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.
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.
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.
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
Next in our series on the writers of “VEGAN VOICES – Essays by Inspiring Changemakers”, is Shweta Borgaonkar.
Shweta is an animal rights activist from Pune, India. At the time of this essay, she is twenty years old, and her mission in life is to create a world where all animals are respected and treated as individuals. She started out volunteering at adoption camps for stray cat sand dogs and joined a vegan activism group at the age of sixteen. She co-organized Pune’s first Animal Libertion March in 2018 and the Pan-India Animal Liberation March in 2019. Shweta has also led training sessions to help activists become better organizers. She co-organized the Pune chapters of Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and the Animal Save Movement. Currently, she is doing undergraduate work in the field of commerce and is an aspiring law student.
Extract from her essay in VEGAN VOICES:
“I grew up in a city with not many animals around. Growing up with a lack of interaction with animals, I was scared of them. This changed when Girija, a street dog, came into my life. In the beginning, I used to be so scared of her that I would walk on the edge of the road to avoid being in close proximity to her. But slowly, with her beautiful black eyes and wagging tail, she made my fear go away and became my best friend. This was the first time I had connected with a nonhuman animal so deeply. Something inside of me loved her unconditionally and she loved me back unconditionally.
One day, I went to class and everyone told me that Girija was no more. She had been hit and killed by a vehicle. I was devastated. I somehow controlled my tears in class… but I knew she didn’t deserve to die like this. She deserved a safe home with a loving family. She deserved to live in a world where everyone respected her, where she had access to medical care and food, and where her life was valued. As Girija left my life, she left me with a purpose in life – to create that world for her fellow Earthlings”.
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
Animal Activist Helen Seta is on a mission. She wants to improve the life of caged birds.
Helen and a cockatoo friend
Helen has created an online store to provide safe and natural toys that stimulate and provide environmental enrichment to caged birds.
Whatever we may feel about keeping birds in cages, they are bred for this, and the alternative is releasing them to almost certain death in the wild. Birds are tremendously intelligent, and our caged companions benefit from our efforts to provide them with a stimulating environment.
Helen’s goals are:
– To educate and share information on bird care and welfare
– To create change in bird care standards and regulations
– To help/rescue pet birds in neglectful and/or abusive situations
– To provide a loving home, as natural as possible, to birds in need
The issue of caged birds is also dear to my heart. Birds live in severely confined spaces in millions of homes all over the world, many never even getting outside their cages. They have minimal interaction with their humans, and become lonely, depressed, and aggressive because of their deprivations. But even well-loved companions who are regularly out of their cages and have plenty of interaction can benefit from enrichment toys. Through her online store Helen provides lovingly handmade toys that are made from safe and natural materials, to keep our companion birds engrossed.
Activity mats and other toys – just the ticket for bored birds
Do you care about the welfare of birds? Do you have companion birds or know people that do? Then check our Helen’s toys from littlebeaks.store, and follow her on social media:-
You’ll also get to know about the exploits of her three parrotlets – Viktor, Blue and Sparky!
Helen also fosters birds. Here she is with some Rainbow Lorikeet friends
The plight of caged birds is often ignored by animal organisations, and Helen’s tireless work to improve their lives is important. By supporting her, we can give our companion birds a better life.
Next in our series on the writers of “VEGAN VOICES – Essays by Inspiring Changemakers”, is Rae Sikora.
Rae has been a spokesperson for other species and the environment for over forty years. Her interactive critical-thinking trainings and talks have been presented around the globe. Rae is the co-founder of The Institute for Humane Education, VegFund, Santa Fe Vegan, and Plant Peace Daily. She and her partner Jim “JC” Corcoran cofounded Root 66 Vegan Cafe and Catering. They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with their pack of rescue dogs.
Extract from her essay in VEGAN VOICES:
“We do not share other animals’ cultures and languages. As with other humans, unless we spend a lot of time with an individual of any other species, it is easy to see them as simply a member of their group. I have seen people who met a pig or a cow or a chicken for the first time have that experience completely change their idea about that group. Beyond rescuing nonhuman individuals and giving them a good life, this is one of the great benefits of animal sanctuaries. Most people are forever changed when they connect with farmed animals, monkeys, chimpanzees, elephants, and others at a sanctuary.
