The Discerning Brute: fashion, food & etiquette for the ethically handsome man » undercover investigation

The Opposite of Journalism, Clubbing With Iggy & Supra Duper Shoes

joshuakatcher — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:16:28 +0000

• Heaven forbid that Americans should have a clear understanding of how meat gets to the table. New laws in Iowa and Florida criminalize undercover investigations into livestock production and are a serious threat to challenging how we treat animals on farms. Listen to NPR's four-minute piece on this: . So let me get this straight - the livestock industry is allowed to create completely fictionalized, idealized imagery and storytelling surrounding their industry (this is called advertising) depicting animals happily roaming quaint farms - but if we actually document the truth about what's happening on these farms, it is criminal. Isn't this the opposite of journalism? The animal livestock industry is so powerful and there is so much money at risk if people could see how these animals live and die that they would make it illegal to access the truth? Ridiculous, scary, and worth getting loud about. The only way they should be able to do this is if, as a trade-off, they install live, 24 hr surveillance cameras in every area of their operations and broadcast them for anyone to view on the internet. • These edgy, canvas, rubber and textile high-tops from Supra are on sale at GILT Groupe for about half-off. Gilt is invite only, so click here to join. • Peta is awesome. Iggy Pop talk's about Canada's shitty club scene in this clever poster.

Spring Hill-Side Ties & Good Spys

joshuakatcher — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:16:20 +0000

• The Hill-Side's Spring Collection features these organic cotton/flax ties and scarves. Now if only the weather would start acting like spring... • Gene Baur, President of Farm Sanctuary, recently wrote about legislation that is gaining national popularity among among agribusiness interests to make undercover video investigations Illegal. It is an interesting trend, considering that it targets hidden, true identities and agendas - but we must ask, whose true identity is the one that is concealed? In his blog, Making Hay, Gene writes:

Imagine an industry whose behavior is so reprehensible that it actually lobbies for legislation to make it illegal to document its practices. North Dakota, Montana and Kansas already have laws aimed at preventing activists from taking photographs or filming on farms, and now Iowa and Florida are considering similar measures. If you live in either of these states, please let your elected officials know your thoughts on this important issue.

Most people want to behave in a humane and conscientious way. It is only through secrecy and ignorance that the cruel status quo and the factory farming industry can be maintained.

Matt & Nat for Autumn, Undercover Animal Lover

joshuakatcher — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 15:00:24 +0000

• Matt & Nat's autumn "Faithless" bag in green and brown plaid, and "Braun" in coated khaki are both very warm and fetching accessories for any gentle-man. Also new is the "Mingus" backpack and the "Teller" and "Moller" in plaid. • PETA's recent undercover investigation into the sick experiments at Professional Laboratory and Research Services, Inc. (PLRS) has resulted in a major victory for animals. PLRS is surrendering nearly 200 dogs and dozens of cats and shutting its doors for good! Vivisection is inherently cruel and needs to be stopped. Learn more here.

No Thanks, Turkey Day.

