Gee, Carol’s a vegan. That was a really great risotto; it was so creamy. So…that was a vegan risotto.’ So I’ve given them a chance to incubate, and the next time they come back to me they’re not as threatened, because I’ve enlisted their right brain to work with me rather than just arguing with the left brain that might not want to change.”
Carol also likes Facebook, which she joined earlier this year. “When I get friended by someone I don’t know, I generally accept the friending, but I’ll ask them to tell me about their activism,” she said. “Oh my gosh, the wonderful responses I’ve gotten! People write, ‘Thank you for asking,’ and often they’ll talk about the influence of my books. Some will say, ‘I’m a quiet activist. I’m uncomfortable speaking in public. But I make vegan meals.’ Some say, ‘I’m a full-time teacher, but I also write letters, or rescue strays and help them get new homes, or I’m doing this or organizing that.’ I’m just so grateful for them. No one has to tell them to go watch a video. They’re way beyond that.”
My sincere thanks to Carol Adams for her time and her contributions to the movement. You can learn more about Carol’s work at her Web site.
Credit:http://strikingattheroots.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/carol-j-adams-on-activism-veganism-and-models-for-change

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Tell Tesco to go vegan! Action Alert from Viva!

Juliet Gellatley of Viva! met with Tesco this summer to discuss their provision for vegans. Tesco stated that they are interested in trialling new vegan products but expressed concern that people are not asking them for lists of vegan foods or 'demanding' more vegan products. Whether you are vegan or not wouldn't it be wonderful to have major food outlets supplying more delicious vegan foods that help save animals and the planet! Please write to their Customer Services NOW! They want to hear what you'd like them to stock, and/or what you'd like them to 'veganise'. Or you may want a list of the vegan foods they already stock.
You can contact them at:
Email:
customer.service@tesco.co.uk


By phone: 0845 7225533, 8am to 11pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm Saturday and 10am to 6pm Sunday
By PostTesco Customer ServicePO Box 73Baird AvenueDryburgh Industrial EstateDundeeDD1 9NF

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Can you Alzheimer's- proof your brain

When you bite into a hamburger or chicken sandwich, what do you think that this grass eating animal was eating before it died? Most likely it was a mixture of ground up eyeballs, anuses,bones, feathers, and euthanized dogs . Most animals that we eat spend the entirety of their short lives in factories eating recycled meat and animal fat. These herbivores have been turned into carnivores thanks to our process of ‘waste removal’ better known as rendering.

Every day thousands of pounds of slaughterhouse waste such as brains, eyeballs, spinal cords, intestines, bones, feathers or hooves as well as restaurant grease, road kill, cats and dogs are produced. From this need for large waste disposal came the development of rendering plants. Rendering plants recycle the dead animals and their wastes into products known as bone meal, and animal fat. These products are sold to the companies that grow animals for meat or milk cattle, poultry, swine, sheep and put into their feed.. Each slaughterhouse has a privately owned rendering plant nearby .


These facilities operate 24 hours a day all over the world. Till the BJP came to government in 1998 rendering was banned in India by the department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Ministry of Agriculture, which prohibited the use of animal byproducts in ruminant feeds (Order No.2-4/99-AHT/ FF) However , the BJP, influenced by a coterie of slaughterhouse owners and interested bureaucrats, repealed this ban and India’s first rendering plants came up in 2001. No one in India knows about them – and few people in America where there are thousands of plants. They are not advertised - and for good reason.



The process itself is very disturbing and those who have witnessed it have often sworn off meat for good. The rendering plant floor is piled high with 'raw product' - tonnes of feet, tails, feathers, bones, spinal cords, hooves, milk sacs, grease, intestines, stomachs and eyeballs of slaughtered animals.. In the heat, the piles of dead animals seem to have a life of their own as millions of maggots swarm over the carcasses. First the raw material is cut into small pieces and then transported to another machine for fine shredding. It is then cooked at 280 degrees for one hour ,melting the meat away from bones in the hot 'soup.' This continuous batch cooking process goes on for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During this cooking process, the soup produces yellow grease or tallow that rises to the top and is skimmed off. The cooked meat and bone are then sent to a hammer mill press, which squeezes out the remaining moisture and pulverizes the product into a gritty powder. Shaker screens remove excess hair and large bone chips that are unsuitable for consumption. Now recycled meat, yellow grease, and bone meal are produced and used exclusively to feed vegetarian animals.


