If you are a vegetarian, and would like to be vegan, my question for you is… what are you waiting for?
Vegetarians know the reality of where there food comes from – or rather WHO their food use to be, and it does not seem to bother them.
A lot of vegans, probably have at some point meet someone who says that they are “almost vegan” or “90% vegan – except for cheese”, or,
They may say something like – “oh I could Never be vegan, I love cheese too much” or maybe they do actually call themselves Vegan, yet has an occasional slip up, if they are at a party, and someone offers them some cheese, then they might “cheat” on their vegan diet
I met a “vegan” recently, who lectured me about how I was a “fake vegan” because I didn’t hate on ALF – animal liberation front – yet, this same person didn’t know that their morning protein shake made with whey wasn’t actually vegan.
Oh how I laughed!
Dairy is not benign, dairy involves huge amounts of cruelty and exploitation and DEATH.
And then these cheese-eaters pat themselves on the back, thinking that Vegan is just a different form of Vegetarian. I mean, we all love animals, right? It’s not like the animal has to DIE or anything, right?
Oh, but I never buy cheese myself! they protest. If someone offers it to me, or there is a pizza, or I’m hungry, or [insert excuse here]. That would be like someone saying “oh but I don’t smoke, I never buy cigarettes myself, I mean, if someone offers me one, or I get them off a friend when I’m at the pub after a late night, but, no, I’m not a smoker or anything”.
How is this any different? Just because you don’t buy it, does that mean it stops being cheese?
Here is my opinion… You know those old sayings “Milk – is liquid Meat” or “There is veal floating invisibly in every bottle of milk” or “Meat is murder, milk is rape” … vegans (by that I mean actual vegans, not faux cheeseatarian vegans) chose to not consume dairy in all its forms, because…
nothing could taste so good that it justifies rape and torture and slavery and murder.
That is what it comes down to:
If you consume dairy this is what you support
This PeTA video, shows the reality of the Land O’ Lakes dairy factory in Pennsylvania USA.
This is not an exception.
And don’t kid yourself – if you consume dairy products, and you haven’t personally met the cow, there is a very good chance that what you are eating came from cows just like this portrayed in the video.
And just why is that cow generously giving us her milk? Well she isn’t. Milk is meant for baby cows… it is baby food, for HER babies.
Like any mammal, she produces milk only to feed her babies.
Which means, she is forced to become pregnant against her will in order to create the baby that will get her body producing the milk.
And if people are stealing her milk (the cow doesn’t GIVE away anything), then there are babies out there, that are not drinking it.
So, what happens to those baby cows, which are surplus to requirements – if they survive the high infant mortality rate, they get sold into slavery, and become either milk cows or veal calves or pet food.
Pet food? Seriously, imagine telling that to a baby – your life is nothing, you are worth more to me dead.
or, Some may be shipped off to cosmetics companies to be turned into face creams or diet pills, because in some markets, it is illegal to use cows that are older than 30-months old in order to reduce the risk of spreading Mad Cow Disease (BSE – bovine spongiform encephalopathy).
Beauty products that are stuffed full with animal products are not beautiful. Nope, I do not want to be slapping dead calf on my face.
And this is a side effect of societies cheese-addiction.
Not much of a life, is it?
Then, what happens when the dairy cow gets too old?
After years of slavery, of being treated like a machine….
Cows that have been bred for maximum milk production, are unable to sustain the weight of their udders, which may be infected with mastitis, then what?
Is there a pension plan, and she goes off to a farm in the country to wander the hills and pastures and frolic in the clover… hell no, if she survives a couple of years of relentless torture in the dairy factory, she is shipped off to slaughter as soon as the milk production begins to slow up.
Thanks for the all milk, my dear, and don’t let the barn door hit you on the way out.
And then there is RENNET
Unless the label states “non animal rennet” – that cheese the vegan is eating, it isn’t even vegetarian.