joshuakatcher — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:08:26 +0000

For many of us, Thanksgiving is about indulgence. Around this time of year, I'm usually flying down to visit my parents in Florida, where we prepare a feast and eat much more than we typically would. Thanksgiving, not unlike the other major holidays, has become more about buying certain things assigned to that holiday and subscribing to a ritual that makes us feel good (indulging in the company of friends and family) under the guise of goodwill. And maybe that goodwill isn't just a guise, but as we all try to act out that famous Norman Rockwell painting, accurate history just doesn't seem to matter. Consider what historians have recently discovered - that Spanish-speaking, Catholic settlers dined on bean soup with the Timucua Indians almost a half-century prior to the famed 1621 Plymouth celebration (which incidentally did not have a single factory farmed Turkey at the table - and no cranberry or potatoes). So how is it that 500 years later, this holiday has become a showcase of nothing but Turkey? It is know as "Turkey Day". Last Thanksgiving I warned, "It's Me or the Turkey," vowing to never again sit at a table where the body of an individual whose existence was thankless is set out on display. A bird whose morbidly engineered body: painfully detoed and debeaked without anesthesia, forced to live in one sq-foot of space, pumped full of drugs and hormones - is somehow turned into the centerpiece of gratitude. An individual whose life is not considered valid. How is it that this abstinence I have asserted is seen as "radical", yet the processes by which this dead body arrived is not? How is it that talking about the truth of turkey farming is avoided like the plague, yet putting the product of that truth in our mouths is so enthusiastically embraced? Every year almost 300 million turkeys are slaughtered in the US. Of that, 46 million are specifically killed for Thanksgiving. Having been bred to grow at alarming rates (twice as fast and twice as large as their ancestors, often causing heart attacks), commercial turkeys are slaughtered after only 14-18 weeks. Many of them die of exposure during transport to the slaughterhouse, and when they arrive, many are not properly stunned prior to slaughter. Turkeys and other poultry are specifically excluded from the Humane Slaughter Act, which requires that animals be stunned prior to slaughter. Finally, as the birds who have not been stunned avoid the automated blades slitting their throats, they are often boiled alive in scalding tanks. Even "free-range" turkeys are no better off. In an industry where maximum output and profit are king, it is no surprise that suffering by individuals who fall between the cracks is so easily overlooked. As much as we'd like them to be true, our delusions of these birds having come from peaceful, Utopian farms must be shattered. Please take a look at these undercover investigations in turkey facilities from our friends at Compassion Over Killing and Peta. As Johnathan Safran Foer says in his new book, "We can not plead ignorance, only indifference". Given what we now know about food production and factory farms, where 99% of animal products come from, it's difficult to rationalize eating turkeys in a symbolic gesture of thankfulness. The scientific community recently re-wrote the book on bird-brains, revealing how incredibly intelligent turkeys and chickens actually are, shaming the community that capitalized on their perceived stupidity. We also know that the environmental consequences of raising animals for food is greater than the entire transportation sector. We know that we don't need to eat a Turkey any more than a Twinkie, yet the sentimentality of tradition persists, and so many of us purchase the anonymous, plastic-wrapped, frozen body of a creature and gather with our families around it like some sort of shrine that we are entitled to, never giving a second thought to who he or she was, and what his or her perception and experience of this world was like. Please take a moment to watch the short video I produced for Farm Sanctuary featuring actress Ginnifer Goodwin as she considers this "tradition based on cruelty" while hanging out with some rescued Turkeys at the sanctuary in Orlan, California. So what's the alternative? Can Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving without turkey? Here are some tips on a conscientious celebration and ideas for a truly thankful holiday: • Sponsor a Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary Turkey, or a Farm Sanctuary Turkey (or both!) • Check out my recipe for Pumpkin Pockets with Smoky Seitan, Mushroom Mousse, & Braised Apple, or check out my recipe page for other ideas! • Try Celebration Roast, Tofurky, or Unturkey as the new centerpiece! • More compassionate and delicious Thanksgiving recipes from VegCooking.com:

Bacon Bumption & The Pork Industry Shocker

joshuakatcher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:07:23 +0000

Something that I've noticed a lot of over the last several years is what I'll call Pork Pride, or Bacon Bumption - a level of bacon obsession that is suspicious of being in response to something. Time Out Chicago has a very interesting article on the subject. This seems to have been happening in urban areas like Brooklyn, Chicago, Portland, and San Francisco over the last 5 or 6 years among an otherwise intelligent and educated culture of young people who act like they've just discovered the stuff (as if it weren't already in every market in America). Celebrating with everything from bacon ice-cream, chocolate covered bacon, and bacon crochet to bacon band-aids, bacon vodka and bacon festivals with bacon sculptors and people who are so passionate about bacon that they seethe. They should form a religion (oh wait, the Holy Church of Bacon actually exists). I think the equation is somewhat simple, somewhat complex. People like fatty, salty stuff. People also like fads. Therefore: Fatty, salty fads are obviously popular - what's not to like? Just put on your bacon bandanna, your bacon bumper-sticker, and pop in a bacon-mint as you stick some bacon-grease moisturizer on your ironic bacon tattoo. It's that simple to be a connoisseur of hipster-foodieism. Among the crafty, indy, artsy crowd - irony, nostalgia, and rejecting the status-quo are all very popular. Bacon is nostalgic. As kids, our weekend breakfasts often started with that smokey smell filling our kitchen and symbolizing mom's love. Bacon is an ironic food (like PBR, the cool kids want to embrace working-class iconography in an attempt to say, "hey working-class people, we're just like you, even though we went to college for 'philosophy' and we just want your street cred"). And, yes, Bacon Bumption might be a seemingly dissenting response to the rise in animal advocacy. What an easy way to participate in rejecting the (strategically selected) culture! Eat a salty, fatty, fad. Wear it. Live it! The complex part? Bacon has to be made from living pigs. Oh..yeah...that. Take off your bacon scarf for a second and consider the perspective of the highly intelligent animal known as the pig. The pig is smarter than your dog.

