Remembering the Dead

The wonderful folks with Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals (CETFA) are calling for a roadside memorial in Manitoba at a spot where a semi truck crashed and killed 71 cows in January.

CETFA is asking for a sign to be placed at the crash site that reads: "Careless driving costs lives: In memory of 71 cows." The sign would be similar to the memorials created by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) that are placed near places where people died as a result of impaired drivers.

It occurred to me as I read this article that we don't always take time to stop and remember the animals that have died. I'm not talking about our pets, mind you. Most of us have lost a pet that was very near and dear to our hearts, and we take comfort in the idea of a Rainbow Bridge, where our pets play and frolic with other animals.

No, I mean animals like the 71 cows killed in the semi collision. Or the countless animals who've perished in factory farm fires in Canada and the United States during the past decade. Or the millions - ultimately - billions slaughtered by the Animal Murdering Industries (meet, dairy, leather, fur, etc.).

We vegans and animal rights activists stare down into the abyss confront death every single day. Day in, day out. We're surrounded by it. We stare at those animal death counters where the numbers are climbing at an astonishing rate (you know what I mean - "Animals Killed Since You Visited This Website" - those counters). We watch some of the most horrible videos imaginable. We feel sick inside when we see meat wrapped neatly in shrink wrap and styrofoam.

And those of us who love animals, who pray for animals, who want to see the bloodletting and the violence stop, die a little each time when we see these things.

So it's probably asking a lot to think about remembering and memorializing the animals who've died as a result of human violence, especially factory farm animals, fish and other aquatic lives, and fur-bearing beings. How do you mourn thousands? Millions? Billions?

When I grapple with this issue, I think of all the people who toss around numbers of human beings killed when talking about the past. More than 6 million Jews murdered under Hitler. Twenty million Russians killed in World War II. Millions who perished in gulags, famines and purges under Stalin. It all becomes miles to Pluto.

How do we put a human face on the millions? How do we put an animal face on the billions?

I look at the bottom of my blog page: 59 billion land and sea animals, murdered for Americans alone in 2009 (Source).

How do you mourn each one of those animals? Billions. Do you find one animal that is representative of all of them and mourn him or her? Or maybe a few symbolic animals who met such a grim fate?

Should we be mourning the dead? The dead cows? The dead pigs? The dead sheep? There are moments when I'm walking by the meat section in the store and I want to break down and sob. Death is everywhere. It swallows you whole in the meat and fish section of the supermarket.

Is there not a Rainbow Bridge for these animals, where they can frolic and play and have fun in the sun? A place where there are no factory farms, no fishing boats, no canneries and butcher shops? No one to rip away your baby when he or she is only a day old?

I realize I'm only asking questions, and they aren't questions with easy answers. I do know that those of us who have experienced our epiphanies about animals, who have awakened to the horrors, and who have consciously chosen to no longer participate in the mass murder any longer, are haunted far more deeply than those who haven't opened their eyes, who can't feel the suffering and who have no empathy for animals.

We're surrounded by death on all sides of us. Mourning is part of the process of loss. How do you mourn the violent end of so many precious beings?

Maybe Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals has the right idea. It begins with memorializing those 71 cows who met their tragic fate on that highway in the middle of Manitoba.

On the surface, it may not seem like much. But it's a start.

Required Reading: Gary Francione's piece "And What About the Four Other Dogs?"... What a Masterpiece!

Anyone who has been following this Blog knows that I'm a huge Gary Francione fan and that his work has had (and continues to have) an enormous impact on my thinking. Even on those rare occasions when I do not entirely see eye to eye with what he says, I always respect his views 100 percent. He is a great thinker, an inspiring figure and just an all-around wonderful person.

I was completely blown away by his Blog Entry today on his Website Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach titled "And What About the Four Other Dogs?" Please, please, please take a minute to read this extraordinary piece. This truly is one of the best examples of writing I have ever read on the subject of animal rights, period.

Read it and you'll see what I mean. In this piece, Francione does what he does best: Cuts right through the bullshit and gets to the heart of the matter. In this case, he is writing about a little puppy who became famous across North America because he was one of five dogs who was euthanized by animal control authorities in Sulphur, Oklahoma. Amazingly, this beautiful puppy (pictured above) somehow survived being euthanized and actually emerged from the ordeal in perfect shape. When the story generated headlines, it triggered an avalanche of public support for the puppy in the form of donations and offers to adopt him. He has become something of a canine celebrity following his ordeal.

Francione's beautiful piece takes to task a public and a culture that celebrates animals who somehow - usually quite miraculously - manage to "escape" death, whether it's in factory farms (usually by getting loose and running away) or in this case, when a puppy somehow didn't die from an injection that should've been lethal. These animals are often singled out as "mircale animals" and they win the public sympathy by being portrayed as plucky and lucky. Meantime, the thousands, millions - ultimately billions - of animals that are killed, day in and day out, are forgotten, relegated to mass graves or the meat section of the super market.

I cannot recommend this piece by Gary Francione (pictured right) enthusiastically enough. It is Francione at his best: Brilliant, right to the point, and full of humanity.

