Author: Sandra Kyle

Future viral outbreaks are inevitable – it’s time to adopt a plant-based diet

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

“The COVID-19 virus has had a huge impact on all of our lives and changed the way we live – perhaps forever. But while it’s important to acknowledge the massive loss of lives and jobs and the impact of the virus on our global society and economy, it’s also vital to examine the root causes of the pandemic – and pandemics in general – if we are to minimise the risk of potentially far more damaging outbreaks in the future.
By exploring the crucial connection between the current crisis and our animal-based food system, the ProVeg Food & Pandemics Report highlights how our food choices help to create a recipe for zoonotic pandemics. By shifting to plant-based and cultured foods, we can help to minimise the risk of future pandemics as well as helping to resolve many of the other key challenges we face, including climate change, biodiversity loss, world hunger, antimicrobial resistance, and the rise of other food-related diseases.
The global response to COVID-19 has shown that we can respond urgently and collectively and that we can do so now. Together, we can change our food systems for a better, healthier, and more resilient world”.

https://proveg.com/food-and-pandemics-report/?fbclid=IwAR05t3eTgOxDISDlKlb4ZvkPh8L871CBS1A8-0h0bXaOv4V9t4ts7QL6dzM

Viscous soup should be Vicious soup. The horror of shark finning.

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Key Points

 

– Hong Kong is the largest shark fin importer in the world, and responsible for about half of the global trade.

 

– The fins are often cut from sharks while they are still alive, and they are then thrown back into the ocean to die an agonising death.

 

– In May, customs officials made the biggest shark fin seizure in Hong Kong history: 26 tonnes of fins, contained  in two shipping containers from Ecuador, cut from the bodies of 38,500 endangered sharks.

 

– Shark fin soup is a feature at wedding banquets and other feasts in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia, as because they are expensive and prized as a status symbol.

 

– 100 million sharks are being mutilated and killed every year for this gluggy soup.  The fins themselves don’t have much taste.

 

– When the demand for shark fin soup stops, so will the carnage.

Read the Guardian article here:

 

 

 

In memory of Regan Russell, 1954-2020

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

The day after Animal Rights activist Regan Russell was knocked down and killed by a slaughterhouse truck driver in Toronto, the Plant Manager at the slaughterhouse here in Whanganui, New Zealand, approached me and said: ‘Please be careful of the trucks.  Make sure you stay clear.’    I don’t have a very friendly relationship with the slaughterhouse staff, but I could see that he was sincere, and looking a bit worried.   It occurred to me that in slaughterhouse/trucking communities, the news of Russell’s death had travelled just as quickly as it had in Animal Rights circles.

It was truly shocking news.  After years of standing peacefully outside Fearman’s Pork with their signs, and offering water to panting, dehydrated pigs about to be killed, activists had lost one of their own. 

Just a few hours after her tragic death, we were reading eye-witness accounts that the driver ‘had an angry look on his face’,  and had deliberately stopped in an awkward place for activists to give the pigs water.   People all over the world who do these vigils know first-hand that some drivers are angry and aggressive, using their giant trucks as weapons.  Our presence incenses them.  We hold a mirror up to their complicity in an inhumane industry and they don’t like what they see.  I have personally been yelled at and abused many times.       Once a driver swerved in close to where I was standing and opened a trap door, splashing animal feces and urine at my feet.  Once when I was photographing some days-old bobby calves, the driver suddenly reversed, then sped forward again so I couldn’t get clear photos.  If someone had been standing behind the truck, who he hadn’t seen, then there could have been a tragic death on that day too.  The recent passing of Bill #156 in Canada that is punitive against demonstrators and whistleblowers, led to some activists speculating that the truck driver may have felt ’emboldened’.   The case is still being investigated, and I hope the whole truth will come out.  

