OMNI
VEGETARIAN/VEGAN ACTION NEWSLETTER #41
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2017.
Edited by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Forward to help advance vegetarianism and veganism.
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OMNI’s OCTOBER VEGETARIAN POTLUCK is Wednesday, OCTOBER 11, 2017, at OMNI, Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology (2ND Wednesdays). We start eating at 6:00. All are welcome.
You may want to enjoy and discuss some old or new vegetarian or vegan recipes, to talk about healthier food, or you are concerned about cruelty to animals or global warming and climate catastrophe. Whatever your interest it’s connected to food; whatever your motive, come share vegetarian and vegan food and your views with us in a friendly setting. If you are new, get acquainted with OMNI’s director, Gladys Tiffany. OMNI is located at 3274 Lee Avenue parallel to N. College east of the Village Inn and south of Liquor World. More information: 935-4422; 442-4600.
If this subject is important to you and you are looking for meaningful, part-time volunteer work, consider coordinating the potlucks or editing this newsletter. Contact Dick or Gladys.
CONTENTS OMNI Vegetarian Action Newsletter October 11, 2017
Health and Nutrition
Follow-up from September:
The American Heritage Book of Indians, Purchased at Garage Sale
Gerry Sloan’s Cherokee Grandmother’s Cherokee Cooklore.
NPR Report, Navajo Source of Calcium--Ash
UAF’s Tamara Walkingstick, Edible Trees and Other Plants, Recipes (via Teresa Maurer)
More from PETA Global (Summer 2017). See September Vegetarian Action.
Dr. Neal Barnard. “Eating Fish Is Like Smoking Low-Tar Cigarettes: The Notion of ‘Healthy’ Fish Flesh Is a Myth.”
VegNews(Oct. 2017).
Vegan Halloween: “Trick or Eat: How can Vegan Parents Navigate Halloween…?”
“Frankenstein’s monster was a vegetarian….’I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment.’”
Books:
10th Anniversary edition of Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.
The Super Easy Vegan Slow Cooker Cookbook.
The No Meat Athlete Cookbook.
“Sysco Adds Meatless Burger to Lineup.”
FILMS
Marianne Thieme (Actor), Gertjan Zwanikken (Director) | Format:DVD
|
Protection of Animals, Do No Harm, Compassion
More from PETA Global (Summer 2017). See September Vegetarian Action.
“WAGS Star: ‘What Has That Animal Gone Through for You to Wear This Jacket?”
“Off the Hook: PETA Works to End Cruelty to Sea Animals. Suffering from Sea to Supermarket.”
“Let Lobsters ‘Rock On’! B-52s Lead Singer Fred Schneider Tells PETA Global Readers How He Came to
Call Lobsters ‘sea life, not seafood.”
Call Lobsters ‘sea life, not seafood.”
“PETA’s Indie Rock Album Animal Liberation Turns 30.”
VegNews(Oct. 2017).
Book Ad: Mercy for Animals by Nathan Runkle. What we can and must do to end the cruelties of factory farming.
“The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms” by Glenn Greenwald. The Intercept, 9 October 2017.
“The Meat of the Matter” by George Monbiot
Climate Crisis and the Veg/ Vegan Link
Cowspiracy
Annick de Witt and the Link
Health and Nutrition
Restaurant adjacent to OMNI reopened as “Hoppin’ John’s American Bistro,” with Susie, the original owner and well-known chef, again cooking. The menu shows many items for vegetarians: Chips and Dips, e.g. fried Zucchini with Chipotle Ranch, $7; Starters, e.g. grilled asparagus with Holandaise, $9; all of the 5 Salads because Susie will replace the meat with more veggies on request, $4 to $10; Sides, e.g. baked potato $4. Large attractive bar. The owner is Mike Roach.
FOLLOW UP ON Native American FOODS IN SEPT. Newsletter
OMNI’s September Potluck and Vegetarian Action led to many discoveries.
SERENDIPITY
At My neighbor Gerry Sloan’s yard sale I purchased The American Heritage Book of Indians (1961), chief editor Alvin Josephy, Jr. The Index contained a dozen references to various foods and their nations: Anasazi, Apache, Mississippi Valley, etc.
