Author: Sandra Kyle

The Real Price of Milk

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on The Real Price of Milk

End Animal Slaughter contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH is filled with rage at the wanton slaughter of baby cows in the Dairy Industry.

 

One of the most harrowing memories I have is of watching very young calves being offloaded from trucks onto a ramp at AFFCO (a New Zealand slaughterhouse). Their tiny bodies stumbled away from large rattles being shaken by the workers. They filed to their deaths, a bunch of babies, confused, frightened, and desperate for comfort.

They got none. And they never would again. From the holding pen to the stun bolt, these babies were about to meet their deaths.

I wanted to tear down the fence with my bare hands and scream at them to stop. I could envisage it all in my head, the blood on my hands as I forced my way through the wire. The unglamorous fall to the concrete below and the subsequent manhandling by a security guard and police arrest.

Yet like a zombie I behaved myself. And like zombies the workers laughed and joked as they shooed the babies to the killing machine.

This is one of the hardest things of being an activist when you are face to face with the victims and perpetrators of violence. You can’t stop it. You want to, you need to, you rage, you tremble. Your body fills with adrenalin and there is no legitimate expression for it.

So you turn the violence inward. And you hurt.

Some people may find exception to the labelling of calves as babies. But that is what they are, no matter how we might try to distance ourselves from this fact. They are mere newborns, just 4-10 days of age.  New Zealand kills around 2 million of them every single year. The majority are male but a sizeable number are unwanted females, and they are the living waste product of the dairy industry. Not to put too fine a point on it, we can’t use them, so what do we do?  We kill them.

They get loaded onto trucks. Legally they are allowed to spend up to 12 hours on a transport truck and up to 24 hours without any food. Once at their destination (the slaughterhouse), they are killed. Little babies, some with their umbilical cords still attached.  It makes me want to curl into a tiny ball and shut out the world.

One of the hardest things for me is the indifference people show to the plight of bobby calves. If they were puppies, or kittens, everyone would be all over it. If we drank dog or cat milk and killed the puppies or kittens, all hell would break loose.   We would have a circus on our hands with people forming Facebook oppositional groups, and there would be global media attention. But not so with calves.

I go to a café and I hear the expression ‘normal milk’ as opposed to plant-based milk. I want to say: “But this is not normal. This is the milk meant for baby calves. Taking the milk Nature designed for them, and killing them is pathologically abnormal. There is nothing at all normal about this behavior. It is ‘calves’ milk’ and the babies that should be drinking it are going to die because we don’t care enough to modify our diet.”

The sight of the calves I saw that day, walking on shaky legs down the ramp to their deaths,  lives as an undying rage within me. What if I had fallen from the fence to the enclosure of the slaughterhouse, spoke my mind, raged my rage, would I have been heard?

 

I’ve been called a terrorist, an extremist, an eccentric, a militant vegan, a flake. All of these labels are wildly ridiculous. Anyone who has seen me with a rescue calf who I nurture with extreme care knows I am merely a human doing my best to stop the killing of innocents.

If nurturing a calf with extreme care makes me an extremist, then it is a label I will wear.

As I write, early-June in New Zealand, thousands of bobby calves are either being killed or beginning their journey to their deaths. They have served their human purpose in life of inducing lactation in their mother.

I can’t save them all. I never will.

My voice will rise, accompanied by others , to travel on a wind current and speak to those who are able to hear. To speak of life loved and life lost, of the monstrousness of the human condition which creates waves of death. And of my own rage.

Ask yourself: ‘How Would I Feel’?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

A few years ago a student took me out to dinner to thank me for teaching her.  As we were shown to our seats in the restaurant, I noticed a tank full of live lobsters and stopped for a moment to look at them.  Suddenly a group of people together with a staff member came to the tank and began chatting and pointing.  After a few moments the staff member removed an animal, who waved his legs about and swished his tail.   The realisation slowly dawned on me that these people were going to eat the lobsters, and the animals were probably going out to the kitchen to be put alive in boiling water – or– heaven forbid – to be eaten alive at the table!   New Zealand has since passed a Law banning boiling crustaceans alive, and I very much doubt that our restaurants would serve live lobster as they do in other parts of the world.   But I shudder to imagine the poor creatures,  appendages waving frantically, dying mouthful by mouthful.

I didn’t want to embarrass my kind host but felt miserable for the rest of the evening, and couldn’t wait to leave the restaurant.   If an animal swishes its tail from side to side and waves its appendages around there must be a reason for it.   If I were to hazard a guess I would say such behaviour shows fear and/or pain, and while until recently it was thought that crustaceans were dumb and didn’t have the proper equipment to feel pain, scientists are now painting a different picture.

Firstly, a little bit about lobsters.  They have been around for 100 million years, more than 90 million years longer than homo sapiens’ earliest ancestors.   A prime example of the diverse pathways evolution has taken, lobsters have adapted to live in every part of the planet, from freezing to tropical.  In the wild, lobsters can live, according to one source, to be more than 100 years old.

Lobsters are invertebrates (animals without backbones) and more specifically arthropods, so called because they have a protective exo-skeleton, segmented body and paired jointed appendages.  Like most arthropods, they grow by passing through phases of moulting when they periodically shed the outer cuticle that restricts their growth.

