Per HSUS email from President Wayne Pacelle:
"I am excited to announce a historic agreement that The Humane Society of the United States reached this morning with the United Egg Producers, which could result in a complete makeover of the U.S. egg industry and improve the treatment of the 280 million laying hens used each year in U.S. egg production. Thanks to your support over the years, through our state ballot initiatives and legislative and corporate campaigns, we now have a new pathway forward to ban barren battery cages and phase in more humane standards nationwide.
The HSUS and UEP have agreed to work together to advocate for federal legislation that would:
Require a moratorium at the end of 2011 on new construction of unenrichable battery cages -- small, cramped, cages that nearly immobilize more than 90 percent of laying hens today -- and the nationwide elimination of barren battery cages through a phase-out period;
Require phased in construction of new hen housing systems that provide hens nearly double the amount of space they’re currently provided;
Require environmental enrichments so birds can engage in important natural behaviors currently denied to them in barren cages, such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas;
Mandate labeling on all egg cartons nationwide to inform consumers of the method used to produce the eggs, such as "eggs from caged hens" or "eggs from cage-free hens";
Prohibit forced molting through starvation -- an inhumane practice that is inflicted on tens of millions of hens each year and which involves withholding all food from birds for up to two weeks in order to manipulate the laying cycle;
Prohibit excessive ammonia levels in henhouses -- a common problem in the industry that is harmful to both hens and egg industry workers;
Require standards for euthanasia of hens; and
Prohibit the sale of eggs and egg products nationwide that don’t meet these above requirements.
If enacted, this would be the first federal law relating to chickens used for food, as well as the first federal law relating to the on-farm treatment of any species of farm animal.
Some of the provisions would be implemented nearly immediately after enactment, such as those relating to forced molting, ammonia, and euthanasia, and others after just a few years, including labeling and the requirement that all birds will have to have at least 67 square inches of space each. (Currently, approximately 50 million laying hens are confined to only 48 square inches each.) The bill would require that all egg producers increase space per bird in a tiered phase-in, resulting in a final number, within 15 years for nearly all producers, of at minimum, 124-144 square inches of space each, along with the other improvements noted above.
In order to protect Proposition 2 (a landmark laying hen welfare initiative passed in California in 2008 that many of you worked on), all California egg producers -- with nearly 20 million laying hens -- would be required to eliminate barren battery cages by 2015 (the date Prop 2 goes into effect), and provide all hens with environmental enrichments, such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas. This will also apply to the sale of all eggs and egg products in California. And this agreement to pass comprehensive federal legislation on hen welfare puts a hold on planned ballot measures related to laying hen welfare in both Washington and Oregon.
Passing this federal bill would be a historic improvement for hundreds of millions of animals per year. We are grateful to all of our volunteers, supporters, and others who have helped to make the cage confinement of egg-laying hens a national issue, and we will keep you informed as we make progress on this issue. I hope you will contact your U.S. senators and representative today and urge them to support this federal legislation to end barren battery cage confinement and provide more humane standards for laying hens."
If you care about this cause go to the HSUS website to contact your local legislator to support this proposition!
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Meatless Mondays Catch On, Even With Carnivores
June 16, 2011
Meatless Mondays Catch On, Even With Carnivores
By KIRK JOHNSON
ASPEN, Colo. — Friction between the health-and-eco-minded hippies who came here for a Rocky Mountain High in the 1970s and the super-wealthy second-homers who followed from the intersection of Hollywood and Hedge Fund is an old story here at 8,000 feet.
But now there is a new potential skirmish line: Meatless Mondays.
For whatever reason, chefs and restaurateurs say, the big outside money that fuels economic life here, often flying in by private jet from places like Malibu or the Main Line, tilts heavily toward the carnivorous.
“It’s very interesting, but for some reason when people come to Aspen, they want to eat meat,” said Mimi Lenk, a vegetarian for more than a decade and the manager of Syzygy, a downtown restaurant where elk, bison and lamb are the big sellers.
A new nationwide pro-veggie effort, however — aimed at persuading people to go meatless at least one day a week — has been embraced here more than in any other city in America. At least 20 institutions and restaurants, including Syzygy, are offering vegetarian choices on Mondays under a plan announced this month.
