September 2009 – Juliette Terzieff

I have to cringe when I hear or read right-leaning politicians and commentators wax poetic about how the U.S. has the “greatest” system in the world – the best health care, the best education, the best government, etc, etc, etc. It’s not that I don’t support the effort for the U.S. to be the best it can, but to categorize things as the “greatest” or “best” implies that these accolades represent achievements perfected and maintained to a level we need no longer worry our pretty little heads about it.

All one has to do is take a walk down the street – pretty much any street in the country with the exception of perhaps Rodeo Drive – to see that we are a long way away from the best we could be.

Continue reading Systematic Failure: Too many children left behind ….

Disturbing video captured by an animal rights activist who secured employment at an Iowa hatchery raises some serious questions over how we get our food supply.

Honestly I barely made it to the one-minute mark of the 3:44-long Hatchery Horrors video – I just couldn’t get past the grinding machine. I guess most of us are aware – dimly – that the meat and other food we buy at the store may come to us poisoned by actions we would normally find repulsive, but it’s different to actually see it.

According to the group responsible for the video, Mercy for Animals, this one hatchery slaughters over 30 million male chicks every year. The males are killed because they cannot produce eggs and won’t grow fast enough to be sold profitably for meat. (The surviving females, the group and other advocates point out, will spend their lives in confinement under cruel conditions.) Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that those 30 million male chick deaths represent a fraction of the number ground up by the industry – it’s almost beyond imagining.

Continue reading Here chickie, chickie ….