Come out to the Cream City Collectives (732 E. Clarke St. in Milwaukee, WI) on October 11th to hear anti-fur activist Peter Young speak, share in on a vegan potluck, and watch a screening of Behind the Mask, a film about the Animal Liberation Front.

Potluck starts at 6pm
Peter speaks at 7:30pm
Film screening at 8:30pm

Suggested donation is $5 to cover Peter's travel expenses. Feel free to drop more if you can, but nobody will be turned away for lack of money!

More info on the here.

Please pass the word!

-Michael

chulo!

Chulo is currently being housed at a humane society in Wisconsin. He has passed temperament tests, etc, with flying colors. However, the humane society cannot adopt him out because he has separation anxiety.

I am working with Midwest Area Pit Stop to find him either a foster or permanent home before his time at the humane society runs out and he is put to death on March 8th.

If you or anyone you know are able to help this guy, please get in touch with me or write the Director of MAPS at pitsrlove@highstream.net.

We met Chulo last Thursday and he's quite the charmer. He's extremely tiny (only around 30lbs, I estimate) and totally calm for being only six months.

I can send more photos, if you'd like to see. I can also set up an appointment to go with you to meet Chulo.

Someone? Anyone? Please?

The Rural Proof pt2

Cycling through the western part of Racine County (in Wisconsin) yesterday, my friend Aaron and I decided to take a right onto a perfect, freshly-blacktopped road. A mile or so down, I noticed rows upon rows of sheds. I realized immediately that they likely housed thousands of broiler or laying chickens. Persistent misery taking place less than fifteen miles from where my parents lay their heads every night...

The facility was sprawling. Easily upwards of a dozen buildings. It looked like a bomb-proof barracks. I had no clue what activities could be taking place in all of the buildings. But when I came home and googled the name of the facility, Maple Leaf Farms, I saw that it's not chicken they raise to kill, it's ducks. Different bird, similar methods of deprivation. But not only do they raise ducks, they also undertake genetic research. Bigger, plumber, and worth more green, I'm sure.

Further reading taught me that the farm I saw was only one in a series of Maple Leaf facilities throughout North America. They're an absolutely massive enterprise. In 2002, Meat & Poultry, an industry publication, ranked Maple Leaf the 12th most powerful meat/poultry company in the North America.

One thing I can guaranty is that the farm I saw with my own two eyes today looked nothing like the idyllic scene portrayed on the company's corporate info site. If you don't believe me, visit it yourself: 2319 Raymond Ave, Franksville, WI 53126.

A report published on the Right-to-Know Web site, a service that provides free access to numerous environmental databases, describes the Franksville's Maple Leaf Farms site like this:

Maple Leaf Farms, Wisconsin Division is a duckling processing plant. The plant processes approximately 120,000 ducks per week. The plant operates five days per week two shifts per day. Day shift is processing and evening shift is sanitation. The duck waste from the plant is used in pet food and the wastewater is treated in a conventional treatment plant and discharge to the West branch of the Root river per a WNPDES permit.

You should read on if you want to know about the local branch's dubious local environmental record. I never would have guessed that the Root River is filled with farmed duck shit.

You should also read VIVA! USA's media briefing for their campaign against the company.

I could go on researching and linking all day, but I'll cap myself after I say one last thing.

The most numbskulled thing that I read about Maple Leaf was on their their careersinfood.com profile:

Although Wentzel passed away in 1968, his vision has lived on at Maple Leaf Farms. Terry Tucker, his wife and their children have continued to set the direction for the company based on their family values -- contribution to our communities, responsibility to the environment, respect for others and insistence on high quality.

Maple Leaf Farms: When you follow the referrer links back to this page, we want to you know that the intensive confinement and incessant murder of over 15 million ducks per year for the sheer sake of profit in no way exemplifies respect for others. There is blood on your hands. You call that family values? What a proud, proud tradition to uphold.

The Rural Proof pt1

On Sunday, I was commuting from Chicago to Wisconsin when torrents hit. It was so bad that everyone pulled over or crawled along, blades trying furiously to keep windshields clean. It sounded like hale, but I don't think it was hale. It was the kind of rain that could soak you through to the guts. There was a cattle transport truck next to me at one point and I could only imagine the terror that the cows inside were experiencing. It was surely almost palpable, filling the trailer completely and rushing out like smoke, quicker than the rain was rushing in.

Rural mobility does a good job of exposing you to the deeper truths of how animal agriculture works. When I'd bike to work in Chicago, I'd be surrounded by carcasses -- bodies of fish and pigs being unloaded into butcher shops. Things like that. But taking to the sticks is what makes you truly understand how cruel it all really is.

Last summer, I took a motorcycle trip from the shore of Lake Michigan in SE Wisconsin to the banks of Ole Miss in the western part of the state. We stuck to the back roads, so as to be able to take our time and appreciate the rolling, almost painful greenness that is Wisconsin in late summer.

While I liked absorbing the natural world, it completely bummed me out every time we'd pass grazing cows. While it was nice that they could be out and about, gnawing as is their wont, all I could think of is what's implied by the little piece of numbered metal that's clipped to their ears.

