VegBlogger - a vegan / vegetarian blog

In the Veg News - fur, chaining dogs, lab animals

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In this issue of "In the Veg News" we start with the fact that baring all is not stopping
people from wearing or promoting fur. Sexist campaigs are, well, just sexist campaigns. They are not effective. Case in point, yesterday BusinessWeek reported that the runway in Milan was dominated by fur, leather and wool. You can read the full article here, but please, don't do it naked, it won't help matters.

In other news, animal rights activists appear to be getting their message across when it comes to chaining dogs. You can read the USA Today article here.

The next article of interest explains how the University of Utah is using shelter cats and dogs to do biomedical research in their labs. You can read about this here.

Did you catch the Temple Grandin movie that was recently on television? I haven't not seen it, but Psychology Today offers an interesting article about her and asks if animals headed for slaughter should want to meet Temple. You can read this great article here.

Interestingly, the Farm Journal has a blog post schooling their readers on the HSUS and PETA. I don't really believe what he says about the animal rights people that he met, about how they felt the animals were all re-encarnated ancestors. I think that is his attempt to try to deflect the issue and make compassionate people seem way out in left field. He says "HSUS is a very real and current problem, and they must be addressed appropriately and forcibly." Hmm... forcibly? When animal rights activists use any kind of force they are referred to as domestic terrorists and are arrested. Hmm...  You can read the full article here, and feel free to leave a comment in the section that follows his article.

Finally, did you know they actually had a cow (beef, dairy) artificial insemination school? Sure enough! Check the ad out for it here.

Changing the Way We Speak

Post written by VegBlogger. Follow me on Twitter.

Did you notice in yesterday's post I wrote that President Obama Dines on A Chicken at
 the Health Care Summit? I didn't write that he ate chicken, or opted for the chicken dish, instead I wrote that he dined on "a chicken."

Why did I do that? Because it conjures up a different image than simply saying he "ate chicken." Think about it - when you ask someone if they "eat chicken" they get an image of a fried chicken leg, nugget or chicken breast on a plate. Something that no longer represents the animal it once was.

But when you ask them if they "eat chickens" or if they are "eating a chicken" it makes them think of a bird walking around. Two totally different images, even though you have changed the words slightly.

Why not call things what they are or change it up just a bit in order to get people to think about what it is that they are really eating? When I refer to milk or cheese that comes from dairy, I always call it "cow milk" or "cow cheese." People over the years have thought it was kind of strange, but I think it is good to distinguish it, just as we do "soy milk" or "almond milk" or "soy cheese," and I like reminding them that it came from a cow.

I've even been known in conversation to call "ribs" a "rib cage," which always raises some eyebrows. When I'm talking to my sister and I know she is preparing chicken "breast" that night, I call it "chicken boobs."

It's just a slight change, but can go a long way toward putting a subtle message in someone's head. This is just one of the easy ways to help spread the message and get people to make the connection with animals and their food choices.

My Kids Love Cows

Post written by VegBlogger. Follow me on Twitter.

My kids love cows. And that's just the way I want it. One of my missions in vegetarian
parenting has been to get my kids to look at as animals as more than a source of food, like many people do. Or, more specifically, to get them to make the connection between animals and their eating choices.

I have always tried to get them around animals as much as possible, in order to help them get to know and appreciate them. This week I went to the farmer's stand, which is just a couple of minutes from my house. The farmer also has some cows on the property and since he was there this particular morning, he gave my kids some old produce to feed to the cows.

The kids were delighted to get the chance to feed the cows. They had a lot of fun doing it and talking to the cows the whole time we spent there (and talked about them for the rest of the day).

As we got in the car to drive home, my daughter announced that she wants to be two things when she grows up. She said she wants to be a dentist and an "animal detector." Then she followed it up by saying that as an animal detector, whenever she sees people eating cows she is going to take their plates away and give the cow back its life.

She may not realize at 5.5 that death is final and you can't actually give the cow its life back, but she is already making a connection between animals, nature and our food choices that most adults go their whole life without ever doing.

If you are raising vegetarian kids, look for opportunities to get your kids around animals. It doesn't have to be at sanctuaries, it can be at local farms, or cows you pass as you go down the road (even if an animal is destined for the slaughterhouse it still deserves being visited). My kids walk around saying they love cows. Because of this, they are less likely to ever want to eat them.

We also have "chicken friends" a couple of minutes from our house and we stop and visit them regularly. After we visit the animals we discuss how people eat them, what they call it (e.g., steak, hamburger, etc.) and why we don't eat them.

So far, so good. If you ask my kids if they want to eat an animal they think you are joking and they find it as absurd as eating a car or house. And that's the way it should be. That's the way it would be for most kids if parents were honest about what they were feeding their children.