Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. My Webinar on “Judaism and Vegetarianism”/Suggestions Very Welcome
2. Vegan Resort in Costa Rica Seeking Help
3. Al Gore’s Comprehensive, Challenging Article About Climate Change Published in Rolling Stone Magazine
4. Vegetarian Week-Related Contest Organized
5. MANY Thanks to Some Wonderful JVNA Volunteers
6. More JVNA Volunteers Needed
7. JVNA Advisor To Participate in Half-Marathon to Raise Money To Improve Conditions for Animals
8. Terrible Rumor of Dog Stoned in Israel Is False!
9. State Of The Ocean: 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress
10. Will Cultured Meat Production Benefit Humanity?
11. Climate Change Accelerating Sea Level Increases
12. Western Fast Food Causing a Diabetes Epidemic
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. My Webinar on “Judaism and Vegetarianism”/Suggestions Very Welcome
http://www.jewishveg.com/schwartz/Webinar_Judaism and Vegetarianism.ppt
Many thanks to JVNA advisor Kris Haley and her husband and Craig Haley for their great work putting this webinar together.
I plan to add audio explanations and possibly use the slides as part of a power point presentation. So, suggestions will be very welcome. Thanks.
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2. Vegan Resort in Costa Rica Seeking Help
Forwarded message:
I am writing on behalf of Lands in Love animal friendly zone, hotel and resort founded six years ago by a group of 18 friends from Israel, all vegetarian and animal lovers with the purpose of providing safe home for homeless animals.
The resort is functioning as an economical structure enabling to provide all the needs to the many animals we host as well as a community structure for ecological, vegetarian and animal lovers retreat.
In the last three years we are encountering economic difficulties due to the global economic crisis and its impact on Costa Rica tourism.
The animals we host (more than 200 and growing) need daily treatment, food, vaccination, shelter, medical care and much more.
We need help
Accommodation or lots on our property are optional in return to your donation.
We are dedicated and persistent in our efforts and need assistance to keep saving animals, being a new home for them.
Thank you.
www.landsinlove.com
rescue@animalfrontier.com
Ace
Tel: + 506 2447 9331
Fax: + 506 2447 9334
US: + 1 408 21 0991
Skype user: assaf6791
Costa Rica
assaf@landsinlove.com
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3. Al Gore’s Comprehensive, Challenging Article About Climate Change Published in Rolling Stone Magazine
Climate of Denial
Can science and the truth withstand the merchants of poison?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622
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4. Vegetarian Week-Related Contest Organized
* Vegetarian Week Contest
This year the Vegetarian Week planners have organized a contest in order to highlight the benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle. The total value of awards is more than 200 euros, and anyone can submit one or more contributions (essays, posters, cartoons, slogans, etc.).
All contributions are welcome, and the best will receive prizes.
The deadline is 10 September. Submit your contribution(s) and good luck!
Read the contest Guidelines:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Page-25-Vegetarian+Week+contest+Guidelines.html
Login to submit contributions:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/index.php?destin=user
* Vegetarian Week 2011
The preparation for the Vegetarian Week 2011 continues, under the motto "A sustainable Future Depends on Our Food Choices". See the Call For Action and use our Resources to prepare your own Vegetarian Week.
October 1-7, or around those days.
Call For Action:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Article-36-Call%2Bfor%2BAction.html
Posters and Flyers
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Article-37-Posters%2Band%2Bflyers.html
Images, Videos and texts
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Article-38-Images%252C%2Bvideos%2Band%2Btexts.html
To change e-mail address or stop receiving this newsletter :
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/index.php?destin=user
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5. MANY Thanks to Some Wonderful JVNA Volunteers
Maida Genser has been helping JVNA for several years by putting the e-newsletters out on the blog at http://jewishveg.blogspot.com/ and doing some web site updates.
She would like everyone to please check out her web page for her main charitable work, Citizens for Pets in Condos at http://www.petsincondos.org. Citizens FOR Pets in Condos is a non-profit public advocacy and educational organization dedicated to increasing acceptance of companion animals in condos and other types of association-run housing.
Maida summarizes the groups activities, “We educate the public about the health benefits of having animal companions and also advocate for responsible pet ownership/guardianship. Our motto: ‘creating a win-win situation for both people & pets.’ We provide resources for a pet-friendly America/Florida.”
We have another wonderful volunteer keeping our website well organized, but he prefers to be anonymous, at least for now.
John Diamond, our secretary/treasurer continues to do very important work in sending out DVDs, and Israel and Eva Mossman continue to be very helpful in sending out JVNA leaflets on request.
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6. More JVNA Volunteers Needed
We can always use more voluntary help in getting our messages out more effectively. There is much work to be done, and we have absolutely no paid staff at all. Even if you can only spare an hour a week or so, that would be very helpful and much appreciated. Thanks.
We can especially use some voluntary accounting help and help finding contacts - rabbis, synagogues, JCCs, professors of religion, etc. - that we can send our messages to.
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7. JVNA Advisor To Participate in Half-Marathon to Raise Money To Improve Conditions for Animals
Forwarded message:
Greetings,
I will be participating in the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon October 2 in San Jose. This is a fundraiser for PETA and I am writing to ask for whatever donation you can afford to help animals the world over.
http://runrocknroll.competitor.com/san-jose
Please go to the link below and click on the green SUPPORT RON! box to the right in order to make your donation online. Thank you on behalf of the animals everywhere. If possible, kindly share this with loved ones, friends, relatives, co-workers, professional associates, and neighbors.
http://www2.peta.org/site/TR/Events/PETAsOnlineCommunity?px=3292498&pg=personal&fr_id=1081
Ron Landskroner
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8. Terrible Rumor of Dog Stoned in Israel Is False!
The Case of the Dog Who Was Not Stoned
There has been a story going around, based on an incorrect story in an Israeli newspaper, alleging that an Israeli rabbinic court ordered a dog that was causing a commotion to be stoned to death.
Jewish court orders dog to die by stoning, believing it was a godless lawyer reborn
http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/06/18/jewish-court-orders-dog-to-die-by-stoning-believing-it-was-a-godless-lawyer-reborn/
Fortunately, as indicated at the website below, the story is false.
http://honestreporting.com/sleeping-dogs-dont-lie-but-the-press-does/
I submitted the posting below after the article at the website immediately above. Please go to that website and post a message reinforcing our position. Thanks.
------------------------------
As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I am very happy to learn that the story about the stoning of a dog is false, because many people emailed me asking for my reaction to the original story.
However, while there is evidently much concern about one dog allegedly being stoned to death, I wonder why there is little or no concern about what I consider a far more disturbing situation - the massive mistreatment and then slaughter of almost 60 billion farmed animals annually worldwide, so that people can enjoy eating meat, a product that is causing an epidemic of heart disease, various types of cancer, and other chronic, degenerative diseases. Making the situation even worse is that animal agriculture is contributing to climate change, food shortages, scarcities of water and energy, deforestation, desertification, rapid species extinctions, soil erosion, and other problems that greatly threaten humanity.
It is important that we strive to increase awareness of Judaism's beautiful teachings on compassion to animals.
For more information on Jewish teachings on the proper treatment of animals and other vegetarian-related issues, please visit JewishVeg.com/schwartz. Also, please visit aSacredDuty.com to see our acclaimed documentary "A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World."
How about a respectful dialogue on "Should Jews Be Vegetarians?" It would be a Kiddush Hashem (a sanctification of God's Name), by showing the relevance of Judaism's eternal teachings to modern issues.
------------------------------------
A later article:
'No dog stoned to death in Jerusalem court'
http://www.thejc.com/news/israel-news/50487/no-dog-stoned-death-jerusalem-court
By Jessica Elgot, June 20, 2011
Jewish Chronicle Online
A rabbinical court in Mea Shearim did not sentence a dog to death
No stray dog was condemned to death, or stoned by a rabbinical court in Jerusalem, the Beth Din have insisted.
Israeli’s newspaper Maariv reported that a stray dog has wandered into a Beth Din financial court in the strictly Orthodox area of Mea Shearim and refused to be moved, which a judge decreed was a reincarnation of a secular lawyer who died 20 years ago.
Reports said the judges then "decreed" that local children stone the dog to death. But the secretariat of the court released a statement calling the reports “bitter humour” and said all that had happened was that the city dogcatcher had been called to remove the stray.
The story made headlines around the world, and was the “Most Read” story on the BBC – despite a correction and apology being printed in Maariv.
A statement from the court said: “There is no basis for stoning dogs or any other animal in the Jewish religion, not since the days of the Temple or Abraham.
“The female dog found a seat in the corner of the court. And the children were delighted by it; there were hundreds outside the court. They are used to seeing stray cats but most have never seen a dog before. The only action we took was to dial the number of the Jerusalem Municipality to get the people in charge to take it away.
“There was no talk of reincarnation, a lawyer has never been mentioned, either now or 20 years ago, and there was no stoning. Such inventions are a kind of blood libel, and we wonder why the inventor of the story did not continue to describe how we collected the blood of the dog to make our matzah.”
The story, when circulated on Yahoo, attracted more than 1,800 comments, most expressing violent anger. One wrote “the more I see of Israelis, the more I like my dog.”
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9. State Of The Ocean: 'Shocking' Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/ipso-2011-ocean-report-mass-extinction_n_880656.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=062111&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
A related article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110621/sc_nm/us_oceans;_ylt=Au41Uj4iX6p4c7IROAjZTGKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpamw1bW81BHBvcwMzNwRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDb2NlYW5saWZlb250
Very frightening situation.
From a cyber friend from Malaysia:
[Moshiach] Ben David will not come until they will seek fish for a sick person and not find it - [the rivers will be as thick as oil, fish cannot live in them]- Talmud Sanhedrin 98a
Pollution, global warming and other man-made problems are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unprecedented in tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists has warned.
Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, and the massive depletion of big fish stocks are all accelerating, according to the report, which is due to be presented at the United Nations on Tuesday.
"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation,'' the report said.
The rate at which carbon is being absorbed by the ocean is already far greater than at the time of the last globally significant extinctions, which wiped out up to 50 per cent of some deep-sea animals, the report said.
Overfishing has also reduced some commercial fish stocks by more than 90 per cent.
"We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."
Sources: CNN and Aljazeera
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10. Will Cultured Meat Production Benefit Humanity?
Environmental Impacts of Cultured Meat Production
Hanna L. Tuomisto†* and M. Joost Teixeira de Mattos‡
University of Oxford, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Oxon OX13 5QL, U.K.
University of Amsterdam, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Molecular Microbial Physiology Group, NL-1018 WV Amsterdam, Netherlands
Environ. Sci. Technol., Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/es200130u
Publication Date (Web): June 17, 2011
Copyright © 2011 American Chemical Society
E-mail: hanna.tuomisto@zoo.ox.ac.uk; Tel.: +447726450316;
Fax: +441865393101.
Abstract
Cultured meat (i.e., meat produced in vitro using tissue engineering techniques) is being developed as a potentially healthier and more efficient alternative to conventional meat. Life cycle assessment (LCA) research method was used for assessing environmental impacts of large-scale cultured meat production. Cyanobacteria hydrolysate was assumed to be used as the nutrient and energy source for muscle cell growth. The results showed that production of 1000 kg cultured meat requires 26–33 GJ energy, 367–521 m3 water, 190–230 m2land, and emits 1900–2240 kg CO2-eq GHG emissions. In comparison to conventionally produced European meat, cultured meat involves approximately 7–45% lower energy use (only poultry has lower energy use), 78–96% lower GHG emissions, 99% lower land use, and 82–96% lower water use depending on the product compared. Despite high uncertainty, it is concluded that the overall environmental impacts of cultured meat production are substantially lower than those of conventionally produced meat.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es200130u
Thanks to Herma Caelen for forwarding this material to us.
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11. Climate Change Accelerating Sea Level Increases
Sea Levels Rising at Fastest Rate in 2000 Years
By Samantha Oltman
Wed Jun. 22, 2011 12:00 PM PDT
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/06/new-study-sea-level-rise-global-warming
The science behind a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal is complicated, but the evidence is more precise than it has ever been: Sea levels are now rising at a faster rate than they were at any time in the past 2,000 years. For much of the two millenia measured in the study, sea levels were either stabilized or rising at .25 millimeters per year. But right around the end of the 19th century, sea levels started rising at a comparatively drastic 2.1 millimeters per year, and the trend has continued today.
SNIP
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12. Western Fast Food Causing a Diabetes Epidemic
Diabetes epidemic affecting 350m – and western fast food is to blame
• Lancet study shows diabetes now a major health problem
• Number of people with disease has doubled since 1980
Robin McKie
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 June 2011 16.59 BST
SNIP
Thanks to author and JVNA advisor Lewis Regenstein for sending this article to us.
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The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of vegetarian, environmental, nutritional, health, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for educational or research purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal, technical or medical advice.
June 27, 2011
06/20/2011 JVNA Online Newsletter
Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Ten Ways You Can Make JVNA More Effective
2. Update on Efforts To Get the Israeli Chief Rabbinate To Ban Meat Produced by Shackling and Hoisting
3. Sampling of Letters Sent to Chief Rabbi Metzger in Support of CHAI’s Initiative Above
4. Vegetarian Week Contest Scheduled
5. Message From United Poultry Concern’s Director on Denial About How “Food” Animals Are Treated
6. Still Time to Register for AR2011
7. Study Indicates that Vegetarian Diets Are Healthier in Every Way
8. Arsenic Found in Chickens
9. Essay: How Much Is Global Warming Due to Animal Agriculture?
10. Message From Canfei Nesharim Seeking Support
11. Important Climate Change Articles:
11a. How the West Was Lost
11b. Are Progressives in Denial About Climate Change?
11c. "Merchants of Doubt": How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
12. Dead Sea Threatened by BOTH Shrinking and Flooding
13. Jews and Muslims Work Together to Protect Their Slaughtering Methods
14. 2012 IVU World Veg Congress Planned
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
=========================
1. Ten Ways You Can Make JVNA More Effective
It is becoming increasingly clear that the world is rapidly approaching climate, food, water, energy, economic, and other crises and that a major shift to plant-based diets is essential to preventing disasters.
JVNA is trying to be a positive factor as much as possible.
Here are ten things that you can do to make JVNA more effective:
· Volunteer to represent JVNA at veg and animal rights conferences to give out literature.
· Get people you know to contact me (president@JewishVeg.com) to get our free JVNA newsletters.
· Suggest that people visit our website (JewishVeg.com).
· Suggest that people visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have about 150 articles, 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews, and the complete text of my book Judaism and Vegetarianism.
· Suggest that people visit aSacredDuty.com to see our acclaimed documentary, “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”
· Request a complimentary DVD of “A Sacred Duty” and arrange a showing.
· Send one or more of my articles at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz to Jewish publications.
· Write an article using material at the websites mentioned above and send it to a Jewish publication.
· Write a letter to the editor using material at our websites.
· Call a talk show and present the Jewish case for vegetarianism or the case for becoming a vegetarian to reduce current threats to humanity.
· Your suggestions?
Many thanks for all that you do.
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2. Update on Efforts To Get the Israeli Chief Rabbinate To Ban Meat Produced by Shackling and Hoisting
Forwarded message from CHAI (Concern for Helping Animals in Israel):
Israeli Rabbinate Fails to Keep Its Promise to Ban Import of Meat from Slaughterhouses Using Cruel Methods
PLEASE WRITE!
Despite the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s promise to stop certifying as kosher meat from cows slaughtered in South America using the extremely cruel method of shackling and hoisting, it continues to certify the meat and allow it to be imported to Israel. Shackling and hoisting, which has already been banned in Israel, the U.S., and the European Union, requires that fully conscious animals be chained by the ankle and hoisted upside down before slaughter, causing excruciating tearing of muscles and tendons and extreme fright.
"The Rabbinate is on record as finding the practice of shackling and hoisting ethically problematic and certainly inflicting pain and suffering on animals," said Rabbi Adam Frank, rabbi of Congregation Moreshet Yisrael in central Jerusalem and Board member of Hakol Chai, the Israeli sister charity of Concern for Helping Animals in Israel (CHAI).
A year ago, Avi Blumenthal, an assistant to Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, promised that if the South American slaughterhouses did not abolish shackle-and-hoist and switch to a more humane method by 2011, the Rabbinate would cease to certify the meat produced there as kosher. Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the kashrut division at the New York-based Orthodox Union, said Rabbi Metzger had told him of his intention to switch to the less cruel inversion pen.
But the Rabbinate has not kept its promise. At first, says Frank, “the public was pacified by statements on behalf of the Israeli Rabbinate that they would ensure a change would occur. Either they misled the public or they lied."
Blumenthal admitted that the Rabbinate still certifies meat slaughtered using shackling and hoisting. The Rabbinate requires that every cow be slaughtered while lying on his or her back, in accordance with kosher laws, but a box-like holding pen that inverts the animal before the throat is slit can be substituted for the more cruel shackling and hoisting method.