“Nobody is saying, ‘go become a vegetarian,’ ” said Martin Oswald, a restaurateur who led the effort in signing up Meatless Monday participants among his food-industry friends. Mr. Oswald said he thought the dynamic that made Aspen such a prime place to expand Meatless Monday was not philosophy or health, but rather the cutthroat economics of the restaurant business — keeping up with the Joneses for fear of being left out.
“The key was to get enough restaurants involved, then I could say: ‘Well, that guy does it and that guy over there and this guy does it over here. Do you want to do it, too?’ ” he said, sitting across the table at one of his restaurants, Pyramid Bistro. That approach, with its hard-to-say-no overtones, worked well. “So far, nobody has actually refused,” he said.
In food, as in so many other things, Aspen was already nowhere near average. In a state with the lowest obesity rate in the nation, an alpine outdoor menu — biking, rafting, hiking, rock-climbing and, of course, skiing — make it a fitness capital. And local institutions already led the charge in healthier eating.
Aspen Valley Hospital began boosting vegetarian choices several years ago in its food services. This month, the cardiac rehabilitation unit, where 20 percent to 30 percent of the patients are second-homers, began urging patients to patronize Meatless Monday restaurants in town.
In the public school system, which embraced Meatless Monday two years ago, whole grain pancakes, dubbed “breakfast for lunch,” are a popular Monday rotation in the elementary and middle schools. And even during the rest of the week, school lunches, down to and including the ketchup, are made from scratch, overseen by a chef hired away from a downtown restaurant.
“We roast our own beets,” said Tenille Folk, the director of food services for the Aspen School District’s middle and elementary schools.
The ambition and scale of the wider restaurant effort for Meatless Monday, which started on June 6, has made Aspen “the nation’s first true Meatless Monday community,” said the Meatless Monday campaign, a national effort in association with the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
It can be a delicate process, and many chefs here stress that they are not trying to convert anyone. The customer is always right, they say, whatever he or she wants to eat. Indeed, many say that in the tougher economic times of the past few years, meat consumption has probably gone up, perhaps as comfort food. A strictly vegetarian restaurant in Aspen closed a few years ago.
But that environment of competition and cost-control also created an opening, boosters of Meatless Monday say. Vegetables, in addition to having less impact on the planet than meat in energy and water usage, are much cheaper as an ingredient. And some local restaurateurs participating in Meatless Monday also said they had noticed an increasingly prominent gender gap, too, in recent years — with women tending more toward the vegetable side of the menu — which they can now overtly exploit on Mondays.
“It’s all about getting somebody in the door,” said Tico Starr, the chef at Rustique Bistro.
Still, some restaurants remain skittish.
“It’s something you need to study,” said Alex Harvier, the manager at Cache Cache, a French restaurant where entrees on recent Monday night included osso buco and calf’s liver, with prices ranging from $30 to $58. He said the integrity of the menu and the dining experience had to be considered in adding any new dishes.
“You can’t just tack something on,” he said.
The local government has also taken a cautious approach. Meatless Monday backers, in approaching the City Council for a public resolution of support — similar to ones passed in San Francisco and Washington, among other cities — got nowhere.
Some residents said the Council’s reluctance was rooted in the old Aspen — rowdy and antiauthoritarian, as epitomized by the gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson, who came to the area in the 1970s and died in 2005. Others said it was the newer Aspen at work — a fear of alienating second-homers by acting in a way that might come off as superior or elitist.
“It’s not government’s role, or municipal government’s role, to be talking about personal choice,” said Torre, a City Council member, who uses only one name. Torre, a tennis instructor when not on city business, said he and one other person on the five-member Council already practice one-day-a-week vegetarianism.
“But is it appropriate to pass a resolution on behalf of Aspen?” he said. “That’s a lengthier conversation.”
Meatless Mondays Catch On, Even With Carnivores
By KIRK JOHNSON
ASPEN, Colo. — Friction between the health-and-eco-minded hippies who came here for a Rocky Mountain High in the 1970s and the super-wealthy second-homers who followed from the intersection of Hollywood and Hedge Fund is an old story here at 8,000 feet.
But now there is a new potential skirmish line: Meatless Mondays.
For whatever reason, chefs and restaurateurs say, the big outside money that fuels economic life here, often flying in by private jet from places like Malibu or the Main Line, tilts heavily toward the carnivorous.
