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.

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!!!

Another undercover documentary having a big impact...

In the UK, the animal rights organization Viva! has filmed a very important undercover documentary about the egg hatchery racket. Even if you think you know what's happening in this business, please take four minutes and 53 seconds out of your day and watch this short film.

As Viva! points out in this film, about 40-50 million chicks are killed per year in Britain alone, most of them dying in electric mincers or gassed alive, as shown in this film.

This is heartbreaking footage. And if you don't live in England (and I don't), please don't go thinking, "Those are terrible conditions they've got in the UK. Good thing it's not that way here."

Remember: What you see in this film is Standard Operating Procedure in the egg-hatching industry all over the world. It is a profound immoral business, and this film shows precisely why that is the case.

Good for Viva! for filming these horrors. Films like this one are making a huge difference. Videos such as this one are getting lots and lots of hits on YouTube, and they're winning new converts for our side every day.

Do Documentaries Violate the Privacy of Animals?

Dr. Brett Mills at the University of East Anglia in the UK makes an interesting argument. He insists that wildlife documentaries violate the privacy of animals. Mills, who is based in the university's Film and Television Department, believes that it is not "fair game" to film animals in their natural habitat. "We see it as unethical and wrong to secretly film people - we say it's not allowed," he says. The same rule, he thinks, should apply to animals. "The question constantly posed by wildlife documentaries is how animals should be filmed; they never ask whether animals should be filmed at all." (Source)

I have mixed feelings about Mills' position. I partially agree with him and partially don't. Animals should have the right to privacy, just as they should have a host of other rights that are systematically denied to them by human beings. He won't get much of an argument from me on that point. But wildlife documentaries serve an important function. To the degree that we empathize with animals, often it has to do with these wildlife films we've watched at various points in our lives that help us to understand the behavior and lives of animals. Moreover, with all the ghastly things being done to animals in the world today on a mass scale - within the walls of the factory farm system, by the fur and leather industries, by animal abusers, by large fish farming enterprises, etc. - the act of simply filming animals seems downright innocuous by comparison.

When the majority human beings reach a stage in their development that they empathize with all animals (not just dogs and cats) on a deeper level - or maybe I should say, if human beings reach that stage - then we can talk about whether we want to cease making these types of films and enact laws to protect the privacy of animals. But with all of the horrors being committed against animals in the world today, halting the filming of wildlife documentaries ought to be considered a low priority for animal advocates everywhere.

The Cove Banned at U.S. Base in Japan

The Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove (pictured above), an uncompromising film about the slaughter of dolphins by gangs of brutish and cutthroat hunters in Japan, has been banned by U.S. military officials at the U.S. Air Force's Yakota Air Base in Tokyo. The Cove cannot be shown at the base theater, in the words of a public affairs spokesman, "since using a military base as a venue that could be seen as an endorsement of the film one way or another would be prohibited." (Source)

The base spokesman explained that officials are simply trying to be sensitive to customs in Japan. Interestingly, the film shows that only a tiny percentage of the Japanese population is involved in the dolphin hunt and most Japanese are shocked and appalled at the news that dolphins are being slaughtered in their country's waters. Defending the decision to prohibit showing the film, base public Affairs spokesman Major Christopher Watt explained that "anything done on an American base would be seen as an approval of that event." Interestingly, Watt says he wants to see the film. He should. I'm sure it will move him, just as it has millions of viewers around the world. It's an extraordinary documentary.

The courageous thing to do, of course, would be to make The Cove mandatory viewing at Yakota Air Base. From what I saw in The Cove, most Japanese people would probably support such a move. They don't seem to like these thugs who are murdering dolphins any more than the rest of us.

They May Not Be Huggable, But They're Still Damn Cool!

If you haven't seen the BBC's 2001 documentary Blue Planet, you should definitely check it out. Some of the most compelling footage comes from the bottom of the ocean. I've included a film clip from the documentary (above), just to give you a small taste of what it's about.

Pictured here to the right is one of the stars of Blue Planet, the famed Blobfish (not to be confused with Rush Limbaugh), a bottom-dweller (again, not to be confused with Rush Limbaugh) who lurks in the darkest depths in the world (yeah, yeah, yeah, not to be confused with Rush Limbaugh). Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes of the Blobfish:

Most fish don't really have faces. You've heard people refer to "fish eyes" or "fish lips," or they say, "Oh, shut up, you old fish face." But the blobfish actually has a face. Not a fish face, but a human face, complete with lips and a big, bulbous nose. A blobfish looks like some fat, drunken judge and may be highly intelligent. And therefore quite dangerous. It frowns. It leers. Sometimes, it even drools.

Equally cool is the Fangtooth (left), another deep-sea fish who apparently is equipped with the biggest teeth in the ocean. With choppers like that, you don't want to go messing around with caramel. Fangtooth brings to mind that old Groucho Marx quote, "I never forget a face. But in your case, I'm willing to make an exception." Actually, they look really scary, but Fangtooths are not dangerous to humans. Part of the reason is that they're only about six inches long and humans scare them. The other reason is that you have to swim pretty deep in the ocean - anywhere from 3,000 to 16,000 feet under the surface - to actually encounter one. Like their comrades the Blobfish, the Fangtooths prefer the deep blackness of the ocean's bottom. You'll also be happy to know that this fish possesses a fully functioning gas bladder, giving it the ability to, um, er, uh, cut the cheese. Sadly, Blue Planet neglected to say whether the bubbles from its farts make it to the ocean's surface.

Keep an eye on your TV Guide for Blue Planet to see these and countless other amazing fish.

