Author: Sandra Kyle

Hunting is Blood Lust in the Guise of Sport and Conservation

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

End Animal Slaughter contributor DEBBIE NELSON remembers early fox hunts she participated in. 

 

During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s on three occasions in three states, and on three different horses, I had the experience of riding in an English-style Fox Hunt. The hunts I road with were the Arapahoe Hunt, Moingona Hunt and Mr Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds, all established live hunts in Colorado, Iowa and Penn.  Our prey was coyote or fox.  It was one of the few outlets girls in their late teens and early twenties had for adventure. We were required to have the whole traditional dress and wore a stock tie around our neck in case we needed a sling. The men carried flasks and the women carried sandwich cases.  The Hunt Master had a pack of hounds; we  followed the whole 16th century English tradition faithfully.

The riding was the most challenging I’ve ever done, in fact it would be a hard ride for rodeo cowboys!  If I wanted adventure here it was!    The hounds picked up the scent and we followed them.   This included jumping at a full gallop over 4 ft. barbed wire fences.  A board was nailed above the top of the dangerous barbed wire fence to give the horses an idea of the height of the fence they had to jump – barbed wire is hard to see when you’re going at break neck speed. To make a mistake was extremely harmful,  if not life-threatening to horse and rider.  We galloped on top of a ridge in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains for 10 miles in horse-knee-deep snow There were cliffs on both sides. If you went two feet off to either side you fell off the ridge.   My horse and I had to slide down slopes so steep that he had to sit on his hindquarters to get down. We galloped through fields avoiding the many holes waiting to trip us up. We followed the hounds through forests where the trees were so dense we had to watch that our knee caps weren’t shattered.

Now that’s a courageous, skillful, think-on-the-spot sport, definitely not for the faint of heart.  Luckily we never killed any animal, unlike in the UK where the sport was carried out by royalty, aristocratic landowners, and clergy. Since 2005 Fox Hunting has been unlawful in England, a ban that is still flouted by die-hards.   At the time Tony Blair’s government was trying to get it banned, Prince Charles wrote him a letter.   He said:  “There is … complete bewilderment that the Government is apparently responding to calls to ban something which is genuinely environmentally friendly, which uses no modern technology, which does not pollute the countryside, which is completely natural – in that it relies entirely on man’s ancient and, indeed, romantic relationship with dogs and horses.”

Many hunters try to disguise cruel traditions and their own blood-lust behind Conservation reasons, whereas in fact hunting just skews natural population dynamics by disrupting Nature’s self-regulating methods.  Animals are killed by hunters, they breed more to cover the losses, requiring more hunting as the ‘solution’ to the problem caused by hunting in the first place.  Plus a lot of the hunting is carried out on game farms, begging the question that beyond lining the pockets of the landowners, how does it aid the earth’s wild spaces or wildlife? Hunters who say they kill for food is also just a bad excuse for guilty killing.   Nowadays we can get a variety of plant-based sources of protein which doesn’t give us chronic disease, is sustainable for the planet, and is not cruel.

There have been over 1,500 studies proving the sentience of other animals. Sentience means that beings are capable of feeling pain, suffering, and emotions.   This statement also applies to fish, and it is ironic that fishing as in other hunting activities, ‘bonding’ between parents and children is carried out at the expense of causing extreme distress and pain to other beings.   What example are these parents really giving their children?  That it is fine to kill animals?

Hunters!   You who stalk deer or other large mammals for example!  Please explain your motivation; physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  Kindly consider all the stages involved.  Choosing and buying your weapons and gear, practising with that weapon, cleaning and caring for the weapon,  planning where to go for the best kills, travelling to and from the stalking site, picking out the beautiful sentient animal to kill, setting up your killing gear, bringing your victim into your sights, pulling the trigger, seeing the painful affect your bullet or arrow has on the prey, watching the hit animal running in panic, seeing the blood trail, following the blood trail of the suffering animal, seeing the animal fall, watching them dying, seeing their death.   Taking your pictures with the dead animal, chopping it up, transporting his head to a taxidermist, taking it home and mounting it on your wall as a permanent reminder of the life you have needlessly taken, a daily reminder of your cruelty.

