Getting animals out of shops… or is it?

You may have seen Say No To Animals In Pet Shops info, pamphlets, or the website before – a campaign against the proliferation of puppy farms/mills and generally seeing “pet” animals as commodities to be bought and sold with little regard for their welfare.

Here’s a new one: Lead The Way: The Animals (Regulation Of Sale) Bill – for animal welfare, against puppy farms (Australia):

We are a nation of Animal lovers, but we need to do more to ensure their well-being and eliminate animal cruelty. Regulating the sale of animals means a better beginning in life, and helps reduce the 60,000+ unnecessary deaths in NSW alone every year. This website has more information on the Bill, and makes it easy for you to support it.

‘The principle here is about our responsibility as humans to the animal world’. Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP

It looks like a step in the right direction for cats and dogs… but unfortunately this Bill seems to only apply to cats and dogs. It appears to be only aimed at cat and dog rights/welfare, not animal welfare or animal rights at all – very selective and clearly speciesist – it makes no mention of extending these “better conditions” to include other animals being mistreated and neglected in shops.

While “other mammals” get a mention in the Bill (although predictably livestock is excluded, which makes one wonder about the status of – and hypocrisy involved with – certain small animals that are considered “food” for other animals…), birds and fish often get the worst treatment in stores, being seen as novelty short-term “disposible pets” or “pocket pets.” Rather a large oversight, given the far greater numbers of small animals going in and out of pet shops. Barely an encouraging move in real terms, but perhaps better than nothing? Although…

Selectively saving lives? Is this really a step in the right direction, or is it encouraging further discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics? If so, will this really even benefit cats and dogs in the long-term? Or is it just another case of token “feel good” welfare efforts primarily designed to relieve guilt? Efforts that will get in the way of the abolition of animal abuse and use for all species? Why are we continuing to put limits on our compassion according to what animal people think looks cuter in our house or backyard? According to what animal it’s more socially acceptable to feel compassion for? … Vegan food for thought.

The Malicious Cup

Yesterday the Melbourne Cup was held in Australia, as part of the Spring Racing Carnival. During this time, women stick dead birds in their hair, calling it fashionable and attractive, and everyone sits on their lazy asses to watch horses get flogged around a race track. Sound pleasant? A little bit of light-hearted fun?

If you open your eyes and look beyond the fluff presented on your idiotbox, you’ll see that it’s far from a “bit of fun.” Having seen the trauma racing inflicts on horses first-hand when I was growing up, I know even the most well cared for horses suffer when they’re forced into racing… Never mind the drugging that goes on behind the scenes. When there’s money to be made off animals, exploitation and abuse isn’t far behind.

This article from Animals Australia covers a heck of a lot:

Horse racing – the glitz, the glamour, the grim reality.

The Melbourne Cup: a celebration? Think again. The only thing being celebrated is an ignorance of cruelty towards animals.

An ethical wardrobe: it’s so hot right now

The UK media, from what I’ve seen, seems to be reasonably vegan-friendly. From pro-animal rights articles to health, they aren’t quite so afraid as certain other western nations of throwing the v-word around. *cough*Australia*cough* *cough*UnitedStates*cough*cough*

The Guardian has been doing a series called The Ethical Wardrobe in their Life & Style section that’s worth checking out. Recent articles include info about leather and silk.

Don’t hide from the truth
Many ethical consumers excuse their leather purchases on the grounds that skins are simply a byproduct of the meat industry. The reality is not so simple, as Kate Carter reveals

& More on vegan-friendly weddings!

A whiter-than-white wedding
Wedding dressing can include a catalogue of ethical no-nos, from low-paid seamstresses to tortured silkworms – not to mention the sheer waste involved. Kate Carter explains how to keep a clear conscience on your big day

Thanks to Andrew Bartlett for pointing this out in his recent blog post “Queensland government’s hot air on climate change continues unabated.”

And speaking of ethical clothing, there’s a great photo group on Flickr dedicated to Vegan Shoes. That’s hot.

Psychological blind spots

People “prefer” the meat version of foods, even if… it tastes, looks, and feels exactly the darn same.

