In this blog End Animal Slaughter contributor Paul Stevenson writes that the most recently evolved part of our brain is the seat of reason, compassion and kindness. It should be developed if we are to create an enlightened world, and find inner contentment ourselves.
The adult within us dreams of Utopia but we can only manifest Utopia by being fully adult human beings, and not being controlled by our primeval infant ancestors. To put it slightly differently, the adult must steer the car, not the child if we wish to arrive at our destination.
We think we are one person, but are actually several people inhabiting the same body. That is because our brain is made of many different parts which have evolved over immense spans of time. We can think of the annual growth rings in a tree. The earliest rings formed when the tree was a tiny sapling are still there at the heart of the noble forest giant, hundreds if not thousands of years later. The more ancient parts of our brain control basic activities such as breathing, moving, resting, feeding, emotions, and memory, while at the other extreme is the most recently-evolved part of our brain that provides us with the ability to carry out rational thought processes and reflect on what we do.
‘We can think of the annual growth rings in a tree. The earliest rings formed when the tree was a tiny sapling are still there at the heart of the noble forest giant, hundreds if not thousands of years later’.
In reality we see with our mind. That is because everything we do in life is controlled by the mind, and our senses are only its servants. When we hear anyone’s screams, irrelevant of species, we know that they are in trouble. We feel for them and we would not be human if we didn’t. This is why we have words such as inhuman, cruel, inhumane, humane, kindly, caring, compassionate, charitable, unfeeling, hard-hearted, warm-hearted, sympathetic, empathetic, callous, magnanimous, and countless others.
Many people do not think about what they are eating, but increasing numbers are doing just that, hence the vegan revolution. The vegan revolution has important implications for our state of mind. A consequence of behaving kindly is that we are kind to ourselves at the same time, When we help others, when we show them kindness we feel far better inside ourselves. Our heart glows with warmth and we walk tall with pride. However, when we treat others unkindly and callously we shrink inside and become small, mean, hard-hearted. We cannot feel proud of ourselves and we cannot have peace in our heart. At the end of the day ultimate happiness is all about having peace in our heart.
Such is the folly of the unkind life. The thief, the brutal person, the cheat, ends up doing the same to themselves as they do to others. This is basically all about the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When we kind to others we are kindest of all to ourselves (notwithstanding cases where would-be rescuers end up dying themselves). And when we are unkind to others we are unkindest of all to ourselves.
‘Such is the folly of the unkind life. The thief, the brutal person, the cheat, ends up doing the same to themselves as they do to others. This is basically all about the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.
In either case we carry the memory of our behaviour to the grave, whether for good or ill. We may forget or brush aside good deeds we have done, but bad deeds are like an immovable thorn in our foot, a pillow of thistles that accompanies us for the remainder of our days. We can try and make amends for our wrongdoing, but we can never undo what has been done, and it can torment us savagely. To sum up, my belief is that we must reconcile our behaviour to conform to what we know to be right. The human dream is the product of the human brain, the product of the advanced brain that is uniquely human. We yearn for the land of our dreams, but we prevent ourselves from reaching there by our primitive behaviour, behaviour of another time, an ancient time. Thus all our behaviour must be compatible with what we know to be right if we are ever to discover happiness and fulfilment in our lives.
Recently-evolved parts of the mind allow us to examine more rudimentary behaviours and preferences in the light of more evidence. Perhaps this process is akin to that of gaining expert advice when buying a house or car, or seeking specialist medical advice for example. In these cases our poorly-informed minds are not up to the job of making expert decisions, so we consult someone who does have the experience and knowledge. The question is then “what shall we do for the best?” We are now all armed with that inner specialist – the advanced human brain. We have built-in a mind that can make expert decisions of the kind required. We are fools indeed not to heed its advice. If we wish to enjoy the blessings that the human mind craves we must see, hear and behave with our fully human mind, not the mind of our primeval ancestors. Thus the vegan life is not at all about being better than others, but by treating others decently, and being best of all to ourselves.
‘Thus the vegan life is not at all about being better than others, but by treating others decently, and being best of all to ourselves’.
Vegan Ethologist and Author Jonathan Balcombe’s books have changed the way we look at other creatures such as fishes and flies. In this article Jonathan answers End Animal Slaughter‘s questions about his love for all animals, and his groundbreaking work on their outer and inner lives.