Blumenthal claimed that some slaughterhouses in South America have switched to the inversion method and those who did not will do so eventually, but the director of the Rabbinate's overseas slaughtering and meat imports department, Rabbi Ezra Harari Raful, said that while a small number of South American slaughterhouses have installed inversion pens, most of the 15-odd slaughterhouses that supply Israel still use shackle-and-hoist. Blumenthal conceded that the bottom line is that Israeli importers signed long term contracts with the slaughterhouses and so have no leverage to pressure their owners. The contracts with several of the slaughterhouses will expire over the next few years.
The fact that Israel is still buying kosher meat from slaughterhouses known to engage in extremely and unnecessarily cruel practices is completely unacceptable, says Frank.
See the article about this subject in Ha'aretz, 10 June 2011.
For further details about this issue, please see Kosher Slaughter: Should Shackling and Hoisting Be Permitted?
WHAT YOU CAN DO
CHAI asks that you send a letter to Chief Rabbi Metzger, urging him to keep his promise to ban the importation of meat from cruel South American slaughterhouses that practice shackling and hoisting.
Please also consider reducing or eliminating your consumption of meat to prevent animal suffering, preserve human health, and save the environment.
Please donate to CHAI and Hakol Chai. Send your tax-deductible donations to: CHAI, POB 3341, Alexandria, VA 22302, USA, or donate through our website.
Yours for a more compassionate world,
Nina Natelson
CHAI - Concern for Helping Animals in Israel PO Box 3341, Alexandria, VA 22302 Email: chai_us@cox.net Phone: 703-658-9650 Web: http://www.chai-online.org
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3. Sampling of Letters Sent to Chief Rabbi Metzger in Support of CHAI’s Initiative Above
rabbis@rabbinate.gov.il
Shalom Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, shlit"a:
Kol hakavod for all of your important efforts on behalf of Medinat Yisrael and Klal Yisrael.
As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I very respectfully urge you to please fulfill your promise to put an end to shackling and hoisting of animals for shechitah. I believe that this action would be a kiddush Hashem by helping end violations of tsa’ar ba’alei chaim at South American slaughterhouses and by showing how Judaism’s eternal teachings apply to contemporary situations. It would also be consistent with other rulings you have made about the proper treatment of animals, including banning the use of furs imported from China, where animals are skinned alive.
"Tov Hashem la-kol, vi-rachamav al kol maasav -- God is good to all, and His mercy is upon all of His works." As Jews, we must strive to emulate Hashem's ways and thus bring this world closer to what the Creator wants it to be. Therefore, we turn to you, as Chief Rabbi, to redress this avoidable tsaar baalei chaim and to institute restraint systems for shechitah that minimize suffering. If this is done, it will be surely help fulfill our divine mandate to be a "light unto the nations" by our example, and not the opposite.
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
-----------------------
Shalom Rabbi.
Please fulfill the promise you made to end the cruel practice of shackling and hoisting in slaughterhouses that ship to Israel from South America.
Since all kosher meat imported from South America into Israel must be approved by your office, the decision in favor of humaneness or cruelty is entirely yours.
Further, please consider how any meat, even if permitted like the quail at Sinai that we just read about in Torah, is antithetical to our highest Jewish values of sh’mirat haguf, pekuach nefesh, tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, shomrei adamah, bal tashchit, tzedakah, shalom v’tzedek, v'Klal Yisrael.
Shalom,
Dan Brook, Ph.D.
The Vegetarian Mitzvah
www.brook.com/jveg
--------------------------------------------
"I urge you to stop the importation of meat from South American slaughterhouses that continue to practice shackling and hoisting. It is disgraceful to eat such meat, and your action in this matter is noted by Jews around the world. It would be a message to the Jewish world that Jews have a moral conscience about the food they eat, if you would follow through on your promise to censure the importing such meat."
Roberta Kalechofsky
----------------------------
Bs"d
L'khvod HaRav Metzger shlit"a
Shalom uverakha.
Please heed the many appeals you have received to put an end to shackle and hoist restraint systems used for shechita in South America. Not only are there superior restraint systems today, but this practice adds to the growing opposition to shechitah around the world and to hostility toward the Torah Hakedoshah and Klal Yisrael.
Dovid Sears
Brooklyn, NY
http://www.orot.com/eden.html
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4. Vegetarian Week Contest Scheduled
Forwarded message:
This year the Vegetarian Week has organized a contest, to highlight the benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle. The total value of awards is more than 200 euros, and anyone can submit one or more contributions (essays, posters, cartoons, slogans, etc.).
All contributions are welcome, and the best will award prizes.
The deadline is 10 September. Submit your contribution(s) and good luck!
Read the contest Guidelines:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Page-25-Vegetarian+Week+contest+Guidelines.html
Login to submit contributions:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/index.php?destin=user
_____________________________
List mailing list
List@vegetarianweek.org
http://vegetarianweek.org/mailman/listinfo/list_vegetarianweek.org
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5. Message From United Poultry Concern’s Director on Denial About How “Food” Animals Are Treated
Thanks to JVNA advisor and producer of “A Sacred Duty” Lionel Friedberg for sending us this message and for his introduction below:
I simply have to share this brilliantly written piece with all of you. It is the work of a woman whose beliefs, efforts and dedication I admire very much. She is Karen Davis, the president of a wonderful organization called United Poultry Concerns. In the article pulled from her e-mail today she talks about -- among other things -- how powerfully influential people such as Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who started Facebook, still has much to learn about what it is to be a compassionate human being. It'll only take a minute of your time and I assure you it is a most worthwhile read.
Best,
Lionel
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13 June 2011
“Only Connect.” Is Boiling a Lobster a Bonding Experience?
by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
Yes, it appears that most people are “very removed from” the meat they eat. Well, not from the meat, obviously, but from the animals to whom the meat was once attached. This removal dates to the mid- 20th century, when animals raised for food in Western countries disappeared from barnyards into factory farms.
Drive by the long, low buildings on the Virginia Eastern Shore where I live, and unless you already know what you’re looking at, you would never guess that many thousands of chickens are living inside each one of those buildings. And those huge Tyson and Perdue “processing plants” with the smoke pouring out of the smokestacks and the cement parking lots filled with cars, who would guess what is going on behind those walls? Except when you see the truckloads of chickens going up and down the roads all day, from the chicken houses to the slaughtering plants, or you’re one of the thousands of poultry industry employees on the Eastern Shore. Otherwise, how would you know?
So, to reconnect meat eaters with the animals they eat or, more precisely, to reconnect them with the fact that they’re eating animals, media culture and society have got on board with the animal welfare, deep ecology idea that what’s needed to bridge the gap, between urbanized meat eaters and the animals behind the scenes of this meat, is to slaughter their own animals. Look your chicken or your goat in the eye as you slice “its” throat and watch “it” struggle in pain and suffocate to death in “its” own blood. This will teach you that eating meat involves killing an animal, although Michael Pollan’s alter ego, Joel Salatin, owner of the Virginia family farm Polyface, told Feedstuffs that “people should not accept that it’s okay toeat grain but not a pig or a chicken just because one has eyes and one does not” (May 23, 2011).
The idea put forth by sectors of the animal welfare community seems to be that killing one’s own animals will somehow develop empathy in the killer. It isn’t just about “now I know” but “now I care.” But is this so? In the case of billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, there is no evidence in his account of his latest “personal challenge” that killing animals himself began or ended in empathy for the animals he had previously bonded with only as meat. According to the story, he “evolved,” from boiling a lobster to death, to cutting the throats of a goat and a chicken. And so on from there. Of the lobster episode Zuckerberg said, “The most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while.”
In other words, the “most interesting, special thing” for Zuckerberg, by his account, was not the lobster or his relationship with the lobster as a fellow creature as opposed to “lobster”; it wasn’t about expanded or deepened empathy at all. It was about his Seafood experience, his Meat experience and the thrill of eating an animal he had, just minutes before, intentionally tortured to death in boiling water. (Don’t plead that Zuckerberg didn’t know the lobster was sentient.)
So what does it mean to bond with an animal or anyone else one chooses to kill for pleasure? Bear in mind that rapists and serial murderers sadistically, ritualistically “bond” with their victims – they know their victim’s pain and they experience it vicariously as pleasure. The fact is that bonding and “connecting” do not necessarily entail compassion, and violating another’s body does not invariably lead to sympathy with the victim or with anyone else. Indeed, hurting others is a thrill for many people who lust for more of the delicious sensation. We know this is true when it comes to humans intentionally hurting other humans, but when it comes to humans intentionally hurting animals, the rhetoric disconnects from reality as easily as the face disconnects from a small helpless body under the smack of a hatchet.
Which brings me to the animal protection spokesman who recently blogged that while many Americans were shocked by Zuckerberg’s cruel behavior and “sympathized with the animals he killed,” their – our – reactions were/are misplaced: “While I understand those natural reactions to the killing of these creatures, I think we owe Zuckerberg some plaudits, not only for reminding people that eating meat involves the killing of animals, but also for recognizing that it’s morally dubious to simply pass on the ‘dirty work.’” Sure, okay, but let us ask, then, whether it is even more morally dubious, or just plain wrong, to do the dirty work yourself, especially when there is no need to do it at all. The topic is death, ladies and gentleman, not hauling the garbage.
Regarding the mantra that urban people need to “reconnect” through personal killing with “where their food comes from,” let us recall the fact that throughout most of human history and in many if not most parts of the world today, animals were, and are, driven to market on foot, slaughtered, beaten and otherwise openly abused in the streets in all kinds of ways, and the people doing and witnessing these events were and are basically oblivious to it. Familiarity breeds oblivion as much as absence does.
As I noted in my book, The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale, B.R. Myers writes that research could prove “that cows love Jesus, and the line at the McDonald’s drive-through wouldn’t be one sagging carload shorter the next day.” Only consider: in Salisbury, Maryland, a McDonald’s sits on one side of the street and on the other side a gigantic chicken slaughter plant looms, surrounded by its endlessly sagging truckloads of chickens waiting on the dock to be killed. There is no clear evidence that the sight of suffering evokes sympathy or protest in the majority of people, and the first shock of seeing suffering can wear off. Even if it doesn’t, people can choose not to look. (p. 24)
In conclusion, I will simply say, in response to recent discussions about Zuckerberg and the like, that I do not believe that people voluntarily killing their own animals for gastronomy raises the moral level of society or the ethical status of animals in society. I do not believe that Zuckerberg’s behavior will have the slightest positive effect on ending global factory farming except, ironically, to further it since his fundamental message is that it’s perfectly all right to kill an animal needlessly if you wish to and can get away with it. Which in the case of “food” animals, you can. I do not share the view that Zuckerberg killing his own animals “reduces animal suffering,” nor do I believe that now that he is killing his own animals he “connects” with them, other than as a hedonistic sadist or an affectless sociopath, and sociopathology paradoxically comprises both. He boasts that he loves to hunt and kill animals. What else do we need to know?
When you choose to terrorize and torture an animal to death for culinary pleasure, or even let us say to kill a chicken or a lobster or a goat “humanely” with a death-inducing sedative, which nobody does, you’re saying that for you this animal is Nothing. You are Everything. Since animals have no protection against us, our words, and our lies, we can say and do whatever we please about our reasons for debasing them and making their lives miserable.
While it’s distressing, though not surprising, that a person like Mark Zuckerberg is killing animals for pleasure and publicity, it is much more distressing, and harder to overcome, the oily sanction bestowed on him by influential animal welfare representatives who seems to bond more closely with Zuckerberg than with animal rights activists and people who really do care about animals, not just in the abstract and bureaucratically, but genuinely. We’re chided that we should consider Zuckerberg’s behavior to be, not cruel, but somehow admirable and worth imitating – to help the animals, of course! “[I]f every American were to adopt Zuckerberg’s approach – or even just witness, if not participate in, what happens to farm animals – you can bet there’d be many fewer animals suffering on factory farms.” I’d bet otherwise, or maybe there would just be a lot more [in]visible blood everywhere, since the moral status and use of animals as edibles would still be exactly the same.
Why oh why did a 16th-century British observer write of the animal raised for food on those nice English “family farms” and estates: “They feed in pain, lie in pain, and sleep in pain.” And this was the life experience of these animals before they were dragged off to slaughter, and before factory farms. – Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
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6. Still Time to Register for AR2011
Forwarded message frm Alex Hershaft of Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM):
There Is Still Time - AR2011 Is Almost Here!
Don't miss out on the animal rights event that will change your life! The Animal Rights 2011 National Conference will take place July 21-25 in Los Angeles.
Check out this year's exciting program. The 100 speakers include Gene Baur, Marc Bekoff, Bruce Friedrich, Alex Hershaft, Elliot Katz, Erica Meier, Jack Norris, Alex Pacheco, Nathan Runkle, Sam Simon (of The Simpsons), and many more.
Still making up your mind about attending? Here are some ways to save money:
You can earn back part or all of registration by volunteering at AR2011.
You can apply for a low-income discount or a full scholarship.
We offer discounted hotel rates and free morning & evening vegan snacks.
You can coordinate with fellow attendees on the travel & lodging boards.
Get an additional $20 off the discounted registration rate by entering "Member20" in coupon code box (on checkout page). Vote for your preferred T-shirt design! (click on image to view)
FARM Undertakes Pay-Per-View Program!
FARM has received a grant from a very generous donor to conduct the national Pay-Per-View program, which pays passersby $1 to view a graphic 4-minute video of factory farming and slaughter-house atrocities. We are currently engaged in the program's pilot stage, operating booths at summer street fairs and festivals in the Washington, DC, and San Francisco areas.
We’re also teaming up with Action For Animals to bring Pay-Per-View to the Warped (rock music) Tour this summer! We’re still looking for volunteers for several of the tour stops, so please let us know if you’re available to help.
Learn more about the Pay Per View Program, and offer local coordination.
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7. Study Indicates that Vegetarian Diets Are Healthier in Every Way
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2011/06/study-vegetarian-diets-healthier-in-every-way-than-diets-with-meat.html
Study: Vegetarian Diets Healthier In Every Way Than Diets With Meat
PCRM.ORG | Neal Barnard, MD | 06/14/11
Vegetarian diets are not just better for weight management, they are more nutritious than diets that include meat, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. With two out of three Americans needing to lose weight, the message is more urgent than ever.
The new findings are based on a study including 13,292 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Not only were vegetarians slimmer than their meat-eating counterparts, their fiber intake was 24 percent higher and calcium intake was 17 percent higher. Vegetarians also consumed more magnesium, potassium, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, and vitamins A, C, and E, and less total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.
The study was accompanied by an editorial concluding that “the benefits of following a plant-based diet can be valuable beyond weight loss goals.” Specifically, the editorial noted, vegetarians have lower cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and “lower risk for many disease states including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension.”
At PCRM, we have often used vegan diets to help people lose weight or improve diabetes or other health problems. In our 2006 review, 38 of 40 published studies comparing vegetarians and nonvegetarians showed that vegetarians weighed less. We also found that adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet brings a dramatic improvement in nutrition. Cholesterol and saturated fat intake plummet, while fiber, beta-carotene, and important vitamins increase. Using the Harvard School of Public Health’s Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) score, we have found that vegan participants excel in every AHEI category.
So this raises the question: If meat tends to crowd out nutritious vegetables, beans, and whole grains, and increases the risk for disease, why would anyone recommend it? The answer is that they shouldn’t.
When the USDA released its new MyPlate diagram on June 2, it looked very much like PCRM’s Power Plate developed in 2009 in that it included no meat group. However, instead of PCRM’s “legume group,” USDA opted for a “protein” group that includes beans and soy products, as well as meat. While USDA is slowly moving in the right direction, there is no scientific reason to include meat at all. Avoiding animal products is a key step for maximizing good nutrition and good health.
Farmer B, Larson BT, Fulgoni VL, Rainville AJ, Liepa GU. A vegetarian dietary pattern as a nutrient-dense approach to weight management: an analysis of the National health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2004. J Am Diet Assoc. 2011;111:819-827.
Turner-McGrievy GM, Barnard ND, Cohen J, Jenkins DJA, Gloede L, Green AA. Changes in nutrient intake and dietary quality among participants with type 2 diabetes following a low-fat vegan diet or a conventional diabetes diet for 22 weeks. J Am Dietetic Assoc. 2008;108:1636-1645.
Berkow SE, Barnard NB. Vegetarian diets and weight status. Nutr Rev. 2006;64:175-188.
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8. Arsenic Found in Chickens
http://www.grist.org/food-safety/2011-06-08-fda-admits-supermarket-chickens-test-positive-for-arsenic
Thanks to JVNA advisor and author Rabbi David Sears for forwarding this link to us.
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9. Essay: How Much Is Global Warming Due to Animal Agriculture?
[This essay was prepared for distribution [by Steve Kauman, director of the Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)]at the upcoming General Synod of the United Church of Christ. Comments and suggestions to cva@christianveg.org are appreciated.]
When environmentalists talk about what we need to do address global warming, they rarely emphasize, and often don’t even mention, moving toward a plant-based diet. Yet doing so is one of the most important things each of us can do to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint. The 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report Livestock’s Long Shadow concluded that animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of human-derived greenhouse gasses – more than cars, trucks, and airplanes combined.
