Animal Person

On Blue Marbles and Vegan Stories

As you may know, I've ghostwritten several dozen books, a dozen of which are about personal finance, and several of which were New York Times bestsellers. Furthermore, my husband is a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) who manages the money of a bunch of families in addition to my measly retirement accounts. Measly, as in, if I weren't married to him I wouldn't be able to invest my money with him because I don't have enough.

Vegan and otherwise-activist friends constantly ask me for investment advice, which of course I am not qualified to dole out, but I can sometimes point them in a helpful direction. I must first say that I think everyone should have a financial planner who communicates with them about their goals and needs and time horizons (i.e., when you'll need what money), and of course their principles.

Principles are what cause most problems for vegans regarding investing, as there are few options for the (financially) average person. When you eliminate all of the industries you don't want to support, and when you consider that most funds have many companies in them, most funds will have a company or two (or ten) that you don't want to support, not to mention the exact companies (though not the general make-up) of the fund are not static. This is not even close to an ideal situation.

Another thing that trips up many vegans--in my experience--is that their anti-capitalism stance translates into not appreciating money or how necessary it's going to be when they reach 65. I know I've said this before, but needing money for retirement is real. Most of us are going to reach an age when we are not as appreciated as when we were younger, and that will be reflected in our dwindling opportunities for income generation (again, this won't happen to everyone, but it is most often the case). How are you going to take care of yourself after you're 60 or 65? Do you know how much money you'll need for food, health insurance, a home, a car, and the insurances they require?

Recently a couple of people close to me who have gone vegan and are unabashed capitalists, noted (and this is just one quote that expresses the sentiment): "What's with all these vegan people wearing their poverty on their sleeve?" Granted, that's a judgment from a person entirely on the outside, who has peeked in for all of three hours (he went to his first vegan gathering), but there is a grain of truth in it, at least from what I've seen in 20 years.

Okay, enough of the lecture. Today I bring you Blue Marble, a "Socially Active Investment Firm" that "specializes in services that serve green and social investors with SRI accounts such as: Retirement, College, Trust, Estate, Business, Non-Profit and Charity." (SRI means socially-responsible investing, by the way.) The site has great calculators in the "info kiosk," and you can invest with under $10,000 (I pretended I wanted to start an IRA with under $10,000 to see if that was possible, and it was), which doesn't happen too often when it comes to highly-specialized investments. There are also helpful and informative articles, graphics and slideshows, and I found that nothing was condescending.

You won't agree with everything or all of their choices, but if you're looking for a way to invest or even for some venture philanthropy opportunities that might return some cash (that's the way I look at some investments), Blue Marble might be a good match for you.

And finally, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine needs your vegan success story.

Have you been able to improve your health with a vegan diet?

Have you lost a significant amount of weight from being on a vegan diet and kept it off? Have you had success in treating diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, migraines, acne, or some other condition with a vegan diet? Well, we need you!  

Please share your experience with us so we can share it with others. We often hear from journalists looking for success stories and we may want to put them in touch with you, feature you in one of our publications, or post your experience to our Web site. If you have a compelling story you're willing to share with the press, please submit your story here.               

Thank you and we look forward to hearing about your success story soon. Due to the large number of submissions, we will be unable to contact each person individually.

Questions can be sent to success@pcrm.org.

Appreciate our "tiny, lovely, and fragile blue marble" today, and every day.

On Racehorses and Ignorant Neighbors

Jane Shakman's Letter to the Editor under "The Welfare of Horses" in today's New York Times is about welfare rather than abolition, however its other points are worth recognition:

• "But let us also give thought to the thousands of horses that are bred every year for racing and don’t make the cut or outlive their usefulness to the investors and owners." Ah, if she only wrote "who" are bred I would have been more thrilled. Then again, the editor would likely have "corrected" her.
• "Most wind up auctioned off for a few dollars each and sent to the foreign slaughterhouses to be made into pet food or dinner for someone overseas. Even the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand ended up in a Japanese slaughterhouse because he wasn’t proving his monetary value as a stud."
• "It’s not just the injured horses that suffer. It’s the thousands of faceless colts and fillies we never see that suffer from this so-called sport."

Most Americans are ignorant about the process that creates a horse, and then what happens after the horse no longer wins. When I let my thoughts about the Derby known to a neighbor who invited me to his Kentucky Derby party (few people in my community know I'm a vegan, and the others don't even know what it means), he told me that "those horses live better than we do," and that of course they love racing.

Now, this is a 60-year old man who has a green grill shaped like an alligator, that is longer than a pick-up truck (and is in fact hitched to one). Every weekend he shovels coal into it and, in his driveway, he grills hundreds of pounds of nonhuman animal flesh, and I have to close my windows so I don't spend the day with the stench of charred corpses. (I live 100 yards away and it feels like the grill is in my living room.) I'm not sure what he does with all of the meat, but I do know he isn't supposed to be doing it according to our association rules (he's not even allowed to have the 8-foot high, 15-foot long grill-gator shaped or not), but he's in law enforcement and therefore apparently above all kinds of laws.

I tell you this because this man is the last person who would ever understand veganism. He still goes to the track to watch Greyhound racing, and whenever he sees me he asks about the racing careers of my dogs. And every time I tell him that none of that matters to me, that they have to be rescued for a reason, and that I don't think we have any right to breed them and race them. It's like Groundhog Day whenever I see him. He doesn't hear a word I say, and it's not as if I'd ever make an impact anyway, so my attempts are admittedly half-hearted.

I was particularly annoyed with this man as I walked past his house on Saturday, complete with a huge Kentucky Derby flag (another thing we're not permitted to have). I said that perhaps if he knew everything involved in horse racing, he might not find it worthy of a party, and he promptly demonstrated that he knew nothing and was in fact gravely misinformed. I told him I didn't believe we had the right to create and use horses, at which point he looked at me with a blank face. I had no desire to talk to him and was late for an event already, and said: Look, I don't want to hurt anybody if I don't have to. I don't want to kill anybody if I don't have to, I don't want to eat anybody if I don't have to, and I don't want to bring anybody into this world just so I can try to make a buck off of them. Enjoy your party.

I walked about twenty yard then turned toward my house, and out of the corner of my eye I could see he was still standing, motionless, staring at me. Within two hours, Eight Belles was dead.

When I walked by the grill-master's house yesterday with the dogs, he very sheepishly said hello, and said nothing about Greyhound racing or horse racing.

On Defining Ourselves as Most Intelligent

Did you read "Lots of Animals Learn, But Smarter Isn't Better," by Carl Zimmer in yesterday's New York Times? It begins with:

Why are humans so smart?” is a question that fascinates scientists. Tadeusz Kawecki, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg, likes to turn around the question.

“If it’s so great to be smart,” Dr. Kawecki asks, “why have most animals remained dumb?”

Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.

The odd thing is that intelligence appears to be defined as the ability to learn. You know, like how we have learned that smoking is deadly, yet many of us still do it, or that many animal products are very unhealthy yet most of us still eat them.

Reuven Dukas, a biologist at McMaster University spends his days breeding generations of fruit flies so he can experiment on them and demonstrate how well they learn (according to him) and what the cost is for that learning. Supposedly, as his knowledge of "intelligence" in "nature" increases, he "will understand more about humans' gift for learning."

“Humans have gone to the extreme,” said Dr. Dukas, both in the ability of our species to learn and in the cost for that ability.

This begs the question: How smart are we if we continue to do things that put us, individually, or as a species, in mortal danger? And why would you need to breed and manipulate generations of fruit flies to ask or answer that question?

In today's NYT, Verlyn Klinkenborg asks similar questions in "The Cost of Smarts." He begins with:

Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are.

And he ends with:

Research on animal intelligence also makes me wonder what experiments animals would perform on humans if they had the chance. . . . I believe that if animals ran the labs, they would test us to determine the limits of our patience, our faithfulness, our memory for terrain. They would try to decide what intelligence in humans is really for, not merely how much of it there is. Above all, they would hope to study a fundamental question: Are humans actually aware of the world they live in? So far the results are inconclusive.

What irks me, but what many (including scientists!) do not appear to notice, is that the definition of intelligence--and even of learning--is based on what we have and do, and which of our behaviors or traits we want the "subject" to manifest. It's completely speciest. We should leave other species alone, and try to figure out why, if we're supposed to be so smart, we're such a mess and we've irrevocably abused our own home. What is this intelligence we're so proud of?

