Vegan.com

Burger King’s been a shitty, also-ran burger chain for as long as most of us have been alive. And now it looks like it’s going up for sale once again.

Interesting that, as I write this, McDonald’s has a market cap of  $79 billion, as compared to Burger King’s approximate $2.4 billion valuation.

Burger King is a company with no real future, unless it reinvents its core menu offerings to reflect the changing tastes of an America that’s no longer totally clueless about its food choices. Perhaps its new owners will recognize that.  Link.

Make it before plums go out of season. Recipe here.

Uploaded by: mihl

Pete Bethune risked his life and freedom to take on the Japanese whaling fleet, and now Striking at the Roots author Mark Hawthorne has a terrific interview with the man. Not to be missed. Link.

Amazing: in response to yesterday’s Commitment Tuesday post, more than 25 Vegan.com readers have stepped up to take at least one of the five recommended actions. And many chose at least two.

This is a huge deal, and a lot of animals will be spared suffering thanks to the commitments made this week. It’s not to late to get involved; please visit the Facebook thread and let us know which of the five commitments you’re ready to tackle.

I’m so proud of everyone who has has risen to the challenge.

Mark Bittman’s got a very nice video on making vegan flatbreads. As he shows, it’s a super easy project that yields spectacular results. He messes up at the end by suggesting you serve it with meats, which is of course insanity. What he really meant is that you want get some great hummus and tahini.

In any event, this is one more way for vegans to avoid feeling excluded during barbecue season. Link.

Nice piece by Marion Nestle outlining the hygiene violations the FDA found at the Iowa egg factories at the center of the current recall. She ends the piece by noting that back in 1959 there were 100,000 egg farms in America, whereas today just 450 facilities produce 80 percent of our eggs. Link.

The battery egg industry just received another kick in the nuts, this time from that amazingly cool gentle old man in the red robe. The Dalai Lama just released a beautifully worded letter explicitly condemning the cruelty inherent in battery cages, and urging people to switch to cage-free.

Please read this and pass it around; it’s fantastic. (Thanks, Fifi.) Link [PDF].

Costco announced today that it has initiated new standards for its veal suppliers:

Costco’s new policy requires that calves not be tethered, that their stalls be large enough to move around and lie down, and that there be at least two calves to a stall.

They must be inspected at least twice a day by a caregiver and be given nutritious feed and fresh water. The farms must have a third-party veterinarians and third-party annual audits, and — although the [Mercy For Animals] video made no indication of this — the calves cannot be touched by electric prods or be put into the food supply if they are not ambulatory.

The company is claiming ignorance of the things revealed in yesterday’s Mercy For Animals video. Seems to me their meat buyers might be more proactive about checking into the animal welfare standards of its suppliers, instead of proclaiming ignorance as a defense. And it also sounds as if Costco’s animal welfare inspections are so infrequent, and involve so few factory farms, as to be meaningless.

Any step towards better animal welfare is welcome, but Costco’s decision to continue selling veal is only going to tarnish their brand until they get rid of it once and for all. Could the company really be making enough profit from veal to justify the damage it inflicts upon its reputation?  Link.

It’s the last Tuesday of the month, so it’s time for another commitment Tuesday. Reading this blog in itself won’t help any animals; it all starts when you make a large or small commitment.  Here are some ideas:

1. Now that you can get it in paperback for $10, pick up a couple copies of Eating Animals. If you haven’t read it yet, I guarantee you’ll be impressed—it’s a must-read for all animal advocates. Make a list of people in your life who would benefit from reading the book, and then lend your first copy out to them. Donate your second copy to your local library—after getting a commitment from the librarian that the copy will be put on shelves, and not sold at a Friends of the Library book sale.  Each copy of Eating Animals that you get onto a library’s shelves will likely be checked out 10-30 times over the next few years.
2. Order 300 copies of Even If You Like Meat from Vegan Outreach, and commit to passing them out at your local college once school starts up in the next month. On a busy campus, you can easily pass out 300 pamphlets in under two hours. Got more money than time? Throw $20 or $100 towards Vegan Outreach to help cover the leafletting costs of other volunteers.
3. Post a request via Twitter or to your Facebook wall asking your friends to cut out dairy for a month, or to give vegan eating a try. You can give them a great starting point by linking to my dairy free guide, or to my 21-day vegan audio series.
4. If you’re not vegan yet, take another step in this direction. Resolve to give up dairy products, or eggs, or any lesser but meaningful commitment that will remove some animal products from your life.
5. Step up your commitment to animal advocacy by picking up The Animal Activist’s Handbook, Striking at the Roots , or Ethics Into Action. If you’re a subscriber to this blog, the activism sections of my books Meat Market and The Ultimate Vegan Guide may interest you as well.

So what’s it gonna be? Most of the best advocates started out by making simple, easy commitments like the ones above.  And commitments grow vastly more powerful when you tell others what you intend to do. Head on over to the Vegan.com fan page and let us know which actions you’re ready to take!

Update 8:06 PM ET: I’m looking to get twenty people on board for Commitment Tuesday. So far, we’re up to eleven people who’ve made public commitments on the fan page. Can you be one of the remaining nine?