You should be ashamed, just as I am ashamed I participated in fox and coyote hunts as a teenager.   The thrill for a teenage girl was in the riding. It was fast hard and dangerous, and  I was up to  it. You bet I was – at the expense and terror of the prey.  My heartfelt apologies to them, and also to the horses who had to undergo human-created hardships that put them in harm’s way.   It must have been terrifying for the poor foxes and other small mammals, but at least they did have a chance to escape. How could they ever be the same after such a terrifying experience?  I sometimes wonder what happened to the pups of our prey during and after our cruel, self-serving hunts.    I take full responsibility for joining in on these events.   But saying sorry to these chased and hunted wild animals and their family members is not nearly enough.   We have to stop all animal hunting, including small and large mammal hunting, trophy hunting, game hunting, and fishing.  They all feel.  They all suffer.  They have the same right to life we have.

I am Meat Chicken

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Megaphone please.

I want to introduce myself.

I am Meat Chicken.

Those who cursed me with birth call me ‘Broiler’.

I came into this world to fulfil a purpose for you, which is to eat my flesh.   For this, I must suffer extreme physical and emotional suffering that endures throughout every stage of my existence.


I want you to spare a moment to hear the story of my life and death.   As a newly hatched baby I and my brothers and sisters were poured from buckets onto the floor of a large shed, tens of thousands of us into that one building.  There was quite a bit of room at first because we were small – lively little yellow balls of fluff!  I remember running with my little legs, and stretching my little wings.   Our ‘peep peep’ vocalisations made us feel good, but it didn’t last. Things deteriorated quickly. As we grew, doubling our size every week, the air became thick with the ammonia from our droppings and our baby chick peeps took on a desperate tone.   Soon I could hardly walk a couple of steps in any direction. I couldn’t open my wings and my eyes were always stinging from the thick ammonia and dust. After a few weeks standing or sitting in my own feces, competing with other chickens for the grain and antibiotics put out for us, I lost all hope and sunk into despair.


Nature has given me an alert mind, and my body remembers the life I was designed for. Within me there is still the desire to run with my flock, procreate and care for my young, dust bathe.  I want to roam free, to root around in vegetation, devouring seeds and berries, earthworms and insects. I want to feel the wind blow through my rich plumage and be free. My ancestors grew and matured slowly over many months, but the Poultry Industry has bred us to reach slaughter weight in only six weeks, making us lame and debilitated. We are bred to be ‘non-survivors’. Even if we were rescued from this hell we wouldn’t live longer than a year. Every day birds’ hearts give out and they flip over and lie with their legs in the air, or with their faces buried in their own shit.     They will be thrown in rubbish bins in the corner of the shed, swarming with flies and filling the air with the smell of rot. We cry out ‘peep peep peep’ like the babies we are, but the humans who walk through the ailes are not moved. To them we are commodities. There is no kindness anywhere, only indifference and sometimes deliberate abuse. 

I won’t have long to wait now until I am delivered of my suffering but I am frightened that the end  will hurt me too much.  Any day now men will come into the shed. They are called ‘catchers’. We panic and try to run away from them, but we have nowhere to go, and are powerless against their mighty strength. They grab us by our legs, four chickens in each hand, and cram us into crates to be loaded onto trucks. Their rough handling dislocates our hips, breaks our wings and legs, and bruises our flesh. For many of us the pain as we travel to the slaughterhouse is excruciating, but even those of us who are not injured, suffer fear and dread at what is about to happen.


At the slaughterhouse they remove us from our crates and shackle us upside down by our feet.   The moving line we hang from dips, and we are dragged through electrically charged water bath designed to stun us.  Our necks are cut by an automatic heck cutter and then we are given a minute to bleed out before being put in the scalding tank to make plucking our feathers easier.  That is how it is supposed to work for the billions of chickens killed by this method every year. But it often doesn’t go as planned. Some of us try to look around and raise our heads at the wrong moment.  We are not stunned, and go on to feel the pain of the blade that automatically severs our neck. Some of us also miss having their neck severed, and endure the final agony of being plunged alive and conscious into boiling water.   Drowning fully conscious in boiling water is what terrifies me the most. Will I cry out in agony or will my fate have rendered me so passive that I stay silent while the water burns my flesh?

t’s over now, my life.   Like billions of others, I was anonymous.  Nobody saw that I was  smart and loveable.  But now you know who I really am.  I hope that next time you are in the supermarket you will linger over my corpse, and ask yourself a question.   Is your desire to gnaw on my wings, thighs and breast really worth putting me through all this?   Is there not a better way?

