Our Compass

The people who care about animals and the people who don’t care about animals all know about Prop 12, hailed as the USA’s “strongest farm animal protection measure … EVER … mandating bigger cages, etcetcetc.”, passed by California voters in 2018 and that is now being challenged – ofcourseofcourseofcourse – by those ever-so cowardly “pork industry execs” as being too costly, blahblahblah, and onward to SCOTUS.

Here’s the thing: if you care about animals, and even if don’t care because your opinion regarding others’ bodies, families, and lives, all of what and whom are important to THEM regardless of how meaningless they are to YOU, REQUIRES YOU LEAVE THEM TF ALONE. You don’t eat them, use them, entertain with them, or wear them, and you sure as hell DON’T celebrate laws that STILL REQUIRE THEIR SUFFERING AND VIOLENT DEATHS.

(There is no way to “humanely” kill a being who doesn’t willingly volunteer to die, and the USDA recently released 1000s of pages of “slaughter violations” – used with apostrophes because, come on, ALL slaughter is an inherent violation of a being – of torturous, neglectful, abject cruelty inflicted on animals in just the death part of the death industry.)

It’s absolutely astounding that so many of the prop 12 promoters are literally NOT waiting for this measure to be implemented (ie, enforced), the will of the voters is obviously enough because they are STILL PARTICIPATING IN ANIMAL SUFFERING AND VIOLENT DEATH, which is actually required pre and post prop 12: the absolute violent irony of people who spend 2 seconds marking a ballot in favor of a proposition that STILL REQUIRES ANIMAL SUFFERING AND VIOLENT DEATH.

So congrats! You’re still an animal abuser but now you can wear the badge of “care” because it cost you all of nothing to mark a ballot. The suffering and killed animals would be proud, but they’re all dead, still being violated and violently killed to satisfy your UNethical behaviour, prop 12 or no prop 12.

Here’s another thing: YOU CAN BE VEGAN RIGHT NOW. Why do people wait for laws to define their ethics surrounding others’ lives? The whiny, petulant voters who are screaming, “I’m happy to spend more money to ensure animals are humanely treated………………………………………………but I’m not stopping using animals in the meantime, it’s the politician’s fault, the pork people’s fault, everybody but my own fault………………………nor will I actually do the MOST humane action and be vegan.” … are relevant only in their cruel hypocrisy.

Because, really, if a larger prison is important, NOT BEING USED AND KILLED IS MORE IMPORTANT. You cannot honestly preach “protections” that still demand animals are relentlessly violated and violently killed. I mean, I’m no Webster scholar, but “protection” pretty much would be the OPPOSITE: NOT BEING FORCED TO BE EXPLOITATIVELY USED AND KILLED.

And ffs, Prop 12 doesn’t prevent cruelty, why do people keep screaming that it does? A prison is a prison no matter the size, and the ULTIMATE cruelty – violent death – is still REQUIRED for the Prop 12 animal victims.

So, yes, shake your head, swear at the tv, demand political retribution, whatever, but know this: it IS YOUR fault. You gladly support the mass suffering and unimaginable terror and pain YOU force on animals, you just stand behind postponed mandates to excuse your actions, but the “pork people” are providing cheap flesh in response to YOUR cheap flesh demand. But I’d like to know, where’s your indignation about the animals who are forced to endure YOUR verbal welfare? Where’s your anger regarding the subjugation and loss of body autonomy, separation of families, the repeated violation and required violent deaths of all animals?

If you honestly care about the passage – or rather, the implementation – of Prop 12, you’d just be vegan. Now. For the ANIMALS because the animals are denied the luxury of just leisurely hanging out, waiting for the end of the slow, ponderous march of “justice” to decide their (always violently cruel and bloody) fate. And if you’re really pissed off at the “pork people” for trying to quash your vote, you’d be vegan – or plant-based at the least, the diet portion of veganism – because THAT will piss THEM off the most giving them essentially a big fu for being bastards no matter what to humans and animals because, really, who else gets to sue and head to SCOTUS to try and overturn a legal vote??? Yup, they are one and the same. Hmmmmm.

One last note, if you’re angry that abolitionist vegans don’t support welfarist issues that only serve to comfort the species causing violent suffering, ask yourself this: what’s the difference between a nonvegan who supports prop 12 and a nonvegan who doesn’t support prop 12? SL

Five things to know about the SCOTUS challenge to California’s ban on extreme farm animal confinement

Source The Counter

By Marina Bolotnikova

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the pork industry’s challenge to California’s Proposition 12, a law that restricts certain confinement practices in industrial animal agriculture. 

The law, passed by nearly 63 percent of voters in a 2018 ballot measure, effectively bans “gestation crates”—narrow, metal enclosures with slatted floors that confine pregnant sows to only sitting and standing, and restrict them from turning around. The industry argues the crates, which have been used in large-scale hog farming for more than 30 years, minimize aggression and prevent competition for food. But growing consumer concern about the wellbeing of animals we raise for food, coupled with strong opposition from animal welfare groups, has made the crates increasingly controversial.

Gestation crates have so far been banned in nine states, plus Ohio, which is slated to phase them out by 2026. In addition, California and Massachusetts have passed restrictions on the retail sale of pork that originated from animals kept in gestation-crate systems. 

It’s that additional restriction on retail sales that’s at heart of the current challenge. When SCOTUS rules on Prop 12 in its next term—sometime between December of this year and June of 2023—it will not be ruling on whether the crates themselves are inhumane, but rather on whether the costs of complying with California’s law put an unfair burden on out-of-state farmers and have a “dramatic economic effect,” according to the petition, on non-California transactions.

Here are five things you need to know about the case:

1.) We’ve been here before.

Prop 12 requires sows to have at least 24 square feet of living space; in industrial-scale operations they currently have about 14. The law also requires egg-laying hens to be housed in at least 144 square inches of living space, and veal calves to have at least 43 square feet. These standards ban industry practices that confine egg-laying hens in “battery cages” so small they can’t spread their wings and male calves raised for veal in similarly restrictive spaces. 

