raw feeding - not just a fad, pt 2

The Dick Van Dyke show (of all things!)

Minute 10:20 - listen to the "houseguest" dog's menu:
Chunk horse meat... lamb's liver... tripe!

Pet Food Institute to NYTimes : kibble is awesome

Don't take my word for it (it being be aware of what you feed, and why) - take Duane's word for it that pet food  on the grocery store shelves is just awesome and wonderful.

What does Duane advocate? Here's his website. He's the voice of the pet food industry. And he wants you to remember, always, that grocery store pet food is prem-o!

8 ways to get a finicky eater to eat

From Dogster:
First, you want to rule any health issues out first when a dog makes any behavioral change but if your vet gives your pup the thumbs up, there are several ways to get him to eat without disrupting his stomach.

1. Tone Down the Treats - A finicky eater is more likely to eat if he's not comparing his dog food to a liver treat.

2. Feed Often - Try feeding smaller amounts of his regular food three or four times a day.

3. Exercise - It's good for so many things and it increases a dog's hunger. Try always exercising your pup before a meal.

4. Spay or Neuter - If you haven't already, fix your pup. Besides the many health and behavioral benefits, it can help prevent a finicky eater.

5. Make it Positive - Always make feeding time a positive experience. If your pup associates it with irritability or punishment from you, he will be less likely to want to eat.

6. Keep It Quiet - Feed your dog in a quiet area without children or other dogs mulling around.

7. Try Different Times - Some dogs eat better in the afternoon, others eat better an hour after you're home. Test it and see what time and situation work best for yours.

8. Resist Temptations - Try the other tips before giving into the urge to tempt your finicky pup to eat with people food. You'll find that a few pieces of cooked chicken will perhaps tempt him for a time but he'll soon grow bored of that, too.

Pet Food Perspective

A great article - check it out here.

Interesting video

floormat commentary

Get it here.

feelin' feisty | risks of raw

The following is from a 'tidy' little blurb about how feeding raw meat to your dog is going to cause you, well, death. Or at least a nasty case of salmonella.

Let's explore the blurb:

Risks of Raw
The study looked at 138 dogs from 84 households in Ontario.  One-quarter of households (21/84, 25%) had at least one dog (32/138, 23.2%) that was shedding Salmonella at one time, which is considerably higher than the 1-4% of pet dogs that are typically expected to be shedding this zoonotic pathogen.

1. Consuming a commercial or homemade raw diet, a homemade cooked diet, or raw meat and eggs, increases a pet dog’s risk of carrying Salmonella.
Raw is raw, and by now we're hoping that people are getting the message that raw is contaminated, whether we're talking about a commercial or homemade raw diet, or feeding any raw animal products (e.g. meat, eggs).  The fact that homemade cooked diets also made the list could be explained by the fact that in order to make such a diet, owners still need to start with the raw ingredients.  Handling and cooking raw meat and animal products for your pet should be done with the same precautions as handling and cooking raw meat for yourself or your family.  If these homemade diets were not cooked as thoroughly as they should have been, or if there was contamination of the dog's dishes with raw product, that could explain the association with Salmonella shedding.  Although traditional commercial diets can also be contaminated with pathogens (usually after processing), the risk with these is much lower.

Can I just say that handling an egg for yourself to fry can also pose a risk of salmonella?
This is my favorite line, like ever, "homemade cooked diets also made the list could be explained by the fact that in order to make such a diet, owners still need to start with the raw ingredients". Because commercial products (that they are so very much for, I gather?) are never ever made with fresh, raw ingredients? Science Diet gets their chicken ingredient from already cooked chicken that was never, ever raw?
And... isn't this how we prepare our own food? Shouldn't there be a 1-4% increase in Salmonella in my own stool samples?

Can I also just say that perhaps all these homes visited were never taught how to wash their hands? Never taught how to store, handle and prepare raw meat? If feeding myself comes at somewhat of a "no brainer", feeding my dog should also.
Ever eat sashimi? Specifically chicken sashimi dipped in raw egg? It is fabulously tasty. Risky? Sure, but most Japanese cuisine (that I've had the good fortune to consume) that is served raw is handled with the utmost care and selected from only the best of sources. I aim to do the same with myself and dogs. Choose meat intended for food with the utmost care and selected from the best source.

Or maybe its luck that I've been preparing and eating flesh & eggs & spinach & tomatoes for decades, and feeding my dogs raw for over two years... and none of us have contracted any parasites or bacteria.

