“The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”

(Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of The Moral Lives of Animals through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.)

What is the nature of morality? Which behaviors do we consider “moral,” and why? Are humans the only animals to have developed a sense of morality and rules for moral living? Dale Peterson’s The Moral Lives of Animals (2011) attempts to answer these questions, with mixed results. While he presents ample evidence which suggests that nonhuman animals have literally evolved their own moralities, in so doing Peterson demonstrates how terribly disrespectful, cruel, and (dare I say!) immoral human treatment of other animals and the planet we all call home remains, even after thousands of years of evolution and revolution.

When you think of “morals” and “morality,” most likely terms such as “just,” “kind,” “compassionate,” and “fair” come to mind. And ideally, what is considered “moral” in any given society is that which is just, and kind, and fair. However, “morality” differs in time and space; morals are relative and context-specific. Morality (or what we consider “moral”) is not fixed, but changes over time and across cultures. Those behaviors and institutions that were thought “moral” in colonial America, for example, are quite different than what we consider moral today. So too does morality vary across species: elephants, bonobos, mice, chickadees – all have their own moral rules, codified not in language (as human moral codes often are), but written into the DNA of the species by evolution. Sometimes these moral principles resemble our own; other times they do not.* This is the crux of the author’s theory of animal morality.

Peterson looks at animal morality in seven areas of animal life: authority, violence, sex, possession, communication, cooperation and kindness. The first five he groups together to form a system of “rules morality” – i.e., something is moral if it follows the rules – while cooperation and kindness together form “attachments morality” – i.e., compassionate behaviors, or those that encourage attachments among social animals, are moral. He presents a wealth of evidence – anecdotal, laboratory studies, field research – attesting to morality in nonhumans. Since each of these seven areas could easily command its own book, the sections are necessarily brief – but compelling nonetheless. (Curiously, Peterson barely touches upon rape – even though it could fit into two different chapters.) Primates receive quite a bit of attention (gotta love those sexually liberated, matriarchal bonobos!), as do elephants, hyenas, lions, whales, wolves, various species of birds, dogs – and humans.

It’s this last group that many of my fellow LT reviewers takes issue with, and with good cause. Though I take the title of the book to mean “the moral lives of nonhuman animals” (the omission of “nonhuman” when referring to animals being a nice/nasty linguistic trick that separates “us” from “them”), examples of human morality are introduced quite frequently, usually as a point of reference against which to consider nonhuman morality. Along these lines, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick serves as a framework on which Peterson weaves his own discussion, and passages from the Bible – used to illustrate written human moral codes – abound. As an atheist who Cliff Noted Moby-Dick in high school, I wasn’t thrilled with either device. That said, by the end of the book, I’d come to see the usefulness of Moby-Dick for shaping the structure of Peterson’s book; and, while the endless Biblical excerpts essentially excluded other religions from the text, I suspect that Peterson used them because he expected that Christianity would be the religion with which most of his audience would be most familiar. (Certainly, this seemed true of the author himself.) So I guess you could say that I came around on both points.

But back to the moral lives of nonhuman animals. While human morality isn’t the main focus of the book, Peterson does return to humans time and again – and it’s here that he drops the ball. For instance, while Peterson primarily relies on observational field research to make his case, laboratory research – including vivisection – is also a common element in The Moral Lives of Animals. Peterson describes horrific acts of animal torture in gruesome detail, without so much as hinting at their moral implications. In the chapter on “kindness,” Peterson un-ironically describes an experiment in which “lab” mice were observed physically reacting to another mouse’s pain – deliberately caused by an injection of acetic acid by a human researcher – in an example of “contagious empathy.” (Would that humans would come down with a case of it!) In another study, captive rhesus monkeys chose to forgo food rather than electrically shock a compatriot housed in another “compartment” of their cage. (Here, the scientists could stand to learn a thing or two about compassion from their subjects!) The ethics of such research are never touched, even though the very subject of the book seems to demand it.

On the contrary, Peterson sometimes takes the opposite tack, waxing nostalgic about animal abuse and exploitation. Early on (fittingly, in the chapter on “authority”), he describes how loggers in Myanmar capture and train free-living elephants to use in their industry. The process involves corralling a “wild” herd; isolating the baby (or babies, as the case may be), kicking and screaming, from her family; lashing her to a “cradle,” which is essentially a giant tripod constructed to immobilize her completely; and then withholding food and water until she “breaks.” The aim, says Peterson, is to “demonstrat[e] a radically new power relationship.” In other words, torture the elephant physically and psychologically until she submits completely. Or commits suicide. (Some elephants have stepped on their own trunks, thus cutting off all air flow, rather than comply with their captors.) Of this horrific practice, Peterson writes “It is certainly possible to overromanticize this relationship between a mahout and his elephant.” That such torture can be romanticized at all is a testament to the depths of human cruelty.

And speciesism, which Peterson introduces and dismisses in just two pages.** He cites the species boundary – the heeding of which is part and parcel of “human nature” – as the difference between speciesism and other isms, such as sexism and racism. In Peterson’s view, there’s something fundamentally unique about the human/animal divide that makes it more difficult – impossible, even – to bridge than differences based on gender and race.

But as abolitionists and anti-speciesists argue, the species boundary is no less arbitrary than those based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, dis/ability, or the like. What truly matters is sentience: The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor, “Can they talk?” but rather, “Can they suffer?” If another being is capable of suffering, and suffering is a bad thing, then isn’t it wrong to cause unnecessary suffering?

To use Peterson’s own example: yes, if she must, a human mother will place the life of her baby above that of a laboratory rat – but she’d also place it above that of another human baby. So too will nonhuman mothers. And I know many people who, if pressed, would choose to rescue their own dog and cat friends over a human who they do not know (and particularly a human they do know and do not like. Heck, I’d save a venomous snake over blowhard bigot Rush Limbaugh every day of the week!) But as Peterson himself demonstrates, this preference for one’s own offspring does not negate the ability to feel empathy and exhibit compassion across myriad us/other boundaries. Add in the fact that most animal exploitation – in the Western world, anyhow – is a matter of convenience vs. survival, and Peterson’s argument (for which he offers not a whit of evidence, just conjecture) becomes rather simplistic: the stuff of Defensive Omnivore Bingo.

When asked, most people – and not just vegans and animal rights activists, but also hunters, and ranchers, and your everyday, run of the mill omnivores and pet owners and circus-goers, too – profess to “love animals.” Even as we use them up and spit them out, enslave and exploit them by the billions, we consider ourselves a nation of “animal lovers.” On some level – one founded on nature or nature, it matters not to me – we recognize that it’s a good thing to care about beings other than ourselves … no matter how “other” they may be. And yet, Peterson’s call for “peace” in the parting chapter betrays this value, and in so doing betrays the very animals he himself claims to “love” – humans and nonhumans alike. Rather than calling for the large-scale revolution that the situation demands, Peterson weakly asks that his readers perform small, random, occasional acts of kindness toward the animals with whom we share this planet – you know, when it’s convenient for us.

We might not always seem it, but humans are capable of so much than this.

* This variance in morals – along with ignorance and speciesism – is one reason why it’s difficult for humans to recognize morality in other animals: if a given quality doesn’t match our anthropocentric definition of that quality to a T, then it doesn’t exist. Thus you see humans finding intelligence, emotions and the like only in other humans – and increasingly, primates (our closest ancestors). We simply cannot fathom intelligence that doesn’t look overtly human.

** Incidentally, Peterson also engages in some pernicious, drive-by gender essentialism. As with his lazy dismissal of speciesism, he does his readers no favor by introducing them to a weighty, controversial topic, only to wave it away with a flick of his wrist. I hope his audience researches each subject more fully on their own!

(Crossposted on Amazon and Library Thing.)

Animated gifs, they’re all the rage. Alas, I was lazy and in a hurry and only used four frames for this one, so it’s a bit choppy. But still, animated Stephen! Times two!

The props go to Columbia University Press, which kindly sent me a copy of Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film by Anat Pick, a senior lecturer in film and program leader for film and video: theory and practice at the University of East London. From the book’s back cover:

Exploring the “logic of flesh” and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a “creaturely” approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Elaborating on such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. Through her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.

This looks like an interesting read for those concerned with how portrayals of nonhumans in pop culture – literature, film, television – both reflect and inform societal attitudes and ethics towards our fellow sentient beings. (In other words, me!) If you’d like to learn more, check out the book’s listing on Columbia University Press.

I tried my best to snap a photo of Peedee and/or O-Ren with Creaturely Poetics – mock reading it, or some such other cutesy silliness – but neither was feeling very cooperative. (Too hot!)

That’s okay, though; truth be told, I wasn’t trying that hard anyway. (TOO HOT! Seriously, have I mentioned how hot it’s been lately? We’re looking at a week of 90 degree weather with 70%+ humidity. Ick!)

Probably now is a good time to mention that I recently updated my policy re: gifts for review? Between the books I’ve received through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program and my various blogs, I’ve fallen woefully behind on reviews. (And just as I’d almost caught up!) While all vegan goods (including topical books) will be rewarded with an on-blog shout out, I can’t guarantee reviews of unsolicited items. If in doubt, contact me first. (Hint: edible vegan nomz and clothing are especially welcome and likely to be reviewed quickly, since they’re much more easily consumed than literature. I especially love pizza and ice cream. I’m also totally into hosting contests and giveaways. THINK ABOUT IT!)

That said, my motto when it comes to books is this:

Unhelpful advice frog says: “Hugs stack of unread books beside bed. BUY MORE BOOKS.”
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Hey, I’m only human! Weak and undisciplined and uncharacteristically optimistic when it comes to my ability to read all the 3,000+ books I own and continue to accumulate!

And so this week I also ordered and received a copy of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2011) and published by South End Press. Given my interest in sexism and misogyny as it relates to animal rights and activism – and recent allegations of sexual assault and partner abuse from within the animal advocacy community (see, e.g., Peter Young and Nick Cooney*) – this seems a timely anthology indeed.

Here’s a brief synopsis from the publisher’s website:

The extent of the violence affecting our communities is staggering. Nearly one in three women in the United States will experience intimate violence in her lifetime. And while intimate violence affects relationships across the sexuality and gender spectrums, the likelihood of isolation and irreparable harm, including death, is even greater within LGBTQI communities. To effectively resist violence out there—in the prison system, on militarized borders, or during other clear encounters with “the system”—we must challenge how it is reproduced right where we live. It’s one thing when the perpetrator is the police, the state, or someone we don’t know. It’s quite another when that person is someone we call friend, lover, mentor, trusted ally.

Based on the popular zine that had reviewers and fans alike demanding more, The Revolution Starts at Home finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “open secret” of intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships, and in friendships—within social justice movements. This watershed collection compiles stories and strategies from survivors and their allies, documenting a decade of community accountability work and delving into the nitty-gritty of creating safety from abuse without relying on the prison industrial complex.

Fearless, tough-minded, and ultimately loving, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.

Hop on over there for additional info, including a TOC and author bios. The volume also has its very own tumblr, and of course is being covered on the INCITE! blog as well.

