Blog Posts

My testimony at the Ks Capitol

2/14/2020

If you don't have young children or grandchildren -- you may not be aware of possibly the most serious epidemic facing us here in the US: The vaccine epidemic.

In the early 1980s, so many children were being injured by vaccines and filing lawsuits, that vaccine companies were not able to make a profit from vaccines, and so threatened to stop making vaccines unless congress did something. Congress passed and Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act into in 1986. This gave

manufacturers immunity from liability for vaccines on the CDC schedule, by placing a tax on vaccines and then having a special court award that money to vaccine injured people. To date the fund has paid out over four billion dollars for vaccine injuries. This in spite of the fact that most claimants spend years trying to get compensated, before being refused. That in addition to the fact that one must file a claim within 3 years, and many who are injured and seeking treatment don't even learn about the fund until it's too late to file. But the 1986 act was a gold mine for vaccine makers, turning vaccines into one of pharma's most profitable sectors now estimated to be worth over sixty billion annually It also led to an explosion in the number of vaccines children are mandated to get in order to attend school.

Most people don't realize that unlike all other pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines are not tested for safety against a true inert placebo. Instead the, "placebo" group may get the vaccine's entire toxic brew minus only the actual antigen. Because mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, gelatin, bovine serum, DNA fragments, egg protein and the other assorted ingredients in vaccines all have biological impacts when injected, "placebos" that contain these probably obscure many harms and adverse impacts from vaccines.

That was why I recently trekked to my state capitol to testify for a proposed bill that would simply make it harder for those under pharma's spell to get additional vaccines mandated for school entry Here is my testimony:

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STAT NEWS -- Just Another Pharma Shill?

11/30/2019

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Censorship by U.S. media is more common than you realize. Why do you suppose the medical news site, Statnews.com. wouldn't allow me to comment on this article? I waited several days after submitting my comment and then edited it slightly for clarity and resubmitted it a second time. The page just tells me it is, "awaiting moderation." What do you think might be the reason they won't post my comment?

                    Here is a cut and pasted copy of the comment I tried to post on Statnews --
                    on the page with the above article:

This article missed a growing reason why adults are not getting vaccines -- it's CENSORSHIP on vaccine information or any science that challenges the pro-pharma narrative dominating the media. This in turn is fueling vaccine skepticism!

Articles by Helen Branswell exemplify this problem. Branswell has superb credentials, but her writing is PR for pharma thinly disguised as "health reporting."

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Do your own critical thinking!

11/20/2019

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A decade ago, TIME Magazine's cover
story made the case that people choosing to not get vaccines were sabotaging "herd" immunity and would be responisble for future outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough.

TIME and the corporate controlled media want us to believe it's everyone's duty to get vaccinated -- especially to protect infants for whom these diseases are more dangerous and who may also be too young to get some vaccines.

On page 37 of the this 2008 article, TIME lamented that only 77% of kinder-gardeners in America were completely up-to-date on their vaccines and even said -- that was the country's highest vaccination rate we had ever had!

      Today, ten years later, whooping cough, measles and mumps outbreaks are in the news and "anti-vaxxers" are being blamed.

     But a large body of published science shows that extremely high rates of vaccine coverage do not prevent circulation of these diseases in the community. They may keep vaccinated individuals from showing symptoms -- but vaccinated people can still be silent carriers, making seemingly healthy vaccinated people a bigger threat to infants than their not vaccinated counterparts (since someone who has not recently been vaccinated and becomes infected with Pertussis is more likely to appear to have a cold or cough and thus can be avoided.)

     Also at odds with the media's narrative is the fact that vaccination rates in children have actually soared from 77% to about 94% since TIME published their article:

Though the report emphasizes the fact that there was a very tiny increase in exemptions, the report actually puts the overall rate of vaccinated kinder-gardeners at about 94% now. Here's another screen shot:

     The idea that people refusing vaccines are putting babies too young to be vaccinated at risk hides another unintended public-health consequence of vaccines; infants may actually be more vulnerable to measles now, than they were in the pre-vaccine era.

