The new leather shoe line from Ellen Degeneres isn’t garnering this comedian and talk show host any laughs from vegan fans. With the introduction of animal products to her clothing line, ED, the former animal rights supporter, has seemingly committed the ultimate act of betrayal and is now facing serious scrutiny from fans and the media.

To some, this situation may seem like no big deal. In fact, many consumers may be looking forward to seeing the new leather shoe line from Ellen Degeneres without understanding the impact of her decision. For those of you who already have a grasp on the devastating effects of buying leather in any manner, we feel this is the perfect opportunity to inform those who do not.

According to One Green Planet, “the global leather industry slaughters over one billion animals every year,” and cows are not the only victims on the roster. Pigs, goats, sheep, exotic animals, and even cats and dogs, who are used for their skin and fur in China, are unjustly slaughtered and used for their coats. And because leather sources are not labeled, it would be nearly impossible to know if your shoes are made from sheepskin or dog skin.

Also alarming is the unnecessary cruelty that these animals have to endure in order to become the products we purchase. PETA claims that most leather comes from developing countries where animal welfare laws are not upheld or do not exist.

“In the U.S., many of the millions of cows and other animals who are killed for their skin endure the horrors of factory farming – extreme crowding and deprivation, as well as castration, branding, tail-docking, and dehorning – all without painkillers,” says PETA. Additionally, many animals regularly have their throats cut and are even dismembered while still conscious.

If these sorts of atrocities happen in American factory farms, imagine the laws, or lack-there-of, in Brazil, where some of Ellen Degeneres’ leather shoes are made, according to the Bergdorf Goodman retail site. With a little digging, it’s evident that more than just animals are being harmed in the process of harvesting leather.

The human welfare of the factory farm and leather tanning employees in the United States, as well as underdeveloped countries, like the modern day slaves in places like Brazil, falls to the wayside and is oftentimes intentionally disregarded in the name of profit.

Not only are factory farm and tanning workers subject to a high rate of injury and illness, but the people living nearby, as well as the surrounding environment, are subject to extreme toxicity and pollution, too. Cancer is prevalent among workers and neighboring townspeople, and the devastating pollution from the waste run-off from factory farms and the chemical VOCs from the leather tanning process are enough to ultimately destroy adjacent land and life.

When someone like Ellen Degeneres has made the commitment to being an outspoken vegan, it’s usually something that is not taken lightly – especially considering the initial dedication and planning involved in such a life improving transition – which is why it comes as such a shock to fans how easy it is for Ellen to forget her personal standards and ethics in the name of profit, much like the factory farming and leather tanning industries.

Although it’s difficult to predict the future success of Ellen Degeneres’ apparel, shoe, and home goods line, ED, we hope that this incident, like so many other celebrity snafus, doesn’t simply get swept under the rug.

Accountability is difficult to come by these days, especially in Hollywood, so in an attempt to right her wrongs and hopefully halt the damage that’s being done by the new addition to her brand, we urge you, Ellen Degeneres, to put a stop to your leather shoe line and attempt to provide restitution for the damage done, or, at the very least, stop lying to the public by claiming to live a vegan lifestyle – it’s an injustice to people and animals everywhere.

Now that you’ve gotten the scoop on the scandal, we want to hear from you. What’s your take on the new leather shoe line from Ellen Degeneres? Do you believe she’s betraying fans and doing a disservice to the vegan lifestyle? What would you like to see Ellen do in order to rectify the situation? Let us know your thoughts on the EcoSalon Facebook page.

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Image of Calf from Shutterstock

The post Seriously…No Kidding: New Leather Shoe Line from So-Called Vegan Ellen Degeneres appeared first on EcoSalon.

Rolling Stone takes us inside the dark underbelly of factory farming in the meat industry, and it’s more insane than you probably think it is. And a warning: It’s also seriously graphic. [via Rolling Stone]

With antibiotics so ineffective these days, what can we turn to? Are you using this all-natural and uber-effective supplement for your infections? [via Naturally Savvy]

Stella is at it again. This time, the other McCartney has designed a gorgeous t-shirt for Animals Asia. It’s a must. [via GirlieGirl Army]

MTV’s music video days may be a thing of the past, but thankfully, artists still find pleasure in making music videos. If you missed any of this year’s greatest, check out Pitchfork’s top video picks for 2013. [via Pitchfork]

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The post Link Love: Evangeline Lilly’s Butt, the Anti-Antibiotic + The Other McCartney Loves Bears appeared first on EcoSalon.