The zine on which the book is based – The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Partner Abuse in Activist Communities (2009) – is available for download (for free!) @ INCITE! Also, if you haven’t yet read Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements – written by Courtney Desiree Morris and originally published in make/shift magazine’s Spring/Summer 2010 issue – please do so now. I highly recommend it.

I’ve added both Creaturely Poetics and The Revolution Starts at Home to my list of recommended reading (anthrozoology and intersections, respectively) – which I continue to update, albeit sporadically. If you have a suggestion, I’m all eyes!

Finally, if the half-assed manner in which I’ve pulled off this week’s furkid friday is any indication, this is most likely the series’ finale. I’m just not that into it. Or rather, I’m not into blogging just to blog. No fun! I’d rather wait until I have something worth saying, you know? Even if it only comes once every two months.

Besides, I’m thinking about starting a private, personal blog (DIARY! THERE I SAID IT! BUT IT WILL NOT BE PINK!) where these gratuitous dog pics would be more at home. What do you think? Do any of you still journal? It seems so quaint in the age of twitter and facebook and tumblr; why bother writing if you’re not going to release your every through out into the world in expectation of immediate feedback, hopefully in the form of unadulterated adoration from your peers?

Holy crap do I feel old. Also: hungry. Dinner time, methinks. Happy Friday, y’all!

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* ETA: I’ve no desire to argue the merits of either case in this here space; I’m simply naming each as a recent example of partner abuse allegations, as well as the dizzying, woman-hating clusterfuck that inevitably arises when such accusations are leveled against men.** Any man, really, but particularly men who are wealthy, powerful, and/or well-respected within/idolized by their communities. On a non-AR related note, see e.g. Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

** This is not to suggest that men are never the victims and women, the victimizers. Or that all violence is opposite-sex. Apologism and victim-blaming may vary.

Holy guacamole, I did it! I totally made Vegan Twinkies®! And so can you – just follow this recipe from Shmooed Food! It’s easy, yo! And delicious. Soooooo delicious….

All you need is a canoe pan (also useful for making vegan corn dogs!) and icing injector. Hostess packages these together as a Twinkie set, but you can find generic versions online as well. (More on that later.)

For the especially frugal among us, a few regular ol’ cupcake pans and a pastry bag set works just as well. In fact, the recipe actually makes 16 Twinkies – but since I only own one eight-cavity canoe pan, I ended up making a dozen+ cupcakes too.

Tip: for extra creamy goodness, inject the cream into your Twinkie horizontally (side to side) vs. vertically (bottom up). Ram a chopstick completely through the Twinkie before injecting the cream; this will allow for maximum fill. Sideways (at three points) is easier than lengthwise, especially if you’re working with a blunt instrument. If yer doin’ it rite, you should be able to see the top of the Twinkie puff up with cream. If you’re especially lucky, some cream will even make it all the way through and spurt out the other side. It’s like a volcano of yum, y’all!

Also, whereas the recipe for Fluffy White Cupcakes says that you should fill each cupcake cavity just 1/4 full with batter, this makes for a rather flat cupcake. I recommend upping it to 1/2 full, since a taller cupcake means more room for cream! Plus, it’s next-to-impossible to punch holes through an inch-high cupcake without causing a crumbly mess. Truuuust me.

Of course, you can add a dollop of cream on top, too: replicate the iconic Twinkie swirl, smother it like a true cupcake, paint it with a smiley face – whatever your heart desires. Just make an extra batch of cream so that you have enough, kay? (Methinks the leftovers would taste delish in an ice cream recipe – but then I think the same of all my leftovers!)

In case you’re wondering how much I adore my Twinkie set, here’s the review I posted on Amazon. If you find that it’s helpful, hop on over to Amazon and say so. Please and thank you!

VEGAN TWINKIES®!

After coming across a recipe for vegan Twinkies® online, I knew I had to get my hands on a DIY Twinkie® kit. Hostess makes its own “official” Twinkie® bake set which, while totally cute and retro and nostalgia-inducing, is both expensive and hard to find online. Also, the kit includes all sorts of items that I don’t have any use for: in addition to the canoe pan and icing injector (which purportedly is a useless piece of junk), there’s a rubber spatula (I have several already!), Twinkie® carrying case (these babies won’t get any further than my kitchen counter!), and recipe booklet (not vegan, no thanks!). Luckily, generic versions of the set – such as this canoe pan and decorating kit from Norpro – are easy to find online.

The Norpro set comes with the two tools essential to making vegan Twinkies®: a canoe pan and icing injector. Though I’ve only used it once, the canoe pan is heavy-duty and looks as though it will hold up over time. My only complaint is that the set only comes with one eight-cavity pan – whereas every recipe I’ve found online produces 16 Twinkies®! Unless you buy a second pan, you either have to bake the batch in two halves or make cupcakes using the extra batter. (Which is just as delicious, don’t get me wrong – but it’s not really the same now, is it?)

As for the injector: it’s constructed of plastic and is a little on the cheap side, but once I got a feel for it, it proved easy enough to use. I found that the cream goes in much more readily if I poke holes into the Twinkies® beforehand (using chopsticks, sideways at three points). Still, you’ll have to stop to refill the injector several times, and the apparatus is difficult to put back together with greasy hands (the cap sort of snaps onto the tube, but the connection isn’t especially secure). If you own a conventional cake decorating set – i.e., a pastry bag with tips – you may be better off using that instead. The injector set included in this kit comes with nine pieces: eight tips and the injector itself.

All in all, I’m happy with the purchase – but not too keen on buying a whole ‘nother set, just for the extra pan.

Next up: vegan corn dogs!

(I’ve been vegan since the mid-aughts and allergic to milk my entire life, so I’ve never partaken in the store-bought, dairy-laden confections. Some local vegan bakeries make their own versions – Golden Girls, holla! – but these tend to be pricey and hard to find. Being able to make my own desserts and candies is a real coup. Score: Team Vegan!)

The Energy Glut: The Politics of Fatness in an Overheating World by Ian Roberts with Phil Edwards (2010)

Note: I received a free copy of The Energy Glut through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.

While researching the link between traffic-related injuries and fatalities, trends in car usage, and public health issues such as obesity, Ian Roberts – a public health professor in Britain and a former practicing physician – developed a simple yet radical premise: that the discovery and subsequent adoption of fossil fuels as a cheap source of energy can be directly implicated in the “obesity epidemic” as well as global climate change. Just as cheap oil powers our cars, so too does it make possible the abundance of energy-dense foods that feed human bodies. Designed for movement, these bodies grow increasingly sedentary in a “motorized” world, thus compounding the problem. The result? Congested roadways, air and water pollution, fewer green public spaces, reduced opportunities for movement, and overall poor public health.

Roberts adeptly demonstrates how seemingly disparate issues are connected, oftentimes exhibiting multiple points of intersection. Like threads in a tapestry, you cannot tug on one without disturbing the others. Likewise, in linking a supposedly personal failing – obesity – with larger societal trends, The Energy Glut reflects that good ol’ feminist adage of the ’60s, namely: the personal is political (and the political, personal). Consider, for example, the following observations made by Roberts:

Artificially cheap oil paves the way for the widespread availability and use of motor vehicles powered by fossil fuels:

The decreased opportunities for movement, coupled with the prevalence of cheap, unhealthy foods – and the health problems associated with each – gives rise to entire industries which might not have otherwise existed. Money and time that could be more wisely spent are wasted on diet and exercise, and public health dollars are squandered on “curing” obesity-related diseases.

Many of these points directly influence and are influenced by at least several others. For example, Roberts points out that the design of highways (speed, placement) – paid for with taxpayer dollars – funnels consumers past small, locally owned neighborhood business and to large chain megastores, thus further concentrating wealth in the hands of few. At the same time, highways encourage suburban sprawl, increase the amount of kinetic energy on the road, are necessarily inhospitable to pedestrians, and encourage driving over walking. Additionally, these chain stores (including convenience stores situated in gas stations!) primarily trade in unhealthy, energy-dense foods that only contribute to obesity – which they’re happy to sell you a pill or diet plan for, natch.

In Roberts’s words, “[P]etroleum replaces food as the primary source of energy for human movement.” Fueling our cars as well as our bodies, our abuse of this cheap, finite energy source is responsible for climate change in myriad ways. Food, fuel, fatness, traffic fatalities: they’re all connected.

Much of the criticism I’ve seen of The Energy Glut involves “personal responsibility”: fatness isn’t an environmental condition or related to social issues, as Roberts claims, but rather the sole responsibility of the individual. But how else to explain the average increase in BMI – and the upward trend in BMI distribution – in industrialized nations? Have we morphed into a nation of gluttons lacking in self-control, or could there possibly be some shared societal factors at play? Given that the average BMI of a population tends to increase when car usage replaces the human body as the primary mode of transport, I think the latter likely.

Additionally, “personal responsibility” is fine and good – assuming, of course, that all members of a society have equal, adequate opportunity to assert control over their environment. Sadly, this is far from the case. Take, for example, the United States. Due to a lack of grocery stores (and corresponding abundance of fast food joints), those living in low-income, urban areas do not have ready access to fresh, healthy foods. At school, the situation isn’t any better; public school kids are served the same unhealthy animal ag. food service slop as are are prison inmates. (Not that prison inmates should be served slop, either!) These families are also more likely to live in heavily congested, crime-riddled neighborhoods, which hardly make for safe areas of play and movement. At the same time, they cannot afford to purchase exercise equipment or gym memberships; nor can their neighborhoods and schools afford to construct and maintain playground equipment. All of this converges to create an environment in which the opportunity to live a healthy lifestyle is a luxury. Shaming people into changing factors beyond their control is not only futile – it’s just plain cruel.

Such criticisms also ignore Roberts’s advice for solving these problems: three of the last five chapters feature steps that one can take at the individual level, such as walking and bicycling whenever possible; switching to a diet rich in fresh, plant-based foods; purchasing and consuming less; planting greenery in front of one’s home and streetside; engaging with one’s neighbors; and lobbying the local government for reduced speed limits. While he’s cognizant of the political and societal factors underlying obesity, Roberts also encourages individuals to take action at the micro level.

Other, more radical solutions involve adopting the Contraction and Convergence proposal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set forth by the Global Commons Institute in the early ’90s. C&C involves reducing overall global emissions in such a way that’s fair to developing nations. This plan would entail national carbon credits that could be bought and sold between carbon-frugal and carbon-wasteful countries, thus resulting in a transfer of wealth between rich and poor nations. In contrast to many “charitable aid” programs, developing nations could ideally use these resources to further their own national interests, rather than those of the aid-giving governments (and corporations).

This is important, as Roberts includes developing countries such as China, India, Senegal and Nigeria in his analysis; for example, his look at proposed road infrastructure programs in African nations illustrates how such efforts are less about industrialized countries helping impoverished nations – and more about helping themselves to the natural resources of the oft-unfortunate “beneficiary” nations. At the same time, an increase in transnational trade threatens to trigger the same motorization of movement – and attendant problems – seen in the U.S. in the latter half of the 20th century. An investment in bicycles, Roberts argues, would do more to help the average Tanzanian than a hundred miles of paved roadways. As with all of his premises, Roberts produces the research to back it up.

