The Most Important Step in Saving Animals
Early Man and Other Species / A World in Balance
Before domestication of animals, humans lived on equal terms with other species, hunting and being hunted by them. The cave paintings of prehistoric man, as well as the traditions of indigenous and aboriginal people, suggest that early humans closely observed and admired the animals they lived amongst. Many indigenous cultures deify or pay homage to other species in dance, music, story-telling, artwork, and myths. The animals in the lore of these people share many attributes with humans, showing a kinship our ancestors must have felt with them. In some of these cultures it is even customary to apologize to prey before or after a hunt.
Betrayal of Kinship
Ten thousand years ago humans first domesticated animals for food and labor, radically altering the relationship with our fellow earthlings. As a consequence of this change, we began to deny our brotherhood with the rest of the animal kingdom and adopted the beliefs that humans exist as a superior type of being, and that all other species were created expressly to serve our needs. This sense of ourselves as uniquely privileged served to blind us to what we had in common with other animals. We eventually came to deny that animals could think or feel emotions. Such a world view would have served well to alleviate any empathy we might have felt for the animals we had enslaved, or misgivings about what we did to them.
Modern Animal Agriculture
In order to increase the benefits we obtained from domesticated animals, we progressively took control of more and more aspects of their lives. Factory farming is the culmination of this trend. Modern agriculture now regards farm animals as mere units of production. To maximize profits by increasing the number of animals raised and minimizing the amount of upkeep required, humans have developed a system that denies living beings the ability to enjoy even the most basic pleasures, such as the ability to stretch one’s muscles or feel sunshine and earth. Wild animals that are hunted live their lives on their own terms. The animals humans raise for food have their lives dictated from birth to death, without consideration of the animals’ needs and desires. As a consequence, they suffer in ways that hunted animals do not. We can no longer compare our killing of food animals with that of early man. And, with so many vegan foods available to replace the nutrition of meat, milk and eggs, the suffering we cause animals by raising them for food and slaughtering them in cold blood can no longer be justified by necessity.
The Costs of an Omnivore Diet/The Power of Veganism
For many reasons, a vegan diet is the single most important step a person can take to help animals. Consumption of animal products is the most direct way most humans cause animal suffering. According to USDA data compiled in 2009, the average American meat-eater is directly responsible for the deaths of 198 land animals a year, which, over a 75-year lifetime, amounts to 14,850 land animals. Over a lifetime, that meat-eater will also, on average, consume 1,700 fish and 17,000 other aquatic animals such as lobsters and shrimp.
Lives of Misery
For farm animals, death is only the final horror of a miserable and unnaturally short life. Most live their entire existence confined in tiny cages or overcrowded sheds and are subjected to bodily mutilations like tail docking, and de-beaking, as well as violence at the hands of farm workers. Fish raised on fish farms are similarly packed into pens so crowded that they cannot swim without colliding into others, at the mercy of flesh-eating parasites, and in water polluted with their own concentrated waste.
The Bigger Picture
The number of animals killed for food each year is over ten billion in this country alone, but that does not account for the actual number of animals that die as a consequence of a diet that includes animal products. Billions more farm animals are killed or die than those whose flesh ends up on the shelves of a grocery store. And there is no way to tally the number of wild animals who are intentionally exterminated or who die from destruction to habitat. We need to consider these lives as well when calculating the cost of eating animal products or the benefits of a vegan diet.
What’s Wrong With Eggs and Dairy?
Rooster chicks of layer hens are of no use to a farmer because they can’t lay eggs and aren’t genetically bred to produce a profitable amount of meat. For this reason they’re killed just after hatching. This is a standard practice at chicken hatcheries including those that provide eggs to small and free-range farms. These little chicks, no different from those wide-eyed, curious, and endearing baby birds we associate with innocence and Easter, are either thrown into dumpsters where they suffocate under a pile of other chicks, suffocated In plastic bags, or ground up, still alive and conscious, to make fertilizer.
Breeding Animals
The female animals used for milk or eggs or for breeding are also killed, either sent to the slaughter house or disposed of in inhumane ways. Economics dictate that a farm animal, whether factory farmed or free-range, can be kept alive only as long as his or her life is profitable to a farmer. For this reason, all farm animals are killed at a fraction of their natural life-spans. A cow that no longer produces the unnaturally high quantity of milk demanded of her, a chicken who can no longer lay her quota of eggs, a breeding sow or turkey who starts to give birth to fewer babies is killed for meat or fertilizer. Since these spent animals have been forced to produce more young, and/or eggs and/or milk than they would in nature, and, because those on factory farms have often been kept in confinement, fed an unnatural diet, and raised in unhealthy conditions, many become sick or crippled. Those deemed unable to make it to slaughter alive may be left to die in agony without access to food or water or veterinary care or simply killed on the farm by methods such as bludgeoning. Some spent layer hens are slaughtered and used for processed meat (their bruised and thin bodies unsuitable for packaged meat); some are simply dumped, still alive, into landfill; others are ground up, also still alive, to make fertilizer.