It is just so very sad.  Regan Russell’s commitment to the cause was exceptional.   At 65, she had been fighting the good fight for animal liberation since the 1970s.  All over the world in The Save Movement, and in other Animal Rights groups, there have been vigils and memorials in her honour.   People have written beautiful testimonials about her character, and her selfless dedication to the cause.    The link below is one such touching article, written by an old friend.

– Sandra Kyle, Owner/Editor, End Animal Slaughter

Read the blog here

 

 

ARGUMENTS FOR EATING MEAT DEBUNKED

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Millions of people all over the world are cutting back on meat or giving it up altogether.  This is because of compelling evidence that plant-based is the best diet, and that over-consumption of meat and dairy leads to disease, pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss and global warming. The animal agriculture sector is trying to fight back against the trend to veganism with counter-arguments which Guardian Environment Editor Damian Carrington, debunks here.

 

Read the article 

Malia’s Story

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on Malia’s Story

This is a mother, being dragged inside a slaughterhouse to have her throat slit.

Look at her poor, humped body, marked in indelible pen by the farmer who decreed her no longer profitable. She has spent her life in Hell from the moment she was born, but she is still afraid of death, and drags her feet desperately as she tries to resist her fate.
Inside her heart is pounding and the blood is rushing to her head. In mere moments, that blood  will be spilled on a filthy slaughterhouse floor, and splashed upon the aprons of those paid to murder her.
She was selectively bred to produce as many piglets as possible, and she has given birth to dozens of babies.   She was first impregnated when she was only eight months old. 
She spent her entire life in cages, lined up with hundreds of other sows in an enormous, barren, foul smelling shed. Bars separated her from her sisters. She could never seek comfort or security from pressing against the flesh of her kind. She could not escape. She could not retreat. She could not turn around.
All day every day this naturally clean girl lay in her own excrement on the hard concrete floor.  Her muscles ached and drew tight, and she developed sores from rubbing against the steel bars. In the pain and intense stress that this confinement caused her, she bit the bars of the steel cage that surrounded her, and her mouth filled with white foam that spat from her mouth when she cried out her distress.
All day every day this naturally clean girl lay in her own excrement on the hard concrete floor.  Her muscles ached and drew tight, and she developed sores from rubbing against the steel bars. In the pain and intense stress that this confinement caused her, she bit the bars of the steel cage that surrounded her, and her mouth filled with white foam that spat from her mouth when she cried out her distress.
After enduring her pregnancy in this prison the size of a household fridge, she was moved to yet another cage – a birthing cage, or ‘farrowing crate’, in preparation for having her babies. Prompted by her natural instincts, she immediately looked around for something to build a nest with – but could find nothing.
She was so stressed and tense that the birth was all the more painful for her. When her piglets arrived, the steel bars prevented her from interacting with them. Her babies latched onto her teets as she lay motionless on her side, sinking ever deeper into despair. She longed to satisfy her natural yearning to care for her babies properly, but she never could, and a normal mother-piglet bond was never formed.
When her babies were just three weeks old, they were forcibly weaned and taken from her. She was then returned to another cage to be made pregnant again, and the painful cycle repeated a number of times until she was ‘spent’ and no longer any use to the farmer. She was then sent to the slaughterhouse.
Which is where you see her now.
This girl never had a name, just a number.
So I will call her Malia, which means ‘Beloved’

 

–    Sandra Kyle

 

Sandra Kyle is the owner of End Animal Slaughter, website, which she started in 2018

with the goal of closing all slaughterhouses in the Western World by 2025. 

Why Do We Only Cry When Puppies Die?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 5 Comments on Why Do We Only Cry When Puppies Die?

New Zealand is a veritable picnic of animal abuse – so why do we only cry when puppies die?    End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch asks the question. 

 

A recent case in the Waikato region of New Zealand resulted in a public outcry when three puppies were drowned in a weighted-down bag.   The black and white puppies had their mouths taped shut and their feet also bound together. They are reported to be male Pitbull Staffordshire crosses.

