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Turkey: fiction and fact
With the holidays approaching and having recently bought some "turkey breast" slices for my dog, I started thinking about how turkey is raised.
Farm Sanctuary
I have a vision of the big, ugly birds plucking around in a grassy area, which I think I must have picked up in public school somewhere. But there's way too much turkey for sale for that vision to be accurate: Upwards of 250 million birds are raised for slaughter every year in the United States — 46 million of those are for the last Thursday in November alone.
According to the animal rights group Farm Sanctuary, turkeys are raised in warehouses, where they get three square feet to live in. To limit the damage done by fights in such crowded conditions, poultry farmers clip off the birds' beaks and toes without anesthesia. Turkeys and other birds are also excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be stunned prior to slaughter.
We've genetically engineered the birds to grow unnaturally fast and unnaturally large. Farm Sanctuary cites an article in an agricultural newspaper: "If a seven pound [human] baby grew at the same rate that today's turkey grows, when the baby reache[d] 18 weeks of age, it would weigh 1,500 pounds."
As a result of their unnatural size, the birds suffer from cardiovascular disease and "cowboy legs," a condition in which their legs, unable to support their weight, bow out.
Hardly the happy picture evoked by the multi-colored, hand-shaped birds your kids bring home from school.
So what are your choices? As with chickens, a "free range" label doesn't mean much. The World Society for the Protection of Animals suggests that you look for "pasture-raised" birds, ideally also bearing a "certified humane" label.
And, of course, there's always Tofurky.
| October 22 2010 at 10:16 AM
Outdoor gear contains petroleum, nanotech
Just when you think it's easy being green, along comes news like this: Much outdoor gear is made from petroleum products and, increasingly, nanotechnology, according to a new buyer's guide put out by the British group Ethical Consumer. The synthetic materials that repel water are largely to blame. (H/T Guardian)
Marek CECH / Shutterstock
The highest rating, out of 20, for a green waterproof jacket was just a 13.5, which went to Páramo. Also near the top were Lowe Alpine and Patagonia. Near the bottom were Mammut, Merrell, Timberland, North Face, and Helly Hansen. In addition to toxic and environmentally destructive materials, many of the companies have lousy animal and human rights policies.
In the backpack — or, ahem, "rucksack" — category, the highest score was just an 11.5, which went to Osprey. Gregory Toxic Free Pacs came in close behind, as did Lowe and Patagonia packs.
In addition to buying the higher-ranking products (Lowe, Páramo and Patagonia, as a general rule), lovers of the outdoors ought to let the companies know that they expect more. But you've got some personal responsibility here, too: Just because you're buying stuff to go outside in doesn't waive the general principal that you should buy only what you really need. You know who you are, gear hounds.
| June 16 2010 at 11:08 AM
Greener taxes, greener Easter
If you're like most San Franciscans, you still have your taxes to face. Don't forget that the tax code is beginning to reflect the need to go green, offering credits for making your home more energy efficient. Here's a guide to the new credits. Also remember to e-file to save paper.
The other thing many Bay Area residents will do this weekend is celebrate Easter. At heart, Easter, like Passover, is a celebration of Spring. And why celebrate flower season with fake dyes and plastics? Here are some more Earth-friendly ideas (H/T SacBee):
- Make eco-friendly Easter egg dyes using natural ingredients such as beets, grape juice and tumeric. Also remember to buy free-range, organic eggs.
- If your celebration includes chocolate, buy organic.
- Use recycled paper instead of plastic "grass," which contains BPA and PVC. Also pass on the plastic eggs.
- Reduce your emissions and increase your community by participating in a neighborhood Easter egg hunt instead of driving across town.
Share your suggestions in the comments.
| April 09 2009 at 11:19 AM
Using Porn To Sell Nature?
PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, announced today that a Super Bowl ad spot asserting that vegetarians have better sex had been rejected by NBC as too sexual. The networks broadcast steamy scenes in ads and programs all the time, particularly during the Super Bowl. That part is no surprise.
