January 5, 2004 San Francisco Chonicle by Joe Garofoli,

They had to. After years of waving their arms about the way beef cattle are raised and the health risks associated with eating meat, suddenly the nation was listening; the security of that most American of meals -- the hamburger -- had been threatened. "When images of farmed animals are flooding the airwaves, it's a huge wake-up call for people to think about what they're eating now," said Lisa Franzetta, an Oakland-based national campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which staged a small anti-meat demonstration in San Francisco on New Year's Eve. "We wanted to get our message out there."

Even though organic food proponents aren't in ideological lockstep with animal rights advocates, they and others surfing in the mad cow wake share two traits: They believe the United States must revamp its standards for raising animals; and much of their intellectual firepower and popular support is rooted in Northern California.

Linked online by their overlapping constituencies, they're hoping the current national attention allows the public to peek into slaughterhouse practices they find repugnant. "Mad cow is just symptomatic of what's wrong with our agriculture system," said David Evans, a fourth-generation Marin County rancher whose Marin Sun Farms specializes in beef that is fed on grass instead of grain. "(The discovery) is a good thing for the movement, in that we can show what needs to be corrected."

So on Christmas Eve, while Franzetta was organizing street demonstrations where "vegetarian starter kits" would be handed out over the next few days in Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Nashville, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, rancher Evans was starting to field interviews on the joys of grass-fed cattle.

In the next few days, while Larry Bain, a San Francisco restaurateur and advocate of humanely raised beef, was urging Mayor-elect Gavin Newsom to consider an antibiotic-free food policy for the city, longtime San Rafael activist Bradley Miller started designing full-page ads to run in national newspapers.

While Guerneville vegan restaurant owner Alex Bury noticed patrons taking more of the "Go Vegan" brochures at her Sparks eatery, Petaluma piano teacher Anahid Bertrand made the decision to change to a vegan diet, and organized her first "anti-meat" demonstration Saturday in downtown Petaluma. Bertrand is even trying to get her five-year-old cat to switch to a vegetarian diet.

Seizing this moment is key, as Miller's staff at the 19-year-old Humane Farming Association knows well. The organization, which has been at the forefront of the national veal boycott since the 1980s, knows the national attention span can be short -- which is why they were in the office Christmas Eve a bit longer than they planned to be.

"This is clearly the most significant development that's affected the beef industry in 20 years," said Miller, whose organization claims 170,000 members. One ad Miller's crew is working on would feature a young girl biting into a hamburger. The wording being considered: "Are you willing to feed your child meat infected with mad cow disease?"

Meat industry advocates say those who are using the mad cow discovery to call for change in the food industry are "not realistically tuned in to what people want," said Steve Dittmer, publisher of Calf News, an industry magazine devoted to cattle feeders. "These people are against the type of agriculture that goes on in this country," Dittmer said during a visit last week to San Francisco. "They don't want consumers to have a choice. Sure, organic farming is fine -- if you want to live like we did 150 years ago."

Bain, the director of operations at San Francisco's upscale Acme Chophouse restaurant, has begun using his position on Newsom's transition team to lobby for food policy changes. Last week, he asked the mayor-elect to consider purchasing only meat, seafood and dairy produced without non-therapeutic antibiotics. "The lesson (with the mad cow discovery) is that cheap food is not cheap. The costs are being externalized," Bain said. "That dollar hamburger may cost you $500 at the emergency room."

The mad cow discovery was the last straw for Petaluma resident Bertrand. After hearing a radio report last summer about how livestock are kept, the lifelong meat eater switched to a vegetarian diet. Last Monday, she decided to go vegan. Two days later, she stood in front of a Powell Street steakhouse in San Francisco, passing out vegetarian starter kits with a handful of PETA activists.

She even brought her mother, a 61-year-old native of Bulgaria, who had never been to a demonstration before. "Most of the reaction was positive, like 1 in 10 was already vegetarian," she said. "But some was negative. People say to us, 'I love meat.' Or, 'Where's the beef?' But that's OK. What's important is our presence." E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com