Boo!

Each year on Halloween we here in the Piggy household dine on the flesh of innocents, and this year is no different.

In past years, the kid(s) have feasted on a free range backyard human, conventionally raised store-bought human from the supermarket (2008 was a tight year for us financially) and last year it was backyard cats.

This year, I've been thinking a lot about the idea that if you couldn't kill an animal yourself, then you shouldn't eat animals. So I thought I'd better teach my kids to kill if we're going to keep going with this tradition. It's either that, or stop the tradition. And since you couldn't tear tradition from my cold, dead hands, I guess I have no choice but to teach the kiddos to kill.

So we cornered this bunny in the back yard. First, I set Liam loose, but all he wanted to do was pet the little guy.

Then I asked Anna to kill him for me (I'm squeamish, I'll admit). She didn't want to at first. She asked me how I knew he was a "him" and that's when I realized a mistake I've been making all this time.

"It," I said, "I meant 'it.' Now kill it please."

Reducing the bunny to a thing by using "it" instead of "he" or "she" seemed to put her at a bit more at ease. So she went after "it" with nothing but her bare hands. After an hour of abject failure, I decided to help her out by whittling a spear out of a fallen branch.

Anna looked on quietly as I shaved one end to a deadly point. She finally said, "Isn't that sort of like cheating, Daddy?"

"No, Anna. It's not cheating. It's natural. Our brains evolved the ability to make tools and weapons, which sort of makes it the opposite of cheating."

Then she said something about nuclear weapons and I told her to be quiet while daddy whittled.

Long story short, we had bunny for lunch. The kids weren't big fans of the bunny by himself, so I made some of him - I mean "it" - into a meat smoothie for Anna:

As you can see, she really got into it. These are the piercing eyes of a daughter whose father made her kill a bunny.

I pureed the other parts into a squash tomato bisque for Liam (you know how kids are with texture):

"My daddy wuvs me so much he made my big sister kill a bunny wabbit!"

Who knows what fleshly delights next Halloween will bring...

Happy Halloween!

For the record, Anna's drinking a banana, soy yogurt, hemp seed, flax oil, strawberry, blueberry, spinach smoothie (recipe here). And Liam's eating curried squash tomato bisque. I'll probably post the recipe for that during next month's VeganMoFo.

Bruce Friedrich Debates Bruce Friedrich’s Monster

I’m going to start this post with a disclaimer of sorts. I generally don’t write about animal rights theory on this blog unless it relates to my family. Though I frequently read animal rights books, blogs and consider myself well versed on animal rights theory, this blog is about raising my kids. So I don’t tend to focus on theory too much. Also, there are others who articulate animal rights theory much better than I do, and I feel that what I would write in this blog would be a repetition of what they already eloquently say.

But today I'm going to break character and delve into animal rights, specifically the debate within the larger animal activist movement about how best to spend our time advocating for animals. If you’re here to look at pictures of my kids, this probably isn’t the post for you. On the other hand, if you consider PeTA an animal rights organization, maybe this is the post for you.

___

I went to a debate on Friday night and I need to write about it. My thoughts about this are like a raging fire in my brain, actually, and I’m pretty sure the only way to extinguish it is to relate how frustrating the experience was for me, and maybe to help you feel some of my frustration (as Bleeding Gums Murphy once said, “The blues isn’t about feeling better, it’s about making other people feel worse!”).

The debate, titled “Is Meat Ethical?”, was between PeTA vice president Bruce Friedrich and a member of the University of Minnesota debate team whose first name was Nick. I didn’t catch his last name.

I arrived about ten minutes early and a couple members of Compassionate Action for Animals (CAA) were handing out leaflets for their Veg Week. A young woman asked me if I wanted a brochure and I said sure. CAA is a local new welfarist animal activist group.

Hold on. Some of you might not know what I mean when I say “new welfarist”. In a nutshell, new welfarists (like PeTA) focus on the treatment of animals and spend time and money trying to incrementally improve that treatment. They have the long-term goal of animal liberation, but they focus most of their money, energy and time on regulating industry rather than educating the public about veganism.