In India no testing is done of these plants . In America and Europe state agencies spot check , yet testing for pesticides and other toxins in animal feeds is not done or is done incompletely with toxic wastes accompanying the dead animals – all of which the rendering plants do not remove. Poisoned cattle stomachs, animals that have been lying dead for weeks before being picked up , animals that have been run over by trucks, all their noxious parts are part of this. The package includes euthanasia drugs given to pets, animals with flea collars containing organophosphate insecticides, fish oil laced with DDT, heavy metals from pet ID tags, and plastics from thrown away meats. Labor costs are rising and therefore many rendering plants refuse to hire extra hands to cut off flea collars or unwrap spoiled shopmeat. Every week, millions of packages of plastic-wrapped meat go through the rendering process and become one of the many unwanted ingredients in animal feed.


Even if some people do realize how animal feed is made and feel that it is still too far removed to be a concern to them, most of them do not know of the risks ,consumption of this meat entails. Perhaps the best-known health concern associated with rendering plants is Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or Mad Cow Disease. In America regulations mandate that brain and other nerve tissue be removed from cattle after they are slaughtered for human food. Yet these most infectious parts, the brain and spinal cord, are allowed to go to a rendering facility where they can be processed into pet and animal feed. This means it is possible that a cow with Mad Cow Disease can be ground up and fed to a pig or chicken that is, in turn, fed back to other cows that are eventually eaten by people. India has no regulations of any kind . Behind the scenes and out of public view, these practices are unfolding around the world putting millions of people at risk for Mad Cow Disease.


Other diseases that can be contracted from rendering plant product feed include tuberculosis , variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease (CJD), and Alzheimer’s. All of these diseases, except Alzheimer’s, are transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases (TSEs), which means that they is are infectious diseases that leave the brain resembling a sponge. The process by rendering plants makes chickens, goats, sheep, pigs,cows and buffaloes into cannibals. – a factor that has been cited as a cause of Alzheimer’s disease which did not exist in the world until this practice started. Millions of people are affected by Alzheimer’s making it one of the leading causes of death among the elderly across the globe. Scientific evidence shows that people eating meat more than four times a week for a prolonged period have a three times higher chance of suffering from dementia than vegetarians. A preliminary 1989 study at the University of Pennsylvania showed that over 5% of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s were actually dying from human spongiform encephalopathy. That means that as many as 200,000 people in the United States may already be dying from mad cow disease each year. God knows how many in India but certainly thousands more after 2001.


In India ,in 2001 the BJP led Government, prepared a secret position paper on the “Utilisation of Slaughter House Waste for the Preparation of Animal Feed”. This is what the report said: “ India ranks topmost in the world in livestock holding and has the potential to utilize slaughterhouse by products to partly meet the growing requirement of animal feeds. The total availability of offal/bones in the country generated from large slaughterhouses is estimated to be more than 21-lakh tonnes/annum. It can also be used for the preparation of animal feeds”. The report further goes on to explain that “Presently in India , live stock feed production is cereal based. This results in livestock, especially poultry, pig and fish competing with humans for grains and cereals which can easily be replaced with slaughterhouse waste.”


