There are a few topics in our culture that get people mightily defensive about – religion, politics, and food.  Tell someone that we should/shouldn’t scrap the welfare system, and tempers will fly!  Suggest that there is/isn’t a god, and veins...

There are many things I love about my husband.  Besides being a loving, supportive, and funny man, he’s also smart, handsome and incredibly humble about it all.  With this humility, he isn’t likely to express his opinion very loudly, unless...

Over three million hens in New Zealand live short and cruel lives crammed inside wire cages to produce almost 1 billion eggs. For over 20 years SAFE has campaigned to ban these battery cages. Open Rescue have bravely entered...

And with seeing and being reminded comes…inspiration…each image of animals being treated with apathy in the most horrific manners…manners in which are impossible to imagine how a human could conceive of them-let alone implement and perpetuate them. And yet,...

    In case you haven’t heard, Australia is considering proposals to kill all the wild camels that roam the outback as part of its contribution to fighting global warming. The 1.2 million camels, considered pests by ranchers and some conservationists,...

Cats are carnivores.  They are natural hunters, skilled at stalking and swift at capture.  One of my trio of housecats had a leg and a tail off a skink yesterday before I could do anything about it. So obviously,...

Those of you who know my story know that I, like many of you, went vegan overnight after reading John Robbin’s book, Diet for a New America.  As an animal lover, my husband knows to pull the car over instantly...

Howdy Partner! (Just kidding; I won't write this whole thing cowboy-style.) Let's get serious here, because we're about to talk about something I take very seriously... POTLUCKS! See, planning a really amazing group dining event combines art with mathematics, originating...

    Thousands of years ago, Hippocrates, the founder of western medicine, said, “Let food be thy medicine.” Tragically, the way most Americans eat, food is more like poison, making us sick and killing us prematurely. Heart disease and cancer...

An article by Mark Bittman in the New York Times on April 26 prompted me to write this piece. While a full chapter in our book is devoted to it, this is my first full blog on this miserable topic. After...

Animal abuse is horrific.  I can’t even watch the Animal Planet anymore because they are forever airing shows about the SPCA going into homes and saving animals from the most terrible conditions.  I would cry so hard that my husband...

Every two-year old knows that flatulence is funny, they just haven't learned that fancy word for it yet. But the environmental impact of the 60 billion animals that we raise for our dinner tables is no laughing matter. In a...

Question: In the last couple of decades, how much of a change do you think there’s been in the perspective of spiritual people about the human relationship to nonhuman animals?Overall, I’ve seen a gradually increasing tempo of change among “spiritual...

Our New Family Members After sadly farewelling our longtime family pets in 2008, we were finally ready to welcome some new furry babies into the house.  We wanted our cats to be friends with each other and with our children,...

My sheep died last week.  I am devastated.  I miss him terribly, even though I only got to see him about once a year on my annual trek to Animal Acres, a farm animal rescue outside of LA.  He...

Mothers giving milk? La Leche League International has grown since 1956 from a group of seven mothers to a highly reputable worldwide organisation with unparalleled achievements in promoting breastfeeding as the normal and healthy way to feed babies -...

When it comes to slaughtering animals too sick or weak to even stand for human food, the majority of U.S. citizens are resoundingly opposed. But despite this public sentiment, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allows this irresponsible and inhumane...

Last Friday Hazel and I were in a group of 15 sitting down to a vegan meal together. Nothing unusual in that you might think, but in this little corner of the world it was probably unique. This is livestock...

In 1999, President Clinton announced the government was taking "new action on food safety to cut in half, over the next five years, the number of Salmonella cases attributed to eggs. And our goal is to eliminate these cases...

  Dark, filthy warehouses that reek of excrement. Masses of animals in distress. Mutilated beaks and toes. Sick, injured birds left to suffer and die without anyone to help them. These are not the kinds of images we tend...