The Astrakhan (aka Karakul) fur industry is a double-winner in the book of cruelty. In order to have the pelt necessary to make the unnecessary coat, not only one animal gets killed.. but two - cause you know... if you want to skin a fetus, prior to that you should kill "its container" .. the mother.
Because their unique, highly prized curly fur begins to unwind and straighten within three days of birth, many karakul lambs are slaughtered when they are only 1 or 2 days old. The rest don't even make it that far. In order to get a karakul fetus's hide - ”called "broadtail" in the industry and valued for its exceptional smoothness - ”the mother's throat is slit and her stomach slashed open to remove the developing lamb. A mother typically gives birth to three lambs before being slaughtered along with her fourth fetus, about 15 to 30 days before it is due to be born. As many as 4 million karakul lambs are slaughtered for their fur every year.
The fur industry tries to justify karakul lamb fur as a byproduct, but with a single karakul lamb coat selling for up to $12,000 and "broadtail" fetus coats fetching as much as $25,000, it's little surprise that the mother sheep and her baby's skinned carcass are usually regarded simply as trash.
And who's profiting from such disgusting cruelty? Designers Ralph Lauren, Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Jean-Paul Gaultier use astrakhan, and Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's sell it on their own racks.
But fashionistas with a heart aren't buying it. Claudia Croft, fashion editor of the Sunday Times Style Magazine in London recently called astrakhan "the cruelest and most vicious fur." And "Material Girl" Madonna hasn't been seen in her astrakhan coat since designer pal Stella McCartney scolded her for "wearing a fetus."
What can you do about karakul lamb fur?
DON'T BUY OR WEAR ANY FUR!
If you see karakul lamb fur for sale, write to the store owners or managers, let them know where it comes from, and urge them to pull it from the shelves. If you read an article about karakul lamb fur in a newspaper or magazine, write a letter to the editor .
They call her "Lucky." Wild- captured at age 4 - imprisoned in this enclosure since 1962... lucky?
(Lucky has been in this small, barren enclosure for 45 years, and alone since November 2007!)
On November 2, 2007, an African elephant named Alport died of undetermined causes at the San Antonio Zoo, leaving Lucky, an Asian elephant, all alone. Lucky was captured in the wilds of Thailand as a baby (she was only 4!!) and transferred to the San Antonio Zoo in the spring of 1962. She has endured decades of captivity in a cramped, barren zoo enclosure for the entertainment of zoo visitors and now deserves a dignified retirement in an environment that more closely resembles life in the wild.
Elephants are highly social animals who live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, forage for fresh vegetation, play, bathe in rivers, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds' babies. Their ability to feel pain—as well as sorrow, joy, and happiness—rivals our own. In the wild, elephants walk many miles and are active for 18 hours each day. Because of space limitations, zoos—no matter how well intentioned they may be—simply cannot provide for elephants' physical and social needs. Zoos' lack of space creates health problems in elephants, such as arthritis, foot and joint diseases, and psychological distress (as is evidenced by repetitive swaying, head-bobbing, and pacing).
In contrast, The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee can offer Lucky hundreds of acres of natural habitat to roam, ponds to bathe in, fresh vegetation and foraging opportunities, and the company of many other elephants. Not only would Lucky's social needs be addressed, the sanctuary environment has also proved to be therapeutic to ailing elephants.
(The reported cause of death for Alport was an orthopedic tear. Now, Lucky is having foot problems as well.)
WHAT CAN YOU DO
Send a polite message requesting that Lucky be retired!
Ask the zoo director to give Lucky a truly lucky break and make the compassionate decision to immediately transfer her to The Elephant Sanctuary and permanently close San Antonio's elephant exhibit:
Steve McCusker, Director San Antonio Zoo 3903 N. St. Mary's St. San Antonio, TX 78212
210-734-7184 210-734-7291 (fax)
mccusker@sazoo-aq.org
Please also contact the mayor of San Antonio and ask him to encourage the zoo to transfer Lucky to The Elephant Sanctuary immediately and permanently close San Antonio's elephant exhibit:
The Honorable Phil Hardberger Mayor of San Antonio P.O. Box 839966 San Antonio, TX 78283
This is where Lucky should go as soon as possible - in the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee!! You can see from the pictures that this would mean a totally different life for her - don't let her die in a concrete prison like poor Alport did... Please help Lucky to spend the rest of her life in the Sanctuary!
I stumbled upon this article from Michael Bluejay and since lately (unfortunately...) i couldn't put myself to write as much as i should, i thought to share this very interesting piece with all of you. As he also says, changing habits it's a very hard thing to do, and finding excuses why not to do so seems the easiest way out - so the answer is No, i'm not interested in your motivations and rants regarding why you will just keep on eating meat... it's your loss, not mine. My only wish and concern is that when you'll decide to stop eating it, you'll do a huge favour to yourself, countless number of animals, and the environment.
And now, ladies and gents... lets hear it from Michael Bluejay!
EATING MEAT ISN'T NATURAL
A fair look at the evidence shows that humans are optimized for eating plant foods, and not meat. Consider:
* Human anatomy: We're most similar to other herbivores, and drastically different from carnivores. * Longevity & health: The more meat we eat, the sicker we get. Meat is poison to us. It's the primary reason we get heart disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and every other major degenerative disease. If eating meat were natural, it wouldn't destroy our health. * Physical performance: People have much better endurance when they don't eat meat -- whether they're professional athletes or not.
Clearly we're capable of eating meat. But that doesn't mean it's natural. You can dress a monkey up in a cute little suit and teach it to perform circus tricks, but just because it can doesn't mean that it's natural -- nor that it should. When I say that meat-eating is unnatural, I mean simply that our bodies aren't optimized to have it be a normal part of our diets -- and we suffer the consequences when we make it so.
The meat-eating reader already has half a dozen objections to this before (s)he's even read the rest of the article, and I will address those objections specifically, but first let me address them generally: It is human nature to want to feel that what we're doing is right, proper, and logical. When we're confronted with something that suggests that our current practices are not the best ones, it's uncomfortable. We can either consider that our choices may not have been the best ones, which is extremely disturbing, or we can reject that premise without truly considering it, so that we don't have to feel bad about our actions. That's the more comfortable approach. And we do this by searching our minds for any arguments we can for why the challenge must be wrong, to justify our current behavior.
Think about that for a moment: Our feeling that our current actions are correct isn't based on our arguments. Rather, our actions come first and then we come up with the arguments to try to support those actions. If we were truly logical, we'd consider the evidence first and then decide the best course of action. But often we have it in reverse, because it's too difficult to accept that we might have been wrong.
This is particularly true when it comes to vegetarianism. It is quite easy to identify because the anti-vegetarian arguments are usually so weak and desperate, compared to other kinds of discourse. A person who would never normally suggest something so fantastic as the idea that plants can think and feel pain, will suddenly all but lunge for such an argument when they feel their meat-eating ways are being questioned. It's human nature.
