Gelatin

Every holiday meal my Grandma would make several Jello dessert molds, which I always ate right up. You could count on finding at least 10+ boxes of said "food" in her cupboard at any given time. It is fascinating what we will eat when we are children...perhaps it is more amazing what people will continue to eat as adults when they have the ability to make choices for themselves and understand exactly what they are using to fuel their bodies.

Now, Kraft has a very glossy website detailing their Jello products, but, surprisingly, nowhere (that I can find at least) do they state what Jello actually is made of. But it does include this in its history section:

"During the early quarter of the 20th century, immigrants entering Ellis Island in New York City were served JELL-O gelatin as a 'Welcome to America.'” Nothing says welcome to a new home like desserts made out of animal bones, tissues, and other tasty treats!

Wait, so what exactly is gelatin? "It is derived from collagen found in the bones, cartilage, connective tissue, and skin of animals, traditionally cows. Most commercially produced gelatin nowadays is produced from pig skin. If you have ever roasted a chicken or ham, you made your own gelatin. The juices in the bottom of the pan contain gelatin rendered from the collagen, and if you put the roasting pan in the refrigerator, you'll find some of the juice setting into a gel."

Oh, and the Jello site also features a "Flavor Finder." Hizzah!

Jello is certainly the most famous gelatin based product, but I'm sure most people have no idea the sheer number of products that use it. I can't find a great list, but here is a decent discussion - Yahoo Answers. Just look at labels when you buy things, especially candy. I used to work in a cafe and would entertain myself by reading the labels of the food we sold, and explaining to my coworkers what exactly was in what they were eating. I was not being mean and never told anyone not to eat anything - I simply told them what they were putting in their bodies. This led one girl to storm out of the cafe yelling at me, "YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!" Unfortunately I'm not the one who filled the foods she eats with shit. Ah ignorance.

For vegetarian alternatives to traditional gelatin, check out this article.

Meanwhile a football star is in trouble for dogfighting.

"I want to apologize to the court, my family, and to all the kids who looked up to me as a role model," Vick told the judge. - AP

I love dogs as I do any animals. But why are they afforded the "luxury" of animal cruelty laws while the 300 million turkeys mentioned in the post below do not?

They aren't supposed to be "cute animal cruelty laws" or "domesticated animal cruelty laws" but ANIMAL cruelty laws, no hyphen necessary.

I often hear from meat eaters how it is disgusting that other countries eat dogs, cats, etc, but they see no issue with eating cows, pigs, etc. Is there not some fundamental issue here that needs to be dealt with? Any adult is intelligent enough to see (as long as they choose to) that meat is meat, no matter what animal it comes from. Nonsense.

A slap in the fucking face to 300 million turkeys (and anyone who cares about living creatures)

So President Bush continued the tradition of pardoning a turkey on Thanksgiving. His kind heart actually pardoned two turkeys. Lucky birds, huh?
I find this an absolutely appalling practice. Of course I am glad to see these two turkeys live through the only holiday when people eat the fucking mascot, but it is disgusting to see them put these two beautiful birds before the public in a nonsense ceremony while they will all be going back to the dinner table and feasting on the slaughtered bodies of the same birds. I absolutely don't fucking get it. It's not funny, it's not cute, it is sickening.

Meanwhile, the turkey pictured above, "Pumpkin," will be made the grand marshall of the Thanksgiving parade in Disneyland. Speaking as someone who worked in a Disney Theme Park, that is absolutely pathetic and hypocritical. Disney sells thousands upon thousands of turkey legs a year, from birds that are horribly altered to produce huge legs. The great majority of turkeys raised in the United States are pumped with so many drugs and genetically altered that they normally cannot stand up under their own weight. They're so heavy that their legs break under the strain.

To try to put it in context, we, in popular culture theory, celebrate Thanksgiving as the time the pilgrims and Indians came together and shared a meal. Of course, we slaughtered most of them, and put the rest on reservations. We raise millions of turkeys a year, only to slaughter them and make a holiday out of it. Wouldn't it be similar if, before driving the Indians from the land, the president would have pardoned two of them? Not because they committed any crime, but simply because they were Indians?

300 million turkeys slaughtered for no other reason than people get pleasure out of eating their flesh. 300 MILLION FUCKING TURKEYS that can feel pain.

