Category: Uncategorized

Update on Rescued Sheep

The final number of sheep rescued from the ship sinking off the coast of Romania is 254. Unfortunately, they are not as safe as was first believed; their fate remains undetermined. According to The Guardian newspaper, the surviving sheep are currently in quarantine, being fed and sheltered by the exporter. Apparently, only the Romanian veterinary health authority has the power to determine what will happen to the sheep now, though animal protection groups are believed to be lobbying for safety for the sheep. Stay tuned for further updates.

Nevertheless, she persisted (part two)

 

Cognitive dissonance

As defined by Merriam Webster, it is the “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” People most often cope with cognitive dissonance by sublimating the attitude they find uncomfortable. This is how people who love animals can still eat them. It’s the mind’s way of handling abhorrent information about a behaviour we’ve engaged in all our lives: eating meat and dairy. On one level we know that animals are generally treated horribly and die unimaginably cruel and painful deaths. People who love animals naturally find this wildly incongruent with their appetite for roast chicken, barbequed ribs, burgers and steak, not to mention cheese and ice cream. Enter cognitive dissonance — they just don’t think about it. For those whose cognitive dissonance is losing its hold, they acknowledge their discomfort but assuage it by seeking out products from “humanely raised” animals.

 

The humane myth

The whole notion of “humane” meat, dairy and eggs is inherently problematic. Regardless of how much pasture animals have, whether they’re given names and sung to every night, there are certain immutable truths that negate how humane the raising of animals for food can ever be. Farmed turkeys can no longer breed without artificial insemination (just imagine). Mothers still have their babies taken away, or if they’re allowed to stay together, the babies will be fitted with a spiked nose ring that will prevent them from nursing. The spikes hurt the mother, which forces her to do the one thing that is completely against every instinct she has: push away her baby. Male calves will still be slaughtered for veal. Male piglets will still have their testicles cut off without anaesthetic (testosterone changes the taste of their meat). Male chicks born at hatcheries — from whence all chickens come, whether for meat or eggs — will still be carelessly tossed into a garbage bin to suffocate amongst each other, or thrown into a macerator to be ground alive. And all animals will ultimately be slaughtered because that’s what they were born for. Small slaughterhouses where care was once taken to render animals unconscious have vanished, forced out by a handful of corporations who demand that slaughter lines move ever faster — so fast that it is impossible for every animal to be unconscious when their throat is slit, or they’re skinned, or dismembered. There are many reports from former slaughterhouse workers about horrendous conditions and unspeakable cruelty. As with anything, you can Google it.

I get that people “don’t want to know.” It’s pretty damn hard to enjoy your meal when you’re actively thinking about how it got in front of you. I’ve been there. I didn’t want to know when I came across a photo of an extremely distressed dairy cow who could no longer walk, being shoved into a slaughterhouse on the end of a backhoe. I could not unsee that image and it changed me. What changed me even more was visiting a farmed animal sanctuary and meeting dozens of beautiful animals who each had their own personality, story and relationships with those around them. It’s hard to eat meat when it has a face and a name and character. It’s hard to enjoy dairy when you’ve had a calf desperately suckle your hand, his mother, with whom he’d normally stay all his life, gone from him forever.

I have spent the past nine years reading and writing about animals, learning about them, spending time with them. What I have learned (and what I think many of us intuitively know) is now fully backed up by science: every animal is someone. If you have dogs or cats, especially if you have more than one, you know what individuals they are. In this one regard alone, they are not special; all animals are individuals. There are lovebugs and independent souls, troublemakers and peacemakers, the insecure and the supremely confident — and this applies across the spectrum, from chickens to sheep to cows and pigs. Everyone.  And I’m certain every other known species too; there’s simply no reason to think otherwise.

 

What an animal advocate sees

Where an omnivore sees eggs, an animal advocate sees the chickens who suffered to produce them, genetically manipulated to lay many times more eggs than nature ever intended. We see the hens who were gassed to death, or died from a prolapsed uterus, or reproductive cancer, or peritonitis after having become “egg-bound” — a horrible situation in which the hen is too weak to physically push out an egg, but because of her breeding her body keeps making them and they build up inside her until she develops peritonitis and dies. And we see all the male chicks at hatcheries who were killed almost as soon as they were born, because roosters are all but pointless in egg production.

