Memorial service for animals
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.
Do animals feel pain? Of course they do! Just ask yourself this question: if animals can’t feel pain, then why do researchers test pain medication on them? Then ask yourself another question: if animals don’t feel pain, then why do they scream or wince when they are hurt? Of course they feel pain and are capable of suffering.
It hurts to be sick, and animals are no exception. When animals are raised in factory farm conditions, they are usually crammed into small spaces, and held in very unhygienic conditions, such that diseases can run rampant. Sometimes these diseases spread from one factory to another causing a pandemic. Unfortunately farm animal disease pandemics plague our food system, destabilizing trade and markets and causing product shortages, and multiplying the amount of suffering that the animals themselves experience exponentially. 
This is serious. This could cost you your life! What if the medication your doctor gave you for an infection didn’t work? What if the second antibiotic didn’t work either? Blame the beef industry. According to a new study, sponsored by consumer and environmental groups, 23 out of 25 U.S. burger chains, including McDonald’s and Burger King, were found serving beef raised with the routine use of antibiotics.
In polling, 94% of Americans agree that animals raised for food deserve to live free from abuse and cruelty. Yet the majority of the nearly 10 billion farm animals raised each year in the U.S. suffer in conditions that consumers would not accept if they could see them. Most of our meat, milk and eggs come from industrial farms where efficiency trumps welfare—and animals are paying the price.