Free Republic

NASIRIYAH — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is improving quality of life and the environment here through the renovation of the Nasiriyah Meat Processing Plant. According to USACE Project Engineer Greg Croon, prior to rehabbing, the butchers could only process a few animals each day due to the poor conditions of the plant. “Most processing is taking place at various sites inside the township which is outside of any controlled health and environmental framework,” Croon said. “Local legislation requires animal butchering only inside the facility. However, as the old facility was so neglected and rundown, there was no...

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on...

At 8 a.m. Sunday the population of Kinsman, Ill., stood at 109. An hour later it nearly doubled, as upwards of 100 federal agents and police swooped in on the tiny, rural community. And no one seems to know why. The law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, immigration officials and state police, surrounded an Islamic meat plant in Kinsman, cordoning off the area and briefly detaining the plant's handful of employees. The FBI isn't saying much, and the county sheriff is mum too, leaving Kinsman's residents mystified. The bust, in a town that has no local police force, involved dozens...

By Andrew W. Griffin Red Dirt Report, editor Posted: October 7, 2009 reddirtreporter@gmail.com OKLAHOMA CITY – Back in July, we here at Red Dirt Report noted how the radical animal-rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had blood on their hands no thanks to their decision to kill 95 percent of the dogs and cats put in their care in 2008. PETA found homes for less than one out of every 300 animals at their so-called “shelters.” PETA loves animals, right? It’s not looking that way. Just check out the informative website Petakillsanimals.com for more information. And...

The number of animals and plants protected by the federal Endangered Species Act is about to increase dramatically. For Cass Sunstein, radical animal-rights activist and nominee for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator job, that means he will be better positioned than ever to make livestock farming a thing of the past.How are the two things connected? Our director of research appeared on the Fox News Channel yesterday to explain to Glenn Beck’s audience how much influence Sunstein may soon have over what we eat: Cattlemen in this country own and manage most of the lands...

One rule of thumb I generally observe while traveling abroad: Always know what something is before putting it in your mouth. Recently, I broke that rule--and ended up regretting it. I ate whale meat. I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened during an otherwise routine company enkai--office party--at a hole-in-the-wall izakaya called Andy's Shin Hinomoto under the Yurakucho railroad tracks in central Tokyo. I ordered a beer and sat down next to my co-workers, just as the waitress was bringing out plates of food: generous cuts of sashimi, deep-fried chicken nuggets, a sautéed mushroom salad and--what the heck...

Grinding Up a Rancid Review A 2007 review of previous studies (that is, a study of studies) conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research claimed that a pattern of research showed a link between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer. The review recommended that people limit their intake of red and processed meats. Slam dunk, right? Not so fast. A nonprofit research organization confirms that the review omitted a major study on meat consumption and cancer. And this week, the review’s own author is admitting that it doesn’t have much meat on its...

KANGAROO numbers could explode due to a Russian ban on roo meat exports from Australia, farm leaders say. Queensland farm body AgForce has warned of an environmental disaster and threats to the viability of regional communities. Russia suspended meat imports from about 24 Australian processing plants on the basis of new health standards. The move, to start next month, affects all kangaroo meat exports, as well as some beef, sheep meat and other game meat. AgForce sheep and wool president Brent Finlay said kangaroo harvesting and exporting would not be viable without the Russian market, which takes about 70 per...

ONE evening last week, almost every seat was occupied at Au Cinquième Péché, a bistro in the bustling neighborhood called the Plateau. And almost every table was sampling an appetizer plate that included a specialty of the restaurant’s French-born chef, Benoît Lenglet: a seared, rare loin, dark red in color, with a texture and taste akin to beef tenderloin. But the meat was not beef. It was seal. Across town, at Les Îles en Ville, Andrée Garcia, an owner and chef, has elevated seal from an occasional specialty to a regular feature. The most frequent preparation there, Ms. Garcia said,...