Because Prop 12 bans not only gestation crates, veal crates, and battery cages on California farms, but also imports of animal products raised in these conditions anywhere in the world, it’s considered one of the strongest farm animal protection laws in the U.S. and is perhaps the most frequently challenged. The pork industry has been fighting like hell to overturn it, and so far, all of its challenges have failed. 

In a case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last year, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), a pork industry lobby group, and the American Farm Bureau Federation unsuccessfully argued that Prop 12 violates the “dormant Commerce Clause” of the Constitution—a legal doctrine that bars states from enacting protectionist laws that discriminate against out-of-state businesses.

After that loss, the National Pork Producers Council took its challenge to the Supreme Court, claiming that Prop 12 would “upend an entire nationwide industry” to cater to the ethical preferences of Californians. It also argues that gestation crates don’t allow pigs to turn around “for hygiene, safety, and animal-welfare and husbandry reasons.” 

2.) The outcome isn’t a foregone conclusion.

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case on which there wasn’t any disagreement among lower courts likely signals a desire among some justices to strike down Prop 12. That the court decided to weigh in on the case at all was surprising to some observers. “It is something that would have been unimaginable not that long ago,” Justin Marceau, an animal law scholar at the University of Denver, said in an email. “This court seems hungry to get involved with every divisive political issue.”

But it only takes four of the justices—not a majority—to agree to hear a case, and the pork industry’s legal argument is considered weak by many legal scholars because Prop 12 applies the same standard to products raised in California as it does to those in any other state. “I think the odds are not great for Prop 12, but I wouldn’t give up at all,” said Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. “The Supreme Court’s decisions in this area—going all the way back to the 1920s—I think strongly support California.” 

The dormant Commerce Clause on which the case hinges is complex and confusing. It isn’t explicitly written into the Constitution, but instead has been inferred in case law as a limit on states’ ability to interfere with interstate trade. The country’s top pork-producing states are Iowa, Minnesota, and North Carolina, which together make up most of the industry. 

The NPPC argues that California’s share of the U.S. pork industry (.12 percent, according to USDA) is extremely small, and Prop 12 would unfairly impact states from which it imports its pork.

Tribe said this doesn’t mean Prop 12 imposes an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. “It’s undoubtedly true that it will have most of its impact outside California, but they’re not exempting California,” he said. “Even though the industry is smaller in California, it’s not insignificant, and it has to comply with these rules just as fully as [producers] in Iowa and elsewhere do.” 

The Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling in favor of Prop 12 similarly reasoned: “A state law may require out-of-state producers to meet burdensome requirements in order to sell their products in the state without violating the dormant Commerce Clause.” 

Clarence Thomas, one of the court’s Republican-appointed justices, has expressed skepticism that the dormant Commerce Clause even exists, Tribe said. “That’s, in a sense, the most conservative originalist view. And it may be that on the current court, only Justice Thomas has that view, but it will certainly influence at least to some extent the way the other conservatives look at this, so that there could be a very powerful conservative as well as liberal argument in support of Prop 12.” 

3.) You should look up the definition of “extraterritoriality.”

Yes, it’s a mouthful. But whether or not the court decides that Prop 12 passes muster will likely come down to the value of that one word, and whether the justices believe that ethical concerns of a state outweigh, as the petition puts it, “the wrenching effect of the law on interstate commerce.” 

“There’s very little basis for invalidating California’s Prop 12 unless one takes the view that the state’s moral concerns for the abuse of animals somehow count less than the kinds of economic concerns that in the past have been used to justify state regulations with nationwide impact like this one,” Tribe said. “Pigs are at least as smart as dogs, and anyway smartness shouldn’t have anything to do with it. They can suffer.” 

“If California decides that intelligent mammals like pigs that can suffer are worthy of moral concern, then California should be allowed to protect their interests. But at least some justices might be insensitive to that and might say, ‘who cares about animals?’ And if they do, that would be an example of a form of judicial activism that conservatives and liberals alike ought to find inappropriate.” 

“Given that a strong case can (and will through amicus briefs) be made that animal welfare is an extremely substantial interest, it would seem under existing law that the law would be upheld,” Marceau from the University of Denver said. But that’s if the court adheres to the established doctrine on interstate commerce, which he called “a big if.” 

4.) Big interests will be represented by Big Law.

One underexamined dimension of the Prop 12 litigation is legal institutions’ (including the Supreme Court’s) ongoing bias toward business interests. The NPPC’s case is being argued by attorneys from the corporate law firm Mayer Brown, which has represented clients like the tobacco conglomerate Altria Group and Cargill, Inc. in a lawsuit alleging child-labor abuses in the global food company’s cocoa supply chain. 

The attorney of record in the Prop 12 case, Timothy Bishop, “is advertised by Mayer Brown as being a top appellate lawyer in environmental law,” said Oren Nimni, litigation director at Rights Behind Bars and a well-known critic of big law. “When you see someone who’s an expert in environmental law at a firm like Mayer Brown, a giant corporate firm, that means that they are an expert in destroying the environment.” Bishop didn’t return a request for comment for this story. 

“There’s essentially universal neoliberal consensus in the legal field that there can be no judgment for that type of representation,” Nimni said, and the Supreme Court likewise favors commercial interests. Whatever the merits of the pork industry’s lawsuit, or lack thereof, he added, “it really doesn’t matter because there’s universal consensus in favor of corporate rights on the Supreme Court.” 

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of NPPC, arguing that “there is already ample evidence of Prop 12’s onerous economic burdens on the pork industry” and that “preventing animal cruelty nationwide is not a legitimate state interest.”

5.) SCOTUS heat could chill local efforts.

Invalidating Prop 12 “would cast quite a shadow on perfectly reasonable state regulations, both in favor of animal welfare and various environmental concerns,” Tribe said. “It’s very hard to come up with a principle that would make the burden on interstate commerce in this case excessive but that wouldn’t invalidate all kinds of other rules as well.”  

