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True Green Report

Shortchanging chickens

January 20, 2003

Col. Sanders must be spinning in his grave. Emboldened by their victories over McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has KFC in its sights.

All of the above folded to PETA pressure to reduce cruel treatment to animals raised and slaughtered for food. Now PETA has declared its latest campaign target: KFC, owned by Yum! Brands Inc. and franchised by priszm brandz in Canada. PETA, along with Animal Alliance of Canada (AAC), formally launched the campaign by unveiling new Kentucky Fried Cruelty posters, leaflets, stickers, and more and showed broadcast-quality footage of abusive animal treatment of KFC suppliers at a news conference on Jan. 7, near the company’s headquarters.

PETA claims to have attempted to negotiate with Yum! Brands executives for 21 months prior to the campaign launch, but despite assurances made "long ago" by a senior vice president that KFC would "raise the bar" on animal welfare, "the company refuses to eliminate the worst abuses."

Among the improvements that PETA wants KFC to implement are the following: replacing crude and ineffective electric stunning and throat-slitting with gas killing; phasing out the forced rapid growth of chickens, which causes metabolic disorders and lameness; increasing the space allotted per bird; adding minimal enhancements, such as sheltered areas and perches in order to provide chickens with some semblance of their natural environment; and implementing automated chicken-catching, a process that reduces the high incidence of bruising, broken bones and stress associated with catching chickens by hand.

"KFC has shortchanged chickens, leaving us no choice but to turn up the heat," says PETA Vegan Outreach coordinator Dan Shannon. "McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s responded to consumer pressure; KFC will do well to follow their lead."


Tinseltown tune:

Me and my SUV

Newsmax is leaving plebes and the unwashed in fits of welcome giggles over Hollywood’s "Anti-SUV hypocrites".

"Norman Lear, Arianna Huffington and Sen. John Kerry aren’t the only anti-SUV hypocrites. Add Barbra Streisand, Gywneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz and Chevy Chase to the growing list.

Tinseltown’s anti-choice left is certainly making an ass of itself this time. "Many of the Hollywood celebrities behind the new campaign against gas-guzzling SUVs are hypocrites who consume huge quantities of fossil fuels in their stretch limos, Gulfstream jets and oversized Beverly Hills mansions," the New York Post’s cheeky Page Six column noted.

"Paltrow’s latest role: appearing with Cameron Diaz in ads for Lear’s Environmental Media Association accusing SUV owners of supporting terrorism. ‘But some of Paltrow’s neighbours find her to be an odd choice for an anti-SUV poster girl,’ the Post noted.

"’She drives a Mercedes-Benz SUV,’ revealed one of Paltrow’s neighbours in Manhattan’s West Village. ‘Not only does she drive an SUV, she selfishly parks it on the sidewalk in our neighbourhood.’

"Paltrow’s mouthpiece refused to respond.

"Long-ago star Chase claims to be a big supporter of Lear’s group, but that doesn’t stop him from tooling around Westchester County in his big fat SUV.

"’They keep it in the back, and it’s very rarely used,’ Chase’s flack, Alan Eichorn told Page Six. ‘They only use it when they have to attach the horse trailer or when they’re carrying a lot of kids.’

"Oh? What about all the ecological damage that "environmentalists" claim horses cause? And how many vehicles do Chase and his wife have?

"At least three. Eichorn bragged that the ‘extremely environmentally conscious’ Chase and his wife have two of Toyota’s Prius hybrid cars, in addition to their SUV and who knows what else.

‘They hate having the SUV, and they’re going to get rid of it as soon as the carmakers come out with a hybrid version,’ Eichorn said.

"Get rid of it? How environmentally insensitive. Do Hollywood’s left-wing thought police suggest cramming our precious landfills with vehicles that still work? Where exactly do these people think all that metal, plastic, rubber and glass came from? (Hint: Think Mother Earth.)

"That brings to mind a recent interview with Diaz, in which she bragged of ignoring her garage full of cars in favour of her new Prius. When Diaz isn’t doffing her duds in such awful movies as The Sweetest Thing, she makes use of the photo opportunities at La-La Land’s luxurious "environmental" fundraisers. Cammie: Exactly how many cars does one starlet need?

"And then there’s Babs.

