CNN is carrying the story of a bacteria recovered from deep drilling in Alaska that was thawed out and found to be alive. The age of the ice it was found in is estimated at 30,000 years. CNN is running the story from a “Possibility of life on Mars” angle, but what about this angle: do you think we would be immune to disease causing bacteria from 30,000 years ago released due to global warming?

Something to think about.

“The organism froze on Earth some 30,000 years ago, and was apparently alive all that time and started swimming as soon as it thawed, said Richard Hoover from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The life form — a bacterium dubbed Carnobacterium pleistocenium — probably flourished in the Pleistocene Age, along with woolly mammoths and saber-tooth tigers, said Hoover.

He discovered the bacterium near the town of Fox, Alaska, in a tunnel drilled through permafrost — a mix of permanently frozen ice, soil and rock — that is kept at a constant temperature of 24.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 4 degrees Celcius).

“When they cut into the Fox tunnel, they actually cut through Pleistocene ice wedges, which are similar to structures that we see on Mars,” Hoover said in a telephone interview.

The ice wedges contained a golden-brown layer about a half-yard (half-meter) thick, and this layer contained a group of microscopic brownish bacteria, Hoover said.

When he looked at a small sample of this bacteria-laden ice under a microscope, Hoover said, “These bacteria that had just thawed out of the ice … were swimming around. The instant the ice melted, they started swimming. They were alive … but they had been frozen for over 30,000 years.”

CNN.com - New organism�raises Mars questions - Feb 23, 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer, climate experts have said.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well under way, Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

“The real place to look is in the ocean,” Barnett told a news conference.
(more…)

February 15, 2005 | Contact: Paul Turner | Colombo Cell: (+94) 77 302-0495 | DC Office: (301) 987-5883

Is there enough for the other children?

Today I talked with the director of Bhaktivedanta Children’s Home, Nandarani, about some of the children that come to her care. She told me a story of three children, all from the same family.

Apparently, they had lost their home because of the tsunami and their father had been injured and was unable to support the family. Out of desperation, their mother was willing to make the greatest sacrifice, giving her children over to the Home. She simply could not care for them properly.

Nandarani (left) explained that when they first sat down for a meal at the Home, the children voiced concern that there would be enough food the other children. She told me that the children had earlier spoken to her of times when the food ration line near their previous home would run out, and they along with others had to go without. Never before had they experienced a time when they could eat as much as they liked!

I asked Nandarani, did they cry when their mother left them here?" "No," she said, with a smile of reassurance. "None of the children cry. Many are coming from a hopeless situation — no bed to sleep on, not enough food, poor health, and in many cases no parents at all. They are very happy when they learn that the Bhaktivedanta Children’ Home will be their new home."

(more…)

Remote farms and temples in India are not Robert Lantos’ usual stomping grounds.

More typical haunts for the multi-millionaire Toronto film producer would be the Caribbean island of St. Bart’s, Bel Air, or his vacation home in Muskoka.

But Lantos, who has produced such films as The Sweet Hereafter, Sunshine and the recently Oscar-nominated Being Julia, is currently bumping along pot-holed tracks between Delhi, Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal because his first cousin, the Maharaja Sivarama Swami, asked him to.

As one of the most senior members of the Hare Krishna movement, Sivarama Swami (born Peter Letia) is revered by Krishna followers, in much the same way aspiring actors in this country bow to Lantos.

Recently, the state-owned Hungarian TV network approached the cousins to see if they would agree to be followed on a two-week trek to various Krishna temples throughout India.

“He’s been asking me for years to come visit him,” said Lantos, who was reluctant to talk about the trip. “Then I figured what the hell? It could be fascinating,” he said in an interview just before he hopped on a plane from Toronto to Delhi. He was late getting organized and was frantically trying to arrange for the mandatory shots for malaria, cholera and meningitis.

Both men are well known in their native Budapest, where they were born in 1949 to Holocaust survivors who then emigrated to Montreal. Lantos now calls Toronto home. His cousin lives in England, India and Hungary, a country that recognizes Krishna as an official religion.

The two spent summers and family holidays together in their youth.

When they were in their twenties, Sivarama Swami found Lord Krishna, gave up sex, and devoted his life to the Hindu faith. Lantos found the movies, (forget a vow of chastity), and founded Alliance Communications, which has grown into Canada’s largest film and entertainment company.