The Office International des Epizooties (OIE World Organisation for Animal Health) had surveyed the risk of CJD/BSE in Asia . The report revealed that no attention had been paid to any risk analysis on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in China , India , Pakistan and seven other countries. According to OIE, significant quantities of animal feed of meat origin have been imported into Asia , which may mean that the BSE agent could have reached domestic cattle in these countries. The Report noted that” the spread of BSE through rendering plants cannot be excluded in some countries such as China , India , Japan , Pakistan and Taiwan . Therefore, much more stringent management at slaughterhouses and rendering plants, as well as extensive surveillance programmes, are required in those countries. “


The Indian companies on the Internet advertise their rendered meal as having been made from "spray-dry" machines that turn blood into a fine, brown powder (gardeners know it as blood meal); gigantic kettles that boil fat to make tallow; grinders that crush bones into minuscule fragments.. Millions of tons are supplied to dairy industry, poultry farms, cattle feed-lots, pig farms, fish-feed plants, and pet-food manufacturers. Leading manufacturers of “Meal” ,as they call it, are Standard Agro Vet (P) Ltd., Allanasons Ltd., Hind Agro Ltd., Al Kabeer, and Hyderabad – also the four largest private slaughterhouses in the country.

All animal feed manufacturers use meat and bone meal in their feeds. Recent reports state most domestic animals are fed such rendered animal tissues. A 1991 United States Department of agriculture report states that approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal was produced by rendering plants in 1983. Of that amount: 12 %percent was used in dairy and beef cattle feed ,34 % in pet food ,34% in poultry feed and 20 %in pig food . This has doubled by 2006. So has the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987 all over the globe. Grass or cereal fed cattle and other animals are nonexistent abroad and lessening in India . BSE expert Richard Lacey states “The time bomb of the twentieth century equivalent of the bubonic plague ticks away.” Do you think Nature will forgive you for a baby chick is eating on what's left of her mother after she's been stripped down, a calf being fed on her mother’s slaughtered remains, a pig being reared on a diet of dead pigs, a goat being fed on a goat’s leftovers


Maneka Gandhi


When I was Minister for Social Justice there were demands for giving grants to build Alzheimer’s Disease Homes- a disease unknown in India till the 1970s. In the West the first 150 cases happened in 1948, rose to 600 by 1978 . Now there are 500,000 cases in the U.K. , 250,000 in Canada and 4.5 million in the U.S. 10% of people over 65 in the US have it and 50% of 85 year olds . It is now very much in India – which means homes have to be set up as it is almost impossible for anyone to look after an Alzheimer’s patient for a long time .

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible brain disorder in which a person loses his capacity to reason, think, recognize and function. The disease progresses from mild forgetfulness to death in just 8 years and is most prevalent in people over the age of 65. 55% of all senility cases are now Alzheimer’s.

Is it to do with old age ? If so, everyone would get it. But, the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that very poor people in Nigeria/India are far less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than their relatives in New York , Obviously it is a lifestyle related disease .

Alzheimer’s is not a normal part of aging. It is caused by sticky plaque-like deposits and neurofibrillary tangles that kill off brain cells until all memory disintegrates. Ultimately the patient dies.
What is the cause of this deadly epidemic? There is no mention of anything that could be considered Alzheimer’s disease in any medical or other literature before 1900. In the last 100 years, Alzheimer’s disease has gone from non-existence to a disease that affects 12 million people yearly and kills 200,000 people .


Dr Murray Waldman is the coroner of Toronto . He is a professor of Toronto University and medical director of a large rehabilitation hospital . His book Dying for a Hamburger has taken the medical world by storm.


He contends that Alzheimer’s is caused by a protein called a prion. The same prion that causes Mad cow Disease, (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE), variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease (vCJD), and other neurodegenerative diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs ).

Prions are misshapen proteins normally found in the nervous systems of animals. When prions come into contact with normal proteins, they cause these proteins to become misshapen, too. As the chain reaction continues, more and more proteins become misshapen and begin to impair normal neurological functions. In all prion diseases the brain is clogged by dense deposits and dementia is the m aj or symptom. The disease shows up only in later age. It is irreversible. All these factors are true of Alzheimer’s.


Waldman correlates the growth of the industrial meat industry( where cows are fed meat and chickens fed other chicken) and meat eating directly to the increase in Alzheimer’s. WHO’s figures correlate with Waldman’s theory. After researching the spread of Alzheimer’s disease , Waldman concludes that Alzheimer’s disease behaves like an infectious disease, not something congenital. He has linked the spread of the disease to industrialized nations that eat factory-farmed animal meats, saying that ,just like mad cow disease, Alzheimer’s disease is the result of the modern factory farm and increased meat consumption in the last century. Till a few years ago scientists denied that mad cow disease could be transmitted to humans through beef. Now hundreds of people who ate infected beef have died of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease (CJD), with perhaps lakhs more at risk. Could the same scenario hold true for Alzheimer's disease?