Rennet is an enzyme used in cheese making, that is naturally present in the stomach of calves in order to digest the milk they are drinking.
Animal Rennet is taken from the lining of calves stomachs, and is often a by-product of the veal industry.
So when Vegetarians justify their continued animal consumption because “the animal doesn’t have to die”, What exactly do they mean? The baby cows that don’t survive to adulthood, the veal calves, the petfood calves or the cosmetics calves, the sick and dying milk cows, the retired cows who are sent to slaughter at 4 or 5 years old instead of well into their 20s which is the natural life expectancy of a cow.
Yummy.
This isn’t even going to go near the substances actually in the milk – pus, blood, leukemia cells, bovine growth hormone, anti-biotics, pesticides, herbicides, possibility of BSE prions, excessive amounts of protein and lots and lots of saturated fat.
Cheese eaters – what is the difference between that and eating meat for all the misery the production of milk entails.
And don’t get me started on vegans who eat HONEY……
EDITTED TO ADD: There had been a MFA (Mercy for Animals) video in this piece, somehow it has been removed, and the link has been removed, without my knowledge. Even the text surrounding the video.
The Myth of Humane Meat
A video I created, not just uploaded to YT.
Former vegans and vegetarians use the concept of humane meat and welfare standards to continue to consume animals. The word animal by-product to describe milk and eggs is shown to also contribute to cruelty and exploitation. Features extreme graphic images of how animals become food. People who eat meat are entitled to know who their food used to be.
Taking one food as an example – the classic burger, this clip shows that for animals, it is not humane.
PETA have always said and done things that get more attention for themselves rather than the animals they claim to support, however, the recent comments from the head of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk that Vegans “should be living in cave” show just how out of touch with mainstream animal rights PETA have become.
This is not just speaking a case of speaking out against a successful animal welfare organisation. My disagreement with PETA, is for several reasons: they don’t think being vegan is necessary to being an animal rights activist, they give awards to slaughterhouse designers, they take in shelter animals and then kill them, they chase celebrities rather than save animals, and think naked women (or “chicks” in PETA parlance) are powerful, this is all subsidised by tax payers and diverts money from no-kill shelters.
I will talk about these things, because I think it is important for people to know where their money goes when they donate to a charity or buy their merchandise. PETA might call themselves “People for Ethical Treatment of Animals” but they are nothing more than a welfare group.
While PETA-bashing is not new, there comes a time, when you say enough is enough. And this is why:
Firstly, they don’t think being vegan is important to them. I’m sorry, did I miss something? How can any organisation that claims to fight for animals, or at least give that impression, not support veganism. If you aren’t vegan, you don’t care about animals.
The goal for many {animal} activists is simply to get more people
to eat less meat. “Absolute purists should be living in a cave,” says Ingrid Newkirk,
president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“Anybody who witnesses the suffering of animals and has a glimmer of hope
of reducing that suffering can’t take the position that it’s all or nothing.
We have to be pragmatic. Screw the principle.” Weekday Vegetarians: TIME magazine
There are no hyphenated-vegans. There is no such thing as Ingrid thinks, as a purist-vegan. You are either a vegan OR you don’t care about animals. There is no such thing as a little bit of cruelty being acceptable, a little bit of rape being acceptable, a little bit of slaughter is acceptable.
It IS all or nothing. If you are Not a Vegan, you have given up your rights to speak on behalf of those whose body you consume, wear, or any other way use.
As this video shows…
Ingrid is concerned about “misery” and “suffering” and “pain” or “anything like that” or “humane euthanasia” when her employees killed 31 animals.
Doesn’t that sound just like the how welfarists describe animals used for food, as long as they don’t suffer when you kill them, it is ok to kill and eat them.
Approximately 6 to 8 million animals are handled by animal shelters in the United States each year. Even though some are reclaimed or adopted, nearly 4 million unwanted dogs and cats are left with nowhere to go. Shelters cannot humanely house and support all these animals until their natural deaths—they would be forced to live in cramped cages or kennels for years, lonely and stressed, and other animals would have to be turned away because there would not be room for them.
