“For The Animals It Is An Eternal Treblinka” By Sharon L. Wallenberg

In the words of Nobel Literature Prize Winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, “How much longer, God, will you look on this inferno of yours and keep silent?  What need have you of this ocean of blood and flesh whose stench spreads across your universe?  Have you created this boundless slaughterhouse merely to show us your power and wisdom?”  He also said that The Sixth Commandment – “Thou shalt not kill” should apply to all God’s creatures, not just human beings.  “What do they know – all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world – about such as you?  They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation.  All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated.  …for the animals it is an external Treblinka”.

The United Nations Climate Action Summit, December 12, 2020 and the United Nations General Assembly 31^st Special Session – In Response To the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) Pandemic, December 4, 2020 had one thing in common:  They both missed the point. 

The greatest contributing factor to Climate Change is the meat and dairy based diet.  Methane from animals raised to be murdered and eaten holds heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than carbon dioxide.  Destroying forests to create grazing land for animal is also a major contributing factor to global warming.

Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease caused by human animal interaction, in this case an extra judiciously executed animal in a wet market who was then eaten by a human.  Vaccines will not change this.  In addition, the deadliest diseases on Earth are all zoonotic.  Vaccines will not eliminate the problem, only respect for all species can do this.  It is only when the human species decides to stop exploiting other species, and give them rights, that the ongoing destruction of the planet and innocent people will stop.

Go Vegan!

Worldwide Response to Speciesism

Covid-19 originated in a “Wet Market”, a place where individuals of another species are murdered for the profit of the human species.  This resulted in Covid-19, a zoonotic disease.  Zoonotic disease is the cause of many worldwide epidemics and pandemics including HIV AIDS, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Black Flu, Spanish Flu, Avian Flu, Swine Flu, among others.  In addition, the meat and dairy based diet is a causative factor in Diabetes, Heart Disease, Cancer and antibiotic resistance.  Speciesism has also been linked to Climate Change, Species Extinction, Habitat Destruction, and other worldwide issues.  There is a growing movement in the world today to right these wrongs!  Specifically:

Asia - Nepal - Animal Rescue Mission and local Nepali organizations:

Nepal’s Dashain Festival to the ‘blood thirsty’ Goddess Kali is one of the most brutal events on Earth.  The streets run red with the blood of tens of thousands of innocent animals.  Animals are subjected to unimaginable brutality.  Crowds scream, push, and fight with machetes.  Terrified animals are dragged through these crowds of people.  Other animals watch the murder of their friends and relatives knowing they will be next.  No animal is safe.

 

The festival is carried on throughout the night and into the next day.  The larger animals, mainly water buffalo, are reserved to be beheaded on “Black Night”, which supposedly commemorates the victory of gods over demons.  During the darkness of night, a convoy goes to a secluded, sacrificial epicenter. In the morning, a two-hour killing spree frantically erupts, and a sea of water buffalo are decapitated.  Water buffalo are often preyed upon in Nepal.  Local sources estimate that 70,000 to 80,000 are killed violently in animal sacrifices every year.

Animal Rescue Mission and local Nepali animal advocate groups are working tirelessly to create awareness of this situation and hopefully end the bloodshed by promoting alternative sacrifices. 

Pacifica:     Animals Australia, and SAFE For Animals, New Zealand

Live export is one of the cruelest practices on Earth.  Recently, Gulf Livestock 1 capsized.  The casualties included 41 crew members and almost 6,000 cows.  This tragedy led the government of New Zealand to announcing a temporary ban on live export, and yet another fruitless review into this cruel and unnecessary trade.  Soon the live export ship, Yangtze Fortune, will take thousands of New Zealand cows on a long and stressful sea journey with no food, water, removal of excrement or deceased individuals.  In sweltering heat, individuals literally cook to death on these ships.  The animals live exported from New Zealand and Australia are sent to countries with lower animal welfare standards, or no animal protection laws at all.