Waldman shows that Alzheimer’s disease first showed up in medical records at about the same time that world meat consumption began to rise and makes a direct correlation between the levels of meat consumption and the number of Alzheimer’s disease afflicted across the world. In countries, where meat consumption is lower, Alzheimer’s disease are much lower than developed countries, where meat consumption is high.


The Alzheimer’s Society is the world’s premier body on this disease. Their head of Research, Dr Sorensen, refuses the prion theory( which is weird because the Nobel Prize winner Prof Stanley Prusiner who discovered prions agrees with Waldman )Instead, he says that the factors that cause heart disease are the same that apply to Alzheimer’s.


This still makes meat the culprit. Saturated fat and cholesterol have been conclusively linked to heart disease and strokes. So have high levels of a substance called homocysteine and high blood pressure – all created by animal products.

Cholesterol is a waxy solid substance. High levels are found in meat,dairy,eggs, fish. Too much cholesterol damages the blood vessels as it deposits in the arteries . The only time vegetable fats carry cholesterol is when they have been altered by industry to be hydrogenated (hardened for shelf life) High cholesterol doubles the risk of Alzheimers unless you already have the Alzheimer’s gener ApoE in which case it goes up sixteen times. ( Only 50% of people with the ApoE gene actually develop the disease – those who eat a high-fat diet during their 40s ). 70% of people in the West , according to WHO have high cholesterol

In a 21-year study, investigators examined the association of cholesterol with brain plaques and tangles in people who had died of Alzheimer’s. They found a strong correlation between increased cholesterol levels and increases in the number of plaques and tangles in the brain , the two characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease..

Not only does meat and dairy consumption raise cholesterol, it raises the levels of an amino acid called homocysteine, which is now widely seen as a risk marker for heart disease.The American Heart Association has shown a clear association between homocysteine levels ,heart attack and stroke – and Alzheimer’s.

Boston University investigators have found that elevated levels of Homocysteine increases the risk of Alzheimer’s three fold. Homocysteine is formed in the human liver after ingesting another amino acid, methionine, found in animal food . High homocysteine levels make nerve cells weak and prone to premature death. Like cholesterol it causes deposits in the arteries and 100gms of chicken have more than 12 times of what your body needs. In Alzheimer's patients much higher levels of homocysteine were found than in elderly individuals with no cognitive impairment. In fact , now tests on levels of homocysteine are useful in *predicting* who might get Alzheimer's.

The only things that brings down cholesterol and homocysteine levels are vegetables, green leaves and citrus. People who adopt a diet free of meat, eggs, and dairy products can drop their homocysteine levels by 20% in one week. This is because folic acid, a B vitamin found in whole grains, green vegetables, beans, and other plant-based foods, helps convert homocysteine to another, more useful amino acid.

In a study, reported at the World Alzheimer's Congress in 2000, researchers looked at 5,395 elder individuals who were free from dementia in 1993 and again in 1999 ."People who remained free from dementia had consumed higher amounts of beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E and vegetables than the people in the study who developed Alzheimer’s disease."



The same findings have been reported at Case Western University School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland , Ohio , and St. George's Medical School in London . Scientists at The Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing have brought out an ideal menu: it is entirely vegetarian with no milk products . WHO recommends stopping animal based food as exchanging red meat for white, full cream for skimmed, butter with margerine – reduces less than 5% cholesterol

Why do our doctors not look at prevention – simple, there is no money in that. Medicine, pharmaceuticals and hospitals are huge business. Why do medical colleges not teach nutrition anywhere in the world ? If prevention became the norm who would need doctors ?


