ovo

This week Stansfield was given a 27-month prison sentence for his misdeed – buying perfectly ordinary food (pork pies, salmon, chickens …) from high street supermarkets, re-packaging it in reassuringly expensive wrapping, calling it organic, and selling it on at inflated prices to other retailers and via mail order. His wife and Russell Hudson, the operations manager, got community service for their part in it. Considering the scale of his offence – an annual turnover of £2.5m, a nauseating trading name (Swaddles Organic), a massive client base that, intoxicatingly, included Fortnum & Mason – 27 months is not a lengthy sentence, but it feels harsh. Sure, the crime wasn’t victimless. It had victims. But they were all asking for it. It’s a huge swindle, the organic market. The first and simplest reason is this emperor’s new clothes aspect that Stansfield made his money from: organic food is meant to taste so much better, and yet nobody can actually taste the difference. [...]

What’s the lesson to the buyer, though? Well, mainly, stop buying it. There is no consistent, demonstrable superiority to organic food. We already knew this, of course, because the Food Standards Agency has always stood against the organic industry making any health claims. This position it reasserted in July, having commissioned research that showed, again, “no important differences in the nutrition content, or any additional health benefits, of organic food”. David Pickering, the lead investigations officer from Trading Standards, said equably that buyers maybe weren’t looking for health benefits, they were looking for standards of sustainability and respect for the land. And this brings us to the other big swindle of the organic industry, the way it has appropriated concerns that reasonable people might well have – the humane treatment of farm animals, the avoidance of unnecessary foodmiles, seasonal eating – and grouped them all under its own umbrella, so that it is now impossible to be a person who cares about cruelty to a pig, and yet isn’t opposed to antibiotics. And it is impossible to be a person who is happy to eat seasonally, who actually isn’t spoilt and doesn’t want asparagus at Christmas, and yet isn’t against the use of pesticides. It is impossible to be a person who cares about food, but doesn’t need every cut of meat to be the best ever, who doesn’t need an Olympian chicken, who would happily eat a tough old campaigner. Even though almost all of us are this person.

Article continues.  I’ve come to believe that people will believe anything.  PETA will protest the killing of a fly by someone else while putting to death 95% of the animals in its own care.  Vegans, those most peaceful of all eaters, have to kill to get their point across once in a while.  It turns out trees have rights too, and the power of the State is necessary to preserve the dignity of plants and the rights of apes.  I’m all for consenting and informed adults eating or not eating what they please.  You can eat meat (the only source of the necessary nutrient B12 – just ask the Vegan Society) [thanks to Klint Finley for pointing out my error: animal products such as milk and eggs contain B12] and protect your brain in old age, or you can not eat meat and have your brain shrink.  Not feeding your child what your child needs is murder and deserves to be punished as such.  But for goodness sakes, if you’re going to indulge in food superstition then have a sense of humor about it, enjoy what you eat and try not to fall for every health hoax that comes your way.

Most likely to be female and under 35. 78% of vegans went vegan between the ages of 16 and 34, with 52% between the ages of 16 and 24. [Statistics on when people stop being vegan, if they do, would be interesting.]

Vegan profile

As we all know, human beings often don’t think before they act. We don’t condemn President Obama for acting on instinct. When the media began contacting us in droves for a statement, we obliged, simply by saying that the president isn’t the Buddha and shouldn’t be expected to do everything right—if not for that, we would not have brought it up. It’s the media who are making a big deal about the fly swat—not PETA. However, we took the opportunity, when asked, to point out that we do offer lots of ways in which to control insects of all kinds without harming them, including the humane bug catcher we sent President Obama. There is even a chapter in PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk’s book The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights about how to rid your home of “uninvited guests.” [...] We support compassion for all animals, even the most curious, smallest, and least sympathetic ones. [...] We can’t stop all suffering, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop any. Our wish is for all people to act wisely and mercifully toward animals.

[Article continues at link. No media opportunity is too small for PETA to jump onto. Their press statements concerning President Obama killing a fly are further evidence. What PETA would prefer the media not discuss is the 95% kill rate of animals donated to PETA, or that according to the Vegan Society "B12 is the only vitamin that is not recognised as being reliably supplied from a varied wholefood, plant-based diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, together with exposure to sun," or that flies spread diseases. What does nature offer up as evidence of its compassion for itself? There's the traumatic insemination of bedbugs in which the male pierces the female's abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity. In Xylocaris Maculipennis the male impales and inseminate other males: the rapist's genes enter the bloodstream to be carried to females by the victim. In this way, the rapist conceives by proxy. Wasps perform roach-brain-surgery to make zombie slave-roaches... don't miss this video of the Jewel Wasp. All animals, as a species and as individuals, either consume other living things (including other animals or plants that fed on the decayed bodies of other animals) - or they perish. As part of nature, man does the same. The means to optimally reduce one's impact on the Earth is ever present, but few PETA-types carry their argument through to its necessary and inevitable end. Nature is at best indifferent to any of her children. We have short and difficult lives that can occur at all only by predation on other living things. Does PETA know what it's talking about? While PETA might support compassion for all animals, flies are not animals. - Trevor Blake]

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. [Like those cute little virus and bacteria?]

PETA wishes Obama hadn’t swatted that fly

Hypocritical Animal Rights Group’s 2008 Disclosures Bring Pet Death Toll To 21,339

Press Release | PETA Killed 95 Percent of Adoptable Pets in its Care During 2008

veterinarians, according to a new report by University of Iowa College of Public Health researchers, are at markedly increased risk of infection with zoonotic pathogens — the viruses and bacteria that can infect both animals and humans.

Veterinarians At High Risk For Viral, Bacterial Infections From Animals

was assassinated 6 May 2002 Dutch national election campaign by militant animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf, who claimed in court he had murdered Fortuyn to stop him from exploiting Muslims as “scapegoats”

Pim Fortuyn – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Little known is the involvement of many in the Mosley movement who took part in the anti-vivisection campaign.

When British Union Cared for Animals

Prosecutors say the parents, Buddhists and vegetarians, believed demons entered the boy through meat he ate.

Parents tried to beat ‘demon’ out of 3-year-old son

NO. Animal abuse, straight-up.

Vegan Pet Food: Is It OK To Raise A Cat Vegan?