Patrick O. Brown, a Stanford University biochemist, has changed science twice by giving stuff away. In the early 1990s Brown invented the DNA microarray, a tool that measures how cells make use of their DNA; he then showed researchers how to make their own, transforming genetic research. In 2000 he was one of three scientists who launched a free, online scientific journal called the Public Library of Science (PLOS); it has already broken the stranglehold of $200-a-year scientific publications like Science and Nature.

Now he is tackling an even bigger foe. Over the next 18 months Brown, 55, will take a break from his normal scientific work (finding out how a small number of genes are translated into a much larger number of proteins) in order to change the way the world farms and eats. He wants to put an end to animal farming, or at least put a significant dent in our global hunger for cows, pigs and chickens.

Brown, who has been a vegetarian for more than 30 years and a vegan for 5, notes that while livestock accounts for only 9% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, it accounts for 37% of human-caused methane (most of it emanating from the animals’ digestive systems) and 65% of human-caused nitrous oxide, according to the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Both are far better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, meaning that cows, chickens and their ilk have a larger greenhouse effect than all the cars, trucks and planes in the world.

The green cognoscenti are choosing animal husbandry as their new enemy. Jonathan Safran Foer, the bestselling novelist, has published articles declaring that he is raising his kids vegetarian because of the environmental consequences of meat farming and that if people are going to eat meat, they should consider eating dogs. Lord Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics, told the Independent that the West would have to become more vegetarian in order to combat global warming; without change in present trends, meat and milk output will double by 2050.

Brown brings scientific clout to the debate–he’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute–and a realization that the arguments for change need to be economic, not just ethical. Growing crops to feed animals requires a lot more land, energy and fertilizer than growing them to feed people, he says: 70% of the land that was once Amazon rain forest is dedicated to grazing. Even if scientists figure out how to make milk with stem cells, it’s unlikely they will be able to create milk with the same efficiency as they can corn or wheat.

“There’s absolutely no possibility that 50 years from now this system will be operating as it does now,” says Brown. “One approach is to just wait, and either we’ll deal with it or we’ll be toast. I want to approach this as a solvable problem.” Solution: “Eliminate animal farming on planet Earth.”

Diets are malleable. Thirty years ago nobody drank high fructose corn syrup. Now it’s a dominant part of the American diet. As Western diets move into China, people there are eating more beef. Brown argues that the key to removing meat from diets is to give foodmakers an incentive to make yummy vegetable-based fare. If vendors push the new foods, palates will follow.

Incentive? Brown thinks if he can convince food manufacturers that the costs of selling meat are too high, and rising, they’ll come around. Seemingly tiny changes in economics could make animal farming a lot less affordable. At the moment farmers around the world are arguing they should be immune from taxes and ceilings on greenhouse gases; if they are not exempt, the cost of meat will go up. Raising the price of water would have the same effect. It takes 1,000 liters of water to produce a liter of milk.

Brown plans to spend the first six months of his project hammering out economic models with colleagues, illustrating ways that animal farming is likely to become onerously expensive. Then he’ll take a year off to work with famous chefs and food researchers on tastier vegetarian dishes, and to develop a strategy to tackle the political, economic, legal, behavioral and food-security issues he’s sure to face.

If Brown can work it so that McDonald’s puts less meat in each Big Mac, that could count as a win. Until now little research has gone into making foods friendly to the environment.

“If you’re a big food producer now, this is absolutely inevitable,” he says. “You’d better start thinking ahead. You’d better seriously start investing and trying to find alternatives in order to stay alive.”

Republished from Forbes.com

Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has never made a secret of his disdain for vegetarians and vegans. In his best-selling book Kitchen Confidential the former New York cook remarked somewhat amusingly, “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.” After his book became a hit, Bourdain moved into television and currently hosts No Reservations, a rather unusual and unorthodox travel show which examines far-flung cultures and exotic cuisines of the world.

