Yay, vegan tattoos

I did some research into the inks that my tattoo artist uses and found that one of the three brands of ink he uses is vegan: Starbrite. I am now happy in the knowledge that my January tattoo will be vegan!

Oh, you probably want to know why most inks aren't vegan. The liquid that the ink is suspended in (the transport mechanism) is often animal based glycerin rather than vegetable based. Some inks use crushed insects to get color, and some use bone char.

Which Clinique items are vegan?

I emailed Clinique to find out which of their cosmetics contain animal ingredients. Their initial reply was encouraging:

"Very few animal derived raw materials are found in Clinique products. Animal ingredients are used only when their efficacy cannot be duplicated by any other source of ingredients. When an ingredient can be obtained from either animals or plants, we use the plant derived material. "

But, they asked me to provide a specific list of items I was interested in to get more information. I sent them a list of every item of theirs that I have ever used. Their reply is below:

Not Vegan:

Different Lipstick - acetylated lanolin alcohol & lanolin oil (wool grease) and beeswax

Colour Surge Bare Brilliance Lipstick - does contain beeswax

Colour Surge Eye Shadow Duo - does contain beeswax

Pair of Shades Eye Shadow Duo - zinc stearate (bovine)

High Impact Mascara - contains melanin from a marine animal's ink sac. (sepia officina) and for extreme inquiries, also contains sodium
hyaluronate (from yeast or bacterial fermentation)

Lash Doubling Mascara - beeswax

Vegan (no animal products):
Quickliner for Lips
Blushing Blush Powder Blush
All about Eyes Concealer
Quickliner for Eyes
Soft Finish Makeup - cholesterol (wool grease) animal ingredients replaced. The Soft Finish Makeup ingredients no longer contain animal ingredients.

Is honey vegan? No.

This is a tough question. Even some vegans debate this amongst themselves. But, in the end, honey is an animal product and vegans believe that animals are not here for our use. We don't need their products to live and therefore we just don't use them. This includes honey.

Here is a link to a great article about whether honey is vegan or not. All quotes below are from this article.

According to the article above, most honey doesn't come from the backyard honeybee farmer that we all picture in our heads, but rather it comes from honeybee factory farms. Bees are killed. A lot of people think that bees are not killed by the process of humans collecting bee honey. Bees are often killed by being stepped on by the beekeeper or crushed by the frames while the beekeeper is taking the honey. Beekeepers control the hives and keep them from swarming so that they can't just leave if they are unhappy.

The hive dynamics are regulated by the beekeeper, not the bees themselves.

"A successor queen is selected by a human instead of the reigning queen--both of whom may have been "artificially inseminated." "Queens can live for as long as five years but most commercial beekeepers replace them every two years" (Shimanuki & Sheppard, 181) (and often yearly). Yes, "replace" is a euphemism for killing the old queen. Backyard beekeepers also regularly kill their queens. This is done for numerous reasons that all boil down to exerting control over the hive."

Queen Bees often die in transit:
"Queens come from commercial queen suppliers. The image is hundreds of queens with a few nursing bees in individual cages waiting to be flown around the country (Beekeeping). Travel can be rough on the queens; according to Eric Mussen, a UC Davis Extension Apiculturist, "Once at the post office or shipping depot, nearly anything can happen. Queens can be over heated, chilled, left out in the sun for hours (desiccated), banged around in baggage compartments, and exposed to insecticides. Often, the post office or shipping hub fails to contact the customer when the queens arrive and they may sit in storage for days. It is surprising that the queens come through as well as they do" (Mussen). Finally, colonies (hives) are routinely split in half according to what the keeper wants, not the queen."

So basically, when in doubt, leave it out.

Substitutes:
Agave Nectar (easily found at Whole Foods or on the web)
Suzanne’s Specialities’ Just Like Honey Rice Nectar
Maple Syrup

Here are some other good articles to read on the subject:
http://www.friendsofanimals.org/actionline/fall-2004/is-honey-vegan.html
http://www.vegansociety.com/html/animals/exploitation/bees.php

A holiday quote...

"Our turkey is so big that it must have been growing for about 8 years"

Yes, even though I am vegan, my family still says things like this to me. So, let me clear up any delusions that people may have about how long their turkeys actually got to live before going to be killed at the slaughterhouse: 14 to 18 weeks. Yep, that's it.

Read more.

Turkey Cruelty

A New Compassion Over Killing Investigation Uncovers Cruelty at a North Carolina Turkey Hatchery that Supplies Butterball and includes video footage.

From the Charlotte Observer article that covers this investigation:

"The videos involve turkeys being hatched for this week's holiday. Since October, the company has been a corporate affiliate of Butterball LLC, and its turkeys are sold under the Butterball name."

A Tale of Two Turkeys

I was going to post about honey today, but Turkey seems more appropriate.  I read several articles in Satya Magazine this week about Turkeys and honestly it broke my heart.  Turkeys are intelligent, curious, social creatures and they are treated horribly.  

Turkeys have been genetically modified to grow very large breasts, because that is what people like to eat the most.  The result of this is that their breasts are so heavy that they can no longer breed normally.  Turkeys have to be artificially inseminated.  And really, it is not as nice as it sounds.  Once or twice a week, the male turkeys are held down and manipulated or "milked" and their sperm is collected.  Someone actually has a job where they do this to turkeys all day long.  Meghan Beeby in a Satya Magazine article wrote:

"In describing the milking process a worker explained, “It’s totally different than what people imagine. I can tell you right now—you’re gonna be shocked… Basically I’ll give you the short run down of it. We got a tom bench in the barn. The guys pick the toms up and put them on the bench and they rub them up, squeeze them, and it ejaculates the tom. The semen is sucked up through the filtration system and sent through a valve...” "

The females are held down and inseminated.  The workers who do this often injure the turkeys.  They are essentially raping turkeys.  Beeby also wrote:  

"Each laborer inseminates an average of 1,200-1,400 hens within two hours."

The other side effect of the extra large turkey breast is that the turkeys have a lot of problems walking.  

Turkeys, like chickens, also have their beaks "trimmed" to prevent them from pecking each other in their overcrowded pens.

Turkeys are slaughtered inhumanely.  Peta says "At the slaughterhouse,turkeys are hung upside down by their weak and crippled legs. Their heads are dragged through an electrified stunning tank, which immobilizes them but does not render them unconscious.Many dodge the tank,meaning that they are fully conscious when their throats are slit. If the knife,too,misses its mark,birds are boiled alive in the tank of scalding water used for feather removal."

For more information, see this Satya Magazine article or this Peta brochure.

And if you think that your turkey was humanely raised, read this Satya article.

This Thanksgiving, I ask that you consider not eating turkey.  Serve something else.  Consider serving a vegetarian main course instead.  Consider adopting a turkey from the Farm Sanctuary.  Your $20 adoption fee provides the funds for the Farm Sanctuary to care for one of the lucky turkeys for the year.

Go see Fast Food Nation, the Movie

Fast Food Nation (the Movie - there is a book too) starts Nov. 17. Go see it. Here is a flash animation called Backwards Hamburger that promotes the movie and shows a hamburger deconstructed in reverse. The dog un-pooping is funny.

Here is a trailer for the movie.

The movie stars: Ethan Hawke, Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Avril Lagine...