Advice on Going Vegan from the New York Times

Posted on 17 January, 2013 by Veganistan

Like many other omnivores, New York Times health columnist Tara Parker-Pope was inspired by former US President Bill Clinton’s journey from a deadly, meat-centric, junk-heavy diet to a life-saving vegan one. “After all,” she writes, “if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.”

As many new vegans do, Ms. Parker-Pope found that merely modifying her favorite animal-based dishes with processed, plant-based imitations of the meat and dairy products was often unsatisfying. Instead of giving up, though, she dug deeper and struck gold. Speaking with many vegans, including vegan chefs and authors, and trying their suggestions, she discovered the richly rewarding world of creative vegan cuisine and found new dishes she liked even better than her old meat and dairy favorites.

In her new article in the New York Times, she describes her journey and offers some mouth-watering menu ideas with links to recipes that passed her own taste tests. She also provides a list of recommended replacements for animal ingredients such as butter, eggs, and cheese, including a discussion of the uses for nutritional yeast.

Most seasoned vegans will agree with her conclusion that going vegan is a learning process with many rewards along the way. The most successful transitions to a vegan diet are those that embrace the journey as a process of exploration and discovery. We applaud Ms. Parker-Pope for going for it, and for sharing her story with the world.

You can read the full article on the New York Times website here.

Have you written about your own learning on the path to a vegan diet and lifestyle? If so, you can share it on our Facebook page.

ACTION: Help save Yellowstone wolves from slaughter

Posted on 21 November, 2012 by Veganistan

Wolves from Yellowstone National Park have been killed just outside the park’s borders. The reported death count as of November 20, 2012, is seven. Five of these animals were wearing radio collars and were the subjects of intensive conservation study.

Wild wolves must roam widely in search of food and mates, both of which are critical for survival of the species. Naturally, it happens from time to time that they venture beyond the unfenced boundary of the park.

We think caring people will agree that the killing of Yellowstone wolves is unconscionable. Please join us in telling the governors of Wyoming and Montana to put an immediate stop to the wolf hunt in lands on the periphery of the park.

The petition is here.

I No Longer Steal from Nature

Posted on 17 July, 2012 by Veganistan

You are diseased in understanding and religion.
Come to me, that you may hear something of sound truth.
Do not unjustly eat fish the water has given up,
And do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals,
Or the white milk of mothers who intended its pure draught
for their young, not noble ladies.
And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking eggs;
for injustice is the worst of crimes.
And spare the honey which the bees get industriously
from the flowers of fragrant plants;
For they did not store it that it might belong to others,
Nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts.
I washed my hands of all this; and wish that I
Perceived my way before my hair went gray!

~ Al-Ma’arri (973-1057)

ACTION: Protect Elephants from Ivory Poaching

Posted on 26 May, 2012 by Veganistan

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has launched a new petition drive to curb elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade, which have been increasing across the globe, with an unprecedented number of seizures of illegal ivory worldwide.

According to IFAW’s petition on Care2:

Within about 30 days in early 2012, 300 to 650 elephants were killed by heavily armed poachers in a single national park in Cameroon, out of an estimated national population of 3,000 to 5,000.

IFAW believes that even one elephant killed for its ivory is one too many. We will not stand by idly while elephants are needlessly slaughtered to meet a demand for luxury goods.

Join the fight to free elephants from the threat of ivory poaching.

Please sign this petition to urge the European Union to take immediate action to stop the poaching and to help protect the world’s elephants from the continued threat of ivory trade.

You can sign the petition here.

ACTION: Petition to UVA President: Stop Cruel Trainings Using Live Cats for Practice

Posted on 17 May, 2012 by Veganistan

URGENT ACTION ALERT

The University of Virginia continues to use an archaic, ineffective, and extremely cruel practice that other medical schools have long abandoned: using live cats as practice dummies for intubation trainings in their pediatric residency programs, resulting in great pain and long-term injury to the cats.

According to Dr. Roberta Gray, M.D.:

During their training, residents in their program repeatedly force breathing tubes down the throats of cats, sometimes as many as 19-22 times in one day, This can cause bleeding, bruising, scarring, permanent injury and significant residual pain. At least two cats have had their teeth broken and another had adverse effects lasting days. Cats are used over and over again. People who have had a breathing tube inserted for anesthesia during surgery will often tell you that recovering from the tube was as bad as recovering from the surgery.

This is all the worse because it does not actually help in the proper education of the pediatric residency students, due to the anatomy of cats being quite different from that of humans. Modern methods, such as the use of artificial infant simulators, are clearly superior and cause no harm, so there is no excuse (nor any valid reason) for continuing the archaic and inhumane method of “practicing on cats.”

Please sign Dr. Gray’s urgent petition at Change.org to ask the UVA President to end this cruel program. You can read the petition and sign it here.

New Animal Abuser Registry in New York Goes Live

Posted on 16 May, 2012 by Veganistan

Animal abusers in one county in New York now have more to fear than bad karma.

In 2010, Suffolk County (on the eastern half of Long Island), passed a law to create the first-ever registry of animal abusers, and the bill came into effect this month. Under the new law, those convicted of animal abuse charges in the county will be listed on the registry for five years, with their names, addresses and photographs displayed online, and convicted abusers who fail to furnish the required information will face fines and jail time. The goal is to serve as a deterrent to animal abuse, much as “Megan’s Law” is designed to deter sex offenders from repeat offenses.

