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Multi Million dollar welfare campaigns revisited, Farm hygiene, New Zealand Snow and Earthquakes, Slinkskins, Dairy "inductions", Dairy Automation,Beer ads and Cute Vegan kids!
Hello and welcome to episode 37 of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals, with the fantastic title of "hey hey hey hey, na na na na", all will be explained shortly.
This episode will serve as a catchup to all the stories I've missed. I should start off by at first playing some more news coverage about my last episodes topic, Animal Rights group SAFE, and their multimillion dollar Welfare campaign:
Once more, SAFE say they are NOT promoting "free range" or "non factory farmed" animal bits and pieces, but thats certainly how the media covers their angle, and they know that by now. As we all said on my last episode, Abolitionist Vegans wish they would simply promote Veganism as the *least* we can do for other animals, rather than some as yet un tit-tit-tit-tit-tit-tick tick tick….tick'ed entry on the big wheel of future Campaigns.
"…most of us live in a very open community…", yes, most of us in New Zealand are not Farmers, although the way they talk, we'd be screwed without them, the both our main islands would snap in half and sink, like the Titanic, into the ocean, and in a few decades, someone would make a movie about it. I've long been interested in how the Farmers shown during "Welfare Exposé" footage generally run from the news cameras, to be represented by some PR person for their industry. You'd think they'd offer to show the news cameras around their farm, right? I mean, they have nothing to hide, we live in a quote "very open community". In most cases, I'd expect live, unedited footage would speak for itself, without any screaming animal soundtrack overlaid over top, no video effects, why not have the Farm owner walk a news reporter through their complete process? From animals being born, to how they live, the actual cages and enclosures, to how they are killed? How could a farm worker claim this
The main excuse given publicly about not allowing television reporters, and the cameras, onto farms is "hygiene", that those shabby looking television reporters, in their suits and ties, leather shoes gleaming, MUST be harboring all kinds of disease, while the farm workers are of course bubble-men and bubble-women, moving about the farm in self contained plastic bubbles, unable to cough on the animals. Cmon, I'm waiting for a Television crew to challenge this, Farm workers leave the controlled environment that is the farm glass dome, I've heard rumors they even walk among "the townies", and all their no doubt fatal diseases. Whatever process farm workers go through to be around the poor farmed animals, why not do it to the television crew? They can have their blood exchanged with pure artificial blood, their bodies plastic bubble-wrapped just as easily as the farm workers. This "animal health" ban on almost certainly nonVegan television reporters, the actual customers of these farms is an "elephant in the room", yet somehow gets ignored in every news piece. A little like how SAFE members such as Hans Kriek, a Vegan asking for "better welfare" are never challenged, "but Hans, no matter what we do or do not do to these animals, you wouldn't eat their flesh if WE paid YOU!". What would be left for SAFE to say? The Kucinich line, "uh, well, personal choice… I believe Americans deserve to eat the healthiest, best animals, drink the most GE free, organic milk…."? Someone is not being honest here.
I'm trying to post more to my blog, which you can find at the very snappy coexistingwithnonhumananimals.blogspot.com . My aim is to cover more news stories, ok as well as to share more videos of my Chicken Friends. When I remember, unlike last episodes post, I'll use the page break feature, making short posts with a "read more" link, so you don't have to scroll
Ok, now on to the news stories.
Recently, New Zealand has had some shocking weather, a very rare fall of snow in my area, and earthquakes a little further up the South Island.
This clip is from the Wellington radio show Animal Rights and Wrongs
Mother sheep had just given birth, and the few day old babies were basically wiped out by the cold, the wind, and the snow, it was difficult for them to even find food. Plenty of coverage was given of the farmers, said to be upset about the loss of the lambs. Well, lets be honest here, as mentioned, "slink skins", the skins of dead baby lambs, are worth about a buck, compared to the stated 90 dollars for a killed year old sheep. I have to describe what we see in the video too, of cat sized bodies, their white wool colored brown, grey and green, they look rotten, as the farmers pick the corpses up by a leg and chuck it at a pile of other dead babies. I think its fair to say, if the farmers actual concern went to the deaths of these animals, they would instead be running animal sanctuaries, farms are a business that revolves around using animals, of keeping them alive for their bodily secretions, or killing them for their actual bodies. The real hurt, for the quote "livestock" owners is financial, from their product being worth ninety dollars, to being worth a dollar.