At an earlier point in my life, I was in the same position as most readers probably are. My habits were challenged by a book I ran across in the library called Going Vegetarian. I didn't want to consider it fairly, because I wanted to keep eating meat. I'd grown up eating it, and I liked it. And there was another reason: I'd grown up in a small farming community raising and killing chickens. Accepting the book's premise really meant that I'd have to admit that I might not have made the best choices. So I came up with various weak defenses to justify my behavior. But deep down I knew I was kidding myself, and practicing a form of intellectual cowardice. When I considered the arguments honestly, I stopped eating animals. That was over 20 years ago and it was absolutely the best decision I ever made.
So I challenge you: stop trying to figure out ways that I "must" be wrong even before you've bothered to read the rest of this article. Instead, read it, and actually consider it rather than reflexively trying to come out with ways to dismiss it out of hand. You can certainly still disagree after you've considered all the evidence -- but not before.
Most meat-eating readers will find it necessary to try to defeat me, at least in their minds, so let's consider what constitutes doing so: providing more and better evidence for your position. One does not win the argument by making a single point, as most of the readers who email me seem to think. The evidence favoring a plant diet for humans is clear, convincing, and overwhelming. There is definitely some evidence for the other side, to be sure, but it's simply not nearly as strong. What I'm saying is, if there are 30 strong points for, and you come up with one or two against, which is the better position? I mention this because the people who email me about this article seem to believe that whoever makes the fewest points has presented the most convincing case. They somehow seem to believe that all the evidence I present somehow disappears into thin air when they present their lone argument, such as that humans have canine teeth. Please don't fall into that trap.
BUT HAVEN'T HUMANS ALWAYS EATEN MEAT?
The angry people who email me always insist, "But humans have always eaten meat!" I can't think of a better example of a case in which people believe something to be true just because they assume it is. We all grew up thinking that our ancestors were meat-eaters, but where did we get that idea? Is it true just because it's part of our collective consciousness? More importantly, what does the evidence say?
John A. McDougall, M.D., perhaps the most knowledgable expert on the relationship between diet and disease, asserts that our early ancestors from at least four million years ago followed diets almost exclusively of plant foods. Many other scientists believe that early humans were largely vegetarian. (See articles by Grande & Leckie and Derek Wall.) This is important because while prehistoric peoples hunted animals, that is still a relatively recent development in the long period of human existence. Certainly not long enough for our bodies to have adapted to it from evolution. Here's some evidence: The Maasai in Kenya, who still eat a diet high in wild hunted meats, have the worst life expectancy in the world. (Fuhrman)
There's another important fact never acknowledged by meat proponents: Humans act by idea rather than by instinct. Other animals are programmed to know what food is. We are not. For us, it's learned behavior. Or in some cases, guessed behavior. We can make choices about what we should eat even if that's contrary to good health, as millions prove every day when they eat at McDonald's. If our ancestors ate meat, they were simply being human and making choices rather than acting on instinct. Think about it: Do you really believe that cavemen were true experts about nutrition? If so, what other major decisions about your life would you like to put in the hands of a caveman?
In any event, the idea that our ancestors might have decided to mimick other animals and eat meat isn't a particularly compelling argument that it's natural for us to do so. Given that humans act out of instinct, looking at historical behavior isn't as convincing as looking at anatomy and health effects.
WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN OMNIVORE
There is no question that humans are capable of digesting meat. But just because we can digest animals does not mean we're supposed to, or that it will be good for us. We can digest cardboard. But that doesn't mean we should.
If the evidence shows that our anatomy favors the digestion of plant foods, and we're healthier when we eat less animal foods, what do we make of the fact that we're capable of eating animals? It's simple: We have the ability to eat a wide variety of foods as a survival mechanism. The fact that we can eat just about anything, including meat, is very handy, from a biological point of view. But the fact that we're able to doesn't mean that we're designed to. The evidence for this is that our biology is similar to that of other herbivores, and the more animal foods we incorporate into our diets, the more our health suffers. In fact, it is rather specious to claim that humans are natural meat-eaters considering how poorly we fare when we do so.
McDougall explains how the ability to digest animal foods didn't hurt our survival as a race, although it takes a toll on our lifespan:
"Undoubtedly, all of these [meat-containing] diets were adequate to support growth and life to an age of successful reproduction. To bear and raise offspring you only need to live for 20 to 30 years, and fortuitously, the average life expectancy for these people was just that. The few populations of hunter-gatherers surviving into the 21st Century are confined to the most remote regions of our planetlike the Arctic and the jungles of South America and Africasome of the most challenging places to manage to survive. Their life expectancy is also limited to 25 to 30 years and infant mortality is 40% to 50%. Hunter-gatherer societies fortunately did survive, but considering their arduous struggle and short lifespan, I would not rank them among successful societies."
Finally, our physiology is much more similar to that of other plant-eaters than it is of true omnivores, as we'll see shortly.
CONSIDERING THE OTHER PRIMATES
Our closest animal relatives are primates. They provide clues about our ideal diet since our anatomy is so similar. Very few of them eat any significant amount of animals, and those who do typically mostly stick to things like insects, not cows, pigs, and chickens. Jane Goodall, famous for her extensive study of apes while living with them, found that it was very rare for the primates she saw to eat other animals. Critics lunge all over the fact that Goodall discovered that primates occasionally eat meat. But the key word here is occasionally. If we ate meat is infrequently as the other primates did, our health would be a lot better. Goodall herself apparently wasn't impressed by primates' occasional eating of meat: Jane Goodall is a vegetarian.
How slight is the other primates' animal consumption? This article on primate eating habits from Harvard has a bar graph of all the things that chimps and monkeys eat (Fig. 3), and meat isn't even in the chart. What they do eat is fruit, seeds, leaves, flowers, and pith. There is a category called "Miscellaneous", which for most species amounts to less than 5% of their diet, and for chimps and redtail monkeys less than 1%. The Honolulu Zoo gives a slighty higher figure, saying that non-plant consumption is 5% of a chimp's diet, but this includes their main non-plant food, termites. Any way you slice it, their diet is at least 95% plants.
Which brings up another point: The people who hysterically scream at me that chimps are omnivores, besides ignoring that chimps' meat consumption is so small as to be virtually non-existent, never acknowledge that the non-plant foods chimps eat are not the same things humans eat. Chimps do not eat cattle and chickens. And humans don't eat termites. The idea that the meat-laden American diet can be justified because chimps may eat a whopping 5% of non-plant foods, none of it cattle or chickens, and much of it termites, is rather silly.
Let's use the Harvard article's figure for chimps and round it up to a generous 1%. If that were beef -- which it is not -- how much beef would that be? About 1/3 of an ounce in a daily diet, or 1/50 of a pound. That's about 1/7th of a medium carrot. Yes, there you have chimps' overwhelming "omnivorism".