The environmental impact of Prop 12 itself would likely be minor because its additional space requirements are minimal, so it wouldn’t impose enough additional costs on pork production to substantially scale down industrial animal agriculture, said Silvia Secchi, a natural resource economist at the University of Iowa, in an email. But the Supreme Court’s decision could have indirect implications for state environmental regulations. “California leads the nation on climate change via, for example, the CAFE standards carve-out,” Secchi said. “This might signal a willingness to re-litigate these issues.”

The only way to mitigate agriculture’s environmental footprint, Secchi added, is to reduce overall meat consumption with policies stronger than Prop 12. “Prices of livestock WOULD be higher and more in line with their environmental impacts, but we would have plenty of other food available and affordable,” she said. “If all this squealing (sorry could not resist) about pretty minor changes to livestock production practices causes all this legal chaos, you can see how hard to do more is going to be.” 

Ultimately, especially with so much recent turnover on the Supreme Court, all bets on Prop 12’s fate are off. “It is beyond tea leaf reading to guess how this case comes out,” Marceau said. “The idea that one can accurately predict how these new justices will respond to a set of technical commerce clause issues would be the height of legal-prediction hubris.”

Marina Bolotnikova is a journalist in Madison, Wisconsin.

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

We need more sane and sensible
Instead of cruel and incomprehensible

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

Source NowThis YouTube , Jan Dutkiewicz

It was my pleasure to guide @nowthisnews through the animal agriculture industry’s playbook for addressing footage of animal abuse.

– @jan_dutkiewicz

If anag execs and farmers weren’t so deceptively abusive and inherently unethical, they’d just be laughable. To them, one “militant” vegan, as defined because a vegan provides industry data from anag sources, is representive of all vegans, but one (or-two-or-fifty-or-onemillion) abusive animal farmer or employee is an anomaly, a rare exception to the rule (ah, the willfully ignorant masses always forget the animals they use and consume are … dead. They’re all … dead, not certain how anyone can pretend that being violently killed after a brief existence of suffering and forced body intrusion, DOESN’T represent the ENTIRE anag industry).

And by the way, even if there is just ONE case (not trillions), it would still be proof that the industry is flawed, there’s no way around that, it’s evil, masked as happy-dancy cows going to school. SL

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

the lavender lizard was once dull,sad and grey
but then he chased the nasties
away
… he decided to like just
who he pleased
no matter what he was taught
at his elders knees
and with his new friendships
he walked towards the sun
sharing his kindness
with most everyone

be kind, practice tolerance, embrace difference…the world will be a much better, happier place☻ 

Mental illness is not an indictment. Mental illness is neither judgement nor judgement call. Mental illness is pain…crippling, life altering, life stealing pain. Mental illness takes no prisoners but those who suffer are its prisoners. 

Mental illness is illness. 

Please see it as such.

Help if you can.

The original title, which I took liberty to “modify”, was Victory for Animals and Free Speech as U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Review Kansas Ag-Gag Law

I changed it because, no, this isn’t a “victory” for animals as it doesn’t benefit animals who all suffer on farms (and labs, entertainment, fur farms, zoos, etcetcetc) regardless of a human court decision. A “victory” for animals would be a vegan world.

And it really wasn’t a “victory” for free speech either as ag-gag should NEVER have been considered much less implemented.

And to be fair, it really wasn’t a victory for “transparency” either, as “transparency” would be the actual anag industry publicizing the torture they inflict on animals versus aggressively trying to illegalize OTHER NON-ANAG PEOPLE from sharing undercover footage of the torture the anag industry effortlessly inflicts on animals.

(I’m not criticizing ALDF, they do excellent work, but many in the tiny minority of vegans who actually care about animals, often view even the meager crumbs of a SCOTUS decision upholding an already-legal-and-required constitutional right, as an “animal victory” in the face of global socially-accepted and celebrated normalized violence and suffering.)

But it’s pathetic how anag cheerleaders can’t get their stories straight, always inviting people to, “COME SEE THE FARMS!!!”, or, “HAVE YOU EVER EVEN VISITED A FARM???” while simultaneously relentlessly pursuing ag-gag to criminalize exposure of THEIR criminally inhuman, abusive acts perpetrated on defenseless, vulnerable animals. So much for “transparency”! (And by the way, I’ve never personally witnessed FGM, seeing someone mutilate a child in person, though, is not going to inspire me to change my mind and support FGM.)

But I wanted to share it anyway as it’s worth noting that a conservative SCOTUS has refused to reconsider a lower court’s decision that ag-gag is INDEED unconstitutional (while of course acknowledging that SCOTUS, along with billions of other humans, still don’t care about animals whatsoever; this wasn’t about animal “rights” or animal “freedoms”, this was about privileged human supremacists who don’t care about human animals OR non-human animals and want to hide their animal cruelty while infringing on the rights of humans).

Oh, and the excuse dejour of – it goes something like – maintaining a disease-free perimeter/area due to “biohazard risks” is based on YOUR actions of confining literally tens/hundreds-of-thousands of animals, not people who are exposing your deviant, shameful behaviour. And your track record sucks as diseases – pandemics – are in the news practically daily. But do pretend that you care about all animals while creating hellishly-zoonotic conditions where suffering, death, and disease thrive….

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for SCOTUS to determine that socially-accepted slavery, rape, and murder inflicted on billions of animals yearly in just the USA, should also be abolished based on the inhuman acts of violently exploiting and destroying animals. In the meantime, however, you can be vegan TODAY rather than wait for others to judicially enforce YOUR ethics.

Oh, and for those who experience moral outrage at my word choices of “slavery, rape, murder”, I don’t like your literal actions – condemning animals to such horrific fates – that inspired my words. You should be more concerned with the violent consequences of your choices versus how I accurately describe them with my word choices.

