Spreading the Message Beyond heebnvegan

The heebnvegan message is not limited to this blog. Here are some of the other venues in which I have talked about Judaism and/or vegetarianism in the last month.

The Jew & The Carrot
Although I had been submitting guest posts to Hazon's blog, The Jew & The Carrot, for several years, I became a regular contributor in January. Most of my writings on The Jew & The Carrot are simply cross-posted from heebnvegan. However, there have been some original pieces.

Last month, when I wrote about Sholom Rubashkin's federal sentencing on both blogs, the post on The Jew & The Carrot set off a firestorm of comments. Some commenters still rushed to Rubashkin's defense and claimed that AgriProcessors had not inflicted unnecessary suffering on animals (tsa'ar ba'alei chayim). When my comments in response were not sufficient to persuade other people, I wrote an entire post outlining a history of tsa'ar ba'alei chayim at AgriProcessors and Local Pride, which had also been owned by the Rubashkin family. I noted, "This information is not new for many readers of The Jew & The Carrot, but demands for it arising out of last night’s post are."

Vegbooks
On July 9, I had a post featured on Vegbooks, a blog about books and movies with animal-friendly and pro-vegetarian themes. I wrote about "the apparent inconsistency between feeding animals to children and teaching them to do the right thing by using animals as models for good behavior," as was discussed in a recent article in The Horn Book. I also linked to letters to the editor that the original article generated.

Movie Screening and Discussion
In March, I noted that holistic health counselor Jackie Topol and I had led a movie screening and discussion at the Forest Hills Jewish Center's Tuv Ha'aretz/CSA. On Sunday, we had a similar event, featuring the movie King Corn.

One part of the movie talked about how cattle in industrialized animal agriculture are fed a corn-based diets (as well as antibiotics to make them accept it) even though nature intended them to eat grass. I was reminded of a comment on this blog from earlier this month, in which someone said, "I recently heard a report that corn-fed cows are destined to die within six months of when they are slaughtered, because corn causes the animals serious stomach disease. This, of course, brings up an even more pressing question: does kosher meat fall under the category of a treifa, which would ultimately mean it is not kosher at all?" I don't think that this situation actually renders the meat treif, but it's a fair point that is worth considering in its own right.

Our Hen House
On Tuesday, Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan of Our Hen House interviewed me about the conncections between Judaism and veganism. The interview will be featured in Our Hen House's podcast next Saturday, and I'll put up a separate post when the podcast goes online.