Taking a few steps towards a vegan diet will reduce carbon emissions far more than local purchasing. Avoiding meat and also buying locally is better still.
Carbon myths by Chris Goodall in today’s Guardian.
Thought for the Day
At this point it would presumably be the right thing to give some detailed description of the horrors enacted in our shambles, of which I might quote numerous instances from perfectly trust-worthy witnesses. If I do not do so, I can assure my readers that it is not from any desire to spare their feelings, for I think it might fairly be demanded of those who eat beef and mutton that they should not shrink from an acquaintance with facts of their own making; also we have often been told that it is the Vegetarians, not the flesh-eaters, who are the “sentimentalists” in this matter. I refrain for the simple reason that I fear, if I narrated the facts, this chapter would go unread. So, before passing on, I will merely add this, that in some ways the evils attendant on slaughtering grow worse, and not better, as civilisation advances, because of the more complex conditions of town life, and the increasingly long journeys to which animals are subjected in their transit from the grazier to the slaughterman. The cattle-ships of the present day reproduce, in an aggravated form, some of the worst horrors of the slave-ship of fifty years back. I take it for granted, then, as not denied by our opponents, that the present system of killing animals for food is a very cruel and barbarous one, and a direct outrage on what I have termed the “humanities of diet.”
Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) Excerpted from “The Humanities of Diet” (Manchester: The Vegetarian Society, 1914), serialised on The Grumpy Vegan and available in full at the Animal Rights Library. Learn more Henry Salt.
ASI Op Ed on Vick in Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ASI’s Executive Director Ken Shapiro op ed, “Vick needs counseling, too: It’ll help him break the cycle of violence,” published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Michael Vick’s prison sentence is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of engaging in illegal animal cruelty. The judge’s order includes jail, fines, probation and drug treatment, but failed to include an important element that would hasten Vick’s personal and professional redemption: psychological counseling to understand why Vick ever considered fighting and killing dogs acceptable in the first place.
As a psychologist, I have studied animal abuse for 15 years and have seen firsthand how a cycle of violence victimizes animals and people alike, including the abusers themselves. This “violence link” forms a behavior chain stronger and more dangerous than any pit bull.
And the relevance to human wellbeing is…..?
“Japanese scientists create mice with no fear of cats”, reports The Guardian.
“So by applying this theory to other mammals, we will probably be able to make other animals that are not afraid of their natural enemies.”
And now that the empathy gene has been found in humans, it won’t be long before science puts two and two together to make animals who have their sense of fear and empathy removed.
And when will people be bred to be like that?
Thought for the Day
One thing is quite certain. It is impossible for flesh-eaters to find any justification of their diet in the plea that animals might be slaughtered humanely; it is an obvious duty to carry out the improvements first, and to make the excuses afterwards. Those who admit that the Vegetarian, in his indictment of the slaughter-house, hits a grievous blot in our civilisation, often try to escape from the inevitable conclusion on the ground that such allegations tell not against the use of animal food, but against the ignorance, carelessness, and brutality too often displayed in the slaughter-houses. This, however, is a libel on the working men who have to earn a livelihood by the disgusting occupation of butchering. The ignorance, carelessness, and brutality are not only in the rough-handed slaughtermen, but in the polite ladies and gentlemen whose dietetic habits render the slaughtermen necessary. The real responsibility rests not on the wage slave, but on the employer. “I’m only doing your dirty Work,” was the reply of a Whitechapel butcher to a gentleman who expressed the same sentiments as those I have quoted. “It’s such as you makes such as us.”
Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) Excerpted from “The Humanities of Diet” (Manchester: The Vegetarian Society, 1914), serialised on The Grumpy Vegan and available in full at the Animal Rights Library. Learn more Henry Salt.
Child Abuse
A 5-year-old Arkansas County boy killed a black bear Sunday weighing more than 400 pounds.
Tre Merritt, a descendant of Davy Crockett, was hunting with his grandfather Mike Merritt when a black bear happened upon their stand.
“His 10th great-grandfather was Davy Crockett,” Mike Merritt said. “And Davy supposedly killed him a bear when he was three. And Tre is five and really killed a bear. I really doubt if Davy killed one when he was three.”
Mike Merritt was in the stand at the time but said Tre did it all by himself.
“He came in about 40 to 50 yards,” Mike Merritt said of the black bear, “and when he got in the open, I whistled at him and he stopped and I said, ‘Shoot Tre.'”
