Feeling hopeless about animal cruelty, pollution and injustices occurring on factory farms? Here’s a way to make a real difference: the ASPCA’s Factory Farm Detox.
Meat, eggs or dairy from animals raised on factory farms. This means caged, crowded, lacking access to the outdoors and worse.
Meat, eggs and dairy produced on welfare-certified farms, as well as all plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.
Join our weeklong Factory Farm Detox and we’ll send you daily emails with inspiration and resources—including exclusive, tasty recipes from favorite chefs and bloggers. We’ll help you understand food labels (both good and bad) and find higher-welfare products where you shop.
Qdoba Mexican Eats: Stop Supporting Chicken Torture! While the campaign for Wendy’s to commit publicly to improved broiler chicken welfare continues, another campaign needs your help. Unlike Chipotle, Panera Bread, Noodles & Company, and other restaurant chains, Qdoba Mexican Eats has also failed to pledge publicly to rid tortured chickens from its supply chain. Chickens.
Chickens used for meat are raised in near total darkness. Many birds are bred to grow so large, so fast, they are crippled by their own weight. The animals often suffer from constant leg pain so severe they can’t stand. As a result, they spend almost all their time sitting in their own waste. At slaughter, they are shackled upside down and shocked with electricity before their throats are cut open—all while fully conscious. Many are even scalded alive.
Despite this horrific cruelty, Qdoba Mexican Eats has failed to publish a meaningful chicken welfare policy. Please tell Qdoba president Keith Guilbault that you won’t support Qdoba while it serves up cruelty. Sign and share our petition to get the word out that consumers care about animal welfare.” (Change.org)
Mary Tyler Moore, a dancer turned award-winning actress who captivated a generation of American women, died on Wednesday at the age of 80. She passed away in Greenwich, Conn., of cardiopulmonary arrest, after contracting Pneumonia.
Best known for her iconic role as Mary Richards in the insanely popular Mary Tyler Moore Show, she portrayed a young, single woman breaking into the male-dominated world of the TV news business. The character exemplified the modern, liberated, working woman for a generation of young women in the 1970s.
Mary Richards was earnest, responsible, hard-working, intelligent, creative, but still very vulnerable and human—-the perfect foil through which legions of young American women heading into the work force recognized themselves, and their struggles, dramatized on screen with humor and a great sense of fun. Moore won seven Emmy awards over the course of her career, and four of them were for her role on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Video: Dr. Phil / Youtube, Creative Commons Attribution License – Reuse Allowed
In the 1960s, prior to her work on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, she starred opposite Dick Van Dyke on The Dick Van Dyke Show, playing Laura Petri, a naive, young housewife, married to Rob Petri, a funny ad executive during the Mad Men era. In many ways the role was the opposite of her later work. Though lovable and sweet, this earlier character lacked the independence and tough-mindedness of that independent newswoman to come, often breaking down in tears, and needing the shoulder of her tall, strong, albeit sometimes bumbling husband, to cry on. Nonetheless, the role was wildly popular, winning her two Emmy awards.
In a striking departure from comedy, Moore also won acclaim, and an Oscar-nomination, for her role in the film Ordinary People, in which she portrayed a cold, dysfunctional mother who lacked the empathy to relate to her son and husband following a terrible family tragedy. She also won a Tony award for her Broadway performance in ‘Who’s Life is it Anyway?’, in which she portrayed a quadriplegic who wanted to die.
Mary Tyler Moore pursued her career despite serious health problems. She had type I diabetes since her thirties, and alcoholism starting during her time on the Dick Van Dyke Show (it ran in her family.) She also had a benign brain tumor removed in 2011. She put her celebrity status to good use as a dedicated advocate for diabetes treatment and research. She publicly acknowledged her alcoholism in the 1980s, and attended the Betty Ford Center for treatment in 1984.
In addition to her diabetes advocacy, Mary Tyler Moore was an enthusiastic vegetarian who worked to promote animal welfare.
It is a terrible fact of life in our generally advanced society that innocent animals are often abused. And sadly, the internet can facilitate such crimes. It’s ironic that sometimes high tech internet technology can inadvertently help to trigger and promote some of the worst acts of barbarism. A dog was recently tortured in a terrible way, and then killed, and we know about this because the heinous offenders videotaped their crime and posted it to social media. This is, of course, an unacceptable outrage.
A petition calling for the maximum prosecution under the law for these criminals is circulating, and the internet will help that petition spread and gain traction with the public. That’s good. However, it’s frustrating to note that online social media played such a large role in triggering this event. Did the perpetrators abuse this dog because they sought internet notoriety? Did they want to go viral and make a name for themselves online? Sadly it appears this was a factor in their decision.
Of course social media companies don’t condone these kinds of crimes. But we must call on them to remain vigilant, and prevent these kinds of terrible posts, and delete them when they slip through. Social media companies control the playing field. These monsters wouldn’t have an audience for their heinous activities if not for the many social media platforms functioning online. The criminals are nothing without social media, and as any Marvel Comic fan knows, with great power comes great responsibility.
This issue isn’t reserved for high flying social media companies, either. This week the modest pages of craigslist played a role in a tragic animal abuse incident. A woman adopted a pet pig from craigslist, in Macon Georgia, but rather than shower it with love and affection, she asked her incompetent neighbor to slaughter it for food, instead. The pig endured a several hour ordeal, which included being struck with a pick axe, shot several times in non-lethal places, and beaten as well. Finally the police were called to the scene, and they decided to killed the animal in order to put it out of its misery. The police also removed dogs from the neighborhood, so animal mistreatment was rampant in the community.
We must all remain vigilant to prevent animal abuse, since these innocent creatures can’t defend themselves. In fact, they rely on us for protection. Social media and other internet venues must do their part, policing their sites for abusive posts linked to crimes against animals, and minimizing potential abuses when ever possible.
The shooting of Harambe, the 17-year-old 400 pound lowland gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo, is burning up the internet with controversy. Zoo officials made the decision to shoot the magnificent animal to protect a young boy who’d broken away from his mother and fallen into the gorilla enclosure.
People are grieving the loss of this great animal, and many are placing blame squarely on both the mother of the child, and zoo officials, for his loss. Concerned animal lovers are so angry that they are circulating an online petition calling for the family of the child to face justice. Read more
