hateandheartache:
Genetically Modified Cows Produce “Human” Milk
Earlier this month, China held an exhibition to showcase major technical achievements during its 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010). Among the wonders on display were photos of a herd of 200 cows that have been genetically modified to produce “human” milk. (Click through for article)
“The ingenuity involved in shifting the nutrient profile of milk produced by mammals is pretty remarkable—it can now only be a matter of time before we bypass the Nestlé factory altogether and squeeze chocolate-yumberry flavor cow’s milk with brain-boosting Omega 3 direct from our pet goat’s udders.”
:|
lipsbetweenthehips:
look y’all,
i will always support vegan initiatives, and i will always respect and defend yr decision to go vegan. always. but i swear to the earth if i hear one more vegan police or diminish me for not being vegan (particularly if they have never met me and are therefore assuming my ability or desire to go vegan), i’m going to flip a shit. veganism is not the only way to combat abuse and overuse of animals and their byproducts, and it also requires a significant amount of privilege, so please respect my choice to address animal rights issues in a way that i am able to and comfortable with (because i’m not comfortable with ignoring the exploitation of foreign workers to mass-produce cheap soy products). and even if i wasn’t doing a damn thing, respect that choice too. before you come to me telling me what a great person you are for eating so ethically, get off yr fucking high horse and check yr privilege at the do’.
ALSO, if i hear one more privileged fucker equate milking cows to rape (i’m talking to you, RVA dude outside the theater today), i’ll do more than accidentally spill my coffee on yr cute little Toms next time.
While I’m bitching and being all text-y, I guess I’ll address this too. THANK YOU. And this is coming from a vegetarian. I blog about vegetarianism and veganism quite a bit because it’s a big part of my life, just like art and being fat and music and all that shit. But here’s the thing: it’s a belief system. And it’s bullshit to look down on anyone because they don’t believe in the same things you do. I know very few vegetarians IRL. The ratio of my vegetarian/vegan friends and my meat-eating friends is pretty heavily skewed to the meat eating side. But I would not even dream of holding that against them. My boyfriend eats meat. He eats a lot of meat and right in front of me. And that’s totally cool. Because he knows about factory farming, he knows where his meat comes from. And he chooses to eat it anyway. I have to have respect for that. The only thing I could ever ask someone who eats meat to do is just to know where that meat comes from. The lives given and taken for that food. If you know that and choose to eat meat, that’s totally cool by me. Just don’t berate me for not eating it and we’re square. People who eat meat are not the problem. They’re not the enemy. I can’t blame a person for eating meat. Meat is delicious, it’s cheap and it’s readily available. And when you don’t have a lot of money, the easiest thing to do is to buy a lb of hamburger to feed your family. And people are not wrong for that. The enemies are the people in a position to change the inhumane practices by which that meat is produced that don’t take a stand against the abuse.
How You Shop When You Are Poor
laurendarling:
elfstaranymore:
I had to put this behind a cut because it’s way long for Tumblr, but I really hope you’ll read it because I think it’s a very important post.
I started discussing this a little bit here, but I wanted to expand on the idea of how shopping on a very tight budget works, because obviously some people have no idea. I will add the caveat that this is how shopping was done in my family, by which I mean shopping with food stamps for a family with no dietary restrictions, with access to a car, and in a rural area of the U.S. Obviously each family’s needs are different and that is why food prescriptivism - which, remember, is a form of body policing - is fucked up.
Read More
This post has actually made me quite emotional as this is pretty much how my family (read as: my mother, as she works in a supermarket and buys food shopping after work every day) does our grocery shopping.
This is why I get annoyed when people claim poor people know nothing about nutrition - we all know about nutrition, and we do what’s best for our bodies and income at the time. It just doesn’t fit the arbritrary standard.
This is really great. Especially the paragraph dealing with “fun” foods.
vegansaurus:
This is a factory farm map of the United States. It’s really, really, really fucking sad. I want to show this to every slow foodtard who is all, “BUT HUMANE MEAT! It’s the answer!” It’s like, NO, the answer is telling people NOT TO EAT MEAT. That is the only way to get them to seriously cut down. If we keep holding the myth of humane meat in front of them, they’ll have hope that they don’t have to really change. The fact is, we can’t sustainably feed people the amount of meat they’re used to. It’s impossible. The only thing will help is if people give it up completely (or drastically reduce how much they eat, that helps!), and the only way that will happen is if we keep talking about how disgusting meat is for us, the animals, and the environment. Maybe once factory farms are eradicated, slow foodtards can start talking about small family farms and how they’ll feed the nation. Or, you know, the wealthy, elite few of the nation.
So in the meantime, let’s put all small family farm owners out of business so that people can learn to live without their precious meat and then, sure by all means have your little farm. The person that wrote this obviously doesn’t own a farm or know anyone that does or know about the struggles HUMANE family farms have because of factory farms. Factory farms took away their business and now you’re suggesting that omnivores who don’t support FF pull their business away from small farms too? I don’t think that’s going to solve much of anything to be honest. If anything, we should be focusing MORE on family farms. Humans, collectively, will never ever stop eating meat. A sad fact. And sadly, FF will probably always exist as long as corporate America is sticking its nose in the food industry. But isn’t it better to point people in the direction of a, yes, MORE HUMANE source for their meat than to just say, “NO MORE MEAT FOR YOU SORRY”? Because banning things that people like instead of allowing a safe alternative way of using it has worked really well for our country in the past.
(via dounyapetunia & charliebrowniest)
Peta, you give vegetarians/vegans a bad name. This is stupid.
In related news, I was wandering around the Commons last night with earthyerinelizabeth and co. and at the hemp shop, there was a sticker that said Eat Vegetarian, but the bottom part of the E was covered up so I thought it said Fat Vegetarian and I was SO. EXCITED. And immediately disappointed. Now I really want a bumper sticker that says Fat Vegetarian.