Consider also that even though primates eat meat sparingly, there again it's likely because they're intelligent and like humans are able to make choices to act outside of instinct. As other writers put it, "While chimpanzees are known to kill, this behaviour is not necessarily dietary but ritualistic."
Eugene Khutoryansky who does believe that eating meat is natural, still cautions that the implications of chimps' killing should give us pause:
"Eating meat is indeed natural in the sense that other animals do it as well. In fact, it is even done on occasion by our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. However, there are many other things which are also natural. For example, chimpanzee males sometimes rape the females in their tribe. Chimpanzees sometimes engage in organized warfare against other tribes with which they compete for territory. A chimpanzee male, in a moment of rage, sometimes picks up a nearby infant, and crushes his skull against a rock. And chimpanzees do on occasion eat meat, and they do on occasion engage in cannibalism, in spite of the fact that there is a plentiful supply of food from other sources.
So eating meat is indeed absolutely natural. However, the fact that it is natural does not imply that it is ethically permissible. If we believed that eating meat was ethically permissible simply because other animals did it as well, then this would imply that there is nothing wrong with rape, cannibalism, or infanticide, all of which routinely occurs throughout the animal kingdom."
HUMANS LACK A DESIRE TO EAT WHOLE ANIMALS
True carnivores (and omnivores) salivate about the idea of eating whole prey animals when they see them. Humans do not. We're interested in eating the body parts only because they've been removed from the original animal and processed, and because we grew up eating them, making it seem perfectly normal. It's amazing how much of a disconnect we've been able to learn about the difference between animals and food. As GoVeg puts it:
While carnivores take pleasure in killing animals and eating their raw flesh, any human who killed an animal with his or her bare hands and dug into the raw corpse would be considered deranged. Carnivorous animals are aroused by the scent of blood and the thrill of the chase. Most humans, on the other hand, are revolted by the sight of raw flesh and cannot tolerate hearing the screams of animals being ripped apart and killed. The bloody reality of eating animals is innately repulsive to us, more proof that we were not designed to eat meat.
Ask yourself: When you see dead animals on the side of the road, are you tempted to stop for a snack? Does the sight of a dead bird make you salivate? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered "no" to all of these questions, congratulations&emdash;you're a normal human herbivore&emdash;like it or not. Humans were simply not designed to eat meat. Humans lack both the physical characteristics of carnivores and the instinct that drives them to kill animals and devour their raw carcasses.
COMPARING HUMANS TO OTHER ANIMALS
(if you can't read the chart properly - just click on the image)
Human physiology is strikingly similar to that of other plant-eaters, and quite unlike that of carnivores. It is telling that in none of the missives that readers have sent in to argue with me do they ever deny the data in the following table. They simply think that by making some other point (e.g., that humans possess canine teeth) that somehow obliterates the more convincing data in the table.
MEAT EATERS
Carnivorous animals, including the lion, dog, wolf, cat, etc., have many unique characteristics which set them apart from all other members of the animal kingdom. They all possess a very simple and short digestive system -- only three times the length of their bodies. This is because flesh decays very rapidly, and the products of this decay quickly poison the bloodstream if they remain too long in the body. So a short digestive tract was evolved for rapid expulsion of putrefactive bacteria from decomposing flesh, as well as stomachs with ten times as much hydrochloric acid as non-carnivorous animals (to digest fibrous tissue and bones). Meat-eating animals that hunt in the cool of the night and sleep during the day when it is hot do not need sweat glands to cool their bodies; they therefore do not perspire through their skin, but rather they sweat through their tongues. On the other hand, vegetarian animals, such as the cow, horse, zebra, deer, etc., spend much of their time in the sun gathering their food, and they freely perspire through their skin to cool their bodies. But the most significant difference between the natural meat-eaters and other animals is their teeth. Along with sharp claws, all meat-eaters, since they have to kill mainly with their teeth, possess powerful jaws and pointed, elongated, "canine" teeth to pierce tough hide and to spear and tear flesh. They do NOT have molars (flat, back teeth) which vegetarian animals need for grinding their food. Unlike grains, flesh does not need to be chewed in the mouth to predigest it; it is digested mostly in the stomach and the intestines. A cat, for example, can hardly chew at all.
PLANT EATERS
Grass-and-leaf-eating animals (elephant, cow, sheep, llama, etc.) live on grass, herbs, and other plants, much of which is coarse and bulky. The digestion of this type of food starts in the mouth with the enzyme ptyalin in the saliva. these foods must be chewed well and thoroughly mixed with ptyalin in order to be broken down. For this reason, grass-and-leaf eaters have 24 special "molar" teeth and a slight side-to-side motion to grind their food, as opposed to the exclusively up-and-down motion of carnivores. They have no claws or sharp teeth; they drink by sucking water up into their mouths as opposed to lapping it up with their tongue which all meat eaters do. Since they do not eat rapidly decaying foods like the meat eaters, and since their food can take a longer time to pass through, they have much longer digestive systems -- intestines which are ten times the length of the body. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that a meat diet has an extremely harmful effect on these grass-and-leaf eaters. Dr. William Collins, a scientist in the New York Maimonedes Medical Center, found that the meat-eating animals have an "almost unlimited capacity to handle saturated fats and cholesterol". If a half pound of animal fat is added daily over a long period of time to a rabbit's diet, after two month his blood vessels become caked with fat and the serious disease called atheriosclerosis develops. human digestive systems, like the rabbit's, are also not designed to digest meat, and they become diseased the more they eat it, as we will later see.
Fruit-eaters include mainly the anthropoid apes, humanity's immediate animal ancestors. The diet of these apes consists mostly of fruit and nuts. Their skin has millions of pores for sweating, and they also have molars to grind and chew their food; their saliva is alkaline, and, like the grass-and-leaf eaters, it contains ptyalin for predigestion. Their intestines are extremely convoluted and are twelve times the length of their body, for the slow digestion of fruits and vegetables.
HUMAN BEINGS
Human characteristics are in every way like the fruit eaters, very similar to the grass- eater, and very unlike the meat eaters, as is clearly shown in the table above. The human digestive system, tooth and jaw structure, and bodily functions are completely different from carnivorous animals. As in the case of the anthropoid ape, the human digestive system is twelve times the length of the body; our skin has millions of tiny pores to evaporate water and cool the body by sweating; we drink water by suction like all other vegetarian animals; our tooth and jaw structure is vegetarian; and our saliva is alkaline and contains ptyalin for predigestion of grains. Human beings clearly are not carnivores by physiology -- our anatomy and digestive system show that we must have evolved for millions of years living on fruits, nuts, grains, and vegetables.
