Cat's milk, mmm-mm

I’ve been reading an argument that goes it’s okay to milk and slaughter cattle because the people who raise them "take care of them all their lives" and that is the cows’ and beef cattles' due -- return payment, for their feed and housing.  And that’s why it’s okay to drink their milk, kill them, and eat them.

Well, I’ve been chewing that one over.  I don’t live on a farm or really anywhere near beef cattle and dairy cows so I don't have any cows that owe me.  But I do live in relationship with a cat and some squirrels.

So my cat owes me, right?  Now, I probably wouldn’t get enough milk from a 12 pound cat for daily requirements, so what about those squirrels?

I live in a really old house with places where they can get in the attic, and they do.  Though I like the squirrels, they can be pretty annoying in the autumn when they're collecting the chestnuts and  between forays also apparently use them in a 10-‘pin’ bowling alley situated in the attic above my bedroom.  They tend to bowl at sunrise before they go to work, just like my neighbours who go to the early bird aerobics class, only thankfully, those people are not 7 ft.  over my bed.

Between my cat (who owes me big time) and the squirrels, I should be able to get a few glasses of milk a day for me and my family, I figure-- -- What?  Why are you recoiling?  You have a problem with cat and squirrel milk?  But you’re udderly okay with cow’s glands?  Hmn.  What is the basis of your revulsion and discrimination amongst the nipple areas of other-than-bovine mammalian species?

Isn’t that a bit like the people who say they “only eat chicken & fish” (I did this for years)? So what are fish & chicken, chopped livah?  What did chicken and fish do to get on our Okay-to-Eat list, that cows, pigs, sheep, bunnies, baby seals, lambs, ducks, geese, shellfish, and horses didn’t do?

How come it’s okay to devour one species but not another?  Not okay to bludgeon baby seals to death, but okay to throw baby chicks, alive, into the grinder?

And I was there.  I was an “only chicken and fish” person for years and years - and my daughter kept asking me that question.  It’s one to think about.

There is a move afoot to take certain parts of  rat and mouse milk to put in human baby formula. Why? Worth thinking about.  What about all the cool stuff for human babies in human breast milk? 

And what about saying sayonara to milk around 2-3 years old anyway?


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Must be nice to be rich: the no-meat mansion

Meat ban by Indian-origin billionaire stirs row
28 Mar 2010

PERTH:  Indian-born billionaire Pankaj Oswal and his wife Radhika have told workers building their $70 million mansion in the Australian city of Perth that they should not consume meat on the site, stirring a controversy with a construction union hitting out at the ban.

The massive mansion, located in the exclusive suburb of Peppermint Grove here, is expected to be finished at the end of next year. It will have a swimming pool 10 times bigger than the average back yard, an observatory, a gymnasium the size of a regular Perth house, a beauty salon as well as parking for 17 cars, Perth Now reported on Sunday.


Rest of story

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Mmmmm, eggs

Quoting Jeffrey Masson from The Face on Your Plate: 

"Almost all hens kept for laying eggs have their beaks trimmed when they are small chicks. It is generally done with an electric machine that uses a hot blade to cut off half the upper beak and about one third of the lower beak of the young chick (how many of them actually die from shock during the operation is not currently known)."  The photo is  from Liberation BC.
And here is how it's done:

I [Masson] have asked farmers who debeak about the procedure and have been told it is like humans cutting their fingernails. But this is manifestly untrue.  There are no nerve endings in my fingernails, while there are many in the beaks of hens. A more accurate comparison would be to liken the procedure to cutting off the tip of my finger. Zoologist F.W. Roger] Brambell said so in no uncertain terms, and as far as I know no scientist has ever contradicted his observation:  'Between the horn and bone [of the beak] is a thin layer of highly sensitive soft tissue, resembling the quick of the human nail. The hot knife blade used in debeaking cuts through this complex horn, bone and sensitive tissue causing severe pain.'

The nerve endings do grow back, but because of the trauma inflicted on them, they grow into what is known as a neuroma--a tangled mass of nerve fibers and surrounding scar tissue that often weeps discharge. Since the tip of the beak is richly innervated and has pain receptors in the same way that our hands do, both acute ad chronic pain is the inevitable result of debeaking."

Will that be sunnyside or easy over?

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A CandyLand Easter

Here is an enormous inflatable Lindt milk chocolate bunny, outside a drugstore. 

This is only one drugstore in Canada, not to mention North America and Europe.

When a little balloon costs two dollars, imagine what this - and its thousands of POS (point-of-sale) clones must have cost -- all folded into the price of the chocolate, of course. I wonder what the homeless guy, who stands outside this store in all weather under his grimy damp  blanket, thinks of this excess?

