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The remark this week by American broadcaster Jim Cramer that ‘Eating animals is dirty, broken and sinful’ prompted End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle to consider why so many Christians continue to eat meat.     

In animal rights circles, you don’t often see the word ‘sin’ used, but growing up as a Catholic schoolgirl in New Zealand, it is a very familiar term to me.

Apart from its obvious connotation with organised religion, and its negative association with fear and punishment, the word ‘sin’ has a general meaning which is ‘wicked and immoral behaviour’.   I would like to discuss this definition as far as it regards other animals.  Although the concept of sin is in all the Abrahamic religions, I know more about Christianity than Judaism and Islam, so will confine my remarks to this.

I think most Christians would agree that Jesus’ essential message is about love and mercy.  The nuns and priests instilled this in me from a young age, and even now, the iconic image of the ‘Sacred Heart’ (Heart of Mercy) comes to mind when I think of Jesus.  I wonder what He would say if he were alive today, and entered a slaughterhouse.  Do you think He would condone what goes on there?  Seeing animal after terrified animal having their brains shattered and throats slit?  Do you think there might be factory farms and slaughterhouses in Heaven?   In Hell, perhaps, but what did innocent animals ever do to deserve to be punished?   Didn’t Jesus challenge us to live mercifully?   Isn’t His own example of caring, rescuing, and healing what Christians should aspire to, and for all sentient beings not just humans?

If Christians believe they are to live with mercy and compassion, then it stands to reason that causing animals suffering is morally wrong. If factory farming and the associated mutilations, drugs and imprisonment are not cruel and ungodly; if lining up tens of millions of knowing, terrified individuals every single day to have their throats slit is not cruel and ungodly; then I am at a loss to know what is.

Many Christians think that causing pain to an animal is not the moral equivalent of causing pain to a human being, and so this exempts them from sin.  They believe that humans are special, fashioned by God to be above the rest of creation, and entitled dominion over it.

But if the victim can suffer, and feel pain, then surely the moral obligation is there not to hurt them.

That animals suffer in the same way we do has been well established by Science now.  ‘Even’ fish have analogous pain pathways to mammals.  And if it were not already obvious, studies have shown animals suffer when deprived of their natural behaviours, such as walking, and being in the company of their family and friends.  As innocent, sentient beings, with natural desires and inclinations, do they not have the moral right not to have suffering inflicted on them?  And why do we create differences between species?  ‘Why’ as the say goes,  ‘do we love one and eat the other?’

I know I am asking a lot of questions, and here’s another one: Why doesn’t a sentient calf, pig, and chicken have the same rights as our own cats and dogs not to be abused and killed?   Is there not a major disconnect in our thinking that maintains that they do not?

I know I am asking a lot of questions, and here’s another one: Why doesn’t a sentient calf, pig, and chicken have the same rights as our own cats and dogs not to be abused and killed?   Is there not a major disconnect in our thinking that maintains that they do not?

If God created animals, then He created them with needs, wants, and a design for their life.   Animals in intensive agriculture are completely denied these basic rights. If Christians believe that God created pigs and chickens, then doesn’t it follow that He created them to live according to their natural instincts and inclinations, including to roam free in the outdoors, root around in the soil for their food, build nests, mate, and properly nurse and care for their babies?  It is well-known that in factory farming they can do none of these things.

In fact such is our entitlement of dominion over animals that we have turned ourselves into God, manipulating and controlling every aspect of their lives, thwarting their every natural desire to our own ends.   We genetically alter them so they grow bigger and fatter to be more profitable, no matter what the cost is to them. Broiler (meat) chickens have upper bodies that grow six times faster than they did when I was born seventy-one years ago, and throughout their entire lives they suffer from lameness, crippling leg deformities and fractured bones, because their legs can’t keep up with the artificially-induced growth.  Enter into any meat chicken shed anywhere in the world and you will find many birds just lying in their own faeces, unable even to move, a percentage already dead before they reach the slaughter weight of 5 or 6 weeks old.  And speaking of poultry, genetically-altered turkeys cannot even mate naturally any more.  But whether raised intensively or not, all farmed animals have to suffer.  They are all trucked, without food or water, to a hellish death at a slaughterhouse, against their will, and at only a fraction of their natural lifespan. 

