FBI says activists who investigate factory farms can be prosecuted as terrorists — Green is the new Red

From Will Potter on Green is the new Red:

This recent investigation of a McDonald's egg supplier is an example of the type of activism the FBI calls terrorism. Photo via the "Black is the new Red" blog.

“The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists, according to a new document uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act.

This new information comes as the Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) as unconstitutional because its vague wording has had a chilling effect on political activism. This document adds to the evidence demonstrating that the AETA goes far beyond property destruction, as its supporters claim.

“11 bananas for a snack” — a glimpse into the world of vegan bodybuilding

From Mary Pilon, in the New York Times:

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Jimi Sitko gets up at 4 most mornings, works out two to four hours a day and can bench-press nearly twice his weight. He has a shaved head and a brightly colored tattoo on his left arm, and he can easily be mistaken for a Marine separated from his platoon.

Competitors like Jimi Sitko are forging a distinctive subculture of antibeef beefcakes who hope to change more of their competitors’ eating habits.

His apartment is filled with medals and trophies from bodybuilding competitions, snapshots of his tanned, rippled physique in full flex. His uniform is an assortment of sweat pants and hoodies, which he occasionally lifts when his abs look particularly fierce.

U.K. study discovers wild birds prefer weed seeds to eating farmers’ crops

An organic farmer I know feels that he is feeding a disproportionate number of his neighbourhood wildlife. It seems they prefer his organically grown crops to the sprayed and fertilized hybrid and GMO crops grown by his conventionally-farming neighbours.

The study described in this post talks about how birds prefer to eat the seeds of wild plants rather than farmers’ crops. One wonders whether the farmers in question are conventional or organic and if they are conventional (as most farmers are) that might explain why the birds would rather eat weeds.

From Heather Smith on Grist.org:

“Call it the bird tax—or rather, the amount of food that farmers need to set aside in order to get birds to stick around and stop dying. Farmers don’t historically have an awesome relationship with birds [PDF], but in recent years, they’ve actually been paid to scatter grain around their land after the harvest, since a lack of seed resources in winter is thought to be one of the reasons for birds’ dramatic decline. Some of the seeds farmers spread around the edge of their fields are also attractive to pollinating insects, which is also thought to be good, since birds like to eat insects too.