A type of salmonella found in eggs is turning up more often in chicken meat and needs to be reduced, according to the (U.S.) Agriculture Department. From 2000 through 2005, there was a fourfold increase in positive test results for salmonella enteritidis on chicken carcasses. Salmonella sickens at least 40,000 people and kills about 600 every year in the United States.

It used to be that eggs got contaminated with salmonella on the outside, from contact with fecal bacteria. But in recent years, the salmonella enteritidis strain has been found inside intact, disinfected, grade A eggs. This type of germ contaminates eggs inside a hen's ovaries, before shells are even formed. Now the germ is turning up in broiler chickens, the kind used for meat, according to research by the Agriculture Department published in the December issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scientists have discovered a new strain of bird flu that appears to sidestep current vaccines. It's infecting people as well as poultry in Asia, and some researchers fear its evolution may have been steered by the vaccination programs designed to protect poultry from earlier types of the H5N1 flu. While the new virus has infected people, there is no evidence that it can pass easily from person to person, Webster said. However, he added, "this virus is continuing to drift." Dr. Michael L. Perdue, of the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Program in Zurich, Switzerland, said the new variant doesn't indicate any increased risk for people "other than the fact it seems to be pretty widespread."

The H5N1 flu has devastated poultry in China and several other southeast Asian countries and also has claimed more than 150 human lives. Most of the people affected lived close to flocks of chickens or other poultry. Public health authorities fear that the virus will mutate into a form that can spread easily among people, raising the potential for a worldwide pandemic like the one that killed millions in 1918.

If you're looking for a good reason to go vegetarian, this may be it. Scientists have warned that the world's edible fish and shellfish stocks could collapse within 40 years. An international team of researchers discovered that 29 percent of fish stocks have sunk to, and even below, 10 percent of their 1950 levels. If fishing practices are not reformed all stocks will decline by 90 percent before 2048.

Report co-author Nicola Beaumont of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (U.K.) warns: "We must take action now. If we leave this for 10 or 20 years we will reach the point of no recovery for fisheries." The team's report was published in Science. Andrew Sugden, the journal's international managing editor, called for "international intervention." He told reporters: "All services that the oceans and seas provide for mankind will be damaged or gone. If this bio-diversity goes it is irreplaceable. Every species matters when it comes to the ocean's ability to repair itself." Consumers also have the power to make a difference by buying less fish from commercial enterprises that fail to face up to this issue.

Iceland and a few other fishing nations [including Canada] have successfully undermined a three-year international effort to place a moratorium on destructive deep-sea trawling. Environmentalists say that the agreement reached at a United Nations meeting [November 23] puts the commercial interests of a few hundred trawlers from a handful of nations ahead of the international community and ignores the advice of the scientific community. "Iceland refused to endorse any measures on the unregulated high seas," said Susanna Fuller, a marine biologist with Canada's Ecology Action Centre. Australia and other nations were extremely angry at Iceland's willingness to sacrifice vital fish habitat in the high seas for its short-term fishing interests.

Scientific evidence of the need to halt unregulated deep-sea or bottom trawling is overwhelming. Trawlers literally drag a large net equipped with steel rollers weighing thousands of kilograms along the bottom of the deep sea, scooping up everything in their 100m-wide paths. Everything - including cold-water corals that have taken thousands of years to grow, endangered and unknown deep-water fish and other sea creatures - is hauled to the surface and then thrown over the side as garbage. Conservationists are calling on countries that supported the moratorium to set up a global network of marine parks and reserves. "Something has to happen in the future to protect habitat or we'll simply run out of fish," Fuller said.

Vegetarian alternatives to traditional holiday favorites are becoming increasingly popular and profitable. Turtle Island Foods is celebrating the sale of its 1 millionth Tofurky roast since the product was hatched in 1995. "At first, retailers didn't believe anyone was crazy enough to make a whole Tofurky roast for Thanksgiving," recalls Seth Tibbott, founder of Turtle Island Foods. "The first one served eight and cost $32. Stores would sell one per season at first, then five the next year." Today, the company is turning a robust profit and expects $10 million in sales in 2006, despite dramatically lowering the cost of Tofurkys over the years.