Q1 Tell us about your early years. I see you lived in New Zealand. What did you do here?
My family moved to Auckland, for the sheer adventure of it, when I was three and we sailed to Canada five years later. We travelled by ocean liner (six weeks), and I remember petting a kangaroo under a tree during a stop in Australia en route. New Zealand, with its mild climate and proximity to the ocean, was a lovely place to spend my early formative years.
Q2 Have you always loved animals? Was this what led you to become a biologist?
From my earliest memory I’ve loved all animals. To me it is entirely natural and normal to perceive other animals as other beings, equally involved in their precious lives as I am in mine. It follows that to do another animal harm is completely alien and repugnant to me, and I remember feeling far more estranged from any child who squashed bugs under their shoes than from the poor creature they were killing. My decision much later to study biology was a direct outgrowth of my strong feelings for animals.
‘I remember feeling far more estranged from any child who squashed bugs under their shoes than from the poor creature they were killing.’
Q3 What is your position on the sentience of animals? Is all animal life sentient?
There is a pattern in scientific discovery that the more we come to know about an animal, the more complex and sophisticated we find it to be. It is hard to imagine that not long ago we thought we were the only tool-users, the only species with emotions, the only one to communicate with symbols, the only one with a personality and self-awareness, and so on. And so while I’m open to the possibility that some “simple” animals—sponges, or jellyfishes, perhaps?—might lack sentience (the capacity to feel), the idea seems increasingly doubtful. Regardless, I believe it is good policy to follow a version of the “precautionary principal,” which in this case assumes that all animals are sentient unless science compellingly indicates otherwise.
Image of Jellyfish: National Geographic
‘It is good policy to follow a version of the “precautionary principal,” which in this case assumes that all animals are sentient unless science compellingly indicates otherwise’.
Q4 Can you share with our readers some stories that show animal sentience and emotions?
In my last two books I have synthesized discoveries for two often demeaned and maligned groups of animals: fishes and insects. Examples include: referential signaling (fishes), observational learning (both fishes and insects), mental mapping (fishes), face recognition (both), mirror self-recognition (both), inferential reasoning (both), problem solving (both), and tool-use (both). Fishes are clearly emotional, and while there is less evidence for insects (maybe because we haven’t been looking for it), insects share with us biochemical pathways such as a dopamine system implicated in pleasurable feelings, and they respond in ways that suggest fear, arousal, and anger, for instance.
Blackspot tuskfish on The Great Barrier Reef. The fish repeatedly bash the shellfish against rocks to get to the edibles inside.
Q5 Is there any inherent distinction between wild animals, and animals that have been our companions for thousands of years, for example dogs?
There is no inherent distinction. Animals we have domesticated retain the same relevant anatomy and physiology as their wild ancestors. Behaviorally, however, there have been changes depending on the species and the context in which we keep them. Dogs have been shown to communicate with humans in ways that their wolf ancestors cannot. This makes evolutionary sense because dogs, unlike wolves, benefit from being acutely attuned to their human providers. For example, experiments at the Clever Dog Lab, in Vienna, show that, like us, dogs glance first (for just a few milliseconds) at the side of our faces that conveys more emotions. This unconscious behavior allows dogs (and us) to get a quick read of whether the person is, say, hostile or friendly. But since dogs’ faces don’t convey emotions in this asymmetrical manner, they don’t glance first at one side of another dog’s face. Nor do we.
Image of Waimaraner puppy: American Kennel Club
Q6 Are we much more like other animals than most of us care to admit? How?
Biologically, we are animals. And that’s much more significant than mere semantics. We literally share the same genetic, anatomical, and biochemical roots. And let’s be clear that humans are not some pinnacle of evolution—a high-point. We are another species of ape, one whose evolutionary trajectory happened to result in a big brain that in turn spawned fairly (though not entirely) unique emergent cultural phenomena such as art, technology, birthday cakes, and cigarettes.
Evolutionary Biologist Desmond Morris’s ‘The Naked Ape’ struck a chord with the public when it was first published in 1967
Q7 You have written so many scholarly articles, and penned several books. One of your books that I would really like to read is ‘What A Fish Knows’. Are fish intelligent and sentient? What does a fish know, that we should know they know….