The law also requires pet stores, breeders and animal shelters to check the registry before selling animal companions or offering them for adoption, and prohibits them from giving custody of animals to anyone named in the registry, according to the Animal Law Coalition.

The law was prompted by 362 recent animal abuse cases in Suffolk Country, including some rather horrifying incidents that received enough media attention to bring the issue into the public awareness, generating support for the bill.

This is, apparently, the first such database in the USA, despite several prior efforts. Earlier in 2010, lawmakers in California and Tennessee rejected similar bills, and Colorado shot one down in February of this year, but advocates are marching onward. The Animal Legal Defense Fund has organized a national campaign to promote similar legislation across the USA. Nationwide animal abuse registries would make it harder for serial abusers to bypass the restrictions of one county or state merely by moving to another.

According to Care2:

Registries like Suffolk County’s could also prevent crimes that hurt humans. A person who abuses or kills animals is five times more likely to commit violence against humans and four times more likely to commit property crimes, according to a Business Week report on a 1997 study by Northeastern University and the Massachusetts SPCA.

You can see Suffolk County’s new online animal abuser registry here.

Action Alert: Domino’s & “Gestation Crates”

Posted on 13 May, 2012 by Veganistan

Domino’s buys meat from factory farms where pregnant pigs spend their lives trapped in stalls barely bigger than their bodies, called “gestation crates.” They can’t even turn around. Soon after they give birth, they’re re-impregnated. And once their bodies can’t physically endure the constant pregnancies and confinement any longer, they’re killed.

The Humane Society of the United States recently released an undercover video of abuse at factory farm. While other major brands have promised to phase out these cruel practices, Domino’s is continuing to profit from this horrific suffering.

Domino’s can take a very simple step to help eliminate this sort of cruelty. It’s the second largest pizza chain in the world, and eliminating gestation crates will set an incredibly powerful example. Even better, as a huge company buying literally tons of food, if Domino’s changes its practices to stop buying meat from abused animals, others will be forced to follow.

Please sign the petition at Change.org.

Bill Maher on Ingrid Newkirk’s ‘Free the Animals’

Posted on 1 May, 2012 by Veganistan

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” has written a poignant (and, as usual, entertaining) article on the new release of Free the Animals, Ingrid Newkirk’s celebrated book that “tells the riveting, real-life story of the people who put on disguises, use fake IDs, or jimmy their way into laboratories in order to carry out the daring rescues of animals used in experiments and of the insiders, the whistleblowers, who risk their jobs to help them.”

One of those rescues involved Britches, an infant macaque monkey who had his eyes stitched closed and some kind of electrical box put on his head in a really lame and truly bizarre experiment. When PETA released photographs of Britches with his eyelids sewn shut, it was a PR nightmare for his tormentors, who switched to doing more benign things — not as benign as, say, knitting, but at least they stopped using baby monkeys.

Maher discusses the progress that has been made since the book was first published twenty years ago, and the work that is still to be done.

Which brings us to something else that’s changed since the book was first released: the widespread awareness that writing letters to your member of Congress isn’t enough and that bold action is needed to get animals out of laboratories, where dogs and rabbits are treated as though they were pieces of lab equipment. That’s something that the surprisingly normal members of the Animal Liberation Front discovered and is discussed in Free the Animals

You can read the full HuffPost article here, and you can buy the book here.

“Free-Range” Poultry & Eggs: Not So “Free” After All

Posted on 30 April, 2012 by Veganistan

United Poultry Concerns has published a critical analysis of practices at poultry farms advertising “free range” eggs and meats. Some highlights:

Birds raised for meat may be sold as “free-range” if they have government certified access to the outdoors. The door may be open for only five minutes and the farm still qualifies as “free-range.”
Apart from the “open door,” no other criteria such as environmental quality, number of birds, or space per bird, are included in the term “free-range.” A government official said: “Places I’ve visited may have just a gravel yard with no alfalfa or other vegetation.”
“Free-range” hens are typically debeaked as chicks at the hatchery the same as battery-caged hens. Debeaking is a painful facial mutilation that impairs a hen’s ability to eat normally and preen her feathers.
Typically, 2,000 to 20,000 or more hens — each hen having one square foot of living space the size of a sheet of paper — are confined in a shed with little or no access to the outdoors. If the hens can go outside, the exit is often very small, allowing only the closest hens to get out. And the “range” may be nothing more than a mudyard saturated with manure.
“Cage-free” means that, while the hens are not squeezed into small wire cages, they never go outside. “Cage-free” hens are typically confined in dark, crowded buildings filled with toxic gases and disease microbes the same as their battery-caged sisters. And like their battery-caged sisters, they are painfully debeaked at the hatchery.

The article also includes findings from visits to specific poultry farms claiming “free range” practices.

You can read the full article here.

URGENT ACTION: Tell the USDA not to eliminate inspections of “poultry” facilities.

Posted on 28 April, 2012 by Veganistan

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently inspects all chicken and turkey carcasses for anomalies such as bruises, bile, and feces before they are sent to “processing.” Such inspections function as critical checks and balances for human health and animal rights. Unfortunately, the USDA is now considering a pilot program that would eliminate that mandatory inspection and allow private poultry processing plants the choice to monitor themselves… or not.

The USDA is holding a public commenting period on this proposed change right now. Please sign the petition opposing the privatization of poultry inspection before the public commenting period ends.