A carnivore rethinks his eating ethics

By Douglas Brown The Denver Post

We all have heard horror stories about the way livestock are sometimes raised in this country: chickens stuffed into cages for their short lives, pigs never allowed to see the sky or feel the sun on their backs, thousands of cattle standing shoulder-to-shoulder in pens knee-deep in mud and their own waste.

I don't know much about these places, called concentrated animal feeding operations. Are the stories true? I have not done enough homework and am not qualified to pass judgment.

I am familiar, on the other hand, with a single ranch on an Indian reservation in Wyoming where the cattle spend most of their lives roaming a sprawling range of grass, where osprey and eagles wheel above cows and calves and wolves and bears. Iam comfortable with Arapaho Ranch, a place that nurtures its cattle until the day they are shipped off to slaughter.

Working on the cover story for this week's Food section changed the way I buy food.

I eat meat. I savor how it tastes, I appreciate its textures, I sometimes feel compelled toward it, especially if I encounter the aromas from somebody's backyard barbecue.

But I feel compassion toward the animals I consume too.

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Not at all about chickens or bees but COOL

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Topsfield Fair Winners - photos by Clare Dubina

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Topsfield Fair photos

CLICK HERE to see all the photos

My new friend Lis Timpone

I think her drawings are super cool

This is my hen Josie when she was first born

Authors@Google: Michael Pollan

The Conscientious Carnivore - Barry Eastabrook 9/09

f you look at the raw (excuse me) numbers, the answer seems to be an unqualified “NO!”. Livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. A meat eater pumps about 1.5 tons more CO2-equivalent emissions into the atmosphere than someone who scorns meat.

But Nicolette Hahn Niman, an attorney and vegetarian who became something of an accidental rancher when she married Bill Niman, founder of Niman Ranch, offers a more reasonable, if less pat, answer to the question. “It depends on how your meat is raised,” she explains.

Niman, who is author of Righteous Porkchop, an investigative book about industrial-scale livestock farming and sustainable alternatives to it, made her statement last week in Chicago before a meeting of Chefs Collaborative, a group dedicated to local and sustainable foods.

Pointing out that the statistics about livestock production’s contribution to global warming include practices such as raising animals on trucked-in corn in vast feedlots in the United States and clearing rainforests in South America and southern Asia to make way for fields, Niman said, “Sheep, cattle, and goats can be raised on natural vegetation.”

Using her own ranch in Bolinas, CA, as an example, she noted that they apply no chemicals to the fields and use no irrigation. Their animals drink collected rainwater. Manure, which is a noxious pollutant at feedlots, is a precious resource for the Nimans. “We’ve had neighbors ask us if they can have any for their gardens and we say, ‘No, we need it all for our pastures,’” said Niman.

There is a downside: Meat raised this way costs more at the store. To those who grumble about cost, Niman suggests a win/win alternative: Eat less. “We don’t need twenty-four-ounce servings,” she said. “Eating less would make us a lot more healthy.”

The planet, too.

People talking about chickens on the radio!

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Awesome Bee movie

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Steers Life

Steer #534

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The IT Bird - Susan Orlean

My mom showed me this article in her magazine.



ABSTRACT: POPULAR CHRONICLES about the writer’s chicken fixation. Chickens seem to be a perfect convergence of the economic, environmental, gastronomic, and emotional matters of the moment. In the past few years they have undergone an image rehabilitation so astounding that it should be studied by marketing consultants. The writer admits that she is an animal fancier, but until recently, only of the fur-bearing type. Describes the effect of the documentary “The Natural History of the Chicken” on the writer. Also mentions the presence of chickens in Martha Stewart’s book “Entertaining” and in the pages of her magazine. Until the nineteen-fifties, it was common to keep a few chickens around. They were cheap and easy to raise. Gathering eggs was so easy that children were often assigned to do it. Buying eggs year round at a supermarket is a relatively recent development. Part of what is unusual about chickens is that they have always been women’s livestock: women and chickens just seemed to have a natural harmony. Mentions books and magazines about chickens, including “A Little Journey Among Anconas” and tells about the creation through breeding of a new type of chicken, the Cochin, in the 1840s. A frenzy of poultry breeding and showing and speculative trading followed, a crazed bubble nearly on the scale of Dutch tulip mania. As Americans drifted from the country to the cities, they took their chickens with them. Writer tells about her decision to own chickens. Discusses the concept of the hundred-mile diet and the popularization of locavore eating. Describes how she came to purchase an Eglu, plastic chicken coop designed by the British company Omlet. Briefly interviews Johannes Paul, one of the founders of Omlet, who describes the origins of the idea for the Eglu. Writer tells about the arrival of her Eglu and her early experiences of rearing chickens. Even people central to the chicken world are predicting what might supplant chickens, if and when chickens run their course—goats or ducks. Chickens have already survived hen bubbles and cholesterol scares and the enormous social change that chased them out of the back yard. But, the chicken, that thing with feathers, always sunny and useful, will endure.

