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BOOK
REVIEWS from recent issues of Vegan Voice |
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STRIKING
AT THE ROOTS: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism Want to be an animal activist but don’t know how to start? Better get a copy of this book. Mark Hawthorne will walk you through every step of the way: how to produce and circulate leaflets; how to organise tables at meetings or markets; how to get free publicity; and how best to write letters to the editor, or to members of parliament, with impact. And as you grow in confidence, you’ll learn how to organise protests and demonstrations, address the public, respond to arguments by having the info at your fingertips, and digest every effective tactic you’re likely to need. Learn how to organise “feed-ins” – people love free food, and this is a good way for the public to taste delicious vegan dishes. Don’t expect to go from first beginnings to an organisation like PETA overnight, but remember: every voice speaks for the animals who are denied a voice. Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, says that this book is your roadmap – give it to everyone you know if you want to make it count. Norm Phelps, author of The Longest Struggle, says this book ranks with the best guides to animal advocacy ever written. It includes “Know your rights” with regard to police powers, and there’s also a listing of useful websites in various countries. There are tips to avoid burning out, as well as direct action activities. Many young people feel compassion for the animals when they learn the truth behind factory farming. This practical guidebook will be your handbook. Don’t leave home without it. |
THE
LONGEST STRUGGLE: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA Norm Phelps is a founding member of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians (SERV), and an author of other books on compassion and animal rights. In this book Phelps tracks, from the earliest times to the present day, the tyranny of human beings towards nonhumans, who were broken to the yoke, harness and saddle. Their natures were crushed so that they lost control over their lives, from birth to death, to their slave-masters. Between 800 and 200 BCE ethical and philosophical ideas took hold, with thinkers such as Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahavira and Pythagoras courageous enough to say no to religious sacrifice and meat eating. The Renaissance period replaced the theocentric thought and obsession with gods and sacrifices of the Middle Ages with new medical ideas, and thus began the rise of vivisection, popularised by Vesalius in the 1500s. It spread from doctors to philosophers such as Descartes in the 1600s, who equated animals with machines, saying that a dog screaming when being nailed to a table for vivisection was like a machine needing oil. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Jeremy Bentham founded utilitarianism, his important work being An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. During this time animal cruelty as amusement took the form of shooting and hunting with dogs, for the wealthy, and dog fighting, bear baiting and cock fights for the poor. The first animal protection bill brought before the House of Commons in 1800 by William Pulteney proposed a ban on bull baiting. The bill was defeated by two votes. In 1809 Lord Erskine introduced a bill into the House of Lords making it illegal to beat a horse, donkey, ox, sheep or pig (pointedly omitting bulls and bears). It passed in the House of Lords but failed in the Commons. Dick Martin brought forward a bill that passed in both houses – an act to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of cattle. The act also provided for any citizen to bring charges before a local magistrate, placing such prosecutions in the hands of the public, leading to private Humane Societies being chartered to make arrests and bring criminal charges in cases of animal cruelty. This practice endures in much of the world. In 1840 was born the world’s first animal protection society, the RSPCA, under the patronage of Queen Victoria. Similarly in America animal cruelty statutes were passed in various states. While these developments were in progress, in the laboratories veterinary students experimented on nonhumans in the name of science. Vivisection procedures were public for those who could bear to watch. Galen even charged admission, and many of these “scientists” become quite the celebrities. In the 1800s Pasteur created modern animal experimentation and won over the European and North American public to vivisection on a grand scale when he demonstrated the vaccines for anthrax and rabies by using animals as living test tubes. So the science of immunology was born. In the 1920s when polio was ravaging populations, there was a “war on polio”, which turned out to be a war on primates. According to medical historian Anita Guerrini, “the population of rhesus macaques plummeted from an estimated 5 to 10 million in the 1930s to fewer than 200,000 by the late 1970s”. In the chapter “One Step Forward, Twenty Steps Back”, the author writes that the Industrial Revolution released animals from the labour of heavy lifting when James Watt built the first working model of a steam engine. After a promising start the American Humane Association abandoned its activist stance and by the mid-1800s, its efforts were