Their career paths are polar opposites. But neither man has lived a life that can be called commonplace or dull. In the 1970s, Sivarama Swami discovered the teachings of Srila Prabhupada’s and became an initiated disciple. Over the years, he has opened and managed temples in the United Kingdom, in India and his native Hungary. That’s where the Vraja Dhama farm community project is situated, in what the locals call, “Krishna Valley” — 450 acres of prime land, and a 1,000-square-metre temple.

Sivarama Swami, who semi-retired a few years ago, has also written several books about Krishna consciousness.

As Lantos noted, his cousin got out of his line of work about the same time that he (Lantos) merged Alliance with his one-time arch-rival, Atlantis Communications Inc. “It had been his life’s work, as Alliance had been mine.”

Lantos now runs a film production company, Serendipity Point Films in Toronto. Over the past 25 years, he’s worked with acclaimed directors such as Istvan Szabo (Sunshine and Being Julia. The latter has garnered Annette Bening a nomination for best actress), David Cronenberg (Crash), Norman Jewison (The Statement), Denys Arcand (Stardom), and Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and, currently in post-production, Where the Truth Lies, starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon).

Lantos and his cousin (their mothers, who are sisters, live together in Toronto) make an odd couple. The two are now visiting spiritual hot spots like Vrindavana (where Lord Krishna was born) and Puri (another sacred place). There are no hotels. “You couldn’t even put a single star on these places,” quipped one Lantos intimate.

All in all, the trip should make for fascinating television.

The journey will be turned into a one-hour documentary slated to air the end of March in Hungary. Lantos said he had no expectations, and no clue really what to expect. “My cousin’s extremely well known in these parts. People fall at his feet. It should be interesting,” he said.

But he was emphatic he would not be sporting the traditional Hare Krishna gear, the flowing robes and scarves. “I won’t be wearing a skirt,” said Lantos. “I’ll keep my pants on.”

When the two men part company in a week, Sivarama Swami will go back to Hungary, to his books, chanting, and statues of Buddha.

Lantos, on the other hand, will catch a flight from Delhi to Los Angeles where he rents a house. He’ll stay there until the Academy Awards on Feb. 27.

Given Being Julia’s nomination, he’s sure to have good seats. And maybe a statue of his own to contemplate — an Oscar.

The Globe and Mail: Movie mogul joins maharajah on the road to enlightenment

CHACALTAYA GLACIER, Bolivia (AP) — Up and down the icy spine of South America, the glaciers are melting, the white mantle of the Andes Mountains washing away at an ever faster rate.

“Look. You can see. Chacaltaya has split in two,” scientist Edson Ramirez said as he led a visitor up toward a once-grand ice flow high in the thin air of the Bolivian cordillera.
(more…)

The risks of global warming are “more serious than previously thought”, concluded a major international climate conference on Thursday.

“Major investment is needed now in both mitigation and adaptation,” stresses the preliminary report, summarising results presented at the conference, called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, in Exeter, UK.

The impacts of global warming discussed at the meeting sounded like a roll call of disasters. Topics ranged from the collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica to the irreversible melting of the Greenland ice caps; from droughts in Africa to floods in Japan. And fears were also raised over the rapidly changing current-patterns in acidifying ocean .

But the scientists shied away from stating that such climate change was “dangerous”. “That’s a value judgement to be made by policy makers,” said Bert Metz, from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and one of the report’s authors.

To help policy makers decide where to draw the danger line, the report echoed some researchers’ calls to establish “critical thresholds that we should aim not to cross”.

For example, the report drew attention to the results of Jason Lowe, from the Hadley Centre in Exeter. He says that local warming of more than 2.7�C, associated with global warming of only 1.5�C, could trigger Greenland’s ice sheet to start contracting.
Dramatic cuts

Collating results from published studies indicated that damage increases as the world warms by between 1�C and 3�C, while serious risk of large scale damage becomes likely above 3�C, the report said. This lends some support to the European Union’s target of keeping global warming to under 2�C by 2050. Other presentations at the meeting suggested that only with dramatic emissions cuts can such a goal be achieved.

The report also warned that more research was needed into the effects climate change could have on the frequency of extreme natural events. It cited the European heat wave of 2003 - during which thousands of people died - as an example of an extreme event made more likely by global warming.

The last substantial review of climate change was conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001. But now “there is greater clarity and reduced uncertainty about the impacts of climate change”, says the new report.