Sandra Kyle

The Depravity of Live Export

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 6 Comments on The Depravity of Live Export

Live Export is Australia and New Zealand’s Shame, is morally bankrupt, and needs to stop writes End Animal Slaughter contributor Lynley Tulloch

 

The live export of animals from New Zealand and Australia is a contentious issue, with concern over welfare outcomes. Despite this, 56,000 sheep are currently being exported from Australia to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates by live export company RETWA.

There have been objections to this voyage from animal rights group Animals Australia, who call them ‘death ships’, but these were overturned. The sheep boarded  the MC Ocean Drover during the weekend of 25 May to sail the high seas. But this is no cruise ship in paradise for these woolly unfortunates, and they will undeniably suffer.

Animals Australia report that these sheep will wallow in their urine and feces which accumulates each day on export ships. This waste builds up and melts into a deathly soup when temperatures rise, and ammonia levels reach unbearable proportions. Sheep will get crushed trying to get to the fresh air vents for cooler air. The irritants from ammonia cause eye infections and the dust from food pellets lead to respiratory illnesses. Many sheep will die painful and slow deaths.

Those that survive will enter a foreign country with their sheep death passports. They are regarded not as individuals but as live lumps of meat. Humans often don’t see the person behind the wool and the ear tag, but there is one there. Sheep have individual personalities, intelligence and emotions. Exporting them as if they are a sack of vegetables is nothing short of depravity.

Sheep get such bad rap for being mindless and stupid, and undeservedly so. There is a deep intelligence, sensitivity and emotional life underneath the woolly coat. Scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that sheep have the brainpower to equal rodents, monkeys and, in some tests, even humans. Sheep are not only intelligent but also deeply sensitive and have complex emotions. A 2009 study showed that : “Sheep are able to experience emotions such as fear, anger, rage, despair, boredom, disgust and happiness because they use the same checks involved in such emotions as humans”. Sheep feel despair in uncontrollable and discrepant situations that don’t meet with expectations – like a live sheep export journey .

A recent study on sheep by neuroscientist Lori Marino and Professor of media studies Debra Merskin concluded that sheep are highly intelligent and social individuals with distinct personalities. Tests done on sheep revealed excellent learning and prodigious memory abilities. Marino and Merskin contend that: “Sheep have emotions that range across the spectrum and combine with cognition in complex ways. They show evidence of cognitive bias, emotional reactions to learning, emotional contagion (which may be a simple form of empathy), and social buffering”.

So, in short we have 56.000 intelligent and deeply sensitive individuals being shipped without their consent or knowledge to another country to be killed. If we think about the studies above, we can conclude that they are likely to be experiencing despair, fear and boredom – and possibly even rage. I know that I would be feeling all these things if it happened to me. But even worse for the sheep, they have no human language to even possibly grasp the depraved rationality behind what is happening to them.

The truth behind live exports is as chilling as a horror movie, and in all honesty is just as well the sheep do not know. They are sent overseas to be slaughtered. As can be expected there have been many catastrophes when things don’t go right.  In 2013 there was a scandal and compliance investigation after the unauthorized movement of sheep in Kuwait. Legally exported sheep have to be killed at an approved slaughterhouse facility, but Animals Australia obtained footage of 100 sheep outside of this chain in markets. These sheep were likely to have been slaughtered on site as is the custom,  their throats cut while they struggled for life. The report by the Australian Government concluded that, “there was a loss of control leading to unauthorised movement of sheep outside the approved supply chains.”

Other reports from Animals Australia are of sheep in Malaysia who were “thrown, trussed, dragged and had their necks ‘sawn at’ by unskilled slaughtermen. All while fully conscious”. In 2014 Animals Australia investigated the Festival of Sacrifice, which they reported  is a goldmine for live animal exporters. The atrocities on animals committed in the name of this festival are sadistic and cruel.