But people love to define the suffering of others in manners that makes them comfortable causing the suffering of others. SRL

Source Animal Legal Defense Fund/ALDF

In a major victory for animals, workers, and transparency In the animal agriculture industry, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that struck down Kansas’s “Ag-Gag” law for violating the First Amendment. The decision follows a lawsuit filed in 2018 by an Animal Legal Defense Fund-led coalition of animal, environmental, and food safety advocacy groups challenging the law’s constitutionality.

The Kansas law in question made it a crime to engage in activities that are essential to conducting undercover investigations that have in the past revealed horrific treatment of farmed animals and food workers to the public. The appeals court held that Kansas may not silence views critical of industrial animal agriculture. The court’s decision affirmed that videos, articles, advocacy, and public dialogue generated by whistleblowing and undercover investigations of factory farms and slaughterhouses relate to a matter of public concern: The treatment of animals and workers on factory farms and slaughterhouses, and manner in which food is produced. Such speech lies at the core of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court’s decision leaves that important ruling in place.

The 2021 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit’s decision notes: “[T]he text and legislative history of the Act evince Kansas’s desire to limit the ability of [the Animal Legal Defense Fund] and like organizations to engage in true speech critical of animal facilities.. . .. We reject this approach because it elevates form over substance and permits Kansas to do just what the First Amendment prohibits: ‘license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquis of Queensberry rules.’”

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to disturb the lower court decisions is a victory for farmed animals, factory farm and slaughterhouse workers, and food and public safety — as it leaves intact the public’s constitutional rights over protecting corporate interests and profits. Until there are cameras publicly broadcasting the conditions within factory farms and slaughterhouses, investigations are the country’s only opportunity to see the horrific ‘industry standard’ conditions under which food is made,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen Wells. “The industry works hard to keep its practices secret, knowing consumers won’t accept the intense confinement and other inhumane treatment of animals, as evidenced by the passing of California’s Proposition 12 and other proposed state legislation.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to California’s Proposition 12 ballot initiative, which outlaws the sale of animal products from pigs held in gestation crates, calves held in veal crates, and eggs from hens kept in battery cages. The measure passed after undercover investigation footage exposed the cramped and cruel conditions in which pigs, calves, and chickens spend their lives at industrial animal agricultural facilities.

“The Supreme Court’s refusal to review the Tenth Circuit’s decision leaves in place important constitutional protections for investigators working with animal rights groups to expose misconduct in the industrial animal agriculture industry,” says Alan Chen, a University of Denver law professor who helped lead the lawsuit against Kansas. “This is a big win for the national campaign against Ag-Gag laws.” Enacted in 1990, the Kansas Ag-Gag law was the oldest in the United States. Kansas is a major agricultural producer with the third-most cows of any state, and until being struck down, its Ag-Gag law had successfully prevented whistleblowers from investigating the conditions that millions of pigs, cows, chickens, and other animals endure.

There have been nine lawsuits challenging state Ag-Gag laws around the country. Earlier lawsuits have resulted in courts striking down similar laws or portions of laws in Iowa, North Carolina, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals will soon consider the constitutionality of Iowa’s second law, after striking down Iowa’s first law and recently clearing the way for an Animal Legal Defense Fund-led coalition’s lawsuit challenging Arkansas’ law to proceed. A decision concerning North Carolina’s law is pending in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Animal Legal Defense Fund is also currently challenging a third Iowa law in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.

The Kansas coalition is comprised of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Food Safety, and state farmed animal organizations Shy 38, Inc. and Hope Sanctuary. The coalition is represented by Public Justice, leading First Amendment scholars, the law firm Foley & Mansfield, and attorneys with the plaintiff organizations, with assistance from Joshua Rosenkranz and the Supreme Court & Appellate practice at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

Until all voices are heard
Until all beings are protected
We will speak for those of voices silent
We will never be silenced

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

My eyes reflect the blue of the sea
When they are in freedom, naturally
I can jump up so high
Chase and play
Catch my food
This is the dolphin way
But when in a small space
Entrapped and alone
Or even with others
All I can do is moan
The blue sea reflection
Flickers then dies
Lost in man’s deception
Why bother to try

I recently emailed an “environmentally-focused” organization in response to a newsletter I received from them regarding Earth Day and the “Top Three Things YOU Can Do Right Now to Stabilize the Climate!!!” including “cutting global methane production”, which is caused by “oil, gas, coal mines and … livestock”. I replied asking why they’re not encouraging veganism, or at the very least, plant based diets, and in response I got nonsense, that while they do “encourage decreasing beef consumption, we’re primarily focused on other things ………………………………………….”

I replied and said that since they acknowledge that decreasing animal consumption is important to decrease negative environmental impacts, then they’re also claiming – while not actually claiming – that THEREFORE, eliminating animal consumption is MORE IMPORTANT.

But, hahaha, nobody actually wants to do anything that would require personal commitment to defending vulnerable, defenseless beings who are denied all opportunities to defend their bodies, their families, their lives, and THEIR environment by, you know, NOT being bred to be dead.

IF YOU’RE NOT VEGAN – or plant based at the very least – YOU’RE NOT CONCERNED ABOUT ANIMALS, THE ENVIRONMENT, WATER, DIRT, OXYGEN or the APOCALYPTIC LEGACY YOU’RE LEAVING FOR YOUR AND OTHERS’ KIDDOS …………

This isn’t difficult, NOT consuming animals, their flesh and secretions, is as easy as reaching for a different item, like plant-based milk vs cow’s milk (by the way, the USDA has added plant based milk as nutritionally equivalent to required-fortified cow’s milk), or beans and nuts vs hotdogs: veganism is literally a nonaction.

If you want to skip the reading, though, you can get a free PDF guide right now:

To help mobilize the shift to more sustainable plant-based diets, A Well-Fed World created the free EcoFood Guide.

SL

Source A Well-Fed World

In their most dire climate report to date, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has urged a switch to plant-based diets as the single most important shift individuals can make to halt the course of climate warming and prevent the most catastrophic impacts.

For the first time in 34 years since the United Nations convened the body of global climate experts, the IPCC’s new report focuses on the importance of demand-side mitigation potential; that is, the crucial role individual choices can play in urgently needed emissions reductions. They group these choices into three categories of action: Avoid, Improve, and Shift.