Isn't she beautiful.

Cool Bumble Bee info from @helpsavebees

Bumblebees are a familiar sight in our gardens. There are 24 species of bumblebee found in the UK. The decline of British bumblebee populations was first noticed in 1959. All bumblebees form small colonies, but usually only the queens survive the winter. Because of this they do not need to store large quantities of honey in their hive.

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11 Facts About Animals and Factory Farms

1. A factory farm is a large-scale industrial operation that houses thousands of animals raised for food—mainly chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs—and treats them with hormones and antibiotics to prevent disease and maximize their growth and food output.

2. Feeding animals antibiotics on a consistent basis may cause the humans that consume them to lose some of their ability to fight certain strains of bacteria.

3. The beaks of chickens, turkeys and ducks are often removed in factory farms to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds.

4. Animals are often force bred to produce young at unnaturally accelerated rates, causing them exhaustion and stress.

5. Animals headed for slaughter who become too sick or injured to walk unassisted are forced onto slaughter trucks, often with a bulldozer.

6. Confining so many animals in one place produces much more waste than the surrounding land can handle. As a result, factory farms are associated with various environmental hazards, such as water, land and air pollution.

7. People who live in close proximity to factory farms often complain of high incidents of illness.

8. To make Foie gras, one of the most popular and well-known delicacies in French cuisine, birds are force-fed enormous quantities of food three times daily for four weeks via a pipe that is inserted into the esophagus. This leads to enlargement of the animal's liver and possible rupturing of the internal organs, infection and a painful death.

9. From birth to slaughter at five months, calves used to produce "formula-fed" or "white" veal are confined to two-foot-wide crates and chained to inhibit movement. The lack of exercise retards muscle development, resulting in pale, tender meat.


10. Egg-laying hens are sometimes starved for up to 14 days, exposed to changing light patterns and given no water in order to shock their bodies into molting, a usually natural process by which worn feathers are replaced. It’s common for 5-10% of hens to die during the forced molting process.

11. After one or two years of producing eggs at an unnaturally high rate, female fowl are classified as "spent hens.” No longer financially profitable for factory farmers, they are slaughtered.

FROM DOSOMETHING.ORG

What's in your food

My bird Biscuit

Honey Bee Life Cycle

Fun Facts about Honey

1. Bees have been producing honey for at least 150 million years.

2. To make one pound of honey, the bees in the colony must visit 2 million flowers, fly over 55,000 miles and will be the lifetime work of approximately 300 bees.

3. Honey is the ONLY food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including water.

4. A typical beehive can make up to 400 pounds of honey per year.

5. Honeybees never sleep!

6. Out of 20,000 species of bees, only 4 make honey.

7. Honey bees will visit between 50-100 flowers during one nectar collection trip.

8. A honeybee can fly approximately 15 miles per hour.

9. Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.

10. Honeybees have five eyes, 3 small ones on top of the head and two big ones in front. They also have hair on their eyes!

11. Bees communicate with each other by dancing and by using pheromones (scents).

12. Bees produce honey as food stores for the hive during the long months of winter when flowers aren't blooming and therefore little or no nectar is available to them.

13. A cave painting depicting an androgynous figure robbing honey out of the hive was found in the Cave of the Spider in Valencia, Spain. It is estimated to be 15,000 years old.

14. Honey stored in air tight containers never spoils. Sealed honey vats found in King Tut's tomb still contained edible honey, despite over 2,000 years beneath the sands.

15. A queen is the largest bee in the hive. She can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day, twice her own body weight per day.