CAA is a new welfarist organization which focuses primarily on educating the public, though they have also done work with industry and declared incremental changes as victories. They have a “Veg Week” and encourage people to go vegan or vegetarian, confusing the drastic difference between the two and perpetuating the idea that the average person doesn’t have the wherewithal to understand a cogent argument and choose to be vegan without first being vegetarian or without first reducing their meat intake or cutting meat out one day a week, etc.

I’m not picking on CAA here, I’m just trying to convey who they are and what they believe (as an organization).

In regard to the new welfarist ideas on reductions in animal suffering, I personally don’t think that supposed short-term reductions in suffering are anything to toot your horn about.

First, how do you quantify suffering? How do you know that birds crammed onto a floor are suffering less than birds crammed into cages?

Second, when an animal organization declares one type of exploitation as being better than another type, they implicitly encourage people to purchase that “better” product of exploitation.

Third, there has been animal welfare for about a couple centuries now, and we’re using more animals in more horrible ways then we ever have before. Animal welfare doesn’t reduce demand. If it did, demand would have been reduced by now, instead of growing exponentially.

I’m an abolitionist vegan, which means that instead of advocating for bigger cages or no cages, I advocate for no ownership at all. Abolitionism is, as far as I’m concerned, the only logically consistent approach to animal rights.

Dan Cudahy put all of this better than I ever could in his essay, Abolition versus New Welfarism: A Contrast in Theory and Practice. I suggest giving it a read.

And while your at it, read Prof. Gary Francione’s piece, The Four Problems of Animal Welfare: In a Nutshell. 

If you’re one of my readers who doesn’t read a lot about animal issues, you might think the differences between welfare and abolition are like the differences between two slightly different religions, where one kneels during prayer and the other doesn't for example, and you’d be excused for thinking so. But for people who think about these things and engage in animal advocacy, it's clear that the differences between abolitionism and new welfarism are quite pronounced and that they have real-world consequences.

___ 

OK, that was one hell of a diversion, but I wanted to provide some context for the debate.

So the debate started and Bruce Friedrich was introduced and here’s the first thing he said:

“Why do University of Iowa graduates put their diplomas in their car window? So they can park in handicap zones.”

Oh yes he did! He started off with an ableist joke. As VP of a profoundly sexist organization, this didn’t surprise me.

Friedrich went on to say in his opening comments that as long as you oppose being wasteful with food, oppose global poverty and animal cruelty (he presented them in that order), then you’ll agree with him that eating meat is unethical. He didn’t need to talk about the first two points at all to make his case, but he did, which left the debate wide open, unfocused and wasted a lot of time. More time was spent debating the economics of global poverty than debating whether or not animals should be treated as resources.

Friedrich said that the only ethical diet is a diet that avoids meat. He did use the word “vegan” a couple times, but he also used “vegetarian” and he used them interchangeably. Is it any wonder that people are confused about what these words mean?

After closing his arguments about meat being unethical he undercut them by showing the first minute or so of Meet Your Meat.

Meet Your Meat (a video Friedrich co-directed) is a film that focuses exclusively on the animals at factory farmes. So yet again, he left the debate wide open and basically invited his debater to talk about the virtues of “happy meat” and “humanely” raised animals. In fact, there were times when both of them seemed to completely agree on the point that supposedly humane raising and slaughter of animals is commendable.

Part of Nick’s counter-argument, of course, was that the problem isn’t meat, but the way the animals are raised. He maintained that there were ways of doing it that gave animals good lives and that killing them for meat wasn’t necessarily wrong. To buttress this idea, he quoted Peter Singer. He called Singer the father of the animal rights movement, a title that is often attributed to him.

Singer himself is not a rightist though, and he doesn’t actually argue for animal rights (the term appears in his book Animal Liberation, but he later said he regretted ever using it). He’s not vegan, he promotes welfare reforms and maintains that death is not a harm for non-human animals. For a critique of Singer’s views, I suggest reading the essay “Peter Singer and the Welfarist Position on the Lesser Value of Nonhuman Life” by Prof. Gary Francione. 

So where would Nick have gotten this crazy idea that Singer, a man who says there’s nothing inherently wrong with killing animals, is a proponent of animal rights? Why, from Bruce Friedrich’s PeTA, of course! When you click on “read more” under “Why Animal Rights” on PeTA’s home page, there’s Singer’s book, Animal Liberation.