I mentioned some examples above, but here’s one that I find especially appealing and revealing. Fishes of several species have been shown to “fall” for the same optical illusions as we do. For example, if you teach a fish to select the larger of two circles (by touching it with her mouth or squirting water at it, for a food reward), then present the Ebbinghaus Illusion—in which one of two identical circles seems larger because of the arrangement of (smaller) dots surrounding it—and the trained fish will choose the circle that appears larger. To me this is a quite telling result. It illustrates that a fish can have beliefs, and that those beliefs are fallible. If the fish’s mind worked like an unthinking, unfeeling robot, it would perceive the two circles as equal. Another example illustrating the sharpness of a fish’s mind is the remarkable bird-hunting behavior shown by certain fishes. In freshwater lakes of southern Africa, predatory tigerfishes have learned to catch swallows by leaping from behind and snagging the birds in mid-air. If you know swallows then you’ll know that they are fast, erratic fliers (they need to be to catch their flying insect prey). Not only does the tigerfish behavior require impressive athleticism and coordination, it also requires planning. Catfishes in French rivers also show clever planning when they carefully stalk and ambush pigeons bathing and drinking in the shallows.
‘An example illustrating the sharpness of a fish’s mind is the remarkable bird-hunting behavior shown by certain fishes.’
Catfish waiting for pigeons to get close enough to catch them.
Q8 Your latest book: ‘Super Fly. The unexpected Lives Of The World’s Most Successful Insects’ sounds fascinating. Why are Diptera so awesome?
Here are just a few of many reasons. Flies belong to the most successful group of animals on the planet, the insects, which make up 80 percent of all animal species living today. At 160,000 described species, and probably around five times that many still undiscovered, flies are probably the most diverse order of animals ever. Flies are also very fecund: in one year, a single pair of fruit flies could produce a dense ball of flies whose diameter stretches from here to the sun! (This calculation illustrates the importance of nature’s checks and balances.) Flies have an attention span, and they show rational decision-making, and deductive reasoning (A>B, B>C, thus A>C). Flies have taught us more about genetics than any other animal. Their maggots are the stars of the growing field of forensic entomology, helping to solve murders and exonerate the wrongly accused. Fly maggots are also effective in healing stubborn wounds such as burns, severe bedsores, non-healing surgical wounds, diabetic foot ulcers, and bone infections. Flies’ colorful sex lives include serenades, dancing, foreplay, gift-giving, cannibalism, bizarre interlocking genitalia, and giant sperm. Flies also self-medicate, using alcohol (in fermenting fruit) as a toxic defence against parasitic wasps.
‘Flies’ colorful sex lives include serenades, dancing, foreplay, gift-giving, cannibalism, bizarre interlocking genitalia, and giant sperm. Flies also self-medicate, using alcohol (in fermenting fruit) as a toxic defence against parasitic wasps’.
Flies have taught us more about genetics than any other animal.
Q9 Why do you think the majority of people continue to eat animals and their products, even when they are fully aware of what you and I would consider the cruelty and injustice of raising animals for food?
I think the main reasons are ignorance and economics. While many people may have a vague idea that meat production is not very nice for the animals, relatively few know, and fewer still wish to know, the ugly details of industrialized meat, dairy and egg production. And because most people enjoy the taste of these products, they don’t wish to be confronted with information that might conflict with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, there is a persistent and deep-seated misconception that plant-based foods are less palatable and rewarding than animal-based foods. This is why the rise of plant-based and lab-cultured meats and dairy products has the potential to be a game-changer in human dietary choices. But as long as these products cost more than the heavily-subsidized products of animal agriculture, large-scale change will be slow in coming.
Image of lab grown dairy products from Phys.Org
Q10 Is a vegan diet necessary for the future of our planet?
For most of the world, I believe a transition to plant-based eating is a critical component of the change that needs to happen. Animal agriculture uses about 83% of arable land to produce just 18% of the calories we consume as a species. Livestock today comprise a grotesque 60% of the vertebrate animal biomass on Earth, with humans making up 36% and wildlife a mere 4%. Anyone who thinks our meat habit isn’t a major if not the leading cause of the climate emergency, and current and future pandemics, is kidding themselves.
