Enewsletter

Notes from Vegan Outreach

Preliminary Spring Report

With numbers still trickling in, as of May 25, Adopt a College volunteers have handed 335,184 booklets directly to students during the Spring semester.

At right, Chris Roberts leaflets at CUNY, Baruch; photo by Jenna Calabrese.

Jon Camp reached his goal of 50,000 flyers for the semester; Victor Tsou handed out 46,489 flyers; Jenna Calabrese hit 107 different schools. At 30,601, full-time teacher (and husband and father) Stewart Solomon has broken his previous semester record of 29,410!

Congratulations to everyone who took part, and thanks to all those who contributed to make this happen!

Vegan Dan's Race Approaches!

Dan Kuzma is finishing up preparations for the Mohican Trail 100 Mile Race, June 16-17. He says: "For this occasion, I will dedicate each mile that I run to ending animal suffering. I need sponsors to help me achieve this goal! You can help by donating a quarter, fifty cents, or dollar per mile that I run to print more Vegan Outreach booklets."

You can learn more, help promote his run, and/or make a sponsorship pledge here.

Products of the Week

Via Vegan.com, Erik Marcus found the Don Lee Veggie Patties in the refrigerated section at his local Costco, and says it is the best veggie burger he's ever had.

McFarland Designs has chosen Vegan Outreach as the charity to receive 5% of sales for the month of June.

Send your nominees for Product of the Week to product (at) veganoutreach (dot) org; previous products can be found here.

Notes from All Over

Go Vegan to Help Climate, Says Government

From the Telegraph (UK); excerpt: "It would help tackle the problem of climate change if people ate less meat, according to a Government agency. Adopting a vegan diet dramatically reduces one person's impact on the environment."

The Daily Mail has a different take: "The secret plans to turn us all vegetarian."

Fewer Animals Killed as Britain Continues to Go Veggie

From Arkangel; excerpt: "Fewer chickens, turkeys and pigs are being killed for meat in the UK and the drop is significant according to the government’s latest agricultural figures produced by Defra. ... According to Mintel (2006), 5-6 per cent of the population is now vegetarian and the number is rising. The number of vegans has increased ten fold in the last 10 years, up to a million."

In the U.S.: Animal Advocacy & Vegetarian Meats

Via DawnWatch.com, "Over Memorial Day Weekend, the Chicago Tribune ran a wonderful story on the cover of its magazine section, Sunday May 27, headed, 'Ruffling Feathers; Once Viewed as Crazies, Animal Rights Activists Say Their Message is Starting to Get Through.'"

"New York Newsday's Monday, May 29 article by Joseph Dionisio is headed, 'GO FAUX for low-cal, low-fat eating; Meatless 'meats' are increasingly going mainstream.'"

Why All This Matters

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation takes you behind the closed doors of one of the country's largest poultry slaughterhouses -- House of Raeford Farms, Inc. in Raeford, North Carolina. In January and February of 2007, an MFA investigator worked in the "live-hang" area of the plant (where live birds are snapped into shackles on the slaughter line), secretly filming egregious acts of animal cruelty with a hidden camera. Shocking abuses he witnessed include:

• Turkeys with broken wings and legs, bloody open wounds, tumors and other untreated injuries being slaughtered for human consumption
• A worker violently punching live, shackled turkeys for "fun"
• Employees forcefully shoving their hands into the cloacae (vaginal cavities) of live chickens
• Turkeys and chickens being thrown across the facility and up into the air
• Workers ripping the heads off live turkeys
• Birds being crushed to death under the wheels of trucks
• Conscious turkeys having their throats slit

You can learn more and see the truly appalling video at this website.

Also via DawnWatch, Gourmet is running "Investigative Report: A Chicken's Life" in their June edition. Excerpt: "[C]chickens balloon in weight so fast that their baby skeletons can't support it well: among other problems their tendons slip and their leg bones twist, making a large proportion of commercial broilers partially or completely lame."

"Worst of all, researchers have found that some birds don't get zapped enough by the electric bath to be rendered unconscious, so they are awake as the blade cuts their throat. Others twist and wriggle so much that they miss the blade altogether, and they get poached alive instead. The chicken council allows a rate of up to 2 percent for such incidents -- which means that up to 180 million chickens each year suffer through a botched death in the slaughterhouse."

Feedback from Our Members

I recently gave a short presentation to ~32 students at the Alexander Montessori School. I gave 32 Try Vegetarian leaflets and showed the video My Friends on the Farm. But the real news is that I was joined by Mr. Clucky and his friend Mark Buckley. Mark rescued Mr. Clucky, who is believed to be a discarded male chick. He is very attached to Mark but he LOVES people, especially children.
-Linda Bower, Miami, FL, 5/31/07

Leafleting at the "Last Thursday" event in the Alberta Arts district, we heard a lot of great feedback, including:

• A girl took an Even If, and then exclaimed to the guy she was with, "See! This is why I'm vegetarian! You have to read this! You have to read this!"
• A girl said no when I offered her a pamphlet and then a split second later said, "Oh wait! Yes! Can I get three of these?"
• A girl (to whom I had given a pamphlet to a earlier) came up and said, "That is a really good brochure. I really like how it's worded." She thanked me multiple times for distributing them.
• A guy came up and asked to see what I was handing out. He stood there for a few minutes looking through the pamphlet and said, "This is really heavy stuff. This is awful."
• A guy ran over to me and said, "Can I get another one? I just handed the copy you gave me to a friend."
• An older (pretty conservative-looking) man approached me and asked for a brochure. He said, "Isn't it sick how chickens are treated? Thanks for giving me this."
• "I'll make sure that this ends up on our kitchen table tomorrow."
• "I need to think more about what I eat."
• "I'm already veg, but I'll give this to someone else."

-Jessica Dadds, Portland, OR, 6/1/07

Vegan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of farmed animals by promoting informed, ethical eating. All donations are tax-deductible. Vegan Outreach POB 30865, Tucson, AZ 85751-0865