Tomorrow, public officials in the Flemish city of Ghent will observe a new weekly “holiday� that’s been making international headlines: “Veggiedag.� Civil servants and elected politicians will eat meatless meals, and the streets will be littered with city-sponsored anti-meat ads. Now that the people of Ghent have two Veggie Days under their belt, we’ve been curious to know how the weekly anti-meat parade is catching on. And according to this TIME magazine report, the answer is “very slowly.� Eben Harrell describes the scene in Ghent last Thursday: While most restaurants owners and residents I spoke to had heard of Veggie Day, few had any...

WASHINTON: Consuming red or white meat does not raise the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, says a new study. The large study, conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, has been published in the International Journal of Cancer. A number of previous studies have found that eating red meat or meat cooked at high temperatures increases the risk of breast cancer. (High temperatures, caused by grilling, barbecuing or pan-frying, produce high amounts of heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in meat; HCAs and PAHs are mutagens (chemicals capable of causing mutations...

Jamie Oliver has signed a deal with ABC for a series seeking to persuade Americans to swap hamburgers for home-cooked food. The programme will be a combination of his two British series, Jamie's School Dinners and Jamie's Ministry Of Food. The 33 year old chef plans to visit unhealthy American cities to improve eating habits by using local resources. The show will adopt the formula used for Channel 4 series Jamie's School Dinners four years ago, in which Oliver prompted the Government to spend £500m on school food after finding pupils in Greenwhich were being fed turkey twizzlers. In Ministry...

There's a sneaky new trend sweeping kitchens around the country. Chefs are serving meat with something hidden inside, and it's getting rave reviews. Marcie Flies enjoys cooking for her family and sometimes uses meat with a fruity surprise mixed in cherries. "My kids can't tell. My husband can't tell. In fact, I had to tell them what it was," said Flies. She buys the meat pre-made in a product called Plevalean. It's one of several new products hitting the market with fruits mixed into the meat. Al Booren, Professor of Meat Science says, "Cherries added to ground beef are popular....

You are probably already familiar with the "Defenders of Wildlife" and their hateful propaganda campaign against Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Alaskan wildlife policies and subsistence hunting. Now Alaskans, which are to a substantial part dependant on hunting, strike back with the Defenders of Wild Food. DefendersofWildFood.org is a national effort dedicated to educating people regarding the importance of wildlife to the culture and diet of Alaskans.Watch their video ad and make sure to check their website.Click on pic for video:http://defendersofwildfood.org/

For chimps, candy is dandy but steak is quicker Tue Apr 7, 2009 8:06pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Human females may get offended at dates who expect a little something extra after they buy a steak dinner, but for chimpanzees, the exchange may be a fair one, German researchers reported on Tuesday. They found that female chimpanzees mate more frequently with males who often share meat with them. "Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis," Cristina Gomes of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany said...

YOU never know where goat will take you. When I asked the smiley butcher at Jefferson Market, the grocery store near my apartment in the West Village, whether he had any goat meat, he told me: “No. I got a leg of lamb, though — I could trim it nice and thin to make it look like goat.” I politely declined. We fell into conversation. I found myself telling him: “Koreans think eating goat soup increases virility. It can lead to better sexytime.” My new friend responded: “My lamb does that a little. You won’t want to every night, but...

Open a cookbook from 50 years or so ago, and there's a good chance the main dishes will call for some pretty obscure bits and pieces like pig’s trotters and cheeks. But there’s a reason ham hock, oxtail, and feather steak were once popular; aside from being some of the most flavorful parts of the beast, they were also cheap. Fortunately, these “forgotten meats” are still more affordable than the popular filets, chops, and legs that are featured on today’s menus and dinner tables. And if there was ever a time to practice frugality at the grocer’s, this is it....

Major Study Finds an Effect, but Critics Say Meat Offers Important NutrientsDiets high in red meat and in processed meat shorten life span not just from cancer and heart disease but from Alzheimer's, stomach ulcers and an array of other conditions as well, a U.S. National Cancer Institute study has found. In fact, reducing meat consumption to the amount eaten by the bottom 20 percent seen in the study would save 11 percent of men's lives and 16 percent of women's, according to the study. "The consumption of red meat was associated with a modest increase in total mortality," said...