"Barbra Streisand, meanwhile, never seems to tire of telling other people how to live, but the world would be a pretty smog-filled place if the rest of us lived like her,’ Page Six observed. "As the Post reported recently, Streisand and her hubby James Brolin have SUVs.

"Bab’s P.R. hack claims that Mrs. and Mr. Streisand also plan to buy a Prius. Just one new toy in the overflowing playpen of those infantile but materialistic Hollywood hypocrites."


Better dead than fed

The Sun Herald’s Paul K. Driessen gives a timely and chilling portrait about how affluent environmental activists are condemning the world poor to lives of abject squalour.

"Three intertwined doctrines are all the rage among corporate, environmental, government and religious activists these days--and unfortunately all are condemning the world’s poor to lives of abject squalour.

"The first, called corporate social responsibility, argues that companies should conduct their affairs with more concern for activists’ pet causes than making a profit for shareholders.

"The second, known as sustainable development, says companies must restrict themselves only to activities that ‘meet the needs and the aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’.

"The third, dubbed the precautionary principle, requires companies to halt any activities that may threaten ‘human health or the environment’ even when there is no documented cause-and-effect relationship.

"A hopeless life of hunger and poverty.

"All of that may sound noble at first blush, but the truth is that radical activists from affluent Western countries created these buzz phrases to promote their own socialist agendas. They--and they alone--define what is ‘responsible’ in a way that blocks any development that doesn’t meet their exacting environmental demands, even though it may mean locking the world’s poor into a hopeless life of chronic hunger and poverty.

"For people in the Third World, the three doctrines are dangerous, and even deadly. They impose the loftiest of developed world standards on developing nations, while ignoring the needs and aspirations of people who struggle daily just to survive.

"For instance, few of the more than 2 billion Africans and Indians living today have access to electricity. Half a billion women and children in Africa, Asia and Latin America currently spend their days collecting firewood, or squatting in mud laced with animal feces and urine to collect, dry and store manure for use as fuel. Few attend school. Millions die every year from preventable lung diseases and dysentry caused by indoor air pollution and filthy drinking water.

"Ironically, the poor in the teeming slums of New Delhi have the same aspirations for themselves and their families as Sierra Club members in gated communities in the Hamptons, La Jolla and Sausalito. Above all, they want to live in modern homes, determine their own destinies, and enjoy electricity, safe water and other basics that Westerners take for granted.

"’We don’t want to be encased like a museum,’ one Indian woman plaintively told a television news crew.

"They also want to protect their environment. ‘If people don’t have electricity,’ points out Gordon Mwesigye, a senior official in Uganda, ‘they will cut down trees, and Africa will lose its wildlife habitats and the health and economic benefits abundant, reliable, affordable electricity brings.

"Dams in Uganda and Gujarat Province, India, could provide electricity and safe drinking water. But First World radicals oppose their construction and are pressuring international aid agencies to withdraw funding. These countries shouldn’t make the same ‘mistakes’ we did by building mammoth hydroelectric projects, the activists insist. They should opt for wind turbines, or solar panels on huts. They mustn’t dam up good kayaking rivers or use fossil fuels.

"An additional 14 million Africans face imminent starvation. Modern science could reduce their anguish--through seeds and crops that have been genetically modified, to make them resistant to drought, salt and insect pests, reduce the need for pesticides, and save wildlife habitat by enabling farmers to grow more food on less land.

"The U.S. has shipped African countries thousands of tons of genetically modified corn--the same corn that Americans have been eating safely for years. But environmental radicals and the European Union are screaming ‘genetic pollution’ and threatening to withdraw aid and ban agricultural exports from any countries that plant or distribute the grains.

"’Better dead than fed.’

"One can only wonder if the activists’ cars will soon be festooned with such bumper sticker slogans as: ‘Solar for huts--and huts forever’, or ‘Sustainable insects, expendable people’ or perhaps, ‘Better dead than fed.’

"For the sake of the world’s poor, it’s time to ask the eco-activists, bureaucrats and media elites exactly how their anti-energy, anti-biotech and anti-people policies are moral, compassionate, sustainable or socially responsible."


Are Americans terrorists?

Writer Ralph Kinney Bennett renders some pithy comments in his piece entitled Are Americans Terrorists?

