Some More Products of Animal Slavery (Vol. 2)

WOOL

Many people believe that shearing sheep helps animals who would otherwise be burdened with too much wool. The truth is that without human interference, sheep grow just enough wool to protect themselves from temperature extremes. In Australia, sheep are specifically bred to grow excess wool and to have wrinkly skin, which means more wool per animal. The idea that taking wool does not harm the sheep is comforting mythology. Most shearers are paid on a piece rate and not by the hour, which encourages extremely fast work (“gun shearers” can spend as little as 2 minutes per sheep) and many animals end up being severely injured in the process. Besides that, young lambs’ tails are chopped off not long after birth and the males are castrated without anesthesia.

Australian ranchers perform a barbaric operation called "mulesing" where they, without any painkillers whatsoever, slice chunks of flesh from around the animals’ tail area. This is done to cause smooth, scarred skin that prevents flies from hatching eggs between the warm moist skin wrinkles. Ironically, the exposed, bloody wounds themselves often get flystrike before they heal, so mulesing may kill more sheep than it saves, but it still continues. After the operation, lambs can be seen writhing over the ground on their sides, trying to escape the pain.

Once the sheep are no longer producing prime wool, they are shipped to slaughter to the Middle East or North Africa. Only about 17% survive the enduring weeks- or months-long journey through all weather extremes on crowded and disease-ridden ships with little access to food or water, only to be killed at their arrival.

Even though sheep’s wool is the most commonly spread, there are also other sorts of wool like angora, cashmere, mohair or alpaca that all involve similar violence and abuse. As for “cutting” the wool out, there are plenty of lighter and less itchy alternatives out there, including cotton flannel, polyester fleece, nylon, acrylic, orlon, Tencel (breathable and biodegradable) or Polartec Wind Pro (made from recycled plastic bottles with four times the wind resistance of wool).

SILK

The silkworm produces a fine thread by making a figure-eight movement some 300,000 times over several days, constructing a cocoon to inhabit in a state of sleep and casting off its skin. After this the pupa begins the period which would normally result in transformation into a winged moth. However, the pupa would normally begin to secrete an alkali that eats its way through the cocoon — ruining someone’s future silk suit. Therefore, as the cocoons take shape, the silkworms are killed by heat: immersed in boiling water, oven-dried, electrocuted or microwaved.

The silk production terminology - stifled for killed and crop for pupae - echoes the denial that we are dealing with living creatures which are awe inspiring when one considers their metamorphic life-cycle

Plant fibers are capable of producing some great silk alternatives. For example, fibers from the pineapple, silk-cotton tree or milkweed seed pods may be made into fabrics as strong and lustrous as any silk. Synthetic fibers like nylon, polyester (Terylene, Dacron) or acrylic (Courtelle, Orlon, Dralon) also have their qualities.

DOWN

Down, the soft feathers from the breasts of geese and ducks, is either plucked from birds slaughtered for food or from forcibly restrained live animals. Either way, they live miserable lives, packed by masses in confinement inside large warehouses. Birds who undergo live de-feathering may be plucked every six weeks - up to five times during their short painful lives.

The down industry is directly linked to the meat and foie gras production, so the cruelty that ducks and geese endure is as horrifying as for any other factory farmed animal. Let me just derive from the subject fot a little bit and use the opportunity to show you this video on foie gras:

Meant to keep the birds and their eggs warm, down feathers are commonly used in pillows, jackets and comforters, for which it can take the feathers of dozens and dozens of birds to fill. So why rob these millions of birds bare naked if we don't really need down anyway? In fact, hypoallergenic synthetic down, polyester fill, Primaloft or Polarguard may even probably end up weighing less on your wallets, not talking about your consciousness.

And do I even have to mention the use of fur and leather? If you hesitated with answering that then why haven't you still seen the "Earthlings"? It's too scary and sad and revolting? Then go see the wonderful, beautiful film produced by Tribe of Heart called "The Witness" and take a look at this while you're at it.

Step Five (Death in Dairy)

The ethical problems behind dairy are probably of the least obvious ones in the consideration of an average omnivorous or vegetarian consumer. Especially for those who - like me - were used to seeing cows happily munching away the grass and lying in the sun on the green pastures when they were kids. Drinking milk and consuming milk products is encrusted in our cultural mind as something so very natural that we don't give it any thought at all, nor do we question the ways that this stuff gets onto our table. But is it not a least bit troubling that humans are the only animals who drink the milk of another species and do so far beyond infancy..?
That being said, it is even more troubling to realize how little we actually know or care about milk production (and I'm speaking from my personal experience here).