“An ingenious study just published in the Journal of Consumer Research has provided a striking demonstration that taste perceptions and product preferences are strongly influenced by our personal values – to the point where people who believe in the importance of social authority perceived a sausage roll labelled as vegetarian as far inferior to a ‘meat’ version, even though they ate the same sausage roll on both occasions.

The same result appeared whether the participants actually ate meat or vegetarian sausage rolls, and the participants couldn’t reliably distinguish the two in any condition.”

Anti-veg prejudice is fascinating… if a little bit sad, given all the unnecessary animal suffering, environmental degradation, and health problems that result from people’s alleged “preferences.”

Read the whole article here!

Abolish welfarism?

If you’ve read up on animal rights or ethics for more than a few minutes, you’ve no doubt stumbled across the very popular abolitionism vs. welfarism debate. Why do animal welfare groups fail to make a significant impact? Why is abolitionism – ie. activism against all forms of animal commodification rather than simply campaigning for “better” conditions for commodified/tortured/etc animals – more productive in the struggle against animal abuse?

The RSPCA Watchdog website helps to answer that question, exposing the significant failures and incompetence rife in the Australian organisation that continually thwarts the efforts of volunteers to relieve animal suffering.

And if you haven’t heard of him, Professor Gary L. Francione also has plenty to say on the matter.

Save the animals, save the world

If you like contributing to human rights groups, but are a little concerned when providing “aid” sometimes means animals for farming and slaughter, then Vegfam might be for you. It’s like Oxfam without the ox/chicken/goat abuse. Vegfam promotes sustainable environmentally-friendly projects that “reduce the dependency on external food aid, decreasing the dependence on outside assistance.” Neat, huh?

For over 40 years, VEGFAM has provided Overseas Famine Relief in more than 40 countries, helping millions of people who were suffering from hunger, thirst, malnutrition and starvation.

We fund sustainable, self supporting projects which do not exploit animals or the environment.

The Fragile Environment of Developing Countries cannot support TWO populations Humans and their Food Animals. Animal derived food, especially if it is intensively produced, squanders resources and damages the Earth’s fragile environment.

VEGFAM is one of only a few Charities in the UK which is trying to prevent Developing Countries copying our ecologically disastrous “Western” Lifestyle.
If you are a Vegan, Vegetarian and/or interested in environmental issues, VEGFAM’S work should be of particular interest to you.

VEGFAM is professionally operated by volunteers, so as much as possible is spent on (vegan) famine relief projects.

To date, millions of people around the world are alive as a result of VEGFAM funded famine relief projects.

For more info, check out their website: www.vegfamcharity.org.uk

Another people-friendly/vegan-friendly charity is: HIPPO: Help International Plant Protein Organisation. HIPPO is founded on the belief that providing food to the world’s poor and hungry does not have to cause suffering to animals… What a mind bender! Ha. It’s good, compassionate stuff.

Cut class, not rabbits

ALV (Animal Liberation Victoria) in Australia has been protesting against the unnecessary abuse and slaughter of bunnies in undergrad science courses. Seriously nasty. Here’s some details:

Monash University conducts completely unnecessary live experiments on rabbits as part of undergrad science classes, but you can make them stop.

Animal Liberation Victoria was contacted in early 2007 by distressed students from Monash University’s third year undergraduate science course.

Students were being instructed to perform experiments on live unconscious rabbits which included:

- Restraining the rabbits on a work table, with their paws and teeth tied to anchor points
- Cutting open the rabbits’ throats with unsterilised instruments and inserting a tube into their wind pipe
- Administering various chemicals into their blood stream to observe the effect on the rabbits’ heart rate
- At the end of the class, the rabbits were given a lethal overdose and discarded in a rubbish bin.

Undercover footage was then recorded from inside the classroom (click here to view the footage) using a hidden camera.

