Author: Sandra Kyle

Animal Activists Sway A Jury By Their Mercy

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

 

 

by Sandra Kyle, Editor, May Safely Graze

 

This week a jury found two animal rights activists not guilty on burglary and theft charges, setting a “powerful precedent” for the right to rescue animals.

In 2017 Wayne Hsiung and Paul Darwin Picklesimer entered a pig farm in Utah to take footage, and came out with two sick piglets.  If they had been found guilty, they faced imprisonment for up to five years each.

Hsiung, an attorney who represented himself, told the jury: “I want you to acquit us as a matter of conscience. There’s a big difference between stealing and rescue.”

The farm they entered was owned by Smithfield Foods, which raises and slaughters millions of innocent beings every year.  Pigs are sensitive and cognitively complex, yet they live lives of misery and are slaughtered in horrific ways because of the demand for their flesh.

Smithfield Foods is a ‘hog’ producer based out of Smithfield, Virginia, where millions of pigs are slaughtered every year.  As is common in companies who exploit animals, they advertise themselves as raising ‘responsible, sustainable’ products, an outrageous statement that couldn’t be further from the truth.  The Humane Society of the United States investigation into the company in 2010 revealed shocking cases of cruelty, including pigs being beaten.  In 2021 HSUS sued the company for continuing to mislead consumers about how they raise their pigs.

“They advertise themselves as raising ‘responsible, sustainable’ products, an outrageous statement that couldn’t be further from the truth”.

The Smithfield Packaging Company was started in the 1930s by Joseph W. Luter and his son Joseph W. Luter Jr.  At the outset of their endeavour they would buy 15 pig carcasses per day and sell the chopped up pieces to local businesses.   Their first processing plant was opened in 1946, where they slaughtered 3,500 hogs per day. Ten years later, their company had grown to 650 employees.

Smithfield Foods remained in the Luter family as a major player in the meat industry for decades, until in 2013 they were bought by the WH Group of China, formerly known as the Shuanghui Group.

Pork is the most popular meat in China, and as the middle class expands, the demand for pig meat has skyrocketed in that country.  To meet the demand, and save on land space, piggeries are now converting to high rises.

Chinese love pork, Americans can’t do without their bacon.  And because of this, billions of intelligent and aware sentient beings are condemned to a life of suffering, painful stunning by gassing,  and a violent death.

Smithfields show their pigs no mercy.  The verdict this week is a tribute to two activists who swayed a jury by theirs.

Will the Dr Oz animal abuse controversy help to end animal testing?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

 

 

by Sandra Kyle, Editor, May Safely Graze

 

I remember watching Dr Mehmet Oz on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he made many appearances over the years.  Oprah was clearly a fan, and Harpo Productions subsequently launched The Dr Oz Show, a daily television program on medical matters and health that was hosted by the charismatic heart surgeon.  The program, while popular, came under a lot of scrutiny by the medical establishment as he featured such topics as faith healing and the paranormal.  Now the doctor is embroiled in even more serious allegations, that he abused animals when he was ‘principal investigator’ in the Columbia University Institute of Comparative Medicine labs.

Mehmet Oz is a true American success story.  The son of Turkish immigrants whose father literally grew up ‘dirt poor’ – sleeping on a dirt floor in his native country – before emigrating to the United States.   Before he became a medical celebrity he had a brilliant career as a heart surgeon and academic, and in the latest stage of his self -reinvention is venturing into politics, currently running for the Pennsylvania Senate.   From his point of view, the news that surfaced this week that he supervised a vivisection laboratory that committed animal abuse is terrible timing.

After centuries of vivisection going back to 500 BCE, and that swelled enormously from the mid 20th century, we seem to be reaching a point where testing on animals is losing public sanction.  Yet an estimated 100 million animals still suffer and die every year in laboratories all over the world, with little or no protection from cruelty.  While a wide range of animals are experimented on, most commonly used are non-human primates, rats and mice, dogs, pigs, cats, sheep, rabbits and pigeons.  The animals are then killed when they are no longer useful to the experiment.

It is cruel and unethical to sentence animals to a barren life in a laboratory cage, intentionally cause them pain, disfiguration, loneliness, fear and despair, and then at the end of it all, take their lives.  But it is also bad science.

In 2004 the FDA estimated that 92 percent of drugs that pass preclinical tests, and use animals, fail to proceed to the market.  One has to ask how all that time, money, energy – and animal suffering – can be justified for such a poor result.

