New Wave Activism: Press Release #1

Animal rights activists say they are not being given the same opportunity to speak out on Bill 156 as other organizations. Bill 156, the Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, 2020 will prevent activists from accessing and exposing abusive treatment of livestock in farms, slaughterhouses, and transport vehicles by both staff and production processes.

Members of New Wave Activism say this bill effectively terminates their ability to “bear witness”: drawing close to the side of the trailer, documenting the condition of the animals, and offering some water, which the animals may not have had for up to 40 hours. It’s an action which is crucial to the movement’s vigils in the area, and all over the world.

New Wave Activism bears witness multiple times a week at Fearmans’ Pork, Harvester Road in Burlington.They hold signs, do outreach, and try to raise awareness as to what happens to animals destined for the slaughterhouse. . However, their most important activity is stopping the trucks to bear witness to the pigs.

Julie Brar, long-time member of NWA., said, “Bearing witness means offering to the animal what may be the first compassion they’ve ever received. For a sentient being, compassion is a fundamental right.”

In order for activists to bear witness, trucks need to stop, which often happens at red lights, but which can also be done voluntarily at a drivers’ and his company’s discretion. However, Brar noted many of the truck drivers are uncooperative, and many activists have reported increasingly aggressive driving, with trucks breaking traffic laws regularly, while police look the other way.

“We have footage of trucks accelerating through the intersection and running red lights in full view of police, who look the other way,” Brar said. “Its giving us the distinct impression that the police are not neutral participants.”.

It’s gotten worse, Brar said, since the death of local activist Regan Russell, a native of Hamilton, who was killed June 19 by a transport truck at the gates of Fearman’s Pork, while she was walking through the crosswalk. Many of the group witnessed the tragic event, and agree, the truck drivers are becoming much more aggressive with Bill 156 looming.

Of Bill 156, Brar said the public needs to understand what activists do is not “tampering” or interfering with their business – the trucks don’t stop running altogether – but maybe for a brief moment, the animals in transport might feel some measure of comfort. It also allows activists to get close enough to determine the condition of the animals, which would go a long way to keeping welfare checks and balances in place for the animals and ensure transparency within the industries. In fact, some drivers, those who tend to cooperate with the activists and stop for them voluntarily, have said since they have to wait for a while inside the gates to be off-loaded anyway, it could just as easily be for those few minutes outside the gates.

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  Centre with orange sign: Regan Russell, killed during a vigil at Fearman’s Pork, Burlington, ON.

“We just want a chance to make our message heard. This bill is designed to obscure the industry from the public’s purview,” she said, adding she wondered what they were trying to hide.

“Forget transparency. You think you know what you are getting because they have to put ingredients on packages, but that doesn’t account for what happens to the animals themselves from birth to death. Their treatment has a huge impact not only on the animals themselves, but also consumers,” Brar said. “With this Bill, it will all be swept under the rug.”

The Provincial Animal Welfare Services (PAWS) Act, which came into effect January 1, 2020, which the industry offers as a viable tool, offers protection for all animals with basic care, food, shelter and transportation – but lists certain exceptions, which could be applied to livestock.

“Basically, they are considered commodities not sentient beings who deserve life as much as we do,” Brar said.

“Two minutes is all we ask to compassionately commune with these living sentient beings. It’s not too much to ask when the end result, their egregious death, is forever.”

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Plants vs Flesh Eating Zombies

“Plants have feelings too. So if we eat plants, why can’t we eat animals?” At first glance, this seems a legit statement. Science HAS proven plants have “feelings” – of a sort, and well, we all know non-human animals do, so where do vegans go from here? Vegans decry taking a life for our useage, so what the fuck are we supposed to eat based on this rationale?

Most of us understand non-human animals have feelings: they have consciousness, think, feel, have babies with whom they bond, live in communities in which they bond, recognize faces and scents, communicate, and have individual personalities. They are not automatons designed for our personal use and to do our bidding; they are beings in their own right.

this would be your “free range” chicken…..