More info here

My letter to our Mayor - Received no response :(

Here is a letter I wrote to our Mayor, about Ian and his birds - "Backyard chickens Cause Fuss in Port Boy crushed by city's order to remove 35 birds" CLICK HERE to see story
Or CLICK HERE to read more

Dear Mr Moak,
I am a chicken enthusiast and know a lot about chickens. I am 12. I have 30 chickens.
I have started a Twitter petition to have Ian keep his chickens. There has been a huge outpouring.
I am very active with my chickens in Newburyport, tryingto make the town of Newburyport smarter about chickens. I have taken my birds to the Farmers Market, to the Blessing of the Animals Etc. I want Newburyport to be known as a Chicken Smart City. However, this event with Ian has brought nothing but bad news about Chickens to Newburyport. Honestly the Twitter-sphere is on fire with this story and it is nothing but a bad reflection on the town. It sounds as if we really don't have a clear policy but instead this is the result of an angry neighbor and an unclear policy. It is also possible I don't clearly understand all the issues with the law.

Petition Backyard Chickens in Newburyport - http://301.to/7e7 #backyardpoultry #Newburyport

If there is anything I can do to help resolve this situation I would be happy to do it. I want to have this solved in a positive manner for Ian and for the town.

Thank you so much for your time.



Thanks to @Ari4Newburyport for helping me

Really cool and helpful site for starting a garden at school

CLICK HERE for more

Thanks @zacharycohen

More Truck Farm - Super awesome

The Garden - Movie Trailer

Truck Farm - Living on Earth

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, the filmmakers behind the documentary, “King Corn,” are at it again. This time they’ve planted rows of vegetables in the back of a Dodge pickup to show that food can be grown just about anywhere.

Twinkie VS Carrot - Nourish Movie

Nourish - the trailer

CLICK HERE to see trailer

Hens get a little wash.

My beautiful Buff Brahma

White House Farmer's Market

September 17, 2009, 6:26 pm
At a New Farmer’s Market, First Lady Picks Up Eggs, Chocolate Milk and Vegetables

Livestock Waste video

As Idaho dairies have grown, so has the environmental problem of coping with all the fecal waste. Much of it is spread over fields, where it can seep into local aquifers that supply people's wells.

CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells - NYTimes

By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: September 17, 2009

MORRISON, Wis. — All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe.There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby grain fields. Other farmers receive fees to cover their land with slaughterhouse waste and treated sewage.

In measured amounts, that waste acts as fertilizer. But if the amounts are excessive, bacteria and chemicals can flow into the ground and contaminate residents’ tap water.

In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials. As parasites and bacteria seeped into drinking water, residents suffered from chronic diarrhea, stomach illnesses and severe ear infections.

Read entire article here

With colonies in decline, bees thrive on rooftops of Paris

From Boston Globe

PARIS - In the romantic City of Light, the bees are downright busy.
Discuss
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Common sense says it is better to keep hives of stinging insects in the countryside, away from city centers packed with people. But on storied rooftops and public gardens in the urban jungle of Paris, the bee business is thriving.

Bees are disappearing from fields across France and elsewhere in the world, victims of a slow decline in number because of loss of habitat compounded by a recent and mysterious catastrophe variously blamed on disease, parasites, and pesticides. The most recent science research points to a combination of interacting diseases for new collapses of bee colonies.

But in the heart of the French capital, Nicolas Geant is preparing to sell his honey. It comes from hives on the edges of the soaring glass roof of the Grand Palais exhibition hall, just off the Champs-Elysees.

“Paris has many balconies, parks, and avenues full of trees and little flowers that attract many bees for pollination,’’ said Geant, who has 25 years of experience under his belt.

The Grand Palais beehives went up in May. They Beehives are also in the Luxembourg Gardens, on the gilded dome of the 19th-century Palais Garnier, and the roof of the ultramodern Opera Bastille.

“In Paris, each beehive produces a minimum of 110 to 130 pounds of honey per harvest, and the death rate of the colonies is 3 to 5 percent,’’ said Henri Clement, president of the National Union of French Beekeepers.

“But in the countryside, one beehive only gives you about 20 to 40 pounds, and the death rate is 30 to 40 percent. It is a sign of alarm.’’

The Luxembourg Gardens’ hives produce more than half a ton of honey per harvest. It is sold to the public during the last weekend in September, and the income funds beekeeping classes and the facilities.

