Green Options

The Meatrix is a clever animated short that explains how incredibly cruel, destructive and dangerous factory farming truly is. Even the recent over-hyped outbreak of swine flu has been linked to poorly managed factory farms in Mexico, that are actually owned by US Agribusiness giant Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest industrial pork producer. “Industrial farms are super-incubators for viruses,” said Bob Martin, former executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Animal Farm Production, and a vocal critic of “contained animal feeding operations.”

Irish scientists have discovered that adding just a small amount of fish oil to the diet of cattle can vastly reduce the amount of methane produced by, ahem…cow farts.

Climate scientists have long known that, pound for pound, methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping the suns rays, making it a highly potent greenhouse gas. An incredible 900 billion tonnes of the noxious fumes are produced each year by methanogen bacteria that live in the digestive systems of ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats.

Who do you want to be the next President of the United States of America?

(A) An unbranded cow.

(B) A politician who doesn’t listen to his/her associates (AKA “The Decider”).

(C) A tool of war.

(D) None of the above.

Image credit: maverick. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved October 28, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maverick

What’s the latest thing in the urban farm movement? What’s the Mini Cooper of the bovine world? What will, according to seriouseats.com, “gives 16 pints of milk a day… keep the grass mown and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer?”

It’s the versatile, efficient, and in my opinion, cute Dexter. The perfect old-fashioned, family cow.

Photograph from scott361 on Flickr

People often refer to non-dairy milks, such as soy and rice, as "alternatives to" or "substitutes for" cow’s milk, and the dairy industry scathingly calls them "imitation milks." By definition, the words "alternative" and "substitute" imply that the thing they are being measured against is the superior choice; that is, you choose the "substitute" when you can’t get the real thing, and so on.

However, I don’t like the use of these terms

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In my 15+ years of animal and vegetarian/vegan advocacy, I have answered countless questions – some smart, some thoughtful, some antagonistic, some ridiculous, and some over and over and over. Some people seem to think that by virtue of being vegan you hold degrees in nutrition, philosophy, anthropology, animal husbandry, ecology, and the culinary arts and often proceed to cross-examine you on each of these topics. Every vegan or vegetarian has been on the

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