Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Why People Become Republicans

The Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan Inc. (FACS) was established in 1992 as the first industry-supported, membership-based, non-profit provincial organization to collectively represent the livestock and poultry industries regarding animal care issues. FACS circulates news articles of interest to the livestock industry to it members from time to time. This one caught my attention:
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School Bans Meat on Mondays
March 4, 2011
Fox News Radio's Todd Starnes reports:

Maine’s Bowdoin College is under fire for a mandatory “Meatless Monday” in the schools’ dining halls. Instead of cheeseburgers and friend chicken, students are offered stir-fry tofu and vegetables.

“Meatless Monday” is sponsored by the Bowdoin College Democrats as a way to promote healthy eating. The Democrats also believe that eating fewer animals will help the environment. And there’s talk that “Meatless Monday” could become permanent.

However, some students were outraged over the mandatory meal.

“Raising awareness for a cause is one thing, but to have a vocal minority impose its will onto the rest of us and then attempt to stifle dissent is outrageous,” wrote Sam Landis in an email to the Bowdoin Orient newspaper.

Landis and another student organized a counter-protest. They gave away free McDonald’s double cheeseburgers to anyone who agreed to donate to the Coastal Humane Society.

He said posters promoting their event were torn down and destroyed.

Read more on the Fox News Website.
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The beef industry has been fighting the pseudo-science, half truths and outright lies of the anti-meat crowd for 40 years.  Because people believe the anti-meat crowd.  Would David Suzuki lie to you?  (Would Glenn Beck?) Bad news "science" about beef hits the front page of the newspapers.  The truth is hard to find other than on industry websites and of course "we KNOW about THEM".  The pressure groups form and this is the result.

And these are "Democrats"?  The Left seems to collect as many crazies as the Right.  So people see this stuff about meat, or whatever the cause of the week is, which they know is bullshit and say if this is the Left, obviously the truth is on Fox News.  People believe the BS of the Left and wonder why others believe the BS of the Right?

If the Democrats and the NDP really want to be taken seriously then FOCUS on people; on programs and policies that improve the lot of the citizens.  Health care; Education; Social Safety nets; Workplace safety; Collective bargaining; REAL environmental problems. The Right is certainly focused on taking away those programs or making sure they never happen in the first place.

Oh, and it was hard to keep a straight face to this line: “Raising awareness for a cause is one thing, but to have a vocal minority impose its will onto the rest of us and then attempt to stifle dissent is outrageous,”  From a Republican????

7 comments:

  1. Republican? Why not?

    Sounds Republican to me.

    Or Conservative. As in Non-progressive Conservative.

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  2. Neither side has any right to the high ground.

    I am a confirmed omnivore. The food chain is the food chain and we are at the top. I just wish we did not rely so much on junk meat.

    Although I will say that the quality of the pork I ate as a youngster pales in comparison to the quality of the pork today. It is way leaner as a rule.

    And on the other side, I think the over all quality of beef has declined from what I remember as a young man.

    ANd there is no doubt that seafood is nowhere close to what it used to be.

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  3. There are meat eaters at Bowdoin?! Isn't it a small liberal arts school, one of those places that usually reek of patchouli and are hotbeds of veganism?

    Given that the report is from Faux News, I was naturally curious as to what they left out or spun to fit their agenda. Turns out that the students don't have a whole lot of choice in that dining hall anyway: the school sets the menus, and they already do a bunch of meatless entrees because it is indeed a hotbed of vegetarianism and veganism -- they just had never promoted any specific day as a meatless one. The Meatless Monday concept originates with the John Hopkins School of Public Health, and has been around for quite awhile. (Woman's Day magazine, for example, has been doing "meatless Monday" on its Month of Menus feature for a number of years now.)

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  4. BTW, when it comes to dead animal flesh, the stuff that never tastes right to me anymore is chicken, at least the CAFO birds that companies like Tyson sell. And the only steaks I really want to eat are the ones from grass-fed beef.

    I prefer not to think about pork. It may be leaner, but the CAFOs are an environmental and public health nightmare. When we do get a killer flu epidemic, odds are it's going to emerge from one of those giant pig factories.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Appreciate the feedback.

    Today's pork is far leaner than that of years gone by. Fat pork just doesn't sell. It does not have the flavour of village raised pigs that take a year to reach market weight, true. Tanya prefers the village pigs.

    Can't speak for American corn fed beef. Canadian barley fed is improving in quality - tenderness, juiciness, flavour - because the industry has invested a lot of time and money in making it happen. Satisfaction ratings are up from 75% a few years ago to somewhere in the low 80's. Target 95%. Given biology and bell curves, that is a hard target to hit.

    If they ever ban antibiotic feeding to livestock other than to treat diseases, the poultry industry will disappear. The next great flu pandemic will likely appear from where the last ones have - where people and animals live cheek by jowl in conditions crowded by both - the village pig farms.

    Canadian pig barns are well regulated and enforced, in terms of manure storage and spreading. The mega barns are actually cleaner and more neighbourly than the old 50 to 100 sow small farm scale barns of years gone by. But pigs still smell like pigs, true.

    If people wish to be vegans etc, they can be vegans. Linking Democrat with Vegan drives thinking people to Fox News.

    Meatless Monday is an easy sop to throw the anti-meat crowd. All it shows is that no one is immune to pressure from the anti-meat crowd, whether John Hopkins or Woman's Day

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unfortunately, the CAFOs in the US are not nearly as well regulated as the ones in Canada, and the ones in Mexico (where a lot of US-consumed meat comes from) are apparently worse. Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 apparently evolved at a Smithfield CAFO in Mexico. I may do a post on CAFOs and infectious disease because a lot of E. coli gets traced back to cattle feed lots, although that might come perilously close to violating my rules about separating my life from my employment at Large Nameless Agency.

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  7. That is what a lot of people would like you to believe as Smithfield is one of the anti-farm crowd's favourite demons. From what I could learn back when it all started was that their hog operation checked out clean but the villages nearby were the source of the H1N1.

    The large concentrations of animals can create situations where new bacteria arise but they are likely to be specific to that species. Also, the all-in; all-out, three site locations tend to break disease patterns. This works in cold climates. Not sure how pigs are raised in warm climates. The small operations I saw 10 years ago in Panama were not reassuring.

    It takes more than just large concentrations of animals to concoct species jumping bugs. You need concentrations of people and animals, which is why so many of our pandemics have come from SE Asia, China, etc.

    Now I am getting out of my depth here, not being a veterinarian, so could be wrong. Would appreciate some credible links to the Smithfield case and to evolution of cross species infections, if you have them.

    ReplyDelete

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