Since I’m only marginally familiar with the intricacies of the fat acceptance movement, I’m afraid I can’t offer a very nuanced critique of Roberts’s infatuation with BMI as a measure of health. To his credit, he does stress that fatness and obesity is largely an environmental problem; you won’t find any fat shaming here. On the other hand, his “less is always best” argument strikes me as somewhat irresponsible, if not downright dangerous:

Accumulating body fat is like accumulating debt. It is better to be $25 in debt than to be $30 in debt, but being only $20 in debt is better still. [Whereas debt = BMI. - Kelly]

Yes, a lower BMI is better – until it isn’t. Just as one can be too fat, there is such a thing as too thin. See, e.g., the symptoms of anorexia; while Roberts is quick to point out that eating disorders are excepted from his analogy, some of the health problems associated with anorexia – amenorrhoea, heart failure, malnutrition – are also likely to be present in those with low or no body fat. And whereas one can actually be owed money, there is not such thing as negative body fat.

From a vegan perspective, I am a bit disappointed that Roberts doesn’t so much as mention veganism (or even vegetarianism) in passing. While he does implicate animal agriculture in climate change (“meat is heat”) – and tie this highly energy-intensive form of farming to a variety of issues to both fuel and fatness – his strongest argument in favor of a plant-based diet is ‘eat more fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes.’ On the flip side, the only direct example of speciesism is Roberts’s demand that we eat less meat so that those in developing nations can eat more. It’s a real WTF! moment, but unlike in eaarth or Diet for a Hot Planet (both of which I recently reviewed), it is – thankfully! – an anomaly.

Overall, I found the book incredibly insightful, exciting and witty. (Seriously, I can’t wait for the weather to thaw, as I’ve made a commitment to get less “exercise” and more dog walking time in come spring!) A quick read, easily devoured in several hours, The Energy Glut will inspire you too look at familiar issues from a fresh, panoramic perspective. Time and again, Roberts picks up a seemingly-forgotten thread, tying it to a disparate, distant neighbor, weaving for the reader the story of our interconnected world.

Five stars: though not without minor faults, The Energy Glut is a must-read.

Updated to add: I also posted this review Amazon and Library Thing; if you enjoyed it and are so inclined, please click on through and vote it as helpful, mkay?

]]> http://www.easyvegan.info/2011/01/22/food-oil-energy-and-excess-a-review-of-the-energy-glut-by-ian-roberts/feed/ 1 http://www.easyvegan.info/2011/01/15/a-belated-vegan-review-of-eaarth-and-diet-for-a-hot-planet/ http://www.easyvegan.info/2011/01/15/a-belated-vegan-review-of-eaarth-and-diet-for-a-hot-planet/#comments Sat, 15 Jan 2011 22:07:06 +0000 Kelly Garbato http://www.easyvegan.info/?p=16907 Last summer, I received review copies of eaarth and Diet for a Hot Planet – authored by Bill McKibben and Anna Lappé, respectively – though Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program. Though I devoured them rather quickly and back-to-back, it’s taken me quite some time to put together reviews for each. (2010 was a funky year for me, and not in a good way.) Given that they cover similar territory; complement one another in several respects; and suffer the same, all-too-common pitfall (in a word, speciesism), I thought a joint review might work best.

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben (2010)

Let’s start with Bill McKibben’s eaarth, which is by far the more radical of the two books. eaarth opens with a terrifying premise: that, when it comes to climate change, humanity has already altered the earth’s environment to the point of no return. For the bulk of human existence, the level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has remained somewhat stable at 275 parts per million (ppm). Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels have been on the rise, as has been scientific debate over its safest uppermost concentrations. Initially, 550 ppm was the supposed ceiling; in 2007, climatologist Jim Hansen identified 350 ppm as the “safe number.” This is problematic to say the least, as currently the planet has almost 390 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even if we drastically reduce emissions overnight (an impossibility, both practically and politically speaking), we’ve already reached the tipping point; our home’s climate is changing, and for the worse.

“Worse,” anyhow, for most of the species that have evolved to live on earth as it was, humans included. The “new earth” – christened “eaarth” by McKibben – will be a planet of much harsher living conditions and more extreme weather patterns; a planet “with dark poles and belching volcanoes and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat.” McKibben looks to current climatological trends as indicators of what’s to come: warmer air and water temperatures, melting glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels, increasingly acidic oceans, more powerful storms, prolonged droughts, a decrease in biodiversity and corresponding increase in invasive “pest” species – all of these phenomenon are interconnected and influence one another in myriad ways; sometimes unpredictable, almost always tragic.

I’m no climate scientist, so I can’t speak to the veracity of McKibben’s predictions – but the data presented in eaarth (buttressed by 25 pages of end notes) certainly makes for a striking argument. If nothing else, McKibben clearly demonstrates the degree to which seemingly disparate natural occurrences are interdependent; a change in one aspect of the earth’s climate affects all others. Human-driven climate change is real, and it’s really happening. Even if you accept this as a scientific truth, however, McKibben’s solution will be hard to swallow (not that you’ll necessarily have a choice, mind you).

In the second half of eaarth, McKibben shares his vision of a new way of life for a new planet. Though he doesn’t describe it in so many words, McKibben’s eaarth strikes me as somewhat anarchist in nature, marked by a number of small, mostly self-sufficient city states functioning under a shared moral code or social contract.* (It’s hard to pin down this new society exactly, as MicKibben doesn’t elaborate on such minor details as systems of government or human rights. I guess those things will just…work themselves out? Sarcastic, who me?) Rather than “regressing” to older ways of life, McKibben sees us living lightly on this changed planet by retaining some necessary and beneficial aspects of our current culture (e.g., the internet, new energy technology) and discarding those which are unnecessary and unsustainable (most of our current, bloated economy, including but not limited to the entertainment industry. No word on traveling bards, fwiw.)

Of course, the most obvious contributors to climate change – energy (i.e., fossil fuels) and food (particularly animal agriculture) – merit a drastic overhaul in this new world. Conservation coupled with a transition to renewable energy can make us energy independent, while a switch from industrial “factory” farming – necessarily reliant on the input of petroleum-based chemicals and focused on short-term gains – to farming that’s small, local, organic and works with nature rather than against it, will provide us with healthy food and a healthier environment: for the people, by the people.

Naturally, this next agricultural revolution must involve a significant shift toward a plant-based diet. While purveyors of local / organic / free-range / “happy” meat (and milk and eggs) would have you believe otherwise, animals exploited (I’m sorry, “raised”) sustainably simply cannot provide enough animal-based foodstuffs for us all, and certainly not in the volumes to which we’ve become accustomed. Sustainability isn’t just about you; it’s about all of us humans – all seven billion and counting. Animal agriculture requires a massive input of resources – energy, land, water, plants – and results in a relatively small return in food. Eaarth will not support such a system, even by McKibben’s own (speciesist) account.

Not that McKibben would have us all become vegans, nosiree! While he’s able to accept that animal flesh and secretions will become a rare delicacy on eaarth, McKibben is reluctant to give up his sirloin steak altogether. In light of the other proposals set forth in eaarth, forgoing the occasional glass of milk or chicken breast seems a downright conservative “sacrifice” to make. And yet, even as he argues in favor of a radical restructuring of human society, McKibben stubbornly refuses to welcome nonhuman animals – our friends and neighbors on this new planet – into his moral circle. Such is the degree to which human exceptionalism has poisoned our consciousness. It may not be in our best interests to enslave, slaughter and exploit other animals – but we reserve the right to do so, dammit!

To this end, McKibben spends quite a bit of time praising small-time animal exploiters. The many scribbles, underlining, explanation points of outrage, and all-caps commentary – most of which reads simply “YUCK!” – that you can find in the later chapters of my copy of eaarth speak to the disgust I felt at McKibben’s shameless displays of speciesism. Establishing a nonprofit to encourage meat and chicken farming?** “Swine clubs” in which pigs are kept in drained swimming pools? Livestock mortality composting? Yuck, yuck, yuck.

In the forward to Diet for a Hot Planet, McKibben writes, “Three times a day, we’re reminded of what is, and what could be.” Indeed.

As long as we’re rebuilding society, why not create a more compassionate world for all? Now that’s a truly radical idea.

Three out of five stars, with one star deducted each for speciesism and a failure to explore this new eaarth beyond the bounds of food.

Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It by Anna Lappé (2010)

In Diet for a Hot Planet, Anna Lappé also looks at agriculture’s contribution to climate change. In contrast to McKibben’s eaarth, Diet for a Hot Planet’s comparatively narrow focus results in a more cohesive and comprehensive discussion of the topic. Unfortunately, like eaarth, it too is riddled with speciesism.

From farm to plate and everywhere in between, Diet for a Hot Planet identifies and examines the many unsustainable aspects of our food production and distribution systems. This necessarily involves standardization, industrialization, waste, pollution, and – perhaps above all else – a dependence on fossil fuels, resulting in a glut of energy-dense foods. (It’s all connected, yo!) As McKibben notes in the forward, “[T]he entire industrial food system essentially ensures that your food is marinated in crude oil before you eat it.”

In order to compensate for the degradation of soil quality, farmers have moved away from crop rotation and the use of leguminous crops (which bind with atmospheric nitrogen) to the over/use of synthetic, petroleum-based fertilizers and animal waste (which may solve the problem of soil fertility in the short-term, but actually exacerbate it in the long run). Food travels across countries and around the globe before reaching our dinner tables, requiring the use of fuel and attendant carbon emissions. Consumers travel by car to supermarkets and groceries – many of which are concentrated in the suburbs – to buy this food, most of which is heavily processed. (Not even the fruits and veggies escape such a fate: about half of the vegetables consumed in the U.S. are canned, frozen or dried!) In anticipation of our patronage, grocers store perishable items in massive, continuously-powered refrigerators and freezers – some of which consist of open cases. (Explain that one to your ten-year-old!)

As if this isn’t appalling enough, roughly 27% of our edible food is wasted – simply thrown away – at both the individual and institutional levels. As Lappé points out, most of this waste finds its way not into compost piles, but the garbage; some municipalities report that food waste represents 50% of the contents discarded into their landfills. Instead of feeding people or nourishing the soil, this uneaten food becomes waste – waste that’s the second-largest source of methane, next only to enteric fermentation (read: animal agriculture).

And then we have the most egregious offender of them all: meat, eggs and dairy. In Lappé’s own words,

[L]ivestock production is one of the biggest contributors to the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions, both from pastures and from feed-crop production, from smallholder farms to large-scale ranchers to multinational corporations. The deforestation driven by pastureland and cropland is only one reason livestock contribute so much to global warming, as we’ll see.