2. Testing multiple consecutive whole fecal samples greatly improves Salmonella recovery in dogs.
This is no great surprise either.  Dogs (and many other species) shed Salmonella intermittently, so not every fecal sample from a Salmonella-positive dog is going to yield Salmonella on culture.  The authors tested five daily fecal samples from each dog.  Based on this study, the sensitivity of testing a single fecal sample in a dog (i.e. the likelihood that a Salmonella-positive dog will test positive on one fecal sample) was only 35.5%.  That means almost two-thirds of positive dogs will be missed if they're only tested once.  The take-home message on this point is that in order to find Salmonella in a healthy pet dog, multiple samples should be tested.

 FIVE daily samples. FIVE. I can't imagine any raw fed dog providing a fecal sample FIVE times a day. I'm lucky if I get ONE a day (because of how wonderfully a raw diet is digested).

I want to explore how one gets infected with Salmonella.
From the Center for Disease Control:
How do people catch Salmonella?

Salmonella live in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals, including birds. Salmonella are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. Contaminated foods usually look and smell normal. Contaminated foods are often of animal origin, such as beef, poultry, milk, or eggs, but any food, including vegetables, may become contaminated. Thorough cooking kills Salmonella. Food may also become contaminated by the hands of an infected food handler who did not wash hands with soap after using the bathroom.

Salmonella may also be found in the feces of some pets, especially those with diarrhea, and people can become infected if they do not wash their hands after contact with pets or pet feces. Reptiles, such as turtles, lizards, and snakes, are particularly likely to harbor Salmonella.  Many chicks and young birds carry Salmonella in their feces. People should always wash their hands immediately after handling a reptile or bird, even if the animal is healthy. Adults should also assure that children wash their hands after handling a reptile or bird, or after touching its environment.

Also, the Risks of Raw study points at raw-fed dogs shedding Salmonella. Not infections, not infections of family members, but just that it is present in their feces. As the public is not prone to rub dog feces in their face, the risk of infection should be low. Is there proof otherwise? Not in this study.
Dogs also shed E.coli! Shouldn't we be having a state of emergency over E.coli as well?
Shouldn't we never own reptiles? Never eat peanut butter? Spinach? Tomatoes?

3. Having multiple dogs in a household, using probiotics and contact with livestock are important potential risk factors that need to be investigated further.
These were factors that were flagged by the authors for future investigation, because at first they seemed to be associated with Salmonella shedding in the dogs, but when the feeding of raw diets was taken into account the associations were no longer significant.  A larger study, or one using a different design, will be needed to help tease apart the potential effects of these factors from feeding practices.
The bottom line: Feeding raw is risky business.  Some people swear by the benefits of raw diets, but the objective evidence is lacking.  There is clear evidence of the risks.  In my mind, the potential up-side simply cannot outweigh the well-established down-side of feeding raw diets to pets.

The unbelievably biased point of view is most evident in their final paragraph.
Well-established? When? By whom? How much risk, exactly, and of what?

Now that my feisty has run out... I'm just trying to see if from their perspective... do you think its also a case in knowing TOO much? Being TOO aware? Never doing what could be biologically the best thing ever for your dog (feeding raw) because you are too hyper aware of the POTENTIAL risks?

Maybe a bit of ignorance is truly bliss... I don't worry as much about the risks of parasites, bacteria and zoonosis thereof because I'm confident in how I safely/smartly handle, store, prepare and feed the raw food.

Man, I wish I worked for Mythbusters!

raw feeding is not a fad.

Health consciousness is not a fad. It is a way of living life!
Visit Jack LaLanne's website for more videos, blog, etc.

Do we really need prescription diets?

From The American Dog Magazine...

Dr. Paula Terifaj, a holistic veterinarian in Orange County, owner of Founders Veterinary Clinic and author of How to Feed Your Dog if You Flunked Rocket Science, recalled being “courted by" pet food companies in vet school: “It was conveyed to us that people are too stupid to cook for themselves,” she says. As most veterinarians do, she utilized “Prescription Diets®” in her practice initially. In 1999, however, she had a light bulb moment when she came across a book written by one her favorite professors, Dr. Donald Strombeck, entitled, Home-Prepared Dog and Cat Diets: The Healthful Alternative, which is still available today on Amazon.com. His advice set her on a journey that changed her practice forever. Today, Dr. Terifaj operates a holistic practice and encourages her clients to cook for their dogs. She feels that the manufacturer of Prescription Diets® uses “substandard ingredients and then fortifies the hell out of their formulas."

...A More Natural Approach
So what is a pet owner to do if their dog develops kidney disease, urine crystals, or any other diseases that these diets would normally be prescribed to treat?

