Boycott Olympics Sponsors and Advertisers

I do not think that the Olympics should be politicized. I really don't. I don't think any athletes should be denied the opportunity to go to Beijing and compete. But I do think that the IOC made a grave mistake in awarding the Olympics to China in the first place. China blundered badly by doing nothing to improve its human rights record in the period between being awarded the Games and now, and in its recent treatment of Tibetans. The Chinese paramilitary Blue Meanies accompanying the torch on its sad little warped journey across the world aren't helping, either. Japan did exactly the right thing by telling China that the Blue Meanies won't be allowed to supplant Japanese police when the torch arrives there.

Sadder still is that the advertisers and sponsors are, according to this Reuters article on NBC, unfazed by any of the furor. It seems that the only things these companies respond to is being hit in the pocketbook. So I urge everyone to boycott and, if it is within your abilities, to deny advertising space to Olympic sponsors and advertisers.

Here is a partial list of Olympic sponsors and some of the brands owned by them. I will add more as I find them.

Coca-Cola (Brands)
Adidas
Nike
McDonald's
Lenovo Group of China
General Electric (Product Guide)
Johnson & Johnson (Product Guide)
Visa
Samsung
ACC Bank
BT
British Airways
Volkswagen
UPS

Meaningful Olympic protest

This does not have much to do with either vegetarianism or drumming, but I am posting it anyway. It is a link to a very good editorial about China, the Olympics, and what a meaningful protest might look like. The author is Johann Hari and the article was originally published in Britain's Independent.

Boycotting the Beijing Olympics won't work, but here's a proposal that just might

Prions Found in Dairy

According to the latest McDougall newsletter, prions have been found in dairy milk in Switzerland. Prions, of course, are those oddly folded proteins which cause mad cow and its variants. Here's the excerpt from the newsletter:

Mad Cow Proteins Detected in Dairy Products

Prion protein in milk by Nicola Franscini published in the December 2006 issue of PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science) found prion proteins in Swiss off-the-shelf milk and fresh milk.1 Prions are the cause of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and humans, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. About the same concentration of prion protein was measured for organic farm milk and non-organic farm milk as well as for pasteurized (heating for 30 seconds to 72°C) and ultra-high temperature (UHT) treated (heating for 1–4 seconds to 135°C) milk.1 Prions were also found in the milk of humans, sheep, and goats.

Comment:

Prion protein is the agent that causes mad cow disease in cattle, people, deer, sheep, and many other animals. These infectious proteins accumulate for years before illness appears. Transmission from food to people is of great concern. Prior to the use of the latest technology, this infectious agent was hard to detect in milk. However, that changed with the use by these investigators of new methods employing the Alicon PrioTrap®. This technology is so effective that prion proteins can even be found in human milk.

A similar story can be told about bovine leukemia viruses found in cow’s milk. This virus was discovered in cattle in 1969, but studies using older technology (agar gel immunodiffusion and complement fixation assays) failed to find antibodies to bovine leukemia viruses in people. As a result, the prevailing opinion was exposure of humans to bovine leukemia viruses by eating beef and drinking cow’s milk was not important; therefore, the presence of this virus in our food supply was not a public health hazard.2 However, in 2003 researchers reported finding evidence of infection with bovine leukemia viruses in 74% of people tested by using more modern technology (immunoblotting).2 Still, almost no one has heard that 9 out of 10 cattle herds in the US are infected with bovine leukemia viruses and that three-fourths of people show immunologic signs suggesting infection.2

You should assume cow’s milk off-the-shelf contains infectious agents (prions, viruses, and microbes), which can impose a health risk to you and your family. Cow’s milk is also high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein; factors known to cause serious human disease. There is no risk in avoiding cow’s milk—it provides no nutrients, specifically calcium and protein, which could not be better obtained from plant sources. (See these recent newsletters for further information: February 2007: When Friends Ask: "Where Do You Get Your Calcium?"; March 2007: When Friends Ask: "Why Don't You Drink Milk?")

1) Franscini N, El Gedaily A, Matthey U, Franitza S, Sy MS, Bürkle A, Groschup M, Braun U, Zahn R. Prion protein in milk. PLoS ONE. 2006 Dec 20;1:e71.