(For an analysis of the myriad contradictions of PeTA, I suggest reading Dan Cudahy's essay, PeTA, a Corporate Tangle of Contradictions.)

Nick also said that hunting gives animals a nice clean end to their lives instead of starving to death and that it manages populations which lessens suffering of deer.

Friedrich’s response to this wasn’t that we shouldn’t kill deer because they have an interest in living their lives and that to ignore that interest for unnecessary reasons is wrong. No, instead he said that Nick was wrong on his population point because hunting actually increases populations since deer breed more when under duress.

So … Friedrich’s argument is that people shouldn’t hunt because if they do there will be more deer?

Wouldn’t you expect the VP of an animal rights organization to instead defend a deer’s right to live free from unnecessary harm and death? Me too! Which is why I and many others contend that PeTA should not be considered an animal rights organization.

For all the contradictory messages that come out of PeTA, Friedrich could have just as well debated himself. 

Friedrich also kept coming back to the point that if we wouldn’t do something to the cats and dogs in our care, then we shouldn’t do it to any other animals either; that the abuses that farmed animals endure would be cause for legal action if they were inflicted upon our pets. But what he didn't say is that there are plenty of horrible things we can do to our companion animals that are perfectly legal, but would not be so if we did them to our children.

And he should know. You might think that Friedrich would be opposed to killing perfectly healthy cats and dogs just because homes can’t easily be found for them, but you’d be wrong. PeTA killed (they use the term “euthanize” of course) 90% of all dogs and cats relinquished to its headquarters in Norfolk, Va. In 2009.

Given that, you'll understand then why Friedrich’s insistence that we should treat farmed animals as well as we treat our cats and dogs rang just a tad hollow and frightening to me.

Friedrich also maintained that any meat you buy in any grocery store is the product of great suffering. He repeated this several times, which made me wonder about that love letter PeTA wrote to Whole Foods…

___

The debate then moved into the “questions from the crowd” period.

I asked one. It went like this (it was, for the most part, a prepared question):

I would like to read part of a letter to John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, one of those grocery stores you keep talking about, on January 24th, 2005.

"The undersigned animal welfare, animal protection and animal rights organizations would like to express their appreciation and support for the pioneering initiative being taken by Whole Foods Market in setting Farm Animal Compassionate Standards. We hope and expect that these standards will improve the lives of millions of animals."

This letter was signed by, among other organizations, PeTA.

Nick’s defense of “happy meat” is a symptom of organizations like PeTA focusing on factory farms instead of animal rights.

How can you argue that eating meat is unethical when the organization you are Vice President of is actively congratulating businesses for killing animals for meat? To say out of one side of your mouth that killing animals is wrong and then say out of the other side that you appreciate companies who raise and kill animals "humanely" is indicative of some awfully confused thinking. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Just as someone wouldn't say that putting padding on a waterboard makes waterboarding better (note: my waterboarding example came from a Gary Francione post, Ingrid Newkirk on Principled Veganism: “Screw the principle”), or raping gently makes rape better, anyone who takes the interests of animals seriously should not say that inflicting somewhat less suffering on animals while they're alive makes the unnecessary suffering and death of that animal any better. Arguing for better treatment and then patting yourself on the back when a company takes heed only serves to make people feel better about eating animal products.

I ask this question under the assumption that you agree with most policy decisions of PeTA. If you don't, I apologize, though I don’t know why you would remain VP if that’s the case.

Can you explain why your organization supports animal compassionate standards and what those standards are?

He answered my question with three main points (everything in this post is paraphrased, by the way):

1. PeTA, of course, wants to see animal liberation, but incremental reforms in the meantime are important. They are steps toward liberation.

2. He likes to apply the golden rule in situations, and the way he applies it is by asking himself, if he were a chicken and in a small cage, wouldn’t he want to have a bigger cage or not be in a cage at all?

3. He also dragged out the familiar new welfarist assertion that focusing on welfare reforms helps the animals who exist right now.

And this is when my head nearly exploded. I think it was right at this moment. Because I had so much to say in response, but I wasn’t the one on stage with him. My question was over and that was it.