Everyone agrees that their beloved pets should be protected legally from the worst abuses, but why do tens of billions of equally sentient animals have no such protection under the law?   Farmed animals regularly undergo painful procedures such as castration, debeaking and dehorning without painkillers, which would be unthinkable for our pets. In slaughterhouses there is even evidence of cattle having their legs hacked off while they are still conscious, and in traditional halal and kashrut slaughter, they have their throats slit while completely conscious and able to feel the searing pain for some minutes before they die.  If castrating your dog  without painkillers is not OK, if giving growth hormones to your cat so that she gets disproportionately so big that she cannot even walk, if slitting your dog or cat’s throat open and hacking off their limbs while they’re still conscious is not OK – then why is it any different to do this to a farmed animal?  What part of the word ‘sentient’ are we not understanding here?

If castrating your dog  without painkillers is not OK, if giving growth hormones to your cat so that she gets disproportionately so big that she cannot even walk, if slitting a dog or cat’s throat open and hacking off their limbs while they’re still conscious is not OK – then why is it any different to do this to a farmed animal?  What part of the word ‘sentient’ are we not understanding here?

I no longer consider myself a Catholic, but the idea of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has been a guiding principle throughout my life, and for me it means mercy for all sentient beings, not just human beings.

That is why I cannot understand why at many religious people, including the majority of Christians, continue to eat meat. Is not persisting in causing horrific suffering to animals unnecessarily immoral behaviour?  As Christian and Animal Rights Activist Matthew Scully, author of Dominion,  says:-

“When a man’s love of finery clouds his moral judgment, that is vanity. When he lets a demanding palate make his moral choices, that is gluttony. When he ascribes the divine will to his own whims, that is pride. And when he gets angry at being reminded of animal suffering that his own daily choices might help avoid, that is moral cowardice.”

If we believe in a merciful God, and we continue to cause sentient beings pain and suffering just because we like the way they taste, then we had better get down on our knees and pray for forgiveness.

The good news is that once we become aware of the inconsistency in our moral behaviour regarding our food choices, there are clear and immediate practical steps that we can take in response.  We can begin to reduce, until we have eliminated altogether, our consumption of animal products.

I wish more Christians would try it.  I know Jesus would approve.

  Sandra Kyle started the website End Animal Slaughter in 2018 with the goal of ending animal slaughter by 2025

A worker in a Chinese hatchery uses a net to kill newly born male chicks in hot water.  As their little heads bob up, he pushes them down with a wooden spoon while thousands of other fluffy babies await their turn. After dying in agony, these babies’ feathers are removed in a spinning machine before being sold to snake breeders as snake food, or to street vendors to be barbecued.

Not only in China, but across the entire world, billions of day-old male chicks are killed in hatcheries because they cannot lay eggs.  In the West they kill them by grounding them up alive in whirling blades, or gassing them.  

This abomination has gone on for decades only because few people knew about it.  As the truth about abuse and cruelty in the animal agriculture industry becomes more widespread, we move closer to a vegan world. 

Read the article here (WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIDEO)

Testing to find a cure to the coronavirus Covid 19 is currently underway, using laboratory monkeys.   However, vivisection is a cruel, ineffective and out-dated way to find cures for human ailments.

Millions of animals suffer and die every day in laboratories all over the world, with little or no protection from cruelty.  Species experimented on include non-human primates, rats and mice, dogs, pigs, cats, sheep, rabbits and pigeons.  Most animals are killed when they are no longer useful to the experiment.

It’s cruel and unethical to sentence more than 100 million animals yearly to a barren life in a laboratory cage and intentionally cause them pain, disfiguration, loneliness, fear and despair before taking their lives.

What’s more, testing on animals is 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. All that time, money, energy – and animal suffering – for such a poor result.

Animal experiments also prolong the suffering of humans waiting for effective cures.  Misled experimenters squander precious money, time and other resources to keep their place on the gravy train.  It is estimated that up to half of experiments using animals are never even published. 