The meeting was opened by Margaret Beckett, the UK’s Secretary of State for the Environment, who said on Thursday: “I think this conference will be seen as a turning point in the perception of climate change. It underlines the need for the international community to take urgent action to combat climate change.”

New Scientist Breaking News - Alarm bells ring louder over climate change

February 4, 2005 | Contact: Paul Turner | Colombo Phone: (+94) 77 302-0495 | DC Office: (301) 987-5883

Hungarian Prime Minister’s Daughter Praises FFL

Saturday, January 29 — The daughter of the former Hungarian Prime Minister, and national celebrity, Ms. Anita Tornoczky, arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka to witness the tsunami relief efforts partly funded by the Hungarian Government’s $22,000 (USD) donation recently awarded to Food for Life. Ms. Tornoczky hosts a popular television special-interest program that airs every month in Hungary. She is also a fashion model and recently appeared on the cover of popular IS Magazine.

Joining Ms. Tornoczky was her "Happy Productions" television crew and ISKCON swami, Sivarama Maharaja. Ms. Tornoczky plans to use the footage for a special presentation on Food for Life’s humanitarian services. The 30-minute documentary will air in April.

Anita Tornoczky (left) helping out with the cooking.

(more…)

The massive west Antarctic ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists warned on Tuesday.

Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world’s ice, and the loss of any significant part of it would cause a substantial sea level rise. Scientists used to view Antarctica as a “slumbering giant”, said Chris Rapley, from the British Antarctic Survey, but now he sees it as an “awakened giant”.

Rapley presented measurements of the ice sheet at a major climate conference in Exeter, UK. Glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, which protrudes from the continent to the north, were already known to be retreating. But the data Rapley presented show that glaciers within the much larger west Antarctic Ice sheet are also starting to disappear.

If the ice on the peninsula melts entirely it will raise global sea levels by 0.3 metres, and the west Antarctic ice sheet contains enough water to contribute metres more. The last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2001, said that collapse of this ice sheet was unlikely during the 21st century. That may now need to be reassessed, Rapley warned.
Cork from a bottle

Changes on the peninsula, where 75% of the 400 mountain glaciers are in retreat, have provided new insights into the ways that ice sheets may disintegrate.

In March 2002, a huge floating ice shelf known as Larsen B shattered into icebergs. This turned out to have an effect akin to pulling a cork from a bottle. With Larsen B no longer impeding movement, the ice floes that fed the shelf began moving faster towards the sea and started to thin. The finding took scientists by surprise when revealed in September 2004 and now modellers are now working to include such mechanisms in their predictions.

Climate records derived from the analysis of sediments show that ice shelves off the peninsula have been absent in several earlier eras, when natural variability warmed the world. But the break-up is affecting ice closer to the pole than ever recorded, said Rapley. “It’s like the Heineken effect,” he said, referring to the beer adverts that claim Heineken “reaches the parts other beers cannot reach”.

Indications that climate change may be affecting the west Antarctic ice sheet comes from three glaciers, including Pine Island and Thwaites. Data reveal they are losing more ice - mainly through the calving of icebergs - than is being replaced by snowfall. According to a preliminary analysis, the difference between the mass lost and mass replaced is about 60%.

Whether the loss of mass by the glaciers is due to natural variation or is caused by human-influenced warming of the oceans is not known for sure. Scientists are now making more field measurements to assess the causes, but warming is a likely culprit, said Rapley: “The fact that three of them are simultaneously accelerating suggests that is the case.” The melting of these three glaciers alone is contributing an estimated 0.24 millimetres per year to sea level.

New Scientist Breaking News - Antarctic ice sheet is an ‘awakened giant’

Here is a great resource for Vedic information on sex. From the culture that brought you the Kama Sutra we present: the seX files - the truth is right here!

I had an brief moment’s epiphany the other day while on a bus downtown. I was looking out at all the people and how they were dressed, and I got a sudden realization about how the culture we live in influences our perception of ourselves. I got this by considering how a person from a hundred years ago would view the scene, and then contrasting this with how people today view the scene.

Just as a fish living immersed in water is unaware of the medium that he is floating in, we are also largely unaware of the cultural setting that we are in, and how this influences how we see things and how we construct our values. Living in several different countries and cultures over the past four years has really brought this home to me in a very personal way. Things that would have been considered normal between people in New Zealand became a source of aggravation and misunderstanding in Peru. Rather than holding on to my own comfortable culturally constructed identity I was forced to see that part of myself as something culturally constructed and move on. Without being placed in that situation, however, I may never have gotten that realization.