‘I thank God the sun and moon

Are both stuck up so high,

That no presumptuous hand can stretch

And pluck them from the sky.

If they were not, I do believe

That some reforming ass

Would recommend to take them down

And light the world by gas.’ (—Popular rhyme c. 1832)

"Hey Arianna. We’re Americans. Remember America? Your adopted country? We like big cars and trucks and SUVs. Do you know what an SUV is? It’s a ‘sport--got that? -vehicle. That’s a vehicle you can ‘play’ with (as in bouncing down a rutted timber road just for fun) and a vehicle you can use the next day to haul a chest of drawers over to your brother-in-law’s place. They’re sporty and useful, okay?

"We’re Americans. We travel long distances and we like to take a lot of things with us, like the kids and the dog and the eight pieces of luggage, and on the way back we can throw in that interesting chair we saw in that antique shop we saw in New Jersey.

"We’re Americans. We like to go down to Home Depot and bring back a couple of sacks of top soil and mulch and a new lawnmower--a gasoline powered lawnmower, mind you--and some sheetrock and a couple of 2 by 4s.

"We’re Americans. We discovered long ago that the Corolla doesn’t cut it when you’re hauling two kayaks and some backpacks and sleeping bags and it’s a windy day. We’ll take the Explorer or the Yukon and then we’ll be able to take the bikes along, too. And guess what? At the end of the year the difference in the amount of gas we used as compared to the little car wasn’t all that much. And we had more fun in the SUV and it came in handy the time we had to ford that stream.

"We’re Americans. We go where we want when we want and we drive what we want. Your pious little Prius is a nice little car. I know. I’ve driven one and enjoyed it. But when I moved to Pennsylvania, I hauled 1,400 pounds of books in the back of my LX450 and when I was almost to my destination I saw a dirt road that looked interesting and I went and explored it and it got pretty rutty and rocky. But the view of the mountain at the end of it was worth it. If I had been in a regular car I wouldn’t have gone there. But I wasn’t. I was at the wheel of my gas-guzzling, irresponsible SUV, thank God.

"We’re Americans, not terrorists.

"Sydney Smith, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1810, noted that ‘men, whose trade is rat-catching, love to catch rats; the bug destroyer seizes his bug with delight; and the suppressor is gratified by finding his vice.’ You’ve found your vice, Mrs. Huffington. Congratulations."


Activists get a little help from their friends

According to the Portland State University faculty senate, arson is just another form of political activism. How else to explain that two Portland State University professors are calling on political officials to stop using the term "terrorism" as a catchall for political dissent?

Mary King, chair of PSU’s economic department, and Barbara Dudley, adjunct assistant professor of political science, co-wrote a faculty senate resolution in December that criticizes statements made by the media and public officials (particularly a local law enforcement panel known as the Joint Terrorism Task Force) linking non-violent political dissent to terrorism.

The resolution, which passed 46-9, does not refer to any specific cases, but King says she was moved in large part by the fate of one of her students, Jeremy Rosenbloom, who received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in March. "I know him," King says, "and the idea of him spending big part of his life in jail appalls me."

Rosenbloom, 25, is one of four activists accused of setting fire to three trucks belonging to an Estacada logging company in June 2001. Two other defendants, 20-year-old Jacob D.B. Sherman and 23-year-old Angela M. Cesario, are also PSU students, both having taken classes as recently as this past summer. (The fourth defendant, 28-year-old Michael J. Scarpitti--better known as Tre Arrow--was never a PSU student. He remains at large.)

The professors’ resolution decried the use of "inflammatory terms such as `terrorism’ and `ecoterrorism,’ which could be prejudicial and `dramatically increase potential sentences." The resolution was sent to the mayor and city commissioners.

Dudley says she wanted the resolution to apply to the Muslim community as well as environmental activists. A proposed phrase implying that property damage does not constitute terrorism was scrapped after some faculty members expressed concern they would be seen as advocating illegal activity.

Doug Hall, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, was among those arguing to delete the phrase. "It is right that we say we’re against overusing the word `terrorism’, he says, `but we should not make a statement that de facto condones property destruction as a valid form of protest. The message this gives is that the PSU faculty condones violence."

King and Dudley do not drive around campus in SUVs.