Vegan Break

For some people the idea of pizza without cheese seems ludicrous, but in fact you can have a very fulfilling, delicious, and much more healthful pizza by leaving off the cheese. Many (if not most) pizza places don’t use dairy or eggs in their crusts, so you can just ask them to hold the cheese. But if you want to get creative and have a little more fun, try making your own pizza! Trader Joe’s sells a pre-made pizza dough (it comes in a plastic bag and is very fresh) as well as some delicious pizza sauce. Grab some garlic, veggies, and vegan cheese if you want it (Daiya works well if you can find it), and personalize your very own pizza pie!

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Elaine Vigneault, publisher of the awesome website VeganSoapbox.com, has been selected as the winner of the Vegan Obamicon contest by unanimous vote!  There were many great entries and it was a close call, but there’s something about that curious cow nose that is just irresistable! Check it out:

There were many other fantastic submissions which you can check out over at the Vegan Break facebook page!  A big thank you to everyone who entered the contest…stay tuned because there will be many more contests and prizes in the future! Elaine, congratulations and your $20 certificate is on its way!

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Bacon and ham may excite your taste buds, but I bet they will lose their appeal when you learn that you are feasting on the bodies of pigs that lived lives filled with tremendous suffering.

The vast majority of sows bred to provide piglets for the pork industry are kept in 2-foot wide metal gestation crates for most of their lives. In these crates pigs cannot walk, turn around, or lie down comfortably. On top of this, they are impregnated every 5-6 months and have their babies taken away from them time and again.  Like human mothers, mother pigs have very strong maternal instincts. In the wild they make nests and nurse their litters for over three months. In breeding facilities, however, piglets are taken from their mothers after only 17 days so the sow can be re-impregnated as soon as possible. The piglets then undergo castration, ear-notching and tail docking without anesthetics.  And then of course, they are all ultimately loaded onto trucks and sent to slaughter. To give you a sense of how pleasant the trip alone is– each year, some 80,000 pigs die in transport on the way to the slaughterhouse. Once at the slaughterhouse, the surviving pigs are prodded onto a narrow walkway where they see the animals ahead of them squeal in horror, have their throats cut, and are hung upside down to bleed out. *

Pigs live a life of confinement, sadness, horror, and chronic physical pain…and more than 120 million pigs endure this and are slaughtered every year in the United States. While visiting Farm Sanctuary, I had the opportunity to visit some of the luckiest pigs in the world who were rescued from this horrific system, and in this video Farm Sanctuary’s National Shelter Director Susie Coston tells the story of the sanctuary’s resident pigs and speaks about the problems with Gestation Crates and the system as a whole.

*The information about pig farming was obtained from the book Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money (2005) by Erik Marcus. This book provides a comprehensive and incredibly well researched overview of animal agriculture industry practices followed by an analysis of the animal protection movement, essays written by different types of activists, and appendices touching on health, the environment, fishing, animal testing, etc. I highly recommend this book to anyone new to the movement as an overview and a guide for how to apply your skills to help animals.

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Anyone who has seen my Facebook profile recently has probably noticed that I discovered a brilliant online tool that can turn any picture into an “OBAMICON.”  That’s right, remember those posters of Obama in red white and blue that swept the nation before the election? Well, now you can make your own. Whether you are an Obama fanatic, a NObama kind of man, or you don’t get yourself involved in messy political side-taking, you’ve got to admit that this is awesome, hilarious, and altogether brilliant. Almost as brilliant as the Chia Obama (but not quite).

In light of this new discovery and my subsequent addiction to Obamifying my very obamagenic dog Chance, I have decided to hold a Vegan Break Obamicon-Off! That’s right. I’m challenging YOU to make THE BEST vegan-themed Obamicon. The winner will win a $20 gift certificate to VeganChic.com!  Not to mention that this is also a great form of online activism because anyone using the Obamicon website will see our awesome Vegan photos

How to enter: Go to the ObamiconMe website and create an Obamicon. Just upload a photo and play around with the color ratios until it looks like a winner! Choose a fun, sassy, *vegan themed* saying. Click “Save and submit.” It will ask you to register for an account, which is super-quick and free. Save your new image to your computer and upload it to the Vegan Break Facebook Fan Page! You may enter as many Veganized Obamicons as you want.