Sick and Injured Animals at the Slaughterhouse
Animals such as cows, pigs or sheep that make it to the slaughterhouse may be too diseased or lame to stand. Workers often use horrific practices to try to force these animals to get up and walk themselves on to the slaughter line since their meat cannot be sold for human consumption unless they are able to do so. Common practices include chaining and mechanically dragging the animals onto trucks or brutally shoving or lifting them with backhoes. The suffering of downed animals, both those left to die without care, and those tortured by workers trying to force them to walk, is some of the most disturbing captured in undercover videos.
Dairy and Veal
Since cows must give birth once a year to produce milk, the dairy industry creates a large number of calves. These calves are all taken from their mothers within a few hours or days of birth so that the milk meant for them can be sold to humans. Mother cows and their babies are deeply bonded from birth and the separation traumatizes both, as does the separation of all mother and baby farm animals. Females calves are used to replace their mothers, but the male calves born to dairy cows are not genetically bred to produce as much meat as beef cattle. Some are immediately taken to the slaughterhouse just after birth and their tiny bodies are used in processed foods. Some are left to simply die from neglect. Many are raised for veal. The veal industry in large part exists to make use of male calves from the dairy industry.
A veal calf is kept isolated in a tiny stall and his movement minimized to keep his flesh tender. This calf, who would be frisky and playful, if given the opportunity, lives his whole life tethered on a chain so short he is unable to turn around or lie all the way down. At only two months of age veal calves are slaughtered. Ethical vegetarians who eat dairy products or eggs should consider their implication in the misery and deaths of male chicks, spent layer hens, spent dairy cows and veal calves.
Wildlife
Predators
The U.S. Department of Wildlife Services spends millions of tax dollars annually to exterminate thousands of predators that ranchers consider a threat to their livestock. They target wolves, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions using many cruel methods such as body crushing traps, gas cartridges placed in dens with baby animals, and poison collars for sheep, devices that kill both predator and prey and cause prolonged vomiting and convulsions first. Predators play an important role in nature and were once widespread around the globe, but humans have nearly eliminated most of them causing many unexpected and negative consequences for all living beings. Despite this ranchers and hunters continue to try to eradicate them.
Wild Horses and Burros
Spending tens of millions each year the U.S. Bureau of Land Management rounds up and removes thousands of wild horses and burros from public lands each year. Although only 37,000 horses share prairie with 12.5 million cattle, they are considered a threat to the grazing rights of ranchers who pay $1.35 per head for use of the land. Many of these horses end up being trucked long distances under inhumane conditions to slaughterhouses. Young, old, healthy, sick, and injured horses are forced to make the trip. Some mares give birth en route to being butchered. Despite overwhelming public support, every bill to ban the slaughter of these animals has been sabotaged by politicians with ties to ranching.
Prairie Dogs
Ranchers also shoot, poison, and bury alive tens of thousands of prairie dogs each year, considering them competition for land where cattle graze. Prairie dogs play an important role in the ecosystem. One hundred and seventy different wildlife species rely on them and their burrows for survival. Despite this, ranchers and farmers consider prairie dogs pests. Tens of thousands have been killed, often with government assistance, and 98% of prairie colonies have been eliminated. Prairie dogs are often killed with slow-acting poisons that cause extremely painful deaths or are burned alive in their dens with gas cartridges.
Bison
Millions of bison once blanketed the American West, but now only 3,700 purebred animals survive in Yellowstone Park. During winter deep snow in the park forces the buffalo to leave their protected range to forage on prairies that cattle graze only in summer. Ranchers claim bison pose a health risk to cattle, although the buffalo and cattle use the land at different times of year, never come in contact with each other, and, despite the fact that no cattle have ever contracted disease from the buffalo. Using hazing methods to terrify the animals, Park Services corral and capture the buffalo each year and slaughter those that test positive for brucellosis, a disease which affects only unborn animals.
Displaced Native Wildlife
All agriculture is harmful to animals, but ten times more land is required to feed a meat-eater than a vegan. This land must be cleared destroying forests, wetlands: Many animals are killed simply in the process of clearing land to graze livestock or grow crops to feed them. Agriculture also destroys complex ecosystems of interdependent plants and animals, and many species die as a consequence.
Grazing livestock compete with wildlife for food, denude the banks of streams and lakes, critical habitat for many species, crush animals in their burrows, and trample vegetation that small mammals, reptiles and ground-nesting birds depend on for cover,. The loss of smaller species to these encroachments endangers the predators for whom they are prey.
In addition, fencing for livestock interferes with migrations of large animals like pronghorn and bighorn sheep. One fifth of the world’s vertebrates, including 12% of the world’s bird species (1,227 species), and 41% of amphibians are facing extinction with agricultural expansion as one of the four top causes. In the U.S., grazing has contributed to the demise of 22% of federal threatened and endangered species, equal to the effects of logging and mining combined.
