“Meat is Murder” MUNCHEN, Germany––Thirty years after the British rock band The Smiths’ third album popularized the phrase “Meat is Murder,” Max Planck Institute for Chemistry researcher Jos Lelieveld has identified the alleged crime as a multiple homicide. In addition to killing about 1.7 billion cattle, a billion pigs, 24 billion chickens, and two billion […]
McDonald’s to phase out using eggs from caged hens
Phase-out to be completed 30 years after McDonald’s accepted statement of humane principles OAK BROOK, Illinois––The McDonald’s restaurant chain, buyer of more than two billion eggs per year, 4% of total U.S. egg production, on September 9, 2015 announced that it will phase out use of eggs from caged hens over the next 10 […]
Will animal industries throw rotten eggs next?
Hampton Creek & Chipotle scare agribiz Not all that long ago bigtime animal agribusiness and the fast food meat industry clamored for laws against so-called “food disparagement,” to try to silence influential critics. Now bigtime agribusiness and allies of the fast food meat industry are doing the disparaging, using the “check-off” funds created by Congress […]
Costco, General Mills, Prop 2, and HSUS: New Day – Same Problem
by Bradley Miller (Bradley Miller founded the Humane Farming Association, www.hfa.org, for which he is national director, in 1985.) By now you have likely noticed the flow of press releases from some of the largest marketers of factory-raised meat, dairy, and eggs –– and the Humane Society of the U.S. –– announcing supposedly “game changing” animal […]
Smart money bets on bio-cultured meat
Facebook & Google financiers say animals are not the future of agribusiness BROOKLYN, SAN FRANCISCO, HONG KONG––Some leading edge investors in agribusiness with long successful histories are betting big-time that the future of animal agriculture will no longer involve raising animals. Li Ka-Shing, for example, the richest man in Asia, with net worth of […]
Bob Brown & Lisa Shapiro used marketing to help farmed animals
Took starkly opposite market-based approaches Robert A. Brown, 82, and Lisa Shapiro, 51, who shared their concern for farm animal welfare but took starkly opposite market-based approaches to expressing it, died recently in Tucson, Arizona, and Boulder, Colorado. Brown can be credited with initiating the “happy meat” approach, seeking to reform agribusiness by developing competition from […]
Courting hen & egg producers leads animal charities into deep @#$%
The AHA and HSUS have each hit the other repeatedly with figurative volleys of rotten eggs FRESNO, California––Which came first, the American Humane Association and Humane Society of the U.S. courting dances with hen and egg producers, or egg on the faces of spokespersons trying to explain the chicken poop outcomes? Frequently bitter rivals […]
Blue Buffalo feels the heat from rendered poultry byproducts in dog food
Blue Buffalo admits to using dog food ingredients that it advertised it did not ST. LOUIS, Missouri; WILTON, Connecticut; RANCHO SANTA FE, California––Poultry byproducts are typically rendered into dog food at about 140 degrees Celsius, 284 degrees Fahrenheit. A year after Purina sued Blue Buffalo over alleged false advertising, Blue Buffalo and Blue Buffalo ingredients […]
Living the Farm Sanctuary Life
by Gene Baur & Gene Stone Rodale Press & Raincoast Books (33 East Minor Street, Emmaus, PA 18098), 2015. 320 pages, hardcover. $29.99. Reviewed by Beth Clifton “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” ––VICTOR HUGO (French novelist) Living the Farm Sanctuary Life […]
The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business
by Christopher Leonard Simon & Schuster (1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020), 2014. 370 pages; hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions available. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton The meat hook on the cover of The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business is misleading. Relatively little of The Meat Racket is in […]