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!
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.
