9 of Your Vegan / Animal Rights Questions Get Answered

Because I believe “there are no stupid questions, it’s those who don’t ask that remain stupid”.

So, what is it that people ask me – not of vegans in general, I’m sure other vegans get asked different questions.

• Which animal rights advocates to follow on twitter?

Depends what kind of animal rights you are into – if you are abolitionist, they generally have “abolitionist” in their bio. If you are Liberationist maybe look for specific people. Search for the hashtag #vegan or #AnimalRights and you will find people you want to follow.

People who have forums, blogs, nings or facebuck sometimes include their twitter @name, if you find a blog you like, look for that.

• But, isn’t animal testing necessary for beauty products?

Beauty products that test on animals are not beautiful.

It is NOT necessary. Why they test is because they are using combinations of chemicals that might cause death, disfigurement, and long lasting health side-effects. These chemicals enter the blood stream and nobody knows what effect they will have on the body. Do we even know that BSE (mad cow disease) can’t be spread via cosmetics?

Now, isn’t it better to use healthy ingredients in the first place than take the risk with these dangerous products that “only” kill 50% of the lab rats they test on.

As this piece here Animal Testing: Pass or Fail explores, reasons for testing aren’t always about consumer health.

• Abolitionists talk about Non-violence being the only way to end animal cruelty, but doesn’t Noam Chomsky say that non-violence cannot work?

I’m generally reluctant to mention Nazis but Noam Chomksy said it first:

Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That’s pretty obvious. You can’t have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case…
The Real History of Capitalism

• What are some veggie symbols?

I don’t know what “Veggie” means. Seriously, I don’t.
Does it mean Vegan or does it mean Vegetarian? Is it meant to be a combination of both?
Does it mean “vegetable”? I’m in Australia, we spell it “vegie”.
This Ⓥ is a symbol some vegans use on social network sites.

• Is Carrot cake Vegan?

It should be, yes.
But people will always find a way to shove animal products into any food. However, it does contain oil instead of eggs, and is not low fat, but is vegan.
This recipe contains fruits and vegetable, and is very easy to make, and non-vegans will love it, I mean, if they like carrot cake:

LINK >> Animal Liberation Carrot Cake – vegan recipe

• Does Angelina Jolie eat?

Maybe that was “WHAT does Jolie eat?”
I’m going to guess not a lot of vegetables, she thinks eating a vegan diet (“strict vegetarian”, because she continues to wear animal products) nearly killed her. She says “I joke that a big juicy steak is my beauty secret. But seriously, I love red meat.”

• Camille Marino / Steve Best

Wow, there is a lot of interest in these two. And often people are interested in CamilleMarinoAndSteveBest, as if it is one word, almost like they have morphed into one person with one brain. But no, they appear to be two separate people.

Best and Marino are USAmerican animal rights advocates. Best is from The Institute for Critical Animal Studies and has his own personal blog and together they are Negotiation Is Over.

Their use of a match as their symbol is problematic for me, since matches are an animal product, but no more problematic than PeTA using naked women and leather-wearing celebrities.

Do you need to follow their every word in order to be a good little MDA (Militant Direct Action) activist?
That’s a personal choice. Some people say NO.

• who is the woman in Moby’s “disco lies” video?

Shayna Steele, who also provided the female vocals. This is the video in which the chicken gets revenge on a KFC-inspired Colonel.

• Benjamin Zephaniah

Who is Benjamin Zephaniah, and where can I find a copy of his poem “Vegan Delight“?
Zephaniah is a British poet who has written and spoken about veganism. Some of his work is featured in this post on him Vegan Delight, Benjamin Zephaniah (plus vegan onion bhajji recipe).

Vegan Delight (and not Onion Delight) – is a poem that answers the question “What do vegans eat?”. When omnivores say that all vegans eat is tofu and broccoli, this poem would set them straight. With the exception of “omelettes” – I don’t know why that is listed in the poem.

VEGAN DELIGHT
Ackeess, chapatties, Dumplins an nan, Channa an rotis, Onion uttapam,
Masala dosa, Green callaloo, Bhel an samosa, Corn an aloo.
Yam an cassava, Pepperpot stew, Rotlo an guava, Rice an tofu,
Puri, paratha, Sesame casserole, Brown eggless pasta, An brown bread rolls.

Soya milked muesli, Soya bean curd, Soya sweet sweeties, Soya’s de word,
Soya bean margarine, Soya bean sauce, What can mek medicine?
Soya of course.

Soya meks yoghurt, Soya ice-cream, Or soya sorbet, Soya reigns supreme,
Soya sticks liquoriced, Soya salads, Try any soya dish
Soya is bad.

Plantain an tabouli, Cornmeal pudding, Onion bhajee, With plenty cumin,
Breadfruit an coconuts, Molasses tea, Dairy free omelettes, Very chilli.
Ginger bread, nut roast, Sorell, paw paw, Cocoa an rye toast, I tek dem on tour,
Drinking cool maubi, Meks me feel sweet,

What was dat question now?
WHAT DO WE EAT?