In Indonesia, Animals Australia learned that the banned and brutal Mark 1 slaughter box is back in action.  Cattle who survive the conditions of live export are subjected to horrific roping slaughter - a practice supposedly wiped out of the industry ten years ago.  Terrified cattle are tripped, roped and killed in brutal slaughter boxes.  Frightened sheep are dragged, man-handled, stuffed into car boots in searing heat, sold for backyard slaughter or killed in the streets where they lay beside the flailing bodies of other animals.  In Jordan, the ‘Festival of Sacrifice' awaits individuals who survive the live export ordeal.  Rough and brutal street slaughter is 'the norm' for sheep shipped there from Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

Animals Australia, SAFE for Animals New Zealand, other organizations and individuals are working tirelessly to stop cruel and barbaric live export which has already affected hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals over the years.

Africa     Governments of Kenya, Senegal, Gabon, and others

 Poaching, the murder of innocent individuals for profit, is a tragedy of enormous proportions on the continent of Africa.  It is wiping out large populations of individuals resulting in species extinction.  Murder of an innocent gorilla for ‘bush meat’ is the original cause of the zoonotic disease, HIV AIDS.

In order to the prevent the murder of innocent elephants, the Governments of Kenya, Gabon, and others have disincentivized ivory poaching by burning existing stockpiles of ivory.  Senegal considers their lions a national treasure, and is very concerned about the effect that climate change and other unnatural events are having on them.  Preventing speciesism is one of the priorities of many African governments.

 Europe     Ireland, Ban Blood Sports

Currently the Irish grass roots organization, Ban Blood Sports, is seeking amendments to the Irish Animal Health and Welfare Bill which would eliminate Fox Hunting. Hare Coursing, Greyhound Racing, Badger Culling, Horse Racing. Digging Out, Terrierwork, Ferreting, Badger Culling, Fur Farming, and the use of Animals in Circuses.  Ban Blood Sports, other organizations and individuals are working tirelessly to achieve the goal of preventing the cruel and unjust exploitation of innocent individuals.

 Planet Earth     The Save Movement:  Animal Save, Climate Save, and Health Save

The Save Movement, started in Toronto, Canada, currently has 1,000 chapters on 6 continents, and has held 4170 vigils in 2019.  The Save Movement’s mission is to hold vigils at every slaughterhouse; bear witness to every exploited animal; reverse catastrophic climate change by defunding animal agriculture; and ensure that plant-based diets, which prevent disease and improve quality of life, are accessible to all in the world community.

It is time to finally have a comprehensive solution to the global issue of Speciesism:  A United Nations Convention Against Speciesism proposed by Vegan International (www.VeganInternational.org).

"Never Again"

 “Never Again” has come to represent a universal goal to prevent future genocides.  When the Holocaust ended and people in the death camps were liberated, almost immediately survivors began to say:

“Never Again”.  Never again would genocide devastate any ethnic, national, racial or religious group.  In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 

It is time to extend this protection to everyone on Planet Earth including those of other species:

Isaac Bashevis Singer – a member of a family perished in the Holocaust and a Nobel Prize winner for literature:  “As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.”  From: “Enemies, A Love Story”

 Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, Dachau concentration camp survivor:  “I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings.”  From “Animals, My Brethren”.

Albert Kaplan, a Jewish-American whose parents’ families perished in the Holocaust:  “Around two hundred feet from the main entrance to the [Holocaust] museum is an Auschwitz for animals from which emanates a horrible odor that envelopes the museum. I mentioned it to the museum management. Their reaction was not surprising. ‘But they are only chickens.'”

Lucy Rosen Kaplan, daughter of a Holocaust survivor whose wife and two daughters were shot and killed before his eyes:  “I have really been haunted by Holocaust images my whole life, and there is no question but that I was drawn to animal rights in part because of similarities I sensed between institutionalized animal exploitation and the Nazi genocide.”