devoted to working cooperatively with cattle ranchers, railroads and meatpackers, to “improve conditions”. Today that organisation, now called American Humane, is no more than an industry front, taking aggressive stands only on issues that generate little controversy in the US, such as the Canadian seal hunt and animal fighting. The chapter “A Quantum Leap in Cruelty” describes scientific breakthroughs that made possible a change from farms as they had existed since the Neolithic Revolution, to factories in which animals were treated as raw material to be turned into finished products quickly and cheaply. This conversion to intensive farms grew rapidly in the 1950s and ’60s. Animals raised for food were killed before they had grown up, so that steaks, burgers, bacon, etc, are the flesh of children. Yet, as the author points out, the cruelty carried out by commercial milk production is far worse. Intensive factory farming of animals has also applied to pigs since the 1980s, and chickens comprise 9 billion of the 10 billion animals killed each year in the US alone. Although Donald Watson in 1944 founded the Vegan Society in England, and in 1957 Jay Dinshah founded the American Vegan Society, the vegetarian movement began to drift away from animal protection and became more concerned with human health than with saving animals from suffering and death. The number of advocates for animals over time has increased but appear to be ineffective because the count of animals cruelly used in vivisection has increased exponentially, and the number of animals abused and slaughtered in the meat and dairy industries has expanded beyond belief, spreading to countries that never before ate meat on such a scale. In 1973 the world was introduced to the term “animal liberation” by Peter Singer and to his argument, adopted from Bentham, that animals are entitled to have their interests given equal consideration with ours. Ingrid Newkirk read Animal Liberation and soon met Alex Pacheco – in 1980 they founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). The author goes into great detail about various PETA campaigns, Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, ALF, ELF, SHAC, and others. Another influential animal rights philosopher is Tom Regan, who rejected Singer’s utilitarianism and built a case for animal rights based on the same natural rights thinking on human rights. Phelps also details dispute within the movement, eg, welfarists versus abolitionists, and activists who favour violence versus those who support only peaceful forms of protest. In 1995 Gary Francione, law professor at Rutgers, pioneered the pursuit of legal rights for animals (see his groundbreaking book Animals, Property, and the Law). He and his wife Anna Charlton, also a law professor, founded the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic. The author writes of a new optimism in the movement but wonders if the best hope for farmed animals, rather than the vegetarian and animal rights movements, might be the creation of meat grown in-vitro from small cell clusters. Paul Shapiro, founder of Compassion Over Killing and director of the Humane Society of the US factory farming campaign, expects this to happen within his lifetime. Shapiro states: “I would be very surprised if we still had factory farming in 50 years … It will happen the way digital photography replaced film and CDs replaced cassettes.” Phelps reminds the reader that our crimes against animals rarely rate a mention in our histories, that a cloak of invisibility protects animal exploitation from the public’s sight, and that a need remains for the creation of a body of writing that reflects the interests and value of all sentient beings through the ages. The author has performed a good service to this end; his important book is very readable, well researched, annotated, indexed and provides useful information on books, magazines and websites that would be invaluable to every activist (the url of SERV is www.serv-online.org). |
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FARM
SANCTUARY: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food What happens to rescued “farm” animals? Ideally, they are sent to a sanctuary where they can be rehabilitated and valued not as property but as individuals. A start was made 20 years ago in New York State when Farm Sanctuary opened. Today visitors are invited to see for themselves how so-called food animals should be living. Thousands of visitors are given the backgrounds of these fortunate ones’ lives, and many are transformed by what they see. Some go on to attend sanctuary training courses or enter the intern program to learn how to develop sanctuaries of their own. It all began with Farm Sanctuary co-founder Gene Baur rescuing animals left for dead on the “dead piles” at abattoirs. In this book Baur describes the conditions in which most farm animals are kept, and how they can be brought back to life and allowed to flourish if given sanctuary. Every type of degrading animal farming operation is described in the book. In response to the base cruelty of the factory farms, Farm Sanctuary shows how each anonymous animal is really an individual, full of personality and worthy of protection and respect. Amazingly, as Baur describes, these animals so abused by humans can actually forgive and trust them again – nonhumans teaching us a lesson we could all benefit from. Farm Sanctuary not only rescues abused animals but “goes upstream” and works to change conditions institutionally and systemically, helping to enact laws that will affect millions of lives. Their approach is one of rescue and refuge, education and advocacy. This is a story of animals (the lucky ones): their shocking beginnings and their eventual rescue. It’s fascinating to read about the impact they often have on people who meet them under these safe conditions. This is a moving book, both readable and well worth reading, to be passed on to young people who will be building the sanctuaries of the future. Farm Sanctuary is indeed “a place of wholeness”, a place “where suffering and healing meet, where kindness has come out of cruelty”. |