Actually, this 18% figure might be a gross underestimate. A 2009 analysis by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang published in World Watch entitled “Livestock and Climate Change” concluded that at least 51% of human-derived greenhouse gasses derive from animal agriculture. By necessity, this report included estimates, and I offer a brief critical review of Goodland and Anhang’s article. I conclude that there is good reason to believe that far more than 18% of human-derived greenhouse gasses come from animal agriculture.
The Analysis
Many gasses have different degrees of greenhouse effects, that is, they trap heat leaving the earth and give the atmosphere its warmth. In order to “compare apples to apples,” the FAO calculated the greenhouse effect potency of different gasses compared to CO2, or “CO2 equivalents” (CO2e). The FAO estimated that animal agriculture adds 7,516 million tons of CO2e to the atmosphere each year. Goodland and Anhang argued that the FAO did not include 8,769 million tons CO2e added to the atmosphere by livestock breathing out CO2. The FAO did not include this source of CO2 because the amount of CO2 that farmed animals breathe out is roughly equivalent to the amount of CO2 taken from the atmosphere by the plants which the animals eat. However, if the farmed animals had not eaten those plants, there would be a steady increase in CO2 sequestration as farmland returned to forests. Further, continued intensive farming designed to provide feed for farmed animals releases carbon sequestered in soil.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but it has a significantly shorter half-life in the atmosphere. The FAO calculation adjusted methane to a CO2e value by lowering methane’s short-term impact but lengthening the methane effect over a longer duration. However, by reducing the short-term CO2e for methane, the FAO did not account for global warming positive feedback loops. For example, as methane and other greenhouse gasses increase global temperatures, polar ice melts. This converts ice, which reflects 70-80% of the sun’s light back into space, into water, which absorbs most of the sun’s light energy and reflects less than 10%. Warmer water and air then melt more ice. Goodland and Anhang’s adjustment for methane increased its CO2e by 5,047 million tons annually.
There are several other considerations, of which I will mention a few. Goodland and Anhang noted that the FAO used 2002 data on world tonnage of farmed animals, but this tonnage has increased rapidly since then. They estimate that the growth of the tonnage of farmed animals has contributed an additional 2,560 million tons CO2e. Goodland and Anhang also noted that the FAO overlooked other significant sources of greenhouse gasses attributable to animal agriculture, including farmed fish; fluorocarbons to cool meat, dairy, and eggs; cooking (meat typically entails higher temperatures and longer durations than plant foods); disposal of liquid and solid wastes of livestock; production, distribution, and disposal of packaging for animal products (which for sanitary reasons is generally much more extensive than for plant-based products); and carbon-intensive medical treatment of diseases related to consuming animals, including infectious organisms derived from farmed animals, and heart disease and other conditions related to consuming animal products. Goodland and Anhang estimated that these other categories add over 8,500 million tons CO2e annually.
I think that it is clear that, if we aim to avert an environmental crisis due to global warming, moving toward a plant-based diet must be a part of the effort.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.
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10. Message From Canfei Nesharim Seeking Support
Forwarded message from Canfei Nesharin director Evonne Marzouk:
Changing the World
Dear Richard and Loretta,
I'm nine or ten years old, and my next door neighbor asks me, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Still a child, I answer from the heart: "I want to change the world." His response: "Change it into what?"
I will remember this moment as the first time that my desire to make an impact, to matter, turned into a desire to make a difference. It was not enough to change the world. There was a world I was seeking to create.
Perhaps you too have been seeking to create a better world. Perhaps you've walked onto the bima of a synagogue with your hands shaking, ready to give your first speech about the environment. Or you've seen the faces of children light up in a garden, or taken a group of families blueberry picking - seeing them connect their food with the land for the very first time. You've chopped endless piles of fruit for Tu b'Shevat seder, helping people appreciate the value of trees, fruit and all of the earth's blessings.
With more than 300 change agents engaging their communities worldwide, Canfei Nesharim is empowering Jews to educate and empower our community to protect the environment. Not just to "change" the world, but to create a better world: a world in which we preserve our resources and live sustainability for today and for future generations.
But this change doesn't happen by itself. It requires your support to keep the momentum going. As we come to the close of our fiscal year (June 30), we need your help to continue creating that world. Can you help us with a donation of $36, $54, $100 or more (any amount is welcome!), or with an ongoing monthly or annual commitment to support our work, in our Planting and Building Campaign?
Donate here via Razoo
With all best wishes,
Evonne Marzouk and the whole Canfei Nesharim team
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11. Important Climate Change Articles
The following articles provide great insight on the climate change issues:
11a. How the West Was Lost
Chip Ward, TomDispatch: "Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It's happening right here, right now."
Read the Article
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11b. Are Progressives in Denial About Climate Change?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/12
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11c. "Merchants of Doubt": How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
Truthout's Progressive Pick of the Week: "Merchants of Doubt," by authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, exposes how radical think tanks have created a cadre of scientists - motivated by money and ideology - to debunk established scientific facts on threats such as DDT, tobacco, nuclear weapons and global warming.
Read the Article:
http://www.truth-out.org/merchants-doubt-how-handful-scientists-obscured-truth-issues-tobacco-smoke-global-warming/1308235932
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12. Dead Sea Threatened by BOTH Shrinking and Flooding
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20110613/ap_tr_ge/ml_travel_israel_dead_sea;_ylt=AhmNhCd6tQIpmwvKkY.g3Uus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFkdmxsdjN1BHBvcwMxNzcEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl90cmF2ZWwEc2xrA2RlYWRzZWF0aHJlYQ--
Thanks to JVNA advisor and author Rabbi Dovid Sears for forwarding this link to us.
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13. Jews and Muslims Work Together to Protect Their Slaughtering Methods
[Note: JVNA opposes all types of slaughter, but we protest when shechitah (Jewish ritual slaughter) is singled out for criticism. We recommend the book Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz, which points out the many problems and cruelties at non-kosher slaughterhouses.]
Forwarded message from vegetarian activist Scott Young:
Hello Richard, Thought you might find this of interest. Looks lke these two diverse groups have finally found some common ground. From, Scott
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Dutch+Jews+Muslims+appeal+plan+stun+animals+before+ritual+slaughter/4961558/story.html
Jewish and Muslim representatives Thursday appealed to Dutch lawmakers not to enforce plans requiring animals to be stunned before halal and kosher slaughtering rituals.
"We are against any form of stunning because it's against our religion," Yusuf Altuntas, president of the CMO - an organization that links the Muslim community with the Dutch government - told a parliamentary commission.
"One of the first measures taken during the Occupation (during the Second World War) was the closing of kosher abattoirs," Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said during the debate in The Hague.
Dutch law required animals to be stunned before being slaughtered but made an exception for ritual halal and kosher slaughters.
The country's Party for Animals (PvdD) which holds two seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament, has submitted a proposal which, if implemented, would see this exception abolished.
Dutch media widely reported that the PvdD's proposal was expected to get a majority nod from parliamentarians, but a time frame was not given.
"The animals suffer more and are more distressed if they are not stunned," Esther Ouwehand, a PvdD parliamentarian told AFP. "By getting this modification in the law, we hope to inspire other countries," she added, pointing out that in Norway and Sweden these measures had already been taken.
More than 2 million animals - mainly sheep and chickens - are subjected to ritual slaughter every year in the Netherlands, the PvdD added.
Abdelfattah Ali-Salah, director of Halal Correct, the organization which issues halal certificates in the country, however called the figure "inexact." He said some 250,000 animals were slaughtered yearly without being stunned beforehand.
Jewish and Muslim representatives Thursday insisted ritual slaughter respected the animals' welfare, notably restriction methods used to limit suffering and that those slaughtering received expert training.
"If we no longer have people who can do ritual slaughter in the Netherlands, we will stop eating meat," Chief Rabbi Jacobs said.
They did however offer to implement some measures which they said would ease the animals' suffering, especially better controls in abattoirs where ritual slaughters were performed and an improvement in conditions under which animals were being transported.
Several organizations in France in January launched a poster campaign reporting conditions in which animals were killed during ritual slaughter.
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14. 2012 IVU World Veg Congress Planned
Forwarded message:
It‘s still about more than a year away, but planning is already moving forward for the 2012 IVU World Veg Congress (WVC) to be held in San Francisco. Among the featured speakers will be John & Ocean Robbins (pictured here), Dr Michael Greger, Dr Don Forrester, Prof T. Colin Campbell, Dr Richard Oppenlander, Colleen
Patrick-Goudreau and Cherie Soria.
Other not-to-be-missed elements of the WVC include a wide variety of international
vegan cuisine, healthy food demos, vegan speed dating, children‘s corner, the
Veghealth Awards ceremony and, last but not least, live entertainment. For updates,
visit www.ivu.org/congress/2012
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The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of vegetarian, environmental, nutritional, health, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for educational or research purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal, technical or medical advice.
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Ten Ways You Can Make JVNA More Effective
2. Update on Efforts To Get the Israeli Chief Rabbinate To Ban Meat Produced by Shackling and Hoisting
3. Sampling of Letters Sent to Chief Rabbi Metzger in Support of CHAI’s Initiative Above
4. Vegetarian Week Contest Scheduled
5. Message From United Poultry Concern’s Director on Denial About How “Food” Animals Are Treated
6. Still Time to Register for AR2011
7. Study Indicates that Vegetarian Diets Are Healthier in Every Way
8. Arsenic Found in Chickens
9. Essay: How Much Is Global Warming Due to Animal Agriculture?
10. Message From Canfei Nesharim Seeking Support
11. Important Climate Change Articles:
11a. How the West Was Lost
11b. Are Progressives in Denial About Climate Change?
11c. "Merchants of Doubt": How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
12. Dead Sea Threatened by BOTH Shrinking and Flooding
13. Jews and Muslims Work Together to Protect Their Slaughtering Methods
14. 2012 IVU World Veg Congress Planned
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Ten Ways You Can Make JVNA More Effective
It is becoming increasingly clear that the world is rapidly approaching climate, food, water, energy, economic, and other crises and that a major shift to plant-based diets is essential to preventing disasters.
JVNA is trying to be a positive factor as much as possible.
Here are ten things that you can do to make JVNA more effective:
· Volunteer to represent JVNA at veg and animal rights conferences to give out literature.
· Get people you know to contact me (president@JewishVeg.com) to get our free JVNA newsletters.
· Suggest that people visit our website (JewishVeg.com).
· Suggest that people visit JewishVeg.com/Schwartz, where I have about 150 articles, 25 podcasts of my talks and interviews, and the complete text of my book Judaism and Vegetarianism.
· Suggest that people visit aSacredDuty.com to see our acclaimed documentary, “A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World.”
· Request a complimentary DVD of “A Sacred Duty” and arrange a showing.
· Send one or more of my articles at JewishVeg.com/Schwartz to Jewish publications.
· Write an article using material at the websites mentioned above and send it to a Jewish publication.
· Write a letter to the editor using material at our websites.
· Call a talk show and present the Jewish case for vegetarianism or the case for becoming a vegetarian to reduce current threats to humanity.
· Your suggestions?
Many thanks for all that you do.
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2. Update on Efforts To Get the Israeli Chief Rabbinate To Ban Meat Produced by Shackling and Hoisting
Forwarded message from CHAI (Concern for Helping Animals in Israel):
Israeli Rabbinate Fails to Keep Its Promise to Ban Import of Meat from Slaughterhouses Using Cruel Methods
PLEASE WRITE!
Despite the Chief Rabbinate of Israel’s promise to stop certifying as kosher meat from cows slaughtered in South America using the extremely cruel method of shackling and hoisting, it continues to certify the meat and allow it to be imported to Israel. Shackling and hoisting, which has already been banned in Israel, the U.S., and the European Union, requires that fully conscious animals be chained by the ankle and hoisted upside down before slaughter, causing excruciating tearing of muscles and tendons and extreme fright.
"The Rabbinate is on record as finding the practice of shackling and hoisting ethically problematic and certainly inflicting pain and suffering on animals," said Rabbi Adam Frank, rabbi of Congregation Moreshet Yisrael in central Jerusalem and Board member of Hakol Chai, the Israeli sister charity of Concern for Helping Animals in Israel (CHAI).
A year ago, Avi Blumenthal, an assistant to Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, promised that if the South American slaughterhouses did not abolish shackle-and-hoist and switch to a more humane method by 2011, the Rabbinate would cease to certify the meat produced there as kosher. Rabbi Menachem Genack, the head of the kashrut division at the New York-based Orthodox Union, said Rabbi Metzger had told him of his intention to switch to the less cruel inversion pen.
But the Rabbinate has not kept its promise. At first, says Frank, “the public was pacified by statements on behalf of the Israeli Rabbinate that they would ensure a change would occur. Either they misled the public or they lied."
Blumenthal admitted that the Rabbinate still certifies meat slaughtered using shackling and hoisting. The Rabbinate requires that every cow be slaughtered while lying on his or her back, in accordance with kosher laws, but a box-like holding pen that inverts the animal before the throat is slit can be substituted for the more cruel shackling and hoisting method.
Blumenthal claimed that some slaughterhouses in South America have switched to the inversion method and those who did not will do so eventually, but the director of the Rabbinate's overseas slaughtering and meat imports department, Rabbi Ezra Harari Raful, said that while a small number of South American slaughterhouses have installed inversion pens, most of the 15-odd slaughterhouses that supply Israel still use shackle-and-hoist. Blumenthal conceded that the bottom line is that Israeli importers signed long term contracts with the slaughterhouses and so have no leverage to pressure their owners. The contracts with several of the slaughterhouses will expire over the next few years.
The fact that Israel is still buying kosher meat from slaughterhouses known to engage in extremely and unnecessarily cruel practices is completely unacceptable, says Frank.
See the article about this subject in Ha'aretz, 10 June 2011.
For further details about this issue, please see Kosher Slaughter: Should Shackling and Hoisting Be Permitted?
WHAT YOU CAN DO
CHAI asks that you send a letter to Chief Rabbi Metzger, urging him to keep his promise to ban the importation of meat from cruel South American slaughterhouses that practice shackling and hoisting.
Please also consider reducing or eliminating your consumption of meat to prevent animal suffering, preserve human health, and save the environment.
Please donate to CHAI and Hakol Chai. Send your tax-deductible donations to: CHAI, POB 3341, Alexandria, VA 22302, USA, or donate through our website.
Yours for a more compassionate world,
Nina Natelson
CHAI - Concern for Helping Animals in Israel PO Box 3341, Alexandria, VA 22302 Email: chai_us@cox.net Phone: 703-658-9650 Web: http://www.chai-online.org
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3. Sampling of Letters Sent to Chief Rabbi Metzger in Support of CHAI’s Initiative Above
rabbis@rabbinate.gov.il
Shalom Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, shlit"a:
Kol hakavod for all of your important efforts on behalf of Medinat Yisrael and Klal Yisrael.
As president of Jewish Vegetarians of North America, I very respectfully urge you to please fulfill your promise to put an end to shackling and hoisting of animals for shechitah. I believe that this action would be a kiddush Hashem by helping end violations of tsa’ar ba’alei chaim at South American slaughterhouses and by showing how Judaism’s eternal teachings apply to contemporary situations. It would also be consistent with other rulings you have made about the proper treatment of animals, including banning the use of furs imported from China, where animals are skinned alive.
"Tov Hashem la-kol, vi-rachamav al kol maasav -- God is good to all, and His mercy is upon all of His works." As Jews, we must strive to emulate Hashem's ways and thus bring this world closer to what the Creator wants it to be. Therefore, we turn to you, as Chief Rabbi, to redress this avoidable tsaar baalei chaim and to institute restraint systems for shechitah that minimize suffering. If this is done, it will be surely help fulfill our divine mandate to be a "light unto the nations" by our example, and not the opposite.
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Very truly yours,
Richard H. Schwartz
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Shalom Rabbi.
Please fulfill the promise you made to end the cruel practice of shackling and hoisting in slaughterhouses that ship to Israel from South America.
Since all kosher meat imported from South America into Israel must be approved by your office, the decision in favor of humaneness or cruelty is entirely yours.
Further, please consider how any meat, even if permitted like the quail at Sinai that we just read about in Torah, is antithetical to our highest Jewish values of sh’mirat haguf, pekuach nefesh, tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, shomrei adamah, bal tashchit, tzedakah, shalom v’tzedek, v'Klal Yisrael.
Shalom,
Dan Brook, Ph.D.
The Vegetarian Mitzvah
www.brook.com/jveg
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"I urge you to stop the importation of meat from South American slaughterhouses that continue to practice shackling and hoisting. It is disgraceful to eat such meat, and your action in this matter is noted by Jews around the world. It would be a message to the Jewish world that Jews have a moral conscience about the food they eat, if you would follow through on your promise to censure the importing such meat."
Roberta Kalechofsky
----------------------------
Bs"d
L'khvod HaRav Metzger shlit"a
Shalom uverakha.
Please heed the many appeals you have received to put an end to shackle and hoist restraint systems used for shechita in South America. Not only are there superior restraint systems today, but this practice adds to the growing opposition to shechitah around the world and to hostility toward the Torah Hakedoshah and Klal Yisrael.
Dovid Sears
Brooklyn, NY
http://www.orot.com/eden.html
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4. Vegetarian Week Contest Scheduled
Forwarded message:
This year the Vegetarian Week has organized a contest, to highlight the benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle. The total value of awards is more than 200 euros, and anyone can submit one or more contributions (essays, posters, cartoons, slogans, etc.).