On Reactions to Eight Belles

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke and was left with a condition called Locked-In syndrome, where he was fully conscious and aware of everything around him, but was almost completely paralyzed and couldn't speak. He realizes in the first scene of the film that he thinks he is talking, but no one can hear him. It's like one of those dreams where you're screaming as loud as you can yet no one reacts at all.

This is how I've been feeling about Eight Belles, and about animal rights in general. There are these people from an organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who have become the voice of animal rights on Planet Earth, yet they don't represent animal rights as I understand it and live it. And the world is listening to them and judging me according to what they say.

Furthermore, people who have chosen livelihoods that center on the exploitation of nonhuman animals for profit, like Eight Belles' owner, Rick Porter, are not stopped in their tracks when they say things like:

“I support horse racing 1,000 percent. There are some ugly parts of it, obviously. There are also some spectacular parts of it. There are ugly parts of every sport. There are people who get paralyzed in football. This is a tragedy that happens in horse racing. It’s hard to put the blame any particular way. It’s part of horse racing.”

First, "1,000 percent" is a pet peeve of mine, but I'll concentrate on something more important, like the absurdity of comparing people who choose to play football and end up paralyzed, with horses who in no way give their consent to race, and then are raced to their death. In addition, to say "it's hard to put the blame any particular way," is inaccurate. It's easy. Mr. Porter bought (or bred) Eight Belles with the hope of winning money from her body and her running. He put her in the race, and she was killed. He owned her, dominated her, controlled her and exploited her, and her blood is on his hands. If she had won the race, I bet Mr. Porter wouldn't find it so difficult placing credit or glory somewhere--like in his own hands.

Now, without a society where nonhuman animals are commodities and most people blithely go through their days giving no thought to the realities of the enslavement and slaughter of sentient nonhumans for no good reason, Eight Belles wouldn't exist to be killed. But we do live in that kind of society, and it's up to each individual, each day, at each meal and with each purchase or donation, to change the way our society views nonhuman animals.

It's also necessary that we're honest about what we want. PeTA states:

Eight Belles' death is yet another reminder that these horses are raced when they are so young that their bones have not properly formed, and they are often raced on surfaces that are too hard for their bones—like the hard track at Churchill Downs. Eight Belles' jockey whipped her mercilessly as she came down the final stretch. This is no great surprise, since trainers, owners, and jockeys are all driven by the desire to make money, leaving the horses to suffer terribly. 

Though I don't disagree with any of that, that is not an animal-rights argument. And the litmus test is: What are they proposing? What do they want to see?

PETA is calling on the racing industry to suspend the jockey and trainer, to bar the owner from racing at the track, and, at the very least, to stop using young horses who are so susceptible to these types of horrific injuries. We're also demanding that the industry stop racing horses on hard tracks and switch to softer, synthetic surfaces, which would spare horses' bones and joints, in addition to calling for a permanent ban on the use of whips. Help PETA call for an end to cruelty masquerading as sport by using the form below to take action today.

Although Eight Belles' death, like Barbaro's before hers, made headlines, countless lesser-known horses suffer similar fates—their broken legs and battered bodies are simply hidden from public view. Most racehorses end up broken down or cast off or are sent to Europe for slaughter.

Please use the form below to join PETA in demanding that the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority institute sweeping reforms that would stop needless, preventable suffering and cruelty in the racing industry.

Please use this form to . . . institute sweeping reforms that would stop needless, preventable suffering and cruelty in the racing industry. This is a classic welfarist strategy: use the horses differently so only the suffering and cruelty that are necessary remain--like breeding, training, drugging and racing them against their will. Oh, and their ultimate slaughter.

I'm feeling like Jean-Dominique Bauby, yelling "No, no, that's not what I want! That's not animal rights! The Humane Society of the United States would probably ask for the same thing, and they don't even pretend to care about animal rights! I want to see an end to the breeding of horses for use by humans. Period. That's the only way to prevent all suffering and cruelty at our hands."

If I want to maintain my integrity, I must propose what I want. Even if no one can hear me.

On AFTERSHOCK, by pattrice jones

I finally read pattrice jones' AFTERSHOCK: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World-A Guide for Activists and Their Allies, and found multiple points of entry, probably the most significant being the trauma of being lied to about nonhuman animals. Not just by my parents, but by my American "culture," by my teachers, and even by my therapists (one of whom asked me at age 15: You seem upset that the animals are being killed for food. Why is that? She did her best to make me feel mentally unstable for wanting to stop eating animals.).

Sure, there have been other traumas, such as from being a witness to extreme poverty in Haiti or the annihilated towns and orphaned children with missing limbs (or with limbs intact) in Bosnia. Or visiting a slaughterhouse. But being lied to and made to feel crazy for being cursed/blessed with experiencing the pain of nonhumans and the planet, is a wrong that is not easily forgotten. ("Any idea that creates or maintains an unnatural division both makes trauma more likely and makes recovery from trauma more difficult" [19]).

Let's get to my favorite passages (and they are all quotes, but all of the quotation marks were maddening so I removed them):

• One of the myths of human superiority is that we can transcend our feelings, while other animals are bound by theirs. This goes along with the idea that we can and should supercede our bodies, while animals are always bound to theirs (14).
• Like me, you may not entirely understand how your body managed to break food down into energy and mass for you to use to live and grow. But, if you think about it, you can see that your body--your self--is literally made up of things that used to be outside of you . . . . The interactions between nature and nurture begin before you are born, multiplying each other so that their effects cannot be untangled (33).
• People who enjoy privileges rooted in the violent exploitation of others are likely to use violence in defense of their pleasure. Activists who actually succeed in redistributing wealth or power run the greatest risk of backlash. That's why the government has cracked down so hard on earth and animal liberationists (who have cost exploitative industries hundreds of millions of dollars) while leaving antiwar activists (who have not yet lightened the pockets of war profiteers) to stage their marches and rallies in relative peace (42).
• I live at a chicken sanctuary in an area dominated by the poultry industry. If our neighbor who operates a factory farm were to come onto our property without permission in order to takes pictures of the birds at our sanctuary, he could be charged with trespassing. If I were to go onto his property without permission in order to take pictures of the birds locked on his farm, I could be charged with a kind of terrorism (57).
• Activists working within aboveground organizations have more people to talk to and more overt support, but they sometimes must grapple with unhealthy group dynamics. . . . [such as] highly professionalized non-profit organizations that have embraced corporate culture and the highly hierarchical political parties that expect their members to subordinate themselves and their identities (92).
• Movement norms about what is and is not permissible to do, feel, or talk about can exert as much if not more pressure on people to conform (93).
• [V]egans, unlike flesh-eaters, never stop noticing the violence inherent in meat (149).
• As any grade-school friend of family member of a dedicated activist can tell you, it's not always pleasant to be in a real relationship with a person who is always thinking and doing things about problems that most people would rather forget . . . . Every vegetarian who has ever attended a family dinner at which meat is served knows that all you have to do is sit there quietly not eating meat for people to feel attacked about their own food choices (158).
• Memory is a kind of connection. Like trauma survivors, traumatized communities and cultures constantly struggle with the conflict between remembering and forgetting. Most often, the most powerful forces are aligned on the side of forgetting. Often, their very power depends on forgetting. That makes the task of remembering that much more difficult and that much more important (185-6).

We have all been traumatized by the lies we've been told about our relationship to nonhuman animals and the Earth. We have all been conditioned to be disconnected from "nature," and empathy with any being who is not human isn't exactly encouraged (except in the case of cats and dogs, which is simply another layer of dishonesty, as if cats and dogs aren't like chickens and cows).

Activists and their allies are in need of support. We need to listen to one another and tell our stories. Some of us need to write and be read as a way of dealing with trauma.

You all know people who are, to some degree or another, engaged in activism that drains them, angers them, frustrates them, and leaves them vulnerable (which is also how they started). Be gentle with yourselves and kind to one another. We're such a tiny minority in this world, and to spend a lot of time attacking one another is to give exploiters an easy path to destroying us.