     Before routine measles vaccination, most mothers had measles in childhood. Studies suggest that babies of mothers who had the actual disease (as opposed to only the vaccine) pass on more protective antibodies to their infants:

Did you hear about the recent measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 6 -- most of whom were babies too young to be vaccinated? The deaths were blamed on falling vaccination rates in Samoa, but it's likely they were due at least in part to vaccinated mothers having less immunity to pass on to their infants.

The media discourages us from seeing something an important fact: High vaccination rates are not preventing circulation of these diseases.

If you have read a lot of the published science on this subject however, this will not surprise you because...

Vaccines do not confer as effective nor as long lasting immunity as actually getting the disease. So as older generations who had immunity from getting the actual disease die off, we are left with a growing proportion of the population whose immunity is only from a vaccine, and this is not sufficient to suppress spread of the disease.
We've also been misled about the true efficacy of vaccines, while the harms have been downplayed.

The pharma-promoting media, in conjunction with our "conflict-of-interest-compromised" regulatory agencies, spin what is happening to support vaccine sales and passage of laws that take away the fundamental right to informed consent for medical procedures -- a direct violation of the Nuremberg Code.

Meanwhile plenty of published science shows whooping cough and mumps are frequently spread in fully vaccinated populations.

Here is a small sampling:

1993:

1994:

1996:

2000:

2019:

And can you think of any population more highly vaccinated than the military? And yet Mumps spread through a navy ship earlier this year. (Though they tried to deny it was mumps by calling it, "Mumps-like.")

     Though the measles vaccine appears to be more effective than mumps or pertussis -- many fully vaccinated against measles have gotten and spread it too...and the vaccine's effectiveness in an individual has been shown to wane with each passing year.

     Meanwhile, growing numbers of parents are coming forward alleging serious adverse events following their child's vaccinations--reactions which left some children brain-damaged, disabled or dead.

     I found this short video of these parents of triplets very moving. Why does our media never tell these family's story? Yet if a child is hospitalized after a case of Chickenpox -- that story makes headlines across the country.

Oh -- looks like Youtube removed that video -- but I found it on another platform -- click the image below to see it.

     America has an epidemic of chronic diseases plaguing fully vaccinated children (allergy, asthma, autoimmune disease, seizures, autism, and psychiatric disorders). A growing body of science suggests various mechanisms by which vaccines are likely contributing to many of these chronic conditions.

     Vaccines are one the fastest growing, most profitable sectors of the pharmaceutical industry -- an industry that has been repeatedly shown to engage in scientific misconduct intended to hide the true harms of their products or overstate benefits.

     Do your own critical thinking.

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Tetanus Vaccine Causes Drop in T-Cells

11/8/2019

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Me -- day 2 of New Zealand bike trip

Years ago I had an adverse event from a vaccination. But at the time I never connected the two.
Although what happened to me took place after I completed a graduate level course in Immunology, my education had never informed me that vaccines EVER caused harm to anyone. (If you don't want to hear my story and just wish to see the published NEJM article -- simply scroll down to the bottom of this article.)

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How talk Shows Manipulate us -- My Experience on the Montel Williams Show.

10/17/2019

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     One of the things I haven't talked about much, was the time I was a guest on the Montel Williams Show. This was about 2001. My first book (Compassionate Souls -- Raising the Next Generation to Change the World) was on it's way to being in hundreds of libraries around the world, but I didn't yet own a cell phone.

     I had been out running errands and was gone longer than I had planned the day Montel's producer called. As I pulled into the garage, my husband swung open the door to the house. I wasn't even out of the car when I heard him excitedly ask, "Where have you been? Producers from the Montel Show have been calling all afternoon -- they want to fly you to NY tomorrow to talk about your book! I told them you would do it, but they need to hear from you in the next 15 minutes or the deal is off. Here is the number. Hurry, call them right now!"

     Though this was exciting news, I did not see it as an entirely positive thing. As the mother of two young children, one of whom was still breastfeed-

ing I had developed a new fear -- flying. I was also not eager to be halfway across the country from my nursing toddler.

