Next year, New York City public schools will initiate "Meatless Mondays" as part of their lunch program. Students will be served all vegetarian food for breakfast and lunch. (Note: photo above for illustrative purposes only. Not representative of actual school cafeteria menu.) From CNN:

"Cutting back on meat a little will improve New Yorkers' health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions," de Blasio said at a news conference. "We're expanding Meatless Mondays to all public schools to keep our lunch and planet green for generations to come..."

School leaders in New York said doing this just makes good sense.

"For those who scoff at this notion, I have some simple advice: Look at the science," Staten Island Borough President James Oddo said. "Look at the data. Look at the childhood obesity. Look at pre-diabetes diagnoses. Look at the fact that 65% of American kids age 12 to14 shows signs of early cholesterol disease. Then, perhaps you will embrace the fact that we can't keep doing things the same way, including welcoming the idea of Meatless Mondays."

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And you thought 2018 couldn't get more grimly, disgustingly, apocalyptically fucked up.

There are roughly 4,000 “hog-waste lagoons,” that is the official term folks, in North Carolina. In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality today says a number of these pork poo ponds are at risk of flooding and overflowing. Read the rest

Nibbling away over the eight years of her employment at a grocery store in Canton, Ohio, an employee munched through $9,200 worth of deli meat before being shown the door. From The Canton Repository:

The Giant Eagle loss prevention manager received a tip that the employee had been nibbling on the meat at the deli, eating about three to five slices of ham nearly every day over a space of eight years, Hale said. She occasionally ate salami.

No arrest was made. Read the rest

Applestone Meat Co. has installed meat vending machines at their Stone Ridge, NY shop with plans to deploy 24-hour meat machines in Hudson, Scarsdale, and Manhattan. From Bloomberg:

Each is filled with a different type of protein: beef, pork, lamb, and ground meat and sausage. He has to restock the machines constantly to keep up with demand. Later this year, Applestone is expanding to Hudson, where the store will have at least seven machines. By early next year the company will open in Scarsdale, where he’s planning for 10 machines, and later in 2019 he’ll open in Manhattan, with possibly even more.

Accessibility is key to this unlikely success; customers don’t have to get to the butcher shop by 7 p.m. or buy questionable leftover product from a late-night market. “We’re not in the 1950s anymore, where everyone works 9 to 5 and eats at the same time every night,” Applestone says of 24/7 accessibility to meat. “Life is chaotic. At best.”

"Your Next Steak Could Come From a Vending Machine" (via Uncrate)

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Artist Marija Tiurina created this tasty backgammon set by repurposing a fancy Jaques London set to look like meat: Read the rest

Perhaps you've put food in a ziplok baggie. Perhaps you've tried to leave open just enough of a gap to push out almost enough air to consider it truly sealed. Perhaps, like me, you've even sucked out the last air through that gap, creating a genuine vacuum while filling your mouth with delicious, cold poultry slime. Here's how to do the same thing without risk of becoming a campylobacter campsite! All you need is a plastic tub or pot of water. Read the rest

It's $18 from Gamiss, perfect for your next BBQ. (via Crazy Abalone) Read the rest

Argyle, New York. The stench of death descended upon this small upstate village, about halfway between the Hudson and Vermont, earlier this fall. It took until now for locals to find the source: a cache of moose bits...

... strewn just off the road, some parts dragged to nearby parts of a field by predators.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation was called and the agency’s conservation officers were able to find clues that led them to a butcher in Vermont, officials said. That butcher provided information that led officers to an Argyle man

The culprit, Raymond F. Graham, was ticketed for unlawful disposal of solid waste. Read the rest

Touted as Earth's "first mobile kiss messenger," Kissenger is a rubbery-looking dock that humans put their phones in. It has a tactile surface they depress with their meat. The movements are then transmitted in realtime over the internet, so that a replica of them may be experienced by another human.

Plug in to your phone and give your loved ones a kiss over the Internet. Kissenger can sense your kiss and transmit realistic kissing sensations to your partner in real time. You can also feel the force on your lips when your partner kisses you back. Share an intimate moment with your friends and families while chatting with them on your phone.

The device comprises six sensors, corresponding actuators, and a meat-colored silicone sheath. There's an app that goes with it so the humans can interact on a audiovisual-discursive level at the same time. It's at the prototype stage with nothing to buy, yet, but obviously we should keep an eye on this. It should suffice to say that our previous recommendations with respect to establishing contact with this species have not changed.

High precision force sensors are embedded under the silicon lip to measure the dynamic forces at different parts of your lips during a kiss. The device sends this data to your phone, which transmits it to your partner over the Internet in real time. Miniature linear actuators are used to reproduce these forces on your partner's lips, creating a realistic kissing sensation. Kissenger provides a two-way interaction just like in a real kiss.