300 million.

Excuses for Eating Meat #4 - I was raised eating meat

So was I.

I was also raised Catholic.

Now I am a vegan atheist. Go figure.

Next please....

I love Cattle Decapitation!!!

For those of you unfamiliar with vegetarian death metal, I highly suggest going to check out Cattle Decapitation.
They're on Metal Blade records and have been going strong for over a decade. Social consciousness is not something normally related to genres such as death metal, and i'm sure most of their listeners still eat meat. However, it's absolutely fantastic shit. The lyrics usually deal with topics such as treating humans how we treat animals, which means like shit. They have a new record coming out next January called "The Harvest Floor" which features artwork of humans being herded into a slaughterhouse:
That makes me happy.

Cattle Decapitation interview on PETA2

But cheese is okay...wait, what is "rennet" ?

While I no longer eat it, cheese kept me from being a vegan for many years. I had given up all other animal products, but as a midwestern boy with an Italian mother and grandma, I was raised on it, and found it the most difficult thing to give up. I figured it was alright since nothing had to die to make it...then I found out about rennet.

"Rennet is an extract from the fourth stomach of young ruminants, such as cows, goats, and sheep. This extract contains a number of enzymes which are designed to help these animals digest their mother's milk, and when added to milk, rennet will cause the milk to coagulate, forming the curds and whey which are so essential in the cheesemaking process." - Wisegeek.com

These stomachs are the by-product of making veal, which comes from slaughtered baby cows, sometimes only days old, depending on the type of veal. Yup, like these little guys - Unfortunately, most cheese is produced in this method, thus most cheese could not be made without slaughtering baby cows. That was enough to get me to stop eating it...well, and the fact that cow's milk is in no way fit for human consumption.

BUT, cheese lovers do not despair. If you can't get yourself to give up cheese, at least do the baby cows (and yourself) a favor by purchasing cheese made without stomach rennet.
Here is a solid listing of cheeses made with vegetarian rennet. I know the Whole Foods by me has their cheeses labeled as either "traditional" or "vegetarian" rennet. Of course it would be more truthful if it was "dead baby cow stomach" rennet, but oh well.

Anyone who calls themselves "pro-life" is a vegetarian!!! (Or a liar).

In the spree to demonize things we do not like, words are changed or substituted in order to either put down an opponent, or make yourself feel better. Thus, dead cow flesh becomes "steak," and dead pig flesh "pork." Likewise, if you're against abortion you become "pro-life" and if you're for abortion in any fashion, you are "pro-choice." Of course, both of these are nonsense terms.

This is not trying to open any debate on abortion in any manner, just to show the nonsense of labels and point out more positives for our animal friends and more negatives for our human actions.

So, it seems to me that if you are calling yourself "pro-life" you would have to be a vegetarian. There is no way around it. If you eat meat, you are agreeing to the butchering of innocent creatures, and in no way could this practice be defined as "pro-life." However, i doubt many in the pro-life movement see it this way, so these ones are outright liars. (Somehow animals aren't really alive...well, you know, unless they live in our houses and do cute things).

This does not put the "pro-choice" crowd off the hook, however. (Well, I guess it does for eating meat, as I can't find a way to tie them together at the moment, but...) If you call yourself "pro-choice" and say things such as "it's a woman's choice to do with her body as she wants," then she should be able to legally choose to do drugs and put any substance she wants into her body. It's her choice.

Personally, I'm a big fan of choice and believe we should be able to do whatever we want as long as it does not interfere with the right of anyone else to do exactly the same thing. Thus, if you want to shoot heroin into your eyeballs, go for it. In a truly free society you should be able to do as you please as long as you do not physically hurt the person or property of another.

So, if you call yourself "pro-choice" but are for drug prohibition, you're a liar. Both sides lose with their inflammatory labels.

Hooray for California and Massachusetts!

local government is a wonderful thing.
let me preface this by saying i am a classic liberal (something which most people who call themselves "liberals" cannot properly define) and so believe action like this must be taken at the state level, leaving the federal government to respect the constitution and only exercise the powers legally given to it. thus, actions such as these can only properly be taken at the state level, UNLESS the constitution is amended.