All contributions are welcome, and the best will award prizes.
The deadline is 10 September. Submit your contribution(s) and good luck!
Read the contest Guidelines:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/Page-25-Vegetarian+Week+contest+Guidelines.html
Login to submit contributions:
http://www.vegetarianweek.org/index.php?destin=user
_____________________________
List mailing list
List@vegetarianweek.org
http://vegetarianweek.org/mailman/listinfo/list_vegetarianweek.org
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5. Message From United Poultry Concern’s Director on Denial About How “Food” Animals Are Treated
Thanks to JVNA advisor and producer of “A Sacred Duty” Lionel Friedberg for sending us this message and for his introduction below:
I simply have to share this brilliantly written piece with all of you. It is the work of a woman whose beliefs, efforts and dedication I admire very much. She is Karen Davis, the president of a wonderful organization called United Poultry Concerns. In the article pulled from her e-mail today she talks about -- among other things -- how powerfully influential people such as Mark Zuckerberg, the guy who started Facebook, still has much to learn about what it is to be a compassionate human being. It'll only take a minute of your time and I assure you it is a most worthwhile read.
Best,
Lionel
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13 June 2011
“Only Connect.” Is Boiling a Lobster a Bonding Experience?
by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
Yes, it appears that most people are “very removed from” the meat they eat. Well, not from the meat, obviously, but from the animals to whom the meat was once attached. This removal dates to the mid- 20th century, when animals raised for food in Western countries disappeared from barnyards into factory farms.
Drive by the long, low buildings on the Virginia Eastern Shore where I live, and unless you already know what you’re looking at, you would never guess that many thousands of chickens are living inside each one of those buildings. And those huge Tyson and Perdue “processing plants” with the smoke pouring out of the smokestacks and the cement parking lots filled with cars, who would guess what is going on behind those walls? Except when you see the truckloads of chickens going up and down the roads all day, from the chicken houses to the slaughtering plants, or you’re one of the thousands of poultry industry employees on the Eastern Shore. Otherwise, how would you know?
So, to reconnect meat eaters with the animals they eat or, more precisely, to reconnect them with the fact that they’re eating animals, media culture and society have got on board with the animal welfare, deep ecology idea that what’s needed to bridge the gap, between urbanized meat eaters and the animals behind the scenes of this meat, is to slaughter their own animals. Look your chicken or your goat in the eye as you slice “its” throat and watch “it” struggle in pain and suffocate to death in “its” own blood. This will teach you that eating meat involves killing an animal, although Michael Pollan’s alter ego, Joel Salatin, owner of the Virginia family farm Polyface, told Feedstuffs that “people should not accept that it’s okay toeat grain but not a pig or a chicken just because one has eyes and one does not” (May 23, 2011).
The idea put forth by sectors of the animal welfare community seems to be that killing one’s own animals will somehow develop empathy in the killer. It isn’t just about “now I know” but “now I care.” But is this so? In the case of billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, there is no evidence in his account of his latest “personal challenge” that killing animals himself began or ended in empathy for the animals he had previously bonded with only as meat. According to the story, he “evolved,” from boiling a lobster to death, to cutting the throats of a goat and a chicken. And so on from there. Of the lobster episode Zuckerberg said, “The most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while.”
In other words, the “most interesting, special thing” for Zuckerberg, by his account, was not the lobster or his relationship with the lobster as a fellow creature as opposed to “lobster”; it wasn’t about expanded or deepened empathy at all. It was about his Seafood experience, his Meat experience and the thrill of eating an animal he had, just minutes before, intentionally tortured to death in boiling water. (Don’t plead that Zuckerberg didn’t know the lobster was sentient.)
So what does it mean to bond with an animal or anyone else one chooses to kill for pleasure? Bear in mind that rapists and serial murderers sadistically, ritualistically “bond” with their victims – they know their victim’s pain and they experience it vicariously as pleasure. The fact is that bonding and “connecting” do not necessarily entail compassion, and violating another’s body does not invariably lead to sympathy with the victim or with anyone else. Indeed, hurting others is a thrill for many people who lust for more of the delicious sensation. We know this is true when it comes to humans intentionally hurting other humans, but when it comes to humans intentionally hurting animals, the rhetoric disconnects from reality as easily as the face disconnects from a small helpless body under the smack of a hatchet.
Which brings me to the animal protection spokesman who recently blogged that while many Americans were shocked by Zuckerberg’s cruel behavior and “sympathized with the animals he killed,” their – our – reactions were/are misplaced: “While I understand those natural reactions to the killing of these creatures, I think we owe Zuckerberg some plaudits, not only for reminding people that eating meat involves the killing of animals, but also for recognizing that it’s morally dubious to simply pass on the ‘dirty work.’” Sure, okay, but let us ask, then, whether it is even more morally dubious, or just plain wrong, to do the dirty work yourself, especially when there is no need to do it at all. The topic is death, ladies and gentleman, not hauling the garbage.
Regarding the mantra that urban people need to “reconnect” through personal killing with “where their food comes from,” let us recall the fact that throughout most of human history and in many if not most parts of the world today, animals were, and are, driven to market on foot, slaughtered, beaten and otherwise openly abused in the streets in all kinds of ways, and the people doing and witnessing these events were and are basically oblivious to it. Familiarity breeds oblivion as much as absence does.
As I noted in my book, The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale, B.R. Myers writes that research could prove “that cows love Jesus, and the line at the McDonald’s drive-through wouldn’t be one sagging carload shorter the next day.” Only consider: in Salisbury, Maryland, a McDonald’s sits on one side of the street and on the other side a gigantic chicken slaughter plant looms, surrounded by its endlessly sagging truckloads of chickens waiting on the dock to be killed. There is no clear evidence that the sight of suffering evokes sympathy or protest in the majority of people, and the first shock of seeing suffering can wear off. Even if it doesn’t, people can choose not to look. (p. 24)
In conclusion, I will simply say, in response to recent discussions about Zuckerberg and the like, that I do not believe that people voluntarily killing their own animals for gastronomy raises the moral level of society or the ethical status of animals in society. I do not believe that Zuckerberg’s behavior will have the slightest positive effect on ending global factory farming except, ironically, to further it since his fundamental message is that it’s perfectly all right to kill an animal needlessly if you wish to and can get away with it. Which in the case of “food” animals, you can. I do not share the view that Zuckerberg killing his own animals “reduces animal suffering,” nor do I believe that now that he is killing his own animals he “connects” with them, other than as a hedonistic sadist or an affectless sociopath, and sociopathology paradoxically comprises both. He boasts that he loves to hunt and kill animals. What else do we need to know?
When you choose to terrorize and torture an animal to death for culinary pleasure, or even let us say to kill a chicken or a lobster or a goat “humanely” with a death-inducing sedative, which nobody does, you’re saying that for you this animal is Nothing. You are Everything. Since animals have no protection against us, our words, and our lies, we can say and do whatever we please about our reasons for debasing them and making their lives miserable.
While it’s distressing, though not surprising, that a person like Mark Zuckerberg is killing animals for pleasure and publicity, it is much more distressing, and harder to overcome, the oily sanction bestowed on him by influential animal welfare representatives who seems to bond more closely with Zuckerberg than with animal rights activists and people who really do care about animals, not just in the abstract and bureaucratically, but genuinely. We’re chided that we should consider Zuckerberg’s behavior to be, not cruel, but somehow admirable and worth imitating – to help the animals, of course! “[I]f every American were to adopt Zuckerberg’s approach – or even just witness, if not participate in, what happens to farm animals – you can bet there’d be many fewer animals suffering on factory farms.” I’d bet otherwise, or maybe there would just be a lot more [in]visible blood everywhere, since the moral status and use of animals as edibles would still be exactly the same.
Why oh why did a 16th-century British observer write of the animal raised for food on those nice English “family farms” and estates: “They feed in pain, lie in pain, and sleep in pain.” And this was the life experience of these animals before they were dragged off to slaughter, and before factory farms. – Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
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6. Still Time to Register for AR2011
Forwarded message frm Alex Hershaft of Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM):
There Is Still Time - AR2011 Is Almost Here!
Don't miss out on the animal rights event that will change your life! The Animal Rights 2011 National Conference will take place July 21-25 in Los Angeles.
Check out this year's exciting program. The 100 speakers include Gene Baur, Marc Bekoff, Bruce Friedrich, Alex Hershaft, Elliot Katz, Erica Meier, Jack Norris, Alex Pacheco, Nathan Runkle, Sam Simon (of The Simpsons), and many more.
Still making up your mind about attending? Here are some ways to save money:
You can earn back part or all of registration by volunteering at AR2011.
You can apply for a low-income discount or a full scholarship.
We offer discounted hotel rates and free morning & evening vegan snacks.
You can coordinate with fellow attendees on the travel & lodging boards.
Get an additional $20 off the discounted registration rate by entering "Member20" in coupon code box (on checkout page). Vote for your preferred T-shirt design! (click on image to view)
FARM Undertakes Pay-Per-View Program!
FARM has received a grant from a very generous donor to conduct the national Pay-Per-View program, which pays passersby $1 to view a graphic 4-minute video of factory farming and slaughter-house atrocities. We are currently engaged in the program's pilot stage, operating booths at summer street fairs and festivals in the Washington, DC, and San Francisco areas.
We’re also teaming up with Action For Animals to bring Pay-Per-View to the Warped (rock music) Tour this summer! We’re still looking for volunteers for several of the tour stops, so please let us know if you’re available to help.
Learn more about the Pay Per View Program, and offer local coordination.
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7. Study Indicates that Vegetarian Diets Are Healthier in Every Way
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2011/06/study-vegetarian-diets-healthier-in-every-way-than-diets-with-meat.html
Study: Vegetarian Diets Healthier In Every Way Than Diets With Meat
PCRM.ORG | Neal Barnard, MD | 06/14/11
Vegetarian diets are not just better for weight management, they are more nutritious than diets that include meat, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. With two out of three Americans needing to lose weight, the message is more urgent than ever.
The new findings are based on a study including 13,292 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Not only were vegetarians slimmer than their meat-eating counterparts, their fiber intake was 24 percent higher and calcium intake was 17 percent higher. Vegetarians also consumed more magnesium, potassium, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, folate, and vitamins A, C, and E, and less total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.
The study was accompanied by an editorial concluding that “the benefits of following a plant-based diet can be valuable beyond weight loss goals.” Specifically, the editorial noted, vegetarians have lower cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and “lower risk for many disease states including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension.”
At PCRM, we have often used vegan diets to help people lose weight or improve diabetes or other health problems. In our 2006 review, 38 of 40 published studies comparing vegetarians and nonvegetarians showed that vegetarians weighed less. We also found that adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet brings a dramatic improvement in nutrition. Cholesterol and saturated fat intake plummet, while fiber, beta-carotene, and important vitamins increase. Using the Harvard School of Public Health’s Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) score, we have found that vegan participants excel in every AHEI category.
So this raises the question: If meat tends to crowd out nutritious vegetables, beans, and whole grains, and increases the risk for disease, why would anyone recommend it? The answer is that they shouldn’t.
When the USDA released its new MyPlate diagram on June 2, it looked very much like PCRM’s Power Plate developed in 2009 in that it included no meat group. However, instead of PCRM’s “legume group,” USDA opted for a “protein” group that includes beans and soy products, as well as meat. While USDA is slowly moving in the right direction, there is no scientific reason to include meat at all. Avoiding animal products is a key step for maximizing good nutrition and good health.
Farmer B, Larson BT, Fulgoni VL, Rainville AJ, Liepa GU. A vegetarian dietary pattern as a nutrient-dense approach to weight management: an analysis of the National health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2004. J Am Diet Assoc. 2011;111:819-827.
Turner-McGrievy GM, Barnard ND, Cohen J, Jenkins DJA, Gloede L, Green AA. Changes in nutrient intake and dietary quality among participants with type 2 diabetes following a low-fat vegan diet or a conventional diabetes diet for 22 weeks. J Am Dietetic Assoc. 2008;108:1636-1645.
Berkow SE, Barnard NB. Vegetarian diets and weight status. Nutr Rev. 2006;64:175-188.
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8. Arsenic Found in Chickens
http://www.grist.org/food-safety/2011-06-08-fda-admits-supermarket-chickens-test-positive-for-arsenic
Thanks to JVNA advisor and author Rabbi David Sears for forwarding this link to us.
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9. Essay: How Much Is Global Warming Due to Animal Agriculture?
[This essay was prepared for distribution [by Steve Kauman, director of the Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)]at the upcoming General Synod of the United Church of Christ. Comments and suggestions to cva@christianveg.org are appreciated.]
When environmentalists talk about what we need to do address global warming, they rarely emphasize, and often don’t even mention, moving toward a plant-based diet. Yet doing so is one of the most important things each of us can do to reduce our greenhouse gas footprint. The 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report Livestock’s Long Shadow concluded that animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of human-derived greenhouse gasses – more than cars, trucks, and airplanes combined.
Actually, this 18% figure might be a gross underestimate. A 2009 analysis by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang published in World Watch entitled “Livestock and Climate Change” concluded that at least 51% of human-derived greenhouse gasses derive from animal agriculture. By necessity, this report included estimates, and I offer a brief critical review of Goodland and Anhang’s article. I conclude that there is good reason to believe that far more than 18% of human-derived greenhouse gasses come from animal agriculture.
The Analysis
Many gasses have different degrees of greenhouse effects, that is, they trap heat leaving the earth and give the atmosphere its warmth. In order to “compare apples to apples,” the FAO calculated the greenhouse effect potency of different gasses compared to CO2, or “CO2 equivalents” (CO2e). The FAO estimated that animal agriculture adds 7,516 million tons of CO2e to the atmosphere each year. Goodland and Anhang argued that the FAO did not include 8,769 million tons CO2e added to the atmosphere by livestock breathing out CO2. The FAO did not include this source of CO2 because the amount of CO2 that farmed animals breathe out is roughly equivalent to the amount of CO2 taken from the atmosphere by the plants which the animals eat. However, if the farmed animals had not eaten those plants, there would be a steady increase in CO2 sequestration as farmland returned to forests. Further, continued intensive farming designed to provide feed for farmed animals releases carbon sequestered in soil.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but it has a significantly shorter half-life in the atmosphere. The FAO calculation adjusted methane to a CO2e value by lowering methane’s short-term impact but lengthening the methane effect over a longer duration. However, by reducing the short-term CO2e for methane, the FAO did not account for global warming positive feedback loops. For example, as methane and other greenhouse gasses increase global temperatures, polar ice melts. This converts ice, which reflects 70-80% of the sun’s light back into space, into water, which absorbs most of the sun’s light energy and reflects less than 10%. Warmer water and air then melt more ice. Goodland and Anhang’s adjustment for methane increased its CO2e by 5,047 million tons annually.
There are several other considerations, of which I will mention a few. Goodland and Anhang noted that the FAO used 2002 data on world tonnage of farmed animals, but this tonnage has increased rapidly since then. They estimate that the growth of the tonnage of farmed animals has contributed an additional 2,560 million tons CO2e. Goodland and Anhang also noted that the FAO overlooked other significant sources of greenhouse gasses attributable to animal agriculture, including farmed fish; fluorocarbons to cool meat, dairy, and eggs; cooking (meat typically entails higher temperatures and longer durations than plant foods); disposal of liquid and solid wastes of livestock; production, distribution, and disposal of packaging for animal products (which for sanitary reasons is generally much more extensive than for plant-based products); and carbon-intensive medical treatment of diseases related to consuming animals, including infectious organisms derived from farmed animals, and heart disease and other conditions related to consuming animal products. Goodland and Anhang estimated that these other categories add over 8,500 million tons CO2e annually.
I think that it is clear that, if we aim to avert an environmental crisis due to global warming, moving toward a plant-based diet must be a part of the effort.
Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D.
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10. Message From Canfei Nesharim Seeking Support
Forwarded message from Canfei Nesharin director Evonne Marzouk:
Changing the World
Dear Richard and Loretta,
I'm nine or ten years old, and my next door neighbor asks me, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Still a child, I answer from the heart: "I want to change the world." His response: "Change it into what?"
I will remember this moment as the first time that my desire to make an impact, to matter, turned into a desire to make a difference. It was not enough to change the world. There was a world I was seeking to create.
Perhaps you too have been seeking to create a better world. Perhaps you've walked onto the bima of a synagogue with your hands shaking, ready to give your first speech about the environment. Or you've seen the faces of children light up in a garden, or taken a group of families blueberry picking - seeing them connect their food with the land for the very first time. You've chopped endless piles of fruit for Tu b'Shevat seder, helping people appreciate the value of trees, fruit and all of the earth's blessings.
With more than 300 change agents engaging their communities worldwide, Canfei Nesharim is empowering Jews to educate and empower our community to protect the environment. Not just to "change" the world, but to create a better world: a world in which we preserve our resources and live sustainability for today and for future generations.
