June 14 Update: California residents, the California Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act has now moved to the state assembly for a vote. Your calls and e-mails in support of the bill were crucial to its passage in the state senate!
Too sweet!💜💜💜
Exciting news! California has the chance to become the first state in the country to ban the sale of cosmetics tested on animals.
The California Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Act (S.B. 1249) recently passed in the state senate. It will soon come up for a vote in the state assembly. The bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton), the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the group Social Compassion in Legislation, would make it illegal for cosmetics manufacturers to import or sell any cosmetics in California if the final product or any of its components was tested on animals after January 1, 2020.
The legislation also covers personal-hygiene products such as deodorant, shampoo, and conditioner.
There are many non-animal testing alternatives that are cheaper, faster, and actually superior when it comes to predicting human reactions to substances. They include the use of 3-D tissue structures produced from human cells and sophisticated computer models.
If this legislation becomes law, California would join the members of the European Union, India, Israel, and other countries that have enacted similar bans.
Because California’s market is so large, this ban could have a big impact on all cosmetics and cosmetics ingredients for sale in the United States!
Show compassion for all Moms this Mother’s Day: Go veggie!
By Dr. Heather Rally, D.V.M.
What if your mother were artificially inseminated time and time again? What if you were taken from her shortly after birth? No nurturing, no love, no celebration. What if she cried out for you constantly but to no avail? You had already been slated to become someone’s dinner.
As a veterinarian who’s concerned about all animals, I hope you’ll keep cows in mind on Mother’s Day — and any other time you’re enjoying a meal with your family — and opt for dairy-free foods.
Cool your jets this summer with vegan ice cream! Tastee! And it’s always for sale at Trader Joe’s, in Shrewsbury, Rt 9, right over the bridge!
Cows produce milk for the same reason that humans do: to feed their young. But on today’s dairy farms, they are kept almost constantly pregnant so that they’ll produce a steady supply of milk. Their calves are typically taken away from them when they’re only a few hours old.
Male calves are commonly raised for veal. They’re chained up in tiny crates and intentionally fed a formula that’s low in iron so that they’ll become anemic and their flesh will stay pale. They take their first weak, wobbly steps — to slaughter — when they’re between 3 and 18 weeks old.
Females are turned into virtual milk machines like their mothers. When their production wanes, they, too, end up at the slaughterhouse, bloodied, dangling by a hind leg with their throats cut.
Cows are like us in important and relevant ways: They’re made of flesh and blood.
They feel pain and love.
They form strong family ties and grieve when they’re separated from their loved ones.
In An Anthropologist on Mars, Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote of a trip that he and agriculture-industry advisor Dr. Temple Grandin took to a dairy farm — and of the bellowing that they heard:
“They must have separated the calves from the cows this morning,” Temple said, and, indeed, this was what had happened. We saw one cow outside the stockade, roaming, looking for her calf, and bellowing. “That’s not a happy cow,” Temple said. “That’s one sad, unhappy, upset cow. She wants her baby.”
As that mother cow demonstrated, all animals have thoughts, feelings and desires. Here’s an example of another basic need: Cows long to live in pastures. A study at the University of British Columbia recently found that cows want to get outdoors as much as they want food.
The researchers steadily increased the amount of force that it took for a cow to open a door leading to either food or pasture. Most of the cows studied pushed just as hard to get outside as they did to get to food.
The scientists speculate that this is because grass is softer than concrete, so outdoors, cows can move comfortably. Soft ground is better for their hoof health and reduces the likelihood of lameness. And they have a basic behavioral need to live in the grasslands, which are, of course, their natural environment.
Yet fewer than 5 percent of cows in the U.S. are allowed to spend time in pasture, and “80 percent never see a blade of grass,” according to researcher Marina von Keyserlingk.
Change is needed, and gradually it is happening. Surveys suggest that half of Americans now consume dairy-free milk. To those of you who still drink cow’s milk, please consider going vegan for Mother’s Day — and beyond.
If you have children, you’ll surely understand how traumatic it would be to lose a baby. And as we all have mothers, we should be outraged that any mother, human or not, would be subjected to a life of torment, as are cows in the dairy industry.
By choosing tasty vegan foods this Mother’s Day and all year round, you’ll be showing compassion for all mothers!
From Mauro DePasquale, Mount Carmel Preservation Society:
Important update:
Despite the fact that the Worcester Historic Commission voted not to do the study to explore a historic district at Our Lady of Mount Carmel church on Mulberry Street (OLMC), we are, in no way, giving up on our mission to save Our Lady of Mount Carmel church.
Despite many people feeling discouraged, as long as the church stands, it is not over.
It is important that we recognize how far we have come, specifically how the church is still standing and, most likely, would not have been if it were not for the efforts of the Mount Carmel Preservation Society (MPS).
We are moving forward with our appeal to the Vatican to oppose the merger of OLMC and Our Lady of Loreto parishes.
We will also appeal to the Vatican the demolition of the church building as soon as the Diocese issues the required decree of suppression.
We are pursuing an alternate (as an option of consideration) plan to save the church by preserving it as a shrine to OLMC, fully supported and sustained by the MPS.
We have just made a formal proposal, regarding our plan to make the church a shrine, to Monsignor Pedone and the Diocese and await their response.
A shrine is a sacred place where, with the permission of the Bishop, people can gather for daily prayer, celebrate Masses, hold special religious events such as baptisms, weddings, etc.
This could benefit the Parish, Diocese and community as a historical sacred tourist attraction as well.