Complain with an email to these addresses, or go to this website for more info and a prewritten complaint (personalising it packs more punch!): www.monashkills.org

Further links:
+ In the news – The Age: “Breach of cruelty law?”
+ Facebook group
+ Monash Kills on Myspace

Disgusting? Yes. But it’s not uncommon. Most people condone these sorts of violent practices against animals daily through what they eat, what they purchase, the industries they support. This sort of brutality – live dissection, physical abuse, and slaughter – also happens daily in slaughterhouses and farms to cattle, dairy cows, calves, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, egg-laying hens, fish – countless other species! – that are treated as commodities instead of as the living, feeling, breathing, intelligent lifeforms they are. Why don’t other species deserve as much attention as these cute little bunnies? They do. Cruelty is cruelty, no matter who the victim is. Hence the whole vegan thing. So. You don’t need to support food industries, laboratories, or universities that cause unnecessary violence. If you want violence against animals to stop, then say something, and, more importantly, DO something – like: go vegan! It’s better for animals and, as a bonus, it’s better for your health, too… and the environment, too – don’t forget that one!

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On a lighter note… For any Australian vegans out there, the 2008 aduki awards: celebrating Australia’s vegan community is open for voting. Vote for your favourite tasty foods and vegan businesses over here.

VegQuotes

If less-informed folks have been hassling you about veganism, it can be helpful to remember that you’re not alone. In fact, by standing up for the rights of the oppressed and giving a voice to the voiceless, you’re keeping company with some of the greatest minds in history. For example:

“The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.”
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat.”
- Leonardo da Vinci

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.”
- Alice Walker

“One is not a great one because one defeats or harms other living beings. One is so called because one refrains from defeating or harming other living beings.”
- Buddha, Dhammapada, Ch. 19

“If a man can control his body and mind and thereby refrains from eating animal flesh and wearing animal products, I say he will really be liberated.”
- Buddha, Surangama Sutra

“My perspective of veganism was most affected by learning that the veal calf is a by-product of dairying, and that in essence there is a slice of veal in every glass of what I had thought was an innocuous white liquid – milk.”
- Rynn Berry

“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologise for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”
“Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers, the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.”
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
- Mohandas Gandhi

“If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.”
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
- Albert Einstein

“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character; and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer

“For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
- Pythagoras

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
- Jeremy Bentham

“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.”
“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
- Leo Tolstoy

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”
“Atrocities are not less atrocities when they occur in laboratories and are called medical research.”
“A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.”
- George Bernard Shaw

(It is probably worth noting that until recent times vegetarian often did mean vegan or more closely resemble veganism than current vegetarianism that is prefixed with non-veg exceptions such as lacto, ova, dietary, etc. Hence the founding of the first Vegan Society in the UK in 1944 to distinguish vegan vegetarianism from less consistent forms of vegetarianism.)

The thinking animal

Anyone who has adopted an animal and brought it into their home knows that animals are more than automatons. For those of us who pay close attention to our animal companions, we’ve witnessed a full range of emotions, mischievous thinking (and the disastrous results that follow!), the curiosity, and the behaviours taught and learnt over time.

Intelligence is not just limited to cats and dogs: people have reported the same sorts of things from other pets, from rodents to snakes to goldfish. Heck, I once saw an article about goldfish who were taught to play a form of miniature underwater soccer! My own adopted angelfish take a great deal of interest in the world outside their tank, and my rats love to play games and collect items to create all manner of bizarre decorations in their cage. With a little persistence, rats can be trained to come when their name is called.

So how does this relate to a gluten-free vegan blog? Well, besides my adopted animal companions eating a gluten-free diet, too (it just turned out that way), the idea of animal intelligence, feeling, wants and needs is what veganism is about. Animals can suffer, that much is clear. But evidence – in our own homes and in laboratories – shows that they can think and reason as well. Humans are not unique, despite the egotism that people spew about our “right” to dominate the earth. Monkeys and crows use tools, earthworms and otters build homes for themselves from carefully chosen materials. Pigs are known for being vastly more intelligent than dogs, and cows and chickens kept on small properties are often prized as “pets” rather than food or egg/dairy production machines.

Simply because animals do not cause destruction and create concrete jungles on a mass scale in the process (like humans do) does not mean their abilities should be dismissed. Rats – commonly used in psychology experiments – have even demonstrated meta-cognitive abilities, ie. thinking about thinking – reconsidering choices, thoughts, the world, etc. Rats are the second most destructive force on earth, next to humans, but we are not the only animals who reshape their environment and create from it, as mentioned earlier. There are a vast range of abilities and intelligences across the animal kingdom.