This led me to a rare cookbook once owned by his Cherokee grandmother, Susie Irvin: Cherokee [North Carolina] Cooklore: To Make My Bread--Recipes, Herbs, Wild Foods, History, the Feast (1951, 71pp.), edited by Mary Ulmer & Samuel Beck (not for sale). History, stories, photos, recipes. Gerry loaned me this precious book to show at the September Potluck.
Frank Scheide told me about this NPR report. (See Creasy 77 on ash.)
www.npr.org/sections/.../to-get-calcium-navajos-burn-juniper-branches-to-eat-the-ash
Aug 21, 2017 - To Get Calcium, Navajos Burn Juniper Branches To Eat The Ash ... Lillie Pete sifts the juniper ash before adding it to her blue corn mush.
Teresa Maurer, director of Fayetteville’s Farmer’s Market knew the following, mainly composed of recipes:
“YOU KNOW, PARTS OF A TREE ARE EDIBLE. Wild Foods from Arkansas Trees and other Plants” by Tamara L. Walkingstick, Ph.D. Associate Professor-Forestry Extension Associate Director-Arkansas Forest Resources Center University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service .
Introduction:
Many of our grandparents and parents used wild plants for food and medicine. We all know about Sassafras tea and the glorious taste of wild blackberries but we have perhaps forgotten how extensively wild plants can be used. In the early 1970's, information on native wild foods and medicinal uses of wild plants became very popular. The well-known naturalist, Euell Gibbons, reminded us that “you know, many parts of a pine tree are edible”. The objective of this fact sheet is to explore wild plants and trees as food sources. [Most of the 35 pages of this publication are recipes. –D] MORE https://mgozarks.com/images/docs/spring-ws-2016/Wild-Edibles.pdf
Introduction:
Many of our grandparents and parents used wild plants for food and medicine. We all know about Sassafras tea and the glorious taste of wild blackberries but we have perhaps forgotten how extensively wild plants can be used. In the early 1970's, information on native wild foods and medicinal uses of wild plants became very popular. The well-known naturalist, Euell Gibbons, reminded us that “you know, many parts of a pine tree are edible”. The objective of this fact sheet is to explore wild plants and trees as food sources. [Most of the 35 pages of this publication are recipes. –D] MORE https://mgozarks.com/images/docs/spring-ws-2016/Wild-Edibles.pdf
Become aware, and they will come!
“Sysco Adds Meatless Burger to Lineup.” NADG (9-16-17). “Food distributor Sysco this week added a Beyond Meat product, the Beyond Burger.” “Tyson Foods Inc. invested in the startup company last year” with “a 5 percent stake in Beyond Meat.” “Kroger grocery stores began offering the meatless Beyond Burger in meat aisles at more than 600 U.S. stores earlier this summer. Sysco is the nation’s largest food distributor.”
FILMS
Vegetarian Potluck and Vegetarian Action have shown or discussed Cowspiracy and What’s the Meat several times.
I have not seen or read a review of these. They might go in Health or Animals:
Death on a Factory Farm. DVD. Tom Simon and Sarah Teale (Director, Producer) Rated: A River of Waste: The Hazardous Truth About Factory Farms. 2009. DVD. Don McCorkell (Actor, Director), Drew Edmonson (Actor). | ||||||||
Marianne Thieme (Actor), Gertjan Zwanikken (Director) | Format:DVD
|
Protection of Animals, Do No Harm, Compassion
ANIMAL RIGHTS / VEGETARIANISM
“The FBI’s Hunt for Two Missing Piglets Reveals the Federal Cover-Up of Barbaric Factory Farms” by Glenn Greenwald. The Intercept, 9 October 2017.
The conclusion follows. For the entire article go to:
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/the-fbis-hunt-for-two-missing-piglets-reveals-the-federal-cover-up-of-barbaric-factory-farms/
This article includes graphic images some readers may find disturbing.
The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none. This imbalance has produced increasingly oppressive laws, accompanied by massive law enforcement resources devoted to punishing animal activists even for the most inconsequential nonviolent infractions — as the FBI search warrant and raid in search of “Lucy and Ethel” illustrates.
