Category: Veganism

THE END OF MEAT

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

In this blog End Animal Slaughter’s Sandra Kyle puts a date on the end of animal agriculture.

 

In 2018 I self published a slim book calling for the New Zealand government to close all slaughterhouses before 2025.   Most ‘sensible’ people, including many vegans, thought at the time that it was a wishful-thinking fantasy, and could never happen in such a short timeframe.

Fast forward three years and such predictions are beginning to become commonplace.   Not only from outsiders like myself, but also from within the animal agriculture Industry. Here in New Zealand, Danielle Appleton, MBA and Masters in Dairy Science and Technology, spent a decade with dairy giant Fonterra before launching her own alternative-dairy startup. In this TED talk from a couple of years ago she warns that two technologies – plant protein and synthetic dairy – means that dairy will no longer be this country’s ‘cash cow’.  Just as wool was the social and economic backbone of New Zealand up until the 1950s,when synthetic fibres caused the bottom to fall out of the wool industry, alternative technologies are now heralding the end of animal agriculture.  In fact, many futurists are predicting a much larger revolution that, as soon as the tipping point is reached, will grow exponentially to spell the end of raising and eating other animals for food worldwide.  The new foods will be more nutritious and convenient, healthier, and produced at a lower cost than the animal-derived products they replace. A world having moved away from animal agriculture may also usher in a world without hunger.  

Tony Seba, and Catherine Tubb from RethinkX, a US-based think tank that identifies social disruptions from new technology, have likened this agricultural revolution to the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago.

As the title of my book indicates, I believe this will happen in many places before 2025.   And in  2018 I couldn’t foresee a pandemic or the increase in flooding and wildfires worldwide, two principle reasons why we are on the cusp of the end of animal agriculture.

We are on our way to a vegan world.   To try a vegan diet, take the Vegan 22 challenge.

 

 

 

The Marvellous Mushroom, A Substitute For Eating Fish

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Billions of sentient beings die every single year because we want to eat them.   Even if we are addicted to the taste of steak, lamb, pork, chicken and seafood, we can find similar tastes and textures within the plant kingdom to satisfy our cravings.

If you have seen Seaspiracy and want to stop eating seafood,  this article by vegan food forager Josh Wayne shows how mushrooms can be made to taste and look like fish.

 

Read the article here

Fish Feel! What the documentary ‘Seaspiracy’ Has Taught Us.

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

The important documentary by filmmaker Ali Tabrizi is swearing people off eating fish.  One of the most important reasons for this is that fish are sentient.

‘Each fish is an individual with a unique personality and the desire to live. Fish experience pain in a way similar to humans, communicate in complex ways (herrings, for example, signal each other by farting), and can feel fear.

So, when massive commercial-fishing nets rip the animals from their homes, pack them so tightly that their eyes may burst out of their skulls, drag their sensitive scales along the ocean floor, and force them to undergo decompression—which often ruptures their bladders and pushes their stomachs out of their mouths—fish likely experience an excruciating, terrifying journey to the surface. Then, if they are still alive, fishers often cut their gills and leave them to bleed out or toss them onto ice to freeze or suffocate slowly. You wouldn’t want to be kicked, thrown, suffocated, or hacked to death on a chopping block—and neither do they.’

Read the PETA article here:

Watch Seaspiracy on Netflix

Are We In Hell Yet, Dorothy?

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
In this powerful article Karen Estensen Rubio reminds us that pandemics are the consequence of the Hell On Earth the Animal Industrial Complex has created for our fellow animals, and that moving to plant-based is the only solution. 
“The movement toward a plant-based world is a juggernaut that won’t be stopped, but if we are to save our planet, we must speed it up. It’s the only food system that makes sense for our health – and indeed the survival of all life on Earth.”

 

Read the Counterpunch article here

VEGAN FOODS AND PRODUCTION WILL LEAD TO THE END OF MEAT BY 2030 – Kiwi Journalist

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

A New Zealand-based journalist, Claire Insley, has predicted the end of meat and dairy by 2030 in the US mainly because of the wide availability of ‘more efficient’ alternative protein technology. 

