This dance is for you, Trav:
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Long time no post, yet again… it happens. Life happens.
Last year saw many advances in the world of animal rights and veganism. I think it’s essential they be quantitatively revisited and acknowledged, to realize the enormity of change being affected as a movement, one small step at a time.
Last year was chock full of accomplishments for MFA, and somehow they’ve managed to fit a whirlwind review into a 6.5 minute video. If you want to see what effective activism looks like, please watch. In the time it takes you to watch the video, 661,920 animals will have been killed (worldwide) for the meat and dairy industries. The numbers are heartbreaking and staggering— all the more reason to get involved NOW.
Admittedly, it’s a lengthy read (over 5,000 words), but that’s because it was a busy year for the meat industry. And not in a good way. For anyone involved in the animal rights movement, this compilation is the best way to get up-to-speed with where things stand, and what battles lie ahead of us in the coming year.
If either (or both) of these postings strike a chord with you, please don’t let it stop there. Repost the links wherever you can think of— Facebook, Twitter, your blog, email, etc. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you want support/ideas for how to get involved, I’ll do everything I can to help.
Raising compassionate awareness throughout our own social circles will only accelerate the overall societal awareness we’re after. Every person that wakes up to the horrors of the meat/dairy/egg/animal industries is one less person buying into the cruel system, and that equates to many lives saved.
The latest undercover investigation by Mercy For Animals uncovered:
Does that mesh well with your vision of a traditional family farm?
“To be responsible stewards of the animals placed in our care, educating and training our pork producers and transporters to constantly maintain the highest level of integrity in animal welfare and bio-security, while reinforcing our commitment to safe, wholesome product our consumers can trust.”
It seems as though gas chambers, tossing of babies, extreme confinement, agonizing slaughter and overall hell is now part of being a “responsible steward.”
This investigation is but another nail in the coffin of the “humane meat” myth. Consumers are frequently duped into thinking they aren’t supporting cruelty if they buy their meat from Whole Foods, a family farm, or look for a “humanely raised” sticker on the packaging.
But there is no such thing as humane animal consumption. Factory farmed or not, ALL those animals die, some just have less hellish lives than others. The word humane is a facade, like “family farm“, unregulated labels designed to fool consumers into paying higher prices for the same tortured animal products.
(Can’t see the video? Click here.)
If this video is hard to watch, makes you cringe, makes you cry, makes you angry, or all of the above — I strongly suggest you opt out of this disgusting food system and go vegan. It’s easy to get started, click here to order a FREE vegetarian starter kit.
If you can afford it, please also consider making a donation to Mercy for Animals. They need our support in order to keep doing critical undercover investigations.
No doubt, American holidays are very meat-centric. Rather than participate in this mass slaughter, why not celebrate a compassionate holiday and serve a vegan dinner this year?
GentleThanksgiving.org provides a great overview of the life and death of most Thanksgiving turkeys:
The nearly 300 million turkeys killed each year in the U.S. spend their entire lives crammed in large sheds with little room to move. Artificially inseminated and selectively bred to gain enormous amounts of weight, they suffer heart attacks, broken limbs, lameness, and death from their genetically-induced accelerated growth rate.
Factory farm conditions are so harsh that the turkeys must be pumped full of antibiotics just to stay alive. Shortly after birth, they have their snoods and parts of their toes and beaks cut off with hot blades, without the use of anesthetic, to reduce damage from from stress-induced aggression. They are then delivered by conveyer belt to a carousel where they get a power injection, usually of an antibiotic, whacked into the back of their necks.
The rest of their lives they are forced to endure crowding, living in their own waste, and ravaging diseases. As many as 25,000 birds may be housed in a single shed. Their eyes and lungs are burned by toxic fumes emanating from their excrement. Conditions are so severe that about 9% of turkeys raised for food (or over 26 million) didn’t survive long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse.
After 16 weeks of misery, they are hung on a conveyer belt, their throats are cut, and they are dumped — sometimes still fully conscious — into scalding water to strip their feathers.
(Can’t see the video? Click here.)