Furthermore, it is obvious that our natural instincts are non-carnivorous. Most people have other people kill their meat for them and would be sickened if they had to do the killing themselves. Instead of eating raw meat as all flesh-eating animals do, humans boil, bake, or fry it and disguise it with all kinds of sauces and spices so that it bears no resemblance to its raw state. One scientist explains it this way: "A cat will salivate with hungry desire at the smell of a piece of raw flesh but not at all at the smell of fruit. If man could delight in pouncing upon a bird, tear its still-living limbs apart with his teeth, and suck the warm blood, one might conclude that nature provided him with meat-eating instinct. On the other hand, a bunch of luscious grapes makes his mouth water, and even in the absence of hunger he will eat fruit because it tastes so good."
So it is clear from scientific studies that physiologically, anatomically, and instinctively, man is perfectly suited to a diet for fruit, vegetables, nuts, and grains. This is summarized in the table above.
As another author said, "The human body was not designed to catch or eat animals. You have no claws. Your teeth do not rend flesh. Your mouth can not seriously wound nor is it made to really get a good bite into an struggling victim like true carnivores can. You are not fit to run fast to catch prey. Meat-eaters have fast enough reflexes to ambush or overtake a victim. You do not. Try catching a pig or a chicken with your bare hands; see what happens."
"BUT WHAT ABOUT CANINE TEETH AND BINOCULAR VISION?"
It's part of our collective consciousness that we have "canine teeth" and that this "proves" that we're meat eaters. But the truth is that this argument couldn't be weaker.
Humans' so-called "canine teeth" are unlike the canine teeth of actual canines, which are really long and really pointed. Our teeth are absolutely not like theirs. In fact, other vegetarian animals (like gorillas and horses) possess the same so-called "canine" teeth.
Overall, our teeth resemble those of plant-eaters much more than meat-eaters. For example, we have molar teeth (plant-eaters do, carnivores don't). Try to find a human-type molar inside your cat's mouth. Our teeth can also move side to side to grind, just like the other plant-eaters, and completely unlike the carnivores. Their jaws go only up and down.
My favorite quote from when someone brought up the canine rationalization on a message board:
"Hey Julia--we evolved with canine teeth? I'd like to see you tackle a steer and tear it apart with those ferocious incisors."
What's funny to me is how the teeth argument is so important to meat proponents when they make their point about canine teeth, and then as soon as they find out that our teeth are much more similar to those of herbivores than of carnivores, and therefore consideration of our teeth suggests that we're designed to be plant eaters -- suddenly what kind of teeth we have is not so important to them after all.
Others have argued that predators have eyes on the front of their heads for binocular vision, while prey animals have eyes on the sides, indicating that we fall into the predator camp. This ignores the fact that the animals that we're most similar to -- the other primates -- have eyes on the front of their heads, and are almost exclusively vegetarian. It's also important to remember what I said at the top of this article: There is certainly evidence on both sides of this debate, but the preponderance of evidence clearly shows that we're suited to eating plants almost exclusively.
IF MEAT IS SO GOOD FOR US, IT WOULDN'T KILL US
The medical evidence is overwhelming and indisputable: The more animal foods we eat, the more heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other degenerative disease we suffer. This has been exhaustively demonstrated beyond any doubt. If it were natural for us to eat these food, they wouldn't kill us. The fact that health can be regained by laying off meat and dairy is powerful evidence that we shouldn't have been eating those foods in the first place.
Dean Ornish, M.D. was the first person to prove that heart disease can be reversed, and he did so by feeding his patients a vegetarian diet. John McDougall, M.D. has also written extensively about how animal foods cause disease, and how people can regain their health by eating vegan instead. The esteemed T. Colin Campbell oversaw the most massive study of the relationship between diet and disease, the China Study, which the New York Times caled "the grand prix of epidemiology". His conclusions are the same as the other experts: we're not designed to eat animal foods, because we get sick when we do so. And as mentioned earlier, the Maasai in Kenya, who still eat a diet high in wild hunted meats, have the worst life expectancy in the world.
Do you think that depriving creatures of their lifes in order to put a candy on the market is a plausible excuse?
I don't think so.
But Mars, the owner of M&M's, Snickers, Twix, Dove, Skittles, Three Musketeers, Starburst etc says Yes. Well... than i guess it's pretty much time that the facts concerning the way these products are made get a bit more accessible to the public.. at least as much as these candies are.
Millions of animals keep on losing their life in horrible and cruel ways in vivisection labs (---> animal tests) in the name of "science and medical research". That's a huge unnecessary waste of lifes which doesn't even bring credible results for us humans to compare and use for our own life improvement.
Then there's an other huge amount of animals that get cut open, poisoned, electrocuted, deprived of food and drink, burned, physically and mentally tortured and so on just for testing out goods relative to household cleaning, personal hygiene, cosmetics.. etc.. basically things that we do use everyday... but that are not worthy of the misuse and killing of all these animals that have never agreed on having their lifes taken away for our consumerism frenzy.
And dying for a candy? No, sorry - that just goes in the "Not Acceptable" files on my desk.
Here's a little pre-taste of these colourful deadly candies:
- Mars recently funded an experiment on rats at the University of California, San Francisco, to determine the effect of chocolate ingredients on the animals' blood vessels, even though the experimenter admitted that studies have already been done using humans. Experimenters force-fed the rats by shoving plastic tubes down their throats and then cut open the rats' legs to expose an artery, which was clamped shut to block blood flow. After the experiment, the animals were killed.
- Mars funded a deadly experiment on mice that was published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience in which mice were fed flavanols (phytochemicals that are found in chocolate) and forced to swim in a pool of water mixed with white paint to hide a submerged platform, which the mice had to find in order to avoid drowning, only to be killed and dissected later on.
- In one experiment supported by Mars and conducted by the current Mars, Inc., endowed chair in developmental nutrition at the University of California, Davis, rats were fed cocoa and anesthesized with carbon dioxide so that blood could be collected by a needle injected directly into the heart—a procedure criticized by U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher Dr. William T. Golde, who notes: “This is not a simple method. … Missing the heart or passing the needle completely through the heart could lead to undetected internal bleeding or other complications.”
- Mars supported a cruel experiment to learn how a chocolate ingredient called PQQ affects metabolism by cramming baby mice into 200-milliliter Plexiglas metabolic chambers—around half the size of a 12-ounce soda can—and then submerging the chamber for nearly five hours in a chilled water bath, inducing labored breathing in the distressed mice. Experimenters then shoved tubes down the mice’s throats every day for 10 days to force-feed them the PQQ, after which they were killed and cut up for analysis.
- Mars funded a test in which experimenters forced rabbits to eat a high-cholesterol diet with varying amounts of cocoa, then cut out and examined tissue from the rabbits' primary blood vessel to the heart to determine the effect of cocoa on rabbits’ muscle tissue.
- Mars supported a test in which experimenters attached plastic tubes to arteries in guinea pigs' necks and injected cocoa ingredients into their jugular veins to examine the effect of cocoa ingredients on their blood pressure.
And keep in mind - none of these tests are required by law (please check full source here).
