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What's wrong with eating meat and other animal products?

 

 

                                                                                           Animals typically raised for food are no different to our companion animals - have

                                                                                           a great capacity to love, feel joy, pain and suffering. In fact, experts agree that pigs

                                                                                           have greater intelligence than dogs and three-year-old children. Chickens

                                                                                           develop strong bonds with their babies and can visually recognise the faces of over

                                                                                           100 of their friends!


                                                                                           Despite this, annually, over 500 million animals in Australian factory farms are subjected

                                                                                           to practices that would warrant cruelty charges if the victims were  dogs or cats. In

                                                                                           factory farms, thinking, feeling animals are considered little more than production units.

                                                                                           Factory farming practices have been developed at minimum cost to the producer, and at

                                                                                           great expense to the animals.

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In their final hours, all animals (including ‘free range’), face the stress of cramped

transportation on trucks bound for slaughterhouses. Here they are subjected to

stunning by electrocution or a bolt in the skull, before having their throats slit and

being hung up side down to bleed to death. When mistakes are made, animals can

sometimes endure this whilst conscious.


The average meat-eater consumes around 100 animals every year. That's how many

innocent animals can be spared from cruelty each time someone makes the

decision to shift to a healthy vegetarian diet.

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Veganism takes the anti-cruelty stance one-step further, refusing to support

the cruel diary, sheep and chicken farming industries in any way by refraining

from eggs and all dairy products as well as leather and wool products.

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To produce milk, dairy cows endure pregnancy and milking at the same time which places enormous demands on their bodies. They frequently suffer mastitis, a painful breast infection that causes immense suffering and also introduces bacteria and somatic (pus) cells to the milk.

Dairy cows produce a calf a year until too exhausted to continue. They are sent to slaughter at about a quarter of their natural life span. Calves are taken away from  their mothers as soon as they are born. Mother and calf bellow for each other for days in distress at the forced separation. Male calves are removed from their mothers and killed for veal while still babies; their sisters are reared on a milk substitute away from their mothers to become the next generation of milk producers.

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Vegan lifestyles are also a love affair between us and our beautiful, fragile blue planet. Find out why meat and animal products create an environmental disaster to our water, our forests, our air, our oceans and threaten the survival of all life on earth here and here.

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Veganism is mainstreaming. Visit our Vegan for Life resources page to find out how you can join one of the fastest growing global movements and follow the long list of vegan celebrities and athletes.            

                                                                                                                 

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​What's wrong with product testing and medical research on animals?

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Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals and the answer is: 'Because animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.

- Prof. Charles R. Magel

 

 

                                                                                                   Animal experimentation and the invasive use of animals for teaching, is

​                                                                                                   inherently wrong. The use of animals in research and teaching is more

                                                                                                   about tradition and history than it is about science.

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                                                                                                   More than six million animals are used annually in research and teaching

                                                                                                   in Australia and New Zealand. Many are subjected to drugs testing, infected

                                                                                                   with diseases, poisoned for toxicity testing, brain damaged, maimed, blinded,

                                                                                                   and suffer other painful and invasive procedures that cause severe distress

                                                                                                   and/or death.

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                                                                                                   There are already many alternatives to animals

    which have been developed, particularly in the

     areas of toxicity testing and teaching, but the

                                                                                                   failure to use alternatives is too often caused by

    a reluctance to deviate from previous methodology.

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Animal Active invites contact by students and staff needing advice and support to conscientiously

object to the use of live animals in schools, universities and workplaces. We will investigate and expose

valid whistleblower information of animal cruelty in research and teaching facilities. Whistle blower

information can be lodged anonymously and will be held in strict confidence.

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Resources:

  • ​​​​Don't buy products that have been tested on animals. See  the list of body care, household and

       beauty products that are ‘cruelty free’ here

 

 

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What's wrong with wearing fur, leather and wool?

 

Each year well in excess of 50 million animals suffer and die as victims of the

international fur trade. These include mink, foxes and rabbits, squirrels, badgers,

wallabies, possums, lynxes, coyotes, seals, otters, bears, chinchillas, martens,

bobcats and domestic dogs and cats.

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85% of the fur industry's skins come from animals raised in 'battery' cages on fur

farms where they are deprived of any form of quality of life and the ability to

perform their natural and instinctual behaviours before being electrocuted, gassed,

beaten to death, or even skinned alive.

 

China is the largest fur producer in the world. China also has no laws to protect

animals. Millions of rabbits, foxes, minks, racoons and other animals suffer in the

most extreme ways imaginable on Chinese fur farms and often have their skins

stripped off while still alive.

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Buying leather directly contributes to factory farms and slaughterhouses because skin is the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry. The millions of cows and other animals who are killed for their skin endure the horrors of factory farming before their slaughter and processing into meat and leather.

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In Australia, where more than 50 percent of the world's merino wool originates, lambs are forced to endure a gruesome procedure called "mulesing," in which huge chunks of skin and flesh are cut from the animals' backsides, often without any painkillers. Shearers are paid by volume, not by the hour, which encourages fast work without regard for the welfare of sheep.

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Sheep who have served their time in the wool industry are then shipped to the Middle East and Asia on crowded multilevel ships. These live exports, which can last for weeks, go to countries where animal welfare standards are non-existent. The suffering sheep are dragged off the ships, loaded onto trucks, and dragged by their ears and legs to often unregulated slaughterhouses, where their throats are slit while they are still conscious. The claim that sheep need shearing is just that - a myth. If they were left alone and not genetically manipulated, sheep would grow just enough wool to protect themselves from temperature extremes.

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Resources:

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