It was a pleasant surprise to see that fast-food giant Burger King has decided to give preferential treatment to providers of cage-free eggs and cruelty-free pork. It doesn’t take much exposure to the horrors of how animals are raised for food to make even the most carnivorous human take pause. I’ve heard that farmers and those who deal with the animals while they are alive, and while they are being killed for our dinner plates, are (generally speaking) very strongly supportive of more humane ways for these animals to live and die. Of course, those of us walking by the tidy shrink-wrapped packages in the refrigerated section of the local supermarket don’t have to think about this much if we don’t want to. And not all of us have the luxury of choosing to pay more for organic / cruelty-free / cage-free whatever… which is why my hat’s off to BK. More on this here, here, and here. [The last one of these is satire. Image from BK's MySpace page.]

- Philip Ryan, Webmaster