 

The young family who found the puppies called the SPCA. The find has generated a cash reward for anyone who can identify the culprit. The deaths of these innocents is hard to stomach.

 

It raises important issues around our treatment of animals and the public’s tolerance of such acts of cruelty.

 

It is notable that drowning of unwanted litters of puppies and kittens used to happen frequently in New Zealand, particularly in rural areas. A quick trip to the pond with a sack full of puppies or kittens and a brick to weigh them down took care of unwanted population explosions.

 

The SPCA says that drowning is a painful death, made even worse in young mammals who have a dive reflex, prolonging the agony. We now know (even if we didn’t in the past) that drowning is not a nice way to go.

 

Yet it seems some people have not got the memo. The SPCA is still busy dealing with animal welfare concerns. So what is going on? Why is animal cruelty such a problem in New Zealand, when we are said to be a country of animal lovers?

 

If we regarded (animals) as sentient beings with rights to life and to agency over their life, it would help to ensure that they are treated with respect.

 

In my view, the problem lies in the way we see animals as ‘lesser beings’, categorizing them according to their use for humans.  If we regarded them as sentient beings with rights to life and to agency over their life, it would help to ensure that they are treated with respect.

 

Any violence toward animals could then be consistent across the species. Their capacity to suffer, is what we need to be focusing on. It should be a crime to maim or kill them for our own perceived needs, or to enslave them for our own ends. They are an end in themselves – not a means to an end. They have intrinsic worth.

 

In addition, we need to regard violence as a continuum instead of an isolated act. Violence against animals is committed day in and day out in  animal farming. Yet few people bat an eye – let alone offer a reward to bring the perpetrators to justice as happened with the puppies.  

 

Animal farmers have a broadly utilitarian view of animals, valuing them mainly for the money that can be made from them. This is not to say that farmers do not care for their animals, or even grow fond of them. But frankly, if animal farmers thought of cows in the same way as many city people think of dogs then they would never get sent to slaughter. 

 

For rural people it is often regarded as admirable to be able to accept the fate of the animals in your care, even to take pride in it.

But farm animals do suffer – it is an inevitable outcome of being raised for death. Think about the hens crammed into cages their entire short lives before being killed when they go off the lay temporarily.  Chickens bred for meat often go lame and have heart attacks because they grow faster than their legs and hearts can support.

 

And their death is often not humane either. In fact, layer hens and meat chickens in New Zealand get killed by electrical stunning before having their throats slit by an automated knife and then plunged into scalding water to have their feathers removed. Some hens don’t get stunned first and endure the whole process while conscious. So really, if you eat eggs and chicken and support those industries you are saying that you are happy with that.

 

If we are ok with that, why are we not ok with drowning puppies? It seems a bit hypocritical. Is it because hens are seen to have a use value that trumps any consideration of their sentience?  We all like to believe in the mythology of humane slaughter. We think that animals bred for their meat or milk or eggs have a purpose. But it is not so – all animals are sentient and feel negative emotions like pain and fear, as well as positive ones like joy. Any farmer will tell you that.

 

We think that animals bred for their meat or milk or eggs have a purpose. But it is not so – all animals are sentient and feel negative emotions like pain and fear, as well as positive ones like joy. Any farmer will tell you that.

 

Many dogs on farms are considered ‘working dogs’ in the same way that hens are considered to have a job to do – laying eggs. If a dog has become old and unproductive on the farm they are often disposed of with a bullet to the head. Just like the hens at the end of their working life.

 

What is the lesser evil? Drowning unwanted litters, electrifying and slitting the throats of chickens or shooting a dog in the head? They are all violent acts, and yet we accept some and not others.

 

As a teenager I had the horrifying experience of being shown through a hatchery for laying chickens. Right in the middle of the room was a giant blender with blades glinting in the bright lights. One day old male chicks are macerated in this contraption while fully conscious.

 

Could you put the puppies in the blender?