Over the course of his career, Bourdain has cultivated a cool, bad-ass image and during his program he sports a black leather jacket. On one of his shows shot in San Francisco, he made a point of taking on political correctness by heading to an old steak house and feasting on prime rib. “To me,” he has written, “life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.”

A few days ago Bourdain took his relentless campaign against vegetarians and vegans to new heights on CNN. Speaking on Larry King Live, the TV personality remarked that we were designed by evolution to eat meat. “We have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have … teeth and long legs. We were designed from the get-go … so that we could chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them,” he said. 

The conversation focused on contaminated burgers that had sickened, paralyzed and even killed some people who had eaten them. Bourdain conceded that factory farms and large meat processors had developed “unconscionable” practices which “bordered on the criminal.” Expressing concern about chopped meat, Bourdain said “The stuff they’re putting in these burgers would not be recognized by any American as meat.”

Still, the popular Travel Channel personality could not bring himself to turn against a carnivorous lifestyle. “I think certainly we could eat better in this country,” he remarked. “It would probably not be a bad thing if we ate less meat, if the ratio of animal protein to vegetables changed along the lines of the Chinese model. But to talk about eradicating meat is silly.”

At this point another panelist on King’s show, Jonathan Foer, rightly took Bourdain to task. Foer, a best-selling writer and author of the upcoming book Eating Animals, declared “What Anthony didn’t say, and I wish he had, is that 99 percent — upwards of 99 percent of the animals that are raised for meat in this country come from factory farms.” Foer added, “When we’re talking about meat, when we’re talking about the meat they sell in grocery stores, when we’re talking about the meat we order in restaurants, we are effectively talking about factory farms. I think it’s a wonderful thing for someone with a reputation and as much intelligence as Anthony has to come out against factory farms. The crucial part of the picture is to say to America, this is almost everything.”

Foer is right about how enmeshed Americans have become in the factory farm system. Yet, the discussion on Larry King about meat and its downsides did not go far enough. Today, meat production is putting our planet in peril and hastening global climate change. It’s an issue which has been ignored by the likes of CNN but one which I deal with at considerable length in my upcoming book, No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2010).

Here’s the problem which Bourdain and other blissful carnivores choose to ignore: the world-wide cattle industry is linked to destructive deforestation and our climate destiny. Worryingly, deforestation is currently the second largest driver of carbon dioxide emissions after the burning of fossil fuels. To put it in concrete terms, tropical deforestation accounts for a whopping 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The Amazon rainforest is of particular concern and accounts for nearly half of the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from tropical deforestation.

In the Amazon the cattle sector is the largest driver of rainforest destruction, accounting for 60 to 70 percent of deforestation. To put it in concrete terms: every eighteen seconds on average one hectare of Amazon rainforest is being lost to cattle ranchers. As if the carbon emissions resulting from cattle deforestation were not enough, consider bovine methane emissions (or cow farts, if you want to be less delicate). While much of the debate surrounding global warming has centered upon carbon dioxide–the world’s most abundant greenhouse gas–methane, which has twenty-one times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, is seldom mentioned.

In Brazil, rainforest cattle has accounted for much of the country’s domestic demand in recent years. But now, the cattle and climate dilemma is becoming internationalized as the South American giant moves into the global marketplace. So far Brazil has exported most of its beef to Europe, though the country’s meat may have qualities that some markets view as favorable. Indeed Amazonian cattle are certainly free range, grass fed, and possibly organic, depending on your definition of the term. Ever wonder where that hamburger you just ate came from? There’s a chance it might contain meat from the Amazon rainforest.

In light of our climate difficulties, we’re going to have to reconsider our dietary choices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization finds that meat production gives rise to more greenhouse gases than either transportation or industry. Furthermore, beef is the most carbon-intensive form of meat production. Consider: a one-pound patty results in about 36 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, or thirteen times the emissions from chicken.