Their body organisation is vastly different from our own.   The lobster brain consists of an array of nerve endings called ganglia, found within their throat, while their nervous system is located throughout their abdomen. The lobster stomach is at the back of their eyes, they sense their environment with their antennae, and they taste their meals with their legs.

Commercial lobster fishers talk about how aggressive they are, and ‘hard-wired’.  According to them, lobsters have no ‘intelligence’, and their reactions are merely an automatic response to chemical stimuli to achieve certain outcomes.  However, research is showing that they are much smarter than previously thought.

One such study was carried out University of New Hampshire researchers led by Zoology Professor Win Watson.   They lowered a standard lobster trap into Portsmouth waters and videotaped what happened.  The expectation was that, given that traps hauled to the surface usually contained only a handful of lobsters, the video would not show many lobsters approaching the trap (that contained bait).   However, the opposite was true.   The trap looked like an ‘anthill’ Professor Watson said, with lobsters scuffling all over it, and happily wandering in and out at will.   A mere six percent of the lobsters who entered were caught, largely because they had the bad luck to be inside when the trap was hauled up, and not because they were too stupid to find their way out.   Further research Watson carried out showed that lobsters have what it takes to recognize and remember left from right, and they successfully negotiated a maze he and his colleagues constructed to test them.  What’s more, lobster scientist Diane Cowan says that lobsters are ‘highly social’, and:

‘They know where their neighbors live and know what molt stage they’re in. It’s not just whether an animal has a backbone or not that makes it simple or complex.’

As usual, we have underestimated the intelligence of other species, but more important to me is whether lobsters can feel pain.

Pain is a difficult thing to test, as it cannot be measured directly or pointed at.  When carrying out studies on pain, scientists make the distinction between pain and reflex. If an animal has responded to something that we would deem painful it does not mean that that individual has actually felt the pain.

At Queens University Belfast, a study was carried out to test crustaceans’ ability to feel pain.   As part of the study they gave crabs a brief electric shock to a part of their body.  The researchers observed that the crabs would begin to rub that spot for a long period of time, with some animals picking at their wound site if the claw was removed. They would also bend their limbs into awkward positions trying to get at the affected site, which clearly bothered them.  The conclusions to the study were that crabs not only felt pain, but retained a memory of it.

Like lobsters, crabs are also sometimes placed alive in boiling water to cook.   Invertebrate zoologist Jaren G Horsley says that crustaceans may feel even more pain than we would in similar situations:-

“The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. … I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open … [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during cooking…   The lobster has a rather sophisticated nervous system that allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm.’

This would explain the tail swishing and appendage waving I saw the lobster at the restaurant do.   My sense that the lobster was feeling fear was probably right.

Boiling crustaceans alive is just one of the egregious ways we treat other sentient beings.   Just because we are ‘at the top of the food chain’, this does not give us the right to take away the rights of others.     All lives have intrinsic value separate to any value they have to humans, and are worthy of moral consideration.  As far as trying to figure out whether certain animals feel pain and fear, then maybe we should try asking ourselves:  ‘How would I feel in that situation’?

Sandra Kyle

‘They Will Not Hurt or Destroy on the Holy Mountain’

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 3 Comments on ‘They Will Not Hurt or Destroy on the Holy Mountain’

While the vast majority of Christians have espoused a carnivorous diet, in the history of Christianity there have always been vegetarians and vegans.  Some early Christian vegetarians were Clement of Alexandria,  John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Maximus the Confessor, and St David.

There are a number of passages in the bible that appear to promote the superiority of a harmless vegetarian diet.   For example, Isaiah 11:6–9 reads:-

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

The notion of humans having ‘dominion’ over the animals (Genesis 1:26–28) has been interpreted as control over our fellow creatures, and that has led to using them in the most egregious ways.  However, Genesis 1:29-30 seems to proscribe a plant-based diet:-

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

This Genesis passage also seems to suggest abstaining from meat:-

“But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” — Genesis 9:4

The violence in taking another being’s life for food or sacrifice is frowned upon in this passage from Isiah:-

“He that kills an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrifices a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck. Yes, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations.”

— Isiah 66:3

Our common existence with other animals is put on an equal footing in this passage:-

“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”

— Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

Some quotations from early Christians:

“What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.” – St Isaac the Syrian

“We do not know God from His essence. We know Him rather from the grandeur of His creation and from His providential care for all creatures. For through these, as though they were mirrors, we may attain insight into His infinite goodness, wisdom and power.” – St Maximus the Confessor

“Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it… If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”- Saint Francis of Assisi

St David, Patron Saint of Wales, was a vegan.

Q&A: Marc Pierschel, Film Maker

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

1 Your film THE END OF MEAT envisions a future where meat consumption belongs to the past.   What was your chief motivation in making this film?

When I made my last documentary, Live and Let Live, one of my interview questions was what the human-animal relationship will look like in 20 years from now. I got some really interesting answers, which got me thinking about a future perspective in the first place. When the vegan movement suddently entered the mainstream in Germany around 7 years ago, I got the idea to explore the idea further in form of a documentary. I am a vegan myself so it is obviously a really exciting question to explore a future vision of a world without animal exploitation.