 

Among other efforts, Ryan Gosling has urged the USDA to stop allowing slaughterhouses to kill chickens and turkeys by slowly suffocating them with foam, and he wrote to the National Milk Producers Federation, calling for an end to painful dehorning of cows through burning or the use of sharp tools.

Now, in an article for The Globe and Mail entitled ‘A tiny cage is not a life,’ Gosling is calling for an end to the cruel confinement of female pigs. A Canadian himself, Gosling applauded Canada’s National Farm Animal Care Council’s decision to stop allowing female pigs to be confined to crates for “nearly their entire lives.”

Gosling wrote “Currently, mother pigs are kept in these cages called ‘gestation crates’ for four months while pregnant, moved to another cage to give birth, reimpregnated and put back into a gestation crate for the cycle to repeat. It adds up to years of immobilization and millions of smart, inquisitive animals relegated to iron maidens.”

The actor compared his “beloved dog George” to these thinking and feeling pigs, who he says are also deserving of compassion. “The bond I have with George is not unique. Like me, countless Canadians share their homes and lives with pets they consider to be part of the family. We know that they have individual personalities and quirks (George loves apples, for example) and that they feel both physical and mental pain. Our pets share these traits with other animals; including those we don’t share our lives with, such as farm animals.”

He adds that the use of gestation crates for pregnant female pigs has been widely “criticized by veterinarians, animal protection advocates, consumers and even major food retailers as inhumane and unnecessary,” and that Tim Hortons and sixty other major companies have recently stopped using suppliers that confine pigs to the crates.

Although the council has reduced the time that the pork industry is allowed to confine pregnant pigs, Gosling is calling for further action. He writes, “While NFACC’s progress is important and laudable, there is a major loophole in the code that I hope will be closed. As written, the draft still allows the pork industry to lock pigs in gestation crates for up to five weeks at a time. Over a pig’s short life, which is just four years long, this amounts to about nine months of solitary confinement in a cage so small she can’t even turn her own body around.”

He adds, “I join Farm Sanctuary and Humane Society International in asking that it close this dangerous loophole by prohibiting the pork industry from confining pigs for weeks at a time – something I would never dream of doing to George, and that no compassionate Canadian would ever do to any animal.” – Jennifer Mishler

This article appears courtesy of Ecorazzi

Ecorazzi covers news and gossip on celebrities and notables in support of the environment and humanitarian causes. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Image: Xoyos

The post Hey Girl, Let Me Get You a Bigger Cage: Ryan Gosling Speaks Up for Female Pigs appeared first on EcoSalon.

What is it with people and their boneless, skinless chicken breasts?

Especially the smug ones who think they are being so green and healthy by eating a low fat white meat? True, most chicken is lower in fat than beef or pork. But how nutritious, really, is our mass-produced, mass-market chicken? My theory is that it’s so innocuous seeming, so flavorless, and so personality-less, that the ubiquitous boneless skinless chicken breast contributes more than it should to thoughtless flesh eating, which we need a whole lot less of.

What do I mean by thoughtless flesh eating? When you don’t need to see bones, gristle, or skin, or anything that looks remotely like it came from an animal, you could easily forget you are eating one. We’ve all done it. Ordered the chicken Caesar in a restaurant, thinking we are getting our much-needed protein and eating something healthy and eco-friendly. A Caesar is a classic salad that wasn’t meant to have chicken on it (or cheap grilled farmed salmon either, but that’s another story).

Think about it. Where do all those breasts come from and what happens to the rest of the chicken?

Mass-market chicken breasts are produced on giant factory farms where manure runoff pollutes the water and noxious ammonia fumes pollute the air. The chickens live in such misery and under such stress that they get sick and can even carry bacteria like campylobacter in their flesh and sicken us. The chickens are transferred from the factory farm to the poultry plant, during which they can spread antibiotic-resistant bacteria into surrounding area farms.

