If you haven't watched Morgan Spurlock's ingenious show 30 Days, at least watch this fantastic episode from June '08, in which he plants a hunter in the gentle, competent hands of a family of vegan animal activists. It's got EVERYTHING: Face-to-face interactions with rescued factory-farmed creatures? Check. PETA demos? Mmmmhmm. The insides of a dairy production facility? Yeah, they've somehow got that. Animal rescue in action? It's all here. You gotta watch this. And send it to at least 50 of your closest friends. (Via VegWeb. Yay, internet revival of this.)
And on the topic of vegan TV exposure, anyone else see Dr. Oz turn a cowboy vegan? Now THAT guy knows how to scare folks into a healthy diet.
A BOCA spokesperson told COK, "I am pleased to let you know the BOCA brand will be eliminating eggs in all of its products by the end of this year. We anticipate all BOCA products will be egg free in 2010."
Craving a BOCA burger and can't wait till the new year? (Or just tired of checking the backs of packages at the supermarket?) These BOCA foods are vegan: Chili, Vegan Burger, Chik'n Nuggets, Chik'n Patties, Spicy Chik'n Patties, and Ground Crumbles in the regular line and the Vegan Burger and Ground Crumbles in the Natural line.
With the appropriately horrifying Virtual Battery Cage, web designer Mark Middleton offers his viewers a glimpse of the intensely confined environment of a battery-raised chicken from the chicken's perspective. The click-and-drag interactive feature on Middleton's website, Animal Visuals, is small on the screen but huge in effect; scrolling up and around the cage of the chicken whose perspective you've adopted to the soundtrack of panicked birds, you come uncannily close to the bars and death that surround the bruised and bloodied chickens.
Kind of want to vomit? Direct your disgust toward companies still using eggs from battery-caged chickens. Compassion Over Killing and Mercy for Animals are encouraging people to ask veggie burger maker Boca to stop using eggs in their products. You can submit comments to Boca online or call them at 1-877-966-8769.
Cartoon by Nick Milliner. This Nugget's Canadian brethern will now be gassed to death rather than electrocuted. Hooray!
SuperVegan's 2nd birthday party is tonight!! Come on out to 'sNice Brooklyn, 315 5th Avenue at 3rd Street in Park Slope, 6:30pm-10pm. Complimentary cake and keg (feel free to bring supplementary alcohol, too), plus an all-vegan menu of other goodies (that you'll have to pay for) from 'sNice.
PETA has annoyed KFC Canda enough that the fried-chicken giant is actually making some changes! Says KFC Canada president Steve Langford, "(PETA) can be unpleasant to deal with, and from a business point of view, it's nice to put that behind you." General welfare upgrades will happen to how they (mis)treat their chickens, and they'll be introducing some kind of vegan faux-chicken to the menu. Sounds nasty to me, but I guess if I'm on a lonely highway in the wilds of Canada, I'd be glad to have it.
I was going to write a whole blog post about Polyglot Vegetarian's phenomenal article on historical Branded Meat Substitutes, but I simply haven't had time to read the damn thing yet. If you're into the history of veg food, or simply into history, go read it. And you must check out the included poem from 1904, "To a Health-Food Girl." Hail to thee, Granola Maid!
The new channel Planet Green launched last night (channel 172 on Cablevision; not sure where it is for you other folks), and I caught a few minutes of it here and there. In partnership with Treehugger, the channel is an exciting development in green biz: the “first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network.” But as optimistic as I was about PG, I found myself wondering where it would fall on the issue of veg*nism and the environment.
Of course, the channel’s programming includes the usual suspects—lifestyles of the rich and environmental (Hollywood Green With Maria Menounos), makeover shows (Renovation Nation, WA$TED!)—and will expand to include “reality” challenges (Battleground Earth: Ludacris Vs. Tommy Lee). But as always, the real answers lie within the cooking/dining and “information” shows. And what I saw there disappointed me.
What happens when a broiler-chick-to-be escapes his fate and witnesses what could have been? He grows up to be a pimp and returns to “MFC” headquarters to exact his revenge on a Colonel Sanders look-alike, of course!
Well, that’s what happens according to Moby, anyway. When he released the “Disco Lies” video on Feb. 14, he wrote, “Nothing says ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ like the ‘Disco Lies’ video, involving pimp chickens, cowboy bodyguards, strippers, and the head of an international chicken franchise being chased through the streets of Mexico City.”
Anyway, the song is really catchy, in a mellow, dancey way, and it’s off the album Last Night, due out April 1. You can download a free sampler here.
By the way, if you’re in L.A., Moby’s band The Little Death is playing at El Cid (4212 Sunset Blvd.) on Friday (doors open at 9; LD goes on at 10:45). Then on Saturday he’s DJing at the Heat Festival at UC Riverside.
SuperVegan is proud to lend our support to the efforts of Morningstar Egg Facts, a co-production of Compassion Over Killing and Vegan Outreach. The Kellogg-owned Morningstar Farms has always occupied an odd spot in the world of faux meats. They're very loud about being "vegetarian," yet an overwhelming percentage of their products contain egg and dairy. Why not (to use a totally backwards metaphor) kill two birds with one stone and peddle their wares to vegans, too? It's hard to imagine how formulating the egg whites and sodium caseinate out of the breakfast links would hurt their business.
The Morningstar Egg Facts website offers several methods to contact the Kellogg Company--hopefully if enough people do so, they'll budge. Pigs will fly before Kellogg's genuinely cares about the lives of chickens, but let's make them chase our vegan dollars.
I'm usually the guy at SuperVegan HQ yelling from my carrel "No cute animal stories! What do they have to do with veganism?!" But I just have to show ya'll Felix's Cute Video Collection. Police chickens interceding with quarreling rabbits? A bouncy German music video of kleine eisbär Knut (the one who "animal rights activists [didn't] advocate killing")? Otters holding hands? I can't not share.
ConocoPhillips and Tyson Foods have been working this past year to develop a renewable bio-diesel with lower carbon emissions than conventional fuels. They announced their apparently brilliant idea on Monday: their bio-diesel will be made using beef, pork and poultry fat. ConocoPhillips said it hopes to introduce the fuel at gas stations in the Midwest toward the end of this year. More strange than the idea itself is that people are really buying into it--even though it's an obvious ploy for more money, not for a cleaner environment. A columnist notes that animal fat burns as clean as natural gas. Uh, plus the smell of burning animal fat? "Animal fat is an ideal solution for a breakthrough fuel. The possibilities are not limited to just heating buildings and water. Other projects are underway."
On Tuesday night the Senate unanimously passed the Animal Fighting Prohibition Enforcement Act, which makes it a felony to transport an animal across state or nation borders for animal fighting; it also prohibits inter-state and national commerce in weapons used for cockfighting. The House passed the same bill a few weeks ago, and it's expected that Bush will sign it into law.
In related news, Louisiana, last outpost of cockfighting, is kind of maybe sort of thinking of banning the grisly "sport" as well. Governor Kathleen Blanco and others on Capitol Hill want cockfighting banned, though some politicians just want to co-opt the matches and tax them, to create a financial (blood-soaked) "life jacket" to help victims of Hurricane Katrina.