 

 

Humane alternatives to animal testing now exist, including computer modelling, in vitro technology, human-patient simulators among others, and what’s more they are cheaper, faster and more accurate than animal tests.

It is time to stop the cruelty and waste that is animal testing, and use current technology to achieve better outcomes.

New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Website

 

Tell us why you think there will be a vegan world before the end of the decade

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

For years May Safely Graze (previously End Animal Slaughter) have been predicting a vegan world, with 2025 as a watershed year in western nations.

We are interested to know what you think.   Will we have a vegan world before the end of the decade?   Fill out the form and let us know! 

 

 

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Will Finland be the first country to go vegan?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
  • When Finnish company Meeat Food Tech changed from traditional meat to plant-based they turned a profit for the first time in a decade.
  • “Combining the ongoing climate crisis with the abysmal feed yield and calorie conversion rates for animal proteins, it makes no sense to continue on that path,” CEO Mikko Karell says.
  • Accelerating the transformation to a purely plant-based food system globally depends on what happens in the large countries where living standards are improving, particularly China and India.
  • Finland’s meat consumption is less than the US or Australia, but is among the world’s top dairy consumers per capita.

Continue reading →

James and Suzy Cameron’s Message: Go Vegan!

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Although this article by Titanic director James Cameron and his wife Suzy Amis Cameron is five years old and was written before the pandemic, its message is more urgent today than ever. 

The vegan commitment the Hollywood power couple made nearly ten years ago for ethical and environmental reasons, has led them to projects focussing on ending animal agriculture.   Recently, they produced Amy Taylor’s prize-winning documentary MILKED.

Read the article here

(Feature photo credit by Roxanne Mccannon/Malibu Times)

Live Export – One Of The Cruellest Things We Can Do To Animals

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 5 Comments on Live Export – One Of The Cruellest Things We Can Do To Animals

Millions of animals are live exported on ships every year,  especially cattle and sheep.  They spend weeks travelling, often forced to remain standing the entire voyage; even if they could find the space, to attempt to lie down could mean being trampled or smothered. Most of the ships are open, which leaves animals exposed to intense cold, extreme heat, and being doused by sea water.  Like us, they suffer from seasickness. 

The animals defecate where they stand, leaving them covered in excrement.  The ammonia smell makes it hard to breathe.  Water can be scarce, and also be soiled by excrement.

Many suffer from injuries and disease.  If babies are born during the voyage, they are often tossed overboard.

In 2017 around  2,500 Australian sheep died in the Middle East from heatstroke.  In 2020, the Gulf Livestock I, carrying New Zealand cattle to China sank in a typhoon and approximately 5,800 cattle, and forty-one crew drowned.The countries the animals are exported to generally have little in the way of animal welfare laws, and their slaughterhouses are unregulated.  Some animals are killed immediately on arrival, others are first used for breeding, and then killed.

Live export is one of the cruellest things we can do to sentient beings, and needs to stop.

 

LIVE EXPORT

by Monika Arya

One of the purest beings’ sucked dry sold for a price

Loaded on ferries, lorries or any means they find

Handed over to anyone who would buy

Travel for interminable times sometimes on bawling land, many times tormented waters

Always in infernal misery

Days dark as the darkest night

Narrow space between slats will not let in a shred of light

Soaked in shit, fuming foul tentacles seep into every pore

Open air of boundless seas refuse to absorb the exuding smells

It lingers forever on the trails streaming behind

From their own pee they take a desperate sip

Birth on the way, look at their babies with exhausted love

Knowing they were going to die and tossed overboard

Who wants to carry extra cargo that’s not going to fetch a price?

The buyer will do whatever they like

Cut, strip, hang them until they die

For you for you to sip your chai in your fancy cup

They were sucked dry for your warm joy

Forced to go on a journey from a living death to death

Stacked on meat and dairy shelves poured into cans, cartons and bottles

Wrapped in cellophane, stickers

Indicating best-before-date of expired mankind

 

Young dairy cow arriving at New Plymouth, New Zealand, to be exported to China.  (Photo Credit, Elin Arbez, Taranaki Animal Save)

Trucks arriving at New Plymouth, New Zealand port to carry cattle to China, 2022 (Photo credit, Summer Aitken, Taranaki Animal Save)

An Australian sheep suffering from heatstroke aboard the Awassi Express, 2017

Veganism: The Elephant In The Room

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Veganism can stem global warming and help bring an end to War.  But it’s still the elephant in the room, writes May Safely Graze editor, Sandra Kyle

In raising the alarm about climate change recently Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres said we’re ‘going in the wrong direction’ in combatting global warming, but failed to mention animal agriculture as a significant cause.  In November 2021, the COP26 climate summit left animal agriculture out of its agenda completely.