PETA and Morissey released This Beautiful Creature Must Die, an anti-meat game where the goal is to save animals from slaughter. Play it below. The soundtrack is a chiptune version of, you guessed it, The Smith's "Meat is Murder."

"This game is the biggest social crusade of all, as we safeguard the weak and helpless from violent human aggression," Moz said. "You don't get that from Pokémon Go."

(Rolling Stone)

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Today we go to a future where animal products are banned. It’s one that lots of listeners have asked for so here you go. We talk about what happens to the land, the animals and the humans in this equation.

Flash Forward: RSS | iTunes | Twitter | Facebook | Web | Patreon | Reddit

In this episode we discuss the arguments in favor and against banning meat. How does that impact culture? Why should we do it? Does it help or hurt the environment? Can you really grow meat in a lab? And is that meat vegan?

▹▹ Full show notes Read the rest

Alex Lambert used to be head chef at the Littleover Lodge Hotel in Derby, UK. That was before he posted on Instragram that he enjoys feeding meat to unsuspecting vegans.

From NZ Herald:

The chef and father-of-one has since denied he ever fed meat to anybody against their will. He claimed he only made the comment on Instagram to irritate a vegan woman he'd gotten into an argument with.

In his bitter exchange, he wrote to the woman: "Well you should find a better way to spend your time, my personal favourite is feeding vegans animal products and them not knowing."

The woman replied: "Hope you get caught one day, would love to see that. I know we're a minority and really don't give a sh*t because that has no relevance. Enjoy the heart disease."

After a group of vegans threatened a boycott of the hotel, Lambert was fired. He insists he doesn't really give animal products to unsuspecting vegans, and only claimed that he did to wind the woman up. He issued a statement, saying:

"I have been a chef for nine years. I have never in this time done anything like feeding a vegan animal products or slipped in contaminated food.

"My job has always been my passion and something I have always taken very seriously. It was a stupid comment said out of anger.

"For the record I have no issue with vegans." Read the rest

It's been nearly a year since I moved from London to Burbank, and in that time, I've been slowly iterating through various online tutorials to be better at charcoal grilling, something I had almost no experience with when I got here. Read the rest

The Kiwi Cafe, a vegan restaurant in Tiblisi, the capital of the eastern former Soviet republic of Georgia, was attacked by a mob of jeering, violent men who threw meat at the patrons and shouted, resulting in a brawl. Read the rest

People who work in chicken and turkey processing plants run by America's biggest poultry producers are routinely denied bathroom breaks. Because of this, some resort to wearing diapers while they're at work on the processing line, Oxfam America said in a report released Wednesday.

`They are in danger of serious health problems,' says the report. Read the rest

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used ultrasound to transmit high-speed data through pork loin and beef liver. Why? They're developing a system for controlling wireless medical implants and also stream high-definition video from inside the body.

"You can imagine a device that is swallowed for the purposes of imaging the digestive tract but with the capability for the HD video to be continuously streamed live to an external screen and the orientation of the device controlled wirelessly and externally by the physician," says engineering professor Andrew Singer.

Singer and his colleagues posted their results on arXiv in a paper titled "Mbps Experimental Acoustic Through-Tissue Communications: MEAT-COMMS."

“To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has ever sent such high data rates through animal tissue,” Singer said. “These data rates are sufficient to allow real-time streaming of high definition video, enough to watch Netflix, for example, and to operate and control small devices within the body.”

That's a whole new spin on dinner and a movie.

(Engineering at Illinois)

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McDonalds is testing a "cleaner-label" version of its legendary Chicken McNugget, reports Peter Frost, with an eye to replacing the current model nationwide in time for the Summer Games.

If you're eating in Portland, Oregon, you may already have eaten the upgraded McNugget, which has 32 ingredients and a "simpler recipe," according to the restaurant chain. It declined to provide the full list while it's in beta, but one presumes it includes chicken.

The cleaner-label McNuggets come as McDonald's combats the perception that its food is overly processed and laden with preservatives. Other restaurants and packaged-food companies also are rushing to respond to changing consumer tastes. Last year, McDonald's unveiled ads on TV and in stores that played up the fact that its Egg McMuffin breakfast sandwiches are made with freshly cracked eggs. It also ran a marketing campaign in late 2014 called “Our food. Your questions,” in which it enlisted former “MythBusters” co-host Grant Imahara to debunk myths surrounding McDonald's food.

I suspect the reason McDonalds is testing a new Chicken McNugget is simply that they made the current ones in 1983 and have finally run out. Read the rest