But this change doesn't happen by itself. It requires your support to keep the momentum going. As we come to the close of our fiscal year (June 30), we need your help to continue creating that world. Can you help us with a donation of $36, $54, $100 or more (any amount is welcome!), or with an ongoing monthly or annual commitment to support our work, in our Planting and Building Campaign?
Donate here via Razoo
With all best wishes,
Evonne Marzouk and the whole Canfei Nesharim team
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11. Important Climate Change Articles
The following articles provide great insight on the climate change issues:
11a. How the West Was Lost
Chip Ward, TomDispatch: "Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It's happening right here, right now."
Read the Article
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11b. Are Progressives in Denial About Climate Change?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/12
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11c. "Merchants of Doubt": How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
Truthout's Progressive Pick of the Week: "Merchants of Doubt," by authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, exposes how radical think tanks have created a cadre of scientists - motivated by money and ideology - to debunk established scientific facts on threats such as DDT, tobacco, nuclear weapons and global warming.
Read the Article:
http://www.truth-out.org/merchants-doubt-how-handful-scientists-obscured-truth-issues-tobacco-smoke-global-warming/1308235932
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12. Dead Sea Threatened by BOTH Shrinking and Flooding
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20110613/ap_tr_ge/ml_travel_israel_dead_sea;_ylt=AhmNhCd6tQIpmwvKkY.g3Uus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFkdmxsdjN1BHBvcwMxNzcEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl90cmF2ZWwEc2xrA2RlYWRzZWF0aHJlYQ--
Thanks to JVNA advisor and author Rabbi Dovid Sears for forwarding this link to us.
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13. Jews and Muslims Work Together to Protect Their Slaughtering Methods
[Note: JVNA opposes all types of slaughter, but we protest when shechitah (Jewish ritual slaughter) is singled out for criticism. We recommend the book Slaughterhouse by Gail Eisnitz, which points out the many problems and cruelties at non-kosher slaughterhouses.]
Forwarded message from vegetarian activist Scott Young:
Hello Richard, Thought you might find this of interest. Looks lke these two diverse groups have finally found some common ground. From, Scott
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Dutch+Jews+Muslims+appeal+plan+stun+animals+before+ritual+slaughter/4961558/story.html
Jewish and Muslim representatives Thursday appealed to Dutch lawmakers not to enforce plans requiring animals to be stunned before halal and kosher slaughtering rituals.
"We are against any form of stunning because it's against our religion," Yusuf Altuntas, president of the CMO - an organization that links the Muslim community with the Dutch government - told a parliamentary commission.
"One of the first measures taken during the Occupation (during the Second World War) was the closing of kosher abattoirs," Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs said during the debate in The Hague.
Dutch law required animals to be stunned before being slaughtered but made an exception for ritual halal and kosher slaughters.
The country's Party for Animals (PvdD) which holds two seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament, has submitted a proposal which, if implemented, would see this exception abolished.
Dutch media widely reported that the PvdD's proposal was expected to get a majority nod from parliamentarians, but a time frame was not given.
"The animals suffer more and are more distressed if they are not stunned," Esther Ouwehand, a PvdD parliamentarian told AFP. "By getting this modification in the law, we hope to inspire other countries," she added, pointing out that in Norway and Sweden these measures had already been taken.
More than 2 million animals - mainly sheep and chickens - are subjected to ritual slaughter every year in the Netherlands, the PvdD added.
Abdelfattah Ali-Salah, director of Halal Correct, the organization which issues halal certificates in the country, however called the figure "inexact." He said some 250,000 animals were slaughtered yearly without being stunned beforehand.
Jewish and Muslim representatives Thursday insisted ritual slaughter respected the animals' welfare, notably restriction methods used to limit suffering and that those slaughtering received expert training.
"If we no longer have people who can do ritual slaughter in the Netherlands, we will stop eating meat," Chief Rabbi Jacobs said.
They did however offer to implement some measures which they said would ease the animals' suffering, especially better controls in abattoirs where ritual slaughters were performed and an improvement in conditions under which animals were being transported.
Several organizations in France in January launched a poster campaign reporting conditions in which animals were killed during ritual slaughter.
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14. 2012 IVU World Veg Congress Planned
Forwarded message:
It‘s still about more than a year away, but planning is already moving forward for the 2012 IVU World Veg Congress (WVC) to be held in San Francisco. Among the featured speakers will be John & Ocean Robbins (pictured here), Dr Michael Greger, Dr Don Forrester, Prof T. Colin Campbell, Dr Richard Oppenlander, Colleen
Patrick-Goudreau and Cherie Soria.
Other not-to-be-missed elements of the WVC include a wide variety of international
vegan cuisine, healthy food demos, vegan speed dating, children‘s corner, the
Veghealth Awards ceremony and, last but not least, live entertainment. For updates,
visit www.ivu.org/congress/2012
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The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of vegetarian, environmental, nutritional, health, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for educational or research purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal, technical or medical advice.
June 12, 2011
06/12/2011 JVNA Online Newsletter
Shalom everyone,
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Superb PDF Refutes Claims of Climate Skeptics
2. How Veg Diets Can Fight Cancer
3. Why Such Denial While the World approaches a Climate Catastrophe?
4. Excellent Material on Environmental Impacts of Animal-Based Agriculture
5. Update on the World Week for the Abolition of Meat
6. The Coming Food Crisis
7. Animated Cartoon Shows Animal Abuses on Factory Farms
8. YOU Can Become a “World Peace Diet” Educator
9. We Are In for Even Hotter Weather
10. Position Paper on Climate Change from the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America
11. International Vegetarian Week Contest Being Planned/Suggestions Welcome
12. Great Videos About Yale University Program Combining Religious Teachings to Environmental Issues
13. Action Alert: You Can Help Get Healthier Food Choices Into Schools
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Superb PDF Refutes Claims of Climate Skeptics
http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Scientific-Guide-to-Global-Warming-Skepticism.html
This PDF is at the website of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Hence, it can be an especially valuable way to respond to climate deniers. It is very clearly written, with helpful graphs, and responses to comments from readers.
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2. How Veg Diets Can Fight Cancer
Fight cancer with your fork
By BRUCE FRIEDRICH
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Published: Monday, Jun. 6, 2011 - 5:13 am
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/06/3679963/fight-cancer-with-your-fork.html
According to a new study, one of the deadliest types of cancer is also one of the most preventable. The World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research found that eating too much meat raises the risk of colorectal cancer and that eating fiber-rich vegetarian foods reduces the risk. What's more, nearly half (45 percent) of colorectal cancer cases "could be prevented if we all ate more fiber-rich plant foods and less meat."
This serves as yet another reminder that one of the best weapons in the war on cancer is a fork.
Scientists at Imperial College London conducted the new analysis as part of the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research's groundbreaking Continuous Update Project (CUP). They found that a person who eats just 3.5 ounces of pork, beef or lamb every day has a 17 percent higher risk of developing colorectal cancer than does someone who eats no meat.
Three ounces of meat is approximately the size of a deck of cards. That's just one serving size as determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, yet it's far less than most Americans ingest in one sitting, let alone in one day.
Just about any meat is loaded with the saturated fat that the American Cancer Society believes is linked to cancer of the colon and rectum, but processed meats such as ham, bacon, hot dogs and deli slices carry an even greater risk. According to the CUP report, if a person eats 3.5 ounces of processed meat every day, his or her risk for colorectal cancer increases by 36 percent. The more meat you eat, the higher your risk will be.
Almost as bad as what's in meat is what's not in it: fiber. Meat and dairy products have absolutely no fiber at all, while fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains are loaded with it. Fiber helps speed the passage of food through the colon. Meat, on the other hand, tends to hang around and, well, rot.
In my work with PETA, I've been researching and writing about vegetarian issues for more than 15 years. And the conclusion of each new nutritional study is nearly always the same. There is overwhelming evidence linking meat to some of our society's most severe health problems. Conversely, eating vegetarian foods can greatly reduce your risk of developing many of these same diseases - and in some cases, actually reverse them.
For example, according to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians have "lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer" than meat-eaters do. The American Cancer Society recommends "choosing most of your foods from plant sources and limiting your intake of high-fat foods such as those from animal sources."
If we take away anything from such nutritional research, it should be that the best prescription for good health is always prevention. And if making the sensible switch to a vegan diet can so greatly benefit our health - not to mention save animals' lives - why not at least try it? With summer fast approaching, and with it a wealth of locally grown fruits and vegetables available in farmers' markets and at produce stands, now is a great time to start eating for life.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Bruce Friedrich is a vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front Street, Norfolk, Va. 23510; www.PETA.org. Information about PETA's funding may be found at www.peta.org/about/numbers.asp.
This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/06/3679963/fight-cancer-with-your-fork.html#ixzz1OWwD77Qz
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3. Why Such Denial While the World approaches a Climate Catastrophe?
Glued to The Weather Channel While the World Burns
By Paul Rogat Loeb
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/glued-to-the-weather-chan_b_871832.html
Following the weather is beginning to feel like revisiting the Biblical plagues. Tornadoes rip through Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma—even Massachusetts. A million acres burn in Texas wildfires. The Army Corps of Engineers floods 135,000 acres of farmland and three million acres of bayou country to save Memphis and New Orleans. Earlier in the past year, a 2,000-mile storm dumped near-record snow from Texas to Maine, a fifth of Pakistan flooded, fires made Moscow’s air nearly unbreathable, and drought devastated China’s wheat crop. You’d think we’d suspect something’s grievously wrong.
But media coverage rarely connects the unfolding cataclysms with the global climate change that fuels them. We can’t guarantee that any specific disaster is caused by our warming atmosphere. The links are delayed and diffuse. But considered together, the escalating floods, droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes fit all the predicted models. So do the extreme snowfalls and ice storms, as our heated atmosphere carries more water vapor. So why deem them isolated acts of God—instead of urgent warnings to change our course?
Scientists are more certain than ever, from the National Academy of Science and its counterparts in every other country to such “radical groups” as the American Chemical Society and American Statistical Society. But the media has buried their voices, giving near-equal “point/counterpoint” credence to a handful of deniers promoted by Exxon, the coal companies and the Koch brothers. Fox News’s managing editor even prohibited any reporting on global climate change that didn’t immediately then question the overwhelming scientific consensus. The escalating disasters dominate the news, but stripped of context. We’re given no perspective to reflect on their likely root causes.
Meanwhile, leading Republicans who once acknowledged the need to act, like Tim Pawlenty, disavow their previous stands like sinners begging forgiveness. A Tea Party Congress insists that they know better than do all the world’s scientists, dismissing decades of meticulous research as Ivory Tower elitism. Even Obama has fallen largely silent, as if he can’t afford an honest discussion.
As a result, too many Americans still don’t know what to believe. We can’t see, smell or taste the core emissions that create climate change. The industrial processes that create the crisis are so familiar we don’t even question them, no more than the air that we breathe. And if we’re not getting hammered by the weather, the world still seems normal, particularly on a lovely summer day. Plus we’re told that in the current economic crisis we can’t afford even to think about climate change or any other urgent environmental issue, even though the technologies that provide the necessary alternatives are precisely those our country will need to compete economically. Add in a culture of overload and distraction, and it’s easy to retreat into denial or self-defeating resignation. It’s as if half our population was diagnosed with life-threatening but treatable cancer—visited the world’s leading medical centers to confirm it--and then decided instead to heed forwarded emails that assure them that they can freely ignore the counsel of the doctors and simply do nothing.
The antidote to denial and the forces that promote it is courage. And as Egypt and Tunisia remind us, courage is contagious. We need to act and speak out in every conceivable way, and demand that our leaders do the same. We need to engage new allies, like religious evangelicals who’ve recently spoken out to defend “God’s creation,” from best-selling minister Rick Warren to highly conservative organizations like the Christian Coalition. We need to work with labor activists who link this ultimate issue with the renewal of American jobs. A recent BlueGreen Alliance conference, for instance, brought together leaders of major unions like the United Steel Workers, SEIU, Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers, Laborers’ International, and American Federation of Teachers, with environmental groups like the Sierra Club, National Resource Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and Union of Concerned Scientists, all speaking about the need to invest in an economy where both ordinary workers and the planet are respected. We need to join with these allies and others to voice our outrage at those risking our common future for greed. We need to find creative ways to do this until America’s political climate comes to grips with the changing climate of the earth. Here’s hoping the mounting disasters will finally teach us to turn off The Weather Channel and begin taking action.
Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, with 130,000 copies in print including a newly updated second edition. He's also the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. See www.paulloeb.org.
To receive Paul’s articles directly please email sympa@npogroups.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles.edu
Sign up here for Paul's Huffington Post articles (a more comprehensive list)
To sign up for Paul’s Facebook page, visit http://www.facebook.com/PaulLoebBooks
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4. Excellent Material on Environmental Impacts of Animal-Based Agriculture
Veg Mondays Good for the World
http://www.vegmondays.org/Environment.html
Eating ‘veg’ has tremendous benefits for our land, water and air. By reducing or eliminating our consumption of animal products we not only conserve vast quantities of fresh water (needed to slaughter and “process” animals), but we also protect our land, water and air from a major source of pollution.
On average it takes 11 times more fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3, Pimentel & Pimentel, Sept. 2003)
Livestock are responsible for 68% of ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and the acidification of ecosystems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 272)
In the U.S., livestock production is responsible for 55% of all soil erosion on cropped land and pastureland, 40% of which ends up in water resources. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 73, Box 2.5)
It takes 5 times more water to yield 1000 kcal of meat as it does to yield 1000 kcal of fruits, vegetables or grains. (Malin Falkenmark & Johan Rockstrom, “Balancing Water for Humans and Nature”, 2004, p. 50)
You could save more water by not eating one pound of California beef than you would save by not showering for an entire year. (Based on 1 shower/day, 7 minutes/shower, using 2 gallons water/minute). (John Robbins, The Food Revolution, 2001, p. 237)
More water is taken from the Ogallala aquifer (western U.S.) each year for beef production than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables in the entire country. (Dr. Candace Chase, The Journal of Ecologically Sustainable Medicine, “Healthy Earth, Healthy Eating”, Dec. 2005)
Learn more about the environmental impacts
Your Can Help Protect the Environment
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
33 tons of antibiotics.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:
Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damage;
4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.
Taken from Kathy Freston's column, "The Breathtaking Effects of Cutting Back on Meat" April 1, 2009.
Resource Depletion
Approximately half the population of Africa and Asia will be facing water scarcity in 2025 and are also the regions that will face the most serious challenges in terms of poverty, population growth and food requirements. (Malin Falkenmark & Johan Rockstrom, “Balancing Water For Humans and Nature”, 2004, p. 135)
Livestock production accounts for 23% of global water usage, including drinking, servicing, processing and feed crop irrigation. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 271, Table 7.1)
Livestock grazing and feed crop cultivation account for 59% of global land use. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 271, Table 7.1)
More than 71,300 mi2 (an area twice the size of Portugal) of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared to graze livestock. (Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “Hamburger Connection Fuels Amazon Destruction; Cattle Ranching and Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon”, April 2004)
As of 2004 more than 10,000 miles of the Amazon rainforest had been cleared to grow soybeans to feed livestock. Kristal, Arnold, “Globalization: It’s a Small World After All”, Food Systems Insider, May 1st, 2005)
In just five months in 2007 Brazil lost more than 1236 mi2 of Amazon rainforest to illegal farming and ranching, as high prices for cattle, soybeans and corn led farmers and ranchers to plant more crops and raise more animals. (BBC News, 2008. “Brazil Amazon Deforestation Soars” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7206165.stm, See also: Sibaja M. 2008. “Brazil to Increase Monitors in Rain Forest as Illegal Clearing Spreads”, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012401059.html
Green House Emissions
Livestock production is responsible for more than 50% of all GHG. (Robert Goodland & Jeff Anhang, World Watch Institute, “Livestock and Climate Change”, Vol.22 No. 6, Nov/Dec 2009)
Distribution of Food Resources and World Hunger
It is much more efficient to grow food directly for human consumption than to cycle it through animals.
Livestock consume more edible protein (77 million tons) than they produce (58 million tons). (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 270)
70% of all corn and grain grown in the U.S. is fed to livestock (Durning and Brough, “Taking Stock”, p. 14. See also, Ayres, Ed, “Will We Still Eat Meat?” Time Magazine, Nov. 8th, 1999. See also The Food Revolution by John Robbins, 2001 p.292)
1,400,000,000,000 (1.4 Trillion) people could be fed by the grain eaten by U.S. livestock alone (John Robbins, The Food Revolution, 2001, p.292)
Worldwide, 80% of all soybeans grown are used for animal feed (Mark Ash, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, email to Danielle Nierenberg, Worldwatch Institute, May 2005)
26% of the world’s surface is used for livestock grazing, 33% of all arable land is used for feed crop cultivation (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p.271 Table 7.1)
25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger and related causes (FAO & The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2006. (World Food Programme: www.wfp.org/hunger/stats))
1,200,000,000 (1.2 Billion) people worldwide are underfed and/or malnourished (Gardner and Halweil, “Underfed and Overfed” Worldwatch Institute paper #150, March 2000)
Water Pollution
The livestock sector is the largest source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, ‘dead’ zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many other problems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p xxiii)
The amount of water pollution generated in producing a pound of ‘meat’ is 17 times greater than that generated producing a pound of pasta. (Brower & Leon, “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists”, March 1999)
The main water pollutants in the U.S. are sediments and nutrients. Animal agriculture is responsible for 55% of the erosion that causes sedimentation, and for 33% of nutrient pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorous. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p 162)
Animal agriculture is responsible for 33% of the United States’ water pollution from pesticides, and 50% of its water pollution from antibiotics. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006)
Pollution from Manure Lagoons
Bursting, leaking and overflowing manure lagoons have spawned environmental disasters around the country, sending animal waste gushing into rivers, groundwater and coastal wetlands. Each year thousands of lagoon leaks are reported and it is estimated that thousands more go unreported. (National Resources Defense Council, “America’s Animal Factories: How States Fail to Prevent Pollution From Livestock Waste” by Robbin Marks and Rebecca Knuffke, Dec. 1998)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that confined farm animals generate 3 times more raw waste each year (more than 450 million tons) than is generated by Americans. (Environmental Protection Agency, National pollutant discharge elimination system permit regulation and effluent limitation guidelines and standards for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); Final Rule, 68 Fed. Reg. 7176, 7180 (Feb. 12th, 2003.))
