Thursday November 11, 2010
I think I nearly fainted when I saw the sign in the supermarket window. ShopRite stores in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland will give you a free Tofurky Feast if you spend $300 while using your Price Plus card before November 25.
This is such a step forward! Not long ago, I tried to get a vegan Thanksgiving bonus from another local supermarket, and got nowhere until I wrote to the corporate headquarters and received a $10 gift card with an apology. That store still offers a $10 gift card, which is great and arguably more useful than a Tofurky feast, but the Tofurky feast puts veganism on the map. It shows that stores want to attract vegan customers and that there's been a demand for a vegan bonus.
Of course, they also offer turkeys and other animals. And a photo of a cooked turkey dominates the holiday bonus announcement. But just offering the Tofurky is a fantastic first, and hopefully other supermarkets will follow.
In fact, you could print out the announcement and use it to tell other supermarkets that you want them to offer a vegan bonus!
Photo © Doris Lin 2010, licensed to About.com, Inc.
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Thursday November 11, 2010
November 7-13, 2010 is National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week. The purpose is "to acknowledge and promote the invaluable role shelters play in their communities and to increase public awareness of animal welfare issues and shelter services."
I love my local shelter. While it's not perfect, they do what they can and it's not just a shelter. They enforce the animal cruelty statutes, offer free bereavement counseling, run a low-cost spay/neuter clinic, conduct humane education in the local schools, and even spoke out against a local deer hunt.
While some shelters are better than others, it's so important to adopt - from any shelter - instead of buying or breeding animals. Three to four million animals are killed in shelters every year, and some suffer a fate that might be considered worse than death.
Mario Tama / Getty Images
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Monday November 8, 2010
Today, the Animal Protection League of NJ and the Bear Education and Resource Group issued a press release demonstrating one example of the pseudo-science behind New Jersey's Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy. While one of the purported reasons behind the hunt is the reduction of the bear population, the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife's own data shows that bear hunting increases the bear population.
DFW's proposed 2010 Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy states that the black bear population estimate in their research study area for 2009 is 3,400 bears (see page 4 here). However, when DFW was pushing for a bear hunt in 2005, they stated that the bear population in the research area in 2009 would be 2,694 if there were no further hunts after 2003. (See Figure 7 on page 38 here). DFW conducted a bear hunt in 2005, and their own data now shows that the bear population is 706 bears higher, a 26% increase, compared to what it would have been if there had been no hunt in 2005.
New Jersey's 2005 black bear hunt and bear policy were both declared illegal by a unanimous opinion of the NJ Appellate Division in 2007.
I'm not saying that bear hunting actually increases the bear population, or that any of DFW's data is to be believed. They're biased, and they've been making stuff up about bears and bear hunting for years. The significance is that it shows that DFW's own data does not support a bear hunt. Although I'm the VP of Legal Affairs for the BEAR Group and attorney for both the BEAR Group and APLNJ, I think the most unbiased scientist would look at this data and say that it can't be said to support the DFW's contention that a hunt will help reduce the bear population.
Speaking of unbiased scientists, today's press release comes on the heels of a press release on a report by Dr. Edward Tavss, a chemsitry professor at Rutgers University, that shows that bear complaints in NJ have actually been decreasing, not increasing as the DFW would have the public believe. The bear complaints were inflated by DFW when they counted many complaints twice or even three times. Dr. Tavss is neither a hunter nor an animal activist. He became interested when he heard conflicting information from the two sides in 2005, and decided to investigate the matter himself.
In 2005, Dr. Tavss came out with a report that compiled data from around North America that shows that bear hunting does not reduce bear complaints. Only non-lethal management has been proven effective for reducing human/bear conflicts.
So in short, the data shows:
- Bear hunting does not reduce nuisance complaints;
- Black bear complaints in NJ have been decreasing, not increasing; and
- Bear hunting causes the bear population to increase, not decrease.
The Policy has not yet been published in the NJ Register, which is required to make it official, but the publication is expected on November 15, 2010. The Fish & Game Council has a bear hunt scheduled to begin on December 6, 2010.
What You Can Do: You don't have to be a New Jersey resident to speak up for NJ black bears. To learn what you can do, visit the BEAR Group website.
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Thursday November 4, 2010
Two "premium chicken producers" are switching over to controlled atmosphere stunning to knock chickens out before they are hung upside down and slaughtered. Bell & Evans in Pennsylvania and Mary's Chickens in California say that it's a more humane method of slaughter because hanging upside down is stressful to the chickens and they sometimes break bones as they are struggling and thrashing around. The more common method of chicken slaughter in the US is the electric immobilization method. With the electric immobilization method, the chickens are fully concious when they are hung upside down.
Of course, the chicken producers have a bit of a PR problem. They want consumers to think they are humane, but they're not crazy about the terms "gassing" or "controlled atmosphere stunning." As Marc Cooper of London's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals puts it, "People don't want to know too much . . . It's hard to sell humane killing as a concept." Some of the other phrases the companies are considering for their packages include, "sedation stunning," "humanely slaughtered," "humanely processed" and "humanely handled."
How's this for humane: Don't slaughter them, and don't eat them. This alleged improvement in chicken suffering is immeasurably small compared to their lifetime of suffering and their loss of life.
In response to the NY Times article, PETA told the NY Times that they had been working "behind the scenes" with Bell & Evans on this new slaughter method, and applauded the switch, saying, "Bell & Evans and Mary's Chickens show that animal welfare and good business go hand in hand."
Good business? The kind that results from an increase in sales because a "humane meat" company apparently has PETA's seal of approval?
I do understand the arguments for more humane treatment and slaughter of animals, and I understand efforts to ban certain factory farming practices. But I don't think animal rights activists should work with or promote "humane meat" companies. There is a difference between calling for a legislative ban on battery cages and publicly congratulating a corporation for switching to cage-free eggs. Let the industry market the concept and tell people that they've come up with a more humane way to exploit animals, as they did in the NY Times article. They've got the money and the incentive to do so. I don't think animal advocates should dedicate their time, donations or good names to promoting a corporation's "humanely" slaughtered chicken products.
H/T to Loredana Loy for the heads-up on the article.
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