Is It Unethical To Kill Plants?
Our green, leafy friends lack faces and voices, but below the surface, they possess a surprising sensitivity and a desperate will to remain alive and unharmed. The New York Times questions the ethics of vegetarianism:
Surely, I’d thought, science can defend the obvious, that slaughterhouse carnage is wrong in a way that harvesting a field of lettuces or, say, mowing the lawn is not. But instead, it began to seem that formulating a truly rational rationale for not eating animals, at least while consuming all sorts of other organisms, was difficult, maybe even impossible.
The differences that do seem to matter are things like the fact that plants don’t have nerves or brains. They cannot, we therefore conclude, feel pain. In other words, the differences that matter are those that prove that plants do not suffer as we do. Here the lack of a face on plants becomes important, too, faces being requisite…
PETA’s Banned Thanksgiving Day Commercial
[disinfo ed.'s note - Diggin' in the crates, this story is a couple of years old, but it's evergreen on Thanksgiving Day!]
PETA purchased ad spot airtime on NBC during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, however the network rejected PETA’s ad because the “commercial does not meet NBC Universal standards.” I guess they found PETA’s take on Thanksgiving a little disturbing.
Which Veggie Burgers Were Made With a Neurotoxin?
This story has raised a lot of controversy last week on the internets … here’s a post on it from Kiera Butler in Mother Jones:
UPDATE: Veggie burger rumors are flying! Some readers and other news organizations have alleged that the study I wrote about was funded by the pro-meat, anti-soy group the Weston A. Price Foundation.
But this morning, I spoke with Cornucopia Institute director Mark Kastel, who said that the Weston A. Price Foundation did not contribute any funding to the “Behind the Bean” (pdf) study. More here.
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[Last] Monday, I wrote about a recent study by the Cornucopia Institute that found that many popular veggie burgers are made with hexane, an EPA-registered air pollutant and a neurotoxin. Commenters had lots of interesting discussions and good questions, many of which require far more knowledge of the subject than I have to answer. So I called up Charlotte Vallaeys, the lead researcher on the Cornucopia…
Could McDonald’s Replace Beef Burgers With Seitan? Would Anyone Notice?
Nick Aster writes on triplepundit:
I sometimes like to write harebrained posts postulating some kind of zany idea. So here’s today’s:
I ate at an airport McDonald’s the other day for the first time in ages. It was at once delicious and disturbing. I looked at the beef. Was it really beef? I mean, seriously, it was definitely some kind of beef-flavored-matter, and the advertisement did say 100% beef. But as I walked off with that greasy post-McDonald’s flavor (that lasts for hours) in the mouth, I got to thinking: that patty was almost no different than the wheat or soy-based stuff used to make vegan food (seitan and so on).
I walked away 100% convinced that McDonald’s could replace all its beef with beef-flavored seitan and NO ONE would notice the difference. McDonald’s would save a fortune, health would be improved, and the carbon and resource footprint of McDonald’s would be massively slashed.
Does…
Plants Are Actively Intelligent: What Does This Mean for Vegetarians?
Ethan A. Huff writes in Natural News:
Most vegetarians believe that by not eating animals, they are preserving life. Everyone knows that plants are alive but they are not viewed with the same level of intelligence as animals are. As science continues to uncover the complex nature of plants, it is becoming more apparent that plants are actively intelligent life that pursue their continued existence in similar ways as do animals.
Research on the subject naturally flies in the face of strict vegetarianism which often insists that eating animals is murder but eating plants is just fine. Yet the facts illustrate that the characteristics of animals used to argue that eating them is murder also apply to plants. In other words, in order for strict vegetarians to be consistent in their beliefs, they would also have to stop eating fruits and vegetables.
Plants are very sensitive to environmental changes and they have many…
Would You Eat Soggy Pork To Save the Planet?
Marshall Chase writes on GreenBiz.com:
The world faces some interesting choices in the next few years. As illustrated by the ongoing Copenhagen negotiations, we have to decide whether and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a wide range of sectors, from energy generation to transportation and beyond.
The livestock industry faces particular uncertainty in this environment. According to various studies, livestock accounts for somewhere between 18 percent and 51 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activity — primarily from cows burping methane. Meat production is expected to double by 2050, at the same time that the world attempts to drastically reduce overall GHG emissions. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress recently prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating livestock GHG emissions.
Despite the Congressional ban (only a short-term measure in a country where livestock accounts for less than 5 percent of national GHG emissions), it is clear that any successful, long-term global solution to…