The fact is that cows (or goats, sheep or any other animal we use for their milk) do not naturally produce milk non-stop throughout their whole life just because their stomachs turns grass into the white liquid and because people "help and alleviate the burden" by milking them.* Milk is not nature's or animals' gift to humans. (Is anything?)

As all the other mammals on earth (including us), they naturally produce milk for a period of time after giving birth in order to feed their young. Thus, to maximize milk production and the farm’s profits, cows are artificially re-inseminated shortly after giving birth over and over again. Dairy cows are deliberately bred to produce ten times more milk than a calf would naturally drink. This and the continuous pregnancies put an enormous strain on the young cows’ bodies, often resulting in udder tumors, infections and breakdown. As soon as their milk production declines – at about 4-5 years of age – dairy cows are sent to slaughter, even though they would normally live for over 20 years. Their bodies are so bruised and exhausted by the time they arrive to slaughter that the meat can only be ground up for use in burgers.

Most cows never get to nurse their little ones – calves are separated from their mothers at only few days of age. Female calves are added to the dairy herd or slaughtered for the rennet in their stomachs that is used to make cheese. Male calves are either slaughtered at birth, raised for beef or sold to veal farms, where they will spend the remaining few months of their fleetingly brief lives in confinement (in tiny individual cradles where they can never turn around nor lie down) and darkness, fed an iron-deficient diet in order to keep their flesh pale. That is why, even after refusing to eat any meat, but by continuing to consume dairy, we are directly supporting the cruelty of the meat industry.

The processes are roughly the same whether it is an industrial farm or an organic (bio) farm. I deeply encourage you to read this beautiful letter posted by the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary to take a little glimpse at the faces of organic and free-range farming.

*This may sound exaggeratingly stupid to many, but it was more or less the image I had before I started digging into those questions.

Step Four (What's Wrong With Eggs?)

Besides the obvious fact that eggs are chicken-embryos? Well, let's see...

Battery eggs:

A huge majority of eggs come from factory farms. Egg laying hens are packed by 5 to 11 into small battery cages of about 40cm (the wing range of an adult chicken is twice this size). Their wings and legs atrophy from disuse, and their legs and feet become deformed from standing on wire cage bottoms. The tip of their beak, full of sensitive nerve endings, is seared off in order to prevent them from injuring each other and thereby obliterating the farmer's financial investment.

When their egg production drops, hens are deprived of water and food for up to 14 days at a time in order to shock their bodies into a period of increased laying. This extremely cruel practice, called “forced molting,” causes birds to lose their feathers and a significant percentage of their body weight, many birds die from hunger and dehydration.

After a year or two of being treated as egg producing machines, their output decreases and hens are sent for slaughter. They are so battered and emaciated by then that their meat can only be used in companion-animal food, instant soups or pasties and pies where the pathetic condition of their bodies will not put consumers off their meal.

Male chicks are worthless to the egg industry - they do not lay eggs nor grow fast enough to be raised profitably for flesh. Thus the egg industry kills millions of newborn male chicks every year by suffocating them to death in trash bags or by dropping them alive into high-speed grinders and then feeding them to the chicken.

Now you might say "yeah well that's just in the US, but the situation is much better in Europe!". Think again. Eggs = food = profit anywhere in the world. It is true that the European Union is planning to ban all the battery cages by 2012, but we are not there just yet. The Estonian company TallEgg has "battery eggs" written all over it. Indeed - the problem is not abstractly "elsewhere", it is right here inside our omlets and our mousse au chocolat.

Free-range eggs:

Free-range is not a legal industry term; therefore it basically means nothing. It is used by farmers to imply a more humane way of production, but in reality there is no regulation regarding how the word is interpreted. Thus, to most producers this merely means a bigger cage.

Free-range farming is still about business where profit surpasses concern for the animals' welfare and comfort. And even if free-range hens were treated with kindness and given all the grass and sun and space, they will still be killed for meat as soon as their egg production drops, even though a hen could live about fifteen years in a natural environment. And like all the other animals raised for food - they will be subjected to the horrors and abuses of transportation, handling and slaughter.

Besides, the appellation bio- (or organic) and free-range is becoming more and more profitable because more people are starting to become "aware" consumers. Bob and Jenna Torres make very interesting points on this phenomenon in their podcast.