‘Anyone who thinks our meat habit isn’t a major if not the leading cause of the climate emergency, and current and future pandemics, is kidding themselves’.
Q 11 As well as your academic work and writing, do you do other forms of animal advocacy?
In addition to being a vegan, and an author, I share issues on social media, occasionally write a letter to the editor, donate to charities, sign petitions, and maintain an animal-friendly investment portfolio. I give around 15-20 presentations in a typical year, and I do lots of media and podcast interviews, especially in years when a book comes out.
Q12 How can we follow and support your work, and read your books?
My website is jonathan-balcombe.com, I have an author page on facebook, and I tweet occasionally. My books are widely available online, and most bookstores (and libraries) will acquire copies upon request.
One of the most powerful animal right speeches we have heard was delivered by Emma Hurst MPof the Animal Justice Party (AJP) in 2019. In her inaugural speech in the Australian Parliament, she tells the story of the ‘dirty mouse’, or ‘pest’ she saw as a child. Cowering in a corner terrified, its little heart beating against its chest, she immediately understood that the tiny being’s life was as important to them as our lives are to us…
She also tells the story of Dudley, the Australian steer live-exported to Indonesia, filmed trying to resist being dragged to slaughter. He put up a brave fight, but finally stumbled and fell. Numerous men jumped on his back, stabbed him with sticks, poked him in the eye, and broke his tail as he bellowed in pain…
There are other true stories told with simplicity, clarity and compassion by the young MP. She finishes her speech with a call to action to to her fellow MPs and fellow Australians:
‘This is the moment. This is the time for change. Let’s transform.
Let’s dare to hope.
Let’s dissolve the cages and shackles that have enslaved animals and caused them great harm’.
In this article from India Today a brave Indian Muslim fasts to protest animal sacrifice.
We need a discussion on animal sacrifice. Many animal sacrifice rituals are based on “substitution”, using animals as proxy-humans to discharge sins. We must ask why an act of publicly killing an animal (often with brutal, painful methods, entailing great suffering to the animal) is needed in 2021. We have progressed in knowledge and understanding from thousands of years ago, when such practices were first carried out.
Animal sacrifice should be substituted entirely with other non-violent rituals that express the essence of the religious act, but without causing pain, emotional suffering and bloodshed to sentient beings.
In this article, undercover vegan/animal activist Alan G recounts his experience in chicken, pig and sheep slaughterhouses in the United States. (Reprinted from thedoe.com).
“ I saw cruelty everywhere I went. ”
“I can’t save any of them.” That’s what I reminded myself, day after day, as I looked upon the faces of the animals who would soon be slaughtered. “Just do what you came here to do,” I would add, locking my eyes forward to concentrate on the task at hand. There’s no time to stop and be sentimental.
Inside a slaughterhouse, there’s always work to be done.
During the years I was an undercover investigator, I worked at three slaughterhouses in three different states—on behalf of a national farmed animal protection organization. While working, I used hidden camera equipment to document the painful reality of what animals endure on the last day of their lives.
I often asked myself how I ended up where I was. Like a lot of people in the vegan movement, I would call myself an animal lover. When I was young, I only had a few career goals. After seeing Jurassic Park, I wanted to grow up and study reptiles. Then, after consuming copious comic books, I wanted to be a hero. I combined these goals and eventually earned a master’s degree in ecology, with the goal of doing conservation research to protect wild animals. But, while I was in school, I learned about the suffering of farm animals through a labmate, the first vegan I ever knew in real life.
You probably guessed this already, but after a lengthy process, I became a vegan as well. Why wouldn’t I? Not only is meat production cruel, but it’s also notoriously bad for the environment, in terms of land use and emissions. So, it appealed to me as someone interested in conservation. In fact, I was so entranced with veganism and its benefits that I decided to keep my career options somewhat open. I wanted to either end up in field research or in activism. The non-profit I continue to work for today was the first to respond to my resume, which eventually brought me to those slaughterhouses.
I ended up working at chicken, pig and lamb slaughter facilities before I retired from fieldwork. I saw cruelty everywhere I went: some intentional and some as a result of companies trying to maximize speed (and, therefore, profits).
“The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere.”