And Turtle Island Foods isn't the only happy player at the table. For businesses manufacturing vegan and vegetarian versions of dairy- and meat-based products, the outlook is pretty much all good. In the U.S., sales of products "positioned as analogs to meat and dairy products" grew 63.5% between 2000 and 2005 ... in the 12-month period ended in January, 2006, sales of frozen and refrigerated meat substitutes alone increased 35.9%. To look at the evidence, one might think the percentage of U.S. vegetarians is climbing steeply. Not true, say industry watchers. "The phenomenon lies in the number of meat eaters who are choosing to eat vegetarian foods more often - but not exclusively," according to Balzer.

Black pudding is about as carnivorous as it gets - fresh pig's blood and ox intestines go into a Lancashire speciality which was narrowly edged out by tripe and jellied eels in a recent survey of the dishes which the British find least palatable. But in an attempt to overhaul the pudding's image, one of its most successful producers has done the unthinkable - and produced a vegetarian version.

The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company's decision has been greeted by howls of protest in Bury, the home of the black pudding. "What is the world coming to?" asked the local writer Jonathan Schofield. "A black pudding without pig's blood? Big wrong." Customers seem to feel differently. First impressions of the "V Pud", as the veggie version is known, seem so positive that the producers have just earned their first contract with a supermarket, Booths. The Vegetarian Society has also given a ringing endorsement.

Farm Sanctuary recently went undercover at one of the largest U.S. turkey breeding facilities. Investigators obtained rare photos and other documentation revealing rampant callousness and cruelty. Like the livestock and chicken industry, turkey "growers" have increased the efficiency of producing turkey meat by manipulating every aspect of the animals' lives. To appease consumer demand for white meat, turkeys are anatomically manipulated to be so large breasted and heavy they are incapable of breeding without human intervention. Workers are required to manually manipulate the genitalia of male turkeys (toms) and then forcibly inseminate female turkeys (hens) - a form of legalized bestiality and rape in animal agriculture.

Breeding toms languish for roughly one year in dark crowded pens and are 'milked' once or twice a week. We documented a worker collecting semen. The worker grabbed each turkey and forcefully restricted his legs in a clamp. Using a straw attached to a suction hose, he collected semen then tossed the bird to the floor so he could grab the next and repeat the process. Between 'milking' sessions, 16 to 17 male turkeys are crammed into five and a half square feet wire pens. Semen is forced into hens in an assembly line fashion, [their] legs clamped into metal forceps. The hens suffer during the process and try to resist. We were told that young hens are curious and friendly with employees "until the first couple [of times] - and then they run from you..." When asked about the state of the turkey business, an industry representative bragged, "It's thriving ... The more people that eat turkey the better we are."

This year a friend and I visited a local, organic farm with a good reputation for environmental and humane standards. Their 1,000 birds are raised in large outdoor hoop-houses with green pasture surrounding. Their feed is organically grown on the farm and hangs from accessible feeders. They even slaughter the birds right on the farm, avoiding transport to a large slaughterhouse facility. Yet even under "better than average" conditions, the turkeys suffer. Most people ordering organic birds assume they are not genetically bred for weight gain. On the contrary, at about 18 weeks, organic turkeys become so obese their legs cannot handle the weight of their bodies. Some of the turkeys we saw were stuck in the straw, unable to get up, and struggling to make it to food and water. While others, already dead, were being removed.

In the slaughter building the birds are "gently" pushed into wall mounted funnels head first and upside down. With their heads hanging below an opening at the base of the funnel, the "harvester" slices the major arteries on the bird's neck. A bucket catches the blood below. In the words of the harvester, "I slice with a clean hundred dollar surgical knife. I am careful not to cut the airway. We need them alive to drain all the blood out or it gets too messy in the next step. It is very fast. It only takes two minutes." I stood there struck by his words. I recently [asked] people to guess how long a minute is. Everyone closed their eyes. I told the participants to open their eyes and raise their hands when they thought a minute was up. Almost everyone had their eyes open and hands raised in about 30 seconds. A minute is a long time. Two minutes of hanging upside down with your major arteries sliced open and bleeding is a really long time.