Unity ...
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Albert Schweitzer, French philosopher, physician, and musician (Nobel 1952)
Backyard Butchering: Loving Animals to Death
Wikimedia Commons
Source Exposing the Big Game
By Jim Robertson
Yesterday I received the following comment to my post, All Meat is the Product of Cruelty and Exploitation… “How can you argue with those whose response is: ‘In the natural world animals kill other animals for food and in a most painful and cruel way and if I choose to raise my animals on my own property allowing them to live in a free and natural manner just as they would live in the wild that only differs in that they have shelter from the elements should they choose to use it and they are not kept in pens or tied but in large open barns and that at some point they will be killed as quickly and humanely as possible to be eaten by my family and the excess sold to others. I love animals but choose to eat them as well. I believe that how I treat them and kill them is better than they would live in the wild and their deaths much less horrible than being ripped apart alive as is the case in the wild’. What can you say to that?”
…to which I replied: First of all, it sounds like someone has been watching too many “nature” programs that revel in prolonged scenes of wildlife predation. Most cases of natural predation happen much faster; in many cases the prey are killed instantly.
In my book, Exposing the Big Game, I wrote about a wolf kill I witnessed in Yellowstone: “Suddenly they tore out after a young mule deer who had risked leaving the cover of the forest for the lure of an open meadow. The inexperienced doe didn’t stand a chance against the incredible, greyhound-like speed of the determined wolves. One quickly caught her by the hind leg, bringing her down, and a split second later the other had her by the throat. In less than a heartbeat, a living, breathing deer was reduced to a lifeless carcass.” Not a pretty sight, but much more the norm than the horrible scenarios depicted for entertainment on cable T.V. shows.
The hypothetical argument you spelled out (above) begins by raising the naturalist fallacy, which I covered in the post, Top Ten Retorts to Hunters’ Fallacies (just substitute hunter for animal farmer/rancher):
# 9) Animals kill other animals, so we can too.
That’s an example of what’s known as the naturalistic fallacy—the notion that any behavior that can be found in nature is morally justifiable. But wolves and other natural predators need to hunt to survive, humans don’t—for them it’s nothing more than a thrill kill. Human beings have moved beyond countless other behaviors such as cannibalism or infanticide, so why can’t some people tear themselves away from hunting?
A quote from author Robert Franklin Leslie adds to this:
“It is not important that a hawk takes a robin, that a bear robs a grouse nest. That is Nature’s own salient way even if we don’t understand it…Wilderness life has gone on that way since the beginning, and the prey has withstood the predation. But when man steps in…the very soul of Nature cringes for having endowed one of her creatures with intelligence disproportionate to responsibility.”
Backyard animal farming is nothing but the revival of Old World animal husbandry, from which modern-day factory farming is an unfortunate upshot. Both the factory farmer and the backyard butcher breed animals for the sole purpose of killing them when the time is ripe. They don’t raise the animals just because they love them and want to give them a good life, and raising them does nothing to eliminate any suffering that might go on in the wild between natural predator and prey (unless a person’s intent is to eliminate all natural relationships between wild animals, and there would be a lot of suffering on the predator’s part as the human strives to eliminate them).
Killing farmed animals “quickly and humanely” is easier said than done. At some point the animal knows that the human they trusted intends to hurt or kill them, as they probably would have seen it happen to one or more of their herd-mates. And the act of ending a healthy animal’s life so you can eat their flesh is cruel no matter how you slice it, especially since people do not have to eat meat to live a long, healthy life. And in fact, a lifetime of meat-eating is unhealthy for the human primate. Also from the Top Ten list mentioned above:
8) Humans are carnivores, look at our canine teeth.
Human teeth are designed primarily for chewing plant-based foods, like our primate cousins do. Humans “fangs” are teensy compared to those of gorillas, who are strict vegetarians and only show them to appear fierce. Also, our intestinal tract is long to allow for the slow digestion of high-fiber foods, while true carnivores have short intestines as needed to process meat and dispose of the resulting toxic wastes quickly.
7) Wild game (or free-range) meat is health food.
All animal flesh is rife with cholesterol throughout, and the protein in animal flesh is acidic, causing bone calcium losses as it is metabolized. According to the American Dietetic Association, a diet high in animal products has been linked to obesity, diabetes, colon and other cancers, osteoporosis, kidney stones, gallstones, diverticular disease, hypertension and coronary artery disease. New studies have found that another culprit in causing heart disease may be a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat meat.
Again, wolves and other predators need to eat meat to survive—modern humans do not. Natural predators don’t hate their prey, but they don’t pretend to love them either.
Forget the 4-H Club—you can’t really claim to “love” an animal you plan to someday kill, butcher and consume.