It is time to celebrate!
First, Massachusetts voters passed Question 3, better known as the Greyhound protection act, with 56% of the vote. The act effectively shuts down greyhound racing in Massachusetts, with violations bringing at least $20,000 in fines. Animals are not here for us to make money off of in this manner. Advocates against the ban argue the dogs are well treated, but in reality they are often raced to death, and when no longer useful, killed outright. Today the doggies have a victory, thanks to the voters.

And over in California, voters passed Proposition 2, better known as the Standards for Confining Farm Animals.
Those against the ban say it will be horribly destructive on the economy, but we shouldn't have an economy based on the suffering of innocent creatures. There is absolutely NO REASON we need to consume animal products to survive anymore. We are intelligent enough to have learned that we can be much healthier by NOT eating animals and their byproducts. If these farmers who are complaining were to use their land to harvest other non-animal commodities, it would make for a healthier populace and they wouldn't have to worry about treating animals better before slaughtering them.

So exactly what crazy measures does this act force upon farmers? It "prohibits the confinement of farm animals in a manner that does not allow them to turn around freely, lie down, stand up, and fully extend their limbs." Oh FUCK! You're right, that's fucking ridiculous. How dare these living creatures be able to lay down. Goodness. The Libertarian Party of California opposed the measure, and so here i must break with the party.

Will the measure hurt the profits of these farmers? Most likely. BUT, to me it is sick to make your living off of raising beautiful creatures only to stun them with a bolt to the head and then gut them, sometimes while they're still alive. Hens will no longer be able to be confined to small, battery cages. Often, egg laying hens have their beaks sliced off when they're still chicks, because if they didn't they would peck each other to death from being confined so close. Go figure.

Hooray for California and Massachusetts! The animals have a friend in you.

How to get people to eat less meat #1 - menu pictures

So the question arises, how do you get people to eat less meat?
My first suggestion is to add pictures to all menus showing how each food item gets to your plate.
For example, you're in a fancy restaurant, glancing at the menu. You come across a veal dish. Beside it would be a series of photographs, beginning with a calf being born. Then the baby cow seen immediately taken from its mother, and slaughtered when only a few days old. Next a photo of the butchered body, then the final dish.

Meanwhile, I glance over to a pasta dish, and see images of grains in the field being cut down, and made into pasta. Then tomatoes are ripped from the vine and smashed to make sauce. Finally, a photo of the finished product.

I would have no problem whatsoever with seeing what it takes to produce my pasta. However, it seems likely that most people would have issues with the veal. If you can look at the pure, unnecessary gore it took to produce your food, then by all means, feel free to eat it. But if you have any issues with this, then you shouldn't eat it.

Just a suggestion.

the truth behind petakillsanimals.com

alright, now there is plenty of solid criticism one can make of PETA, but the people behind petakillsanimals.com have taken it over the edge. (For solid arguments against PETA, check out Penn and Teller's show Bullshit.)

I found the site the other day when my girl told me how she heard about PETA members caught killing animals. When I tried to research the accusations I found an incredible amount of bullshit to slough through, the slickest being petakillsanimals.com

The website is a project of the Center for Consumer Freedom.
Sure it sounds good in their tagline that they promote personal responsibility and consumer choice, but in reality it is all just a product of infamous Washington lobbyist Richard "Rick" Berman. He began the "non-profit" in 1995 with $$$ from Philip Morris.

Over the years Berman has attacked many groups, including MADD, (whom he accused of using "junk science."
Another of his projects has been to dismiss the notion that high levels of mercury in fish are bad for you to consume. His largest donors include Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Tyson, Cargill, Outback Steakhouse, and Monsanto.

From what I understand, Berman's scheme goes something like this -
He approaches these big corporations to donate to these "non-profits" he is a part of, these non-profits then hire Berman's consulting firm to work for them, and so a great deal of the money eventually goes right back to Berman.

Indeed. Berman is the epitome of shady.

Vegan Bodybuilding

Just a note to add on to Excuse #2 below -

I recently discovered that there is an entire vegan bodybuilding community. I should not be surprised, but I found it very exciting nonetheless.

Check out these sites:

veganbodybuilding.com

veganbodybuilding.org

hooray!

Excuses for Eating Meat #3 - I'm at the Top of the Food Chain

The basic argument here is as follows: "I, a human, am at the top of the food chain and thus eat everything that is below me. To show my dominance over other animals, I eat them."

