Category Archives: Animals

Ninety two billion animals killed

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Ninety two billion! That’s how many animals we raise and kill worldwide every year for food. It’s a number so large that it staggers the imagination. The most recent data about land animals bred, kept and slaughtered for consumption has revealed a figure higher than ever before. An estimated 92 billion land animals are kept and slaughtered annually in the global food system, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Making matters worse is that if we add in all the fish captured or bred and killed, that number goes even higher.

It’s not just about how many farm animals are killed but also the suffering they endured while they were raised. The majority of the world’s farm animals are raised in dismal conditions in what’s known as factory farms. Pigs are held in cramped, stressful conditions, living a life in chronic discomfort and distress. Cows’ calves are taken away from them, so that the milk they produce is available for human consumption, a practice under which both the mother and the calf suffer. Many animals are castrated without anesthetic. Chickens are often debeaked to stop them from fighting with other chickens out of discomfort and pain; many cannot turn around their entire lives.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Viewed from the other side, this means that the benefits of reducing and finally ending meat consumption are massive. Change is happening. The sales of meat, egg and dairy substitutes are soaring. Every time you have a meal without any animal ingredients you make a difference.

Thousands of chickens die in fire

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Fire at Feather Crest Farms, Bryan, TX

Tens of thousands of chickens living in very crowded conditions have recently died in a horrible fire. The fire happened at Feather Crest Farms in Bryan, Texas. Firefighters spent several hours putting out the blaze. It is thought that tens of thousands of “egg-laying” hens may have died, though the total number is unknown. The cause of the fire is also reportedly yet to be determined.

Feather Crest Farms is owned by MPS Egg Farms, one of the biggest egg producers in the United States. The company proclaims that “[w]ith 11 million laying hens, MPS Egg Farms produces 9 million eggs […] every day.”

In the US, the vast majority of egg-laying hens are raised in battery cages. Each bird has a space no larger than an a sheet of paper. The scale and suffering of the intensive egg industry is immense. In the US, hens used to produce eggs have such limited space that they are unable to carry out natural behaviors like stretching their wings, perching, or nesting. Hens will be kept in these conditions for around two years, before being sent to the slaughterhouse when their egg production slows.

Last year, around 100,000 hens were killed as a result of a large fire at a Connecticut egg farm in the US. The blaze took hold at the end of January at the Bozrah-based Hillandale Farms location. The company is one of the largest egg producers in the country.

Here in the Northwest things are a bit better when it comes to chickens. Nearly all commercial egg farms in Oregon and Washington must now keep their hens cage free, under laws that went into effect on January 1.

Oregon and Washington join a handful of other states that have passed similar laws. California and Massachusetts already have cage-free laws in place, and more states – Utah, Colorado, Rhode Island, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan – have passed laws that will go into effect in the coming years.

However, even cage-free chickens aren’t living in anything close natural conditions. Worse, it all ends up in cruel slaughterhouses. The only way to save the chickens, while saving your health and the environment at the same time, is to stop eating them and their eggs!

Vegan tuna in a can

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People who follow a vegan diet avoid eating animal products, including conventional canned tuna, which is the key ingredient for popular dishes such as tuna melts and tuna salad sandwiches. Here’s why cruelty-free and sustainable vegan tuna is a better choice.

Traditional canned tuna is, of course, made from fish. Not just any fish, but one of the larger fish in the ocean, which means that it’s spent a lifetime growing and feeding on smaller fish. The problem is that as they feed on smaller fish, they absorb, store and concentrate the toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing chemicals and mercury, that the smaller fish contain. Once absorbed, it is very hard for the fish to get rid of these harmful chemicals.  Since fish cannot be easily tracked, tuna may swim through very polluted waters without us knowing it. If we eat such a fish, we can absorb all the harmful substances it’s been storing up throughout its life. 

While canned tuna is a very popular ingredient, children and pregnant moms are advised to limit their consumption because of the risk of damage to a child’s development from these chemicals. In addition, the cholesterol and saturated fat found in all fish don’t do our arteries any good, and no benefit has been found to consuming so called “heart-healthy fish oils”.

The fishing industry is renowned for ethical and environmental problems, such as overfishing, bycatch, and habitat destruction, plus the problems of slavery that is rife in the industry. And of course, the fish themselves suffer greatly.