In my country, New Zealand, a full half of our greenhouse gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture, yet our new Climate Change Adaptation Plan fails to address the problem.

The United Nations has formally stated that we are in a ‘Code Red,’ environmental emergency, and all around us we see the climate crisis playing out in realtime – for example, the European heatwaves and Pakistan floods just in the last few months.

When it comes to global warming, animal agriculture is the elephant in the room we refuse to see. The process of raising and killing animals for food is much more carbon-intensive than growing and harvesting plants, and comes with a high cost in emissions. In breeding, raising, and slaughtering billions of animals for food every year we use much more land and fresh water, and create massive amounts of waste and pollution.

When it comes to veganism, though, there is not one, but two gigantic elephants in the room.   The Russian/Ukraine conflict has now been recognised as a full-scale war, one of many conflicts and insurgencies going on around the globe. What is the other elephant in the room that is standing in the way of all our efforts to make peace in the world?

 

The other elephant in the room is the violence and cruelty inherent in the animal agriculture industry, and the misery it inflicts on sentient beings. As many Jewish writers, including Isaac Beshavis Singer, have pointed out, it is a holocaust of vast proportions where we show the victims no mercy, and from where there is no escape.

 

“As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields” Tolstoy said in ‘What I Believe’.   If we want a world without wars, we have to stop waging war on helpless animals.

And if we want a chance to bring global warming back from the brink, our leaders need to begin to name animal agriculture as a large part of the problem, and start working towards a plant-based world

Looking for the Little – The Photography of Hendrika Pauley

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

With just her cell phone vegan photographer Hendrika Pauley shares her love of Nature and the insect world on her Facebook page.

Every morning she and her dog Rexi head out to capture the myriad of marvellous creatures Earth’s ecosystem depends on, and whose lives go unnoticed about us.  While temperatures are low they are still sleeping, or awakening from slumber, and easier to photograph.    Her photos inspire us to look more closely:-

“If you feel lonely, sad, and forlorn–please go to a field early in the morning when little friends are still dreaming away. Tread lightly. They are slowly waking up, unfolding and stretching their dew-covered wings. Slowly air-dry-flapping their delicate wings in soft poetry-like motion”.

 Hendrika’s message:  All life is unique, marvellous, and should be respected.

Enjoy a selection of her photos.

 

Grasshopper enjoying the protection of a water umbrella

Fall Webworm moth caterpillar eating

“Slowly awakening from slumber”…

“Busy bee butt doing busy butt work… Both Morning Glory and bee will soon disappear…”

“We can’t make strong silk from our bodies.  Respect for spiders…”

“She wanted to box with me…”

Two suphurs in an embrace

“Be careful… they sleep… on grasses close to the ground”

“Just hanging…”

A ladybug has found a niche in the market…

“In the NoContraceptivesNeeded Orphanage the overworked and underpaid child care workers are getting beyond annoyed with Mildred. She left her offspring once again without notification and took flight during the dark of night. No doubt looking for another hookup…”

 

 

 

Regenesis: A ‘world-changing book’

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on Regenesis: A ‘world-changing book’

If you care about our planet and all the Earthlings we share it with, then you should read this wonderful book.

Monbiot, a vegan, believes that animal farming is unsustainable, and industrial meat and dairy could collapse remarkably rapidly.  (At May Safely Graze we believe that it could be as early as 2025).  There is a complexity of reasons for this, including the rise of alternative proteins and fats made from plants, fungi, and genetically modified bacteria.