Once at the plant, the chickens have lived and been transported under such filthy conditions, that their flesh must be treated with chlorine to ensure they don’t carry salmonella into our kitchens. The workers who process these chickens are typically undocumented immigrants or other people with little political or economic power. They are exposed to the chlorine and filth during the dirty, dangerous jobs they perform. The chickens must be killed, hung, and hand-deboned under freezing and slippery conditions. Poultry plant work is one of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. Serious lacerations and repetitive motion injuries are common. Read this short account of a typical day for a poultry plant worker. If you can stand it, read the entire series in the Charlotte Observer. After the chicken is separated into breasts, legs, and thighs for our consumption, the leftover parts are mechanically separated to produce goodies like chicken tenders and those fast food restaurant chicken sandwiches. Don’t click on that link if you consider such foods to be one of your staple diet items.

So what’s the solution to mass-market, factory farmed chicken breasts? I’ll propose a few.

1. Eat less meat overall. For low on the food chain eating tips, read this post. For a realistic look at how much protein a body needs, check this out. For great tofu-less ideas here are 7 Delicious Meat Alternatives to help you discover new ways to cook.

2. Eat meat consciously. Remember you are eating an animal. Respect and honor that fact however you think is best.

3. Treat all meat as a special occasion food and buy the better stuff produced by small family farms. It will be more expensive but it tastes better too.

4. If you aren’t yet ready to lower your consumption, look to one of the humanely certified choices on the market.

5. Eat the whole animal. Seriously, head to tail eating and butchery are top trends. Cutting up your own steer might not be on your list of things to do before you die, but certainly we can all manage to cook a whole chicken every now and then.

Why? It’s more economical, it bypasses some of the processing issues with poultry, and it reminds you that you’re eating an animal. Plus, trust me, there is so much more flavor in a whole chicken than there is in a boneless, skinless piece of chicken flesh. Once you’ve cooked your whole chicken you can easily transform the shredded meat into salads, soups, enchiladas, tacos, sandwiches, or any number of other delightful dishes.

3 Great Ways to Cook a Whole Chicken:

1. Roast It: Remove any giblets and neck from cavity. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Dry the chicken and sprinkle it with salt and pepper, inside and out. If you want (but it’s not required) stuff the cavity with 2 lemons that you’ve poked with a fork in a few places, and/or a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme, and/or a couple cloves of garlic. Put the chicken in a roasting pan, breast down. Roast for about 30 minutes. Turn the chicken over, increase heat to 400 degrees and continue to roast for an additional 30 minutes or so. The chicken is done when the juices run clear from the cavity when the chicken is tipped and also from the thickest part of the thigh when you poke it with a sharp knife.*

2. Poach It: This is hands-down my favorite and the easiest way to cook a whole chicken. It’s a common whole chicken cooking method in both Chinese and Mexican cooking. Simply change up the aromatics you use to match the cuisine. The best thing about this method is that it yields a free soup! Remove any giblets and neck from cavity. Put a whole chicken in a large stockpot. Pour in cold water to cover, add onion, garlic, cilantro sprigs, whole peppercorns, salt, a bay leaf, and whole cumin seeds and Mexican oregano (both optional). Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, lower heat to medium low. Simmer, partially covered, for 15 or 20 minutes. Turn off heat, cover and let sit, undisturbed for 1 hour. Strain and reserve broth for soup. For a different flavor profile, you might add ginger, garlic, green onions, and celery. Get creative!

3. Slow Cook It: Remove any giblets and neck from cavity. Rub the chicken with salt and/or pepper or a spice rub of your choice. Put the chicken in a slow cooker large enough to contain it. Add a chopped onion, a rib of celery, cut up, a couple of smashed whole garlic cloves, and some sprigs of fresh herbs (all optional except the salt and pepper) Add about a cup of water, cover, and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

*This is a variation of Marcella Hazan’s famous chicken with 2 lemons.

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: CALM Action

The post The Green Plate: Down with Factory Chicken Flesh appeared first on EcoSalon.

Imagine this: You’re having a normal day until you gradually notice a little sore throat and begin to feel a tad feverish. You assume you must have the flu. You go to bed and rest. The next day, you can barely breathe, and you rush to the hospital. Things go quickly downhill and soon, you’re trying to write down your last wishes – your body riddled with an aggressive infection – while the doctors put you in a coma to save your life. You may or may not make it. Sounds like something out of a made-for-TV script, right?

Now consider: The U.S death rate from the staph infection MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) surpassed the death rate from AIDS way back in 2005.

