A n i m
a l W r i t e s © sm
The
official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue # 08/15/01
Editor
~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ Park StRanger@aol.com
~ MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE NINE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ EnglandGal's Trip To The Store by
EnglandGal
2 ~ Facts & Statistics from Food-Farm Factories
3 ~ Rites of Passage by Robin Downing, D.V.M.
4 ~ The Rest Of Us by Jacquelyn Mitchard
5 ~ We're Not the Only Smart Animals by Robert
S. Boyd
6 ~ Teen Resource Book
7 ~ Subscriber's Tip by Jean Gonska
8 ~ Q-Tip Left Today by Guila Manchester
9 ~ Memorable Quote
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EnglandGal's Trip To The Store!
by Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
I was in the local grocery store this evening checking out my weekly groceries,
when the bag boy asked:
BAG BOY: Are you a vegetarian?
Wow, I thought, wonder what made him ask that, I didn't have any tofu or meat
substitute products to give it away!
ME: Yes, actually I am! How did you know?
BAG BOY: It's not every day that someone comes through the check out with 15
pounds of fruit & vegetables.
After he bagged my groceries he pushed the cart to my car and asked why I
became a vegetarian. I kept my answer simple and clear, and told him briefly of
my ethical beliefs and the pain and suffering of factory farmed animals.
I truly felt that this brief contact with this person left him questioning his
own actions. If we can reach into the hearts of strangers this way, then
it's one step closer to ending animal abuse.
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Facts & Statistics from Food-Farm Factories
Intensive food-factory farming, as supported by the Dairyman's Association and
the Cattle & Beef Association, is an environmental nightmare. In
addition to subjecting billions of sentient creatures to a life of pain and
misery, harming human health & safety, it is responsible for depleting the
world's topsoil and infecting global lakes and streams with bacteria-laden
runoff from acres of confined animals' urine and feces and blood and diseased
tissue infected with penicillin-resistant bacteria (from over-vaccinating to
stop outbreaks of disease among sick and dying animals, whose immune systems
have been suppressed by food factory farm practices.)
Note these facts and statistics:
* Water needed to produce 1 pound of meat: 2,500 gallons
* Cost of common hamburger meat if water used by meat industry was not
subsidized by U.S. taxpayers: $35/pound
* Current cost for pound of protein from beefsteak: $15.40
* Cost for pound of protein from beefsteak if U.S. taxpayers ceased subsidizing
meat industry's use of water: $89
* How frequently a child dies of starvation: Every 2 seconds
* Number of acres of U.S. forest which have been cleared to create cropland to
produce a meat-centered diet: 260,000,000
* How often an acre of U.S. trees disappears: Every 8 seconds
* Chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide residues in the U.S. diet supplied by
meat: 55%
Supplied by Dairy products: 23%
Supplied by vegetables: 6%
Supplied by fruits: 4%
Supplied by grains: 1%
* Current cost for pound of protein from wheat: $1.50
* Number of children who starve to death every day: 40,000
* Number of people who will starve to death this year: 60,000,000
(Source: http://foodrelief.tripod.com/v/veg1.htm)
Bottom line is: Whether it's overuse of resources, water or air pollution, or
soil erosion, raising animals for food is wreaking havoc on the Earth. In fact,
raising animals for food requires more water than all other uses of water
combined, causes more water pollution than any other activity, and is
responsible for 85 percent of U.S. soil erosion. America's meat addiction is
steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air. Not
surprisingly, Albert Einstein wrote, "Nothing will benefit human health
and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution
to a vegetarian diet."
* Every year, U.S. factory farms produce some 1.4 billion tons of
animal waste -130 times more than humans.
* The waste produced in a single year would fill 6.7 million train
boxcars - enough to circle the Earth 12 and a half times.
* According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory
farming pollutes U.S. waterways more than all industrial sources combined.
* Scientists suspect that runoff of manure from chicken and hog
farms is one of the leading causes of the recent outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida.
This deadly, flesh-eating microorganism has killed billions of fish from
Delaware to Alabama and causes its human victims to suffer from memory loss,
skin lesions, and incapacitating fatigue.
* Twenty-thousand pounds of potatoes can be grown on one acre of land,
but only 165 pounds of beef can be produced in the same space.
