Vegan Daily News

The egg of the future may not involve a chicken at all. In fact, in the high-tech food lab at Hampton Creek Foods in San Francisco, the chicken-less egg substitute has already been hatched.

“We’re trying to take the animal totally out of the equation,” Josh Tetrick, founder and CEO of Hampton Creek Foods, told me.

Hampton Creek’s egg substitute product is called Beyond Eggs. It’s made from bits of ground-up peas, sorghum and a few other ingredients, and it’s attracting the attention of high-tech investors including Bill Gates.

Meatless Mondays will begin next fall for San Diego Unified elementary schools.  The school board approved a proposal Tuesday night officially removing meat from cafeteria menus one day a week.  The vote affects all San Diego Unified elementary and K-8 schools.

The Meatless Mondays campaign began 10 years ago with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has been adopted at a number of schools nationwide.

Connecticut will require manufacturers to label genetically modified foods, but only after four other states - including one that borders Connecticut - enact similar measures. In addition, any combination of Northeastern states with a combined population of at least 20 million must mandate GMO labeling.

GM foods sold in Connecticut will bear the message “Produced with Genetic Engineering.”  More than two-dozen states, including some in New England, are considering similar laws.

Each spring during “kitten season,” thousands of newborn kittens join the millions of cats already in shelters across the country. That means your local shelter has tons of cute, cuddly newborns, in addition to all the mellow, older cats and everything in between. And the shelter staff are ready to help you adopt your very first cat - or to bring home a friend for another beloved cat!

To find shelters near you, use this searchable database of more than 13,000 local SPCAs, humane societies and animal control organizations.  

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency announced their plan to tackle food waste in America, a problem that has grown by 50 percent since the 1970s. Today, as much as 40 percent of food produced in America is thrown away, amounting to 1,400 calories per person per day, $400 per person per year, and notably, 31 million tons of food added to landfills each year.

Throwing away food contributes directly to climate change as decomposing food releases methane, a greenhouse gas that is more than 20 times as effective at trapping atmospheric heat than carbon. According to the EPA, 17 percent of U.S. methane emissions come from landfills.

But a high rate of wasted food also means a high rate of the energy that goes into food production — the water, fuel and farmland needed to grow crops and produce meat — is also wasted. It’s been estimated that 2 percent of all U.S. energy goes into food that American consumers and retailers are wasting.

The Spanish government is currently considering whether or not to recommend that bullfighting be protected as a national cultural pastime. Bullfighting is shameful, violent animal abuse dressed up as “sport.”

Spain is a country rich in history, architecture, cinema, art, and culture. Protecting bullfighting will damage Spain’s reputation and can only have a negative impact on the tourism industry, which is so important to the country’s economy.

Please take a minute to sign this letter to Spain’s ambassador and ask him to oppose protection for bullfighting. The government’s decision is imminent, so take action today!

South Korea has joined Japan in announcing a halt on imports of U.S. wheat due to the USDA’s recent announcement that commercial wheat grown in the USA is contaminated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered wheat.

GMOs are outlawed or shunned nearly everywhere around the world. Only in the USA have GMOs managed to avoid being labeled or outlawed — and that’s primarily due to Monsanto’s financial influence over lawmakers.  However, Monsanto shares plummeted 4 percent on Friday following the announcement by South Korea.

It is now likely that all wheat produced in the United States will be more heavily scrutinized - and possibly even rejected - by other nations that traditionally import U.S. wheat. This obviously has enormous economic implications for U.S. farmers and agriculture.

Founded in 1989, Animal Place is one of the oldest and largest sanctuaries for farmed animals in the country. Nestled on 600-acres in Grass Valley, CA, Animal Place provides refuge to hundreds of neglected farmed animals.  The 300 animals at the refuge are permanent residents.

Animals arrive from small and large farms, slaughterhouses, research facilities, and neglect or cruelty cases. All animals find a haven where all their needs are met and their individual quirks respected.  Animal Place offer tours, cooking classes and workshops at the sanctuary as well as volunteer and internship opportunities. Because factory farming takes the lives of 10 billion land animals each year in the United States, Animal Place promotes a vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle. 

Even a small donation can help recently rescued Lucy and the 300 other animals at the sanctuary. Be a hero for the animals - donate!

It’s easy to get confused between omega-3 and omega-6 oils…

• Omega-3 acids are the fats which are not so easy to come by. They’re in flax seeds, kiwi seeds, and chia seeds, among other things.
• Omega-6, on the other hand, is found almost everywhere you look: nuts, vegetable oils, avocados, etc. As important as omega-6 oils are to our health, the balance of omega-3 to omega-6 is equally important. As it is so easy to consume plenty of omega-6, it is very easy to end up with an unbalanced consumption of the two types of oils, which are also known as essential oils.
• When it comes to the amount of omega-3 oil in various seed oils, the chia seed has the highest content, just above kiwi seeds and flax. In fact, the name chia comes from the Aztec word for ‘oily’, which is ‘chian.’
  

A frozen fruit mix commonly used in smoothies is suspected in a hepatitis A outbreak that has affected five Western states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Thirty people have been infected with acute hepatitis A, and nine of them have been hospitalized. Infections have been reported in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, the CDC website said Friday.

Eleven of 17 ill people interviewed reported eating Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend, a mix of frozen berries and pomegranate seeds.  Company records show that the fruit mix with contaminated ingredients was sent to only Costco stores.