I look at these disgusting piles of rotten looking bodies, and wonder how the hell anyone would want to buy those foul smelling corpses, and yet, "slink skins" are used to make soft skin gloves, and other apparel…. People will be buying that skin, once their flesh has been pulled away and made into quote "cat food", or perhaps dumped down a hole, like the quote "offal pits" on a farm. To find out more about slink skins, you can visit slinkskins.co.nz ,
quote
"Producers of high quality furs and skins from New Zealand slink, possum and calfskins.
Slinkskins Ltd supply leading fashion houses and glove makers around the world. With a network of farmers and hunters throughout New Zealand supplying local agents with fresh pelts, Slinkskins has a ready supply of quality skins, which are carefully selected and treated at its source, then transported to the Tannery at Thornbury for finishing.
"Also offered, during season, is "ovine placenta", yum! I have no idea, nor do I really want to know, what you do with the placentas of Sheep. Probably some miracle cream that fights signs of aging, no doubt its pronounced with a thick accent too, "oveen plac-enta" and *ditzy voice* "I think its Esperanto for fountain of youth!"
The skins of dead cows and sheep are described as "casualties of nature", well at least they don't invent a God to blame, with Possum skins labelled "a pest….thus making use of this otherwise wasted resource".
Think of the dead piles next time you see leather in a "fashion house", it might well have come from a dead, rotten looking baby, from the other side of the world. Who in their right freaking mind would buy that? And yet, these disgusting piles are apparently turned into "high quality designer goods". The latest craze, slaughterhouse chic!
Our other crazy weather involved earthquakes around Christchurch
I can only imagine what it would have looked like inside, with the Chickens stuck between metal, inside each shed.
Another newsclip involving a fire at a Chicken Farm
A "poultry farm", that makes it sound so "humane" right? Imagine again, a shed, filled with upset birds, being raised to be killed. "thank goodness" no birds were inside at the time? Well, no doubt the sheds were in preparations, heating, for a NEW batch of birds to be sped through. There were no birds at the time, because the former inhabitants had been killed, and the new victims about to be moved in. And to joke about cooking the birds… what a vulgar, and humorless joke, although I guess we can just have that duality in our minds, doublethink, about what a terrible tragedy it would be for thousands of birds to be burned to death in a fire, and yet joke about cooking their corpses individually, after we've killed them. I hope by spreading videos of the Chickens I care for, that more people will break free from Big Brothers grasp, that I could be Emmanuel Goldstein, and our perceptions of how we see and treat Chickens will change, to give those beautiful birds the respect they deserve.
As the farmers I speak with online say, "where theres livestock, theres deadstock", farmed animals die all the time, in fact, its generally the point THAT they die, albeit in a way profitable to their Owner.
Another issue that broke was of Dairy inductions, giving Dairy Cows abortions. Perhaps many see New Zealands dairy industry as first rate, "humane", "organic", "grass fed", all that jingo crap, theres nothing noble about dairy farming anywhere. Not only do we control the Cows cycles, using "CDIRs", which are a giant tampon of hormones, which are left in for some time, and removed all covered in pus, we then forcibly impregnate them, because being mammals like us, cows produce milk for their babies. But, having the baby stick around, especially if male, is just "another mouth to feed", hell, we cant have that, that milk belongs to ME, not the mother, nor her baby, don't be silly! So, the babies are killed, for males, most often as "bobby calves", as in they'd be worth a "bob", or about a dollar to the farmer, they're "taken care of" as soon as possible to minimize the farmers losses. And, sometimes, the pregnant mothers are "induced", or really, to use normal language, given an abortion.
This clip has some odd audio distortions
In the video we saw Vets giving the injections, and then saying how much they don't like giving the cows abortions! Well, if you don't want to be doing that, why ARE you doing that? Why are we doing this to animals at all? Its sick, its revolting. And to hear the talk of , "ohhhh, we cant do this to cows, because it might hurt the nations IMAGE, our BRAND!…", its wrong to give females hormones, to force them into pregnancy, to take away (and kill) their sons, or force their daughters into further dairy servitude, because of what we're doing to the animals, not because it might tarnish New Zealands image overseas.
About the audio distortions too, I don't know what thats about, New Zealand robots sound more like this:
From the clip, "…any that are still alive are…humanely euthanized….", right, what ever could that mean? Well, the farmer reports, thinking of how to explain this to the "blardy townies" watching on TV, they're humane shot to death, yippee! Lets give them a medal for using the right, lead free bullets! Shooting a baby animal, who you've forced to be born prematurely for profit, shame on them. Other farmers I've heard from secretly admit to being quote "hammer jockeys", taking to the calves with a hammer, hey, bullets cost money you know! Some farmers were fighting over this, "hey, thats not quote "humane", its doesn't have the Grandin "she'll be right mate" seal of approval, why, Animal Welfare groups havnt spent millions telling us its ethical!". I make sure to ask why they are harming and killing animals in the first place. In all the time I've been speaking with farmers on these issues, their basic answer is that I'm wrong, I'm stupid, that I smell like poopy, keep in mind many of them are three times my age, and that we are allowed to eat animals, as long as we do it quote "humanely". And who promotes all this Free Range, Humanely slaughtered nonsense? The Animal Welfare groups. If Animal Advocates would speak clearly against ALL animal use, and to promote Veganism, then these arguments would absolutely fall apart.