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is Europe’s largest contract animal testing laboratory. They have about 70,000 animals on site, including rabbits, cats, hamsters, dogs, guinea-pigs, birds and monkeys. These animals are destined to suffer and die in cruel, useless experiments. HLS will test anything for anybody. They carry out experiments which involve poisoning animals with household products, pesticides, drugs, herbicides, food colourings and additives, sweeteners and genetically modified organisms. HLS have been infiltrated and exposed a number of times in recent years. Each time horrific evidence of animal abuse and staff incompetence has been uncovered, including workers punching beagle puppies in the face. On the SHAC site you will find information on HLS, who they are, who their supporters are and most importantly how you can take action to have this disgrace of a company closed down.
Under Cover Footage taken inside Huntingdon Life Sciences
HUNTINGDON LIFE SCIENCES: A to Z
- A is for.... AIR FRANCE. They ship in animals to HLS. This company dominate the market in flying primates to labs in Europe, many die in transit from suffocation.
Air France HQ, 45, rue de Paris, 95 747 Roissy CDG Cedex, Tel: 01 41 56 78 00 (9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday), Fax : 01 41 56 70 29 Air France, 10 Warwick Street, Piccadilly Circus, London, W1 5RA, Tel: 0845 0845 111 USA, Tel: 1-800-237-2747
- B is for... BEAGLES. Channel four filmed Huntingdon workers punching tiny beagle puppies in the face because they were crying with pain from having needles pushed in them. They were swung, shaken and punched whilst other workers stood around laughing. Find out for yourself, view the footage here: http://www.shac.net/HLS/exposed/broughton.html
- C is for... CUSTOMERS. Customers are the companies that pay HLS to carry out tests for them. No customers = No HLS. Find customers in your area and get out your placards and megaphones: http://www.shac.net/HLS/clients.html
- D is for... DAIICHI. Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd have used HLS hundred of times to test their products. EU HQ: Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH, Zielstattstrasse 48, 81379 Munich, Germany, Tel: +49 (0)89/78 08-0
- E is for... EXPOSED. HLS have been exposed on eight separate occasions for animal cruelty. They have been exposed by undercover workers both in the UK and US as well the national media. One expose in 1997 led to Huntingdons License being suspended for animal cruelty. You can see the evidence here: http://www.shac.net/HLS/exposed.html
- F is for... FRAUDULENT. A senior scientist has recently filed a law suit against HLS after he was sacked without explanation after refusing to falsify data in laboratory experiments.
- G is for... GLAXOSMITHKLINE. GSK are one of HLS's largest customers. They have great demo targets all over the world. If you can't go on a demo you can write to their HQ and ask them to justify what they do:
GlaxoSmithKline, Glaxo Wellcome UK Ltd., Stockley Park West, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB11 1BT. You can also ring them free from the U.K (infact GSK will have to pay for your call): 0800 221441
- H is for... HERBICIDAL MANIACS. Despite claims by Huntingdon that they only carry out life saving research, they in-fact carry out tests for pointless products like Herbicides and Agro chemicals.
- I is for... INFO PACKS. Want to find out more about the campaign? E-mail info@shac.net and ask for a free info pack.
- J is for... JUNKIES. Workers have been caught out taking drugs and then working with animals. Whilst at work, UK Animal techinician James Berry took speed, and then offered it around to other employees.
- K is for... KIDDY FIDDLERS. Two executives of some of Huntingdon's largest customers have recently been exposed as peadophiles. Pfizer's executive Alan Hesketh faces trial after posing as a 28 year old woman and trading cruel images of children engaged in sex acts. He did this both from his home and work computer, as well as whist staying at a hotel during a UN conference. Also the former VP of Chiron (Novarits) was recently caught in a police sting, after arranging to meet up to have sex with underage girls, luckily, however, the "girls" were actually police decoys.
- L is for... LIARS. HLS tried to cover up SHAC's latest report. Two workers spoke out about the cruelty they witnessed in the beagle unit at Huntingdon Life Sciences. Brian Cass then wrote to all their customers to tell them SHAC made it up, and to ignore it! Silly Cass, obviously we got it all on tape! Go here for the latest expose: http://www.shac.net/MISC/Inside_HLS.html and here to see the letter full of lies that Brian Cass sent out: http://www.shac.net/ACTION/newsletters/HLS_letter.pdf
- M is for... Morale. Leaked documents from HLS's Occold Lab reveal that morale is very low. One technician when interviewed about why he walked out of work in the middle of the day without informing anyone, stated that he "had reached the end of his tether." He said that other members of staff felt the same, and that he "was merely the first to crack."
- N is for... NYSE EURONEXT. This is the most important target for the financial aspect to this campaign. Without them HLS can't trade their shares and they have no future whatsoever. Contact NYSE and ask them to stop dealing with HLS. Here are their offices:
AMSTERDAM, Beursplein,5, 1000 GD Amsterdam, Tel: +31 (0)20 550 44 44 BRUSSELS, Palais de la Bourse/Beurspaleis, Place de la Bourse/Beursplein, 1000 Brussels, Tel: +32 (0)2 509 12 11 LISBON, Av. da Liberdade, No 196, 1250-147 Lisbon, Tel: +351 (0)21 790 00 00 LONDON, Cannon Bridge House, 1 Cousin Lane, London EC4R 3XX, Tel: +44 (0)20 7623 0444
NYSE, 3 Old Burlington Street, W1S 3AE, Tel 0207 025 7882 NYSE, Tower 42, 25 Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HQ PARIS, 39, rue Cambon, 75039 Paris Cedex 01, Tel: +33 (0)1 49 27 10 00 NEW YORK, Board of Directors, c/o The corporate Secretary, NYSE Euronext, 11 Wall Street, New York, NY10005
- O is for... ORANGE. Agent Orange was tested at Huntingdon Life Sciences. The deadly chemical was used for deforestation during the Vietnam war and ended up giving soldiers cancer as well as causing birth defects for families in the local vicinity.
- P is for... PHENOMENEX. This company supply vital laboratory equipment to HLS. Their managing director said that withouth them HLS would find it difficult to keep running.
- Q is for... QUARTER. HLS's first quarter results are just out... but so are SHAC's and demo's are on the up.
- R is for... RACISTS. A senior scientist at their US site has recently filed a lawsuit against HLS after being paid less than white people.
- S is for... SUPPLIERS. A laboratory can't operate very well without equipment, without stationary, without computer software... Knocking out suppliers won't close HLS but will make life incredibly difficult, coupled with the lack of customers could prove to be devastating.
- T is for... TEVA. This company have used HLS tonnes of times to test their products, they have sites all over the world, check it out: http://www.tevapharm.com/worldwide/
- U is for... UNSCIENTIFIC. When asked if they agreed that animal experimentation can be misleading because of anatomical and physiological differences between animals and humans, 88% of doctors agreed.