Plants have been scientifically proven to sense their environment using hormones and sensory ions: they lean into the light for food production, many close up at night when there is no sun to produce food, enabling them to retain moisture. Plants also sense beneficial fungi and work underground through the root systems to connect with plants of the same type to send signals and nutrients back and forth. There is no doubt nature is amazing. However, does this mean the plant has the same sentience as an animal? Science has shown that answer is No.

The main consideration for feeling pain is a central nervous system. Human and non-human animals share this attribute. Plants do not. Plain logic shows animals and plants sentience is different: animals scream, cry and bleed when cut; plants do not. Certainly, modern research has shown plants do have a reaction to being pulled from the earth or off a stem, it is an automatic sensory reaction to a change in their environment. It’s not a feeling of pain or fear, it’s more a chemical reaction to what’s going on in order to adapt to their environment. This has been proven scientifically.

A plant’s life goal is to procreate – that’s it; that’s all. So having a blossom or fruit plucked from a plant, where the seeds will be disseminated elsewhere and germinate and grow to fruition is exactly what it wants. The area where the fruit is plucked from becomes the focus of the plant as it sends enzymes to promote quick healing so it’s food production can be sent to further it’s goal of procreation. That is its reaction to being eaten. Not fear, not bleeding, no screaming.

All this to say: plants want to be eaten! Since pollination, seed dissemination, root upheaval, etc are all vehicles for a plant procreation, being eaten is the fulfillment of their life goal.

Now, they are obviously not rubbing their hands together in glee, chortling at the success of building the prettiest fruit and being chomped on by someone to further their ends of world domination, umm no. Invasion of the Body Snatchers aside, if a plant is eaten, it has fulfilled its raison d’etre – its reason for being: spreading its seeds.

Conversely, non-human animals do NOT want to be eaten. We can tell this, quite simply, by their body language, no science needed. Rolling eyes, crying in terror, running physically away, shaking, vomiting, defecating where they lay/stand – all very obvious signs of fear and distress. Their life goal is NOT being fulfilled by being eaten, because their life goal is to LIVE. Killing an animal will not cause it to spread seeds around the earth to continue life. Science has proven non-human animals do feel the same as us; they have a central nervous system which allows them to feel the excruciating pain of suffocation in gas chambers or the sting of a bloody blade. This is NOT a natural process for them.

selecting a pig for slaughter

We don’t want to die. Humans sometimes die in car accidents, work accidents, through illness; we devise laws and methods to protect us and heal us so these events are fewer. Animals don’t want to die either, but rather than putting measures in place to protect their lives, we condone their death and we justify it by saying it fulfills the “circle of life”.

No. A plant being eaten fulfills the circle of life. An animal being killed ends it.

“Get A Job!”

It’s a cry I hear frequently while protesting. It’s directed at those of us who are taking time out of busy schedules to bear witness to the suffering and cruelty of the animal agriculture system and other forms of speciesist control and oppression.

And I wonder: why do these people think we don’t have jobs? Why do they assume we are all dirty hippie layabouts, who do not contribute to society and don’t pay taxes? I mean do they think we mooch off of society, hanging out in our communes wearing Jesus sandals and dashikis, clouds of questionable smoke wafting around our heads?

Time management: heard of it?

Sure, we are obviously not at work at that moment in time; some have days off, some have later shifts. Some of us are retired, having spent our lives working, contributing and paying taxes (and still are) and are now enjoying free time but choosing to do something positive with it. But there we stand, at our corners, with our signs, peacefully bearing witness to beings destined to end up at slaughter mere moments later, and all around us the hue and cry “Get a job!” echoes around us continuously.

I saw comments on a thread on Facebook a few days ago, and someone posted the “get a job” remark, to which I replied, “Why do you assume they don’t have jobs?” And you know what he said? He replied, “Well they obviously they have too much time on they’re hands.” (sic)

So there it is, peeps. If you have spare time after work, and decide to do something constructive with your time, such as exercise your Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms, then YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS.

