With Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) protesting Lark over Foie Gras, and the (expected) backlash, I feel like it’s time to have a pro-animal rights post. Not pro-NARN, mind you. I want to praise the animal rights activists who created, implemented and supported the research animal use regulations.
Rather than go after an outright ban on animal use in labs, these effective activists came up with a regulatory structure—a set of rules an overwhelming majority of people could agree with. Animals used in laboratory research have strict housing and care guidelines—requiring a vet checking over things, no overcrowding, fresh food and water and as disease-free of an environment as can be created. All animal research must be pre-approved by a panel—including vets, fellow scientists and citizens (i.e. animal rights activists.) Everyone working with animals must undergo extensive training—renewed at least once a year. And so on. Animals used in a lab are treated better than children in the care of most States.
It was an adult path to take—recognizing the ethical interest in both developing new cures or health knowledge through scientific study of animals and the preventing cruelty to animals. This path took much work—time spent talking to vets, scientists, reading and writing laws, lobbying politicians and building public support. It’s much less fun than meeting up with your buddies for a Friday night protest outside a small business.
It worked in almost every way possible. By forcing all labs to engage in the highest level of animal care practices, animal research became more expensive and onerous. As a result, the decision to start an animal study is a profoundly serious one in labs—with every alternative exhausted. Fewer animals are used, and those used are cared for in the best and kindest way possible. Labs that violate these rules are subject to the severest penalties—including a total loss of funding.
Imagine what the twenty or so NARN activists—currently wasting hours with childish comments on SLOG, or purposeless protests of a single restaurant serving a single dish—could do if they switched tactics. Most of us—omnivores and vegetarians (such as myself)—are totally and completely disgusted with the practices of industrial farms: the use of hormones and antibiotics, the use of disgusting industrially rendered and non-physiological feeds, the overpacking, the mutilation to allow overpacking into cages, the total lack of concern about disease and health. The details coming out about this month’s salmonella outbreak could be applied to outbreaks in hamburgers, berries, or a dozen of other abusively produced foods.
How about NARN—these same small handful of people—sitting down with vets and food safety experts and drafting up a set of realistic regulations for industrial farms: no clipping of beaks, no overcrowding of animals, no pro-acidic diets for ruminants, no autophagy—for example. Demand that any industrial farm directly or indirectly receiving federal subsidy follow these guidelines. Go after people’s hearts through their stomachs.
It would take work—long boring hours reading scientific documents, writing proposals, lobbying politicians, and educating the public. More importantly, it’ll take an adult recognition that while you might not want to eat meat, others will. If you are serious about the betterment of animals—instead of whining about silly bans—focus on small, broadly agreeable changes in how food animals are treated. By crafting regulations that both vegans and omnivores can agree upon, you’ll genuinely help animals and actually advance your cause in a meaningful way.
It worked for your fellow activists concerned about laboratory animals. You should learn from them, NARN.
YGBKM @ 47,
Modern factory farming, along with government subsidies, have created the current model where cheap (and very unhealthy) meals exist. Besides e coli and other problems that didn’t exist in food til recently, these unhealthy meals are the cause of our ballooning rate of obesity and all the health problems related to it. (Ever wonder why so many poor people are fat?)
I’m guessing that the compassion for the poor you express is disingenuous, and I know that your understanding of the problem is nonexistent. Read up on this before you comment.
Meanwhile, as NARN unfairly targets one chef, true horrors are occurring around the globe.
Hey NARN, try this on for size, a story from the BBC on those who clean the sewers of New Delhi:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fr…
Picketing one local chef is the singularly least effective way you can come up with to achieve your goal – in fact, your tactics have increased consumption at Lark.
There are atrocities occurring on an unimaginable scale around the globe – foie gras production doesn’t even rate.
How about helping to unionize slaughterhouse workers in the deep south, who are injured and maimed at an alarming rate, while working for minimum wage? Successfully unionizing those workers would do far more to slow industrial farming practices than your little self indulgent snit in front of Lark.
@36, We tried that. It resulted in mad cow disease and bird flu.
Another lecture by a Stranger writer not involved with activism telling activists to grow up. Thanks, Science! That’s really helpful.
Why is it people at the Stranger seem so daft when it comes to the role that activists play in our society? Do you think that social change comes from the top down? Without street heat, so to speak, do you think we would even have these “adult” regulations of animal testing? And do you think, once you pass a law, that it just enforces itself, and that the need for activism disappears and the only thing left to do is become a bureaucrat?