Most people are forever changed when they connect with farmed animals, monkeys, chimpanzees, elephants, and others at a sanctuary.
“Who is included in our circle of caring and compassion is often determined by whether they are familiar to us and whether we have connected with them in some way. If we let go of fear and take the time to connect with other living beings, even the most unfamiliar, we would never see their groups in the same way again.”
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
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, founded in 1965, is an annual international showcase of the best nature photography. In 2021 the contest attracted more than 50,000 entries from 95 countries.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.
View winners from previous years on the Natural History Museum website here:
Our feature image is a 2020 winning entry by Mogens Trolle. ‘A young male proboscis monkey cocks his head slightly and closes his eyes. Unexpected pale blue eyelids now complement his immaculately groomed auburn hair. He poses for a few seconds as if in meditation. He is a wild visitor to the feeding station at Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary in Sabah, Borneo – ‘the most laid-back character,’ says Trolle, ‘quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen on another monkey’.
In this poignant article animal activist and Lead Agriculture Campaigner at Greenpeace Aotearoa, Christine Rose, shares memories of growing up on a pig farm.
The pig sheds of my childhood were like something out of a Dickens nightmare. The low light, the air thick with dust, the sounds and smells of hundreds of animals, eternally contained.
The floors were old wet and cracked concrete; the walls, fibrolight, with wooden flaps covering unglazed windows. In winter it froze, in summer it cooked. Every day, on Dad’s rounds, he would pull out dead piglets from the pens and put them in a barrow, headed for disposal. Ultimately their destinations were the same, young or older, pigs came and went by the hundreds through the years of my childhood. Legions without a life worth living, space, sunlight or love.
Ultimately their destinations were the same, young or older, pigs came and went by the hundreds through the years of my childhood. Legions without a life worth living, space, sunlight or love.
Some sheds held the weaners, as many fast-growing youngsters crammed into each pen as could fit. Bleaker and more boring than a penitentiary. No break from routine or boredom, no sunlight, mud or shade, no touch of the wild or natural world. In a departure from standard procedure, my dad, who was a low paid worker, sometimes hung some wood on a string for them to play with, some small element of enrichment. It was a wee act of kindness in a short life long on oppression and brutality.
Dad sometimes hung some wood on a string for them to play with, some small element of enrichment. It was a wee act of kindness in a short life long on oppression and brutality.
Other sheds housed the sows, each mother trapped in a crate where she couldn’t turn, couldn’t move, couldn’t nuzzle her young. Her piglets were in the wider pen, tiny, velvety and pink but without maternal contact or the chance to express their true ‘pigness’. Their little upturned snouts all wrinkly and curious, at first they were oblivious to the cruelty of the system they were part of. But they were denied nests, soft bedding, smells and textures of the outside world in generations before they were born, and in generations to come.
Out the back of the main piggery were other pens, for single sows, each one just high bare walls and a spartan shelter, without bedding, grass, or the sight, support, and socialisation of a herd. Only the boars roamed free, in paddocks with sheds for shelter and wallows. Beyond the sheds were the oxidation ponds, the offal pit, the final horrors in a system of misery.
Sometimes we’d have a runt to take care of, that we would bring back from the edge of early death. Little Pink Pettitoes was one such weakling. She’d run through the house wagging her curly tail, following us like a puppy. She’d suckle our fingers and gumbooted toes, come when we called, lie on the floor in the lounge, an honorary child. Until she was well enough, recovered, and returned to the piggery, no longer a name but a number. Such was the life on a pig farm. Pigs were pets one day, sausages the next.
She’d run through the house wagging her curly tail, following us like a puppy. She’d suckle our fingers and gumbooted toes, come when we called, lie on the floor in the lounge, an honorary child. Until she was well enough, recovered, and returned to the piggery.
Despite being kids, we weren’t spared the brutal reality of pig ‘husbandry’. When the time for castration came, my dad would remove the piglets from the farrowing pen, take them in a shopping trundler down the back of the shed, and one by one, chain the young male piglets upside down in a rudimentary metal cradle. He’d cut around their genitals with a scalpel and pull out the scrotum and other stringy bloody bits, and pour some iodine on the wound. He’d trim their teeth and chop off their tails with what looked like wire cutters, and put the screaming piglets in the growing pen, where they’d spend the rest of their lives, getting fat for slaughter and human consumption.