But wait, there’s more: in order to feed the world’s rapacious demand for meat, Brazil has turned large tracts of land over to soy production. Soy has long been popular among vegetarians but it is now prized as a quick, cheap, and safe animal feed for poultry, pigs, and cattle. The Chinese and Europeans have become voracious consumers of Brazilian soy, catapulting the South American nation to agribusiness giant status. In China soy imports have increased exponentially, in large part because of growing affluence and a shift in the local diet. For many Chinese, consuming meat and dairy products symbolizes wealth, status, modernity, and escape from rough rural life.

Though the average American eats more than 250 pounds of meat ever year, the Chinese are now catching up and currently consume 115 pounds. Per capita consumption of pork in China has meanwhile almost doubled. Though China produces a lot of soy on its own, it is now the world’s largest importer of soy to feed its growing livestock sector. In Europe meanwhile, demand for soy has skyrocketed.

Though the soy planters cut down some forest, their influence is often more indirect. Once ranchers have cleared land in the Amazon the soy planters buy up property and move in. But as they take up cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, the soy magnates push others such as slash-and-burn farmers even further into the forest. Soy then acts as a significant push factor and catalyst of climate change. The farmers who get pushed into the rainforest by agribusiness quickly find that Amazonian soils are notoriously low in fertility. After several harvests crop yields start to disappoint and eventually farmers abandon the land altogether or convert it to cattle pasture. In addition to pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers into the forest, soy magnates exert pressure on the Amazon in other ways. For example, they lobby for highways and infrastructure projects which pave the way for yet more deforestation.

In Brazil, it is large international companies which are fueling the soy bonanza — companies like Minnesota – based Cargill. It’s a fact which apparently eludes Bourdain: speaking on CNN he remarked that it would be “ridiculous” and “silly” to replace Cargill, a huge corporation, with a food system based on fruits and vegetables. Bourdain has apparently failed to consider the nefarious social and environmental costs associated with corporate agribusiness. Perhaps he should talk to poor farmers in Brazil who have been displaced by soy production and must head to the rainforest to practice subsistence agriculture — all in the name of fueling agribusiness exports and expanding the global meat-eating lifestyle.

It’s perplexing how Bourdain, whose show is easily one of the most lively and intelligent on TV, has become such an impassioned foe of “silly” vegetarians and their “Hezbollah-like” vegan cousins. Considering all the disadvantages, perhaps one of the best things anyone can do to tackle climate change is to have one meat-free day a week and gradually decrease meat intake thereafter. It’s not enough, however, to simply transition toward a vegetarian diet which includes lots of milk, butter, and cheese–this probably won’t reduce emissions significantly as dairy cows would still release methane through flatulence. While it may sound a bit naive to think that people will change their eating habits any time soon, such a move is certainly much less complicated than getting people to switch their mode of transport.

Tony Bourdain has a cool show though his overall coolness is rapidly wearing thin. Maybe he should channel his constructive energy into lambasting corporate cattle ranching and agribusiness as opposed to vegetarians and vegans. The host of No Reservations has a great appreciation for traditional cultures and local folk. Why not air a program about how soy and our unsustainable consumerist lifestyle are displacing poor people while simultaneously fueling deforestation and climate change? Now THAT would be a show worth tuning in for.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of the forthcoming No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2010). Visit his blog at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com/

What could be more American than a glass of milk? Cow’s milk, that is. In light of this common perception, the time is long overdue to add the milk mustache to that ever-growing list of American myths. Human beings are not designed to drink any milk except human milk (only during infancy, of course). As you’ll see below, consuming dairy products — milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, etc. — is not green and it’s not healthy.

It’s also a nightmare for the cows themselves. Here’s a little of how the folks at GoVeg describe it: “The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.”

*Living dairy-free has never been easier…so here’s a little motivation to get you on the greener, cruelty-free, not-milk track.

Environmental Reasons to Avoid Milk

1. Dairy cows produce waste.

Lots of waste. In fact, your average dairy cow produces 120 pounds of waste every day — equal to that of more than two dozen people, but without toilets, sewers, or treatment plants.