He rolls into the parking lot of Leon’s Thriftway in an old, maroon Impala with a trunk full of frozen meat. Raccoon — the other dark meat.

The height of the Dexter bull is between 38 and 44 inches. The Dexter cow is between 36-42 inches. Because of their smaller size, some people mistakenly call them miniature. This is wrong. The Dexter Cattle Breed is a true breed. Dexters are, by nature, a smaller breed of cattle.

I heard on Fox News this morning that the Madoff investors are clamoring for a bailout for putting all of their money with this weasel.Also that among them is Kevin Bacon and his wife. This kind of takes the non-existent fun out of that game 7 Degrees from Kevin Bacon.We' all soon shall be only 1 degree from Kevin Bacon If this bailout crap continues the Dollar will resemble the German Mark at the end of WWI when it will take a wheelbarrow of money to nuy a loaf of bread.

Mexico suspends meat imports from plants in 14 states, apparently in response to labeling law Mexico suspended meat imports from 30 processing plants in 14 states, including some of the nation's largest, on Wednesday and Friday, according to a list posted on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site The action pushed down beef and pork futures in trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Friday. Among the plants listed on the site are the Smithfield Packing Inc. plant in Tarheel, N.C., the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. Another Smithfield plant in Plant City, Fla., that processes pork, beef and poultry is...

(IsraelNN.com) The bankruptcy of the kosher meatpacking plant Agriprocessors, the largest American kosher meat operation, has forced many Jews to go vegetarian amid kosher-food shortages and soaring prices. The Postville, Iowa plant had supplied more than half of the kosher meat for millions of Jews as well as non-Jews who prefer buying meat processed according to Jewish law. Federal investigators raided the plant in May and charged officials with violating immigration laws and hiring 389 illegal workers. Agriprocessors filed for bankruptcy this week after the resulting labor shortage left it unable to meet customer demand and forced a shutdown of...

Schools should stop serving hot dogs and other processed meats because even small amounts increase the risk of adult cancer, says a provocative new commercial airing on TV stations around the country. The spot is produced by the Cancer Project, an affiliate of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. "Protect Our Kids," which can be watched online at www.pcrm.org/hotdog.html, is based on a comprehensive report released late last year by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund. After reviewing all existing data on nutrition and cancer risk, scientists concluded that processed meat increases one's risk...

There are a lot of things about vegans that grate on my nerves, but the thing that bothers me the most is their zealotry. Like most left-leaning kooks, vegans follow an "ends justify the means" philosophy, and have no compunction about using hyperbole, overstatement, and, more often than not, out-and-out lies and deceit to hammer home their message. * * * * * I just found out about a new TV commercial that's being run by an organization called The Cancer Project. The worst part about it is ...

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns. The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

- Food and milk from the offspring of cloned animals may already have entered the U.S. food supply, the Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday, but it would be impossible to know because there is no difference between cloned and conventional products. The FDA said in January meat and milk from cloned cattle, swine and goats and their offspring were as safe to eat as products obtained from traditional animals. Before then, farmers and ranchers had followed a voluntary moratorium that prevented the sale of clones and their offspring. "It is theoretically possible" offspring from clones are in the...

Eating veggies shrinks the brain 14 Sep 2008 MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin. The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical...

People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming, says the UN's top climate scientist. Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will make the call at a speech in London on Monday evening.

What's for supper? I'm guessing the animal protein in the center of the plate tonight is one of these four-letter words: beef, lamb, pork, fowl, fish, veal or, on hunters' tables, deer. But is anybody serving goat? Some day soon you might. Goat is on its way to becoming a common menu option. Another red meat. Goat is beloved by Latino, Middle Eastern and Italian cooks but is not well known to most Americans. Those who haven't grown up with goat on the table may turn up their noses, imagining a smelly, scruffy animal, a lower-class member of barnyard society....

