Politics

‘So Your Kid Wants to Go Vegan… What Next?’ ∞

October 11, 2019

Jessica Scott-Reid at Tenderly:

“When children and youth realize what’s happening to animals and the planet it can be overwhelming,” she says. “A lot of children and youth are reporting that they are experiencing climate anxiety.”

[…]

As Dr. Fergusson concludes, not only can a plant based diet be physically safe and healthy for young people, but allowing children to eat and live in a way that may better align with their personal ethics, can also be psychologically beneficial.

“It may help them to reduce some of the anxiety they feel around the current state of the planet, and as they become aware of the state of animals within animal agriculture. Knowing that they are not personally contributing to that system and that they are taking a stand ethically, may be comforting and empowering to them.”

Thinking about food is another opportunity to be anxious. As this young generation becomes more informed through the internet, it’s hard to not feel sympathy and a related tension for action or inaction on almost every social issue. There are problems all around us, but now it’s a question of where people want to focus their energy, their exposure, and inevitably their life.

‘How much is a whale worth?’ ∞

September 25, 2019

Protecting large, charismatic animals like whales is often seen as a sort of charity work individuals and governments do on behalf of nature. A team of economists led by Ralph Chami, an assistant director of the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development, wanted to change the way we think about whales by quantifying the benefit they provide us in dollars and cents. 

This sort of thinking offers a new opportunity to reconsider the value of an animal. As the world has larger discussions about climate change, animals around the world can help or harm our planet depending on what we do or don’t do with them.

The analysis hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific paper, and there are still important scientific knowledge gaps in terms of how much carbon whales can capture. But based on the research that’s been done so far, it’s clear to the economists that if we protect great whales, it will reap major dividends for the planet.

Chami hopes this finding will “start a conversation with the policymakers who don’t buy into saving animals for the sake of animals.”

At this point, any angle that introduces people to veganism is good. And even saving one animal could have a large net effect, like when wolves were brought back into Yellowstone.

Great whales, including the filter feeding baleen and sperm whales, help sequester carbon in a few ways. They hoard it in their fat and protein-rich bodies, stockpiling tons of carbon apiece like giant, swimming trees. When a whale dies and its carcass descends to the bottom of the sea, that stored carbon is taken out of the atmospheric cycle for hundreds to thousands of years, a literal carbon sink.

A study published in 2010 estimated that eight types of baleen whales, including blue, humpback, and minke whales, collectively shuttle nearly 30,000 tons of carbon into the deep sea each year as their carcasses sink. If great whale populations rebounded to their pre-commercial whaling size, the authors estimate this carbon sink would increase by 160,000 tons a year.

[…]

Using the current market price of carbon dioxide, the economists then worked out the total monetary value of this marine mammalian carbon capture, and added it to other economic benefits great whales provide through things like ecotourism.

Altogether, Chami and his colleagues estimated that each of these gentle giants is worth about $2 million over its lifetime. The entire global population of great whales? Possibly a one trillion dollar asset to humanity.

Interesting.

“We don’t want to oversell the concept,” said Steven Lutz, the Blue Carbon Program Leader at GRID-Arendal, a Norweigan foundation that works with the United Nations Environment Program. “It’s not like we save the whales and we save the climate.”

That’s true, but any step in the right direction is a good step.

‘Fort Sill’s dining facility is the first to offer troops a 100 percent plant-based entrée at every meal ‘ ∞

September 25, 2019

The Guns and Rockets Dining Facility at Fort Sill, Okla., is setting a new standard for healthy food options by offering a 100 percent plant-based entrée during every meal.

It’s the only dining facility in the Army providing options for soldiers who don’t eat meat, eggs or dairy, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jeremy Patterson, a food adviser for the 75th Artillery Brigade, told Stars and Stripes via telephone Friday.

This is great.

Let’s hope meals-ready-to-eat (aka MREs) happen next. There are currently 24 MRE options, with 4 that are vegetarian. It’d be nice to see at least 1 option be vegan. Being deployed is hard enough, but imagine not being able to eat well either. If most of the whole world is grouchy when not fed, I’m scared to imagine how that might affect someone who’s main job involves a gun.

‘Shalt thou eat an Impossible Burger? Religious doctrine scrambles to catch up to new food technology.’ ∞

September 16, 2019

Laura Reiley with an incredibly interesting piece for the Washington Post:

This month, Tyson announced it is investing in a company that will launch plant-based shrimp early next year, raising a curious question. Will it be kosher? The short answer is its ingredients — which mimic the verboten crustacean with a proprietary algae blend — could well be both kosher and halal. Once the product launches, the company will seek certification so that Jews who keep kosher and Muslims — certain Muslim groups avoid shellfish — can enjoy a shrimp cocktail, scampi, a po’ boy or ceviche.

And yet. In this era of plenitude and choice and disruptive technology, what is permissible, what is forbidden and what is flouting the letter of religious law? The food system is in flux, the rise of plant-based meats and the promise of cell-cultured meats bending categories such that legislation, ideology and theology are scrambling to keep up.

If God says no pork, how does He feel about a very persuasive forgery? And if only beef from the forequarter is permitted, how will observant Jews parse meat grown in a lab, no bones and no quarters at all? How do you bleed an animal with no blood or slaughter an animal humanely if there’s no slaughter? And if you give up meat for Lent, what constitutes a cheat?

This bit from Rabbi Eli Lando, the chief customer relations officer with OK Kosher, is an interesting question:

“Is it a violation of the spirit of the law? That becomes a realm that you can never end.”