2 While meat and animal products continue to be consumed in large quantities in some parts of the world, the growth of veganism is a marked trend in the western world, do you agree?

Yes, absolutely. That was one of the main inspirations to make the film – the growth of veganism and how it changed from a lifestyle that was seen as absurd or crazy to something that is now quite trendy. The market for vegan foods is still growing here and in other european countries and I don’t think it will stop anytime soon especially with new innovative foods that are really challenging traditional animal products in taste and texture.

3 The production and consumption of animal flesh and products involves many industries and people – farmers and farm workers, transport workers, butchers, slaughterhouse workers, retailers, the petfood industry, admin workers, scientists, vets and so on.  In some cases, like here in New Zealand, it is a pillar of the economy.   Is the economy in danger of collapsing if we no longer produce and export animal flesh?

I asked myself this question when I was researching the situation here in Germany. And what I found was that the number of farms and famers over the last 20 years has reduced dramatically. We are now seeing  larger and larger operations farming animals in a more automated way,  so I think employment in the industry or at least for traditional farmers has been decreasing for many years, even before the rise of veganism. On the other hand the plant-based economy is growing quickly and we see that traditional meat producers are entering the plant-based market, either by producing their own vegan and vegetarian products or by investing in plant-based or cultured meat start-ups. So there are new jobs being created at the same time. I don’t think it will be a collapse but rather a slow shift to an animal-free industry.

4 In order to bring the change about sooner, what should our strategies be?

I think consumer awareness is key for broader change. And that is something that has been growing exponentially. Without awareness it will difficult to establish any sort of structural changes that are necessary on a legislative level. For example by taxing animal products or cutting subsidies. It is a tricky situation since the animal industry has such a large lobby in most countries. But with growing ecological and health related problems that are undeniably caused by the consumption of animal products I think it is far from  a hopeless cause.

5 What would a post-meat western society look like?  How will it be a better world?

There would be tremendous benefits to lots of ecological problems our planet is currently facing: Greenhouse gases from animal farming, deforestation for farm- and cropland, water shortages caused by farming as well as vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. And of course there are the billions of animal lives that won’t be born only to suffer and be killed. It would be interesting how this would change our relationship with the animals that we don’t eat – I hope this will also have an effect on other exploitative practices that are still seen as acceptable,  such as animals used in entertainment,  for testing and hunting – just to name a few. A very interesting book I can recommend is ‘Zoopolis’ by Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson, who also have an appearance in the film.

6 Where can people see your film?

You can livestream The End of Meat at http://www.theendofmeat.com/en/watch.html.   You can also sign up to our newsletter or follow us @theendofmeat on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.  Thanks!

Thankyou for your time.

I Am Not A Hamburger

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Should cows have the right not to be placed in a hamburger?  End Animal Slaughter Contributor LYNLEY TULLOCH thinks they should.

New Zealand-owned Pizza chain Hell was recently in the news when they covertly added a Beyond Meat patty to their burger pizza.   It is suggested that they were in breach of the NZ Fair Trading Act, which protects consumers from being misled.

Lawyer Ray Neild is quoted as saying: “What does a reasonable consumer expect if it says “burger”?  A reasonable consumer is going to think that means meat.”

But what is reasonable for the consumer is not necessarily so hunky dory for the bovine. In fact, if bovines were extended human rights they would well and truly be on solid ground to seek legal remedy. They would no doubt ask to make it illegal to murder bovines in order to put them in a burger patty, or on a pizza, or for any other reason.  If a bovine had the same rights that are bequeathed to humans under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it would be complete pande-moo-nium.

Let’s face it, by being made into a burger the bovine has a substantial amount of her rights breached. These include her right to life, health, liberty, self-determination. equal protection of the law, nondiscrimination and protection against torture.

 

The bovine’s right to life seems to be a pretty clear cut case,  seeing that she has ended up as a medium rare patty in your burger. To get there she had to be dead. You may be ok with this. but the bovine, bless her, is probably not. I think I am in pretty safe territory when I say that no bovine goes to his or her death willingly, especially for no other purpose than to fill space between two bread buns alongside the lettuce and tomato.

If a bovine were accorded the right to good health she would also not end up in a burger. Not only is eating burgers bad for the bovine’s health, but also for yours. Meat eating is linked to many cancers, specifically colon cancer. It is also bad for the heart, causing fatty deposits which contribute to heart disease. It goes without saying that eating burgers is bad for the bovine’s heart which, not to put too fine a point on it, must desist in order for her to become a burger.  Meat, as the saying goes, ‘stops a beating heart.’

And what about the bovine’s right to self-determination? The bovine currently has none. She is caught up in a system where her very existence is predicated on her demise. Her life is determined by others, who seek to profit from her death. Years of domestication have rendered her docile enough to keep captive until she is deemed ready for the slaughterhouse. She may be used to breed other calves for meat, or her body may be used for milking before it is spent and sold off as cheap hamburger fodder or pet food. There is no self-determination for bovines at any stage of their short existence.