 

Insley, who is Vegan Society Aotearoa New Zealand media spokesperson, says 2021 will see an accelerated use of all things plant based as we endeavour to improve our sustainability.

 

Some of the changes we can expect to see in 2021 are:-
 

More celebrities turning vegan and plant-based

More plant-based leathers and fabrics

More profits in horticulture

More restaurants and chain stores offering vegan options

More plant-based food products available in supermarkets

Fewer rodeos

Less horse racing

Less greyhound racing

More respect for animals and concern for their welfare and safety

More plant-based alternatives such as facon, chikkun, furkey, dairy alternatives etc

Read the full article here

Sign up to go vegan for the month of January here

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Jillian Sullivan is an acclaimed New Zealand writer and essayist.   Her latest book is ‘Map For The Heart‘.   In an article published on the first day of the new year, she states her desire for New Zealand to go plant-based.

 

Excerpt, (referring to Rachel Carlson’s ‘The Silent Spring’):- 

 

‘She was talking about the chemical highway of toxic pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, and the lesser-known road of alternative, biological systems. But she could have been talking about us today, with our highway of intensive industrialised agriculture, our heating, chaotic planet, and the hope that is offered by visionary practitioners and scientists. My wish for New Zealand? That we have the courage to take that other road to transform our industrial agricultural systems into plant-based and organic’.

 

Read The Spinoff article here:

 

 

OPEN LETTER FROM 100 SIGNATORIES URGES PUBLIC TO GO VEGAN

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

Ricky Gervais, Bryan Adams and Jane Goodall and 97 other celebrities and organisations have signed an open letter urging the public to go vegan.

 

The letter acknowledges the threats posed by environmental damage caused by animal agriculture and the pandemic potential from factory farms, and states that we have to change our diets. 

 

Read the VegNews Article and Open Letter here

Xmas Not A Merry Time For Farmed Animals

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle

As I stand at my two local slaughterhouses here in Whanganui New Zealand I witness the ‘Xmas Rush’, as many more trucks arrive with animals to be slaughtered.

It is heartbreaking to see the gentle animals peering out of the narrow openings of their vehicles, looking out at the world for the last time before their deaths.

However, I remind myself that our cruelty and indifference towards animals is nothing new, and, thankfully, our acknowledgement of animal sentience is much more widespread than it was.  The extract below is from Ian Hay, from his Guardian article a few years ago:

“This has never been a good season for animals, but two or three centuries ago it was rather worse. Christmas dinner was preceded by artisanal cruelty in all its terrible variety. Poultry, for instance: the less they ran or fluttered about, the fatter they got, so geese would be nailed by their webbed feet to the floor, while chickens and game birds were confined to windowless cells, sometimes after their keeper had taken the extra precaution of blinding them or cutting off their legs.

Mammals were, literally, a tougher proposition. Popular belief said that meat was best tenderised while it was still alive, so calves and pigs were whipped to death with knotted ropes, and bulls killed only after dogs had baited them. Succulent Dorset lambs, according to the historian Keith Thomas, arrived at the Christmas tables of the Georgian gentry only after a lengthy imprisonment in “dark little cabins”.

A desire for paler meat led to longer deaths. A calf’s executioner, having cut the animal at the neck, would let it bleed for a while and then staunch the wound for a day to let death come slowly. As for turkeys, the custom was to snip a vein inside their mouths and hang them upside down, so that their blood dripped out little by little. The upside-down position remains a constant of turkey slaughter, though the process today is industrial, possibly less painful and necessarily quicker.

Somewhere around 10 million of the birds will be eaten this Christmas in Britain, ending their brief lives suspended by their legs from a production line that plunges them head-first into the electrified stunning baths, and then to the slaughterhouse workers who slash open their carotid arteries. One stroke usually does it.”

We still have a long way to go, but our awareness is expanding, and the momentum to stop killing animals and the closure of slaughterhouses is also growing.

We must continue our work until every slaughterhouse is closed forever.  Once the institutionalised carnage of our fellow beings is over, we can truly begin to build a violence-free world.