My compassion for another human is not limited to my estimate of their intelligence. Is someone with a lower intelligence less entitled to a life free from harm? Or, to put it another way: is someone with a different form of intelligence, with a different way of life, any less entitled to a life free from harm, abuse, enslavement, forced labour, and violent slaughter? For the most part, the wants of animals are ignored, or dismissed as non-existent (yet anyone with pets – or companion animals – knows that animal have needs, eg. cats in particular aren’t afraid to remind you know about what they want! Incessantly and repeatedly. And each individual cat makes their requests in a different way, and has preferences for different things).

For humans, the answer appears obvious in the age of the Declaration of Human Rights, yet less than one hundred years ago humans still enslaved others, discriminated based on race, gender, physical and intellectual disabilities. This still goes on in plenty of places in the world, in plenty of ways, but it’s not considered fair or just. As education becomes more and more widespread, people are empowered to make choices and rethink what is acceptable treatment of them and others. People work to eliminate violence and abuse based on bigotry. The anti-sweatshop movement is a great example (and remarkably similar to the anti-factory farming movement).

So, where does veganism fit in? Discriminating on the basis of species is equivalent to discriminating on the basis of any other arbitrary characteristic, such as race or gender. Simply because an intelligent being is of a different species doesn’t make it any less worthy of our compassion. The idea of “inherent worth” being applied to arbitrary characteristics is the same idea behind white supremacy and the patriarchal values oppressing women – it is a poor excuse for excusing all sorts of violent, ignorant, and abusive behaviour against another life. Simply because someone is born with white skin or is a man does not make them more worthy of privilege than dark skinned folks or women, respectively. Similarly, being born a human should not give you the privilege to abuse nonhumans or to place your needs above theirs. To not use, abuse, or support animal industry is to not engage in bigotry against nonhuman species.

Speciesism, like racism and sexism, causes harm, destruction, violence, and pain, and it’s completely unnecessary. There is nothing to be gained by supporting animal abuse, but plenty to lose by continuing down this path – for starters, animal industries create more pollution than all other industries combined, including automotive, and animal farming industries so often have to be subsidised by governments to stay afloat – ultimately they are not sustainable on any level. Just as sexism and racism impede societies economically and sociologically, so does speciesism.

Animals are entitled to their own needs just as much as we are. They express their needs to each other and to us – and here’s a National Geographic article that shows they do. Not only can animals relate to each other, they can stretch themselves to think in human terms. Most humans are incapable of relating to animals on their terms, yet animals are often open and willing to learn from us and teach us.

Minds of their Own:
Animals are smarter than you think.
By Virginia Morell

But is this what veganism is all about? Focusing on all the misery and violence in the world? … Absolutely not! Although fostering awareness of suffering is a key step, along with the issues of animal rights and the importance of acknowledging non-human intelligence. Veganism is about positive change, personal liberation for everyone – and not at the expense of anyone else. The aim is freedom and happiness for everyone, human and nonhuman. It’s about health for everyone, animals of all species and the environment included. By making an effort to stop consuming animal products, life improves. Eating also becomes cheaper and fun and positive. Shopping for clothes and other items besides food also falls into the same realm.

Vegans sometimes hit a negative wall when other people don’t understand the meaning of veganism and take it as a personal criticism or a challenge. But it’s not just about you, and it’s not just about me. It’s about the animals, the rights of non-human and human animals. It’s also about the health of the planet and the health of all non-human and human animals. Veganism is about living in balance with a large ecosystem, without engaging in unsustainable, needlessly destructive or violent behaviours. Ultimately, it’s about helping everyone, which is inclusive of you and me… So hug a vegan today! We’re not out to personally attack or criticise you. We’re only trying to be nice! And if we manage to raise awareness in the process and help more people become vegan along the way, then so much the better for everyone.

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My next non-recipe vegan articles coming up in the near future will feature: why food tastes better when you’re vegan; why veganism is not restrictive or about “giving up” things; how veganism is about discovering a whole new, vast world of flavours and life options beyond the western infatuation with grease, constipation, disease, and obesity; further discussion on human and “pet”/companion animal interactions; various approaches to becoming vegan; why PETA is a thorn in the side of veganism; Buddhists, other religions/philosophies, & veganism… and whatever other stuff comes up in the meantime! And more recipes. There’s always more recipes.