Author: Sandra Kyle

Do Insects Feel Emotions?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

When I moved into my new home just over a year ago I discovered that I had company.   Waking up at night and going into the kitchen I would regularly see at least one or two tiny cockroaches walking over the bench.   When I approached them they momentarily froze, then ducked for cover.

If observed behaviour is any indication, then it is reasonable to assume that my houseguests were feeling fear.  The questions must therefore be asked: if they can feel fear, then is it not reasonable to suggest that they can experience other emotions also?

Charles Darwin thought so, writing in his book   The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals that insects “express anger, terror, jealousy and love.”   The idea didn’t catch on however, and 150 years later, studying insects for intelligence is still an under-developed field.   The science of Entomology has been established for centuries, but until recently investigators concentrated on insect taxonomy and physiology, and how populations related to environment and agriculture.  Their behaviour was studied, but it was assumed to be ‘instinctive’, not intelligent.  Proposing to study insect intelligence and emotions would have gotten former generations of scientists laughed out of town.

Insects are not the easiest organisms to study however, let alone relate to, as they are so different to us.  They can be defined as ‘small invertebrate animals with an adult stage characterized by three pairs of legs and two pairs of wings’.    They are segmented, modular, and their nervous system is planned along decentralised lines.  An insect has many different sub-brains in different parts of its body, which feed into and can be controlled by a central brain but can also function separately. Even if the central brain of an insect stops working, so long as the leg sub-brains are intact, they can keep walking.

Since entomologists have been turning their attention to insect intelligence they have discovered problem solving, advanced communication, social skills, adaptability, and memory.  For example researchers from the University of Oxford’s Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour showed that fruit flies take longer to make more difficult decisions,  suggesting they ‘think before they act’.  Bees, when offered a reward from a perch of a certain colour, will return first to perches of that colour.   Bees are famous for the ‘waggle dance’, first described by Karl von Frisch.  When they have located a source of food bees return to their hive and through a complicated series of manoeuvres transmit the location and route to their mates, who then fly off to gather the food.

Thoughtful Drosophila?

Evidence is also emerging that so called ‘lower animals’ such as worms, can experience pain and suffering.  One striking example of this is the presence of hormone levels.  For example, just as certain hormone levels can validate the presence of pain in humans, when an earthworm is injured, its nervous system secretes an opiate substance that has the role of attenuating pain.

We humans are the indiscriminate Dispensers of Death to every other life form on the planet, including insects.  We kill billions of them every year largely through insecticides, and this has led to a massive decline in insect numbers.  Older citizens wonder what has happened to all the butterflies, bees, wasps, praying mantises, moths and dragonflies that used to be so common in their youth.   Insects pollinate blossoms, perform scavenging roles, and recycle nutrients back into the soil.    Their annhilation is just one part of the ‘sixth mass extinction’ currently taking place, brought about by human overpopulation, overconsumption, and wanton disregard for the rights of other species.

The jury may still be out on the true nature of insect intelligence, and their ability to feel (as opposed to ‘demonstrate’) emotions.  But if we are appalled at the thought of deliberately hurting sentient beings, then our annihilating thumbs and trigger fingers would do well to give insects the benefit of the doubt.    If you stick a cockroach with a pin and see it writhe, it is not unreasonable that it is feeling not only pain, but also negative emotions.

Fortunately, my cockroaches are in no danger at all of that.

Sandra Kyle

INDIA LEADS THE WAY IN ANIMAL RIGHTS LEGISLATION

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

 

The Father of Modern India, Mahatma Gandhi, once said: ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated’.  Decades after Gandhi pronounced these words Indian law makers in the states of Punjab and Haryana have passed groundbreaking legislation, ruling that all animals are legal ‘persons’, entitled to legal rights like human persons.

Echoing an order passed by him while sitting at the Uttarakhand High Court last year Justice Rajiv Sharma’s order stated:

“The entire animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic, are declared legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person. All citizens throughout Haryana are hereby declared persons in loco parentis (responsible for a child in parents’ absence) as the human face for the welfare/protection of animals.”

