Author: Sandra Kyle

‘What Pom Pom Taught Me….’

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

When End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle looked after a one month old lamb she found out some endearing things about sheep.   

It is estimated we slaughter more than half a billion animals every single year for food, and also for religious sacrifice.

See Sandra’s blog below, and read PETA’s article about un-ewe-sual facts about this much-underestimated species. 

 

WHAT POM POM TAUGHT ME

When one of my music student’s family went away, they asked me if I would look after their pet Romney lamb. Pom Pom entered my home for the first time wearing two nappies, and proceeded to bound around excitedly. When you are just three weeks into this world, everything is new, everything is an adventure – there are so many sights, sounds and smells you are experiencing for the first time!   His human mother showed how to prepare his formula and bottle feed him, an experience I won’t quickly forget! It was like holding onto a suction pipe, and I wondered if my arm would disappear down his throat as he pulled on the teat in strong, intense gulps, his long tail wagging in enjoyment, just like a dog’s.

I kept Pom Pom outside in my back yard for most of the day, with frequent visits for a feed or cuddle, and at night he slept inside in a cage lined with hay. Once or twice I would get up to check on him and when he saw me he would shake off sleep and get to his feet, pressing his forehead against the cage for me to stroke his head and ears. I could tell he enjoyed, and got comfort from, this simple act of affection, and a bond soon got established between us.

If I were out in the unfenced area of my yard Pom Pom would be with me, supervised so he wasn’t tempted to jump over the low fence that borders the front of my property. He would go from area to area, bush to bush, curious and enthusiastic, sampling some of the food Nature provides his kind.  At first he didn’t seem to know how to eat properly and I frequently saw him with a blade of grass hanging out of his mouth while he made contorted mouth and head movements trying to get it inside! Pom Pom didn’t have a sheep Mum or flock to show him what to do, and some things he had to trial and error for himself.

When I needed to put him in the secure area at the back of my property, which he didn’t like so much because there was no company, he would jump up and bunt the fence as I closed the gate, to show me how angry he was. When Pom Pom wanted food or company, he would maaaa loudly, a sound that reminded me of a baby crying.

One of the cutest things about Pom Pom was when his spirits were high he would run around the house, from time to time springing in the air and kicking his back legs together sideways, like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain.   Sometimes at the end of such a display he would finish off by landing on all four feet at the same time – thump thump thump thump thump, and then come to a complete halt as if to say ‘Well, that was fun! What now?’

Looking after Pom Pom for ten days confirmed what I already knew. That sheep are sentient beings. They feel pain and sorrow. They have intelligence, desires, drives, perceptions, fears and joys. They respond to love. Nature has equipped them with inner knowledge, but they still have to learn how to do the most basic things, just like human children do.

When his family came to pick him up they all noticed how Pom Pom had grown. He was already big and strong, his coat had grown thick and he was much heavier. They noticed how he didn’t want to leave my side. I knew that he would miss me for all of five minutes, and then he would adjust again to his human family, and his life with them. Pom Pom has his own secure paddock next to their house, and plenty of interaction with his human family. Soon the family will be adopting two more sheep, so he will also have the company of his own kind.

I feel angry and sad when I think of the impassive, noble faces of sheep I have seen on slaughter trucks, mud-caked and packed together, commodities for farmers and meat eaters alike. I feel angry and sad when I think of all the newborn lambs like Pom Pom who, come Christmas, will arrive at slaughterhouse gates, maaaaing with fear and confusion. My heart hurts and I shake my head with disbelief in the knowledge that staff will push them around, and listen to them crying like babies before they shatter their brains and slit their throats.

I am beside myself with sorrow when I think of the half billion animals, many of them sheep, brutally sacrificed every year for Eid and other religious festivals.

This is no way for civilised human beings to be living their lives. Eating baby animals, eating any animals, requires an act of violence and injustice. It is barbaric to be slaughtering intelligent, sensitive, sentient – and possibly sapient – beings for our taste buds, when we don’t need to be doing it.

If you like to eat roast lamb, has reading this account made any difference to you at all?   Maybe not, but if not, why not?

Only you can answer that question.

Animal cruelty is largely ignored, when it comes to fishes

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

This week a global salmon farm operation headquartered in Canada, is under investigation for animal cruelty as a result of a campaign conducted by Compassion Over Killing (COK).   Undercover footage shows salmon being scooped out of cramped tanks and tossed into plastic containers where they are left to slowly suffocate.  

Read the Guardian article here. 

Fishes are without doubt the most abused vertebrates on the planet, and the last for the public to recognize their sentience.    Despite many scientific investigations showing they feel pain and emotions, are smart, and form attachments just like other groups of animals, it is still widely believed by the general public that fishes do not possess these characteristics.  Joker Star Joaquin Phoenix describes a fishing experience that he had at the age of 3: “The animal went from a living, vibrant creature fighting for life to a violent death. I recognized it, as did my brothers and sisters.” 