2. Let me repeat: Dairy cows produce lots and lots of waste (and greenhouse gases).

California produces one-fifth of the country’s total milk supply. According to MilkSucks.com, “in the Central Valley of California, the cows produce as much excrement as a city of 21 million people, and even a smallish farm of 200 cows will produce as much nitrogen as in the sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people, according to a U.S. Senate report on animal waste.”

3. Milk production ultimately leads to climate change.

The dairy industry is an extension of the beef industry (used-up dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse after an average of four years, one-fifth their normal life expectancy) which means it plays a major role in creating climate change. Here’s the equation: The dairy industry uses cows before passing them on to be slaughtered by the beef industry which is now recognized as an environmental nightmare. “According to a UN report,” writes Brian Merchant, “cows are leading contributors to climate change … Accounting for putting out 18% of the world’s carbon dioxide, cows emit more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation combined.” That means the industry of exploiting all cows — including dairy cows — involves destructive practices like deforestation and polluting offshoots like runoff.

4. Milk often contains unwanted ingredients.

Under current industrial methods, cow’s milk is often a toxic bovine brew of man-made ingredients like bio-engineered hormones, antibiotics (55% of U.S. antibiotics are fed to livestock), and pesticides — all of which are bad for us and the environment. For example, unintentional pesticide poisonings kill an estimated 355,000 people globally each year. In addition the drugs pumped into livestock often re-visit us in our water supply.

Which brings us to…

Health Reasons to Avoid Milk

5. Cow’s milk is for cows.

The biochemical make-up of cow’s milk is perfectly suited to turn a 65-pound newborn calf into a 400-pound cow in one year. It contains, for example, three times more protein and seven times more mineral content while human milk has 10 times as much essential fatty acids, three times as much selenium, and half the calcium. Some may like cow’s milk but drinking it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful.

6. Milk is actually a poor source for dietary calcium.

Humans, like cows, get all the calcium they need from a plant-based diet.

7. Contrary to popular belief, milk may increase the likelihood of osteoporosis.

It is still widely accepted that the calcium in dairy products will strengthen our bones and help prevent osteoporosis, but studies show that foods originating from animal sources (like milk) make the blood acidic. When this occurs, the blood leeches calcium from the bones to increase alkalinity. While this works wonders for the pH balance of your blood, it sets your calcium-depleted bones up for osteoporosis. As explained by John Robbins, “The only research that even begins to suggest that the consumption of dairy products might be helpful [in preventing osteoporosis] has been paid for by the National Dairy Council itself.”

8. Milk makes you fat.

In 2005, the Harvard School of Public Health had this to say on the consumption of dairy products: “Three glasses of low-fat milk add more than 300 calories a day. This is a real issue for the millions of Americans who are trying to control their weight. What’s more, millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, and even small amounts of milk or dairy products give them stomach aches, gas, or other problems.”

It’s easy to go dairy-free. Here are 7 easy vegan recipes to set you off on the right path.

Reposted from AlterNet.

(NaturalNews) In The Physiology of Taste, written in 1825, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” This is the origin of the popular phrase, “You are what you eat.” It’s no secret that America is facing an unprecedented obesity epidemic. So, just what are Americans eating?

Cows fed Junk Food

According to an article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the average American eats about 44 kg (about 97 pounds) of beef every year. That number may be shocking to some people. However, it’s not nearly as shocking as the news reported by The Daily Green concerning the latest addition to the diet of the American cow: “potato chip and chocolate waste not fit for the junk food aisle at the grocery store.”

That’s right. Farmers are feeding cattle potato chips and chocolate scraps. Ever wonder what happens to those broken potato chips and chocolate candies? It’s bad enough that many children are permitted by their parents to eat this kind of junk food. Now, to make matters worse, they are experiencing even more ill health-effects through a meat-based diet, courtesy of farmers whose primary concern is turning a huge profit.

Cows Should eat Grass

Ask a little kid what a cow is supposed to eat, and the little kid will almost always give the correct response: grass. What’s up with American farmers? Why are they so confused? Studies have shown that beef produced from cows that eat the diet that nature intended is much more beneficial to human health.