Dr. Alex Hershaft, Warsaw Ghetto survivor and Founder of FARM Animal Right Movement:  “It finally dawned on me. “Never again” is not about what others shouldn’t do to us. It’s about what we shouldn’t do to others. “Never again” means that we must never again perpetrate mass atrocities against other living beings. That we must never again raise animals for food or any other form of exploitation.”  “For the Animals, All Men are Nazis“

Charles Patterson, “I always felt that there was something ethically and aesthetically obscene about taking a beautiful, feeling animal, hitting him over the head and cutting him up into pieces and stuffing the pieces in my face.  My experience led me to a lifelong pursuit of justice for the oppressed. I soon discovered that the most oppressed beings on earth are non-human animals and that the most numerous and most oppressed among them are farm animals.”  From “Eternal Treblinka”.

Alexandra M., Holocaust survivor:  “In a state established on the scarification of more than a third of its people – the enslavement and mass murder of living beings has become part of the lifestyle: TV cook shows devoted to the best way of serving the flesh of living beings – murdered babies; and panels of judges voraciously delighting in the successful outcome.

Mark Berkowitz – one of “Mengele Twins”, a Holocaust survivor whose mother and one of his sisters were sent to the gas chambers in front of his eyes, during a public meeting to defend Canada geese:  “I dedicate my mother’s grave to the geese. My mother doesn’t have a grave, but if she did I would dedicate it to the geese. I was a goose too.”

Theodor Adorno, German Philosopher,  “Auschwitz begins wherever

someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks “They’re only animals.”

 

John Maxwell Coetzee, Nobel award winner in literature,  “Let me say it

openly: We are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and

killing which rivals anything that the Third Reich was capable of, indeed

dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating,

bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the

purpose of killing them.”

 

Dr. Helmut Kaplan, German Writer and Philosopher, “Our grandchildren

will ask us one day; Where were you during the holocaust of the animals? 

What did you do against these horrifying crimes?  We won’t be able to offer

the same excuse for the second time, that we didn’t know.”

 

Charles Patterson, “All who are not afraid to understand that the suffering that humans have so relentlessly inflicted on animals over the course of our species’ history is one and the same with the suffering that humans often inflict on each other, must read and re-read this book.”  From Foreword to the book “Eternal Treblinka”.

Anna Kelemen, a Holocaust survivor who lost two of her relatives in the Holocaust:  “…an impassioned plea for justice for all creatures.”

www.VeganInternational.org,  www.RaoulWallenbergSearch.com

 

 

“Malnutrition is the number one cause of death in our society today.”

 

“Malnutrition is the number one cause of death in our society today.”      (From an article by T. Colin Campbell)

Malnutrition, including the dietary patterns that produce obesity and chronic disease, such as heart disease and diabetes, and is the number one cause of death in the world today.  It kills literally millions of adults and children worldwide every year.  The costs to both affluent individuals and governments struggling to meet their economic projections, continues to grow, despite being largely ignored by healthcare policy institutions, the media, and the public.

The word malnutrition is most often used to describe diets that are deficient in calories or essential nutrients and associated with starvation and extreme poverty.  The word malnutrition literally means “poor” nutrition.  It needs to be applied equally to dietary patterns of excess that produce obesity, and diet-related diseases like heart disease and type II diabetes.

More than1.9 billion adults worldwide are now overweight or obese.  This is four times as many people then those who are undernourished (462 million).  This gap is growing most pronouncedly in high-income countries, but now even the low and middle income countries are experiencing rising rates of obesity and overweight.^[1]

To a greater or lesser extent, malnutrition plays a role in virtually all of these causes of death. For example, up to 90 percent of heart disease deaths,^[3] 70 percent of cancer deaths,^[4] and 50 percent of stroke deaths^[4] could be prevented by the informed use of nutrition. Likewise, it is widely accepted in the medical community that most type II diabetes could be prevented by better nutrition.

A vegan diet provides all the protein, vitamins, and other nutrients needed for optimal health without the fat, cholesterol and empty calories of the meat and dairy based diet.  GO VEGAN!

