The USDA sets the framework allowing amazing levels of cruelty to happen to farm animals (if you thought the organization cared at all about animals feel free to read this: http://www.hfa.org/about/rabbits.pdf). The USDA is here to “provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management.” This is their mission statement. It makes me feel good that they are using the best available science and base it on sound public policy. That sounds like a great service, but wait a second, what’s that last piece, “efficient management”? Uh oh! That sounds like some cleaned up version of “it’s really all about the money”.

The problem with many organizations that oversee very large and powerful industries is that they are subject to influence. USDA regulations can substantially effect the economies of many farming states. Because of this influence there are lobbyists and powerful senators/reps/congressman that exert pressure on the USDA to help keep their constituents in a state of relative prosperity (or at the very least maintain a “let’s not change anything” mentality). The secretary of Agriculture and many other high ranking positions within the organization are appointed by the current administration. While lobbyists/Washington insiders get to influence policies guess what you can do? You can influence who is chosen as Secretary for the new administration.

Barack Obama said “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” In this spirit, please take the time to review the potential nominees and let your state reps/congressman/senators and Mr. Obama know what you think.

This has the potential to make BILLIONS of animals lives just a little bit better. Isn’t that worth 30 minutes of your time researching and contacting the appropriate people. Don’t ever forget, they work for YOU.

Many other people have covered this issue, so here are some helpful links to read:

Agriculture.com Article - article listing some of the potential candidates

Ethicurean Blog - just discovered this while writing my post, amazing blog and great post about this subject!! (I could’ve just saved myself the time of typing and just posted a link….)

Contact President Elect Barack Obama - this is his Senate contact form, I would imagine that his office would still receive correspondence through this form, at least until someone fills his seat. If anyone has better contact info please post a response!

Alright, good news and bad news. The bad news, I am getting laid off as of December 19th of this year. The good news is that gives me a lot more time to focus on this website! Expect to see more posts and if you visit please feel free to drop a comment to let me know what you think or what type of information you came here looking for. I’d love to change this site for the better and I won’t know how to do that without your input.

Regards,

theResponsible

Wow, I can’t believe how quickly time flies, even if you’re not having fun! So last time I updated, I wrote about Flying Pigs Farm being deleted from the Certified Humane website and speculated that it could be any number of reasons and that I would contact them. Well, I did contact them and Jen, co-owner of Flying Pigs Farm wrote me back the very next day. She couldn’t have been nicer and explained everything. I then went on to reward her for answering my questions so quickly that I proceeded to not post up the response until a full 3 months later. Jen, I apologize.

So what’s the deal, you ask? Well Jen has two small children, a part-time job, a household to keep up and, oh yeah, a farm to run with her husband! The farm is their main source of income and they have a few hundred pigs and about 1,000 chickens laying eggs. It sounds like they have their hands full. Jen told me that she believes that Humane Farm Animal Care’s “Certified Humane” program is a good group and sets a good baseline, but in fact their farm exceeds their standards. Basically, Jen has a lot on her plate and could not find the time to fill out the necessary paperwork to stay “Certified Humane”.

I guess I couldn’t possibly fault them for that given the fact that I have not posted in 3 months. So to sum it all up, go to Flying Pigs Farm (http://www.flyingpigsfarm.com/) and order some sausages or pork.

*Oh and yeah, the picture has nothing to do with the post this time, but it’s from my recent trip to Hong Kong, I find it amusing and I feel like the blue guy is waving and kind of apologizing, which seems appropriate given the length of times between posting*

So a little while ago I wrote about Flying Pigs Farm and how terrific they are. Well, I’m not sure what has happened, but I was reviewing the Certified Humane website (www.certifiedhumane.org) and noticed that they have been removed from their list of approved organizations. I can’t find any information on what happened, but I have contacted them via e-mail so I’ll report back with any updates. It may be that being certified was too expensive, or it could be that they are no longer up to humane standards. Before I knock them off my list I’ll wait to see if I get a reply.

I’ll keep you posted.

Well I finally got around to getting a full logo together. I suppose that it’s not an amazing logo, but I think it looks pretty cool. Anyway, the real news is that, with the completion of the logo, ResponsibleOmnivore is ready for full launch. I will updating very frequently and building a nice link list of humane sources of meat (look to the right for the link). My goal is to have at least 3 posts per week. If anyone reading this is interested in contributing, feel free to drop me a line, I’d love to see what you have to offer. E-mail is: theresponsible@responsibleomnivore.com

Thanks for reading,

theResponsible

In short, yes, yes it is. The act of slaughtering an animal is, of course, inhumane. It’s horrible, it’s most likely not as pain and stress free as the meat industry would have us believe and most of us could never do it ourselves. Now that I have that out of the way,  I find that there is a certain negative and mocking attitude in the Vegan animal rights community to the idea of Humane Meat and “Certified Humane Raised & Handled”.

I think these negative reactions are always short-sighted and polarizing. Perhaps it’s my background as a Business Major and being kind of a “corporate shill” in my everyday life, but I think you have to know what battles to pick and how to fight them. As a sales guy, I need to constantly find a middle-ground, a place where my customer and I can discuss what we both want and figure out a way to achieve the maximum satisfaction for both of us. I believe this is the only way to get results in a civilized society.

When people get too emotionally attached to an issue it seems they can lose sight of small victories. Rather than embracing the fact that there is a growing number of people that care about the treatment of farm animals, it seems that a majority of Vegans see only one solution, everyone should be vegan. Is that possible? Yes. Is it realistic? No.

Why not celebrate the fact that people are even THINKING about the treatment of farm animals. Why not celebrate the fact that we live in a society where we have the power of choice and rather than look down on those that are now searching for humane options, encourage them.