As for equal protection of the law, the bovine has none of this either. She is not protected, as humans are, from murder, forced impregnation, denial of liberty, or incarceration. She is at the mercy of the laws of the country she was born into that determine acceptable ‘welfare standards’ for her upkeep. However, these are routinely transgressed, and in some countries completely absent.

The right of bovines to nondiscrimination is clearly flouted. Bovines, like other animals who are farmed, are discriminated against on the basis of their species. She may be born into a bovine body, but she is still able to think, feel, hope, fear, and form attachments. Just because she is a bovine, does not mean she is not an individual whose life matters to her. Despite this, she is discriminated against, simply because she is a bovine.

What about her right to protection against torture? Surely we don’t torture bovines? Sadly, we do. They have their horns burned off, with 97% of New Zealand farmers using the hot iron cautery method.. If the calf is less than nine months old it is recommended pain relief is used, but this is not a legal requirement. Young male calves often have tight rings put around their scrotum so the blood supply is cut off,  causing the testicles to drop off. Some bovines used to have their tails cut off,  but since October 2018 this is illegal.  The law grants small mercies. Bovines also often experience distress by being given inadequate shelter, braving the wind, rain and biting cold in winter and the hot sun with no shade in summer. When they are transported to the slaughterhouse bovines are put in trucks and electric prods may be used to move them along. They often travel long distances in hot conditions only to arrive at the gates to Hades Underworld, with a one-way entry ticket purchased on their behalf. They come out in dismembered pieces; even in death they are not given any dignity.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that all human rights be extended to animals. For example, the right to education and freedom of religion and participation in government would be a trifle bizarre. No one really wants a bull lining up at the polling booth, horns and balls intact, ready to express his right to vote. However, animals can be given some rights within human law that would protect them from being so badly abused. We should bequeath to animals the freedom from human use and exploitation, and that, of course, means not murdering and eating them.

So in response to Lawyer Ray Neild’s comment about the expectation of ‘reasonable consumers’ I would like to shift the goal posts. A ‘reasonable consumer’ should find murder of an animal to be entirely unreasonable.

Hell General Manager Ben Cumming is to be commended. He is quoted  as saying: “We care about the planet and want to start a conversation and raise awareness about sustainable food choices.”  I don’t think I am being unreasonable in suggesting that, perhaps, a burger that tastes like meat, but for which no animal had to suffer and die,  is the more inclusive path to take.

This generation is waking up to the reality that many individual ‘choices’ about matters such as meat consumption are having an impact on the future viability of the Earth and our future as a species. Many people are also beginning to care a whole lot more about animal sentience, and want to extend the principal of non-exploitation to them.

It is not that difficult to do. We just need to break though the species barrier and see the individuality and person-hood in all beings. The ultimate feel-good factor in food consumption is knowing that your choice is based on non-harm, compassion and life.

Step away from Hades Underworld and enter the gates of Hell.     I hear the future calling.

 

More Pigs Boiled Alive in Slaughterhouses If Proposal Goes Ahead

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In January 2018 the United States Department of Agriculture announced its proposal to ‘modernize’ pig (‘swine’ or ‘hog’) slaughter. The programme was designed to greatly increase slaughter line speeds and also to reduce the number of trained USDA meat inspectors at slaughter plants.

Opposing this move were workers’ unions, public health officials and animal welfare organisations.   Despite this, USDA planned to go ahead with rolling out the programme to a handful of slaughterhouses collectively responsible for killing 90 percent of the nation’s pigs.   Just this week however, Congress announced that it has forced an investigation into whether USDA used flawed data to downplay worker safety issues, and the programme has been delayed.

Compassion Over Killing’s Scott David worked undercover inside Quality Pork Processors (WPP), which was killing 21 pigs per minute under the high speed pilot scheme.  He documented pig carcasses covered in feces and abscesses, workers under intense pressure to keep up line speeds beat, pigs being dragged and electrically prodded to make the terrified animals move faster.

Read Scott David’s article

In her groundbreaking book ‘Slaughterhouse’, animal cruelty investigator and prize-winning author and journalist Gael Eisnitz documented pigs being dropped into vats of boiling water (designed to remove the hair off the pig’s skin) when they were still conscious.   When line speeds are increased it puts the workers under extreme pressure of injury and stress. and more animals are improperly stunned or ‘stuck’ (killed).  Like the pig in our feature photograph, they may die agonising deaths, drowning in boiling water.

When will the insane cruelty end?  We need to begin the work of closing down slaughterhouses.  There is no place for them in civilised society.

See also:

 

 

 

A message from Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

The article below was written by Buddhist monk, teacher and author, THICH NHAT HANH, and we have reprinted it with original illustrations of New Zealand native plants and animals by Alex L Scott.   

“This is the kind of awareness, the kind of awakening that we need, and the future of the planet depends on whether we’re able to cultivate this insight or not. The Earth and all species on Earth are in real danger. Yet if we can develop a deep relationship with the Earth, we’ll have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change our way of life”.

If we cultivated a reverence for ‘Mother Earth’ and all life that depends on her, we could not kill other beings.  With the consciousness Thich Nhat Hahn talks about in this article, it would be literally impossible to massacre billions of our fellow beings every year.  The world would be transformed.