Apparently, to be a legitimate contributing member of society, you must work all day and night, with only enough time to get a few hours sleep in between shifts. If you have extra time on your hands, and maybe go shopping, or to the library, or lounge in your backyard, or protest something you feel strongly about, then YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS.

I kid you not. This is a thing.

Then I noticed something: the opposition had protesters too. Morning, afternoon, evenings, whenever we were there, they were too. Did they all quit their jobs to keep up with us? They must not realize they now also have TOO MUCH TIME ON THEIR HANDS, and so it might be helpful if we yelled “Get a job!” at them now. I mean, if we are there, and they are there, WHO’S WORKING?? Who is keeping our economy going, paying the taxes, supporting medicare and social programs? Because now we all HAVE TOO MUCH TIME ON OUR HANDS!

I don’t know if our country can ever recover from this.

Basically, the phrase “Get a job!” directed at activists infers our cause is unimportant and should therefore be abandoned in pursuit of more productive tasks. But who is the arbiter of what’s important and what is not? Who decides which task qualifies as important to society and which impedes it’s advancement?

Rosa Parks, MLK Jr in background
Stock Photo

I understand we have opposition: people who disagree with us. Maybe even hate us. There is a fundamental belief out there that those who shake up the status quo are bad, troublemakers, malcontents, maybe even criminals. It appears it has never entered their heads that protesters are the people who bring about change; who bring issues to the forefront of awareness in society. All the things in this world that we have accepted now as the norm were all once issues which were fought over, with many, many dissenters. Emancipation, desegregation, the vote for women, abortion & bodily autonomy, child sexual abuse, Indigenous rights, corporate glass ceilings: all these issues drew blood in society. People died to bring about these changes, and we’re still fighting for them today in many cases. Who are these people who fight for these improvements?

Us. Activists. And it has ever been so since the dawn of time.

And what’s important to realize is we don’t have to be activists to make ourselves heard. There are many ways to bring about change. Activism can be as simple and as quiet as living a certain lifestyle with conviction: no fanfare needed. Lead by example.

But there are some of us who like to make a little noise, shake things up, challenge the “man”, plants seeds and just generally kick society in ass and get some discomfort going to fertilize those seeds of thought. That doesn’t make us bad; it doesn’t make us toxic; it doesn’t make us unemployed layabouts, either. It does however, scare people.

Humans historically feared the unknown.; We burned witches, despite the fact they healed the sick; we oppressed different cultures, even while appropriating goods and actions within their communities – because it was unexplainable. As cave dwellers, we didn’t travel far from our homes – to do so was to challenge our survival. Predators, extreme weather, starvation, murderous rogues from other tribes: these were our enemies and being away from the cave put us in jeopardy. Routine was familiar, safe. Introduction of some new element or being meant things were different, unknown, and it created rampant and widespread fear, because our and our tribe’s safety was dependent on knowing the who, what, when, where, and why’s of our environment. Changes are rarely welcomed with open arms, and even today, that is still typical . Despite all our advancements and technology, we are still animals and we still have a need for security for our survival.

So activists with radical ideas and loud voices threaten not only everything we hold dear, but our very existence! Obviously, most people will oppose the new ideas and are fearful of the strident message: it challenges the margin of safety we have put around ourselves. It introduces elements of the unknown and we sure as heck can’t have that!

One of the arguments against protests I hear from people is that we “disturbed their peaceful, lovely day.” Well, duh. That was our intent! They weren’t going to hear our message magically with feathers and sparkles blown in by a gentle breeze a la Disney stylez. People don’t sit up and take notice of quiet, pretty messages floating by on clouds of inconspicuousness. You send someone a message like that, where does it end up? Still floating – forever and ever. And ever.