It is misleading and cynical to use a truism– that activists need to work with people in power and not completely alienate the people whose behavior they seek to reform– to then basically argue that there is no need for activism.
@51- I too am very concerned about obesity among the poor. (As a top bracket tax payer their enlarged livers wind up costing me a hell of a lot more that Foie Gras.) However, I am more inclined to lay blame for that problem at the feet of cheap government subsidized corn syrup than cheap poultry.
And don’t tell me when I’m being disingenuous. You know nothing about me.
Lizzie, have you ever actually been to a farm where ducks and/or geese are raised for foie gras? It’s not torturous at all. The animals are very well treated and they coming running for the feeding. You really are much better spending your time, as Jonathan suggests, focusing on the cruelty of factory farming. The foie birds are plenty happy.
Our Action Plan: Once Foie Gras is no longer served at Lark, we’ll move on to another restaurant, then another, and eventually nobody anywhere will ever be cruel to animals again.
56, treatment of animals at Sonoma Foie Gras (which supplies Lark) is one of the reasons for the statewide California ban on production and sale of force-fed foie gras taking effect in 2012. Happy geese? Not so much.
But what about the people who rely on inexpensive mass produced food to feed their families?… I don’t know what a Happy Meal costs these days, but I bet its a lot less expensive than the equivalent allowance of protein under your proposed production methods.
Yes, but we really don’t need much protein. USRDA is less than a gram/day/kg. That’s 6 ounces of meat for an average individual (less than a half pound). No one will be unhealthy if they can’t eat a Happy Meal for every meal.
protesting fancy foo foo restaurants because they use foie gras is a hell of a lot easier than picketing/persuading hard core bikers not to wear black leather jackets.
@ 56,
I alluded to cheap corn syrup in my post. You must have missed that. Anyway, cheap corn syrup can be found in happy meals (the burger and fries, not just the soda) and many other cheap foods you wouldn’t think of, so while you’re sights are set on the right culprit, you were also (inadvertently) defending it in the 3rd paragraph of your first post. You’d remove the choice of cheap food more effectively than anything being proposed here.
@ next gay rights march, the tune will change…multiple posts
Bring something relevant to the argument or fuck off, your condescending tone makes you sound like an ass and your illogical comparisons are tired.
@60
scary tyler moore, how many cows would be saved if everyone quit wearing leather?
jesus christ, do we need Foie Gras? i like my pork, but i’m sure as hell ain’t going to eat live baby butter injected pig eyeballs just because they “tasted soooo good.” And I think standing outside of a restraunt to:
“focus on small, broadly agreeable changes in how food animals are treated.” …like don’t serve Foie Gras because these animals aren’t treated well…
would eventually work. this is how i choose to do it, and not stay in the background wispering to the live baby butter injected pig eyeball producer on why he should change and quit the business.
@63 more than if everyone quit eat foie gras.
To whomever dared an animal activist to compare the struggle for animal rights with rights for african americans, homosexuals, holocaust victims etc. you should probably do a little more research:
Charles Patterson: A jewish vegan. Author of Eternal Treblinka
Coretta Scott King: Ethical vegan. Wife of Martin Luther King Junior. “King called her adoption of a vegan diet in 1995 a blessing. Her son, Dexter, had been vegan since 1988, saying that an appreciation for animal rights is the “logical extension” of his father’s philosophy of nonviolence.”
Vegans of Color: Network of non-white vegans, cataloging and discussing the implications of animal abuse and the struggle for the rights of all living beings.
Nathan Runkle: Founder of Mercy for Animals, an animal rights based group with 25,000 members nationwide. Brutally attacked for his homosexuality.
Not only are these people not offended by the relationship between human and non-human oppression, but they have made it their life’s work to help others understand that the same ideology and prejudice that allows humans to abuse one another is what allows us to commodify animals for our own selfish desires.
infrequent, quitting foie gras and leather would both save an equal number of cows: zero.
Golob, just wondering, did you actually speak with anyone at NARN? It seems like there’s a whole lot of judgment going on from the Stranger – telling NARN what they should and shouldn’t protest, how to protest, what other issues they should be focused on, etc. And yet I haven’t seen that a single Stranger writer has actually had any sort of discussion or conversation (face-to-face, phone, email) of any sort with anyone from NARN. It seems like poor journalistic practice to condemn or criticize a group without actually learning anything about them first.
@66. You forgot Hitler.
Hitler’s vegetarianism was a hoax propogated by his team of image consultants to make him more likeable. That shit was de-bunked years ago. Nice try though.
@61-
Your only “allusion” was to “modern factory farming, along with government subsidies”.
