So, I guess I'm a bit of a local celebrity...
Wow, amazing how big controversies can be stirred up so easily in a small town... I hope you're in for a long story.
As many of my loyal blog readers (if there are any, lol) probably know, I work for
PETA and I've become very interested and involved in the animal rights movement since going vegetarian over two years ago. I was sent a message from a Moscow e-mail list by someone who knew my interests, in which a local woman expressed that to her dismay, a local French restaurant was just opening up in Moscow that had
foie gras on their menu, and that she would be boycotting said restaurant. Foie gras is a French delicacy, the words foie gras literally mean "fat liver" in French. The only way to produce it is to cruelly force-feed geese and ducks until their livers are 6-10 times their normal size and they contract a liver disease. So it's a pretty disgusting dish, and the cruelty behind it is equally disgusting. Undercover investigations into foie gras farms in the US and Europe show what goes on, it ain't pretty, but you can see it
on PetaTV.
So, I got on the Moscow e-mail list and thanked my fellow Moscowian (Moscowvite, Muscovite or whatever) for mentioning that a local restaurant would be serving fatty diseased duck liver. I asked if anyone would be interested in participating in a protest and called for the owner to remove it from his menu, as well as provided information and my reasons for not wanting this cruelty to be supported in my town. A few days later the online menu changed and foie gras was removed from it. I contacted the owner to ask if the change was permanent and gave him some information on foie gras. He responded saying he was concerned with the welfare of animals and was looking for a more humane source of foie gras. Well, there's really no such thing. Ducks and geese raised for
foie gras are force-fed and would never eat
thatmuch food voluntarily. They often get sores in their throats from the metal feeding pipes that are shoved down them. All this torture just for a "delicacy" the mostly poor college student population of Moscow probably can't afford anyway doesn't make sense to me.
Anyway, about the same time, I was contacted by the
Moscow-Pullman Daily News about the planned protests and the foie gras debate in Moscow. In the article, the owner of the restaurant, called
West of Paris, said that foie gras was removed from his menu because he ran out, and also said we had a point to object to foie gras. He insisted that there was a demand for it and that he would put it back on the menu once he found a more humane producer. I had mentioned this incident to PETA and they claimed it as a victory, since there's no such thing as a humane way to produce foie gras. The text of the Daily News article was:
Foie gras controversy hits Moscow
Activists up in arms over delicacy's inclusion on restaurant menu; item has
since been removed
By Alexis Bacharach Daily News staff writer
Published: 08-23-2006
Foie gras is no longer available at Moscow's West of Paris, but not for the
reasons one might think.
Restaurant owner Francis Foucachon sold out of the item his first week in
business.
He wants local activists, who got their hands on an outdated menu earlier
this week, to know their threats of protest mean nothing to him or his
staff.
"Here is the bottom line," he said. "I ordered a small amount just to see if
there was a demand in Moscow. It was such a huge success, we almost sold out
our first night."
Foie gras, French for fatty liver, is produced through a process of
force-feeding ducks and geese until their livers become saturated with fat.
Handlers insert tubes down the birds' throats and funnel pounds of cornmeal
into their stomachs several times a day.
Megan Prusynski, a local activist with People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals and the Humane Society of the United States, said consumption of
foie gras went down in areas that provided focused education and outreach
programs.
With that in mind, she's teaming with local and national groups, including
Compassion Speaks at Washington State University, to organize protests in
Friendship Square later this month.
"There are still a lot of people out there who don't know what foie gras is
or how it's made," she said. "When I heard there was a restaurant in Moscow
serving it, I started talking to people about doing some kind of protest to
raise people's awareness - maybe get it banned."
More than a dozen countries, including Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom,
Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Poland and Denmark, have
outlawed the French delicacy.
In the United States, lawmakers are proposing bans at the state and
municipal levels.
The California Legislature passed a phased ban last year on the production
and sale of foie gras. Earlier this month, city leaders in Chicago banned
the controversial item from all menus in the city.