Globally, livestock account for as much as 18 percent of all global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the U.N. study mentioned earlier. That figure includes almost one tenth of carbon emissions, more than one third of methane, and roughly two thirds of nitrous oxide. (Livestock is responsible for other polluting emissions as well, including two thirds of all human-made ammonia.) (p. 19)

Yet, like McKibben, Lappé simply isn’t able to imagine in world in which humans don’t retain their supremacy over nonhuman animals:

All told, 70 percent of all agricultural land in the world is tied up with livestock production. But livestock don’t need to cause such ecological harm. Traditionally and still today, in much of the world, livestock have been integrated into diverse farms and their communities, playing a range of roles: providing companionship, manure to enrich soils, muscle for farm work, and as a source of protein as meat. [...L]ivestock can be an integral component of sustainable systems. Well-managed livestock can even nurture the land. All that stomping and tromping helps to press seeds into the earth, fostering plant growth. The action of hooves on the ground can also break up the soil, allowing in more oxygen and improving soil quality. Today’s self-described “carbon farmers” are adopting these proven practices and mimicking time-honored grazing methods to increase carbon content in the soil. (p. 19)

While I agree that nonhuman animals “can be an integral component of sustainable systems,” I don’t understand why humans must enslave them in order to realize this. Nor can I comprehend why a diet comprised of no meat is so much harder for Lappé, McKibben & Co. to swallow than one involving a serving of meat once every few weeks or months. Lappé (daughter of Frances Moore Lappé, a longtime vegetarian and author of Diet for a Small Planet) describes herself as an “on and off” vegetarian since her teen years – so you’d think she’d know better than to, say, categorize nonhuman animals as “plants.” Then again, perhaps the “and off” part explains it.

All snark aside, as with eaarth, a good deal of Diet for a Hot Planet is devoted to celebrating small, local, organic farmers – including those who make a buck off the bodies of others. While Lappé does at least broach the idea of vegetarianism – according to my notes, McKibben only mentions the v-word (vegan) once and, if I remember correctly, it’s to make a very unfunny joke at our expense – it’s in a rather wishy-washy, noncommittal way that’s guaranteed to have abolitionists rolling their eyes. Sandwiched between the glorified animal exploitation, however, sits a wealth of facts and figures, tables and numbers, including some original reporting by Lappé. Additionally, she tackles a number of common myths surrounding climate, industrial agriculture – and biotechnology’s ability to save us from the perils of each.

If you can get past the speciesism, both books are interesting reads. Whereas eaarth is more thought-provoking in its subversiveness, Diet for a Hot Planet leaves the reader with the information necessary to counter climate change skeptics and corporate apologists for our existing food industries.

Three out of five stars, with two stars deducted for speciesism – including Lappé’s inability to promote a plant-based diet without objectifying nonhuman animals.

Updated to add: I posted variations of these reviews on Amazon and Library Thing; if you enjoyed them and are so inclined, please click on through and vote them as helpful, mkay?

eaarth: Amazon | Library Thing

Diet for a Hot Planet: Amazon | Library Thing

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* That said, my first and last introduction to anarchism was Bob Torres’s Making A Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights, which is equally short on the specifics in regards to building anarchistic societies. While an interesting read, in trying to present the case for veganism to anarchists – and anarchism, to vegans – Torres necessarily abbreviates both discussions, to the detriment of each. (imho, anyhow.) Making a Killing piqued my curiosity, but I haven’t had the opportunity to follow up on the topic as of yet. So I could be completely off-base in identifying McKibben as an advocate for anarchism, is what I’m saying.

** As if, um, chickens aren’t also animals and thus included under the rubric “meat”?

]]> http://www.easyvegan.info/2011/01/15/a-belated-vegan-review-of-eaarth-and-diet-for-a-hot-planet/feed/ 4 http://www.easyvegan.info/2010/11/24/book-review-prisoned-chickens-poisoned-eggs-by-karen-davis/ http://www.easyvegan.info/2010/11/24/book-review-prisoned-chickens-poisoned-eggs-by-karen-davis/#comments Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:42:55 +0000 Kelly Garbato http://www.easyvegan.info/?p=13346

Two holiday-themed Bizarro strips.
In the first, a group of turkeys looks on in horror and disgust as a farmer, clad in the requisite red flannel, hauls two of their terrified brethren from the barn, seemingly for slaughter. Two turkeys in the foreground discuss this all-too-predictable turn of events: “This is all about ‘thanks.’ Next month, the massacre starts all over again in the name of ‘peace on Earth.’”
The second strip shows a turkey angel visiting with a reindeer, who looks a little mopey despite the festive bells slung around his neck. The wizened turkey advises, “I’m just saying, WATCH YOUR BACK. I was a holiday icon too, & look what happened to me.
Images copyright Dan Piraro.
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I realize that a review of an animal rights book isn’t wholly in keeping with the theme of veganmofo; so, to compensate, I’ve included a number of yummy, egg- and bird-free recipes at the bottom of this post. Hopefully this will help drive home that point that the atrocities described in Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs are 1000% unnecessary while also placating the veganmofo goddesses! (No smiting of my person, mkay? Nevermind that I also have a blog named Smite Me!)

Out of respect for my fellow mofo’ers, I’ve purposefully omitted any visual representations of animal exploitation from this post, so you can scroll through without worry.

Or, if you’d rather not read the review, you can jump straight to the recipes!

Book Review: Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An inside look at the modern poultry industry by Karen Davis (1996; revised 2009)

[FYI: you can download a pdf copy of the first edition here. Also, by way of disclaimer, I received a free review copy of this book from the the publisher, The Book Publishing Company. As in, nearly a year ago. Slow, who me?]

In the United States, nearly 10 billion chickens are slaughtered every year; worldwide, the number is 40 billion and growing, as agribiz continues to export America’s extremely unhealthy, meat-laden diet – as well as its industrialized method of animal “farming” – to developing nations. At any given time, 5 billion hens “live” in battery cages on American “farms,” so that their bodies may be exploited for eggs. Because male chicks are an unwanted byproduct of this system, 250 million of them are discarded – suffocated, gassed, ground up or merely thrown out, alive – annually.

While chickens – hens, roosters and chicks; mothers, fathers and children – represent the single most exploited species of farmed animals, they receive perhaps the least consideration. More chickens are enslaved and slaughtered per year than cows, pigs, sheeps and goats combined – and yet, along with cold-blooded mammals such as reptiles, chickens and other birds are not even considered “animals” under the U.S. Animal Welfare Act. (Granted, animals farmed for food and fiber are also not covered under the AWA, but this is perhaps small consolation, as they still fall under the rubric of “animals.”) Perhaps it’s their “alien” faces, what with rigid beaks where expressive mouths “should” be, but humans seem to have more trouble empathizing with chickens and birds than other farmed animal species, such as pigs and cows (who, of course, receive less consideration than “pet” species, such as dogs and cats).

In the intro to Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, Karen Davis – founder and director of United Poultry Concerns (UPC) – reports that, when she first became involved in advocating on behalf of chickens in the late 1980s, these beautiful and abused creatures were largely overlooked in animal welfare and rights campaigns:

I was told by some that people weren’t “ready” for chickens. This proved to be false. The point, in any case, was to make people ready.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of folks like Davis, chickens are now central to the vegan and anti-factory farming movements. Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs – first published in 1996 and revised in 2009 – provides an accessible and compressive, if horrifying and hard-to-read, overview of industrialized chicken egg and “meat” production. (Something similar is sorely needed for fishes and other “seafood,” who seem to be the chickens and birds of this decade. But I digress.)

What with a 19-page reference list and copious quotations culled from industry publications and decades-old news clippings, Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is meticulously researched and brimming with information. I’d hoped to include a list of talking points or key facts, but the sheer breadth and detail makes this nearly impossible. (That, and I’m not exactly about brevity, as regular readers well know!) Instead, let’s take this summary chapter by chapter, shall we?

 

Mayfly. The sole survivor of a school hatching project, Mayfly was rescued by Farm Sanctuary in 2002 and lived out his life in safety at its New York shelter. Sadly, he passed away last winter. You can read more about Mayfly on Farm Sanctuary’s website,
and view more pictures of this beautiful bird on Flickr.
Image copyright Farm Sanctuary; all rights reserved.
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Davis begins the discussion by tracing the human-chicken relationship to its roots; namely, back to the jungle fowl living in Southeast Asia thousands of years ago. Although our treatment of chickens has not changed qualitatively – humans have always exploited chickens for their meat and eggs (and fought them for entertainment) – it has undergone a dramatic shift in scope. With the advent of the modern factory farm in the 1950s, the environment and numbers in which we “kept” chickens transformed. Instead of outdoor pens that at least accommodated the chickens’ natural behaviors (e.g., roosting), farmers – and, later, agribusiness – began to house chickens in massive, filthy, crowded sheds that housed hundreds of thousand of birds at a time. When a chicken’s natural constitution proved inconvenient to a farmer (and his bottom line), the solution was to force the chicken’s body to conform to its unnatural environment, rather than change the environment to suit the individual or species. Enter: debeaking, starvation (i.e., forced molting), blackouts, the overuse of antibiotics and artificial insemination. From “animal” to “machine.”

Like most books that describe an animal exploitation industry, Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is arguably feminist in nature – inasmuch as the abuses necessitated by such systems are gendered and rely on continued rape and forced pregnancy and birth. (Culminating, almost always, with the interruption and severing of the mother-child bond.) However, Davis – a previous contributor to at least one ecofeminist anthology, and author of The Holocaust & the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities – goes a step further, weaving various feminist and otherwise intersectional anecdotes and analyses into the text.

Consider, for example, the following excerpts from Chapter 1:

Most of us know deep inside that we are members of a single family of living creatures, yet many people resist this knowledge and its implications. Evolution is accepted, but the sentiment of kinship still struggles to evolve. (pp. 17-18)

Before the Second World War, women were the primary caretakers of poultry in the United States. According to American Poultry History, many men felt it was beneath them to “spend their time fussing with a lot of hens.” Mrs. W. B. Morehouse told a Wisconsin’s Farmers’ Institute audience in 1892, “A good many of the masculine gender tell us that it will so lower their dignity as to actually become a poultry keeper.” On most farms, the housewife and children looked after the flock, using the pin money received to buy groceries. [...] However, as poultry-keeping changed from a small farm project to a major business enterprise, it wasn’t long until, as one woman put it, “my” flock became “our” flock and ultimately “his” flock. (pp. 7-8)

The morality of forcing human beings to subsist in an alien environment to serve economic objectives was analyzed by Karl Marx in terms that provide insight into the experience of chickens shunted into human-created environments that are alien to their nature. Marx described four interrelated aspects of alienation: from the product [or from their own products], from the productive activity, from the species life, and from nature. We can look at chickens and other captive animals from a similar viewpoint. (p. 12)

This – the kinship between humans and chickens, and hens and women – is a theme Davis returns to throughout the book, with heartbreaking results.

A hen stands watch over her three chicks. Photo taken in Guatemala.
CC image via Flickr user Dave Wilson Photography.
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Before moving on to the pitiable “living” conditions of “laying” hens and “battery” chickens, and the horrific death common to them all, Davis describes the family, social and emotional and intellectual lives of hens, roosters and chicks in loving and lovely detail. For generations, hens have been utilized as a symbol of motherhood and the maternal instinct, and for good reason – hens are protective, devoted and brave mothers.

An annoyed hen will confront a pesky young rooster with her hackles raised and run him off! Although chickens will fight fiercely and successfully with foxes and eagles to protect their family, with humans such bravery usually does not win. A woman employed on a breeder farm in Maryland wrote a letter to the newspaper berating the defenders of chickens for trying to make her lose her job, threatening her ability to support herself and her daughter.

