The UK Telegraph reports that the United Nations International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management has a new report calling the food animal industry a major contributor to harmful climate change, comparable only to fossil fuel consumption.

Old news to most vegans, sure, but it always helps when big, trusted organizations impartial to animal-rights come out with this stuff.

Though the Telegraph trumpets "meat," it does sound like the UN report also blames the dairy industry (unlike Food, Inc.!). And it's nice to see some thoughts about systematic economic incentivizing:

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, said ... "The Panel have reviewed all the available science and conclude that two broad areas are currently having a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet's life support systems—these are energy in the form of fossil fuels and agriculture, especially the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products."

Mr Steiner said governments could encourage people to eat less meat by reforming the system of taxes and subsidies so vegetarian food is cheaper.

"Smart market mechanisms, more intelligent fiscal policies and creative policy-making are among the options for internalising the costs of unsustainable patterns. Some tough choices are signalled in this report, but it may prove even more challenging for everyone if the current paths continue into the coming decades," he added.

(The Telegraph's link-free old media approach makes it hard to provide any supporting details, and the UN IPSRM's own site doesn't seem to mention the report yet.)

This weekend's going to rock your veggie world, if you're into that sorta thing! Veggie Prom is tonight, followed by a post-prom potluck picnic at Central Park. Finally, the Veggie Pride Parade rounds out the weekend Sunday starting at 11 a.m. in the Meatpacking district.

Hungry after all the parading, yes? Z Pizza's got vegan slices this weekend, starting today! That means no more staring in their window wishing you had friends to go in on a pie with you, and no aging pizza in your fridge. (But leftover pizza is the best, no joke!)

Jonathan Horowitz's art exhibit at a former meat locker in the Village called "Go Vegan!" looks brilliant. Have you been? What'd ya think?

At least two carriage horses have crashed in the last two weeks, Gothamist reports. It's been just a month since the City Council approved changes to the carriage horse industry that support more humane treatment of the horses, but the new legislation does nothing to protect horses from injury due to crashes. Hey, it looks like you can't make carriage-hauling safe or humane for horses unless you eliminate it entirely. News. Flash.

The LA Times blog's "L.A. Unleashed" column has a snappy animal round-up of its own: Labradoodle breeder's regrets, gray whale in Israel, and researchers hurt mice to see the looks on their faces. Guh.

The Humane Society of the United States gives us a peek into Richard Berman's absurdly shady lobbying tactics and how they threaten animals. You wanna read this!

Remember when Compassion Over Killing encouraged us to enter Dunkin' Donuts's "Create Dunkin's Next Donut Contest," and asked us to share our vegan creations with them? They've picked their favorite 12 contestants' dreamed-up sweets and will make one of those dreams come true! Vote for your favorite by next Friday, May 21 (and you'll be entered to win one of 10 prizes, too). Vegan Treats will produce the winning doughnut, which will be announced in June. I will take a box of each!

Daiya-serving pizza chain Z Pizza opened in the West Village this week. Gluten-free crust available! Huzzah! Fill out a two-minute survey (really, I tested it out for ya) to get a $5 coupon delivered to your inbox.

Even better: the largest foie gras farm in the U.S., Hudson Valley Foie Gras, will pay $50,000 for violating the federal clean water act after a judge ruled against them in a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States.

Pepperidge Farm is way behind the times, still using eggs from caged hens. Join East Bay Animal Advocates in telling Pepperidge Farm's parent, Campbell Soup Company, that cage-free is the way to go by e-mailing Douglas Conant at douglas_r_conant@campbellsoup.com or calling him at (856) 342-4800, ext. 3752.

Haven't seen Fowl Play yet? MFA has organized a screening at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center for Thursday, May 13 at 6:30 p.m. The movie will be followed by a Q&A with MFA campaign coordinator Matt Rice, Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary founder Jenny Brown, chicken keeper and blogger Martha Lazar, and Elizabeth Ayer, BK Farmyard’s farm director and consultant and caretaker at Wyckoff Community Garden and Farmers Market. Tickets are $12, or $8 for students and seniors.

VegNews won the best lifestyle mag category for the third consecutive year at the Maggie Awards this week! Yaaaay VegNews!

