Cop an antler, kill a grizzly: Human wants trump animal needs

Kathleen Stachowski   Other Nations

Where to start? Perhaps with this question: In how many different ways can we take from animals? We take their lives and call it food, call it sport, call it fun…or tradition or clothing or pest control or management; they are a renewable resource, after all. If we allow them to live–at least for awhile–we take their freedom, their dignity, their right to a life without suffering. (Yes, you’re thinking factory farming, and rightly so, but let’s include even those dogs who live their lives at the end of a chain.) Even seemingly benign endeavors–picking up antlers shed by ungulates, for example–turn into something different when human appetites enter the mix.

Holland Debates Banning Ritual Slaughter

Laurens Peters

Approximately 2 million animals are slaughtered in the Netherlands without stunning each year. This number is composed mainly of poultry, but also of large numbers of sheep and cattle. Although Dutch and European laws generally prohibit slaughter without stunning, exception is granted to ritual slaughter, practiced by parts of the Jewish and Muslim communities. In 2008, the Royal Dutch Veterinary Society published a report proving that this practice causes the animals to experience much stress and unacceptable suffering (video produced by the Party for the Animals, contains shocking footage).

This month, the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch Lower House of Parliament) completed a first reading of a bill to prohibit ritual slaughter, i.e. to make the existing ban on slaughter without prior stunning absolute. The bill was introduced by the Dutch Party for the Animals (PvdD), which holds two seats in the House. Although the proposal is likely to be adopted, it has received plenty of media attention. The discussion has been focused on the clash of fundamental rights and values.

Meat Without Slaughter

                                                                               photo by Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

ANDREW C. REVKIN  (x-post from Dot Earth)

Can you have a hamburger without a slaughterhouse?  Michael Specter provides a fresh look at the prospect of growing meat in labs instead offeed lots and pastures in The New Yorker this week.

In a podcast accompanying the article, Specter acknowledges there is “ghoulish” aspect to “lab meat,” but notes that industrial-scale livestock husbandry is ghoulish, as well. He then ticks down the benefits, beyond the ethical one of having meat without slaughterhouses, if this technology can prove profitable. These include less demand for land and pesticides, fewer emissions of methane and more options for developing foods without harmful health impacts.

“OUR PLANET. THEIRS TOO.”

David Cassuto

From the email:

The New York Animal Rights Coalition presents:

“OUR PLANET. THEIRS TOO.”

A REQUIEM CEREMONY FOR EARTH’S NON-HUMAN ANIMALS , AND A CELEBRATION OF WHAT IS POSSIBLE FOR ALL ITS SPECIES

Sunday June 5th 2011, 11 am-4 pm, Union Square North, NYC

The public is invited to a mass requiem ceremony, to mourn and commemorate the billions of animals, Earth’s greatest inhabitants, who are confined, abused, and killed every day by ‘humanity’, all over the world.

We will recount the horrors and cruelty inflicted upon these innocent beings in countless industries and practices, such as factory farms, dairy and egg farms, the fur and skins trade, research labs, hunting grounds, menial labor, religious rituals, sports and entertainment, and the list is endless. We will celebrate their lives, and mourn their deaths, and cry out to the world on their behalf: how come, how far, and how long, will the human race put itself above them, use them and destroy them as it destroys this planet which we all share? We will show the world that we are a massive movement that will not rest until humanity takes responsibility, and protects all animals instead of harming them. Until planet Earth is given back to all its inhabitants, human and non-human alike, to be shared equally, in harmony and in peace.

During the event, there will also be opportunities for everyone, young and old, to watch displays and attractions, and learn about the many cruelty-free alternatives to all the practices mentioned above. The public will be invited to join our movement and make the moral, ethical, environmental, and healthy choice to adopt a cruelty-free, non-animal based lifestyle. To help us create a planet which is ours and theirs too.

Please join us at the square!