Backyard Butchering: Loving Animals to Death
Wikimedia Commons
Source Exposing the Big Game
By Jim Robertson
Yesterday I received the following comment to my post, All Meat is the Product of Cruelty and Exploitation… “How can you argue with those whose response is: ‘In the natural world animals kill other animals for food and in a most painful and cruel way and if I choose to raise my animals on my own property allowing them to live in a free and natural manner just as they would live in the wild that only differs in that they have shelter from the elements should they choose to use it and they are not kept in pens or tied but in large open barns and that at some point they will be killed as quickly and humanely as possible to be eaten by my family and the excess sold to others. I love animals but choose to eat them as well. I believe that how I treat them and kill them is better than they would live in the wild and their deaths much less horrible than being ripped apart alive as is the case in the wild’. What can you say to that?”
…to which I replied: First of all, it sounds like someone has been watching too many “nature” programs that revel in prolonged scenes of wildlife predation. Most cases of natural predation happen much faster; in many cases the prey are killed instantly.
In my book, Exposing the Big Game, I wrote about a wolf kill I witnessed in Yellowstone: “Suddenly they tore out after a young mule deer who had risked leaving the cover of the forest for the lure of an open meadow. The inexperienced doe didn’t stand a chance against the incredible, greyhound-like speed of the determined wolves. One quickly caught her by the hind leg, bringing her down, and a split second later the other had her by the throat. In less than a heartbeat, a living, breathing deer was reduced to a lifeless carcass.” Not a pretty sight, but much more the norm than the horrible scenarios depicted for entertainment on cable T.V. shows.
The hypothetical argument you spelled out (above) begins by raising the naturalist fallacy, which I covered in the post, Top Ten Retorts to Hunters’ Fallacies (just substitute hunter for animal farmer/rancher):
# 9) Animals kill other animals, so we can too.
That’s an example of what’s known as the naturalistic fallacy—the notion that any behavior that can be found in nature is morally justifiable. But wolves and other natural predators need to hunt to survive, humans don’t—for them it’s nothing more than a thrill kill. Human beings have moved beyond countless other behaviors such as cannibalism or infanticide, so why can’t some people tear themselves away from hunting?
A quote from author Robert Franklin Leslie adds to this:
“It is not important that a hawk takes a robin, that a bear robs a grouse nest. That is Nature’s own salient way even if we don’t understand it…Wilderness life has gone on that way since the beginning, and the prey has withstood the predation. But when man steps in…the very soul of Nature cringes for having endowed one of her creatures with intelligence disproportionate to responsibility.”
Backyard animal farming is nothing but the revival of Old World animal husbandry, from which modern-day factory farming is an unfortunate upshot. Both the factory farmer and the backyard butcher breed animals for the sole purpose of killing them when the time is ripe. They don’t raise the animals just because they love them and want to give them a good life, and raising them does nothing to eliminate any suffering that might go on in the wild between natural predator and prey (unless a person’s intent is to eliminate all natural relationships between wild animals, and there would be a lot of suffering on the predator’s part as the human strives to eliminate them).
Killing farmed animals “quickly and humanely” is easier said than done. At some point the animal knows that the human they trusted intends to hurt or kill them, as they probably would have seen it happen to one or more of their herd-mates. And the act of ending a healthy animal’s life so you can eat their flesh is cruel no matter how you slice it, especially since people do not have to eat meat to live a long, healthy life. And in fact, a lifetime of meat-eating is unhealthy for the human primate. Also from the Top Ten list mentioned above:
8) Humans are carnivores, look at our canine teeth.
Human teeth are designed primarily for chewing plant-based foods, like our primate cousins do. Humans “fangs” are teensy compared to those of gorillas, who are strict vegetarians and only show them to appear fierce. Also, our intestinal tract is long to allow for the slow digestion of high-fiber foods, while true carnivores have short intestines as needed to process meat and dispose of the resulting toxic wastes quickly.
7) Wild game (or free-range) meat is health food.
All animal flesh is rife with cholesterol throughout, and the protein in animal flesh is acidic, causing bone calcium losses as it is metabolized. According to the American Dietetic Association, a diet high in animal products has been linked to obesity, diabetes, colon and other cancers, osteoporosis, kidney stones, gallstones, diverticular disease, hypertension and coronary artery disease. New studies have found that another culprit in causing heart disease may be a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat meat.
Again, wolves and other predators need to eat meat to survive—modern humans do not. Natural predators don’t hate their prey, but they don’t pretend to love them either.
Forget the 4-H Club—you can’t really claim to “love” an animal you plan to someday kill, butcher and consume.
Horrific
Veganism Is The Future & Green Unity For Nature And Animal Liberation
Chickens burned alive in China because of the bird flu ”outburst”… Absolutely outrageous! Please, do something!