Turning unwanted animals loose to roam the streets is not a humane option. If they don’t starve, freeze, get hit by a car, or die of disease, they may be tormented and possibly killed by cruel juveniles or picked up by dealers who obtain animals to sell to laboratories.
Good and Bad Solutions
Because of the high number of unwanted companion animals and the lack of good homes, sometimes the most humane thing that a shelter worker can do is give an animal a peaceful release from a world in which dogs and cats are often considered “surplus” and unwanted. PETA, The American Veterinary Medical Association, and The Humane Society of the United States concur that an intravenous injection of sodium pentobarbital administered by a trained professional is the kindest, most compassionate method of euthanizing animals. The American Humane Association considers this to be the only acceptable method of euthanasia for cats and dogs in animal shelters.
LIES. or Creative truth telling?
Many good shelters, struggle to get by on extremely limited funds, that do not kill animals brought in to them. But, housing animals in good conditions costs more money than PETA want to spend on animals, that they could be spending on celebrities instead.
PETA also gives awards to slaughter-house designers.
In 2004 PETA awarded Temple Grandin with a Proggy (progress) Award, as a Visionary. This is part of the reason they gave for awarding a slaughterhouse designer a PETA award:
Dr. Grandin consults with the livestock industry and the American Meat Institute on the design of slaughterhouses! However, Dr. Grandin’s improvements to animal-handling systems found in slaughterhouses have decreased the amount of fear and pain that animals experience in their final hours, and she is widely considered the world’s leading expert on the welfare of cattle and pigs.
When you design a more efficient slaughterhouse, the result is animals are slaughtered more efficiently, which means more animals are killed. This does not sound “visionary” to anyone who believes in Animal Liberation.
But then, PETA do take in shelter animals… and kill them, so it is easy to understand how they could be confused between “slaughtering” and “saving”.
As this website PETA Kills Animals
makes clear: Exclusive: PETA’s Pet Killing Program Set a New Record in 2009
During all of 2009, PETA found adoptive homes for just eight pets. Just eight animals — out of the 2,366 it took in. PETA just broke its own record.
The PETA Kill Animals website also features PETA’s kill statistics from 1998 to 2009, and that figure works out to 299/300 animals are killed by PETA.
While no-kill shelters manage to get by on a fraction of the money PETA get, they do, and they do it without killing 299/300 animals brought in by people who think they are doing the right thing.
Although, as PETA themselves do point out, it is expensive providing a basic standard of care for “surplus” (their word) animals, money that could be better spend chasing celebrities.
As Vegina (the well-respected animal rights activist, Ms Glasser) points out in her blog post playing to the paparazzi , concerning a circus protest,
A celebrity appearance was arranged for the protest. Activists were not told who was coming but it was requested we not do any chanting until she arrived because she was “sensitive to that sort of thing.”
PETA’s use of celebrities is getting in the way of real activists, doing real work.
UK model, Naomi Campbell appearing in this PETA ad, under the banner, “We’d rather go naked than wear fur”, only to turn up on the catwalk a couple of years later, for Dolce & Gabbana wearing a fur coat… Oops.
DITA Von Teese, burlesque dancer and PETA model, loves her fur, and refuses to give them up, despite her work with PETA:
Dita, who wore fox fur when she performed at the Macy’s Passport AIDS benefit last week, told People magazine: “PETA is totally aware of me wearing fur. I’m not working with PETA to tell people to be vegetarians or to stop wearing fur. I am there to strictly speak about spaying and neutering your pets.” Von Teese won’t give up fur despite working with PETA
Jenna Jameson, PETA model for pleather, yet, kills fish, people see the behaviour of celebrities and it weakens PETAs message, unless their message is “do what we say, and not what we do”.