 

We and the Earth are one

The Earth is our mother, nourishing and protecting us in every moment–giving us air to breathe, fresh water to drink, food to eat and healing herbs to cure us when we are sick. Every breath we inhale contains our planet’s nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and trace elements. When we breathe with mindfulness, we can experience our interbeing with the Earth’s delicate atmosphere, with all the plants, and even with the sun, whose light makes possible the miracle of photosynthesis. With every breath we can experience communion. With every breath we can savor the wonders of life.

We need to change our way of thinking and seeing things. We need to realise that the Earth is not just our environment. The Earth is not something outside of us. Breathing with mindfulness and contemplating your body, you realise that you are the Earth. You realise that your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Look around you–what you see is not your environment, it is you.

Great Mother Earth

Whatever nationality or culture we belong to, whatever religion we follow, whether we’re Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, or atheists, we can all see that the Earth is not inert matter. She is a great being, who has herself given birth to many other great beings–including buddhas and bodhisattvas, prophets and saints, sons and daughters of God and humankind. The Earth is a loving mother, nurturing and protecting all peoples and all species without discrimination.

When you realize the Earth is so much more than simply your environment, you’ll be moved to protect her in the same way as you would yourself. This is the kind of awareness, the kind of awakening that we need, and the future of the planet depends on whether we’re able to cultivate this insight or not. The Earth and all species on Earth are in real danger. Yet if we can develop a deep relationship with the Earth, we’ll have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change our way of life.

Falling in love

We can all experience a feeling of deep admiration and love when we see the great harmony, elegance and beauty of the Earth. A simple branch of cherry blossom, the shell of a snail or the wing of a bat – all bear witness to the Earth’s masterful creativity. Every advance in our scientific understanding deepens our admiration and love for this wondrous planet. When we can truly see and understand the Earth, love is born in our hearts. We feel connected. That is the meaning of love: to be at one.

Only when we’ve truly fallen back in love with the Earth will our actions spring from reverence and the insight of our interconnectedness. Yet many of us have become alienated from the Earth. We are lost, isolated and lonely. We work too hard, our lives are too busy, and we are restless and distracted, losing ourselves in consumption. But the Earth is always there for us, offering us everything we need for our nourishment and healing: the miraculous grain of corn, the refreshing stream, the fragrant forest, the majestic snow-capped mountain peak, and the joyful birdsong at dawn.

True Happiness is made of love

Many of us think we need more money, more power or more status before we can be happy. We’re so busy spending our lives chasing after money, power and status that we ignore all the conditions for happiness already available. At the same time, we lose ourselves in buying and consuming things we don’t need, putting a heavy strain on both our bodies and the planet. Yet much of what we drink, eat, watch, read or listen to, is toxic, polluting our bodies and minds with violence, anger, fear and despair.

As well as the carbon dioxide pollution of our physical environment, we can speak of the spiritual pollution of our human environment: the toxic and destructive atmosphere we’re creating with our way of consuming. We need to consume in such a way that truly sustains our peace and happiness. Only when we’re sustainable as humans will our civilization become sustainable. It is possible to be happy in the here and the now.

We don’t need to consume a lot to be happy; in fact we can live very simply. With mindfulness, any moment can become a happy moment. Savoring one simple breath, taking a moment to stop and contemplate the bright blue sky, or to fully enjoy the presence of a loved one, can be more than enough to make us happy. Each one of us needs to come back to reconnect with ourselves, with our loved ones and with the Earth. It’s not money, power or consuming that can make us happy, but having love and understanding in our heart.

The bread in your hand is the body of the cosmos

We need to consume in such a way that keeps our compassion alive. And yet many of us consume in a way that is very violent. Forests are cut down to raise cattle for beef, or to grow grain for liquor, while millions in the world are dying of starvation. Reducing the amount of meat we eat and alcohol we consume by 50% is a true act of love for ourselves, for the Earth and for one another. Eating with compassion can already help transform the situation our planet is facing, and restore balance to ourselves and the Earth.

Nothing is more important than brotherhood and sisterhood

There’s a revolution that needs to happen and it starts from inside each one of us. We need to wake up and fall in love with Earth. We’ve been homo sapiens for a long time. Now it’s time to become homo conscius. Our love and admiration for the Earth has the power to unite us and remove all boundaries, separation and discrimination. Centuries of individualism and competition have brought about tremendous destruction and alienation. We need to re-establish true communication–true communion–with ourselves, with the Earth, and with one another as children of the same mother. We need more than new technology to protect the planet. We need real community and co-operation.

All civilisations are impermanent and must come to an end one day. But if we continue on our current course, there’s no doubt that our civilisation will be destroyed sooner than we think.

But if we continue on our current course, there’s no doubt that our civilisation will be destroyed sooner than we think.

The Earth may need millions of years to heal, to retrieve her balance and restore her beauty. She will be able to recover, but we humans and many other species will disappear, until the Earth can generate conditions to bring us forth again in new forms. Once we can accept the impermanence of our civilization with peace, we will be liberated from our fear. Only then will we have the strength, awakening and love we need to bring us together. Cherishing our precious Earth–falling in love with the Earth–is not an obligation. It is a matter of personal and collective happiness and survival.