PETA, too, is known for its publicity stunts. It's likely that they never expected the ad to pass muster, and have used it purely to garner cheap publicity. The ad is, indeed, steamy. It features scantily, S&Mishly; clad women engaged in highly sexual movements and poses with vegetables. A woman also gets into a hot bath with vegetables, suggesting that she'll become part of a soup. Watch it:
'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad
The ad raises the question of whether it is OK to exploit women to persuade people to treat non-human animals more ethically—not to mention whether hot-lady-and-vegetables soup is vegetarian. (I checked PETA's site for any indication that the actresses in the ad were actually activists who voluntarily sexed themselves up for the cause: No such evidence.)
Another spot I've seen recently also aggressively sells sex in the service of a "natural" product. It's a Dove Go Fresh ad that runs on web TV sites like Sidereel and Hulu. (Curiously, Dove hasn't posted it anywhere on their site.) It features a klatch of scantily clad women claiming that Dove makes them rubable, tasty, and a series of other overtly sexual adjectives, spoken in bedroom voices. Go Fresh products have natural scents such as grapefruit but they aren't naturally scented, making the ad a prime case of greenwashing as well as an apparent contradiction to Dove's quasi-feminist marketing theme.
Do we need to push the already broad limits of sexuality permissible on television in order to sell the idea of nature? Are fresh vegetables and fruit scents so unappealing on their own? And does the lowest-common-denominator element of these campaigns undermine their self-proclaimed attempts to make the world a better place? Why are women always the odd-man out when it comes to ethical behavior (viz American Apparel)?
| January 27 2009 at 11:56 AM
Poultry And People
Prop 2, which ensures chickens the right to engage in basic life activities such as stretching their wings, passed yesterday by an impressive margin.
Prop 8, which detracts from human beings' rights to engage in the basic life activity of falling in love, also passed.
Californians are willing to pay—and tolerate some risk to the state's agricultural industry—to ensure farm animals their rights. They're also willing to pay to take them away from gays and lesbians when those rights have no real-world effects on heterosexuals.
According to the Williams Institute, maintaining legal same-sex marriage would have put an additional $64 million [pdf] in the coffers of state and local governments.
I'm proud of Prop 2's success and I'm happy for the chickens. But why is my right to fall in love so odious to my fellow Californians? Octogenarian men can legally marry twenty-something arm candy. Cousins can marry. Surely these unions do not uphold the noble ideals of marriage backers of Prop 8 claim justify the exclusion of same-sex couples (noble ideals which are wholly fabricated—the real origins of marriage date to tribal societies where women were property and virginity was fetishized not because it was virtuous but because paternity was just a theory. For a compelling analysis of evangelicals' facts and fantasies about sex and marriage, read this New Yorker article).
If any commitment of a noble rite makes a mockery of that rite, it is the act of voting to insert discrimination against a minority into the constitution. What greater abuse of democracy is there?
Sadly, votes based on hate do not respond to facts or economic analyses. And so, most progressive ballot measures fail if analysis suggests they will be ineffectual or expensive, but discriminatory measures sail through the realm of facts and logic unscathed. It's a major problem with California's ballot system, and, yesterday's presidential election notwithstanding, I don't think we will have a truly healthy national democracy until everyone agrees that facts—not religious fervor—are the currency of social discourse.
Still, voters were willing to act with something not unlike religious fervor in order to protect another helpless minority: the chickens. Why the difference?
Note: Some readers took this post to mean that voters should have chosen GLBTs over chickens, or that chickens now have more quality of life than gays and lesbians. Not so. I supported Prop 2. I only wonder why the empathy voters expressed for farm animals didn't extend to their fellow humans. True compassion, like true equality, doesn't pick and choose.
| November 05 2008 at 11:04 AM
Green Voters Guide
Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the election. (I'll also be busy voting, volunteering, and with any luck, celebrating, so I'm posting the night before.) Here's a quick rundown of the state and SF propositions that have green implications. (Sorry, East Bay voters, with an entire alphabet of SF props, I've got all I can handle.) I'm providing the vote on each that reflects environmental concerns. You could reasonably decide to vote otherwise if you also opted to base your vote on other issues.
Come Wednesday, I'll give you a rundown on which green issues to follow in the first 100 days of a new administration.
Prop 1A would create a less carbon-intensive form of transportation between major California cities. Green vote is yes.