PETA’s star-studded, once-in-a-lifetime event will celebrate 30 years of cutting-edge campaigns that have brought about monumental change for animals and are leading to even more progress. This memorable night will feature a celebrity awards presentation, wonderful musical performances and other top-notch entertainment, delectable vegan food, unique silent auction items, and more in a historic and famous Hollywood setting.
Will Temple Grandin be in the running again, has she designed any other ways of efficiently slaughtering animals, that PETA feels she should be award for?
A website set up, to discredit PETA, I am currently researching who is behind this (another major anti-PETA campaign is funded by CCF, Centre for Consumer Freedom, an organisation that represents the meat and dairy industries), has a PETA vice president quoted on the Fox News Channel’s audience: “Our campaigns are always geared towards children, and they always will be.”
How much of peoples hard-earned dollars are being wasted on this garbage of celebrity worship? Money that people donate a few dollars at time, thinking they are making a difference in the life-or-death of an animal? Would they be disappointed to find out money they slave hard for doing their 60hours a week gets diverted to throwing parties for the rich and famous.
PETA rakes in the money through donations, but do they spend any of it on animals, any, at all? But why spend money saving animals, when PETA could be out there making soft porn to sell vegetarianism?
Vegetarians? Did I miss something? Dairy, eggs, honey, are all vegetarian food products which inflict intolerable cruelty on the cows, chickens and bees involved.
I think you meant GO VEGAN, didn’t you?
PETA quote often uses naked women to promote vegetarianism. These ads and promotions are so ubiquitous, that I will not repeat any more of them here. They use naked women to promote tofu, circuses, fur coats, and many more causes. There isn’t an issue that PETA doesn’t promote using naked women.
But then, PETA’s agenda is never about VEGANISM, as Ingrid Newkirk herself has allegedly said (quoted on the website TMZ)
PETA big cheese Ingrid Newkirk tells TMZ she’s got no beef with steakhouses — she’s been to the STK in New York herself.
Although, what is more likely, they are promoting PETA, rather than anything to do with animals.
How about some more naked women to promote VEGANISM, and actually make a difference on behalf of animals?
If being naked was a sign of empowerment, why doesn’t President Obama turn up to the oval office in his underwear, and on the topic of empowerment – Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Senator Hillary Clinton, former Governor Sarah Palin and Oprah, these are powerful women, and I notice they often wear clothes.
Comparing womens’ bodies to meat, does more to objectify women, or commodify women than it does to convince anyone to give up meat. It seems like all it would do is convince patriarchal meat-eaters to objectify women even more.
And yet, as a registered charity, what PETA does is tax-deductible. What they do is being subsidised by the tax payers, every publicity stunt, every naked woman, every dead dog, it seems from my perspective, that it is all about how much money PETA can make. And if I am wrong, I will be prepared to stand corrected.
While large groups, such as PETA, ASPCA, HSUS, allegedly kill almost 10 million animals a year, smaller groups do much better with a lot less money, but they don’t get the media.
What can someone say other than to quote Penn & Teller… Bullshit PETA
Attacking PETA though, feels a little strange, I mean, how often do Animal Rights Activists say we need to stop the infighting. On the other hand, I can’t just support someone because they say they are for animals, when clearly they are not. And, they do have some useful resources and by that I mean ‘free’, which does help some people, but there comes a point when they are not just merely getting in the way of real vegans and AR people, but they are doing more damage than good.
And no one should have to unquestioningly support a pseudo-Animal Rights group, just because they say they are for animals.
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Articles copyright 2010 ‘Vegan Animal Liberation Alliance’. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Written by RedGlitter of VALA http://redglitterx.wordpress.com/
Recently, however, Jillian Michaels diet has gotten some interest for reasons other than weight-loss. Although, how accurate these stories in the online media are, is hard to know. But they make a change from celebrities such as Angelina Jolie close to death saying “vegan… nearly killed me.
Jillian Michaels has whittled down her animal intake to sustainable fish, citing her reasons to the Houston Chronicle as being for animal welfare.