What Else are Cows Eating?

However, cows have been given things like corn to fatten them up quickly for the last fifty years, according to The Daily Green, but corn is something that isn’t easily digested by cows. In fact, eating corn creates an acidic environment in the cow’s stomach that encourages the growth of E.coli. This, of course, requires the cow to be treated with antibiotics.

Of course, cows are also given growth hormones, and CNN reports that some farmers think regular feed is too expensive and are feeding their cattle chicken manure. (Maybe it’s so expensive because it’s irradiated — most animal feeds are irradiated, too.) If that’s not bad enough, the FDA allows all sorts of chemicals, contaminants, drug residues, and euthanized animals in animal feed. By the way, it’s no secret that many of the drugs found in animal feed are linked to weight gain. Anyone hungry?

You Are What You Eat

For those who think they can escape all of this ugliness by eating organic beef, think again. While eating organic, grass-fed beef is certainly healthier than eating the meat of cows that have been fed corn, chicken manure, chocolate, potato chips, euthanized animals, and irradiated feed laden with chemical residues, organically-raised cows still have to go to the slaughterhouse. For a great description of what happens at the slaughterhouse, be sure to read the chapter entitled “The Dead, Rotting, Decomposing Flesh Diet” in the book called Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the FDA is pretty worthless when it comes to protecting the health of the American people. The FDA even allows chemicals to be added to meat to make it look nice and red at the grocery store so that it will appear fresher longer. You are what you eat. Looking at the backsides of most Americans walking down the street, this is most certainly true.

About the author

Joanne Waldron is a computer scientist with a passion for writing and sharing health-related news and information with others. She runs the Naked Wellness: The Gentle Health Revolution forum, which is devoted to achieving radiant health, well-being, and longevity.

This article was reprinted from Naturalnews.

(NaturalNews) The recall of 143 million pounds of beef processed over the past two years is the largest meat recall in the history of the world. The USDA had no choice following an animal group’s release of videotape of “downer” cows being dragged across filthy floors and pushed around by a fork lift, before joining their healthier brethren on the hamburger highway. Since we all agree that the primary responsibility of the USDA is food safety, the question is, where were the USDA inspectors? The answer may be that for several years, the top priority at the USDA has not been food safety, but the creation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).

What is NAIS?

Formulated under the Patriot Act and therefore with no legislative review or input of the people, NAIS is a government program originally designed to give US beef producers help in getting their products into the export markets, as well as protection from liability involving those products.

Often labeled “no chicken left behind”, the program has grown to include all livestock species, including cattle, bison, deer, elk, llamas, alpacas, horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, swine, all poultry species, and fish. Owners are required at their expense to electronically, and with geo-satellite coordinates, tag each group or groups of animals and report within 24 hours to a data base: animal births, deaths, ownership transfers, and animal ingress and egress from the owner’s land.

Under this system, animal owners who want to sell or take their animals off their property are also required to register their land with the USDA, thus putting their property under federal jurisdiction.

Of course, the benefit is to the big factory farms who clearly do need some type of regulation. They will do single ID’s for large groups of animals. Small farmers, pet owners and homesteaders will have to tag and track every single animal individually.

Under NAIS, there are no exceptions. Even small farms that sell directly to local consumers will be required to pay the fees and file paperwork on each of their animals. Homesteaders who raise their own meat and grandma with her one egg hen will also have to register their homes as ‘farm premises’ and obtain a Premise ID, as well as tagging each animal.

The animal tracking, logging and reporting components of NAIS are scheduled to become mandatory nationwide in January, 2009. Strict enforcement involving fines, inspections of properties and confiscation or redistribution of livestock can be done by the USDA or state government without trial or legal hearings and with no compensation to the owner of the animals. Failure to register your home or farm with a Premise ID already faces a $1,000 fine in some states. This is in violation of the Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Nearly $150 million of taxpayer money as been spent on promoting NAIS, money that could have been spent on more inspectors to oversee meat processing plants. Instead, NAIS money has been used to influence non-government organizations into a public/private partnership to promote the NAIS. The Future Farmers of America and the 4H Club received large sums to encourage their parents to quickly register their property into the program.