When an omnivore gets excited about a “rib fest,” an animal advocate thinks about the pigs those ribs belonged to, and their beautiful, expressive eyes. I often think of Mouse, a gorgeous pig I know who lives at Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York, who is missing a hoof and isn’t very mobile, but who is one of the sweetest pigs I’ve ever known and who lives a rich and happy life because he has people who love him and he gets to live with his best piggy friend.

When an omnivore sees cheese, an animal advocate sees the cows, sheep and goats who were unwilling participants in their own insemination, who mourned loudly as their babies were taken from them, and the babies themselves who called in vain for their mothers…because people really like cheese. This isn’t melodramatic; this is reality.

When we see all these animals where omnivores see food, they are not a homogenous mass. Each one of them is represented to us by a sweet animal we’ve met…a calf who has suckled our hands in the absence of his mother, the sweet chicken we’ve held in our arms, the pig who has coming running with a joyful greeting of “HAHAHAHA!”

So if we are tiresome in our advocacy, if we sometimes get angry and frustrated because we ran out of “reasonable and measured” that day, it is because we see animal agriculture as an emergency for the animals who are trapped in that system, 10 billion of them in North America alone every year. It’s an unfathomable number tied to unfathomable suffering. As animal advocates, we just want people to open their eyes and their hearts and to see what we see: beautiful animals who are complete individuals, worthy of being allowed their own lives. They have done nothing to deserve what we do to them, treating them literally like trash, as if they don’t feel sadness and pain and terror — believe me, they do. This is not ascribing human emotions to them; in fact, the very notion of anthropomorphism is anthropocentric.

Think of all the times just in recent decades when we acted on new information: Seatbelts save lives. Lead paint leaches poison. Drinking and driving is a seriously bad idea. Smoking cigarettes can kill you. Suntanning can cause skin cancer. People used to litter with abandon; now we understand that our garbage actually goes somewhere and we are eschewing single-use plastics and disposable coffee cups. In theory, when we know better, we do better.

Science acknowledges the sentience of non-human animals. It’s time for people to catch up.

Nevertheless, she persisted (part one)

It’s been a while…a long while, and I’d like to tell you why. I have been experiencing a long period of deep discouragement. When I look around the world, despite the horrors that continue daily for animals, I see many successes: whole countries banning animal testing for cosmetics. Cities and countries banning circuses that use animals. Animal activists becoming ever louder, more animal farmers turning to plants instead, small dairies sending their cows to sanctuaries and becoming vegan cheesemakers. The astonishing rise in the availability and quality of plant-based versions of animal foods, and the almost mind-bending frequency with which animal issues are in the mainstream news.

And yet, within my own circle, which is quite broad, there seems to be so little change. The Year of the Pig brought the predictable number of “Mm, bacon!” posts on Facebook (where I suspect a number of friends, finding me tiresome, have simply unfollowed me).  Ninety-nine percent of all animal agriculture takes place on factory farms, and yet it seems every omnivore I know buys meat, eggs and dairy that come only from the one percent of “small family farms.” (How do the 99% stay in business? How does the 1% keep up with demand?)

I fear I have run out of different ways to say and to show people that animals matter, that they feel…that from an emotional perspective they experience their own lives very much as we do. They have friends and they mourn when their friends die. They rejoice in the warmth of spring. They feel deep love for their babies — and total anguish when their babies are taken away. They are capable of altruism, of planning, of displays of genuine cleverness and compassion. I have shared so many stories that demonstrate all these things and more, but it seems as though no one is listening. So I stopped writing, because I’m not sure I can say it any differently than I already have. I don’t seem to have the magic words that will make people feel something for these animals, and perhaps make a choice to live a little bit differently.

But someone lit a fire under me today. So tomorrow I will tell you why I don’t “just give it a rest.”

Spelling it out: the link between animal agriculture and the decline in wildlife

Earlier this week, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released a report that any thinking person would find depressing. I fear too many people will read about it in the news, shake their heads in sadness and get on with their day. We need to do more than that. Every single one of us should find that report alarming, because it details an emergency, an emergency that we have created.