Captain Paul Watson, Canadian Citizen and founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

No, the way to catch attention, make people sit up and think, is to be loud and maybe even obnoxious. Activists want to disturb you; they want to interrupt lovely days; they want you to hear their message. It might be the only way you will actually HEAR it. Once you hear it, it stays with you, and you think about it. And you may disagree, in fact, as history as shown, you probably will disagree – emphatically. But eventually, as you continue to hear the message over time, in different ways, some subtle, some not so much, your opinion might change. And that seed of thought, that bud of transformation is how we as society grow and progress from cave dwellers to a civilized society.

We in Canada have an unalienable right to civil disobedience. It’s in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We are allowed to gather in public, peacefully – but not necessarily quietly. We are allowed to express our views publicly by any way we choose – yelling, talking, leafleting, creating dramatizations, marches, public spectacles, signage, speeches. We are allowed to disturb your peaceful day. We are allowed to disrupt traffic, to agitate. We are allowed to ROCK YOUR WORLD.

That is our job.

As Ghandi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Out With The Old…

Three years ago, I was wielding a spatula, slinging spices, and rocking a carving knife, making some delish meat-centric meals for my family. All this whilst brandishing a dry pinot or three in a tipsy waltz across the kitchen.

My favourite shows were Master Chef, Hell’s Kitchen and Dinner Party Wars. I watched them almost exclusively, over and over, as I drained bottle after bottle of dry white.  I seemed to have a penchant for anything creative all my life, writing, sewing, painting, and eventually that evolved to include cooking.

 All the recipes revolved around meat, which I didn’t actually like much. All my life I have had issues with eating meat: the stringiness, the fat, the cartilage, the gelatinous textures, the smell of bones. So I rarely ate it myself, but I was a “feeder”: I cooked for everyone else. And I mean everyone!

Every kid on the block stopped by for breakfast, lunch or dinner. My kids would call their friends and say “she’s making spaghetti” and BING! someone would magically arrive at my door just in time, and naturally, I made them up a plate. My daughter’s friend would ask his mother what they were having, and then contemplate one second before stating “I’ll see what Carol’s making.”I didn’t mind one bit; I enjoyed it. But I rarely ate it. Turkey at Christmas; a hamburger at a bbq, pepperoni on a pizza, but steak? nope. Chicken on the bone? Nope. Chops? hell no. 

Then I changed a few things in my life. I left an abusive ex; the box of pinot stopped gracing my counter, and I started thinking about my health. ME. My health. My life. Things I wanted. Not anyone else. Just me. What a revelation. 

I didn’t want to eat flesh. I didn’t want to eat animals. I didn’t want any part in an industry that commodifies sentient beings and reduces them to “cuts of meat” in a supermarket. I had spent years doing it in order to please others, to follow the status quo. I did it because doing what I wanted was not an option, and in truth, I didn’t know what I wanted because all my time was spent catering to what others wanted. I had become a non-entity in my own life. I was no better off than the animals bred into the agriculture industry. I followed “the herd” because that’s all I knew and all I was allowed.

And then I deleted the negative and inserted ME into the equation. 

Better late than never, eh?

And as most vegans say: I wish I had done it sooner!

Empathy for animals has to go beyond our pets: cats and dogs. It has to go beyond wild animals hunted or trapped for fur or other products. It has to go beyond animals threatened with extinction. These issues are understood around the world as being legitimate concerns which even non-vegans will support. 

But it also has to include agricultural animals: horses, cows, pigs, goats, sheep. It has to because it’s plain logical. Why protect some animals and not others? What is the difference? Non-vegans will say “well they are bred for food.”These animals which were bred to fill a human concept: that it’s easier to go out into the field and kill a cow for food than hunt it. So agricultural animals were bred out of human LAZINESS and greed. Nature didn’t breed domestic animals, humans did. So they are not natural to this world, but now they are here, why do we think it’s ok to abuse them and not dogs (which we also bred)?