A mere round-up mention of Mia MacDonald's HuffPo article about the relationships between Goldman Sachs and agribusiness and your tax dollars, "Investment Bankers with Wings: Making a Killing", doesn't do the story justice, so go read. You will be horrified.

And finally: Holy cannoli! Mike Tyson is vegan!

In response to the Supreme Court's decision Tuesday to strike the ban on the sale of videos depicting cruelty to animals, Representative Elton Gallegly (R-CA) and 55 other representatives introduced H.R. 5092, a bill to ban the distribution and sale of crush videos. The Humane Society of the United States reminds us that we can help by contacting our representatives asking them to support the law.

We added 27 new restaurants to the guide this week (Thanks, Cathy!), including Organic Village in Forest Hills, Victory Bhaven in Staten Island, and Sunlife Health Food and Juice Bar in the Bronx. See all the new restaurants here, and don't forget to leave a review if you've been!

This week on "Law & Order: SVU," the show whose following, I'm guessing, is rivaled only by Oprah's, a woman is murdered while filming "an unflinching expose of meat," NBC's description says. Did you catch it? If so, how much did they get into the business of slaughter?

KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure launched their "Buckets for the Cure" promotion. For every bucket of chicken sold, KFC will donate 50 cents to Komen now through 5/9. People are rightfully grossed out. I mean, shit is crazy! Since when is the relationship between fried dead chicken pieces and cancer-fighting a mutually symbiotic one? Never ever ever!

Quarrygirl let us know that Starbucks is going to sell vegan frappuccinos. I hate coffee, but whatever! Yay!

Do you like your shredded carrots raw? Birdbath Bakery has your hippie food right here: the Old School Vegetarian Sandwich.

A few reminders for ya:

Our very own Patrick Kwan will be a judge at Veggie Conquest Sunday. (Hint: toss some Daiya cheese on that shit and he will love it!)

The Sea Shepherd's flagship, the Steve Irwin is docked right here in NYC and you can go INSIDE it!

The bake sale to support Darwin Animal Doctors at Vegan Drinks is Thursday, April 29, 7-9 p.m. at Angels & Kings. Bring a to-go container -- Laura Dakin of Sea Shepherd will be baking some serious treats!

Looking for that special vegan with whom you can celebrate/not have to think about your lifestyle? Let us help. Check out Date This Vegan and you might just find the one.

The Nebraska Soybean Board's latest commercial wants you to know the truth about meat. Oh, no, that's not right. They want you to eat meat so they can profit, because, as they say in this commercial, 98 percent of domestic soybean sales are purchases from the US meat industry.

The commercial makes no effort to hide the soybean farmers' agenda. After an intro segment, it begins: "From across our heartland, soybean, livestock, and poultry farmers are working together to feed the world."

We get the usual appeals to patriotism ("heartland"), community ("working together"), and an unquestionable common goal ("feed the world"). So, as united Americans, the soybean and meat farmers are going to stamp out hunger. Brilliant!

But let's back up. Why don't they tell us how much soy it takes to feed a cow (whose natural diet consists of grass), and then tell us how many humans you could have fed with that? Also, perhaps they could let us know how feeding an animal an unnatural diet of soy (and corn) affects its immune system and actually costs even more because they have to dose it with antibiotics to keep it healthy? Let's not forget the costs to human health of eating animal meat. And while they're analyzing the true cost of meat production, why not tell us the costs to other species as the soybean farmers mow down animals' natural habitats to make space for more soybeans?

"We need to do a better story of telling the benefits" of meat consumption, they say. I didn't hear about a single benefit of meat consumption in this commercial. I did hear plenty about the industry's "commitment" to human health and animal welfare (What??), but not a single representation of benefits. Show me proof that eating animals is good for my health or their welfare. C'mon, Soybean Board, show me what's really going on behind the curtain -- the animals as they're typically raised and slaughtered -- and try to tell me that this is humane and healthy.

The Soybean Board is clearly looking where the money is, and right now that's in the meat industry. But hey, I love edamame, tofu, and tempeh, just to name a few delicious soy-based foods. Let's remind the Soybean Board of the truth about the costs and "benefits" of meat production and consumption, and let's let 'em know that we're happy to eat soybeans, but not in the form of meat. Write them at info@nebraskasoybeans.org.

Babeland's Jaguar Harness is now vegan, according to Shewired. No leather necessary for super good times!