For her, “breeder” hens were “mean” birds who “peck your arm when you are trying to collect the eggs.” In her defense of her life and her daughter’s life against the champions of chickens, she failed to see the comparison between her motherly protection of her child and the exploited hen’s courageous effort to protect her own offspring. (pp. 28-29)

Likewise, while polygamous, roosters form deep bonds with their mates and are an integral part of the family unit.

Most striking is Davis’s description of the egg (and embryonic development occurring within); even if you slept through high school biology, it’s hard not to be impressed by how complicated this seemingly simple process/product really is. You’ll never look at an egg – or a mother hen – the same way again.

Intertwined with the wonder of chicken birth are the horrors of school hatching projects and commercial egg hatcheries – the largest of which might “produce” two million chicks per week. The conditions into which these babies are born stand in stark contrast to the loving comfort of a mother’s wing. This is but a prelude for what’s to come next.

An ex-battery hen; one of hundreds rescued
by Brinsley Animal Rescue in Brinsley, Nottingham.
CC image via Flickr user 東京へ行きましょう.
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“Battery” or “laying” hens are essentially female chickens enslaved and exploited for their eggs. These hens are commonly “housed” in a cage measuring 15-16″ high x 12″ deep x 18-20″ wide – with five to ten hens per cage. Cages stacked one on top of another in seemingly endless rows result in anywhere from 150,000 to 380,000 “layers” in a single building, and up to 2 to 5 million birds in a multi-building complex. Hens may live this way anywhere from one to two years, until their bodies are “spent” and no longer able to produce the desired number of eggs – at which time they are unceremoniously slaughtered or simply discarded. Because their flesh is sub-par, meat from “battery” hens often winds up in

chicken soups, pies, and nuggets, commercial mink and pet food, livestock and poultry feed, and school lunches and other institutionalized food service and government purchase programs designed by the egg industry and the Department of Agriculture to dump dead laying hens onto consumers in diced up form.

Since their “purpose” is to produce eggs and not meat, the bodies of “battery” hens undergo brutal exploitation; so many essential nutrients are diverted toward egg production that their skeletons become brittle and prone to breakage.

Hens living in these unnatural, unsanitary and physically and psychologically stressful conditions are prone to a number of other maladies, including:

* foot and leg deformities (from a life spent standing on sloping, rectangular metal wire);
* cellulitis or “swollen head syndrome”;
* osteoporosis – the loss of bone tissue resulting in weak and brittle bones – also caged layer “fatigue”;
* caged layer “hysteria” or “fear” (a “diagnosis” which essentially pathologizes a normal and understandable reaction; see below);
* fatty liver syndrome;
* Salmonella poising (spread by rodent droppings);
* manure and ammonia “burn”;
* coccidosis (caused by coccidia, a parasite that’s normally present in the gut and not harmful under natural conditions);
* cannibalism (a result of overcrowding, hunger and stress);
* acute and chronic pain and an inability to eat, leading to starvation, due to “improper” debeaking (which is itself an industry “solution” to cannibalism and hen-on-hen attacks);
* heat stress;
* mouth ulcers;
* psychological distress and disorder caused by the stifling of a hen’s natural instincts, including nesting and dustbathing; and
* a general susceptibility to disease

Additionally, starvation in the form of “forced molting” is not only acceptable, but standard industry practice, meant to eke out an extra laying cycle or two from a nearly-”spent” flock:

The U.S. poultry and egg industries use food deprivation and nutrient restriction as an economic tool to manipulate egg production in commercial laying hens and in male and female birds used for breeding of both egg-type and meat-type birds. In the United States, hens used for commercial egg production are depopulated at seventeen or eighteen months old, or they are kept for another laying cycle and depopulated at two years old. The dwindling number of survivors may even be kept for a third cycle until they are two and a half years old, and then destroyed, whichever is cheaper.

Birds to be re-used are force-molted – “recycled” – to prepare them for the next laying cycle. In this procedure, they are partially or completely starved for two to five to fourteen days or longer to give them a “rest.” Their food is removed or nutritionally reduced, causing the hormone levels that induce egg production and inhibit feather growth to drop. New feathers push out old ones ["molting"], and the hen stops laying for one or two months instead of four. [...]

Poultry researchers invent, duplicate, and refine starvation and nutrient-reduction methods in experiments designed for commercial use and to perpetuate research. The three main methods of forced molting are (1) elimination or limination of food and/or water, (2) feeding the birds low-nutrient diets deficient in protein, calcium, or sodium, and (3) administration of drugs and metals including methalibure, enhepton, progesterone, chlormadinone, aluminum, iodine, and zinc. (pp. 75-76)

Davis’s description of egg laying as it transpires in a battery cage is agonizing. In a book filled with horror and suffering, these passages are among those that affected me the most:

The actual laying of the egg is a complex process involving nervous signals from the brain to the muscles of the uterus and vagina, and the influence of hormones released from the posterior pituitary gland. Just as prolactin and other hormones that initiate maternal behavior are the same in both mammals and birds, so the hormones that stimulate muscular contractions in birds are the same ones that stimulate the uterine contractions in mammals leading to birth. This commonality, as noted in The Chicken Book, is one of many biological signals showing that despite evolutionary divergences, “chickens, and ourselves, are still members of a family, and a single family at that, of living creatures.” [...]

If pride and satisfaction are an important part of egg laying in chickens, then the following description of the caged hen’s ordeal may be cited in contrast:

“The frightened battery hen starts to panic as she vainly searches for privacy and a suitable nesting place in the crowded but bare wire cage; then she appears to become oblivious to her surroundings, struggling against the cage as though trying to escape…

“Take a moment to imagine yourself as a layer chicken; your home is a crowded cage with a wire floor that causes your feet to hurt and become deformed; there’s no room to stretch your legs or flap your wings and they become weak from lack of exercise; but at the same time, you can never be still because there is always one of your miserable cell mates who needs to move about; one of the other chickens is always picking on you and you cannot get away – except by letting others sit on top of you; the air is filled with dust and flying feathers that stick to the sides of the cage splattered with chicken shit from the inmates in the cage upstairs; it is hard to breathe – there is the choking stench of ammonia in the air from the piles of manure under the cages and you don’t feel at all well; the flies are unbearable…[E]ventually, despite your wretchedness and anguish, and the tormented din of thousands of birds shrieking their pain together, you lay an egg and watch it roll out of sight; but the joy of making a nest, of giving birth, of clucking your chicks is absent – laying the egg is an empty, frustrating, and exhausting ritual.” (pp. 31-32)

[Excerpt from Old MacDonald's Factory Farm: The Myth of the Traditional Farm and the Shocking Truth About Animal Suffering in Today's Agribusiness, C. David Coats, 1989, pgs. 93-94.]

The laying of an egg has been degraded by the battery system to a squalid discharge so humiliating that ethologist Konrad Lorenz compared it to humans forced to defecate in each others’ presence. (p. 49)

Poultry researchers have described the futile attempts of caged hens to build nests and their frantic efforts to escape the cage by jumping at the bars right up to the laying of the egg. (p. 50)

Also interesting from a feminist perspective is a section on “Caged Layer Hysteria, Fatigue, and Fear” (pp. 52-54) in which Davis describes several afflictions common to layer hens:

Caged layer fatigue is the term that is used to describe the condition of osteoporosis – loss of bone tissue – in laying hens kept in cages.

As with humans, osteoporosis in chickens can lead to bone fragility and bone fractures, as well as “an inability to stand” and paralysis.

Related to cage layer fatigue are hysteria and fear. Birds whose bones become paralyzed cannot reach their food and water. Videotapes show hens beating wildly against cage bars, shrieking, and hens with their heads and wings stuck between cage bars, their terror frozen in their faces and their eyes.

In 1981, Klaus Vestergaard cited 84 studies conducted between the 1940s and 1970s on the effect of cage systems versus non-cage systems on frustration, fear, and hysteria responses in laying hens. No matter how “flighty” the genetic stock was, cages produced the worst effects. [...] The studies showed that “hens are more fearful in battery cages than in pens” and “the fear tends to increase with density. Hysteria, which is characterized by sudden wild flight, squawking (fear squawking?), and attempts to hide, has been interpreted as an abnormal fright-fear behaviour.”

More than 20 years later, Commercial Chicken Meat and Eggs Production talks about “emotionality (fearfulness, hysteria)” and fatigue in caged laying hens.

When applied to human females, adjectives like “emotional,” “flighty,” and – especially – “hysterical” are loaded terms with a lengthy history of sexist usage. Consider, for example, this brief summary of “hysteria” from Wiki:

Until the seventeenth century, hysteria was regarded as of uterine origin (from the Greek “hustera” = uterus) in the Western world. Hysteria referred to a medical condition, thought to be particular to women, caused by disturbances of the uterus. The term hysteria was coined by Hippocrates, who thought that suffocation and madness arose in women whose uteri had become too light and dry from lack of sexual intercourse and, as a result, wandered upward, compressing the heart, lungs, and diaphragm. The belief was that hysterical symptoms would emanate from the part of the body in which the wandering uterus lodged itself. Originally defined as “a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus” (“Hysterical”).

The same general definition, or under the name female hysteria, came into use in the middle and late 19th century to describe what is today generally considered to be sexual dysfunction. Typical treatment was massage of the patient’s genitalia by the physician and later vibrators or water sprays to cause orgasm.

“Female hysteria” even has its own entry:

Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the Victorian era. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and “a tendency to cause trouble”.

While a comprehensive discussion of sexism in psychiatry, psychology, and medicine is well beyond the scope of this post (if you’re interested, I have written about sexism in personality disorder diagnoses elsewhere), it’s worth noting that descriptors such as “hysterical” and “flighty” are much more likely to be applied to women than men. Indeed, emotionality, nervousness, and fearfulness are all stereotypically “feminine” traits; in this context, it’s worth noting how the hens’ reactions to their oppressive and torturous environment are interpreted and labeled 1) in feminine terms and 2) as somehow dysfunctional (as if you wouldn’t similarly try to escape from a laying cage!). Similarly, women who exhibit anger, fear, upset, complaint, and other “negative” or “unwomanly” emotions may be labeled “hysterical,” “emotional,” “crazy,” or “angry” (or “man-hating feminazis”) – irregardless of whether circumstances warrant such “extreme” emotions.

Chapter 3 concludes with a brief look at “laying” operations outside the United States (specifically, Canada, the European Union, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Australia and New Zealand), including welfare reforms. Though Davis is consistently critical of “organic,” “free range,” and “humane” animal exploitation throughout Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs – and, likewise, UPC promotes veganism rather than vegetarianism or “humane” meat (an oxymoron if ever there was one!) – abolitionists will likely take issue with her begrudging acceptance of welfare reforms in Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, e.g.:

The battle to liberate hens from battery cages has begun, and it includes all of us. Wherever we are, we are morally obliged to end the oppression. Battery cages should be abolished in the United States and throughout the world. Until they have been discontinued, our species stands condemned of a criminal relationship with the living world. People should boycott battery eggs and discover the variety of egg-free alternatives. (p. 96)

Without digressing into a discussion of my own views on welfare reform, suffice it to say that, while I think most reforms are borderline useless – riddled with loopholes and lack of enforcement as they are – I don’t find all single-issue campaigns necessarily speciesist or reinforcing of other types of oppression. (Ditto: single-issue human rights campaigns.) Really, it depends on the campaign: how it’s devised and framed, the language employed therein, the solutions it posits, the groups it welcomes into its coalition, etc. That said, I rarely if ever volunteer my time or donate my money to such campaigns, though I may support them at the ballot box. (Missouri’s recent Proposition B is a good example of a bill I disliked but voted for anyhow.)

