President Obama "pardoned" a turkey named Courage yesterday at the White House, taking part in an annual tradition that dates back to 1989. Courage will be sent to Disneyland to live out his life - probably a year or so, because turkeys bred for meat are too large to survive much longer. Obama joked about eating turkeys, but I don't find it funny to think about their deaths and their suffering.
Obama also sent out a mass email yesterday that said:
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love . . . So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
I look forward to that tomorrow. That day when children will ask why the turkey is the symbol of Thanksgiving, and are told that long ago, people used to eat turkeys on Thanksgiving. Before the world was a more peaceful place.
In the meantime, we still have Fur-Free Friday in the U.S., on the day after Thanksgiving, to raise awareness of the cruelty of fur. Find an event here, and speak out against fur.
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I wasn't going to blog about Martha Stewart's vegetarian Thanksgiving show, but when I saw positive coverage of the show on Vegdaily.com and Vegan.com, I had to set the record straight.
Martha Stewart featured some vegetarian and vegan Thanksgiving recipes, but did not do a vegetarian-themed show. Some of the segments were very anti-vegetarian.
I have a love/hate relationship with Martha Stewart. I used to subscribe to her magazine, and I love her crafts, her style, her eye. In 2005, Stewart narrated and appeared in an anti-fur video, and her daughter Alexis is a vegetarian. But I stopped buying the magazine when she went to prison, and I cringe whenever I see her cooking meat, cracking eggs and pouring milk into mixing bowls. So when news went around that she was doing a vegetarian Thanksgiving show, I was cautiously optimistic. I was disappointed.
Her first guest was Robert Kenner, producer of the documentary Food, Inc. Stewart started by mentioning Oprah being sued by Texas cattlemen for disparaging beef, so I couldn't help but wonder if the segment was influenced by fear of a libel suit. During this segment, Kenner and Stewart blame obesity, diabetes and heart disease on corn and soy. After mentioning that animals in factory farms are "tortured," Stewart says to the audience:
Go to your local farmers and support local farm community (sic) as they are trying very hard to provide you with poultry and pork and beef that is grass-fed, that isn't sent to the feedlots.
Her second guest was Joel Salatin, one of the farmers featured in Food, Inc. Salatin's farm, Polyface, produces "pasture-based" beef, pork, poultry and rabbit meat. The Polyface website explains how the animals are rotated to different pastures on a daily basis. And that they respect and honor the animals. You can't make this stuff up - a two-faced farm called "Polyface" claims to respect and honor the very animals they slaughter and sell.
When asked whether the entire country can be fed with meat produced in this way, Salatin naively responds, "Absolutely." Stewart ends the segment by thanking Salatin for "so honorably preserving the rich heritage of American farming."
Neither of these segments had anything to do with vegetarianism. Vegetarianism has nothing to do with feeding grass to cows or buying locally produced meat. It's about not eating meat. I didn't expect Martha Stewart's vegetarian Thanksgiving show to promote veganism, but I did expect it to promote vegetarianism. But sadly, today, too many people believe that caring about animals is about eating them with full awareness of their suffering.
Both segments also promoted the myth that Americans can continue to eat 9 or 10 billion land animals per year, and we can destroy and deforest enough land to raise these animals on wide pastures without annihilating our wildlife and our environment.
Only 3% of the beef produced in the U.S. is grass-fed, and already, thousands of wild horses are displaced by this relatively small number of cattle.
The only reason we are able to produce enough meat to satisfy American appetites is because factory farmed animals are raised on intensively grown grain. As environmentally destructive as feedlot beef is, the land used to produce that beef is minimized because the grain is grown in dense, high-yield monocultures and the animals reach slaughter weight faster on grain than on grass. Factory farming started because scientists in the 1960s were looking for a way to meet the meat demands of an exploding human population. In a report titled, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America," the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production wrote:
Animal agriculture has experienced "warp speed" growth over the last 50 years, with intensification resulting in an almost logarithmic increase in numbers. The availability of high-yield and inexpensive grains has fueled this increase and allowed for continually increasing rates of growth in order to feed the burgeoning human population.
To further annoy me, in another segment in this same episode, Stewart says to Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals (Buy Direct), "I've been thinking a lot about the animals, and I think backyard animal husbandry is the way to go."
