Me: Vegan

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“Pittsburgh, PA, USA

In honor of World Week for Animals in Laboratories, folks decided that the labs hidden behind fancy names and large buildings in the city needed a more visibility.

One building, Mellon Institute in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh, contains multiple animal testing facilities inside.

Large tagging stickers with ‘Animal Research Torture Happens Here’ and ‘Animal Research Torture Facility’ written on them with the word ‘Research’ scratched out were placed on the sign on the front of the building and on posts around the building.

On the rear side of the building, ‘Animals Die Here’ was painted on the side that faces the street.

There are several other animal torture facilities in the area. This is but one that hides behind the facade of being a welcoming historical landmark or university building. Behind the walls, animals suffer and die each day.”

Excerpt from STOP UBC ANIMAL CRUELTY facebook page:

On January 25, 2008, the UBC student newspaper, the UBYSSEY, ran a cover story, “Cruel Intentions? Animal Testing at UBC,” that included some startling and disturbing findings. I’ve included excerpts from UBYSSEY reporter, Marc Serpa Francoeur’s 2008 piece. In his article, Francoeur wrote:

“UBC is one of the largest bio-medical campuses in the country. The ACC [Animal Care Center] distributes some 100,000 creatures, both large and small, to dozens of UBC affiliated research projects.”

“According to the Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC), the numbers of animals used in ‘science’ in Canada have increased significantly in the past decade, with over 2.5 million animals in 2006, up from less than 1.5 million in 1997. In fact, 2006 saw the highest number of animals used in research since 1975. As the home of a sizable and rapidly expanding industry of animal experimentation, UBC appears to be at the forefront of these trends.”

“…UBC maintains over thirty animal care facilities across its campus and throughout the rest of the city.”

“Harvey Clark describes a recent shift in Canadian research from the use of companion to farm animals and from larger to smaller animals in general; a process he characterizes as ‘refinement’ of research practices. ‘Pigs are probably the main large animal that’s used,’ says Harvey Clark. ‘We haven’t seen dogs used in research at UBC since 1992.’”

“While the wide majority of the animals used each year are rats, mice, and fish, there are over 5,000 subjects from other species like sheep, pigs, rabbits, cats, and non-human primates. Harvey Clark views the use of these animals in research as ‘consumptive use’ and equates it to the use of animals in food production.”

“According to the CCAC, experiments in Canada are divided into four different ‘Categories of Invasiveness.’ In 2006 while about one third or over 800,000 experiments caused ‘little to no discomfort or stress,’ another third caused ‘moderate to severe distress or discomfort.’ Additionally, over 7 percent, some 180,000 animals, were subjected to the highest level of invasiveness, ‘severe pain near, at, or above the pain tolerance threshold of unanaesthetized conscious animals.’ This quantity is more than double proportionately and well over three times in number than the mere 55,000 or 3 percent of animals used in this way in 1998…”

“As for the nature of the experiments, while some 30 percent were related to medical purposes in 2006, roughly 10 percent, some 238,000 animals were used in the ‘regulatory testing’ of non-medicinal products. While the number of animals consumed for this purpose has been relatively consistent over the past decade, the proportion subjected to the highest level of invasiveness has risen from less than 20 percent in 1998, for instance, to nearly 60 percent in 2006. All told, non-medicinal product testing represented well over 60 percent of the total number of animals subjected to the highest level of invasiveness in 2006.”

“Most notable perhaps, has been the continued use at UBC of non-human primates in neurological experiments. Recently, the rhesus macaque, an Asian species, has been used extensively in Parkinson’s disease research. The monkeys are typically subjected to brain damage which models the degenerative disease and then treated with various methaphetamine and electroconvulsive shock therapies.”

So, mevegan is undertaking a project suggested by many readers to post Veganized recipes of some favorite recipes that are either difficult or ‘impossible’ to make Vegan.  We are looking for submissions of non-Vegan recipes that mevegan will Veganize and post.

Put on your thinking caps folks and send in as many recipes as you can think of!

CNN has been on fire lately.  Last week, on Issues with Jane Valez-Mitchell, she broke the story of an Organic veal farm in Maine that was subjecting new born babies to levels of cruelty unimaginable to a normal person’s mind.  This is the type of farm that many people tell themselves is “better, or at least less cruel” to the animals.  Nonesense, go Vegan!