NAIS and Food Safety

NAIS does nothing to prevent or arrest disease or contamination in the food supply. The initiative is not intended for this purpose. The goal of NAIS is to provide a 48 hour trace back to the farm of origin in the case of problems, a requirement for export to foreign markets. NAIS expands corporate profits, not consumer safety. The 48 hour trace back time that follows any problem detection could mean weeks or months have elapsed since any problem would actually have occurred.

Contamination of the food generally happens after the food leaves the farm. Many examples of factory contaminated food fill the news. And if the problem is not discovered at the factory but later, at the consumer level, there is a recall. The systems are already in place to handle this type of problem.

As to disease, meat sold in stores and restaurants is supposedly USDA inspected during slaughter and processing. The reality is that large numbers of recalls show us that meat from big commercial producers may not have been properly inspected because there are not enough inspectors, and because priorities lie elsewhere.

NAIS does nothing to halt the spread of Mad Cow Disease, a disease believed to be caused by the practice of grinding up old cows and adding them to cow feed. This practice is banned, and it is the job of the USDA to enforce this ban.

NAIS cannot help prevent the feared Avian Flu which is spread by wild birds.

Had the NAIS system been fully in place, it would not have prevented the “downer” cows in California from getting into the food supply. Nor would it have prevented any of the other meat recalls in recent years. Only a more efficient USDA inspection program can improve food safety.

Who Benefits and Who Loses From NAIS?

Today’s NAIS is an outgrowth of international agreements brought to the USDA by the National Institute of Animal Agriculture, a not-for-profit organization consisting of large meat packers, manufacturers of animal tags and tag-reading equipment, and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. These are the organizations benefiting financially from the NAIS. Farmers, ranchers, and producers who must pay for this program were not invited to participate in its development.

The tag and reader manufacturers anticipate windfall profits from NAIS. State Departments of Agriculture are also slated to benefit. And certainly this is a full employment act for the USDA.

Animal owners who have to pay the bill for all this are being urged to sign up before NAIS becomes law in their states. Early sign up is billed as a patriotic act. To encourage early signing, animals cannot be shown at state fairs unless their premises are registered in the NAIS. Breed associations are being encouraged to withhold registration of animals for people not first registered with NAIS. There are reports that animals have been slaughtered by USDA inspectors on small farms where the owners resist registration.

Agri-business is the clear winner under NAIS. The prize is expanded export markets, and legal liability protection at minimal cost. Small farmers will be forced out of business due to the additional fees and paperwork, resulting in market share gain, bigger monopolies, and higher profits for the corporations. Anyone wishing to raise his own, better quality food will face the obstacles of paperwork and regulation.

NAIS is going to be expensive and guess who will pay for it in higher food prices? You!

About the author

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using “alternative” treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

Reprinted from Natural News.

I witnessed a death two days ago. I am trying my best to get that image out of my mind, but I’m going to write about it here in the hopes that writing will be a catharsis.

An hour before I was planning to head out to leaflet, a friend of mine, Dan Dunbar, called me up and said that he had spotted a stalled transport truck with a downed dairy cow inside. I drove out to meet him.

I arrived to witness a grisly scene. The poor girl was collapsed on the ground inside the truck, in a 3-inch-deep cesspool of feces and urine. You could see her wide, terrified eyes staring into nothingness, her entire body quivering ever so slightly. But she was making no sounds. The other cows had trampled her broken body; she had bloody wounds and bright red lesions that were clearly visible through the filth. Her udder was swollen to many times its normal size. We noticed a ghastly sliver of flesh on a gate mechanism above her. (It was later suggested to us that this might have been her tongue. Cows tend to lick the sides of the truck, in search of moisture, but when it’s a frozen mechanized gate, that desperate attempt can have tragic consequences.)

