Do You Want Eggs With That? Highway 1 Closed. Dryer Working! "Prime".

 Ask the FDA to Revise the Egg Safety Rule.

"Through an undercover investigation, the HSUS has collected video footage and photographs documenting the systematic abuse of animals at Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., the nation’s largest egg producer.
Our findings during this five week investigation at Cal-Maine include the following:

• Birds producing eggs for human consumption confined in overcrowded cages with the rotting corpses of other birds.
• Dead hens, trapped under their cages, had died with their heads on the egg conveyor belts exposing passing eggs to the decaying bird.
• Birds trapped by their wings, necks and legs in the thin, rusty wires of the battery cages.
• Birds with severely injured legs, unable to reach food or water.
• Birds suffering from severe, bloody uterine prolapses enduring the pain of other hens in the overcrowded cages stepping on them.
• Eggs covered in feces and blood. "

TAKE ACTION
Please send Dr. Margaret Hamburg of the FDA a message that the cage confinement systems used by the majority of egg producers are a problem that affects the health of the laying hens and increases the risks of Salmonella infection.
Please send a message to the FDA asking them to revise the Egg Safety Rule to protect human health and stop the terrible abuse of these animals -
HERE:   https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=4749
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Conventional Eggs = Factory Farmed Eggs.- No label on the carton. 
Hens are crammed into cages not giving them even enough room to spread their wings.
Imagine a chicken on a piece of 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper.
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Meanwhile, McDonald's Europe is Going 100% Cage-Free
The battery cage photo above is described this way:
"95% of egg laying hens in the United States spend their entire lives in a battery cage like this one. 6-8 birds are confined to a cage this size; each bird having less room than a standard sheet of notebook paper to live her entire life. In these crowded conditions, they are unable even to spread their wings."
This is the type of living conditions that McDonald's board of directors seems to think is appropriate for the chickens that produce the eggs used to make its meals in the U.S.

More at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/mcdonalds-rejects-5-percent-cage-free-eggs-proposal-usa.php
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 "I eat free range eggs. Isn’t that better for the animals, my health and the environment?”
"That couldn’t be further from the truth and Eggland’s Best isn’t going to run a TV commercial showing you the horrid conditions of 99% of all factory farmed animals.  Most people are still confused by package labels."
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"Are you going to trust labels that imply humane treatment when The Times quotes Mitch Head of the United Egg Producers as stating that most cage-free and free-range eggs come from the same farms that produce battery-cage eggs? The industry is delighted that the number of consumers who are willing to pay higher prices for cage-free and free-range eggs is growing." More at: http://prime.peta.org/2010/09/cage-free-doesnt-mean-cruelty-free
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Cage-Free vs. Battery-Cage Eggs

"Cage-free hens are spared several severe cruelties that are inherent to battery cage systems. But it would nevertheless be a mistake to consider cage-free facilities to necessarily be "cruelty-free." Here are some of the more typical sources of animal suffering associated with both types of egg production:

• Both systems typically buy their hens from hatcheries that kill the male chicks upon hatching—more than 200 million each year in the United States alone.
• Both cage and cage-free hens have part of their beaks burned off, a painful mutilation.
• Both cage and cage-free hens are typically slaughtered at less than two years old, far less than half their normal lifespan. They are often transported long distances to slaughter plants with no food or water.
• While the vast majority of the battery and cage-free egg industry no longer uses starvation to force molt the birds, there are battery and cage-free producers alike who still use this practice."
• More at: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/confinement_farm/facts/cage-free_vs_battery-cage.html

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Wouldn't you rather eat something that lived like this:













"It is truly a shame that instead of mimicking nature, humans try to pervert it for their own gain.
Instead of holding the animals in reverence and respect, humans basically put a bar code on them.
It is a shame that the use of words like local don’t necessarily mean clean and humane.
The words free range and cage free don’t necessarily mean the animals are happy and healthy. The words all natural simply don’t mean what we think they should."
More and many comparisons to factory farming at: http://www.downingfamilyfarm.com/sustainability.html
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If you cannot find a farmer to sell you eggs directly, then organic eggs from the store would be your next best option. Refrigeration does allow them to last longer but they lose some of their nutritional value this way.
Also conventional eggs from the store may have taken several weeks or more to get there, and they may have sat around for some time before they were even packed. The “packed-on” date doesn't necessarily mean they were laid that day.

