A Must-See Video: PIG VISION - The Journey of Two Brothers

This video should be mandatory viewing, especially among anyone that eats pork and other pig products. This is one more appalling chapter in a very, very long book full of atrocities that humans commit on a daily basis against animals. This video shows us two different paths that pigs can follow: the factory farm system, with all of its horrors and violence and murder, and the life of a pig at a loving rescue sanctuary.

Please watch it. Even if you think you know what's going to happen, the video will surprise you with its combination of beauty and tragedy.

And if you haven't already, please go vegan.

Another Powerful Must-See Video

Actor James Cromwell (The Queen, L.A. Confidential) narrates this powerful Mercy for Animals video on the deplorable treatment of animals in the Factory Farm Gulag. It's so effectively made, and so heartbreaking, that I'm posting it here.

These videos are essential viewing. I've always been of the belief that films - short films, feature films, documentary films - are one of the most effective ways of winning over omnivores and vegetarians to a cruetly-free vegan lifestyle.

Many folks, whatever their political persuasion, are innately kind and hate to see animals treated poorly. Sadly, there are some very kind people who are torn. They hate seeing animals treated harshly, but they want their meat, they want their eggs and milk, they want their fish and all of their animal products. The thought of not ever eating meat or eggs or fish or dairy products seems too stark to them. They hate seeing animals go through pain, but their love of animal products outweighs their desire to see an end to animal suffering.

The key with omnivores is to figure how to tip the scale so that it weighs more in the direction of wanting to see the elimination, once and for all, of the exploitation and mass murder of animals.

How to accomplish this??? Well, as I said in my Blog the other day, the Animal Rights Movement is a Big Tent struggle with lots of people trying their damnedest to end this kind of suffering and bloodletting. Who has the right approach? That is up to you to decide.

But I'll tell you who does not have the right approach: Those who believe that it is OK to consume animals, whether it is done as food or clothing (or for any other purposes). They need to understand the suffering their choices are causing. The best way to get through to them, I think, is to beam the message through audio-visual means, or to write about it or lecture about it in such a powerful way as to hit the message home clearly, and without second guessing.

And that message, as we all know, is that causing suffering - any kind of suffering, whether human or non-human animal suffering - is not acceptable and will not be tolerated by those who want to create a truly civilized society.

Call me a Pollyanna, but I'm optimistic that we're moving in the right direction. More and more people are going vegan. The Internet has been a godsend, helping to beam the message to the remote corners of the world. And it has enabled us to see that good people - in Asia, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Europe - are mobilizing on behalf of the animals.

The recent events in Egypt have shown us the nobility of the fight for human rights and democracy. That fight must begin to spread so that all sentient beings are included in the equation. It isn't easy. The trick is for the waves to keep battering the cliffs, eroding the earth, changing the landscape. So that when future generations are writing the history of these times, they will note the barbarism of widespread animal consumption, but they will also see videos like this one and realize that good people fought the good fight and made a difference.