A n i m
a l W r i t e s © sm
The
official ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue # 02/24/02
Editor
~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ Park StRanger@aol.com
~ MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ MeatOut is Coming by
ParkStRanger@aol.com
2 ~ Student Opportunity
3 ~ The Great American Protest by Robert Cohen
4 ~ A Tip From EnglandGal
5 ~ Boycott Petco
6 ~ In Memory: Jerom
7 ~ The Circus Animal
8 ~ Memorable Quote
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~1~
MeatOut is Coming
By ParkStRanger@aol.com
There are a couple of times a year we can get
really pushy about vegetarianism, one is October 1 (World Vegetarian Day), and
the other is the Great American MeatOut. This March 20th will be the 18th
annual occurrence of MeatOut which is coordinated each year by the Farm Animal
Reform Movement.
Based on the Great American SmokeOut, March 20th is a day we can ask our
meateating acquaintances to give it up for just a day. Of course we want
them to go a bit further and give it up entirely, but the main purpose of
MeatOut is to raise awareness that eating meat is a bad habit, responsible for
more deaths each year than smoking.
Now is the time to start planning your activities and to register them with
FARM, which has event kits, flyers, posters and other material to help with
your events. One good way to get the word out is to have a literature
table at malls, health food supermarkets and on campuses. Tabling should
be done a day or two in advance so that people are aware it is coming.
You can have them sign a pledge to give up meat on March 20th as well as give
out printed information about vegan diets.
It is a good idea to develop a good relationship with your local health food
supermarket or food coop. My health food supermarket gives us coupons,
vegetarian meat and faux dairy products to pass out when we table there.
The store manager even bought a lifetime membership to my vegetarian society on
behalf of the store.
Letters to the editors of papers is something else that should be done.
FARM has sample letters you can use as a template. Be sure to write your
letter at least a week in advance and ask them to run it before March 20.
Call a local radio talk show or be a guest on your local "Good Morning"
TV news show. I am scheduled to appear on "Good Morning El
Paso" and I will bring the news team a breakfast of scrambled tofu and
vegan sausage. It's a good idea to feed the news team, because you can
talk more while their mouths are full.
Another good thing to do is to organize a vegetarian potluck lunch at your
workplace. Put up a poster where you work or send a memo that March 20th
is the Great American MeatOut and announce your veg lunch plans. I am
lucky enough to have two vegetarian coworkers, and between the three of us we
plan to feed all the other rangers at my park a vegan lunch.
I urge you to take advantage of the opportunity that MeatOut gives us to spread
the word about the health reasons, the ethical reasons and the environmental
reasons for a vegan diet.
Go to
www.meatout.org
or call FARM for free at 1-800-meatout
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~2~
Student Opportunity
By Beth Williford - bwilliford@wesleyancollege.edu
My
name is Beth Williford and I am a senior sociology major at Wesleyan College in
Macon, Georgia. My senior honors thesis is concerned with assessing the
motivation of contemporary student activists. I am interested in studying
the motivation of student activists in two stages: 1) via survey and 2) with
follow-up phone interviews. For the purposes of this study I am
interested in analyzing the responses from participants ranging from the ages
of eighteen to twenty-five. As a participant, you have the option of
protecting your anonymity. Moreover, when the results of my study are
published and presented, whether you choose anonymity or not, all names will be
changed.
If you know of other contemporary student activists that would be interested in
participating in this study please contact me at any of the contact information
I've provided below. I will attempt to reach those students you refer, so
please include their contact information. If you have any questions about the
survey or how the information gathered will be used, I encourage you to contact
me in the way most convenient for you. Thank you for your cooperation.
Beth Williford (478) 474-3396
bwilliford@wesleyancollege.edu
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~3~
The Great American Protest
By Robert Cohen - i4crob@earthlink.net
www.notmilk.com
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is
dead, and his gruesome murder was recorded on videotape.
Pearl's grisly death was carefully planned. The Federal Bureau of
Investigation is analyzing the actual tape of his murder.
Pearl's last words were:
"I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew."
Pearl was then killed by a man holding a large knife. The man slashed Pearl's
throat, and the expression on Pearl's face and the pleading look in his eyes
will be forever replayed in the nightmares of the horrified investigators who
have reviewed the taped evidence.
Pearls last thoughts must have included a very confused "Why are you doing
this to me?"
As Pearl was bleeding to death, his executioner completely decapitated him. The
final slash of the knife severed a spinal cord that delivered no further
signals of pain. Fifteen to thirty seconds later, all of the oxygen-sustaining
blood had dripped from Pearl's brain, and the final thought processes delivered
Pearl into his gentle oblivion.