The U.S. government, of course, has always protected and served the interests of industry. Beginning when most of the nation was fed by small farms, federal agencies have been particularly protective of agricultural industry. That loyalty has only intensified as family farms have nearly disappeared, replaced by industrial factory farms where animals are viewed purely as commodities, instruments for profit, and treated with unconstrained cruelty.
In general, the core moral and philosophical question at the heart of animal rights activism is now being seriously debated: Namely, what gives humans the right or justification to abuse, exploit, and torture non-human species? If there comes a day when some other species (broadly defined) — such as machines — surpass humans in intellect and cognitive complexity, will they have a valid moral claim to treat humans as commodities whose suffering and death can be assigned no value?
The irreconcilable contradiction of lavishing love and protection on dogs and cats, while torturing and slaughtering farm animals capable of a deep emotional life and great suffering, is becoming increasingly apparent. British anthropologist Jane Goodall, in her groundbreaking book “The Inner World of Farm Animals,” examined the science of animal cognition and concluded: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined … They are individuals in their own right.”
All of these changes have been driven by animal rights activists who, often at great risk to themselves, have forced the public to be aware of the savagery and cruelty supported through food consumption choices. That’s precisely why this industry is so obsessed with intimidating, threatening, and outlawing this form of activism: because it is so effective.
Dissidents are tolerated to the extent they remain ineffectual and unthreatening. When they start to become successful — that is, threatening to powerful interests — the backlash is inevitable. The tools used against them are increasingly extreme as their success grows.
To call the FBI’s actions in raiding these animal sanctuaries a profound waste of its resources is both an understatement and beside the point. The real short-term goal is to target those most vulnerable — volunteer-supported animal shelters — to scare them out of taking care of rescued animals. And the ultimate goal is to fortify and intensify a climate of intimidation and fear designed to deter animal rights activists from reporting on the horrifying realities of these factory farms.
There is a temptation to turn away from and ignore this mass suffering and cruelty because it’s so painful to confront, so much more pleasant to remain unaware of it. Animal rights activists are determined to prevent us from doing so, and we should all feel gratitude for their increasing success in making us see what we are enabling when we consume the products of this barbaric and sociopathic industry.
“The Meat of the Matter” by George Monbiot. TRANSCEND Media Service.
ANIMAL RIGHTS / VEGETARIANISM, 9 October 2017
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/the-meat-of-the-matter/
Farming animals is as unsustainable as mining coal.
4 Oct 2017 – What will future generations, looking back on our age, see as its monstrosities? We think of slavery, the subjugation of women, judicial torture, the murder of heretics, imperial conquest and genocide, the First World War and the rise of fascism, and ask ourselves how people could have failed to see the horror of what they did. What madness of our times will revolt our descendants?
There are plenty to choose from. But one of them, I believe, will be the mass incarceration of animals, to enable us to eat their flesh or eggs or drink their milk. While we call ourselves animal lovers, and lavish kindness on our dogs and cats, we inflict brutal deprivations on billions of animals, which are just as capable of suffering. The hypocrisy is so rank that future generations will marvel at how we could have failed to see it.
The shift will occur with the advent of cheap artificial meat. Technological change has often helped to catalyse ethical change. The $300m deal China signed last month, to buy lab-grown meat, marks the beginning of the end of livestock farming. But it won’t happen quickly: the great suffering is likely to continue for many years.
So the answer, we are told by celebrity chefs and food writers, is to keep livestock outdoors: eat free range beef or lamb, not battery pork. But all this does is to swap one disaster – mass cruelty – for another: mass destruction.
Almost all forms of animal farming cause environmental damage, but none more so than keeping them outdoors. The reason is inefficiency. Grazing is not just slightly inefficient; it is stupendously wasteful. Roughly twice as much of the world’s surface is used for grazing as for growing crops, yet animals fed entirely on pasture produce just 1 gram out of the 81 g of proteinconsumed per person per day.
A paper in Science of the Total Environment reports that “livestock production is the single largest driver of habitat loss”. Grazing livestock are a fully automated system for ecological destruction: you need only release them onto the land and they do the rest, browsing out tree seedlings, simplifying complex ecosystems. Their keepers augment this assault by slaughtering large predators.
