California is 40% Worse Than Iowa

Highest combined concentration of burger, bacon rack, and milk jug production units in the country. Yeah, the whole country. We beat friggin’ Iowa for shit’s sake. 120 pounds of waste crap and pee per cow every day, flushed out of the “barns,” into multi-million-gallon surge ponds lagoons of crap and pee, then sprayed on the ground surrounding them. And that’s just the milk-makers. Go play around with the Food and Water Watch Map. Diaper yourself beforehand.

On the drought side of the equation, 1,780,000 CA cows used for dairy are slurping up 4 gallons of water a day to squeeze out just one gallon of milk so you can suck it down your throat like you’re still an infant nursing from someone else’s mother.

Four gallons of water to get 1 gallon of cow milk.
Times 7.5 gallons of milk a day of “high production efficiency.”
Times 365 days a year.
Times 1,780,000 cows used for dairy.

Your ten-minute showers are already down to seven, you can’t afford to flush the toilet, and your house is burning to the ground beside the lake that’s gone dry. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to put off thinking about it.

As found on Craigslist

The poster requests only serious inquiries. OK, then. Start with the obvious–is his mother a Happy Cow®? If she’s still alive, we doubt it.

Children notice the strangest things, don’t they? If, after nine weeks of separation, this baby boy noticed his mother across a wide, green field and she called to him, he would run to her to be nursed and groomed by her warm, rough tongue. Make it six months and nine weeks later, the reunion would look the same. Children would notice that, too.

We noticed that our calendar marks the start of a New Year. If you cannot give hope and shelter to this mother’s precious child, we’re thinking you should do something besides nurse a hangover tomorrow.

Audio clip: Peaceable Kingdom: Falling from the Family Tree

Changes to WIC benefit needy vegan families

Des Moines Register

A substantial update to WIC, the federal program that provides supplemental, nutrition assistance to at-risk pregnant women, mothers and their children, is nearing reality. For the first time since the program’s inception, fresh and/or frozen fruits and vegetables, soy milk and tofu will be available for purchase with WIC vouchers. And the USDA, which operates WIC, is proposing a reduction in the allotment of dairy products and eggs that program participants can purchase with vouchers. Did the magnetic poles reverse?! What did we miss?!

Public comments on the proposed rule changes are still open! Get yours in before Nov. 6, 2006. All who are eligible for assistance through federally funded, food assistance programs should have the choice of nutritionally complete foods that don’t derive from animal sources.

Read what others have already said in the published comments from the Advance Notice period. We liked two submitted comments so much that we’re making them available without a need for search: PCRM’s and 20–year RD/MPH Carol Allwine’s.

Hang in there till 03/01/2007

and they promise they’ll hook you up again.

If you’re thrifty and pro-active like PFW, you stocked up by the case-load far in advance of the well running dry and brunched on the Ultimate Vegan Breakfast Burrito:

Strap up
1 pkg Fantastic Foods Tofu Scrambler
12 oz extra-firm tofu
3 oz (or about 1/2 a “link”) of Soyrizo per burrito
Cooked, diced potatoes, peppers, onions
Vegan Cheddar of your choice, shredded, diced, however you like it
Large flour tortillas (Mission makes a super-size corn, too!)
Toppings of your choice (pico de gallo, salsa so hot it doubles as paint remover, sliced avocados, jalapenos, just knock your vegan self out)

Build that monster
Mix Tofu Scrambler and tofu per the package directions and set aside.
Running late for the demo and starving? Take the shortcut for the potatoes, peppers and onions: buy frozen Potatoes O’Brien and cook per package directions, about 1 cup of frozen product per ginormous burrito.
When your ‘taters are nearly done and browned to your liking, add the Soyrizo, or cook it in a separate skillet almost according to the directions. We find that if you freeze Soyrizo first, then slice thinly with a sharp, serrated knife, it crisps up better and has less of a ground or crumbled consistency. It cooks quickly so keep a close eye on it, turn it frequently, and char to your preferred level.
Add your mixed Tofu Scrambler to the pile and cook a few more minutes until it’s heated through.

How we roll
Raise your hand if you still need burrito wrapping instructions, or just read on for three animal agribusiness industry-standard reasons why eggs, pigs, and dairy products don’t belong on your plate.

By now you should be blissfully sleeping off your food coma in the shade somewhere, comforted in the knowledge that your meal didn’t contain a trace of this,

or that,

or even $1’s worth of what subsidizes this.

And the Ultimate Vegan Breakfast Burrito is spinach-free, too.

Could your child be suffering from disordered eating?

Are you suffering, too? The Dairy Council of California wants to help with a free resource to let parents identify the insidious symptoms of this condition. We liked it so much we’re cutting your search engine idle time in half by making it available here. PFW tossed it in the /scripts directory because it kinda reads like a bad one.

“Normal” eating includes meat, dairy, and eggs. “Disordered’ eating doesn’t. So what’s a mom to do with a child who has “declared herself a vegetarian and refuses to eat meat”? Set ‘em straight, of course! Just confine your salient talking points to the fat/not fat ones outlined in the guide and you’ll be fine. And normal again. Hit the wiki section titled ‘Farming plants harms animals’ for a few other disordered points, then get them cleared up for grown people by our smart friend Gaverick Matheny.

More dietary dairy = more cows used for dairy = 3 for $1 Tuesdays at Del Taco and all the 49¢ McD’s you can shovel in. You know that’s where the happy cows go, right? Hey, maybe that Davis guy was spot-on after all: vegetarians are more harmful.