On Barbaro and Eight Belles

This is Eight Belles, a filly who fractured both of her front ankles, moments before she was killed on the track at yesterday's Kentucky Derby. My first Animal Person post, on May 22, 2006, was called "Barbaro Made Me Do It." Six months later I wrote "Barbaro, The Final Chapter," which garnered the obligatory "horses love to run" comment.

As I mentioned yesterday, I didn't care if the race when swimmingly. I don't care if the horses live at the Taj Mahal. Horses shouldn't be made (as in both bred and forced) to race for humans--for profit or otherwise. The New York Times' "Filly's Death Casts Shadow Over Big Brown's Derby Victory," by Joe Drape, is remarkable in its lack of emotion (but second to "Triumph, Tragedy at Derby," by Mark Blaudschun, who mentions Eight Belles exactly once, saying she "broke down after finishing second, breaking both front ankles, which necessitated her being euthanized."). Drape writes:

Big Brown hit the wire nearly five lengths ahead of Eight Belles, but moments later, there was heartbreak. While Kent Desormeaux was galloping out Big Brown, Eight Belles fell.

She had fractured both of her front ankles, said the Derby’s on-call veterinarian, Dr. Larry Bramlage, and was euthanized on the racetrack.

Later he writes:

It was a sorrowful end note to what had been 2 minutes 1.82 seconds of scintillating horse racing, punctuated by the bravura performance of Big Brown.

And here's what Big Brown's jockey had to say about Big Brown:

He’s intelligent. That’s the difference. He’ll stand like a statue if I ask him to.

Oh, you do what I want you to do = you're intelligent. That's a new definition for me.

As expected, Drape presents questions about track surfaces, racing fillies against colts, and breeding. As if all of that will solve the problem. As if any of that is the problem.

Eight Belles was driven to her death--literally--in 2.182 seconds. Drape writes:

For Jones [her trainer] and the grooms and exercise riders who had cared for Eight Belles, it was a devastating end to what had been a wonderful weekend. . . . “She went out in glory,” he said, his voice breaking. “She went out a champion to us.”

She didn't go out in glory. She went out in vain.

A better article in the NYT is "Race Illustrates Brutal Side of Sport," by William C. Rhoden, who writes:

Why do we keep giving thoroughbred horse racing a pass? Is it the tradition? The millions upon millions invested in the betting?

Why isn’t there more pressure to put the sport of kings under the umbrella of animal cruelty?

The sport is at least as inhumane as greyhound racing and only a couple of steps removed from animal fighting. . . .

But this isn’t about one death. This is about the nature of a sport that routinely grinds up young horses.

Rhoden gives us a different lens to watch trainer Larry Jones through:

But even through the grief, Jones instinctively toed the industry line about racing. . . . He also refused to concede the point that horse racing is an extremely dangerous sport, saying that these types of injuries occur in any sport.

Rhoden is no animal rights advocate, but what I do like about him is that he appears to believe that horse racing should end because it is as brutal as, well, let him tell you:

Why do we refuse to put the brutal game of racing in the realm of mistreatment of animals? At what point do we at least raise the question about the efficacy of thousand-pound horses racing at full throttle on spindly legs?

This is bullfighting.

Eight Belles was another victim of a brutal sport that is carried, literally, on the backs of horses. Horsemen like to talk about their thoroughbreds and how they were born to run and live to run. The reality is that they are made to run, forced to run for profits they never see.

Finally, "Is Horse Racing Breeding Itself to Death?" by Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post, makes me want to scream, "No, horse racing is racing horses to death!" Jenkins begins with:

The camera cut away from her, but it should have stayed on her. Eight Belles had run herself half to death yesterday, and now the vets were finishing the job as she lay on her side, her beautiful figure a black hump on the track.

What Jenkins wants I agree with: Everyone should have been required to watch as Eight Belles was killed (NBC cut away from her after she fell). If Jenkins were calling for an end to horse racing, she would have said so. But she's concerned with the "moral crisis" that thoroughbred racing is in and how to remedy it. The surfaces need to be changed and the way the horses are bred and trained must be changed ("A Kentucky Derby horse has to run a mile and a quarter on a dirt track around two turns by the age of 3. It is the horse equivalent of asking a college kid to play in the Super Bowl.")

She writes, "They need to be given the bodies to accommodate their hearts." After all, we "give" them bodies; we create them for our use. And that, Ms. Jenkins, is the real problem.

I'm sure that every publication will be flooded with letters. Remember to keep it short (under 150 words), include your full name, address and phone number, and don't rant. You can send letters regarding the referenced articles to: letters@nytimes.com, opinions@washingtonpost.com and the Boston Globe has a form for your e-mail message at the end of the article.

Here's the NBC footage, on the Huffington Post, which already has eight pages of comments. Watching the owners of the winner in ecstasy over "their" win, is, I warn you, not a pretty sight.

Comment on Kentucky Derby Stories

Every newspaper in the US will have a story about the Kentucky Derby today and then tomorrow. Regardless of whose leg gets broken, who wins, who has to be "put down" either today or weeks from now, or if the race is uneventful, it needs to be stopped. Abolished. I don't care if everything goes swimmingly today, as that's not the point.

I read a Huffington Post comment about the derby by Purple Girl who wrote:

Although an awesome race, a historical tradition. I am still one who is concerned that these young horses are pushed to their limits before they are physically capable of really handling it.
Granted more is being done to care for those who don't cut the mustard. but often they have been broken down so early in life by merely the training they spend their lives in pain and discomfort.
I wish the TB racing commision would consider pushing the ages up for these horses- when they have reached a more physically mature age for such grueling work.
Arabians don't even start training young horse until they are late into their 2nd year and then it's ground work first - then saddle, walk, trot, canter. Often not seeing a show ring until they are well into their 3rd yr.
I love to stand at the fence when the horses run by- but I know how many Others have been unable to hold up to the intense training.

This is exactly the type of comment I don't want to see. I do not think it is "an awesome race" and the fact that it is a tradition is no excuse for using horses to race. Horses have been used by humans, nonstop, since shortly after they were unfortunate enough to meet our acquaintance.

Yes, there are culls. And yes, making babies race their underdeveloped bodies is cruel. (And remember, horses, like Greyhounds, may love to run, but they don't love to race. Just ask my defiant boy Charles who refused to race for The Man and was discarded, and if he wasn't so gorgeous he would've been killed. Other animals are more easily "broken," a word which I don't need to explain).

Purple Girl is not an animal rights advocate, or at least I hope she isn't as her strategy is primed for backfiring. We should wait to race them. We shouldn't push them too hard. But watching them race is "awesome." We must find a way to use them a bit differently so we can still get what we want from them (notice how I don't say what we "need," as we don't need anything from them) without so many of their bodies breaking. Fewer broken bodies would be better.

The way to fewer broken bodies is clear and waiting for us to choose it. Stop breeding horses. Stop killing ("culling") horses. Stop racing horses.

I love to stand at the fence of my local horse sanctuary and watch the horses run by, if they are so inclined. And I love to see them stop when they feel like stopping.

Go online to your favorite publications and comment. Write letters to newspapers. The derby is once a year, and there will be people writing about cruelty and killing (they'll say "culling") and changing the surface or the training schedule or whatever. But there won't be as many people saying that we have no right to create horses and make them race. This "tradition" is nothing to be in awe of. It's domination and enslavement for profit, period.

Help Peaceful Prairie Spread the Word

Michele at Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has the opportunity to purchase ad space in a mainstream magazine for the following two ads that would run side-by-side (2 pages total). The ads are also ready for easy and inexpensive duplication if you'd like to hand them out (you can even do a two-sided handout!). I'm going to send a handful to my friends who are vegetarians and who find meat disgusting and don't see any connection between meat and their beloved pizza or eggs Benedict.

Michele needs to raise $15,000 immediately. I know it's a lot, but it's also a great deal.  I've sent a check for $1,000 (the original amount was $16,000). Please circulate this ask widely in the hope that the milk-drinking, egg-eating world will be confronted with the reality that a vegetarian diet isn't any less cruel than an omnivorous one.

(Click on the images to enlarge them.)

I had never seen the dairy ad before and my heart broke at the sight of it. I look forward to the responses of the handful of people who have asked, "What's so bad about pizza?" The egg ad you've probably seen in one form or another.