More facts, most of them detailed in John Robbins' Pulitzer prize-nominated
book, Diet for A New America:
* Rainforests, vital to earth's oxygen supply, are being destroyed at an
alarming rate - the top cause is the raising of animals for food.
* Forty-five percent of the total land in this country is used to raise
animals for food or crops to feed these animals.
* A carnivorous diet requires 4200 gallons of water per day; a vegetarian
one, 300 gallons per day.
* Turning grain into flesh is extremely wasteful. Twenty vegetarians can
be fed on the amount of land needed to feed one person on a meat-based diet.
* More than one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in
our country go to raise animals for food.
* We have permanently lost 3/4 of U.S. topsoil; 85 percent of this loss
is directly due to the raising of animals for food.
* The price of meat would double or triple if the full ecological costs -
including fossil fuel use, groundwater depletion and agriculture-chemical
pollution - were included in the pricetag.
* Animal waste ravages the environment. A typical hog factory farm
generates raw waste equivalent to that of a city of 12,000 people. Much animal
factory waste is stored in pits a half-mile wide and 20 feet deep - massive
cesspools of feces and urine that pollute the air and groundwater. Chicken
waste is being blamed for the toxic microbe that killed hundreds of thousands
of fish in mid-Atlantic states in 1997. Runoff from animal wastes is linked to
a 7,000-square-mile "deadzone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
* Malnutrition and starvation will kill approximately 14 million people
this year. If Americans reduced their intake of meat by just 10 percent, the
land, water and energy freed up from growing livestock feed would feed 100
million people.
(Source: http://www.peta-online.org)
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Rites of Passage
a story by Robin Downing, D.V.M.
contributed by Gail Clark - owlcaller@hotmail.com
Some of the most poignant moments I spend as a veterinarian are those spent
with my clients assisting the transition of my animal patients from this world
to the next. When living becomes a burden, whether from pain or loss of normal
functions, I can help a family by ensuring that their beloved pet has an easy
passing. Making this final decision is painful, and I have often felt powerless
to comfort the grieving owners.
That was before I met Shane.
I had been called to examine a ten-year-old blue heeler named Belker who had
developed a serious health problem. The dog's owners; Ron, his wife, Lisa, and
their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker and they were hoping
for a miracle. I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the
family there were no miracles left for Belker, and offered to perform the
euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home. As we made arrangements,
Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for the four-year-old Shane
to observe the procedure. They felt Shane could learn something from the
experience. The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker's
family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm petting the old dog for the last
time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few
minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away. The little boy seemed to accept
Belker's transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a
while after Belker's death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal
lives are shorter than human lives. Shane, who had been listening quietly,
piped up, "I know why. "Startled, we all turned to him. What
came out of his mouth next stunned me - I'd never heard a more comforting
explanation.
He said, "Everybody is born so that they can learn how to live a good life
- like loving everybody and being nice, right?" The four-year-old
continued, "Well, animals already know how to do that, so they don't have
to stay as long."
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The Rest Of Us
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - 1999
Hunting for some answers about hunters. In my state, we sometimes fell a little
short of things to kill. Last spring, the proposals considered at a meeting of
the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) included removing wolves (the
symbol on our special-issue endangered species license plates) from the
endangered species list in order to start novelty hunts in the name of “species
management”. Another idea was giving hunters the chance to use mourning doves
(already the most hunted bird in North America, do you think because of breed’s
natural ferocity?) for target practice. Ten doves a day limit.
It’s a kind of funny use of language. The DNR is not really a department
dedicated to preserving natural resources – among them wildlife – at all. It is
a department dedicated to preserving opportunities to hunting. That means
“conserving” wildlife. Conserving wildlife is not what it sounds like.
“Conserving” wildlife, in my neck of the woods, means keeping wildlife healthy
long enough to kill it. It makes as much sense as putting a guy on Death Row on
a 24-hour suicide watch, though this is also something that happens in our
wacky culture, and is provided for by law. “Conservation” sometimes means
carefully reintroducing and nurturing species like wolves and cranes until
those species begin reproducing and behaving in the ways they behaved before
they were hunted to near extinction – in order to give people
the chance to hunt them.