So I’m going to douse my brain fire by responding to Friedrich’s points here in this blog, where people might read it and get something out of it (but even if they don't, I had to write it down somewhere and this seemed like the best place).

1. Incremental reforms are not steps toward liberation. Instead, they further entrench animals into the property paradigm, writing more laws about animal ownership and codifying the ways in which animals can be used to satisfy our every whim. They make people feel better about animal products overall, thereby increasing consumption. And when incremental reforms are touted as victories by organizations such as PeTA, it gives people the impression that, if they eat these products of less suffering, they are off the hook; they’ve fulfilled their moral obligations to animals. Why would an animal rights organization perpetuate this view?

2. The golden rule? If you’re hitting me in the head with a tire iron while kicking me in the shin with steel toed boots, wouldn’t I ask you to stop doing both? Wouldn’t your obligations to me (based upon the golden rule) demand that you stop doing both? If you stopped doing just one, let’s say the tire iron to the head, should I congratulate you? Thank you? Give you an award for your humane kicking of my shin?

Shouldn’t the application of the golden rule demand that we advocate for the end of animal use? Don’t you think the chickens would rather we do nothing unto them?

Should PeTA have given an award to Temple Grandin for designing “humane” slaughterhouses that cause somewhat less stress for animals? How about if these slaughterhouses also increase the efficiency and rate with which animals are killed, and increase the profits of the businesses who run and rely on those slaughterhouses (all of which means more dead animals)? How does applying the golden rule lead you to award and promote a slaughterhouse designer? How does this create anything but confusion and continued slaughter?

3. Friedrich says that welfare reforms are helping animals right now. To not work for welfare reforms now, he says, is to abandon the animals who are alive and suffering at this very moment. But in his answer to another question about "happy meat", he laments the fact that broiler chickens live only seven weeks.

When a welfare reform laws are passed, they don't go into effect within seven weeks. It usually takes years. And more often, they are not enforced or never go into effect. So, by passing reform laws, you’re not helping the chickens who are alive now (remember that they have, at most, seven weeks to live), you’re not helping the chickens who are alive in the future (at the very least, you might be hurting them a little bit less, but you’re not helping) and you’re wasting precious time and resources on further entrenching the property status of animals while you could instead be putting all that effort into vegan education.

What does vegan education do? 

Well, it helps a lot of people go vegan. And what does that do? 

It reduces suffering in the short and long term.

If Hank goes vegan tomorrow, he removes himself from the demand for chickens to be raised and slaughtered (a chicken not brought into existence doesn’t suffer at all). Hank’s decision to not buy chickens’ flesh immediately starts to have an effect on the pocketbooks of those who raise chickens for meat. And while it’s true that more chickens are always being brought into existence - it’s a market that’s expanding, not contracting - Hank’s refusal to buy animal products causes that market to expand at a lesser rate. And eventually, given enough time and enough Hanks, this rate of expansion will level off and then start to decrease. The more vegan education, the more vegans, the sooner this can happen.

There you go. Short term and long term goals met and there’s no confusion about what we “animal rights people” maintain we owe animals. 

Why do you think PeTA disagrees?

North Dakota in September

We took a trip to North Dakota in early September to visit my parents. Here are some photos.

No late-fall stay at Grandpa and Grandma's is complete without a walk to Grandpa's gardens (and without taking home boxes of fresh vegetables).

I tried to get one of Anna in the corn, sort of like I got when she was just over a year old. 

Just for the heck of it, here's the one I took back in September of 2007.

Wow, that's really weird to look at those two together. I forget how long it's been.

Anyway, Liam loved running through the corn, too.

Then the corn attacked him!

I really like this next one. You can see Anna in the foreground and then Liam, but way back there is my dad getting eaten by the corn.

My dad scratched Anna and Liam's name into pumpkins with a pole barn nail (and he did the same for the other 7 grandkids and other people's grandkids in town, too). I talked to him last night and all of the pumpkins are picked and orange and ready to go. I wish we were less than 6 hours away.

This is as busy as it gets when we visit my parents' house. Which is why we love going there.

Then we visited some more family in Carrington, ND.