According to The Living Planet Report, wildlife populations have declined 60% in the last 40 years.  And we have completely and forever lost nearly two-thirds of all species living on Earth. From the report:

“While climate change is a growing threat, the main drivers of biodiversity decline continue to be the overexploitation of species, agriculture and land conversion.”

These things are not separate; they are inextricably intertwined. “Overexploitation of species, agriculture and land conversion” is an elegant way of saying “concentrated animal feed operations,” or CAFOs — otherwise known as factory farming, and it plays a huge role in climate change and consequently in species loss. The statistics are staggering, and these are only a handful:

  • Raising animals for food takes up 80% of the world’s land mass yet produces less than 20% of calories consumed.
  • Fully one-third of plant crops worldwide are grown for farmed animal consumption. If we stopped eating meat, we could literally end world hunger. (For example, it takes 16 pounds/7.25 kg of grain to produce one pound/0.45 kg of beef. Imagine how many people could be fed with 16 pounds of grain.)
  • One and a half acres/0.6 hectares of the Amazon rainforest are lost EVERY SECOND, most to clear land for animal agriculture. That habitat destruction results in the loss of 50,000 species a year from that part of the world alone. The rainforests are referred to as “the lungs of the planet,” and experts predict that within 40 years, there will be nothing left of them. We are in deep trouble.
  • Almost 50% per cent of water use in the U.S. goes to raising farmed animals, including in perennially drought-stricken California, where people are encouraged to take shorter showers, as though that will solve the problem.
  • The hormones and antibiotics given to farmed animals, so they can grow faster and survive their living conditions long enough to reach the slaughterhouse, wind up in our groundwater, our rivers and our streams, along with the astronomical amount of waste the animals produce — killing wildlife, poisoning the drinking water and making people sick. The problem is so massive that it’s largely responsible for creating dead zones in the oceans.
  • Animal agriculture and the resources consumed as a result are responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases worldwide, exceeding the damage caused to the environment by all forms of transportation — cars, trucks, trains, transport ships, ocean-liners and planes — combined .

These few statistics merely touch the surface of the impact of animal agriculture on our planet. It is absolutely unsustainable in every conceivable way and it is without question degrading biodiversity and killing entire ecosystems the world over. When animal agriculture causes this much harm (not to mention the very real harm done to farmed animals themselves, who are living, sentient individuals), we have to stop saying “It’s terrible what we’ve done,” while shaking our heads and adding chicken to our grocery lists.

Let me repeat that wildlife populations have declined 60% in the last 40 years. Moreover, we are losing species entirely at a conservatively estimated rate of 10,000 a day (WWF). If we care about this devastating loss of wildlife, indeed, if we care about our own future and that of the planet, we need to stop eating other animals.

Rethinking the Boycott

A lot of vegans and vegetarians are upset that Maple Leaf Foods has bought Field Roast, maker of delicious vegan food, and are declaring a boycott. But here’s why they shouldn’t: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.” (Gandhi, if you’re unfamiliar with the quote.) Maple Leaf Foods can see which way the wind is blowing, and like any smart business, they want in on the action. It’s understandable why people who don’t eat animals don’t want to support them; Maple Leaf Foods, after all, is Canada’s largest “food producer” and also operates in the U.S. and Asia. By default this makes them responsible for a staggering amount of animal suffering, every minute of every day. But if you know how large business works, then you know that Field Roast will become a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Foods, as NYX, Kiehls and other companies against animal testing are subsidiaries of L’Oréal, and MAC et al are subsidiaries of Estée Lauder. All the money that comes in does not go into one big pot. Each business is managed separately and money, therefore, is also managed separately. When we support good companies owned by larger ones whose ethics or policies we disagree with, we are showing them what is sustainable and encouraging them to put more focus there. We are showing them where the money is. If we boycott and profits fall below expectation, we will ultimately damage vegan brands  and instead of flourishing, they will wither. Supporting animal-friendly subsidiaries of large companies is, in the long run, the right thing for animals.

Sentience – what does it actually mean?