Please note that the line at the bottom, about the ad being sponsored by Libra Max, is there because the exact copy I present here was in the Genesis Awards program. The magazine ad won't have that copy, unless of course one or a couple of people fund the entire remaining $15,000 and wish to have their names on the ads.

On Desperate Times and Intelligent Measures

In "Clipping, Scrimping, Saving," by Jane Black in today's Washington Post, we meet Marti Tracy, who is feeling the effects of the global food crisis.

Let's deconstruct:

• How is the impact of the crisis manifesting itself in the life of this woman, you ask?
  
  • She has given up organic meat and is buying organic milk only for her 2-year old son rather than for the whole family. If she only knew her son doesn't need milk, she'd be able to cut her spending even more!
  • She has also stopped buying single-size packs of food or juice and stopped going to multiple stores. I think that's great, as the packaging of those convenience items is dumped in landfills, and being more efficient in your shopping is smart and saves energy and is better for the planet. Every little bit counts.
  • "I find the whole thing a huge hassle, but I've reached a tipping point," said Tracy, a government human resources specialist who is pregnant with her second child. If she were pregnant with her third, I'd have something to say about population growth, but alas, I can say nothing. I can say something about "hassles," though, and that is that Americans are finally realizing what the rest of the world has long known: That decisions that are the best for the planet usually involve some "hassle," and we're so spoiled and feel entitled to live the most comfortable, easy, convenient lifestyles, that we complain about having to change a habit, even if it wasn't a particularly positive habit. Some people are smartening up, which is great. But they're doing it while kicking and screaming and acting resentful.
• The prices of eggs, milk, white bread and ground chuck are up 35, 23, 16, and 8% respectively.
  • "And while the total rise is far less drastic than elsewhere around the world, the sharp hike for staples means everyone is feeling the pinch." I beg to differ. For those of us who don't eat eggs, milk, white bread and ground chuck, there is no such pinch. To say "everyone" is inaccurate. Perhaps an alteration in both eating and shopping habits would ease the "pinch."
  • "We are in shocking new territory," said Todd Hale, senior vice president of consumer shopping and insights at Nielsen Consumer Panel Services. "With the exception of the very affluent, everyone is looking to save by altering where they shop, how they shop and the brands they buy." And with the exception of vegans, I'd imagine. My grocery bill and shopping habits haven't changed at all. (But I could be the exception--how about you?)
    
• But wait, there actually is an acknowledgment that changing what you eat is possible.
  • "The crunch for American shoppers pales compared with the challenges faced by those in the developing world. Americans spend just 9.9 percent of household income on food, according to the Agriculture Department. Compare that with poor countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh, where it's not uncommon for families to spend 70 percent. Diets also are more varied here: If the price of milk or flour jumps, shoppers can opt for other items." Yes, and this might be a great time to opt for bulk quinoa, millet, barley, lentils and beans, and lots of fresh fruits and veggies!

There's a lot more in the article about people changing the way they do things and the reality that food is relatively inexpensive for us (because of subsidies, although that goes unsaid), although I don't think most Americans understand that their food, even with the increases, is still inexpensive. One final quote, by a senior citizen, was stunning:

"We're that older generation that feels we need to have food to feed half the block if they happen to get hungry. I am not stuffing the freezer anymore. I just buy what I need when I need it, or I try to use up what I already have. That's a form of cutting back I haven't done in the past."

I guess for older people that might in fact be a form of cutting back. But it is very odd--and telling--that buying what you need and using what you have would be considered cutting back.

On Industry-Funded Studies

Here's the link to the Wall Street Journal article. And here's the Pew report.

On a Petition That Worked and Property Rights

If you are a member of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, you probably know (via Good Medicine, their magazine) that just south of me, in Broward County, Ashley Capps, a 10th grader at Everglades High School, circulated a petition that was signed by 100 of her classmates to persuade the administration to offer more vegetarian and vegan options.

At the request of a Broward County school board member, PCRM nutritionists helped the district's food service department  . . . . [and] PCRM president Neal Barnard, M.D., visited each school to speak to parents and administrators about the healthfulness of vegetarian options (13).

The article also notes that according to a recent Harris Interactive Poll, the number of vegetarian teenagers has tripled in the last 10 years.

If you want to work toward more options in your district's schools, PCRM's Healthy School Lunches campaign will help you with the process. I continue to support PCRM because they have few issues, and they tackle them well. They want people to go vegan because it's healthy. They want animals out of labs (largely) because it's bad science and there are alternatives. They're organized, professional and rational (i.e., not hysterical) in the way they present their messages, they have free, helpful material for all of their campaigns, and they always provide quick, as well as not-so-quick actions you can take.

With regard to property rights, on the New York Bird Club discussion board, marilyn asked:

I wanted to know since animals are on the law books (from my understanding as propert)-who is in charge of changing such a law so that cruelty to animals is not taken so lightly with not much punishment. The laws need to say that animals are sentient creatures and that cruelty is a felony with many years jail time. Anyone have information for me. thanks.

You don't have to be a member to chime in, so if you're inclined, go for it!

On THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS

THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and  Empathy--and Why They Matter, by Marc Bekoff, is similar to Jeffrey Masson's ALTRUISTIC ARMADILLOS, ZENLIKE ZEBRAS (which I reviewed last year) and PLEASURABLE KINGDOM, by Jonathan Balcombe (which I wrote about in 2006) in that it's a useful tool to combat speciesism.

Without ever using the word "speciesism," Bekoff demonstrates that the emotions we are so certain are unique to humans are indeed not (e.g., love, grief, joy, embarrassment, jealousy), and also some cognitive capacities, such as thinking about the future and living by a moral code, are not unique to humans either.

Before I list some of my favorite quotes, I must say that Bekoff does not believe we should be using animals, however in the interim he believes we should work to improve their welfare and their living conditions while we are using them (135). Also, there are many instances of calling an animal "it" (18, 33, 150),  and euphemisms such as "put to sleep" (16).

And now, to the favorites:

• It's because animals have emotions that we're so drawn to them; lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication (15).
• Rather than presuming that fish feel less than mice and that mice feel less than chimpanzees, or that rats aren't as emotional as dogs or wolves, or in general that animals feel less (and know less and suffer less) than humans, let's assume that numerous animals do experience rich emotions and do suffer all sorts of pain, perhaps even to a greater degree than humans (22).
• [H]umans can be selfish, unfair, and uncaring, and their moral codes can sometimes be self-servingly hypocritical. Just take a cursory glance at the front page of the newspaper: the murder of a family during a robbery is considered unacceptable, but not so killing in self-defense or as part of a distant, "justified" war. Humans can lie, steal, and cheat, and they can justify their actions so they never feel "wrong." At times, indeed, it can be hard to imagine how anyone could consider humans morally "above" any other animal beings (91).
• [I]t is becoming clear that many moral behaviors originate in emotional centers in the brain--a neural architecture that humans share with other animals (104).
• [The] "survival of the fittest" mentality, which pervades so much thinking and theorizing, is increasingly not supported by current research as being the prime mover in evolution. . . . Animals certainly still compete, but cooperation is central in the evolution of social behavior, and this alone makes it key for survival (107).
• Cognitive ethology  . . . relies on anecdotes, analogy, and anthropomorphism to reach its conclusions. They have traditionally been "dirty words" in science, since they smack of the subjective and the personal . . . . But are people who resist these A words themselves reacting out of personal or professional bias? (113).
• No longer do researchers have to clean up their language and sanitize their prose by using quotation marks around words such as happy, sad, jealousy or grief. Animals don't merely act "as if" they have feelings; they have them (120).
• [W]e all recognize and agree that animals and humans share many traits, including emotions. Thus we're not inserting something human into animals, but we're identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe. . . . Claims that anthropomorphism has no place in science or that anthropomorphic predictions and explanations are less accurate than more mechanistic or reductionistic explanations are not supported by any data (125-6).
• We must not simply continue with the status quo because that is what we've always done. What we know has changed, and so should our relationships with animals (133).
• [T]he precautionary principle . . . maintains that a lack of certainty should not be an excuse to delay taking action. Sometimes we have to act based on our best judgment, because we may never have "all" the facts, and if we wait for absolute certainty, we might never do anything . . . . We may never know everything that goes through an animal's mind and heart, but we don't need to (137).
• I could no longer abide the killing of any animal, no matter how humane the process, simply for it to become my meal (150). Please note that on the same page, Bekoff promotes mitigating the worst abuses on farms and promotes free-range chickens and livestock.
• [Z]oos operate with two express purposes: one is to educate the public about animals and conservation, and the other is to help preserve species. These are laudable goals, but they rest on two shaky premises. One is that zoos can actually succeed at them, and the other is that zoos can adequately care for their charges. As for their goals, there is insufficient evidence to know the extent to which zoos actually educate visitors or if zoos play any significant role in species protection . . . . So if zoos don't really educate and aren't important for species survival, can they at least be trusted to nurture their animals? Unfortunately, too often the answer is no (152-3).
• If we continue to allow human interests to always trump the interests of other animals, we will never solve the numerous and complex problems we face (162).
• The separation of "us" (humans) from "them" (other animals) engenders a false dichotomy (162).
• No one is an object or an other; we are all just us (163).