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VEGANOMICON:
The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook This is a new and captivating collection of recipes written by the creative duo Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who wrote Vegan With A Vengeance, and Terry Hope Romero, who teamed up with Moskowitz for Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. These same two women also hosted The Post Punk Kitchen, a vegan cooking show on community access television in New York City from 2003 to 2005. They are funny, offbeat and extremely inspired cooks. Veganomicon contains more than 250 enticing recipes, each complete with a little introduction about the ingredients, how the dish came about, various ways to serve it, and tips for the cook or shopper. The required time for preparation and cooking is also noted under the title. A particularly nice feature is that each recipe is coded with symbols indicating whether the dish is soy free, gluten free, low fat, takes less than 45 minutes, or supermarket friendly. These categories are also conveniently listed in the index. For
novice cooks and new vegans there are sections on kitchen equipment
and stocking the pantry, information on cooking grains and vegetables,
and terminology for cooking and prepping. I’m an old hand at cooking
but I gained many useful suggestions from these sections. And since
there is also humour throughout the book, I had a lot of laughs, too.
The next choices were based on what we already had in the house. Bright orange-coloured Tomato Couscous with Capers was a vibrant accompaniment to Chickpea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce. Mexican Millet became Spanish Rice because we didn’t have millet on hand, but it made a beautiful complement to Chilli Cornmeal-Crusted Tofu. Next was the heavenly Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits. The biscuits are similar to damper formed into balls, flattened just a bit and baked on top of the cassoulet. A big family favourite is Portobello Salad with Spicy Mustard Dressing. This is a great dish as a starter for dinner guests or as a light lunch. It’s not only wonderful but looks exactly like the photo in the book. You’ve got to love that. The Simple Seitan recipe is rather unusual, but it tasted very nice in the BBQ Seitan And Crispy Coleslaw Sandwich. There are several international-style seitan and tofu dishes to explore, as well as a fine assortment of pates, spreads, crepes, sauces, desserts and cookies. I am especially drawn to the wonderful ethnic-style dishes like Smoky Red Peppers and Bean Gumbo, Eggplant Potato Moussaka, and Seitanic Red and White Bean Jambalaya. And how about Mediterranean-Style Baked Limas, Eggplant Rotallini or Pumpkin Saag? Well, I’ve found my menus for the week so I’d better get into the kitchen and start cooking. I may never want to leave. |
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WHY
ANIMALS MATTER: The Case for Animal Protection Why Animals Matter is an indispensable resource for animal advocates. It shows how nonhuman animals are used, how they should be protected and, as Marc Bekoff says, “how we all can play a role … making humane choices that are good for animals and our one and only planet”. The authors put it this way, “Our consciousness is awakening to the consequences of our choices regarding the lives of animals.” The animals’ lives and our choices concerning them are the focus of this book. What is striking is the way each chapter covers so much essential detail of animal abuse by the animal industries, and tells us so bluntly. This is crisp writing with not a word wasted. And it is stern writing with a stern message – that where there’s use, there’s abuse. The monster attacking the creature – how it does it, even why it does it. This book shows the arguments “they” use to justify animal use. And it tells how the tide is turning. Whether it’s animal experimentation, the pet industry, entertainment, hunting or animal farming, there is declining support. But there is no decline in the scale of cruelty and even less decline in the hard-heartedness of the transnationals in charge of our millions of animal farm prisons. Here is agribusiness instituting a “supply chain” business model where everything is controlled, from production to processing. These faceless companies make the “growers” powerless and deny the animals any shred of compassion. Not
stopping there, they practise widespread corruption, providing campaign
funding to politicians in exchange for them looking after their interests
or allowing new government regulations to be ignored. The public are
kept unaware of it all (unless they read books like this) and they are
therefore powerless. They are led to believe that animals do not matter.