"I can't go, we're still nursing," I said matter-of-factly to my husband.

"I told them that," my husband shot back. "But you would only be gone one night. They

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Cervical cancer -- an example of medical-media-industrial complex fake news

10/11/2019

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Here's a great opportunity to see how the medical-media-industrial complex tries to manipulate us. Look at this screen shot of a story about how cervical cancer may soon be eliminated in Australia...

Especially pay attention to the very bottom words on the image above...

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Kid's Activities that Teach Health, Environmental Sustainability and Justice

9/17/2019

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The 7 foot tall Tree of Love and Justice

     I am in the process of creating hands-on activities for children that teach principles related to peace, justice, health and sustainability. These will debut at Kansas City's first ever Midwest Soul Vegfest and be set up in the children's area.

Below you will find descriptions and pictures of the various activities I have created. I will be updating this blog post over the next few weeks as I finish making more of more of the activities. My plan is to document everything with enough detail so that parents, teachers and activists can copy what I have done.

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Carrot Juice Instead of Sunscreen?

8/4/2019

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My daughter Sarina on the beach in Sydney.

When I was a new mother with a ten month old baby, I found myself in the wonderful position of having nothing else to do for a few months other than hang out with my infant daughter in Sydney Australia. Because she was mostly existing on just breast milk at that time, I knew it was important for my baby to get regular sunshine on her body so that she could make adequate vitamin D. Since we were near the ocean -- I made sure we visited the beach every day.

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A HUGE Pan of Healthy Lasagna - to Make your own Frozen Entrees

8/3/2019

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ATTENTION FOOD MANUFACTURERS:

I have a suggestion for you -- how about creating a new line of "inclusive" frozen dinners? (Feel free to use this recipe for your first entree!)

There is a HUGE untapped market for gluten-free-vegan, low-sodium, little to no-oil frozen dinners.

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Are you REALLY Pro-Science or just a Cult-Follower of Scientism?

7/23/2019

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Me on the job, back in the day

I used to work as a microbiologist for a global pharmaceutical company. My position was unique because I worked with both the marketing and the scientific sides. Usually these are completely segregated areas, and only employees higher up in the ranks and far more invested in the company's success get to see all of what

I saw. But this enabled me to appreciate this bigger picture before I was, "educated" to not find it problematic: How companies create biased science and then use it to shape public health policy.

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The Carnivore Diet

7/20/2019

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The Carnivore Diet, is the latest incarnation of the controversial low carb diet, but differs from previous versions by taking "low carb" to its farthest extreme and consuming zero plants at all. (With the possible exception of coffee.) Why should you care about this?

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Enculturating Our Children Consciously

7/18/2019

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(This article is one I wrote nearly 20 years ago and was originally posted on my Compassionate Souls website.)

      The dictionary defines enculturation as:

     "The process by which an individual becomes a part of his native culture."

     Anthropologists who have studied various cultures have described a variety of ways that elements of culture are transmitted to individuals born into that culture. These include such things as the usage of language, participation in rituals, the telling of stories, the emotion conveyed in relationship to certain events, and all the day to day, moment by moment choices and behaviors that one can observe in those around them.

     For the most part this is a process that happens automatically and unconsciously. Yet everyone agrees that enculturation is a very powerful force, one that shapes the context of every individual's entire life, and lays a foundation that for good or bad influences our life choices in subtle and pervasive ways.

     While some popular books try to argue that parents have little influence with their children today, I believe that parents who choose to educate their children at home, and choose to forgo television can be very influential, and powerful role models -- if they also build strong bonds of trust by meeting their children's developmental needs, with attachment parenting and healthy boundaries and use non-violent discipline. If we also give some thought to making conscious choices about which aspects of the larger culture we share with our children when they are very young and develop a degree of awareness about some of the ways we may be unconsciously transmitting and reinforcing elements of the larger culture that we consider harmful or counter to the positive aspects we are hoping to impart, we can influence our child's perspective in a way that increases his or her odds of becoming a healthy, compassionate citizen.

