We support two ocean protection organizations: People for Puget Sound (local) and the Ocean Conservancy. I was reading Ocean Conservancy's magazine today. For the past couple of issues I've read, it has had a "sustainable seafood recipe." I understand that they are trying to encourage people to eat fish and other marine life that are not part of a collapsing fishery.

It's titled "The Animal Activists' Handbook: Maximizing Our Positive Impact in Today's World" by Matt Ball and Bruce Friedrich. One guy runs Vegan Outreach and the other is a VP at PETA (they have those?). Here's a review on Huffington Post. Looks like it has

After all the brewhaha about improving the conditions at the King County animal shelters in Washington State (where we live), I'm still seeing this kind of stuff. A group of veterinarians that volunteered this year to treat sick animals at King County's two animal shelters has quit, citing a lack of accountability and a reluctance from shelter staff to fix a broken system. In a searing letter to the county last month, one veterinarian stated that "pervasive negativity" and an unwillingness to change led the vets to stop offering their services at the Kent and Bellevue shelters.....

Finally, a cruelty suit against Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, is coming to trial. A U.S. Department of Agriculture investigator determined the use of the bull hook “precipitated in the physical harm and ultimate death” of Benjamin, said Tracy Silverman, general counsel for the Animal Welfare Institute....The

This is a good thing. The American Southeast is a hotbed of blood sports. This information is from Best Friends. Before 2008, only one person had been incarcerated for dog fighting in Georgia. Considering the state had one of the weakest dog-fighting laws in the nation, that's no compliment. But

From the website of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture : Washington, DC - The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) this week released a proposal to address the critical economic situation of American dairy, pork, and poultry producers, while simultaneously providing much-needed nutritional assistance to Americans facing hunger due to job loss and other economic hardships. People whose careers involve creating, fattening, transporting and slaughtering sentient nonhumans whose parts and secretions will then be used as food are having some

Today's New York Times gives us Adam Shriver's Op-Ed " Not Grass-Fed, But at Least Pain-Free ," which presents its dilemma at the end: If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

 A couple of years ago I catalogued the dozens of excuses/rationalizations from well-meaning, compassionate people about why they eat animals, and all fell into one of six categories: It's what god wanted (and other versions, such as: That's why they were put on the earth. . . . By god .)

We support two ocean protection organizations: People for Puget Sound (local) and the Ocean Conservancy. I was reading Ocean Conservancy's magazine today. For the past couple of issues I've read, it has had a "sustainable seafood recipe." I understand that they are trying to encourage people to eat fish and other marine life that are not part of a collapsing fishery.

Frequently, when I read Steve Best, I feel guilty. "He's He's talking about me," I say to myself. Though I'm not a Francione-style abolitionist, and much of what Best writes isn't directed at me, plenty of what he writes is. And I don't mean me personally (though I probably should).