Humane alternatives to animal testing exist.  Non-animal research methods include computer modelling, in vitro technology, human-patient simulators among others, and these are cheaper, faster and more accurate than animal tests. 

It is time to stop torturing and killing innocent animals in the name of science.  It should be against the Law to do so.

Visit this website to learn more about vivisection. 

• An undercover investigator working for Animal Recovery Mission (ARM)  documented animal abuse and cruelty at Natural Prairie Dairy, a certified ‘organic’ dairy farm in Texas, United States.    

• Cows were repeatedly and violently inseminated and mother cows were witnessed being chased while giving birth, then having their babies immediately ripped away from them.

• Cows were stabbed with screwdrivers, kicked and dragged when unable to stand due to illness and fatigue. Downer cows were repeatedly beaten to get up by the farm’s so-called ‘animal caregivers’.

• Cows that couldn’t prop themselves back up were stabbed with screwdrivers, pulled by the head by front loaders, dragged, picked up by the bucket and driven to a holding area where they awaited transport to be sold for slaughter.

• Other cows were left to die slowly in barns, some cows taking a whole day or longer to die. Cows were seen falling into cesspools and almost drowning.

• Despite the ‘organic’ label, and company advertising stating that the cows spent time in beautiful green pastures and open-air, free-stall barns, many cows never went outside and spent their lives in illegally overcrowded barns where they lay on cement in their own waste.   Some had footrot and could not walk.

• The most effective way of creating change is through consumer power: leave dairy products off your grocery list.

• Read the Sentient Media article here (Warning: Graphic video)

The Animal Save Movement is a global organisation which holds peaceful vigils outside slaughter houses. The key objective of Animal Save is to ‘bear witness’ to farm animals in their final moments before they enter the slaughter house to be killed. 

There are nearly 700 Animal Save groups on five continents, and those attending vigils carry the message that we should have mercy on animals we raise for food, many of whom suffer ceaselessly their entire short lives.  We can only really help the animals by stopping eating them altogether, and adopting a compassionate vegan diet. 

Pictures are from Auckland Animal Save’s early morning vigil outside one of New Zealand’s biggest chicken slaughterhouses. 

Watch the Video here:

Author Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel ‘The Jungle’ created such a public outcry at the time that it led to the Pure Food and Drug Act being passed by Congress.  The reaction of the public to his novel, written to portray the cruel treatment of animals and harsh conditions of workers in Chicago slaughterhouses, surprised and disappointed the author.   ‘I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit the stomach” Sinclair said.

More than 100 years later, the work of relentlessly slaughtering living, breathing animals and turning them into cuts of meat is still one of the most harrowing jobs anyone can do. Understandably, it takes a punishing toll on the workers and their families.  For example, there have been a number of studies relating slaughterhouse work to domestic and community violence.   The only way many workers can cope by becoming ‘desensitised’.

In this BBC News story a woman who worked in the Industry in the UK gives an insight into what happens between the ‘blood covered walls’ of modern abattoirs. 

Quote:

“At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows’ heads. Each one of them had been flayed, with all of the saleable flesh removed. But one thing was still attached – their eyeballs.

Whenever I walked past that skip, I couldn’t help but feel like I had hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me”. 

In 2020 these places of horror and suffering have no place in any society.  Slaughterhouses need to close now.

Read the article here

At a popular beach on the upper reaches of coastal Auckland on the second day of the new year, a crowd gathered around an unusual sight: that of a Great White Shark slowly dying on the beach.  The 2.75 female had apparently been netted on purpose (against the Law as the species is fully protected in New Zealand waters), and the fishermen were seen kicking the shark, taking selfies and laughing.    When beachgoers tried to intervene the men ‘became intimidating’.

Although there were attempts by a lifeguard and members of the public to refloat her, she returned to the beach where she died moments later.    Behind the disrespect and abuse shown by some to an individual sentient being, is a sorry story of greed and superstition that permits us to cause great pain and distress to sharks, and endanger their existence in our oceans.   

