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.

Words of Wisdom

Some videos are so powerful, they need no commentary...

... such as this one. Please watch. Please share. And please do your best to stay away from dairy, for the reasons explained here.

Great Advice on Maintaining a Healthy Vegan Diet

Here is chef and health counselor Alex Jamieson, who has so many great ideas about maintaining a healthy vegan diet. In this video, she gives terrific vegan tips, talks about her vegan cookbooks and mentions some of her favorite vegan recipes.

If you aren't familiar with Jamieson's work, check out here Website here. She was a health advisor to Morgan (Super Size Me!) Spurlock when he was trying to detoxify from his horrifying all-McDonald's diet. As she mentions in this video, the key to success with the vegan diet is variety. She mentions an excellent point - how easy it is for vegans to eat unhealthy processed foods (and how hard it is for those vegans to lose weight).

I'm one of those vegans who pops a few too many Oreos and potato chips. I could stand to lay off that stuff for a little while. I plan to follow Jamieson's advice in the weeks and months ahead. By eating more natural foods ("whole foods," as she calls them), we will all feel better, lose weight, and really gain great benefits from a vegan diet.

Check out this video if you get a chance!

Check it Out: Steve-O Speaks Out Against Factory Farming

Wonderful Steve-O, of Jackass fame (one of my guilty pleasures over the years), narrates a Farm Sanctuary video that looks absolutely extraordinary. It is the story of a pig, cow and chicken who manage to escape the horrors of factory farms. While I haven't seen it yet, I've watched plenty of other Farm Sanctuary videos, and I love the work they do.

In this interview with vegan and animal rights supporter Jane Velez-Mitchell, Steve-O discusses his efforts to humanize the three stars of the film. "Whenever you can even give one of these animals a name, I think you're doing something pretty major," he tells the Velez-Mitchell. "People don't want to think of their meal as a living thing that has a name or a personality or anything like that. By talking about just one pig, you really get through to people in a special way."

Check out this brief interview, if you get a chance. It's short and it's exciting to see such a high-profile figure speaking out for the animals. Go Steve-O!!!

The Sadism of Foie Gras

Apologists for Foie Gras - one of the most sadistic foods ever concocted in the long, tragic, violence-filled history of the (in)Human Race - insist the French delicacy made from the livers of duck and geese who were force fed during their short, awful existences, is actually not that cruel.

If you get a chance, have a look at this short video featuring Janet Street-Porter, a British journalist and media personality who is a correspondent on Chef Gordon Ramsay's The F-Word. Here, Street-Porter goes to a foie gras farm in France to witness the ultra-violent way that foie gras birds are treated.

It turns out that Street-Porter chuckles a fair number of times during the video. She is renowned for her odd mannerisms, like acting light-hearted about pretty heavy-duty stuff. But it is clear that she is laughing out of an intense sense of discomfort, and by the end of the video, she makes it clear - in no uncertain terms - that she is going to stay the hell away from this god-awful "food."

We also see an enlarged foie gras liver. It's all the proof you need to know that this "delicacy" is yet another example of the human race at its most depraved, no small feat for a species that wrote the book on the sadism.

Words of Wisdom from Gary Francione

Words of wisdom from Gary Francione, who has been a source of so much wisdom over the years. He is absolutely right. The key is to link Animal Rights and Human Rights. One without the other is meaningless. The violence used against animals comes from the same place as violence used against humans. It is rooted in an objectification of both, the dangerous tendency to see them as means to ends, or commodities, or the "other."

5 Reasons to be Hopeful at the Start of 2013

With the start of a new year, there are ample reasons for animal rights advocates to be discouraged. Yet there are also reasons to be hopeful. Here are five:

1. As of midnight on January 1, 2013, Israel has banned the import and sale of all cosmetics and cleaning products that have been tested on animals. (Source)

2. Last month, firefighters in Boynton Beach, Florida, saved four rabbits from the inside of a burning house. One of the rabbits was suffering from smoke inhalation, so one of the heroic rescuers used an oxygen mask to help restore the animal's breathing. (See the image above.) (Source)

3. At the Barry Room, a popular restaurant serving the House of Lords in London, England, foie gras - the horrendously cruel delicacy made from the liver of force-fed ducks and geese - has been removed from the menu following protests by animal rights activists. (Source)

4. Here in Canada, the provincial environmental ministry in Ontario is launching a probe into mass animal burial sites near Marineland, which - along with the sustained protests against cruelty at that theme park over the past several months - will continue to shed negative light on the Niagara Falls tourist attraction. According to former Marineland staffers, the park has been burying huge numbers of animals - more than a thousand in four mass graves - without any public scrutiny. The graves are located close to the Welland River, which connects with the Niagara River. (Source)

5. Mexico City has strengthened its laws so that now people found guilty of animal cruelty will be made to serve up to two years in prison and a $500 fine if the animal is injured, or four years in prison and a $2000 fine if the animal is killed. These represent some of the strictest animal protection laws in this hemisphere. (Source)

The world presents us with ample evidence to be deeply pessimistic. Here are five reasons to keep fighting the good fight. It pays off. It may not seem like it, but it does.