- V is for... VICKY RUSH. This Huntingdon worker broke the leg of a marmoset when restraining him with a gangcage. The animal was susequently "euthanased".
- W is for... WORLDWIDE. SHAC global has taken HLS by storm. E-mail info@shac.net to get active in your country!
- X is for... XENOTRANSPLANTATION. Huntingdon carried out sick xenotransplantation experiment for Novartis. This involved stitching pig hearts in to babboons. These primates were taken from the wild and shipped across the world for the sicko's to play around with. Some suffocated in transit, infact HLS predicted this would happen, which is why they ordered twice what they needed. The experiment was a failure and HLS broke the law over 520 times during this study.
Global HQ: Novartis International AG, PO Box, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland, Tel +41 61 324 11 11 Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd, Frimley Business Park, Frimley/Camberley, Surrey, GU16 7SR, Tel: 01276 692255
- Y is for... YOU. When will Huntingdon close? Well that's down to you... the more action that happens, the quicker it will come.
- Z is for... ZYKLON B. This was a cyanide-based insecticide used by Nazi's to gas jews to death during the holocaust, it was made by Bayer, one of Huntingdons customers.
In this 'Cruelty Glossary' there are basic definitions of words and terminologies used in connection to animal welfare and animal rights topics. Most of animal lovers and activists out there are already familiar with these facts - but for any newcomer it's a simple way to get to understand some of the realities behind the words.
I'm also taking this chance to post one more time the documentary "Earthlings", which was one of the first entries here at Animal Voice more than a year ago. To read more details about the video produced and direct by Shaun Monson , just check the official website I Saw Earthlings.com .
CRUELTY GLOSSARY
Animal Cruelty: Acts of violence or neglect perpetrated against animals are considered animal cruelty. Some examples are overt abuse, dog fighting and cockfighting, and denying a companion animals the basic necessities of care, such as food, water or shelter.
Animal Hoarding or Collecting: Obsessive/compulsive disorder in which individual keeps a large number of animals-sometimes more than 100-in his or her home, and neglects to care for the animals and the home environment; "collectors" are usually in extreme denial about the situation. Technically, hoarding can be considered a crime, as it is a form of neglect.
Animal Testing (Vivisection): the term applies to all types of experiments on living animals, broadly, any form of animal experimentation, especially if considered to cause distress to the subject.The term also applies to experiments done with the administration of noxious substances, burns, electric or traumatic shocks, drawn-out deprivations of food and drink, psychological tortures leading to mental imbalance, and so forth. In about 85% of these experiments, no anaesthetic is used and results are believed by most to be inconclusive and of no benefit to Humans.
Animal Welfare Act: Act passed into law in 1966 that ensures that pets and animals used in research and for exhibition purposes are provided humane care and treatment. The act also assures the humane treatment of animals during transportation in commerce and outlaws the sale or use of animals who have been stolen.
Backyard Breeder: Dog owner whose pet either gets bred by accident, or who breeds on purpose for a variety of reasons-a desire to make extra money, for example, or to let the children witness "the miracle of birth." The animals involved are usually not tested for genetic or health problems, and there usually is no thought to where the pups will go. Unfortunately, a backyard breeder can easily become a commercial breeder.
Battery Cage: A wire cage, measuring no more than sixteen inches wide, in which four or five hens are housed. These cages are lined up in rows and stacked several levels high on factory farms. This system of production has been outlawed by countries in the European Union.
Branding: The practice of burning an identifying mark onto the body of an animal using an extremely hot iron stamp, or "brand," pressed hard into the animal's flesh for several seconds without anesthesia. Ranchers use brands to distinguish their cattle and hogs from those owned by others.
Broilers: Chickens raised for meat consumption on modern factory farms. These birds have been selected or bred so that their bodies grow very rapidly.
Bullhook: Tool commonly used in the training and management of elephants. According to accounts by several former Ringling Bros. employees and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), elephants who perform in Ringling Bros. circuses are repeatedly beaten with sharp bullhooks.
Canned Hunts: The canned hunt is a barbaric practice in which hunters pay fees to shoot and kill exotic animals in a confined area from which they are unable to escape.
Charreadas (also Charrerias): Rodeos popular in Mexico and the American Southwest. Aspects of this sport—specifically, the two events known as colas (bull-tailing) and manganas (horse-tripping)—are considered by many to be extreme cruelty. Horse-tripping has been banned in California, Texas, New Mexico and Maine.
Cockfighting: A blood sport in which two roosters specifically bred for aggressiveness are placed beak to beak in a small ring and encouraged to fight to the death.
Crush Act: A federal law that prohibits people from knowingly creating, selling or possessing depictions of animal cruelty with the intent to place them in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain.
Debeaking: A process that involves cutting through bone, cartilage and soft tissue with a blade to remove the top half and the bottom third of a chicken's, turkey's or duck's beak. This measure is taken to reduce the excessive feather pecking and cannibalism seen among stressed, overcrowded birds in factory farms.
Declawing: The act of surgically amputating the entire distal phalanx, or end bone, of an animal's toes. The surgery is non-reversible, and the animal suffers significant pain during recovery. Declawing has been outlawed in many countries in Europe.
Downers: Animals headed for slaughter who become too sick or injured to walk unassisted. The Downed Animal Protection Act outlaws the practice of transporting downers to auctions and stockyards for slaughter and requires that these animals be humanely euthanized.
Ear Cropping: The cropping of a purebred dog's ears to conform to a breed standard. Although this unnecessary cosmetic surgery is regularly performed by some veterinarians, it is often done by untrained individuals, without anesthesia, in unsterile environments.
Electric Cattle Prod (also called a Hotshot): A device that can deliver an electric current to an animal. It is used to stimulate movement in animals; commonly used with livestock and in rodeos. When animals are poked with the electrified end, they receive a high-voltage, low-current electrical shock. The short shock is not strong enough to kill a large animal, but is enough to cause some pain.
Factory Farm: A large-scale industrial site where many animals raised for food—mainly chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs—are confined and treated with hormones and antibiotics to maximize growth and prevent disease. The animals lead short, painful lives; factory farms are also associated with various environmental hazards.
Felony Cruelty: Animal cruelty is considered a crime in all 50 states. But in some states it is taken more seriously-and carries a felony charge, rather than a misdemeanor.
Feral Cat: A cat too poorly socialized to be handled and who cannot be placed into a typical pet home; a subpopulation of free-roaming cats.
Foie Gras: To make this pricey gourmet delicacy, birds are force-fed enormous quantities of food three times daily via a pipe that is inserted into the esophagus. This leads to enlargement of the animal's liver and sometimes rupturing of the internal organs, infection and a painful death. The process typically lasts up to four weeks, until the birds are slaughtered.
Forced Molting: Process by which egg-laying hens are starved for up to 14 days, exposed to changing light patterns and given no water in order to shock their bodies into molting. It is common for 5 percent to 10 percent of hens to die during this process.