Chicken Slaughterhouses: Animal Cruelty Bordering on Torture
My first job undercover was at the poultry plant, working live hang. Our one job was to pull chickens off a conveyor belt and wedge their legs in shackles passing by at eye-level. We were supposed to handle 24 chickens per minute, an impossible timeframe for anything even resembling “humane.” The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere. The other workers seemed unconcerned with their plight. They would tear feathers off to throw at one another, or press the bodies of chickens against the metal conveyor belt in retaliation against their struggling. Sometimes, the workers at the head of the line would take a few steps back and hurl the birds at the shackles like they were baseballs. Often, the birds would successfully end up in the shackles after these pitches. It was easy to see that the workers had practiced this method.
“Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.”
Pig Slaughterhouses: Cruel and Inhumane Methods of Killing
My second position was at a slaughterhouse supplying a household name in pork products. I ended up working two different jobs there, one of which was on the kill floor. Part of the job was herding the animals through chutes and pens until they reached the stunner. Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.
We had “rattle paddles,” which look like oars with the flat end filled with noise-making beads. Workers would raise these paddles above their heads and bring them down on the heads or bodies of pigs. Several times, I was admonished by others for not doing this. “Hit them! Hit them!” they would yell at me. We also had access to electrical prods, which other workers would use on animals multiple times, sometimes in the face or near the genitals. The sick ones would be pulled by their tails or shoved out of the pens. We were supposed to use a sled to do that, but a supervisor told me they just didn’t have the time.
When the animals got past the chutes, a worker would use an electrical stunner on them. The hogs would go rigid and fall down a slide to a conveyor belt below. There, a worker would cut their throats. If the cut wasn’t done correctly, the animal wouldn’t bleed out enough to kill them before the stunning wore off, so I documented several pigs returning to sensibility and attempting to right themselves while they were hanging upside down, bleeding from the gaping hole in their throats. Workers were supposed to stop the line to re-stun the animal, but in one instance I witnessed, they didn’t bother, leaving the animal to suffer as the shackle took him slowly towards tanks of scalding water. I remember a choice quote from one worker: “If USDA were around, they could shut us down.”
“After having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. . ”
The Lamb Slaughterhouse: Processing Contaminated Meat
My final investigation was at a slaughterhouse for one of the largest lamb producers in the U.S. I spent a few months working in a refrigerated room all day. The supervisor would tell workers to change the “best by” date labels on older products to falsify their freshness. He would help people avoid putting product through the metal detectors to save time, risking contamination of the meat with metal shavings. And when I finally got a position that would help me observe the slaughter process, we discovered that after having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. What we saw was so egregious we decided to file a False Claims Act against the company, which resulted in a historic intervention from the Department of Justice, a settlement and mandated changes to their slaughtering practices.
Slaughterhouse Workers Suffer Too
Slaughterhouse practices don’t just cause suffering for the animals. Meatpacking plants are notoriously dangerous for workers, with two amputations occurring in the U.S. per week. Most of my jobs were basically assembly line jobs, with workers performing the same action hundreds or thousands of times per day. Injuries are common, especially those caused by the repetitive motions on the line. I remember my hands aching every minute while I was employed in live hang, my knuckles red from holding the bony legs of thousands of chickens.
In another job, I wore a back brace on top of another because I spent all day carrying boxes filled with lamb meat. I cut myself on knives and metal hangers at the pig plant. More than once, I cried in my car before a shift, anticipating the mental and physical anguish I would endure for the next 12 hours. (And, now, during the coronavirus pandemic many Americans are painfully aware of how disease can spread like wildfire inside of these facilities.)
Though all of that is behind me now, it is still the reality for the billions of animals who are slaughtered every year. While I’m retired from undercover work, I’m still very much an activist for animals. As part of my job, I work with footage from other investigators and witness the same cruelty I saw firsthand. But it’s worth it, because I want people to see what I saw, as hard as it can be to watch. Despite the efforts of investigators like myself, there are still so many people who have no idea where their “food” comes from, and what horrible atrocities they’re paying into by buying animal products. My hope is that everyone who is even a little curious about what I went through can take the time to watch some of the footage brought back from these facilities. As someone who was on the inside, I hope the reality of the plight reaches you.
In this blog End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle puts a date on the end of animal agriculture.