    The process of enculturation begins at birth. When our baby wants to suck for comfort, and we offer our breast the message is very different then if we offer a bottle or pacifier. We are telling them whether WE believe in seeking comfort from people or things. When I play "This Little Piggy" with my babies, the third little piggy never has roast beef....but instead has tofu. My toddler and I play a game at nap time, as I am changing her diaper before nursing her down to sleep.
It starts with her saying, "Milk! Milk!"

"Who want's milk?" I ask her
"Me me!" she shrieks.
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Cat milk?"
"No No!"
"Rat milk?"
"NO!"
"Elephant milk?"
"NO!
"Pig milk?"
"NO!"
"Cow milk?"
"NO!"
"Giraffe milk?"
"NO!"

Guess who fell asleep first?

     Then I pause as if trying to think what kind of milk she might want...smiling broadly I ask,
"Mommy's Milk?"

     "YESSSS!" she says with even more emphasis then any of the no's.
And then we settle down to nurse.

Games such as this reinforce our family's view that drinking the milk of any other animal is yucky and an aberration of what is normal.

     Once when my younger daughter had a cough for over a week, I took her to the doctor. My six year old went too. She heard me tell the doctor that we've never used antibiotics--or any other drugs -- and wouldn't unless we there was a very serious problem. The doctor agreed saying they are way overused. Then he examined my toddler and reported that her ears and tonsils looked perfect, and her lungs were clear. The only signs of illness he could see were that her temperature was elevated one degree, and she had one small swollen gland. I felt glad to know there was nothing serious wrong and that we could simply let her body heal itself. But then the doctor offered to give us a prescription for antibiotics and recommended a decongestant too. Of course I declined all these things. But it was a good example for my children to see that I do not turn over my decision making to any "authority figures" and that while we may seek out the opinions of others, we still must make our own responsible choices consistent with our own values and beliefs.

     Today at lunch my six year old told me that she thinks the reason she does not know much about the world (we had been talking about the legal requirements for home schoolers and how they are slightly different in every state.) is because we don't eat meat, and so she misses out on a part of the world that everyone else knows about. "How do you feel about that?" I asked her -- not sure where she was going with this whole discussion. "Good." She told me..."I'm glad I don't eat meat." I waited to see what else she might offer up, but she seemed to have expressed all that she wanted. This gave me an opportunity to point out to her how not eating meat had nothing to do with not understanding the laws about homeschooling, and that no two people on earth have exactly the same knowledge of the world. I went on to explain how the world is such a vast place that no one can know everything. So based upon our own unique experiences each of us knows slightly different things. Then I pointed out some of the things that she knows all about, which most six year olds wouldn't know anything about. She seemed very comfortable with our discussion.

     My point in all this is to raise awareness that hundreds of times a day each of us, as a parent is making choices. The stories we read, the words we use, the way that we offer comfort, the foods we make available, the outside influences we bring into our homes (toys and TV for example) every one of these choices is an element of enculturation. Individually and moment by moment, each choice by itself is probably inconsequential. But together they suggest a path, they create a paradigm. Together they communicate to our children what we value most, what we stand for, what we believe in our hearts.

My husband and daughters standing with our friend Ellen after we did a little beech activism together, on a visit to her island.

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Five Reasons Congress Should Reject the PRIME ACT

7/10/2019

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H.R. 2859/ S.1620 (PRIME Act) seeks to repeal the federal ban on the sale of meat from small slaughterhouses catering to local, grass-fed or organic farms. If this act gets passed it would facilitate the building of a lot more slaughterhouses and likely mean more animals being raised on pasture or grass-fed.

(Links to the proposed legislation are HERE and HERE.)

1) No one should be forced to live near a
slaughterhouse.

While large slaughterhouses typically can only set up shop in areas zoned, "industrial", these small, "artisanal" or "custom" slaughterhouses often open in rural residential neighborhoods. I wouldn't want one in my backyard -- so I oppose it going into anyone's backyard -- but new slaughterhouses will be moving into someone's backyard if this law passes.