Alternatives:
And last but not least: we don't really need eggs - unless you crave for a dose of cholesterol and salmonella. In fact, they are quite simple to replace in all your cooking:

2 tbs of corn starch or 2 tbs of potato starch = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy flour + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

1 tbs of soy milk powder + 1 tbs of corn starch + 2 tbs of water = 1 egg

2 ts of corn flour + 2 ts of water = 1 egg

For cakes you can also use some ripe mashed banana or apple sauce. Tapioca powder works well as a binding agent. Obviously there are numerous other alternatives out there like the Ener-G egg replacer for baking or silken tofu for that "scrambled eggs" effect, or even eggless mayonnaise... In the end it's not so much a question of need nor even comfort, as about making concious and responsible choices.

"No matter what words or systems are used to candy-coat animal production, when we treat sentient beings as commodities, we invariably invite abuse." (Joanne Stepaniak)

Step One

If you are here on my blog and reading this post then hopefully you are willing to hear me out...
So I would like to benefit of this privilege and share with you some of the things that I hold very dear, hoping that you might understand (wherther you know me in person or not). This will be the prelude (The dress rehersal I should say) to my explaining and reassuring and facing scepticism etc that I feel is yet ahead of me. But this is not about me, it is about everything that is and should be important.

So step one: If you haven't yet seen or heard of the film "Earthlings" and if you are still reading my post inspite of the crappy and confusing intro, then please go and watch it, it's available here. I'm not sure about how legal and thus lasting this Internet-available version is, so check it out before it's gone. But I must warn you: unless you suffer of severe compassion defficiency, you will probably need some hankys to go through it. It's probably best to watch this alone or in a close company, at least for the first time. So please take a moment to sit down and go through the whole lot of it right away... (You can come back here and finish reading the post afterwards if you want, but I thinks it's important that you see this first).

click here to watch

After you've watched it (or if you've already seen it), you might feel hopeless and powerless (maybe even unwilling) to change anything. Or you might feel like doing something, anything about it... That's how I felt anyway - and here I am, writing this post. I assure you - even the smallest effort is already a good start and the fact of having watched the film through shows you have consciousness and interest regarding these questions...

Letting other people know about what you've just seen is the first reflex I guess. Tell your friends, send them the link, put it in your MSN personal message, your blog, your internet site - anything might work to spread the word. Then you might want to find out a bit more about these things. Meat.org - for more precisions on the food issues; The 11th Hour - for a more global and less hard core view on how serious the problem is (this is what inspired me to believe that I can actually do something) ; Sharkwater - as extremely overlooked as it is important (unfortunately "Earthlings" did not feature the shark finning issue), this film is being screened all over the world and should definately be seen by the biggest possible number of people. This was also where I first found out about the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and which gave me the last positive push I needed... The last two films are unfortunately not available directly on the internet, but they should be downloadable (sorry Rob and Leonardo, but the cause is more important than the copyright!). This is not about some commercial stuff or profit, it's - I repeat - about everything that's important on this planet and for our generation...

The conclusion of this post is not long, but sincere. If you have been patient enough to see "Earthlings" and are still with me: thank you..! Keep tuned for the upcoming.

Part 2 or How All Of The Sudden It Became So Easy To Be A Vegetarian

I spent the whole night watching interesting videos and looking for information around the net and what I found... well... there are things that just break my heart and things that infuriate me and make me feel ashamed of being a human. Sometimes I think that it's maybe just best to give up and not do anything, to ignore everything that's going on and just wait for the end of it all, hoping that in the end nature survives and humans will be just one more species extinct in the course of the evolution (not that I'm really sure about the whole concept of evolution, but that's another story)...

But then there are also things that give hope and make me want to do something - anything - to help and support the ones that are actually accomplishing things in battles against time and money and powerful corporations... I hope some people will agree...

This video of Captain Paul Watson (from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) is part of those hope-giving things. If you don't really understand what the hell this post is all about and the video here is too long and you don't have time to watch it then I suggest you go see a film called "The 11th Hour" or even better - the one that I just discovered with awe yesterday called "Sharkwater" (and which was the reason I stayed up all night, surfing around to get more informed). Wathc it ASAP and I'm sure that, as I, you might suddenly find the time and the motivation to want to see and hear more.. to go further in the investigation of what's really going on and maybe even act on it.

As for the title of my today's story: it's maybe the recent accumulation of the people i've talked to and the things i've seen and heard and thought. And maybe having watched "Sharkwater" just before also helped shifting something into place. Anyway, there is something in what Captain Watson says here that just made a click in my head and all of the sudden it became so easy to be a vegetarian... I just had to put this out here (as to respond to my previous post) and share what I'm thinking. Now I'm wondering if someone might get a similar reaction, so let me know what you're thinking too...

PS: during the time you spent reading and watching this, about 5000 sharks were slaughtered. To find out more go see the film...