The Grey Lady’s Vegan Debate

David Cassuto
They NYT recently featured an op-ed by Gary Steiner that lays out the challenges of ethical veganism in contemporary society.  I have my issues with the piece, which suffers from a rigidity that can be off-putting to people of all stripes.  More interesting, though, are the letters it generated.  Amid a few thoughtful exceptions [...]

Does the Winter Mean Fur Coats?

Simona Fucili
As the holiday season is approaching, one cannot help notice all of the fur ads you see in magazines and commercials.  The ads portray fur coats as a symbol of elegance and status but fail to show how the original owners of these coats met their gruesome deaths.  According to the Spanish animal-rights [...]

Eating Like a Rogue

Vanessa Merton
A bit of wisdom from Sarah Palin’s new book:
“If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore,” she wrote. “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of [...]

The Pig, The CAFO, & The Flu

David Cassuto
Excellent piece here regarding the pig CAFO/swine flu link and another one here about the inefficacy of the vaccine approach to prophylaxis.  And yet another interesting piece here about the intelligence and social nature of pigs.
In light of these developments, let’s consider the American approach to pigs: mass confinement in facilities so devoid [...]

“If Nothing Matters, There’s Nothing to Save”

Gillian Lyons

This past weekend New York Times Magazine published an excerpt of novelist (writer of Everything Is Illuminated) Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Eating Animals.  In the article, and by extension, in the book, the author talks about his lifetime of wavering vegetarianism, and why he has decided to raise his children vegetarian.
Reading [...]

Radio as Animal Enterprise — Some Further Thoughts on AETA

The Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for downing two towers in Snohomish County, Washington.  The ELF statement declared that: “AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines.”  No one was injured but the property [...]

Publishing Opportunity for Non-fiction Animal Prose

from the email…

Call for Submissions: Animals
For an upcoming issue, Creative Nonfiction is seeking new essays about the bonds—emotional, ethical, biological, physical, or otherwise—between humans and animals. We’re looking for stories that illustrate ways animals (wild and/or domestic) affect, enrich, or otherwise have an impact on our daily lives.
Essays must [...]

Bestiality and the Sex Offender Registry

If you were wondering whether judges in Kansas were paid enough, the answer is “NO.”    Judges in Kansas have to sometimes decide whether a person caught en flagrante with his ex-girlfriend’s dog (after sneaking into her garage) should have to register as a sex offender.  (Apparently so.)  That type of work, in my humble [...]

More on Cows and Climate

Following up on the post below, this article in the NYT bears a look.  Some in the dairy industry (e.g. Stonyfield Farms) are experimenting with feeding dairy cows green plants instead of corn to see if it lowers their methane output.  Guess what?  It does.
Cattle fed alfalfa and flax emit less methane than those fed [...]

Vilsack Going South on Us

My low expectations for Secretary Vilsack (USDA) were briefly raised with Kathleen Merrigan’s appointment to the #2 spot over there (see post here).  Then I read stuff like this, where Vilsack tells Congress that the “vast, vast, vast majority of farmers who are raising livestock are very sensitive” to the need to be careful about [...]

Live Skinning Raccoon Dogs and Other Tales from the Fur Farm

Sometimes, information presents itself that is so stirring, so disturbing, so utterly inconceivable that even those of us paying attention to these issues are shaken to the core.
Such was the case when I chose to view the undercover video of a Chinese fur farm taken by investigators of Care for the Wild, EAST International, and [...]

Swine Flu: Born in North Carolina

So it turns out that the H1N1 or (let’s call it what it is:) SWINE Flu is a Tarheel.  This outstanding post in Daily Kos tells the story about how the genes of this most recent virus are traceable to a 1998 outbreak at a Sampson County, North Carolina industrial hog facility.  The whole piece [...]

Pete Seeger, Hope, & Animals

Yesterday, I attended Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration (and benefit for the Clearwater) at Madison Square Garden.  The music and spirit of Seeger (and the Weavers) were a huge presence in my house during my childhood and remain so to this day.  To attend this event with multiple generations of my family was a blessing [...]

Animal Scholarship Opportunity in Social Text

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Social Text
SPECIES
We are soliciting papers for a special issue of Social Text titled SPECIES.  The past decade has witnessed the emergence and crystallization of a field of scholarship hailed as “Animal Studies” or alternatively, the “Post-human turn.”  While this relatively novel formulation reflects a self-conscious interest in animals, it [...]