People actually say they dream of shooting a timber wolf, even if a timber wolf
is not threatening them or their cattle, but running the other way.
Conservation means that it’s important to keep deer herd populations up, to
allow for the annual slaughter of half a million or so individuals every fall
during the big gun-deer season, even if those deer get so habituated to humans
they’re virtually giant garden pests (like 800-pound rabbits) that also spread
Lyme disease through ticks.
And hunting, though you wouldn’t know it from a gun-safety programs such as
Take a Kid Hunting, is not really “hunting,” which is stalking and finding
prey. It’s
just killing. It’s taking firearms with laser sights and milled barrels so
high-tech they could probably knock a bottle off the moon out to kill things
like deer and doves and pheasant (which are farm-raised and essentially are
colorful chickens).
My state is a haven for hunters. The DNR, and everyone else, knows better than
to rile them. From having written a couple of essays like this, I know how
hunters work. If you disrespect the name of the sacred practice, essentially,
they hunt you. They write you letters that start out sounding like a cross
between “The Yearling” and “Field of Dreams,” about how hunting with their
fathers (mothers, cousins, uncles, friends) taught them the responsibility and
decency and respect that have made them the kind of human being they are today.
How those values have helped them be better fathers, husbands, reverends,
mothers, sisters.
Only hunting, evidently, rather than any other parent-child pursuit, can
nurture such values. Not team sports nor hiking nor anything else but hunting.
These letters often posit our differences as a matter of ignorance, a disparity
between people of
goodwill.
But if you stick to your guns, as it were, the letters take on another tone. In
the second wave, they often begin to use terms you wouldn’t want your kids to
use in reference to women.
The third wave of letters begins to suggest some of the damage that guns and
bows can do, and not just to deer. Reading those letters makes it easier to
understand why hunters often get their way in Legislature. It makes writing a
column like this something you tend to put off to think over.
I know that the most devoted hunters realize that words like “hunting” and
“species control” are pretty talk for what they really do and what they really
feel while their doing it. So why not just say the words? Why not call it Take
a Kid Killing? Why not describe hunter-safety courses as a way to make sure the
only living things that get ripped open by slugs are not human things? Why not
encourage kids to raise
flocks of chickens or ducks and then, when the chickens or ducks are grown,
take them out into a field and let them run a little before shooting them?
If hunting is indeed the “sport” that make families hereabouts strong and
traditional, why can’t hunters stand up proudly and say, “I like to kill. I
want my kids to like killing, too.” After all, language is supposed to be a way
to seek truth, not to speak falsehood.
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We're Not the Only Smart Animals
by Robert S. Boyd - Knight Ridder News Service
Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune
Animals are smarter than most people realize.
In a flurry of recent books and research papers, scientists report that some
animals can perform simple arithmetic, form mental maps of their environment
and understand bits of human language. They also can exchange elaborate
messages with each other, master intricate social relationships, create tools
and teach others to use them.
A few animal whiz kids even demonstrate a rudimentary self-awareness and can
handle abstract concepts -- such as whether things are the same or different --
intellectual capacities previously thought to be limited to human beings.
"We share the planet with thinking animals," said Marc Hauser, a
neuroscientist at Harvard University. "Insights from evolutionary theory
and cognitive science have begun to revolutionize our understanding of animal
minds," Hauser writes in his new book, Wild Minds.
The brainiest are chimpanzees, which share 99 percent of our DNA and can be
taught an elementary form of human language. Next come talking birds, whose
ability to make intelligible sounds opens a window into the nonhuman brain that
no other species provides. Many other species, including dolphins, whales,
elephants and crows, also exhibit intelligent behavior, but have not been
studied as intensively as apes and talking birds.
Irene Pepperberg, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has
trained a parrot named Alex to name, request or refuse more than 100 objects.
She said Alex now understands such abstract concepts as "same,"
"color" and "how many?"
Pepperberg calls Alex an "avian Einstein." Alex knows his numbers up
to six, she says.
Scientists acknowledge there is an enormous gulf between human and animal
mental capacities, and animal researchers compare their subjects to human
babies -- not to adults.
In her book Minds of Their Own, Australian animal psychologist Lesley Rogers
says a baby's developing brain forms "maps of the infant's own body and
the world around it. Animals do likewise. Neurophysiologists have found such
maps laid out in the cortex [the outer layer of gray matter over most of the
brain] of cats and monkeys."
