People who think cows (and animals similar to them) don’t have to be treated well because they aren’t conscious never saw a cow play.

The cows in the video below use a hay bale as their personal toy to create cute mischief.

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Playful cow image via Shutterstock

The post Who Says Cows Don’t Have Personality? [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Apparently you’re not the only one who can’t get Lorde’s “Royals” out of your head. These cows are drawn to it like moths to a (seriously overplayed) flame. But this kind of makes the millionth listen all worth it. 

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Finally, a Really Good Reason For Listening to Lorde’s ‘Royals’ [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Cabin fever barely begins to describe life for these cows before being liberated into a lush open field. They jump and skip like happy children at recess–only for these happy cows, it’s a permanent freedom. Watch with a tissue–their innocence and gratitude got us a little weepy here, especially when the woman who saved them starts crying herself. Moo-hoo.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post These Happy Cows Jumping Almost Over the Moon Will Make You Tear Up [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

VideoAmericans eat an average of three burgers a week. What is that habit costing us?

On average, Americans eat three times more meat than people in other countries. Not only that, but we also eat an average of three hamburgers per week. Yes, you read that correctly. Three hamburgers a week.

What is that eating habit costing society? The Center for Investigative Reporting put together a video to answer that question. Watch it and you’ll never look at a hamburger the same.

A few key numbers:

• It takes 1800 gallons of water to make a single pound of grain-fed beef.
• Because cows release methane gas when they digest food, they produce more greenhouse gas than 22 million cars per year.
• Slaughterhouses create about 30 million pounds of contaminants a year.
• One burger can contain the DNA of more than a thousand cows.
• If all Americans ate no meat or cheese one day a week, it would have the same climate change prevention effect as taking 7.6 million cars off the road for one year.

The post Video: The Hidden Costs of Hamburgers appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’ve always been a cheese fanatic. It started when I was a kid with sharp cheddar cheese from Wisconsin and the massive blocks of baby Swiss my father used to receive from one of his patients during the holidays. I would gleefully trim off ever-so-thin slices, curl each one into a roll and start nibbling while thoughtfully eyeing where to cut off the next piece.

As many cheese lovers, my taste continues to mature, and now I’m more likely to reach for say, aged Gruyere and goat Gouda. In one of my recent grocery shopping experiences, while I carefully selected organic yogurt and organic milk, I realized that when it came to cheese, I wasn’t so sure of what I was buying. With gourmet cheeses, such as specialty goat cheese or cheese from sheep’s milk of the Basque region, I wasn’t so worried, but what about cow’s milk cheese from the U.S.? Is there a chance that it has come from cows treated with growth hormones?

I was having these thoughts when I came across this article from Grist about the recent decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an Ohio law regarding the labeling of food produced without growth hormones.

“Earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the state of Ohio’s ban on labels that identify milk as rBST- or rBGH-free, meaning produced without the use of artificial bovine growth hormone. Consumer and organic food groups were jubilant at the Ohio news, which may have far-reaching repercussions not only for all milk, but for genetically engineered foods.”

Later, the article goes on to say:

Thanks to consumer pressure, approximately 60 percent of milk in the U.S. is rBST-free at this point, labeled or not, according to the Center for Food Safety. However, that leaves an enormous amount of milk still being produced with these hormones, and by extension cheese and most brands of ice cream, except for Ben & Jerry’s.

The bit about ice cream got my attention. Not only do I love cheese, but I also adore ice cream. (You mean, I can’t eat Haagen-Dazs?) It seems that as I’ve been selectively buying organic milk, I may have been eating cheese and ice cream made from non-organic sources. Yikes. (Yet another reason to go D.I.Y. in the kitchen.)

I suppose I should have thought of this earlier, but I guess my love of cheese and ice cream blinded me. If anything, however, it is yet another reminder that companies should not only be allowed to label their food, but should be required to label it. Consumers need to know and have the right to know what they’re eating. I look forward to and am hopeful for the time when the FDA does the right thing in this regard. I just hope it isn’t another decade before we get there.