A good time was had by all.

Bus Ride Conversations

Anna's loving her bus rides. She has a new friend she sits by, and they figured out that Anna should have me write our address and what our house looks like on a piece of paper so she can find it. Which I thought was pretty clever.

Here's what Anna said about the bus today.

Anna: One girl on the bus said that spinach was disgusting.

Me: What did you say.

Anna: I said spinach was yummy!

Me: Were you all talking about food you like and stuff?

Anna: Yeah.

Me: Like what foods?

Anna: Um, pretzels and popcorn and macaroni and cheese and suckers.

Me: Cool. Did it come up that you were vegan at all?

Anna: Yep, I said, "I'm vegan," and a girl didn't know what that meant so I told her.

Me: And what did she say?

Anna: She said, "Oh."

Anna's First Homework

Anna gets to hand in her first piece of homework tomorrow. Actually, she gets to share with the class what she drew. She's excited to share.

First Day of School!

Yesterday was Anna's first day of school and it went great!

Anna likes to sleep in. She always has. And me staying home with her and all, I've always let her. But no more! She probably would have slept till 9:00 had I not woke her up at 7:30 yesterday morning. It took her a few minutes to get out of bed, but once she was up, she was up.

We sat her down to a bowl of granola and some raspberries (from the bush out back! It's been a great year for raspberries in the Piggy household). She ate some raspberries and a couple bites of granola. I suppose the lack of appetite was either from waking up too early or maybe nerves (though she didn't seem nervous at all).

After getting ready to go, we all drove to the school. Jen was able to start work a bit late so she could come, too.

Anna's teacher came outside to gather all the kids and greet more as they come. She immediately recognized Anna and called her by name, even though she'd only met her once (the ability to do this is one of the many mystical teacher superpowers, in my opinion).

Anna's friend and neighbor Sophia showed up a few minutes later and they were happy to see each other. Anna is, by chance, in the same classroom as Sophia and also her friend Cameron. Montessori schools combine pre-K and Kindergarten into one class. Sophia is an "old friend" and Anna and Cameron are considered "new friends."

So the two girls hung out for a while and then another old friend walked up to Sophia and they started talking and, kids being kids, Anna wasn't introduced. (I don't remember ever introducing anyone until I was in my twenties. I still forget to do it all the time.)

So Anna stood there and listened to the girls talk, and after a while there were a couple more girls and they all talked and Anna still stood there, listening, digging the sole of her left shoe into the sidewalk, working the stress and anxiety out with her feet.

After a couple minutes she walked back to me, took my hand and pulled me toward the group of girls. I hung back and let her hold my hand. Then her grip loosened bit by bit until she let go of me. About a minute later she ran up, hugged my leg for a second and ran back to the group without the aid of my hand.

Next, she just looked around for me, saw I was taking a picture and smiled.

Then they got into a line and the teacher led them into the school.

Jen and I said bye, have fun. Liam whined a bit because he couldn't follow them into the school.

About four hours later, her bus pulled up to our house and she got off, all smiles.





Today was her second day. She woke up by herself at 7:00, had a full bowl of oatmeal and was ready to go a full 45 minutes early.

The teacher met them outside again. Anna was clingy until Sophia showed up. Then they started to goof around. Anna noticed a girl wearing her backpack on her front, so Anna tried it out and laughed. Her and Sophia bumped bellies like two sumo wrestlers. Then they got in line and went inside.

Later that day, her bus pulled up to our house and she got off, all smiles.

So far, so good!

The Beginning of a Great Adventure

Anna starts pre-Kindergarten tomorrow. In Saint Paul, pre-K is done through the public school system. The school she's going to is a Montessori, which I'm sure I'll blog about at some future date.

We're all pretty excited about it. It's about three hours a day in the morning and she even gets to take the bus home. She's in class with two of her friends too, which I think is really going to help her ease into things.

A few weeks ago Anna said she'd probably be shy for the first few days, but that once she got to know the teacher then she would talk and not be shy. "Just like in Spanish class!" she said. (She took a Spanish class once a week over the summer.)