A Must-See Documentary on Sharks

I highly recommend Canadian filmmaker Rob Stewart's amazing documentary Sharkwater. Documentaries don't get much better than this one. In it, Stewart effectively debunks the myth of sharks as terrifying predators that prey on human beings. He brilliantly mixes underwater footage, interviews, old film clips of movies portraying sharks as fiends, and he follows a heroic radical conservationist who uses his ship to fight against illegal shark hunters. Director Stewart also takes his hidden cameras inside of Central American operations that capture endangered sharks to sell their parts, including teeth and fins.

Documentaries like Sharkwater and my personal favourite, Death on a Factory Farm, are so powerful - and so essential - because they help convert human beings to reason and compassion. They do so through effectively using images and interviews to show troubling truths about our world. In Sharkwater, there are a number of harrowing moments. Ironically, the scariest predators in the film are human beings - especially the so-called "Shark Mafia" in Central America that illegally hunts the sharks for huge profits. These are the bloodthirsty hunters of Sharkwater. By sharp contrast, the majestic sharks, who have been around since the age of dinosaurs, kill an average of 5 people a year around the world. More people die in vending machine accidents each year than shark attacks. Yet popular culture continues to portray sharks as underwater devils. Hopefully, Sharkwater will help debunk this terribly destructive myth. But it can only do so if people actually see it. My advice: Do whatever you can to view it. Order it from Netflix or Zip.ca, buy it from Amazon or ask your local video store to order it. It's an incredible film.

Are the Do-Gooders Really Doing Much Good?

Last night, I watched a show called Beef Inc., a Canadian documentary made about 10 years ago. It was one of those lefty documentaries that excoriates big corporations. The bad guy, in this case, was Cargill, a gargantuan agribusiness and the largest private corporation in the United States. Cargill is about twice the size of the Empire in Star Wars and owns damn near half the planet. Not only did the film attack Cargill, it was also a celebration of the independent, small cattle farmers.

Like I said, the movie is a little more than a decade old, so it's sort of a forerunner of the contemporary "Happy Meat"/"Conscientious Carnivore" movements. The film's message was clear: Giant, impersonal corporations = Bad Guys. Small farmers who allow their animals to enjoy nature = Good Guys. All of the commentators on the show, who were mostly academics, reinforced this decidedly populist point of view.

On the surface, it's a sensible position. In Canada and the United States, small farmers are almost regarded as sacrosanct in the popular imagination (indeed, Thomas Jefferson called them "God's chosen people"). And who wouldn't support the underdog - the small farmer - over huge and powerful agribusinesses that have been gobbling up land and resources and making gargantuan profits for decades?

Interestingly, at the end of the documentary, the interviewer - perhaps hoping to end on a note of levity - asked the pundits on the show how they like their steaks prepared. Most of them laughingly answered "medium rare." Only one said, "I prefer my steak inside the cow, and I like the cow to be playing happily in the field."

Right on!

I must admit, I was taken aback when I watched the film that these liberal anti-corporate types - preaching the virtues of the small farmer over the big corporation - had NO ability to relate to the animals that were being slaughtered. Before I came around to veganism, I probably would've sounded a lot like one of these people if asked about the deleterious effects of gigantic agribusinesses. I most likely would've attacked the big guys and stood up for the small farmers.

Thanks to the efforts of brave souls like Gary Francione, more and more people are starting to see right through the phoniness of the "Happy Meat" and "Conscientious Carnivore" movements. True, the animals in these free range settings are better off than those held captive in the factory farm system while they are actually alive. But make no mistake about it: These animals are still enslaved and exploited, slaughtered for their meat to feed human beings who do not actually need that meat to survive. To quote Francione:

The “happy meat” movement is intended to make the public feel more comfortable about animal exploitation and to ensure that social discussion about animal ethics remains focused away from the relevant question—why are we eating animals in the first place given that it is not necessary for human health, is an ecological disaster, and, most importantly, results in our imposing suffering and death on sentient nonhumans? The “happy meat” movement is achieving these goals, and that does not represent any sort of progress. Quite the contrary. The “happy meat” movement represents a significant step backwards.

As I watched Beef Inc., I thought: What a sad thing that most of these anti-corporate commentators cannot recognize that the very same impersonal forces that drive corporations to exploit people, deplete communities, maximize profits, quash small competitors and sacrifice their own (through downsizing and relocating overseas) - that these very same institutions also stun billions of animals, hold them upside down by metal clamps, slash their throats and drain them of all of their precious lifeblood.

It is far easier to relate to small farmers who have a human face than to gigantic corporations. We can understand their challenges and dilemmas, their vulnerability and courage in the face of adversity. It is possible to be sympathetic to these farmers and their plight, yet also see right through the delusion of "humane slaughtering." I have no problem with peacefully coexisting with meat eaters. As I've said before, I ate meat most of my life, and I wouldn't have wanted some over-zealous vegan to pass judgment on me.

But I do wish the "progressive" do-gooders would abandon all this B.S. about Conscientious Carnivorism. The "free range" cow whose artery is slit open feels the agony of death every bit as much as the cow who was confined to a coffin-like space in a factory farm, yet the people who insist on devouring "happy meat" are in a complete state of denial about this fact. "What is a Conscientious Carnivore to do?" asked the Website Eco Child's Play. "The answer is three-fold: Buy small, buy local, buy grass-fed."

At least the Sarah Palins of this world don't fool themselves into believing there's a nice way to slaughter animals. When she proclaimed in her memoir Going Rogue her love for hamburgers, pork chops and the "seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak" and said "there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals - right next to the mashed potatoes," at least she didn't try to place a lot of politically correct widow dressing around her decisions. You could almost envision Palin wearing a bib, tearing into the T-bone, and letting the juices run down her chin.

There's far more honesty in that sort of Red State gusto than in all of this mealy-mouthed talk of Conscientious Carnivorism.