The UK government has seen fit to vote against animals by declaring that they have no emotions or feelings, including the ability to feel pain. In light of this breathtakingly backward move, There’s an Elephant in the Room has published an excellent post on sentience. Have a read.

There's an Elephant in the Room blog

Image by Jo-Anne McArthur, We Animals

We frequently see it stated that the individuals whose lives, bodies, and reproductive systems we use, are sentient.  So what actually is sentience?

Human animals and the vast majority of other animal species that our species uses, harms and kills, usually without thought, conscience or most importantly, any necessity whatsoever,  share the quality of sentience.

Although almost everyone who has shared time with a cat, a dog, a horse, a rabbit or any species of companion has instinctively recognised the fact that other animals clearly have feelings, thoughts, preferences and emotions, scientific acceptance of their sentience was formally acknowledged on 7 July 2012 and enshrined in the landmark Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness by a prominent international group of scientists.

A sentient being is a creature that can suffer and feel pain. Such an individual is defined as having the faculty of sensation and the power…

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Welcome back!

Welcome to the new site for Kingdom Animalia, formerly These Glass Walls. If you’re new here, please have a look around, and “like” and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You may also subscribe to new posts via email — using the blue link to the right that says “Follow Kingdom Animalia” — to be sure you don’t miss one (don’t worry, you won’t be deluged with email; I’m not as prolific as I’d like!)

If you’ve visited this space before, you’ll find updated information at the tabs above. Like what you see? Please share!

 

For the animals,

Debra

Give from your heart…AND your head

santasheep

Image: Cute Overload

“Give a goat, save a life.” This is the slogan of an organization called Give-a-Goat. But unless you’re giving a goat to a farm animal sanctuary, you’re likely not saving anyone’s life.

With the holiday season comes the multitude of ads entreating us to extend our gift-giving to people around world who are less fortunate than we are — a noble request and one that many people will act on. But what is consistently advocated year after year is giving the “gift” of a farm animal to a family in need. Visit various charities’ websites and you will see beautiful photos of smiling children holding baby animals in their arms. The children are smiling, you will learn, because thanks to the gift of an animal, the family now has food and an income! You’ll be told how the goat or the cow or the sheep or the chickens selflessly provide the family with nutritious milk and eggs, and that the animals are a vital source of much-needed protein.

Bollocks.

The intentions are great, but badly misguided. First of all, the health benefits of animal products are a myth. I won’t get into animal vs. plant-based nutrition here; ample information on the subject is widely available on the internet and elsewhere, including from Harvard, WHO and NIH. One can be optimally healthy on a plant-based diet. Further, an estimated 75% of the world’s population is lactose-intolerant, making milk consumption actually harmful, so no one’s doing anyone any favours there.

From an animal welfare standpoint, there are so many troubling questions in this scenario: What if there is a drought? What if the animal gets sick? How will the animal be cared for? How will the animal eventually be slaughtered? Animals given as gifts may well simply become another mouth to feed; if a family is having trouble feeding themselves, how will they feed this animal? Animals also use many times more in resources than they put out, so to speak. They use much more land and water than plant agriculture, which makes raising an animal for food an extremely inefficient use of already scarce resources. And what will the family do when that animal is no longer around?

Many organizations that are highly regarded by the general public cheerfully tout their “livestock”-gift options for people in third-world countries. World Vision offers cows, alpacas, baby chicks, goats, piglets, sheep and more. SOS Children’s Villages, Heifer International, Oxfam, Feed the Children (they even had a Cyber Monday special on goats: two-for-one)…all persist in the short-sighted and ill-conceived notion that it’s a good idea to give living beings to people who have next to nothing. Plan Canada International actually has some excellent options, including funding newborn checkups, gardens, school meals, medicine and mosquito netting — yet they still also offer farmed animals.