Hog-Dog Fighting (also called Hog-Baiting or Hog-Dog Rodeos): A blood sport in which a hog or feral pig is mauled by a trained fighting dog in an enclosed pen. Because its legality, as determined by state anti-cruelty laws, can be vague, many states, particularly in the American South where hog-dog fighting is more common, have passed laws specifically criminalizing it.
Intentional Cruelty: Intentional cruelty occurs when an individual purposely inflicts physical harm or injury on an animal; usually an indicator of a serious human behavior problem.
Internet Hunting (also called Remote-Controlled or Computer-Assisted Hunting): Combines video shooting games with the power of Internet technology to allow a remote computer user to kill real animals. At the game ranch that the "hunters" see on their monitors, a gun is mounted on a robotic tripod controlled by their computer mouse. Food Animals are lured within close range with food, at which time the armchair hunter can line up a shot and "fire" at will. Legislation has been passed to ban Internet hunting in many states.
Killer Buyers: Middlemen who travel from horse auction to horse auction, purchasing any horse they can. They eventually sell these animals to slaughterhouses for human consumption, but regularly subject horses to cruel and inhumane treatment-i.e. beating them, depriving them of food and water.
Leghold Trap: The steel-jaw leghold trap is most often used to trap wild animals who are killed for their fur, such as beavers, lynx, bobcats and otters. Trapped animals usually do not die instantly, and are left to suffer intense pain, dehydration and starvation. Sometimes dogs and cats who are allowed to roam outdoors are also caught and killed in these traps.
Mulesing: the removal of strips of wool-bearing wrinkle skin around the tail of a sheep (common practice in Australia). The practice is cruel and painful, and more humane alternatives exist such as the use of plastic clips on the sheep's skin folds etc.
Neglect: The failure to provide an animal with the most basic of requirements of food, water, shelter and veterinary care. Neglect is often the result of simple ignorance on the animal owner's part and is usually handled by requiring the owner to correct the situation.
Pit Bull: A great deal of confusion surrounds this term. This label is used for a type of short-coated large terrier, anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds, characterized by wide, powerful jaws and a muscular, stocky build. Some of the dogs that fall under this category are pure-bred-either the American Staffordshire Terrier (the "AmStaff") or the American Pit Bull Terrier; term is often used for pit bull mixes.
Premarin®: A hormone replacement therapy drug made from pregnant mares' urine (PMU), collected from horses who are confined in stalls for half the year, strapped to urine collection funnels.
Pound Seizure: The transfer or sale of shelter animals to research facilities of any kind, including those that engage in scientific research and experimentation. The ASPCA is unalterably opposed to this practice. As of 2004, 14 states and many communities prohibit pound seizure either by state law or local regulation. Click here [link to position statement] to learn more.
Puppy Mill/Kitty Mill: Breeding facilities that produce large numbers of purebred dogs and cats. The animals are regularly sold to pet shops across the country. Documented problems of puppy mills include overbreeding, inbreeding, poor veterinary care and overcrowding.
Soring: Abuses to show horses include painful "soring," whereby a mechanical or chemical agent is applied to the lower leg or hoof of a horse, for the purpose of "enhancing" the animal's gait, forcing him to throw his front legs up and out. This is often done to Tennessee Walking Horses.
Stray: A currently or recently owned dog or cat who may be lost; usually well socialized but may become wary over time. A stray's kittens or pups may be feral.
Spent Hen: After one or two years of producing eggs at an unnaturally high rate, female fowl are classified as "spent hens." No longer financially profitable for factory farmers, they are slaughtered.
Tail Banding: A method of docking an animal's tail in which a rubber band or similar ligature is wrapped tightly around the tail at the desired point of removal. This cuts off the blood supply to the end of the tail, which atrophies and usually falls away after a few days. Banding is legal in the United States, and is frequently practiced by laypersons on dairy cows.
Tail Docking: The cutting of a purebred dog's tail to conform to a breed standard. Although this unnecessary cosmetic surgery is regularly performed by some veterinarians, it is often done by untrained individuals, without anesthesia, in unsterile environments.
Tenectomy: An operation performed on cats that severs the tendons in the toes so that the cat is unable to extend her nails to scratch. Owners who choose to have this surgery performed must clip their cat's nails regularly, as the cat is unable to maintain them herself.
Tethering: The act of chaining/tieing an animal, usually a dog, to a stationary object as a primary means of confinement. Tethering is a risk factor for aggressive behavior and dog bites.
Trap/Neuter/Return (TNR): A method of managing feral cat colonies that involves trapping the animals, spaying or neutering them, vaccinating them (ideally) and returning them to where they were found. The ASPCA promotes this ethical and humane practice.
Vivisection (Animal Testing): the term applies to all types of experiments on living animals, broadly, any form of animal experimentation, especially if considered to cause distress to the subject.The term also applies to experiments done with the administration of noxious substances, burns, electric or traumatic shocks, drawn-out deprivations of food and drink, psychological tortures leading to mental imbalance, and so forth. In about 85% of these experiments, no anaesthetic is used and results are believed by most to be inconclusive and of no benefit to Humans.
White Veal: From birth to slaughter at five months, calves used to produce "formula-fed" or "white" veal are confined to two-foot-wide crates and chained to inhibit movement. They are fed an iron-and fiber-deficient diet resulting in anemia; the lack of exercise retards muscle development, resulting in pale, tender meat.
The following stories are just a few small examples of the vicious and cowardly cruelty that is inflicted on animals in China on a daily basis (not inclusive of the horrendous cat & dog meat and fur trade). There's NO way that these acts are justifiable, acceptable and forgiven - NO WAY. China's Olympic Games are quickly approaching - violence inflicted on humans and animals it's an everyday reality that the chinese government and officials are trying, now more than ever, to hide from the international public eyes. But my personal choice is that till i'll have a voice - i'll use it, and i will not stop to speak out against those terrible cruel actions. The stories and the clips are hard to read and watch - but as the old saying goes "To close your eyes will not ease another's pain".
CLIP 1
A security guard at Wenzhou University beats a helpless dog to death.
A security guard at Wenzhou University beats a helpless dog to death as students videotape from above. For those of you that can't bear to watch this clip yourself, here's what's in it. At the start of the clip, we see that the dog has already lost control of its hind legs and is trying its best to run away from its attacker on its two front legs. The guard comes up to the dog and after another two or three hits, the dog lies motionless on the road. But we imagine it's not dead just yet, it's just left there to die a slow painful death.
CLIP 2
Another security guard on some Hebei university campus who smashes a brick at a dog.
- China's dogs & cats are boiled, stabbed, drowned, bludgeoned, strangled, poisoned, hanged, and electrocuted...experiencing unbearable pain as their legs are routinely broken while trussed up and hung in local markets for human consumption, or skinned alive and cast off like garbage, for the despicable fur trade.