I drove down the street after gawking at this and saw one of those Smart Cars all painted gold with huge gold bunny ears  -- a Lindt Gold Bunny car.

This is one among presumably thousands of Lindt gold bunny cars out there promoting a CandyLand Easter.

The Smart Car is environmentally worthy...but you have to wonder about the manufacture of those gigantic balloons, both the ingredients  used to manufacture them and the energy used to create them; and then about what inflates them, and the energy used to transport them all over the world. All  all that marketing money for this one promotion for a religious festival that has become more about candy than crucifixion. And all those unhappy cows who lived nasty lives to produce the milk for the chocolate.

I hope Jesus doesn't come back too soon. I don't think He'd be very happy either to see what the festival contemplating the meaning of his life & death has come down to.

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Happy Easter, newborn animals

Look at all these cute little chocolate bunnies. What a sweet sweet image--and not just because of the sugar in them.

Under that non-recyclable gold foil, these bunnies are made of milk chocolate. The milk is obtained from poor innocent cows kept in dark stalls or on ghastly milking carousels all their lives -- pumped and repumped of their milk throughout the day by cold metallic "lips." Artificially inseminated (ouch) to keep them pregnant, birthing, and lactating even after their little calves are ripped, howling, away from their mothers soon after birth.

Those poor benighted creatures provide the milk to make the milk chocolate bunnies that are oh-so-cute, and which help us to ring in the season of Easter - Oestre - Spring........ the season of newborn lambkins and newborn calves. Little lambykins that we imitate for our children with plush toys for Easter baskets, their mammalian counterparts who are destined to  sit on a platter with mint sauce. And sweet almond eyed calves who will be sent off to live a life of unadulterated torture to become plated veal.

Happy Easter newborn animals.

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Bet you can't watch it all....

I started to watch the docu EARTHLINGS on Dec. 12th, 2009. It was horrifying and shocking. It took me until Dec. 27th to fortify myself and get to the point where I oculd watch the last two-thirds of it.

Everyone needs to watch this movie, at least those in the G20 and/or the Northern Hemisphere. Everyone. Then we'll talk.

Dynix #: 2253499. Library call #: 179.3 E12m (I got the DVD from my public library).



Here's a YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkLt88_u5lQ&feature=PlayList&p=9FD18926170ED901&index=0&playnext=1


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Eeuw...

http://www.foodanimalconcerns.org/filthyfeed/

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Mmm-mm "cheese"

I found a recipe for a vegan "Ricotta cheese" made with tofu...which means now I have something for a vegan lasagne, so naturally I had to make it right away.

It's goo-oo-ood.

The recipe was on the Vegan Outreach site. It spread beautifully (better than the cottage cheese I used in my previous life) and has a similar consistency to actual ricotta. Here is the recipe:

TOFU RICOTTA

- 1-1/2 lb. firm regular tofu, well mashed;
- 1/4 c fresh lemon juice (I used organic lemon juice);
- 2 tsp dried basil leaves - (I happened to have fresh basil in the house);
- 1/2 to 1-1/2 tsp sweetener of your choice (I used about 1/4 tsp);
- 3/4 tsp salt (whoah! I used about 1/4 tsp sea salt);
- 1/2 tsp garlic granules;
- I added a few grinder twists of fresh black pepper. (I live to improvise).

Mash all the ingredients together until the mixture has a fine grainy texture. (I threw everything in the food processor and pulsed it a couple of seconds). Use in veggie (I hate that word) lasagne or any savory dish that calls for ricotta cheese.

(Recipe originally from *The Uncheese Cookbook* (c)1997, J. Stepaniak. (Guess what book's on my Get list?)

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Vegan Outreach

Someone who took pity on all my whining about trying to be vegan, sent me this link to the Vegan Outreach website.

Maybe it'll help.

Maybe it's like religion - you have to go to a service at least once a week - to perambulate and pray at the alters of strength and compassion.

I need all the help I can get.

Tofu and a whole lot of soy products, I have realized, really do not agree with me. And their arguments with my digestive system can be quite unpleasant and bloat-y feeling.

Beans? Well you know about them. Same story basically.

That leaves nuts and legumes for the sought-after PROTEIN. Ah, but I am told protein is actually amino acids, and that you can get various ones from other things - especially vegetables - and they will combine and reate protein.

And do we need as much protein as we are told? Or is that meat marketing hegemony?

Stay tuned......


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Cravings and old habits

I am craving cheese. Milk-made cheese.

I have been craving it so badly, I have had to think about it, and pay some attention to how it feels.  These cravings for cheese are making me wonder if I can really ever be a vegan.