This book has been described by one reviewer as an “unflinching indictment of human appetites, of our ridiculous desires … an indictment of our behaviours and ourselves”. As the same reviewer mentions, there are positive tips at the end of each chapter: “Buy a vegetarian cookbook. Buy cruelty-free products. Vote.” Vote against this “bustling, bloody world-within-a-world in which terrible things happen to animals. The evidence is everywhere: in the bedroom closet, the medicine cabinet, the fridge …” Everyone should read this book. It’s just a shame that the people who need to read it most, probably won’t. |
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NOW
VEGAN! Lynda Stoner writes in the introduction to this book, “Most vegans are foodie hedonists and light years away from the fading fallacy of pale, anaemic and frail.” How true. She goes on to say: “Vegans enjoy their food with extra relish knowing they are not contributing to environmental devastation, savage cruelty to animals and damage to their own health.” The author does not like to mince words – garlic, well, that’s different. As I note in my interview with Lynda, Now Vegan! is a lovely-looking hardcover book that would make a beautiful present for someone (once you’ve bought it for yourself, of course). Some cookbooks just entice you in. This one does that with its gorgeous, full-page colour photography and clean, attractive design. Then there are the recipes, some Lynda’s own and some contributed by family and friends. The first one I made was Mema Lorrie’s Tsimmis, which is a slow-cooked sweet potato, pineapple and carrot casserole. I had a ripe pineapple that needed using and plenty of sweet oranges for the cooking sauce, so it was decided for me. It’s a simple recipe but a taste sensation, a bit like sweet’n’sour. I went through and marked all the recipes that appealed to me most at first glance. The sweet things I just drooled over and turned the page, not wanting to be led astray. I happen to know from memory that my Tuscan namesake, Sienna Cake, is so delectable, so rich and so naughty in the chocolatiest of ways that no amount of cycling would compensate for the indulgence. Alas. It being winter, I next embarked upon the Spinach Stew (all right, I lie – my partner made it, cutting the oil content because I’m an oil nazi). It turned out to be a spicy, comforting, spinachy-gravy concoction that went wonderfully with mashed potato and a Fry’s veggie burger. My partner’s made it several times since, using whatever greens were growing in the garden, and it’s become a weekly favourite. It really encourages you to eat more greens, it’s that good. There’s an interesting recipe for Lynda’s signature dish, Never Fail Vegan Pizza. You bake the crust – with Lynda’s secret ingredients that I won’t divulge, you’ll have to buy the book – and then cover it with hummus, which ensures your crust will never be brittle and will remain moist as it cooks. Then you add your sauce and fave toppings. The picture of it looks ravishing. I’ve also made the Curried Chickpea Burgers with great success, as well as Lynda’s Mum’s Vegetable Croquettes. I gazed longingly at the pic of the Eggplant in a Carriage: eggplant (one of my favourite vegetables) slices sandwiched together with, wait for it, soy cream cheese, then battered and deep-fried. No, I didn’t go there. I stayed strong. Visions of Dr McDougall wagging his finger at me kept me on the straight and narrow. Other recipes that caught my eye include Creamed Vegetables with Gnocchi; Autumn Pasta, made with an unusual combination of coconut cream, miso and cashew butter; the exotic-sounding Roast Pumpkin and Couscous Salad, made with sweet spices and dried fruit; and sugar-free Banana Blueberry Cake. It’s a joy to see such a terrific Australian vegan cookbook. Let’s hope VV readers help make sales soar. |
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VEGAN
BITES The author says that this cookbook was written specifically for single young people, in their teens and twenties, who have chosen to live as vegans. In the opening section, Getting Started, she explains our nutritional needs and how to satisfy them deliciously. She says that, as we know, smart eating habits are easier to learn and adapt to when we are young. There’s a table showing the New Four Food Groups and advice on how to be a smart shopper: reading labels, going organic, keeping it local, starting fresh, shopping in season, and so on. Next comes an exhaustive section covering pantry essentials and useful equipment. There’s a cooking guide for common grains, helpful culinary tips and flavour boosters. In this book young people will find over 100 recipes for fairly easy-to-make vegan dishes. For breakfast the author tempts the tastebuds with Fruit and Granola Parfait; Sweet Italian Tempeh Sausages; and Tofu and Vegetable Hash, to name just a few. The Tasty Toppers section is made up of dips, dressings and sauces, including Black Bean and Mango Salsa; Olive Hummus; and rich Golden Gravy made with savoury yeast for pouring over veggies or grains. There are also Super Soups and Salads; Sandwiches and Wraps; Baking Basics; and Side Dish Sidekicks. Better