The amount of waste produced by North Carolina’s 7 million factory-raised hogs is 4 times greater than the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of that state (6.5 Million) (Facts and Data, Waste Pollution and the Environment, GRACE Factory Farm Project, www.gracelinks.org/factoryfarm/facts, 2000)
Compare: 12 million gallons of oil spilled by Exxon-Valdez in 1989 vs. 25 million gallons of putrefying hog urine and feces spilled into the New River in North Carolina, June 21st, 1995, when a lagoon holding 8 acres of excrement burst. 10 - 14 million fish were killed as an immediate result. (Williams, Ted, “Assembly Line Swine”, Audubon, March/April 1998, p.27. See also, “Environmental and Health Consequences of Animal Factories”, Natural Resources Defense Council report, 1998., see also “Feedstuffs”, July 3rd, 1995)
On factory dairy farms one cow produces 115 lbs. of manure each day. (Citizens’ Environmental Coalition & Sierra Club, “The Wasting of Rural New York State”, 2005)
Land and Air Pollution
Livestock are responsible for 68% of ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and the acidification of ecosystems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 272)
In the U.S. livestock production is responsible for 55% of all soil erosion on cropped land and pastureland, 40% of which ends up in water resources. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 73, Box 2.5)
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5. Update on the World Week for the Abolition of Meat
Forwarded message: (Sorry that some is already out of date)
Greetings,
Please find below the English version of the closing communiqué* for the May 2011 WWAM (World Week for the Abolition of Meat). The awareness actions will nevertheless continue through the month of June.
If you have organized actions, please remember to publish your reports here. If you'd like to organize events, please announce them here!
You can join us on Facebook!
Look forward to hearing from you,
WWAM Organizational Committee
* This closing communiqué is available in the following languages: Brazilian/Portuguese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish. Please ask at contact@meat-abolition.org.
Please post and circulate widely
Closing communiqué for the May 2011 WWAM:
Once again there has been great mobilization for this year's second World Week for the Abolition of Meat (WWAM): fifty actions took place in the world, all aiming towards the same goal: to promote the idea that the consumption of meat is not ethical and that it should be abolished at the societal level, just like human slavery, for example, was abolished in its time.
Numerous organizations united to demand the end of a deeply ingrained injustice, perceived as natural and ancestral, and thus perceived as normal.
They united to say:
No one has the right to eat meat.
Even the most basic morals, accepted by all, which affirm that one must not kill or make an animal suffer unnecessarily, unavoidably lead to the conclusion that the consumption of meat must be banned. This practice which produces the most suffering and death that have ever existed on the face of the earth is not justified by any physiological necessity.
Throughout the world, individuals, groups and organizations stand up to proclaim their dissent.
We demand the banning of animal agriculture, fishing and hunting.
We no longer want to tolerate that reasons as ridiculous as the good taste of flesh in one's mouth can overcome the fundamental interests of those concerned: sentient beings who are raised, fished, and hunted in order to become dead bodies for consumption.
These World Weeks for the Abolition of Meat, we hope, are the beginnings of a world where everyone will have it in her or his heart to avoid making other beings suffer.
WWAM Organizational Committee
---------------------------------
Contact:
International organization: http://www.meat-abolition.org
Yves Bon: + 33 4 75 21 44 91
Florence L.: + 33 6 85 79 22 61
email: meat-abolition.org and meat.abolition@gmail.com
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6. The Coming Food Crisis
Spirituality and Ecological Hope
The looming threat of food shortage
Posted: 06 Jun 2011 09:23 PM PDT
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish:
Friends, this is a busy week, too busy for a truly thoughtful post, yet my heart is heavy with many worries and fears. We really are right up against it now, this threshold I tried to describe in my book (Living Beyond the "End of the World": A Spirituality of Hope). We are at the moment when we really must decide what kind of world we want to leave to our children, just how bad things are going to get, what it will be like to live in a world where everything we need for life will be under the threat of our changing ecological reality.
I invite you to read this lengthy article from Sunday’s NY Times – because it is very important. While the news media can make me crazy, this is one story that tells us something we need to know – our global food shortages are not something to worry about in the future, they are arriving right now. And whether or not this planet will be able to feed this growing human population (until we can get it to stop growing) depends entirely on the decisions we make, you know, right now.
Here is the article: A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself, by Justin Gillis. It was on the front page and consumed 2 pages inside. The NY Times made this the most important news story of their Sunday edition – for good reason.
Now I want to add a couple of links to give this more perspective, and then add a thought or two.
Worst Ever Carbon Emissions Leave Climate on the Brink, from the UK’s The Guardian.
Floods, Droughts, Are ‘New Normal’ of Extreme US Weather Fueled by Climate Change, a Reuters article.
Now put this news up against the profound political dysfunction in this country, the utter impossibility of even having a national conversation about any of this.
We can’t, because if we did certain things would become obvious:
* industrial agriculture as a model for food and fuel production would have to be brought to an end as quickly as possible;
* growth as a model for the global economy would have to be renounced and something new created;
* our western societies would need to get off meat as quickly as possible;
* new international laws would need to prohibit multinational corporations and sovereign funds from buying up access rights to water and food production on arable lands in other countries;
* affluent societies would have to begin to renounce their wealth and privileges and drastically downscale the lifestyles of the richest;
* tax structures would need to change, meaning taxes on the rich and on corporations and global financial transactions would need to be raised sharply;
*Monsanto’s GMO seed business would need to be made illegal, along with patents for seeds needed to grow food, returning seed sovereignty to local farmers;
* growing food grains for fuel would need to be halted;
* and massive amounts of international aid would need to be offered to poorer countries to help them develop local agriculture for the purpose of attaining seed sovereignty and food security.
And perhaps most of all, food would have to be removed from the list of commodities to be sold for profit and become what it really is – a basic right for all.
In chapter nine, I begin to articulate a ‘spirituality of scarcity,’ using the gospel story of the loaves and fishes, breaking it open to see what it suggests about how to proceed. The course of the narrative suggests a path. The crowd is hungry and the time is late. How to feed the throngs? Jesus’ first response is a challenge, “feed them yourselves.” Yes, that is our charge. The disciples, lacking confidence in their own ability to do this, lament that they have only found these few loaves and fishes.
Again, the course of the narrative is what matters, certainly more than the ‘miracle’ itself. First, Jesus blesses the food, then they break it into smaller pieces, then they share it with the crowd. Not only are all fed, but there is food left over, there is abundance.
Abundance came from the sharing of the smaller pieces with everyone.
This is a story out of a faith tradition, yes. It is also a story out of an ethic, a moral framework suggesting how we can live with dignity, sharing the abundance of creation. Jesus did not come to start a religion, and much of the religion that claims his name falls shamefully short of proclaiming the worldview that got him into so much trouble.
So I leave us tonight with the story of the loaves and fishes and invite it to disturb us, to invite us to a conversion and transformation in how we see the human journey and our current predicament. We either create a world built upon a vision like the one suggested in this story, or we descend into moral chaos as more and more of our sisters and brothers grow hungry and die.
It really is that stark.
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7. Animated Cartoon Shows Animal Abuses on Factory Farms
WATCH: Agribusiness on the Assault (Cartoon)
http://motherjones.com/media/2011/05/zina-saunders-undercover-animal-abuse-videos
— By Zina Saunders
Tue May. 3, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
Mother Jones illustrator Zina Saunders creates editorial animations riffing on the political news and current events of the week. In this week's animation, a look at our sordid meat production industry where agribusiness has been pushing laws in a number of states that would criminalize shooting or displaying undercover videos that show animal abuse on farms. One such law has already passed the House in Iowa, and would carry a penalty of up to 5 years in jail. As always, that's Saunders with the voiceovers. Other sound effects are courtesy of freesound.org. —The Editors
Thanks to author and JVNA advisor Dan Brook for sending this material to us.
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8. YOU Can Become a “World Peace Diet” Educator
Forwarded message, from author, speaker, activist Will Tuttle
Richard
Greetings!
Hope you're enjoying these early June days, wherever you are!
If you're interested in deepening your understanding of the ideas in The World Peace Diet, I've got some exciting news. We are now offering two self-paced online educational programs focused on providing you with the liberating skills and training to thrive as a vegan and also to be an effective advocate for compassion and health.
The basic 4-week program, the World Peace Diet Mastery Program, provides an excellent foundation for the 8-week program, the WPD Facilitator Training. This 8-week advanced training leads to certification as a World Peace Diet Facilitator, and can open many doors in your life, from greater health and self-confidence to a new career in the growing vegan movement. The two programs are independent and provide an in-depth experience of the empowering ideas in The World Peace Diet, directly from me, the book's author.
To get the skinny on these new programs, please go to http://worldpeacemastery.com
I hope you'll join us in the rewarding adventure of personal and cultural transformation that is calling!
Madeleine and I would also like to thank everyone who has helped organize our recent presentations in Texas, Arizona, and southern California. We are constantly humbled by the generous, creative, and hard-working efforts of you, our fellow advocates for a better world. Bless you all!
We have some upcoming lectures in San Diego and L.A. before we present at the terrific Vegetarian Summerfest in Pennsylvania in early July. Please join us if you can and check our constantly-updated tour schedule.
We appreciate you and all you're doing to embody the ancient wisdom teaching: to be the change you'd like to see in others.
That's it for now,
All the best, Will & Madeleine
Dr. Will Tuttle
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9. We Are In for Even Hotter Weather
Summers Are Going To Get Hotter, Stanford Scientists Say
The Huffington Post Joanna Zelman First Posted: 06/ 9/11 11:26 AM ET Updated: 06/ 9/11 11:37 AM ET
The summer season has not even officially started yet in the U.S. and already people are cranking up the a/c, boxing away the sweaters, seeking out the best swimming hole, and plotting how to avoid sweat stains. It’s about to get a lot worse.
A recent study conducted by Stanford University scientists has concluded that if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, many regions in the world will probably experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years.
LiveScience explains that a single heat wave or warm day is not a sign of global warming. But while an individual weather event cannot be attributed to a warming world, more long-term trends are accepted in the scientific community as evidence of man-made global warming.
The recent Stanford study, which will be published this month in the journal Climatic Change Letters, found that middle latitude regions of Europe, China and North America (including the U.S.) will likely see extreme shifts in summers temperatures within the next 60 years. In just the next two decades, tropical regions of Africa, Asia and South America could see permanent and “unprecedented” summer heat. The most immediate rise in extreme temperatures is expected to occur in the tropics.
Last year tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record, with the average worldwide temperature 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The Associated Press reports, “Most atmospheric scientists attribute the change to gases released into the air by industrial processes and gasoline-burning engines.” This is man-made global warming.
The Stanford study's lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, sought to determine when the current hottest temperatures would become “the new normal.” He says, "According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years."
Diffenbaugh and co-author Martin Scherer came to this conclusion after analyzing over 50 climate model experiments, including both computer simulations of 21st century predictions and 20th century simulations that accurately predicted the Earth’s climate over the past 50 years.
Beyond perhaps a need to stock up on sunglasses and deodorant, what is the significance of these findings? According to Diffenbaugh, this dramatic rise in seasonal temperatures could severely affect human health and agriculture.
Regarding health, heat waves can kill. As Diffenbaugh cites, heat waves in 2003 killed an estimated 35,000 people in Europe. Last year, a record heat wave in Russia killed 700 people per day. As for agriculture, new research reveals that global warming has hindered crop yields. Higher temperatures cause dehydration and prevent pollination, resulting in a rise in food prices. Other studies suggest that warmer winters keep pests alive longer, allowing them to carry plant diseases, and greenhouse gases affect a plant’s structure, reducing its protection abilities.
The Stanford report comes amid many other dire global warming predictions. One recent study found that rising sea levels could threaten 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100. Reuters reports cities including Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, and Virginia Beach could lose over 10 percent of their land area by the end of this century.
U.N. predictions suggest that there may be 50 million environmental refugees by 2020. This past year alone, natural disasters displaced 42 million people, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. According to the organization, over 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather incidents that were probably, to some extent, impacted by global warming.
Scientists and government planners announced in May that heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and deadly droughts signal a "new normal" of extreme U.S. weather events influenced by climate change.
How many looming threats and even visible evidence are needed before serious action is taken to fight global warming?
Instead of recognizing that another air conditioner is just a bandaid on our warming world, climate talks are expected to miss the Kyoto deadline, climate scientists are receiving death threats, and global emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide were the highest ever last year.
Will significant action against global warming have to wait until we can’t take the heat?
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10. Position Paper on Climate Change from the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America
https://www.agronomy.org/files/science-policy/asa-cssa-sssa-climate-change-policy-statement.pdf
One more example of the scientific consensus on climate change.
Thanks to agricultural expert and JVNA advisor Professor Joe Regenstein for forwarding this link to us.
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11. International Vegetarian Week Contest Being Planned/Suggestions Welcome
Forward message from IVW organizer Mateus Mendes:
1. I will create a contest in the website. The software we use is prepared to run contests, we have done it in Portugal using this software.
2. Participants can submit their ideas and works directly, after logging in to the system.
2.1 The deadline for participating is 10 September.
2.2 These kinds of contributions are accepted:
- Cartoon
- Essay
- Leaflet
- Poster
- Slogan
2.3 Participants must be individuals.
2.4 All the submitted texts must be in English.
2.5 There is no limit of submissions per author - each author can submit many different works.
3. Prizes
3.1 The awarded contributions will become official IVW material, and the authors will be promoted by vegetarian week project;
3.2 The winner can be announced with a press release, presentation of the person with picture and article about her/him or an interview - whatever is preferred.
3.3 Additionally, the following prizes can be given:
1 - 60 Euros voucher for http://en.efeitoverde.com
2 - 50 Euros voucher for http://www.amazon.com
3-10 - Vegdining cards (valued at $11.95US for members of recognized veg groups, $15.95US others - http://vegdining.com)
4. NGOs, companies and individuals taking part in the IVW are invited to promote the campaign on their websites, via their distribution systems and newsletters and in whatever form they find suitable.
5. A jury consisting of reps from all NGOs supporting the idea will grade the contributions until 25 September.
5.1 The grading system will be double-blinded (the author doesn't know who are the reviewers, and the reviewers don't not know who are the authors).
5.2 Each submission will be graded by at least 2 reviewers.
6. The winners will be announced on 1 October.
7. The authors agree that their submissions are actually contributions to the IVW project, and the winning contribution(s) may be freely used to promote the IVW.
1) Relevance for the International Vegetarian Week goals (promotes the vegetarian lifestyle? promotes the vegetarian week?);
2) Quality (is the message scientifically correct [if applicable]? Are there typos in the texts [if applicable]? are the illustrations or images good-looking [if applicable]?);
3) Expected effectiveness (is the message appealing? is it clear? May it reach a wide audience?).
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12. Great Videos About Yale University Program Combining Religious Teachings to Environmental Issues
http://environment.yale.edu/profile/tucker
http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/maryevelyntuckercomplete
Thanks to JVNA advisor Ron Landskroner for forwarding these links to us.
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13. Action Alert: You Can Help Get Healthier Food Choices Into Schools
Forwarded message:
Hi Richard,
I have been working with a fantastic group - the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food as a volunteer for the last 3 years, because I see the amazing work they are doing in schools, and they also develop great resources for schools to educate children about the importance of plant foods.
I hope you will join me in supporting the important work they are doing. You can click here to see the details of how you can help them, but essentially, they need DONATIONS:)
© Corporate sponsorships of our fall Gala: $1000, $2,500, $5000, $10,000 or more.
Some past sponsors (not yet confirmed for this year): Whole Foods Market, The Hain Celestial Group, Nutiva, Candle Cafe & Candle 79, NuTru, HealthForce Nutritionals, and Wildwood Pulmuone.
(Click here for more details, including what you get in return)
© Items for Gift bags for our fall Gala (need 300) – no samples, regular size products only; coupons for free products, not discounts; all items must be fully plant-based (vegan). Donation includes listing on our website and Gala program guide.