Dr. Terifaj first suggests first verifying that the dog does indeed need a special diet. She feels that often times a dog is “on the fence” and the easiest thing for a veterinarian to do is to suggest a Prescription Diet®. Instead, she often turns to a Web site, www.balanceit.com. This Web site provides recipes at a nominal charge to pet owners interesting in cooking their own food. In addition, vets can log in at no charge and request diets designed to treat specific diseases. She suggests asking your vet to do so for you if he or she is adamant about a specific diet. Not only will this be a cheaper alternative, but Dr. Terifaj feels it is a much healthier approach to feed real “human food.”

...If a veterinarian won’t budge from the idea of a Prescription Diet®, it may be time to locate a holistic veterinarian for  second opinion. Dr. Jasek is a member of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (AHVMA) and clients often find her using the vet finder on the group's web site, www.holisticvetlist.com.

The next time your veterinarian suggests a diet for your four-legged child that you’re not comfortable with, don’t hesitate to ask questions. A good veterinarian, traditional or holistic, will welcome that discussion and encourage you to look at all the options available.

Rate Your Dog's Kibble

First, find the ingredients... either on the food's website or a decent vendor, like K9 Cuisine.

Second, go to Rate Your Dog's Food and answer the 20+ questions.


EVO Herring & Salmon got an A+ (102)

Solid Gold's Wolf Cub got an A+ (105)


Go find yours!

VPI top 5 ailments

According to a list dogster.com posted, (VPI) evaluated this issue and released the following results, listed in order of frequency:
The most common health problems in dogs are:

1. Ear Infections
2. Skin Allergies
3. Pyoderma/Hot Spots
4. Gastritis/Vomiting
5. Enteritis/Diarrhea

Its rather amazing. It seems the solution to all the above problems is a natural, unprocessed diet. And perhaps many are issues that arrise due to vaccine damage. Just sayin...

what does 'organic' mean?

From The Honest Kitchen:

The term ‘organic’ refers to ingredients that have been grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms (GMO’s), or radiation. Animals that produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products do not take antibiotics or growth hormones and must be fed only organic feed, and raised in an environment that meets organic standards.

Click to read more!

feeding philosophy

- aka - why I do not feed (much) vegetables/fruits or grains:

Carbohydrates

Dogs do not have an essential requirement for carbohydrates. In their natural habitat, dogs consume prey that is high in protein with moderate amounts of fat and minimal amounts of carbohydrate (1-2%) are utilized in the diet (soluble or insoluble fiber). Although dogs can use carbohydrates as a source of energy, the limitations of substituting animal-origin nutrients with plant-origin nutrients in dog foods are being increasingly realized. Recent research has shown that high-carbohydrate diets are responsible for many cases of canine diabetes. In fact, not only diabetes but many serious health problems in dogs have a dietary factor. Some are caused by diet, and all are affected by it. Diet-related diseases include: obesity, chronic vomiting, pancreatitis, arthritis, heart disease, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, urinary tract disease, hyperthyroidism, skin and coat problems and cancer.

Dogs lack salivary amylase, the enzyme responsible for initiating carbohydrate digestion. Many pet owners and pet food manufacturers insist on adding vegetables or grains to a dog's diet claiming that they would eat them along with the stomach and intestines of their prey. However, this does not take into account that the amount of vegetable matter in small prey is small and more often than not, the stomach and the intestines are not eaten from large herbivorous prey.

Dogs do have a metabolic requirement for glucose. This requirement can be supplied either through endogenous synthesis (endogenous synthesis refers to the synthesis of a compound by the body) of glucose or from carbohydrate food sources. Metabolic pathways in the liver and kidney use other nutrients to produce glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. This glucose is then released into the bloodstream to be carried to the body’s tissues. The dog can maintain normal blood glucose levels and health even when fed a carbohydrate-free diet.

- Dr. Corinne Chapman, www.carnivora.ca

the easy way out

For every topic in this world, there is always one who argues it... or doubts it... or has tried it and found it to be a negative experience and is advocating that everyone avoid it.

The internet is FULL of this stuff. Take, for instance, a place called Second Chance Ranch and their negative views on the raw diet 'fad'. Now read the rebuttal (long, but full of good stuff - promise!)

Picking the truth from the lies is the hard part. Unfortunately, most people would rather not take the time to find the truth--they just want the info, now.

Which I suppose is, in a way, a blessing in disguise when it comes to the raw diet. If you're not willing to do a lot of truth-seeking and research before feeding it, then you shouldn't feed it. Period. Better to feed kibble than a poorly balanced raw diet.

Admit it - kibble is the easy way out. Whether the issue is time (not enough), availability (hard to find), research (haven't done it) or personal (can't touch it) - kibble is the easiest way to feed a dog. I'll admit it. I go back to kibble when I have foster dogs - its easier. But is it better? I can't make that claim, I can only tell you what I have learned - via this blog.