It Depends on the Cheeseburger

David’s post on the morality of food choices is generating an important debate. What spurred the discussion was David’s assertion that “[a]s a matter of intellectual consistency, it makes no more sense to decry animal cruelty while eating a cafeteria cheeseburger than to condemn racism while attending a lynching”.
I also find it problematic to condemn [...]

Defending Diet Defensively

Interesting piece in today’s NYT about Jeffrey Masson and his path to veganism.  It’s heartening that in the space of a couple of weeks the Gray Lady featured Kristof’s piece (mentioned below) and this one, both of which deal with diet and animal rights.  Overall, I see articles like these as an enormous net positive [...]

Torture Hunting

Today on the ski lift, my seat mate told me about a hunting club that adjoins his property.  The club is comprised of people — all to the manner born — who get together to hunt animals and then not kill them.  For example, they “beagle,” which for them involves letting loose hunting beagles to [...]

Large Eggs, Small Eggs, No Eggs

This article about how the British Free Range Egg Producers Association encourages consumers to eat smaller eggs has been getting a fair amount of play (including this post at Feminist Law Professors).  The producers note that (for obvious biological reasons) it is harder and more painful for a hen to lay a large egg than [...]

The Congressional Canine Awards

From the Truth is Stranger than Fiction Desk: Last night were the Congressional Canine Awards. . .
At the awards ceremony,  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer eulogized his late dog, Charlotte, declaring: “God invented dogs for us, to give us the kind of uncompromising love that human beings need, and we in turn give them the [...]

Raising Duck Liver

D’Artagnan, Inc. has reluctantly agreed to stop claiming in its advertising that the ducks whose engorged livers are used in its foie gras are “hand-raised with tender care under the strictest of animal care standards.” They further have ceased saying that the ducks’ livers are “not diseased” but “simply enlarged.”  The company’s shift comes in [...]

Arne Naess: 1912-2009

I have written and will continue to write about the overlap between animal and environmental issues (and the laws such issues spawn) but what I have not yet done and now will belatedly do is acknowledge my intellectual debt to Arne Naess, who died this past Monday at the age of 96.  Naess was the [...]

Women, Animals, and Advertising

Very interesting thread at the always intriguing Feminist Law Professors blog discussing the images below and asking whether they are “Mocking Sexism or Mocking Feminism?”
The text in both ads (for Eram, a French shoe company) says (more or less): “No women’s bodies were exploited in this ad.”

Given the parallels noted by many scholars between [...]

The Super Slam: Ethics and the Trophy Hunt

It has been a busy news cycle.  Our economy continues to tank, the conflict in Gaza continues to rage, an unarmed man lying face down in police custody in Oakland is shot dead.  The list goes on.  Much other news, both good and bad, permeates the airwaves, print, and ether.
Faced with all this, I turn [...]

FDA Reversal on Off Label Antibiotic Use: A Big Picture View

Here’s a newsflash:  Neither Laura Bush nor Condoleeza Rice think the Bush Presidency has been the worst in history.  Hmmm, I guess I’ll have to rethink…
In other less newsworthy matters, the FDA has reversed itself and decided to permit “off label” prophylactic use of cephalosporin antibiotics for industrial, confined “food” animals.  Off label use refers [...]

Factory Farm Emissions: No Solution = No Problem

AP reports that EPA has exempted the nations “farms”  from having to “report to authorities the toxic, smelly fumes released from manure.”  I have complained elsewhere about the use of term “farm” to refer to industrial confinement facilities so I’ll not belabor that issue.  Instead, let me just note that the Bush administration has reached [...]

Turkey Pardons

Much has been said about the ritual of Thanksgiving and its accompanying slaughter of hundreds of millions of defenseless birds, most of who lived short lives of unrelenting and abject misery.  I have little to add to what’s already out there except my own indignation and sorrow.
But I do have something to say about the [...]

Hot Off the Email: National Institute for Animal Advocacy

I know nothing about this organization.  Can anyone fill us in?

NIFAA:  Because the most important factor in how a lawmaker votes on legislation is whether it could lose him or her Election Day votes

NIFAA:  Because grassroots organizing and political groups that endorse candidates are KEY to winning strong laws for animals—and [...]

More Art, Animals & Politics

Another friend of mine just turned me on to The Animal Lounge , where artist Jane O’Hara blogs about animals and art.
–David Cassuto