Ethical Vegans Must Reject Donald Trump. Period.
Note: Regarding Protect the Harvest’s ludicrous and deceptive claim of the nonexistence of factory farms, “family” has zero legal distinction regarding farm size; indeed, a “family” can refer to Kraft, Ford, Trump, Smithfield, and Walmart. The government defines size, and anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of Google can easily find this data. To suggest that the greater than 10 billion land animals killed annually in the US alone come from Uncle Ted’s backyard hinges on desperation to continue the animal holocaust unseen and socially accepted. SL
EPA:
USDA:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines AFOs as agricultural enterprises where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. AFOs congregate animals, feed, manure and urine, dead animals, and production operations on a small land area. Feed is brought to the animals rather than the animals grazing or otherwise seeking feed in pastures, fields, or on rangeland. There are approximately 450,000 AFOs in the United States.
A CAFO is another EPA term for a large concentrated AFO. A CAFO is an AFO with more than 1000 animal units (an animal unit is defined as an animal equivalent of 1000 pounds live weight and equates to 1000 head of beef cattle, 700 dairy cows, 2500 swine weighing more than 55 lbs, 125 thousand broiler chickens, or 82 thousand laying hens or pullets) confined on site for more than 45 days during the year. Any size AFO that discharges manure or wastewater into a natural or man-made ditch, stream or other waterway is defined as a CAFO, regardless of size. CAFOs are regulated by EPA under the Clean Water Act in both the 2003 and 2008 versions of the “CAFO” rule.
Additional resources:
Large animal feeding operations on the rise
99% of U.S. Farmed Animals Live on Factory Farms
Ethical Vegans Must Reject Donald Trump. Period.
Source Free From Harm
Veganism, at its essence, is the recognition that all animals have the right to bodily integrity. Humans do not own the bodies, families or lives of other animals – we can be guardians to animals in need of rescue, but animals are never our property or commodities.
Donald Trump has demonstrated, over and over again, that he sees animals only as obstacles to be cleared or resources to be used to serve corporate interests and generate maximum profits.
But his actions don’t reveal a detached view of other species as objects or commodities so much as a seething contempt – for the natural world, for animals and for anyone trying to protect them.
Putting animal haters in charge
At every turn, Trump has placed people who actively oppose animal welfare, wildlife and environmental protection in leadership roles at the agencies responsible for carrying out those protections. Not surprisingly, this fox-guarding-the-hen-house strategy has resulted in dire consequences for animals and their habitat.
In 2016 he selected Brian Klippenstein, executive director of a particularly vile organization called Protect the Harvest, to serve as senior advisor to the USDA – the agency charged with safeguarding animals used in commerce.
Protect the Harvest exists to “save the agricultural industry from the growing threat of the radical animal rights movement” by lobbying against animal welfare legislation, supporting ag-gag bills and promoting animal commoditization in all forms – including circuses, rodeos, dog and horse racing, horse carriages, puppy mills and horse slaughter.
One of the group’s campaigns aims to soothe consumers’ growing concern regarding confined animal feeding operations by assuring the public that factory farming is just a “fictional concept created by activists.”
Next, Trump chose to appease animal agriculture and fossil fuel industry elites by putting climate change denier Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency – a move that led to the rollback of several critical climate and pollution regulations, along with the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
Pruitt, once honored with an award for his contribution to the success of the beef cattle industry, has described himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda” and “a big fan of beef.”
Though he resigned in 2018 under the weight of numerous legal and ethics investigations, EPA leadership continues to prioritize industry demands over keeping the country’s air and water clean. In March the agency used the COVID-19 chaos as a cover to release polluting industries from monitoring and reporting requirements.
Perhaps the most stunning hire Trump made was William Perry Pendley, a former oil and gas attorney he installed to wreak havoc on the Bureau of Land Management. That’s the agency charged with conserving public lands – such as national parks – in 11 Western states and Alaska.
Pendley, who spent the bulk of his career lobbying for oil companies’ rights to drill in pristine wilderness, does not believe public lands should exist at all.
He has joked on video about illegally killing and burying endangered animals, and tweeted that climate change is like a unicorn because “neither exists.” He also has a grotesque obsession with eradicating wild horses and burros – insisting that they (rather than cattle grazing or resource extraction) represent an “existential threat” to public lands.
A judge recently ruled that Pendley’s service violates the Constitution because he was never confirmed by the Senate, but so far he has refused to leave his post.
