After having a serious case of the blahs yesterday, I woke up feeling so much better with no more feelings of fever or nausea, so my plan is to have a quiet Saturday. Maybe Cheryl and I will go for a walk, go out for lunch or dinner and perhaps take in a movie. Last night after having some popcorn while we watched FlashForward (new TV drama series) I read the first couple chapters of a book Cheryl picked up called Farm Sanctuary, by Gene Baur.
Farm Sanctuary is about a sanctuary for animals that were rescued from Big Agriculture’s stockyards. Sometimes animals (aka live-stock) die while being transported to the stockyards. Often they are trampled to death by other terrified animals in the back of truck trailers. Farm Sanctuary was started when Gene Baur and some like minded friends were visiting a stockyard in upstate New York and they came across a lamb that was lying in the “dead pile” when suddenly the lamb lifted up her head and looked at them. As it was a public stockyard and there wasn’t any security to speak of guarding the discarded animals they picked her up and took her to a vet. Amazingly she was quickly restored to health and named “Hilda.”
Thus Farm Sanctuary was born and it has since grown into a large rescue and animal rights activist organization with sanctuary farms in Upstate New York and Northern California. While their organization is quite limited in what they can do in light of such a huge industry, they do exceptional work caring for the lucky animals that are rescued and educating the public about the scope of the problem. They also do an outstanding job of showing that these animals that were saved from the brink of death from factory farming, are sweet loving animals with individual personalities. Even the chickens respond differently to people they know and don’t know and have a sweet nature, not unlike common pets.
In 1950, just over 1 billion farmed animals were killed for food in the United States. In 2005, there were nearly 10 billion animals killed for food including 100 million pigs, 35 million cows and calves, 250 million turkeys and an astonishing 9 billion chickens. Dairy production has increased dramatically although the number of dairy cows has been dramatically reduced due to all the hormones given to the animals to make them give milk almost constantly while awake.
If you think the majority of these animals killed are culled after spending their days roaming the range you are sadly mistaken. The top four cattle processors, IBP, Monfort (owned by ConAgra), Excel (owned by Cargill), and Farmland National control 80% of the market and for these companies it is all about efficiency and profit. Compared to their ancestors, some of these animals look almost freakish as they have been bred and engineered for maximum profit to have large breasts (chickens) or hind quarters (cows). After World War II these companies grew out of a new “factory farming” movement and you had better believe it is all about the money.
First brought to the attention of Americans in 1905 by Upton Sinclair’s classic novel, The Jungle, factory slaughterhouses have abused animals and killed them in horrible ways (on an assembly line) without any consideration for the animals suffering. The brutality of the industry is shameful, as there are more humane ways to put down an animal. But profits come first in factory farming.
Interestingly, Sinclair was disappointed in the public’s reaction to his book. While the public was disgusted by the conditions at the stockyards and this led to the creation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 that helped toimprove sanitation in the stock yards, the public missed the bigger picture about what was happening to the animals. Sinclair said, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
You would think conditions would have improved over the years, but in most respects they are worse. The way these animals are treated from birth to death is shameful. They are treated like a product or material rather than a living being. Their lives bear little resemblance to those of animals you see raised on traditional American ranches. The irony is that as the “Big Agriculture” animal farming companies gained efficiency in raising and slaughtering animals, the meat from those animals is killing the very people that eat them. You and me.
Besse’s Revenge – The correlation between meat consumption and cancer and heart disease is just astonishing. That holds true whether your diet principally consists of chicken, fish, pork or red meat. Cancer and heart disease isn’t the only way that Americans are injured by factory farming. Don’t forget about the greenhouse gases emitted by cattle that have put our country and world over the tipping point for global warming.
When you think about how these animals suffer from birth to slaughter and what the effect of factory farming is on the environment, it makes makes a plain case for vegans on ethical, environmental and health related grounds.
Food! For brunch Cheryl and I went to WaterCourse Foods in downtown Denver. It is perhaps Denver’s best and best known vegetarian restaurant and every item on the menu is customizable for vegans as well. I ordered the NYC Scramble, whole wheat toast and homefries. My NYC scramble came with tofu (eggs for non vegans), Sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, caramelized onion, roasted garlic, fresh basil, and brie. It was quite good and I would have ordered it again until I tasted Cheryl’s Amsterdam Hash which came with tofu, grilled vegetables and homefries scrambled with eggs or tofu and topped with gravy. That was amazing and the gravy gave the tofu the extra flavor needed for a proper breakfast. I’m guessing the gravy was made from pureed portobello mushrooms? I’ll have to ask next time.
Cheryl also had some homemade biscuits which I nibbled on and those were incredible. Since WaterCourse also has a bakery it is no surprise that their bread and baked goods are all made fresh daily and are a real healthy treat!
For drinks I ordered a refreshingly delicious Banana Colada (Bananas, Pineapple Juice, and Coconut ) and Cheryl had the Sunrise Smoothie (Orange Juice, bananas, strawberries, peaches, and blueberries ) which were both vegan and loaded with fruit. WaterCourse Foods has a very laid back atmospherewith friendly service and I look forward to coming back and trying their lunch and dinner entrées.
Never in my life has eating been so much fun as the it has been since going vegan. 
I’m looking forward to going to City,O’ City which offers vegan pizza!
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