Okay, fair enough. I would buy this argument if the law of the food chain still applied to a modernized society where the majority have no idea where their food comes from, let alone have taken part in it whatsoever. Yes, if you are living out in the woods/jungle/etc and demonstrate to the other creatures that you are above them by eating their brethren, that is one thing.

On the other hand, if you are showing your dominance over the other creatures by eating 50+ wings at a time at Buffalo Wild Wings, then clearly the food chain does not apply. When you have removed yourself as much as possible from the animal world in order to have more comfort, then you cannot argue that the normal laws of that world still apply. Clearly they have been altered. It is normal for all of the other animals of the world to be naked and defecate wherever they please. If this is you, then certainly go ahead and use the food chain argument for eating meat.

Humans have been able to evolve and find ways to improve our situation. There is no doubt that we no longer need to eat other animals for our own survival, and because of that, the food chain argument is a moot point.

Next, please.

Excuse for Eating Meat #2 - Not Eating Meat Makes You Weak.

ha.

this is another common reason I have gotten from meat-eaters defending their diet of choice. It is quite true that I am rather skinny, but I was just as skinny growing up, when meat was pretty much a part of every meal in my household. Fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, etc do things can only strengthen your body, especially since only animal products contain cholesterol.

I am no nutritionist, but could certainly go on with it for quite awhile. Instead, meet Ultimate Fighter Mac Danzig, who is also a vegan -
Now, here's the thing - personally I see fighting of this sort as stupid and silly, BUT as they are all consenting to the ordeal, let them beat the crap out of each other. Animals, on the other hand, are not able to give their consent before you shoot them in the head to "stun" them. Anyways, the point here is that if veganism/vegetarianism made you as weak as the meat-eaters like to think, there is no possible way this man could ever be in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, right? Well, at least it makes sense to me...

Excuses for Eating Meat #1 - It Just Tastes Good

I think this might be the excuse that leaves me the most infuriated, and it is certainly one of the most often reasons I get from meat-eaters.

It reminds me of a scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the kids drive past a slaughterhouse and one of them begins to describe how the animals are killed. One of the girls gets angry, telling him to stop talking about it because "I like meat." But if you can't even listen to how it gets to your plate....yeah.

I don't think there is much I can say in argument with this excuse, as there is no debate to be found, it is simply an ignorant statement that takes nothing else into it beside sheer animalistic pleasure. Perhaps human flesh is delicious, is that any reason for me to kill my neighbor and fry him up on his grill as he has so many animals in the past? No.

This excuse offers no reasoned justification for eating meat, and thus just leaves me to shake my head.

Look for more in this series...there are quite a few excuses to say the least...

i need you to save me.

as i am sitting here, there is a fuzzy gray man on a chair by the window, enjoying a sunbath. his name is ashford (or "fang," if you like). I got him a couple of years ago from an animal shelter in the western suburbs of chicago. He can be a little crazy, (as can any animal), but I adore him. He spent about two years in and out of shelters, being returned at least once that i know of.

Please, please, please - if you are considering getting a pet, please go to a shelter. There are literally millions of animals that need a home, please give it to them. There is NO REASON TO GO TO A BREEDER - unless you want to condemn an animal in a shelter to death. Do not encourage breeders to continue this practice. And whatever you do, DO NOT purchase a dog or cat from a pet store. Most pet stores have stopped selling dogs and cats, but there are certainly ones who continue the practice.

Check out the Humane Society, they do good work.

And for everyone who does own a pet - look into their eyes. They don't want to die to be on your plate, do they? Neither do cows, pigs, or chickens. If you are okay with eating one animal, why not with another?

okay class, can someone tell me how "slaughter" can ever be "humane"?

Today is a little lesson in history:

The Humane Slaughter Act (1978)

Just a note to put things into context first - as a libertarian, I am certainly NOT a fan of the great majority of laws which our country enacts....that notwithstanding...

The Humane Slaughter Act is the only - ONLY law that does anything to protect animals used as livestock in the United States. Upton Sinclair's Jungle first brought the horrors of the slaughter industry to the public, and they were horrified (rightly fucking so). Why we are still not horrified, I do not know. We just had the largest meat recall in US history, and yet people continue to devour carcasses. but anyway....