 

The Planet Needs Protection From Pandemics and Other Dilemmas

 

Speciesism, the exploitation of non-humans by humans, is the cause of zoonotic disease and other dilemmas.  Zoonotic disease, which causes epidemics and pandemics, is from human – animal interaction.  The most serious infectious diseases are zoonotic, causing an estimated 3 million human deaths per year even before Covid-19.  Emerging diseases are invariably zoonotic: Covid-19, HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Swine and Avian Flu, etc.  Without understanding the creation and spread of zoonoses and the cause of other major issues – Speciesism, and rectifying it with an enforceable international law, it is impossible to prevent the next pandemic and other issues, such as: 

 

Climate Change:  Scientific facts prove that the main cause of global warming melting polar ice caps and raising sea water levels is methane.  Methane traps heat in the atmosphere more effectively than carbon dioxide.  The meat and dairy based diet is directly responsible for the impending disaster we are currently facing. 

 

Hunger:  Land used to grow crops to feed animals killed for food, could be used to grow crops to feed people.  This would significantly reduce world hunger especially in developing nations which export crops while experiencing hunger.

 

Human Health Mortality and Morbidity:  There is copious documentation that transitioning from the traditional fiber rich plant-based diet to the fat and cholesterol filled meat and dairy based diet causes human mortality and morbidity from heart disease, cancer, diabetes and antibiotic resistance. 

 

Pollution: Air, water, and land pollution is a direct result of animal agriculture.  In the United States, animal agriculture produces more pollution than all other industries combined.

 

Misuse of scarce resources: Land and water are being used unsustainably. Rainforests are cut and burned down to provide grazing land and land, and to grow crops to feed to animals raised for food.  It takes a hundred times more water to produce meat than vegetables.

 

Species extinction and Habitat Destruction:  As animal agriculture grows, it needs more and more resources of land and water, destroying the habitats of existing species and causing extinction of irreplaceable individuals.

 

Justice:  Speciesism is unjust, unsustainable and destructive.  It is treating animals as slaves of humans.  The unfortunate individuals, who are eaten, used for clothing, experiments, and entertainment, have no rights of their own.  As you know from the past, the individuals kidnapped in Africa, and forced to be slaves, did not want to be treated better, they wanted to be free and have rights.  This is true not just for humans, but for all species.  The world needs a United Nations Convention Against Speciesism.  www.VeganInternational.org

 

 

 

Covid-19, a zoonotic disease, is caused by unjust exploitation of animals by humans.

Zoonotic diseases, the cause of epidemics and pandemics, is from human – animal interaction.  The most serious infectious diseases are zoonotic, causing an estimated 3 million human deaths per year even before Covid-19. 

Zoonotic disease occurs when a pathogen ‘jumps’ from animals to humans, and then transmitted directly among humans.  Emerging diseases are invariably zoonotic: Covid-19, HIV, Ebola, SARS, MERS, Swine and Avian Flu, etc.  Without understanding the creation and spread of zoonoses, and rectifying these issues, it is impossible to prevent the next pandemic. 

COVID-19 originated from an animal extrajudicially executed in a live animal market – an innocent, exploited individual sold and murdered for profit.  HIV/AIDS, also from zoonotic origins, occurred through the hunting and butchering of innocent wild animals. Ebola virus disease is from zoonotic origins.  Bites and injuries caused by primates kept as pet animals can also cause viral transmission.

Modern food production invites zoonotic disaster.  Innocent, incarcerated animals are relentlessly stressed, confined, forced to share space with dead or diseased animals, share bodily fluids and airborne pathogens, expel waste on each other, all while being fed a steady supply of antibiotics. 

The problem: Zoonotic Disease.  The Solution: Vegan!

No More Bacon!

 

No More Bacon

How could something so popular be so evil?

It starts with the treatment of the pigs – one of the most intelligent and affectionate animals on earth.  Undercover investigations reveal that when these docile, loving creatures are raised for food they are subjected to the most egregious abuses imaginable.  For example, semen is collected from the boars (male pigs).  Outside of a factory farm this would be called the crime of beastiality. 