In the meantime, I’ll be more consciously buying cheese from such locales as the Cowgirl Creamery, certified organic. And ice cream? Looks like I’ll be making it at home.

Image: Jeffrey Coolidge

The post What’s in the Cheese? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Pets or meat? You decide.

According to The Guardian, baby bovines may be poised to be the next, er, small development in sustainable animal husbandry. Good for the environment, good for consumers, good for farmers, and local economies.

Evidently, cows were once more diminutive than today’s cows. This was back when farms were smaller and family run, particularly in Britain where small landholders were the norm. In the middle of the last century, U.S ranchers began breeding for fast growth and size, translating to larger cattle.

But smaller cows are greener cows. Here’s why: Smaller cows actually need less land and are more efficient at transforming feed into flesh. The breeder referenced in the Guardian article found that he could raise 10 mini cows on just five acres, which would only hold two average size cows. That translates to 6,000 pounds of beef versus 3,000 pounds. That’s a lot more burgers per hoof.

Not only that, but cow belches and flatulence emit methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas. Astonishingly, it takes 10 mini cows to produce the methane of just one larger cow.

In addition to the environmental benefits, certain traits of mini cattle make them a better product for today’s meat eaters. A faculty publication from The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, published in the 2008 Miniature Cattle: For Real, for Pets, for Production article by Dana W. R. Boden notes that mini cattle produce a more petite cut of meat – useful during these times of conscious meat reduction by environmental and health conscious consumers. However, proportionally, the best cuts from mini cattle are larger than in conventional cattle. For example, the rib-eye from a mini cow is 25-50 percent larger than in a full-size cow. So people who like steaks get more of what they like.

Another trend that points to the future success of tiny cattle is the rise in meat buying clubs and meat CSAS. Smaller animals make sense for families buying and freezing a whole animal. Larger cattle are just too much for most freezers and most family’s eating habits.

Back to the pets or meat question. Are people really raising these novelty animals for food? Another article on the subject notes that hobbyists are raising mini cattle for small-scale milk and meat production, but most are purchased as pets. An exotic possession for the well heeled? Perhaps. The mini cows are more expensive due to their rarity but prices should come down once the supply balances out.

Once prices drop the baby bovines could be a boon not just for the environment and consumers, but also for the less well-capitalized smallholder farms and farmers in urban spaces. According to the 2002 U.S. Census of Agriculture, the number of small farms has increased by over 46 percent since 1974. Among the small farm categories are retirement farms and residential/lifestyle farms. These are the types of operations that can support stronger regionalized and local food systems and the infrastructure that accompanies them, as well as feed the public hunger for locally produced food.

First we’ll need some work on the legal side of things. Thus far, chickens and rabbits are legal in many cities (with restrictions) and small goats are becoming more commonly accepted, but as far as I’ve been able to find out, cows (however tiny) are prohibited most everywhere urban or suburban. If you believe, as I do, that the blokes across the pond are way ahead of us in most things environmental and forward thinking, we have some good news from that quarter. Plans are ahoof in Bristol (England’s 6^th most populous city) to graze a herd of cattle on a 200 acre park parcel. The meat will be used for local schools. According to an earlier article on the subject, the plan is not “about using local businesses and suppliers, but creating a more localized supply and trading network that benefits and involves businesses and citizens of Bristol.”

The plan is also to increase public use and enjoyment of parklands. According to one Councilor, “[the cows] are rather more attractive than the average lawnmower, and use less diesel.”

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: JoePyreks

The post Cute Mignon: It’s What’s for Dinner appeared first on EcoSalon.

The professionally funny Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest have taken up a serious topic and written an open letter about farm animal abuse.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest posted an open letter to Conklin Dairy Farms-the site where barbaric animal abuse was captured on video by a Mercy For Animals investigator.

The footage obtained at the dairy farm located in Plain City, Ohio reveals horrors including workers violently punching calves in the face, beating cows with crowbars, stabbing cows in the legs and stomach with pitchforks, and twisting the tails of cows until the bone snaps.