Just to put the SCR's argument into perspective... the 'extensive' research mentioned can only have taken place in the last 60-70 years, as kibble had not existed before then and it was widely practiced to feed raw scraps to dogs. Therefore, it is not a fad. It is (was, and should be) a way of life for the domestic dog.

Reading accounts like this put it into more perspective for me. This is a breeder who has seen many generations THRIVE (not just live, or survive) on a total raw diet. For me, 'nuff said.

I have seen the benefits in my own dogs, its not just a digestive revolution - but a total wellness one. The results I have seen MYSELF, after the due research going into the diet, is enough to convince me forever - the raw diet works.

and now admitting my dorkiest side.. Hell, even Hagrid is shown feeding his pets/creatures raw meat/prey! Like hippogriff Buckbeak, who gets whole prey ferrets in Prisoner of Azkaban; and dog, Fang, gets a big red steak in Half Blood Prince. :)

Avocados & Garlic | Vet Commentary

Dolittler explores the dangers (or not..) of Garlic and Avocados

Can Raw Help Her?

Update: I truly believed feed Maisy this way helped. It at least eliminated her constant hunger/hungry behavior, and helped her take food from hands without biting them. She did however continue to show troubling behaviors within the home structure with our other dogs and inevitably we made the difficult decision to bring her back to the no kill shelter.

Our newest dog Maisy has some pretty severe resource guarding tendencies.

Would a raw diet help the resource guarding? Or make it worse?

I don't know yet. But I'm going to try it.
She is some sort of terrier though. The last terrier I tried to acclimate to raw nearly took my fingers off and inhaled a drumstick right out of my hand (remember, Jana?!)

I also think, with the added moisture and balanced natural bioavailibility/distribution of nutrients (especially protein) may even calm her down temperamentally over a few weeks time.

My belief is that it has to do with how she is fed. Large meals. Meals enough to fill her stomach. Challenging RMBs. An ideal RMB is the size of the dog's head or larger. I'm going to start with half a chicken.

Small meals (what humans tend to consider "normal meals") directly feed into the resource guarding. A dog who never feels full can feel it needs to do anything to secure its next meal. The dog constantly feels hungry, and that feels like starving. This is something I CAN control.

Mogens Eliasen said it best, "Few dog owners want to starve their dog or to keep it constantly hungry. Nevertheless, this is what most people end up doing when they feed their dog multiple daily meals, assuming that this is just as good for a dog as it is for a human.

"An adult dog needs an amount of food in average per day that is about 2-3% of its body weight. Considering that it takes 6-8% to fill the stomach, there is just no way the average dog will ever get to experience the satisfying fulfillment of having a full stomach…"
Why your dogs needs to fill its stomach on a regular basis

So. We'll see if raw can help save her.

Does anyone have advice to behaviorally make a feisty terrier who INHALES her food accustomed to eating RMB's from my hand?

Unfit for Human Consumption

How utterly fascinating... the things we do not know. In the years following the massive pet food recalls, a major shift of focus began to happen, major scrutiny of the pet food industry. And yet, there is still so much left in the shadows for the origin of the feeds we use daily for our dogs and cats. Many have begun to only feed "human grade" products, believing that those products go under a greater review than food products not intended for human consumption. Case in point - Nebraska By-Products and their contribution to Happy Hounds dog food. The following are snippets from this article. Be sure the click the link, you'll see a fantastic image of a man handling a box that clearly states "unfit for human consumption".

Nebraska By-Products removes dead stock from farms and ranches and processes it. It’s a vital and important business to the livestock industry, but has importance to other businesses, too... The dead stock received is rendered into two products: tallow and rendered tankage that is processed into meat and bone meal for use in the animal feed industry. One of the most important issues for a rendering facility is the promptness of retrieving the fallen animal. Deterioration leads to lower product value...

In 1997, the company created its own red meat product bearing the Happy Hound label for greyhounds and farms in Kansas and Florida, then began expanding its distribution into Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona and Iowa.

“We’re recycling dead animals into useful products,” Fagot said. “We get the beef from farmers, ranchers and feedlots.”

Two years ago, Happy Hound dog food became available in Montana, Wyoming and Alaska for sled dogs. Some of the product is used by sled dogs that race in the Iditarod...

“This is not the kind of dog food a person would feed a family pet,” Fagot said. “It’s higher in fat for cold temperatures. It’s raw red meat, 100 percent beef. It’s more for energy than as a food source.”

Nebraska By-Products processes much the same as a slaughterhouse. “They work with live animals. We work with dead stock.”

