VegE-News is a monthly news and events email service. It is free to subscribe. Their August issue's stories included:

• Feast or famine: Meat production and world hunger. The United Nations estimates that 854 million people – nearly 13 percent of the world’s human population – go hungry every day. And the problem is only getting worse. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program, says, “The world’s misery index is rising.” So is our hunger for meat. Every year industrial animal factories in the U.S. feed 157 million metric tons of legumes, cereal and vegetable protein to livestock, resulting in 28 million metric tons of animal protein for human consumption (for a ratio of 5.6 to 1). Nutritious plant-based food that could feed humans instead goes to feed animals in a very inefficient use of resources.

• On trail of elusive carbon footprint. The most accurate calculators (such as the one by the Berkeley Institute of the Environment) take a cradle-to-grave approach, tallying everything related to an individual's consumption. For example, the Berkeley calculator will count not only tailpipe emissions from driving, but also those from a vehicle's manufacture. Most calculators are comparatively simple, counting only driving emissions. Food can also play a large role in a person's carbon footprint. Cows are notorious for their methane emissions, but feeding them also requires fuel and energy. A University of Chicago study found switching from a diet laden with red meat to a vegetarian one can lower a carbon footprint by 1.5 tons.

• Eating less meat and junk food could cut energy use almost in half. An estimated 19 percent of total energy used in the U.S. is taken up in the production and supply of food. By curbing junk food and over-eating, reducing processed food intake, switching to more traditional, organic farming methods and converting to diets lower in meat, that number could be cut to 10 percent. Conventional meat and dairy production is extremely energy intensive. Half of the energy used to make food in the U.S. is spent making animal products - meat, dairy and eggs. Also see ABCnews for an excellent story on this report.

• Kids are picking up on eco-friendly veggie lifestyle. PETA has recruited 200,000 youths this summer while tagging along with the music and sports festival Warped Tour, said Lara Sanders, the group's head of youth marketing. "Kids have been making the connection between the environment and a vegetarian diet and knowing that going vegetarian is the best thing that you can do for the environment."

Health

• Large study links meat consumption to increased cancer risk. A new large-scale study has provided stronger evidence linking the consumption of red and processed meats to an increased risk of cancer. Researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute examined data on 494,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-AARP Diet and Health Study. Researchers found that people who consumed the most red meat (beef, pork and lamb) had a 25 percent higher risk of developing colorectal cancer in the study period compared with those who ate the least, and a 20 percent higher risk of developing lung cancer. The risk of esophageal and liver cancer was increased by between 20 and 60 percent.
• Canada confirms 14th case of mad cow disease. Mad cow disease is believed to be spread when cattle eat protein rendered from brains and spines of infected cattle or sheep. The rendered protein was still allowed in pig and poultry feed until July 2007, when regulators, fearing cross-contamination, ordered that brains, spines and other high-risk material from old cattle be removed at slaughter and destroyed.
• Controlling diabetes might be easier than you think with vegan diet.
• Africa courts animal-spread diseases. It is estimated that about 75 per cent of the new diseases that have affected humans over the past 10 years have been caused by pathogens originating from animals. This was the case of the HIV - the virus that causes AIDS, which experts believe jumped the divide from apes to humans.

Lifestyles and Trends

• Bringing an end to food waste. There are people out there that can afford to buy food first-hand, but they would rather live off discarded, yet perfectly edible [mostly vegan] food that would otherwise clog up land fill sites. They are called freegans.
• Answers about the vegan lifestyle in New York (and elsewhere). Sample question: Why are so many omnivores so incredibly hostile towards vegans? Answer: Vegans are culinary gadflies whose very existence sting people into re-examining the morality of eating murdered animals.
• Just right for the UK garden: A mini-cow. Registrations of the most popular breed, the Dexter, have doubled since 2000 and websites are sprouting up offering "the world's most efficient, cutest and tastiest cows." For between £200 and £2,000, people can buy a cow that "stands no taller than a large German shepherd dog, gives 16 pints of milk a day that can be drunk unpasteurised, keeps the grass 'mown' and will be a family pet for years before ending up in the freezer."

Animals

• In a flap over caged hens. A November ballot measure seeking more space for calves raised for veal and breeding pigs could also make California the first U.S. state to ban the housing in small wire cages of egg-laying hens. An undercover investigation in May by Mercy for Animals showed video of rotting hen carcasses in cages with live hens and scrawny hens covered in excrement.
• From battery farm to family pet. Chickens have real characters: they can be very curious and cheeky. They're like little cats and dogs with feathers.

Books and Perspectives

• Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals by Karen Dawn. "After reading her description of how the deli meat got to my Tupperware container, I put off lunch until late in the afternoon . . . With each bite into the ham, I heard the shrieking of pigs in my head. When will the pigs stop screaming, Karen Dawn? When? When the world converts to vegetarianism, she writes in the book. This will happen eventually. She's not militant about this point. She's logical. She's levelheaded. She's funny. That's why her message is so . . . darn . . . persuasive." – Dan Zak of the Washington Post.
• KidLit: Wild Animals in Captivity is a book by Rob Laidlaw, director of Zoocheck Canada.