2) Prime would increase carbon emissions from
animal agriculture.

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Why the Chickenpox Vaccine is NUTS!

6/14/2019

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(Note -- this article was originally published on my Compassionate Souls website shortly after my first book came out (about 2001). Neil Miller republished it with permission in his booklet on the Chickenpox vaccine, and 4 years ago I posted it to this blog. I am bringing it to the front of my blog now, because this issue is timely again.)

When I was a child, chickenpox was universally understood to be a generally benign disease in otherwise healthy children. Every spring, chickenpox would wash through the younger grades at my elementary school, and initiate a new group of kids. Most of us remember the disease for its horrendous itching and the occasional scar, but I don't remember any of us fearing it. I grew up accepting Chickenpox as a fact of life, and a normal passage of childhood -- like skinning your knees.

According to the Merck Manual, Chickenpox is a highly contagious infection caused by the

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Strawberry Shakes - Raw and Whole-Food Plant-Based

5/31/2019

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We'd been out of town -- and when we came back, our strawberry patch was way over-due to be harvested. What to do with all those strawberries?

We are LOVING these strawberry shakes. This recipe makes two large shakes -- but that never seems to be quite enough...

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Home Made Oil Free Vegan Mayo

5/4/2019

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This recipe is one that I adapted from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Vegan Feast Kitchen blog. It is really an amazing creation that allows me to enjoy the flavor and texture of mayonnaise without all that fat. Though this recipe is not fat-free -- it is entirely oil-free -- the only fat in this recipe is a tiny bit from a few raw nuts and seeds. For some amazing history on how she created this recipe, you can click on over to Bryanna's and see her recipe.

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A Tale of Two Infectious Diseases

4/26/2019

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Tuberculosis

Measles

Which one are we being told to fear more?

WHY?

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Lawrence, Kansas -- Earth Day 2019 -- a Day to Remember!

4/22/2019

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This year's Earth Day celebration marks the day I noticed a shift in the conversation around veganism in Lawrence Ks. The change was palpable for many of us!

This year was different from every previous Earth Day I have participated in.

It wasn't because the sun was shining, although that was a wonderful improvement over last year. And it wasn't because we had even more people come by our table -- though that was pretty gratifying too.

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Chick Pea "Faux Tuna Salad"

3/18/2019

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This has been a favorite of my family for a long time. When I make it for others, I almost always make it using Follow Your Heart's Veganaise -- which I think is the BEST tasting vegan mayo. However when I make for myself I use my own home made vegan mayo following this recipe which is entirely oil free.

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Trading Patronage for Power in the Animal Right's Movement

3/4/2019

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United Poultry Concerns stands out among the longer running animal-advocacy organizations as one of the few that has never sold-out the animals for its own interest in fund-raising or growing it's organization or base of support. When PETA, Mercy for Animals, HSUS and so many others followed Peter Singer's lead and signed on to the infamous Whole Foods Letter that undermined the ethical messaging of animal advocacy, UPC was one of the few that did not do that.

That was why I was especially excited to be invited this year to present at UPC's Conscious Eating Conference in Berkeley, California. My presentation was one of three in the morning, while the afternoon featured a jaw-dropping debate on clean meat -- probably the first such debate to happen in the movement.

There was an amazing synergy at this event. When I gave my presentation: "Don't Push Your Values: Under Pressure -- Social Justice Progress amidst Societal Group Coercion" (see my presentation Here) I didn't know the specific evidence that professors John Sanbonmatsu and Vasile Stanscu (arguing that clean meat would harm animals in the debate) would be presenting to counter the slick polished rhetoric of those trying to promote clean meat at this event. But the debate provided the audience with an amazing opportunity to witness for themselves the very dynamic my slide presentation sought to bring to people's attention -- part of which involves good people facilitating injustices they claim to oppose.