Great White Sharks are on the World Wildlife Fund’s 10 Most Wanted list.   Trade in their teeth, jaws and fins, as well as commercial fishing, are making them vulnerable.   We kill around 100 million sharks a year, and a great deal of this is to satisfy the demand, mainly in China, for shark fin soup.  Shark fins are a so-called  ‘delicacy’ and are one of the world’s most expensive seafood items.   

Sharks are not ‘seafood’, they are sentient beings.  As such, we can imagine the terrifying experience they endure when they are hauled out of their environment, have their fins sliced off, and then thrown back into the ocean to die slowly from blood loss, stress, or suffocation. 

It is not sharks, but humans, who are the biggest and cruellest predator of them all.  We are  the reason tens of millions of  sharks and trillions of other sea animals are killed every single year.  We are  the reason why there may not be any fish stocks left in the sea at all by 2050. 

If we don’t want to cause the global collapse of marine ecosystems, and the untold suffering of sharks and other fish, then the most effective thing we can do is to stop creating a demand for their flesh, and become vegan. 

Read the article

A highlight of the New Zealand Social Calendar is the Boxing Day Races, held at Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland.

The 160-year institution sports the Queen City’s most colourful fashion, hospitality and entertainment.

Racegoers converge to imbibe food and alcohol, to place a bet on high-octane thoroughbreds, and to outdo each other in the fashion stakes.

On Boxing Day 2019 they were met with another group of people, also glamorous….

… who were protesting cruelty to racehorses.

QUICK FACT ONE:  There is no retirement plan for racehorses.   After winning thousands of dollars for their owners and trainers, when they are no longer profitable they are sold on.  The former equine athletes can pass through multiple owners and often nobody knows what happens to them. 

QUICK FACT TWO: Racehorses are stabled up to 22 hours every day prior to training, and many of them suffer from boredom.

QUICK FACT THREE:   90% of racehorses suffer from bleeding in the lungs directly as a result of over-exertion. 

QUICK FACT FOUR:  90% of racehorses suffer from stomach ulcers.  This is thought to be brought on as a result both of an unnatural feeding regime, and stress.

QUICK FACT FIVE:   Horses are goaded on the racetrack by use of the whip.  Whipping the horses over and over again inflicts physical and psychological pain, and increases the likelihood of injury.  

QUICK FACT SIX:  It is estimated that around 2,500 New Zealand unprofitable horses are sent to slaughterhouses every year to be exported as horse meat overseas, or turned into pet food.   This is known as ‘wastage’ in the Industry.

Seventeen horses died on New Zealand racetracks in 2019.   

To find out more go to horseracingkills.com

Watch the ABC expose: The Final Race

Photo credits: Christian Huriwai

Foie gras, (French: “fat liver”), a delicacy that belongs to the ‘protected cultural and gastronomical heritage of France’, is the liver of a goose or duck that has been fattened by a process of force-feeding. The practice has its roots in ancient Egypt, and was adopted by the Romans and mediaeval Jewry through to modern-day France. The product is produced and consumed worldwide, particularly in Europe, the United States and China.  However, as a result of the campaigns of Animal Rights activists,  awareness about the unbelievable cruelty  that produces foie gras has grown, and more and more restaurants and retailers are withdrawing it from their menus and shelves. 

Read the Mercy for Animals article that reveals the cruel forced gorging of male ducks on a prize-winning French foie gras farm, while female ducks (not used for foie gras) are left to slowly suffocate. 

Excerpt:

‘When the male ducks are several weeks old, they are immobilized in narrow metal cages and force-fed with air pumps. The extreme overfeeding causes the young ducks to gasp for breath and gives them terrible diarrhea. According to L214, the process is so physically traumatizing that 10 times more ducks die during the force-feeding period than under normal conditions’.

See also Mercy for Animals article:

Excerpt:

‘MFA’s undercover investigator documented a culture of cruelty at HVFG, including: Workers violently shoving metal pipes down ducks’ throats, dead ducks — killed by the cruel force-feeding process — callously thrown away into trash bins, birds with open, bleeding wounds left to suffer without proper veterinary care, and fully conscious ducks being shackled upside down and having their throats cut open’.

