On Self-Delusion and Seeking Absolution

A friend of mine sent me a link last week to a small blurb on the ever-inconsistent This Dish Is Veg website. The piece, "Can I make a case for eating eggs?", is the sort of thing you'd expect to see left out as bait by a writer to generate hits and comments. For its writer Shana Kurz, however, it seems more an attempt to garner a little bit of sympathy from readers so that she can feel better about her decision to go back to exploiting other animals.

Kurz begins the short blurb stating outright that giving up eggs was easy -- that she didn't eat them and had otherwise found simple substitutes for them where she might have used them while cooking. Regardless of this, though, Kurz proceeds to try to make a case for her going back to using them. She does so in such an illogical manner that one can't really help but wonder if she's serious.

The eggs from her CSA come from "happy" chickens, she insists, "adopted" from organic farms who'd relinquished them as unproductive. These "adopted" chickens are allowed to roam, she tells her readers. Of course, she also adds that when the chickens go from being less productive to being unproductive altogether, they are either passed on to others or "killed" and that she has no idea of just how these chickens are killed, but is speculating that it must somehow be "humanely". (One almost envisions Kurz crossing her fingers, eyes squeezed tightly shut!)

So someone who had already found substitutes for eggs has a CSA that treats chickens as things and whose slaughter practices for those chickens are unknown to her. So? She views this as triggering some sort of "diet related dilemma" but says so while admitting that she's already made the decision to order them on a weekly basis (i.e. so much for any dilemma). One has to wonder about her self-identifying as having "compassion for animals" considering her eagerness to obtain a sort of absolution from her readers as she informs them of that decision. Even more so, one has to wonder why in the little bio following the blurb, This Dish Is Veg describes her as a "Certified Health Coach (and vegan)".

One also has to wonder if Kurz can really be that oblivious to the fact that the chickens on those original organic farms came from breeding operations where male chicks (deemed worthless) are invariably killed, often simply ground alive or suffocated. It's a shame that -- while not even knowing how the chickens meet their deaths when her CSA deems them useless and disposable little feathered machines -- she still clings to this myth that there is such a thing as a humane way to slaughter another. What's bizarre, however, is that she then chooses to assume -- based on nothing but a hunch -- that the chickens whose eggs she is taking must surely be killed in a manner in which that killing somehow seems more ethical to Kurz.

It's unfortunate that this is the sort of sloppy writing that This Dish Is Veg continues to feature on its website, particularly from someone it presents as being a vegan consultant.

The Faces of "Free-Range" Farming

For the full story about the rescued "free-range egg" laying chickens featured in this video clip, visit the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary blog here.

The point is that there's no such thing as so-called compassionate meat-eating. There really isn't.

Update to the KFC Canada / PETA story

WorldPoultry.net, an industry website, has published more details of the KFC Canada / PETA agreement.

- The vegan chicken substitute will only be offered in a little over half of the KFC restaurants in Canada (i.e. those owned by a company called Priszm).
- KFC Canada will merely be "urg[ing] (my emphasis) its suppliers to adopt better practices, including improved lighting, lower stocking density and ammonia levels, and a phase-out of growth-promoting drugs and breeding practices that cripple chickens", so it appears that there'll be no actual requirement for it (or if there will be, nobody's sayin' so).
- No information is provided on solid dates for the phasing in of controlled-atmosphere killed chickens.
- They'll be forming an advisory panel to monitor the changes and suggest further ones, but no information is given on who will be on the panel and how (or if) they'll have any direct sort of impact on real changes.

The list on the WorldPoultry.net website is taken directly from PETA's and there's no information at any of this at all yet on KFC Canada's website.

KFC Canada and PETA come to an agreement

After five years of dealing with PETA's ''Kentucky Fried Cruelty'' campaign, KFC Canada is ''promising improved welfare for the chickens it buys for its fast-food outlets in exchange for an end to a boycott campaign that will continue in the U.S. and elsewhere.''

KFC Canada and PETA have supposedly signed an agreement, by which KFC Canada agrees that it will begin buying from suppliers who gas their chickens to death -- a method deemed less cruel than other popular methods. KFC Canada is also going to lay down animal care guidelines by which its suppliers must abide (e.g. mostly pertaining to limiting crowding in cages and phasing out the use of hormones and drugs). Basically, they're just implementing some small welfarist changes to enhance their image and to get PETA to call of its goons. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept of PETA-approved animal slaughter.

KFC Canada is also planning to introduce a vegan ''chicken'' subtitute, but I have to wonder about that since it seems that everything at KFC is deep-fried together, isn't it?

Animals in the news

The Guardian reported this past week that according to the British Egg Information Service, free-range egg sales surpassed those of eggs coming from chickens confined to battery cages for the first time ever there. It seems that entire supermarket chains in the UK have been eliminating battery cage chicken eggs altogether. The article cites the influence of popular chef Jamie Oliver and his spotlight on the the cruelty of confining chickens to these cages as having possibly influenced consumers. On another ''high profile celebrity spotlight on animals'' sort of note -- I hope that Oprah's recent show on puppy mills has an impact on that sad industry, as well.