This act allows for two methods of "humane slaughter" -
The first applies to "cattle, horses, mules, sheep, swine, and other livestock." The proceeding creatures must be "rendered insensible to pain" with a single blow or gunshot before being "shackled, hoisted, cast, or cut." The second applies to ritual slaughter, as in the Jewish and Islamic faiths. Here, anemia of the brain is induced by severing the carotid artery, and then proceeding with the slaughter.

Humanely Delicious.

Most of the time, there simply are not enough USDA inspectors to constantly oversee the millions of creatures being slaughtered. Corners are cut - as we saw with the stories recently of downed cows being ground up for our pleasure (and our dollar).

There are four approved methods of "stunning" - these are often ineffective.
These are chemical (by means of CO2 gassing), mechanical (either hitting the brain with a captive bolt or gunshot), and electrical (normally by attaching electrical current to the spine).

HOWEVER, the act does absolutely NOTHING for chickens, turkeys, or fish. Every year there are nearly 10 BILLION chickens slaughtered. 10 BILLION - that's 23 MILLION killed every single day.

Yet nothing is protecting these innocent creatures. Nothing.

Spring is coming up soon now. There will be countless numbers of baby chick images used to represent the season. Take a good look at one when you see it - along with it, there will be 22,999,999 others of its species killed that day. Happy Spring Murdering!

a little bit of the ultra-violence...

"There comes a time, however, when violence is seen as juvenile and boring. It is the repartee of the stupid and ignorant." - Anthony Burgess, "A Clockwork Orange Resucked"

In an update on the Marine from the last post, the establishment media, has pretty much said it was just a way for them to blow off some steam. Never mind the needless suffering they inflict. And to anyone who thinks this was an isolated incident, I have one word - HA.

Here's the article from ABC News.

Let us not forget that ABC is owned by Disney, who is responsible for countless movies praising dogs - the entire Air Bud series, Homeward Bound, Oliver and Company, etc.

There is NO EXCUSE.

Marine Throws A Puppy Off A Cliff

Yup, that's right. A video surfaced on YouTube (and has been subsequently taken off, thank you) of a United States Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff in Iraq. Apparently his name is David Motari.

HERE is an article on it.

Now, I have never been in the armed services, nor do i ever plan on being in the armed services, and it is certainly true that I do not know what it is like to be in a war/police action/"peacekeeping mission," BUT I do know that there is absolutely no excuse for hurting an innocent puppy, let alone throwing it off a cliff. I guess when we teach our soldiers that middle eastern people are pretty much all terrorists, then even the respect for wide eyed puppies is lost.
There has been speculation whether the puppy was still alive when said marine threw it off a cliff, with the Neo-Cons declaring it was dead first. By most rational accounts, it was alive. Well, here's the thing - why would you ever throw a puppy DEAD OR ALIVE off of a goddamn cliff?!?
Good Lord.

Another meat recall

This one comes courtesy of Meijer. They have recalled over two thousand pounds of frozen chicken entrees because of possible listeria contamination.

Read the whole story here.

Greatest Vegetarian Movie of All Time

Hands down, as far as I'm concerned, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is the greatest pro-vegetarian movie of all time. If all that you know about it is that Leatherface kills kids and has a weird family, go back and watch it.

At the time it came out, it was said to have many connections with Nixon, Vietnam, etc, but when the director, Tobe Hooper was asked what it was about, he simply stated, "It's about meat."

To view it just as a "horror" movie is to miss Hooper's entire point. It is a morality play (as most horror movies actually are), with the lesson being that meat is meat, and meat is murder, no matter what the source.

Early on in the movie, the teenagers are seen driving through Texas, where they come across a horrible stench, which could only come from a slaughterhouse. While one character is describing how the cattle are killed, another plays the part of the willfully ignorant public, crying out, "I like meat, please change the subject."

When Leatherface enters the film, we see him treating the kids how we treat slaughterhouse animals. My favorite is when he sticks one of the girls on a meathook:And thus the meat-eaters are turned in to meat themselves. Also of note are the scenes of torture, when the humans are seen in pain and yet we hear sounds of cows and pigs instead of human screams. Amazing.

Go and re watch the film, and make sure your meat eating friends are there to see it.