I have seen that same look many times before. I turned away from the animals I
killed. Some lives were ended in the name of science. As a researcher, I once
recognized that brain chemistry changes with anesthesia, so I decapitated
animals while holding them in my hands without administering pain killers.
As a fisherman, I cut off the heads of living breathing creatures. As a hunter,
I saw that "look" as animals took their last breath, then exhaled
what I believed was their soul. As one who once raised ducks and geese for
food, I felt the struggle for life, as I brought about death.
Twenty-seven million, four hundred thousand animals die every single day in
America so that people can be fed. Each one of these gentle creatures
experiences final thoughts. Each cow or sheep or pig or bird feels the pain of
a knife. In other nations, the cat or dog that would be a family companion in
the United States experiences that same pain. Each head is severed from a
protesting body.
Every human pet owner who has ever lived with companion animals knows that
these creatures have emotions, give and receive love, and have the ability to
feel pain. There can be no denying these truths.
Each creature lived a gentler life before man's final solution, a plan that
brought a moment or two of extreme terror to a living life force. Every
animal killed for food in America shares one undeniable common element: Every
living creature possesses the innate abilities to feel pain and confusion.
There is one man more than any other who attempts to negate the insanity by
becomming the savior. One man, who for eighteen years has tried to
communicate their pain to his often clueless fellow humans. His name is Alex
Hershaft, and each year, just for a few moments, Alex asks all citizens of the
world to join in the Great American Meat-Out. For one day, Hershaft asks
meat eaters to take pity on the animals who suffer the violent acts of
life-ending cruelty of the slaughterhouse.
JOIN THE PROTEST ON MARCH 20TH
On the first day of spring, celebrate the abundance of fresh fruits and
vegetables, grains, beans, and nuts. Do not eat animals on that day, for in
doing so, you must take responsibility for the knife, and the fear, and the
pain, and the death. Alex lives this life of his 365 days per year, and hopes
that you will join him.
Governors from 37 states have issued statements supporting Alex Hershaft's
Great American Meat-Out. Celebrities have participated in publicizing
and attending this event. They include:
Ed Asner, Bob Barker, Dirk Benedict, James Cromwell, Doris Day, Peter Falk,
Frances Fisher, Jennie Garth, Sara Gilbert, Chrissie Hynde, Casey Kasem, Rue
McClanahan, Bill Maher, Hayley Mills, Mary Tyler Moore, Kevin
Nealon, Cassandra 'Elvira' Peterson, Joaquin Phoenix, and Ally
Sheedy.
Also sports figures Tony LaRussa, Mark Levy, and Al Oerter, and authors and
educators Berke Breathed, Michael Jacobson, Frances Moore Lappe, John McDougall
and Jeremy Rifkin.
Alex's program has become more than just an American event. You can join the
protest by accessing a list of American states and nations of the world
participating in this enormously successul grassroots movement:
http://www.meatout.org/html/meatout_events.html
Visit Alex Hershaft's website:
http://www.farmusa.org
This summer, there will be 1,000 people attending
Alex Hershaft's annual animal
rights conference. I will be there, and so will my three children, for our
future
health and happiness includes a world in which there is no more abuse for any
living creature. Should you wish to attend the June 28-July 3 conference,
visit:
http://www.animalrights2002.org
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~4~
A Tip From EnglandGal
Save $$$$ on Heartgard, Advantage, Program and more!
I just discovered a website where you can order
products such as Heartgard, Advantage, Program, Interceptor, Frontline, etc,
and it's a lot cheaper than getting it at the vets office.
I generally pay $53 for a 6 pack of Advantage for my dogs my local vets
office. I have four dogs, so it costs me $212 every six months.
I can order a 12 pack online for only $88.98 x 2 = $177.96 every six months
(saves me $33 per time).
Check out this site and compare the prices with your current supplier:
www.1888PetMeds.com
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~5~
Boycott Petco
From Critters' Corner in HB (www.harderbeat.com)
Nearly 20 people protested near the
Preston/Forest Petco (Dallas, TX) on February 1, passing out 500 flyers in 1
1/2 hours with thousands of cars passing to see the signs.
After promising in 1994 that they "would not sell rabbits,"
Petco has not kept its word and has begun to sell rabbits. According to Barbara
Yule, President of the North Texas Rabbit Sanctuary (NTRS), many of the rabbits
are sick and/or diseased. Ms. Yule purchased eight rabbits from three stores
and after an exam at the vet, it was determined that all eight were sick,
mostly with coccidia. One bunny died within 24 hours.
Please call Petco at 972.490.9168 and tell them you will not buy any dog
or cat supplies until they stop selling rabbits. Also, you can cut up and
return your Petco card.
(NTRS is a non-profit rescue/adoption organization based in Richardson,
TX and has many beautiful sweet bunnies for adoption. Call 972.234.8281 for an
appointment.)
