Modern Meadow, the start-up company producing cultured meat and leather (without killing animals, or as I call it: in meatro) just raised $10 million to expand its life-saving work.

Speaking of fortunes, my coworker Josh Balk has a great Fortune magazine column this week about how the pork industry’s antics opposing animal welfare reforms are anti-free market.

In other news, did you know there’s a World Meat Congress? Well, they’re not too happy with our work passing laws to improve the treatment of farm animals. There’s a lot of corporate policy progress on farm animal protection issues too, and I was glad to be on Al Jazeera this week discussing it (minutes9:00–19:00).

Not to be outdone, CNN has a new video this week with Dr. Sanjay Gupta entitled, “Eat Less Meat,” in which he argues that meat is one “of the biggest risk factors for early death.” Perhaps people will take his advice, especially in light of sky-high meat prices right now.

You know what price isn’t sky-high, though? The price of Taking Action for Animals, the awesome conference in DC June 27-30—it’s only $75. Hope to see you there!

Paul Shapiro
Vice President, Farm Animal Protection
The Humane Society of the United States
Follow at http://twitter.com/pshapiro

P.S. Video of the week: The bravest pigeon you’ve ever seen.

Meave and I had the pleasure of visiting NYC’s Beyond Sushi (Union Square location) last week and we were pretty much blown away! Seriously, I didn’t know sushi could be so fun—and so vegan!

People have always told me about different places with such and such vegan roll and I’ve always been like, “whatever, I just like avocado rolls! Why I gotta go somewhere special for that?” Little did I know there’s a big, exciting vegan sushi world out there! What an idiot I was. But we live and learn, yeah?!We started off with some of their yummy juices. These are not the cleanse type, which is good because that’s not my steeze. I got the cucumber mint lemonade and it was SO GOOD. Meave got some sort of watermelon juice that I refused to try because watermelon is bleh! But my juice was the yum.Next, we had one of their wraps. I wasn’t that excited because I think of wraps as just like a bunch of raw veggies pretending to be a sandwich. Boy was I delightfully surprised! This Nutty Buddy wrap ended up being maybe my favorite thing we had. It was full of buckwheat noodles, cashews, carrots, cilantro, jalapeño peanut butter, avocado, sesame oil, tofu, and lettuce—whoa! Plus it came with a side of sweet soy mirin sauce. I love the noodles and peanut butter!!! I could eat this every day. 

Next came the sushi! OMG how pretty, right? On the very left is their most popular roll, the Spicy Mang: black rice, avocado, mango, English cucumber, spicy veggies and toasted cayenne sauce. A lot of their rolls use black rice, which is actually more purple. It’s really good. It’s a bit sweeter than white rice and just has more flavor in general. In the middle, is the roll of the month! Every month they have a special roll. For June, it’s this fun eggplant roll: black rice, roasted eggplant, avocado, and baby arugula topped with rosemary infused butter bean purée and roasted roma tomatoes infused with garlic and thyme. YES. I was all, “I didn’t know you could even have sushi like this” and Meave is all, “well, it’s BEYOND sushi!” Haha, indeed. 

The third roll was the Mighty Mushroom: six-grain rice, enoki, tofu, shiitake, and micro arugula with a shitake teriyaki sauce. This was my favorite! The shitake teriyaki sauce on top was so good. 

We also had two of the individual pieces, baked tofu with chili mango. AWESOME. 

So, if you couldn’t tell, we love Beyond Sushi! I warn you if you go though that seating is limited. But we got there at 6:30 on a Tuesday and there were plenty of places to sit. But by the time we left, people were waiting to sit. I also advise that you TRY EVERYTHING! Because it’s so good. Oh, besides the one in Union Square, there’s also a location in Chelsea Market.BONUS! They have all these exciting almond butters they make in-house! I got my big bro this truffle oil/thyme almond butter because those are his favorite things and I’m so nice to him. 

Disclosure: we dined for free because we are very fancy! I paid full price for the almond butter though, and I’d do it again! Because I’m so nice to my big bro!

Warning: graphic!!!

This is not the most pleasant way to start the day but if we vegans don’t share this kind of information, I don’t know who will. Right? I don’t want to watch it either but we all know people who consume dairy and these are the tools to raise awareness. So, here is the latest undercover investigation by Mercy For Animals of Canada’s largest dairy factory farm, Chilliwack Cattle Company in British Columbia. It’s brutal. I made it through about 15 seconds. The description alone is awful. From the MFA summary, some of the atrocities captured on the video:

• Workers viciously kicking, punching, beating, and hitting cows in the face and body with chains, canes, metal pipes, and rakes
• Sick and injured cows suffering from open wounds, oozing infections, and painful injuries left to suffer without proper veterinary care
• Workers using chains and tractors to lift sick and injured cows by their necks
• Workers poking and squeezing festering wounds, ripping clumps of hair out of cows’ sensitive tails, and punching bulls in the testicles

Brutal. According to MFA Canada’s FB page, the factory was promptly raided by officials—good on them for swift action! Though it would be nice if laws were enforced because, you know, they are laws, as opposed to being enforced because a third party did their own investigation and made it public. And of course it would be even nicer if animals weren’t treated as objects and machines. 

Final message: Vegetarians, if you gave up meat to help animals, I applaud you for your intentions but eating dairy is just as bad. It’s time to ditch dairy. You can do it!

Jess being cute. My cone is on the left (your left) and her peanut butter chocolate chip is on the right. 

As the weather was mostly pleasant here in NYC last week and her main squeeze was out of town, I got to go on an ice cream date with my friend Jess. You guys remember Lula’s Sweet Apothecary? Well, as you may recall, they had some drama last year. I don’t know much about it but I know they didn’t really close, but they don’t go by Lula’s anymore. They also don’t go by anything else so…I will call them the Sweet Apothecary formerly known as Lula’s I suppose. Regardless, I hadn’t since whatever happened, so Jess and I decided to see how things were going over there. 

First of all, they had espresso ice cream. MY FAVE. Second of all, they were all out of it—I guess it’s not just MY fave. However, all was not lost as I took a chance and got the vanilla ice cream with peanut butter crunch swirl and it was FANTASMIC! The swirl wasn’t really crunchy, just peanut buttery, which is what I was hoping. Jess got the peanut butter chocolate chip. I gave it a try and it was delicious as well! Even if they have the espresso next time I go, I think I will get one of the two we got. Or maybe the espresso. OR MAYBE ALL THREE BECAUSE I DO WHAT I WANNA. 

I have to say I think the ice cream there is better than it used to be when it was Lula’s. Is that possible? When I first moved to NYC, I went to Lula’s a few times and while I liked it, I didn’t find the ice cream that flavorful. Or there were flavorful options but they weren’t classic ice cream flavors. Like the maple pecan was great, but the traditional options weren’t as plentiful and were just a little underwhelming. Maybe it’s all in my head, but I swear, the flavors now are perfect! TWO peanut butter options?! BE STILL MY PEANUT BUTTER-COVERED HEART. 

And you’ll be happy to know they still have all the vegan candy bars for sale, including personal fave Go Max Go’s Thumbs Up. 

So if you haven’t been to the Sweet Apothecary formerly known as Lula’s in a while, go! Tis the season!

The address is 516 E 6th St, between ave A and B.