Well known activists, Bruce Friedrich and Paul Shapiro led the crusade to get animal advocates to support clean meat and it is due almost exclusively to the efforts of these two men that many of the large animal advocacy groups have given their endorsement to clean meat. Previously I wrote about ethical problems when Shapiro and Friedrich appeared on stage at KC's first vegfest in my article, How Co-option of Grass Roots Activism Played out in KC's First Vegfest, after that event's organizers made the unfortunate decision to "Trade patronage for power" by having Friedrich and Shapiro as its main speakers. (I just learned of the term, "Tradiing Patronage for Power" from a sociology student at the Conscious Eating Conference, who told me after she watched my presentation that there was a term to express what I was describing.)

This past weekend Friedrich had a new comrade to join him in his rhetoric (Shapiro lost his job at HSUS for sexual misconduct.) Leah Garces, the new president of Mercy for Animals was his partner in the debate and also enthusiastically promoting clean meat.

If you have been working for justice for animals for a long time, you may appreciate how devastating the marketing of "local" "organic" "happy" "humane" meat has been to the cause. Following the growing popularity of the locovore movement the number of abused animals increased dramatically. There are theoretical reasons that may explain this such as the fact that these marketing ploys have given more respectability to killing other beings (as long as it's done the "right" way.)

I can certainly see evidence of this in my own community of Lawrence, Ks.

When Lawrence's natural foods coop formed, it was entirely vegetarian. But once it started selling happy meat, the shelf space dedicated to animals and their bodily secretions began to grow year after year. Coop advertising worked to legitimize and then increase demand for these items. Then the coop began selling CAFO meat, dairy and eggs alongside the "humane" versions. So clearly, rather than simply providing an alternative to CAFO products, Happy meat legitimized CAFO products and paved the way for its growth into new markets.

Happy meat simply provided yet another option for enjoying body parts of exploited beings, while serving to placate some people's moral sentiments, in the process of helping to grow markets for a wider variety of products that involve violence to animals.

As far as I can tell, coop member-owners who justify their meat/dairy/egg consumption on the grounds that they consume "ethically" produced products, raised no objections about the fact that CAFO meat was now being sold at the coop too. Nor have I witnessed the many people I know personally who raise and kill their own animals, refusing to partake of CAFO products when they are served at public events or at private gatherings. And when I went on the local farm tour, one of the farmers who was also a mother, told me that she told her children, "it's ok to eat CAFO meat" because it's going into their, "happy bellies."

So now, alongside the exploding growth of vegan options everywhere, we have record numbers of animals being physically and sexually assaulted and then killed for profit. Since it is now easier than ever to be vegan, as the marketplace of vegan options explodes, how can anyone suggest that the introduction and growth of "humane" "organic" or "pasture-raised" options for meat/dairy/eggs have overall been a good thing for animals? And yet -- that was the very reason that many animal advocates gave some years back as to why we should encourage the growth of "happy meat" options. In fact, one of the loudest voices, from within the ranks of those claiming to support justice for animals was Bruce Friedrich.

It was Friedrich who spoke first in last weekend's debate, and emphatically stated that because the vegan movement has utterly failed (which he supports with numbers showing that per capita meat consumption is at an all-time high) he believes he can do more good for animals now by shifting from promoting veganism to promoting the brand new -- as yet untested technology of clean meat (also known as cell-based meat or cultured meat.)

But to say that we in the vegan movement are not making progress in our work to lay a foundation for the largest peaceful revolution the world has ever known begs the question...why?

Why would someone who claims to care about justice for animals choose to highlight only evidence in a public talk to vegans, that suggests we are completely failing? Friedrich then followed up his assertion of failure with the most sophisticated PR I have ever heard about why promoting alternatives to veganism (which claim to be less terrible for animals -- but still exploit them) will be better for animals then just spending our time promoting veganism. His perspective -- especially coming from someone publicly seen as a supporter of animal rights was chilling to say the least, and looked like the perfect example of what film producer James Laveck wrote about in his extraordinary essay, Invasion of the Movement Snatchers.