"The people complaining about foie gras have a point," Foucachon said. "The
way the birds are being stuffed is questionable, and I do believe it's
important to treat animals humanely. I will put foie gras on my menu again
when I find a producer that doesn't engage in force feeding."
PETA spokesman Matt Prescott said that's a victory for animal rights,
because Foucachon will never find what he's looking for.
"There are producers in the industry who say their foie gras is produced
humanely, but such claims are unsubstantiated," he said. "Investigations at
every foie gras farm has uncovered incidents of sick, dead and abused
animals. We've seen birds with holes in their throats and bloody beaks.
We've seen farms where dead birds were dangling from wires, dripping blood
on the live birds."
Video footage and photo galleries on PETA's Web site provide images of birds
with gaping wounds, images of blood-soaked cages and buckets full of
feathered corpses.
"No animal should be subject to torture," Foucachon said. "But these things
they're complaining about, I would suggest American chickens are treated far
worse than the ducks and the geese. Why aren't people writing letters and
staging protests at the grocery stores and restaurants that sell chicken?"
Why stop there, he asked?
Foucachon suggested protests against restaurants that cook live lobsters.
"This is a group that was looking for something to use against my business
and they found something," he said. "While I believe there are some valid
concerns here, I'm not going to stop serving what people want. I will put
foie gras on my menu again."
Alexis Bacharach can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 238, or by e-mail at
abacharach@dnews.com
Well, the controversy pot stirs and I'm asked to appear on a radio show on KUOI, the University of Idaho's campus radio station. I immediately contact my friend Kelsey who was a PETA intern and organized an animal rights group on campus (I protested KFC with her last semester). She is also quite a bit more well-spoken on animal rights issues, so we both went into the station this morning for an interview. We discussed foie gras & the local controversy as well as animal rights, PETA, factory farming, vegetarianism, and a laundry list of related issues. It has been wonderful how much press the issue is getting locally, and the interview went very well despite a couple challenging and a bit hostile people calling in. Kelsey & I kicked some ass for the animals though; I must admit that activism is exciting!
So, I'm sure this saga isn't over, but maybe we opened a few eyes around here, maybe West of Paris will keep foie gras off the menu and we can move on to other activities & protests... or maybe we still have more work to do there. Several countries, the state of California, and the city of Chicago have recently passed laws banning the production and/or sale of foie gras. So it's possible to enable change on the local level, and I'm hopeful. If you'd like more information on foie gras, please check out this article on
GoVeg.com,
NoFoieGras.org by the Farm Sanctuary, or the aforementioned
Undercover Investigation video from PETA. Thanks for caring, but watch out for the greusome video.
I will try to make the audio of our interview this morning available once I receive a copy of it. We discussed foie gras and animal rights for nearly an hour & a half! :) Stay tuned.
Labels: activism, vegetarianism/animal rights
We be greasin'!
We finally have a greasecar! After a lot of work (mostly on Seneca's part), we got our greasecar.com kit installed so the bus can run on Waste Vegetable Oil. We took her for the first veggie-fueled run on Friday. We had to be sure to smell the exhaust, which didn't smell like much of anything since we were running on virgin oil for the first trip, not used oil. We're very excited to have a more sustainable & less polluting form of transportation, and of course, now we're planning some trips in the bus! We've done a lot of upgrades on the bus since we got back from vacation: new headlights that are MUCH brighter and safer, a hemp/organic cotton pop-top canvas with 3 windows, fixed the sink with a hand-powered water pump so now all the camping equipment works, and we just got our new tires in today. So all that's left is to put the new tires & wheels on (we have an appointment scheduled tomorrow) and possibly get the engine checked out by a mechanic and the timing belt replaced. Then it's ready for road-tripping!