This is the absolute folly of live export. The legalities from the countries exporting the animals require compliance to accepted animal welfare codes. But once animals reach their destination, there is no guarantee that these laws are upheld. Animal welfare standards in Australia and New Zealand are woefully absent in many countries that animals are shipped to. Corruption, crime and industry cover-ups keep these atrocities in the dark.

It is not just sheep who suffer in Australia’s live export business. RSPCA Australia details that each year three million live sheep, buffalo, cattle and goats are exported to be killed for their meat overseas. Some are even wild, having been caught from the bush. Unused to people and fences, their journeys must be all the more horrific.

Australia recently came under scrutiny for shipping 3000 live dairy cows to Sri Lanka through  the Australian owned export corporation Wellard.  New Zealand has shipped 2000 cows to Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan farmers have not received guidance and support promised from Wellard and the cows are suffering with dysentery, mastitis and Mycoplasma bovis bacterium. Distressing footage has emerged of these cows collapsing and dying. Wellard still has to send another 15,000 cows to fill the order.

But cows aren’t books from Amazon. You can’t just ship them off across the globe and cross your fingers. This isn’t going to end well, especially not for the cows.

New Zealand has a colorful story when it comes to the whole live shipment debacle. New Zealand banned live export of sheep following a 2003 disaster when 5000 sheep died on a ship bound for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia rejected a shipment of 57,000 sheep which then were left stranded at sea with no port for two months. Thousands of sheep died slow and horrific deaths on board. The remainder were gifted to the poor northern African nation Eritrea where they  were killed in makeshift slaughter houses.

Yet New Zealand has struggled over the years to maintain this ban due to pressure on New Zealand’s trading and diplomatic relationships with Saudi Arabia.  Between 2010-2012 Sheik Hmood Al-Khalaf , an influential Saudi businessman with significant interests in New Zealand animal agriculture made his grievances public.  This resulted in a  multi-million cash payout, and a New Zealand built  Agrihub and slaughterhouse in the Saudi desert – all on the taxpayer. New Zealand was fearful that the influence of Mr. Al-Khalaf would blight free trade agreements with the Gulf States.

It basically comes down to terse playoff between the lives of animals and the almighty dollar. And as usually happens, morals go down the drain when financial interests are at stake. When treating animal lives as commodities there is always going to be this kind of tension between their well-being and maximizing profit.

Currently New Zealand exports live animals for breeding purposes. In 2015 New Zealand air freighted 900 heavily pregnant sheep to the Sheiks new Agri hub, and most of the lambs (75 %) died.

Apart from this debacle, 2017 statistics demonstrate ongoing live exports with 8 million live animals exported overseas, much of whom were day-old chicks and incubated eggs ready for hatching, 27,306 live cattle for breeding and more than 15,000 kilograms of bees. Only 123 of all live exports were sheep. Many New Zealand cattle are sent to China to spend their lives in concrete feedlots, only to be slaughtered after they have fulfilled their reproductive ‘duties’. Ultimately exporting for breeding results in the animal’s slaughter.

The issue of live export is a heated one, but it is also quite simple if we follow ethical principles rather than material ones.  Non-human animals are not commodities, and should not be subject to long journeys across the ocean for any reason. They are intelligent individuals who feel a complex range of emotions and value their lives. We have no right to treat them as mere fodder for the capitalist machine.

 

 

 

HIGH SPEED SLAUGHTERHOUSES A GIANT STEP BACKWARDS

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

The worst incidences in animal slaughter occur in slaughterhouses where line speeds are increased.  Gail A Eisnitz in her book ‘Slaughterhouse’ talks of pigs surviving the stunning process and having their throats slit, then being dumped into scalding water fully conscious and wounded to drown.   High speed slaughterhouses will cause more of this kind of thing to happen, causing endless suffering to innocent and helpless animals, and putting  even more pressure on the fragile mental health of slaughterhouses workers.   The buying public could end up eating contaminated meat.   There is only one step forward for the slaughterhouse industry, in America and worldwide, and that is to wind down until full closure is achieved.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/06/ive-seen-the-hidden-horrors-of-high-speed-slaughterhouses

 

Activists should be compassionate and calm

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

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‘Compassion and Calm’

All the forms of activism and outreach are valuable, but activists need to be respectful and inclusive, writes End Animal Slaughter contributor Sonja Penafiel Bermudez.                                              