According to Hauser, many animals, as well as human babies, exhibit rudimentary
numerical abilities spontaneously and without training.
In a report in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology,
Columbia University researchers Elizabeth Brannon and Herbert Terrace describe
how three monkeys were trained to understand the sequence of numbers from one
to nine.
First the monkeys learned to touch groups of symbols -- circles, squares or
diamonds -- in ascending order from one to four. Then they were shown similar
groups consisting of five to nine symbols. Without further training, the
monkeys touched the higher numbers in the proper order.
Terrace said the experiments "provide compelling evidence that number is a
meaningful dimension for rhesus monkeys."
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Teen Resource Book
From hsuspr@hsus.org
HSUS Youth Division NAHEE Releases 'Understanding Animal Cruelty', A Resource
Book For Teens
'Understanding Animal Cruelty' Sheds Light On Dark Topic; HSUS Youth Division
Releases Book For Teens
EAST HADDAM, CT (July 24, 2001) -The National Association for Humane &
Environmental Education (NAHEE), the youth education division of The Humane
Society of the United States, has a few questions for teens:
* Did you know, according to recent study of 1,600 animal cruelty cases
nationwide, males committed 94 percent of crimes & 31 percent of those
crimes
were committed by people 18 or younger?
* Did you know that animal cruelty is widely recognized as a sign of serious
psychological distress?
* Did you know people who are violent to animals are likely to be violent to
all creatures, including other people?
This is just some of the compelling info included in Understanding Animal
Cruelty, a new resource book for teens published by NAHEE. The 24-page book
examines the concepts & causes associated with animal cruelty, state &
federal laws that address mistreatment of animals, & connection between
animal cruelty & domestic violence, child abuse, & other violent
behavior. Understanding Animal Cruelty also takes a look at high-profile
cases of animal cruelty, such as those committed by serial killers &
notorious school shooters.
Written for high-school students & their teachers, Understanding Animal
Cruelty is an excellent resource for school projects, reports & debates. It
also includes critical - thinking questions, activities & suggestions on
how teens can stop animal cruelty in their communities. To cover portion
of production costs, Understanding Animal Cruelty is priced at $3 per copy.
Order online at http://www.nahee.org or send a check or money order (payable to
NAHEE) to
NAHEE
HSUS Youth Education Division
PO Box 362
East Haddam, CT 06423-0362
Understanding Animal Cruelty may also be viewed & downloaded at
http://www.humaneteen.org
Editor's Note: Press copies of Understanding Animal Cruelty can be obtained
from HSUS Media Relations Department. Call Karen Allanach at 301-548-7778
or Rachel Querry at 301-258-825 for a copy.
Contacts: Susan Hejlik (860) 434-8666, hejlik@nahee.org
Or Karen L. Allanach (301) 548-7778
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Subscriber's Tip
by Jean Gonska - hugadog1@localnet.com
Kindly
consider sharing this with Animal Online Readers. It is something that I
have been doing, and it is fun, productive and free!
When you get junk mail from places that you don't want to be solicited by, like
credit card companies or sales pitches, use their prepostage paid envelopes to
mail them some educational literature on our animal rights movement. It
will educate people, and the company that solicits you pays the postage!
I am careful that there is no identifying information on the envelopes and then
I mail them information on vegetarianism, factory farms, horrors of fur and
animals in labs, rodeos etc! Let's use this to spread our message!
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Q-Tip Left Today
by Guila Manchester
Somewhere beyond there is a place
That's filled with flying wings.
A silver star becomes a perch
Where Flippytail now sings.
And Prettyboy's dear little voice
Keeps saying, "Pretty bird."
And in the distance
Doodle's bell-like calls can still be heard.
And all the feathered friends I've known
And loved throughout the years
Are gathered in this happy place
Untouched by pain or fears.
And Blinky waits to welcome
All of those who come to stay.
And oh I hope there's such a place
For Q-Tip left today.
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Memorable Quote
"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants
and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and
when he devotes
himself helpfully to all life that is in need of
help.
~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
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Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
-=Animal Rights Online=-
&
Advisory
Board Member, Animal Rights Network Inc.,
not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
The Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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