A Google search for “vegan Thanksgiving recipes” yields approximately 8,860,000 results. There is no shortage of delicious vegan Thanksgiving recipes! Here are some of my favorites:
Olive
For people who want to do even more than just prepare a vegan meal, The Farm Sanctuary has a wonderful program for people who choose to help turkeys, rather than kill them. The Adopt-a-Turkey Project “seeks to end the misery of commercially-raised turkeys by offering a compassionate alternative for Thanksgiving. Since 1986, Farm Sanctuary has rescued more than 1,000 turkeys, placed hundreds into loving homes through our annual Turkey Express adoption event, educated millions of people about their plight, and provided resources for a cruelty-free holiday.”
From FowlPlayMovie.com: National surveys show that the majority of Americans are opposed to the inhumane treatment of farm animals. In fact, Americans are in opposition to the very treatment animals face every day on factory farms. This disconnect that people have between the food they buy and the industries they support is exactly what agribusiness counts on to maintain its bottom line.
However, a growing movement of people are opposed to factory farming and the commodification of animals. They are organizing, documenting the living nightmare that animals face, and speaking out against animal agriculture.
Fowl Play illuminates the plight of factory-farmed laying hens through interviews with people who are fighting diligently to save them. A story of hope emerges as footage recorded inside battery cage and other facilities is balanced with personal accounts of the individuals working to protect the often-forgotten victims of the egg industry.
The film also introduces us to animals who survive the system: Hope, a hen left to die in a garbage can but then rescued by activists; and Consuela, a hen gassed on a farm when she was no longer useful but who survives to be rescued at a landfill.
The suffering that animals face on factory farms won’t end until enough people are motivated to change it. Fowl Play connects the dots between consumers and the practices they support, and leaves viewers with a groundbreaking message of personal change and community outreach.
(Can’t see the video? Click here.)
Screening to be followed by a Q & A session with several of the filmmakers and individuals featured in the film, including MFA’s Executive Director, Nathan Runkle.
“Regardless of how anyone feels about the treatment of farm animals, Issue 2 is poor public policy, and it should be defeated.
The Ohio Constitution should never be used to promote the interests of specific individuals, businesses, or industries. The reasonable approach to balancing the needs of Ohio’s farming industry and the concerns of animal-rights groups would have been to follow Michigan’s example and work out a compromise in state law that would protect both farmers and farm animals.”
In case there’s any doubt about this being big business, consider Ohio’s 2008 agriculture numbers:
• 4 million pigs were raised on 4,000 farms. Another 170,000 sows were used for breeding.
• 27 million hens laid 7.1 billion eggs. There were 57.5 million chickens and 6 million turkeys raised for meat.
• 1.2 million beef cattle came from 15,000 farms. Another 700,000 calves were marketed for veal.
While the Ohio Constitution authorizes a state board of education, boards typically aren’t prescribed in that document, said Charles Hallinan, a University of Dayton law professor and constitutional scholar.
“It’s an oddity,” Hallinan said of Issue 2. “It is unusual enough that it would give me pause to include it in the constitution.”
Backers of state Issue 2, the proposed constitutional amendment to create the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, gave more than $4 million to that cause.
“Contributions to Issue 2 are about much more than just supporting a ballot measure,” said Jack Fisher, executive vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and treasurer of Ohioans for Livestock Care Political Action Committee.
“They are really an investment in educating all Ohioans on farmers’ commitment to excellent animal care and to providing safe, affordable, locally grown food for our consumers.”
Issue 2 supporters said about $3 million of the total came from Ohio family farmers and groups representing farm organizations.
Records show about $1.2 million came via more than 100 donations from out-of-state organizations, ranging from the Delaware Farm Bureau to the Arizona Pork Council to the Texas Turkey Federation to the Hawaii Cattlemen’s Council. Eli Lily Co. of Indianapolis added $25,000.
The drive to pass state Issue 2 was led by a dozen six-figure donations. The Ohio Farm Bureau chipped in about $535,000 overall, although the largest single contribution, $200,000, came from United Egg Producers in Alpharetta, Ga.
O’Connor said the state constitution is a “much bigger document” that should not be amended to include policy decisions, such as livestock care, that are best left to lawmakers.
O’Connor, who plans to run for chief justice next year, said backers of Issue 2 understand that once something is added to the constitution, it will take “an arm and a leg” to overturn it, the paper reported.