I also have to disagree with Foer's characterization of the episode. Foer wrote that Stewart devoted, "an entire show to the horrors of the meat industry without feeling a need to offer the industry a voice." As a producer of beef, pork, poultry and rabbit meat, Salatin was the voice of the meat industry. Not factory farmers, but the meat industry, nonetheless. And Stewart agreed with and praised Salatin, wholeheartedly.
This week, Gary Steiner eloquently discussed the issue of humane meat in an op-ed in the New York Times, titled, "Animal, Vegetable, Miserable":
Even if it is raised "free range," it still lives a life of pain and confinement that ends with the butcher's knife . . . [M]ost people just don't care about the lives or fortunes of animals. If they did care, they would learn as much as possible about the ways in which our society systematically abuses animals, and they would make what is at once a very simple and a very difficult choice: to forswear the consumption of animal products of all kinds.
We don't need more grass-fed beef, and we don't need more people raising chickens in their back yard. To save animals and to save the environment, we need to reproduce less and we need to spread veganism.
I'm sure that my love/hate of Martha Stewart will continue. I'm glad that Stewart discussed animal suffering and provided some vegan and vegetarian recipes, and very glad that she mentioned that she's going to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving at her daughter's house. But this episode did not live up to its promise.
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Vegan cookbook author, Sharon Valencik.
My friend and vegan cookbook author, Sharon Valencik, was invited to appear on a TV show earlier this month, but the invitation was revoked when one of the advertisers - the dairy industry - objected.
I was livid. I was angry that the producers allowed their content to be manipulated by an advertiser. I was angry that the dairy industry felt so threatened, they had to try to silence a cookbook author. Of course, their actions were part of their larger efforts to continue to use and oppress animals in any manner they wish, without criticism.
In an exclusive interview, Sharon talks about her experience, and gives a free vegan dessert recipe!
Read the interview, then show Sharon some love by buying her book!
Photo by Milan Valencik
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Wild horses rounded up by BLM.
The Bureau of Land Management's latest proposal to round up wild horses says they are trying to prevent "further range deterioration." If they're worried about range deterioration, shouldn't they ban the grazing of tens of millions of cattle and other domestic livestock on public lands?
These are not theoretical livestock, hundreds of miles away from the horses. If you look at the map of the "capture area" (outlined in yellow), these cattle grazing allotments (outlined in green) are inside the Calico Complex area where the BLM proposes to remove the horses because they claim to be concerned about range deterioration.
Not only are the livestock in the horses' territory, but they are inside a National Conservation Area. Animal advocates are well-aware that the word "conservation" does not mean that animals will be protected. But the word conjures up images of saving wildlife. Not displacing wildlife in favor of private livestock interests.
What you can do: First, go vegan. The horses are being removed from their natural habitat because they compete with domestic livestock grazing on public lands. Second, submit comments on the BLM's proposal for the removal of wild horses from the Calico Mountain Complex. The comment period was just extended to November 22, 2009. Send comments to:
Dave Hays, Field Manager
Black Rock Field Office
BLM Winnemucca District Office
5100 E. Winnemucca Blvd.
Winnemucca, NV 89445-2921
Email: wfoweb@nv.blm.gov
Oh, and the BLM's plan to put wild horses on "preserves" is similarly offensive. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who is a hunter and a rancher, stated in an October 7, 2009 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
[A]rid western lands and watersheds cannot support a population this large without significant damage to the environment. To prevent starvation of animals and to protect the lands from over-grazing, the BLM each year moves thousands of wild horses to short-term corrals and long-term pastures.
Salazar's letter somehow fails to mention that while there are 37,000 wild horses eating vegetation on BLM's public lands, tens of millions of cattle and sheep are allowed to graze on that same land. Hmmm. Must've slipped Salazar's mind.
Jeff T. Green / Getty Images
Addendum: The Preliminary Environmental Assessment for the Calico Complex wild horse capture plan makes it plain that the horses are being removed because they compete with cattle. After determining that the cattle and horses cannot coexist for much longer (p. 34), the BLM considered several options, but not one of them included reducing the number of cattle allowed to graze in the area. Every option focuses on removal, sterilization and/or killing of the horses. Page 19 of the Preliminary EA shows that 2,498 cattle currently graze in the area, and according to page 22, about 3,095 wild horses live there.
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