As you can see, Bekoff walks the line between his personal belief that we shouldn't be using animals, and his prescription to care more about their welfare when the rest of us use them. I would recommend the book for all animal rights activists to bolster their information regarding the emotional and cognitive capacities of other species, as such ammunition comes in handy, particularly with people who own and claim to love dogs (and that's a significant part of his argument--that dogs aren't unlike us in many ways, but likewise other animals aren't unlike dogs in many ways). However, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to someone as a way to help them change the way they live their life, as that could easily backfire into the world of humane veal and providing more enrichment to animals being tortured in labs. Though Bekoff does speak of use, he speaks far more of suffering and ways to reduce it, and that concerns me.

On the Saving of Individuals

Deb Durant and I have written (her far better than I) about the mountain lions at the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona for months, and I'd like to ask everyone a favor.

I talk a lot about seeing animals as individuals who have an interest in their own lives, free from the domination and torment (to say nothing of the slaughter) that occurs when we humans find a use for them or decide that they're in our way.

We have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of, at most, a handful of mountain lions at Kofa. That difference, for them, is that between life and death, as the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) has decided the cougars (/pumas/mountain lions) should being collared and killed ("lethally removed") because the population of bighorn sheep is lower than it was in 2000, yet higher than it was last year. (Yes, you read that right.)

If you're thinking that it makes no sense to vilify and kill natural predators, particularly when their prey population has actually increased, and you must be missing something, you indeed are missing something: that tags for the hunting of bighorn sheep are a source of revenue for the AGFD, so they want to have as many bighorn sheep on the Kofa NWR as possible . . . . so people can kill them. You don't see AGFD calling for a decrease in people killing mountain lions. . . .

Hunting:

The 2008 season will commence on December 1, 2008, and run through the month.  The results of the 2007 season are available in the January 2008 monthly update.                            

Mountain lions--the natural predators of the sheep--are being blamed for the fact that there are fewer sheep than in 2000, yet more than in 2006, yet there are myriad other reasons for sheep population decline and/or mortality. The report prepared by the Kofa NWR and the AGFD describes other factors, including:

• Population response to drought
• Water availability
• Biological considerations (they are slow to recover, as a species, anyway)
• Disease
• Human disturbance
• Translocations (to reestablish populations elsewhere)
• Hunting ("Hunter success rates have averaged 89% for bighorn sheep on the Kofa over the last 20 years"-p. 19).

The Yuma Sun article Deb referenced a couple of days ago has a lively comments section and you can "Recommend" the article as well as individual comments. Please, at least do that (I did!). You'll find that even hunter Daniel Patterson agrees that the slaughter of mountain lions at Kofa is unethical. He writes:

The real problem here is the unethical tactics of AZ Game & Fish using GPS collars not for real research, but to track and kill rare low desert pumas. I'm a hunter and most other hunters will agree it is unethical to use GPS collars to track and kill pumas.

Bighorn populations on the Kofa are going up -- something AGFD seems to not want to talk about. Between 06 and 07, the agencies estimate the bighorn population went up significantly from 392 to 460 animals. We should all be glad the bighorn population is going up, and the gov't should be honest about it.

The Kofa is a National Wildlife Refuge that needs ecosystem management, not single-species bighorn game farm management.

And now for that favor I was talking about . . . Please read letter from the US Department of the Interior regarding this issue. There is a "scoping period," which basically is a window for providing input that began on April 24 and will close on May 24. Please either send an e-mail to KofaLionComments@fws.gov or send a letter expressing your thoughts and feelings over this situation, and specifically saying that there is no need to kill the "offending" pumas (not to mention it's unethical) to:

US Fish and Wildlife Service
Southwest Arizona National Wildlife Refuge Complex
356 West 1st Street
Yuma, AZ 85364

The "Project Description" on the last page of the letter states it:

"is to allow for the limited removal, by government agents, of individual lions identified as regularly preying on sheep. The lethal removal of 'offending lions' in order to recover and manage bighorn sheep would be used when population levels of sheep fall below an identified threshold. A mountain lion would be considered an 'offending lion' if it preyed on more than one sheep in a six month period."

Lethal removal. Offending lion. More than one sheep in six months. And hunting season has not been affected.

Please write and save a handful of individuals in Arizona.

The Difficult Thing About Going Vegan

A while back, Dan commented that the most difficult thing about going vegan is the most difficult thing about life in general--other people.

Well, other people don't appear to be making life any easier for the Milwaukee Brewers' Prince Fielder, who has become a vegetarian.

Let's deconstruct:

Fielder and his diet have become as delicious for critics as the rib eyes he used to love.

“Fans last year were yelling at me, ‘Hey Prince, eat a salad!’ ” Fielder said during dinner at a Milwaukee restaurant last Tuesday. “This year they’re saying, ‘Eat a steak!’ I feel like going: ‘Keep yelling, buddy. You’re still in the stands.’ ”

Great comeback.

Fielder, 23, decided to make the switch over the winter after reading how cattle and chickens were treated and “was totally grossed out,” he said. His wife, Chanel, preferred a no-meat diet as it was, so he embraced a new approach.

Two things jump out:

1. He did it because of the treatment of the animals, yet didn't include milk products and eggs, which just might contain more suffering than a hamburger. Someone ought to tell him that.
2. His wife eschews meat, which is great because he has support at home.

I have a question about something on the following page that I don't understand:

Names of any other baseball-playing vegetarians remain a mystery; the tight end Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs last year became a vegan [but not really], meaning he also eschews eggs and dairy.

Not quite so draconian, Fielder still has received advice on his new diet from Leslie Bonci of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Not quite so draconian?  Is the article's author, Alan Schwarz, referring to veganism as draconian? I don't understand.

Brewers fans do not seem quite so comfortable with their brawny slugger becoming so refined.

Refined? That was an interesting choice, don't you think?

Dan Ricksetter of Milwaukee added: “It was a bit disheartening when he decided to become a vegetarian. Brats are intrinsic to our culture. They’re the breakfast of champions. I’m not sure which sport.”

Perhaps Mr. Fielder realized that culture is no excuse for torture.

You can write to the New York Times about Fielder and the article referenced above at letters@nytimes.com. Maybe congratulations are in order, maybe you want to point out that milk products and eggs are not without hideous cruelty. Here's Fielder's page on the official Brewers site, and here's the fan feedback e-mail page.

On Petitions and Grizzly Bear "Actors"

The proposed budget cut in the State of Florida that would have involved a dramatic reduction in funds for foster youth and emancipated foster youth has been rejected, in part (from what my contacts tell me) due to the overwhelming response from Floridians, like me, who signed a petition and called legislators to register their discontent. Over 2,500 people signed the petition! my contact enthusiastically reported.

Wow. 2,500.

That doesn't seem like a lot to me, considering the millions of people since I became an "animal rights activist" in 1986, who signed petitions to stop the seal slaughter. And who continue to sign.

I have had numerous petition experiences with positive outcomes when the issue had to do with humans, and particularly if it was an election year. I signed a petition a couple of years ago to ban gestation crates (yes, that was me, thinking the elimination of gestation crates would lead to veganism, mea culpa, mea culpa), and I know that similar welfare reforms that are a win-win-win (allegedly) have succeeded.

However, I have yet to see a petition produce any change that I would campaign for. (And I welcome suggestions, as it's not as if I have a list in front of me so I could be missing something.) It makes sense that no abolitionist measure would come from a petition, as the economic reasons underlying the use of animals will always prevail, for now. And then there's the reality that legislators are supported by the animal-exploitation industrial complex.