Even the most modern factory farm does not grow Corn Syrup. It is a processed product manufactured by refiners. As such, I would not count Corn Syrup as food but a chemical additive and on that basis I am completely in favor of criminalizing.
Not because its cruel to the defenseless corn. Or even because its cruel to the uneducated and/or poor (and you would have to be uneducated to eat anything with it in it). But because it is an unnecessarily costly burden on society (The obese poor are expensive to maintain and provide little or no return on that investment) and the void its absence would leave can be easily filled by a healthier and equally equivalent ingredient (Sugar Cane) that could be equally cheap and available if Big Corn’s subsidies were rerouted to its producers.
Unfortunately you can’t grow Sugar Cane in Iowa and Hawaii is not a caucus state.
The example of the Happy Meal was not meant to describe the ideal meal of the poor, McDonald’s was meant to represent a dinning out option that is as accessible to the poor as somewhere like Lark is to myself.
But I would venture to guess that pound for pound Foie Gras and Happy Meals are comparably unhealthy (in cholesterol content alone) and as such completely agree that they should be consumed only in moderation.
“Not only are these people not offended”
3 people out of 6 billion on the planet. I’m impressed.
” to make him more likeable. “
Yes, apparently being a fascist vegetarian makes you more likeable to fascists.
@72: yes, because we all know that it’s the majority opinion which is most often correct and just.
“majority opinion which is most often correct and just.”
Being an omnivore is not an opinion, it’s our nature. It’s how we evolved. Being a vegetarian, however, is just an opinion, like being a Jesus freak.
What @68 said.
66
you forgot Rush Limbaugh
Freebie: You are correct. Humans evolved to include some animal products in our diets. What seems to be missing from this discussion though is the reality that, much like apes (you remember them right? closest living relatives and all that?), our diets have historically consisted of almost exclusively fruits and vegetables with a small amount of foraged meat once or twice a month.
Does it really seem like a coincidence to you that eating as much meat as we do, colon cancer is so prevalent? Does it seem like a concidence that we regularly consume the mammary secretions of pregnant animals and have seen a near-epidemic rise in breast and ovarian cancer, not to mention early onset of menses in young girls?
Also, humans are the only animals ever to continue drinking milk past infancy. Does that seem natural to you? Name a single other species that has seen the disease rate that we have. Do you think evolution is really on our side right now??
@78. I agree No, Really, eating too much of anything is bad for you but thanks, I will continue to eat meat and fois gras in moderation as both grandma (94) and grandpa (97) have for decades.
FYI most causes of cancer are genetic, not dietary.
hey stupid fucking credulous hack, be honest and use your real slog name, bellevue avenue.
This could go on forever.
The last thing I will say is that history has revealed that our oppression of non-whites, non-christians, non-heterosexuals, non-males, and so forth is essentially bankrupt from an ethical perspective. Recognizing the right for non-humans to preserve bodily integrity as so many humans have asked from each other will be the next major hurdle for us to climb as a civilized and reasoned species.
lol @ “real slog name”
@ 71, that quote was where my allusion to corn syrup was. Corn subsidies may well be the number one reason modern industrial food production is the way it is today.
I’m not talking about the animal rights angle; I’m actually in full agreement with your conclusions about NARN’s motivations and aims. (I am opposed to cruelty to animals and most factory ranching practices as a result, but don’t consider the act of taking their lives and eating them “cruel.”)
The Happy Meal comment was more apt than you seem to think, however. Subsidies for corn have resulted in corn syrup being used in almost every processed food, and processed foods are all that the poor can afford. It also has resulted in more naturally produced foods to see their costs become artificially high. “Organic” and “cruelty free” ought to be affordable, but in our free-market-rules, let’s-make-a-maximum-profit culture it is not.
” our oppression of non-whites, non-christians, non-heterosexuals, non-males, and so forth is essentially bankrupt from an ethical perspective. “
You know lots of non-whites oppress other people and animals, too right?
Ever met been to China or Korea? I’ll tell you from first hand knowledge, dog is greasy and gamey, and not really my taste. The mink whale I had in Shibuya? Oily, not to my taste. Snake in Cambodia? Yikes, no seconds please. Crocodile I ate in Laos? Tasted like chicken. The dolphin I hate in Lamalera Indonesia? Superb! Of course, you probably want to impose your white, American values on these people too.
