• 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 →

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

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.)

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/

We are having a funeral for Lisa today. And while I expect it to be healing, it won’t be easy. I’ve written about this loss on two occasions now. And about my broader perspective on the meaning of grief.

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.