In the letter, Curtis and Guest explain that their daughter was “overcome with grief that human beings could inflict such cruelty and unconscious hatred at the most benign of creatures and their infants. The shocking images were too much for her father and me but we watched enough to know where it led.”

The couple asks the dairy farm’s owner, Gary Conklin, if he has shown the video to his children and suggests that he attend classes where he is “taught kindness and compassion for all beings.”

“We challenge you to have the courage, as the brave person who filmed this did, to open your doors and your hearts. Become the standard for safety and kindness and actually change – change your mental state and spend the rest of your lives, and the lives of your descendants, trying to make your farm the leader in humane, clean, loving treatment of the very animals you profit from.”

To read the rest of the letter and learn more, check out the full article at Ecorazzi.

Editor’s note: Article by Daelyn Fortney. Originally published by our friends at Ecorazzi. Ecorazzi is the source for breaking green gossip. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Ecorazzi on Twitter, too!

Image: newagecrap

The post Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest Write Open Letter to Ohio Dairy Farm appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Gentle Barn Foundation needs our help to save 60 malnourished cows – many of which are pregnant – from a dilapidated California dairy farm. Will readers step up to save the day?

In recent weeks, animal lover Ellen DeGeneres has been trying to bring attention to a deplorable situation: Dozens of black-and-white cows, many of them pregnant and sick with pneumonia, pinkeye and skin fungus, are living – barely – on a dilapidated dairy farm in Santa Clarita, Calif.

The farm itself is in the process of being shut down, and the animals would normally be destined for the slaughterhouse. And yet, these gentle animals that have spent their lives providing nourishing milk to so many humans are now so sick and malnourished themselves that even the slaughterhouse won’t take them. The dairy farm’s owner does not have the money to care for the cows, nor to nurture the animals back to health in order to take them to the auction house.

So without intervention, these 60 cows will be left to die of dehydration, starvation and disease.

Click Here to Make a $10 Donation Now.

The tragic scenario was first revealed to the public by The Gentle Barn Foundation on April 26. Since then, the animal rescue and rehabilitation facility, miraculously located in the very same town and already home to 120 rescued farm animals, has successfully negotiated to take the cows off the owners’ hands and nurse them back to health – to give the cows and their calves whole new lives.

There’s just one problem: The Gentle Barn Foundation has no place to house them. The Foundation needs to build two new barns in order to give the cows a proper home. And building barns isn’t cheap.

The Gentle Barn needs funding. They need it now. And readers can make it happen.

Yesterday on her talk show, DeGeneres announced that Tonic is launching a major fundraising initiative in order to build the barns these cows so desperately need.

Tonic has committed to matching your donations, dollar-for-dollar, up to $50,000, for a grand total of $100,000 – enough for the Gentle Barn Foundation to build an entire barn.

And as if doubling your donation isn’t enough, there’s another layer of goodness that comes along with giving to save these California cows: A private benefactor has agreed to match every dollar The Gentle Barn earns, up to $100,000. So if Tonic readers accomplish this goal, and donate at least $50,000, the Gentle Barn Foundation will have all the money they need to build both barns!

Before Tonic’s initiative was announced, Ellie Laks, who founded and operates The Gentle Barn with her husband, Jay Weiner, gave an interview to The Signal of Santa Clarita Valley. Of their efforts to save these malnourished cows, Laks said, “This is cool because we can save their lives and give them the opportunity to raise their babies. It’ll be something the community can sink their teeth into – be part of their birth and their lives.”

More than just an animal rescue organization, The Gentle Barn brings at-risk youth and special needs children who have suffered physical, mental or emotional trauma of their own to their facilities to interact with the animals and take a hands-on role in their welfare. As described on their website: “[T]hose who undergo treatment at The Gentle Barn learn empathy, kindness, strength, trust, forgiveness and leadership.”

They’re the human qualities we try to spotlight here on Tonic every day. The qualities we’ve helped DeGeneres celebrate on her talk show, by giving scholarship money to Constance McMillen and helping to cover Alyson Myatt’s health care costs.