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

Animal Testing: pass or fail?

“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: ‘Because animals are like us.’

“Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: ‘Because the animals are not like us.’

“Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.”

—Prof. Charles R. Magel

Why do we accept that some of the most sadistic things are done to animals in the name of science?

Are we, as a human species so blindly superstitious, that we still believe in “sympathetic (or hunting) magic” like our cave people ancestors did, back inn the day, when they draw art on the walls of the animals. Modern theory suggests when this was teamed up with dancing and chanting while wearing skins and antlers of slain animal would bring good luck in the hunt. By imitation they animals in the hunt they would recreate the expected results of the hunt.

How little we have progressed as a species since the days of Paleolithic cave art. For this hunting rituals magic has long since been discredited for lack of evidence. We know better, or we should.

Yet we continue to conduct all variety of experiments on animals, from emotional (separating animals from their families), stimulus deprivation, to cutting their brains open and inserting electrodes in, to testing medication, cosmetics, floor cleaners and many other useless products we have no use for. Vivesection shows how hollow our claims for being an advanced civilisation are.

Not only are we testing consumer products which are “new and improved” and require testing by law, these products are often no better and even worse than the old products they are replacing. The medications are giving inaccurate results, making the testing not merely cruel but pointlessly cruel.

The British Medical Journal has said that animal studies are of limited usefulness to human health because they are of poor quality and their results often conflict with human trials
(BMJ-British Medical Journal (2006, December 18). Just How Useful Are Animal Studies To Human Health?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August)

There are also fundamental flaws in the way the tests are conducted, producing results which are unusable in any scientific way, even if the testing was as necessary as these vivisectors claim.

And, if these test were conducted at even a basic level required to achieve usable date, (which they are not), they are producing results that reflect how chemicals or conditions affect animals, and only those animals that are being tested. Testing doesn’t reflect how it affect animals in real world conditions. So these tests are useless even in for producing animal results, without trying to apply it to humans. (http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/animal_testing.shtml)

On top of all this there is no guarentee of how these chemicals and products will affect humans, making the results of this deliberate cruelty, irrelevant.

As this article points out, Five out of six new prescription drugs don’t work, doctor claims, and they offer “few if any new benefits” to patients. Yet Big Pharma push these new wonder drugs, government regulatory agencies pass these drugs, in order to keep the profits rolling in. New and Improved, is really just Cruel and Horrific. These drugs are useless, and may actually be harmful, but the animals are tortured anyway, with no benefit to human health, which is the raison d’être “scientists” give us for this experimentation.

So, there are poorly designed tests, inaccurately carried out, producing irrelevant data, from cruel and useless tests on animals that have no clear correlation between how these products will affect humans, and after that, they still have to run human trials. Often the human trials are conducted at the same time, regardless of animal testing.

And in cases where animal testing has produced negative results, the companies can ignore it and proceed to human trials regardless. Such as with Proctor & Gambles testing of Olestra a fat substitute on mice and rats. These test shows that mice and rats developed liver tumors, and P&G decided to ignore these findings are rats and mice are different to humans.

Proctor & Gamble, the worlds largest producer of consumer goods, when we buy their products we are telling them that we agree with their testing policy. P&G has been the subject of many boycott attempt from consumers (for a full list of their products, their site provides a handy list of P&G products (US brands) ethical consumers and those who oppose animal testing may like to avoid

and why boycott proctor & gamble

P&G admit that guinea pigs, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, rats and mice are among the animals used in their ‘product safety research’, as well as cats and dogs in pet food experiments.
Source: uncaged: protecting animals

As long as a company is making money, and P&G is making billions of dollars annually, they do not have the consumers health as their number one consideration. In fact, corporation law requires them not to, the law corporations to put profits for shareholders before all else.

The testing of our food on animals must give people cause for concern about what we eat. Food that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years gets adulterated in the labs and this raises safety issues for consumers.

As Kate Hood MDAA and Isabelle Quinn, authors of Vegan Bootcamp (Redcliff publishing, 2005) state “Testing (for any reason, other than taste) is done to find out how much of a chemical they can that add before it it will kill you. In other words, how much can they get away with, before your family launches lawsuits on your behalf. … If food needs to be tested to pass product safety tests, your body doesn’t need it. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients, your body doesn’t need it. If it is produced in a lab and not grown in the ground, your body doesn’t need it.”

There is a saying which reminds us why we must oppose this at every opportunity. If anyone knows who said this first, I would be happy to attribute it.

Animal experimenters inflict so much torture on dogs in order to induce heart disease. A disease that dogs, being meat eaters, do not get naturally. Once they have heart disease “scientists” test drugs that will be used on humans who have heart disease. Often as a result of eating animal products in the first place.

While people are continuing to receive grants to conduct these experiments, it is more profitable for them to torture rather than to show compassion, logic, reasoning and common sense.

The things we do to animals, because we can, is shameful.
Feedback welcome.