...Another byproduct is the hides. They’re removed from the animal and sold to tanneries in China, Vietnam, Mexico and Korea.

“We are the original recyclers,” Fagot said.

Cows vs. Cars

Are Cows Worse Than Cars?

These days almost any proposal to reduce global warming gets taken seriously, even by conservatives. Solar panels are proposed for powering everything except submarines. Oilman T. Boone Pickens wants to put windmills on every empty patch of land in Texas, and Republicans have finally found something to like about France: nuclear power.
But when Rajendra Pachauri, who runs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made a suggestion that could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 18 percent, he was excoriated. Why was his proposal so unpalatable? Because he suggested eating less meat would be the easiest way people could reduce their carbon footprint, with one meat-free day per week as a first step. "How convenient for him: He's a vegetarian," sneered a Pittsburgh Tribune Review editorial. "Dr. Pachauri should be more concerned about his own diet. A new study shows that a deficiency of vitamin B-12, found primarily in meat, fish and milk, can lead to brain shrinkage." Boris Johnson, London's outspoken mayor, posted a long screed on his blog, declaring, "The whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response."
Johnson may not appreciate the environmental value of replacing his steak and kidney pie with a tofu scramble, but the benefits would be quite real. Animal agriculture is responsible for local pollution from animal waste and chemical use and for greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-intensive process of growing feed and raising livestock, plus the, ahem, byproducts of animal digestion. It would be much easier -- and cheaper -- to give up meat than to, say, convert an entire country's electrical grid to using solar, wind, or nuclear energy. A rural Montanan might have no choice but to drive to work, but he can certainly switch out his pork chop for pinto beans. While Pachauri was correct to note that one need not go vegan to help the environment -- simply eating less meat would help -- he could have also emphasized the more politically appealing point that one can be a carnivore and still reduce one's impact by choosing different meats. Even limiting one's meat consumption to chicken yields major environmental benefits -- not to mention health and financial benefits.
What should be a surprise is not that Pachauri made the comments he did but that it took him so long to do so. In fact, the environmental movement has largely ignored meat consumption. The man with whom the IPCC shared its Nobel Prize for raising climate change awareness, Al Gore, has never mentioned the environmental impact of meat consumption. Green groups tell their conscientious constituents to trade in their SUV for a Prius and buy compact-fluorescent light bulbs but haven't dared suggest that they give up steak.
Perhaps even more so than cars, meat is deeply embedded in American culture. Apple pie may be the quintessential American food, but McDonald's hamburgers aren't far behind. We carve turkey on Thanksgiving and host Fourth of July barbeques. Without meat, how do you know it's a meal? To most Americans, veggies and tofu are a laughable substitute. "It was a reaction to the '60s hippie cooking that gave this important idea of vegetarianism a bad name," says Alice Waters, the chef and author who is widely credited with creating the organic-food revolution. Environmentalists, who know they must change the stereotype that they are all either tree-hugging radicals or self-righteous scolds, may be reluctant to embrace vegetarianism because of those easily caricatured cultural connotations.
"Environmental groups don't want to come out too strongly on it," says Danielle Nierenberg, who researches the intersection of animal agriculture and climate change for both the Humane Society, an organization that promotes the compassionate treatment of animals, and the World Watch Institute, an environmental think tank. "People get very upset when they feel they are being told what to eat."