The report notes that “The greatest Avoid potential comes from reducing long-haul aviation and providing short-distance low-carbon urban infrastructures,” while “The greatest Improve potential comes from within the building sector, in particular increased use of energy-efficient end-use technologies and passive housing.” And “The greatest Shift potential would come from switching to plant-based diets.”

Transforming the Food System Is Key

While emissions from the energy sector have long received the bulk of attention in both the media and in policy recommendations, emissions from the food system are a major contributor that scientists say we can no longer ignore. A 2021 study published in Science warned that if global fossil fuel use were halted immediately and all other emissions were eliminated, greenhouse gas emissions from food production alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C, overshooting the carbon budget by the middle of this century. Even keeping warming below 2°C would be difficult if not impossible without major dietary shifts, the scientists urged.

IPCC scientists agree. They note that since the Industrial Revolution, global greenhouse gas emissions have reached a cataclysmic 2,400 billion tons, with a whopping 42% of those emissions occurring after 1990, and 17% in the ten years between 2010 and 2020. At current emission rates, in less than a decade we will surpass the remaining carbon budget that would keep global warming to 1.5°C, the level at which scientists say we’ll have a mere 50-50 chance of averting the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

To keep 1.5°C within any scope of feasibility, global emissions must peak by 2025, the IPCC report says. If current emission levels persist, we are on a trajectory toward an apocalyptic 3.2°C by 2100.

While half a degree, or even a difference of two degrees, may sound small, scientists say each increment of warming spells fundamental– and irreversible– disaster for life on our planet, from increasingly lethal and widespread heat waves, unprecedented global crop failure and resulting famine from more intense drought and flooding, ecosystem collapse from the Amazon rainforest to the Arctic, and entire cities and coastal regions disappearing under rising seas.

“I don’t have words to explain,” former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres commented. ‘Concerning’ is not enough. This is frankly a terrifying report.”

Making the Shift

Unsurprisingly, the meat and dairy industries continue to ramp up efforts to greenwash the most climate-disastrous foods. Proponents of so-called “regenerative” grazing, for example, say all that is needed is better production methods, but this flies in the face of actual climate science. Global methane emissions reached their highest levels in the past year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Animal agriculture is the largest human-caused source of methane in the United States, with grazing cattle and other farmed ruminants contributing the vast majority of these emissions.

Methane traps significantly more heat— 86 times more than CO2— in the atmosphere over a 20-year time frame, which is why products from grazing animals, such as beef, dairy, and lamb, are ranked as the worst foods for climate. At the same time, it stays in the atmosphere for a much shorter time, leading experts to say that slashing methane is now our single greatest and quickest strategy for slowing down warming by 2040.

The UN has previously noted, “Improving production methods and reducing methane emissions from livestock could reduce emissions by up to 1.44 Gt CO2e per year, but much greater reductions could be achieved by shifting to healthier and more sustainable diets with a higher proportion of plant-based than animal-based foods, which could avoid emissions of up to 8 Gt CO2e each year.”

The new IPCC report reiterates this, stating: ‘In addition to climate mitigation gains, a transition towards more plant-based consumption and reduced consumption of animal-based foods, particularly from ruminant animals, could reduce pressure on forests and land used for feed, support the preservation of biodiversity and planetary health, and contribute to preventing forms of malnutrition (i.e. undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency, and obesity) in developing countries. Other co-benefits include lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and reducing mortality from diet-related non-communicable diseases.”

To help mobilize the shift to more sustainable plant-based diets, A Well-Fed World created the free EcoFood Guide.

This colorful, user-friendly resource explains the immense climate benefits of plant-based food choices, the harms of even the so-called “greenest” forms of animal-based food production, and includes helpful tips, recipes, statistics, food swaps, and more.

Visit EcoFoodGuide.org to download your PDF and/or pre-order a free printed copy. You can also read it in a fun, reader-friendly flip-book form.

And learn much more about the greenwashing of grazing at our new companion website, GrazingFacts.com.

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

We are our earth mother’s last and first hope.

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

I would like to bake
a compassionate cake
to create a world of giving
and less of take
where loving kindness
is the norm
not one where cruelty
attacks in swarms

Source Direct Action Everywhere (DxE):

YouTube

Facebook

Twitter

This Iowa farm just killed 5 million birds during an outbreak of avian flu, and we documented the horrific aftermath of the mass killing, including birds left behind after surviving “ventilation shutdown.”

Taxpayer dollars paid for the farm’s last mass killing after infectious disease ran rampant in 2015. Now, the farm’s billionaire owner, former Senator Glen Taylor, who also owns the Minnesota Timberwolves and Star Tribune, may be getting bailed out once again despite posing a public health threat.

(Because billionaires have a lot of money, you’ll support them having more money to reward their putrid, disgusting actions causing unimaginable suffering? Would you trust Glen with your cat? I don’t trust Glen with dirt – look at the abysmal mess he’s made out of it already, but he’s old so he doesn’t care that his legacy is cesspools of bacteria, pus, and decomp poisoning a world – much less a live being capable of pain and misery. Just because the Timberwolves team sucks is no reason to take it out on vulnerable, defenseless animals, who, by their very nature of vulnerability and as acceptably abused by humans, deserve the MOST care and empathy, which excludes exploiting them in any way. SL)

Learn more about Direct Action Everywhere: https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/

(Because not caring about animal suffering doesn’t preclude the effects your abusive behaviour has on Planet Earth, which affects everyone. SL)

Support the right to rescue animals from harm: https://righttorescue.com/

(Because if someone stole your dog, intent on killing and eating her, what would you do to save her? SL)

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

Human ignorance is the most dangerous pandemic

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

What goes on inside an elephant’s head
Do they look at their world with fear and dread?
Do they see each day as another chance to live
Are they short on grudges, and long on forgive?
Do they revel in their planet and its natural wealth
Do they understand the importance of their homeland’s health
Do they go about their lives, day by day
In quiet reverence, with not much to say
We can barely understand each other
Perhaps we can learn from our 
Elephant sisters and brothers
If we open our hearts and eyes
We might just be pleasantly surprised. 