As an animal rights activist, when I think of an end to all slaughterhouses it feels like such an enormous task.  It is certainly the case in my country, Aotearoa New Zealand, where animal farming is so much a part of our everyday lives.   In this country we are brought up being proud of our ‘milk and honey’ image, and if we didn’t live on a farm growing up, we probably had ‘rellies’ or friends who did.  Farm animals were considered cute, and it was an unquestioned ‘necessary evil’ that they ended up between two buns on your plate.  So it’s a big change in mindset for Kiwis to make the leap towards living as a vegan.  I know for me it was a life-changing moment when ‘the penny dropped’.    Once I was educated about the injustice animals were facing every day, and the overwhelming enormity of it, I felt compelled to do something.    It was like I had entered a room and the door had closed behind me.  From that moment on, there was no going back. 

The question that has stayed with me for almost 8 years now is:  how do we create this mindshift in society as a whole?  How can we effectively shut down slaughterhouses? How can we stop the suffering of so many animals for entertainment, cosmetics and medical testing? How do we affect both supply and demand for animal products, and how can we achieve our goals as quickly as possible?  They are not easy questions to answer but as I evolve both as a person and member of the community, I learn more about ideas, theories and thoughts that make sense to me.

I have concluded that we need multiple action platforms.     There has been a lot of division within Animal Rights over the years – abolitionists vs welfarists, vegan outreach vs animal rights actions and so on.  But all the various types of action are valid.   Activists storming factory farms and chaining themselves to the gates; activists holding peaceful vigils for animals as they enter slaughterhouses; activists filming undercover footage of  suffering animals and sharing it for others to witness;  activists offering vegan food and information to strangers, activists protesting parliament to petition for changes in the Animal Welfare Act.  Every one of these actions makes a difference.   

I think the one thing we must be careful of in this movement is criticising one another.  We are all on the same team and we all want the same outcome.  We need to support, not denigrate, one another.  It is not everyone who feels comfortable being arrested for the cause, and not everyone feels that approaching strangers with vegan cupcakes is what they want to do for the animals either.   

My thought is that we need to strive to be an inclusive AR/vegan community, not a divisive one.  Let’s not hate the person who is struggling to give up cheese or who protests climate change without mentioning animal agriculture.  Let’s not even hate the farmers or slaughterhouse workers!  A great example of this approach is the relationship our AR group has with the local slaughterhouse we hold regular vigils at.  They have given us permission to enter their property to bear witness to the animals in their last moments.   The reason for this permission is due to clear and compassionate communication from the initiation of our relationship.  This is one of the SAVE Movement’s ideals.  No hate – just relentless compassion, with a calm demeanour.  We do not encourage aggression towards slaughterhouse workers and truck drivers.  These people may be undertaking a job they feel forced into due to circumstances they have little control over.  Instead, we are civil and kind and open to chat to anyone.  People are more likely to listen to someone with a calm voice rather than an angry one.  It leads to less confrontation and more constructive conversations.  There is, after all, enough confrontation in the world already.

I have hope for our movement as we move forward into the 2020’s.   It is not only the compassion and commitment of the individuals around me that gives me hope.  It’s the way things can evolve so quickly, especially nowadays, with the power of social media.  To take the example of plastic bags – one minute everyone is using them, next minute they’re socially unacceptable.  Eating animals (even writing these words feels bizarre to me these days!!!) is something that will also become socially unacceptable to the general population, and hopefully this will happen within a decade. 

I am confident I will see an end to slaughterhouses in the Western world in the not-too-distant future.  

It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but of ‘when’.    

Sonja is one of the organisers of Wellington Animal Save, a group that holds regular vigils outside a Wellington slaughterhouse.

 

 

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‘I’ve Seen You In The Meat Aisle’, by Emily Murphy

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
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I’ve seen you in the meat aisle

Seen you choosing what to eat

Eyeing up their body parts

In rows all nice and neat.

I’ve seen you grabbing bottled milk

That wasn’t made for you

And I know you never think about

The suffering they knew.

I’ve watched you fill your trolley up

With misery and pain.

Eggs and cheese, a leg, a wing

My heart just broke again.