Alain Sandmeyer, 63, a volunteer instructor at the gardens, said trees and shrubbery have grown sparser in rural areas, attracting fewer bees. Also, rural bees are dying off from pesticides and fertilizers. In Paris, on the other hand, pesticides are forbidden in all parks and gardens.

Urban beekeeping is not just a Paris thing. Berlin, London, Tokyo, and Washington are among beekeeping cities. New York, however, lists bees as “venomous insects,’’ and beekeeping is punishable by a $2,000 fine.

Read entire article here

The World According to Monsanto

See more of the movie here

Future of Food Trailer

From @sisteramy on twitter :)

@HappyChickens just wanted to let you know I bought cage free eggs today. more expensive but you have changed my mind about eggs and chicks.

This makes me so happy

Egg Supplier

Minnesota-based Michael Foods supplies eggs to several national restaurant chains, including Dunkin' Donuts. Compassion Over Killing has reached out to Dunkin Donuts numerous times to inquire about the treatment of hens in its supply chain and to encourage the company to make meaningful changes for hens

Life with Goats

Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Life With Goats

Most of us don’t herd goats anymore. Go far enough back in time, and a whole lot of humans did.

Brad Kessler left a rent-controlled apartment in New York’s East Village to raise goats in Vermont. He took it seriously — even spiritually — for himself, and now for us, in the pages of a wondrous little book on goat-herding.

There’s a reason, he writes, that Jesus, Moses, Krishna and Mohammed were all tied up with shepherds. There’s something magic here. And the cheese is pretty divine, too.

CLICK HERE to hear

We had this cool field of sunflowers in town!

Another Take on Chick Lit - Penelope Green

The chicken is still having her moment as the mascot and darling of the always-cresting locavore food movement. But as hipsters and foodies from New York to San Francisco embrace her charms and services — like her ability to consume food scraps and turn them into nitrogen-rich compost much faster than, say, a clutch of earthworms can (and with bucketloads more personality) — many people are struggling to learn how, exactly, to care for her.

Enter “City Chicks: Keeping Micro-Flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-Recyclers and Local Food Suppliers” (Good Earth Publications, $22.50). Yes, its title is a mouthful, but its author, Patricia Foreman, a pharmacist and author from Lexington, Va., is a very thorough woman. (She has degrees in agricultural science and public affairs and has kept chickens, and written about sustainable agriculture, for two decades.)

In an attempt to have the chicken-keeping laws of Lexington changed — the city, like many others, considers chickens livestock, which are usually contraband within city limits — she took Attila the Hen, a comely and personable fowl (above, with Ms. Foreman), to a city council meeting. The council members, she said, loved the chicken, which purred and preened as she was passed around, but the law remained, to Ms. Foreman’s dismay.

“I think the stakes are high,” she said in a telephone interview. “We need to change our food supply, manage our trash and get off the oil habit.”

In her book, Ms. Foreman notes that commercial fertilizers and pesticides are oil-based, but chickens make a richer fertilizer than the commercial variety and are deft weeders and pest eaters. Of course, she said, “education is key, to show that chickens are an asset, not a nuisance.”

Happy Chickens make for a happy boy

Sweet Sugar, my bantam cochin

Seeds I have saved for next year

From ATAAC.org

This is a baby female chicken having the end of her beak cut off with the hot knife on the debeaking machine. This is extremely painful.

Chickens

More chickens are killed and eaten than any other animal. Anyone who has ever encountered chickens kept as companion animals knows that they are intelligent and inquisitive - and fiesty!

There are two types of commercial chickens - 'broilers' raised for meat and 'laying hens' who are used to produce eggs.

Broiler chickens are crammed into dark, dingy sheds, sometimes 100,000 at a time. They are bred to reach their slaughter-weight in just six weeks. They put on so much weight, so quickly that their still-developing legs often buckle under the strain. Access to food and water points then becomes even more difficult, as the birds are unable to force themselves through the crush. Weaker and sicker birds collapse and die from thirst and hunger.

The cramped conditions may also lead to abnormal aggressive behaviour, such as pecking at each other, which can turn to cannibalism. To try to stop this from happening, chicks have the ends of their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, which is extremely painful. Inside the sheds, the litter that lines the floor is not changed for the duration of the birds' lives. They are forced to stand and sleep in their own faeces and urine, which covers their feet, causing ulcers and sores and often burns away the feathers on their breasts. Because of the terrible conditions, bugs and germs run rife. Farmers put antibiotics in the food in an attempt to fight off disease and infection.