For home use, three or four pigs were put in a cage on the back of the tractor. They were removed one at a time, and man with a gun would shoot them in the head before cutting their throats, while the others still trapped, watched and waited their turn. Their screams haunt me still. They’d bleed out on the dusty apron in front of the shed. They were hung upside down, gutted, reduced to innards and guts and blood. They were put in a hot bath of water where their hair was burnt off, and they were butchered into meat cuts, and ‘choice’ pieces were pickled for bacon and ham. Sometimes the heads were taken home and kept in the big deep freeze. Boiled up later for brawn, they’d stare out at us whenever we took out a loaf of bread or other frozen goods for dinner.
Boiled up later for brawn, they’d stare out at us whenever we took out a loaf of bread or other frozen goods for dinner.
These days they don’t castrate male pigs, they’re killed before they sexually mature, a marginal improvement. Sow crates are banned, but farrowing crates are legal. There’s not much difference between the two. They both deny mothers the chance to express innate and essential behaviour – like turning around, moving about, nest building, nurturing of young.
My dad no longer farms pigs. But there’s a pig farm near where I live, where familiar atrocities remain. My childhood love for pigs prevails, so does the haunting of my heart for the way they are treated. There are less than 100 pig farms in NZ now and not all of them are so archaic, though less than 2% are truly free range. Farrowing crates are still the norm, and even new piggeries deny sows the chance to turn around – in cages visibly too small. Farmers say separating the sow from her babies helps address piglet mortality, but they breed sows for so many piglets, that they’re small and vulnerable, so of course the death rate would be high. MPI’s online ‘pig space calculator’ shows how grotesque modern practices remain acceptable to authorities who should be more responsible for their welfare. You’re allowed 125 25kg pigs in a space that’s just 30m2, smaller than some peoples’ lounge. You’re allowed 252 50kg pigs in a space 100m2, smaller than an average house. As bad as this confinement is, it’s legal and considered a high animal welfare standard, and with more than 60% of pork eaten in NZ imported from overseas (Spain, Canda, the US), where there are even worse rules – or none at all, pig farming – and eating, is immoral and indefensible. There can be no justification for taking a pig’s life for the passing pleasure on the palate.
The latest indignities we inflict on pigs is to use them in xenotransplants. Scientists breed pigs especially for their organs to be transplanted into people. We recognise they are enough like us that their organs and ours are interchangeable. But we deny that they’re enough like us to warrant rights to lives worth living, to flourish and express their natural behaviours. Those curious, smart, funny, friendly, witty and loyal animals are no less than dogs – or humans. We shouldn’t treat a human or a dog like this, and we shouldn’t do it to a pig.
AND NOW FOR A MUCH HAPPIER STORY: End Animal Slaughter rescued these three pigs who were going to be killed, and safely rehomed them in a sanctuary where they will live out their lives happy and free. Meet Happy, Lucky and Hope! (Tik Tok by Summer Aitken, Video by Chris Huriwai.)
In our series on the writers of “VEGAN VOICES – Essays by Inspiring Changemakers”, we introduce you to VICTORIA MORAN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Moran. Victoria is listed among VegNews magazine’s “Top 10 Living Vegetarian Authors” and voted PETA’s “Sexiest Vegan Over 50” in 2016. She has written thirteen books, including The Love-Powered Diet, Main Street Vegan, and the international bestseller Creating a Charmed Life. She hosts the award-winning Main Street Vegan Podcast, produced the 2019 documentary A Prayer for Compassion, and is director of Main Street Vegan Academy, training vegan lifestyle coaches and educators. Victoria wrote the Foreword for VEGAN VOICES, and the title of her essay is “Veganism, Yoga, and Me.”
“The cessation of human-caused misery in the animal world would be the most profound event in the ethical history of this planet. It would affect chickens, turkeys, and geese; pigs, cows, sheep, and goats; and myriad kinds of fishes. It would liberate hunted animals, fur-bearers, and those wild beings whose rangeland humans claim for grazing cattle. The cages in laboratories would empty and their inmates – rats and mice, rabbits and guinea pigs, cats and dogs, and nonhuman primates – would no longer be subject to pain and death for someone else’s knowledge, someone else’s funding. Entertainment that enslaves animals would be universally deemed barbaric and would end without fanfare. And no more “pets” would be chained, ignored, abused or abandoned. As this healing revolution sweeps across nations, people could tackle remaining problems with renewed vigor.”