Than Takeout is a particularly good section for young people, because
it provides healthy alternatives to ghastly, greasy junkfood. Try Pita
Margherita, individual pizzas made with vegan mozzarella and parmesan
cheese. Or Seasoned Tofu Tidbits, strips of tofu seasoned with tamari,
garlic powder and onion powder and baked in the oven. Someone said to me recently that they thought there were too many vegan cookbooks on the market. But I’ve decided that this could never be true, because one day vegan cookbooks will be the norm and there will be as many of them as there now are SAD (Standard Australian/American Diet) cookbooks. Imagine this: in some wiser future, the ruins of a library might be found amidst jungle, and buried beneath all the concrete and steel will be shelves of yellowed books on how to cook corpses. And the advanced, gentle humans who find them will not believe that people actually did it – slaughtered the animals and ate their flesh. That’s my fantasy and I’m kind of fond of it. |
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ANI’S
RAW FOOD KITCHEN The author tells us in her introduction that this book is “the green living resource for busy, health-conscious people who want to eat more fresh organic living foods that are fast and easy to make, delicious and nutritious to enjoy”. I have to say that Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen is beautifully presented. It has a large colour photo section in the middle and lots of black and white pictures of ingredients and preparation, as well as Ani (usually eating) at the market or the beach or in the kitchen. And she looks great: trim, toned and super-healthy. Phyo hangs out on America’s West Coast – like all raw fooders, she prefers to live where it’s warm. The long, enthusiastic introduction is written in a friendly, chatty style that tells how Phyo came to living foods and began her business, SmartMonkey. “Green Tips” and “Kitchen Tips” abound: tips on reusing, recycling, cycling, composting, organics, shopping locally, and so on. The delectable colour photographs show Cherry Malt and Blueberry Smoothies, made with almond and cashew mylks respectively; Goji Berry Sunshine Cereal; a very pretty Fruit Parfait; Coconut Breakfast Cakes, made with flax seeds, coconut oil and agave nectar; Spanish Scramble; and Japanese Miso-Shiitake Soup, which sounds and looks deliciously exotic but also contains a whole cup of olive oil. Other recipes with colour photos to accompany them include Walnut Cranberry Squash “Rice” (the rice is simulated by processing a butternut pumpkin into tiny pieces); Sun Burgers on Black Sesame Sunflower Bread with Sundried Tomato Catsup; and Marinated Portabello Steak and Brazil-Broccoli Mash with Mushroom Gravy. Desserts include Coco Kream Pie with Carob Fudge on Brownie Crust (it looks to be a rather involved recipe but you should see the outcome); Fresh Mango Cobbler (roll on, mango season); and Coconut Snow Cake (aah, words fail me). Phyo says in the book that she has a very sweet tooth and often makes a meal of an entire dessert. Raw treats really do taste superb, it’s true, with their rich nutty crusts and sweet creamy fillings. I only wish I could believe that they’re as healthy as they say they are. Anyway, if you get hold of this book you can experiment to your heart’s content. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. |
SOUP
FOR ALL SEASONS This tiny, power-packed soup book was created by the cooks at Las Vegan Nirvana Bakery/Cafe located in Collingwood, Melbourne. The 20 recipes presented in the book prove that simple, nutritious ingredients in the right proportions can make delectable one-dish meals for all seasons. Each recipe is accompanied by a lovely, full-colour photograph, as well as an introduction providing interesting information on the origins of the soup and the nutritional value of the key ingredients. The recipes are easy and time efficient. Preparation times average 15 to 20 minutes. Cooking times average around 30 minutes. There are no exotic or hard-to-find components, so you may often find the vegetables, herbs and spices you need are already on hand. The first two soups I made were Gazpacho and Cream Of