Three U.S. scientists are concern about the potential of people contracting Creutzfeldt Jakob disease -- the human form of "mad cow disease" -- from eating farmed fish who are fed byproducts rendered from cows.

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In the latest issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Dr. Robert P. Friedland, a neurologist at University of Louisville in Kentucky and colleagues suggest that farmed fish fed contaminated cow parts could transmit Creutzfeldt Jakob disease.

The scientists want government regulators to ban feeding cow meat or bone meal to fish until the safety of this common practice can be confirmed.

Fresh evidence from the largest study to date to investigate dietary habits and cancer has concluded that vegetarians are 45% less likely to develop cancer of the blood than meat eaters and are 12% less likely to develop cancer overall.

The study also reported that the total cancer incidence was significantly lower among both the fish eaters and the vegetarians compared with meat eaters.

And I have changed too. The early dogmatism has vanished. I eat fish, sometimes (which began with trips to France, when greed battled successfully against virtue).

Only last week, as a last-minute, self-invited supper guest, I found myself eating a hearty plate of meaty Thai curry, and enjoying it. My friends laugh at my occasional weakness for "just one" piece of chorizo.

Rising feed prices and a world surplus meant it cost as much as $17 to produce $10 of milk.

Farmers made a loss of 1p for every pint they sold last year, according to DairyCo figures for 2007/2008.

Planned and structured eating and understanding your personal food triggers are essential. In addition, educating yourself about food can help alter your perceptions about what types of food are desirable. Just as many of us now find cigarettes repulsive, Dr. Kessler argues that we can also undergo similar “perceptual shifts” about large portion sizes and processed foods. For instance, he notes that when people who once loved to eat steak become vegetarians, they typically begin to view animal protein as disgusting.

But I'm afraid there is a problem, and that is the inherently tedious nature of evangelical vegetarianism. I say this not because it ruins my lunch of foie gras, but because I am a vegetarian. Huh. Kinda feel like I just outed myself, there.

A life without bacon is the life I have lived. I don't think we need to get into any more precise details of what I do and don't eat, because unlike certain other journalists I do not believe that boasting about kerrrrazy eating habits will make me sound interesting or admirable. I think it will just make me sound like I think a little too much about food and, most of all, myself.

Each incremental victory at the state level, moreover, helps to prepare the ground for eventual broader reform, for at least two reasons. First, opposition based on the contention that same-sex marriage is an oxymoron is plausible only so long as there is no such thing as same-sex marriage. Now that thousands of same-sex couples have been married, no one can claim that same-sex marriage is simply unthinkable. Second, just as the increased visibility of gays and lesbians over the last generation has reduced fear and prejudice born of ignorance, so the fact that marriage has been extended to same-sex couples in several states and nations without any deleterious consequences is likely to undermine opposition based on fear of the unknown. While a majority of all Americans still oppose gay marriage, 57 percent of Americans under forty support it; time is on gay marriage's side.

Eskridge, Spedale, and West also argue that the best forum for achieving lasting victory is legislatures, not the courts. That seems less clear. There is no question that those seeking change cannot restrict their advocacy to the courts; a multitiered strategy is critical. But the recent court decisions suggest that it would be wrong to write off the judiciary. In view of the polls showing continued popular resistance to gay marriage, progress in the political realm is likely to be difficult. At the same time, the patent weakness of the legal arguments against recognizing same-sex marriage suggest that courts may be a more receptive forum. Polls show much less resistance to civil unions, and in some instances, majority support for that alternative. Thus, a state-by-state strategy that pursues civil unions politically, and same-sex marriage through the courts, may be most likely to succeed.

Moreover, as Gerstmann argues, judicial decisions can serve as a catalyst for political change. The first year after the Massachusetts Supreme Court approved same-sex marriage, a constitutional convention in Massachusetts voted 105–92 in favor of an amendment barring same-sex marriage. Massachusetts law requires such a vote two years in a row, however, and the next year, the amendment was voted down, 157–39. In 2007, the amendment again was defeated, 151–45. Today, 56 percent of Massachusetts voters approve of same-sex marriage. The supreme court decision took some time to sink in, but seems to have played a positive role in changing the political landscape.

As the United States Supreme Court has recognized, the history of constitutional law "is the story of the extension of constitutional rights and protections to people once ignored or excluded." Just as the institution of marriage survived its extension to couples of different races in the 1960s, so it will survive its extension to couples of the same sex in the twenty-first century. If the inclusion of same-sex couples changes the institution, it is likely to be for the better, rendering it more consistent with ideals of fairness. For marriage itself, then, and more important for the constitutional principle of equality, the only just result is to accord equal dignity and respect to all those who choose to enter long-term, committed family relationships, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

We believe a core, yet undervalued, intellectual activity of university professors is participation in advocacy. It the term "advocacy" has become pejorative, then perhaps academics need to better convey the importance of evaluating options in a responsible and accountable manner, and of advocating one option, or set of options, over others based on the weight of evidence. Academics leave advocacy to others at their own peril. Should academics advocate? In our collective opinion, it is essential that they do so.

Talk about out of your depth.

It is, by anybody's standards, an arresting image: a truly beautiful photograph of a luscious, radiant creature, all shiny eyes and silky skin. And Greta Scacchi, who is pictured clutching the cod to her naked body, doesn't look bad either. In the months and years to come, this picture, flashed throughout the British media last week, will doubtless come to be seen as the seminal image for a particular moment, when the gruelling, knotty business of campaigning around food issues finally became sexy.