Considering this, I still found Davis’s position on welfare reforms – as voiced in Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs – to be a little confusing at times. Using the above excerpt as an example, Davis advocates in favor of the abolition of battery cages – just 35 pages after dismissing its precursor and likely alternative (i.e., group housing on shed floors) to be equally inhumane and unacceptable. While clearly devices of torture, battery cages aren’t the problem; rather, the human consumption of chicken eggs and “meat” is. Which, of course, can be further attributed to speciesism, anthrocentrism and our general tolerance (encouragement, even) of discrimination and oppression.

“Macro chicken.”
CC image via Flickr user mark lorch.
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Whereas egg production used to be the poultry industry’s primary source of revenue, “broiler” chickens – i.e., chickens raised specifically for their flesh – now dominate the market; in 1992, for example, “meat” was responsible for 61% of the $15 billion total “producer value,” according to Davis.

“Broiler” chicks are birthed in hatcheries, far removed from the hen and rooster who created them. (These animals are held captive in another type of building, coined the “breeder house.” A chick’s mother may outlive him, but not by much; “breeding” chickens are “liquidated” after 40 weeks.) From the time they’re born until the day they’re packed into cages, loaded onto trucks, and transported to the slaughterhouse, these chickens grow and “live” in massive “chicken houses” – sheds or “tunnel housing” – along with tens of thousands of other chickens, as well as the accumulation of their collective waste, which (as with “laying” hens) is only cleaned up when the flock is “depopulated.” Because they have been bred for rapidly accelerated growth, these chickens – babies, really – may be “ready” for slaughter in just over a month.

Like “laying” hens, “broiler” chickens suffer a number of physical diseases and behavioral issues that are a direct result of so-called scientific “advances” in breeding and rearing:

* growth-related mortality: bred for forced rapid growth, the bodies of many “broiler” chickens simply give out, resulting, for example, in congestive heart failure – in babies;
* arthritis and skeletal issues, again due to unnatural, rapid growth and the stress that this excess weight exerts on the body;
* ulcers on the feet and blisters (similar to bed sores) on the legs and breast, which are both painful and invite “bacterial rot”;
* ulcerative and necrotic diseases, such as femoral head necrosis and gangrenous dermatitis;
* orthopedic (bone) disorders, including skeletal abnormalities, such as bowed or twisted legs, bone fractures and fissures, and dislocated vertebrae;
* ascites syndrome (also called “waterbelly” or “leaking liver”), a metabolic disease of the cardiovascular system that often results in sudden death;
* suffocation, either due to computer failure or poor air quality and pollution;
* damage to the respiratory system caused by ammonia, released into the air by the breakdown of manure;
* kertaconjunctivitis, an inflammation and erosion of the eye cornea, also caused by exposure to ammonia;
* aggression and stress caused by overcrowding and a lack of personal space;
* chronic and acute pain; and
* physical and psychological pain due to all of the above

To add insult to injury, “small” (a relative term, no?) and injured birds are “culled” on a regular basis, so as not to “waste” any additional resources on them. Many are just tossed into bins like so much garbage. Likewise, “breeding” hens and roosters undergo blackouts and starvation, and suffer aggression because of confinement and too-early sexual maturity. They also suffer many of the same physical disorders as do their offspring, since they too are bred for morbid obesity. Occasional mass “depopulations” due to avian influenza (BIRD FLU!) scares are actually funded by taxpayer dollars – and sometimes include suffocation by firefighting foam, which under normal circumstances, is a tool used to save lives, not snuff them out.

While it isn’t necessarily the focus of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, Davis also points to the negative impact that industrialized chicken egg and “meat” production has on public safety, human health and the environment. No doubt readers are already familiar with many of these; they include:

* workers exposed to unsanitary conditions, particularly sheds reeking of ammonia and other pollutants;
* the feeding of industry waste to farmed animals, possible transmitting communicable diseases from one or more individuals to others, and even potentially across species;
* the processing of diseased and injured animals into “meat” for human consumption;
* the overuse of antibiotics (e.g., as a preventive rather than a treatment, or in lieu of providing chickens with a healthier environment – and bodies – in which to live), leading to bacterial resistance/decreased antibiotic effectiveness, including in humans; and
* the leaching of toxic waste into the environment

As with most social problems, it’s oftentimes marginalized humans who bear the brunt of these inequities.

A young chick looks up to the sky.
CC image via Flickr user Arwen Twinkle.
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Whether kept for eggs, meat or breeding purposes, a chicken’s fate on a farm – even so-called “humane,” “free-range,” and “organic” operations – is the same: an excruciating, early death, usually at the hands of an overworked, underpaid slaughterhouse worker.

The numbers are staggering:

Of the 10.5 billion animals slaughtered in 2006 in federally inspected [U.S.] facilities, 9,252,320,000 were chickens, turkeys, and ducks. Of these, 8,968,916,000 were chickens, including 8,837,755,000 chickens raised for meat. The remaining 131,161 chickens were “spent” fowl, including hens usd to produce eggs for human consumption, and roosters and hens used for breeding. (pp. 131-132)

The beginning of the end starts with the catch and transport of the doomed chickens to the slaughterhouse. Birds are chased, grabbed, thrown, kicked and otherwise manhandled as they are crammed into cages and packed onto trucks. Many chickens suffer broken bones during this ordeal, while others may freeze to death on the truck while it’s being filled – or succumb to the heat during hotter months. These problems only intensify during transport, as the changing conditions inside the truck result in more extreme temperatures, both high and low. Truck accident en route mean more injuries, fatalities and slow deaths by neglect.

What comes next – “dumping, shackling, ‘stunning,’ throat-cutting, bleeding, [and] scalding,” as Davis titles the section on slaughter – will bring tears to your eyes (and, along with the chapter on “laying” hens, gave me nightmares). Suffice it to say that a chicken’s death, much like her life, will not end quickly and with mercy. There’s much waiting around; waiting to die. Waiting while you breathing in the stench of death, pain and fear. The cacophony of one’s terrified neighbors and kin the only thing you hear; the final thing you hear.

“Stunning,” in which a chicken, shackled upside-down and by one leg to a conveyor belt, is “dipped” into an electrified, cold-water bath, is designed to paralyze the bird – not render him unconscious and unable to feel pain, contrary to popular belief. A chicken is awake and aware throughout the entire, hellish ordeal.

Spent “laying” hens sometimes even skip the “stunning” bath, as this could further damage their already frail bodies. Instead, they’re left to thrash in shackles, potentially causing injury to themselves. Other “laying” hens, not deemed “worthy” of the slaughterhouse, might be killed on-site, usually by gassing. As already mentioned, some animals are simply discarded: left to suffocate or be crushed to death in garbage bins; shredded, alive, in wood chippers; or electrocuted. 250 million of these unfortunate souls are newborns, considered worthless because of their male gender.

Nor are chickens the only birds tortured in this way; an estimated 2.3 billion ducks, 691 million turkeys, 533 million geese and 63 million pigeons were farmed and slaughtered worldwide in 2003. On Thanksgiving day alone, Americans consume the corpses of 48 million turkeys (up from 45 million in years past). Although chickens enslaved and exploited in U.S. animal agriculture operations are the focus of Davis’s investigation, as with “laying” hens, she briefly examines the plight of chickens and turkeys farmed for their flesh in Chapters 4 and 5.

True Whitaker spends quality time with the California turkeys at
Farm Sanctuary’s 2008 Celebration FOR the Turkeys.
To adopt a turkey this Thanksgiving, go to www.adoptaturkey.org.
Photo by Connie Pugh for Farm Sanctuary; all rights reserved.
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At a crossroads (we’re always at a crossroads, it seems), we have but two choices: reject the objectification, exploitation and oppression of nonhuman animals, most notably by adopting a vegan diet – or continue down the road we’re on, finding newer and more sadistic ways to profit off the bodies of our fellow earthlings.

To anyone who’s watching, it’s clear where humanity is headed – namely, toward continued exploitation. On the one hand, we have “organic,” “free range” and “humane” egg, milks and meat producers, meant to lull concerned consumers into mindlessly accepting the delusion that enslavement and needless death can ever be anything but cruel and immoral. Here, Davis deftly refutes each of these labels in turn.

Perhaps scarier still are the frontiers currently being forged by agri-science: featherless chickens. De-winging and de-tailing live birds. The introduction of contact lenses to reduce “feed usage.” The breeding of blind chickens. Studies involving the insertion of inflated balloons, shell membranes and tampons into the uteri of hens (!).

Imagining the future of egg production, one engineer described a spectacle that seems ripped from the pages of a Margaret Atwood novel:

“Mature hens will be beheaded and hooked up en masse to industrial-scale versions of the heart-lung machines that brain-dead human beings need a court order to get unplugged from. Since the chickens won’t move, cages won’t be needed. Nutrients, hormones, and metabolic stimulants will be fed in superabundance into mechanically oxygenated blood to crank up egg production to three per day, maybe five or even ten.

“Since no digestive tracts will be needed, it can go when the head goes, along with the heart and lungs and the feathers, too. The naked, headless, gutless chicken will crank out eggs till its ovaries burn out. When a sensor senses that no egg has been dropped within the last four or six hours, the carcass will be released onto a conveyor, chopped, sliced, steamed, and made into soup, burgers, and dog food.” (p. 183)

[Excerpted from "The Future of Eggs" by Robert Burruss; published in The Baltimore Sun on December 29, 1993.]

ChickieNobs, anyone?

Throughout Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs, Davis argues passionately in favor of another future – a future in which we not only recognize but embrace the kinship we share with nonhuman animals. Vegetarianism isn’t enough; in Davis’s words, “milk and eggs are as much a part of an animal as meat is.” (p. 166). Veganism – not just in diet, but worldview as well – is the only way. One cannot profess to “love” animals while exploiting them. And we will never know peace until the killing – of even the “least” among us – stops.

A giant metal chicken, made out of old auto bumpers by Larry Godwin of ARTWORKS of Brundidge Al.
CC image via Flickr user whiteforge.
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Conclusion

I received a review copy of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs in early 2010. While I read through it rather quickly – it’s an accessible, if disturbing book – this review has literally been six months in the making. Partially, this is because of the sheer volume of information that Davis manages to pack into just 183 short pages – I found it difficult to distill it all down to a short and pat review. Even more so than the amount of detail is its horrific quality; much of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs reads like something out of the Seventh Circle of Dante’s Inferno.