***
Now should be environmental vegetarianism's big moment. Global warming is the single biggest threat to the health of the planet, and meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize. The production and transportation of meat and dairy, particularly if you include the grains that are fed to livestock, is much more energy-intensive than it is for plants. Animals, especially cattle, also release gases like methane and nitrous oxide that, pound for pound, are up to 30 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Internationally there is an additional cost to animal agriculture: massive deforestation to make land available for grazing, which releases greenhouse gases as the trees are burned and removes valuable foliage that absorbs carbon dioxide. As a result, according to a 2006 United Nations report, internationally the livestock sector accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions -- more than the transportation sector.
The numbers for the United States are more hotly contested. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that meat is only half of the U.S. agriculture sector's share of domestic greenhouse gases and that the entire agriculture industry produces 7.56 percent of the U.S.' contribution. This is considerably less than the transportation sector, which the EPA estimates accounts for roughly 29 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. The American Meat Institute, an industry trade association, cites the EPA numbers as credible. But they fail to take into account that 50 percent of grain is being fed to livestock and that its production and transportation costs should also be attributed to what you find in the meat or dairy aisle of the supermarket. Additionally, the EPA numbers do not include large categories such as the transportation of plants and animals.
In fact, some environmentalists allege that the Bush administration's EPA chose the lowest possible estimate, which the meat industry routinely cites, for political reasons. "With the EPA being in the pocket of the meat industry, it's not in their interest to come up with the best numbers," says Bruce Friedrich, who works on environmental issues for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The real U.S. figure is roughly halfway between the UN's and the EPA's numbers, according to independent experts. "There are many assumptions that one needs to make when quantifying emissions," explains Gidon Eshel, an environmental studies professor at Bard College at Simon's Rock. "It's not that any one assumption is correct. Almost all of them are defensible." Eshel estimates that if you used the UN's standards, animal agriculture would account for 10 percent or 11 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.
Consumers may not have a say in whether or not another coal power plant will be built, but they do have control over how much meat they personally eat. A University of Chicago study co-authored by Eshel found that, for the average American, "the greenhouse gas emissions of various diets vary by as much as the difference between owning an average sedan versus a Sport Utility Vehicle." One meat eater going vegetarian results in putting the equivalent of 1.5 fewer tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Further, according to the study, if all Americans ate a vegan diet it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 6 percent, probably more. Those savings would have a more immediate impact than would reducing the same amount of carbon through other means, because the average time scale for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is about 10 times as slow as for methane. Most important, as Eshel notes, one can reduce personal greenhouse gas emissions through dietary change more easily and comfortably than, say, cutting back on electricity use by living in the dark or forgoing air conditioning all summer.
But meat eating has grown dramatically in developed countries in recent decades, with developing countries beginning to catch up. The average American eats 200 pounds of meat, poultry, and fish per capita per year, 50 pounds more than Americans did in the 1950s. Between 1970 and 2002 the average person in a developing country went from consuming 24 pounds to 65 pounds of meat annually. In all, the world's total meat consumption in 2007 was estimated to be 284 million tons, compared to 71 million tons in 1961. It is expected to double by 2050. "You're seeing now India and China, with a growing middle class, are eating more meat," says Laura Shapiro, a culinary historian and author of Something from the Oven, about the cuisine of 1950s America.
Yet the environmental conversation remains solely about cars and power plants, not beef and pork.

***
Unlike the vitriol that Rajendra Pachauri encountered, Caryn Hartglass has been met with a different reaction when she suggests people eat less meat: deafening silence. Hartglass is the only paid staffer for Earth Save, the most prominent (using that term loosely, as it only has 3,000 members) organization dedicated solely to promoting an animal-free diet for environmental reasons. "I go to [environmental organizations'] Web sites and it's supposed to tell you what to do to reduce global warming and it doesn't say eat less meat," says Hartglass. "So I ask them why not. They say they're focusing on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions not methane-gas emissions."
Why are environmental groups and even politicians willing to tell Americans to drive smaller cars or take the bus to work but unwilling to tell them to eat less meat? If you live in a recently built suburb you must drive most places whether you wish to or not. Walking or public transit simply isn't an option. But you could stop buying ground beef and start buying veggie burgers tomorrow, saving yourself some money and sparing yourself some cholesterol in the process. And yet no one, other than a small cadre of lonely fringe activists like Hartglass, devotes much energy to making the connection. Food experts and environmentalists generally worry that Americans might react with hostility similar to Boris Johnson's if asked to put down their hamburgers.
Their timidity is understandable. On the rare occasion that the federal government has tried to even suggest that Americans lower their meat consumption, it has failed. In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs recommended eating less meat and dairy to combat heart disease. But the meat and dairy lobbies complained vociferously, and the committee rephrased the report to say that people should instead choose animal products that would "reduce saturated fat consumption." Just to be sure no one else got the foolish idea of suggesting Americans eat less meat, the beef industry spent heavily to successfully defeat Committee Chairman George McGovern in 1980.
But while politicians may have reason to fear the meat lobby, environmental groups are supposed to push the political envelope. They began calling for caps on carbon emissions in the late 1990s, before it was politically palatable, and both major party candidates for president endorsed cap-and-trade in 2008. Many people see their car or truck as a part of their identity, but that hasn't stopped the Sierra Club from ensuring that every American is aware of the environmental threat their vehicle poses. And yet, the major environmental groups have been unwilling to push the meat issue. "I don't know of anyone in the environmental community that has taken a stance of 'we support no meat consumption because of global warming,'" says Tim Greef, deputy legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters. Adds Nierenberg, "It's the elephant in the room for environmentalists. They haven't found a good way to address it."
The Sierra Club's list of 29 programs -- which includes such relatively small-bore issues as trash-transfer stations (they threaten "quality of life and property values") -- does not include any on the impact of meat consumption. Their main list of things you can do to help prevent global warming mentions hanging your clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer but makes no mention of eating less meat. "The Sierra Club isn't opposed to eating meat, so that's sort of the long and short of it. [We are] not opposed to hunting, not opposed to ranching," says Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, the nation's oldest and largest grass-roots environmental organization.
Of course, asking Americans to eat less meat is not the same thing as actively condemning ranching and hunting, but ranchers and hunters might consider it a threat to their livelihood and lifestyle all the same. And there's the rub. Though the Sierra Club does not have a position on meat consumption, it does ally with small ranchers and hunters on an array of issues, from opposing the development of giant feedlots to preserving land. "We believe that making connections with hunters and anglers is critical to ultimately getting a solution to global warming," says Dave Hamilton, director of the global warming and energy program at the Sierra Club. "They are often in places that are targets for what we're trying to do, and they are a key constituency for policy makers."
Calling for less meat consumption would almost certainly endanger that relationship. But the Sierra Club denies that is the reason for its lack of a stance on meat, saying that it focuses instead on issues where it can have a greater impact. "It does not necessarily pay to appear to be telling people how to live their lives," says Hamilton. "We want to give positive solutions. We've tried to focus on the things that we feel can make the greatest difference with the energy and resources that we have."
Other environmental groups, such as Natural Resources Defense Council, acknowledge that reducing meat consumption would be helpful in ameliorating emissions, but it simply is not a high priority. "We haven't taken a position [on meat]," says Elizabeth Martin Perera, a climate-policy specialist at the NRDC. "There's no reason not to; we just haven't gotten around to it." The League of Conservation Voters, which coordinates environmental political efforts, explains it as a process of fighting one battle at a time. "Once you deal with the largest emitters of carbon, complementary policies need to get passed," says Greef. "After they pass cap-and-trade, you will see work for a better transportation bill, work on deforestation and the logging industry. Meat falls into that bucket." When it comes to sorting out legislative priorities, Greef's position is sensible. The car-dependence of the American landscape and other energy-intensive consumption habits make attacking those larger emitters a higher priority domestically.
But environmental groups do more than just lobby Congress. First and foremost, they explain how our activities affect the environment. It is obvious that a car spews pollution, but to see your beef burrito first as a burping cow, and before that as oil being burned to grow corn to feed that cow, requires education. The movement also can advise the public on lifestyle choices and demonstrate how those choices can be practical. A typical Sierra Club member cannot do much to pass cap-and-trade, but she can skip the bacon in her breakfast sandwich.