The fact that it only takes a couple of seconds to sign a petition isn't a plus, in my mind. Everyone knows it's a no-risk venture, it takes virtually no time, there's no commitment attached to it, and no money. It does make a statement when delivered, I'm sure, particularly if it has hundreds of thousands of names on it (or even thousands, as with the Florida budget petition). But how strong can that statement be when it took so little to create it (especially if it was created on the Internet)?

When I first started working with nonprofits and raised the meager $3,000 it would take to go, with two other teachers, to Haiti to deliver medical and school supplies in 1991 (can you say coup d'etat? And debacle?), I was given a bit of advice I'll never forget. I was collecting clothing to bring to the children and amassed so much I had to ask the people in the community to stop sending me clothing and give it to a certain local church that served homeless children. A nun at the church wasn't surprised by all of the clothing. She said (after she expressed her gratitude): "That's what you get in middle class neighborhoods. They give you clothing--and anything else they don't want--and they sign petitions. That's what they think supporting a cause is. Just don't ask them to do anything that would actually cost them something."

A nun said this. Ouch.

This is probably me being cynical again, but I have the old-school notion in my mind that when you believe in something and you want to change the way things are, there must be sacrifice. I don't find in this lifetime that you get something for nothing. And I find it difficult to believe that massive social change of the variety I'd like to see is going to come from signing petitions.

But I could be wrong.

I already know what some of you think because you e-mailed me and made me want to write this post, and I thank you. I suspect a lot of people will disagree with what I've written.

But I could be wrong.

Finally, I was going to post about "Hollywood Grizzly Bear Kills Trainer," but I have little to say other than: What did you expect?

On Speciesism and the Relanguaging of Reality

The primary reason I wanted to blog was to point out the way our language belies our behavior when it comes to nonhuman animals. The relanguaging of reality to conjure up a contrary image used to be a mere fascination for me. But now it's a cause for worry.

I worry that the average American doesn't find anything odd about the phrase "humane slaughter." I worry that the concept of "ethical veal" can actually make someone feel good about eating a calf. I worry that the "lethal removal" of cougars (and read Deb for commentary and action to take), despite including the word "lethal," doesn't cause more ire.

And when I read that some people might not want to eat veal because it comes from a baby, I find myself thinking: So you'd rather him suffer longer before you eat him? 

And for those upset by the prospect of eating a baby, what about lamb? What about eggs? Here's an educational tale that goes under the category of Too Much Information, but it's worth telling.

INT: DOCTOR'S OFFICE

Mary is getting an ultrasound of her ovaries.

MARY

What's that?

TECHNICIAN

That's a follicle, you know, it holds an egg.

MARY

    (pointing to oblong bubble)

No, that. What's that?

TECHNICIAN

Oh, that's a sac of fluid. It came from the egg when you ovulated.

MARY

Oh, so it's like the egg cracked and that's the egg white. Just like with eggs you have for breakfast.

TECHNICIAN

Exactly. . . . Wait . . . I never thought of it that way . . . Ewww.

MARY

I'm so glad I don't eat eggs.

It is odd that they're called eggs, though. Amazing that we haven't created a word that would make them sound less like what they really are. Then again, as my technician who looks at human eggs all day demonstrated, it's altogether possible that most people aren't connecting the idea of an egg with the reality of an egg.

I worry about the culling of birds, mushing dogs, Greyhounds, race horses, day old chickens and sea lions, as if culling them is a relief, as killing them would have been cruel.

I worry that when I speak of the enslavement of animals, people get offended, as if enslavement is a condition applicable only to humans. I worry that we don't refer to what we do to animals as rape, when we are indeed raping them, according to several definitions.

I worry that when I comment that "what I find most unsettling is that there is no hint that bringing sentient beings into existence for the sole purpose of dominating, exploiting and slaughtering them, when there is no need to, might also be some kind of crime," someone named evie responds, "for 1 split second I thought you were speaking of humans. Yikes."

Speciesism, in addition to our propensity for wanting to turn away from the atrocious things we do, has created a jargon that is now common usage. Those who exploit nonhuman animals have been allowed to label what they do and what they "produce," and the mainstream public has lapped up and incorporated their language, thereby lulling themselves into a false sense of what it means to be humane or just.

So what can you do? Attend to the precision of your language, and clarify the language of others when you can, whether in conversation or in a letter to the editor or a producer. Yes, we could all spend entire days doing this; I'm aware of that. But we are such a minuscule minority, and we need to step up and combat the lies that have become reality for most people as they become unwitting accomplices to the multi-billion dollar business of dominating and slaughtering sentient beings and destroying the planet.

A Smattering of Things to Do

This week has brought many interesting suggestions of things Animal People can do to get the word out--whatever your word is (after all, we are not clones).

Bea informed me that Dirty Jobs, on The Discover Channel, will feature . . . .

Inside an Indiana dairy farm, Mike learns how to milk a cow and use a blow torch to clean her udders. Then, Mike gets the inside scoop on how to inseminate a cow. Finally, Mike gets an up-close look at fatherhood as he helps deliver baby calves.

I accidentally saw several minutes of the episode where Mike gleefully, and to romping, silly music, checks the sex of day old baby chickens, and tosses the males to their deaths. This is a popular show, and millions of people are now aware that male chicks are killed on Day 1 or 2 and I haven't heard anything about egg sales plummeting as a result, so though the audience might be upset about some of what they see (and it is likely to be presented in a delightful manner), I suspect dietary and consumer habits will not change. And that's not the intention of the show, anyway. I'd be curious to see who the advertisers are for that episode.

If you are so inclined, watch it, deconstruct it, and let me know how it all goes. Write to Mike Rowe and the producers of the show and let them know what you think (here's a message board).

Next, I didn't follow Pope Benedict XVI's US trip, but I hear that 100 white doves were released at his New York and Washington DC masses. The New York Bird Club was aflutter regarding this information, particularly considering the Pope's (alleged) love of cats is well known. There's some confusion over whether the birds were doves or white homing pigeons, as if they were the latter it would be acceptable. There are six pages of discussion on the board, including suggestions for what you can do if this is something that offends you.

Penultimately, if you haven't visited Water Footprint.org and calculated your individual water footprint, do so and then use your results in discussions with vegetarians and omnivores and anyone else interested in the environment. Do NOT use the quick calculator , as it doesn't distinguish between vegetarians and vegans, and your results will have an enormous dairy component to them that you cannot control. You might want to rethink your coffee consumption and quit said habit (it takes 140 litres of water to produce 1 cup of coffee, compared to 35 litres for a cup of tea). And you'll need to know that 1 kilogram=2.20462 pounds.

Also, there are slides that provide very useful tidbits on the home page, but Safari apparently doesn't support them (yet doesn't say anything about their existence), while Firefox does show them. This tells me that there might be other parts of the design that I'm not seeing with Safari.

I'm a bit confused about "Industrial goods consumption" being judged by my gross yearly income. That enormously skews my water footprint, yet I purchase far less than the average person. And to use gross income rather than net makes no sense to me. It appears that there's a lot of judgment factored into the equation. Nevertheless, the information on the site is useful for conversations with meat and dairy eaters, as it helps them see that if they call themselves environmentalists, they might want to change what they call themselves or change their behavior.

Finally, Deanna wrote me asking for help with:

  . . . finding a way to stop the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, UT from building a proposed new polar bear exhibit. The Hogle Zoo had a polar bear several years ago that died from an intestinal blockage caused by ingesting a glove that had been thrown into his cage. I had seen that polar bear in person and it was a most depressing sight. This was Salt Lake City in the summer which is blazing hot! The poor bear was in a really small concrete and bar cage and it was just pitiful. Now they want another polar bear and are campaigning for donations for a new exhibit. They have already received a $3 million grant from a local philanthropic
organization. It will probably be several years before the exhibit has enough funding, but I would like to marshall some resources to stop it before it gets started. There are so many logical arguments against building this exhibit, not the least of which is that the money it will take to build it could be put to better use protecting the Arctic. I know it always comes down to money and power and I am not at all sure where to start. . . .