VOICES FOR ANIMALS ACROSS THE AGES: LOREN EISELEY

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Loren Eiseley  (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was an American anthropologist, philosopher and natural science writer.   During his lifetime he received many honorary degrees for his accomplishments.   A ‘scholar of imagination and grace’,  dubbed ‘the modern Thoreau’,  he taught and wrote from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Eiseley’s reputation was established primarily through his books, including The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin’s Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and his memoir, All the Strange Hours (1975).

His beautiful prose was written with a sense of reverence before the natural world, and the mysteries of life.  Eiseley was an evolutionist, and both understood scientifically, and felt intuitively, the interconnectedness of all beings.  

 

‘THE STAR THROWER’

The famous ‘Starfish Story’ is based on an original story by Eiseley called  The Star Thrower’,  which appeared in his book ‘The Unexpected Universe’.  Here is an excerpt:-

I have caught a glimpse of what man may be, along an endless wave-beaten coast at dawn. It began on the beaches of Costabel. I was an inhumanly stripped skeleton without voice, without hope, wandering alone upon the shores of the world. I was devoid of pity, because pity implies hope… I concealed myself beneath a fisherman’s cap and sunglasses, so that I looked like everyone else on the beaches of Costabel, which are littered with the debris of life. There, along the strip of wet sand that marks the tide, death walks hugely and in many forms. The sea casts them repeatedly back upon the shore. The tiny breathing pores of starfish are stuffed with sand. The rising sun shrivels their unprotected bodies. The endless war is soundless. Nothing screams but the gulls. In the night, torches bobbing like fireflies along the beach, are the sign of the professional shellers. Greedy madness sweeps over the competing collectors, hurrying along with bundles of gathered starfish that will be slowly cooked and dissolved in the outdoor kettles provided by the resort hotels for the cleaning of specimens. It was there that I met the star thrower. As the sound of the sea became heavier and more menacing, I rounded a bluff into the full blast of the offshore wind. Long-limbed starfish were strewn everywhere, sprawling where the waves had tossed them as though showered down through the night sky. The sun behind me was pressing upward at the horizon’s rim ~ an ominous red glare amidst the tumbling blackness of the clouds. Ahead of me, over the projecting point, a gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection had sprung shimmering into existence.

 

Toward its foot I discerned a human figure standing, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow. He was gazing fixedly at something in the sand. He stooped and flung an object beyond the breaking surf. I labored another half a mile toward him and by the time I reached him, kneeling again, the rainbow had receded ahead of us. In a pool of sand and silt a starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the stifling mud. “It’s still alive,” I ventured. “Yes,” he said, and with a quick, yet gentle movement, he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the sea. “It may live if the offshore pull is strong enough,” he said. In a sudden embarrassment for words I said, “Do you collect shells?” “Only ones like this,” he said softly, gesturing amidst the wreckage of the shore, “and only for the living.” He stooped again, and skipped another star neatly across the water. “The stars,” he said, “throw well. One can help them.”

‘THE JUDGEMENT OF THE BIRDS’ is another famous Eiseley work.

Original watercolour ‘SPARROW’ by Alex L. Scott

I have said that I saw a judgment upon life, and that it was not passed by men. Those who stare at birds in cages or who test minds by their closeness to our own may not care for it. It comes from far away out of my past, in a place of pouring waters and green leaves. I shall never see an episode like it again if I live to be a hundred, nor do I think that one man in a million has ever seen it, because man is an intruder into such silences. The light must be right, and the observer must remain unseen. No man sets up such an experiment. What he sees, he sees by chance.

 

You may put it that I had come over a mountain, that I had slogged through fern and pine needles for half a long day, and that on the edge of a little glade with one long, crooked branch extending across it, I had sat down to rest with my back against a stump. Through accident I was concealed from the glade, although I could see into it perfectly.

 

The sun was warm there, and the murmurs of forest life blurred softly away into my sleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some cornmotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak.

 

The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestlings parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing. The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents.

 

No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death.

 

And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.

 

The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song pass-ing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang, from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.

VOICES FOR ANIMALS ACROSS THE AGES: ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (November 5, 1850 – October 30, 1919) was an American author and poet. Her works include Poems of Passion, and Solitude.   She coined some memorable phrases, including  “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone”.
Her poems, written in rhyming verse, were filled with insight, and though not highly critically acclaimed were widely accepted and loved by the public. Her works popularized what at the time was known as ‘New Thought’ embodying the belief that all life is connected spiritually as well as physically, and that people are spiritual beings.  As ‘Voice for the Voiceless’,  her most famous Animal Rights poem shows, she believed that animals also have souls.   Some of her most popular works were ‘Poems of Passion’, (1883) A Woman of the World’ (1904)‘Poems of Peace’, (1906), and ‘Poems of Experience’ (1910). Her autobiography,  titled ‘The Worlds and I’, was published a year before her death.

‘You may choose your words like a connoisseur, And polish it up with art, But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, Is the word that comes from the heart’.  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

 

THE VOICE OF THE VOICELESS

I am the voice of the voiceless; 
    Through me the dumb shall speak; 
Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear 
    The cry of the wordless weak. 
From street, from cage, and from kennel, 
    From jungle and stall, the wail 
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin 
    Of the mighty against the frail.