You say I should respect your choice

That it’s your right to choose

Well legally perhaps you win

But morally you lose.

I don’t know how you do it

But you close your ears and eyes

To the slaughterhouse, the blood and screams

Their fear, despair and cries.

It doesn’t even cross your mind

You bite and drink and chew

And you keep yourself from knowing

They died because of you.

So no, I don’t respect your choice

There’s no respect from me

You are putting in your stomach

Someone you refuse to see.

The animals, they have no voice

Convenient for you

 

But have a heart and look at those

WHO LOST THEIR LIVES FOR YOU

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Foxes in the Hen House

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on Foxes in the Hen House

Jacinda Ardern and the New Zealand Government appear to have  a blind spot in Brand Kindness, writes Save Animals from Exploitation’s Campaigns Officer MONA OLIVER.

Tens of thousands of NZ animals are still enduring horrendous conditions on ships bound for countries with low animal welfare and unregulated slaughter. The government needs to extend its circle of compassion and start fronting up with answers to the question of Live Export.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/112195693/when-will-the-governments-brand-kindness-be-extended-to-animals?fbclid=IwAR2U-qLOiQzICdL8m3qThyDYBkztFcM64ZxRCQTGvil2RlCfMAr1YOsW4lo

We’re sorry, Dr Drip….

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on We’re sorry, Dr Drip….

The story of Dr Drip highlights what is wrong in the horseracing industry, write Lynley Tulloch and Sandra Kyle.

Dr Drip was an American multi-stakes winner, a racehorse with an impressive pedigree, bred for big things.   During his career he earned a barrel of money for his owners but when he was no longer profitable they got rid of him.    Many ex-racehorses go unceremoniously straight  to slaughter at a fraction of their natural life span, but Dr Drip changed hands between owners until he ended up with Jermaine Dewayne Doucet Jr, an 18-year-old from an impoverished Louisiana community.   The day he was discovered Dr Drip had no water and the pile of hay in his pen was molding and inedible.  He was so weak and skinny that he didn’t even have the energy to swish the flies off his tail, and his underside was covered with maggot-infested sores.   The ex-thoroughbred was too far gone to save, and was euthanised the next day.

Dr Drip had been a magnificent specimen in his prime, a perfect  example of equine athleticism.   Yet even though they are large, strong animals horses are very easily hurt, especially when they are being whipped to run at dangerously high speeds on hard ground.   

That racing hurts horses should be obvious.   Those who think a day at the races is harmless are either uninformed, or don’t care about horses.        No doubt it’s great fun for people who attend race meets in their thousands, wearing slinky dresses and stiletto heels, derby hats and bow ties,  and sipping champagne.  It’s an opportunity to see and be seen, get a little tipsy, and if you’re lucky go home richer than you arrived.   What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with having a bit of fun? 

There’s no problem with having fun so long as your fun does not hurt other beings.  In horse racing as in so many other cases, we think nothing of exploiting animals for our benefit.  Whipping a horse on to go at ever more dangerous speeds is just one  example.   Another, widespread in the industry, is to begin training horses at the age of just two years old when their bones have not stopped growing.   Intensive training at this stage can cause tendons to break and bones to chip and fracture.    Burst arteries is another injury that is more likely to happen to a juvenile horse.   A number of  racehorse deaths are  caused by forcing a horse to perform on pre-existing injuries, which are not always obvious. Horses, like many animals, are very stoic.  They could be in constant pain and you might not even know it.  The problem of horse injuries and deaths is further complicated by the use of drugs .   A racehorse who is laid off because of injuries is not profitable for the owners, so unscrupulous veterinarians and trainers administer drugs to mask the effects, resulting in the injury being aggravated and worsened. 

 International animal rights organisation, PETA claim that studies show one in 22 horses fail to finish a race due to injuries sustained and that three thoroughbreds die every day in North America from race injuries.  In the past eighteen weeks, there have been 28 horse deaths at just one racetrack, Santa Anita Park in Los Angeles. 

Like many other racehorses, so long as he was winning Dr Drip was safe, but the moment he started finishing further back in the field he wasn’t worth the effort, and was ‘retired’.   We often talk about ‘retired race horses’, as if there is some form of animal retirement that compares to human retirement. There is not – it’s a disingenuous way of creating the illusion that the animals we selfishly use get some kind of deserved rest after their hard work.