Maneka Gandhi



And while no mention is made of the indelible mark on the American/western diet
made by the fast-food giants McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy's and their contribution to this terrible picture, please consider if those burgers and nuggets are really worth it and especially when you take into account the major contribution made by cattle raised for food, to the destruction of rainforests, to soil degradation, pollution of rivers and streams and of course, as a major cause of global warming. Also, our kids are being raised on these very unhealthy diets and so the picture for the future is certainly bleak if major changes in diet are not made.

============ ========= ========= ========= ========Special Report: Can you Alzheimer's- proof your brain============ ========= ========= ========= ======== The answer is a resounding YES... you can. So no, it is NOT our fate to go senile when we enter ourgolden years, even if it "runs in our family." Thankgoodness, because it's not a pretty picture. If you knowsomeone who has lost touch, you know how they becomepathetic shells of their former selves. But it doesn't have to happen to you. ============ ========= ========= ========Alzheimer's / Dementia is Rare In India============ ========= ========= ======== You see, dementia and Alzheimer's in India is very rare. Here are the remarkable statistics: In India , fewer than 1 in 100 people over the age of 65have any form of dementia or Alzheimer's. Less than 1 percent. In the U.S. , it's 1 in 8. 13 percent! More than 13 times higher in the U.S. than in India ! It gets worse: According the Alzheimer's Association, by age 85, over 47% of Australians have Alzheimers. You are shocked, "Can't be true!" But it is. Plus, Alzheimer's Disease International says that 24million people worldwide have Alzheimer's, and over 5million of them are in the U.S. The U.S. has over 21% of allAlzheimer's sufferers even though they only have 5% of theworld's population. Fair to say that our lifestyles are killing us. Consultation with some of the foremost anti-agingdoctors confirmed that dementia in any formis rare in India . Why? India is still mostly vegetarian - Draw your own conclusions





--

Philip Wollen OAM

The Winsome Constance Kindness Trust

Australia

Venture Capital for Good Causes

http://www.kindnesstrust.com

Telephone (613) 98221662

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

(UK) Vegan prisoners win right to 'cruelty free' products in jail

Vegan prisoners have won the right to order ethically-sourced food,
toiletries and cosmetics in jail.
...
They will be allowed to buy in products including nuts, seeds, dried
fruits, vegan chocolate bars, soap, shampoo, deodorant, sunscreen,
lipstick and facial scrubs after prison chiefs agreed to allow them to
place mail order requests to two “eco-outlets”.

Vegans refuse to eat any food, wear any clothes or use any product
which involves the use of animals in any way. They don’t wear wool and
leather, don’t consume dairy products and will not use toiletries or
cosmetics that contain animal products or that have been tested on
animals.

Some of the strictest vegans avoid all products with even a remote
connection to animal exploitation, including sugar processed with
animal bones and camera film that contains gelatin.

There are an estimated 800 in the prison population at any one time
and they currently struggle to obtain products they find acceptable,
with most jail canteen food and even prison-issue boots excluded.

--
full story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6081670/Vegan-prisoners-win-right-to-cruelty-free-products-in-jail.html

Friday, August 14, 2009

The Meat of the Problem Is Meat

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18688.cfm

By Ezra Klein
The Washington Post, July 29, 2009
Straight to the Source


[Editor's Note: The OCA believes in eating organic, grass-fed, humanely raised meat if you feel that you can't live without meat in your diet. But we also applaud vegetarians and vegans, as well as those who are helping to reduce their carbon and ecological footprints by cutting back on meat consumption. This article might oversimplify the issues a bit in respect to these options, but the OCA commends the Washington Post for covering the relationship between climate change and industrial agriculture so well.]

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas -- interestingly, it's mainly burps, not farts -- is a real player.

But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian."

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can "fight global warming." As you'd expect, "Drive Less" is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for "high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids." They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word "meat" is nowhere to be found.

