PETA's frightful new Halloween ad stars someone from Twilight

Christian Serratos, who played Angela Weber in the Twilight movies, is already a PETA veteran at age 23. She previously appeared nude in one of their anti-fur ads, and appeared alongside a mixed bag of b-and c- list celebrities in an anti-sealing campaign.

Now Ms. Serratos gives us this Halloween pro-vegetarian campaign, appearing as a... zombie circus performer? ...vampire figure skater? ...reanimated magician's assistant? Not too sure.

Agreed on the factory farming issue, though.

Can man live on bacon alone? Oscar Mayer is giving it a shot

Have bacon, will travel.

That's the idea behind Oscar Mayer's clever new online campaign. They're sending a man across the United States with no money. All he has is a van full of Oscar Mayer bacon to barter for non-bacon food, lodging, and other expenses.



The campaign offers people along the route to make barter offers with "Josh Sankey" via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

I'm not a big fan of factory farmed and mass-processed bacon. But as far as marketing is concerned, this is pretty damn tasty.

Tip via NY Times

Domino's praised by Big Agriculture for still crating pigs

While McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's have followed Chipotle's lead in phasing out the use of nasty gestation crates in their pork supply chain, apparently Domino's will not follow suit. This despite the fact that both consumers and animal welfare professionals are pressuring them to do so.

While this is a potential PR black eye for the hold-out, Domino's has earned a new fan in The Texas Farm Bureau.

Michael Barnett, via Twitter

From their blog:

"It’s about time one of the major fast food franchises showed some backbone to the animal rights activist group. Other fast-food companies—including Burger King, McDonald’s and Wendy’s—have caved to their demands, fearing HSUS will stir public outcry and reprisal if they don’t."

Interestingly, the writer, Director of Publications Mike Barnett says "I’m not defending nor condemning their use. I truly don’t know enough about pork production to make that judgment." He defers to the American Veterinary Medical Association's recommendation that "to address animal welfare in the long term, advantages of current housing systems should be retained while making improvements in design to overcome problems identified."

In other words, the AVMA believes that current cage systems need to be improved, but that there are some advantages to separating sows from their fellow pigs when breeding them in factory farms.

Mr. Barnett doesn't really care about that, however. He's just happy that Domino's didn't play "follow-the-leader in these fast-food follies."

Follow-the-leader in responding to consumer demand for less cruelty in the animal food supply chain? Whatever you say. The same blog also vilifies market farmers who advertise "hormone-free" meat (“Really? I know I have hormones. My girlfriend has hormones. You have hormones. Don’t you think cows have hormones?” Mr. Barnett writes) and wishes starvation on "food activists", "tree huggers" and "bureaucrats". (I won't take a shot at his defence of "pink slime" in the beef industry, however, as I also took issue with the media hype around the issue — but from a different angle.)

Big Agriculture is attempting to buttress Domino's resolve. The publication Farm & Dairy and Drovers Cattle Network echo the Farm Bureau's call to buycott Domino's:

There is also an "Ag Pizza Party" event on Facebook, with 1,245 people confirming their support of Domino's so far.

I'm not a Domino's consumer anyway (local mom & pop joints FTW) so they probably don't care what I think about their supplier choices. But what I find interesting is the way that the reactionary forces of industry are rallying to fight the online fight to improve animal welfare conditions on farms. 

In the end, pizza fans will decide.

PETA wishes Americans a Crappy Thanksgiving

Newser says NBC refused to air this ad. Which is stupid, because unlike PETA's usual shock and T&A tactics, this one is fairly sophisticated:



I am not a vegan, and I am not against eating meat. But I still agree that factory farming and processing of animals is cruel and disgusting.

Cargill asks, "would you like fries with those GMOs?"

"Next to the revered hamburger, nothing is more classic to fast food than the french fry. But typically, french fries are cooked in partially hydrogenated oil, a source of trans fats. When a major restaurant chain wanted to offer their french fries with zero grams trans fat per serving, they knew they couldn’t change the taste consumers loved. They called on Cargill, who worked with them to develop frying oil that could achieve that goal."

Awww, shucks! Aren't those folks at Cargill just the sweetest things?

"The process required collaboration on all fronts, starting with improvements in canola seed genetics. Cargill then contracted with farmers to grow the volumes of oilseeds that would be necessary to supply all locations, and helped build an identity-preserved chain from the farm to the restaurant. Processing methods were overhauled as well. New technologies for crushing and refining seeds were introduced, and multiple formulations were considered to create a cooking oil that performed well for fries, chicken and fish.

The final test, of course? Taste. Consumers gave the made-over fries two huge thumbs-up. Now the chain serves classic-tasting french fries, without the trans fat risks. It’s a better situation all around, and Cargill was proud to help create it.

This is how Cargill works with customers."

I'm really, honestly touched by the way this megafood corporation focussed all their high-tech resources on something as patriotic and old fashioned as a freedom fry. So what if they are patenting a genetically modified organism that will further the spread of factory farming and monoculture at the expense of family farms and crop diversity? Gull darn it, that's a good, honest American fry!