In 2018 I self published a slim book calling for the New Zealand government to close all slaughterhouses before 2025. Most ‘sensible’ people, including many vegans, thought at the time that it was a wishful-thinking fantasy, and could never happen in such a short timeframe.
Fast forward three years andsuch predictions are beginning to become commonplace. Not only from outsiders like myself, but also from within the animal agriculture Industry. Here in New Zealand, Danielle Appleton, MBA and Masters in Dairy Science and Technology, spent a decade with dairy giant Fonterra before launching her own alternative-dairy startup. In this TED talk from a couple of years ago she warns that two technologies – plant protein and synthetic dairy – means that dairy will no longer be this country’s ‘cash cow’. Just as wool was the social and economic backbone of New Zealand up until the 1950s,when synthetic fibres caused the bottom to fall out of the wool industry, alternative technologies are now heralding the end of animal agriculture. In fact, many futurists are predicting a much larger revolution that, as soon as the tipping point is reached, will grow exponentially to spell the end of raising and eating other animals for food worldwide. The new foods will be more nutritious and convenient, healthier, and produced at a lower cost than the animal-derived products they replace. A world having moved away from animal agriculture may alsousher in a world without hunger.
Tony Seba, and Catherine Tubb from RethinkX, a US-based think tank that identifies social disruptions from new technology, have likened this agricultural revolution to the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago.
As the title of my book indicates, I believe this will happen in many places before 2025. And in 2018 I couldn’t foresee a pandemic or the increase in flooding and wildfires worldwide, two principle reasons why we are on the cusp of the end of animal agriculture.
We are on our way to a vegan world. To try a vegan diet, take the Vegan 22challenge.
Cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus) appear alien to us, yet they possess remarkable intelligence, cunning ways, curiosity and affection.
Their cognitive abilities and complex thinking patterns are still being investigated by scientists. In a recent study cuttlefishshow that they also are able to delay their gratification.
For some years now the scientific concensus has been that fish feel pain. At the anatomical level, fish have neurons known as nociceptors, which detect potential harm, such as high temperatures, intense pressure, and caustic chemicals. They also produce the same opioids—the body’s innate painkillers—that mammals do. All over the world, every moment of every day, untold individual fishes suffer panic and undergo painful death through suffocation and injury because of our taste buds.
There are now widely available substitutes that mimic the texture and flavour of fish. There is no longer any excuse for torturing the denizens of the Ocean in order to eat them. Eating fish and other ‘seafood’is also causing harm to sea mammals and marine ecosystems.
Read about scientific findings on fish sentience and complex behaviour in this Free From Harm article.
In this article, End Animal Slaughter pays tribute to the work of ‘artivist’ Philip McCulloch-Downs.
“I feel privileged to be a voice for the voiceless – to hold up a mirror to our society and its lazy brutality and inhumanity, and I’m proud to be able to commemorate the forgotten, the hopeless and the unloved – my art is ‘compassion on canvas’.”
[learn_more caption=”Where did you grow up?” state=”open”] I grew up in Malvern in Worcestershire, which is a very green town on the slopes of the lovely Malvern Hills (home of Edward Elgar and Malvern Water). [/learn_more][learn_more caption=”Where are you based now?” state=”open”] Nowadays I live and work in Somerset in the south of England, in a tiny hilltop hamlet near to Bath, Bristol and Wells.[/learn_more][learn_more caption=”Have you always loved animals?” state=”open”] Ever since I was little my family have had pet cats, and so I was always taught to respect and love animals as equals. According to my parents I apparently had a very visceral reaction against farms when on school trips to see dairy/sheep farms, and I always found eating meat an innately disgusting thing to do. My dad had an allotment, so I could see where all our vegetables came from, and the meat seemed to me to be an alien and unnatural substance to find on my plate. I would secretly hide it in the cat’s food bowl! It drove my parents mad, until my mum discovered soya chunks at the local supermarket when I was 8 years old.[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Can you describe your vegan journey? ” state=”open”] At 19, I became vegetarian overnight after being caught at traffic lights, eye to eye with sheep in a truck transporting them to slaughter. My girlfriend of that time said to me ‘How can you justify eating meat after seeing this?’. I couldn’t, so I changed my diet. Sadly it took me another 16 years to become vegan. This second change happened because, when I moved to Bristol, I volunteered at a local animal rights organisation and was exposed to all the information about dairy, eggs, leather, etc and simply couldn’t find any way to continue without changing my lifestyle once again. It was a relief to finally find a way to live ethically and healthily – as with most people’s vegan journeys, it was simply lack of information (and an unhealthy dose of cognitive dissonance) that had prevented this simple moment of clarity and conscience to allow me to be a better person.