 

What about bobby calves? They get taken from their mothers, transported for up to 12 hours in a truck (legally) and go for up to 24 hours without milk before having a bolt driven through their brains and their throats slit. Sounds pretty violent to me. Yet, may people in New Zealand who speak out against the drowning of puppies will also use dairy products with wild abandon. I see it all the time – a slice of Camembert here, a white coffee there, lashings of chocolate and smoothies. It’s a veritable picnic of animal cruelty.

 

I am not in any way justifying the horrendous drowning of the puppies. It is a disgusting and despicable act. But before we make any real inroads into addressing animal cruelty we have to take a more complete look at the picture. We need to be consistent in our attitude and treatment of all animals.

 

Violence begets violence, and in terms of suffering, a puppy is a chick is a calf.

 

 

    Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and Lecturer in Education

 

Mega farms in Europe affecting well-being of neighbours

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Key Points:

–  All over Europe small-scale operations with a diversity of crops and livestock are disappearing, being replaced by mega farms such as a 23,000 cow dairy farm in Spain and enormous piggeries in Denmark, one of the world’s biggest producers of pork.

–  This growth of Europe’s animal farming sector has seen it exceed what scientists have claimed are safe bounds for greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient flows and biodiversity loss.

–  Greenpeace campaigners visited animal farms and their surrounding communities in France, Denmark, Spain and Italy between December 2018 and March 2019 to find out what is happening.

–  They discovered many of these European mega farms are near small towns, and are affecting the health and well being of their close neighbours in a variety of ways.  These include possible toxic substances through manure and air.  

–  Residents next to one giant Danish pig farm frequently see pigs in rubbish bins, for weekly collection.   

Read The Guardian article here

 

 

 

Why Do Slaughterhouse Vigils?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

It will soon be five years that I have been standing outside slaughterhouses on a weekly basis.  I do my vigils as part of the Worldwide Save movement. 

These peaceful vigils to ‘bear witness’ to the lives of the animals, take place outside slaughterhouses.    The aim is to say goodbye, and give comfort to the animals who are being taken to their brutal deaths. When we see the animals in the trucks, we tell them we’re sorry.   We apologise on behalf of the human race for the atrocities we commit against the animal kingdom.  We tell them we love them.

We take photographs and videos, and share these on social media, to help meat eaters make the connection that the meat they consume was once a living, breathing, feeling animal.  We stand on the roadside, so passing motorists can read our signs.   When we can we ask the drivers if they could stop for a moment while we say goodbye to the animals.   From time to time a truck driver will stop, but in the majority of cases they do not.

The two slaughterhouses I do my vigils at in Whanganui, New Zealand, are Land Meats, that kills cattle and pigs, and AFFCO Imlay, that kills sheep and bobby calves.  I am usually at the cow and pig slaughterhouse, and have seen countless trucks of cows arriving over the years.   The animals are visibly distressed.  Many are covered with mud, and also their own excrement.  The smell is often overpowering.    I have seen many foam at the mouth and others rolling their eyes so you can see the whites.  Some desperately try to get out of the truck.  Just last week when I was joined with friends from another centre, we saw one cow ramming his head against a wall, and another kicking his back legs against the locked door.

If we make eye contact with the animals, we often think about them for hours and even days afterwards, after they have met their gruesome end.

While vigils can be emotionally exhausting we feel it’s important that we keep this happening.  We refuse to turn a blind eye to the terrible animal holocaust that goes on every single day, when it is completely unnecessary.

When you look into the eyes of an animal you can feel their souls.   Pigs especially have human-looking eyes.  Pigs are said to be as intelligent as three-year-old human children.  I have sometimes heard them screaming at the slaughterhouse, a heartbreaking, bloodcurdling sound that is impossible to forget.

Over the years I have mainly seen cows arriving, and because I know they like music, I sing to them, or play music for them.  I seek to give them a little gentleness and comfort, possibly the only expression of love they have had in their lives.  It is distressing for me to see how the drivers and ground staff handle them, using an electric prod.   From a distance, I have witnessed how they beat them to get them to move up the chute to the stunbox.