In Sanskrit this is described in the following aphorism: atmavan manyate jagat - “Everyone sees in the world the reflection of their own mind”; and that mind is to a very significant degree influenced by processes of socialization and enculturation. Just as a frog placed into a pot of water that is gradually warmed up does not perceive the change taking place, we do not perceive the subtle but powerful force of the culture we are soaking in and its effect on our values.
(more…)

Record low temperatures over the North Pole are thinning the protective ozone layer, a condition which could affect human health in northern countries and even central European nations, the European Union warned Monday.

“Large ozone losses are expected to occur if the cold conditions persist,” said European Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potocnik.

CNN.com - Ozone layer over Arctic ‘thinning’ - Jan 31, 2005

Global warming is approaching the critical point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea-levels would be irreversible, an international climate change task force warned Monday.

According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius above the level in 1750 — the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

Beyond a 2 degrees rise, “the risks to human societies and ecosystems grow significantly” the report said, adding there would be a risk of “abrupt, accelerated, or runaway climate change.”

It warned of “climatic tipping points” such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down.

No accurate temperature readings were available for 1750, the report said, but since 1860, global average temperature had risen by 0.8 percent to 15 degrees Celsius.

The two degrees rise could be avoided by keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per million (ppm). Current concentrations of 379 ppm “are likely to rise above 400 ppm in coming decades and could rise far higher under a business-as-usual scenario,” the report warned.

Read CNN’s coverage: CNN.com - Report: Global warming approaching critical point - Jan 24, 2005

Download the report itself here

Reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka

Serving Food "Military-style"

On Saturday we traveled down South to meet our food relief team in Matara. On the way we witnessed the incredible scale of the destruction as literally hundreds of miles of coastlines was wiped out. At one point we stopped to view a train that had been hit by the wave. As I surveyed the area I came across hundreds of personal items, including a child’s shoe. Nothing more needs to said.

Our team in Matara have been cooperating with the Sri Lankan military to provide hot meals to various refugee camps in the area. The people down here have a very particular taste — they love chilies, salt and loads of rice cooked a very particular way. So our team made the adjustments and began serving thousands of meals daily. The other unique feature of this program was how the meals were served. Rather then sit everyone down or have everyone line up in front of our pots, the local soldiers and some villagers helped us to scoop the rice, dhal and vegetable curry into plastic wrap and then package them with newspaper.

Major General Kulatunga told me, "this is military style." And I must say it was very efficient under the circumstances. The meals stayed hot for a long time while we traveled to each refugee camp to distribute them.

Food for Life Relief Coordinator, Indradyumna Swami (Maharaja) meets with Major General Kulatunga in Matara.

Afterwards we gave out Food for Life Volunteer T-shirts to all the children that helped us. Talk about enthusiasm, the kids swarmed us like a Rugby scrum pleading for one of our bright yellow t-shirts.

The next day the military suggested we move our operations to more needy areas on the island. We had to agree, it was becoming clear now that the military had done an excellent job of providing food for these camps. Food for Life was instrumental in making sure no one went hungry during the early stages of the relief, but it was time now to move on. Our team packed up, loaded the truck with our rice and headed back to Colombo. Next stop, Batticaloa, on the far east side of the Island and one of the hardest hit areas, where we will join our other relief team.

Since the beginning days of the Tsunami relief, Food for Life has been operating in the East in the main port of Trincomalee Our teams continues to provide much needed food and counseling in this area, and soon our team from the South will join them in the nearby city of Batticaloa. We expect to also close down these operations in one month as the situation continues to normalize and go from relief to reconstruction.

(more…)

A Democratic Australian Senator linked to last week’s commentary on the Lamb ad, and included a link to an article on Surgical Mutilation of animals.

The article discusses, among other things, the practice of “mulesing”, or mutilation of a lamb to prevent it from getting fly strike. Fly strike kills an estimated 3 million sheep a year in Australia. Mulesling involves slicing flesh off the hindquarters of a lamb so that it grows back as scar tissue, without the wrinkles that provide a place for flies to lay maggots.