A world without elephants, isnt

https://vimeo.com/685093882

Don’t come at vegans with your, “bUt sMaLL fArMS …” First, satisfying a 7+ billion human populations’ addiction to animal products could NEVER be met with the amount of land required to “revert back to small-farm animal exploitation”, it’s not sustainable, it’s not a solution; all factory farms were birthed from the small-farm model, which has devolved into >90% global animal bodies “produced” on CAFOs, FFs, ILOs. Second, tell me about how factory farms are “cruel” because they confine animals, but small farms are “kind” because they kill animals … How anyone can honestly praise killing animals as a solution to confining animals, is bizarre and a grammatical manipulation of others’ bodies and lives, animals who do not volunteer their bodies, lives, or children for human snacks, amusement, products, etc.

ALL animal farming, ALL animal exploitation is unethical, it’s a system based on inherent brutality and injustice, how anyone can knowingly participate is based on the inability to reconcile being a “kind” animal killer with kind vegans who don’t kill, it’s not vegans’ behaviour that bothers you, it’s YOURS.

Watch the brief documentary above, see the absolute Hell devil-humans create for the most vulnerable, defenseless beings. Why support such violence inflicted on animals, you don’t have to. And remember: all animals sold in the USA require FSIS inspections in slaughterhouses, there are NOT two doors into slaughterhouses, ALL animals, regardless of “operation size” they came from, face the EXACT SAME torture, cruelty, and violence.

Stop defining others’ required suffering in terms that brings YOU comfort causing it. SL

Source Direct Action Everywhere / DxE

Directed by Raven Deerbrook

All pictures from DxE

Sign to support AB 2764 and help put a moratorium on factory farming in California HERE

‍California is the highest-producing agricultural state in the nation. California’s farms and ranches received $49.1 billion in cash receipts for their output in 2020, with cattle, calves, and dairy products as some of the top agricultural commodities. Animal agriculture is well-known as one of the largest contributors to climate change, making up more than a third of methane emissions in the US and using so much water that it is significantly diminishing the flow of major US rivers. And yet, instead of working to address the harms caused by this industry, the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development is actively funding the construction and expansion of factory farms and slaughterhouses throughout the state. 

A new investigation into a major Costco beef supplier in California’s Imperial Valley is showing the true cost of this government-subsidized expansion — for animals and all of us who rely on the same precious natural resources. 

The One World Beef company, also operating as Brandt Beef, has one of the largest cow feedlots on the West Coast, spanning 730 acres and confining as many as 150,000 cows at a time. Two-thirds of these cows are slaughtered by Brandt to supply Costco’s “Kirkland Signature” product line – around 86 million pounds of beef each year, making up an estimated 25% of all beef sold by the retail giant. 

Over the course of a 6-month investigation at the Brandt Beef slaughterhouse in Brawley, California, anonymous whistleblowers recorded criminal animal cruelty, including improper stunning, cutting into the necks of conscious cows, pulling cows with rope, the use of cattle prods to shock “downed” cows, as well as prodding cows who were too crowded to move and countless numbers of animals with unexplained bleeding injuries and lameness.

During each step in the process of a Brandt cow’s life and death, water is wasted, land is degraded and polluted, dangerous emissions are generated, workers are exploited and traumatized, and the cows themselves are subjected to abuse.

State-Funded Criminal Animal Cruelty at One World Beef 

Facility background

One World Beef opened the Brandt Beef slaughterhouse in Brawley, California in 2016, with the assistance of over $6 million from the state of California. Killing over 300,000 cows per year, it is one of the largest slaughterhouses in the state. The facility had operated in the past under two different companies, and the 2016 reopening faced considerable opposition from the local community, which is over 85% latino. In December 2020, Cal/OSHA fined One World Beef Packers for inadequate safety precautions and failing to report a COVID-19-related worker fatality. The $23,000 fine was a small fraction of the amount OWB received in state funding that same year. 

Investigation Methodology 

Over the course of a multi-month investigation, anonymous whistleblowers collected data and footage using hidden cameras throughout the Brawley slaughterhouse. From loading ramps to the kill floor, investigators documented the entire process to which Brandt cows are subjected.

Findings

Hidden camera footage recorded inside One World Beef in Brawley, California shows improperly-stunned, still-conscious cows raised onto the slaughter line upside down via chains shackled to their legs, before shaking loose and falling to the floor, highlighting what investigators say is a climate of lax enforcement in an industry rife with criminal abuse.

The footage shows company and/or USDA inspectors watching over a worker, who rightfully checks the animals for signs of sensibility after stunning them, in accordance with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. But once the inspectors step away, the worker immediately stops checking the animals for sensibility after the bolt-gun shot, resulting in still-conscious cows proceeding through the slaughter process. 

Other footage inside the facility shows additional violations of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act via the routine misuse of an electric prod, including on “downed” cows (animals physically immobilized due to illness and/or injury) as well as cows waiting in a line to slaughter, with no physical space available to move forward. These violations constitute criminal animal cruelty under federal law.

Environmental Impact

238,000 gallons of water per day is consumed and polluted by Brandt’s slaughterhouse alone. The Alamo river, one of only two major waterways in Imperial County, runs directly beside the Brandt Cattle feedlot northwest of Calipatria, and it is polluted by manure dust from the feedlot. The company uses an estimated 2 million gallons of water just to control the amount of dust in the air at its feedlot. In the Imperial Valley, the rate of asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations for children is double the California state average.

The Lives of Brandt Cows

Calf Raising

Brandt uses exclusively male holstein calves, considered a byproduct of the dairy industry because they don’t produce milk. Male calves from dairy farms across the state are separated from their mothers and sisters at birth, and trucked to massive industrial calf raising operations like Grimmius Cattle in Tulare County. 