The insanely timely hilarious geniuses at Vegansaurus gave us a recipe for a vegan version of KFC's heart-clogging, rotting body parts, media darling sandwich, the Double Down. Oh my god, Rudy, get your deep fryer.

As of this week, Mondays are vegetarian days in San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors declared in a resolution Tuesday. Yaaaayyyy! Whatever it means in practice, we like the theory and hope it means more delicious veggies for all.

Since life isn't all fried seitan and Meatless Mondays, and because you need something to show your friend who doesn't understand that egg farming causes suffering, we give you the Humane Society of the United States's latest undercover investigation, released Wednesday. Warning: you might puke.


In restaurant news, Souen on 13th Street will close for several months starting next week to renovate, so if you like your hippie food served in a hippie restaurant, go eat there right now, hippie.

'sNice Soho will open NEXT WEEK so get in a sandwich-y, coffee-y mood with me!

Oh, and in other 'sNice news! Two of their employees were stabbed last month (shocking and horrible, i know!), so 'sNice in the West Village is having a benefit to support them on Sunday, April 11, 6-9 p.m. $10 at the door. There will be vegan pigs in a blanket! And me! I will be there!

Enough about restaurants. Registration for the Let Live conference in Portland is open. June 25-27 at Portland State University. Speakers will include Gene Baur, Josh Hooten, Andy Stephanian, Isa Moskowitz, Jasmin Singer, and others TBA.

There's a lot of noise on the internet today about Christopher Cox's "Consider the Oyster" which carries the slug/page title "It's OK for vegans to eat oysters" and the subhead "Why even strict vegans should feel comfortable eating oysters by the boatload."

Cox's basic thesis is that oysters don't feel pain and that commercial oyster production/harvesting is far more ecologically friendly than most other industrial food production. He goes out of his way to say that oysters are sustainable for food use in a way that clams and mussels are not. He gets a qualified endorsement from Peter Singer. One can certainly argue with these things, but he's basically done his homework. Except for seeming to have no clue what it means to be vegan.

When I became a vegan, I didn't draw an X through everything marked "Animalia" on the tree of life. And when I pick out my dinner, I don't ask myself: What do I have to do to remain a vegan? I ask myself: What is the right choice in this situation? Eating ethically is not a purity pissing contest, and the more vegans or vegetarians pretend that it is, the more their diets start to resemble mere fashion—and thus risk being dismissed as such. Emerson wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The only way for me to read this is that Cox doesn't know what "vegan" means. He never became a vegan, and needn't worry himself over remaining a vegan. Because of our very consistency (foolish or not) there's no gray area for vegans when it comes to eating animals. Cox is trying to be ethical about his consumerism, and that's great. I just don't understand how the hell anyone thinks the way he's going about it can be described as any form of veganism. It isn't.

Vegans do not knowingly/willingly/actively consume or purchase any part or bodily product of an animal that was taken from a living animal or for which an animal was killed. (I know that's a lot to pack into a sentence, but there it is. End of story.) You can argue that this isn't the most constructive approach to ethical consumerism, as Peter Singer does. But Peter Singer does not claim to be vegan, nor does he endorse the point of view that eating oysters can ever be vegan.

Work that floral blouse! H&M launched a line of organic and recycled clothes called the Garden Collection (sending you to the Swedish site so you can see all the rainbow-colored garments). They're priced like the non-organic stuff so no excuse not to, unless you only wear gray or something INSANE like that.


The NYC Animal Advocacy meetup is heading to Columbus Circle-area restaurant Telepan Saturday to protest its use of foie gras, and the owner is getting ready by preparing some bullshit spiel about how he's a beacon of awareness who champions hormone-free milk in schools, serves grass-fed cows, and "won a merit batdge from Animal Welfare Approved." Congratulations, Bill Telepan, for caring about what affects your bottom-line. That's capitalism, not compassion. Go to the protest tomorrow, Saturday, March 27, 7-9 p.m.

HEY YOU GUYS OUT IN BAY RIDGE, CAN YOU HEAR ME? The Village Voice tells us there's this delish vegan sandwich at Casa Calamari in your 'hood -- puffy hero bread overstuffed with loads of sauteed broccoli rabe. Yum!