In the article the authors mention other methods of prevention that have been developed, including breeding for sheep without wrinkles in the breech area, vaccination to increase sheep immunity to strike, chemical applications to kill the wool follicles in the breech area, biological and other control of blow flies, and the traditional methods of applied chemicals to repel flies; but how about this for a radical concept: What about stopping the industrialized wholesale slaughter of animals for meat?

Previously a shepherd would look after his flock. That phrase still carries with it a powerful evocation of pastoral care and concern. He would tend to each one and make sure that it was clean and healthy. Today huge stations run by a few people and some machinery churn animals out for slaughter in an impersonal fashion.

Previously people would mainly get wool from their sheep and only occasionally, and in some cases never, eat them. Today people eat sheep all the time without even thinking about it - simply going into the supermarket and buying a slickly wrapped package, taking it home and popping it in the microwave or the oven is all it takes. If eating Lamb is what being Australian is all about, then this is all part of it. Buying that lamb and cooking it up is the direct cause of all this suffering.

All the methods mentioned by the article’s author are expensive and complicated, involving further industrial processing with attendant resource depletion and pollution. Sure you can swallow a spider to catch a fly, but why not simply not swallow the fly to begin with?

Animals Australia federation of animal welfare and animal rights :: Surgical Mutilations

The nuclear family - its majority status long under threat from social change - has finally fallen to less than half of all Australian households.

While still the most common household type, the traditional mix of parents and at least one child is now only 47per cent - or 2.3million - of all households, an annual snapshot of the nation reveals.

NEWS.com.au | Mum, dad and kids the new minority (January 22, 2005)

See also this earlier media summary presenting sociological trends.

Much to their surprise, scientists have found that less sunlight has been reaching the earth’s surface in recent decades. The sun isn’t going dark; rather clouds, air pollution and aerosols are getting in the way. Researchers are learning that the phenomenon can interact with global warming in ways that had not been appreciated.

“This is something that people haven’t been aware of,” says Shabtai Cohen of the Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences in Bet Dagan, Israel. “And it’s taken a long time to gain supporters in the scientific world.” Cohen’s colleague Gerald Stanhill first published his solar dimming results 15 years ago.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: The Darkening Earth — [ CLIMATE ] — Less sun at the Earth’s surface complicates climate models

Increased flows of Russian rivers into the Arctic Ocean are due to man-made greenhouse gases and might indicate changing global rainfall patterns, according to a report by leading British climate scientists.

The team at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research - part of the British Meteorological Office - said computer models showed that the cause was human activity and predicted that things would get worse. …

It comes just four weeks before the Kyoto climate change treaty enters into force, aimed at curbing the emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Critics say the treaty is too late and inadequate to tackle the looming global climate crisis.

They note the world’s worst polluter, the United States, has refused to sign up arguing human activities do not contribute to climate change which is a natural phenomenon.

Read the full article: here

Soot mostly from diesel engines is blocking snow and ice from reflecting sunlight, which is contributing to “near worldwide melting of ice” and as much as a quarter of all observed global warming, top NASA scientists say.

The findings about the snow and ice albedos - their power to reflect light falling on the surface - raise new questions about human-caused climate change from the Arctic to the Alps.

“We suggest that soot is a more all-around ‘bad actor’ than has been appreciated” NASA scientists James Hansen and Larissa Nazarenko wrote in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
MSNBC - Scientists: Diesel soot abets global warming

Date: January 20, 2005 | Contact: Paul Turner | Phone: (+1) 301 987-5883

Reporting from Colombo, Sri Lanka

I arrived in Colombo on Thursday, after an exhaustive plane trip and many days frantically trying to tie up loose ends in Washington DC. It is a big sacrifice for me and my family, but I feel impelled to oversee the relief efforts in Sri Lanka and to make certain that your kind donations are properly utilized.

Mr. Mahakarta Das (left), the director of Hare Krishna Food for Life in Sri Lanka, greeted me at the airport and immediately took me to observe the orphanage that his wife, Nandarani (right) manages.

The children looked very happy and healthy, with beaming smiles as they crowded around the door to greet me. Mahakarta showed me the new construction taking place which will provide more facility to the 80 children presently residing at the orphanage and the many more that will come in the near future.

Caring for the Children of the Tsunami

Immediately after the disaster occurred in Sri Lanka, our local Food for Life representative, Mr. Mahakarta Das, started distributing hot meals to the victims. But since he was already being overwhelmed with an increase in needy children to his orphanage, he requested Food for Life Global in Washington D.C. to coordinate the distribution of food in the affected areas.

