vegetarianism
milhayser | September 23, 2015You can almost hear the sound of PZ Myers' palm hitting his face as "a couple of vegetarian philosophers with no knowledge of biology" urge humanity to end predation worldwide—so that no more zebras have to suffer at the fangs of a lion, and no more mice at the talons of an owl. Their plea on behalf of prey species, inspired by the model culling of Cecil the lion, calls carnivory simply 'unnecessary;' PZ writes, "it’s as if they are completely unaware of the fact that predation maintains and increases biodiversity, or that there’s more to wildlife than mammals and birds, or that life is a…
gregladen | August 1, 2013Emily S Cassidy, Paul C West, James S Gerber and Jonathan A Foley, from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, have produced a very important study for IOP Science Environmental Research Letters. (This is OpenAccess so you can access it openly!) You know Emily as one of the participants in our CONvergence panel on food last July. The research Emily and her colleagues do is some of the most important work being done right now, because it is about the food supply.
The bottom line is this: When we look at our food supply, we find that a large amount of what is grown in…
denialism | May 7, 2012The New York Times has the results from when they posed the question, "is it ethical to eat meat?" The finalists, with one or two exceptions, are quite interesting. Certainly, when it comes to opinions about food, everyone has one, and the judges emphasized the variety of the opinions, and interestingly, the near unanimous belief that CAFOs are unethical (I'm with Pollan on that one). The only other topic at the NYT which seems to generate as much diversity of opinion, and frankly insane commentary, is child-rearing. But what I liked most about these finalists were the three writers who…
grrlscientist | May 19, 2010tags: Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian, environment, global warming, meat, vegetarianism, ethics, climate change, Graham Hill, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video
We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals -- but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion ...
The video following the TEDTalk is more interesting than the actual talk itself.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and…
sastyk | January 25, 2010One of the roles our farm has, rather unintentionally, taken on is as sanctuary (mostly temporary) for the unwanted roosters of friends and loved ones. First, there was Cora, who turned out to be Corey - and not permissable under town regulations. My step-mother relocated him here and found Eunice, a hen, and Corey lived a happy life on our farm for about a year, until he got aggressive and started attacking my children. After he jumped Asher, then two, as Asher puts (still with some satisfaction), "We ate Corey." There are far too many gentle animals in the world you can't keep to hold…