Enid Breakstone, Founder and Executive Director
The Queenie Foundation, Inc.
Animal protection through education
Dallas, Texas
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~6~
In Memory: Jerom
By Rachel Weiss - riweiss@mindspring.com
Jerom
Chimpanzee should have been twenty years old this month. Had he lived the
life of his ancestors, he might be dwelling in a riverine forest, making
knowledgable decisions about where to spend his time - in a fig tree
overlooking the savanna, chasing red-tailed monkeys through the canopy,
following a friend off into the undergrowth. He might have developed into
a proud and handsome individual, carrying 130 lbs. on his tall frame, his
jet-black hair and dark face giving him a secretive look. He might have
populated a forest with his offspring, ensuring the future of wild chimpanzees.
Jerom never lived this life - he was created for humans, so that we may pursue
our unattainable goal of living without disease. Although intelligent and
often full of opinions, such individuals are not consulted before their lives
are stolen from them for use in biomedical research.
Jerom lived until nearly the age of fourteen at the Yerkes Regional Primate
Research Center, a federally-funded laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia. He
was taken from his mother when he was an infant, raised as if an orphan, and
experimentally infected with HIV at the age of two. When I met him eleven
years later he was alone and dying. Instead of a proud figure, he was
lean and gaunt, his hair dull, his skin pale, his eyes sunken from wasting and
bright with fear and fever. He was distrustful of humans, unsure of
himself, and frustrated at his lot in life. He suffered in almost every
way a caged chimpanzee can suffer, and then he died. To the people who
created him, his only value was the data that came from his blood. To me,
everything about Jerom was of value.
If Jerom was alive today, it is likely that he would still be living alone, in
sight of other chimpanzees he'd never again be able to touch. If he was
twenty, he would have spent the last eighteen years indoors, without even once
in that time feeling a cool breeze or warm sun on his face. In eighteen
years he would have spent every single day in a wet concrete cell, his only
entertainment provided periodically by a human, in the form of a small plastic
toy, shreddable box or newspaper, or maybe a cartoon on television. He
would have spent the last eighteen years eating only what humans decided he
would eat, and only when they decided - no matter what he really wanted or
liked, no matter when he was hungry.
Jerom died six years ago, February 13th, and no longer has to endure such
treatment - conditions determined by lawmakers and researchers to be
"humane" and codified by the Animal Welfare Act, but known to be
barbaric and cruel by many of us who have been there (for more information,
visit www.lpag.org). Jerom may be lucky - ten of his fellow
research subjects are right now continuing to live this life at Yerkes.
Two of them - Buster and Nathan - are caged alone as was Jerom, and have been
for years. For years. Imagine it - hundreds upon hundreds of days
without the touch of another save a latex-and-tyvek garbed human once in a
while, and then only at the whim of the human. The other eight live in
pairs and trios, but suffer the same conditions of confinement and disrespect.
Buster and Nate are both a bit older than Jerom would have been now. The
reasons for their social deprivation are unknown. Neither are known to
have developed clinical symptoms of AIDS, so it's likely they're not alone for
health reasons. Maybe it's inconvenient for Yerkes to give them the
social outlets they no doubt crave.
Every year I tell this tale to move your heart. If you are reading this
because you are a part of the struggle for the independence of biomedical
research subjects, fight on - they need you still.
If you are reading this and remain unmoved, permit me to try a different
tack: in the nearly twenty years that chimpanzees have been used as
biomedical research subjects for HIV prevention and vaccines, no successful
drugs, vaccines, insights or any other advances have been discovered or created
as a result of the chimpanzee studies. With the possible exception of
Jerom, chimpanzees do not develop AIDS; the virus acts very differently in the
chimpanzee immune system than in the human. If you can't care about the
chimpanzees, consider the money wasted on them - money that could be spent
actually helping humans. Millions of dollars every year are spent on
their upkeep alone, not to mention the wasted research dollars, wasted time,
and wasted energy.
Don't just take my word for it. Groups of medical doctors around the
world have joined together to protest not the inhumane conditions of laboratory
life, but the faulty scientific premises underlying biomedical research.
Not just the chimpanzee work, but studies on tens of thousands of monkeys,
dogs, rabbits and other nonhumans as well. You should be concerned -
every one of these individuals suffers for your medical needs, and is directly
affected by the products you consume, and the tax dollars you spend. Your
funding supports a system that is cumbersome and archaic, and produces
negligible results at best. Advances in technology combined with
epidemiological and clinical human studies have been shown to produce far
better and more applicable results for humans.