I am not choosing one animal over another to focus on. I think zoos of any kind should be abolished. The reason for my focus on this particular zoo and this particular exhibit is that it does not yet exist and has the possibility of being stopped and the possibility of educating the public about protecting the polar bears' natural habitat if they are to be saved - not putting them in zoos in the high desert. It just seems that stopping this exhibit would be a huge step in making people sit up and take notice and realizing that zoos are not the conservation havens that their PR people try to make them out to be.

Any suggestions?

• Does anyone have evidence that starting online petitions actually works? I just signed one against budget cuts for child welfare in Florida (they will dramatically affect funds available for foster and former foster youth), because a good friend asked me to, but I do wonder about their efficacy.
• I suppose Deanna could start a blog or an organization dedicated to stopping this endeavor, and/or partner with the local animal welfare groups or animal rights groups.
• Writing letters to the editor could be helpful.
• And writing to city commissioners (that's how it works down here--it's all about the city commissioners).
• Going to council meetings with a group and getting on the agenda to publicly discuss this, unless the zoo is private.
• Contacting the Utah Zoological Society Board of Directors, which runs the zoo, is definitely a good idea.
• If you know any big donors--or can even amass a bunch of smaller ones--who can let the zoo know that its customers aren't happy with its plans, that could be helpful.

As I run around today I might think of others, and I'll be in and out to publish comments if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks, as always, for reading and writing.

On Absurdity and NYT Editorials

An editorial in today's New York Times, called "Million-Dollar Meat" is screaming for letters to the editor. I haven't been writing as many letters for animal rights as I usually do, as my commitment to blogging daily (and at least a couple of times a week at the recently-launched www.marymartinphd.com) is my priority, and sometimes that's all my day allows.

The back story is that PeTA is "offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to produce and bring to market in vitro meat."

Let's deconstruct:

• The Times is "disgusted by the conventional meat industry in this country, which raises animals — especially chicken and pigs — in inhumane confinement systems that cause significant environmental damage." So is everyone else, and there's absolutely no risk in writing that. In fact, they'd sound like barbarians, at this point, if they took any other position.
• Naturally, the Times believes that: "There is every reason to change the way meat is produced, to make it more ethical, more humane." Without fear of sounding like a broken record, I am disappointed that such bright, articulate, educated people fail to consider slaughter without necessity as unethical or inhumane, regardless of the conditions the animals are kept in. But they will explain themselves, in a remarkably unsophisticated manner, in a moment. First, however, they must exacerbate the existing confusion over what animal rights is.
• "But the result of the technology that PETA hopes to reward could be the end of domesticated farm animals." What's so bad about the end of domesticated farm animals? They're only domesticated because we made them so, and we only made them in order to dominate and exploit them.
• "This has often seemed as if it were the logical conclusion of some radical animal-rights activists: better for animals not to exist at all if there is a chance that they would suffer." Seems as if it were the logical conclusion is confusing to me. First, seems as if it were often tells me that the editorial board at the Times isn't clear about what animal rights is and hasn't been properly introduced to the idea that domination and exploitation are at its core. Next, it is a logical conclusion that bringing animals into the world for the sole purpose of using them isn't right, and I don't know what's so "radical" about that idea. Finally, I don't think that last clause is the point of animal rights. The idea that it's better for animals not to exist at all if there is a chance they would suffer is inaccurate. I would rewrite it as: better for animals not to exist at all than to be brought into this world for the sole purpose of being dominated, exploited and slaughtered for no legitimate reason. But because of all of the focus on cruelty, this misunderstanding about animal rights has become ubiquitous.
• This editorial is a perfect example of what happens when you focus on cruelty: you open the door for what the Times "prefers," which is "a more measured approach."  Once you couch your objection in the language of suffering, you have no choice but to accept any resolution that seeks to reduce suffering, otherwise you look like you're against reducing suffering.
• Of course, this is the direction the Times chooses, with its declaration that we should: "Ensure the least possible cruelty to animals, by all means, and raise them in ways that are both ethical and environmentally sound." Again, the editorial board, word people that they are, might want to further explore the notion of "ethical," and ponder the place of dominance, exploitation and slaughter in their definition.
• The next sentence contains a notion I found embarrassingly unsophisticated, not to mention absurd: that we should "also treasure the cultural and historical bond between humans and domesticated animals." It is not a bond that we are treasuring; it is bondage. What kind of a society treasures involuntary servitude in 2008?
• Surprisingly, the penultimate sentence articulates the substance of animal rights as I know it, yet it appears that the editorial board isn't aware of what it has done when it states: "Historically speaking, they exist only because of the uses we have found for them, and preserving their existence means, in most cases, preserving the uses we have made for them." Exactly. The editorial board might want to think about what that means.
• We end with: "It will be a barren world if the herds and flocks disappear in favor of meat grown in a laboratory tank." Animals wouldn't completely disappear, and there are more food animals in sheds and factories than in herds or flocks.

What's amazing--but not really--about that last sentence and much of the editorial, is that it celebrates the idea that we bring animals into the world for our use. And that the Times thinks it would be a damn shame--a barren world--if we didn't get the opportunity to continue to use them the way we wish to. If the Times understood animal rights in terms of nonviolence and social justice, I wonder what kind of "measured approach" they'd be able to conjure up?

Letters can be sent to: letters@nytimes.com.

How is Earth Day Like Mother's Day?

How is Earth Day like Mother's Day? People think they can celebrate, express their gratitude and give the Earth or their mother/s a rest for one day, then go back to neglecting and trampling on them the next day--and for the rest of the year.

That's the nature of holidays, though: a quick acknowledgment, which is supposed to be better than none. It's a gesture.

The cheeky "What Killed Earth Day? Too Much Fuss and No Bother," by Hank Stuever in today's Washington Post ends with:

Finally, Earth Day died the minute they canceled that Earth Day concert here on Sunday. Because of rain. Because of lightning.

That sort of wussiness won't save the planet. Earth Day died because, it turns out, saving the Earth is going to be very complicated. It is going to require attention spans, intelligence, sacrifice and lawyers and more than one day a year. To save the Earth, Earth Day had to go.

Earth Day is survived by its longtime companion, Mother Nature.

Respecting the Earth and its inhabitants isn't achieved by shifting consumption from one provider of goods to another, although when you need to replace something, shifting to a "greener" (as opposed to more greenwashed ) product is certainly desirable. (Check out Freecycle, where you might be able to get what you want, free of charge, from someone who wants to give it away.) It's not accomplished through buying a different kind of meat or egg.  If you're serious about ending the exploitation of the Earth, you'll buy only things--and that includes food--that you need. Eating to live rather than living to eat doesn't mean you don't enjoy your food and look forward to each meal. To me, it means your food decisions are based on what your body needs to function optimally. It also means that if there's something you crave, such as an animal product, you make the decision for others--a decision that is far more important for them--that you are going to refrain from killing them for your meals. Eating to live can include eating in such a way that allows others to live.

People want to hear that they can honor the Earth for a day, only to return to their destructive practices the following day. People want to hear that they can care about animals and not want to harm them, but still eat their flesh, secretions and excretions. But the jig is up, and we know that that's impossible.

On Cameras in Slaughterhouses

I'm categorizing this post under Gray Matters, among other things, because I'm ambivalent. As many of you know by now, as a result of the investigation at the Hallmark slaughterhouse, Congress is calling for video cameras to be installed at slaughterhouses.

This is from Erik Marcus:

Such an action wouldn't stop all slaughterhouse abuse but it's a vital
step in the right direction.  On Friday I recorded an eighteen minute
podcast about this:

http://www.vegan.com/2008/04/18/bonus-podcast-glass-walls-and-video/

And, as a result, one of my listeners started a petition on the Care2
site, calling for Congress to pass legislation mandating the
installation of video cameras inside all United States
slaughterhouses.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/video-cameras-in-slaughterhouses

Won't you take two minutes to visit the above web page and to sign
this petition . . .

Elaine wrote a post for the Daily Kos about this issue here.

My question for you all is: Are you going to sign the petition, and if so, why? If not, why not? What does it mean for you to sign the petition?

My opinion is that this is no way related to animal rights and will not lead to animal rights. It just might lead to some people going vegetarian or vegan because it will provide slaughterhouses with those glass Linda and Paul McCartney spoke of. Maybe it won't, as we don't know if all (any?) of the footage will be for public consumption.