That's not an oversight. Telling people to give up burgers doesn't poll well. Ben Adler, an urban policy writer, explored that in a December 2008 article for the American Prospect. He called environmental groups and asked them for their policy on meat consumption. "The Sierra Club isn't opposed to eating meat," was the clipped reply from a Sierra Club spokesman. "So that's sort of the long and short of it." And without pressure to address the costs of meat, politicians predictably are whiffing on the issue. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, for instance, does nothing to address the emissions from livestock.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Becoming vegan: a step to reduce impact on climate change

The film "An Inconvenient Truth" brought the issue of climate change
to the forefront of American and, to some extent, international
thought. It showed trends of our modern, industrial society and their
correlation to global warming. But one major factor was left out of
the film as a major contributor to climate change: diet.

The way we choose to eat has a direct result on climate change on a
global and local scale. There is much talk about eating local,
organic, and sustainable but what about the vegan lifestyle?

Leaving meat and other animal products off the plate may be a solution
to reduce one's impact on lands, waterways, and atmosphere. Gidon
Eshel and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago conclude in their
report "Diet, Energy, and Global Warming" that choosing a plant-based
diet can lessen an individual's contribution to climate change more
than ditching a "clunker" for a hybrid vehicle. In addition to other
wise choices to lessen waste, veganism is a great way to be more
healthy and avoid the worst animal abuses in factory farms.

--
full story:
http://www.examiner.com/x-19017-San-Jose-Vegan-Examiner~y2009m8d6-Becoming-vegan--a-step-to-reduce-impact-on-climate-change

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

6-year-old vegetarian from Brandon teaches her mom a thing or two

BRANDON — Brooke English gave up eating meat for ethical reasons: She
loves animals.

Sometimes, though rarely, she eats fish. But she hasn't had a bite of
chicken or beef or pork in two years.

Brooke is 6. She recently munched a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
and a salad in her Brandon home, where there's an ideological divide.
Brooke lives with her mother, who eats meat.

These days, Brooke is not alone. Young children are deciding to cut
meat out of their diets and many of their meat-eating parents are
backing them.

"I think she's 100 percent right," said Brooke's mother, Heidi
English. "I'm so proud of her. She tells kids in her class not to eat
meat. She really stands behind it."

Debby Magill, public relations director for Tampa Bay Vegetarians,
which has more then 120 members, occasionally hears from parents of
such precocious children. She was approached recently by a mother of a
10-year-old girl who wants to be vegetarian.

--
full story:
http://www.tampabay.com/features/food/general/article1024417.ece


SEE ALSO:
Vegetarian celebrities and vegetarian celebrity quotes
Vegetarians Live 6 To 10 Years Longer, 50% Lower Heart Disease Rate

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Include Non-Dairy Alternatives in the Child Nutrition Act


Don’t Schoolchildren Deserve the Option of Healthy Alternatives to Cows’ Milk?

The Child Nutrition Act is the foundation for food policy in our schools. This year, Congress will reauthorize the law, providing us with a tremendous opportunity to make non-dairy alternatives to cows’ milk an option for children in school cafeterias around the country.

Currently, virtually all children participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) are automatically served cows’ milk, despite the fact that as many as eight million schoolchildren are lactose intolerant, and countless others avoid cows’ milk for health, environmental and ethical reasons. A longstanding federal policy stipulates that schools will only be reimbursed for meals containing a serving of cows’ milk. As a result, healthy, plant-based alternatives to cows' milk - such as fortified soy, rice and almond milk - are unavailable to children in almost all schools participating in the NSLP.

Denying children easy access to dairy alternatives is especially damaging to minority populations, particularly African Americans and Latino children who are not only more likely to be lactose intolerant (according to the National Institutes of Health), but also make up a greater percentage of those dependent upon the NSLP for their nutritional needs. The effect of this inequity is that while the dairy industry reaps profits from the NSLP, schoolchildren (and cows on dairy farms) suffer unjustly.

PLEASE DO YOUR PART TO ENSURE THAT SCHOOLCHILDREN HAVE READY ACCESS TO NON-DAIRY ALTERNATIVES.

Please call your senators and representative today. You can find their phone numbers here. Simply state that you are a constituent and ask them to support alternatives to cows’ milk in the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act.

After making your phone calls, please take a moment to send a quick and easy follow-up e-mail by filling out the form below. Make sure to personalize the letter with your own words to make it more persuasive.