Duck killed through forced feeding at Hudson Valley Farm (see above article)

United States Presidential Contender Cory Booker has a plan to ditch factory farms.   

If implemented, this would be a leap forward towards the end of all animal agriculture.

Read the Live Kindly article here.

“Fish in aquaculture farms are forced to live in crowded tanks and endure unwanted interactions with other fish, handling by humans, struggles to get food, and sudden changes in lighting, water depth and currents. Just like pigs and chickens, fish in intensive farms live a life of suffering”.

It is time we realised that fish are like every other sentient being, and suffer greatly because of our selfish choices.   The only moral thing to do is to stop all fishing and fish farming. There are cruelty-free fish-free products that have a similar taste and texture to fish. 

Pledge to go Vegan in January 

Read the Animals Australia article here

Farmed ducks, like other poultry raised for food, suffer greatly.     As with all intensively farmed animals, ducks in factory farms are deprived of their most basic needs.

They would like to be able to fly, forage, choose a mate and live for 15 years or more, but the life they are forced to endure couldn’t be more different.  They  live inside dark, filthy sheds with up to 10,000 other birds, and never feel the warmth of the sun or enjoy swimming. Except for drinking, animals that have evolved to eat, swim, dive, clean and play in rivers, lakes and ponds, have no access to water at all. Without water they cannot preen, their feathers deteriorate, and they can lose body heat.  They need water to cleanse their eyes, and many develop eye itchiness and other eye diseases, and some even become blind. 

  Blind duck in a UK duck farm. Source:  VIVA

Mother Ducks cannot even sit on their own eggs, as the moment they are laid they are taken from under them and placed in incubation chambers. Because they are bred to produce as much meat as possible in the shortest time, the ducklings grow quickly, and reach slaughter weight at around just 7 weeks old.  Even before then some become lame with painful leg deformities their weight gain causes, and standing all day on litter-strewn floors can lead to painful ammonia burns on their skin.   Many fall onto their backs and are not able to right themselves, there is no one to right them, no one cares,  there is virtually no one to care: in one UK based company, the most intensive enterprise of its kind there are as many as 85,000 birds tended by only one person. Consequently these poor creatures die a frightening and protracted death as they struggle in vain to right themselves.

Ducks in despair.  Source upc-online

In the wild ducks are swimming most of the time, eating plankton, seeds, plants, insects and worms, instead of the dry pellets they are fed in the sheds.    On top of all this suffering, they are also neglected and sometimes deliberately abused by sadistic workers.   In 2014 and 2016 employees at two US farms, Reichardt Duck Farm and Culver Dark Farms, were videotaped tormenting ducks to death by bashing them against walls, and ripping off their heads.   They were videoed callously throwing, dropping and roughly handling ducks and ducklings by their heads and wings.  The undercover cameras also showed animals with ripped-off body parts stuck in wire mesh flooring, and birds were seen trapped in manure pits below the floor.

The extract below is from a recent Viva campaign. 

“Modern farming techniques have turned the fluffy Easter duckling image into a sick joke. 19 million ducks were slaughtered in the UK in 2005 (in the mid 1970’s the UK duck population was barely a million). We know what these birds lives are really like because we have investigated several duck units. Twice we visited Manor Farm Ducklings, who then supplied Marks & Spencer. On our first visit, we saw thousands of fluffy, yellow ducklings in stinking, windowless sheds. Some could barely walk and dragged themselves across on their wings. Others had fallen on their backs and were unable to right themselves and this is how they would die – a horrible, stressful death. Many had already lost the battle to live and their little corpses were scattered amongst the straw. One duckling had fallen behind machinery and was hopelessly trapped – calling desperately for a mother who would never come.”

Duck is a traditional French food,  and is especially popular in Chinese cuisine where it is considered a rich delicacy, and most commercial dark farms supply restaurants directly.  When we eat duck, and the flesh of other factory farmed animals, we are causing them continuous suffering.  There is only one way to prevent cruelty to sentient creatures raised for food, and that is to make the commitment to go Vegan. 

Take the pledge to go Vegan for the month of January, 2020.