***
Remember those TV commercials that declared, "Beef, it's what's for dinner"? Only a few foods are so central to American cuisine and culture that they can assert their primacy simply by reminding you that you've always consumed them. Americans do indeed eat an extraordinary amount of meat, roughly twice their daily recommended dose of protein. But contrary to the commercial, this was not always the case -- consumption has not just been driven by market demand. The other culprit is cheap corn.
Meat has become cheaper -- and therefore more prevalent in American diets -- in the last 30 years because it has been heavily subsidized, albeit indirectly. Ever since Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz declared in 1973 that "what we want out of agriculture is plenty of food," American agricultural policy has encouraged overproduction and lower prices, primarily in the form of massive subsidies for corn. Livestock, in turn, consumes more than half the corn grown in the U.S. because it is cheaper to confine animals to a tight lot and funnel corn in than to allow them to graze freely on grass. With cheaper grain and denser, dirtier feedlots replacing free-range ranches, meat prices and meat quality have dropped, while meat's environmental impact has increased.
"The livestock doesn't get direct subsidies per se, but they have until recently done very well by getting subsidized corn," says Larry Mitchell, director of government affairs at the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA), a rival offshoot of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), which the ACGA contends represents agribusiness conglomerates rather than small farmers. "Most of the huge, confined animal-feeding operations, factory farms, wouldn't be viable if they had to pay the true cost of corn," Mitchell says.
Some environmental scientists contend that, in addition to filling local groundwater with animal waste and destroying the open spaces of the West with feedlots, grain-fed meat creates more emissions per pound than grass-fed meat. "Some work from the EPA suggests that you can reduce methane by half by not confining animals and not feeding them high-energy grains," says Nierenberg. But, she concedes, the evidence is mixed. Other studies, such as those promoted by conservatives, find the opposite: Eating grass gives cows gas. A spokesperson for the NCGA declined to comment for this article but referred me to Alex Avery, a researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute. Avery, who acknowledges that his research is underwritten by industry interests, cites studies suggesting that corn-fed livestock emits less methane.
Fundamentally, though, Avery and food-industry spokespeople don't acknowledge the role that cheap corn plays in the prevalence of meat in the American diet. "The world needs to eat," says Tamara McCann Thies, chief environmental counsel for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, "and demand dictates how much beef is produced in the U.S. and elsewhere." Of course, demand is a product of price, and price is a product of production costs, and production costs are affected by subsidies. The world needs to eat, but it does not need to eat burgers.
Indeed, while a public-relations campaign would have some marginal impact, it has long been established that only government regulation can be certain to change America's consumption patterns. Despite all the publicity surrounding the ills of oil, average auto fuel efficiency has stagnated. And how many people do you know who hang-dry their clothes to keep the polar ice cap afloat?
So what would a political agenda to reduce the emissions from animal agriculture look like? The answer is surprisingly simple.
As with so many environmentally damaging habits, such as driving, our over-consumption of factory-farmed animals is the product of a set of indirect subsidies that make its cost artificially low. Much of the agriculture industry is exempt from compliance with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, thus reducing its business costs. Grain subsidies lower the cost of feed. And the Government Accountability Office recently found that the EPA has failed to hold factory farms accountable for massive violations, essentially another form of government subsidy by freeing them of the cost of compliance. Undoing any of these boondoggles would raise the cost of meat. Another option is to raise the standards of animal treatment, which would also make the production of meat more expensive. California recently passed a ballot proposal to ban cruelly overcrowded conditions in factory farms. By eliminating dense feedlots, which animal-rights activists and even many farmers regard as inhumane and which create local pollution, it should become more expensive to produce meat because it will require more land per animal. Although it is not clear how much meat consumption would fall as a result, it makes sense, as it does with driving, to at least remove the price advantage of such an environmentally destructive activity.
And, of course, the government could remove corn subsidies. Whatever the merits of grass-fed versus grain-fed meat, an increase in the price of corn would mean more expensive meat. But the institutional barriers to removing subsidies -- the key committee positions of senators from farm states, the power of the Iowa caucuses, the political largesse of agriprocessor Archer Daniels Midland -- make such a dramatic reversal in American agricultural policy an incredibly tall order. In any case, the environmental movement has not shown any desire to make this a top priority.
In the meantime, activists are taking small bites out of the problem. Food experts like Shapiro and Waters say that raising awareness about reducing portion size, which has grown over the years, is one first step. And a Web site called PB&J Campaign, launched in February 2007, encourages a plant-based diet for environmental reasons. Bernard Brown, the site's 31-year-old creator, says he is careful to advocate not outright vegetarianism but intermediate steps that are more realistic.
Yet they still have a long way to go. "I think it's amazing that even the greenest of green liberal environment activists, the vast majority of them tend to consume meat at the same rate as people who think global warming is a hoax," says Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. "Meat consumption seems to be the last thing that progressive people address in their lifestyle. If I had a nickel for every global warming conference that had roast beef on the menu, I'd be rich."