And MSRA is just one of the antibiotic resistant diseases that can infect people. Others include food-borne bacteria such as e-coli, salmonella, and still others that are associated with poverty and crowding, such as tuberculosis and typhoid.

These “superbugs” I’m concerned with today are the ones associated with food and farms and – though the drug industry and some farmers won’t agree – the evidence is overwhelming that they are at least partially a result of dosing farm animals with subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics added to their feed.

I used to think this was done to keep the animals healthy. And that’s part of it. But the reason it’s necessary is because most farm animals live in such crowded, filthy conditions. What I didn’t know until recently is that farmers also administer antibiotics to help the animals grow twice as fast. This boosts production and their bottom line.

In fact, according to Pew, up to 70 percent of all antibiotics consumed in the U.S. are given to healthy farm animals, not people.

(note: the above statistic was found on the Pew website but it is actually from the Union of Concerned Scientists from a 2001 report titled Hogging It! Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock, Mellon, Margaret, Charles Benbrook & Karen Lutz Benbrook, Cambridge Mass)

The problem with these practices, aside from the harm done to the animals themselves who have to live under such conditions, is that these superbugs, which at first only occurred in hospitals, have been unleashed on the community at large.

It used to be that MSRA was commonly found only in hospitals and nursing homes, but recently, another type of MRSA has occurred among otherwise healthy people in the wider community. This form, community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, is responsible for serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a dangerous form of pneumonia.

Though MSRA can be related to farming, it isn’t a food-borne illness. But salmonella and e-coli both are, and today there more aggressive forms than in the past, making these diseases more harmful. Both can be caused by poor farming practices, as can their drug resistant mutations.

There have been multiple studies, farm surveys and stories that make the link between antibiotic use on farms and increases in drug-resistant diseases look increasingly apparent, including in the Academy Award nominated documentary Food Inc. It’s only been recently that the mainstream media has acknowledged the link between animal husbandry and the rise of “superbugs.”

Katie Couric took on the story last month for CBS News. Bravely slogging through pig farms (while remaining perfectly groomed), interviewing farmers and victims of drug resistant staph who worked on farms or lived in farm families, she presented problem clearly: These bugs are being spread through air, water and food. We know our food contains e-coli and salmonella, and MSRA has also been found in our meat supply. Nobody knows how prevalent it is because, as Couric said, “A very small amount is actually tested for MSRA.”

Couric also reported that the exact same drugs used to treat human disease are also used on animals. Her piece also presented Denmark’s experiment with administering antibiotics only when the animals actually become sick and interviewed farmers in the US who don’t use antibiotics as a regular practice.

One poultry farmer admitted that he’d been using them so long “they didn’t work well anyway anymore.”

He also said his Pennsylvania poultry farms are more profitable than when he used antibiotics and the cost to consumers was only about 20 cents per pound higher.

Though the prevalence of these diseases may be new to many Americans, the problem of antibiotic use on farms has been well understood by the science community for a long time. Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have done numerous studies. In one, they collected flies near 8 poultry farms and then collected samples of poultry litter (a mix of manure and bedding materials) from three large-scale, conventional poultry operations in that same area. Both the poultry litter and the flies were found to harbor antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. When you think about the flies buzzing around the casserole dishes at your next get together this information lends new meaning to the word “potluck,” doesn’t it?

In another Johns Hopkins study, we learn that simply being in a car driving behind open-crate poultry trucks may expose you to harmful, drug-resistant strains of bacteria. Who knew rural life could be so dangerous?

But wait, there’s more: Barry Estabrook (formerly of Gourmet) reports on his blog, Politics of the Plate, that a new study has found low levels of antibiotics (such as those administered on farms) actually create free radicals in the bacteria, leading to a supercharged mutation rate, resulting in a heavily populated “zoo of mutants.” Good grief.

What can you do? There is a bill in Congress right now called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. Contact your representatives and ask them to support it.

Take it further, though: stop buying what we are being sold. There are other options out there made by producers doing the right thing. Support them by looking for meat and dairy labeled antibiotic-free.

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: James Jordan

The post Rise of the Superbugs appeared first on EcoSalon.

I can’t quite begin to imagine what the laboratory flesh created by scientists last month might taste like, but petri pork may be hitting the breakfast table sooner than you know.

Nobody knows what it tastes like because the scientists who created this delicacy are not actually allowed to eat their creations, but if their descriptions of the texture are any indication of deliciousness, I think I’ll go vegan.