I feel like this is the first Great Unknown for her. I remember my stomach getting tied into knots over the these huge unknown moments when I was a kid (and teenager, and young adult, and adult), but Anna seems to be genuinely excited and ready for it.

But then again, when I think back on my first day of Kindergarten (my school didn't do preschool), I vividly remember my stomach NOT being tied up in knots. I remember being excited and ready for the Great Unknown. I don't know if I can pin down exactly what happened (though I'm sure I can come pretty damn close) that changed all of it for me and caused me to dread change; to fear meeting new people; to stay up late at night practicing potential conversations and replaying old ones.

At any rate, here's hoping the same thing doesn't happen to Anna. Or if it does, here's hoping she doesn't let it get to her like I did.

Yeah.

Liam and Anna. Here they are. 

Jumping and Running

Some videos from a few weeks ago (2 in 1, because they're so short). I have some from months ago that I never posted. I may at some future date. But for now, here you go.

What The Hell Do I Do With... Carrots? (and a lot of things to do with kale)

I know, carrots are pretty basic. But hey...

First though, here are some things you can do with kale. 

Lisa suggests colcannon puffs and suggests this recipe for kale chips.

Jacqueline says, "Kale chips are great! Just wash, pat dry, tear into chip-size pieces, removing stems, then toss with a tablespoon of olive oil. Lay them out flat on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with a little salt and nutritional yeast. Bake for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees, turning over once mid-way, and watching so they don't burn near the end. Yummo!"

Erin says, "For a super easy side, I tear it off the stem into a boiling/salted pot of water. Let it double double, boil and trouble for a few minutes, drain, and top with Cajun or Chipotle seasonings and/or garlic salt and/or hot sauce! Also tasty with a chopped fresh tomato on top."

Another Erin (the one I know personally and am friends with) said, "Separate the leaves from the tough stem. Simmer kale in a sauce pan with water for about 10 min (depending on how tough it is), drain it in a collander, then in the empty frying pan, heat up some oil (sesame adds the best flavor), add a bit of garlic for about 30 seconds, toss in the kale and saute a bit, until it dries out a bit and the oil has infused the kale. Then treat it with a squirt of tamari/soy sauce (less tamari if you have less kale; start with a little, taste and build from there to avoid really salty kale) and finish with about a tablespoon or so of sesame seeds."

That's actually the recipe that we make all the time. Because Erin gave it to us a few years ago. It's great, we love it and the kids love it. Thanks Erin!

Radioactivevegan suggests the Garlicky Kale With Tahini Sauce recipe from Vegan With a Vengance which can also be found when you click this here text.. 

Whitehairedveg can only stomach kale with this Mustard-Crusted Tofu with Kale and Sweet Potato recipe from Epicurious. 

Samantha made this Indian-Spiced Kale and Chickpeas and it was fabulous. 

Patrick throws it in smoothies. 

GreensPlease said, "Using whatever kind of kale you prefer (we rotate with whichever looks most fresh at the co-op), chop leaves into medium sliced shreds (like a thick cole-slaw). Chop thinner near the base as you ad more stem - we use as much stem as possible). 

We use a very hot wok, ad a bit of grapeseed oil then chopped garlic for a second then half the bunch of kale. Toss fast to keep the garlic from staying on the bottom. Cook tossing constantly for about a minute and a half. Add a bit of white wine vinegar or lemon juice to taste and remove right away to a serving dish. Repeat with the rest of the kale. If you do too much at once, you'll boil it which we would NEVER do. We like it with some crunch and as much nutritional value as possible. Finish with some sea or kosher salt and enjoy!"

And finally, Anonymous said, "I love the Kale-Potato Soup recipe from Laurel's Kitchen. It's just potatoes, onions, garlic, soy butter, kale, water, salt and pepper, but the simple flavors and hearty texture are really satisfying, especially during the cruelest months of winter."

Thanks everyone for all the ideas! Now I'm hungry for kale. 

So what's your favorite thing to do with carrots? I usually end up eating them raw with some ranch dill dip that we whip up (I'll post the recipe for that next time). Or I shred a couple and throw 'em in a scrambled tofu or a salad. But we're getting a lot of carrots from our CSA these days and I'd like to branch out a bit, so ... 

... what the hell do you do with carrots?