Videos
Yes, Fish Suffer, and No, Vegetarians Don't Eat Them (On Singer vs. Cowen)
Published March 20, 2009 @ 07:03AM PT
Yesterday morning, Ezra Klein posted the below video featuring a conversation between Peter Singer and Tyler Cowen. These days, when I read or hear something Singer has said regarding animals and animal rights, I far more often want to respond (and do respond) with "What the hell, man?" than I want to thank him for it. But in this case, I was glad to see Singer hold his ground on the fact that fish--yes, fish--do suffer terrible deaths, and we don't need to inflict suffering and death on them because we don't need to eat them, while Cowen stubbornly insisted that he just doesn't think it's wrong to kill a fish, with--in my opinion--not very strong arguments to back up that position.
"There's no humane killing of fish," said Peter Singer. For that, thank you, Singer. (And now, please, make that unwavering statement regarding the killing of all other sentient beings, would ya?) And although Cowen wished to just put aside all the environmental and ocean food-web implications in this debate, you can't do that; you can't separate that out. And how does Cowen justify the issue of bycatch, whereby millions of non-target fish, sharks, rays, turtles, and whales are incidentally caught and killed each year and just thrown back? What's Cowen's defense of this?
-More after the jump-
Reaching Out to the MTV Crowd
Published February 26, 2009 @ 07:22AM PT
Among the topics being discussed in the vegan and animal rights blogosphere lately is Compassion Over Killing's latest set of efforts. One effort is taking a veg message to the MTV audience. Starting this week and for the next five, COK is again running two ads on MTV: "Exploring Your Food," in the style of a 1950s educational film (see embedded video below), and "A Side of Truth," taking place at a fast-food drive-through window and imparting the same message as the first ad. The ads have only 30 seconds to get a message out, so they just briefly mention some of the cruelties of factory egg, pig, and dairy farming in specific and then link to COK's sister site TryVeg.com.
I admit that because of people's mindsets these days and the active promotion of "humane" meat, "cage-free" eggs, and so on, these kinds of ads sometimes make me nervous because I worry that the focus on "factory farming" will just lead people to seek out non-factory-farmed products instead, without realizing that a number of the cruelties that go along with factory farming go along with all animal farming. These ads have just 30 seconds to make their point, so there's no time for deep exploration, but at some point, I'd really love to see COK or another nonprofit make another commercial like these, with the same brevity and perhaps even the same style, that focuses on issues that are true across animal ag. For example, the calf-taken-from-mother dairy issue that the ad points out is not a factory-farming-unique issue, but the mention of battery-caged hens could be changed, for example, to an alert about all the male chicks suffocated or ground up at birth or the practice of debeaking or even the transport and slaughter practices. And I also have mixed feelings about the word "vegetarian" rather than "vegan" being focused on in instances when "vegan" is what a group really means, but that's a topic for another day.
But I'm happy to say that COK reports good feedback on these campaigns (they've been airing such commercials since 2004), and it's great that a vegan message is getting airtime on MTV--that's pretty significant in and of itself. And many viewers whose attention is caught by the ads hopefully follow up by visiting TryVeg.com and learning more, including through reading the brief explanation of the "free-range myth" on that site. COK explains, "By targeting MTV’s teen and young adult viewing audience, we’re able to get the animals’ message directly to those shown by research to be the most receptive to vegetarian eating."
The Dolphins--and the Dolphin Slaughter--of The Cove
Published February 10, 2009 @ 02:42PM PT
"You gotta get in there; you gotta do something," says one voice, followed immediately by "You're either an activist or an inactivist" from another voice at one point during the trailer for The Cove. The film, which exposes the yearly dolphin slaughter in a small Japanese town--a slaughter that even most of the Japanese public knows nothing about--received high praise from viewers and critics at Sundance, where it won the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary a few weeks ago.
Explains Joel Reynolds of NRDC,
The film, directed by Louie Psihoyos and produced by the Oceanic Preservation Society, chronicles former dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry's heroic campaign to stop the killing of 2,000 dolphins every year in the Japanese coastal village of Taiji. In the 1960s, O'Barry trained the animals that collectively became known as Flipper to TV viewers - an experience that he has spent decades trying to undo because of the role the television show played in creating the captive dolphin industry in the United States and around the world. He came to believe that dolphins should never be captive, and he has tirelessly campaigned to end the inhumane treatment of these undeniably intelligent, self-aware creatures.
The Cove is a riveting tale, told with skill, substance, and relentless drama. The place that gives rise to the film's name is a secretive cove in Taiji, Japan, and the film tells the story not only of what goes on in this hidden place but the lengths that O'Barry and his team had to go to expose it. The Cove is promoted as "an intelligent/action/adventure/Ocean's Eleven-like horror film wrapped around a tale of redemption and ultimate revenge - oh, and it's a documentary." It justly deserves, and was recently awarded, the Audience Award at Sundance.
And here is part of the synopsis from the film's Web site:
THE COVE, directed by Louie Psihoyos, tells the amazing true story of how Psihoyos, O'Barry and an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The mysteries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg.
The Cove, an intelligent/action/adventure/Ocean’s Eleven-like horror film wrapped around a tale of redemption and ultimate revenge – oh, and it’s a documentary.
Trailer:
The Images and Truths We Cannot Hide From
Published January 27, 2009 @ 05:17AM PT
Julie, rescued resident of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Photo credit: WFAS.
Any punk or ska fans out there? This music video from John Feldmann of Goldfinger, with a personal, informal, unedited introduction (~1 min.) from lead singer Feldmann, features the song "Free Me," which Feldmann wrote after encountering a truck of chickens headed for slaughter while on tour.