(more…)

Check out this blog entry by Bhakticandrika. It’s a report (text in Spanish, but lots of pretty pictures) on the recent concert performed by the South America Bus Tour (great website by Bhakticandrika) in Barranco, a bohemian suburb of Lima, Peru. This morning one devotee MSN’d me from Cuzco, high in the Andean mountains, where the bus party is now. The bus party has 54 devotees in it and they went through the streets of Cuzco dancing and chanting today. The mayor of Cuzco is vegetarian (watch out Meat Board - there’s another one!), and very favorable to the Hare Krishna movement.

“First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi

Read about the ad here.

I think it’s great. It’s funny - and contrary to the stereotype being portrayed in this ad and others by the Meat Board, vegetarians are not sickly, whiny, politically correct, uptight people. I can certainly appreciate a joke and laugh along with it. I can appreciate a good send up. I’m also a big fan of right wing rhetoric, which is a send-up of itself.

It’s witty. It plays on stereotypes, taking one aspect and exaggerating it, both in terms of the “Aussie bloke” position, and also the “left wing hippy vegetarian” position.

That’s not why I think it’s great, however. The reason I think its great is that from a strategic viewpoint it clearly demonstrates the progress that we are making. We are now defining the agenda. As Kurma mentioned to me last year, advertising meat was unthinkable twenty years ago. It’s not so unthinkable now. It represents a desperate rear guard action. As Kekovich says in the ad: “I’m sickened by the creeping tide of un-Australianism eroding our great traditions.”

Advertising to tell people to eat meat twenty years ago was as unthinkable as advertising to tell them to drink water. It’s just “what you did”. Not anymore. The Meat Board has obviously identified a significant threat in the rise of the vegetarian diet, and has analyzed the situation in order to formulate a response. This ad, and the other “dancing butchers” ad (which clearly mimicks the Hare Krishna devotees) are part of that strategic response. They are on the back foot. They advertise, but they are forced to address our issues - about health, about vegetarianism, about Hare Krishna. The meat industry has a competitor, and they are worried.

The funny thing about these ads is that they have a polarising effect, and probably even a negative one from the perspective of the Meat Board and their objectives. By reinforcing one stereotype in the ad they also reinforce another, driving the youth further away from the position they wish to establish. “Pierced taste buds”? Say good bye to the next generation my friends - All your base are belong to us.

They are on the defensive. We stay on the attack. My pick: next they will be forced to address environmental issues, and ethics.

Twenty years ago, advertising to eat meat was as unthinkable as advertising to drink water. In twenty years, it will be as unthinkable as advertising to smoke cigarettes.

Read my commentary about the ad here.

It is the lamb advertisement that has everyone talking that stars ex-footballer Sam Kekovich. After just a few days on-air the ads that were meant to by funny have been labeled offensive.

Click here to view the ad.

A red-meat rant that calls vegetarians soap-avoiding, pot-smoking hippies, and suggests eating anything other than lamb on Australia Day deserves capital punishment, will be allowed to stay on television.

“I don’t believe that we have offended vegetarians any more than we’ve offended chicken eaters or pizza eaters or any other food,” Mr Thomason said

The ad, produced by agency Brown Melhuish and Fishlock, shows Kekovich sitting in front of an Australian flag, delivering a virtual call-to-arms for lamb eaters.

“I’m sickened by the creeping tide of un-Australianism eroding our great traditions.”

“A balanced Australia Day diet should consist of a few nice juicy lamb chops and beer, and perhaps a bit of pavlova for those with a sweet tooth,” Kekovich says.

“Yet your long-haired, dole-bludging types are indulging their pierced taste buds in all manner of exotic, foreign, often vegetarian cuisine - chicken burger value meals, pizzas, a No 42 with rice.

“It’s an absolute disgrace, and people ask why we need capital punishment.”
Kekovich even invokes the spirit of Anzac, asking viewers if the diggers were fighting for tofu sausages.

“No. They were thinking of grabbing a lamb chop off the barbie with their bare fingers, sustaining third-degree burns, then sticking their hands in a relieving Esky to fish out a cold one,” he says.

“The soap-avoiding, pot-smoking hippie vegetarians might disagree with me, but they can get stuffed.

“They know the way to the airport, and if they don’t, I’ll show them.”

Today Tonight on Seven

Article from the Age, Melbourne here (soul-sucking registration required)