I am a ray from the centre; 
    And I will feed God’s spark, 
Till a great light glows in the night and shows 
    The dark deeds done in the dark. 
And full on the thoughtless sleeper 
    Shall flash its glaring flame, 
Till he wakens to see what crimes may be 
    Cloaked under an honoured name.

The same Force formed the sparrow 
    That fashioned man, the king; 
The God of the Whole gave a spark of soul 
    To furred and to feathered thing. 
And I am my brother’s keeper, 
    And I will fight his fight, 
And speak the word for beast and bird, 
    Till the world shall set things right.

Let no voice cavil at Science– 
    The strong torch-bearer of God; 
For brave are his deeds, though dying creeds, 
    Must fall where his feet have trod. 
But he who would trample kindness 
    And mercy into the dust– 
He has missed the trail, and his quest will fail: 
    He is not the guide to trust.

For love is the true religion, 
    And love is the law sublime; 
And all that is wrought, where love is not, 
    Will die at the touch of time. 
And Science, the great revealer, 
    Must flame his torch at the Source; 
And keep it bright with that holy light, 
    Or his feet shall fail on the course.

Oh, never a brute in the forest, 
    And never a snake in the fen, 
Or ravening bird, starvation stirred, 
    Has hunted its prey like men. 
For hunger, and fear, and passion 
    Alone drive beasts to slay, 
But wonderful man, the crown of the plan, 
    Tortures, and kills, for play.

He goes well fed from his table; 
    He kisses his child and wife; 
Then he haunts a wood, till he orphans a brood, 
    Or robs a deer of its life. 
He aims at a speck in the azure; 
    Winged love, that has flown at a call; 
It reels down to die, and he lets it lie; 
    His pleasure was seeing it fall.

And one there was, weary of laurels, 
    Of burdens and troubles of State; 
So the jungle he sought, with the beautiful thought 
    Of shooting a she lion’s mate. 
And one came down from the pulpit, 
    In the pride of a duty done, 
And his cloth sufficed, as his emblem of Christ, 
    While murder smoked out of his gun.

One strays from the haunts of fashion 
    With an indolent, unused brain; 
But his sluggish heart feels a sudden start 
    In the purpose of giving pain. 
And the fluttering flock of pigeons, 
    As they rise on eager wings, 
From prison to death, bring a catch in his breath: 
    Oh, the rapture of killing things!

Now, this is the race as we find it, 
    Where love, in the creed, spells hate; 
And where bird and beast meet a foe in the priest 
    And in rulers of fashion and State. 
But up to the Kingdom of Thinkers 
    Has risen the cry of our kin; 
And the weapons of thought are burnished and brought 
    To clash with the bludgeons of sin.

Far Christ, of a million churches, 
    Come near to the earth again; 
Be more than a Name; be a living Flame; 
    ‘Make Good’ in the hearts of men. 
Shine full on the path of Science, 
    And show it the heights above, 
Where vast truths lie for the searching eye 
    That shall follow the torch of love.

 

 

 

From Hatchery to Slaughterhouse – Born to Suffer and Die for our Food

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter contributor DEBBIE NELSON lends her voice to the voiceless.

 

In the Broiler Barn

Can you please help me?   I am living in a filthy shed with thousands of others. I’m only 42 days old but my body is growing so fast I can hardly stand up. There is no room to walk, no room to spread my wings.  My breast is so big I keep falling on my face.  I can feel my heartbeat faltering.  That’s because I have a chick’s heart in a grown body.

I can’t breathe. The smell in here is so bad. I’m standing in my own shit.  A lot of my friends can’t walk. Some have broken legs.  Their legs can’t hold the weight of their huge bodies.  Some are lying on the floor, already dead.

It’s so dark in here.  OH NO THE DOORS ARE OPENING! They’re pulling in trucks! The fork lifts are bringing in the crates. We run, peeping at the top of our lungs but we can’t escape. The men are grabbing us six at a time by our legs and throwing us in crates.   Oh, the pain!   I think my wing is broken. They are so rough with us, but there’s nothing we can do.  We are trapped.  They are loading us on to a big truck.

At the Hatchery

The rooster

I’m male and the chick next to me is female. We are two of the tens of thousands who have just hatched out of our eggs. The humans dropped us in a box, and then onto a moving lane.  We are little yellow balls of fluff, alert and curious, and looking around us.   The humans are picking us up and looking at our feathers.   Because mine are different from my hatch mate she and I are sent down different metal tubes. I get the tube of death! I’m falling into a grinding machine. I try to jump but the humans pick me up and throw me back.   I scream but my mother cannot hear me.   I have never met her so how can she save me?   What have I done to deserve this fate?  There are only seconds left.  I’m looking down into the grinder. I can see the ground up chicks that went before. I’m in.

The hen

I was sent down the female tube. A human hand grabbed me, put me in a sharp machine and cut off my beak. The pain was unbearable. The chick who went before me died of shock! Then the humans stuck a needle in me. I don’t know why. Are they really going to cut off my toes? They are! I don’t think I can stand the agony.   Now they are putting me into a crate and loading me onto a truck.  I don’t know where I am going. I need my mother! Why don’t I have a mother?   I want to hide under her wing.