These horrors happen because of greedy humans breeding and using these animals for ”profit” and because of those who buy animal products. If everyone ate an animal-products-free diet, and didn’t use animals for any other purpose, none of these horrors would happen. Signing petitions can sometimes make a difference, yes. But if you really want this to stop, you must change your eating habits and your way of living — you must stop using animals for any purpose — and also help us raise awareness. Please, go vegan!
PETA
BACKGROUND
Pigs are social, intelligent, loyal, and highly sensitive animals who enjoy communicating with each other, making nests, and relaxing in the sun. But on Saturday, June 8, the village of German Valley, Illinois, has scheduled a “Pig Scramble” event to take place during its German Valley Days festival. Such events typically involve frantic groups of people chasing, grabbing at, and tackling terrified pigs confined to pens lined with screaming crowds. Being trucked to and fro and subjected to the violence and general chaos of these events is a horrific and hazardous ordeal for the pigs, who often sustain severe injuries such as broken limbs and backs. PETA has asked organizers to replace this cruel activity with any number of humane alternatives, but to no avail. We need your help today!
Please politely urge the festival’s organizers to cancel this cruel event. And please, spread this alert far and wide!
WHOM TO CONTACT
Send polite comments to:
Mark Jewell
President of German Valley
815-362-5671
marcus@jewellzone.com
SAMPLE LETTER
Dear President Jewell,
Pigs are social, intelligent, loyal, and highly sensitive animals who enjoy communicating with each other, making nests, and relaxing in the sun. But on Saturday, June 8, the village of German Valley, Illinois, has scheduled a “Pig Scramble” event to take place during its German Valley Days festival. Such events typically involve frantic groups of people chasing, grabbing at, and tackling terrified pigs confined to pens lined with screaming crowds. Being trucked to and fro and subjected to the violence and general chaos of these events is a horrific and hazardous ordeal for the pigs, who often sustain severe injuries such as broken limbs and backs.
I am disturbed to learn of this and am therefore respectfully urging you cancel this unjustified and cruel event. Pigs are marvelously intelligent and sentient creatures, capable of love, pain, thought, and suffering; when you subject pigs to such indecent treatments, you not only condemn them to fear and agony, but you also demean yourself and establish that you are unsympathetic.
Furthermore, when you actively engage in this type of cheap entertainment in front of children, and, in fact, have children actually potentially participating in such, you are demonstrating that animal abuse and disrespect are socially-approved activities, and the link between animal and human abuse is represented. I therefore urge you to cease this exploitation and demonstrate that yours is a community that recognizes the importance of animal protection rather than animal abuse.
Thank you for taking the time to read this urgent appeal.
Read more…
All Meat Is the Product of Cruelty and Exploitation
Wikimedia Commons
Source Exposing the Big Game
By Jim Robertson
A German serial killer, Fritz Haarmann, known as the “Butcher of Hanover,” cut his victims’ bodies into strips of flesh and sold them as pork. Here in North America, third-generation Canadian pig farmer and serial killer of 49 women, Robert Pickton, ground the bodies of his victims into sausage and sold it in packages or gave it out to friends.
While it’s appalling that folks who acquired meat from Pickton may have ingested human flesh, it is equally unsettling that they didn’t notice. To the taste buds it seems meat is meat. This tragedy was just one of many recent incidents that should make people rethink their carnivorous ways.
On a related note, according to an article by Cindi Avila with NBC News, Whole Foods admitted to accidentally reversing labels on two salads sold at its stores, a curried chicken salad and a vegan version called curried “chick’n” salad, last Tuesday and Wednesday at some 15 of its locations in the Northeast (including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York). “The switched labels means it is highly likely someone who made a conscious choice not to eat animal products wound up doing so, through no fault of their own.”
To the ethical vegetarians who inadvertently ingested chicken flesh, the stomach-churning physical response of revulsion was on par with those of the pork-eaters who learned they’d cannibalized. Now, you might be asking yourself, “How can anyone compare eating chicken or pork to cannibalizing human flesh?”
The NBC article makes the clarifying point, “It may be hard for meat-eaters to understand, but this is a way of life that simply doesn’t involve compromise or mistakes. That’s especially the case for those of us who are vegetarian or vegan because of animal-welfare reasons or those who choose this for religious reasons.”
Pigs, like humans, cows and chickens, are capable of experiencing joy, affection, and pleasure. However, on hog farms, they are treated like unfeeling machines, confined in tiny stalls and fed growth-accelerating drugs that often cause lameness. Their teeth are cut with pliers, and their tails are cut off-without anesthetic. At the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside down and bled to death-often while they are fully conscious. Whether flesh comes from the victim of a serial killer or from a pig, a cow, or a chicken, it is the product of cruelty toward a thinking, feeling being who experiences pain and fear and wants to live free of exploitation.