One thing I'm fairly sure it will lead to--and this is just logic talking--is that slaughterhouse workers will be on their best behavior for the cameras, while they mutilate, torture and slaughter sentient beings in perfectly legal ways. And what I see in our future is slaughterhouses using the footage to demonstrate that the animals are not suffering unduly (of course, that's a ridiculous statement, but you know you're going to hear about how they're being treated humanely).

Perhaps the footage might lead to the alteration of some practices. Perhaps not. Remember, the cameras aren't so you can see how horrible it is in the slaughterhouse--they're for oversight. They're supposed to catch the person who thinks it's funny to sit on a turkey or throw chickens against a wall for fun or sexually molest a pig. They're supposed to make sure that business goes as it should in a slaughterhouse.

And if no problems are found, a slaughterhouse might use that fact in their marketing. You won't even have to pay more for happy meat, then, because you can get less-abused met from Tyson (or wherever).

What I would like to see if I'm going to spend my time and energy on a campaign, and I know I've written this many times, is evidence that it will help my cause. My cause is the liberation of animals, and not only don't I think cameras in slaughterhouses will lead to it, but I think the entire idea might backfire, making even slaughterhouse meat into happy meat.

I'd be thrilled to be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps I'm just being cynical. But this act by Congress could turn out to be a boon for animal slaughter companies, depending on who is allowed access to the footage, and what exactly would constitute inappropriate or cruel action. I don't want to hear that business is going the way it should in a slaughterhouse. I want to hear that we're not going to be slaughtering animals.

Intention is a powerful notion, and the intention here is to catch things that shouldn't be happening, not things that are customary for the industry. That doesn't help my cause.

On the Spirituality of NOT Eating Animals

You may recall that a couple of days ago I was experiencing frustration with people who call themselves spiritual, yet manage to incorporate eating animals into their brand of spirituality. To be fair, traditional Western religions (i.e., not mysticism), at least according to their doctrines, incorporate animal products, so I do understand why someone who calls herself Catholic might find nothing unacceptable about eating animals. It's the Eastern types that confounded me, as ahimsa (nonviolence, non injury) is a tenet, and nonhuman animals are explicitly included. Eating meat is the ingestion of suffering on a spiritual level, and I'm not sure what kind of mental acrobatics have positioned my friends (and some commenters on Rethos) to say otherwise.

Eric suggested directing them to Dr. Will Tuttle's World Peace Diet, which I had forgotten about, probably because it's the book closest to what I believe so it didn't create any stress, conflict or dissonance in my mind. (That's just how my mind works. Or doesn't.) You can direct people to a 340-page book, or you can ask them to watch a video, or you can do both. I'm doing both.

Here are some of my favorite points to ponder for those who believe they can eat animals with love and deference:

• "Seeing beings rather than things."
• We are attached to food, religion and our cultural story, but why?
• "In our culture, we practice the art of disconnection." Anyone who meditates or does yoga knows that repetition is the mother of mastery.
• When you harm others, you're harming yourself even more.
• "Whatever we do to animals, we start doing to people."
• "Perhaps the reason we have all the problems we have is the mentality required to have an unending supply of flesh and fluids."

I think my new strategy is to ask my friends to watch the video. It certainly isn't a substitute for reading the book, but it does raise important questions and present valuable information (like his story about the monastery in South Korea that has been vegan for 650 years). His personal journey will no doubt be  particularly interesting to my friends who have had similar paths.

I'll let you know if my new strategy yields any desired outcomes.

What Can YOU Do About The Food Crisis or Climate Change?

In response to those who have written saying, "I'm a vegan--the food crisis and climate change aren't my fault! What else can I possibly do?" (or something like that), I pass that question back to you. Let's come up with some ideas.

I tomorrow's NYT Magazine, "The Green Issue," there are some good ideas and some that won't apply to you because they're animal based and the NYT hasn't gotten around to taking the connection between animals for food and climate change seriously. They do have an entire section called "Eat," wherein the penultimate tip, "The High Price of Beef," states:

Trimming the amount of meat Americans eat would not only help the planet — a mere 20 percent reduction is the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius — but would also be likely to reduce obesity, cancer and heart disease. Until recently, it was only animal rights groups like PETA that were willing to ask Americans to forgo the pleasures of the flesh. That changed in January, when Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and a vegetarian), uttered four little words: “Please eat less meat.” He continued: “This is something that the I.P.C.C. was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.”

Other than that, unless I missed something, the "production" of food that comes from animals doesn't appear to be a serious problem.

With regard to the food crisis, every article I've read has at least one sentence regarding the connection between eating animals and global hunger. But sometimes only one sentence.

So what can someone who's already being part of the solution contribute? Here are some thoughts:

• I find many vegans to be single-issue focused. I'd like to see more discussions that connect other issues relating to nonviolence and social justice (and the environment) because I think they make going vegan an even stronger idea as it's part of the solution to so many issues. (Part, as in: aligning actions with beliefs.) I also think that when you present veganism as necessary if you're serious about climate change, nonviolence, etc..., it's tough for someone to accuse you of loving animals and not people (which is ridiculous, but we all know people who do that) because your issue isn't with the treatment of animals--it's with promoting justice.
  
• Educating others about why veganism is an integral part of a plan that would ease the food crisis and climate change (not to mention create a healthier, thinner population in the ever-fattening West).
• Stop buying products made with corn. You may have already done that. I'd also add rice to the list of products not to buy. Even wheat. And here's why: demand for corn, rice and wheat (and of course meat) are in large part what's causing the crisis (though it really is more of a distribution crisis). And often when people learn of a supply and demand crisis, they rush out to buy as much of the product as possible, thereby exacerbating the problem. To flip that situation (and this is also true when investing--you don't buy when prices are high and the stock is in demand--that's when you get out!), whatever product is experiencing market stress is one to avoid as to not add to the stress. Besides, there are people who need that rice and wheat a lot more than you do. Eat more quinoa. It's better for you, anyway.

What do you think?

On the Eating of Meat with Love and Spirituality

Almost two weeks ago, I posted Is "Compassionate Carnivore" and Oxymoron? on Rethos, and encountered an idea I haven't seen for a while: that you can eat meat with "love" and "deference," and if you do so your behavior is "morally sound."

I truly believe it is morally sound. With deference, love, and an understanding of the proportions of nutrients the body needs, eating meat can be ethical.

I tried my best to respectfully disagree with the gentleman who wrote that, but it wasn't easy for me. I have many people in my life who are spiritual, though very few who would call themselves religious. Some believe in a god, others don't. All were raised within the Judeo-Christian model, yet as adults they're now more in a Hindu-Buddhist model. And here's what I get from the ones who used to be vegetarians or vegans (some of whom lived in ashrams, which are usually vegetarian as they use ghee):

Spiritually, I believe that if you express your gratitude and bless your food and the animals it came from, eating some meat is okay. After all, it is all karma and (similar to what the gentleman who wrote the above comment concluded) "the living must eat the dead, for the dead to live again."

It takes every ounce of self-restraint for me not to say, "Dogs are scavengers and eat the dead. You wanna do that? Go for it. But what you are doing is paying someone to breed, dominate, exploit, mutilate and slaughter someone. Is that part of your whole poetic circle-of-life scenario? Does that sound karmically correct?"

I am aware of how rude I sound, but I do happen to be surrounded by spiritual-types, and I find them more adept at rationalization than the average person. And the crux of it all is that spirituality trumps everything and in fact INFORMS morality. So if you can justify something with spirituality, morality is PRESUMED.

Do you see my problem?

Any advice for dealing with these loving, compassionate, meditating, chanting, well-meaning yoga-doers?

On The Global Food Crisis, Part Deux

For at least 10 days, my mailbox has been inundated with links to articles about the global food crisis. I'm currently working with a group directly affected by the crisis, and it has begun to see food riots. I tell you this because I'm the only person involved in the initiative who is a vegan or--and this is far more important--understands the connection between how we eat here in the US and why there doesn't appear to be enough food for developing nations. If you're going to work directly with people who are starving, it would seem to me that engaging in a lifestyle that contributes to that starvation is not the optimal way to behave.

Though most mainstream publications in the US connect not just biofuels to the food crisis, but meat consumption also, they don't concentrate on the latter (as I discussed in The Global Food Crisis and Crimes Against