The Animal Abuse Scandal that Shook Canada

The killing of 100 sled dogs in Whistler, British Columbia, has caused a huge scandal across Canada.

Newspapers have been fixated on the "dog slaughter," which allegedly last April, when post-2010 Winter Olympics demand for dog sled rides plummeted. A company called Howling Dog Tours Whistler Inc. allegedly shot the dogs and buried them in a mass grave.

In the past few weeks, news of the slaughter has escalated into a full-fledged national scandal. The British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals launched an investigation of the alleged slaughter.

Stories about the bloodletting have been all over the television and internet, and newspapers across Canada (and outside the nation) have editorialized about the brutality. Howling Dog Tours Whistler Inc.

The company responsible for the dog slaughter issued a statement saying

that the dogs to be euthanized were too old or sick and not adoptable. These dogs live to run and were not able to do so and would have had to be kept in cages with the result that they would have had very poor or virtually no quality of life. (Source)

This as an after-the-fact rationale that sounds like a big load of B.S. Of course, it is regrettable that the terrible treatment of factory farm animals does not stir the same sort of reaction as the violent slaughter of 100 sled dogs. Most people who become outraged at the news of dogs being shot can't be bothered with stories about pigs and cows and chickens meeting violent deaths.

That much is impossible to deny.

But I keep going back to what I've been saying all along on this Blog. We've come a long way, baby. Twenty years ago, an incident like this would have likely passed without anyone noticing. Thanks to years of struggles by animal rights activists, outrages like this one are now capturing media attention from far and wide. The Internet has helped spread the word. And companies caught treating animals so horribly either go on the defensive or they go out of business.

We'll take all the outrage we can get. Bless the public for being so furious about this nightmarish story. Notice has been served to companies that brutalize and kill animals. People who are shaken to the core and outraged by the treatment of these dogs are potential converts to the cause of animal rights. If a story like this can upset them, other instances of animal abuse can have a similar effect.

The key is to keep chipping away, like waves battering cliffs. Eventually the wall will erode and collapse.

So Far, 2011 is Not Getting Off to a Promising Start...

For those of us who support animals and animal rights, 2011 has not gotten off to a very promising start.

First, there have been the numerous mystery animal deaths, which have defied any explanation. "Dead Birds Fall From the Sky in Italy," said a headline in the Huffington Post. The Discovery News website (affiliated with the Discovery Channel) echoed the Huffington Post: "'Aflockalypse' Hits California." Animals have been falling over dead or washing up on shores in huge numbers in Chicago and Arkansas, in Louisiana and Sweden, in England and Brazil.

Nobody really knows why it's happening. Some scientists have talked about changing magnetic fields. Others emphasize global warming. Toxins have been blamed in certain circles. And the born-again Christian actor Kirk Cameron insists that these mass deaths are the fault of "pagan mythology." (Source)

To make matters worse, the treatment of factory farm animals around the world continues to be deplorable. Just before Christmas, 1,000 pigs were burned alive in a fire in Rostock, Ontario. (Source) In Quebec this past weekend, 20,000 rabbits and 4,000 piglets perished in two separate factory farm fires. (Source) In Germany, large numbers of pigs and chickens were recently given contaminated feed that contained, among other things, dioxin. (Source) Across Europe, countless pigs and chickens have been slaughtered.

But the worst slaughter is going on in South Korea, where an astonishing one million pigs have been buried alive due to an epidemic of Foot-and-Mouth Disease that broke out in November. To quote one report from South Korea (Source):

The South Korean government has so far refused to vaccinate pigs against the disease and is now slaughtering them in record numbers despite appeals to stop. On January 4 in one area of Gangwon-Do, 33,900 pigs alone were destroyed, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

It turns out that Foot-and-Mouth Disease does not infect human beings, even if they eat the meat of animals infected by the disease. The situation in South Korea has been nothing short of catastrophic, as the Straits Times reports:

Nationwide, more than 1.3 million pigs, cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals have been slaughtered or will soon be culled, the agriculture ministry said, as the outbreak showed no sign of abating.

The situation has been so horrific in South Korea that the government is providing therapy for workers who have been traumatized from having to slaughter so many poor, innocent animals. "We've heard reports of people suffering from insomnia, fearfulness, hallucinating sounds and a lack of appetite." (Source)

The horrors occurring in South Korea are unquestionably the most insane example of what happens when we turn animals - sentient beings with thoughts, feelings and emotions - into commodities, whose value is to be measured in profit and loss columns.

Those of us who love animals have a mission in 2011. Our goal is to fight for them. And I don't mean fight for "reforms" and "tinkering" - such as cameras in slaughterhouses or regulations that reduce animal pain in factory farms, or stricter laws that govern fur production. I mean we need to advocate for the total and immediate liberation of all animals, based on the fact that they are not ours to exploit, bury alive, place inside of highly flammable and unsafe factory farms, or murder for their meat or other parts.

Let 2011 be the year that animal liberation becomes a more mainstream goal. We may not be able to control the mystery animal deaths, but we can guarantee that animals are no longer exploited and slaughtered. Animals are not ours to use in any way. This is the message of a truly civilized society.