The sows (female pigs) are locked in cages so small that they cannot stand or turn around.  They are immobilized like this for their entire short lives.  Even in prison solitary confinement, prisoners can stand and walk.  And the sows have done nothing wrong to deserve this!  Under other circumstances, this would be called cruel and unusual punishment.

In this vulnerable position, from which there is no escape, the docile, intelligent, sentient girls are artificially inseminated by workers.  They manipulate the sows’ vaginas to insert the semen.  Sometimes a male pig, a boar, is dragged around by a robot in the hope that this poor unfortunate’s smell will facilitate the heinous procedure.  Under other circumstances this would be called rape.

When the innocent baby pigs are born, they nurse from their incarcerated, pinned down Mothers briefly before being removed by workers.  The Mother’s and Babies’ screams are heartbreaking.  Under other circumstances this would be called kidnap.

The baby boy pigs have their testicles removed without anesthesia.  Their high-pitched screams are heart breaking.  They also have their tails removed to prevent the natural act of sucking by their companions looking for mother’s milk.  Their teeth are filed down to prevent ‘financial loss’ from cannibalism caused by the unbearable circumstances of their short lives.  Under other circumstances, this mutilation would be called torture.

Slaughter/murder comes for the Mothers when they are no longer able to produce babies either because their reproductive organs have been expelled from their bodies, or they have become so hopeless that they stop eating.  The babies are killed after they have gained weight.  This qualifies not only as murder, but since literally billions of pigs are killed annually, it is more accurately called genocide.

The only reason crimes committed against these individuals do not qualify to be called beastiality, rape, torture, kidnap, murder and genocide is their species.  It is the same reason that black individuals were forced into slavery, that a nuclear bomb was dropped on the already decimated Asian Japanese, and not the European Nazis.  It is because they do not look like the rich and powerful.

This evil will only stop when consumers gain some perspective and empathy, and stop eating bacon, sausage, ham, etc.  There are plenty of delicious plant based substitutes available. 

No more bacon!!!  

From Livestock's Long Shadow

From Livestock’s Long Shadow

According to this United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, the livestock sector generates the most greenhouse gas emissions and is a major source of land and water degradation.  With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products.  The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agriculture sub-sector

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture and land used to producing feed for livestock.  Forests are cleared to create new pastures causing deforestation, especially in Latin America where 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.  Herds cause wide-scale land degradation through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. 

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources.  The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray crops. 

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass.  Livestock’s presence contributes to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock the culprit.

This does not take into consideration the immense suffering of these innocent individuals who are exploited to provide their bodies for human consumption.  This then causes heart disease, diabetes and cancer in the humans who eat them and drink their milk.

Covid-19 Was Preventable!

 

Zoonotic diseases, the cause of most epidemics and pandemics, including Covid-19, are caused by human – animal interaction.  The most serious infectious diseases are zoonotic, causing an estimated 3 million human deaths per year even before the current Covid-19 pandemic.  Zoonotic disease is caused by a pathogen that “spills over”, from animals to humans.  Infections are then transmitted directly among humans.

Emerging diseases are almost invariably zoonotic.  An estimated 60% of all viruses that infect humans came from animals, and 75% of all new infectious diseases in the past decade are zoonotic.  Examples include Covid-19, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola virus, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, and Avian Flu, and many others including the deadliest pandemics in history: Black Death, Spanish Flu, HIV, and now Covid-19. 

The global rate of zoonotic disease is increasing.  Without understanding the creation of zoonoses - abuse and exploitation of the non-human species buy the human speciesism, including eating them, wearing them, using them for entertainment, and unnecessary tests, or Speciesism, and rectifying these issues, it is impossible to prevent the next pandemic. 

 

Starvation of the Vulnerable Linked To Diet of the Affluent

 

Of planet Earth’s nearly 7 billion humans, roughly 1 billion people are malnourished and 6 million children starve to death annually as a result of the meat and dairy based diet of the affluent.