It is not OK to torture sentient beings by painfully ripping open their flesh, and suffocating them.  It is a bad idea to teach a child to fish, and it’s time to throw the fishing rod on the recycle truck.    Commercial fishing and fish farming is extremely cruel to fishes, and should be banned.  

So what does a fish feel and know?   Read the Q&A with scientist and author Jonathan Balcome, author of What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of our Underwater Cousins 

Read the Huffpost article here: 

 

 

I

SLAUGHTERHOUSE VIGILS, Whanganui and Christchurch (NZ), 13 October, 2019

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

END ANIMAL SLAUGHTER’S SANDRA KYLE, (70), DOES TWICE WEEKLY VIGILS, OFTEN ALONE, OUTSIDE ONE OF TWO SLAUGHTERHOUSES IN HER HOME TOWN OF WHANGANUI, NEW ZEALAND.   SHE IS PART OF THE WORLDWIDE  ANIMAL SAVE MOVEMENT, THAT HAS NEARLY 900 GROUPS ON FIVE CONTINENTS. NEW ZEALAND HAS FIVE ANIMAL SAVE GROUPS WHOSE REGULAR ACTIONS OUTSIDE SLAUGHTERHOUSES ARE GROWING IN STRENGTH AS MORE VEGANS BECOME ACTIVE FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE INNOCENT AND THE DEFENSELESS.  

JOY ANN SATCHELL, (73),  OF THE CHRISTCHURCH (NZ) ANIMAL SAVE GROUP ALSO DID A SOLITARY VIGIL THIS WEEKEND.   AN EXCERPT FROM HER REPORT:

‘It was a new experience standing alone at the slaughter house gates. I spent more time talking to the animals, over and over, I told them how sorry I am. I told them, I see you and this is goodbye.  Seeing the trucks arrive carrying their precious cargo, I felt deeply sad…. The sadness only strengthens my resolve to fight harder.
There they stand these beautiful, gentle cows, waiting in holding pens until tomorrow. In the morning they will be herded through the slaughter house doors, and they will be murdered with a knife across their throat. Bodies to be chopped up, wrapped up and put on display in a supermarket. This is the sole purpose they they were born, to fill the appetite of people who crave dead flesh.  They have as much blood on their hands as the slaughter house worker. They support this horrific industry’.

AN EXCERPT FROM SANDRA’S REPORT

SLAUGHTERHOUSE VIGIL, Whanganui, 13 October 2019

With Monika still away in Australia I was by myself again today.

As the sheep and bobbycalf slaughterhouse wasn’t receiving cattle today, I went to the nearby cow and pig slaughterhouse and stood on the roadside with my signs. I have never noticed a gender bias for drivers’ positive toots, although more males yell out expletives and give the finger and other gestures of disapproval than females do. I had quite a few of those today, plus a man who pulled up beside me and angrily told me off for trespassing.

I walked around the side where the pens are and looked over.   A group of Black Angus were directly below me. I have noticed that Black Angus tend to be more agitated than the other breeds of cows I see, who I would describe as looking more scared and depressed. Can anyone who knows more about cattle than I do tell me why this would be? Why would Black Angus be visibly more agitated than other cows? Are they known for being more highly strung?

I stood in the part of the forecourt that is designated as pedestrian and took photos of animals who arrived in two truckloads. The sun was shining and there was little wind, and although I was more than thirty feet away, the animals could clearly hear me talking to them: ‘Hello my darlings, Hey babies! How are my boys?’ How are my girls? You’re so beautiful. I love you so much. You’re so beautiful, aren’t you babies?’. I also sang to them, ‘Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram’ – over and over again, until every cow was unloaded from both trucks.

I know many dedicated animal activists who won’t do slaughterhouse vigils, because it is so confronting and so depressing. I understand that; I still get depressed, every single time. Yet even though the sights, the smells, and the sounds – metal doors clanging, chaotic hooves on wooden ramps, rough shouts from the workers – play on my mind, I still want to do this work. Seeing the poor animals makes me all the more determined to do everything I can to stop the terrible injustice.

 

Eating animals is barbaric, but it’s easy to adopt a vegan diet

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter contributor LAURIE TURUNEN is an artist, and is currently writing a vegan cookbook.   In this short article she asks us to consider our assumptions about why it’s OK to eat meat, and urges us to adopt a healthier, more compassionate vegan diet.

 

Humans who believe they are nice people, yet support the kind of injustice and savagery to animals required to produce the meat they eat, really need to ask why their “niceness” is selective.

