Planet Vegan

Vegans for World Peace

Our food system is inefficient, cruel and we are wasting our resources. We will run out of clean water, deplete the soil of nutrients and collapse the ecosystem. We are destroying the tropical rainforest, the lungs of the planet, and home to millions (if not trillions) of species of life forms that took millions of years of evolution to create. We are growing food on this land to feed the animals we eat (for the most part.) We are creating mass extinction and we are not immune to extinction ourselves as we are dealing in a land of finite resources. Humans are starving right now because we choose to feed their food to the animals we eat. Approx. 50,000 litres of drinking water goes into producing 1 kilo of beef or a gallon of milk. It takes approximately 10 times more grain to feed a "food" animal to eat it than it does to just feed the grain directly to the human being. We can feed 7 billion humans much more efficiently than 100 billion or more land animals. And we are ignoring our moral obligation to protect innocent animals and people who cannot protect themselves. Yes animals in the wild eat flesh but they do not breed in captivity and confine their prey to spaces indoors without space enough to turn around or be comfortable at all during the entire life. These animals are living a life of torture. No wild animal is so cruel to abuse, torture, confine, neglect, overcrowd, beat, cram in cages so small they never move, allow them no exercise, no sunshine, EVER, no movement even! Cut up into pieces while conscious, skin them alive, boil alive, etc etc etc This is common the world over. 100 billion a year we slaughter!!!!! and we kill another 1-3 trillion in the oceans. Non human animals are not capable of cultivating plant crops, however we are. We do not need animal products to survive. Some animals do need other animals to survive we are not one of them - many have proven this. Our intestines are long like herbivores and we have a back up emergency system we are abusing. Animal protein and fat creates disease in our body where plant food does not. We can derive all we need from plants and bacteria, rather than have the animals process this for us. If we focus on feeding the people directly we stop the torture and slaughter. If you eat meat dairy or eggs and you watch how the pigs, cows, chickens, farmed fish etc live you, will see they suffer immensely. When we take from the oceans we risk the lives of the sharks and whales who are essential to the ocean ecosystem. We need to keep it in balance. And the taste for flesh is not worth mass suffering beyond comprehension. We can learn to eat the plants. If you don't have the stomach to watch these videos on how the "food" animals live - it is because you already know it is creating suffering for them. Please stop supporting animal cruelty immediately! We can eat if we grow food for us rather than the animals we breed into existence to consume. We threaten the wildlife when we farm the land to grow the animal food. There is enough food for everyone but not enough to feed and care properly for so many animals! Every social issue is solved by going to a plant based diet and provides a tangible way of knowing who is cruel and who believes all life is sacred. The torture can stop but it takes each and every one of us to make it happen. Violence is a choice. Please stop contributing to lifetimes of starvation, torture, confinement, abuse, and slaughter. Please stop! Let us instead worship all life, not just our own. Let's love and worship instead of destroy, torture, and exploit ok?! Please! We can do this! And we will be better for it!

Monday, December 31, 2012

Benjamin Zephaniah: Why Veganism Is The Ultimate Protest Against Animal Exploitation - YouTube

Benjamin Zephaniah: Why Veganism Is The Ultimate Protest Against Animal Exploitation - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

W5 Undercover investigation reveals disturbing and inhumane treatment of factory farm animals

Undercover investigation reveals disturbing and inhumane treatment of factory farm animals:

Just off a country road north of Winnipeg, in the nearly featureless winter landscape of rural Manitoba, there is a series of nondescript barn buildings. The only hint of what goes on inside is a sign posted in the driveway that reads “Highest Productivity Sow Farm.” It is unlikely anyone passing by would give the place, or any other like it anywhere in Canada, a second thought. That may be about to change.

This Saturday, CTV’s W5 program will broadcast secretly recorded video of how the pork available in major supermarkets everywhere begins its life. It is not easy viewing. After screening it, the CEO of Canada’s Federation of Humane Societies, Barbara Cartwright, predicted Canadians are in for a shock. “They are not used to seeing this,” she said. “They still believe animals are being raised in the old farm style.”

The reality could hardly be more different. The video shows what amounts to a living production line with thousands of pregnant sows, each held in a tiny metal stall where they will spend the nearly four months of their gestation. When they are ready, they are transferred to a slightly larger stall called a farrowing crate where they will give birth. After three weeks, the piglets are then sent away for fattening and eventual slaughter while the sows are returned to the gestation crates, re-impregnated to start the cycle again.