At Grimmus, as is standard in calf raising operations, the typical crate stall is 2.5 x 4.5 ft. As calves approach 6 weeks old, they are barely able to turn around and lay down. Hutches are constructed side-by-side in long rows on top of concrete latrines which funnel into manure lagoons. This means, instead of bedding, the bottom of calf crates are made of open slats, often covered in diarrhea. The calves are crated for at least 6 weeks, drinking 2 gallons of “waste” milk or formula per day while being weaned onto a “calf starter” (a bucket full of flaked corn and soybean meal) before being moved to the “grow yard.”

Feedlots

On the Brandt feedlot, cows are kept in stationary pens, never allowed to leave or see pasture. The concentration of cows in a confined environment leads to the trampling and compaction of manure and dirt, creating immense amounts of dust. This dust is remediated by the use of sprinklers, consuming an estimated 2.3 million gallons of water per day. The average Brandt cow drinks over 7,000 gallons of water over their lifetime, averaging around 3 million more gallons consumed per day at the feedlot. 

But the largest amount of water consumed by Brandt is the water used to grow their feed. Imperial Valley’s alfalfa growers, such as Brandt, consume more water than any other crop, even though much of Imperial Valley alfalfa is exported overseas and the United States relies on the Imperial Valley to grow 80% of its vegetables during winter. Each steer eats over 6,000 pounds of feed per year. Even at only 10% alfalfa (a minimum amount of forage necessary for rumen health in cattle), across 150,000 individuals, Brandt consumes another 43 million gallons of Imperial Valley water via alfalfa irrigation every day.

This means the Brandt operation is responsible for consuming at least 48.5 million gallons of California’s allotment of Colorado River water every day. Meanwhile, Californians are being asked to change their personal habits to use only 55 gallons per day.

Along with the immense amount of water used to grow the animals’ food, there are other negative effects of this unnatural diet. Cows who eat an industrial, grain-based diet often suffer from acidosis, a painful buildup of acid in their bodily fluids.

What Must Be Done

Instead of funding the expansion of factory farms and slaughterhouses, California should be halting this destructive expansion.

Californians overwhelmingly supported trailblazing animal welfare reforms in 2008 and 2018, but animal welfare legislation isn’t enough.  

Bold, decisive action is needed to address the routine abuses of the animal agriculture industry. That’s why DxE launched the No More Factory Farms campaign, calling on California leaders to enact a moratorium prohibiting the construction and expansion of factory farms and slaughterhouses in the state.

In response to the No More Factory Farms coalition campaign, in February 2022, California Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian introduced Assembly Bill 2764 to enact a moratorium on the construction and expansion of commercial animal feeding operations and slaughterhouses in California, along with joint author Assemblymember Alex Lee.

California has passed moratoriums on evictions, debt repayments, offshore drilling, and even on the death penalty. Now is the right time for a moratorium on factory farms.

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

A cow bleeds
A cow has needs
A cow is real
Like we humans
They feel

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

We are fast built for speed 

Now we run from man’s misdeeds 

We do not want to race

We want to sit beside you

And kiss your face

Source PETA UK

When these Londoners were asked to try a new milk, they were more than happy to offer praise for the creamy drink, but when a disturbing “fact” about the milk was revealed, everything changed. People were disgusted when they were told that the drink (which was actually soya milk) came from a dog. But if the thought of drinking dogs’ milk makes you feel ill, why drink the milk from any other animal?

After all, there is nothing “normal” about artificially inseminating a cow and forcing her to give birth, only to tear her beloved calf away from her so that the milk that nature intended for her baby can be consumed by humans instead. Humans are the only species on the planet to drink another animal’s milk, and cows’ milk is no more natural for us than dogs’ or rats’ milk would be.

____________________________

So, if you “accidentally” drank dog’s milk, or cat’s milk, would you be angry? Pissed off? Morally outraged? You’re not the victim who’s forcibly impregnated, separated from her infants, and then violently killed.

Right?

Did you know there are actual industry video shorts on how to “safely” steal a calf from her mother, to protect the kidnapper from an angry and fearful mother trying to SAVE HER CHILD? Yeah, it’s all about how violent cows can be and how the farmer is just the innocent bystander risking bodily injury to nobly take an infant SO HUMANS CAN DRINK THE CALVES’ NATURALLY-INTENDED MILK INSTEAD.

What would YOU do if someone tried to take your child?

But what if, say, dogs were farmed for their flesh and for their breastmilk? Would that be ok? I mean, people say ALL THE TIME how much they love animals, but eat them, and farmers always say they care for the animals better than their own kiddos and then kill them. Right? Effing yikes.

So what about love for Fido or Fluffy or Lassie or Benji? Can you show THEM how much you care?

Find out more about this unique and dog-lover owned business venture at Elwood’s Organic Dog Meat

I bet you can also hear Sam Elliot proclaiming, “Dog. He’s what’s for dinner………………..”

(Be aware that due to some negative feedback they’ve received, ie., angry messages, hostile tweets, violent phone calls, death threats … they are monitoring their feedback more frequently, but want to let you know how important dogs are to them, and how much they love dogs like you love pigs, chickens, cows, lambs, so please keep an open mind and remember this is all for the love of animals.)

SL

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

The lies we tell
So we believe
Cruelties ignored
Who do we really
Deceive

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

Why do you still breastfeed? Even beyond the suffering violence inflicted on animals and their infants, humans drinking the breastmilk of another species, beyond infancy and with teeth, is bizarre at best, disturbing in general. Does the violent irony of human infants being unable to drink cow’s milk ever hit you?

Feel free to milk humans who can produce breastmilk, that would at least be species specific and eliminate the disturbing nature of breastfeeding from other species and the required violence, reproductive exploitation, separation of mother and children, and violent death, including the downed cows who are so debilitated, diseased, and abused, they need to be moved by machinery, like bulldozers.

Profit and greed are not acceptable reasons; I don’t smoke to sustain tobacco farmers any more than I consume dairy to sustain animal farmers: they both result in suffering and death.