Justice Sharma also stated: “We have to show compassion towards all living creatures. Animals may be mute but we as a society have to speak on their behalf. No pain or agony should be caused to the animals. Cruelty to animals also causes psychological pain to them. In Hindu Mythology, every animal is associated with god. Animals breathe like us and have emotions. The animals require food, water, shelter, normal behaviour, medical care, self-determination.”

In most of the world, if they have a legal status at all, animals are classed as ‘property’.  Animals were recognized as property in Law at a time when the general belief was that God had given humans special rights – they had ‘dominion’ over the animals.  Animals did not possess moral standing because they lacked rationality and autonomy.  They were mere machines, acting on instinct, incapable of thinking or feeling the way humans do.  As little as fifty years ago this belief (that quite obviously lacked common sense) still had currency.  For example, scientists were cautioned not to ‘anthropomorphise’ when studying animal behaviour.  However, much has changed since then.   Back in the 19th century Darwin made the irrefutable case that humans had evolved from animals, clearly asserting that emotions and not only physical forms had shown continuity through species.  Thousands of scientific studies conducted over the last forty years have now proven without doubt that animals feel physical pain and positive and negative emotions just like us. Consequently, assert philosophers such as Peter Singer, the interests of humans and animals should receive equal moral consideration.

Yet in the most places an animal has the same legal status as a ‘thing’ – a car, television set, or toaster for example.  What kind of law states that animals are more like a house or a pair of headphones than a human being?   It is clearly ludicrous.  Animals are not inanimate objects.  They have the capacity to suffer, and engage in intelligent thinking.   By categorising animals as property the law is treating them as non-sentient objects, making it more likely for us to treat them as if they were.

An animal is not a toaster!

The very welcome Punjab/Haryana ruling comes as there is a worldwide push towards recognising animals as ‘sentient’ under the law.  A number of countries and cities, including France, New Zealand, Brussels and Quebec now have formally recognized animal sentience.  This is the first step towards recognizing animals as ‘non-human persons’ – which should, by the way,  replace the word ‘animal’.  If pigs and chickens in factory farms were called ‘non-human persons’ and given rights more commensurate with people than with things, then it will be a lot harder to imprison, torture and slaughter them in their billions every single year.

In Justice Sharma’s ruling fish and birds will also benefit.  Plundering the ocean’s inhabitants, cramming fish so tight in tanks in polluted water where they can hardly move; keeping wild birds in tiny cages without ever being allowed out, or blasting them out of the sky to hunt them,  will also be difficult to justify when they have personhood status.

According animals ‘person’ status will make an enormous difference.   For example Justice Sharma included 24 individual welfare codes that would take immediate effect.    Animal activists in India, such as Karuna Society for Animals and Nature, Haryana-based Teachers Association For Animal Rights, and Government Minister Maneka Gandhi – a powerhouse who has done more for animal rights in India than any one person – will be rejoicing at this news.   Having recently returned from Haryana and witnessed for myself the reality of animal suffering in that state as it is all over India, I join them in their rejoicing.

The judgement still has to be ratified by India’s Supreme Court, but if all goes well a precedent will be set.  India has paved the way, and now it is up to the rest of the world to follow suit.     According personhood status should be a campaign priority for all those everywhere who work to relieve sentient beings from their sufferings.

Sandra Kyle

It’s Off to the Slaughterhouse for Racehorses Who Don’t Perform

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

All over the world racehorses are killed when they are no longer profitable.   In the US, where horse slaughter is illegal, many are sent to Mexico where slaughter standards are lower.  Measures are being taken to try and improve the situation, but if horse racing didn’t exist neither would the problem.  The Racing Industry – which puts horses in harm’s way and creates an excess of animals to be turned into horse meat –  should be banned.

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/20190523/racing-fans-likely-unaware-of-silent-slaughter-of-thoroughbred-horses

 

 

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