So it’s great to know that companies have been coming up with alternatives to tuna fish that taste very realistic.  Most common brands use a blend of soy and wheat proteins, or protein mixes containing peas, chickpeas, beans and/or lentils, along with various seasonings including some seaweed or algae extract to give it a subtle oceanic flavor.

Choices to look for include Nestle’s Garden Gourmet Vuna, Good Catch’s Plant-Based Tuna, and Loma Linda Tuno.

Making vegan fashion choices

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When choosing your clothing, it’s easier than ever to avoid animal products and make cruelty-free fashion choices.  Vegan fashion no longer means having to sacrifice style, durability, quality and practicality, as more and more options are developed made from plants.

Clothing and accessories made from hemp and bamboo, along with common fabrics such as cotton and polyester, are readily available.  Choosing organic or recycled materials can help reduce your environmental footprint further.

It’s particularly important to avoid animal leather, which is usually made from the skins of cows, but can also be derived from the skin of pigs, sheep, snakes, horses and more.  It’s made through a lengthy process in which the animal skin is heavily salted, soaked in calcium oxide, tanned (often using chromium) and then put through a liquoring method which includes adding fats and oils to the leather to make it softer and stronger. In addition to the need to raise and then kill the animals to make animal leather, this process is resource intensive and damaging to the environment, particularly when chromium is used.

New creative “leathers” can be made from cork, mushrooms, pineapple leaves, apple peels, and other fruit waste, along with recycled plastics. These are softer and more sustainable than the cheap PVC-based leather alternatives that have been around for many years.

In addition to avoiding leather, there are now substitutes available for other animal based fabrics such as wool, silk, down and of course, fur. While there are already many specialty brands available online, as mainstream brands recognize the popularity of providing vegan selections, you can expect to see more fashion choices become available.

Capturing what really goes on

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Here’s a great idea from our friends in Canada. Why not install cameras on factory farms and slaughterhouses? Advocacy group Animal Justice is calling for legislation requiring cameras inside farms and slaughterhouses to improve transparency, accountability and the humane treatment of animals in the agricultural industry. If the animals are not being abused as the meat industry says then they have nothing to worry about.

It’s been said that if slaughter houses had glass walls we’d all be vegetarians. It seems to us that installing cameras is a lot easier than making glass walls.  According to an Animal Justice spokesperson, “Right now, the lives of farmed animals are kept hidden from the public, as animals are mainly housed behind closed doors on private property. Consumers don’t have the right to visit the farms that supply their food, so there is a severe lack of transparency about food production,”

Installing cameras would also reduce the need for animal welfare advocates to surreptitiously document farm animal abuse. Recently, Animal Justice has secretly recorded video exposing shocking abuse on a hog farm. The video, which it says was shot between April and June this year, shows pigs enduring abuse, injuries and neglect.

Animal Justice is calling for legislation requiring cameras inside farms and slaughterhouses to improve transparency, accountability and the humane treatment of animals in the agricultural industry. We think it would also protect workers from abuse. We think this a great idea and wish we could have similar legislation on this side of the border.

Horse meat consumption needs to stop!

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The sale of horse meat is controversial and it is banned in many countries.  Many people consider horses as pets, like cats and dogs, and can’t imagine eating them.  Here in the USA, slaughterhouses have long been banned from accepting horses, although it has still been legal to transport horses across the American borders for slaughter in Canada or Mexico.  We wrote previously about the introduction of a bill in Congress that would prohibit the export of live horses to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses.  The relevant bills (HR 3475/S 2037) have now been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and are making slow progress through various committees.

Let’s hope these bills are passed soon, because horses suffer greatly when they are transported long distances with minimal rest periods. They may lose their balance and fall on these trips and many will be unable to stand up again. They may be trampled on by other animals and it’s not uncommon for horses to die during transport.

In France, a draft bill is also being introduced to finally see horse meat banned and give horses the same rights as companion animals like cats and dogs.  A number of French celebrities have signed an open letter urging support of this bill. The vast majority of French people do not eat horse meat and it’s increasingly controversial among the general public, but there are still “boucherie chevalines” (specialized horse butcher shops) operating in France.

Horse meat is also still consumed in European countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and some parts of Italy, as well as on a number of other continents, such as Asia (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Japan), as well as Central and South America (Mexico and Argentina). Outside of Europe, Canada is one of the world’s biggest horse meat suppliers, although Canadians eat very little of the meat itself (except for a few areas in Quebec).  Unfortunately, the country exports both horse meat and live horses over long distances to Europe and Asia.

