Below, there are resources for travel and cooking. Plus there’s news about PETA, vegan bloggers, and a bit about e coli.

Got any good links to share or new news? Leave a comment!

Veg Travel: As a vegan who has been to Paris twice and never once felt the need to eat animals, I assure you there is plenty of vegetarian food in France despite anyone’s protestations. But now a new book will soon be out called “A Vegetarian in Paris”. The book features “more than 300 restaurants that serve pure vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly fare” and should demonstrate why the Paris Exemption is poorly named. The guidebook offers a grand set of solutions for travelers committed to eating kindly. Read more about the new book here >>

Don’t forget, too, that if you need to find vegan, vegetarian, or veg-friendly eats whilst traveling check out these websites:

• Happy Cow: http://www.happycow.net/
• Veg Guide: http://www.vegguide.org/

Vegan Food: Want a recipe for black bean and beer soup? Sounds like a great idea for the cold winter nights. Here you go >>

Wintertime is cookie time, so here’s a recipe for Pistachio Praline Linzer Cookies >>

And here’s a recipe for curry burgers that look awefully good >>

Vegan Pie in the Sky is now widely available. Pick up a copy today from Amazon and support us at Vegan Soapbox.

Bloggers who quit: Erik Marcus of vegan.com announced “After nearly three years and more than 5000 posts, I’ve decided to pull the plug on daily blogging.” The key here is the daily part. He is still updating his blog, just not as often.

And the blogger at Quarry Girl says “This blog is no longer updated” and cites life as the problem: “i used to have a vegan blog, but life got in the way.” Oh well.

Grass-fed cow flesh: “when it comes to E. coli O157:H7, the advantages of grass-fed beef aren’t so clear. In fact, exploring the connection between grass-fed beef and these dangerous bacteria offers a disturbing lesson in how culinary wisdom becomes foodie dogma and how foodie dogma can turn into a recipe for disaster. Step back from it all and veganism starts to look like the best option.” read more at Eating Plants >>

PETA stuff: “For the second consecutive year, Northwestern University has been selected by peta2, an affiliate of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as the most vegan-friendly college in the small U.S. schools category.” read more here >>

“Just in time for the holiday season, [PETA] will be showcasing the top 20 vegetarians of all-time by putting their faces on postage stamps.” read more at Ecorazzi >>

Want to share a good vegan website? Got a news story that needs attention? Leave a comment!

So, when I read Dan Cudahy’s blog post about Eating Animals where he claims that the book “suggests, if not states explicitly, that we should treat some species (like dogs and cats) better than other species (like pigs and chickens)” it got my hackles up. I’m half-way through Eating Animals and this particular criticism simply isn’t valid.

Here is a quote from the book that implicitly compares dogs to pigs on page 157. It’s an implied anti-speciesist argument:

“Like dog or cat breeds, each pig breed has certain traits associated with it: some traits matter more to the producer, like the ever-important rate of feed conversion; some matter more to the consumer, like how lean or fat marbled the animal’s muscle is; and some matter more to the pig, like susceptibility to anxiety or painful leg problems.  Since the traits that matter to the farmer, consumer, and pig are not at all the same, it regularly happens that farmers breed animals that suffer more acutely because their bodies also display characteristics that the industry and consumers demand. If you have ever met a purebred German shepherd, you might have noticed that when the dog is standing, its rear is closer to the ground than its front, so that it always appears to be crouching or gazing up aggressively. This ‘look’ was seen as desirable by breeders and was selected for over generations by breeding animals with shorter rear legs. As a result, German shepherds – even of the best pedigrees – now suffer disproportionately from hip dysplasia, a painful genetic condition that ultimately forces many owners either to condemn their companions to suffering, euthanize them, or spend thousands on surgery. For nearly all farmed animals, regardless of the conditions they are given to live in – ‘free-range,’ ‘free-roaming,’ ‘organic’ – their design destines them for pain. The factory farm, which allows ranchers to make sickly animals highly profitable through the use of antibiotics, other pharmaceuticals, and highly controlled confinement, has created new, sometimes monstrous creatures.”

More than that, an entire chapter (2) is dedicated to how unreasonable is the “species barrier” (page 75), how unjust, how wrong.

It may be tempting for some vegan thinkers to get hung up on the use of words like “it” or “owner,” – as if individual words matter more than their collective meaning – but the reality is, this book will change the way many people think. This book will compel them to change their diets and change their thoughts about animals.

I chose the above quote for a reason: I think it’s compelling. It makes a strong case, albeit in a slightly subtle way, that forcing animals to live, breed, and die according to our unreasonable whims is wrong. It’s “painful,” it’s “monstrous,” and it’s not in the animals’ interests.

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*For the record, I’ve been to Paris twice and I loved it. If you go, do your research first, though, because vegan options can be a little tricky.