Get more tips on how to communicate with your representative here. And if you receive feedback from your legislators, please e-mail us their response.

(U.S. Residents Only)

The Meat of the Problem

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy
abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or
downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this
point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple
thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that
are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive.
Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house
with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But
there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a
hamburger.

If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more
than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply
that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge
contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global
transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18
percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat's
contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy
efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain
and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults
that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is
gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for
the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous
oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson
chuckle. Cow gas -- interestingly, it's mainly burps, not farts -- is
a real player.

But the result isn't funny at all: Two researchers at the University
of Chicago estimated that switching to a vegan diet would have a
bigger impact than trading in your gas guzzler for a Prius (PDF). A
study out of Carnegie Mellon University found that the average
American would do less for the planet by switching to a totally local
diet than by going vegetarian one day a week. That prompted Rajendra
Pachauri, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, to recommend that people give up meat one day a week
to take pressure off the atmosphere. The response was quick and
vicious. "How convenient for him," was the inexplicable reply from a
columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "He's a vegetarian."
...
It's also worth saying that this is not a call for asceticism. It's
not a value judgment on anyone's choices. Going vegetarian might not
be as effective as going vegan, but it's better than eating meat, and
eating meat less is better than eating meat more. It would be a whole
lot better for the planet if everyone eliminated one meat meal a week
than if a small core of die-hards developed perfectly virtuous diets.

I've not had the willpower to eliminate bacon from my life entirely,
and so I eliminated it from breakfast and lunch, and when that grew
easier, pulled back further to allow myself five meat-based meals a
month. And believe me, I enjoy the hell out of those five meals. But
if we're going to take global warming seriously, if we're going to
make crude oil more expensive and tank-size cars less practical,
there's no reason to ignore the impact of what we put on our plates.

Ezra Klein can be reached at kleine@washpost.
or through his blog
at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ezraklein
.

--
full story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072800390.html

Sunday, July 26, 2009

THE EFFECT OF ANIMAL FATS ON THE HUMAN BODY!-VIDEO

In the last 100 years, the North American and European diet has changed radically. The change can be summed up simply: calories from plant foods have been replaced by calories from animal fats.

During the same period, rates of degenerative diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes has sky rocketed.

Is there a connection?

Here's some evidence there might be.

While degenerative diseases have become common in the west, populations that have not yet adopted this "new and improved" diet are failing to get these diseases at anywhere near the same rate.

Is eating animal fat - beef, chicken, milk, cheese etc. - really that big a deal?

The video presents the science that the meat and dairy industries (and their paid agents in the US Department of Agriculture) would prefer you not learn.
http://www.therealfoodchannel.com/page/18.html

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Meeting calcium needs: tips for vegans

Meeting calcium needs is super easy on a vegan diet—especially with the availability of so many fortified plant foods.

Recommended intake of calcium for adults is 1,000 mg per day. Right now, the research doesn’t support the idea that vegans need less calcium than anyone else. A few studies have suggested that some vegans may fall short of calcium requirements, raising their risk for bone fractures. (Many omnivores don’t get enough calcium, either, of course.)

Here are some good sources of calcium for vegans (and for everyone else, too!) followed by a few tips for boosting calcium intake.



Foods that provide about 300 mg of calcium:

1 cup fortified orange juice or V8 juice
1 cup fortified soymilk
1 Luna Bar


Foods that provide about 200 mg of calcium:
1 tbsp blackstrap molasses
1 cup fortified apple juice
½ cup cooked collard greens
½ cup calcium-set tofu
1 ounce of fortified breakfast cereal


Foods that provide about 100 mg of calcium

½ cup cooked kale, turnip greens, or broccoli
½ cup cooked soybeans
¼ cup soynuts
1 package of instant oatmeal
5 dried figs


Foods that provide about 50 to 75 mg of calcium
2 tbsp almond butter or tahini
½ cup prepared textured vegetable protein (TVP)
½ cup cooked bok choy
½ cup tempeh

1/2 cup cooked navy, black or great northern beans
½ cup vegetarian baked beans
1 orange
2 tbsp almonds





Try these easy ways to boost calcium intake

• Make your own trail mix and include soynuts and almonds.