So, the inductions story was big here, it was spoken of publicly, and took over the news for some time. The general consensus seems to be that Farmers don't like doing it, they think it might be "inhumane", but that its being "phased out", I love that term, "phased out". Its near meaningless, "oh yeah, we'll probably stop doing it in five years or so". The problem, as the dairy farmers see it, is that male calves are born, all kinds of genetic tricks are being tried to prevent this, including choosing to produce only females, cows, by tricks of Artificial Insemination selection.
I heard about this twist from the Farmers online, "The Bossman",Sir Henry van deer Heyden, chairman of Fonterra, our large dairy empire, actually uses inductions on his own properties, although he sure didn't want to say that on camera! In this video, he's ambushed about it during a routine interview, and moves to leave his chair, and to shout down the reporter:
I LOVE IT, I'm going to try that technique when discussing Veganism with people, I'll just shout them down, HEY HEY, NA NA NA NA , HEY HEY NA NA NA NA NA, it really looks effective, certainly we can see why they pay van deer Heyden the big bucks. HEY HEY HEY, NA NA NA NA
A really inspired debating technique. Heres the rest of the interview, it must have been torture for van deer Heyden
These are all standard dairying practices, and it doesn't make much sense to spend millions of dollars, and more importantly, our time, on petitions asking for these to be banned. We should instead focus on what we ourselves do, as people, as consumers, and promote Veganism to others. I admit we wont get as many cool statements from dairy chairman, NA NA NA HEY HEY HEY, but its the ethical thing to do.
I should point out, Henry van deer Heyden, many, seemingly the majority, of Southland diary farmers are Dutch, I have no idea why. I guess I can imagine a Dutch man, walking about in his wooden shoes, enjoying the produce from an Amsterdam coffee shop, when he receives a vision, "I know, lets jump on a 20 odd hour plane ride to the other side of the world, to a country best known for three movies about elves and hobbits, lets be Southland dairy farmers!"
A dairy story I'd missed covering were "robot milking machines" here in my region of Southland, the small town of Winton. Yes, these fairly large red machines, that look sort of like an automated car wash admit one cow at a time, a gate closes behind her, the cups attach themselves, probably laser guided, to her teats, and away the machine goes. Theres mention of the machine cleaning each cow too, perhaps they really are just hot-wired car washes after all:
Its not really said, but under the guise of all this "increased productivity", it should be mentioned this very high level of automation will be putting many milkers out of business. The farm owner will basically buy a couple of these machines, put them in a shed, and as long as food and water are taken care of, its really like egg laying hens in battery cages. The "floor cleaning machines" look like giant Roombas, the consumer "robot cleaner". What with talk of "cow cubicles", moving to indoor systems for dairying, if we DID believe in any sort of quote "animal welfare" through farming, its decreasing, because of productivity, simply more money can be had by treating the animals, I mean, farm property, in this manner. It really is a hellish glimpse of the future, the ads for New Zealand dairy focus on our beautiful green grass, gentle hills, white snowy mountains, blue rivers…."meadow fresh", but the future, even the present, are muddy sheds with equipment all around. I've been to a working dairy farm once, on a school visit. I don't think anyone of us "city kids" could forget how crappy it was, literally, without gumboots, you'd be in a terrible mess, it felt like half a foot of cow…waste….made up the "road" towards the milking sheds.
This is never featured in the dairy ads, which focus on the green grass remember, in reality, the animals are covered in their own waste, and within the milk itself are "somatic cell", the SCC, somatic cell count is monitored, you know, infections, white blood cells, PUS.
There is nothing ethical within dairy farming. Now arguments are being made for indoor dairy farming, "oh, it saves the cows having to walk as far, they stay warmer, out of the rain, they have brushes to rub up against and they sleep on mattresses….", right. Its being done for greater profits, less costs, no other reason.
