The environment doesn’t appreciate our meat obsession.
The average meat-eater in the U.S. is responsible for almost twice as much global warming as the average vegetarian, and close to three times that of the average vegan, according to a study (pdf) published this month in the journal Climatic Change.
The study, which was carried out at Oxford University, surveyed the diets of some 60,000 individuals (more than 2,000 vegans, 15,000 vegetarians, 8,000 fish-eaters, and nearly 30,000 meat-eaters). Heavy meat-eaters were defined as those who consume more than 3.5 ounces of meat per day—making the average American meat-eater (who consumes roughly four ounces per day) a heavy meat-eater. Low meat-eaters were those who eat fewer than 1.76 ounces. And medium meat-eaters were those whose consumption fell somewhere in between.
The difference found in diet-driven carbon footprints was significant. Halve your meat intake, and you could cut your carbon footprint by more than 35 percent; stick to fish, and you could cut it by nearer to 50 percent; go vegan, and the difference could be 60%.
The variations were so drastic that the study’s authors suggested that countries should consider revising their definition of a sustainable diet. “National governments that are considering an update of dietary recommendations in order to define a ‘healthy, sustainable diet’ must incorporate the recommendation to lower the consumption of animal-based products,” the study says.
The livestock industry is responsible for roughly 15 percent of global carbon emissions. And the resources necessary to produce even the smallest amounts of market ready meat—like, say, a quarter pound hamburger—are staggering.
The good news is that while Americans might still eat more meat than mother nature would prefer, they are scaling back, and especially so with the most environmentally unfriendly kind—per capita beef consumption has fallen by 36 percent since its peak in 1976, according to data from the USDA. The bad news is that the rest of the world appears to be headed in the opposite direction. Global demand for meat is expected to grow by more than 70 percent by 2050, largely driven by burgeoning middle classes in the developing world.
…it is always wrong and misguided and thoughtless and cruel.” – Susie Duncan
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/7898756-where-is-jay-leno-when-we-need-him-three-stories
Three Stories and a Great Quote from Susie Duncan
1) 
Unlikely friendship of a dog and an owl … Okay! So, why can’t humans simmer down and be nice and stop eating other species? AND stop warring with one another? AND stop worrying and start being happy and looking out for each other? These photographs at the above link are exceptional – enjoy! LIFE as it was meant to be lived…by all!
Don’t eat any animals under any circumstances; it is always wrong and misguided and thoughtless and cruel.
2) Urgent: Ask Indiana Legislators to Oppose ‘Canned Hunting’ Bill! This state has gone so damned low that it is not to be believe; they may have already voted as they are running crazy, mean-spirited legislation through like crazy!
3) ODD HEADLINE? “American gored by bull in Spain out of intensive care“: not just a double preposition, but also sounds like the bull gave a bit of a gore to a rotten person just to teach a lesson in humane-ness, doing so from that spirit of concerned “intensive care” for the brat’s soul?????? Like a parental swat? Where is Jay Leno when we need him?
France has declared that animals are sentient and ‘not furniture!’
The French Parliament has overturned 200 years of law to elevate animals to the status of sentient beings. Although it was already obvious to most of us, this recognition in law is an important milestone for animals. As the law begins to acknowledge the sentience of animals, recognition will grow that animals have needs and desires of their own. And one day they will gain the rights that they have so long been denied.
Thanks to the many submissions put in by you and others, New Zealand is set to acknowledge sentience in its own animal welfare legislation later this year. Find out more about animals and NZ law: http://safe.org.nz/issues/animals-and-the-law#description
SHARE if you think animals are so much more than a piece of furniture!
Does this mean the French, who invented and produce foie gras, will end the bizarre practice of shoving a pipe down the throats of geese and force feeding them until their livers swell or their stomachs burst, whichever comes first?
speciesism
(ˈspiːʃiːzˌɪzəm)
n
1. (Environmental Science) a belief of humans that all other species of animals are inferior and may therefore be used for human benefit without regard to the suffering inflicted
Why Do Right-Wing Adherents Engage in More Animal Exploitation and Meat Consumption?