If you want to really make a difference in the lives of people in poorer countries, there are many ways you can provide concrete, long-term help. Here’s a partial list to consider:

  • A Well-Fed World does incredible work to feed hungry people around the world. Learn more about it and how to support them here
  • Help fund a water project in sub-Saharan Africa
  • Support clean water initiatives through The One Foundation
  • Help African children whose lives have been affected by AIDS by donating to the Stephen Lewis Foundation
  • When women and girls are educated, everyone benefits. Support and empower women and girls through Willow Tree Roots or The Malala Fund
  • Help people in Haiti. The issue of supporting international aid organizations in Haiti has been fraught with controversy, but you can find a list of Haitian-led initiatives here
  • Literacy helps lift people out of poverty. Make a difference by funding literacy programs through The World Literacy Foundation. They work with people in 25 countries around the world.

Share your abundance with others without inadvertently contributing to animal suffering. And while you’re spreading your compassion around, please consider a donation to your favourite animal cause. Farm sanctuaries in particular could really use your help.

Wishing you a joyful season, whatever you’re celebrating.

Backyard eggs: are they cruelty-free?

I’ve seen a number of posts recently on Facebook from well-intentioned people questioning the ethics of “backyard eggs.” The rationale is that if the hens are treated well, what harm could there be in eating their eggs? It’s a reasonable question. But the answer may surprise you.

I found a terrific blog post from Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary on the subject, so I’m sharing it here with you.

As they say at Edgar’s Mission, if we can live happy and healthy lives without harming others, why wouldn’t we?

fs-chickens-myphoto

Photo: Debra Roppolo, These Glass Walls

The Crime of Indifference

This has been a terrible day. It began with the news this morning that a tractor trailer carrying about 160 pigs overturned near Fearman’s slaughterhouse. After the initial feeling of horror, my first immediate thought was “I wonder if any of the pigs escaped?” And I hoped against hope. I knew that many activists I know would be on their way to the site — Toronto Pig Save holds vigils there several times a week. As challenging as the vigils are to attend, what the activists saw there today will likely haunt them forever. (As an aside, let me clarify that loaded word, activist: they are not “extreme”, they are not kooks. They are ordinary people who at some point saw what our society does to animals and found it so unconscionable that they couldn’t stand by in silence. That’s all. They’re just people who see an injustice and have to speak up, and they are deserving of respect, not the derision they too often receive.)

At least 40 pigs — piglets, really; they were only a few months old — died in or as a result of the accident. I confess I have not watched any of the videos that were shot this morning; the photos are bad enough, but the sound of animals in distress tears at my heart like nothing else can. The activists were there for hours.  They saw dead pigs in the overturned truck, dead pigs on the road, live pigs who were bruised and cut, trying to run…pigs who were more seriously injured terrified and screaming in pain.

Steve Jenkins, co-founder of Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary, lives not far from where the accident happened and he was there too, as was Anita Krajnc, the woman who is currently on trial for giving water to dehydrated pigs on a hot summer day (she was arrested again today, for crossing police tape). When an animal arrives at a slaughterhouse injured, they cannot by law be “processed” and enter the food chain. People were pleading with Fearman’s (yes, that’s actually the name) employees to release at least some of the injured pigs so they could be tended by a veterinarian and live out their lives at a sanctuary. Steve Jenkins had himself offered sanctuary to the injured pigs. With breathtaking heartlessness, the activists’ pleas were ignored. Even though Fearman’s employees could have turned the pigs over, they instead chose to shoot them with a captive bolt gun and bulldoze them into a dumpster. If that’s not spite, I don’t know what is. They didn’t show a shred of compassion, of common decency, of humanity. Steve Jenkins wrote earlier today “In the four years I have known Esther, I have never heard the noises I heard coming from those pigs today. It was sheer terror, and I will never forget it. But the hardest part was witnessing first-hand the total indifference shown for their suffering, by those responsible for their care.” It’s callous, and utterly heartbreaking. Every single one of those poor piglets was someone. They are Esther, Julia, Mouse, Marge and BooBoo…they all had their own personalities and feelings, whether they were shy or curious or passive or mischievous.

The reality of their lives was bad enough. The accident today was bad enough, with the added fear and suffering it wrought. But when those slaughterhouse workers chose to kill injured piglets rather than let them go to sanctuary, it broke something in the spirit of every animal-lover I know. How could they?

This is why I spend so much time advocating for animals. They need it, urgently. They are *someone*, just like our cats and dogs. You can be anything…why not be kind?