We are disgusted at the Chinese Yulin Dog Meat Festival but celebrate ribfests all summer long. We think it’s horrific that some Asian cultures eat live octopus, but really enjoy slugging back that raw (read ALIVE) oyster. And this year, we were horrified that due to a Chinese delicacy of bat soup, we ended up locked down in our homes hiding from a zoonotic novel coronavirus, but we conveniently ignore H1N1 outbreaks because “mmm bacon”.

Oh believe me, I ignored the facts too. I’m guilty of all of the above and then some. But when I made the change and stopped eating meat, I also started reading and researching, and I opened my mind to thoughts and ideas about which I previously had not heard. I went back to my nature spirit roots and had some serious conversations with my soul. I did a lot of housecleaning in my mind, opened up a few musty windows and gave that space a new coat of paint. 

I like where I am now. I like me. I have goals. I have a purpose. I have drive. I’m connecting with a new tribe and I love how that feels. I’m tapping into my creativity, my spirituality, and my imagination and it’s looking up as never before. And it’s all because I stopped using other sentient beings for my own selfish needs. I recognized we are all animals: some human animals, some non-human animals, but animals just the same. We all deserve to be treated with respect; we all deserve love; we all deserve life.

Won’t you consider this concept too?  

The True Story of the Christmas Turkey

Our family used to have turkey only twice a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas, with mum’s special sausage stuffing and a creamy, savoury gravy – having it so rarely made it extra special. As adults, we followed the same recipe and the same rules, and that made the Turkey Dinner the star of the show.

In fact, turkeys are very intelligent creatures with distinct personalities. They can fly at 55 miles per hour, run up to 35 miles per hour, and can live for up to 10 years under natural conditions. Like all animals, they are sentient, and can feel pain, fear and stress. Farmers have labelled them dumb, hence the sobriquet “turkey” is usually used to insult someone, inferring lower intelligence, but studies have shown they are misunderstood in that when they don’t do what the farmer wants they are labelled “stupid” or “unintelligent”.

Well if not listening to an abuser makes them “stupid” then I am in good company!

The turkey on the Christmas platter was more than likely raised in a dark battery with no space to move, crammed in with other broiler birds. He was fed hormones and gmo grains to plump him up to an unusually meaty size so we can have lots of white breast meat, which caused him to be unable to support his weight, leaving him lying in his own feces, being trampled on by other oversize birds. Because of their tight quarters, their beaks are cut off, along with a portion of their toes, and also males may have their fleshy snood cut off – all without benefit of anaesthesia.

This is meant to prevent them damaging each other while they are confined and grown to optimum size for slaughter. Within five short months a turkey can weight up to 40 lbs, due to genetic manipulation – 56 per cent larger than those produces in the 60s. This means, due to their gargantuan size, they are unable to perform like a normal turkey in the wild: they cannot fly, often cannot walk, and certainly can’t procreate. Hence, artificial insemination is used to get turkey babies.

This is not a pristine, hygienic procedure as we might imagine. Basically, females are held upside down, while someone shoves their hand with a tube or syringe into their vent and inseminates them. A worker in Missouri was quoted as saying, ” I have never done such hard, dirty, disgusting work in my life: 10 hours of pushing birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside down, pushing open their vents, dodging their panic-blown excrement and breathing the dust stirred up by terrified birds.”

And once again, don’t think because you purchased ‘organic’ or ‘free range’ that your turkey was living in a meadow, frolicking and cavorting with the other barnyard buddies. Nope. All this means is the food was a little different and the shed they were kept in had no cages, just open floor, giving them a little more room to defecate on each other, step on each other, and breath in more ammonia fumes and dirt.

You may not realize, at the time of slaughter, most birds are suffering from … “painful respiratory diseases and eye disorders, including swelling of the eyelids, discharge, clouding and ulceration of the cornea, and even blindness. There is a high rate of viral and bacterial infections, …” according to ezine Free From Harm.