I and my friends in the Save Movement here in New Zealand, and all over the world, are proud to take this stand for the animals.  The animals need us.   We are their voice.   They depend on us to act on their behalf.

If you think that this kind of deeply compassionate action and outreach is for you, wherever you may be in the world, then you can learn more about it from thesavemovement.org

Follow the Save Movement on FB: Animal Save Movement

Follow the SAVE Movement on Instagram: @thesavemovement

Follow the SAVE Movement on Twitter: @animalsavemvmt

All photos taken at a vigil at Land Meats slaughterhouse, Whanganui, New Zealand, 24 May 2020.

–  Sandra Kyle 

Sandra started endanimalslaughter.org in 2018 with the aim of having all slaughterhouses in the western world closed by 2025.

‘Not Your Feathers, Not Your Food’

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this article End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch agrees that chicken feathers do not belong in KFC packets.  Neither does the chicken.  (All photos accompanying this article were taken in 2018 when activists from Direct Animal Action entered a Tegel (New Zealand) Broiler Chicken factory).

 

An anonymous UK mother from Blackpool who served her son KFC with feathers in it has complained to the KFC branch concerned. She also posted pictures on Facebook with the offending feathers (feature photo).

This customer was so appalled that she wrote ‘I won’t ever eat KFC again’.

I don’t get it. Chicken is a bird. Last time I looked they came complete with feathers.

A healthy ‘Cobb’ chicken, the same breed commonly used as chickens reared for meat on factory farms.

 

If you think your chicken should have the feathers removed before you consume them then perhaps consider what you are eating. Which, to be fair, she has – but it took the presence of the bird’s feathers to engender such outright disgust.

I’m offended as well. I’m offended for the chicken. What, seriously, do you think the chicken felt when his life was brutally ended in a medieval assembly line torture chamber?

In the UK chickens bred for their meat are killed though electrical systems or gas systems. Electrical systems involve hanging the chickens upside down on metal shackles and stunning them using electrified water. They then have their throats slit with an automated knife.

Due to individual variation in resistance to the stunning process, some birds are inevitably only electro-immobilized (paralyzed but fully conscious). They are then bled out and plunged into a tub of scalding water to remove their feathers. I guess the poor chicken in the KFC box of the UK woman just didn’t get all his feathers removed.

Chickens in New Zealand are also killed by this system of electrical stunning and throat slitting. It is notoriously inhumane, considering that many birds are not unconscious during the process and get their necks cut while paralyzed. They also may break their legs while being shackled.

If you are happy to gamble on which bird you are eating (the stunned or electro – immobilized) then hands – up I am offended. I’d write a letter, for all the good it would do me, to complain to the factories that raise (and I use that term very loosely) these birds to be killed and send them to slaughter.

And that is the problem isn’t it? Consumers get heard, they get listened to and apologies and refunds.

Thrown onto the barn floor at a few days old, the little chicks at first have some room to run around.   However, as they are bred to grow rapidly to reach slaughter week at just 6 weeks old they become so cramped that they can barely move.  

 

Animal activists, on the other hand, have to actually twist themselves inside out to get footage of animal suffering, document it, analyse it to see if it breaches welfare standards – before they even complain. And they have to use their own money. And then more often than not, it does not get taken seriously. They definitely don’t get a refund.

Walk into any ‘broiler’ factory farm and you will find a percentage of dead birds.  The overburdening of the birds’ underdeveloped cardiopulmonary systems often causes congestive heart failure before they reach slaughter weight.