Disney, Children's Movies and Carnage

I was raised on a healthy diet of children's movies and television programming, as I am sure were many others. A great number of these had animals as the main characters - characters that we grew with and came to love.

One of the most popular was the film Babe. In the movie, we are overjoyed to see that even a little pig like Babe has worth, and maybe so do we. Millions have watched this film, felt for the character, perhaps even loved him. (He is pretty adorable after all). And yet...the great majority of those same people continue to eat the flesh of pigs.
where is the sense in this? Surely, children do not understand where their food comes from...but once those children become adults...where is the answer then?

Disney has made countless movies with animals as heroes, and yet in their parks you will find all kinds of slaughtered creatures for sale. Is there not something bizarre about buying a stuffed Chicken Little doll in a theme park gift shop, and then walking next store to buy fried chicken?

A Fun Game For the Weekend

Spring must be on it's way as I heard Pat and Ron on 720 calling a game from AZ...that makes me happy.
For the weekend, here is a fun game to play:
Take an entire day, and keep track of the minimum number of animals that have died for you to use in any way.
For example - if you put on your belt and it is leather, that's one dead. Leather shoes? that's at least one more.
And your meals - if you pride yourself on your ability to eat wings and you eat twenty of them, that is at least TEN DEAD CHICKENS.
So keep track of the cows, chickens, pigs, etc that were killed so you could use a part of their body.
Got your score? Now see exactly how many of those had to die in order for you to survive...

The Wealth and Luxury that WHO deserves?

If you watch TV In the Chicagoland area, it is impossible to escape commercials for Andriana Furs.
Their slogan/jingle is,"Feel the wealth and luxury that you deserve...Andriana Furs." I guess I am missing where any sort of luxury can come from this needless slaughter.

This is not even taking in the fact that many furs come from China, where they are routinely made from cats and dogs. You may think it is only slaughtered minks or rabbits you are wearing, while it could very well be a relative of the beloved family pet. No matter what animal it is, there is no reason EVER to wear fur.

Okay, perhaps this is a little much...if you are living in the mountains with absolutely nothing to keep you warm, and the only way to survive is to kill a bear with your own hands, skin it, and wear it, well then okay, i'll give you that.
But when you walk down to Michigan Avenue and drop a couple grand to wear the fur of slaughtered creatures...there is absolutely no excuse. period.

Can You Spare A Teat?

There is absolutely nothing natural about drinking cow's milk. Let me stress that once more, there is NOTHING NATURAL ABOUT DRINKING COW'S MILK. Perhaps I am too harsh. It is natural - If you are a baby cow.

Let us reverse the situation in order to get some perspective on this. Here's how it goes -
1. A member from a different species takes your mother, sister, girlfriend, wife, and female friends and pumps them full of artificial growth hormones and other unnatural things
2. This other species hooks their lactating breasts up to machines which extract their milk
3. The other species feeds this extracted milk to its children

Fucked up enough? Because this is exactly what we do to cows.

No matter how humanely the cows are milked, even if they are not pumped full of growth hormones, etc, take a step back and look at just how bizarre this practice is. Humans take the milk from other species, which is meant ONLY for their own babies, and feeds it to our own. That is absolutely disgusting. and bizarre.

Why do we eat?

a simple question that few actually seem to ask themselves while they are busy shoving shit down their throat.
of course, the first reason is simple SURVIVAL,
but seeing as how that is not so much an issue for the great majority of the United States, it is the second which we are most concerned about - PLEASURE

Now, if you are eating meat for a reason other than instinctual survival, it is pretty much a guarantee that you are consuming meat out of sheer pleasure. Of course, no matter what the method of slaughter, the only way meat can reach your plate is for an animal to suffer and die. if you are engaging in an act of pleasure that can only result from the pain of another creature, that is perverse and sadistic.

to that end, anyone who claims to be a peaceful person but continues to eat meat is ignorant at best, and a sick sadistic hypocrite at worst.

If you cannot watch your food during all stages of its production, you have a problem and need to ask yourself why you can eat the finished product, so long as you do not see what it took for it to get to your plate. simply, that is wrong.
I have no qualms about personally taking part in each and every step of production for every single piece of food i consume - if you cannot say the same, please examine what you are using for survival, and what you are using for pleasure.

go vegan.