And if this isn’t bad enough, Mercy for Animals reports animals also suffer from “workers kicking and stomping on birds, dragging them by their fragile wings and necks, and maliciously throwing turkeys onto the ground or on top of other birds; birds suffering from serious untreated illnesses and injuries, including open sores, infections, and broken bones; and workers grabbing birds by their wings or necks and violently slamming them into tiny transport crates with no regard for their welfare.”

Yes, folks, your turkey probably had some kind of viral lung infection, most likely some sort of skin infection filled with pus from the filth, was not treated, and then you ate it, seasoned with all those GMOs and a few kicks in the head.

After living this five months or so of abuse, they are shipped to the slaughterhouse, where they are dipped in an electric water bath and HOPEFULLY stunned enough so their throats can be more easily cut, and again HOPEFULLY after that, they are actually dead so that the boiling water they are next dumped in to remove their feathers easier doesn’t hurt them – because, you know – we want to kill them humanely. Often, however, they are not dead by the time they reach the boiling vats. It’s estimated more than 1 million turkeys are boiled alive each year.

So much for that humane death.

What does this tell you? Well I know what it tells me: We care more for rapists, pedophiles, and serial killers on death row, criminals who have committed egregious acts, in terms of humane death than we do for the innocent beings on this earth.

I’m including a link here which has a video of such a turkey facility, right here in Ontario. Hybrid Turkeys is the second largest producer of turkeys in the world – so chances are, yours came from there. In this plant, workers abused the turkeys in front of management, but when a hidden camera exposed the brutality, management was quoted as saying it was an isolated incident, and the workers were let go.

Don’t kid yourself. None of this is isolated or unusual, and it’s not limited to just turkeys and chickens. I urge you – no, I implore you – to watch the video, as horrific as it is, and then tell me you can eat your turkey on Christmas Day without a thought as to how it got there.

Hybrid Turkeys, Ontario – undercover video

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/hidden-camera-captures-blatant-animal-cruelty-at-turkey-farm-1.1729233

Merry Christmas.

Some Gross Morning Thoughts…

These days, many conversations often go something like this:

“Oh are you vegan? That’s cool. I don’t eat much meat at all. Maybe like twice a week?”

Why? Why do some people I speak with find it necessary to explain their animal consumption to me once they find out I am vegan? I mean it goes without saying I would like everyone to become vegan and finally have all living beings treated with compassion and respect; failing this at least eat less meat and dairy, but contrary to what you see on my social media, I don’t ram veganism down everyone’s throats…. No, really, I don’t.

Yet for some reason, without prompting, many people I meet seem to feel it necessary to explain to me how LITTLE meat they eat as soon as they learn I’m vegan – and I have to wonder why.

Is it guilt? It could be guilt because they know vegans in general are against the abuse and cruel treatment of animals, and the animal agriculture industry is being exposed, more and more, as proponents of the commodification and abhorrent exploitation of domesticated animals. It could be because they know vegans are also against the fur and leather industries, animal lab experiments, and puppy mills, and these folks know definitively these industries also profit from the cruel useage and eventual death of innocent animals.

So as I sit here drinking my tea with almond milk, I THEN start to wonder if they feel this guilt, then they KNOW, or at least SUSPECT, that the consumption and commodification of living, sentient beings is unquestionably WRONG so the next question is: WHY ARE THEY STILL DOING IT?

Why is it still such a battle for us who advocate for animal rights? I mean, they already actually know or they wouldn’t be justifying themselves to me, and if they know…well….why would they want to be part of it?

If you are eating less meat and dairy, or transitioning to veganism at your own pace: good for you! I’m so happy about that! The best method to being heard is affecting these industries where it hurts: their bank accounts. Every little bit you don’t consume helps get the message across – slowly – but still. And they are not going bankrupt, peeps, don’t worry about that. They will – and are – responding by filling alternate plant-based demands which are getting more and more popular all over.