Food prices to post biggest rise since 1990: USDA By Christopher Doering Wed Aug 20, 5:43 PM ET U.S. consumers should brace for the biggest increase in food prices in nearly 20 years in 2008 and even more pain next year due to surging meat and produce prices, the Agriculture Department said on Wednesday. Food prices are forecast to rise by 5 percent to 6 percent this year, making it the largest annual increase since 1990. Just last month, USDA forecast food prices would climb between 4.5 and 5.5 percent in 2008. "It's a little bit of a surprise how...

OK so here is the deal. I cooked that London Broil in my electric oven with it set to "broil." I put the rack on the 2nd highest shelf. It was basted with olive oil, salt, & peper. I drove a fork through it repeatedly, just because it felt good, and I thought it might make it more tender. I cooked it 7 minutes each side. THE RESULTS: It was dry and boring, and I almost choked on it. I should have given to the one poster who said that London Broils are dangerous and he/she would dispose of it....

After five years of futile efforts to find or confirm sightings of any Caribbean monk seals — even just one — the U.S. government on Friday announced that the species is officially extinct and the only seal to vanish due to human causes.

Remember the campaign against smokers? It started quietly and grew to hysteria. From bans to added taxes, smokers were left to wonder what hit them. Tobacco was (and continues to be) a legal substance. Now, following the same pattern, a push has started against red meat.

When actual economic indicators – unemployment, jobs creation and gross domestic product, for example – aren’t meshing with the media theme of an economy in turmoil, leave it to journalists to create unconventional indicators. That’s just what NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams did May 29 when he introduced the Spam indicator. Spam sales were 10.6 percent higher in the second quarter of 2008 than the same period in 2007, according to an Associated Press article dated May 28. Its manufacturer, Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL), has seen profits increase 14 percent. That’s a sign of “our times,” according to Williams....

Federal authorities charged that a methamphetamine laboratory was operating at the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and that employees carried weapons to work. The charges were among the most explosive details to emerge following the massive raid Monday at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa. In a 60-page application for a search warrant, federal agents revealed details of their six-month probe of Agriprocessors. The investigation involved 12 federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the departments of labor and agriculture. According to the application, a former plant supervisor told investigators that some 80 percent of the workforce...

Neanderthals at Mealtime: Pass the Meat Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Pass the Auroch, Please April 23, 2008 -- Neanderthals living in southwestern France 55,000 to 40,000 years ago mostly ate red meat from extinct ancestors of modern bison, cattle and horses, according to a new study on a large, worn Neanderthal tooth. The extinct hominids were not above eating every edible bit of an animal, since they were dining for survival, explained Teresa Steele, one of the study's co-authors. While a steak dinner "is probably the closest modern comparison," Steele said, "remember too that they were consuming all parts of...

A Thirst for Meat: Changes in diet, rising population may strain China's water supply Sid Perkins China's rapid industrialization and increasing population, along with a growing dietary preference among its citizens for meat, are straining the country's water resources to the point where food imports will probably be needed to meet demand in coming decades. Economic growth in China is brisk: Over the past 2 decades, the country's gross domestic product has risen, on average, about 8 percent per year. That's the highest rate of development in recent world history, says Junguo Liu, an environmental scientist at the Swiss Federal...

Nashville, Tenn. - This week, PETA sent a letter to all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates--including Sen. Fred Thompson--explaining that a 10-cent-per-pound "sin" tax on meat could go a long way in protecting the environment, reducing health-care costs, and adding dollars to the U.S. Treasury. PETA points out that meat is the leading cause of global warming--according to a 2006 United Nations report, the meat industry emits 40 percent more global-warming gases than all the cars, trucks, SUVs, Hummers, airplanes, and ships in the world combined--and has been conclusively linked to serious illnesses, including heart disease, some types of...

People who eat a lot of red and processed meats have a higher risk of developing several types of cancer, including lung cancer and colorectal cancer, according to a new study from the National Cancer Institute. For the study, researchers examined data from a large U.S. diet and health study, which began in 1995 and involved 500,000 men and women ages 50-71. The research was conducted by Amanda Cross and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute and is published in the latest issue of PLoS Medicine. This is what the study found. People who ate the most red were 25...