Seneca has been very dedicated to this project, making it his full-time job for the summer. His brother, Andy, also has a greasecar, an old Mercedes Benz. So now the "Bio-Brothers" are hoping to start up a business converting people's cars to run on veggie oil and installing conversion kits, using their own cars as models and as advertising. We have been trying to find sources of used fryer oil from various restaurants. We have one regular source, The Breakfast Club, who graciously provides us with about 5 gallons every week, which we then process (put baking soda in it so the animal fats & hydrogenation settles out), filter, and put in the veggie oil tank. We're on the lookout for more sources, and have a couple in the works (it sure helps knowing lots of people in this town, especially those that work at restaurants we want to get grease from). We just got a big storage barrel for the filtered grease, which we heat up a bit before putting into the tank. We're hoping once we move to Eugene (sometime later this fall) that we can get grease from the many vegetarian restaurants in town, to avoid having to separate the animal fats from the usable oil.
So the process works a bit like this: the car has 2 tanks now, one for diesel (or bio-diesel when we can get it) for starting the car & warming up the lines. The second tank is the veggie oil tank, which is heated up so it flows well. After the car is warmed up & running, we flip a switch on the dash and it begins running off of the veggie oil tank. Seneca says the engine sounds quieter on veggie oil, since it's a natural engine lubricant. Once it's running on veggie oil, the exhaust smells like french fries (a big improvement over diesel exhaust), and we cruise at about the same miles per gallon as we get with diesel (for our car it's about 30MPG, not bad for such a heavy bus). About a minute before we stop, we have to purge the veggie oil from all the fuel lines since it can solidify when cool, and switch back to diesel. If we forget to purge it, we have a buzzer that alerts us when we turn off the car in veggie-oil mode, so then we can turn it back on & purge it. Pretty simple, and according to Seneca (well, he's an engineer, this stuff is way over my head), it was easy to install. The only problem we ran into was that our wire for the switch & gages wasn't long enough, so Seneca had to improvise and we'll re-wire it when we get the correct wire from greasecar.com. After that's done the wiring will be hidden and it won't look ghetto-rigged. :)
We're planning on going to several
barter fairs this fall in the bus, and spreading the good word about a more sustainable method of travel. And of course now that we get free fuel (assuming we get some good sources soon), we'll be much more likely to take a lot of weekend road trips & camping trips!
I have been writing about our conversion process and bio-fuels in general on my new blog,
Our Volksvegan Adventure. We'll also post pictures and stories of our hopefully many future veggie-fueled travels, information on collecting and filtering grease, and anything interesting about sustainable vehicle developments. Please check out the new blog and say hi to our new greasecar!
Labels: activism, green living, volksvegan grease bus
One step closer to sustainable transportation!
Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. Let me bring y'all up to speed... First of all, and most exciting, WE FOUND A DIESEL VW BUS! As much as I hate E-bay, it seems that it was the only place we were finding diesel westfalias with low mileage. So we found on e-bay and actually won the bid last night! It's in Atlanta, which is much farther than we were hoping for, but luckily my lovely aunt Susan was able to go check out the bus since she lives in the area. It's beautiful, has low miles, and it's a diesel with an absolutely immaculate interior and a pretty close to perfect body.
So, Seneca is flying down to Atlanta today so he can drive it back up here before we leave for vacation next week, and hopefully all goes well and we can drive it on our road trip. I'm SO EXCITED that we finally found a bus. After months of looking and disappointment, our greasecar dream is materializing! The diesels are rare and kinda spendy, but it's much easier to start with a diesel (and cheaper, we found out) than to get a gas one, convert it to diesel, then convert it to grease. So we're halfway there. Diesels can run on a bio-diesel/diesel mix without any modification, so Sen found several gas stations along the trip that sell 20% bio-diesel fuel, and this is probably what we'll do until we have the money for the grease kit. Sen and his brother (who is a mechanic) are going to do the grease conversion and then we can use waste vegetable oil (filtered first) and bio-diesel to run it! Woohoo! No more oil!