And now, even the workers are going to be put out of business, when teams of men and women are replaced by a machine or two, which can work around the clock, without pay! To see these beautiful cows, if you don't look at the cow…waste…they're walking through and have on themselves….they have these massive collars on, with some sort of RFID tracking chip, so the system knows that cow…I mean,
they really are being treated as things, now we're turning them into cyborgs, for decades, perhaps centuries we've tagged their ears, piercing their ears and leaving large bits of plastic for ID hanging out, soon we'll no doubt have them injected with RFID chips, and nanomachines in their blood to fight off infections, as they live in dark sheds, wired into the system, eating Soylent Green, and dreaming of being free.
We shouldn't be focusing on this as a welfare issue, but as their Rights, we should never be treating nonhuman animals as things. By promoting Veganism, we are helping all animals, not wasting our time asking for their children to be killed "quote" humanely with a "firearm" instead of being bludgeoned to death with a hammer.
And its important to note, Animal Rights is spreading, Veganism is now being promoted worldwide, as we all focus on Veganism, as we speak of Veganism, there become more Vegans, hmm, funny that. I know of former Vegetarians who've decided to be Vegan because of being around me, of hearing of Veganism, and online forums cannot be overestimated, I've taken to lurking on Twitter, with a saved search for the word "Vegan", whenever it comes up, often every minute or so, I LEAP onto the tweet, and send a reply to the sender. Commonly, people will say, "well….I want to be Vegan…but it sounds so hard!". I'll reply with a message about how its easy to be Vegan, no matter where you live, even if its in a fourth world country like New Zealand, with a socialist healthcare system. Almost all the replies my random replies get are POSITIVE, with people thanking me for speaking clearly about Veganism, I think they expect to get "well, maybe you could just buy like, the cage free eggs and stuff?" from the likes of PETA, and are glad to be treated like adults, able to understand how Vegans feel, and not wanting to be lied to, or treated as if they were very stupid.
We're being mocked in mainstream Beer ads, I should mention the theme of the ad, "real men" are overweight, lazy, overweight, stupid, overweight, insensitive to others, overweight…their hobbies are basically getting drunk, regardless of being at the stage of their lives where they've matured, watching sport, rock music, and did I mention being overweight? I know New Zealand is actually the third most obese country, its shocking how recent ads just accept that these people are their targeted audience, loud, stupid, overweight men who should act their age. I think of it as the Homer Simpson effect, where Women are quite empowered in New Zealand, men have long been the target of jokes and stereotypes, and now these are coming true. Where its oddly seen as unmanly as being tall, not overweight, Vegan and wearing badges saying "I'm Vegan and I love you" on your work overalls, instead, we're meant to gulp down any emotions we have, reach for the nearest beer, and hit on the next woman we see.
Ok, heres the ad:
Hopefully naturally selected from the genepool.
The Mayans predicted the explosion of Veganism in 2012, and by 2014, all non Vegans imploded.
I get tired of being seen as "unmanly" for caring about others, but its also a good thing that Vegans are mentioned in ads now, as many of us have seen those ambush videos where people on the street are asked "do you know what a Vegan is"?, and they have no idea. Well, some of us are looking forward to the day when they answer, "I'm Vegan".
And it starts with the young:
I'd like to thank Daniel Manahan for letting me use his video clip, the children featured are Sophia, age 6, and Raphael aged 3.
Its always great to hear of young Vegans, of children who've learnt about how we really treat animals. True, some of them grow up, and stop talking about their damn Chicken Friends all the time, for the rest of…well, me, we still get out there and talk about Veganism being respect for ALL animals.
Thank you for listening to Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.
You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com
If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, or on Twitter, twitter.com/ j a y w o n t d a r t, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you for listening.
Sources
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Jan Cameron/SAFE Multimillion dollar welfare campaign recap
http://www.3news.co.nz/Businesswoman-joins-fight-against-animal-cruelty/tabid/309/articleID/185300/Default.aspx?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4cd8ab0b4b48175b%2C0
Slinkskins
http://www.slinkskins.co.nz/
1984
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
Animal Rights and Wrongs, Welfarist radio show
http://www.accessradio.org.nz/animal_rights_and_wrongs.html
Dairy inductions
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/fonterra-boss-admits-controversial-practice-3803799
Chicken Farm Fire "roast chickens" clip
http://www.3news.co.nz/Two-firefighters-injured-in-New-Plymouth-blaze/tabid/423/articleID/181208/Default.aspx
robot cow milkers
http://www.3news.co.nz/Robot-milks-cows-for-all-theyre-worth/tabid/311/articleID/182477/Default.aspx
Abolitionist Approach Forum
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/forum/
Beer ad blaming Veganism
http://bit.ly/beeradveganism
Child teased over Gelatin clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOtsx19tYaM
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