Here are some reviews of Regenesis:-

“Brilliant, mesmerizing, vital . . . a whole new way of thinking about our agriculture and our diets, our climate and our future.”  – David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth

“A world-making, world-changing book . . . It rings and sings throughout with Monbiot’s extraordinary combination of passion, generosity, and justice.” – Robert Macfarlane, New York Times bestselling author of Underland

“Regenesis is a lively and deeply researched enquiry that confronts our dilemmas head on.Transformation is urgently needed, and this book shows how it is possible.”  – Merlin Sheldrake, international bestselling author of Entangled Life

“Monbiot writes with all the imaginative sympathy of a great storyteller as well as the overarching understanding of a moral visionary. This is a fine and necessary book.” – Philip Pullman, New York Times bestselling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

“People from all walks of life should read this remarkable book. It is in my view one of the two or three most important books to appear this century.” – Professor Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government

“Regenesis speaks to us like a poem. . . . It offers a magnificent political economy of global food production and concludes with a hopeful vision of a techno-ethical equilibrium between Humanity and Nature. It must be read.” – Yanis Varoufakis, author of Another Now

“Regenesis calls for nothing less than a revolution in the future of food—one that will literally transform the face of the Earth. . . . This is Monbiot’s masterpiece.” – Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics

“A harmonic vision of how changing our relationship to land use, farming, and the food that we eat could transform our lives.” – Thom Yorke

“A visionary, fearless, essential book.” – Lucy Jones, author of The Big Ones and Losing Eden

“Inspiring and compelling. A transformative vision of a new food future with the potential to both restore nature and feed the world.” – Caroline Lucas, MP and former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

“A genuinely brilliant, inspirational book.” – Sir Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project

“Monbiot reaches for new ideas that might ignite the collective consciousness in a push to protect, rather than tragically destroy, the biosphere.” – ANOHNI

“Essential reading . . . This deeply researched book provides a blueprint for the future.” – Rosie Boycott, journalist and activist

“The writing, observation, and devotion is infectiously compelling. The learning is deep and immense.” – Mark Rylance, actor

“Regenesis gives us an inspiring vision of the future. . . Monbiot has combined his gifts as an investigator, interviewer, and witty storyteller to create an exhilarating epic!” – Robert Newman

The book is available in hardback, and as an e-book and audio-book.

Confessions of a ‘Bug Girl’ – VEGAN VOICES writer Claudia Lifton

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Next in our series on the writers of “VEGAN VOICES –  Essays by Inspiring Changemakers”, is Claudia Lifton.

Claudia has been with the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition since 2015. Prior to working with FFAC, she travelled throughout Africa and Southeast Asia, working with locals to address concerns ranging from poaching, shark finning, overfishing, water access, animal tourism exploitation, to wildlife trafficking. She spent three summers working at Catskill Animal Sanctuary in New York, helping to run Camp Kindness, a summer camp where children learned about farmed animals, plant-based diet and nutrition, and effective advocacy. In her free time, Claudia enjoys attending concerts and festivals, hiking, camping, and cuddling with rescued farmed animals at her favourite sanctuaries.

Extract from her essay in VEGAN VOICES:

“ It started with earthworms. While other kids played with Barbie dolls and Tonka trucks, I played with annelids and insects. I quickly became Highmount Avenue’s resident animal rescuer. Neighbours would call my mom if they found injured butterflies, baby birds, or snakes. As my rescue services became better known, we had to convert our downstairs bathroom into a makeshift rehabilitation center, filled with creatures in need of a helping hand. The derogatory nickname I was given by my classmates in elementary school (which I later reclaimed as a badge of honor) was “Bug Girl….

.. “I’ve come a long way from “Bug Girl.” I still love all creatures, big and small, but I’ve moved on from spending my days playing with earthworms and spiders to advocating for cows and pigs, from preaching to my fellow nine-year-olds about the cruelty of killing ants to standing in front of thousands of students a year, entreating them to stop harming chickens and turkeys. I’ve moved on from battling my teachers when they’d try to make us dissect frogs in the classroom to battling one of the most powerful industries on Earth, determined to intimidate me and my fellow activists into silence. I know that together, we will never stop fighting until every cage is empty.”

 

Review of Vegan Voices by Bruce Friedrich, Co-founder & Executive Director, The Good Food Institute:

“There are as many reasons to be vegan as there are vegans, as this lovely anthology makes clear. So many of my heroes in one place—what a treat. Read it and be inspired.”

