Why I Do What I Do

I rarely send something to my entire list.  Today I am sending out my blog posting to my entire email list.
I have many people in my life who think that the vegan choice is just sort of my little thing I do or the equivalent of my religion or is a popular trend and nothing more.  They would not think this if it were me working each day to end violence toward humans. In most human circles, the non-violence education work I do would be considered "more important" if I were working for humans rather than non-humans.
I am sending this out because it is important to not turn our backs on needless violence.  It is not to point a finger at anyone or to say that I am a perfect example of non-violence/consistency.
I am not perfect.  I have inconsistencies in my life.  Like everyone, I do my best with what I know and with the often difficult choices I have to make. 
Most people want to help create a less violent and more caring society.  Some situations seem overwhelming.  How do I personally stop the war in the Middle East?  I have no idea.  Other situations are totally within our power.  How do I personally stop contributing to the war on innocent non-humans?  Here the choices are often within our hands and can be acted on immediately.
Some choices are easier than others.
Whether it is ethical to eat dairy or not eat dairy is not one of the more difficult choices in life.  It is quite clear that we are causing lifetimes of violence and suffering for the pleasure of a bowl of yogurt or a cheese pizza or a dish of ice cream. Most people do not realize this or do not want to make this connection.

Most people do not want to watch difficult/violent footage.  I understand....there are images that I have witnessed that have haunted me for years.  And, it is important to not turn away, especially if the industries are ones we choose to support. 

I am going over to the meditation center to volunteer today.  The center serves dairy.  It is accepted in even the most caring circles.
I know that many of my most politically and environmentally conscious friends are going to say that they only get "humane" or "organic" dairy products.  Most of them have never visited these dairies.  Caring people would not support these farms if they were witness to every step of the process.  Even the most "humane" dairy farm has to deal with the by-product of their industry: the male calves.  They are slaughtered or sent to a veal facility within a few days because the milk meant for them is destined for ice cream, yogurt, cheese and milk for humans who are beyond the nursing age.
There is no humane way around that or the fact that the mothers are slaughtered while still in the prime of their life and become part of the meat industry.
Eating dairy is a slippery slope.  You may start out saying you only support "humane" or "organic" animals products, but when you go out to eat you go ahead and order animal products in your meal without regard for the source.

Please, if you still consume dairy products and decide that you do not want to witness the extremely difficult/violent video attached to this email, there are other, gentler places to get informed. 
Buy some Daiya vegan cheese (the best..) and some coconut milk ice cream and make yourself a comfort food snack while reading through the endless vegan educational material on-line.  Simple Google: Dairy cruelty

Once you read the material you find, you will be more informed.
What you do with that information is up to you.
I hope you will choose to act on what you see.



http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/26/conklin-dairy-farms-animal-abuse-video-goes-viral/

Exactly Len.....Memorial Day As If All Life Mattered

On May 28, 2010, at 8:17 AM, My friend Len Frenkel wrote:

AN UNTRADITIONAL MEMORIAL DAY

Please allow me to express some ideas about Memorial Day that go beyond the traditional. Of course I honor those men and women who have given their time, their bodies, their lives for the betterment of this country or the salvation of another. I honor those unfortunate innocent civilians caught in the crossfire who have lost their homes, their belongings, their lives.

But I also honor those living things and beings, innocent of any crime, who have also lost their place, lost their right to exist in peace, or lost their lives after brutal treatment by humans. I refer to trees cut down, needlessly; to fish corralled in nets by the zillions, needlessly; to mammals that undergo painful testing, needlessly; to animals in circuses and zoos forced to perform unnatural acts or live in constrained spaces, needlessly; to the billions of chickens, cows, pigs, turkeys, sheep and goats that are confined and brutalized for their short lives so that we can eat them, needlessly.

That’s what my Memorial Day is about, and it is a profoundly sad one. When will humans learn to cohabit with other life forms rather than treat them as property to be used for selfish purposes?

Pet Them, View Them, Feed Them, Fall in Love with Them and Eat Them.....

WHICH ONE LOOKS LIKE LUNCH?

 

It is no wonder that human children grow up confused about what constitutes violence and what it means to be compassionate and live our values with consistency........

Here is an ad from the local Quaker e-newsletter:

(I removed the full name and email to give this guy some anonymity)

Roger Y. of River Oak Farm is selling organic Angus beef from cattle he has raised in Micaville. Groups make an order together. He can have 1/2 cut the way a group wants it. People can order with 2,4, 6, or 8 together. The full steer is about 500 lbs. His e-mail is: ay@peoplepc.com. His cell is 208-55**.  Small children may come and feed a calf.