Take this economic and medical concern, and add to it the ethical dimensions of
what I'm telling you. 200 AIDS chimpanzees languish in biocontainment
cells - some large, some small, all artificial and restrictive - around the
US. Over 1500 more chimpanzees used to study gout, hepatitis, malaria,
reproduction, and other human conditions, and others not being studied at all,
may have a bit more space and possibly a chance to smell fresh air, but live
similarly deprived lives in laboratories here and around the world. Every
one of them has a face, a name, a personality. Every one has been
enslaved because humans decided that this injustice is justified.
The CHIMP (Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection) Act,
which was enacted last year to provide alternatives to laboratory housing, may
improve the lives of some of these individuals in the coming years by removing
them from the laboratories and giving them larger areas with larger social
groups. But the CHIMP Act is not enough - in order to remedy the wrongs,
research on chimpanzees must stop, and reproduction must be halted. The
recent deaths of Pablo and Annie Chimpanzee, beloved residents of the Fauna
Foundation, Canada's only chimp sanctuary, prove that it's not enough to get
them out. Pablo and Annie were not old individuals, yet four years of
unconditional love and respect in sanctuary were no match for the decades they
spent in research. Most striking about their autopsies were the massive
adhesions tying their organs together, caused by years of being darted, the
preferred laboratory method of sedating chimpanzees. No amount of love,
space or choice could have undone that trauma.
Giving laboratory chimpanzees larger cells with access to the outdoors, social
groups, food choices, and alternatives to darting is a step but is not enough,
and is not what they deserve: they deserve respect - they deserve to not
live in service to humans. The one thing they can never have in captivity
is complete freedom of choice, the one thing that defines a truly free
people. And they are people - not humans, but people - and we are doing
not only them, but ourselves a grave disservice by treating these people as if
they were born to serve us, and not to live the dignified lives of which they
are capable. Their lives, although research claims them, belong to nobody
but themselves, and what they need more than anything is to be treated
accordingly.
Research claimed far too many of them this year, and all of them at an age much
younger than their life expectancy:
- Manual: Yerkes inmate, HIV+, Jerom's sometime-friend died of
unknown
causes on April 17, 2001, age 22;
- Sonia: Yerkes inmate, died off organ failure in a small cage and
without
her family, June 5, 2001, age 42;
- Gina: Coulston Foundation (Neew Mexico laboratory) inmate, died of
exposure to sun and heat while locked outside, June 5, 2001, age 12;
- Sellers: Yerkes inmate, died accidentally of strangulation while
on a gout study, unsupervised and alone in a tiny cage, June 11, 2001, age 18;
- Pablo: Fauna Foundation residdent, died of excess internal scar
tissue and all-around poor health, October 6, 2001, age 31;
- Annie: Fauna Foundation residdent and matriarch, died of gangrene
of the
intestine and all-around poor health, January 10, 2002, age 42;
- Koen: BPRC (Dutch laboratory)) inmate, HIV+, died of unknown
causes,
January 29, 2002, age 28.
These are just the individuals with human friends who cared enough to tell
their stories. Without doubt there are many others. In memory of
all of them, and with grief for the two babies who were recently taken from
their mothers at the Coulston Foundation to be sold into the entertainment
industry so that we may laugh at television commercials, and on behalf of the
remaining AIDS Project chimpanzees at Yerkes - Buster, Nathan, Arctica, Joye,
Betsie, Jonah, Marc, Roberta, Tika and Hallie - I ask you to remember them, and
remember Jerom.
Please write to Yerkes' Director Stuart Zola:
954 Gatewood Road
Atlanta, GA 30322
404.727.7844
szola@emory.edu
Tell him you care, and that you'd like an explanation for the treatment of
these individuals.
Rachel Weiss
13 February, 2002
* please forward everywhere
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~7~
The Circus Animal
Copyright 1998 by Christina Sharik
I am the circus elephant
I'm all dressed up for you --
but when alone, I always wear
these chains, just out of view.
~~
I am the circus tiger -
A rare sight to behold;
when whips are snapping near my face
it's hard to stay controlled.
~~
I am the elegant circus horse
I prance and trot around -
I am a noble creature
I'm not a circus clown.
~~
The saddest choice you humans make
is to keep me chained and bound -
you make me dance, you make me prance
a circus ring around.
~~
When I am tired or sad or sick,
you strike and prod with club or stick -
I want to run, to play, to roam,
I miss my far, beloved home.
~~
I have no voice you understand,
I cannot make you see
that you should listen with your heart
and simply set me free.
~~
I hear there are some circuses
where only you perform.
I hope that someday soon, perhaps,
they will become the norm.
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~8~
Memorable Quote
"Scientists say that genetically modified
pig hearts may be transplanted to humans within the next five years. And
the beauty of that is - you can eat all the bacon you want, and in the end,
that same pig may just save your life."
~~ Dennis Miller
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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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