“It’s very interesting, but for some reason when people come to Aspen, they want to eat meat,” said Mimi Lenk, a vegetarian for more than a decade and the manager of Syzygy, a downtown restaurant where elk, bison and lamb are the big sellers.
A new nationwide pro-veggie effort, however — aimed at persuading people to go meatless at least one day a week — has been embraced here more than in any other city in America. At least 20 institutions and restaurants, including Syzygy, are offering vegetarian choices on Mondays under a plan announced this month.
“Nobody is saying, ‘go become a vegetarian,’ ” said Martin Oswald, a restaurateur who led the effort in signing up Meatless Monday participants among his food-industry friends. Mr. Oswald said he thought the dynamic that made Aspen such a prime place to expand Meatless Monday was not philosophy or health, but rather the cutthroat economics of the restaurant business — keeping up with the Joneses for fear of being left out.
“The key was to get enough restaurants involved, then I could say: ‘Well, that guy does it and that guy over there and this guy does it over here. Do you want to do it, too?’ ” he said, sitting across the table at one of his restaurants, Pyramid Bistro. That approach, with its hard-to-say-no overtones, worked well. “So far, nobody has actually refused,” he said.
In food, as in so many other things, Aspen was already nowhere near average. In a state with the lowest obesity rate in the nation, an alpine outdoor menu — biking, rafting, hiking, rock-climbing and, of course, skiing — make it a fitness capital. And local institutions already led the charge in healthier eating.
Aspen Valley Hospital began boosting vegetarian choices several years ago in its food services. This month, the cardiac rehabilitation unit, where 20 percent to 30 percent of the patients are second-homers, began urging patients to patronize Meatless Monday restaurants in town.
In the public school system, which embraced Meatless Monday two years ago, whole grain pancakes, dubbed “breakfast for lunch,” are a popular Monday rotation in the elementary and middle schools. And even during the rest of the week, school lunches, down to and including the ketchup, are made from scratch, overseen by a chef hired away from a downtown restaurant.
“We roast our own beets,” said Tenille Folk, the director of food services for the Aspen School District’s middle and elementary schools.
The ambition and scale of the wider restaurant effort for Meatless Monday, which started on June 6, has made Aspen “the nation’s first true Meatless Monday community,” said the Meatless Monday campaign, a national effort in association with the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.
It can be a delicate process, and many chefs here stress that they are not trying to convert anyone. The customer is always right, they say, whatever he or she wants to eat. Indeed, many say that in the tougher economic times of the past few years, meat consumption has probably gone up, perhaps as comfort food. A strictly vegetarian restaurant in Aspen closed a few years ago.
But that environment of competition and cost-control also created an opening, boosters of Meatless Monday say. Vegetables, in addition to having less impact on the planet than meat in energy and water usage, are much cheaper as an ingredient. And some local restaurateurs participating in Meatless Monday also said they had noticed an increasingly prominent gender gap, too, in recent years — with women tending more toward the vegetable side of the menu — which they can now overtly exploit on Mondays.
“It’s all about getting somebody in the door,” said Tico Starr, the chef at Rustique Bistro.
Still, some restaurants remain skittish.
“It’s something you need to study,” said Alex Harvier, the manager at Cache Cache, a French restaurant where entrees on recent Monday night included osso buco and calf’s liver, with prices ranging from $30 to $58. He said the integrity of the menu and the dining experience had to be considered in adding any new dishes.
“You can’t just tack something on,” he said.
The local government has also taken a cautious approach. Meatless Monday backers, in approaching the City Council for a public resolution of support — similar to ones passed in San Francisco and Washington, among other cities — got nowhere.
Some residents said the Council’s reluctance was rooted in the old Aspen — rowdy and antiauthoritarian, as epitomized by the gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson, who came to the area in the 1970s and died in 2005. Others said it was the newer Aspen at work — a fear of alienating second-homers by acting in a way that might come off as superior or elitist.
“It’s not government’s role, or municipal government’s role, to be talking about personal choice,” said Torre, a City Council member, who uses only one name. Torre, a tennis instructor when not on city business, said he and one other person on the five-member Council already practice one-day-a-week vegetarianism.
“But is it appropriate to pass a resolution on behalf of Aspen?” he said. “That’s a lengthier conversation.”
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