As we stood witnessing this terrifying scene, the truck driver sat in his car, on the phone, no doubt cursing his misfortune, to have two broken “machines” (the truck, and the cow) on the same trip. The other cows had already been removed to another truck, which left our poor friend alone in her quiet torment.

In the abstract, we all know about the billions of individuals suffering and dying all around us. We all have seen footage and images from the concentration camps we euphemistically describe as “farms.” But nothing has quite the impact as seeing an innocent die before your eyes. I’ve witnessed the tortuous death of an innocent victim a few times before, and that is a few times too many.

It HAS to stop.

My friends, this is the enemy. The fear, the pain, the utter desolation … our non-human brethren have done nothing to deserve such a terrible fate. And yet that fate is cruelly forced upon them, over and over and over again … an endless procession of torment and death, a procession that sometimes may seem invincible to change.

Whenever I lose hope for this movement, whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the oppression all around us, I just look around me a bit more carefully. And when I look a bit more carefully, I see something different and even beautiful. I see the inspired stream of emails coming in from the [Vegan Outreach Adopt a College email] list. I see a few dozen people standing on a frozen Chicago street, calling clearly for animal liberation. I see a passerby’s pained expression of empathy when she stops briefly to look at a sign. And when I see these things, I see that our enemy can be defeated, that the holocaust raging all around us can be stopped, and that our vision of a just and peaceful world for all animals can become a reality.

Our poor friend died that day, on the filthy floor of a bloody transportation truck. We witnessed her body go cold, and her eyes stop moving. Her entire life had been enslaved and twisted by violence and prejudice. But I think that, despite her cruel death, she had moments of peace and joy the sweet smell of a new and unexpected food, the gentle touch of a rare worker who had not been desensitized to pervasive industrial cruelty, or the fresh taste of cool water on a hot summer day. Of course, much of her life was torment. That cannot be denied. But because of people like you, and because of brave activists all over the world, from San Francisco to Chicago to Amsterdam to Moscow, her torment will not be forgotten. And some day soon, those few moments of peace and joy, that our poor friend experienced ever so fleetingly, will no longer be just moments.

All of these thoughts were sifting through my mind as I headed out to leaflet a couple hours later than I had expected. My mood was somber. I could still visualize, and indeed feel, the terror in my poor friend’s eyes, as she wallowed, slowly dying, in torment and filth. And when I arrived, I looked around: I was alone on a cold Chicago street.

But I didn’t feel alone. Because I thought of the hundreds of activists on this very list, the many thousands who have rallied for the rights of animals in cities across this nation, and the millions all over the world who have spoken and stood for the rights of oppressed classes, in a centuries-long struggle for equality, justice, and freedom.

All of you inspire me. All of you give me strength. All of you give me hope. And for all of our superficial disagreements and differences, for all of our human pettiness and peccadilloes, the common vision and passion we share — of a just and peaceful world for all of us on this planet — makes me glad and proud to call each and every one of you a friend, a friend in the fight for liberation.

As to the leafleting itself? The traffic was low at Robert Morris College. I don’t remember any interactions of note, perhaps because I wasn’t my usual self. But at a moment when I should have been drowning in despair over the suffering I had witnessed, isolated on a cold street, facing an oblivious or outright hostile public, I did not feel despair.

I felt hope and kinship. And I have all of you to thank for that.

There will come a day when the animals are all free. I don’t know if it will happen sooner or later, but I have no doubt that it will come. And when that day comes, the world will look back on our times, gratefully, for the brave work that you do, for your passion to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves, and most of all, for your hope … your hope in a movement where it is so easy to wallow in despair.

But this email has now gotten much longer than I had anticipated. So let me conclude with a quote by an activist much braver and better than myself:

“I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long…because THE ARC OF THE MORAL UNIVERSE IS LONG, BUT IT BENDS TOWARD JUSTICE.”

If you are ever in despair or frustration, remember those words. Dr. King was right about his movement, and he will be right, too, about ours.

Reprinted from Vegan Outreach.