[…]

The prohibitions, he said, are about the actual creatures (pigs, shellfish, rabbits and reptiles), not a plant-based facsimile, however uncanny the likeness. Strictly kosher Jews, he notes, are frequently big fans of fake crab made of finely pulverized white fish. Lando sees plant-based meat as a revolution of sorts.

“A person today knows that being kosher does not mean you have to go to the back of the store and look for something like a second-class citizen. Having those products commonly available is achieving a great milestone,” he said.

And I didn’t know this was part of the Muslim tradition of Halal:

The inspection and certification process is similar for halal foods. For plant-based products designed to imitate haram products (pork and other foods forbidden by Islamic law), Roger Othman, director of consumer relations for Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, said words matter.

“Plant-based bacon bits, for example. The product would qualify to be halal but may be repugnant to halal consumers if the word bacon appeared in the name,” Othman said. “Halal consumers would not know what pork chews like, maybe not even what it smells or looks like. If plant-based, it could qualify to be halal, but the naming should not contain any pork-related words.”

Which ties slightly back into to the recent legal flare-up between many states’ meat-industries and free-speech advocates that would allow plant-based foods to call themselves “meat”, “sausage”, or even a “burger”. It would be interesting to see if certain products might be repackaged or relabeled depending on what stores they end up in — so that they might be allowed into Halal shops or supermarkets in certain states that deem meat-related labeling illegal.

It’d be interesting if many vegan products, once fully mainstream and with widespread use, moved to welcome religious or more niche audiences by changing parts of their products to appeal to those needs. Maybe we’ll see the same product packaged twice: one named to reference a similar flavor or product (i.e. Tofurkey or things labeled “Chik’n”), and then another where the words give the impression of an entirely new category of product (e.g. seitan, tofu, tempeh). Or if Impossible developed another heme product that they didn’t test on rats to try to entice a certain group of strict vegans. All of these things are possible, but I don’t know what it would take to be cost-effective.

‘FOUR COUNTRIES UNITE TO FORM VEGAN WORLD ALLIANCE’ ∞

September 9, 2019

First the Vegan-Carne Alliance, and now the Vegan World Alliance. I think Alliances are the new thing.

The Dutch Association for Veganism, Vegan Australia, Vegan Society of Aotearoa New Zealand, and Vegan Society of Canada came together to address worldwide challenges and share initiatives to fulfill their individual and collective missions.

I’m assuming partnerships like this have happened before, but I especially am interested in this bit:

Its first project is to create a uniform certification system for vegan food products.

This problem is not unique. It’s tricky labeling thing and giving certification. You can see this the confusion mostly clearly in how they label eggs — and most people not knowing the difference between cage-free and pasture-raised. I think most people assume the former means the latter.

Maybe a better analog would be Jewish certifications of Kosher. Veganism is often akin to religious thinking with stringent devotion and oftentimes fairly vocal folks involved—so I think there is definitely some cross-over. And often the generalities of what people consider “vegan” varies person-to-person. Veganism will likely need some variants to properly help someone buying keep to their ethical system. There will likely be wedge issues, like gelatin from non-kosher animals for Jews. Here’s a small bit from a write-up on My Jewish Learning about Kosher Symbols:

“While there have been some lenient opinions over the centuries regarding gelatin,” Rabbi Lopatin said, “current Orthodox practice, at least in the Diaspora, is to not accept gelatin from non-kosher animals. Therefore, supervisions which do accept the leniencies of gelatin from non-kosher animals are not acceptable to (Orthodox) community standards.” And once you have an organization that allows for gelatin from a non-kosher animal, the community might be nervous accepting that organization’s supervision on any food, even if it doesn’t contain gelatin.

‘Why I vote ‘Hell, no!’ on a vegan president’ ∞

August 14, 2019

From Steve Cuozzo:

Beware the Vegan-in-Chief.

The 2020 Democratic presidential pool includes not one, but two, meatless wonders.Booker, at least, says that he would never try to force his animal-free diet regimen down America’s throat.

[…]


“Everybody should eat what they want to . . . The last thing we want is government telling us what to eat,” the Democratic senator from New Jersey said in February.

But I’m scared. The 97% of Americans who aren’t vegan (according to a 2018 Gallup poll) should be, too.

Who’s Booker kidding that he or Gabbard wouldn’t turn the Land of the Free into the Land of Chia Seeds?

A gentle reminder for when you meet someone like Steve Cuozzo out in the wild, please remind them that 1 in 4 deaths in America come from heart disease.

‘There’s No Elegant Way to Eat a Corn Dog’ ∞

August 13, 2019

From Gary He for Eater:

The first weekend of the 2019 Iowa State Fair had it all: a butter cow, a craft beer tent, mutton bustin’, a Slipknot museum, and 20 candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. Iowa is the home of the first nominating contests that will eventually determine the nominee from both parties, and the food-on-a-stick bonanza is the stage on which candidates vie for the hearts of Iowa voters and attention of the news media.

I’m not sure why I found these photos so funny. The headline really nails it. And I’m happy to hear the Iowa State Fair had some vegan options.

Cory Booker, the New Jersey senator who is famously vegan, tracked down a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick. “Can we settle the Democratic primary by how many of these you can eat?” he said. “I think I could take the field.”

I’d seen a few things online mention that this would be a tough spot for Cory Booker with the turkey legs and corn dog traditions, and—as a vegan—I’ve been in the same barren situation: scant options and a lot of meat. What he found sounds good to me though.

I can’t imagine it’ll be a large part of this election, though it does make me wonder if a candidate’s diet could play a role in electability the way religion used to. (Think: JFK and Catholicism.) Now, many people are as strict with their diets as middle America has been with its religion.

✏️ by C. W. Moss