There will be 3 judges who will rate the submissions, and we will announce a winner on Friday September 18th, 2009 at 6:00PM.  Now…let the games begin! Good luck, and may the best human win =)

WARNING: Obamiconifying pictures is known to be highly addictive. Use with caution.

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Jasmin Singer, the National Advocacy Organizer for Farm Sanctuary, gives quick witty responses to 5 questions and statements that vegans are asked all the time. It’s fabulous to have the knowledge base to be able to launch into a lengthy, well researched response to questions such as the infamous “where do you get your protein?”  However, it’s always nice to have short (and fun) responses on hand.  I like to carry some vegan pamphlets with me so that I can then give people a brochure that they can read on their own time.

Be sure to stalk check out Jasmin Singer and everything she’s up to because she’s involved in a lot of innovative projects like Farm Sanctuary’s Advocacy Campaign Team.

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Before you go out and purchase “humane” meat, “cage free” or “free range” eggs, or “organic” animal products, take a few minutes to research what these deceptive labels actually mean. As it turns out, they don’t mean much at all in terms of animal welfare. In this interview, Farm Sanctuary‘s director of legal campaigns, Delci Winders, speaks about the misleading labeling techniques used by animal agriculture industries to deceive the public and increase sales.

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My good friend Stephanie Ernst, who writes the animal rights blog over at change.org, posted a compelling blog entry about sheep and wool today.  She wrote about common practices in the wool industry that are unbelievably barbaric and painful to the sheep, such as mulesing. This practice of tying down sheep and slicing off the skin surrounding their tails without anesthetics is something I learned about for the first time at Farm Sanctuary this summer. I knew that as a vegan I would stop wearing wool because it is an animal product, but I did not realize the extent of the suffering and painful mutilations associated with wool production.  In this Vegan Break episode, Angela from farm sanctuary describes some of the reasons why wool isn’t something most people would want to support, let alone wear.

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Sanctuary noun 1. A place of refuge.  2. A shelter from danger or hardship.

Finding sanctuary is not something most Americans think about regularly–the lucky ones of us don’t need to at all. Some of us have found it already, and some are still searching. But for the majority of animals on this earth, farm animals, the idea of sanctuary–a place of shelter, protection, and safety, is but a distant dream.

Farm Sanctuaries are some of the most beautiful places in the world. They rescue animals who lived lives as machines in factories, and were in line to die as products being manufactured. Sanctuaries open their doors to animals who have lived through a more horrific hell than any one of us could begin to imagine, and provide them with peace and freedom from the incessant suffering and pain, both mental and physical, that had plagued their prior lives. Farm Sanctuaries are a glimmer of hope in an ice cold world.

I had the opportunity to visit Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY this summer for their annual Hoe Down event, and the animals I met there touched my heart in a way I never knew any creature could. It was my second time interacting with cows, and every time I nearly lose my breath at their patient, gentle characters. I took lots of videos and photos at the sanctuary so I could share a bit of the most peaceful place on earth with you.

And to think, most farm animals don’t even have enough room to turn around.

Please remember these animals when you sit down to eat, and know that by choosing foods that do not include animals or animal products you are relieving tremendous amounts of suffering.

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At the 2009 Farm Sanctuary Hoe Down in Watkins Glen, NY, I had the opportunity to speak with Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary. He talks about the sanctuary, how it started, some of the major problems with animal agriculture, his new book, and more! Gene Baur is one of my personal heroes and has been a huge inspiration to me and countless others, so I am very excited to have had a chance to talk with him and to be able to share this video with you!

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During my trip to southern California, my friends and I stopped at Real Food Daily in Santa Monica so we could show you a glimpse of yet another all-vegan (and organic) restaurant and bakery. We didn’t try the restaurant foods, but the baked goods we tasted were all amazing. My absolute favorite was the vegan version of a Hostess cupcake (which I never used to like, but this vegan version was out of this world). They’ve got two locations, both in the SoCal area, and if you’re ever in the area I definitely recommend checking them out!

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