 

Vegan Voices: Essays by Inspiring Changemakers
Available at Lantern Publishing & Media
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59056-650-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-59056-651-0

‘It’s As Hot As Hell And We Shouldn’t Take It Any More’ – Thoughts on the European Heatwave

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on ‘It’s As Hot As Hell And We Shouldn’t Take It Any More’ – Thoughts on the European Heatwave

On a working holiday in London in 1970 I looked out my window and saw snow for the first time.  The light dusting that fell overnight had settled on trees and rooves, and I thought it looked beautiful.  Even the summer was chilly as I recall compared to Auckland, and the sky was mainly overcast.

More than fifty years later these memories come to mind as UK temperatures surpass 40 degrees C for the first time in history.  Cases of heat exhaustion and heat stroke are increasing, and more people are drowning as they try to cool off at beaches, rivers, lakes and reservoirs.   

In Spain and Portugal, nearly two thousand people have died since the heatwave started at the beginning of July.   In parts of southwestern France, ferocious wildfires are spreading through tinder-dry pine forests,  and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from homes and summer vacation spots.   It’s as ‘hot and hell’, and it’s not only humans who  are affected, but the whole biosphere. 

The warming of the planet, including the intensity and frequency of wildfires, storms and drought, is negatively affecting not only us but all other beings – their lives, habitats and food sources.     In Australia in 2019/2020, 97,000km2 of forest and surrounding habitats were destroyed by intense fires caused by climate change. Millions of animals, including kangaroos, koalas, possums and other endemic species burned in agony, died through smoke inhalation, or had their habitats destroyed.  In the oceans, warming and acidification is causing cascading effects on marine life through changing developmental and growth patterns, mass migration, and coral bleaching to name just a few.   

When it comes to containing global warming, the greenhouse gases that are of greatest concern are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. About a quarter – in New Zealand it’s a half –  of greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture and land use activities, mostly in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.  Deforestation to clear land that formerly hosted ecosystems in order to raise cattle or grow crops to feed animals is one of the direct causes, as when trees are felled they release carbon, increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

 

 

 

Agricultural practices on animal farms also directly worsen climate change.  Intensification of animal agriculture has led to billions of farm animals, mainly cows, emitting a large quantity of heat-trapping methane through their burps.    Manure application, use of nitrogen in fertilizer, and nitrogen deposition are also major sources of nitrous oxide emissions in the agricultural sector. 

Leading New Zealand climate scientist James Renwick warns if countries don’t get on top of their emissions the results will be “catastrophic”.  I think the situation has become so critical now that it is individuals, not governments,  who must lead the way.   One of the easiest and most effective things we can do is to convert to a plant based diet.  

 

 

Sandra Kyle is an animal activist, teacher and writer.  She is the Editor of End Animal Slaughter

‘A Lamb To Slaughter.’ A Short Story by Lily Carrington

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on ‘A Lamb To Slaughter.’ A Short Story by Lily Carrington

‘Molly’ the lamb journeys to the slaughterhouse, where she watches her friend be killed.  Next, it’s her turn.

 

This is a story about a lamb. She doesn’t have a name, but for the sake of this narrative lets call her Molly.

Molly sits at the back of a cattle truck. She is tucked into the corner with her legs folded under her, trying not to slide around in faeces as the truck lurches and judders. The foul stench of the manure fills her nostrils and clings to her woolly coat. Feverish warmth rolls through her in waves, making her dizzy. Her thirst is accompanied by a constant ache in her empty belly. “What’s going on?” she thinks, trembling despite the suffocating heat. “Where are we going? Where is my herd?”

The scenery outside the truck changes from farmland to bush, to hills, to farmland again, but Molly doesn’t see it as it passes by. After an eternity of staring at the same poop-splattered walls and the same scared faces of fellow lambs, Molly feels the truck start to slow. She leans to the side as they turn a narrow corner, and flinches when a loud beeping sound pierces the air. The truck moves backwards then stops. The roar of the engine fades and gives way to a different, fainter noise. It’s a strange sound which Molly doesn’t recognise at first. It echoes eerily through the air. Screams, she realises. It’s the muffled sound of screaming. The realisation sends fear rolling through her and the tension in the air rises, all the lambs becoming more distressed.

The ramp of the truck is lowered and lambs scramble back towards Molly and cower around her at the rear of the truck. Someone’s hooves jab her sharply in her side. A man walks onto the truck, all business, and shoves a couple of lambs towards the ramp. They scramble down into the bright afternoon sun and into a pen. The man stomps his way towards the back of the truck, towards where Molly still sits in the corner. He shakes a rattle and Molly lurches to her hooves in fright at the loud clanging. She races after the other lambs, down the ramp and into the crowded pen, breathing hard. The lambs are packed in tightly, wool pressed against wool, hooves stumbling over hooves. Molly’s soft ears swivel constantly. Her wide eyes search those of the other lambs, seeking comfort but finding only her own fear reflected back at her.