Like all animals raised for food, horses farmed for meat generally live in unpleasant and unnatural conditions.  They may be raised specifically for meat, or sent to slaughter after being retired from racing or pulling carriages, but either way they end up in large feedlots with thousands of others before being killed. Because they are going for meat, they don’t generally get veterinary care or hoof care. They frequently suffer from injuries and illnesses like hoof conditions and eye infections, and suffer from a lack of shelter in extreme weather conditions.

Let’s hope that legislation continues to make progress to ban the slaughter of these magnificent animals across the globe.  Of course we wish that the slaughter of all animals for food was prohibited.  Horses may be just the first step.

Memorial service for animals

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We raise 60 billion farm animals each year, and catch two trillion fish for food, even though they are unhealthy to eat. It seems so unfair that they are killed for our consumption, and they don’t even get a funeral! The least we can do is give them a memorial service. That’s exactly what happened in London on July 2. The We Stand For The Animals memorial service is an annual event that shines a spotlight on the animals society turns away from.

The industries that exploit animals are often hidden from public view. They are crammed into huge barns or stockyards away from public view, and raised without much care for their welfare, and then they are transported to slaughterhouses. It’s often been said that if slaughterhouses had glass walls we would all be vegetarians. The memorial service is one method by which activists communicate this suffering to the public. As well as honoring and mourning the dead, the reality of industries of exploitation was also read out on a speaker by We Stand For The Animals founder Hannah Blake.

According to Blake, ““The memorial is an opportunity to pay our respects to non-humans worldwide and to give some of these individuals a ceremony that celebrates their lives.”   By communicating this message in such a public setting, it’s hoped that the participants will plant seeds in the minds of the public, most of whom would never have given a second thought to the cruelty of human treatment of animals raised or caught for us to eat.  

Funerals and memorial services are a new way for activists to get their message across. For instance, hundreds of people have held a high-altitude “funeral” for a Swiss glacier that has been lost to global warming. Climate activists dressed in black clothes climbed to 2,600 metres above sea level to pay their respects to the last remnants of the Pizol glacier in the Glarus Alps, east Switzerland.

When antibiotics stop working

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This one actually scares me.  What if you had an infection and the antibiotic the doctor gave you to fight the bacteria didn’t work? This is known as antibiotic resistance and worldwide it’s resulting in more deaths than HIV and malaria combined. Closer to home, three million antibiotic resistant infections occur every year. What’s causing this growing problem? It’s farm animals, although it’s really not their fault, it’s the way they are raised.

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Banning factory farms?

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Could a whole country ban factory farms? Last year, 38% of Swiss voters went to the polls to vote for an amendment to the federal constitution that would, in a global first, ban intensive, or “factory,” farming. While the amendment didn’t pass, it still represents a large portion a country’s population that wants factory farming to end. Years ago, this would have been almost unimaginable.  

The Swiss campaign dovetails with—and will perhaps provide ballast for—animal rights efforts elsewhere in the West. Recently, Spain became the first country in Europe to mandate video surveillance inside slaughterhouses in order to ensure they follow best practices. Last year the Dutch city of Haarlem became the first to ban advertisements for meat.

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Cow fakes sleep to avoid being milked

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A cow in a 200-strong dairy herd on a farm in England didn’t feel like getting up to be milked one morning.  A farmhand tried to coax her up, knowing that she was faking being asleep.  It’s not surprising that the cow didn’t want to get up, since being a dairy cow is a miserable experience.  This particular cow had the name of Doris and was treated kindly by the farmhand, but most others don’t have it so lucky.

It’s unlikely that a typical farmed cow would be given a name – they are usually treated as milk factories. They are forcibly made pregnant via artificial insemination and then have their babies removed from them so that humans can consume their milk. They are selectively bred to produce significantly more milk than they naturally would, and as a result, they often develop a painful udder condition called mastitis.  A third of dairy cows suffer lameness as a result of being forced to stand on hard surfaces for long periods of time.  When a cow’s milk dries up, and her body finally wears out, she is sent to the slaughterhouse for meat.

Many people choose to give up meat, recognizing the harm that comes from killing the animals for our consumption.  But they don’t always stop to think about the suffering endured by dairy cows and egg laying hens in producing dairy and eggs for human consumption.  A vegan diet is the best way to avoid causing animal suffering.

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