They’re the qualities we hope our readers will show by making donations to The Gentle Barn Foundation today.

Click Here to Make a $10 Donation Now!

Editor’s note: Article by Mark Dagostino. Originally published by our friends at Tonic.com. Tonic is a digital media company and news source dedicated to promoting the good that happens each day around the world. Tonic tells the stories of people and organizations who are working to make a difference, by inspiring good in themselves and others. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Tonic on Twitter, too!

Image: Dave Young

The post Ellen and Tonic: Giving Dairy Cows a Second Chance at Life appeared first on EcoSalon.

FarmVille is the green place to be for city folk reaping the rewards of rural relationships and cooperation through good, clean social gaming.

The hugely popular farming sim has my friends and family bragging on Facebook about a season of planting cash crops, helping neighbors grow lettuce instead of lawns and finding new homes for lost little duckies. It quacks me up!

The strategy of the Zynga grainchild: The user is given the chance to start their own farm, build it out and move up in levels.

After they have plowed the land and their crops are ripe for picking, they harvest the food and sell it for cash to buy new crops. Other ways to get money include helping friends with their farms or sending free gifts to friends, such as trees and farm animals.

“This is a good game because it’s not superficial where you are going out and buying clothes or houses like in other virtual games,” says my 13-year-old daughter, an avid fan who set up a farm for her 10-year-old sister in recent weeks planting eggplants, soybeans and strawberries. “You’re building crops and helping neighbors with their crops and in the coming years, it will really come down to that.”

My teen, now at level 7,  finds FarmVille lets her and her Facebook friends associate a fun game with something not product-based, and that it helps train her generation to think green.

That’s the main reason an employer in Minneapolis, Minn. set up a real organic farm as a playground and work perk for his employees. His concept is a hit as the Haberman public relations team clocks time hoeing and raking after hours.

You don’t get points with your boss for playing FarmVille so my cousin, Alan Finkelstein, plays in his spare time when he’s off work. He’s at the top of the heap with an impressive level 31. He’s a god in his neck of the woods. You don’t get to level 31 without logging some serious computer time.

“Okay, FarmVille police, I was forced to play, they kidnapped me and made me play,” Alan jests, defending his highly-coveted acreage. “I do notice more things in the world that are related to farms than I used to prior to playing.”

Alan says he gave it a go when a friend was playing and really loved it. He finds the game makes him more aware of things associated with farming and holds a “zen quality” for the L.A. journalist, husband and Facebook fanatic.

“I like to strategize, collect, plan, design, steal other folk’s designs, send gifts to friends, receive gifts from friends, and having to be patient in growing my own farm,” he says. “My cousins say to me, ‘Dude, your farm is amazing and thanks for sending me the horses’ and it’s nice to have that interaction.”

Del Monte should only have such interaction. This sim is clearly a brand of socialism Americans can get behind.

According to Virtual Worlds News, FarmVille has gained over 1 million new players per week since its June 19 launch, and currently boasts more than 11 million daily active users.

Apparently, that’s the total achieved by lead designer Mark Skaggs over his entire career with Electronic Arts where he designed other strategy games such as Command & Conquer and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. He says FarmVille will probably break records, largely because he’s keeping it fresh.

“One of the really fun and successful features we added is what we call the ‘Lonely Cow’ feature,” Skaggs told VWN. “You can help find it a home, then somebody claims it. You’ll get a brown cow instead of the white cow you had before. Then you milk the brown cow and you get chocolate milk! That’s a ‘moment of delight,’ totally unexpected but cool.”

We once felt that same moment of delight when competitors landed on those high-priced blue properties we monopolized – Park Place and Boardwalk – and had to fork over big bucks for encountering our big, red hotels.

I much prefer a society that works together to land big red barns, sustainable crops and organic chocolate milk. As my wise daughter said, it will really come down to that.

Main Image: Sabrina.dent

The post So Long 4-H, Howdy FarmVille! Fastest Growing Social Game Ever Has Users Thinking Green appeared first on EcoSalon.