The man who secretly videotaped the operation worked at the barn for nearly three months last summer and early fall. He continues to work on other animal welfare investigations. He agreed to speak about his experiences on the condition his identity is not disclosed.

“The conditions are horrible,” he told W5 in an interview. “Nothing could prepare me for what I saw. There are thousands of pregnant pigs in these crates nearly their entire lives.”

The video also shows piglets having their tails cut, the males among them being castrated, all without anesthetic. Sub-standard piglets are killed using a method called thumping. It consists of an employee swinging the animal by its hind legs, striking its head against any nearby hard object, the remains thrown into a pile, some piglets appearing to be still alive. Sows that are no longer productive are dispatched using a device that fires a bolt into the brain. But it does not always appear to work effectively.

Dr. Mary Richardson, who chaired the Animal Welfare Committee for the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association, viewed the video and wrote, “It clearly shows evidence of abuse and neglect leading to tremendous unnecessary suffering.” An Alberta based veterinarian, Dr. Debi Zimmerman wrote bluntly, “These animals endure a life filled with privations, unrelenting physical, mental pain and emotional distress.” And after watching images of one employee appearing to botch the task of euthanizing a fully grown pig, Dr. Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph, called it, “…the worst cruelty inflicted on an animal that I have witnessed in many years.”

While the images may be disturbing, experts interviewed by W5 concluded that the actions of the farm staff are within accepted industry standards and likely did not break any laws.

The sow farm is owned by a major Manitoba pork producer, Puratone, that is based in Niverville, a town just south of Winnipeg. It turned down repeated requests to be interviewed, but after two weeks of back-and-forth communication with W5 was provided an opportunity to screen the video at its headquarters.

President and Chief Executive Officer Ray Hildebrand provided the following statement: “We are disturbed by some of the images shown in this video, which do not reflect our principles or our animal welfare policy and operating procedures. We have launched an immediate investigation and corrective actions are underway.

“Over our 25 years of farming operations we have strictly followed the provincial regulations regarding animal welfare … and we have two veterinarians on staff to support this mandate.”

The letter implies that the video is highlighting the actions of a few who are the exception in an industry that otherwise, takes animal welfare seriously.

Those responsible for the undercover video disagree. They are part of a group called Mercy for Animals. It is American-based but is expanding north with a new chapter called Mercy for Animals Canada. It says its Manitoba investigation is the first of its kind done in Canada, the world's second largest pork exporter.

The group points out that castration and tail docking without anesthetic, the use of thumping and bolt guns to euthanize, and confinement of animals in tiny stalls are all standard across Canada. But not elsewhere.

Kate Parkes, who is the Senior Scientific Officer for the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals concluded, “Some of what is seen in the video is poor practice and some of it would be illegal over here (in the U.K.).”

Critics of Canada’s standards often cite the methods of confining pigs as an example of how the country is lagging behind others, particularly in Europe. Dr. Parkes said, “Gestation crates are illegal in the U.K. They were banned in 1999 on welfare grounds.” The rest of Europe will follow suit in the new year.

Canada’s pork producers do follow a set of rules, appropriately called the Pig Code of Practice, that hasn’t changed in 20 years. Animal welfare activists say the code was outdated even before it was written.

One of the activists who helped plan the hidden camera operation is Twyla Francois, the Head of Investigations at Mercy for Animals Canada, and well-known to the industry. She argues that pork producers are not intentionally cruel, but are working “…with a set of standards and a system of rearing animals that’s inappropriate and this is the result, unbelievable suffering.”

Canada’s producers agree that the standards are in need of change, but there is reluctance to move quickly. Andrew Dickson, with the Manitoba Pork Council told W5 that the practice of crating pigs was created to protect them from hurting and competing with one another. “We’re being careful with change,” he said, “because with a new system there’s no guarantee that these animals will have the same level of care that we might have had with the previous system.”

And in fact, the whole process of change appears to have stalled. On November 20, the National Farm Animal Care Council that will set the new farm standards wrote, “We know our industry is going through a very bad time financially. At the end of the day, if the producers can not incorporate changes that we’re proposing, their option is either to go out of business or perhaps put themselves in a very negative financial position.”

The industry in other words is arguing that for now, change is a luxury it cannot afford. Animal welfare groups will argue, it is the status quo that the country cannot afford. But the undercover video will give animal activists a powerful boost for their argument.

The image of production lines of animals being bred, raised and killed to provide low-cost meat, cannot be made pretty. It’s why the doors of the Canada’s pig farms have been kept firmly closed. Until now.