Location

South side of Union Square, NYC

14 street, between Broadway and University Place, NYC

Go HERE for all the info

The War on Pit Bulls

Lili Corn

Dog fighters concerned about whether they’re abusing their pit bulls

enough to achieve maximum viciousness in the fight ring can breathe a sigh of relief.  The popular dog fighting game application for Android, “Dog Wars,” from Kage Games, is back with a new name.  Pulled from the market for a few days last week due to trademark problems, the app was rereleased as “KG Dogfighting” on Saturday.   Those over the age of 14 are once again free to chose a game personality (perhaps the professional football player looking for a thrill) and get to work injecting virtual dogs with steroids, shocking them with electric currents, forcing them to drag around tractor trailer tires to build muscle, and sending them into the ring to rip apart opponents (or be ripped apart themselves).

          As heinous as it sounds, this game is not only real, but marketed as an attempt to raise awareness against animal cruelty.  Following this logic, one can only imagine what anti-pedophilia or anti-racism games would involve.  Search images of “dog fight victim” on the Internet if you want to see the true face of dog fighting and decide whether you think it is an appropriate subject matter for a game.

Graphic Content

Will Sheehan

Public perception has always played a significant role in the battle for animal rights. Newspapers, publishing houses and television have traditionally served as facilitators–and occasionally unwitting allies–of the movement. Due to the persuasiveness of visual aids, it is clear that the future battleground for the public relations struggle will take place on Youtube and other online media sources. These websites have revolutionized anti-cruelty documentation through the distribution of inexpensive, visceral and uncensored viral videos depicting the inhumane treatment of animals. This has elevated animal advocacy to an unprecedented level.

Coyote and fox penning: Tell Indiana NO (and do it soon!)

Kathleen Stachowski Other Nations

As far as a sense of humor goes, I have a pretty good one, or so I’m told. I keep thinking I’ll find a way to inject some hard-to-come-by laughs into my animal rights writing–perhaps a take-off on “Chicken Soup for the Vegan Soul” or something silly like that. Wouldn’t it be nice to yuk it up for a change? But I never quite get around to it; the frivolity is always supplanted by the horror du jour. On today’s menu: the penning of foxes and coyotes.

What kind of human garbage throws a frightened, disoriented coyote into a fenced enclosure and then turns the dogs loose to chase and shred the hapless creature?

Wild bison calf born on Monday, dead by Thursday: The short, tragic life of an American icon

Buffalo Field Campaign photo

WEST YELLOWSTONE, MONTANA: A wild American buffalo calf born Monday was found dead Thursday – a result of being repeatedly forced from winter range in Hebgen basin by agents with the Montana Department of Livestock and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Yellowstone National Park rangers and Gallatin County Sheriff’s office were part of the repeated “hazing” operations that entail forcing buffalo from winter range under the highly controversial Interagency Bison Management Plan.

Read the full account here.

Happy Mother’s Day, Montana style: Mom and newborn wild bison hazed mercilessly

Buffalo Field Campaign photo

Kathleen Stachowski     Other Nations

The tiny calf pictured was only four hours old and caught up in a hazing operation when the Montana livestock industry flexed its muscle. Mom hadn’t even shed the afterbirth before the harassment began. Regarding the photo, Buffalo Field Campaign reports:

Mom checks on her injured and confused baby, who was having a heartbreakingly difficult time trying to follow her. Nearly rolling down the hill, mom had to come to his aid. These little buffalo don’t know anything other than to stay with mom, keep up with the herd, do what she does and stay with her at all costs. Nothing else matters. They try with all their little might to do whatever it takes to stay with mom. What these agents put the buffalo, including newborns, through is unforgivable.

Buffalo Field Campaign, based in West Yellowstone, MT, has been on the front lines of bison advocacy and activism for over a decade.  Sometimes I wonder if wild Yellowstone bison would even exist anymore had it not been for BFC’s constant vigilance and dedication.

“Rat” vs. “her”: We’d RATHER have an honest discussion

Imagine that, marketing presenting us with a false dichotomy. And as any former English teacher (ahem) will tell you, it’s “whom.”

“That billboard has appeared in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Chicago and Baltimore, and will soon debut in Madison, Wis. — all cities with major medical or primate research centers. They were put up by the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Biomedical Research, a non-profit educational organization funded by universities, hospitals, advocacy groups, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech firms with a stake in animal research. The foundation, like its sister lobbying organization, the National Association of Biomedical Research, supports “humane and responsible use of animals in research.”