But the thing that really weighed on me was one particular field we passed: All of the cows on it were black as night, and there were huge numbers applied with white spray paint on the side of each. They were pure commodity. Nothing more. They were all numbers. Purchase price, selling price, and price per pound. Numbers, numbers, numbers.

Tazo's deception

The break room at my work has free bags of Tazo Tea. A few weeks ago, I notices that the Zen green tea I'd been drinking has natural flavors in it, so I decided to write the company to see if the flavors were animal-based. Here is the sketchy, sketchy, sketchy response.


Thank you for writing to Tazo.

We use the term "natural flavors" in compliance with the labeling requirements of the Food and Drug Administration. (These can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations Book 21 CFR 101.22)

Tazo is committed to providing a safe, natural product that meets all regulatory and food safety requirements. While we understand that some customers may have a need to know specific ingredient information not listed on the ingredient panel prior to consuming a product, our flavor information is proprietary, and not something we reveal.

If you have concerns about a tea possibly containing ingredients that you do no wish to consume, we would recommend that you not consume that tea and instead try a different flavor. Below is a list of Tazo teas that contain only tea or botanicals and no added natural flavors:

Awake Filterbags
China Green Tips Filterbags
Organic Darjeeling Filterbags
Organic Envy Filterbags
Organic Tazo Chai Filterbags
Refresh Filterbags (caffeine-free)
Organic Iced Tea Ready to Drink

Additional facts about Tazo and out teas are revealed on our website at www.tazo.com. Simply click on the "What is Tazo" link and open the FAQ/IAQ section. Each tea and herbal infusion also has its own page listed under the "Explore Our Teas" link.

Kind regards.
Joseph R.


Tazo Customer Relations


This has hiding of sources happened to me before (on the part of wineries), and I'm tired of companies hiding behind "FDA requirements." What ever happened to transparency? And aren't customer questions somewhat part of the customer always being right? I should think so.

It's important to note that Tazo is owned by Starbucks. I hadn't realized this until the company replied from an @starbucks.com email address. They do a good job of concealing this on their packaging, but you'll find information about the connection if you dig through the Tazo site.

Most of us don't necessarily want to support Starbucks in any way, but I think it's important that they lay it bare for their customers. If we were asking for the kosher status, they'd be obliged to give it to us. We need to show companies that ethical concerns are just as valid as religious concerns.

Please send an email to info@starbucks.com to give them your thoughts on the issue. Let's demand corporate transparency!

Saul Bellow

A few weeks ago, I was reading Saul Bellow's Seize the Day and came across the following quote, which I've never seen reused anywhere:

Wilhelm had a queer feeling about the chicken industry, that it was sinister. On the road, he frequently passed chicken farms. Those big, rambling, wooden buildings out in the neglected fields; they were like prisons. The lights burned all night in them to cheat the poor hens into laying. Then the slaughter. Pile all the coops of the slaughtered on end, and in one week they'd go higher than Mount Everest or Mount Serenity. The blood filling the Gulf of Mexico. The chicken shit, acid, burning the earth.


Of course most of the novel outlines Wilhelm's pathetic involvement in lard futures, but still! The fact that Bellow described such a thing in such a way in 1956 is pretty astounding! Sounds like nothing's changed, though sadly we know that it has. For the worse.

Liberalism and poultry

In my estimation, Worldview is the valley of the NRP workday schedule. I generally scour my iPod when it's on. There is just something about how news-heavy and impersonal it is that turns me off. Maybe I'm a simpleton. Yes, that's it: I am a simpleton.

For some reason, the weekend stockpile of podcasts wouldn't export to my iPod today, so I wasn't able to fall back on them when Worldview came on at noon. And I'm glad of it. All this week, they're doing segments called Where Things Come From. The first was about Indian tea & how you shouldn't boycott Darjeeling, despite the appalling treatment of tea pickers in the region. The second segment? It was about chicken.

Jerome McDonnell's guest was Steve Striffler, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of Arkansas. He spent two summers working* for chicken producers, and put his experiences and reflections in a book called Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food.

Striffler gave a nice rundown of the history of chicken farming, from premium products whose slaughter was mainly the responsibility of the farmer's wife, to the dire institutions that grow the product today. But sentience is something he never alluded to once throughout the piece. Striffler seem to have no problem viewing chickens as commodities. Sure, he admits that that salmonella is a problem, and that sanitation infractions issued by the FDA are routinely paid off and never corrected by the chicken producers. But, in the same way that Eric Schlosser continues to eat burgers, Steve Striffler continues to eat chicken.

Jerome asked Steve what consumers could do. As much as possible, buy organic, he suggests. It's clear that he has no idea how the organic animal food industry works, and that the food fed to the animals does not dictate how they're reared, contained and treated, and how those things impact the safety of the chunks of meat that end up on people's plates. He's missing the whole core of the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I think Striffler makes some salient points, but on the whole, what he says just plays into the whole NPR/liberal schtick identifying a problem, but never acting against it for fear of having to make some sort of lifestyle change.

You can listen to the Worldview segment with Steve Striffler here.

I'd be interested in reading the book. Has anyone out there done so yet?



* It's important to keep in mind that he didn't work in the slaughter area of the processing plant. He put breading on the meat or something like that. He was miles away from the nasty truth. Maybe that's why he's suck a weakling in opinion and will.