- Dogs [both owned and stray] are relentlessly hunted down by 'police authorized' roving mobs and savagely beaten to death by the hundreds of thousands, in the name of 'rabies' control.
- Bears, suffer a lifetime of excruciating pain as they are surgically mutilated and milked each day for their gall bile. Their paws taken as delicacies for the Chinese restaurant trade or ground into powdered 'medicines'. The use of bear parts supplying the traditional Chinese medicine trade and exotic meat market is the major reason why bear species are declining around the world. Endangered species of bears are fast becoming extinct.
- Rhino, both Black & White, are butchered for their horns and are now highly endangered.
- Over 70-100 million sharks PER YEAR are 'finned' and their carcasses dumped into the sea, to accommodate Chinese' growing taste for shark fin soup.
- 20 million turtles are devoured in China EACH YEAR. Slaughtered alive & fully conscious; their heads are decapitated and crushed...even after a turtle's head is detached from its body, if not crushed properly, destroying the brain, it can survive up to ONE HOUR in agonizing torment. Two thirds of the world's turtles are now threatened with extinction.
- TONS of elephant tusks are carved into ivory trinkets--their feet hacked off for stools and coffee table legs.
- Animals are used as 'dried' ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines and killed in the billions--tiger parts, crocodile bile, deer musk, sea horses, lizards, sea cucumbers, powdered antlers, dog penis, pangolin (scaly anteaters), only to name a few on a seemingly unending list. ALL are considered no more than 'products' to be abused and murdered in the most monstrous ways possible, even if it means permanently wiping many of these species from the face of the planet in order to fulfill often frivolous, antiquated and selfish needs.
- China's role in the single, largest mass butchery of marine mammals on Earth, the annual Canadian seal slaughter, [which has taken over 1.25 million innocent lives in the last 3 years, alone], happens in part, so that dried seal penises can be turned into aphrodisiacs to "theoretically" increase the libidos of elderly men engaging in sex with Asian girls as young as 7 years old.
- Live domestic pets, as well as cows and chickens, are fed to lions and tigers for the "entertainment" of visitors at Chinese zoos. Zoo officials encourage guests to buy domestic animals on the premises, and feed them to the carnivores through special vending flaps fitted onto tourist buses...allowing individuals to throw chickens and other FULLY CONSCIOUS animals to the waiting predators.
- A Chinese chef describes how to cook pangolin [endangered scaly anteater] : "We keep them alive in cages until the customer makes an order. Then we hammer them unconscious, cut their throats and drain the blood. It is a slow death. We then boil them to remove the scales...cut the meat into small pieces and use it to make braised meat and soup. Usually the customers take the blood home with them afterwards." [The blood is thought to have medicinal value.]
- Live monkey brains are considered a delicacy: A "gourmet" can buy monkeys in the marketplace and send them to inns for cooking. The cooks first stuff the monkeys into tiny cages and force them to drink rice wine until they're intoxicated. They are then pulled from the cage and bound by their limbs (preventing movement.) Their skulls are hacked open with a sharp knife to reveal easily visible, pulsing blood vessels.The white brains are then scooped out and served as soon as possible; eaten when still warm with seasonings. Monkey brains become pungent if they are not fresh...if the skull was opened too long ago. Thus it is best to open the skull and eat at once, while brain cells are LIVING and blood vessels throbbing.
- It is not unusual in many areas of China, to see live deer in pens or crocodiles in tanks at restaurants. Buying and eating rare animals is a common way of SHOWING OFF. In southern China, rare meat is known as ye wei (wild taste), and people believe eating exotic animals can endow them with bravery, long life or sexual prowess. The Cantonese brag that they will eat ANYTHING that moves!
WHAT TO DO:
- Boycott China & the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
- Inform your family, friends and as much people as you can about China's cruelty against animals and people
- Contact your local Chinese Embassy and inform them on your choice to actively boycott China's economy by reducing or stopping all together the purchase of items that have been made in China. Below you'll find all the info & contact details where to address your protest:
A recent disturbing YouTube video shows a US Marine, identified as David Motari (22-year-old from Washington state), happily throwing a puppy off a rocky cliff while in Iraq. The US soldier, now based at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe, is under full investigation. In a statement the Marines called the video "shocking and deplorable" and said it violates "the high standard we expect of every Marine". “We do not tolerate this type of behaviour and will take appropriate action,” the statement added.
Unfortunately, this is not the first episode that sees soldiers responsible for acts of senseless cruelty towards animals. There have been other online videos that show that while fighting a war, soldiers find entertaining the abuse and torture of defenceless and innocent creatures, being them humans and animals alike. Wars and battle fields are already enough terrible on their own - Life should be considered and held as the most precious gift, expecially in those environments where death is a constant bloody reality.
Too late to save this puppy's life now - but the right time to demand to the U.S. Marine Corps to establish a zero-tolerance policy for cruelty to animals. Following are some action alerts where you can ask for justice to be made:
One of the main things that make this life worth living,
is to help alleviate and end the suffering of innocente beings,
no matter in what shape and form they came to express their soul on
this planet. In particular this Blog is an attempt to drag attention
on the Animal World, to sensibilize and motivate people on taking
action against suffering and abuse of animals,
in every possible field - from vegetarianism to pet and fur trade et cetera.
1person+1person+1person+1person+1person+ 1person+1person+1person+
1person+1person+1person+
1person....
....Makes The Change !!!
Animal Voice is NOT about sharing cute fluffy pictures of animals to make your day go pinker... you'll see some of these photos and stories too, and they are there to give us strength to go on for our MAIN MISSION, that is to correct what's being done wrong. To bring awareness on all of the stories and realities that you ain't gonna see in the front page of any mainstream magazines or channels, HERE we are dealing with what is being hidden, HERE we are dealing with what should never happen but it does, and you can change things only when you are aware of it. Only when you are Aware of it.
So if you wanna be part of this, you are welcome.
You are welcome to enjoy the sweet things, but we need you here MOSTLY to help with the dirty work. We are dealing with the 'dirty work' here and we need people who are ready and willing to help out and get their hands dirty too... cause we all know the best satisfaction we might have after all this, is to know a life, any kind of life, have gained something out of our work. In many cases their life itself.
The aim is to reach as much people as possible, because the animals need every little bit of help that they can receive!
The contents of this website are for information purposes only. They should not be used to commit any criminal acts or harassment. Names and/or facts published in the Animal Voice blog have the sole purpose of informing members of the public about the current situation related to animal conditions - in order to allow people to voice their concerns and carry out protests in a legal manner.
Also, this blog claims no credit for most images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to its respectful owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail kiaraganesha@gmail.com with a link to the said image and it will be promptly removed.
Once again: Nothing contained on this website is intended to encourage or incite illegal acts.
The Astrakhan (aka Karakul) fur industry is a double-winner in the book of cruelty.