© Silent Auction item for our fall Gala (minimal value $300) – all items must be fully plant-based. Donation includes listing on our website and Gala program guide.
© Charity Buzz online auction items (minimal value $1000) – unique experiences and items. Great Publicity! See sample donations at www.charitybuzz.com. Donation includes listing on our website.
Note: please send low resolution logo in .jpg format for all donations listed above.
PLEASE respond by September 1, 2011 for Gala sponsorship, gift bags, and/or silent auction.
A little more about New York Coalition for Healthy School Food:
They are in partnership with the NYC Office of SchoolFood, the largest school food operation in the country. They have developed plant-based entrée recipes and conducted educational presentations for all staff and food service personnel. They are in 19 schools with a waiting list of 48 schools! In addition they are in partnership with the Ithaca City School District Child Nutrition Program and they have developed plant-based entrees using local organic beans and grains – a true Farm to School program. In addition, they have created Wellness Wakeup Call, nutrition education in the form of “easy to digest sound bites” read over the loudspeaker each morning. It is currently heard by over 100,000 students each day in New York and many other states around the country.
Please let me know if you need any other information, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Deer Fields
Volunteer Development Director
NYCHSF, New York Coalition for Healthy School Food
Check out our new website: www.healthyschoolfood.org
The New York Coalition for Healthy School Food (NYCHSF) is a statewide nonprofit that works to improve the health and well-being of New York's students by advocating for healthy plant-based foods, including local and organic where possible, farm to school programs, the elimination of unhealthy competitive foods in all areas of the school (not just the cafeteria), comprehensive nutrition policy, and education to create food- and health-literate students.
Sign up for our email list from our homepage to be kept up to date on Healthy School Food! Happenings and join as a member - it's free!
--
Love, Deer
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~George Bernard Shaw
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
Live and Let Live, Go Vegan!
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** Fair Use Notice **
The material on this site is provided for educational and informational purposes. It may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of vegetarian, environmental, nutritional, health, economic, social justice and human rights issues etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in using the included information for educational or research purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The information on this site does not constitute legal, technical or medical advice.
This update/Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA) Online Newsletter has the following items:
1. Superb PDF Refutes Claims of Climate Skeptics
2. How Veg Diets Can Fight Cancer
3. Why Such Denial While the World approaches a Climate Catastrophe?
4. Excellent Material on Environmental Impacts of Animal-Based Agriculture
5. Update on the World Week for the Abolition of Meat
6. The Coming Food Crisis
7. Animated Cartoon Shows Animal Abuses on Factory Farms
8. YOU Can Become a “World Peace Diet” Educator
9. We Are In for Even Hotter Weather
10. Position Paper on Climate Change from the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America
11. International Vegetarian Week Contest Being Planned/Suggestions Welcome
12. Great Videos About Yale University Program Combining Religious Teachings to Environmental Issues
13. Action Alert: You Can Help Get Healthier Food Choices Into Schools
Some material has been deferred to a later update/newsletter to keep this one from being even longer.
[Materials in brackets like this [ ] within an article or forwarded message are my editorial notes/comments.]
Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the JVNA, unless otherwise indicated, but may be presented to increase awareness and/or to encourage respectful dialogue. Also, material re conferences, retreats, forums, trips, and other events does not necessarily imply endorsement by JVNA or endorsement of the kashrut, Shabbat observances, or any other Jewish observances, but may be presented for informational purposes. Please use e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and web sites to get further information about any event that you are interested in. Also, JVNA does not necessarily agree with all positions of groups whose views are included or whose events are announced in this newsletter.
As always, your comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks,
Richard
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1. Superb PDF Refutes Claims of Climate Skeptics
http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Scientific-Guide-to-Global-Warming-Skepticism.html
This PDF is at the website of Republicans for Environmental Protection. Hence, it can be an especially valuable way to respond to climate deniers. It is very clearly written, with helpful graphs, and responses to comments from readers.
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2. How Veg Diets Can Fight Cancer
Fight cancer with your fork
By BRUCE FRIEDRICH
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Published: Monday, Jun. 6, 2011 - 5:13 am
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/06/3679963/fight-cancer-with-your-fork.html
According to a new study, one of the deadliest types of cancer is also one of the most preventable. The World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research found that eating too much meat raises the risk of colorectal cancer and that eating fiber-rich vegetarian foods reduces the risk. What's more, nearly half (45 percent) of colorectal cancer cases "could be prevented if we all ate more fiber-rich plant foods and less meat."
This serves as yet another reminder that one of the best weapons in the war on cancer is a fork.
Scientists at Imperial College London conducted the new analysis as part of the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research's groundbreaking Continuous Update Project (CUP). They found that a person who eats just 3.5 ounces of pork, beef or lamb every day has a 17 percent higher risk of developing colorectal cancer than does someone who eats no meat.
Three ounces of meat is approximately the size of a deck of cards. That's just one serving size as determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, yet it's far less than most Americans ingest in one sitting, let alone in one day.
Just about any meat is loaded with the saturated fat that the American Cancer Society believes is linked to cancer of the colon and rectum, but processed meats such as ham, bacon, hot dogs and deli slices carry an even greater risk. According to the CUP report, if a person eats 3.5 ounces of processed meat every day, his or her risk for colorectal cancer increases by 36 percent. The more meat you eat, the higher your risk will be.
Almost as bad as what's in meat is what's not in it: fiber. Meat and dairy products have absolutely no fiber at all, while fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains are loaded with it. Fiber helps speed the passage of food through the colon. Meat, on the other hand, tends to hang around and, well, rot.
In my work with PETA, I've been researching and writing about vegetarian issues for more than 15 years. And the conclusion of each new nutritional study is nearly always the same. There is overwhelming evidence linking meat to some of our society's most severe health problems. Conversely, eating vegetarian foods can greatly reduce your risk of developing many of these same diseases - and in some cases, actually reverse them.
For example, according to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians have "lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer" than meat-eaters do. The American Cancer Society recommends "choosing most of your foods from plant sources and limiting your intake of high-fat foods such as those from animal sources."
If we take away anything from such nutritional research, it should be that the best prescription for good health is always prevention. And if making the sensible switch to a vegan diet can so greatly benefit our health - not to mention save animals' lives - why not at least try it? With summer fast approaching, and with it a wealth of locally grown fruits and vegetables available in farmers' markets and at produce stands, now is a great time to start eating for life.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Bruce Friedrich is a vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501 Front Street, Norfolk, Va. 23510; www.PETA.org. Information about PETA's funding may be found at www.peta.org/about/numbers.asp.
This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/06/3679963/fight-cancer-with-your-fork.html#ixzz1OWwD77Qz
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3. Why Such Denial While the World approaches a Climate Catastrophe?
Glued to The Weather Channel While the World Burns
By Paul Rogat Loeb
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-loeb/glued-to-the-weather-chan_b_871832.html
Following the weather is beginning to feel like revisiting the Biblical plagues. Tornadoes rip through Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma—even Massachusetts. A million acres burn in Texas wildfires. The Army Corps of Engineers floods 135,000 acres of farmland and three million acres of bayou country to save Memphis and New Orleans. Earlier in the past year, a 2,000-mile storm dumped near-record snow from Texas to Maine, a fifth of Pakistan flooded, fires made Moscow’s air nearly unbreathable, and drought devastated China’s wheat crop. You’d think we’d suspect something’s grievously wrong.
But media coverage rarely connects the unfolding cataclysms with the global climate change that fuels them. We can’t guarantee that any specific disaster is caused by our warming atmosphere. The links are delayed and diffuse. But considered together, the escalating floods, droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes fit all the predicted models. So do the extreme snowfalls and ice storms, as our heated atmosphere carries more water vapor. So why deem them isolated acts of God—instead of urgent warnings to change our course?
Scientists are more certain than ever, from the National Academy of Science and its counterparts in every other country to such “radical groups” as the American Chemical Society and American Statistical Society. But the media has buried their voices, giving near-equal “point/counterpoint” credence to a handful of deniers promoted by Exxon, the coal companies and the Koch brothers. Fox News’s managing editor even prohibited any reporting on global climate change that didn’t immediately then question the overwhelming scientific consensus. The escalating disasters dominate the news, but stripped of context. We’re given no perspective to reflect on their likely root causes.
Meanwhile, leading Republicans who once acknowledged the need to act, like Tim Pawlenty, disavow their previous stands like sinners begging forgiveness. A Tea Party Congress insists that they know better than do all the world’s scientists, dismissing decades of meticulous research as Ivory Tower elitism. Even Obama has fallen largely silent, as if he can’t afford an honest discussion.
As a result, too many Americans still don’t know what to believe. We can’t see, smell or taste the core emissions that create climate change. The industrial processes that create the crisis are so familiar we don’t even question them, no more than the air that we breathe. And if we’re not getting hammered by the weather, the world still seems normal, particularly on a lovely summer day. Plus we’re told that in the current economic crisis we can’t afford even to think about climate change or any other urgent environmental issue, even though the technologies that provide the necessary alternatives are precisely those our country will need to compete economically. Add in a culture of overload and distraction, and it’s easy to retreat into denial or self-defeating resignation. It’s as if half our population was diagnosed with life-threatening but treatable cancer—visited the world’s leading medical centers to confirm it--and then decided instead to heed forwarded emails that assure them that they can freely ignore the counsel of the doctors and simply do nothing.
The antidote to denial and the forces that promote it is courage. And as Egypt and Tunisia remind us, courage is contagious. We need to act and speak out in every conceivable way, and demand that our leaders do the same. We need to engage new allies, like religious evangelicals who’ve recently spoken out to defend “God’s creation,” from best-selling minister Rick Warren to highly conservative organizations like the Christian Coalition. We need to work with labor activists who link this ultimate issue with the renewal of American jobs. A recent BlueGreen Alliance conference, for instance, brought together leaders of major unions like the United Steel Workers, SEIU, Communications Workers of America, United Auto Workers, Laborers’ International, and American Federation of Teachers, with environmental groups like the Sierra Club, National Resource Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and Union of Concerned Scientists, all speaking about the need to invest in an economy where both ordinary workers and the planet are respected. We need to join with these allies and others to voice our outrage at those risking our common future for greed. We need to find creative ways to do this until America’s political climate comes to grips with the changing climate of the earth. Here’s hoping the mounting disasters will finally teach us to turn off The Weather Channel and begin taking action.
Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, with 130,000 copies in print including a newly updated second edition. He's also the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. See www.paulloeb.org.
To receive Paul’s articles directly please email sympa@npogroups.org with the subject line: subscribe paulloeb-articles.edu
Sign up here for Paul's Huffington Post articles (a more comprehensive list)
To sign up for Paul’s Facebook page, visit http://www.facebook.com/PaulLoebBooks
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4. Excellent Material on Environmental Impacts of Animal-Based Agriculture
Veg Mondays Good for the World
http://www.vegmondays.org/Environment.html
Eating ‘veg’ has tremendous benefits for our land, water and air. By reducing or eliminating our consumption of animal products we not only conserve vast quantities of fresh water (needed to slaughter and “process” animals), but we also protect our land, water and air from a major source of pollution.
On average it takes 11 times more fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein. (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3, Pimentel & Pimentel, Sept. 2003)
Livestock are responsible for 68% of ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and the acidification of ecosystems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 272)
In the U.S., livestock production is responsible for 55% of all soil erosion on cropped land and pastureland, 40% of which ends up in water resources. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 73, Box 2.5)
It takes 5 times more water to yield 1000 kcal of meat as it does to yield 1000 kcal of fruits, vegetables or grains. (Malin Falkenmark & Johan Rockstrom, “Balancing Water for Humans and Nature”, 2004, p. 50)
You could save more water by not eating one pound of California beef than you would save by not showering for an entire year. (Based on 1 shower/day, 7 minutes/shower, using 2 gallons water/minute). (John Robbins, The Food Revolution, 2001, p. 237)
More water is taken from the Ogallala aquifer (western U.S.) each year for beef production than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables in the entire country. (Dr. Candace Chase, The Journal of Ecologically Sustainable Medicine, “Healthy Earth, Healthy Eating”, Dec. 2005)
Learn more about the environmental impacts
Your Can Help Protect the Environment
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
33 tons of antibiotics.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:
Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damage;
4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.
Taken from Kathy Freston's column, "The Breathtaking Effects of Cutting Back on Meat" April 1, 2009.
Resource Depletion
Approximately half the population of Africa and Asia will be facing water scarcity in 2025 and are also the regions that will face the most serious challenges in terms of poverty, population growth and food requirements. (Malin Falkenmark & Johan Rockstrom, “Balancing Water For Humans and Nature”, 2004, p. 135)
Livestock production accounts for 23% of global water usage, including drinking, servicing, processing and feed crop irrigation. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 271, Table 7.1)
Livestock grazing and feed crop cultivation account for 59% of global land use. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 271, Table 7.1)
More than 71,300 mi2 (an area twice the size of Portugal) of the Amazon rainforest has been cleared to graze livestock. (Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “Hamburger Connection Fuels Amazon Destruction; Cattle Ranching and Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon”, April 2004)
As of 2004 more than 10,000 miles of the Amazon rainforest had been cleared to grow soybeans to feed livestock. Kristal, Arnold, “Globalization: It’s a Small World After All”, Food Systems Insider, May 1st, 2005)
In just five months in 2007 Brazil lost more than 1236 mi2 of Amazon rainforest to illegal farming and ranching, as high prices for cattle, soybeans and corn led farmers and ranchers to plant more crops and raise more animals. (BBC News, 2008. “Brazil Amazon Deforestation Soars” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7206165.stm, See also: Sibaja M. 2008. “Brazil to Increase Monitors in Rain Forest as Illegal Clearing Spreads”, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012401059.html
Green House Emissions
Livestock production is responsible for more than 50% of all GHG. (Robert Goodland & Jeff Anhang, World Watch Institute, “Livestock and Climate Change”, Vol.22 No. 6, Nov/Dec 2009)
Distribution of Food Resources and World Hunger
It is much more efficient to grow food directly for human consumption than to cycle it through animals.
Livestock consume more edible protein (77 million tons) than they produce (58 million tons). (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 270)
70% of all corn and grain grown in the U.S. is fed to livestock (Durning and Brough, “Taking Stock”, p. 14. See also, Ayres, Ed, “Will We Still Eat Meat?” Time Magazine, Nov. 8th, 1999. See also The Food Revolution by John Robbins, 2001 p.292)
1,400,000,000,000 (1.4 Trillion) people could be fed by the grain eaten by U.S. livestock alone (John Robbins, The Food Revolution, 2001, p.292)
Worldwide, 80% of all soybeans grown are used for animal feed (Mark Ash, Economic Research Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, email to Danielle Nierenberg, Worldwatch Institute, May 2005)
26% of the world’s surface is used for livestock grazing, 33% of all arable land is used for feed crop cultivation (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p.271 Table 7.1)
25,000 people (adults and children) die every day from hunger and related causes (FAO & The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2006. (World Food Programme: www.wfp.org/hunger/stats))
1,200,000,000 (1.2 Billion) people worldwide are underfed and/or malnourished (Gardner and Halweil, “Underfed and Overfed” Worldwatch Institute paper #150, March 2000)
Water Pollution
The livestock sector is the largest source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, ‘dead’ zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many other problems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p xxiii)
The amount of water pollution generated in producing a pound of ‘meat’ is 17 times greater than that generated producing a pound of pasta. (Brower & Leon, “The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists”, March 1999)
The main water pollutants in the U.S. are sediments and nutrients. Animal agriculture is responsible for 55% of the erosion that causes sedimentation, and for 33% of nutrient pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorous. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p 162)
Animal agriculture is responsible for 33% of the United States’ water pollution from pesticides, and 50% of its water pollution from antibiotics. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006)
Pollution from Manure Lagoons
Bursting, leaking and overflowing manure lagoons have spawned environmental disasters around the country, sending animal waste gushing into rivers, groundwater and coastal wetlands. Each year thousands of lagoon leaks are reported and it is estimated that thousands more go unreported. (National Resources Defense Council, “America’s Animal Factories: How States Fail to Prevent Pollution From Livestock Waste” by Robbin Marks and Rebecca Knuffke, Dec. 1998)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that confined farm animals generate 3 times more raw waste each year (more than 450 million tons) than is generated by Americans. (Environmental Protection Agency, National pollutant discharge elimination system permit regulation and effluent limitation guidelines and standards for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); Final Rule, 68 Fed. Reg. 7176, 7180 (Feb. 12th, 2003.))