And this from the Christian Science Monitor:

 Hey kids, wanna go to the zoo today and look at the crocodiles? And then maybe eat one? The Beijing Zoo puts the same animals on its restaurant menu as it keeps behind bars. Crocodile, kangaroo, antelope, and hippopotamus are among the species that visitors can go the zoo to admire on the hoof, and then savor at lunch – steamed, braised, or roasted – at the Bin Feng Tang restaurant. This has been going on for years, according to the restaurant’s manager, who seemed surprised that a newspaper article this week about her establishment should cause a stir on the Chinese Internet. The news has not gone down well. “How would you feel, watching animals imprisoned in a limited space while eating their siblings?” asked Zheng Yuanjie, a well-known author, on his blog. The zoo restaurant apparently has the requisite license from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry (which would presumably prefer to see crocodiles and hippos in a soup than in their landscapes) and is quite legal because none of the species on the menu is endangered.  Nor, the restaurant insists, do any of the animals come from the zoo’s own enclosures. Still, the restaurant’s menu makes some people wonder. “The zoo is where we teach children to be nice to animals,” Qin Xiaona, head of the Capital Animal Welfare Association told the daily “Global Times.” “How can we do this after eating them?”
 

*Christian Science Monitor
The original link:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0520/Beijing-Zoo-lets-visitors-admire-eat-wildlife
 

Forks Over Knives - Movie Trailer

I cannot wait to see this film...check out the trailer....fantastic! Two of my favorite people coming together for this film!

Don't Cut Down That Tree!

My friend Daniel Seifert bought my little log cabin in western Wisconsin some years back.  He totally gets that the land belongs to the wildlife and he is a visitor.

Today he emailed me:

"i've been threatening to cut this tree down for years

these little guys must've been the reason i haven't"

And these are the photos he took and attached to the email:

Simple Food

Sometimes the most simple foods are the BEST.
An apple eaten right off the tree in the autumn.  A mango that drips juice down your chin.  Greens munched while gardening.  A handful of blueberries picked on the side of a hill overlooking the ocean.
Here is today's favorite.  Not as simple as raw foods, but this is total comfort food delight.

We got some red rice at the market. 
I cooked up red rice.  I cooked up garbanzo beans that I had soaked overnight.
I put these together with umeboshi vinegar (plum vinegar) and olive oil. 
I added some chopped celery. 
Heaven.
Don't bother asking me for measurements......use your intuition and enjoy. 

Joyful Pandas and Brilliant Bees....

I am working on my book that includes lots of stories of animal intelligence. It is pretty shocking that most humans still think that we are the intelligent species and other species are just sort of animal machines without feelings, thoughts, desires, language, etc. I was reading about animals reveling in freedom. in the book When Elephants Weep. I read this book when it first came out and just pulled it out to re-read some sections today. If you haven't read this book, you are missing out.

Zookeepers, scientists who keep animals in cages in labs and others who make a living from captive animals, usually say/think that the animals just want food and a comfortable place to be, but do not care if they have freedom. In the book there is a story of a two-year old panda at a Chinese breeding center who lives in a dark cage. When she was given a chance to go into an outdoor enclosure, she ran out into the outdoor space, trotted up a hill and again and again somersaulted down the hill. The scientist observing the panda said that she exploded with joy.

It is obvious that zoo animals want more than just food and a roof over their head when they try to escape time and time again.

What is less obvious, and most scientists will argue against, is that all species want the ability to control their own destiny. One study with mice first proved that they had preferences. When given a dimmer switch to control their own lighting, they would turn down very bright lights to a more comfortable level. When left alone they would adjust the lights to their own preference. The mice would also often choose the opposite of the scientist's choice. If he turned the lights on bright, they would darken them and if he turned them off completely they would turn them on very bright. If this same scientist disturbed the sleeping mice they would come out of their nesting boxes and immediately return to their cozy spot. But if he put them back into the nesting boxes, they would come back out immediately and would not stay in no matter now many times he put them back in. This and other studies have shown that they (and other species) care more about choice than comfort.

There is a division in the animal rights/animal welfare community. Some animal rights groups are joining in the fight for "better conditions" for farmed animals. This is a welfare issue, not a rights issue. While I would be happy if the animals we keep captive had better lives, my job, and the job of all animal rights activists is to work for the abolition of this type of slavery. The backlash of the new "happy meat" products is that many people are going back to eating meat and dairy who had once boycotted it. The reality is that there is no such thing as humane slaughter. There is no such thing as happy meat. The animals are all killed before they are old or sick. And even those farms calling themselves "organic" "humane" or "free-range" include practices that no peaceful non-violent person would want to support if they saw the reality. (For more information on this issue, go to www.humanemyth.org). My reason for bringing this up is the connection to animals wanting choice more than comfort. Even if the reality was that "humane" farming practices were really humane, this important element would still be absent for the animals. Like slaves getting nicer living quarters and better food, they still do not have free-will.



We know so little about other mammals. We know even less about insects.

There is no way that humans could recognize individual bee's faces. But, bees, sheep, fish and other non-humans have no trouble recognizing human faces and remembering them later.

One study in Australia found that bees could remember human faces even days after they were trained. The scientists would show the bees the very same series of black-and-white photos of faces (the same ones that are often used to test human memory). The bees got sweet rewards for choosing correctly and sour rewards for choosing incorrectly.




Just more proof that we have barely tapped the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding our big animal family. what I am sure of is that they can comprehend our language and our culture much more than we can theirs. Just ask your dog or cat.




(For the full bee story, go to: www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1532832.htm)