I would like to wish all our subscribers and readers and your human and animal family members a joyous holiday season.   Thankyou for your support for my little website’s goals.   Here in New Zealand we have not been impacted by Covid-19 nearly as much as other parts of the world, and I send love to all of you in countries that have experienced extensive lockdowns and other difficulties.   I hope 2021 will be a much better year for you, for us, and for the animals.

Arohanui

Sandra Kyle

 

Voices For Animals Over The Years: Philip Wollen

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle
It has been called the greatest animal rights speech ever:  Philip’s Wollen’s 10-minute blazing contribution to the debate ‘Should Animals Be Off The Menu?’ held at the St James Ethics Centre, Wheeler Centre in Australia on May 16, 2012.   Philip’s speech began:
“King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester “How do you see the world?”  And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.  Shouldn’t we all?  Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair…”
A wealthy ex Vice-President of Citibank, head of the philanthropic charity named for his beloved mother The Winsome Constance KindnessTrust,  Philip Wollen never thrusts himself into the limelight yet his outstanding work has been acknowledged internationally, and he has been awarded high honours, including Australian of the Year, in his own country.     Now into his 70s, Philip continues to campaign untiringly for the causes dearest to his heart, the majority for the benefit of other animals who are the most abused and neglected beings on the planet and the victims of the most grievous injustices.  Just in the past few weeks Philip has donated some $750,000 to organisations in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Thailand, Cambodia, Lebanon, India, the Netherlands, Nepal, Israel and others.
Gifted as a powerful orator and writer, yet like everyone else facing personal sorrows in his life, at every opportunity Philip puts the most disadvantaged first.  Recently, when reviewing the graphic production of Sydney Theatre Company’s production of ‘1984’ Philip wondered:

‘How many “meat-eaters” in the audience have ever been in a slaughterhouse, where (in comparison) Orwell’s terrifying “Room 101” is an up-market, health spa for the super-rich. One scene reminded me of my friend, Gail Eisnitz’s book “Slaughterhouse”.

“One time I took my knife – it’s sharp enough – and I sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of bologna. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it just sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt brine and ground it into his nose. Now that hog really went nuts, pushing its nose all over the place. I still had a bunch of salt in my hand – I was wearing a rubber glove – and I stuck the salt right up the hog’s ass.  The poor hog didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.”

Philip ends urging us to buy Gail Eisnitz’s powerful book – and then to go vegan.  He is never afraid to tell it as it is, and yet his message is simple.   Going vegan is the one thing we can all do to stop the carnage that is taking place all around us.   We don’t have to be gifted or wealthy in this world, we just have to care.
Thankyou Philip, I am also proud to call you my friend.  You empower us all to use whatever resources we have to create a kinder, gentler, more just and enlightened society.  And it really is as simple as choosing something else to eat.

 – Sandra Kyle

 

Sandra Kyle started End Animal Slaughter in 2018 as a vehicle for campaigning for the closure of all slaughterhouses in the western world before 2025.

MUST-WATCH VIDEO: Dr Joanne Kong: Cherish All Animals

Posted on | by Sandra Kyle | 2 Comments on MUST-WATCH VIDEO: Dr Joanne Kong: Cherish All Animals

‘Dr Joanne Kong is an amazing person. A concert pianist and a Director of Music at the University of Richmond, she is also a TED speaker and lecturer on animal rights, environmental sustainability and compassion.  

This insightful and powerful video, written and produced by Joanne, blew me away. At only twelve minutes it can be seen again and again until the full importance of what she is saying is understood. It is a must-watch’.

-Sandra Kyle

 

Excerpt:

We have come to a point we have never had to face in our lifetimes….  The  challenges are daunting… yet I believe we have been given this moment as a turning point.  It’s about fully realising this: that all  existence is deeply connected to the nature of our relationships with all other beings, human and non-human.  How we regard and treat our fellow earthlings, the attitudes we hold towards them and the places they have in our lives.  My purpose is to bring about conscious global awareness of the most destructive act on the planet: the domination and exploitation of non human animals mostly for food but also through the research, entertainment and clothing industries.