Let’s set the record straight. A survey funded by the RSPCA in 2002-2003 in Australia found that standardbreds and thoroughbreds were exited from the industry for a range of reasons – including poor performance, ill-health or injury, or unsuitable temperament and breeding. The fate of many of these horses remains unknown due to no tracking system. Some get rehomed for other equestrian purposes while 6% of thoroughbreds and 17% of standardbreds get sent to the slaughter house.

Horse arriving at a slaughterhouse

Save Animals From Exploitation (SAFE) revealed that in New Zealand 1962 animals were slaughtered in 2011. That is a lot of individual horses for a small country with a small population.   The  problem is we don’t see them as individuals when they’re earmarked for slaughter, but as a statistic.  We don’t look into their eyes and see the sadness, the terror.  For horses  bound for slaughter their trial begins on the truck, where they are sometimes transported for more than 24 hours at a time without food, water or rest.  Such are the conditions of transport that horses are sometimes hurt or even killed in transit.  By the time they arrive at the slaughterhouse they are exhausted, stressed, bewildered and fearful.

When it comes to a quick and painless death, it is harder to achieve with horses than it is for  bovines, sheep, and other large mammals.  Horses are skittish by nature (owing to their heightened fight-or-flight response), which makes accurate pre-slaughter stunning difficult. As a result, horses can sometimes remain conscious during dismemberment. Before the last domestic plant closed in 2007, the United States Department of Agriculture  documented rampant cruelty violations and severe injuries to horses. Gail A Eisnitz, in her book ‘Slaughterhouse’ interviewed one horse slaughterhouse worker who said:  “You move so fast you don’t have time to wait till a horse bleeds out. You skin him as he bleeds. Sometimes a horse’s nose is down in the blood, blowing bubbles, and he suffocates.”

It’s time to rethink our relationship to non-human animals and stop abusing and slaughtering them.   If you are in doubt about whether we should treat an animal like a horse as a form of entertainment and profit, and then send it off to slaughter, then try putting your feet in the horse’s shoes.

Would you like this done to you?

Why are human beings cruel?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 1 Comment on Why are human beings cruel?

It may be hard to understand the precise origins of human cruelty, but the harm our actions cause to non-human animals need not be difficult to change writes End Animal Slaughter’s SANDRA KYLE.

There are a number of theories about why human beings exhibit cruel behaviour.   Christian fundamentalists say that our troubles started when Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden apple leading to The Fall, while scientists assert cruelty is more likely to be the result of our evolutionary past.  

 Many psychologists maintain that in order to be cruel to others we have to ‘dehumanize’ them, as with the institution of slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews in the Second World War.  

There is a famous social psychology experiment conducted in the 1960s, known as The Milgram experiment.  Stanley Milgrim and his team recruited 40 men to participate in an experiment on ‘memory and learning’.    The subjects were from a diverse range of occupations and varying levels of education, and were told that they would be paid for their participation, no matter what the outcome.   One by one the men were taken into a room and placed in front of a control panel that ostensibly delivered electric shocks to other participants (actors, actually), who were located elsewhere in the building.   Standing beside them was an official looking ‘scientist’ in a white coat carrying a clipboard and making notes.  As he instructed the men to steadily increase the amount of voltage to near fatal level, every one of the subjects did so.    Delivering what they believed to be real electric shocks the men showed signs of tension and stress, sometimes severe, but even though they could hear the screams from the other room they did it anyhow.

Milgrim experiment on obedience to authority

 Milgrim’s research was considered evidence that German soldiers in concentration camps were only able to carry out such atrocities against the inmates because of unquestioning obedience and deference to authority.

It is doubtful that there is a ‘silver bullet’ for understanding cruel behaviour however.  Sometimes acts of cruelty come from our sense of justice and outrage.   We may want to hurt and punish others, because they have hurt us or those we love.   Included in expressions of cruelty by humans to other humans are some motivated by extreme racial biases.  A recent example of this is the recent Christchurch massacre by a single gunman of peaceful Muslims praying in their mosques.