[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Did you have formal training in Art?”] I have been painting and drawing since I was an infant (and now video-making and novel/poetry writing) – always encouraged by my parents. After doing my art ‘A’ level, I pursued my calling through a foundation course, then an illustration degree, and onwards into just over a decade of freelance graphic design/illustration work, until I chose my vegan path through life at the AR organisation. After s futher nine years there ( continually painting and writing my own personal work in my free time) I eventually combined my art, ethics and information from my job and became an animal rights artist. [/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”How would you describe your style?”] I work in a very detailed and realistic manner, using no stylistic tricks, and following a very traditional method of paint on canvas. I mostly work very small – people seem constantly surprised that most of my images are A4 size. It’s handy for storage in my tiny home studio, and due to the complex detail in them, they can very easily be enlarged to A0 size digital prints if necessary, and still look visually effective.[/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”How do you work? (Materials, process, etc)” state=”open”] I paint a lot of grass/rusty metal/animal fur – these aren’t clean flat areas of colour and texture, so I find I work quickly and intensely (wearing out a lot of tiny brushes!) which acrylic paint is the perfect medium for as it’s quick drying and this allows me to build up many thin layers of paint very rapidly.
I’m happy to categorise my art as ‘Vegan Art’, ‘Animal Rights Art’, ‘Protest Art’ ‘Reportage’, ‘Animal and Human Portraiture’, or any other niche title, but what I’m aiming for is to blend all these together and simply have the viewer see my work as ‘Art’ (or ‘Fine Art’ if that’s the terminology that allows me to get my work into galleries). [/learn_more] [learn_more caption=”Is Protest Art powerful as a kind of activism? Why?” state=”open”] This work demands to be seen. The issues are so urgent, the crimes of factory farming so vile, the cruelty and abuse so well-hidden, that I want this imagery to be seen and discussed everywhere – on the streets, in galleries, restaurants, on protests, in short films, at festivals… wherever. I want to grab attention, to offend, to upset, to inform, to have people see the previously unseen, to make them think, empathise, learn, and change. I have never felt so passionately about anything. I feel privileged to be a voice for the voiceless – to hold up a mirror to our society and its lazy brutality and inhumanity and I’m proud to be able to commemorate the forgotten, the hopeless and the unloved – my art is ‘compassion on canvas’. [/learn_more]
In this article End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle, and animal activist Robert McNeil call out the New Zealand billionaire family behind the notorious Talley’s Group.
Managing Director of the Talley’s Group, Sir Peter Talley.
New Zealand’s notorious agribusiness moguls, the Talley family, are in the news again. This time it is because of allegations of unhygienic conditions and dangerous health and safety breaches in their Ashburton frozen foods operation. In May 2015 Te Atatu Hemi, 42, was working in the cold store at this same facility when several bins stacked on top of a forklift fell on top of her, leaving her a paraplegic. Since the latest story broke this month more former employees have come forward. This includes one cold store worker at the same plant who, six years after Hemi’s accident, quit in fear his life was in danger.
Demonstration by meatworkers and their families. Workers striking for better conditions were locked out of AFFCO plants in 2012
The rich-lister Talley’s group have long courted controversy over their approach to industrial relations, and workplace safety. They are notorious for squashing union activity, seeking to dilute health and safety legislation, and blatantly flouting environmental rules. Their Wikipedia entry includes 29 references to their litigious history with unions, disgruntled employees, and the environment.
In the past ten years Worksafe have had multiple reported cases over injuries incurred at their workplaces. One such was Nelson fisherman Leighton Muir, 27, who was decapitated in August 2014 in an accident aboard a Talley’s seiner. Talley’s were found negligent, and fined $73,520 and ordered to pay $21,000 reparations to the family of Mr Muir – chump change for this billionaire family.