Mushroom, which were served at the same meal. I had never been a gazpacho fan before, but I definitely am now. The mushroom soup made with a full tablespoon of dried Italian herbs was delightful. There were two other light soups that were very enjoyable: Tomato, which contained generous portions of basil and spring onion, and Light Broth, which included a combination of both cooked and raw ingredients. Michael’s Mother’s Simply Delicious Soup is a particular choice of mine. The prominent vegetables in this soup are carrots and turnips. There are few veggies that flavour a soup like turnips. Our family favourite would have to be the hearty, luscious Minestrone. The vegetables, beans and pasta are timed perfectly. Dutch Pea made with split green peas and vegan sausages was highly pleasing. Serbian Bean was a bit bland and contained a huge amount of oil, but the family gave it the thumbs up. There are so many exquisite soups to try. Laksa; Harira Served With Harissa; Udon Miso; and Spicy Moroccan Pumpkin and Chickpea, to name a few, look very inviting – something for every palate. All of the recipes in this collection are nourishing and honest, and this little jewel of a book warrants a place in every soup lover’s kitchen. |
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FOOD
MATTERS: You Are What You Eat (DVD) Are
you ready to watch this movie? Because Food Matters can and
will change your life. Nutritionists-turned-filmmakers James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch created, directed and produced the feature film Food Matters. As they say, it is their independent mission to uncover the wholesome truth. I say they do not reveal the truth; they simply remind us of it. Food Matters features leading authorities on nutrition and natural healing from the UK, Australia and the USA: Andrew W. Saul, Charlotte Gerson, Dr Dan Rogers, David Wolfe, Prof. Ian Brighthope, Jerome Burne, Philip Day and Dr Victor Zeines. They claim that not only are we harming our bodies with improper nutrition, but also that the right kind of foods, supplements and detoxification can be used to treat chronic illnesses. You will learn that many “alternative” therapies can be more effective, inexpensive and less harmful than conventional medical treatments. The movie touches on various health problems such as heart disease, alcoholism, cancer and diabetes. Food Matters is thought provoking and will not leave your mind easily. Most VV readers would have given much thought to how much nutrition and value they are actually getting from food. The film looks at our “miraculous” agricultural systems and how we are producing food – nowadays even commercial vegetarian food is toxic and deficient. It’s frightening to think that most people would rather spend their money on material possessions than on nutritious food. You will hear interesting things about vitamins, adverse drug reactions and the ways in which doctors and hospitals put nutrition aside. Is this a failure of medicine? Is there a crisis in hospitals and professional medical education? Articles in certain medical journals state that high doses of nutrients cure disease, but the US National Library of Medicine refuses to index these, so we never get to read them. I must agree with Andrew Saul: we would have an epidemic of health if we ate fresh, plant-based organic food. But instead we’d rather accept severe depression and alcoholism than use vitamin therapy such as niacin (vitamin B3). There is not one death from niacin per year and yet how many deaths are caused by depression and alcoholism? The medical profession treats symptoms and not the causes, the film tells us. Charlotte Gerson from the Gerson Institute claims that a normal, healthy body has powerful defences so that it cannot and will not develop cancer or any other chronic disease. According to her late father, Max Gerson, the body has its own healing mechanism and with proper diet it is possible to cure almost every ailment. If you want to find out about diseases that are reversible without the need for drugs or surgery and how this is possible, or what connects cashews and Prozac, or how drugs are tested, watch this movie. Act before it is too late. The solution is “safe, easy, inexpensive and very effective”. Are you ready to take responsibility for your own life and the lives of your children? Become informed about the choices that exist. All you have to do is to open one door. Information and education are the key. Food Matters was produced in Australia and launched globally on 30 May 2008. You can learn more and see the trailer at the official website: www.foodmatters.tv. |
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