Farming individuals is notoriously wasteful when compared to growing plants to feed humans directly.  “Livestock” animals, individuals raised for meat and dairy, take drastically more food from the global food supply than they provide.

Crops necessary to feed individuals raised for human food are vastly more crops than it would take to feed humans directly.  It takes thirteen pounds of grain to yield just one pound of beef.  Crops such as soy and lentils produce, pound for pound, as much protein as beef, and sometimes more.

Feeding half the world’s edible grain crop to farmed individuals is a grossly inefficient use of protein and a waste of natural resources.  It requires far more land, water and energy than cultivating plant foods for direct human consumption.

One acre of land can yield between twelve and twenty times more plant food than animal-based foods.  This is also true of water usages.  Pollution of water, air and land, human mortality and morbidity, as well as starvation of the world’s most vulnerable people also result from the affluent’s meat and dairy based diet.

 

 

Animal Sacrifice in the Himalayas

In Bangladesh, Nepal, and other parts of the Himalaya region, religious animal sacrifices take place on a regular basis.  This is the part of the world that not too long ago would burn girls, as young as ten years old, in oil soaked wedding dresses, as ‘brides’ if the man they had been arranged to marry died in Nepal.

 “I’ve seen these kinds of horrors before, but the torture that I have witnessed during Eid al-Adha scarred me for the rest of my life.”  Animal Rescue Mission (ARM)  undercover investigator.

 The Eid al-Adha animal sacrifice festival is horrendous.  Millions of cows, goats, sheep, and even camels travel in a mass caravan by boats, trucks, and ‘death trains’. They are crammed into unhygienic and unsafe transport units.  They suffer in the unforgiving sun, often succumbing to severe dehydration and exhaustion.  Restrained by tight ropes. Swarmed by zealous mobs. Executed with machetes. 

Not even pregnant and newborn animals are safe during Eid al-Adha.  Their final destination is Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, and the epicenter of an animal sacrifice that will leave blood flooding the streets.  Despite the current restrictions of the pandemic, nothing is standing in the way of slaughtering these animals.  The festival will proceed.

 

An Inside Look at Dairy - Beastiality

An Inside Look at Dairy - Beastiality

This is where milk comes from and how it is produced.  Semen is collected from bulls by forcing them to ejaculate using either an artificial vagina or an instrument called an electroejaculator.  With the first method, a steer (castrated male) is restrained with a nose ring and used as a ‘teaser’ animal to be mounted. The bull is also tethered and controlled with a nose ring. After the male bull mounts the male steer and attempts penetration, his exposed penis is grabbed by a worker. It is then diverted to a long plastic sleeve or ‘artificial vagina’ held in the worker’s other hand.  Both male animals are tethered by a harsh metal nose rings as their sexual organs are manipulated by humans.  Nose ringing is a very distressing and painful process for the animals.  With electroejaculation, an anal probe is inserted into the bull’s rectum and electric shock applied to the muscles that control ejaculation.

Nearly 80% of dairy cows in the U.S. are forcibly inseminated once a year.  This is a crude procedure that involves a farmer inserting one arm up to his elbow inside the cow’s rectum.  Then the farmer optimally positions her cervix, and uses his other hand to insert an ‘artificial insemination gun’.  Semen is shot into her vagina.  Rectal violation plays no part in natural bovine copulation.  This brutal procedure commonly results in the cow violently and painfully defecating. 

Do not support this.  Drink plant milk and eat plant based cheese and ice cream.  Thanks.

From 'Livestock's Long Shadow'

Animal exploitation is not only the cause of zoonotic disease, such as covid-19, HIV, SARS, MERS, and the historic Spanish Flu and Black Death, but is destroying the planet.

The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing to water pollution, euthropication and the degeneration of coral reefs.  The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray crops.  Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources.  Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Meat and dairy animals now account for about 20 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass.  Livestock’s presence in vast tracts of land and its demand for feed crops also contribute to biodiversity loss; 15 out of 24 important ecosystem services are assessed as in decline, with livestock identified as a culprit.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock.  Forests are cleared to create new pastures causing deforestation, especially in Latin America where 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

It is time to stop exploiting innocent, defenseless individuals, and begin to recognize their value as individuals, and in the process save them, ourselves, and the planet.

