Here's what Monica Chen of New Roots (formerly Factory Farm Awareness)  says at the beginning of letter going out:

Did you know that factory farms are exempt from the Clean Air Act? This means they’re allowed to emit hydrogen sulfide and ammonia at levels higher than the EPA permits for the oil and gas industry.

This came in when I was writing a letter to the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle:

There's a connection between Peter Hartlaub's article on the fire station decoration contest and Patti Breitman's letter to the editor of  December 24th.  Both mention the manger scene, which Peter Hartlaub reports was created by one fire station between 1948 and 1950 when it "borrowed live animals on route to a local slaughterhouse and used them in a manger scene."  Patti Breitman pleads for showing concern for the animals at peace in the manger scene by abstaining from eating them, an act of kindness in an era when cats and dogs are part of our family but we treat farm animals like insensate beings and accept their suffering  on route to our stomachs.  I want to know more about the incident with the animals temporarily rescued from slaughter.  How did they adjust to the manger scene?  What was their ultimate fate?  I can't find anything online.  Could Peter Hartlaub dig into the archives and do a follow-up?

I heard this read by Peter Singer himself (I think).  I ordered 5 copies to give to different people.

Yesterday it occurred to me to write to him and share my "Thanksgiving Day with Doctored Seuss."

Dear Peter Singer,

I heard you reading your book Consider the Turkey and ordered 5 print copies to give to friends.

Thank you for writing that book and for including recipes.   

Several years ago, I wrote a short story I'd like to share with you. Even though I wrote it before reading your book, your book and my story are closely related!  In fact, I mention the pardoning of a turkey on the first page!

I'm attaching it, but now I want to write a stanza in your honor.  I'll get this off to you, and then I'll add to it!

Thank you for all you do!

 https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/388499/wicked-elphaba-animal-rights-dillamond 

Did you know that Elphaba was an animal rights activist?

Lion has finally opened in the space where the Fuji Restaurant burned down in April 2022.  Christiane and I went together for the first time on November 27th, a week after its "soft opening."  

Here's what Christiane wrote, when we were given a little post it along with the tab.  

 

It was good to have a West Coast family Thanksgiving at Millennium, which serves no animals or animals products!  Days before I'd read Peter Singer's Consider the Turkey.

 

Leslie Simon treated me to lunch at a Vietnamese cafe I'd been wanting to try--Mong Thu on Hyde Street near Eddy. It was written up in the SF San Francisco Chronicle. Here's a paragraph that's really touching: "Even the name of the restaurant is a nod to the importance of family. Kim considered each of her four daughters’ names before deciding that her third-born’s was the best suited for a cafe. Five years later, Mộng Thu was killed in a car accident shortly before her high school graduation. Kim is thankful that every morning when she comes to work, she gets to see her daughter’s name on that hand-painted sign."

https://www.sfchronicle.com/.../mong-thu-cafe-vietnamese...

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  An Immense World covers human beings, spiders, octopi, ants, snakes--just about all life you can imagine, but I'm not sure that it covers the sentient beings in factory farms.  Today I plan to go to West Portal and find the print book.  I've been reading with my ears.  

If he doesn't consider factory farmed animals, is that because we've normalized thinking of them only as meat, eggs, and dairy?  Does he not want to study caged animals because he's interested in what's natural and knows that caged animals and animals otherwise used as food can't follow their instincts?

Tonight I was listening to the chapter on pain.  It appears that regardless of how animals behave or react, there will always be people who say they can't feel pain--not the way that we human beings do.  I'm afraid there are still people who think that some human beings don't feel pain the way we do, that they don't value life, their lives don't mean as much as ours do.