But if you are, by making this statement, acknowledging there is something wrong with the animal product industry, and yet NOT actually working towards cutting it out even a little bit, then you are a hypocrite. And I don’t actually want to hear how many times a week you don’t eat meat. Because all I hear is the how many times you still do eat the flesh of a once living, breathing, feeling creature.

That’s another thing: it’s flesh – skin, muscle, tendons, blood, bone, capillaries, nerve endings, veins, all things we have, too. That crispy coating your licking your fingers over is SKIN, with hair follicles and bruises and scars. It could be your skin – but it’s not, luckily. It’s some other creature’s skin. You know in Nazi Germany, the skin of the Jews was used to make book covers, furniture covers, and lamp shades…but I digress.

Gross eh?

Anyway, that’s my gross thought for today. Maybe someone out there has an answer for why people explain themselves to me when they learn I’m vegan. I think it’s guilt. Guilt because they know and understand how cruelly animals are being treated for our consumption, and that makes me feel sad because if that is the case, then it’s going to take a lot more than some undercover videos of the inhumane treatment of pigs to stop people from eating bacon. If you already have the knowledge, and you do it anyway, that doesn’t bode well for humankind on this earth.

Why One and Not the Other?

Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute.

What if pigs, cows and chickens were not used for food. What if they were, let’s say, roaming the wilds like elephants, deer, and rhinos. And what if you found out, through some undercover activists, that there were places where these animals were kept and bred for an unnecessary use, like trophies, rather than for food. And what if this enterprise kept these animals in dirty, deplorable conditions; beat them, cut off horns and tails without anaesthetic, forcibly impregnated them to control births, prevented them from seeing the light of day by keeping them in tight metal cages and just generally abused them in order to profit off them. And they are not food. Think elephants, dogs, cats…

Would you be appalled? Would you be angry? Wouldn’t you do everything you could to lobby for the animals’ freedom? Wouldn’t you picket these organizations; produce petitions to be signed; sneak in to take videos to show the world what is actually going on? A warehouse full of dogs kept in metal crates, their puppies laying in their own filth around them. Like puppy mills but for cows, pigs, and chickens.

Wouldn’t you think this is a bad thing? That humans were evil to the core to be able to do that to innocent beings? I mean, they are not being used for food, we have loads of other things to eat – remember this is hypothetical. Try to be honestly neutral here.

You would, I know it. I can see the articles being shared on Facebook, IG and Twitter. I can see your comments. They are the same ones I see under pictures of abused dogs and cats. The same ones I see plastered all over; photos of Trump Jr. and his slaughtered trophies; Michael Vick and his bait and fighting dogs; carcasses of elephants missing tusks. I know you would think it was wrong.

So why is it alright now?

Why is it ok for cows, pigs, and chickens? Because we eat them? So there are certain animals we can abuse and some we can not. Why? Are they lesser in some way? Are they ugly? Is that it? An abomination to our senses? No…Do they damage our property, encroach in our neighbourhoods, steal our children? No…What do they do that gives us the right to maim and kill them when other animals are protected?

Why one and not the other?

That is All.

The Past Is The Present

Remember back in the day when it was cool to smoke? Oh man, those sloe-eyed sultry women who could inhale through their nostrils were my idols! Clicking open the shiny silver cigarette case, flicking the gold-plated zippo, inhaling the first whiffs of butane, then “zoopf” the flame itself, six inches high, dazzling in its initial flash, then the first tendrils of smoke curling around a glowing end.

It was pure Hollywood, peeps, and I was a part of it. So were many, many of my friends, starting in our early to mid-teens. There was a law about age, you had to be 16, but no one enforced it. Unless you looked about five years old, no one refused to sell anyone cigarettes. In fact, even if you were five years old, all you had to say was you were buying them for your parent or grandparent, and boom, away you went with a little box of death that in the late 70s cost about $2.

