Enewsletter

This issue is sponsored by Pangea Vegan Products:

Notes from Vegan Outreach

New Studies on Diet and Cancer

Vegan Outreach’s President, Jack Norris, RD, has added new posts to his blog, including “Vegetarians Have a Lower Cancer Rate than Regular Meat Eaters”: “[C]an we now say that vegetarians have a lower rate of cancer than meat eaters? Well, fish eaters are meat eaters, so that might be kind of hard. We could say that vegetarians have a lower rate of cancer than chicken eaters.”

Jack has also updated his main soy article with new data about isoflavone intake and breast cancer risk. Be sure to subscribe for cutting-edge health and nutrition information!

Product of the Week

Michelle: “V-Dog is vegan owned and operated, so we can feed our furry companions without contributing to animal agriculture!”

Send your product of the week to product (at) veganoutreach (dot) org; previous entries here.

Notes from All Over

The Mainstream Media’s Version of Even If You Like Meat

Time Magazine’s cover story “The Real Cost of Cheap Food” opens:

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon – circa 2009.

And under a half-page picture similar to this one, the caption reads, “On a factory farm, 10,000 or more swine are kept in tight conditions – torture for the animals and risky for us.” Full article.

Decline in Number of Animals Slaughtered

The USDA’s recent report (PDF) shows declines across the board, including, “Over the first half of 2009, the number of broilers slaughtered was 4.2 billion, a decline of 6.2 percent from the same period in 2008.”

Lightning Round

• An Animal-Rights Activist Stands up for Vick
• Via TheVegetarianSite.com: Big Progress for Caged Hens
• Via Vegan.com:
  • Tyson Foods Spent $637,000 on Lobbying in Just Three Months
  • Bacon Flu Hops to Turkeys (But still “safe” to eat!)
  • Alicia Silverstone, Veganism, and Sparkling
  • McDonald’s Australia to go Cage Free (Already so in Britain)

Notes from Our Members

Petra Halasova enlightens another young person in Chicago.

We leafleted Melbourne University as part of prospective student day, and reached 800 19 year olds. Mario Sos had this exchange:
     Dude: “No thanks, I love my meat.”
     Mario: “Then you’ll like this, there’s plenty of pictures of meat in it.”
     Dude: (laughs) “Good one.” (takes a booklet)
—Roy E. Taylor in Australia, 8/18/09

It has been a great week leafleting with Theo Summer. Students at Fresno City College were AMAZINGLY receptive. Dozens were reading them while they walked, or they sat down to read. Edison High School was also full of receptive and friendly kids. Even though it’s 103 degrees in Fresno, it feels great to be received well.
     Earlier, at Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College, people at both schools remembered getting leaflets previously, and one young woman exclaimed to her friend, “See! This is why I don’t eat meat!”
—Brian Grupe, 8/20/09

The Ottawa Animal Defense League handed out Vegan Outreach brochures outside screenings of the movie Food, Inc. this past weekend. Over three days and about 40 minutes total, we handed out over 600 brochures. It was a very successful event and we hope many minds were changed as a result.
—Jason Halvorson, 8/20/09

Had good interactions while leafleting in Chicago today, including a man who said he and his wife had gone veg about a month ago after reading the Why Veg? booklet.
—Matt McEwen, 8/18/09

Lynn Halpern, Lisa Shapiro, and I handed out over 900 booklets at the Freshman Welcome, so we reached about 1/5 of the incoming class at Colorado University, Boulder. A lot of people sat around reading them – always nice to see. One young guy came back and recommended that we hand the literature out near the brat stand, and said reading the Compassionate Choices was making him not want to eat his brat. I told him about vegetarian brats and showed him the Tofurky brand in the back of the booklet.
—Barbara Bear, 8/23/09

Posted to the Adopt a College email group:
Sean Hollick, Joe Espinosa, Tom Schlieske (right), and I handed out 3,000 copies of Even If You Like Meat, 25 Guides, and 2 A Meaningful Life booklets at Illinois State. It was a long day, waking up at 4:00 am and returning home around 9:30 pm, but that is par for the course when dealing with the incredibly dedicated Mr. Espinosa (above).
     Cheers to the new semester! I’m thrilled to take part in this meaningful, effective work with all of you, arguably the best crew of grassroots activists alive! And once again, thanks so much to the donors on this list, who are going to make another hugely successful semester of this absolutely vital outreach possible.
—Jon Camp, 8/18/09

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