Free Republic

U.S. pork producers are about to be bitten by a second batch of hefty retaliatory tariffs from China and Mexico — and that has some large producers predicting they could lose big money and be forced to invest overseas. Executives say the pork industry has been expanding in recent years, in part on the expectation of export opportunities that would continue to support growth. However, the threat of a trade war is adding uncertainty and driving fear. "We put a halt on all investment, not just because we will be losing money, but because we don't know if growing in...

PARIS — French butchers say they’ve had enough. Not only must they confront media coverage of the “vegan way of life,” now they say they are under assault. After a series of small but unprecedented incidents, the butchers federation says its members need protection from militants who have broken windows, thrown fake blood and sprayed graffiti on their shops. In a letter to the French Interior Ministry, the butchers wrote that “physical, verbal, and moral violence” against them was “neither more nor less than a form of terrorism.” The letter may be a touch hyperbolic — and French vegan organizations...

If you've ever tried (and failed) to cook the juiciest, best tasting pork chops, the first thing you need to do is give up any notions you might have about pork being "the other white meat," as it was marketed in the fat-phobic 1980s. "To me, a lean pork chop is the saddest possible thing," Samin Nosrat, cooking teacher and author of the James Beard Award-winning cookbook "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking," told TODAY Food. "The challenge of those tender cuts [like pork chops] is retaining that tenderness after you cook them," Nosrat explained. "In...

Q: What ever happened to “live and let live?”A: Exactly! Story: Britain's butchers say they're "living in fear" after a spate of violent attacks they say were committed by militant vegans who are unhappy with their meat-based businesses. – DW Now I have nothing against vegetarians or vegans, but you have to admit, there’s something funny about the phrase “militant vegans.” Although, there was Nasim Aghdam who went on a rampage when she thought YouTube censored her vegan videos:  The woman responsible for wounding three people at YouTube headquarters Tuesday was a vegan activist angered by policy changes that...

The trail-blazing Impossible Burger, the world’s only kosher cheeseburger, created sustainably, is now officially on the Orthodox Union’s kosher database registry. The Impossible Burger entered development in 2011 and debuted in July 2016 at the fashionably erstwhile Chef David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi in Manhattan. It’s since won a 2017 Tasty Award and a 2018 Fabi Award from the National Restaurant Association - and it’s the only plant-based burger to ever have done so. “Getting kosher certification is an important milestone,” said Impossible Foods CEO and Founder Dr. Patrick O. Brown. “We want the Impossible Burger to be ubiquitous, and that...

From a first-principles perspective, the task of feeding eight billion people boils down to converting energy from the sun into chemical energy in our bodies. Traditionally, solar energy is converted by photosynthesis into carbohydrates in plants (i.e., biomass), which are either eaten by the vegans amongst us, or fed to animals, for those with a carnivorous preference. Today, the process of feeding humanity is extremely inefficient. If we could radically reinvent what we eat, and how we create that food, what might you imagine that “future of food” would look like? In this post we’ll cover: 1.Vertical farms 2.CRISPR engineered...

The former Massachusetts governor and shapeshifting perennial candidate spilled the beans on his hot dog meat habit in a moment captured by The Washington Times, which just published a lengthy profile on Romney, who is running for Senate in Utah: “My favorite meat is hot dog, by the way. That is my favorite meat,” he told a gathering of supporters as they joined him recently for a casual dinner organized by his campaign. “My second favorite meat is hamburger. And, everyone says, oh, don’t you prefer steak? It’s like, I know steaks are great, but I like hot dog best,...

Hungry customers began calling Bull City Burger and Brewery in Durham, North Carolina, last month in search of their famous tarantula burgers. The restaurant has been serving the eight-legged dish for the past three years in honor of exotic meat month -- and this year would be no different, though the establishment pushed the date back a month.

WASHINGTON — Horse meat production won’t resume in the U.S. anytime soon, a victory for animal-rights advocates under the spending bill signed last week by President Donald Trump. The $1.3 trillion spending deal, which funds the government through September, renewed the country’s horse slaughter ban. Just months ago, animal-rights activists feared the ban could be in jeopardy. The measure includes language that prohibits the U.S. Department of Agriculture from spending money on inspecting horse slaughter facilities. Without inspections, horse slaughter plants can’t operate, so they’ll remain closed as they have for more than a decade. “I think we’re all kind...

Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist. Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his...

Washington, D.C. (Vocus/PRWEB ) January 15, 2009 -- The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom said today that Cass Sunstein, the Harvard University Law School professor tapped by President-elect Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has a secret aim to push a radical animal-rights agenda in the White House. Sunstein supports outlawing sport hunting, giving animals the legal right to file lawsuits, and using government regulations to phase out meat consumption. In a 2007 speech at Harvard University, Sunstein argued in favor of entirely "eliminating current practices such as … meat eating." He also proposed: "We ought...

Some people in Britain hate grey squirrels enough to devour them. With the UK’s biggest purveyor of fried chicken in crisis, perhaps we should be cooking up our furry feral friendsne cold Sunday morning last month, I visited Pow Hill, a glorious moorland thick with pine trees that overlooks the Derwent reservoir, north-west of Durham. In a clearing, three amateur wildlife photographers, in full camouflage gear, sat on plastic bags and watched a red squirrel race across the bracken. As I watched the little fella leap from log to tree, the sunlight dancing across its tail, naturally my thoughts turned...

Those who are unfamiliar with Venezuela’s unprecedented economic collapse might be surprised to learn that the country’s oil production has only slowed, even as the price of a barrel of crude has risen in most international markets. Unsurprisingly (it’s Venezuela), there’s a macabre explanation for this phenomenon: The workers at PDVSA – Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which once showered Venezuelans with oil wealth – are literally collapsing due to hunger and exhaustion as workers defy their government handlers and flee their jobs in their desperation as the value of their pay has been completely erased. Bloomberg spoke with several workers...

The White House says the changes could save $214 billion over a decade. “The Budget proposes to combine the traditional retail-based SNAP electronic benefit with the direct provision of nutritious and 100 percent American-grown USDA Foods to participating households. This cost-effective proposal maintains our commitment to helping needy families avoid hunger while generating substantial savings,” the budget said. Households receiving $90 per month or more would get a portion in shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit, vegetables, and meat, poultry or fish. The remainder of the benefit would go onto the debit card...

Barking at their rescuers, labradors, beagles and mongrels desperately scrambled out of rusty cages in South Korea: saved from the dinner plate by a deal with dog-meat farmer Kim Young-Hwan. In the face of falling demand, Kim agreed to close his establishment in exchange for compensation from US-based Humane Society International (HSI). The dogs are bound for a new life in adoptive homes in the West. He is the 10th canine-meat farmer to accept such an offer in three years. The exact sums are confidential, but each deal requires hundreds of thousands of dollars once adoption costs are included. "This...

In August one of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups closed a $17 million round of funding. The Series A had attracted some of the biggest names in tech. “I got closed out because of Richard Branson and Bill Gates, with one of its then-partners calling the nascent company’s work an “enormous technological shift.” The cutting-edge product the startup was trying to develop? Meat—the food whose more than $200 billion in U.S. sales has come to be the defining element of the Western diet. But what made this company’s work so revolutionary was not what it was trying to make so much...

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Watch the video of a man near the fire saving one of God's helpless creatures. Man is capable of so much evil and of so much kindness and humanity.

In the 1970s, Kenya had about six times as many elephants as Zimbabwe, and today Zimbabwe has three times more elephants than Kenya (see chart).  What happened that caused the dramatic reversal in elephant populations in the two African countries?  Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) explain in their excellent article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community": "Anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting Kenya to ban all hunting in 1977. Since then, its population of large wild animals has declined between 60 and 70 percent. The country’s elephant population declined from 167,000 in...

Boy, there just isn’t anything that goes together better than nudity and raw meat. A group of beauty contestants in Brazil recently sported bikinis made of uncooked meat to highlight their opposition to the sexual harassment of women. The name of the pageant they were participating in is called the Miss Bumbum Brazil pageant. The purpose of the contest is to find the Brazilian woman with the best buttocks. The message the women were trying to send was that they were “not just a piece of meat.” That might have sounded a little confusing to people who were trying to...