Let's Get Animals Off the Menu Before We All Perish!

Let’s get animals off the menus and out of the torture chambers before we all perish from species induced zoonotic disease like Covid-19!

If any nation had developed weapons that could wreck such havoc on the world as the meat and dairy industry, we would bomb it.  Zoonotic disease such as Covid-19, SARS, MERS, HIV, and Ebola are all caused by pathogens that transfer from animals to humans.  Weapons of mass destruction are our own knives and forks. 

Eliminating meat, dairy, and speciesism will solve our environmental, water, and human health problems, and end cruelty.  Farming won’t end, it will boom.  Only the product line will change.  Governments will love it.  Health insurance premiums will plummet because meat and dairy cause a wide range of cancers and heart disease.

Animals are not just another species, they are other nations.  We murder them at our peril.  Peace is not just the absence of war, it is the presence of justice.  Justice must be blind to race, color, religion, or species.  There is unimaginable terror in those “factory farms” and “slaughterhouses”.  It spills over as zoonotic disease.  Pandemics will continue and getting worse!  Another world is possible, let’s make it happen! Go vegan!

Covid-19 is Zoonotic, Eliminate the Cause!

COVID-19 originated from an animal bought and murdered in a live animal or ‘wet’ market, which exist all over the world.  Scientific evidence indicates the virus originated from a bat coronavirus, transferred to an intermediate host, an animal sold for consumption or traditional medicine.  It ultimately evolved into SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, and spread to humans. 

Zoonotic diseases, the cause of most epidemics and pandemics, result from exploitation of animals.  The most serious infectious diseases are zoonotic, caused by a pathogen “spills over” from animals to humans, and then transmitted directly among humans.

Emerging diseases are almost invariably zoonotic.  Examples include Covid-19, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Ebola virus, SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, and Avian Flu, among many others.  Zoonoses have caused the deadliest pandemics in history: Black Death, Spanish Flu, HIV, and now Covid-19.  Zoonotic diseases are increasing.  Without eliminating their cause - exploitation and abuse of other species - it is impossible to prevent the next pandemic.  It is time to treat innocent animals with the dignity and respect they deserve, if only for safety reasons.

Pandemics Are Caused By Speciesism – Animals Exploited By Humans

There's a long history of deadly pandemics that are, like COVID-19, deeply rooted in our treatment of animals — especially the 70 billion who are raised and killed for food each year around the world.

While much media coverage has focused on wildlife wet markets where rare and 'exotic' animals are bought, sold and killed, confining this conversation to the often-illegal wildlife trade ignores the breeding grounds for disease created by industrial food systems globally.

It also ignores the large-scale destruction of habitats that is forcing wild animals out of their homes and into closer proximity with people and other animals.

All of these issues need equal scrutiny.  Animal protection and conservation groups are urging the World Health Organisation to call for a ban on wildlife markets and curb the illegal wildlife trade and ending factory farming — the number one cause of animal cruelty in the world today.

As a species, we haven't always been great at learning from mistakes of the past but that doesn't mean we can't be this time. It's heartening to see some deeper conversations emerging about our relationship with animals; a relationship that is in urgent need of repair — not only for them, but for all of us.

The Truth About Dairy

The Truth About Dairy

Mounting scientific evidence points to milk as a source of disease, not health.  Despite no evidence that milk protects against bone fractures and osteoporosis, it continues to be marketed as necessary for bone health. The simple equation of milk = calcium= strong bones is nothing more than smart marketing.  Often thought of as the only source of calcium, milk, is a very recent addition to most food cultures. Great sources of plant-based calcium abound and include greens, broccoli, tofu, corn tortillas, nuts and seeds.