And you realize we’re living longer and healthier lives now as humans than in any time in human history right?
it’s not my fault repeating that biker canard makes you look foolish, scary tyler moore. you could have thought about it instead of just saying it. funny how certain gay rights activists get respect for taking the low hanging fruit and marching forward one tiny step at a time but when animal rights activists start with the low hanging fruit certain silly people want to mock them for it.
“The last thing I will say is that history has revealed that our oppression of non-whites, non-christians, non-heterosexuals, non-males, and so forth is essentially bankrupt from an ethical perspective. Recognizing the right for non-humans to preserve bodily integrity as so many humans have asked from each other will be the next major hurdle for us to climb as a civilized and reasoned species.”
It’s a crying shame you’ll be worm food before that even comes close to happening.
Jonathan – are you high or just really, really, really stupid? Seriously, those regulations you praise have done NOTHING to help animals in labs. Have you ever been to a IAUAC meeting at the UW? They meet every third Thursday at the UW – check out the NARN website for details. Do you have even the slighest CLUE what goes on at the University of Washington Primate Lab? Horrible, horrible things that sometimes comply with these fabulous regulations you talk about and sometimes don’t. NOTHING ever happens to the researchers that break the rules. NOTHING. The USDA comes in there and gives them an “all good here”, and then a private, animal experimentation loving organization comes in and says “wow – things are fucked here, your cages are dirty, you have diseased animals housed next to “healthy” ones the very next week. Wow – I’m aghast that you think these regulations work. Clearly you have done no research whatsoever. A simple google search would have done the trick, really
@ 78
Where are you getting your information?? You make it sound as if the entire human population thru out history only eats a miniscule amount of meat and thats simply not true, thru out history or now. Look at the inuit population that historically has thrived on eating whale, or any of the other indigenious peoples of N America. Yes sustained nutrients are provided by fruits veggies and berries but only sustained not maintained. Only in today’s supplement happy ecosystem buffered w grocers able to get a variety of veggies and fruits in year round are veggitarians getting their required nutrients.
It can also be historically shown that puberty in both males and females has gotten earlier and later depending on the time frame in question, putting other factors like access to food, stress, quality of life and such as mitigating factors pointing to a cause for the shift…not just an utter puss diet. (milk is gross)
no really.
So No REally, another vegan who finds drinking milk offensive but late term, partial birth, brain evacuation abortions are just splendid.
How’s that degree from Evergreen State helping you out there in the job market?
vegetarians don’t need supplements, drone
@75 oh shit! i totally forgot that it’s our evolutionary legacy to eat fatty liver. every since hunter gatherer days when the men of the tribe would go hunt elk and the women would pick berries, fatty liver and butter off of the trees in the nearby wood.
the fact that human beings are capable of digesting meat doesn’t imply that any non human animal on the planet lacks a central nervous system or natural lifestyle of it’s own.
oh wait now some armchair biologist will point out that our canine teeth are sharp and that means we eat meat and then somebody else will say that gorillas are vegetarians and they have pointy teeth. i forget what comes after that.
did you know that one of the earliest legendary trolls was when someone in an artificial intelligence newsgroup got marvin minsky into this same meat/veggie debate?
Two points:
First, with respect to the Animal Welfare Act and its associated regulations, they are largely ineffectual. Although they regulate cage size and provide modest welfare improvements, they have a very small effect on the state of animal experimentation in the U.S.. For example, they do not prohibit any type of experiment, no matter how painful, how speculative the outcome, or how tangential the benefits to human health. They also exempt mice, rats, and birds, which are the subjects of the vast majority of animal experimentation. The the function of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) that approve experimentation protocols is largely to rubber stamp research proposals. I encourage anyone who thinks that the AWA has improved animals’ lives to read protocols that have been approved by the University of Washington’s IACUC and the documents about animal experimentation that animal rights groups have obtained from the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act to understand the magnitude of suffering that is permitted under the AWA.
Second, Mr. Golob’s accusations that NARN does nothing more than engage in protests and that we don’t have the patience for arcane research are simply untrue. In fact, NARN is the plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the exemptions to the state animal cruelty statute for routine practices in animal agriculture. NARN has also challenged cruel treatment of animals under complex environmental laws. As an attorney on NARN’s board, I have worked on litigation under the Animal Welfare Act, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and other animal welfare legislation. Although we do engage in protests when we believe that they will be an effective avenue, our twenty-two year history of litigation, legislative efforts, educational events, and outreach belies Mr. Golob’s claims that protesting is all we do.
Christ, how much does money does Lark spend to advertise with you guys? Bethany’s logically-challenged posts weren’t enough, so you brought out a token “vegetarian” serious person who decides Narn are simply little children who really know no better and deserve nothing but ridicule. I think child or childish or other variation appears several times in this post.