So today, I stumbled upon another article on CNN.com from an author by the name of Johnathan Foer who writes passionately of the need for a Vegetarian diet.  He is also very critical of mainstream dietary information sources, stating that “We are constantly lied to about nutrition.”  I highly recommend this article, not to support the mainstream media, but hey, when they’re right, they’re right.  Enjoy:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/30/eating.meat.jonathan.foer/index.html

This week the epically funny, always contraversial show South Park took on the issue of the Japanese Whale and Dolphin slaughters.  Obviously both sides got it rather viciously, but then that’s why we love South Park.  Most of all, this is terrific exposure for both the Sea Shepherds as well as the issue of illegal Whale killing.  Check out the episode below:

http://www.xepisodes.com/southpark/episodes/1311/Whale-Whores.html

and in case that doesn’t work, try comedycentral.ca

Ah, this week we have Vancouver’s good friend Robert Belcham.  First I’d like to take a moment to make fun of his weight.  Ah, that was fun.   The only reason making fun of his weight is a fun as it is for me is because he runs a restaurant which sells the most foie gras (fatty liver) in Vancouver.  That is a seriously dubious honor Robert.  In his facility one may perchase a foie gras appitizer for $30, or an entire “lobe” of it for $125.  Beyond that, he offers Pigeon and foie gras,  a foie gras mousse terrine, among other things…  When his shit hole of a restaurant became the target of local animal rights groups (many, many of them) rather than do the right thing and remove this cruel, disgusting, unpopular item from his menu, he turned around and added foie gras to nearly every item on the menu.  That’s like saying ‘fuck you to all the customers and non customers, I’m gonna do what I want coz I can!’

Several weeks ago, Robert felt it fitting with his total hatred of all animals, human and non human alike, to host a infant pig roast.  He then stuffed the little tiny baby pig’s dead body FULL of foie gras and served it to humans, the poor, poor sods.  A few weeks after this, Belcham was caught assulting two young, female activists who were, legally protesting outside his restaurant.  One woman was grabbed and yanked by the arm, and another had a pail of water dumped on her head!   Robert Belcham is insane.  He is a deeply disturbed individual in serious need of a hug, advanced therapy and a long period away from the general public.

Please give him a call at: 604-288-7905  and send him and e-mail at: info@fuelrestaurant.ca

Let him know that it’s time to drop the foie gras and do what’s right!

It has been a while since my last post.  I suffered some “technical difficulties” which lead to me not being in a writing mood for a few weeks.

This past weekend was the annual Animal Law Conference at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR.  Lewis & Clark is a wonderful school of Law, specialising in Environmental and Animal Law.  The conference features several panels per day each with two expert speakers on a wide variety of topics from dog fighting, factory farming and street level activism, to a Holocaust Survivor’s views on Animal issues, global warming, media relations, and criminal prosecutions.  Virtually everyone in attendance is either a lawyer or law student.   Anyone would benefit from attending, however the majority of the subject matter is quite “wordy” and industry related, thus it is recommended to have some amount of legal education.

This year crowd favorite author Steven Wise spoke about factory farming issues and his new book informally titled “The 3 holocausts of Bladen County”  though formally titled:  “An American Trilogy.”  He spoke about the minascule town of Tar Heel, North Carolina which, according to the 2000 census has a population of 70 people.  Tar Heel is also home to the world’s largest slaughterhouse owned by Smithfield Foods.   The plant is nearly 1,000,000 square feet, has approx 5000 employees, and murders nearly 40,000 pigs EVERY GOD FORSAKEN DAY!

Former and current prosecutors Scott Heiser and Heidi Moawad spoke about recent or landmark animal cruelty cases and some of the challenged of convincing prosecutors to proceed with charging the offenders.

This year’s conference was a great success!  I had the priviledge to attend even though I am not a lawyer or law student.  Each session is 1 1/2 hours long with 15 minute breaks between, and 100% VEGAN breakfasts and lunchs are served each day.  It is a two full day conference that runs from 9am-5pm.  I found this to be the ideal set-up having gone to other conferences during the summer where each session was much too short given the wonderful speakers, and the talks often ran very late into the night, up to 11pm!

Conferences are best enjoyed when the speakers and attendees are well rested, well fed, well informed, and given enough time to fully appreciate each set of speakers with time for questions.