Submitted on Jan 26, 2015 (Original item from 2014)
Even though a number of studies have established a link between right-wing ideology and meat-eating, there is a dearth of literature addressing why those with right-wing beliefs are more likely to consume animals. Recognizing the gap, this study of Dutch and Belgian adults begins to address the question of why, and finds that people with right-wing beliefs tend to staunchly oppose any movement that threatens traditions, or perceived human superiority. Though it is only an initial foray into right-wing psychology and its tendency towards animal exploitation, the authors establish a strong link between the two and encourage further inquiry.
Abstract:
When it comes to right-wing ideology, past research has identified two “dispositional dimensions” that are the primary lenses through which adherents see the world: Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), defined by a strong belief in cultural traditions, submission to authority, and aggression towards disobedience; and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), a desire for your group to be dominant, and belief that there is a fundamental inequality among social groups. At the beginning of their paper, the authors note that “Few studies have investigated relations between social-ideological orientations and exploitative attitudes and behaviors toward animals. […] Yet existing evidence reveals positive associations between right-wing ideologies such as RWA and SDO, and attitudes toward the exploitation of animals as objects for human benefit.” Even though it is established that having a right-wing orientation means that a person is more likely to self-identify as a meat eater and consume meat in their daily life, there is little evidence as to why this is the case. In this study, researchers hypothesized that the link between meat-eating and right-wing beliefs is caused primarily by “a sense of threat from increasingly popular non-exploitive ideologies toward animals (i.e., veg(etari)anism),” as well as “human supremacy beliefs.”
Conducting two separate surveys with Dutch and Belgian adults respectively, researchers established the link, finding that “those higher (vs. lower) in RWA or SDO demonstrate greater acceptance of animal exploitation and greater animal consumption.” However, more importantly, they were able to “reveal that right-wing ideologies predict animal exploitation and consumption through two psychological processes: the perceived threat that animal-rights ideologies pose to the dominant carnist ideology, and the belief in human superiority over animals.” Even when researchers replicated their first study with a second group, sampling a greater proportion of non-meat eaters, and controlling for the possibility that meat-eaters simply like the taste of meat, researchers still found that the basis of meat-eating for right-wing respondents was ideological in nature. Again, they found that for right-wingers, meat-eating behavior was “clearly ideological in nature, referencing power, might, and greater ‘rights’ over animals, plus an active push-back against movements advocating for the under-powered (i.e., non-human animals).”
Through this study, the authors hope to inspire further inquiry and note that their work indicates that it is “increasingly clear” that right-wing thought has “much broader implications” for the propagation of meat-eating. Given the strength of ideological beliefs, it might be wise for animal advocates to undertake further research into how their messages target and impact right-wing adherents. Furthermore, if right-wing ideology is such a strong predictor of a steadfast belief in the rightness of consuming animals, it may be more effective to target meat-eaters who do not disagree with veganism/vegetarianism on such fundamental, visceral grounds.
Original Abstract:
Despite the well-documented implications of right-wing ideological dispositions for human intergroup relations, surprisingly little is understood about the implications for human–animal relations. We investigate why right-wing ideologies – social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) – positively predict attitudes toward animal exploitation and meat consumption. Two survey studies conducted in heterogeneous community samples (Study 1, N=260; Study 2, N=489) demonstrated that right-wing ideologies predict greater acceptance of animal exploitation and more meat consumption through two explaining mechanisms: (a) perceived threat from non-exploitive ideologies to the dominant carnist ideology (for both SDO and RWA) and (b) belief in human superiority over animals (for SDO). These findings hold after controlling for hedonistic pleasure from eating meat. Right- wing adherents do not simply consume more animals because they enjoy the taste of meat, but because doing so supports dominance ideologies and resistance to cultural change. Psychological parallels between human intergroup relations and human–animal relations are considered.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914…
My fellow animal lovers, it’s time to quit singing praises for the Pope. It turns out Pope Francis has backed away from his alleged statement that (non-human) animals have souls and that our bygone pets (God rest their souls) will be waiting for us in Heaven (presumably with leash at the ready, for us to take them on a long-overdue poody walk).