During another typically bizarre day for Heather Mills, the former model yesterday urged people to try drinking milk from rats and dogs to help save the planet. Media-shy Heather started off by storming out of a radio interview with London's LBC station. She then drove a gas-guzzling Mercedes 4x4 to Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park to speak about ecological matters - and kept the engine running for part of the morning. Once there she proceeded to launch into an extraordinary ecological rant and exhorted the assembled crowds to try drinking rat's milk instead of cow's milk in a bid to...

SAN FRANCISCO -Families and friends who share eggnog, lamb curry or beef stew this winter may not know whether the main ingredients came from cloned animals, after the governor vetoed a San Francisco lawmaker’s labeling bill. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to end a voluntary moratorium on the sale of dairy and meat from cloned cattle, goats, pigs and sheep, after it ruled last year that the food is safe for humans. The agency published a health risk assessment in December that noted high death rates among cloned animals and host mothers, partly because of incidents of...

HamNation is...Not Vegetarian.

EVER since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined. The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases. Some backlash...

An ordinary trip to the supermarket meat department could turn into an experience in international comparison-shopping under House legislation scheduled to be debated today that for the first time would require meat products to be labeled by their country of origin. The farm bill House members will consider includes a provision mandating that meat -- including beef, pork and lamb -- include a label stating where it came from. Only meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the United States would be eligible for a domestic label. The measure aims to enforce a five-year-old law that has already been...

The Humane Society of the U.S. has, for years, been trying to frighten people away from consuming meat, milk and eggs -- but its recent testimony before a congressional committee reached a new low when the HSUS president, Wayne Pacelle, made the unsupported claim that pigs could be harboring the infamous and deadly British ‘mad cow” disease. Swine veterinarians quickly pointed out that “mad cow,” or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has never occurred naturally in swine. At the height of the British “mad cow” epidemic, both swine and cattle were exposed to the tissues from thousands of infected cattle and the...

Police are seizing more smuggled meat than ever before, and border patrols suspect organized smuggling gangs that are supplyng a market keen on dodging Norway's high meat prices. Customs authorities have seized 34 tons of meat smuggled into Norway so far this year. That's three times the amount seized in the same period last year. Police, customs and officials from Norway's Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet) have no doubt the smuggling has become organized. Several of the couriers caught with smuggled meat are repeat offenders, and the quantities of meat caught in some seizures is so large (2.8 tons on one...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumers overwhelmingly support stricter food labeling laws, with 92 percent of Americans wanting to know which country produced the food they are buying, a consumer magazine said on Tuesday. Consumer Reports said recent food scares, including worries about peanut butter and lettuce, have made Americans more interested in knowing not only how their food was produced but where it was made. "I was definitely shocked at how high these numbers were," said the study's coauthor Dr. Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine. "It's...

Supermarket meat 'could be MRSA infected' By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 12:39am BST 25/06/2007 Pork, beef and chicken in supermarkets could be infected with a strain of MRSA, according to a report today by organic campaigners which warns that the issue could become "a new monster". The bacterium is sweeping northern Europe and has already infected one in five of all pork products on sale in Holland, from where Britain imports almost two thirds of all its pork, the report claims. The strain found in Holland, Denmark, Belgium and Germany is different from MRSA found in British...

I like sizzling meat on the grill. Wild, huh? Anybody? Now, we all know ol' Nuge isn't by any stretch of the imagination a weirdo when it comes to an omnivorous diet. Especially here in the great Republic of Texas, a smiling, drooling preference for succulent, protein-rich, nutritious backstrap over aromatic mesquite coals is as American and natural and right as Mom, apple pie and the flag. It's beautiful, really. But a culture war rages against such universal, self-evident truths. It would be laughable if it were not so deranged. Some weirdos actually are on a crusade to outlaw the...