For the first time in possibly forever, no dogs were killed in the Iditarod this year. Racers chock it up to the cold. I get that many of the racers love their dogs, but somehow not enough to NOT put them in harm's way? I really just want to see the dogs mushing their humans. MUSH, MUSH, ASSHOLE. Update!: Commenter Lucy reminds us we can write to the Iditarod sponsors and politely ask them to stop using dogs to pull sleds at Helpsleddogs.org.

Food banks for companion animals! Thanks, Petco Foundation! Next step: make 'em vegan!

Hey, it's Alicia Silverstone at Candle 79, talking up veganism!

Go Dairy Free rounds up 20 new dairy-free (mostly vegan) foods from Natural Products Expo West 2010. Nut butters! (Stop cringing, boys.) Gluten-free breads, Tofurkey frozen pizza, new Gardein stuff! Check it!

Finally, don't forget to turn off the lights during Earth Hour Saturday, 8:30 p.m. local time!

When Andy Stepanian and Dara Lovitz gave a talk on SHAC7 and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) at NYU Law School on Tuesday, most of the audience came half-expecting to hear a legal seminar (Lovitz is the author of Muzzling a Movement). Almost no one expected to laugh or cry with inspiration before the talk ended, although almost everyone did. (We interviewed Andy before this event.)

This was not a speech or a classroom teaching. Dara spoke so candidly about the absurdities of animal enterprise terrorism laws that even the law students had to start laughing with her. Andy spoke so painfully earnestly to everyone that few had dry eyes by the end of the talk. No one walked away depressed, though, as the duo were determined to show everyone exactly how much potential we all have to effect positive change, despite how much money and effort the animal enterprises dump into making us feel powerless and small.

Dara, the lawyer, spoke first. And the takeaway of her talk wasn't "the history and overview of AETA," but rather just how impressively unconstitutional the AETA is, and how it managed to be drafted anyway. She explained very frankly how a series of unconscionably illegal laws culminating in AETA were pulled over everyone's eyes through passionately written passages. Passages about how animal activists victimize dying people who can only get a cure through animal testing. Passages that literally say that we owe so much of our lives to the selfless people in charge of the factory farm industry. And she put us face to face with how so many of our senators and policymakers are CEO's and beneficiaries of devastating animal enterprises.

• The Humane Society of the United States will sell organic vegan vegetarian dog food, called Humane Choice. Let's hope they kick Purina's ass to next Tuesday! Also, cat food next, pls!
• The Superbowl happened; the underdog won; and Roberto Martin and Tal Ronnen prepared for Ellen yummy vegan nachos, pot pie, stew, and more. Rah, rah, rah!
• Olympic ice skater Johnny Weir is going to don fake fur rather than real fur over his manitard because some muddling vegans tried to take the focus off his triple axel for a second to talk about his anally-electrocuted outfit, and he just CANNOT BE DISTRACTED FROM WHAT'S IMPORTANT. Weir gets what's wrong with fur, he told the AP, "but it's not something that's the number-one priority in my life. There are humans dying every day. ... Look at what just happened in Haiti." LOOK OVER THERE! LOOK OVER THERE!
• You know things are bad when people are giving up their orange tabbies. Animal Care & Control of New York City is apparently full of them. If you have room for a furry one at home, maybe consider these guys?
• How about this: a slice of your debit transaction fees could support animals instead of banks. In Defense of Animals launched a debit card that will direct a portion of transaction fees to IDA, which they will use to fund "our chimpanzee sanctuary in Cameroon, Africa; our veterinary clinics and ambulance service for the thousands of street animals of Mumbai, India; and for our investigative and sanctuary work in rural Mississippi," IDA founder and President Elliot M. Katz said. For use wherever Mastercard is accepted. No details yet on how to get one, but I'll update if I find out.
• Food Fight! Vegan Grocery needs our $$ to help cover their taxes. They're offering a 5-percent discount with code "FUTAXES10" (heh) good through Monday, 2/15. Time to stock up on chocolates and Ricemellow, MMMMHMMM.
• New iPhone app from the vegan boozemeisters at Barnivore. Search for "vegan is easy" in the iTunes store. Update (2/15): Per Jason Doucette's comment below, the app was not made by Barnivore, but it uses data from Barnivore.

Well, there you have it -- the week that was. Did we miss anything? Let us know!

Correction (2/16): HSUS's new dog food contains supplements that they say might come from animal sources. Drat.