Some of these theories of cruelty may bear more weight than others, but it could be that pinpointing where cruelty in human nature comes from may be a difficult, and even pointless, exercise.   As human beings we are a bundle of characteristics, and thankfully, along with the potential for cruelty, there is a great capacity for empathy, compassion, kindness and caring.

When it comes to other animals who we know feel pain and fear just like us, the majority of humans would not directly hurt them.    We love our pets, who we think of as members of our family.  Yet there are many animals we continue to hurt indirectly, and this is widespread and sanctioned as normal behaviour. Eating the flesh of animals is an example, especially those that have led lives of torture in factory farms. 

In order to continue with behaviours that deep down we know hurt sentient beings,  we are forced to rationalize, and live with ‘cognitive dissonance’.    Eating meat isn’t cruel because…  Wearing wool isn’t cruel because….  Testing on animals isn’t cruel because…. Having a flutter on the racetrack isn’t cruel because….  I don’t want to think about it… so I’ll think about something else instead.   

To overcome these tendencies in ourselves we have to be ruthlessly honest and courageous enough to change the harmful behaviours we engage in.  As far as cruelty to other animals is concerned, we need to put ourselves in the place of the sentient being our actions are harming.  There may have been a time when we needed to eat and otherwise exploit other animals, but that is certainly no longer true.   If we stop indirectly hurting animals, we will not only become happier and more peaceful human beings, but also develop a sense of wonder and appreciation for all Life.  Refusing to change our behaviours on the other hand, means we continue to be a direct link to their egregious suffering and premature deaths.  Knowing how much they suffer I think the choice is clear. We have to stop hurting other animals.

https://www.peta.org/blog/10-of-the-worst-things-still-happening-to-animals-today-and-what-you-can-do-about-them/

‘Like lambs to the slaughter..’ What choices will you make this Easter?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 5 Comments on ‘Like lambs to the slaughter..’ What choices will you make this Easter?

This weekend, families across the country and around the world will celebrate Easter with leg of lamb dinners and egg hunts.  The tradition of eating lamb at Easter has old testament roots, and was part of Jewish Passover observances before the birth of Christianity.  Similarly, eggs have been a symbol of rebirth and new life since ancient times, but it was Mesopotamian Christians who first adopted them as an Easter food.   

Read more about Easter traditions in these two articles:  https://www.history.com/news/easter-foods-from-lamb-to-eggs )

http://upc-online.org/alerts/180328_the_easter_chick-a_lost_soul.html

While eating  lamb and eggs at Easter reaches back to antiquity we should not in this, or in any other case, accept tradition  blindly.   While traditions are well and good – they give us a sense of comfort, pride and belonging –  they must always be revised and adapted in light of an ever-changing society.   If a particular tradition is cruel or harmful to sentient beings (as in many that involve other animals)  then it is immoral to continue with it, and it should be stopped.    As celebrated Animal Rights Activist Maneka Gandhi wrote in the article ‘Tradition is no excuse for Cruelty’, about a barbaric Indian rite of passage  ritual (Ukweshwama) where  a group of youths torment and slaughter a terrified bull with their bare hands:

 “While I respect culture, this bull-killing ritual causes extreme suffering to an innocent creature and has no place in the modern world. Tradition is not an excuse for cruelty, and many societies have ended or are working to end ‘traditional’ practices—such as slavery, cannibalism, infanticide, female circumcision, foot-binding, bullfighting, and fox hunting—that cause animals or humans to suffer”.

Is it acceptable now to eat the flesh of baby animals to commemorate the birth and death of Christ, himself called The Lamb of God because he submitted meekly to his persecutors ‘like a lamb led to the slaughter’.? Isaiah 53:7:

Is it acceptable now to eat the eggs of mother hens who are confined to tiny cages on factory farms for their entire wretched lives?  Even  free range eggs involve cruelty such as killing one day old roosters by shredding or suffocation.   I think the answer is clear.  The tradition of eating chocolate eggs can stay, but the practise of consuming eggs that involve extreme cruelty to sentient beings has no place in a progressive, compassionate society.

This Easter I hope you will remember the gentle lamb and the mother hen. If you still eat them, it will be an opportunity for you to reflect on the cruelty involved getting them to your plate, and to begin your transition to a harmless diet.

Sandra Kyle