Video of workers abusing cows raises food safety questions

The Humane Society of the United States released a video Wednesday it says shows mistreatment of "downed" cows at a California slaughterhouse -- and one lawmaker said it raises questions about the safety of the nation's food supply.

"This must serve as a five-alarm call to action for Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture," said Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society president. "Our government simply must act quickly both to guarantee the most basic level of humane treatment for farm animals and to protect America's most vulnerable people -- our children, needy families and the elderly -- from the potentially dangerous food."

Read the article and watch the video here.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Now two new high-profile books probe our need to eat in search of deeper meaning.

Michael Pollan's view ("In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto") is that industrial manipulation of food almost always makes it worse and that food can be a way to save the world..........Meanwhile, the the trash-talking ex-fashionistas Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin ("Skinny Bitch in the Kitch") make veganism seem as glamorous as any cosmopolitan ever guzzled on "Sex and the City."

The issue nobody wants to talk about -- Human overpopulation

We have to consider how we will live tomorrow on a resource-depleted and climate-compromised planet.

At the end of the day, the most fundamental issue is growth. If we want to meet our goals for the development of human culture and the increase of well-being, the first prerequisite is that we change our attitude about the growth of human population. We live in a culture and an economic system that promotes growth as the ultimate and greatest good. On a finite planet, this amounts to suicide. Growth was good for a certain time. At the beginning of the Industrial Age, it was good to grow our capacity, but with oil - the prime mover of that Industrial Age - running out and also causing grave life-threatening, species-threatening, world-threatening problems of global warming and toxic pollution, growth is no longer good, especially growth in the quantity of goods and the quantity of people.

Population is projected to rise to nine billion by 2050, but as recently as 1929, when my parents were born, there were only about two billion people on the planet. That's exactly the number that our best scientists say we can support on this planet with a comfortable lifestyle, not a poor scrabbling starvation lifestyle, living on a dollar a day - the way the majority of people on this planet live today - but a comfortable lifestyle. If we want to meet all the goals for development of human society, nine billion people are too many for that to happen. The ecological limits of the planet say that, and there's really nothing we can do about it.

That doesn't mean that we have to do anything violent or drastic or genocidal or inhumane, but we do need to think about a social and economic system that will move us to that point as quickly as possible.

Read the full article:

    Abortion and the Earth
    By Kelpie Wilson
    t r u t h o u t | Environment Editor

    Tuesday 29 January 2008

The Power of Unreasonable People

There is a theory that what social entrepreneurs have in common is that they are "unreasonable people" - and this meant as a compliment! The idea is inspired by playwright George Bernard Shaw, who once said,

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

This week's special report in The Economist explores the growing impact of these social entrepreneurs. Who are they? Some examples:

• a French woman who runs a company that provides childcare to parents with unusual working hours
• a Czech woman who set up a helpline for victims of domestic violence and then campaigned to change the law so that perpetrators rather than victims have to leave the family home
• a Chilean founder of an organisation that provides coaching for at-risk families
• a Mexican who has built a for-profit company that provides free movies to poor people on inflatable screens, funded by advertisements from big companies.

Check out the article HERE.
Check out the new book "The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets and Change the World."

Check out GOOD magazine

Welcome to GOOD, media for people who give a damn

We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let's call it GOOD. We're here to push this movement and cover its realization.

While so much of today's media is taking up our space, dumbing us down, and impeding our productivity, GOOD exists to add value. Through a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events, GOOD is providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world.

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