You can look for local sources of humanely raised chicken on any of the following sites:
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/farm_locator
http://www.eatwild.com/
http://www.apppa.org/  
Where to find cruelty free food near you: http://www.apppa.org/producers.htm
http://www.localharvest.org/
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Part of Highway 1 near Big Sur crumbles into the sea; road closed indefinitely

By DONALD MURPHY - Monterey County Herald     Posted: 03/16/2011 10:12:58 PM PDT
Click photo to enlarge

The southbound lane of Highway 1 about 2 miles south of... (Orville Myers/ Special to the Sentinel)
BIG SUR - Highway 1 was closed to traffic about 12 miles south of Carmel on Wednesday after a stretch of the scenic roadway tumbled toward the Pacific Ocean far below.
About 40-feet of the two-lane highway washed out just after 5 p.m. on a curve south of the Rocky Creek Bridge where the highway hugs the Santa Lucia Mountains. All of the southbound lane was gone as was a chunk of the northbound lane. Soil under the northbound lane was reported sliding as late as 6:30 p.m.
The California Highway Patrol closed the southbound lane of the highway at Palo Colorado Road and drivers going north were stopped at the Bixby Creek Bridge.
No one was injured, a CHP dispatcher said. "Nobody went down. No people got hurt," she said.


It was not immediately known how long the coast road would be closed.
"It could be cleaned up in a couple of days, who knows," the dispatcher said.
Caltrans workers posted signs near Rio Road to the north and near Ragged Point and Cambria to the south warning drivers that the highway was closed.
The road was not completely impassible.
Emergency vehicles would be allowed through "at their own risk," the CHP dispatcher said.
For a while after the closure, people were allowed cross the area on foot, but authorities stopped that as soil continued to erode under the roadway. More at: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/news/ci_17630392
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Yesterday:

Jim, the mechanic down the street, (our savior when we are above our capabilities), came here and ran a new wire to the dryer from the breaker box.  To do that, Ray and I had to move several rolls of carpet, and other stuff, stored in that area of the storeroom attic, and unscrew that area of the floor, to expose the ceiling joists of the guest house below. 
Jim was going to go into town to buy the new wire, until I flipped open a trunk up in that attic where I have plenty of 12, 10 and 8 gauge Romax.  We ran the new wire through the ceiling joists, and down into Ray's utility room.  Jim hooked it all up, and voilà, the dryer had heat!  Jim also made it so that the 110v. outlet for the washing machine worked, too.
Ray and I were both pretty beat after doing all that.
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Today:


Prime was still looking for Patches, the adopted foster cat, and as I don't want to run the AC in the grooming room for one cat when I am not grooming, it is time she stayed in the house most of the time.
So I let Prime stay in the house with us last night.  She got up on my bed, and wriggled around wanting me to pet her.  I knew that if I ignored her she would eventually hold still, and she did.  She gets plenty of attention and petting other times, so she must learn that wriggling, pawing and wanting to be petted when on the bed, is a No-No.  Cats can be trained.
I still feed her canned dinner high up in the grooming room or porch, so the dogs won't eat it, and I left the grooming room door open so she could use her box.  That door will have to be closed when we turn the house AC on, so she will have to share Bobcat's box, in my bathroom, then. We will see how Bobcat likes that!

I haven't had a call from Patches' folks, so I assume that she is doing alright, but I still worry about that sensitive little cat.

Lots of interruptions today. 
When Ray's water heater didn't work, Jim came back and hooked up some more wires in the outside breaker box. Now the water heater works!

Then, Roni came by for me to bathe her dog, Big Girl, just as Ray and I were trying to do 'Time'. (Money earned off his rent). So I fed her a sandwich and coffee, while she waited. 

At the same time, the lady that used to have Paco came by, and he wouldn't have anything to do with her!!
She couldn't believe how much weight he has put on.  Little did she know that he is an eating machine, and I really have to make him push his paws away from the table!

She couldn't open the hood to her truck, and neither Ray nor I could, either. She had wrecked the front, so the handle wouldn't pop it open, and we couldn't find the lever underneath either!


Finally, I bathed Big Girl, she thoroughly enjoyed that, and she didn't want to leave here. 
Roni has her on dog food with cornmeal in it, and wonders why Big Girl's skin has got bad again!  She looked so great after I fed her my good dog food when she stayed here.

If you can't afford to buy the right food for a pet, or give it the vet care it needs, you shouldn't have an animal. But Roni manages to smoke three packs of fags a day! (Fag, a British colloquialism for cigarette.)

The weather is lovely, so while we are working, running in and out, and opening and closing doors, Prime and Bobcat are on the porch today.