They have come a long way since Dalmatian immigrant and local fisherman Ivan Talijancich (later known as Ivan Talley) established a small firm in Motueka in 1936. From these humble beginnings, the company has cast a giant net over sea and land. For the last couple of decades it has been one of New Zealand’s biggest businesses, with interests in fishing and seafood (Talley’s) meat (Affco), dairy (Open Country Dairy), frozen foods, and coal mining (in conjunction with Solid Energy).
There’s no getting around the fact that an animal died to provide the sausages and bacon sizzling on New Zealand BBQs. Tens of millions of cows, sheep and pigs are killed in New Zealand every year, many of them at the Talley’s owned AFFCO.
They own AFFCO, one of New Zealand’s largest slaughterhouse chains. The business of killing animals is grisly, and full of potential hazards to workers because of animal size, machinery involved, and contamination from animal-origin viruses and bacteria. In 2014, a cleaner at the Rangiuru (Bay of Plenty) meatworks spent more than an hour with a meat hook impaled in his head, resulting in a ruling that the company breached health and safety rules. The man involved in this terrible accident now lives in constant pain, and has tried to commit suicide, while the company was fined $30,000 and ordered to pay $25,000 to the victim. In June 2015 a Whanganui Affco Imlay worker was cleaning up an offal spill when some raw material squirted into his eye. He became extremely ill with an animal bacterial infection and had to have life-saving surgery to replace his aortic and mitral valves. Talley’s are aware of the hazards of their businesses, yet repeatedly fail to implement control measures to enforce workers’ safety.
Trading under the Amaltal brand, Talley’s have a modern fleet of fishing vessels, including bottom trawlers that damage the marine environment and exacerbates global warming.
All year round Talley’s fleet of eight fishing vessels operates in the EEZ (exclusive economic zone), the Antarctic and Western Pacific, to sell in global markets. One of the methods they use is bottom trawling, a highly destructive fishing technique that has both direct and indirect negative effects on marine ecosystems. One of the ways is through overfishing, which can remove essential predators, increase algal bloom, threaten local food sources, and lead to an ecosystem imbalance.
Another way is catching untargeted species, or ‘bycatch’, including mammals and even seabirds that are brought up injured or dead, and then ‘shovelled’ back into the sea. A further consequence of bottom trawling is the way the weighted nets ruin reefs and coral populations that have been growing for centuries, and are the homes of countless fish species as well as anemones, sponges, urchins and other fragile-bodied animals. This fishing method also releases carbon stored in the seabed, impacting global warming as well.
On their website Talley’s promote their commitment to sustainable fishing practices and the environment, yet their track record tells a different story. In a recent example they have been found guilty of bottom trawling in a marine protected area off Kaikoura. They also hunt the Patagonia tooth fish in Antarctic seas. A top predator in the Antarctic food chain, the tooth fish (sold as Chilean bass) doesn’t reach sexual maturity until age thirteen and can live for fifty years. As large fishing vessels can only access its home waters a couple of months a year, it is impossible to monitor and report changes in fish stocks, a sustainability practice Talley’s claims to adhere to.
The animal agriculture industries that have made the Talley’s family billionaires (and have bestowed a knighthood on Peter Talley) are as secretive as the family itself. Their animal operations kill cows, calves, sheep and pigs in the tens of millions every year; factor in their seafood operations and the number is in the billions. Those who profit from killing living beings for food want us to believe that something humane happens along the way, but nothing humane happens in slaughterhouses and commercial fishing fleets. Animals, unlike people, cannot speak up for themselves, their rights are seldom protected, and there are few willing to stand up for them.
But even if we don’t care about animals, then we all should care about the future of our planet. We need to act with a unified purpose to keep Earth and all its inhabitants healthy and resilient. Companies such as Talley’s with such a destructive global footprint, and who repeatedly disregard their duty of care to people, animals and the environment, deserve to be deregistered. In the meantime, we can boycott their products.
Sandra Kyle and Rob McNeil are part of the global Animal Save Movement that bears witness to animals at the gates of slaughterhouses, and seeks to expose animal exploitation industries.
Humans love animals yet perpetrate extreme violence against them. We have a world to share, so we need to forge a better relationship. Where do we begin? At End Animal Slaughter the answer is clear: Stop Eating Them!