Suddenly a cold stream of water splatters down on the lambs. Molly startles and tries to run but there’s no space to move and nowhere to go. She blinks repeatedly as the water continues to fall until it soaks through her dense coat. Her hooves splash anxiously in the shallow pool of water that now covers the concrete.

Then the lambs start to move. The one behind Molly pushes her forward as the man with the rattle starts shaking it behind them. Molly stumbles forward then manages to push her way out of the group and darts backwards into an empty space in the pen, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. She bleats and runs back and forth, confused and scared. A man walks towards her so she runs the other way, only to find another man waiting for her. She changes direction and bolts back to the other lambs. She’s quickly swallowed by the group again and there’s nothing to do but follow along with everyone else.

The metal fences that make up the sides of the pen narrow at one corner to become a kind of corridor which disappears into a building. The lambs are being herded from the pen down this corridor and inside. The terrible smell that’s hung in the air since the moment Molly got off the truck starts to intensify the closer she gets to the entrance of the building. She soon reaches the part where the pen gives way to the corridor but she resists moving out of the pen. She pushes back against the sheep behind her, trying to turn back, terrified. A large hand comes down on her rump, sudden and hard. She flies forward, bleating in panic. She follows after the lamb in front of her, recognising him as the one who stood next to her on the truck. He’s a small boy lamb from her herd, the one whose tail stump never recovered properly after they cut it off.

Soon the corridor takes them inside the ominous building. As soon as Molly enters, the smell that’s been hanging in the air gets a hundred times stronger, hitting her like a solid wall.  It’s the worst kind of smell, thick and acrid. Molly and all the other lambs know what it is and what it means, leaving them waiting in horror for what’s to come. It’s the smell of blood, the smell of death. It consumes the place like a physical thing, inescapable, and not without a fitting soundtrack to accompany it. The soundtrack of endless screams that tell of unbearable agony and terror. Now the screams of Molly’s travel companions join them in a haunting, hellish harmony.

Regular loud bangs get louder and louder as Molly’s forced further inside the building. The little boy lamb in front of her soon reaches the front of the line. Another man gently pats his behind and he trots forward. The man shuts a gate behind him.

Molly sees what happens next through the gap in the gate’s hinge. The boy lamb scrambles forward into a room and sniffs the glistening, scarlet ground. The man picks up something solid and metal and approaches the boy lamb, but he doesn’t run.

The man strokes his head and the boy lamb just stands there, shaking. Then the man gets the lamb between his legs, and holds the metal object to his small, soft head. The lamb looks up at the man innocently, and makes a quiet, pitiful little baaing sound. The man shakes his head. “Sorry sweetheart” he whispers. Then he pulls the trigger.

Molly flinches at the loud bang and watches in horror as the boy lamb falls to the ground letting out a short, choked cry. Molly looks only at his eyes. They’ve gone too wide and they stare, frozen, as his body convulses and his legs spasm on the blood- soaked floor. The man grabs him by the leg and hangs him upside down with a shackle around his ankle. Molly watches as another man brings his knife to the little boy lamb’s throat and cuts it open, the boy lamb jerking uncontrollably. She cannot tear her eyes away as blood starts to pour from her friend’s neck. The boy lamb meets Molly’s gaze, and for a split second she sees the friend she grew up with, who always liked clover flowers, who frolicked with her in the field, looking back at her with eyes wild with pain and terror before they go blank. Molly’s gaze stays fixed on his eyes as his head is chopped off and thrown in a bin where it lays amongst many other heads, and its eyes still stare, unseeing, straight back at her.

See also:

https://maysafelygraze.org.nz/18-months-of-hell-a-short-story-by-young-writer-and-animal-activist-lily-carrington/

https://maysafelygraze.org.nz/1803-short-story-by-lily-carrington/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lily Carrington is a dedicated animal rights activist who is driven by a strong sense of justice for all beings. She is fighting for a world where all non human animals are granted respect, compassion and freedom. Lily lives in Hamilton, New Zealand, with her Mum and 10 companion animals, and has recently graduated from school.