So other than searching and finding our bus, we've been keeping busy and enjoying the summer. We went to a barter fair/gathering near Trout Lake, WA last weekend. It was called the Llama Reunion (a group of friends called the Llama tribe hosted it) and it was fantabulous! There's lots of
pictures on my flickr page of the trip. It was quite the drive, but well worth it. The location was beautiful, we camped in a field of daisies with Mt. Adams hovering above us. It was a small barter fair, but the crowd was great and we met some cool people. I also sold lots of soap and duct tape wallets, which is always nice!
We're planning our summer trek and I'm getting very excited, especially now that we have a camper bus to take the trip in! We are leaving next Wednesday (hopefully!) and heading to Steamboat Springs, Colorado for the Rainbow Family Gathering. This is a magical annual event, a gathering of all kinds of "rainbows" from all over the country. We've only been to one before, two years ago, and it changed my life. It's a mix of all things counter-culture, and it operates a bit like a commune. Everyone helps out (volunteering at kitchens, cleaning up the camps, digging pit toilets, etc.) and no money is exchanged at all. The food is all vegetarian (mostly vegan actually) and freely distributed to everyone. We all eat together in a big meadow, there are lots of opportunities for hiking, there are themed camps (I want to stay in Yoga camp this year!) and each one has a kitchen. There are workshops and classes on anything from herbalism to yoga, meditation to alternative medicine... it should be awesome! My first Gathering is what convinced me that I could go vegetarian, and I haven't eaten meat since. It's an empowering experience and a look at a completely alternative way of life.
After the Gathering we are heading to Eugene, Oregon for the Oregon Country Fair. It's a bit like a giant barter fair, with all kinds of activities, vendors, and camping nearby. We've never been but it looks like fun. After that we hope to check out Eugene for a bit, maybe go to the beach, and then come home. We're considering moving to Eugene so if there's time we might look for places to live and check out some of the non-profits & environmental organizations that Seneca is interested in working for. Then it's back up to Idaho and back to the daily grind.... a two-week vacation (I'm not bringing my computer, kinda scary, huh!) is MUCH needed right about now. I've been working more than full-time with my job and freelance projects combined, so a break is just what I need to refresh and relax.
So needless to say I will be out of commission for two weeks (June 28-July 11), so please hold off on the e-mails & such until I get home. I will definitely post pictures and stories of our journey when I get back. Now, back to work... :)
Labels: activism, green living, volksvegan grease bus
Too Many Years
This is a graphic I came up with today for a peace rally poster for the
Palouse Peace Coalition. They are having a peace rally on March 25, the third anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. I just started volunteering to do some posters for their events, and I'm pretty happy with my first poster idea. Hopefully they will be too. :) It's not exactly a Happy Anniversary though, and I hope there is no fourth anniversary next year. But it was nice to get to create a political graphic like this for a good cause. I think it would look quite nice on a t-shirt. I've been trying to come up with some graphics for t-shirts and other items lately so Sen & I can open a CafePress store online and make some extra cash while spreading good messages. This may just be our first t-shirt!
Other than working on this poster, I've been pretty busy working for PETA, mostly working on their punk-rock inspired youth site,
peta2. I'm enjoying it, even though the 10-hour days are tough to get through sometimes. The three day weekends make up for it though. And at least I don't have to leave the house to go to work. I wonder how much pollution doesn't get spewed into the air simply because I don't have to commute to work... Now that would be interesting to know.
Speaking of pollution and cars, Seneca is looking for a diesel VW camper he can convert into a grease car. We want to run it on vegetable grease (and/or bio-diesel) and travel around this summer. Obviously it's cheaper (or free!) to get french fry grease from restaurants along the road than pay for gas, the emissions are much lower, and we wouldn't be supporting war or the oil industry. Yay! Unfortunately, diesel VWs camper buses are hard to find, but if you see an ad for one for sale, let me know! It seems odd that a grease-burnin' VW is my dream car, but right now, it is. :) Someday Subaru will make hybrid Outbacks, and then that will be my dream car, but until then... I gotta get a VW (V for veggie, of course)!
Labels: activism, green living
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