Only…infinitely worse, because it’s real. It’s happening. Right this very moment, as you sit in your office perusing the ‘net during lunch break, or lounge in bed while a laptop and cat vie for precious lap space, hundreds of millions of “laying” hens remain trapped in their own filth: eyes burning, stomachs empty and cramping, feet aching, skeletons collapsing, hearts and minds crying out for relief, freedom – and their disappeared babies. These are our sisters, suffering; alone and not. For no reason other than that the products of their reproductive systems taste yummy to human palates.

Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs is an exquisitely difficult story to read. And yet, read we must. Davis gives voice to the billions of forsaken chickens that we Americans enslave, exploit, kill and dismember every year. (Even if you do not work in a slaughterhouse or own stock in Tyson, if you consume chickens or their eggs, then yes, you are directly complicit in the suffering described above.) She puts the chicks, roosters and – especially – hens front and center, daring the reader to live their shared experiences, if only vicariously.

Should you ever find yourself face-to-face with a rescued “battery” hen, dear reader, tell me this: will you be able to return her gaze without flinching?

One of many chickens I met on a recent trip to the farmed animal sanctuary
Cracker Box Palace in Alton, NY.
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Further Reading

Davis, Karen. 2001. More than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality. Brooklyn, New York: Lantern Books.
(You can download this book as a free .pdf file here.)

United Poultry Concerns | www.upc-online.org
Many of Davis’s writings, including first editions and excerpts from published books, as well as a number of essays and poems, are available on United Poultry Concern’s website. As a former English professor, Davis’s writing is beautiful, lyrical and heart-wrenching – and tinged by a feminist sensibility that, too often, is missing from animal rights commentary. I can’t recommend her written work highly enough.

“Twisty the rescued egg-laying hen often preferred cat food kibble to chicken feed because her beak deformity made it difficult for her to pick up small bits of chicken food.”
CC image the HSUS on Flickr / Ariana Huemer of Oakland, California.
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Last but not least, I’ve included a variety of egg- and meat-free recipes to demonstrate that a diet devoid of chicken suffering need not be considered a “sacrifice.”

Please note that a much, much shorter version of this review is posted on Amazon and Library Thing. Helpful votes are appreciated; sharing, encouraged!

Book cover, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes: Amazing Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Pies, Brownies and Breads by Kris Holechek (2009)
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Earlier in the year, I happened upon a giveaway of The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes; publisher Ulysses Press was offering up a few copies of the recently-released book for review. Since I was already a fan of author Kris Holechek through her NOM! NOM! NOM! BLOG (and, perhaps more to the point, am unable to pass up a vegan freebie!), I jumped at the chance. Six+ months later, and I think I’ve finally tried enough of the recipes to offer up a review.

The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes features recipes for a variety of baked goods, grouped into the following categories: cookies; bars; muffins; quick breads; cakes; pies and tarts; pastries; yeasted treats; frostings, icings and toppings; and children’s recipes (“Kids in the Kitchen”). The recipes include some standards (Shorbread; Best Banana Bread; Basic Pie Crust; Rosemary Focacia; Going, Going, Gone! Gingerbread) as well as a number of more creative concoctions (Strawberry Lemonade Cheespie; Gas Station Pie; Garden Muffins; Mocha-damia Bars; Blackest Forest Cake). Each recipe is rated for difficulty and prep time, with one “whisk” being the simplest and five “whisks,” the most challenging.

In addition to ten sections listed above, Holechek begins the book with a handy introductory chapter. Particularly useful for novices such as myself, this “vegan baking 101″ guide covers the fundamentals, such as the ups and downs and when-to’s of various egg replacers, sugars and sweeteners, and leaveners; the best way to melt chocolate; essential ingredients; and must-have kitchen utensils and gadgets. (Whereas I’d been resistant to buying cooling racks for quite some time, Holecheck – with no small help from Shane! – finally convinced me of the need.)

Over time, I tried a number of recipes, including….

The Lemon Almond Bling Muffins (page 66), which are flavored with almond extract and topped off with a delicious mix of lemon, sugar and raw almonds:

The Choco-Chai Coffee Cake (page 89), which wasn’t as strongly flavored as I’d hoped (the chai flavoring comes from chai tea; in future attempts, I think I’ll double the number of teabags used from 5 to 10), but yummy nonetheless:

The Best Banana Bread (page 70), which was good, though not the best I’ve ever tasted (that distinction goes to Shane’s Super-Awesome Super Vegan Bananer Bread, which is – hello! – super awesome!):

The Chocolate Raspberry Swirl Muffins (page 62), whose infusion of raspberry preserves is lovely:

The Raspberry Lime Muffins (page 68), reinvented here as Lemon Blueberry Muffins (hey, I had neither frozen raspberries nor lime zest at the time, but I was able to find frozen blueberries and lemon zest; a hungry vegan’s gotta do what a hungry vegan’s gotta do!):

The Best Boston Cream Pie (page 91), lovingly baked for me by my husband on my birthday…

…though not without a hitch, as you can see in this next photo. For some unknown reason, he had trouble getting the cream to thicken up, resulting in a bit of a gooey mess, cream leaking out on all sides of the cake. Even so, it tasted amazing.

Last but not least are the Better-than Breadsticks (page 128), which are a DIY version of “a certain Italian chain restaurant['s]” soft, garlicky, buttery breadsticks. (Perhaps?…Could it be?…The Olive Garden, maybe?) Though I was a bit skeptical of the recipe’s one-whisk rating, I was especially looking forward to trying it out, as I too happen to be hooked on this unnamed Italian chain’s bottomless baskets of dough-based crack.

Unfortunately, my skepticism was well-deserved; the breadsticks came out…okay. Just…okay. I don’t know if we made a mistake with the dough, or baked them a little too long, or whatever, but they were on the dry side. Kind of boring and unimpressive. Needless to say, nowhere near as addictive as the original.

To be fair, I think it likely that the Mr. and I just weren’t up to this particular challenge. Going in, we suspected that it would be a tricky recipe – those professionally made breadsticks are just so. damn. good! – and all things considered, they actually came out better than I thought they would. (They were edible, mkay.) Probably this recipe calls for a higher skill rating, methinks.

Peedee sez, “wuman, I wants sum kahlua cakes, n I wants em now!
or else I be bringen my poo pies in teh house, u gets me?”
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All in all, The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes is 150+ pages of pure deliciousness.

(An abridged version of this review was also posted on Amazon and Library Thing.)

With the threat of an overabundance of fruit and veggies looming, I hurriedly began researching methods of preserving the extras for winter. Canning struck me as intriguing, if a bit risky for a newbie like myself. Freezing, while quick and easy, brings with it the obvious space and energy limitations. Eventually, I decided that dehydrating the excess food was my best option: safe, uncomplicated and requiring the minimal upfront investment.

My (then-) newly-purchased Nesco American Harvest Gardenmaster FD-1020 Digital Pro Food Dehydrator, still in the box.
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Enter: the Nesco American Harvest Gardenmaster FD-1020 Digital Pro Food Dehydrator. After quite a bit of online window-shopping, I finally opted for this make and model. A mid-range dehydrator, the Gardenmaster FD-1020 is one of the pricier models offered by Nesco, and yet it’s still less expensive than those made by Excalibur (which, if the Amazon listings are any indication, is the Lexus of food dehydrators). Currently, the Gardenmaster FD-1020 retails for $154.99 on Amazon, but is on sale for $116.95.

All things considered – e.g., price, customer reviews, expandability, accessories – the Gardenmaster FD-1020 struck me as the wisest choice: suitable for my needs, without going over the top. Plus, it only cost me $30 after I applied my existing gift certificate balance. Score!

This is my third autumnal season with the Gardenmaster; in this time, I’ve used it to dry a variety of fruits and veggies, including tomatoes:

sweet potatoes (for the dogs, natch!):

all manner of jalapenos and peppers:

apples:

and even watermelon (looks like HuFu, yo!):

I have to admit that, out of habit and not a little concern, I store most of these dried items in a fridge or freezer until use. Even so, by sucking all the moisture from them, the Gardenmaster allows me to fit more produce in a finite space than I could otherwise; additionally, the food keeps almost indefinitely. (Seriously, I still have a few lingering, two-year-old slices of vegan HuFu in my produce drawer!)

As much as I love me some dried tomatoes on a gooey, cheesy pizza, my absolute favorite use for the Gardenmaster FD-1020 is this:

FRUIT LEATHER!

It’s simple, really: just make a huge pot of applesauce or fruit puree, and when it’s cooked down, spread it out (nice and thick!) on a Fruit Roll-Up Sheet and let dehydrate for 12 hours+. (There’s always a risk of overdrying it into a chewy crisp, so start small – 10 hours at 150 degrees F – and then keep going, a few hours at a time, until it’s mostly dry; not sticky, but still a little moist.)

I’m a big fan of the individually-wrapped slices of fruit leather sold in certain natural foods stores, but they don’t hold a soy-based candle to the homemade stuff! Not only is the DIY version less expensive (especially if you have access to cheap or free ingredients), but making your own allows for endless customization: strawberry apple. blueberry peach. pumpkin spice. apple almond butter. Though I haven’t yet tried it, vegetable leather is a yummy possibility, too; basil-tomato-broccoli, anyone?

On the downside, money saved equals time spent. Prepping foods for drying can be a time-intensive task, and the apple-based fruit leather of which I’m so fond is no exception: peeling, cutting and then cooking all those apples can take hours, and two grocery bags of apples only yields four trays’ worth of applesauce.

(Of course, you can also use dehydrators to make raw food meals, such as this Dehydrated Black Bean Burger recently republished for veganmofo by JL Goes Vegan. I’ve never used the Gardenmaster for this purpose, but never say never!)

Anyhow, back to my trusty Gardenmaster. Seeing as I’ve only owned it for a few years and have nothing to compare it to, take the following with a grain of sea salt…

My Gardenmaster FD-1020, with the standard four trays. Later I’d expand my collection to twelve, which was a little optimistic on my part, considering how time-intensive the food prep can be. Twelve trays’ worth in one day? LOL, grasshopper, LOL.
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Construction: Solid. The top of the machine (its “lid,” you might say), which houses the heating unit and fan, is substantial but not heavy. The plastic trays are lightweight but durable; supposedly they’re dishwasher-safe (ditto: the plastic base), though I haven’t yet tested this. The Fruit Roll-Up Trays and Mesh Screen are (obviously) flimsier – since they’re designed for use in concert with the trays – but have held up well.

Durability: Good – I haven’t had any issues in the two years I’ve owned it.

Ease of use and care: With its LCD display and simple design, the Gardenmaster is quite easy to use: push one button to change the LCD display from time to temperature and back again, one of two arrows to set each up/down, and a start/stop to start and stop the drying. (As long as the machine remains plugged in, the digital screen stays on.) Recommended temperatures for fruits, veggies and jerky (here defined as “dried TOFU”) are posted on the top of the machine, which can run between 90 and 160 degrees F. Does it get any easier than this?

Clean-up is a bit trickier. Because the machine is so large – circular in shape, it measures 15″ across – I have to clean the trays, accessories and base in a bathtub. (For serious, they don’t fit in my kitchen sink! *sad Kelly*) The Fruit Roll-Up sheets and machine base are rather easy to clean – just wash with a bit of detergent and a soft sponge – but the trays, what with their closely positioned spokes, require some elbow grease and extra diligence. Air drying is the only way to dry them completely, and can take quite a bit of time and even more space.