Prop 2 would require that all farm animals be given room to stretch their limbs and turn around. It favors cage-free egg production. The green vote is a strong yes.
Prop 7 is an attempt to expand renewable energy in the state, but it's so badly written that all green groups give it the thumbs down. Green vote is no.
Prop 10 is a T. Boone Pickens handout masquerading as a renewable energy measure. It actually promotes the use of fossil fuels. Green vote is no.
Prop D would create financing for a redevelopment project at Pier 70. The development would replace what is at least marginally green space at present. With no criteria in place to encourage green—or even affordable—development, the green vote is no.
Prop H would push the city towards more renewable energy than the state requires. It could do that by creating a municipal utility, or it could do it some other way. (It would not, in any reasonable person's interpretation of the proposed law, "take away your right to vote." Seriously.) Concerns about cost could be valid, but the green vote is unmistakably yes.
Prop P would change the composition of the county Transportation Authority Board, giving more power to the mayor. The green vote (Sierra Club, Green Party, SF League of Conservation Voters, SFBG) is no.
Prop R would rename the Oceanside Water Treatment Plant after George W. Bush. It would be expensive to implement, and the plant is pretty effective making it clearly not the right choice for a snarky renaming effort. I'm not sure it's a green vote per se, but no is what everyone recommends.
(By the way, several of these suggestions differ from the endorsements offered by the Chronicle's editorial board.)
Stay sane out there. Democracy is messy, but it's better than the alternative.
| November 03 2008 at 08:10 PM
What To Do About Prop 2?
With opposition to Props 7 and 10 virtually universal among greens and progressives, let's talk about Prop 2, the measure that would outlaw caging animals in spaces too small to allow them to stretch their limbs and move around. In theory, it applies to all farm animals, but in practice, it will affect almost exclusively poultry producers in the state.
It's chief sponsor is the Humane Society, and has enough grassroots support not to be a pay-to-play ballot measure brought to voters through the financial might of a business, out-of-state individual, or special interest group.
Factory farming can be an ugly, ugly thing, there's no question about it. PETA's videos on feedlots and pig farms are difficult even to watch. The only sane question to ask is whether Prop 2 is too broad, and might end up outlawing some humane practices as well.
At first glance, supporters and opponents appear to line up predictably. Supporting the measure are veterinarians, animal rights groups, foodies (such as literari Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser) and food safety groups. Opposing the measure are business groups and larger farms.
It doesn't sit right with this blogger that the big farms have spewed a bunch of scary rhetoric about how cage-free chickens will lead to avian flu outbreaks and all manner of other public health disasters. I'm fairly persuaded by the Voter Information Guide arguments that those claims are exaggerated to the point of being simply false (and perversely so, since factory farming is the source of most food-borne illness in this country). The Bay Guardian, my source of radical progressive views, agrees.
So, as to the real question: Would Prop 2 ban reasonable practices? For this, I would look to farms whose humane practices I know and trust to see which side they're on. Problem is, both Yes and No on 2 claim to have small farmers on their side. And indeed both the Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee cite small farmer opposition among their reasons for endorsing a no vote.
Stumped, I turned to the No on 2 site, looked at the "family farms and businesses" they cite as opponents. None were among the brands I choose from at my local worker-owned co-op (Rainbow Grocery, one of the easiest and purest green things I do each week). So I Googled a few names that sounded especially family-farmish. Of the six I chose, four were out-of-state businesses (Hickman's in Arizona, Willamette Egg Farms in Oregon, and Rose Acre Farms in Indiana). Sanchez Ranch is actually a hunting ranch in New Mexico. C B Nichols Egg Ranch is in Acadia, but it's listed as an "importer." Demler Egg Ranch is in San Jacinto and has 35 employees. Hurray! One genuine family farm!
After this exercise, I am inclined to believe that honest producers of cage-free eggs, Petaluma farmer Steve Mahrt's claims to the Chronicle notwithstanding, would generally not be hurt by this measure. For that reason, and because big business has cried wolf—forgive the dark pun—once too many times with regard to reasonable regulations, I'm leaning towards voting yes on 2.
But I'd like to hear what supporters and opponents have to say in the comments first.
| October 16 2008 at 01:05 PM
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