At the egg farm

I’m being sent to the egg farm.  They are roughly unloading me. I see where I’m supposed to live until I’m old enough to lay eggs. When I can lay eggs the humans will stuff me in a small metal cage with five or six other hens.  We can’t stretch our wings. We must stand or crouch on hard wires which cut our feet.  Our job is to lay eggs.   I slave away for the humans until I can’t anymore.

Three years have gone by, and I am spent. I have no feathers left, and my body is bruised and bleeding from rubbing against metal, and my cellmates pecking me.  I am taken from the cage put into another crate to be transported once again. I sense I’m going to a terrible place.

In The  House of Death

I have arrived after a long drive to a place that sounds and smells like death and misery. I have to wait 6 hours, anxious and in pain, before anything starts to happen.   Then some men arrive, and I am seized out of my transport crate. I see one of my kind thrown up into the shackles like a ball. Another one of us has their head torn off by the shackler. The humans are laughing.

I am turned upside down, held by my feet and hung up on shackles. I am fully aware of my dire circumstances. Now I’m moving down to a tub of water. My head is going into the water. The water feels alive with negative energy. Is this how I’m going to die? I lift my head up at the last minute.  My brain was not electrocuted,  and I’m fully conscious.  Next I’m dragged over a sharp device which cuts my throat. I struggle, and it’s not a clean cut.   I’m still conscious.   In pain, but conscious.   Next I’m dropped head first into scalding water. The searing pain overtakes my being, and then, nothing.  Finally it’s  all over.

It doesn’t matter if we are bred for meat or to lay eggs.  It doesn’t matter if the farm is labelled humane or organic we all come from the same place, and we all end up in the same place.  We all have to suffer traveling many miles without food or water and with no protection from the weather. Many of us are seriously hurt from the rough handling we experienced upon loading. Some of us are dead on arrival.

The suffering is endless.   Must this continue?   It doesn’t have to.   You, the

consumer, can stop this. Please do not buy any chicken products.

 

Old Anthem, New Anthem

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 4 Comments on Old Anthem, New Anthem

A Civil Rights Anthem from the 60s takes on a new meaning, writes End Animal Slaughter contributor, LYNLEY TULLOCH

 

Back in 1964 Bob Dylan wrote ‘The Times They are a Changin’ which became an anthem of change for the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements.   In 2019, while we are facing a myriad of environmental and social issues, the song remains a point of reference.

As we enter the 2020s, we have to realise that change is now imperative.   If we don’t change our ways very quickly, we may not have a habitable Earth to live on. Climate change, which in large part has been caused by industrial activity and animal agriculture, is creating massive biodiversity loss, collapse of ecosystems and extreme weather events.   Unless real and sustained efforts are made now, it will only get worse, with cataclysmic results

Everyone wants to avoid this, and everyone wants a change for the better.  Yet just what ‘better’ is remains a point of contention.  Some people want to continue with the old ways.   ‘Old ways die hard’, the saying goes, something that Dylan also recognized. Addressing mothers and fathers he talked about a new path, and told them:

‘Your old road is
Rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand’

The message then, and now, is to the older generation who want to stick to the old model to ‘get out of the way’.    It is our version of ‘human progress’ that has caused the disastrous problems we now face.  But our view of human advancement, based on human supremacy and domination over other animals and the environment, has ultimately been our downfall.

Fortunately, more and more people are recognising that the old methods of domination and killing are not the way forward.  More of us are recognizing that we need to respect the Earth and all her inhabitants, and work with her not against her.

One of the ways we need to change involves animal-based agriculture.  Raising animals for food is no longer sustainable.  The creation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, water pollution, climate change, and land degradation are all significant problems associated with farming animals. And – dare I say it – rearing and slaughtering them, often in appalling conditions in order to eat them, is both barbaric and cruel.

No one wants to die, least of all the animal on your plate. We should not be breeding animals with the explicit purpose of consuming their flesh.  Not only does it cause them immense suffering and pain, study after study has shown that it is also bad for our health and the environment.

Calls to convert to a plant-based diet and plant-based sustainable agricultural systems have been met with resistance, yet more and more high-profile people are calling for this change.  For example, Oscar-winning director James Cameron and his wife Suzy Cameron Amis advocate that individuals shift to a plant-based diet, and countries begin the transition to plant-based agriculture.

Changing our diet is one, very significant way every single person can help to stop the disaster of climate change.   We have to accept that the need is urgent.   If we don’t become part of the solution rather than part of the problem, then we will only have ourselves to blame when we no longer survive as a species.

‘Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.’

Change is hard, but it is imperative we embrace it.   If you don’t want to be part of compassionate social change for the better, then you had better step aside.

 

How much cruelty would you like with your bacon?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Pigs are highly intelligent and curious. They form strong attachments, have long memories, can solve puzzles, and like to play just for fun.  Studies have also shown that they experience complex emotions and can feel optimistic and pessimistic.  The suffering pigs endure in factory farms is unconscionable.

We have to stop killing pigs for food.

Learn more about pigs.