“Personally I’m not eating chicken or beef right now. It’s not about health; it’s about the slaughterhouse practices. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, organic yogurt and eggs and a lot of beans and nuts. But I also eat things like dark chocolate.”
I began exploring different avenues of “greening” my life – getting a hybrid, water conservation, air pollution etc. I was also in the process of reading books about the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry (Selling Sickness, Appetite for Profit and Food Politics). These books horrified me. I knew there was corruption in the government and corporate America, but didn’t begin to fathom the extent or the depth of it. …
I have gone off the deep end on this. I find that when one has the knowledge and the means they have a responsibility to make the ethical choice. With regard to my diet, I always go organic. I shop at local farmers’ markets whenever possible. I have given up all animal products except for fish that has been ethically fished like ocean caught salmon, farmed arctic char, farmed trout, pacific cod, tilapia, crab, shrimp, and farmed oysters. I use all natural beauty products like Olive Oil, brown sugar for scrubs, avocado and ethical organic brands. My cleaning products are all green – and got rid of paper towels almost entirely and use rags instead. I use a Kangen water filter for drinking water and put in stainless steel canteens- never bottled water.
If these are true quotes, regarding the use of animals for food and the perceived nutritional qualities, it is saying the treatment of animals is affecting the choices Jillian is making, and she is eating with awareness.
When someone who makes her living via her body, such as Jillian Michaels, comes out saying that what happens in the slaughterhouse has an impact on her food intake makes a powerful statement for anyone who follows her. It may also get her fans to begin to question their own food intake and why they eat death.
For anyone wanting to know what these slaughterhouse practices are getting people such as Jillian Michaels to change her diet…
watch the full video here – http://www.earthlings.com/earthlings/video-full.php
which has been described as “Powerful, informative and thought-provoking, EARTHLINGS is by far the most comprehensive documentary produced on the correlation between nature, animals, and human economic interests.”
A spoken-word track by Consolidated, called MEAT KILLS from their Friendly Fa$cism (1991) album, is nearly 20 years old, but still as important today.
Consolidated: Adam Sherburne, Mark Pistel, Philip Steir
This is what is being said. Reprinted here, is in no way meant to impinge on their copyright, or suggest that they endorse this blog, its authors, or its themes. They are here, only to make clear the words being spoken on the video clip over the sounds of the slaughter house.
Meat Kills
The driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rain forests is the American meat habit. The rain forests are cleared then planted with grass for grazing livestock to create hamburger for fast food restaurants.
More than half of all the water used in the United States is used for raising animals for food. 25 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of wheat. 2500 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of meat.
Dependence on foreign oil is one of the principle reasons for US intervention in the Persian Gulf. The length of time the world’s oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a meat-based diet would be approximately 13 years. The length of time the world’s oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a plant based diet would be approximately 260 years.
Feedlots and slaughterhouses are both major polluters of rivers and streams. Filling them with poisonous residues and animal wastes. 250,000 pounds of animal excrement is produced every second in the US and there are no sewage systems to treat the wastes.
In 1989, over 40% of the world’s grain harvest was fed to animals going to slaughter. If the same grain was fed directly to human beings, there would be more than enough grain to feed the entire world. Over 20 million people will die as a result of malnutrition this year.
In third third world private and government money has gone to developing cash crops for export while food production for the poor majority is neglected. 80% of the corn grown in the US is fed to animals raised for food rather than going to hungry people.
On a purely vegetarian diet the world can support a population many times its present size. On a meat based diet the current world population could not be sustained.
Cattle ranching has always competed with wildlife. Coyotes and wolves would not be shot and poisoned by ranchers if people did not eat steaks and lamb chops. Destroying the rain forests to raise cattle is causing millions of birds, monkeys, snakes and other species to lose their homes and lives.
In the US this year alone thirty seven and a half million cattle, eighty five and a half million
pigs, five and a half million sheep, two hundred forty two million turkeys, four billion one hundred forty seven million chickens will be murdered for the taste of their flesh.
