Civil Eats

In a move to help consumers make more informed choices when choosing to eat humanely sourced animal products, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) developed and launched the very first restaurant database. The resource identifies 150 restaurants in 15 U.S. cities that offer products and menu items created by methods that benefit animal welfare, human health, and the environment. The free database includes 11 Bay Area restaurants and others in: Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC. Read More

Ever feel like you were playing checkers and the other guy was playing chess?

That’s the sort of feeling I get often when I watch many of the recent spate of food documentaries to be released.  Activists announce that this or that is wrong with the food system, and on the rare occasion when something appears to be getting done about it, the folks who are doing things badly simply change their tactics, but not their strategy.

It happened again while watching the British documentary film Pig Business. Read More

The agribusiness sector has been abuzz with complaints about ABC’s recent Nightline exposé of the biggest dairy factory farm in one of the largest dairy production states: New York. The segment features footage compiled by Mercy for Animals showing inhumane treatment of dairy cows, followed by ABC’s interview of the operation’s owner rationalizing that he doesn’t know if it hurts the animals, because as he put it, “I can’t speak for the cow.”

Agribusiness spokespeople predictably dismissed the story as a “propaganda piece” and “lacking…factual information.”

Reading industry responses to these kinds of investigations is always interesting to me. Whether it’s exposés of pig factory farms, egg factory farms, or now this dairy investigation, some ag producers seem to have a “circle the wagons” mentality that prompts them to attack anyone who’s critical of industry practices. In many cases, they resort to the industry mantra that farm animal suffering only occurs as isolated cases, not as part of standard industry practices. Read More

Reading agribusiness officials’ responses to undercover exposés documenting egregious acts of cruelty to farm animals can be truly mind-boggling. I’ve written about this before, and feel compelled to follow up with a couple more recent sordid examples.

When faced with gruesome images of mistreatment of farm animals, rather than simply condemning the cruelty, some in agribusiness just can’t leave it at that. They feel the need also to attack the compassionate investigators who put themselves at great risk to go undercover and blow the whistle on such abuse.

For example, a new Mercy for Animals investigation involved videotaping workers at one of the nation’s largest pork companies throwing piglets by their ears and legs across the room, cramming pigs into cages barely larger than their own bodies for months on end, and even leaving pigs with untreated prolapses, sores and other health problems.

And what’s the response of the president of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, Dr. Butch Baker? Quite simply: These types of investigations “really are an attack on the rural lifestyle of America.” Read More

It sounds like a bad Halloween prank, but unfortunately, feeding cattle chicken litter—the material that accumulates on the floor of chicken growing facilities—is everyday practice in feedlots. Surprisingly, this unhealthy and inhumane practice is legal and poorly monitored, creating unacceptable risks to human and animal health.

Consumers Union and Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), a Chicago-based animal welfare organization, have filed pre-Halloween grassroots petitions signed by more than 37,000 individuals with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asking the agency to end the practice of feeding chicken poop to cows. FACT, with the endorsement of Consumers Union and 11 other national organizations, filed a formal citizen petition in August 2009 asking FDA to ban this practice. The petition is part of FACT’s Filthy Feed Campaign. Read More

Last year, the term “Prop 2” was virtually synonymous with a step forward for animal welfare. Opponents of factory farming won a major victory in California with Proposition 2’s passage, in which voters overwhelmingly banned battery cages, gestation crates, and veal crates (with a phase-out).

This November however, the ballot number 2 has a much different meaning.

Two thousand miles away from the Golden State, Issue 2 will be on Ohio’s the statewide ballot November 3^rd. In short, it would amend the state constitution by creating a council that would have the authority to adopt regulations for the treatment of farm animals in the state. Sounds pretty good, right?