In the UK, for example, sheep supply, in terms of calories, around 1% of our diet. Yet they occupy around 4 million hectares of the uplands. This is more or less equivalent to all the land under crops in this country, and more than twice the area of the built environment (1.7 million hectares). The rich mosaic of rainforest and other habitats that once covered our hills has been erased, the wildlife reduced to a handful of hardy species. The damage caused is out of all proportion to the meat produced.
Replacing the meat in our diets with soya spectacularly reduces the land area required per kilo of protein: by 70% in the case of chicken, 89% in the case of pork, and 97% in the case of beef. One study suggests that if we were all to switch to a plant-based diet, 15 million hectares of land in Britain currently used for farming could be returned to nature. Alternatively, this country could feed 200 million people. An end to animal farming would be the salvation of the world’s wildlife, our natural wonders and magnificent habitats.
Understandably, those who keep animals have pushed back against such facts, using an ingenious argument. Livestock grazing, they claim, can suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in the soil, reducing or even reversing global warming. In a TED talk watched by 4 million people, the rancher Allan Savory claims that his “holistic” grazing could absorb enough carbon to return the world’s atmosphere to pre-industrial levels. His inability, when I interviewed him, to substantiate his claims has done nothing to dent their popularity. MOREhttps://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/10/the-meat-of-the-matter/
As the final argument crumbles, we are left facing an uncomfortable fact: farming animals looks as incompatible with a sustained future for humans and other species as mining coal.
That vast expanse of pastureland, from which we obtain so little at such great environmental cost, would be better used for rewilding: the mass restoration of nature. Not only would this help to reverse the catastrophic decline in habitats and the diversity and abundance of wildlife, but the returning forests, wetlands and savannahs are likely to absorb far more carbon than even the most sophisticated forms of grazing.
The end of animal farming might be hard to swallow. But we are a resilient and adaptable species. We have undergone a series of astonishing changes: the adoption of sedentarism, of agriculture, of cities, of industry.
Now it is time for a new revolution, almost as profound as those other great shifts: the switch to a plant-based diet. The technology is – depending on how close an approximation to meat you demand (Quorn seems almost indistinguishable from chicken or mince to me) – either here or just around the corner. The ethical switch is happening already: even today, there are half a million vegans in the land of roast beef. It’s time to abandon the excuses, the fake facts and false comforts. It is time to see our moral choices as our descendants will.
Global Warming, Climate Catastrophe, Change the System Not the Climate
“271 Million: The Amount in metric tons, of climate-changing pollution that was prevented by a 20-percent decrease in meat consumption by Americans between 2005 and 2014—about the equivalent of emissions from 57 million cars.” VegNews (July-August 2017), 19.
VegNews (Oct. 2017).
T-Shirt Ad by The Herbivore Clothing Company: “The World Used to Be Cooler: Fight Climate Change—Go
Vegan.”
Vegan.”
The Relationship Between Carnivorism and Global Warming.
Guest Blog: People Still Don't Get the Link between Meat Consumption and Climate ChangeBy Annick de Witt. Scientific American, April 11, 2016. See Vegetarian Action #38.
Contents: Newsletter #40 September 13, 2017
Wednesday Sept. 13 Potluck emphasized Native American Food Gardens and Cooking. Reference: Rosalind Creasy, Cooking from the Garden, “Native American Gardens.” Pp. 60-83.
Health and Nutrition
Enjoying Recipes from VegNews and NADG
Drawbacks to Meat: Deadly Pathogens Mutating
Industrial Farming Superbugs
Big Farms, Big Flu
Declining Effectiveness of Anti-Biotics
Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico
Protection of Animals, Do No Harm, Compassion
PETA Magazine, Summer 2017
Focus on Sea Animals
Sea World Changes
Eating Live Fish
Jon and Tracey Stewart Animal Rescuers
Tracey’s Book, Do Unto Animals
Global Warming, Climate Catastrophe, Change the System Not the Climate
Braun, Meeting Paris Goals vs Eating Meat
Krantz, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequence Underreports Harms of Eating Meat, but still an important film by one of the leaders of global warming resistance
Documentary Meat the Truth (2008) on Livestock Gas Emissions Relevant Today?
Fight CC: Choose Vegetarian/Vegan
MORE