Pain, frustration, stress, fear, abuse, neglect, and deprivation are realities of the raising of animals in today’s factory farms. Animals are artificially inseminated, fed growth hormones, overcrowded, chained and caged.
Raising livestock for profit is a competitive business and being humane means costs will go up. These animals are kicked, prodded, electro-shocked, dragged, and finally transported to their deaths.
A vegetarian diet promotes superior health, endurance, and longevity.
Animal products have 3 nutritional disadvantages. They contain too much protein, too much fat, and no fibre.
Do not believe the protein myth. It was based on a study done by the meat and dairy industries to rats, animals who need 1000 times more protein in their diet than humans.
The outbreak of salmonella poisoning that sickened more than 1,500 people in the U.S. in August, forcing the recall of more than a half billion eggs, mandates a harder look at the combined impact of the monopolization of the poultry industry coupled with the critical lack of government oversight.
Salmonella causes fever, severe vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain, and can be fatal to the very young, the elderly and anyone with a weakened immune system. So far no deaths have been recorded from the current outbreak, but since only one in every 38 cases of salmonella generally gets counted in government statistics, the actual number of people impacted by the tainted eggs could be in the tens of thousands.
Outbreaks of salmonella poisoning are on the increase, sickening more than a million people in the U.S. every year. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 81 million cases of food-related illnesses occur every year across the U.S., causing 9,000 deaths.
The cause of this latest food-related health crisis appears to be the practice of cramming hundreds of thousands of egg-laying hens into wire cages, so crowded that the birds are unable to even spread their wings. More than 95 percent of all U.S. eggs are currently coming from caged hens. Odds of salmonella contamination are around 50 percent less in cage-free hens and nearly nonexistent in free-range hens.
According to United Egg Producers, an industry trade organization, as of April there were 192 egg-producing companies with flocks of 75,000 hens or more. In 1987 there were around 2,500 operations. Currently, there are 58 egg-producing companies with over a million layers and 13 companies with greater than 5 million layers.
Crowded hens, tainted eggs
Despite long-standing industry denial of any connection between salmonella outbreaks and caging of laying hens, John Robbins reported that nine scientific studies on this issue in the past five years found increased salmonella rates in eggs coming from facilities that confine hens in cages. (Huffington Post, Aug. 27)
In a video exposing the horrors of caging hens produced by the Humane Society of the United States, Paul Shapiro comments, “This isn’t a case of a couple of rotten eggs; rather it’s a case of where standard industry practices are simply rotten.”
That the egg and poultry industries have been allowed to maximize profits by minimizing health and safety standards can be linked to the complicity of the federal Food and Drug Administration, which oversees shell egg production. With only 450 inspectors to visit over 156,000 sites, most operations have gone uninspected for decades.
Funding cuts that have halved the FDA’s food safety program over the last 10 years severely limit the agency’s ability to force companies to recall unsafe products. The FDA’s long-standing practice of allowing agribusiness to “voluntarily” comply with safety measures bears an eerie similarity to recent disasters in the oil and gas industry, where the drive to maximize profits by cost-cutting measures has spelled disaster for workers and their communities.
Even though the two Iowa companies that were responsible for the recent salmonella poisoning, Wright County Eggs and Hillandale Farms, had a long history of violations, the FDA never inspected these farms.
The Washington Post on Aug. 21 published a partial list of violations against Wright County Eggs’ owner Austin “Jack” DeCoster going back to 1996 when the Labor Department fined him $3.6 million for brutal conditions at his egg farm. DeCoster’s workers had been forced to live in trailers infested with rats and to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands at what then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich described as “an agricultural sweatshop.”
Environmental, labor violations
The Washington Post reported that DeCoster was also “charged by the state of Iowa for violating environmental laws because of manure runoff in rivers from his chicken and hog farm operations.” The Iowa Supreme Court later found DeCoster to be a “repeat violator” and forbid him to expand hog farming in the state.