 

Take for example, Direct Animal Action who investigated a chicken factory farm owned by Tegal in 2018. This farm was a KFC supplier. The investigators found countless lame chickens unable to reach water, slowly dying. Ammonia in the shed from chicken waste was so strong the activists had to wear masks. The crowded sheds housed dead and live birds together.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) did not take action against this farm. There is really not a lot I can say about that, because it is so devastating that the people responsible for ensuring the animal welfare code is adhered to choose to look the other way. But I guess that is what you get when they have a vested interest in the ongoing continuation of animal agriculture.

Basically, the suffering of chickens is a necessary evil if you want your KFC. You simply cannot raise that many animals, that quickly without factory farming them.

So yes, I am offended. Every chicken in that shed is quite literally a dead chicken walking (if they are not lame). They all have a target on their feathered backs, and live a life of misery while they wait. Well, when I say a life, I mean six weeks. These birds are bred to reach slaughter weight fast – too fast for their legs which collapse under them.

A chicken unable to right him or herself will die from dehydration, because they are physically unable to even reach the water nozzles in their sheds. 

 

A chicken is a sentient being – meaning they have feelings including fear, joy, and pain. We may associate such emotions with humans, but our emotional repertoire is not unique to us. We have more in common with animals than we don’t. In fact, the emotional make-up of animals is very similar to that of humans.

I can’t begin to think what they are going through during their time incarcerated in a factory and the slaughter process. It’s a horror film.

So back to the UK scenario of the fried feathers. Reading further in the article it says: ‘It doesn’t meet the Colonel’s usual high standards, and it’s certainly not the reunion we want people to have with their favourite fried chicken after some time apart!’

Say, what? A reunion with fried chicken after some time apart because of lockdown? Seriously?

KFC is using this Covid-19 situation to continue their marketing line that the Colonel (who is now dead along with the chickens in the boxes) has high standards. High standards for who? Not for the chicken who hobbles around, lame from the excess weight his legs cannot support the plump juicy breasts of your favourite meal.

I remain incredulous that people can consider meat of chicken as something they have grown emotionally attached to. In reality, they are attached to the fried batter, the oils and herbs and spices. Give them a plain chicken breast and they would not be so excited.

There is nothing wrong with the enjoyment of herbs, spices, oils and so forth. This can be wrapped around a fake meat if you like. Just please leave the chickens, and their feathers out of it.

As well as lameness and heart failure, other common causes of death pre-slaughter are heat prostration, cancer—in an animal less than seven weeks old—and infectious diseases.  Ammonia blindness and ammonia conjunctivitis are eye conditions the birds can suffer from.

 

Not your feathers, not your body, not your food.

So to the ‘angry Mum’ in this article – get angry about the suffering of the chicken and the destruction of our planet caused by fast food outlets like KFC. Don’t be angry at the feathers. They are poignant and sad reminder that someone once lived.

They belonged to somebody. Just not you.

 

 

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an animal advocate, and a Lecturer in Education

UK Doctors: We Need A Food System Change Now

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
  • UK-based Plant Based Health Professionals (PBHP) say the connection between major disease outbreaks and factory farming is being ‘swept under the carpet’ amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • While former coronavirus epicentre Wuhan has introduced a law against the breeding, hunting and consumption of wild animals this week,  this is not just a problem for China.
  • The vast majority of new infectious diseases that have appeared in humans over the past century have been caused by tampering with farmed animals and their habitats, including Swine Flu (pigs), Avian Flu (birds) and Spanish Flu (poultry). 
  • In the UK demand for cheap meat has fuelled a huge expansion of factory farming – providing the perfect conditions for the generation of novel infections with epidemic and pandemic potential, as well as an antibiotic resistance among humans.   
  • A vaccine won’t solve the problem, because of the risk of mutations.   
  • A growing body of evidence shows a balanced vegan diet can provide all nutrients the body needs and improve human health by minimising the potential for cardiovascular disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
  • The coronavirus crisis has seen a record number of sign-ups in PBHP’s ‘No Meat May’,  but while such campaigns are important, effective, change will only come about if it is implemented from the top. 
  • We need a food system change now. 

Read the metro.co.uk article here