The amount of waste produced by North Carolina’s 7 million factory-raised hogs is 4 times greater than the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of that state (6.5 Million) (Facts and Data, Waste Pollution and the Environment, GRACE Factory Farm Project, www.gracelinks.org/factoryfarm/facts, 2000)
Compare: 12 million gallons of oil spilled by Exxon-Valdez in 1989 vs. 25 million gallons of putrefying hog urine and feces spilled into the New River in North Carolina, June 21st, 1995, when a lagoon holding 8 acres of excrement burst. 10 - 14 million fish were killed as an immediate result. (Williams, Ted, “Assembly Line Swine”, Audubon, March/April 1998, p.27. See also, “Environmental and Health Consequences of Animal Factories”, Natural Resources Defense Council report, 1998., see also “Feedstuffs”, July 3rd, 1995)
On factory dairy farms one cow produces 115 lbs. of manure each day. (Citizens’ Environmental Coalition & Sierra Club, “The Wasting of Rural New York State”, 2005)
Land and Air Pollution
Livestock are responsible for 68% of ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and the acidification of ecosystems. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 272)
In the U.S. livestock production is responsible for 55% of all soil erosion on cropped land and pastureland, 40% of which ends up in water resources. (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, 2006, p. 73, Box 2.5)
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5. Update on the World Week for the Abolition of Meat
Forwarded message: (Sorry that some is already out of date)
Greetings,
Please find below the English version of the closing communiqué* for the May 2011 WWAM (World Week for the Abolition of Meat). The awareness actions will nevertheless continue through the month of June.
If you have organized actions, please remember to publish your reports here. If you'd like to organize events, please announce them here!
You can join us on Facebook!
Look forward to hearing from you,
WWAM Organizational Committee
* This closing communiqué is available in the following languages: Brazilian/Portuguese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish. Please ask at contact@meat-abolition.org.
Please post and circulate widely
Closing communiqué for the May 2011 WWAM:
Once again there has been great mobilization for this year's second World Week for the Abolition of Meat (WWAM): fifty actions took place in the world, all aiming towards the same goal: to promote the idea that the consumption of meat is not ethical and that it should be abolished at the societal level, just like human slavery, for example, was abolished in its time.
Numerous organizations united to demand the end of a deeply ingrained injustice, perceived as natural and ancestral, and thus perceived as normal.
They united to say:
No one has the right to eat meat.
Even the most basic morals, accepted by all, which affirm that one must not kill or make an animal suffer unnecessarily, unavoidably lead to the conclusion that the consumption of meat must be banned. This practice which produces the most suffering and death that have ever existed on the face of the earth is not justified by any physiological necessity.
Throughout the world, individuals, groups and organizations stand up to proclaim their dissent.
We demand the banning of animal agriculture, fishing and hunting.
We no longer want to tolerate that reasons as ridiculous as the good taste of flesh in one's mouth can overcome the fundamental interests of those concerned: sentient beings who are raised, fished, and hunted in order to become dead bodies for consumption.
These World Weeks for the Abolition of Meat, we hope, are the beginnings of a world where everyone will have it in her or his heart to avoid making other beings suffer.
WWAM Organizational Committee
---------------------------------
Contact:
International organization: http://www.meat-abolition.org
Yves Bon: + 33 4 75 21 44 91
Florence L.: + 33 6 85 79 22 61
email: meat-abolition.org and meat.abolition@gmail.com
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6. The Coming Food Crisis
Spirituality and Ecological Hope
The looming threat of food shortage
Posted: 06 Jun 2011 09:23 PM PDT
Fostering Ecological Hope Today from Margaret Swedish:
Friends, this is a busy week, too busy for a truly thoughtful post, yet my heart is heavy with many worries and fears. We really are right up against it now, this threshold I tried to describe in my book (Living Beyond the "End of the World": A Spirituality of Hope). We are at the moment when we really must decide what kind of world we want to leave to our children, just how bad things are going to get, what it will be like to live in a world where everything we need for life will be under the threat of our changing ecological reality.
I invite you to read this lengthy article from Sunday’s NY Times – because it is very important. While the news media can make me crazy, this is one story that tells us something we need to know – our global food shortages are not something to worry about in the future, they are arriving right now. And whether or not this planet will be able to feed this growing human population (until we can get it to stop growing) depends entirely on the decisions we make, you know, right now.
Here is the article: A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself, by Justin Gillis. It was on the front page and consumed 2 pages inside. The NY Times made this the most important news story of their Sunday edition – for good reason.
Now I want to add a couple of links to give this more perspective, and then add a thought or two.
Worst Ever Carbon Emissions Leave Climate on the Brink, from the UK’s The Guardian.
Floods, Droughts, Are ‘New Normal’ of Extreme US Weather Fueled by Climate Change, a Reuters article.
Now put this news up against the profound political dysfunction in this country, the utter impossibility of even having a national conversation about any of this.
We can’t, because if we did certain things would become obvious:
* industrial agriculture as a model for food and fuel production would have to be brought to an end as quickly as possible;
* growth as a model for the global economy would have to be renounced and something new created;
* our western societies would need to get off meat as quickly as possible;
* new international laws would need to prohibit multinational corporations and sovereign funds from buying up access rights to water and food production on arable lands in other countries;
* affluent societies would have to begin to renounce their wealth and privileges and drastically downscale the lifestyles of the richest;
* tax structures would need to change, meaning taxes on the rich and on corporations and global financial transactions would need to be raised sharply;
*Monsanto’s GMO seed business would need to be made illegal, along with patents for seeds needed to grow food, returning seed sovereignty to local farmers;
* growing food grains for fuel would need to be halted;
* and massive amounts of international aid would need to be offered to poorer countries to help them develop local agriculture for the purpose of attaining seed sovereignty and food security.
And perhaps most of all, food would have to be removed from the list of commodities to be sold for profit and become what it really is – a basic right for all.
In chapter nine, I begin to articulate a ‘spirituality of scarcity,’ using the gospel story of the loaves and fishes, breaking it open to see what it suggests about how to proceed. The course of the narrative suggests a path. The crowd is hungry and the time is late. How to feed the throngs? Jesus’ first response is a challenge, “feed them yourselves.” Yes, that is our charge. The disciples, lacking confidence in their own ability to do this, lament that they have only found these few loaves and fishes.
Again, the course of the narrative is what matters, certainly more than the ‘miracle’ itself. First, Jesus blesses the food, then they break it into smaller pieces, then they share it with the crowd. Not only are all fed, but there is food left over, there is abundance.
Abundance came from the sharing of the smaller pieces with everyone.
This is a story out of a faith tradition, yes. It is also a story out of an ethic, a moral framework suggesting how we can live with dignity, sharing the abundance of creation. Jesus did not come to start a religion, and much of the religion that claims his name falls shamefully short of proclaiming the worldview that got him into so much trouble.
So I leave us tonight with the story of the loaves and fishes and invite it to disturb us, to invite us to a conversion and transformation in how we see the human journey and our current predicament. We either create a world built upon a vision like the one suggested in this story, or we descend into moral chaos as more and more of our sisters and brothers grow hungry and die.
It really is that stark.
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7. Animated Cartoon Shows Animal Abuses on Factory Farms
WATCH: Agribusiness on the Assault (Cartoon)
http://motherjones.com/media/2011/05/zina-saunders-undercover-animal-abuse-videos
— By Zina Saunders
Tue May. 3, 2011 3:00 AM PDT
Mother Jones illustrator Zina Saunders creates editorial animations riffing on the political news and current events of the week. In this week's animation, a look at our sordid meat production industry where agribusiness has been pushing laws in a number of states that would criminalize shooting or displaying undercover videos that show animal abuse on farms. One such law has already passed the House in Iowa, and would carry a penalty of up to 5 years in jail. As always, that's Saunders with the voiceovers. Other sound effects are courtesy of freesound.org. —The Editors
Thanks to author and JVNA advisor Dan Brook for sending this material to us.
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8. YOU Can Become a “World Peace Diet” Educator
Forwarded message, from author, speaker, activist Will Tuttle
Richard
Greetings!
Hope you're enjoying these early June days, wherever you are!
If you're interested in deepening your understanding of the ideas in The World Peace Diet, I've got some exciting news. We are now offering two self-paced online educational programs focused on providing you with the liberating skills and training to thrive as a vegan and also to be an effective advocate for compassion and health.
The basic 4-week program, the World Peace Diet Mastery Program, provides an excellent foundation for the 8-week program, the WPD Facilitator Training. This 8-week advanced training leads to certification as a World Peace Diet Facilitator, and can open many doors in your life, from greater health and self-confidence to a new career in the growing vegan movement. The two programs are independent and provide an in-depth experience of the empowering ideas in The World Peace Diet, directly from me, the book's author.
To get the skinny on these new programs, please go to http://worldpeacemastery.com
I hope you'll join us in the rewarding adventure of personal and cultural transformation that is calling!
Madeleine and I would also like to thank everyone who has helped organize our recent presentations in Texas, Arizona, and southern California. We are constantly humbled by the generous, creative, and hard-working efforts of you, our fellow advocates for a better world. Bless you all!
We have some upcoming lectures in San Diego and L.A. before we present at the terrific Vegetarian Summerfest in Pennsylvania in early July. Please join us if you can and check our constantly-updated tour schedule.
We appreciate you and all you're doing to embody the ancient wisdom teaching: to be the change you'd like to see in others.
That's it for now,
All the best, Will & Madeleine
Dr. Will Tuttle
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9. We Are In for Even Hotter Weather
Summers Are Going To Get Hotter, Stanford Scientists Say
The Huffington Post Joanna Zelman First Posted: 06/ 9/11 11:26 AM ET Updated: 06/ 9/11 11:37 AM ET
The summer season has not even officially started yet in the U.S. and already people are cranking up the a/c, boxing away the sweaters, seeking out the best swimming hole, and plotting how to avoid sweat stains. It’s about to get a lot worse.
A recent study conducted by Stanford University scientists has concluded that if greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, many regions in the world will probably experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years.
LiveScience explains that a single heat wave or warm day is not a sign of global warming. But while an individual weather event cannot be attributed to a warming world, more long-term trends are accepted in the scientific community as evidence of man-made global warming.
The recent Stanford study, which will be published this month in the journal Climatic Change Letters, found that middle latitude regions of Europe, China and North America (including the U.S.) will likely see extreme shifts in summers temperatures within the next 60 years. In just the next two decades, tropical regions of Africa, Asia and South America could see permanent and “unprecedented” summer heat. The most immediate rise in extreme temperatures is expected to occur in the tropics.
Last year tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record, with the average worldwide temperature 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The Associated Press reports, “Most atmospheric scientists attribute the change to gases released into the air by industrial processes and gasoline-burning engines.” This is man-made global warming.
The Stanford study's lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, sought to determine when the current hottest temperatures would become “the new normal.” He says, "According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years."
Diffenbaugh and co-author Martin Scherer came to this conclusion after analyzing over 50 climate model experiments, including both computer simulations of 21st century predictions and 20th century simulations that accurately predicted the Earth’s climate over the past 50 years.
Beyond perhaps a need to stock up on sunglasses and deodorant, what is the significance of these findings? According to Diffenbaugh, this dramatic rise in seasonal temperatures could severely affect human health and agriculture.
Regarding health, heat waves can kill. As Diffenbaugh cites, heat waves in 2003 killed an estimated 35,000 people in Europe. Last year, a record heat wave in Russia killed 700 people per day. As for agriculture, new research reveals that global warming has hindered crop yields. Higher temperatures cause dehydration and prevent pollination, resulting in a rise in food prices. Other studies suggest that warmer winters keep pests alive longer, allowing them to carry plant diseases, and greenhouse gases affect a plant’s structure, reducing its protection abilities.
The Stanford report comes amid many other dire global warming predictions. One recent study found that rising sea levels could threaten 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100. Reuters reports cities including Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, and Virginia Beach could lose over 10 percent of their land area by the end of this century.
U.N. predictions suggest that there may be 50 million environmental refugees by 2020. This past year alone, natural disasters displaced 42 million people, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. According to the organization, over 90 percent of the disaster displacements were caused by weather incidents that were probably, to some extent, impacted by global warming.
Scientists and government planners announced in May that heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and deadly droughts signal a "new normal" of extreme U.S. weather events influenced by climate change.
How many looming threats and even visible evidence are needed before serious action is taken to fight global warming?
Instead of recognizing that another air conditioner is just a bandaid on our warming world, climate talks are expected to miss the Kyoto deadline, climate scientists are receiving death threats, and global emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide were the highest ever last year.
Will significant action against global warming have to wait until we can’t take the heat?
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10. Position Paper on Climate Change from the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America
https://www.agronomy.org/files/science-policy/asa-cssa-sssa-climate-change-policy-statement.pdf
One more example of the scientific consensus on climate change.
Thanks to agricultural expert and JVNA advisor Professor Joe Regenstein for forwarding this link to us.
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11. International Vegetarian Week Contest Being Planned/Suggestions Welcome
Forward message from IVW organizer Mateus Mendes:
1. I will create a contest in the website. The software we use is prepared to run contests, we have done it in Portugal using this software.
2. Participants can submit their ideas and works directly, after logging in to the system.
2.1 The deadline for participating is 10 September.
2.2 These kinds of contributions are accepted:
- Cartoon
- Essay
- Leaflet
- Poster
- Slogan
2.3 Participants must be individuals.
2.4 All the submitted texts must be in English.
2.5 There is no limit of submissions per author - each author can submit many different works.
3. Prizes
3.1 The awarded contributions will become official IVW material, and the authors will be promoted by vegetarian week project;
3.2 The winner can be announced with a press release, presentation of the person with picture and article about her/him or an interview - whatever is preferred.
3.3 Additionally, the following prizes can be given:
1 - 60 Euros voucher for http://en.efeitoverde.com
2 - 50 Euros voucher for http://www.amazon.com
3-10 - Vegdining cards (valued at $11.95US for members of recognized veg groups, $15.95US others - http://vegdining.com)
4. NGOs, companies and individuals taking part in the IVW are invited to promote the campaign on their websites, via their distribution systems and newsletters and in whatever form they find suitable.
5. A jury consisting of reps from all NGOs supporting the idea will grade the contributions until 25 September.
5.1 The grading system will be double-blinded (the author doesn't know who are the reviewers, and the reviewers don't not know who are the authors).
5.2 Each submission will be graded by at least 2 reviewers.
6. The winners will be announced on 1 October.
7. The authors agree that their submissions are actually contributions to the IVW project, and the winning contribution(s) may be freely used to promote the IVW.
1) Relevance for the International Vegetarian Week goals (promotes the vegetarian lifestyle? promotes the vegetarian week?);
2) Quality (is the message scientifically correct [if applicable]? Are there typos in the texts [if applicable]? are the illustrations or images good-looking [if applicable]?);
3) Expected effectiveness (is the message appealing? is it clear? May it reach a wide audience?).
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12. Great Videos About Yale University Program Combining Religious Teachings to Environmental Issues
http://environment.yale.edu/profile/tucker
http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/maryevelyntuckercomplete
Thanks to JVNA advisor Ron Landskroner for forwarding these links to us.
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13. Action Alert: You Can Help Get Healthier Food Choices Into Schools
Forwarded message:
Hi Richard,
I have been working with a fantastic group - the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food as a volunteer for the last 3 years, because I see the amazing work they are doing in schools, and they also develop great resources for schools to educate children about the importance of plant foods.
I hope you will join me in supporting the important work they are doing. You can click here to see the details of how you can help them, but essentially, they need DONATIONS:)
© Corporate sponsorships of our fall Gala: $1000, $2,500, $5000, $10,000 or more.
Some past sponsors (not yet confirmed for this year): Whole Foods Market, The Hain Celestial Group, Nutiva, Candle Cafe & Candle 79, NuTru, HealthForce Nutritionals, and Wildwood Pulmuone.
(Click here for more details, including what you get in return)
© Items for Gift bags for our fall Gala (need 300) – no samples, regular size products only; coupons for free products, not discounts; all items must be fully plant-based (vegan). Donation includes listing on our website and Gala program guide.
© Silent Auction item for our fall Gala (minimal value $300) – all items must be fully plant-based. Donation includes listing on our website and Gala program guide.
© Charity Buzz online auction items (minimal value $1000) – unique experiences and items. Great Publicity! See sample donations at www.charitybuzz.com. Donation includes listing on our website.
Note: please send low resolution logo in .jpg format for all donations listed above.
PLEASE respond by September 1, 2011 for Gala sponsorship, gift bags, and/or silent auction.
A little more about New York Coalition for Healthy School Food:
They are in partnership with the NYC Office of SchoolFood, the largest school food operation in the country. They have developed plant-based entrée recipes and conducted educational presentations for all staff and food service personnel. They are in 19 schools with a waiting list of 48 schools! In addition they are in partnership with the Ithaca City School District Child Nutrition Program and they have developed plant-based entrees using local organic beans and grains – a true Farm to School program. In addition, they have created Wellness Wakeup Call, nutrition education in the form of “easy to digest sound bites” read over the loudspeaker each morning. It is currently heard by over 100,000 students each day in New York and many other states around the country.
Please let me know if you need any other information, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Deer Fields
Volunteer Development Director
NYCHSF, New York Coalition for Healthy School Food
Check out our new website: www.healthyschoolfood.org
The New York Coalition for Healthy School Food (NYCHSF) is a statewide nonprofit that works to improve the health and well-being of New York's students by advocating for healthy plant-based foods, including local and organic where possible, farm to school programs, the elimination of unhealthy competitive foods in all areas of the school (not just the cafeteria), comprehensive nutrition policy, and education to create food- and health-literate students.
Sign up for our email list from our homepage to be kept up to date on Healthy School Food! Happenings and join as a member - it's free!
--
Love, Deer
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends. ~George Bernard Shaw
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
Live and Let Live, Go Vegan!
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