Unfortunately, while designed to give the appearance of helping farm animals, Issue 2 is little more than a power grab by Ohio’s agribusiness lobby. The industry-dominated “animal care” council that Issue 2 proposes is really intended to thwart meaningful improvements in how Ohio factory farms treat tens of millions of farm animals. Read More

IHOP tells its customers to “come hungry, leave happy,” but an increasing number of its customers are hungry for something that’s not yet on the menu—animal welfare improvements.

Unlike many other major restaurant chains—including Denny’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Quiznos, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and Red Robin—every single egg IHOP uses comes from a hen confined in a cage so small, she can’t even spread her wings. That’s right: 100% of the eggs IHOP sources come from battery cage confinement operations. Even more, IHOP’s primary egg supplier, Michael Foods, was just exposed by an undercover investigation that documented particularly egregious acts of animal cruelty. Read More

Last year, Californians voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 2, which banned the harsh confinement of laying hens, pregnant sows and veal calves. A national Zogby poll from October 2003 entitled Nationwide Views on the Treatment of Farm Animals [pdf], found that 82% of respondents agreed that such laws protecting farm animals should be in effect nationwide. Now, as the interest in where our food comes from grows, it seems that the country at large is ready to extend animal welfare laws to farm animals.

In fact, the tide has been turning on farm animal treatment for years now. Before California’s well-publicized vote for the improved treatment of farm animals last November (which will take effect in 2015), Florida voters chose to amend their constitution in 2002 to ban gestation crates, and Arizona banned them in 2006, as did Oregon in 2007 and Colorado in 2008. But very few people know that a similar bill has been proposed in New York State’s Assembly, where it is currently stuck in the Agriculture Committee. But will the Chair of the committee, William Magee (D-Nelson), allow the issue to go to a vote? Read More

Last week The Humane Society of the United States co-hosted a screening of the film Food, Inc. for policymakers in Sacramento. It was a lively and engaged crowd representing the gamut from vegan activists to staunch carnivores, and it seemed every one of them learned something from Food, Inc. Alice Waters, Martin Sheen, Elise Pearlstein (the film’s producer) and the two most powerful state Senators brought cache and insight with their post-screening panel.

Dave Murphy’s great review of Food, Inc. the other day was spot-on and HSUS urges everyone to see it. Its fundamental aim is to expose the rampant abuse of power that has resulted in an inefficient, polluting, degrading, cruel, and unhealthy food system in America.  To add to Dave’s commentary, I wanted to offer the perspective  of someone who works daily to address the torturous conditions that 10 billion animals raised for food routinely each year endure. Read More

Since the overwhelming passage of California’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act this past November, Big Agribusiness has been in a feeding frenzy, stepping up its attacks on its critics, most especially The Humane Society of the United States. Read More

Just like every other year, parents are shelving traditions of dyeing and hiding Easter eggs. And just like every other year, post-Easter egg demand is inevitably declining, leaving producers with a surplus. To ease the financial burden of this annual drop in egg consumption, the American Egg Board declares May “National Egg Month” and attempts to woo food editors and morning talk shows into promoting eggs.

But one thing the egg industry likely won’t trot out in its PR effort is its sordid animal welfare record. Read More

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my hope that President-elect Barack Obama would ask his Agriculture Secretary nominee, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, to break the hold of Big Agribusiness on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and to broaden the agency’s outlook and constituency. Following Obama’s election, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote two trenchant columns about renaming the agency the Department of Food, to reflect that we all have a stake in how food gets to our tables and that USDA can no longer be the handmaiden of Big Ag. In addition to mentioning the need to address animal welfare, Kristof echoed author Michael Pollan’s view that we cannot solve our nation’s big problems of energy policy, national security, and global warming without enacting serious reforms to America’s agricultural policies. Read More

The recent debate over Proposition 2, eloquently outlined in Paul Shapiro’s post, is a timely example of the dilemma we now face: We want food we can feel good about, even after we know all the facts; but the vast majority of our meat, dairy and eggs still come from factory farms. So how did we get here, and how do we change course? Read More