I realized one day that the cravings felt very familiar. Especially their urgency and insistence and pestering quality.

And then it came to me: they were exactly the same kind of cravings I had--same kind of urgency, persistence, hammering at you--when I quit smoking.

Ah, so cheese is a habit?

Then it occurred to me that I might--might--be able to use the same techniques I used to quit smoking to push the cheese away. The cheese that was calling out to me...."Cheddar...mmm-mm orange, melted on whole wheat bread, over potatoes....a nice slice when you come home and you're starving and you don't feel like marinating tofu.... Cheese.......cheese calling------calling----calling....."

Oh, shut up, cheese.

Some of the distractions I used when the cravings for a cigarette were overpowering me were - go for a walk,  call someone on the phone, do some drumming, drink water, eat carrots, celery and portable healthy snacks, particularly things you could suck on. At least cheese does not want to be sucked.

And so I have been doing that. I've gotten myself through about ten days of really intense craving. Nothing really takes the place of cow milk cheese (thank goodness?).  The soy cheese isn't vegan (it's got casein in it). And the vegan cheese--Oh, Mother of God that is monstrous-tasting stuff. It's like eating melted shoe leather that a cat has urinated on.  Echh.

But the idea that some of these eating choices are actually habits just like smoking. Well that means if you want to go vegan, but you're having a struggle,  you can throw all the strategies for beating addictions at it.

I'm not vegan yet. I'm only vegan in my mind and heart, but not yet in my soul.

The Face on My Plate...

I'm reading a book called The Face on Your Plate: the TRUTH about FOOD by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (more on him later - you may remember him from When Elephants Weep.)

The cover blurb says, "Somewhere in between Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, between eating at McDonald's and killing a pig for dinner, there is a need for a book that will probe more deeply and provide greater understanding and insight into the psychological factors that influence decisions about what we eat and why--and how these choices affect our lives, animals' lives, and the environment."

Indeed - and The Face on Your Plate is probably that book.

I have had to read it in installments. Not just because I'm busy and because I got the H1N1 and found that I was too sick to read [unheard of] -- but because it is really hard to take, the information in this book.

It's a hard read. I cry. I've just finished Chapter 4 "Denial" now, and the fact is that the mechanism that Masson (a former psychiatrist) describes which allows us to go on eating our fellow creatures, is so strong that you keep wanting to put this book down, even though you know you want to finish reading it.

I have been aware of this weird, other world where we dwell when we eat meat, or are part-vegetarian and "only" eat chicken and fish, for a long time - because that's where I've been for years.

I've lived in this unSpockian land of illogicality even when my daughter (vegan) has asked me why I find it okay to eat chicken but not beef, that it doesn't make sense this choosing of "okay animals to eat" (cows, rabbits) and "not-okay animals to eat" (horses, cats).

I've clung to retaining beloved cheese & dairy products even though my son (vegan) has described to me how live male chicks (no good for egg-laying) are thrown alive into the grinders at birth. I've still kept on eating those things.

I absolutely love eggs, always have, and a Saturday breakfast of eggs and hash browns and once upon a time, bacon, was heavenly. I dropped the bacon years ago. And, after reading Masson's book, I'm going to try now and drop the eggs. I say "try" because I can't honestly say I know I will succeed, although I haven't been able to face [no pun intended] them since I started the book. Which coincided with the onset of the H1N1, so who knows if it was me or the flu. I am hoping to keep my resolve, because after what I read.....

Ah yes after.... That is what this book is largely about. That even when many (most) of us hear about the absolute atrocities of torture and horror animals, and fish & fowl, are put through to arrive on our plates ... we will still go on eating them, even though we are horrified.

We go into Denial.

And who better than a former Freudian psychoanalyst who has been psychoanalyzed upside-down, sideways & backwards to de-construct the roots and continuing engine of this Denial?

So this post today, this beginning, is a start at trying to come out of the Denial. My Denial.

I dedicate today's post to my cat, Stripey, while I contemplate why it is all these years I've been able to eat chickens but not him? Why I cry at baby seals getting bludgeoned to death but not the salmon in fish farms? And I thank Jeffrey Masson for helping me sort through it. And my children who were not able to dwell in the land of Untruth on this, but who have been very patient and have attempted to be nonjudgmental while I have walked its bloodsoaked dishonest shores.

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"It is hard to tell if male chicks have it worse. They are 'macerated' at one day old--crushed to death by a high-speed grinder while they are still alive. Or else they are 'bagged' and left to suffocate or die of dehydration." (pg. 69 in the chapter The Lives They Lead).

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