The music video, after you get through the introduction, includes brief but very real glimpses into the experiences of animals in the various situations in which we exploit and, yes, even torture them. The "spent" dairy cow and veal calf at the livestock auction; the fox at the fur farm; the thrashing hooked fish; the monkeys, dogs, and cats in the lab; the elephant at the circus; the pigs and turkeys at the farms; the crated veal calf; the egg-laying hens and chickens raised for flesh; the tied-up dog outside; the chickens, pigs and cows at the slaughterhouse. If you still participate in or support any of the represented industries or practices through your diet, lifestyle, purchases, or donations, you must watch videos such as this. Refusing to watch when, through the decisions you make every day, you're supporting and even demanding the practices shown, is--and I'm sorry, but it's true--cowardly and irresponsible. Once upon a time, I didn't want to know either; I get that. I get that it takes courage to face the truths that it would be easier to ignore. But please find that courage. Please watch.
And if after watching this, you seek comfort in, for example, the fact that you are eating or now will eat animals from so-called humane farms and not animals such as the hens you saw in the battery cages, please pause and remember the slaughterhouse scenes. Please pause and remember the calf (byproduct of the dairy industry) at the livestock auction. Please pause and remember how clearly the animals shown wanted to live. None of this is different for the "free-range" animals. There is such a thing as compassionate living. But there is not such a thing as humane animal research or humane animal entertainment. And there is most certainly no such thing as humane animal agriculture or humane killing.
The vast majority of us have choices about what we eat, and we make a conscious decision every time we sit down to a meal--do we choose compassion, or do we decide that our simply liking something is worth the massive number of deaths and myriad unavoidable forms of suffering required for us to continue eating in the ways we think of as convenient?
The Love of a Rat
Published January 24, 2009 @ 04:24PM PT
Rats don't get a fair shake. When people hear that you actually care about a rat or a mouse--for instance, that you don't want to kill one who isn't a pet but who has shown up uninvited in your home--they look at you like you're crazy and scrunch up their face in disgust. And why is that exactly? What makes rats and mice, particularly rats, so different from other animals? So loathsome? So scary? We see and hear all sorts of negative things about them from childhood on (e.g., portrayals of rats in cartoons or movies as creepy and devious and "rat" name-calling directed at fellow humans we find despicable) and fail to ever, or often, question our preconceived notions about them. I've seen and heard even vegetarians respond to a mention of rats with automatic disgust. We don't often stop to consider that just like other animals--just like the dogs and cats whom many of us take in and just like the cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and other animals whom many of us refuse to eat--rats think, experience emotions, and suffer.
Some of you may recall that in an early December roundup ("Animals in the Blogs: 'Expendable' Animals, Global Warming, and More"), I linked to a truly wonderful post from Reformed Fast Food Mascot titled "Final Two Hours of a Life." It was difficult to read. And it made me cry. But I strongly recommend that those of you who missed that post the first time go read it now.
Then come back and watch the below video. This won't make you cry; you will smile and maybe even laugh. Rats feel, and they express affection and joy and playfulness, and not just with fellow rats. Don't believe me? Just watch. Interspecies relationships among nonhuman animals aren't as uncommon as many people think, but this one is quite adorable and may lead you to see rats a little differently. Maybe "just a rat" isn't a good enough response to the question of why we kill these animals when they show up where we don't want them or why we experiment on them in such terrible ways.
Rat Loves Cat
Mother and Son: The Way It Should Be But Hardly Ever Is
Published January 21, 2009 @ 01:05PM PT
I wanted to embed a video for you here, but technical difficulties prevented it, so I'm going to supply you with links instead. Follow this link to have the video open in Windows Media Player on a large screen, or follow this link to see the smaller video embedded in the related news article. (Really, watch the video. The rest of this post will make more sense, and there are adorable sights that I just can't describe.)
Now for the less adorable part. If Hillside Animal Sanctuary hadn't rescued Clover, a dairy cow, one of two things would have happened, as noted by the sanctuary worker in the video:
1. Because there was too much pus in her milk (and yes, a fair amount of pus is legally allowed and is present in all the cow's milk consumed by humans), and no farmer businessman is going to keep around an animal a machine from whom which he can't profit, she would have been killed, and the calf she was carrying would have died along with her. (I don't know enough about this particular story to know with certainty whether Clover then would have been turned into hamburger, which does come mostly from "spent" dairy cows.)
2. Or she would have given birth before being killed, and her sweet calf would have been taken away almost immediately to be turned into veal.
Luckily, neither of these things happened in this case. But as we watch the news story on Clover and her unexpected (unexpected by the sanctuary, that is) calf, we have to take note of that playful, sweet-faced calf. He very easily could have been yet another victim of the dairy/veal industry. Clover and her son Bramble will live out natural lives now, together, but most are not so lucky.
-----
(Thanks to Alison of the heart2heart list for providing the alert to this story.)
Animal-Based Research: Why (Really)? And What Are the Alternatives?
Published January 18, 2009 @ 07:50AM PT
Following are parts 3 and 4 of Animal Aid's film Wasted Lives (parts 1 and 2 were featured in Friday's post), exploring why we continue practices that aren't getting us anywhere (I'll give you a hint: one of the major reasons starts with "m" and ends with "oney") and what the alternatives are. Each of these parts is only a few minutes long, so you have no real reason not to watch and learn; please do.
Succinctly, from Dr. Ray Greek (author, with Jean Swingle Greek, of Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experiments on Animals, and onetime animal experimenter himself) in part 4: "From a scientific perspective, animal experimentation simply does not work. Animal experimentation does not help human beings who are sick get better. Animal experimentation does not help prevent disease or cure disease."
(Image from the Empty Cages gallery)
---
---