The birds are sent off to slaughter when only six weeks old, to be made into nuggests and other chicken meat products for peoples plates.

VISIT THERE SITE http://ataac.org/content/view/45/32

A Tale of Chicken Rescue, Told in Six Parts - From Humane Society

Part 1: Ever Wonder What It's Like to Live with Chickens?

Marilee Geyer knows. She has a flock of more than fifty rescued chickens in California.

Marilee sees birds as charismatic individuals who each have their own personalities—and she welcomes them as part of the family.

"My mom was a kind, compassionate woman who taught me to care for and respect animals. She brought home every stray she came across, and so my family included a large number of companion animals."

Marilee came to view chickens differently after working in an animal shelter and doing rescue work.

"Working at an animal shelter gave me an opportunity to get to know an even wider variety of animals (sadly, just about every kind of animal you can think of ends up in a shelter sooner or later) and that's when I really got to find out what chickens were all about. I was charmed: chickens are highly social, friendly, smart," Marilee says.

But what really made an impact, in Marilee's case, was one particular little white hen named Willy.

The big rooster

HoneyBunny

The Social Life of Chickens

An interesting article about chickens. CLICK HERE

Friends for Hens | HumaneTeen.org

Your mission:
Put the chicken before the egg! Get the word out about cruel cages for hens and see if you can help your community go cage-free.

Why? Most eggs produced in the U.S. don’t come from Old MacDonald’s Farm. Instead, they come from industrialized factory farms confining millions of laying hens in overcrowded battery cages. Stacked one on top of another, each small wire cage may hold as many as 10 hens. Each hen has less space than the size of a sheet of paper. Hens confined in battery cages can’t spread their wings, make nests, perch, dustbathe, or do other things they were born to do. Get more details at NoBatteryEggs.com.

How? Write letters and talk to your parents, friends, restaurant managers, and school cafeteria manager. Ask them to make the switch to cage-free eggs.

CLICK HERE for more info

What's on your plate - the movie

CLICK HERE TO SEE

BEE CULTURE - The magazine of American Beekeeping

SEE SITE HERE

Saving Bees: What We Know Now

The first alarms about the sudden widespread disappearance of honeybees came in late 2006, and the phenomenon soon had a name: colony collapse disorder. In the two years that followed, about one-third of bee colonies vanished, while researchers toiled to figure out what was causing the collapse. A study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences surmises that there may not be a single pathogen involved but a collection of culprits. What have entomologists and beekeepers learned in the last few years of dealing with the crisis? We asked May R. Berenbaum, an author of the study, and other experts for an update.

* Rowan Jacobsen, author, “Fruitless Fall”
* Kim Flottum, editor, Bee Culture
* Joe Traynor, California bee broker
* May R. Berenbaum, entomologist, University of Illinois
* Marla Spivak, entomologist, University of Minnesota
* Diana Cox-Foster, entomologist, Pennsylvania State University


SEE DEBATE HERE

Urge the Department of Agriculture to act now to save bees

Bees are a critical agricultural resource that help produce $15 billion worth of crops in the United States each year. The recent unexplained mass disappearance of honey bees, called colony collapse disorder, poses a significant threat to honey bees, beekeepers, farmers and our food supply. Most bee experts believe bees could be falling sick due to a combination of factors, including pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, an inadequate food supply and a new virus that targets bees' immune systems.

Last year Congress recognized colony collapse disorder as a threat and granted the Department of Agriculture emergency funds to study the problem. In addition, the department receives $20 million each year for honey bee research, pest and pathogen surveillance, and other bee-related programs. But to date, the agency has been unable to fully account for how these funds are being used or show any significant results from its work.

The Agriculture Department should be held accountable for a clear and complete annual report of its progress on all of its duties concerning colony collapse disorder. Moreover, the department should determine what resources are needed to fully address the problem and inform Congress of these needs as soon as possible.

What to do:
Urge the Department of Agriculture to fulfill its commitment to fight colony collapse adisorder.


CLICK HERE and send your message

Happy Polish

Japanese, from @mypetchicken