And don’t give me your regenerative nonsense, animal farmers make it sound as if animal exploitation is required to be environmentally responsible, and that animal suffering, violation, and death is just an unfortunate consequence of being “environmentally responsible”. Like, what would people do without the feces, bacteria, rot, gore, disease, pus, blood, decomp, and marrow, not to mention the suffering and violence, if they decided to NOT be “environmentally responsible”? — insert confused, bewildered emojis demonstrating utter clownish, ridiculous behaviour —

Grow up, people. Literally. SL

Source SAFE For Animals: New Zealand’s Leading Animal Rights Charity

For too long, mother cows and their babies have suffered at the hands of an industry which views them as little more than production units or waste products. Many people don’t realise that cows must give birth in order to produce milk, and one of the dairy industry’s darkest secrets is what happens to those newborn calves. 

The dairy industry

In 2021, nearly 5 million cows were farmed for their milk in New Zealand, over 4.5 million of whom gave birth to calves who were taken away within days of being born. The milk which would normally nourish and sustain their calves is instead taken to be consumed by humans. Female calves are raised by humans to one day replace their mothers in the milking shed, while male calves are often killed within a few days of being born, considered ‘waste products’ of the dairy industry.

Mother cows are not machines

Like humans, a mother cow will carry her pregnancy for nine months. She will love, nurture, nurse, and protect her calf until the day comes when her calf is no longer a baby, but a young adult who is old enough to care for themselves and begin a life of their own. Sadly, this otherwise unbreakable mother-child bond means nothing to the dairy industry.

Every year in Aotearoa, millions of mother cows helplessly watch as their newborns are taken away from them so that their breast milk can be harvested for human consumption.

This cycle of abuse only ends for mother cows when they are no longer able to pump enough breast milk to be profitable to the dairy industry. After 5-6 years of being impregnated, giving birth and being milked, mother cows will be sent to slaughter.

Male calves are not ‘waste products’

Around 2 million male calves, also known as ‘bobby calves’, are taken from their mothers and killed shortly after birth every year in Aotearoa. Because bobby calves are male and can’t be used for milking, the industry has no economic incentive to raise them. Male calves are deemed useless byproducts of the dairy industry, rather than the sentient individuals they are.

Some will be sent to slaughter four days after being born while others will be shot on the farm within just 24 hours of life, all so the dairy industry can take the milk that was meant for him to sell for human consumption.

Dairy is destroying our environment

Animals aren’t the only casualties of the dairy industry. The pollution caused by industrial dairy farming is severely impacting our environment. The dairy industry is New Zealand biggest climate polluter, generating more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transport sector. In the last 30 years alone, the industry’s total emissions have risen 132%.

The dairy industry is also the largest source of water pollution and a major stressor on biodiversity and soil health. Run-off from dairy farms and synthetic fertiliser is poisoning our rivers, lakes and even our drinking water. As a result, 82% of waterways in farming areas are unfit for swimming and up to 800,000 kiwis may be at a greater risk of bowel cancer due to nitrates in water.

Dairy and your health

There is a growing body of evidence that links dairy consumption to many chronic diseases including diabetes, obesity, and cancer. According to Dr Neil Barnard of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, taking dairy off your plate can significantly reduce your risk of heart disease and diabetes and cut the chances of being diagnosed with certain cancers by more than 70%.

Mammals produce breastmilk to feed their infants until they are weaned onto solids. Humans are the only animals that consume milk from another lactating species throughout their lifetime. After infancy, most of us lose the ability to produce the enzymes that break down lactose, which explains why so many people experience bloating, discomfort and an upset stomach after consuming dairy.

Calcium, protein and iron are abundant in plants. It’s easy to nourish your body with plants once you know how!

Go Dairy Free!

Go Plant Based!

Dairy is not our future

It’s only a matter of time before Aotearoa can no longer sustain the continuous water pollution, soil damage and high greenhouse gas emissions the dairy industry creates. To protect the animals, our environment and our health; Aotearoa must embrace a future where its primary industries do not rely on the exploitation of our precious land and our animals for profit.

Our farmers are facing massive amounts of debt, increasing public scrutiny and a lack of industry leadership. Animal-free alternatives are shown to require up to 99% less water, produce 97% less greenhouse gas emissions, and requires no animal exploitation.

Governments around the world are recognising the harm dairy creates and are setting plans in place to assist farmers in transitioning away from animal agriculture. Now is the time for Kiwis to hold the New Zealand Government to account for failing to do the same. Our future depends on it.

Download Your FREE Vegan PDF HERE

Order a FREE vegan kit HERE

Dairy-Free Info HERE

Take the Dairy-Free Challenge HERE

Click HERE for more Dairy-Free

Fish alternatives can be found HERE

Learn about eggs HERE

Find bacon alternatives HERE and HERE

Take PETA’s Cruelty-Free Shopping Guide along with you next time you head to the store! The handy guide will help you find humane products at a glance. Order a FREE copy HERE

Searching for Cruelty-Free Cosmetics, Personal-Care Products, Vegan Products, or more?
Click HERE to search.

Free PDF of Vegan & Cruelty-Free Products/Companies HERE

Click HERE to find out How to Wear Vegan!

Want to do more than go vegan? Help others to do so! Click below for nominal, or no, fees to vegan literature that you can use to convince others that veganism is the only compassionate route to being an animal friend:

PETA HERE

Vegan Outreach HERE

Get your FREE Activist Kit from PETA, including stickers, leaflets, and guide HERE

Have questions? Click HERE

No cute ad jingles
Or cartons
In pretty wrappings
Can hide the cruelty of dairy
And all it’s trappings

Karen Lyons Kalmenson

I look upon the chaos below
This is a world I do not want to know.
Life is simple, loving is what it is all about.
Caring for those in our orbit
Not for screaming and shout.
The hate and screed
I do not understand
Nor will i try
We should all do our best
Before we die.
Heal what is hurting
Fix what is in need of repair.
Humans you can do better,
If you dare!