Green Options

Just months after the swine flu pandemic panicked the world, varying strains of the Ebola virus have been discovered in pigs, and they may be jumping between swine and humans effortlessly.

Researchers, who reported their findings in the journal Science, are concerned that pigs are providing a melting pot where the virus could mutate into something deadlier. And they warned that the emergence of Ebola in the human food chain is “of serious concern.”

While the world quivers over a potential Swine Flu pandemic, a far deadlier outbreak of dengue fever has gone comparatively under-reported in South America and Australia.

Hundreds of thousands have been infected in South America, and in Australia the outbreak is being called the worst seen in 50 years. While the swine flu scare may be an overreaction in comparison, both outbreaks do highlight a clear link between environmental degradation and the spread of disease.

Did you hear about KFC’s offer to fill the potholes in Louisville and four other US cities? Well, they’ve asked to be allowed to stencil an ad onto the pavement in exchange. Predictably, PETA and their KFC Cruelthy campaign now want some of the action.

“KFC might concentrate instead on improving conditions for the chickens it abuses, but it won’t, so we’re offering to double the money that KFC offered the City of Louisville—if the city will use our ads against KFC cruelty on its potholes instead,” reads a post today on PETA’s blog.

Web developer Mark Middleton created AnimalVisuals.org to help expose the conditions animals face in factory farms through interactive, illustrated recreations from the animal’s perspective.

AnimalVisuals has only one “virtual environment” so far: the egg-laying hen’s battery cage. Complete with a sountrack recorded inside an actual factory farm, viewers are invited to read factual information about the intensive confinement at the bottom of the screen.

Few other foods are as fraught with environmental issues as meat. From the treatment of animals, to the environmental impacts of factory farms, to the recalls and health questions, it’s all become a rather meaty issue, pardon the pun.

As consumers demand better choices, those items appear at the market, often with confusing labels and overlapping terms that lead consumers to believe statements that may not be true. Take, for example, cage-free. In one’s mind, there may be visions of happy chickens running free, but in actuality, this only means the chickens were not enclosed in a cage. The birds could still have been raised indoors in overcrowded conditions, with no access to pasture. If you think these labels were designed to confuse you, well, you may be right.

Link to get your own free guide after the jump.

Water contamination by toxic chemicals appears to be the cause of a mutation which resulted in the deaths of thousands of bass larvae in Australia. The two headed fish survived a mere 48 hours before dying off en masse.

Dr. Matt Landos of the Australian College of Veterinarian Sciences specializes in aquatic animals, and says that this is the first time he has ever seen anything like this. He sees no natural explanation for the deaths and is pinning the likely cause on the chemicals being used by a local macadamia nut plantation.

The urban chicken movement is growing as more and more folks try to move away from factory farmed food and towards self-sufficiency.

[Creative Commons photo by Linda N.]

Why Chickens?
Chickens are pretty low-maintenance. Once you have your coop set up, you just have to make sure they’re fed, watered, and get to run around outside. Most people who raise their own chickens do so for the eggs, not the meat. Instead of buying eggs from a factory farm or from hundreds of miles away, urban chicken owners benefit from a cheap, local, reliable source of protein. Chicken poop is also a great fertilizer for your garden!

Long before the Puritans decided to cop a squat on Native American land and then had the first “Thanksgiving” meal featuring turkey meat, someone managed to discover that the turkey was a good bird to eat. Somehow, despite all logic, some hungry human looked at this rather odd-looking (okay, ugly) bird and thought, “Boy, that sure looks tasty!” Or maybe that lucky hunter was just so desperate that anything would suffice for food.

Whatever the case, turkeys found themselves on the menu. And then after 1621, turkeys became the feature of Thanksgiving–comprising the main course and finding their way into just about everything else, from stuffing to leftovers for the rest of the week.

While gourmands may give praise to the first turkey eater, turkeys themselves have very little to look forward to on Thanksgiving–the Black Thursday for these birds. Even if their intelligence level is as low as it has long been held to be, even amongst (the stupidest) animals, turkeys are yet another victim of the meat industry. Unlike other commodified creatures, though, turkeys practically have their own holiday…with celebration centered on eating them!

Thanksgiving is particularly black for more reasons than the simple acts of killing and eating living beings (however ugly and dumb). Like most other commercial meat industries, the turkey industry is riddled with cruel practices, from raising to transporting to “preparing” the birds that end up on human tables.

What’s the integrity of your organic milk?

The Cornucopia Institute’s Organic Dairy Products Scorecard pulls no punches in its ratings of organic milk producers.

Which brands are at the bottom?

The factory farms of Horizon, Aurora, Woodstock, Natural Prairie, and Shamrock.

The recently updated Organic Dairy Scorecard rates 107 organic dairy producers based on their answers to an in-depth survey asking about:

• the milk supply source (farmstead or open market)
• the amount of pasture time for the herd
• the use of hormones and antibiotics
• the health and longevity of the cows (cull rate)
• the source of replacement animals (organic or conventional farms)
• their organic farm certifier

“Consumers who pay premium prices for organic products do so believing that they are produced with a different kind of environmental ethic, a different kind of animal husbandry ethic, and social justice for family farmers. But not all organic dairy products are alike.” - Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst, Cornucopia Institute

In an exposé of factory farm dairy producers and the brands that threaten to take over the organic dairy industry, Cornucopia’s scorecard helps consumers all over the country to select foods best representing their values.

In an act of precognition, Mark Seall wrote a post today on EcoWorldly raising a number of questions about vegetarianism. While it would be near impossible to address all of his questions in one post, I do want to get the conversation started. I call his post precognitive because it provides a perfect segue to promote an event happening tomorrow: The Great American Meatout.

Every Spring, thousands of activists and educators get together at events all over the world to raise awareness of vegetarian diets. Despite the event’s name, it has in fact grown into an international phenomenon. You can find a calendar of events here to see what’s going on near you. This is certainly a great place to start in terms of resources, and I plan to address that further in my next post.

For today I want to look at Mark’s question, “Should we be eating animals in the first place?” Here’s my take…