It gets worse. In 2001, DeCoster Farms settled a $1.5 million complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when 11 undocumented Mexican women workers were raped and sexually assaulted by their supervisors. A year later the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined DeCoster $3.2 million in a lawsuit filed by Mexican workers over deplorable housing conditions.
The Ohio State Department of Agriculture revoked permits of Ohio Fresh Eggs in 2006 when it found this company failed to disclose DeCoster’s secret involvement in their operations to avoid a state background check on his Iowa violations.
Ohio Fresh Eggs, which has also incurred dozens of enforcement actions, up to seven in a single day, is co-owned by Orland Bethel, founder of Hillandale Farms, which recalled 170 million eggs in August. Hillandale Farms and Wright County Eggs purchase their chickens and feed through the same suppliers.
The recent egg recall has prompted the Obama administration to push for legislation that would require increased testing for contamination, but these regulations won’t take effect until 2012.
Public demand for safer food has led California and Michigan to pass laws phasing out the practice of caging hens. Robbins’ article in the Huffington Post notes that fast food companies, including Burger King, Subway and Wendy’s, and retailers including Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s, are pledging to purchase or sell cage-free eggs. Hellmann’s mayo, which uses 350 million eggs a year, has announced they will go 100 percent cage free.
As long as the drive to maximize profits propels food production and not the desire to guarantee healthy and safe products, the age-old question of whether the chicken or egg came first gives ground to the modern-day dilemma of whether either are fit for human consumption.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
MR AND Mrs Brown seemed like regular pig doggers. They talked about hunting pigs, blooding hounds and listened to jokes about stray bullets killing sheep.
It would take close inspection to notice Linda’s wedding ring had been bought for $12 at Paddy’s Markets – that she could see perfectly well without her large glasses, that her marriage was a fake, and her hair a wig.
“I was Linda with an ‘i’. It’s better not to make things too complicated,” says Lynda Stoner, the former star of Cop Shop and The Young Doctors, after spending a weekend undercover for Animal Liberation at the Game Council’s first pig-dogging workshop.
”Without Animal Liberation doing these sort of things, a lot of information would not get out. You cannot get this information by knocking on the door and asking for it.”
Pig dogging – in which pigs are pursued and caught by dogs and then killed with knives – has been legal in declared state forests since March 2006. About the same time, Animal Liberation says it began receiving phone calls from farmers troubled by the brutality of the practice.
”It’s such an underground culture. I’ve spoken to other hunters; they are so disparaging of pig doggers. They are the lowest of the low,” Stoner said.
”If they’re proposing this is to reduce the number of feral animals, it’s the most disgusting, most barbaric, most brutal thing they could do.”
Last month, an opportunity presented itself to Animal Liberation: ”the best pig dog event this year,” as the state government’s Game Council described it. It was a two-day workshop on dog training, game dispatching and meat preparation.
Stoner and a colleague – both vegans – signed up. ”The only way to do it is to go in there and try to dissociate, to mentally put yourself in another place and know that you’re doing it to try to get this terrible thing stopped,” she said of the time undercover, though she confessed she did not stay the entire weekend.
”I kept thinking we would get done but I don’t think they had any idea. You joke with these people, listen to them joking about killing, and you’re one of them. You just do it. Afterwards, there’s lots of showers.”
The pair found the workshop run without a syllabus, which the council has since admitted. Trainers advised gored dogs could be wrapped with cling film to hold in their intestines, that more superficial wounds could be fixed in the field with a stapler.
”These comments,” the Game Council later said, ”were not part of the actual dog care and first aid classes … and were not given as any form of official advice.”
They found the session on humanely killing pigs was carried out on a rubber creature that more closely resembled a deer.
”When the workshop commenced,” said Steven Whan, the minister responsible for the council, ”the rubber pig body could not be located and a rubber deer body of similar body size had to be substituted at the last minute.”