2) Buehring GC, Philpott SM, Choi KY. Humans have antibodies reactive with Bovine leukemia virus. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 2003 Dec;19(12):1105-13.

The entire newsletter can be read here:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/mar/fav5.htm

Looks like I'm going vegan.

There's Mad Cow in Them Thar Vitamins

It turns out that vitamin D3, also known as cholecalciferol, is derived from animals. Usually it comes from sheep or fish, but it can also be derived from cattle brains.

Cattle brains. The source of mad cow prions. The thing that we have all been warned against eating in order to avoid contracting vCJD, the human equivalent of mad cow. There is no way to tell if the cholecalciferol in your food came from a sheep, a fish, or a bovine brain. Even if you eat meat, the fact that cattle-brain-derived products are still allowed to enter the US food supply should be a matter of concern.

The reason D3 in particular is added to may food products, including multivitamins, is because it is very easily absorbed by our systems. D3 is the kind of vitamin D we produce ourselves when we go out in the sunlight. The problem arises if/when cattle-brain-derived D3, cholecalciferol, is in our food. Cholecalciferol is even in products which are labeled vegetarian, such as some kinds of multivitamins and some soy milks.

Vitamin D2, ergocalciferol, is derived from yeast and is both vegetarian-safe and cattle-brain free.

From now on, I will be very carefully checking the labels of everything I buy to see what kind of vitamin D is in my groceries. I will also return to this post from time to time to add the names of products I find which contain cholecalciferol.

Lobster trees and chicken vines...

Every "vegetarian" I have met in the last year and a half eats fish or chicken. Waiters and waitresses in restaurants have offered me fish or chicken entrées when I asked if there were any vegetarian dishes on the menu. Putatively vegetarian soups are made with chicken broth. I even met one woman years ago who insisted that bacon became a vegetable after frying. Someone who eats fish but no other kinds of meat is a pescatarian, not a vegetarian. As far I can tell, the only word for someone who eats chicken and claims to be a vegetarian is liar.

Let's get something crystal clear: vegetarians do not eat dead animals. Period. That's what vegetarian means. Fish are not vegetables. Chickens are not vegetables. Pigs are not vegetables (nor is pork white meat, but that's grist for a different rant). If it has eyes and a brain, vegetarians don't eat it. If it has either an endo- or exo-skeleton, vegetarians don't eat it. If it has blood and a heart, vegetarians don't eat it. If it can run or creep or fly or swim or slither away from you, vegetarians don't eat it.

Open for comments

My apologies to people who have been trying to post to this blog. Apparently I was posting-control-impaired, but I think I have it figured out now. Comment away!

About those links over there...

So in my first post I thought I'd do a little explaining about those two (so far) links over there on the right.

The Benkadi Project
Every year, my drum teacher Helen Bond spends three months in Guinea studying with her teacher, Famoudou Konaté. Conditions in Sangbaralla, Famoudou's village, are not the greatest so Helen and Famoudou started the Benkadi Project to help out. Benkadi is an African word which translates, "To live together is very good." So far, they have built a school which already needs expansion and they are starting on medical services.

The 100-mile diet
Last spring, my sweetie and I bought a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share. From May until November, we received a weekly box of locally-grown organic produce. It was some of the best food I have ever had. For what worked out to around $20 per week, we ate like royalty. The quality of the food got me thinking and reading. I learned that the average bite of food eaten by the average American traveled an average of 1500 miles to get from field to fork. Maybe I'm envious that my food might be better-traveled than I, but it seems to me that using all that fuel to get all that food to its various destinations simply cannot be good for the food, for the people who eat it, or for the environment (especially when one also considers the amount of petrochemical fertilizer used to grow that food, too).

Eventually I stumbled across an article about locavores. They are people who eat only what is produced in a 100-mile radius of their homes. The link goes to a site which explains more about localvores, and challenges people to spend 3 months, 6 months, or a full year on the 100-mile diet. I have not tried the diet yet myself, but I'm being more careful at the grocery store. I may try the diet next summer, though I'm not sure about giving up coffee or tea. I read about one man in New York state who planted a coffee bush in his yard. Since I am an apartment-dweller, growing my own coffee or tea isn't really an option unless I figure out how to do so hydroponically.