In the 80s, the health and welfare party poopers got real hot and heavy over the health risks of smoking, and in 1988 new legislation was passed requiring cigarette packages to list certain health warnings and it just snowballed from there, peeps. Before long, the age was raised again (and people actually checked ID this time around!), smoking was banned in public places, then in the workplace, then gruesome images graced the boxes. People were quitting left and right, like passengers jumping off a sinking ship. Tobacco companies rallied, but the health conscious boomers were stronger and today, smoking is persona-non-gratis everywhere.

But let me tell you, the uproar! The initial hue and cry! Campaigns about curtailing our rights to choose, personal freedoms, the financial impact on tobacco companies and tobacco farmers, oh the humanity! It was not a popular concept at first. Our health was less important than the income generated from the industry – I mean, how were these rich tobacco families going to continue to live their extravagant lifestyle? Would they have to sell a yacht or two? Perhaps they’d have to forgo a few vacations or budget for Christmas?

Eventually, those companies either rallied and diversified or they died out. But life went on, and the quality of life for many was so much better. Today, we recognize how bad smoking is for us, and the memories of the turmoil of the 80s and 90s, as changes were made, has faded.

I feel like this scenario is playing out again, peeps.

But this time, it’s with meat and dairy.

Think about it: animal agriculture is a huge part of our world. It’s not bread that is the mainstay of cultures around the world, it’s meat. Our diets are meat rich for the most part. Rarely does the average family have a meal that is not meat-centric with a side or two of high-fat carbs.

So think of animal agriculture today as the tobacco industry of yore; and the way people fight to continue to eat meat despite medical organizations and World Health Organization’s (WHO) warnings about the risks of eating meat.

Society at large does not appreciate the truths about eating meat, the same as they repudiated the truths about smoking back in the day.

I can see it now: suddenly, all meat packaging starts to carry warnings as to the health risks associated with its consumption, maybe even gruesome pictures of colorectal cancer and plugged up arteries.

Animal ag farmers and dairy producers are already crying foul as activists storm their facilities and expose their deplorable conditions and abusive methods. They are opening their arsenal of propaganda to fight to maintain their position financially and ethically, just like tobacco companies did way back. Billboards are going up for both sides, peeps, using the highways as battlegrounds, and slogans as weapons. 

It seemed like an unwinnable war, for either side, until I recalled the tobacco issued and suddenly saw a resemblance between the two.

Now I know who will win (at least a majority) because the writing is on the proverbial wall, peeps. Been there, done that.

Health and welfare will start to take the lead, as usual; and anti-meat sentiment will raise it’s broccoli-topped head and brandish carrot swords whilst showing the world a better, healthier more compassionate way. I know it, because health and welfare won the war against cigarettes, so I know it will be victorious here too.

Sure, some people still smoke. It is not gone completely. I expect meat eating to be the same. Neither will be completely eradicated until many, many years hence. But I figure it’s a start – and every little step taken is better for the environment, for us, and for our children.

Only 40 years ago practically every man, woman and child smoked. Today, only 20 per cent of the WORLD smokes. That’s fucking amazing, peeps! And guess what – people are living longer – back in the 50s, life expectancy was 52. Today it’s 72. That’s a 20 year difference and probably much of it is attributed to the non-smoking lifestyle choices and changes we have made. After all, we have fewer smokers and fewer incidences of second-hand smoke diseases. 

Imagine if meat were were mostly eliminated – life expectancy could be 82 or 92 – with less to no cholesterol ingested and very few carcinogens absorbed from processed meats, meat-related diseases would decrease drastically.

I changed my way of thinking about cigarettes way back when, and I quit smoking – as did most of my friends. Today, I also don’t eat meat or dairy – same with many of my friends. I adjusted to the changes both times based on new information and education about the reality of the industries and how they affect us and the world at large (not to mention the animals, in the case of animal agriculture).

If you can quit smoking because of the health benefits and what we now know, you can do the same with meat.

Go vegan!