• Whole grain cereal with fortified soy (or any nondairy milk) is a great breakfast or snack. Add a glass of calcium fortified juice and you’ll have met half your calcium requirement before the day has even started.

• White beans and figs are both good sources of calcium and they are often paired up in Italian cuisine. Cook them with onions sautéed in olive oil and season with rosemary.

• Blackstrap molasses has a robust flavor that may be too strong for some palates straight from the jar. But it’s wonderful to add to baked beans, hot breakfast cereals or baked goods, though.

• That old veggie standby, hummus, is a great source of calcium since it uses both chickpeas and tahini.

• It’s best to eat whole foods most of the time, but there is nothing wrong with grabbing a protein bar occasionally when you are on the go. Choose Luna bars, which are vegan and packed with calcium.

• Miso soup with chunks of tofu and some wilted greens is a good lunch or dinner. Or eat like the Japanese and have it for breakfast.

• Try almond butter on a sandwich instead of peanut butter.

Make the most of the calcium in your diet:

The calcium content of tofu varies widely. Look for brands of tofu that list calcium-sulfate as an ingredient.

Fortified soymilk is a great source of calcium, and provides isoflavones, too. Give cartons of soymilk a few good shakes before using since the calcium can settle to the bottom of the carton.

If you consistently fall short on calcium intake, make up the difference with a supplement. It’s an easy and perfectly healthful way to meet calcium needs on any kind of diet. Use supplements between meals if possible since they can interfere with iron absorption.

Gary Francione on Creative, Non-Violent Vegan Education

Gary Francione on Creative, Non-Violent Vegan Education
In the fourth and final part of my interview with Professor Gary Francione, whose abolitionist approach to animal rights rejects welfare reforms of the animal industry demanding instead the complete abolition of animals, Gary discusses one of my favorite subjects of animal rights: activism.
You can also find this and the preceding interviews on the difference between animal rights and welfare and vegan education at the abolitionist approach website, AbolitionistApproach.com. These interviews will also be provided for free to subscribers of The Vegan News.
I welcome you to embed these players on your own blog via these Links: [1 2 3 4] embedding options are available in the dropdown menu to the right of each file. Enjoy.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

(US) Gary Francione on Animal Inferiority and Veganism

In part three of my four-part interview with Professor Gary Francione,
Francione discusses the topic of animal inferiority. Because of the
ideological consideration of non-human animals, questions are often
asked of animal rights advocates whether or not they believe animals
are superior to humans.

Francione also goes on to talk about promoting "creative non-violent
vegan education" as a primary means of activism. Hear the interview
with the embeddable player below as well as the preceding interviews
farther down

--
full story:
http://www.examiner.com/x-4198-Vegan-Examiner~y2009m7d22-Professor-Gary-Francione-on-Animal-Inferiority?cid=exrss-Vegan-Examiner

JUST DIFFERENT-VIDEO

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

(US/ga) Vegan pregnancy and babies

Many people who aren't vegan question if being a vegan while pregnant,
and whether or not raising a vegan child, is healthy. While there is
research that could be used to support both sides of the argument, the
research against vegan pregnancy is clearly lacking.
...
Vegan children typically are more self aware than non vegan children.
They know where their food comes from and why they eat the way that
they do. Many children grow up to be animal rights activists because
of their upbringing. This is a clear benefit of raising your child as
a vegan.

Children who are vegans typically are not as sick as non vegan
children. This is due to the fact that most vegans do not use modern
medicine, but instead use alternative methods to healing and curing
common ailments. This practice makes their immune system tougher,
keeping them healthier.

--
full story:
http://www.examiner.com/x-9229-Atlanta-Vegan-Examiner~y2009m7d14-Vegan-pregnancy-and-babies


SEE ALSO:
Vegetarian/Vegan 101: Where are vegetarian, vegan or raw restaurants in Seattle?
An Appetizing Reason to Take a Flexible Stance on Vegetarianism