Do your own critical thinking...Ask yourself, compared to ten years ago, how often does someone -- who may not even be vegan themselves, tell you about someone they know (a relative, neighbor, colleague etc) who is vegan? how many items at the store now carry a label that says, "vegan" as compared to ten years ago? And why have non-vegan business entities proclaimed 2019 as, "The Year of the Vegan"?

These things suggest veganism IS winning the hearts and minds of people in increasing numbers. When someone goes vegan whether or not they fall off the wagon several times in their journey to grow as an ethical human being -- the fact that they even try is evidence that our peaceful revolution is winning hearts and minds. Many people struggling to quit tobacco have a circuitous path to becoming a non-smoker -- perhaps many vegans do too. Keep in mind, customs that encourage animal exploitation are more ubiquitous and powered by a larger economic engine than tobacco use ever was!

It is also worth noting -- that prior to the Civil War, the number of slaves in America actually increased every single decade -- right up until legalized slavery ended. Does Friedrich know this?

Any one else having a "deja vu" experience regarding Friedrich's promotion of clean meat? In Friedrich's activism with PETA, Farm Sanctuary and Farm Forward, his most memorable messaging was not about authentic veganism (ie, it is wrong to exploit and kill other beings, and vegans should not be endorsing ANY forms of exploitation.) but rather about "suffering reduction," which as we have seen is a slippery slope to justifying ongoing violence. In his time working with Farm Forward (as a founding board member) Friedrich actually encouraged animal activists to support happy animal exploitation. He actually worked to grow the market and production capacities for animal exploiting operations. Look at these screen shots from www.HumaneMyth.org and archived pages from Farm Forward:

Pay close attention to Friedrich's rhetoric now, because once again he is THE single largest, most compelling voice within the animal advocacy movement suggesting that some new trend in exploiting animals will lead to reductions in the number of exploited and killed animals.

Friedrich's arguments that clean meat will be good for animals are similar to those he made about how "humane" meat would be good for them. By Friedrich's own estimation his previous efforts on behalf of animals failed to reduce the number of animals being exploited – so why is he using exactly the same approach in promoting clean meat? In fact, as the professors in this debate pointed out -- industry documents show that investors are expecting that rather then replacing CAFO meat, clean meat will add yet a third option to the menu for those still clinging to archaic culinary traditions based upon violence and exploitation -- with CAFO meat continuing to grow until it can grow no further because of limitations in available land -- at which point, clean meat will still be able to offer continued growth and investment returns.

One of the points I heard both Friedrich and Garces emphasize to the audience was to suggest that because they each have a long history of working on behalf of animals, and because so many other of the professional animal advocacy groups share their view that clean meat is a good idea and will help reduce the number of animals being exploited and killed, that we should trust their judgement and all of us should follow their example and support it too.

But history is full of examples of good people who jumped on board and supported bad ideas that facilitated systemic injustices. Growing justice takes more than hero worship. We need to use our best critical thinking combined with compassion, while keeping our eye on the goal -- creating a world where justice and non-violence are normalized. The character of the people promoting an idea is less important, than evaluating the idea on its own merits. When someone suggests to me that I simply do what they suggest because they are trustworthy, rather than doing my own critical thinking and dig deep for myself -- I suspect that the evidence that supports their perspective probably isn't that good.

One of the problems with the professional animal advocacy movement (ie the big groups) is that they readily absorb the corporate mindset -- which often exemplifies and reinforces paradigms that work better for supporting capitalism rather then justice. With many staff members on their payroll, growing and attracting more members/donations can take precedence over advancing justice. And justice can be hard to measure and quantify -- but the corporate paradigm emphasizes things that can be most readily measured and quantified. As a result they often use, proxies that stand in for things that are hard to measure -- which can lead to erroneous conclusions, that encourage choices that aren't always in line with justice. What is measurable may give no insight about how close we are to a tipping point, that can lead to big jumps in social justice.

