Often times numbers alone won’t penetrate the hearts of people who refuse to feel compassion for animals. Massive amounts of death mean nothing to them, they’re unfazed. That’s when powerful visualizations can be a big help.
The two I’m sharing below were created by Mark Middleton, an artist, web developer, and animal advocate who’s posted them for public use at his website: AnimalVisuals.org.
The second visualization is a “Virtual Battery Cage” which gives you the perspective of a “layer” hen (the ones who supply with cheap eggs for omelets and McMuffins) in a factory farm. Press play and you’ll become one of those chickens, crammed in a wire cage with no space to open your wings, no room or material on which to comfortably lay down, no windows, no natural light, sick and/or dead chickens next to you, and the deafening noise of suffering is all you can hear.
There is NOTHING natural about the way these chickens live, it’s pretty much hell:
Thank you to Mark for creating these visualizations, I hope other activists find and use them on their own websites and outreach projects.
I’ve decided I’ll check out the Columbus Tea Party after work to see the turnout for myself. This will be my first time attending a rally that’s NOT comprised mostly of Democrats. In fact, I’ll probably be surrounded by some of the same people who glared angrily at my signs during previous protests I’ve attended the past 6 years.
I’m keeping my expectations pretty low because it looks as though the Tea Party trend has been hijacked by right-wing Neo-Cons who are bitter that it’s a Democrat doing all the spending and bombing and not another Republican. Where were they when Bush had the credit card? In the same cave the anti-war activists are now hiding in, on the Island of Hypocrisy I presume.
For the record, 9/11 Truthers brought back the Tea Party protest idea in 2006, and the Ron Paul Revolution did it a year later. I’m honored to have been a part of both. SoI’ll admit, I was excited about the Tax Day Tea Parties at first, but now the media is paying attention (so you know something’s up), the Neo-Cons are on board, Democrats are waging counter-attacks — the point is GONE, the focus is already lost.
It was never supposed to be about Left vs Right, Liberal vs Conservative, Democrat vs Republican, or any divisive label vs another divisive label. It was supposed to be about LIBERTY and FREEDOM. The right to live your life on whichever side of the aisle feels right to you, free from government intervention and mob rule.
It’s not about Sin Tax or Fair Tax or Carbon Tax , it’s about NO tax. It’s not about money for food stamps and abortions instead of bankers and war, it’s about NONE of them getting federal funding. It’s not about Obama’s budget or Obama’s deficit, it’s about ALL budgets and ALL deficits. Yes, I can’t f#@$ng stand Obama’s doublespeak rhetoric or his mindless sheep that excuse every hypocritical move he makes. But I couldn’t stand Bush’s doublespeak either. Taxes, debt, socialism, fascism, communism, Big Government, war, tyranny — those things are NEVER OKAY, whether it’s Bush or Obama sitting in the White House.
In this game of protesting and partisan outrage we keep rotating teams every 4-8 years instead of crying foul and storming the field TOGETHER. Well I’m done playing! Time to demolish the stadium and cure the disease altogether. We must declare ourselves FREE agents, not owned by any team.
WE — Americans — must step outside of this pathetic paradigm of controlled opposition and see what is happening off the field while we’re busy chasing each other around the bases. That, dear Comrades, would be a true Revolution.
People keep asking me what I’m doing for Easter this weekend. I’ll tell you what I’m NOT doing — I’m not gonna eat a plate full of ham. Here’s why:
As babies, piglets are subjected to painful mutilations without anesthesia or pain relievers. Their tails are cut off to minimize tail biting, an aberrant behavior which occurs when these highly intelligent animals are kept in deprived factory farm environments.
At 2 to 3 weeks of age, the piglets are taken away from their mothers, by which time, approximately 15% will have died. The surviving piglets are crowded into pens with metal bars and concrete floors.
The air in hog factories is laden with dust, dander, and noxious gases which are produced by the animals’ urine and feces … respiratory disease is rampant.
Modern breeding sows live a continuous cycle of impregnation and birth, having more than 20 piglets per year. After being impregnated, the sows are confined in small pens or metal gestation crates which are just 2 feet wide. At the end of their 4 month pregnancy, they are transferred to farrowing crates to give birth. They barely have room to stand up and lie down, and many suffer from sores on their shoulders.
Prior to being hung upside down by their back legs and bled to death at the slaughterhouse, pigs are supposed to be ’stunned’ and rendered unconscious. However, ’stunning’ is terribly imprecise, and this results in conscious animals hanging upside down, kicking and struggling, while a slaughterhouse worker tries to ’stick’ them in the neck with a knife. If the worker is unsuccessful, the pig will be carried to the next station on the slaughterhouse assembly line, the scalding tank, where he/she will be boiled alive.
Watch the video below. The WHOLE thing. If you can’t stand to watch it, how can you stand to EAT it?
I’ll be honest, I hope that made you lose your appetite. I hope you look down at your plate stacked with ham on Sunday and a queasy feeling quells up inside your stomach and you opt for seconds on the pasta salad instead. This would be a good sign, it means you have feelings! It also means it’s time to examine what happens to your food before it arrives beautifully packaged on Easter Sunday. There is nothing honey-baked about the path on which your cruel and inhumane feast traveled.
If you wouldn’t get up from your computer right now and go inflict all this torture on a pig directly, why is it okay to have somebody else do it while you’re not looking?
The Garden of Eden, God’s perfect world, was vegetarian (Gen. 1:29-30). Immediately, God calls this ideal and non-exploitative relationship “good” (Gen. 1:31). There follow many years of fallen humanity, when people held slaves, waged war, ate animals and committed various other violent acts. But the prophets tell us that the peaceable kingdom will be nonviolent and vegetarian; even the lion will lie down with the lamb (e.g., Isaiah 11). Jesus is the Prince of Peace, who ushers in this new age of nonviolence. When Christians pray, “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven,” the one prayer given to us by Jesus, this obligates us to change our lives, to make choices that are as merciful and loving as possible. There will be no factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven.
Jesus’ message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about factory farms and slaughterhouses, where billions of animals live miserable lives and die violent, bloody deaths. Jesus mandates kindness, mercy, compassion, and love for all God’s creation. He would be appalled by the degree of suffering we inflict on animals to indulge our acquired taste for their flesh.
Christians have a choice. When we sit down to eat, we can add to the level of violence, misery, and death in the world, or we can respect His creation with a vegetarian diet.
The choice is up to you. I hope you choose compassion, otherwise you might be missing the point of Jesus’ teachings, in which case — should you really be celebrating Easter?
“As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal… All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return…”