Rainforest Wildlife
Scientists estimate that half the world’s species live in rainforests, but every second 1½ acres of this lush habitat is cut down, and each day an average of 35 rainforest species go extinct. In South and Central America, most rainforest is felled to create grazing land for cattle and grow crops to feed them. Most of the meat from these animals is destined for the United States. Seventy percent of formerly forested land in the Amazon and 91% of the land deforested since 1970 is used for livestock, while Brazil is the second largest global producer of soybeans, mostly for cattle and chicken feed used in the U.S.
Aquatic Wildlife
Runoff from farms and fields of feed-crop foul water with manure containing pathogens, hormones, and heavy metals; deadly pesticides; as well as algae-promoting fertilizer and nutrients. Algae blooms suck oxygen from the water, suffocating nearly all other aquatic life in affected areas. The hormones fed to cattle present in manure cause genetic mutations in fish and amphibians. Fifty percent of freshwater species, from fish and frogs to river dolphins, are declining from agricultural pollutants.
Arctic Wildlife
Deforestation and fossil fuel use associated with livestock farming, along with methane from grazing animals, contribute significantly to climate change. Warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice and snow cover, rising sea levels, longer summers, and more extreme weather pose many hardships for animals like walruses, seal, caribou, narwhals, polar bears, arctic birds, and cold-water fish. Unlike other species that can survive warmer temperatures by moving north, arctic animals have no colder place to which they can go. This is one reason, all the species dependent on this unique habitat face extinction.
Marine Animals
Commercial fishing boats trawl the seas with nets that scour the ocean floor scooping up every living thing in their wake including many non-targeted animals like turtles, dolphins and whales. Animals caught inside the nets are smashed together and dragged along the rough ocean floor for hours before suffering decompression as they are brought to the surface. Unintended victims may be still alive when thrown back into the ocean, but die from their injuries and trauma.
These nets also strip away corals, sponges, and rock formations that fish depend on for food and shelter. Long line fishers set adrift 5 – 10 billion baited hooks per year which lure animals like seabirds, turtles, and penguins, to untimely deaths along with many tons of fish killed for profit. Industrial-scale fishing methods and sophisticated sonar location make it impossible for animals to evade capture, decimating once-abundant species. The alternative, fish-farming, often requires large quantities of wild-caught fish for feed. Like factory-farms on land, overcrowded pens of captive fish pollute the ocean with concentrated waste full of disease, and nutrients that produce toxic algae blooms and kill coral reefs.
Veganism: First Step to Animal Rights
In order to raise and butcher animals for food with impunity, we have had to relegate all animals to the status of property. As a consequence, even those animals we keep as pets or marvel at in the wild, are denied legal protection for their own sake. While it is true a person can be fined for abusing a family pet, these animals are still considered property and are protected only as far as protections don’t interfere with human interests. Cats, dogs, rabbits and hamsters can legally have many painful and cruel things done to them that would be illegal to do to pets when they are used for scientific research or product testing.
Similarly, a wild animal may be protected, but only as the member of a species that is valued for some benefit it provides humans, even if that value is simply its place in a natural world we want to preserve for our own reasons. Wild animals considered nuisances or threats or desirable as moving targets are killed, even tortured, with impunity. Again, the protection of animals is dictated by our needs and desires, never their own. As long as we raise animals for food, humans have a deeply vested interest in denying animals such rights, and that leaves not just farm animals, but all animals, vulnerable to institutionalized cruelty that is limited only by the boundaries of human imagination. It has allowed for their exploitation and horrific abuse in research and testing, fur, wool, and exotic skin production, rodeos, circuses, and puppy mills to name only a few of many widespread commercial uses of animals.
Debasing Fellow Living Beings
Exploiting animals for food compels us to debase our fellow earthlings in the same ways we debase other humans. When humans exploit, enslave, or wage war on our own species, we make peace with our consciences by denigrating those we abuse. In cases where some advantage allows one group of humans to dominate another, we cloak our bullying in the guise of moral superiority. We declare that those we subjugate are stupid, dirty, inferior, even deny their ability to think or feel at all. Slave owners, anti-Semites, and men in chauvinistic societies have all insisted on the intrinsic inferiority of the humans suffering at their hands. Those in power portray themselves as the standard to which all others are measured. Differences in terms of culture, technology, physiology, or psychology are debased.
Likewise, as long as humans raise other species for food, we must, in a similar way, continue to view all animals as inferior to, rather than simply as different from us. We will insistently blind ourselves, even in the name of science, to the unique and amazing abilities of the billions of other species on earth, and, at the same time, the many traits that we have in common with them. Once we go vegan, our hearts and minds can be open to and appreciative of other creatures.
Human Dominion and Self Destruction
As long as we exploit animals for food, we will insist on our dominion over them. The blinding sense of our intrinsic superiority and the heedless pursuit of our own interests have and will continue to fuel the destruction of the natural world and threaten the existence of many species all together, including our own.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you want to do the one thing that will spare the most animals, go vegan; if you want to win animals the legal status they need to be protected from suffering and destruction at the hands of humans, persuade others to do the same.