Whether Pope Francis said that last week or not, the very idea that pets go to heaven has been vehemently denied by Vatican commentators. How would humankind ever square that with their notions of superiority and sense of entitlement to preferential Heavenly treatment?
But the Pope did recently do right by our biological underlings in proclaiming his belief in Evolution and the Big Bang Theory. God is no ‘magician with a magic wand,’ he quickly added, being sure to assign ultimate credit to the mystical one created in Man’s image. (As to whether magicians are gods he wouldn’t divulge.)
Collective Evolution reported, “Pope Francis continues to shake-up the Christian world with his latest public revelation, announcing that evolution and the big bang theory are in fact real, Speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, [Wait, what? Pontifical sciences? Isn’t that an oxymoron?] Pope Francis’s words lessened the divide between the Christian faith and science with his shocking assertion about mankind’s evolution.”
The fact that originators of the Big Bang Theory never mentioned Heaven or its approximate location within the boundless Universe doesn’t seem to matter to His Holiness, but evidently there’s limited acreage within its gates since non-humans are not officially allowed in. Apparently they still haven’t evolved a savable soul.
Listen up, ladies (and men who care about women’s rights, duh!), because this one’s for you:
As an animal rights activist AND a feminist, I’ve always felt that it’s important for us women and girls to recognize the connection between feminism and the treatment of cows used by the dairy industry. While this may sound like a stretch at first, here’s why:
All cows who are used for their milk are female—in case ya didn’t already know that!
Female cows don’t need to be milked. Female cows produce milk for the same reason that human women do: to feed THEIR babies. On factory farms, calves are torn away from their mothers so that the momma cow’s milk can be saved for human consumption (we’re the ONLY species that drinks another species’ milk regularly—so weird!). This is what it looks like:
Cows produce milk only after they’ve been pregnant. In order to get cows pregnant, farmers forcibly impregnate them on what the industry calls a “rape rack.” Uhhhhh … read that again. A rape rack. That’s literally what it’s called. Can you really consider yourself someone who stands up for all females if you condone farmers’ use of RAPE RACKS to impregnate cows—just so they can DRAG their babies away and repeat the whole thing again?
Female cows in the dairy industry are treated as nothing more than baby- and milk-making machines—with no regard for their emotional lives. If they were allowed to do so, mother cows would spend months with their young, teaching, nurturing, and bonding with them. On factory farms, all they can do is cry out for their babies as they’re violently dragged away. For the milk to make it to grocery-store shelves, cows are hooked up to milking machines for most of their lives. No “old MacDonald’s farm” here. When their milk production decreases and the cows are no longer profitable, they’re sent to slaughter.
If you still aren’t getting the connection, let me break it down for you: Women and girls EVERYWHERE are being used and abused. Many of us have grown up in male-dominated societies that tell us what to do with our bodies and how they should be used, and sadly, we’re often seen as nothing more than objects. Many women and girls are forced into situations where they lose control over their bodies—and far too often, other people think that they deserve this control. That’s what’s happening to cows on dairy farms every single day—all for a totally unnecessary and disgusting product.
You know that this is wrong, but the good news is that it’s SO easy to help. All you have to do is stick to dairy-free alternatives to milk and cheese, which is easier than ever!
1. Check this page out for tips on ditching dairy.
2. Get the scoop on vegan cheese here!
3. Take action here for cows used for their milk, then share this page by clicking the buttons below.
Read more: http://www.peta2.com/blog/feminism-dairy-milk/#ixzz3OSGPb7Fn
Exposing the Big Game 