Finally, because the machine is so large, it probably isn’t the best choice for those with limited storage space. The Excalibur models seem more compact, at least judging from the photos available on Amazon.

Extras: When I purchased the Gardenmaster FD-1020, it came with two Fruit Roll-Up Sheets, as well as one Plastic Mesh Screen for drying herbs and other items too small to rest on the trays. If you’re a fruit leather person and/or grow your own herbs, neither will be sufficient. Luckily, add-ons are available: extra trays, Fruit Roll-Up Sheets and Mesh Screens are all sold separately, and for a reasonable price.

I also received a recipe book and jerky spice packet, both of which have sat, untouched, at the bottom of a miscellaneous kitchen drawer since their arrival. Beef jerky, yuck.

Value: Not bad. Even at retail price, I think I’ve more than made my money back in the amount of food I’ve managed to save through dehydration (the value of my time excluded). Possibly I might have done just as well with a lower-end model, though the lackluster reviews scared me away from those in the < $100 range.

Overall: I’d recommend it!

…Though newbies on a budget might get just as much use of out a slightly less expensive model. Just sayin’.

Updated to add: I posted an abridged version of this review on Amazon; if you enjoyed it, please click through and give me a helpful vote, mkay?

After some searching, I stumbled upon Sweet V Confections, an all-vegan bakery (baker, singular?) located in North Carolina. Sweet V makes a variety of, um, vegan confections, ranging from candies and cupcakes to brownies and cookies. Can I get a nomnom?

Sitting at the kitchen table, a cordless phone in one hand, my grandmother Arnie shows off a basket of vegan goodies from Sweet V Confections. In keeping with the Christmas season, the basket is striped red and green, and the wrapped cookies all sport festive white, green and red ribbons. The lights of a Christmas tree glow faintly in the background.
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While all the vegan bakers on Etsy make my mouth drool, I chose Sweet V because the seller offers customizable gift baskets – and with holiday decor, to boot! Score! I decided to purchase a basket each for my grandmothers Arnie and Vita, as well as my great-uncle Ken (who’s still alive and kickin’ it at 101 years young; my grandmothers clock in at an unimpressive-by-comparison 94 and 84, respectively).

In each basket comes three dozen cookies (nom-er’s choice!), along with six peanut butter cups, six peanut butter and jelly cups, and nine peppermint patties. For Arnie, I chose chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, and butterscotch chocolate chip cookies; for Vita, chocolate chip, peanut butter, and gingerbread cookies; and for Ken, chocolate chip, butterscotch chocolate chip, and gingerbread cookies. Yummy, festive and cruelty-free!

A screenshot of Etsy seller Sweet V Confections’s storefront. Taken on October 7, 2010.
(Yes, I planned my mofo’ing well in advance this year!)
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Of course, like many Etsy sellers, Sweet V will also consider custom requests. At the time of this writing, the shop features 33 creations, all of which sound heavenly: Fudge Filled Sandwich Cookies. Cherry Walnut Fudge. Cookies n’ Cream Cupcakes, Jumbo size. Orange Cream Chocolates. Pecan Bourbon Balls. S’more Fudge. Let me repeat: S’more. Fudge. (Oh yes she did!) Conceivably, one could create a custom basket containing any variety of these chocolaty, sugary miracles. (If you do, please send it my way, mkay?)

Naturally, I can’t really offer a review of Sweet V Confection’s products, since I wasn’t lucky enough to sample any. But. I can say that the recipients had nothing but good things to say about the cookies and chocolates. This won’t really come as a shock to the vegans in the audience, but no one even suspected that the items were egg- and dairy-free, and were (pleasantly?) surprised and more than a little impressed when I broke the news. (Pffft, who says vegan foods are gross and boring? As if!)

On my end, Kristen was very nice and easy to work with. She responded to all my questions and updates quickly and with nary a hint of Christmas frazzle. I placed the order on December 16th – a little later than I would have liked – and she had the baskets assembled and shipped within a few days. Extremely pleasant, hassle-free and reasonably priced, too.

Come to think of it…I might gift myself a basket of goodies from Sweet V Confections this holiday season!

What about you, mofo’ers? Which vegan Etsy shops get you all hot and bothered?

Behold: the Nostalgia CCP-509 Old Fashioned Movie (Fun) Time Popcorn Cart, in all its glory.
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Though Shane and I only sporadically exchange gifts for our birthdays, a few years ago I decided to spring for something extra-nice and super-special. Namely, one of those old-fashioned movie theater popcorn cart replicas. And not the countertop model, either. Nope, I went all out, opting for the full-sized version, working wheels and all! We were getting set to move into our first home at the time, so this was also a bit of a housewarming gift that we gave ourselves. (Awwww!)

After some shopping around, I settled on the Nostalgia CCP-509. (Though this model doesn’t appear to be available on Amazon, they do sell the 510 for $205. Free shipping, yo! I’m pretty certain I bought mine from a certain evil box store. Free site-to-store shipping, yo!)

Let’s turn to Overstock.com‘s specs for the 101, shall we? (The product manual I managed to dig up is all but useless. Unless you want to know the history of popcorn, in 250 words or less. As I said, useless.)

Dimensions: 27.0×20.0×59.0
Materials: steel, rubber, polycarbonite, glass
Model No: CCP-50

o Your very own 4-foot-11-inch tall theater-style popcorn cart will look great in your game room and will be the hit of every party

o Full-sized, 4-ounce popper will pop up to 1.5 gallons of movie-house-quality popcorn per batch

o Specialty appliance features a large, stainless-steel kettle with a built in stirring system and kernel catcher to keep out the unpopped kernels

o Supplies compartment in the base of the unit for storage of oil, kernels, bags and more

o Popcorn cart offers an easy-to-clean design and, though it’s perfectly sized for the home, is approved for commercial use

Construction and durability: Constructed primarily of steel and weighing in at 50 pounds +/-, the cart’s a pretty solid appliance. We purchased it just before a major household move, so it certainly made the rounds before we assembled it – manufacturer to box store warehouse to local box store to Kansas home to Missouri home – and yet everything was intact when we finally cracked the box open. We’ve had it set up in a spare room for about three years now, shuffling it here and there as home maintenance projects have necessitated, without any problems or even visible wear. We only use it to make popcorn sporadically – mostly for special occasions or trips to the drive-in – and it has yet to fail us.

One reviewer on Amazon complained that the plastic plate that secures the kettle to the roof of the machine shattered – on both the original and replacement cart – sending shards of plastic into the popcorn, but we’ve had no such problem. Others have said that the kernels get stuck in the kettle or do not pop properly, but I suspect that they’re simply adding more kernels than the machine can handle at once. (You’re only supposed to add 1/2 cup at a time.)

You will, however, want to store the machine in a room that’s not subject to much foot traffic or roughhousing, as a tumble could dent the steel, shatter the glass, or damage the kettle and its motor.

We store our popcorn machine in a spare/storage-type room that isn’t frequently home to the mad dashes of energetic, ball-fetching little doggie monsters.
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Ease of use: The machine’s operation is straightforward and simple: turn the machine on, allow it to run for 3-5 minutes (or until the kettle becomes hot), turn it off, add a tablespoon of popcorn oil and the popcorn kernels, turn the machine back on and go play with the dogs or the kids or your spouse or whomever. In 15 minutes (give or take), you’ll have around 10 cups of rich, buttery deliciousness at your noshing disposal. Rinse, repeat, nom.

Ease of care: In order to prevent the oil from caking onto the kettle (trust me, learn from our mistakes!), it’s best to clean the kettle after every use. Though the manual offers instructions for cleaning the kettle while in place, this involves pouring water into the bowl, allowing it to heat for 15 minutes, and then pouring the excess water out by tipping the kettle (the same way you would unpopped kernels, I might add), using a container to catch the water before it hits the platform of the unit, potentially resulting in an electric shock. Doesn’t sound very safe, does it?

Luckily, the kettle is removable, and while not dishwasher safe, it can be cleaned using a damp, non-abrasive cloth or sponge. Ditto: the inside of the popcorn machine (i.e., where the popcorn is stored) and the kernel catching tray that’s housed, drawer-like, underneath the platform.

A bowl of rich, buttery/oily popcorn. This was my lunch on Halloween – or, as it’s known in the Garbato-Brady household, Horror Movie Marathon Day.
Dinner? Tofurky Pizza with Daiya Cheese!
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Popcorn quality: Rich. Buttery (but not really; the oil just makes it seem so!). Fatty. Yummy.

If you prefer plain, low-fat popcorn – or no popcorn – then a popcorn machine probably isn’t for you. Unlike an air popper, these old fashioned machines require oil to pop the corn, so there really isn’t a healthy option other than going a bit light(er) on the oil. But. If you like the buttery movie popcorn, yet find yourself shying away because you never can tell whether it’s actually vegan, then a popcorn machine may be the perfect treat for an occasional night in at the movies.

Bonus points: if you want something different, you can choose from a variety of corn kernels and flavored oils.

Aesthetics: Let’s be honest: second only to the awesome factor of being able to make movie theater-quality popcorn on a whim, I bought this cart because it’s beautiful. What with the fire engine red exterior, the elaborate gold lettering, and the vintage vibe, the Old Fashioned Movie Time Popcorn Cart is as much an art piece as it is a kitchen gadget. (Cue: memories of carnival “freaks,” small-town fairs, luxurious retro movie theaters, and baseball games with grandad of childhoods long since passed.) Gorgeous doesn’t begin to describe it.

While smaller, counter-top models are available for as little as $30, we opted for the more expensive full-sized version for several reasons, all of which involve aesthetics (because, let’s face it, we rarely have a need for more than one serving of popcorn at a time!). First and foremost is the retro kitsch factor, which meshes well with some of our other belongings. Shane, for example, is a huge fan of all things baseball, old school stadiums in particular. It’s no coincidence that our popcorn cart resides beside his collection of replica stadiums, bobbleheads and glossy hardcover baseball tomes.

Makes me wanna don a poodle skirt and dance to Buddy Holly!
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We also seem to have hella more extra floor space than we do counter space, so it works out perfectly!

Value: For us, the Nostalgia CCP-509 is a great value for our money. Granted, it did cost a good chunk of change, but we’ve gotten quite a bit of use out of it. And, when it’s not busy popping our kernels, it pays its way by prettying up our house. It’s the best looking appliance we own, by far.

Look, we even decorate it red, white and blue for FSMas!:

Hello, Kitty!
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If, however, you find yourself limited by budget or storage space, a mini-cart will work just as well.

Conclusion: Popcorn’s on, vegans!

Yes, that means the doggies, too! Just kidding; these photos were all taken in the days before the Nostalgia CCP-509 came into our lives. Any excuse to whip out the dog photos, amirite peeps?

His ears and eyebrows clearing the kitchen counter, Peedee tries to sneak a stray piece of popcorn with one outstretched pawn. Not so fast, Peedee, we see you!
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A still-spry Kaylee catches a flying piece of popcorn in mid-air.
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Meanwhile, Peedee continues his not-so-subtle creep onto the counter, and toward the popcorny goodness that taunts him from above.
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