Medical studies have found dairy consumption to be linked to a higher risk for various cancers, especially prostate, breast and ovarian cancer, as well as increased sex hormones in children, and early puberty in young girls.  Also, the liquid calories and hormones in milk contribute to obesity and diabetes. 

When people who are lactose intolerant drink milk, they can experience digestive problems like gastrointestinal distress, diarrhea, and flatulence and impeded nutrient absorption. Lactose intolerance is the norm in most ethnic groups.

Every day in the United States 45 million meals are offered through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs. Federal and state school meal policies mandate that milk be offered at every meal. This is an incredible boon to the dairy industry, and places corporate profits over the health of the nation’s low-income children.  The harm done to children by school milk—and the benefit to the dairy industry—extend far past childhood. As children are taught that milk consumption is normal and necessary, healthier sources of calcium sources are overlooked and forgotten, and a whole new generation of future consumers is created.

Cows are Mothers.  They have been forcefully and brutally raped, and their babies stolen from them.  They grieve inconsolably for their babies.  The boys are brutally slaughtered.  The girls are fed a type of formula until they are just barely old enough to become Mothers themselves.  Then they are raped, tortured, tormented, and forced to produce milk until their bodies wear out.  ‘Spent’ cows are brutally slaughtered after their short lives filled with endless sorrow and pain.  There is a deep injustice in dairy.  For your sake and theirs, don’t consume dairy!

Most of Blog courtesy of Nassim Nobari, Seed the Commons, San Francisco

What Causes Pandemics?

There's a long history of deadly pandemics that are, like COVID-19, deeply rooted in our treatment of animals — especially the 70 billion who are raised and killed for food each year around the world.

While much media coverage has focused on wildlife wet markets where rare and 'exotic' animals are bought, sold and killed, confining this conversation to the often-illegal wildlife trade ignores the breeding grounds for disease created by industrial food systems globally.

It also ignores the large-scale destruction of habitats that is forcing wild animals out of their homes and into closer proximity with people and other animals.

All of these issues need equal scrutiny.  Animal protection and conservation groups are urging the World Health Organisation to call for a ban on wildlife markets and curb the illegal wildlife trade and ending factory farming — the number one cause of animal cruelty in the world today.

As a species, we haven't always been great at learning from mistakes of the past but that doesn't mean we can't be this time. It's heartening to see some deeper conversations emerging about our relationship with animals; a relationship that is in urgent need of repair — not only for them, but for all of us.

Industry Claims Torching the Udders of Dairy Cows Is Painless, By Robert Grillo

Just when I thought I knew all the common, standard industry practices in dairy farming, I find something even more bizarre and cruel. The sound in this video is said to be “turned off” since it is for “trade show purposes” but one wonders if the sound of the cows confined to stalls and having their udders torched would reveal how unpleasant this experience is for the animals. The claim that the cows feel no pain from having a flame applied to their sensitive udders is “udderly” ridiculous. We share the same kind of pain receptors with cows and just as with us, the nipples are one of the most sensitive areas of the body.

The video justifies the torching of cows’ udders as follows:

“The UdderSinge uses a low temperature flame passed 2-4″ below the udder and belly that removes hair quickly and painlessly. Removing hair aids in creating a healthier cow by reducing the occurrence of mastitis in the cow’s udder.

Mastitis is a painful disease that causes painful swelling and infection in the udder and is potentially fatal for the cow. Removing udder hair decreases somatic cell counts [blood cells] in milk thus making the product safer for the consumer.”

Yet it is the relentless cycle of forced pregnancy and lactation, and the unnaturally high rates of milk production, that cows in the dairy industry are subjected to, combined with being “nursed” by harsh mechanical equipment rather than their own babies, that causes mastitis to be so pervasive.

Add this to the list of atrocities inflicted on animals in the dairy industry: dehorning; tail-docking; spiked nose-ringing; sexual violation and industry-approved bestiality; separation of families; slaughter of young dairy cows when their milk production declines; and slaughter of calves: all so we can steal the mothers’ milk of other animals when the only milk we ever needed came from our own human mothers, and then we were weaned.