If I said I would get hold of a dog, forcibly inseminate her, take her baby away if it’s a boy and kill it, take her milk, repeat the whole cycle again until she can’t take it any more and then kill and eat her, would you think this was OK.   Why then is this OK for a dairy cow?

Do you willingly support the worst inhumane atrocities to others who experience pain just like us?  If you were being tortured and mutilated, kept in a tiny smelly cage, soaking in your own excrement, waiting to be violently slaughtered, would you want everyone to just mind their own business?

If you eat meat, would you be able to kill the beautiful lamb in this photo? No??? Then how natural is it for humans to be eating animals? Humans are not lions, tigers or bears so we should stop pretending we have the same instincts.

It is time for you to stop and think about what you have been so programmed to believe is necessary or ethically okay.   Killing and chopping up animals to eat them is neither.

Going vegan is the awakened, compassionate thing to do. I don’t care how addicted you are to eating dead body parts or how much you believe you need them. You don’t need them and your habits are easy enough to change.

Eating low fat vegan, mainly fruits, vegetables and herbs, does the body a lot of good. For example, there are studies that show that eating heme iron from meat increases the likelihood of heart disease, cancer and diabetes significantly! It’s the non heme iron from plants, like leafy greens, vegetables, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes and some grains, that is the healthiest type of iron for the human body.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine among other medical bodies support a plant based diet, and state that plant-based food is superior to meat.  All plants contain protein and vital nutrients to keep you healthier.   Protein is NOT the most important nutrient in our food! Even if you believed it was, there is more than enough of it in plants.

Our food should not be barbaric. Eating animals is nothing but that.    If we eat meat and dairy, then it is time for you to go deep and question your heavy programming, misinformation and lies that have been drilled into you since birth.

Adopting a vegan diet is the healthiest, most sustainable and compassionate thing to do.   What’s more, with so many choices now, it is easy.  

Have mercy on animals and improve your own health by going vegan.

Mooove Over Animal Agriculture: Plant Proteins Are Mushrooming

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Emerging technologies spell the end of animal agriculture within a couple of decades, according to a new report from international Think Tank RethinkX. While we agree, at End Animal Slaughter we believe that the report’s authors timeline is too conservative – by 2025 most animal-derived protein will have come to an end in the western world. 

Farmers should be reading the signs now, and begin the work of transitioning.

Read a summary of the report here

Social Change And The 3.5% Rule

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Non-violent resistance won voting rights for women, India its independence and black Americans their rights.  It has also mobilised climate change, empowered the labor movement, closed down or cancelled dozens of nuclear plants, and any other number of other actions in social and political contexts.  

When compared to armed or other violent action, non-violent resistance has also historically been the most effective. It is not always guaranteed to work however, and even those actions that are in the end successful, may come with short term despair about the inevitability and intractability of the status quo. 

Erica Chenoweth from Harvard University studied hundreds of campaigns over the last century, and concluded that non-violent resistance achieved twice as many wins as violent, and what’s more, that when only 3.5% of the population is mobilised for change, every action ended in success. 

Feature photo taken by Diego Casanova at the 2019 Official Animal Rights March in Auckland, New Zealand.  

Read the article here:

 

 

World Animal Day – October 4th

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

MISSION OF WORLD ANIMAL DAY

To raise the status of animals in order to improve welfare standards around the globe. Building the celebration of World Animal Day unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force to make the world a better place for all animals.  It’s celebrated in different ways in every country, irrespective of nationality, religion, faith or political ideology.  Through increased awareness and education we can create a world where animals are always recognised as sentient beings and full regard is always paid to their welfare.

See Website:

 

Gandhi’s Birthday An Opportunity to Remember Innocent Victims

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 8 Comments on Gandhi’s Birthday An Opportunity to Remember Innocent Victims

There is an International Day for nearly everything, including the toilet, the frog, the coffee bean – and the farmed animal.   On World Farmed Animal Day it is an opportunity to remember and mourn the 70 billion cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other sentient land-based animals who lead lives of sheer misery in the world’s factory farms, and are then brutally slaughtered for our dinner table.  End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH urges us to stop turning the other way, and stand up and fight for their rights.

 

If you blinked you may have missed it. The 2nd October 2019 was the ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’. It is also Ghandi’s birthday. There seems to be a day for everything, even a ‘World Frog Day’ on March 20 and a ‘World Toilet Day’ coming up in November 19.  I am still patiently waiting for ‘World Coffee Day’ – oh wait. It was on the 1st October. Not to mind, if I missed it. I drank my usual amount of black coffee on that day and celebrated it in private.