This article is by Wayne Hsiung, American attorney and animal rights activist (co-founder of co-founder of the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). It has been reprinted from Wayne’s blog page https://simpleheart.substack.com/
What I’ve not said, however, is why we are having a funeral at all. I’ve only been to one other funeral for an individual non-human animal, that of my other beloved dog Natalie. And, to some, the concept of a funeral for a dog might seem odd or even a little silly. But Lisa’s loss weighs so heavily on us; the rite of a funeral will hopefully give me and Priya peace. More importantly, funerals are not just about those who grieve. They are about the importance of those we have lost. And in that sense, having a funeral for Lisa is not just a personal but a political act. It’s meant to say that her life had value, and should be treated with the same dignity and respect as we give to members of our own species.
But to understand this, I thought it would be interesting to dive a little more deeply into the history of funeral ceremonies. And it turns out that history is a long one. The oldest intentional burial in the historical record occurred at Qafzeh, Israel, over 100,000 years ago. Fifteen modern humans were found in a burial site, with 71 pieces of red ocher and ocher-stained stone tools, suggesting there was some ritual associated with their burial. Perhaps even more interesting is the burial site of a human child 78,000 years ago in Africa. The child, whose body was analyzed extensively using forensic tools and microscopes, was apparently laid down in a fetal position, and perhaps covered with a shroud and given a pillow. Those who buried her wanted her to feel peace and love even in death. To me, this shows that remembering the dead is part of who we are.
This is partly because human beings were hardly human 100,000 years ago; the fact that we had funerals suggests their deep connection to our basic identity as a species. One hundred thousand years ago, language, if it existed at all, was brand new to the scene. (The renowned linguist Noam Chomsky says that a chance mutation gave us the ability to speak exactly 100,000 years ago.) Neanderthals were still at our side, and would not go extinct for another 60,000 years. And wooly mammoths would still be around for 95,000 years. It’s hard to even comprehend how long ago this was (even though it’s still just a blip in the history of life on earth, which goes back a remarkable 4,500,000,000 years). Yet even in these remarkably different times, perhaps before we even had language, we were honoring our dead. That deep history seems important.
But the funeral rite also seems tied to our basic humanity because of the conceptual importance of death in our species. The Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has argued that imagining the future is what makes humans unique on the planet Earth. (He is probably wrong about this, as this angry-but-well-prepared rock-throwing chimp has shown.) When we developed that capability, we also conceived of death for the first time, that empty endless space of the unknown. We are not, as a species, particularly good at handling uncertain fears; uncertainty is an emotional amplifier that makes even small risks seem terrifying. And so it’s not surprising to me that funerals have existed for 100,000+ years. They are, it seems to me, our species’ attempt to reckon with death, and therefore also with the sanctity of life.
That brings me back to the central point. If funerals have been part of our species, for as long as we have been on this earth, then performing funerals for other animals is a way to show that they, too, are part of our history, both individually and as a species. It is also a way to show that our understanding of the importance of death extends to our animal friends. And by honoring the one individual before us, we problematize the brutal slaughter of billions of others.
Traditionally, we slaughter these unknown masses without even individually recognizing the being who is about to die. This is most notable in instances of mass slaughter, such as ventilation shutdown. To the industry, it is not even recognized as death; it’s just clearing out the unneeded inventory.
Extending the funeral rite to animals shows that we can evolve beyond this. It shows that our species has the ability to overcome self-interest, and express love and care for an individual of another species who no longer has anything to offer us in return. This is, in many ways, our real super power as a species: our ability to empathize with, and therefore form kinship with, even those who are very different from us. The funeral elevates this idea.
I don’t know what the human beings of ancient Africa, or Israel, thought exactly of the ones they buried. But the respect given to the dead shows they had love for those they lost. And I hope, when we remember the funeral that unfolds today in Berkeley, that is what people will say about Lisa and her family.
You may not have known her, at least the way we do, but you will see that she loved, and was loved. And by doing so, perhaps you will see a future where we love all animals.
Helen and a cockatoo friend
Activity mats and other toys – just the ticket for bored birds
Helen also fosters birds. Here she is with some Rainbow Lorikeet friends
