meat is murder

Street artists / subvertisers saying what needs to be said

PETA are welcoming the statement from Burger King that they will be sourcing more food from ethical sources. Personally I question how any institution that breeds life to cage and kill it can be considered ethical. But also, the figures that Burger King are talking about sound an awful lot more like a token gesture than a committment to helping fight environmental damage and animal suffering. This editorial comment will no doubt be lambasted and it said that any advancement in animal welfare should be welcomed. I would argue that animals are not the property of humans and if we did not treat them as such we would not need  to consider their welfare. They should be free and not bred into a life of serving human purposes.

Burger King, the world’s second largest burger chain, is to increase supplies of humanely-sourced meat and eggs.

Animal rights groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) - a critic of the farming behind fast-food - have praised the move.

The decision to encourage the use of cage-free chickens and free-range pigs will apply to the US and Canada.

Burger King aims to source 2% of eggs from non-caged birds and 10% of pork from pigs allowed to roam freely.

Ripple effect

Burger King has told its suppliers that if they provide eggs from caged-free hens they will get a better deal.

The firm said it hoped to expand the market for such eggs.

“The fact that Burger King has made positive changes for some of the animals killed for its restaurants will send a ripple effect through the fast food industry,” said PETA spokesman Matt Prescott.

It would show other companies that animal welfare “cannot be ignored,” he said.

“Suppliers will hopefully respond by producing more of these types of products,” Mr Prescott added.

Burger King said it would also prioritise products from suppliers using controlled stunning as the way to kill birds.

Animal rights groups have criticised other methods, such as gassing.

In February, UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s promised to cease selling battery eggs by 2012.

By then, 100% of its 600 million eggs sold annually will be either free-range or barn eggs laid by hens allowed access to natural light.


Burger King says 2% of its eggs will be from non-caged firms.

CHICAGO - McDonald’s french fries just got fatter — by nutritional measurement.

The world’s largest restaurant chain said Wednesday its fries contain a third more trans fats than it previously knew, citing results of a new testing method it began using in December.

That means the level of potentially artery-clogging trans fat in a portion of large fries is eight grams, up from six, with total fat increasing to 30 grams from 25.

From www.spiegel.de  we learn how McDonalds are under attack even by the English  Language.

McDonald’s Targets the English McLanguage

The word has only been in the English language for two decades, but the hamburger chain McDonald’s would like to see the word “McJob” McEliminated from the dictionary — the fast food firm is not lovin’ the OED’s definition.

DDP

McYum.

It’s a bit of job-seeking advice that parents have been dishing out to their aimless, unskilled, post-high school offspring for decades: You can always work at McDonald’s.

And many have taken that advice. It is estimated that fully one out of every eight workers in the United States has put in stints behind the counters of the fast-food McGiant. Most of them have been eager to leave as quickly as possible. Low pay, poor prestige, and less-than-haute cuisine combine to make the job of a burger flipper McSpurned.

But at least the job shouldn’t be denigrated in the English language as well. McDonald’s Corp. on Tuesday restarted its push to get the word “McJob” removed from dictionaries — and has set its sights on the gold standard of lexicons, the Oxford English Dictionary.

From the point of view of the fast-food proletariat, the reason for the McLanguage offensive is clear: The word McJob, as the OED definition makes clear, is “depreciative.” It goes on to define the term as: “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.” It found its way into the dictionary in March 2001, 15 years after it was apparently coined by the Washington Post.

“Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And it this case, they got it completely wrong,” Walt Riker, a Mickey D’s McSpokesman complained to the Associated Press. “It’s a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that’s been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years.”

The company says it will kick off its campaign in May in an attempt to change the “out-of-date” definition, as McDonald’s spokeswoman Amanda Pierce called the McJob entry. But the hamburger giant may have to break out some special sauce for the effort. In 2003, the Merriam-Webster dictionary — which defines McJob as “a low-paying job that required little skill and provides little opportunity of advancement” — elected not to remove the word, despite McPressure.

The OED, for its part, has released a statement indicating it will likely also retain the word. “We can confirm that we monitor changes in the language and reflect these in our definitions, according to the evidence we find,” the statement sent to SPIEGEL ONLINE reads.

There are other indications that Greasy McD’s may be fighting a losing McBattle. The OED also has an entry for the entire “Mc” prefix, defining it as a depreciative prefix attached “chiefly to nouns to form nouns with the sense ’something that is of mass appeal, a standardized or bland variety… .’” McMansion — “a modern house built on a large and imposing scale, but regarded as ostentatious and lacking in architectural integrity” — is also in the dictionary.

The burger joint itself has coined a couple of OED entries. “Quarter pounder” makes an appearance. So too, does the (transitive) verb “to supersize,” defined as “To increase the size of, esp. to extravagant proportions.”

Changing any of these entries will be quite a McJob.

A new Hollywood film is due out soon that will hopefully air some truths or at least further remove the plastic advertising sheen from the Fast Food Industry. Due out in the UK on March 07, already out in the States. Inspired by the incendiary bestseller that exposed the hidden facts behind America’s fast food industry comes a powerful drama that takes an eye-opening journey into the dark heart of the All-American meal. Richard Linklater’s FAST FOOD NATION traces the birth of an everyday, ordinary burger through a chain of riveting, interlocked human stories - from a hopeful, young immigrant couple who cross the border to work in a perilous meat-packing plant, to a teen clerk who dreams of life beyond the counter; to the corporate marketing whiz who is shocked to discover that his latest burger invention - “The Big One” - is literally full of manure. As the film traverses from pristine barbeque smoke labs to the volatile U.S.-Mexican border, it unveils a provocative portrait of all the yearning, ambition, corruption and hope that lies inside what America is biting into. the FoxSearchlight Site