And yet the event was described as a success. ”It is clear that the event was regarded as one of our most successful training workshops to date,” a council spokesman said.
Mr Whan said it was a ”hands on” course that could not be taught effectively from the sort of syllabus other licensing bodies would be expected to use.
”The Game Council’s support for pig dogging as an effective means of feral animal control is based on the statistical success of it in hunting, and the lack of suitable alternatives,” he said, citing the 3914 pigs killed this way in state forests since 2006.
The information Stoner gathered at the workshop, typed and provided to the Greens will form the basis of Animal Liberation’s campaign against pig dogging – a sport the group describes as akin to dog fighting, and surpassed only by factory farming as a concern.
The Greens’ spokeswoman on animal welfare, Lee Rhiannon, says the Game Council is a ”bankrupt model” for controlling feral animals. Her party has a bill before Parliament to have the council disbanded and its $3.5 million in annual government funds directed into other means of pest management.
“The Game Council is a child born of an unhealthy relationship between the government and the Shooters Party,” she said.
“[It] is bent on advancing the interests of recreational hunters who then send their votes onto the Shooters Party.”
For Stoner the issue is more base still.
“There’s no one out there policing what people do to these animals. If it’s the Game Council with all of their wink wink, nudge nudge, there’s no policing.”
Marion Nestle, food activist, of FOOD POLITICS, talks here on The Colbert Report, about the fake ‘sugar shortage’ in order for manufacturers to import more sugar.
Often from farmers in much poorer countries than the United States, who grow sugar instead of crops to feed their own people.
Um, yep, I can see how you can think tweeting is exactly just like the same as being “on the frontlines” too.
I did some research (looked up WIKI) for the meaning of “front line” and this is what it said:
Frontline… is a term used by most armed force services worldwide. It is a battlespace control measure that designates the forward-most friendly and hostile forces that are presently on the battlefield during an armed conflict or war; whether it be regular infantry or reconnaissance. It can also identify the forward location of covering and screening forces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_line
While I don’t doubt that tweeters are involved in “direct action”, I don’t see what “hostile forces” or “armed conflict” or “war” they are encountering.
And, to be fair, to this person whose name I blacked out, I am not really attacking them, their comment just made me laugh. How do you compare a group like Biteback, to someone who “promotes veganism”? Although, they probably do more than just tweet and retweet. And, promoting veganism, is a good thing, I’m not knocking their efforts, just their comparison to Biteback. And, if someone did the same to me, they could probably find things that can be taken out of context and pick it apart…. oh wait, they have….
H$U$ (Human Society of United States) recently had a petition against “cruel factory farms“, when I replied to their tweet, “how about: ending all factory farms?”. To say that there are cruel factory farms, implies that there are factory farms that are not. All factory farms are cruel, all farms are cruel, any use of animals for any reason is exploitation and cruelty.
The comments didn’t stop for days, accusing me of being a ‘welfarist’, ‘supporting animal abuse’, being an ‘abuse enabler’, ‘supporting farming’… wow, people, back off. Attacking other vegans, and with such vitriol and viciousness, and then claim to be about peace is just bizarre and does not do anything to promote the vegan message.
When using social network sites, particularly Twitter, be careful what you say, someone is always reading, and usually not the people you expect.
Or maybe Vegans need to just stop attacking each other.
Morgan Spurlock’s expose on McDonalds as an example of Fast Food restaurants which have contributed to USAmerica becoming one of The most obese nations on earth.
Receiving an Academy Award nomination for this 2004 documentary which follows the film maker for 30-days during Febuary 2003 which he ate Only McDonalds food. He gave himself the following rules, eat only McDonalds, eat only products on the menu, eat three meals a day, consuming every item at least once, And, if offered the option to supersize, he took it. This documentary follows his journey and the impact of this diet on his lifestyle and health, both mental and physical.
He consumed an average of 5,000 calories (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment.