Denying farmed animals space to move
While the average consumer may believe an organic label on meat and dairy products indicates humane treatment, in many cases it means nothing of the kind. Popular mid-sized chicken producer Organic Valley allows its birds only five square feet of space each – less than one-eighth of the room European chickens have.
But a 2016 USDA rule would have required organic producers to provide chickens with enough open space to move around and stretch their wings, and give cows and pigs 24/7 access to an outdoor area.
The new regulation would have helped smaller farms that could more easily comply, but because it could have disadvantaged large industrial farms that pack up to 180k birds into one building, the Trump administration delayed the rule’s implementation several times and finally withdrew it altogether.
Forcing slaughter plants to kill faster
Time is money, and moving more animals through the slaughter line per minute means more profits for the meat industry. It also means less oversight, more mistakes, and greatly increased animal suffering.
The Trump administration removed line speed limits for many chicken and pig processers, and has begun to do the same for cow slaughterhouses. The new rule also allows untrained workers, rather than federal inspectors, to ensure the plants are complying with humane handling and food safety protocols.
Compassion Over Killing (now Animal Outlook) took undercover video at a Hormel supplier that was piloting the new policy and killing an additional 120 pigs per hour. The horrifying footage showed animals who were not effectively stunned wounded and writhing in agony, and others reaching the kill floor with obvious dripping and infected pustules.
Trump’s new line speeds mean 11.5 million more pigs will suffer and die in U.S. slaughterhouses each year.
Failing to enforce animal cruelty laws
Once Trump’s new USDA leadership was in place, the agency promptly removed all animal welfare records from its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service website – which prevented welfare organizations, activist groups and the public from viewing abuse citations and monitoring animals used by exhibitors (like circuses, marine mammal parks and roadside zoos), breeding operations and research facilities.
USDA Animal Care inspectors were told to fundamentally change the way they worked with animal industries. Their job was to help businesses avoid violations, not to protect animals and enforce the law.
The agency’s new mission was laid bare in a shocking Washington Post article that led with 300 raccoons cooking alive in 117-degree heat at a fur farm, inspectors who tried to rescue them, and a subsequent order from the Trump administration to put the animals back.
Sadly, several inspectors and veterinarians who were unable to do their jobs simply quit – and left the animals with even less hope.
The USDA has been carrying out fewer inspections and issuing fewer citations for animal welfare violations. From 2016 to 2018 the number of citations declined from 4,944 to 1,700, and the number of enforcement cases plummeted by 92%.
The Trump administration said there were so few cases because the agency was doing such a good job educating the industry about proper animal care. But former Animal Care veterinarian William Stokes said the inspection process was broken, and “untold numbers” of animals were suffering as a result.
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Tyranny of the callous, cruel and clueless
Our Compass 
Tyranny of the callous, cruel and clueless
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Love it, as always, thank you, hon, it’s perfect. It’s interesting how the Braveheart wannabes feel that being asked to wear a mask out of decency, is “tyrannical”, yet those same ppl think animal exploitation and forced suffering on docile beings is secondary to human entitlement and privilege.
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you are so very welcome and thank you!
we live in a world where far too many have taken the hypocritic oath
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Fortunately I don’t live in the U.S.
But actually the world we live in, is more or less the same everywhere. We have the “animal’s” lovers and those whom eat them.
This blody virus didn’t change things at all.
For a very short time, it seemed that the wet markets in Asia were going to be shutted down… that the bestiality of eating dogs, cats, bats, alive frogs and an absurd quantity of other “animals” was to be avoided. Oh, really? But no, it was only an mental effort… things are still horribly disgusting.
Exactly the same over here and further west were the killing is done to calves, cows, rabbits, chicken, wild animals and so on.
I guess it has something to do with their DNA or Mind vibrations (spirituality)?
I’m quite interested in finding out why there are people able to change and other who doesn’t take even the idea of making a change.
Despite covid, nothing has changed in better.
Hugs and kisses :-)c
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Well, as I frequently say, if animal exploitation doesn’t end for the animals, it will always continue for the humans. Covid has only enabled more despicable animal treatments with (lack of) respect to animals, burned alive and “depopulated” via burning from the inside out and foam, farmers don’t “care” for animals any more than the general consumer. Historically, there have always been pandemics caused by atrocious treatments of animals, humans never changed before, they won’t change now. It’s disgusting, listening to the anguish, pain, and suffering of animals being tortuously killed en masse is even more horrific in that it’s socially accepted as a human benefit. :((
Thank you, beautiful Claudine. ❤
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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