For dogs... with glaucoma?

CBP: Marijuana Found Inside Dog Food At Bridge Of The Americas

October 15, 2009
EL PASO, Texas -- Bundles of marijuana were found inside dog food bags Wednesday by officials at the Bridge of the Americas.
A drug-sniffing dog alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the trunk of 2009 Peugeot. CBP officers opened the trunk and found large bags of dog food, but when they opened them up, marijuana was found inside.
CBP officers removed 30 marijuana-filled bundles from the dog food. The drugs weighed 31 pounds.
The driver, a 25-year-old Mexican male from Ciudad Juarez, was turned over to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department for prosecution.

Smooth.

Cruelty Free. Does it matter to you?

As a cheese & egg consumer, and a meat purchaser, I often try to consider cruelty free items. These, however, are hard to find at an affordable price in my corner of the US. Perhaps if I made more of an investigative effort I could procure items from a local farm or a free range farming system, this would be ideal though not all together practical when shopping in a hurry, and on a budget.

Do my dogs care that their beef was free range and cruelty free? Should I care for them?
What conditions are considered cruelty free?

Consider the ever 'powerful' HSUS and their allegation against IHOP. View IHOP's Social Responsibility statement here.

IHOP claims that its eggs are "cruelty free" and animals used for its food receive "dignified, humane treatment." The animal welfare group said that's not true and filed complaints with federal regulators saying the Glendale-based company is engaged in "false or deceptive advertising."
The complaints allege that the eggs for IHOP's 1,421 U.S. restaurants come from chickens raised in cramped cages that do not allow them to stretch their wings, walk around or nest.
That doesn't meet a consumer's reasonable expectation of what "cruelty-free" means, the Humane Society said. "Consumers do not consider it `humane,' let alone `cruelty free,' to confine hens for life so tightly in wire cages that they cannot fully spread their wings, as IHOP's standards allow," the group said in its complaint.