Penn State University conducted research between 1996 and 1998. Using positive reinforcement (treats) they showed that pigs can be taught to maneuver a modified joystick to move a cursor on a video monitor. The pigs were shown one scribble, then a few seconds later shown the same scribble along with a second. They used the joystick and cursor to distinguish between the scribble they had seen before and the one they were seeing for the first time. Just watch this video if you need further convincing.

In order to make bacon, the guys are castrated without anesthesia, sometimes by simply ripping off the testes with bare hands, the gals are kept in confinement so small they go insane and can't even turn around or lie down comfortably while being forcibly impregnated again and again their entire lives (any feminists around?), and ultimately all 105 million of them they are dragged to their death every year where they are often improperly stunned and boiled alive. This is all documented reality. Our friends at Mercy For Animals have time and time again, unveiled some of the most important undercover footage of meat-production facilities that allow people to see how we treat these animals. It is because of footage like this, as unpleasant as it is to witness, that legislation is able to be passed protecting farm animals. These are animals who are not even protected under the most basic standard anti-cruelty legislation that dogs and cats are.

A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation reveals unconscionable cruelty to mother pigs and their young piglets at a Hatfield Quality Meat supplier - "Country View Family Farms," in Fannettsburg, Pennsylvania. The hidden camera video provides consumers with a jarring glimpse into the nightmarish world of factory pork production.

For more on pork farming, click here. Are there ways to enjoy fatty, smokey, saltiness without participating in this cruel, ecologically devastating and resource intensive industry? Sure! Check out these suggestions.

Milk of Human Kindness?

joshuakatcher — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:53:18 +0000

Everyone knows that in order to make milk, cows have to be impregnated, like any other mammal. This creates the veal industry - and just four days ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture shut down a veal slaughter facility in Vermont. When Shakespeare wrote down the phase "Milk of human kindness" in Macbeth, he was unaware of the irony this phrase would have almost 400 years later. The care and compassion for others he speaks of does not extend to dairy cows or their calves, who are the subjects of the latest undercover investigation from the HSUS, who continue to open our eyes to the atrocities committed out-of-sight for something as simple as a glass of milk.

Videotape from the investigation reveals that veal calves only a few days old—many with their umbilical cords still hanging from their bodies—were unable to stand or walk on their own. The tape shows that the animals were kicked, slapped and repeatedly shocked with electric prods and subjected to other mistreatment.

The worst part is, this is not uncommon. Approximately 700,000 veal calves are slaughtered in the US annually. The even worse part? We're not baby cows - and we don't need to drink cows' milk any more than we need to drink giraffes' milk. There are other things to put in our coffee and cereal, and every time we take a sip of milk or a bite of cheese - as the late Gretchyn Wyler once said, "We must not refuse to see with our eyes what they must endure with their bodies.”

Bloody Tuesday

TheDiscerningBrute — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:41:29 +0000

1. Columbus Day Just Passed. Maybe it's time we all passed on Columbus:

Doctrine of Discovery is a thin veil for white supremacy. As European nations were competing with one another for riches, they were able to share in an ideology that exerted their superiority over darker people around the world. This doctrine was used to validate the mass murder of people for profit and the enslavement of them. It continues to do so today, said Morris, as there has never been a dialogue around the colonization of the Americas and slavery and how the U.S. was born into the world dripping with blood from head to toe.

2. Please watch Oprah today! 3. Mercy For Animals Undercover Investigation A new Mercy For Animals undercover investigation is throwing back the curtains on one of California’s largest factory egg farms - exposing the routine abuse that takes place behind the closed doors of our nation’s egg industry.