I remember meeting a man years ago, who told me of his visit to a communist-block country one year before the wall in Germany fell, and censorship, and other injustices appeared to be at an all time high. This guy recounted speaking with dozens of underground justice advocates who all told him they had little hope that their efforts would create any benefit in their lifetime. But they saw themselves as laying a foundation for their grandchildren, who they hoped might someday be able to travel outside the country and not go to jail for speaking publicly about things they found unjust. But then my acquaintance returned about a year after the Berlin Wall fell, and he encountered a transformed society. The underground activist’s dream had been realized, and this point was made to me: It is hard to know just how close we might be to a “tipping point, when we are in the midst of fighting for justice.

As was brought out in the debate, currently there is no published science to suggest that we are even capable of producing clean meat without needing to feed the cell cultures with FBS (fetal bovine serum) FBS is a product obtained after a pregnant cow is slaughtered and fluids are extracted from the body of her still living baby. But Friedrich and Garces are confident we will come up with a plant-based alternative to this that is scale-able for industrial clean meat production. They are confident too that we will work out how to grow large amounts of cell based meat, in ways that will have a lower carbon footprint than traditional meat production -- even though the professors presented evidence that at it's current state of development this technology is likely to use egregious amounts of energy and produce even more greenhouse gasses.

Yet Bruce Friedrich and Leah Garces suggest that those who would like to see a vegan world, should support this new approach to marketing of animal exploitation. But in my experience Friedrich's prior attempts along this same path -- promoting humane meat --made my efforts to promote veganism even harder.

It was about 15 years ago, when I had my first experience with how counter-productive happy meat would be to justice for animals. In the decade prior to this time, when I told people about the horrific things happening to animals on industrial farms they had only two choices: Stop buying and using things from animals (ie go vegan) or continue supporting the industrial food machine and just look away. I still remember my shock and despair when I was talking with a college student on a downtown sidewalk about veganism and she looked me square in the eye and told me with all earnestness about how she wished I could have been with her when she interned on a small local organic farm. She said that she had been vegetarian before that time, but after she spent time with this lovely farm family and came to see how kind they were to their animals and how they killed them with such respect, she changed her mind about being vegetarian. (Reread that last sentence!) Over and over she kept telling me, “If you could see the respect with which we treated the animals, you would have no problem with eating them either.”

How does killing someone get “rebranded” as “respect?”

And just as importantly, how does being an accomplice to such violence, while embracing an Orwellian view of it, impact one’s ability to recognize other injustices, or oppose certain paradigms that support oppression?

As the debate progressed, it was clear that Leah Garces was less knowledgeable of the details and less invested in the promotion of clean meat then her pro clean-meat partner Bruce Friedrich. It also appeared to me, that this was Leah’s first time, struggling to defend this perspective amidst the new information she learned from Professors Sanbonmatsu and Stanscu.

After the conference, UPC took all the speakers out to dinner at the fantastic upscale vegan restaurant, “Sanctuary,” and every speaker was there – except Leah. This left me hoping that maybe Leah had actually “gotten” the gist of my presentation and was reflecting upon the role she was playing to help promote clean meat, in light of the historical record I shared in my talk, which explained how time and again, otherwise good people have played integral roles in advancing social injustices that contradicted the values that they claim to support.

It will be interesting to see how her organization, Mercy for Animals goes forward now. Will they continue to align with the powerful oppressive mindset – supported by a growing investor base, that is driving clean meat, and supported by most of the people who are her peers within the professional animal advocacy world, or will she break ranks and use her new bully pulpit at MFA to support authentic justice for all beings?

I was heartened when attendees at this event came up to me at the end and explained how they had come in expecting to confirm their perspective that Clean Meat would be good for animals, but that after the debate they now could see clearly how clean meat was just the latest example of green washing. Some went further. They told me that having previously read the OUTSTANDING essay by visionary film producer James Laveck, (linked to above -- but HERE it is again -- please read it!) they knew that they had just witnessed for themselves, exactly how moneyed interests co-opt the long term efforts of grass-roots activists, and set back our work for social justice progress.

I encourage you to watch this debate for yourself and share it widely with others. But to see it in the context of important historical facts, please watch the video of my presentation first

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