The meat was described as being “sticky” with a texture that one scientist likened to “wasted muscle tissue.” Yum.

Maybe it’s no accident that the research was partially funded by a sausage company. Most of the cheap flesh in sausages, processed foods and fast food relies on carefully calibrated, chemically produced flavors and textures to make it palatable anyway, so I suppose there might be a market for this sticky sinew.

Feel sick yet? Try this: To make the test tube pork, cells are extracted from a live pig and then bathed in a nourishing “broth” of blood products made from animal fetuses. The cells are encouraged to grow and multiply until eventually they turn into a substance like animal flesh. Clearly, using ground-up animal fetuses to produce lab meat is ethically questionable, but scientists say they are working on a way to make a synthetic “broth” free of animal products. Would this still cause an ethical conundrum?

“I actually haven’t heard much protesting on the ethics and I don’t see a problem in that area. After all, they’re simply growing muscle cells, I believe, which are not sentient and thus can’t feel deprived of having much of an existence,” says Bonnie Powell, inventor of the word Ethicurean and Founder of the blog by that name. “Given [what] we subject animals to in order to grow replacement organs, serve as pharmaceutical factories for our drugs, and of course routinely abuse them for food, this seems like a relatively mild use.”

“We already treat animals as protein widgets to be processed by the Meatrix factory for our needs. In-vitro meat is simply the refinement of this process – minus the animal pain and suffering. Still, I am philosophically (if not morally) opposed to producing more of our food in the lab, divorced from nature and the complex, holistic system by which nature produces nutrients, which we still don’t fully understand.”

From an environmental and anti-cruelty point of view, the argument for test tube meat can be made to sound compelling. Livestock production is a waste of resources due to the inherent inefficiency of converting plants to animal flesh. Ruminant animals also produce copious amounts of methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. PETA has come out in favor of the idea of in-vitro meat production as a way to alleviate animal suffering and address some of the environmental issues with livestock production.

Cruelty is one of the reasons conscious meat eaters avoid factory-farmed meat in favor of meat produced on a smaller, more responsible scale and purchased through buying clubs, farmers’ markets, and meat CSAs. As the founder of a couple of well known Bay Area meat CSAs, I asked Powell if she thought any of her CSA members and would be receptive to laboratory produced meat in the future.

“While a significant portion of our CSA members are ex-vegetarians like me, looking for an ethical source of meat, I don’t see this being much of a draw for them. The humane animal treatment is but one appealing aspect of a small-farm meat CSA,” says Powell. “The others are a desire to see this kind of ecologically responsible farming prosper again, keep money in the community, and because this kind of meat tastes so different – so much more animal in essence than factory meat. In my experience CSA members tend to be people who like cooking and who like real food – which in-vitro meat is just simply not, any more than textured soy protein flavored to taste like teriyaki chicken is.”

So maybe the issue really will come down to taste.

“I cannot imagine test tube meat ever going mainstream because the ‘yuck’ factor is huge. Also, the process of producing anything in vitro is incredibly capital and resource intensive,” says Nicolette Hahn Niman, Marin County, Calif. rancher, lawyer, and author of Righteous Pork Chop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. “Just think about all the resources that go into in vitro labs.

Niman (you’ve no doubt heard of Niman Ranch meats) reflected further.

“The other thing is this: I don’t think it’s even desirable to entirely get rid of animals in farming – reduce yes, eliminate no. The best farming mimics the complexity of nature, where plants and animals function together,” says Niman. “That’s the kind of farming humans should be striving for, rather than wasting precious resources on things like in vitro meats.”

Assuming the financial and textural concerns are resolved, my worry is that test tube meat won’t even have to go mainstream.

Perhaps food producers will simply incorporate it into processed and frozen foods without government or consumer oversight or labeling. After all, that’s the reason around 70% of the processed foods on our grocery shelves contain unlabeled GMOs. Why go to the trouble of selling something if all you have to do is invent it and grease a few regulatory palms to make sure it finds a market?

What do you think? If test tube meat was made tasty, affordable, and cruelty free, would you willingly buy it? PETA, not surprisingly, are welcoming the possibility.

Image: Mike Licht

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.

The post Test Tube Steak: It’s What’s for Dinner appeared first on EcoSalon.