For such a presumably silly and ineffectual action by NARN, it sure seems to have upset the Stranger staff to no end. And you do know that NARN’s position re: fois gras is not compatible with political dialogue or the oh-so-adult crafting of regulations, don’t you, Mr. Golob?
Just come out and say what you want to directly: direct action against restaurants that serve foie gras is counterproductive to the vegetarian cause. It’s a debatable assertion, and intelligent, well-meaning people may agree or disagree… but at least you won’t come out looking like a condescending asshole with inane suggestions about crafting regulations that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Bethany’s argument in a nutshell: Rick Steves and Anthony Bourdain say foie gras is not cruel. End of argument. That’s all she wrote. See ya. Buh-bye. No research, no acknowledgment that countries and states are banning foie gras production because of the cruelty involved; no research or outside opinions other than those that support her argument; nada, zip, zero. Anthony Bourdain says it’s okay, so it’s okay.
OH – she did quote the web site of Sonoma Foie Gras, which claims that its foie gras production is humane. Not once, but twice. Because we all know that a producer would never, ever, ever fib or lie or distort the truth about their products or practices.
Bethany, if you believe that, I’ve got a peanut factory in Blakely, Georgia to sell you.
What’s even funnier is that her colleagues, the very ones who invented “Stupid Fucking Credulous Hack”, and who lob that term at any reporter they think is guilty of one-sided hack reporting, swarm around her in support. Isn’t that precious? They can create all kinds of standards for others, but they themselves are above such petty conventions. I’m starting to see how things work over at the Stranger. It’s kinda pathetic, because there used to be some smart people running the show.
@93 Sorry, you are incorrect.
No, mice, rats, and birds are NOT the most-used laboratory animals. Fruit flies and roundworms make up over 99.9999% of all lab animals. I grow more roundworms on a single Petri dish than there are mice in our entire animal facility. But worms and flies aren’t cute, (thank goodness), so nobody is protesting their use.
And I can’t speak for UW, but our IACUC does turn down some proposed experiments, and all NIH grant panels I’ve been on do look at how to use the minimum number of mice required to make an experiment work.
Of course, the number of mice that all research uses is dwarfed by the number that can be legally tortured or killed by householders who find them in the kitchen, where there are no regulations at all on how you can trap, poison, torture, or squash them. But I haven’t heard of anyone proposing to outlaw killing rodents or insects in those situations. At least in the university, you have to justify the experiments as having potential benefit to human health.
Assuming that researchers go into it out of a desire to torture animals is as insulting as assuming that all animal rights groups value cute furry animals above human lives. It’s easy to point out disgraceful examples on both sides, but dehumanizing the “enemy” is inconsistent with the goal on both sides, to make the world more humane, don’t you think?
#96, as someone who has read the minutes from the IACUC meetings at the UW, I can tell you that they don’t have to try very hard to justify the scientific merit of their experiments. Dr Fuchs for example, sticks metal coils into the eyes of monkeys. He has been doing this for 30 years. It’s bad enough that he has been doing this for 30 years, but he doesn’t even have the decency to properly sanitize the coils. Is this good laboratory practice? I don’t think so. And even though I think that what Dr Fuchs does is horrible, I don’t think Dr Fuchs or his colleagues are evil people. I can’t. I truly think that they believe that what they are doing is justified. Why? Because in order to work towards a better world, I have to believe that people are capable of doing good, and that animal researchers aren’t monsters. We need to find better ways of conducting scientific experiments because regardless of how you feel about animals they make very poor research models. I’ve been working in the science industry for awhile and I have lost count of the number of scientists that say “yeah, mice, dogs and monkeys, aren’t good models, they produce results that aren’t well extrapolated to humans, but what else are you going to do?” Which face it, is a very very lame excuse. Science should be about finding that better way, not sticking with an old method because you are too lazy to work on finding alternatives. If we can find alternatives to fetal stem cells, we can find alternatives to using animals to test the toxicology of that new heartburn medication.
Right, Golob. It’s fool-proof system they’ve got worked out there.
http://www.komonews.com/news/15988507.ht…
Wow, yet another Slog post about how ineffective NARN is. Strange how much NARN talk there is, about how ridiculous they are and misguided….seems like you wouldn’t take the time to take them seriously with all this attention.
It’s like you are validating what we are doing.
Thank you.
the ban on steel-jaw leghold traps.
man, that caused a huge financial catastrophe at the Acme Corporation. Next to go are the anvils, I reckon.