There is often an unexpected message behind many of these special days. For example ‘World Toilet Day’ was convened by United Nations and aims to raise awareness about sanitation issues across the globe. Apparently 2.5 billion people across the globe lack access to proper toilets. I am not sure if that includes the unpopular freedom campers here in New Zealand. But what about farmed animals? New Zealand has many more farmed animals than it does freedom campers. It is only fair that they get a look in. What is 2nd October mean for farmed animals? ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’ was set up in 1983 as part of an international campaign of Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), from Washington DC.

Here in New Zealand ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’ was marked by Slaughterhouse Vigils, which are part of the ANIMAL SAVE movement. In Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson and Whanganui, activists stood outside slaughter houses to honour the victims who were being killed behind closed doors.

Standing at the slaughter house gates is one way of making visible the suffering of animals. It is a rather unpalatable fact that in order to get onto your plate animals must first be farmed and killed. It all gets hidden behind closed doors and smelly transport trucks. And the killing is definitely out of sight. We are told it is ‘humane’ and that there are rules and regulations to ensure animals live well before being killed.

Call it humane if you want, but I am not convinced that having my brains electrocuted or shattered before my throat is cut would be my preferred form of death. I’d prefer to go out in my old age while I am sitting quietly drinking coffee, nursing a frog, and sharing the need for worldwide sanitation on social media. Well, anything really, apart from death by electrocution and stabbing. I think there should be a ‘World Day to Call a Spade a Spade’.  No death this way is ever humane – and if you can’t say you would be happy having it done to you, then you have no business inflicting it on another living and sentient being.

It’s the reason I drink my coffee black and bitter. It matches my mood. I’m terribly bitter about the plight of farmed animals for a variety of reasons. I know humans have been domesticating and farming animals for about 10,000 years. I realize it is oftentimes regarded as a turning point in human evolution. I’m not here to judge my ancestors who have been dead for thousands of years. They might have lived and breathed, blood dribbling down their stubbly beards as they chomped into a half-cooked piece of meat, but I am not certain it justifies what we do to animals today.

My ancient ancestors did what they had to. They set their square jaws rather firmly, gathered up the goats on the hills and put them in a pen. I can’t argue with that. But I am here in 2019 in peace, with my coffee (no milk), feeling bitter about the calves who died for those who like cow’s milk in their coffee. Around 2 million calves are killed every year in New Zealand for the milk their mother’s make. These cows are impregnated with the express purpose of inducing lactation from birthing. ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’ was an opportunity to try and raise awareness of this, and other, unpalatable farming facts.

‘World Day for Farmed Animals’ is, like other days, an attempt to make visible some injustices in our world. Coffee growers often get paid unfairly for their produce – hence we have ‘World Coffee Day’. Frogs may become extinct. We have World Frog Day.  Animals are raised in intense confinement and filth and killed by electrocution and stabbing. Literally billions of them in fact. Is one day enough?

The animals that are killed and farmed include newly hatched male chicks who are ground up alive or suffocated. Laying hens who are crammed in small wire cages. Pigs in gestation crates, pigs in gas chambers, piglets who have their curly tails cut off without anesthetic, dairy cows who have their calves taken from them, farmed fish who suffocate slowly. Newborn dairy goats whose heads are slammed on concrete.


Gandhi, whose birthday it was on ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’, famously said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. So I try. I don’t eat animals or animal products. I rescue bobby calves. I try.   It is all any of us can ever do.

We have nearly a whole year to prepare for the next ‘World Day for Farmed Animals’.  During that time more than 70 billion land will be killed for food globally. The scale and the suffering are unimaginable.

Don’t blink next year. Stand up and fight for their lives. All 70 billion of them.

Fish Feel Pain

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Antiquated ideas about fish not being able to feel pain and lacking the brain structure necessary for a subjective experience of the world still persist, despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.   Through line fishing, deep sea fishing, commercial fishing, and factory farming, we continue to subject trillions of sentient beings to pain and suffocation every year. 

 

QUOTE FROM FEATURED ARTICLE:

“I recently learned of a culinary tradition, still practiced today, known as ikizukuri: eating the raw flesh of a living fish. You can find videos online. In one, a chef covers a fish’s face with a cloth and holds it down as he shaves off its scales with something like a crude cheese grater. He begins to slice the fish lengthwise with a large knife, but the creature leaps violently from his grasp and somersaults into a nearby sink. The chef reclaims the fish and continues slicing away both its flanks. Blood as dark as pomegranate juice spills out. He immerses the fish in a bowl of ice water as he prepares the sashimi. The whole fish will be served on a plate with shaved daikon and shiso leaves, rectangular chunks of its flesh piled neatly in its hollowed side, its mouth and gills still flapping, and the occasional shudder rippling across the length of its body”.

 

Read the article from Hakai magazine here

For up to date information about fish sentience follow fishfeel.org