In light of all this, why are people still eating meat? One common answer goes something like this: “I’m a human—superior to other beings—I’m entitled.” But a sense of entitlement is one of the trademark rationalizations that serial killers use to justify their wrongdoings, and grandiosity is also symptomatic of psychopathy, according to Canadian psychologist and author of Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Robert D. Hare, Ph.D. Other symptoms outlined on Dr. Hare’s “psychopathy checklist,” such as shallow emotions and a lack of empathy or remorse, aid the killer—or meat-eater—in disregarding the suffering of his or her victims.
Psychopathic serial killers objectify their victims and consider their victims’ self-interests insignificant. The same rationale is called into play when one thinks of pigs only as “pork,” cows as “beef,” or chickens as “poultry,” without thought of the individuals or their suffering.
Both Canada and the U.S. have had recent cases of mad cow disease. As a result, we saw news footage of downer cows, too sick to walk, being dragged by chains into slaughterhouses. Press coverage of avian flu outbreaks reveal the intensely overcrowded conditions of chickens on factory farms-tens of thousands of animals cooped up in their own filth, each with less space than a standard sheet of typing paper. Besides being warned of health risks, consumers are finally learning about some of the cruelties endured by the animals they know only as “roasts” or “drumsticks.”
It is never too late to examine our actions and re-evaluate our food choices accordingly. By respecting the interests of all sentient beings, we are not akin to the conscienceless killers that plague our society. The only way to ensure that you are not supporting grotesque violence and cruelty against animals, or benefiting from their suffering, is to adopt a plant-based diet.
PETA’s Vegan Shopping List
Read more…
Karen Lyons Kalmenson
Please click HERE to sign petition
Source | Comment on OC post fromVirginia
I need your help. I have created a petition for my school to Ban this cruel fundraiser also. Here is the link. We have so far 578 signatures. Please, spread the word and sign this important petition. Please post a sensitive comment also if you could. Thank you for caring for animals.
Background
Donkey Basket Ball Show encourages the mocking of people (bullying) and the use of animals for the sake of entertainment (animal cruelty). Schools across the country have have stopped hosting the cruel donkey basketball fundraisers because they want to help nurture kind kids, not bullies.
Donkey Basket Ball brings together Bullying and Abuse. Little children at school age are invited to watch and mock of people and animals that are frightened by the crowd and being physically abused for the sole purpose of entertainment: Pulled, dragged and kicked, one way to the other, by inexperienced riders for 2 hours trying to play basket ball on top of them. We are in the 20th Century, and this is far from expressing a civilized message to our next Generation. Schools are not Circuses. It is time for the Schools to take a serious stance to their role in the community and especially in the values and examples they set for the young minds.
The U.S. National Parent-Teacher Association Congress states, “Children trained to extend justice, kindness, and mercy to animals become more just, kind, and considerate in their [interactions] with each other.”
Read more…
Please note: Our Compass had an alert about the event, but it occurred nonetheless. The following is what is happening currently.
Press Release | Source SHARK
Riverdale, CA – The Riverdale Rodeo is under fire from animal protection group SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) for its “Barnyard Scramble” event. The event is where a large group of children chase animals including chickens, goats, pigs and rabbits for a competition. In a SHARK investigation at the May 5, 2013 rodeo, the terrified animals can be seen being dropped, kicked, held by their wings and roughly handled. The event can easily result in many serious injuries to the animals.
SHARK is demanding local officials ban the “Barnyard Scramble” and is calling on the local Animal Control to investigate the rodeo for animal abuses. SHARK president Steve Hindi stated, “It is shocking that children are being taught to abuse and dominate animals in this way. The animals are clearly mistreated.” Throughout the video animals are shown being thrown to the ground, baby ducks being picked up by their delicate wings, chickens being kicked and goats and pigs being roughly handled. The animals run terrified around the ring trying to escape their ordeal. Any animals the children catch they keep dooming them to an unknown fate.
Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns stated, “This “Barnyard Scramble” is a reign of terror, orchestrated by adults, on helpless, frightened and bewildered chickens, ducks, goats and pigs by children who are being used by their parents to act out behaviors the children do not understand. The “scramble” comprises both child abuse and animal abuse. Children are always abused whenever they are taught and, as in this situation, basically forced by the adults they are dependent on, to enjoy tormenting animals and to fear being ridiculed if they refuse or are scared to participate in such a heartless, moronic, and injurious activity that defiles a child’s natural empathy for animals.”
SHARK investigates cases of animal abuse at rodeos around the country. The illegal electro-shocking of horses at the Riverdale rodeo was also captured on tape along with other animal injuries. Video footage of these incidents will be released at a later date.
Read more…