I am saying this to help Vegans, if it sounds mocking, it’s not supposed to. I would love to be a Vegan, but I can’t, I don’t have the willpower and I do believe there is a basic human need for some meat. I think more people would be open to adopting a “more Vegan” lifestyle if they were encouraged to do so. You know the old saying, “you’ll attract more flies with honey than you will with vinegar”? (Who wants to attract flies anyway?) Well, Vegans should take note. You can’t convince anyone to try your meal if they aren’t sitting at the table.

clipped from www.abolitionistapproach.com This approach does not lead people incrementally in the right direction. Rather, it gives them a reason to justify going backwards. It focuses on animal treatment rather than animal use and deludes people into thinking that welfare regulations are actually resulting in significant protection for animals.

You know, as much as I want to eat humanely it is just so difficult to consistently do so. For first time readers, I know it sounds odd to say eat humanely, but that’s a word I’ll be using often. Anyway, it’s hard on a day to day basis and makes eating out virtually impossible. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t eat nearly as much humane meat as I would like, in fact, I find it’s very hard to find in the grocery store. That was most of the impetus for The Responsible Omnivore. I am going to do what I can though and start ordering meat to be delivered from some of the fine farms I’ve spoken about here and many more that I have found and will be posting soon.

So with making a change in mind, I decided to look around for a beef producers website/forum/blog to see what information was available on the future of beef production. I stumbled across the Beef Board (www.beefboard.org) website. It’s basically a large organization of the major beef producers in the U.S. I downloaded their long range plan brochure (http://longrangeplan.beef.org/) and was disheartened to read their overall mission statement on their long-term plan for consumers, which I quote here verbatim:

“A productive beef industry that creates profit opportunities for every segment and produces beef products that meet consumers’ needs for flavor, safety, healthfulness, consistency, convenience and value”

I understand they need to be productive and create profit opportunities, but when you are dealing with living beings as your product, how about mentioning improving their conditions for the short time they are here on this earth? I notice that all meat industries refer to the animals as “meat” or “product” to shelter readers (and probably themselves) from the reality of the business. I’m not trying to provoke a right or wrong/black and white argument because I don’t want this site to become one large argument, but it would have been really promising to see something in the mission statement regarding “beef products” quality of life.

The only way we will ever see that added to their mission statement is if we, as consumers, voice our opinion with our dollars. Search out your local farms or mail order humane beef and you can start to make a difference. Let us know what you find!

So I am reading the the USDA.gov’s website to try and find out more information on how they judge what is “free range” and also how they define humane. While trying to wade through the mound of links, articles and rulings they have on their website I came across a link for the Recommended Animal Handling Guidelines that is written by the American Meat Institute Foundation. I know that this is basically a pamphlet on how to effeciently and effictively slaughter animals, which is not what I want to read about, but I really should be as informed as possible.  On a sidenote, going back to the American Meat Institute Foundation, can you be an institute and a foundation at the same time? I may start my own Humane American Meat Istitute Foundation Organization Corporation.

Anyway, I am not a veterinarian, so I have no idea whether the methods used at slaughterhouses are “humane” (I guess it’s hard to label any sort of killing as humane) and as such I am not going to pass judgement on the majority of recommended ways to kill pigs, cattle and sheep. I did read through the regulations for Kosher and Halal meat and I can say quite definitely that the methods are nowhere close to humane. I understand that the animal must be killed in a certain way for religious reasons, but if someone is so religious that they want their meat that way, why not have your own farm, or a co-operative farm.

I am not going to write anymore about it, because I know many people do not want to know. If you do care to find out the recommended killing methods you can visit this link and scroll down to Section 7. http://www.grandin.com/RecAnimalHandlingGuidelines.html

If you are wondering about the picture, I decided to post a cute picture to try and take my mind off of the depressing reading I just did.

I have so much to learn here with this blog. This is my first experience with WordPress, and i’m pretty pleased with it so far. It’s very easy to use and easily customizable while keeping a formulaic layout. I have always used Frontpage or Dreamweaver to put together webpages in the past (and they didn’t look too great) so WordPress is a bit of fresh air. As I’m putting this together I am also realizing I should have some kind of logo. I want to keep working on this site and hopefully create a hub, of sorts, for humane meat eaters and I think that deserves a logo. I originally had this really super simple one with a paw in the middle of a circle, but it was brought to my attention that a paw isn’t really representative of cows, chickens and pigs, the most common meats. Very true. So I’m trying to figure out how to draw a hoof print that is recognizable. I don’t think it’s difficult to create, but with my skillset, it has been so far.

So for now I’m going to try and post as often as possible, I have a lot of humane farms I want to call attention to and once I have the look and feel fully completed, I’ll finally start working on a database of locations you can purchase humane meat. Keep checking back and don’t be afraid to comment. Soon there should be a fairly interactive sight as I learn about the world of Wiki’s so if you have knowledge in this area I certainly hope to hear from you.

When I first started thinking about this blog I did a search and found www.certifiedhumane.org. This organization aims to certify farms and suppliers with humane treatment of their animals. The idea is great and it looks like they are very well organized. That being said, I have yet to come across them in the grocery stores I frequent. They do have a search feature to find local retailers that sell certified humane products and you can read all about what they consider “humane”. I read through their information and I am fully onboard with their effort and their conditions for approval.

They are non-profit and funded by some organizations I’m sure you are familiar with including the ASPCA, the HSUS (Humane Society of the United States), the MSPCA (Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and the spcaLA (The Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) among others.

I urge you to support them by looking for certified humane labels on meat, dairy and eggs in your area or donate!

Have you seen a certified humane label? E-mail us at theresponsible@responsibleomnivore.com and let us know or post a comment!