We are also waiting for approval of our application for non-profit status and expect to have that approved very soon. Non-profit status will allow us more flexibility with fundraising, as we definitely need to continue to raise funds for legal costs and for the support of our proposed shrine to OLMC.
Plans are already underway for another MPS fundraiser and we will update all of you when we have the details.
We need the active involvement of each MPS member at this critical time. We must stay united and positive as we persevere in saving the church from demolition.
Our Sunday Prayer Vigil is ongoing at Mt. Carmel Apartments at 10 a.m., Sunday.
To donate visit http://www.preserveourladyofmountcarmel.org
Tickets for tonight’s (3/11) fundraiser are available at the door – $20. This wonderful music event is hosted by First UNITARIAN Church at JOHN HENRY HAMMER Coffee shop at 7 pm Main and State St., Worcester. Near the old court house.
Next meeting will be announced soon.
Thank you for your support. Stand Tall and God Bless you.
Mauro DePasquale, MPS
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****** From our friends at Veteran Homestead!💜💛❤
The Second Annual Veteran Homestead Star Spangled Go-Kart Challenge
… at F1 Boston in Braintree
Thursday, April 6
5 pm – 9 pm
Come compete for racing glory where your donation goes to support the veterans in our programs thanks to the support and generosity of F1Boston.
Gather your friends together for a FUN night of go-kart racing, food, drinks, prizes, pool, networking and, of course, mingling with our veterans.
Form your team now and don’t miss this opportunity to support our heroes, the military veterans who are responsible
for our freedom.
Don’t feel the need for speed?
You can attend, cheer on your favorite team, enjoy food and drink while supporting our veterans. The donation is $150 per person.
Call or email Cindy to participate and for costs and more information 978-632-1271.
******
REC WORCESTER 🌺EARTH DAY🌸🌻 NEIGHBORHOOD CLEANUPS AND BEAUTIFICATION!🌻🌸🌹🌺💐
Saturday, April 8
8 am – 12 pm
We are excited to invite you to join us for this year’s REC Earth Day Neighborhood & Garden Cleanups!
This is truly a community-wide event in which residents come together every year to give Worcester the Spring-cleaning it deserves.
Last year, more than 1,000 volunteers came together to pick up more than 50 tons of trash at over 60 sites in Worcester!!!🌸❤
Please feel free to contact Pat Barnosky with any questions or concerns
– earthday@recworcester.org – 508-799-9139
Thank you for joining with your neighbors and friends to support the 28th Annual REC Earth Day Neighborhood & Garden Cleanups!
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15 GREAT CRUELTY-FREE COMPANIES! Buy their cosmetics and personal care products – NEVER tested on bunnies💜 – at CVS, Walgreens, Target or your local supermarket:
And this, from a gal pal. Highly recommended by Allen Fletcher!😉
We don’t need ‘Frankenscience’ to solve the organ shortage
By Dr. Emily Trunnell
In Greek mythology, the sighting of a chimera — a creature composed of parts from more than one animal — was a bad omen.
I think it still is.
Experimenters at the Salk Institute made headlines recently with the publication of a study describing how they grew fetuses that were part pig and part human.
Although these chimeras contained few human cells, the work was widely hailed as a milestone — an initial step toward a far-off day when people in desperate need of transplants can order organs from warehouses in the form of living animals.
Leaving aside for a moment the unique ethical minefield that this line of research creates, let’s look at how patients in need of organs could be helped today, without subjecting intelligent, sensitive pigs to invasive procedures and then killing them — as was the fate of both the fetuses and the surrogate mothers who carried them in the Salk Institute’s experiments.
Just a simple change in law is all that is required. In Belgium, France, Sweden and other countries that have passed presumed consent laws, which presume that people’s organs are available for donation upon their death unless they opt out, or mandated choice laws, which require adults to choose whether or not to donate their organs, the number of organs available for donation has increased dramatically. For instance, since changing its law in the 1970s, France has seen organ donations shoot up by nearly 5,000 percent.
As for the rationale behind the Salk Institute’s study, its senior author is quoted as saying, “[O]rgans developed in petri dishes are not identical to the ones that grow inside a living thing. … What if we let nature do the work for us?”
“Petri dish” hardly does justice to the recent advances in sophisticated 3-D bioprinting that now allow scientists to grow human tissue in a highly controlled manner, with more precision and consistency than is possible in chimera experiments, in which tissue develops in live animals.
The same can be said of 3-D organs-on-chips, a technology that is not only providing insights into diseases — another justification given for chimera work — but also offering the potential for personalized medicine when, eventually, the efficacy of therapies will be able to be tested on a patient’s own cells. If we’re going to invest in long-term research to grow and study human organs, shouldn’t we pursue these pioneering, high-tech methods?
Because of the unique moral dilemma that chimera research presents, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) took the rare step in 2015 of imposing a moratorium on funding studies in which human stem cells are injected into animal embryos. (The Salk Institute experiments were privately funded.) While NIH has indicated that it intends to lift the funding ban in certain circumstances, I hope it will reconsider. Instead, it should support forward-looking, non-animal methods of developing replacement organs and researching disease.
We need to leave behind the ancient world of mythological creatures and embrace the promising, cutting-edge technologies that will alleviate the suffering of both animals and humans.
****** And remember! When buying stuff like household cleaners and make-up, have a 💙💜💛❤💞💗💙😍! – always BUY PRODUCTS NOT TESTED ON BUNNIES!
ELF, Wet ‘n’ Wild and Physicians Formula are just a few of the great cosmetic brands that are CRUELTY-FREE. You can buy their fine and beautifully priced products at CVS, WALGREENS or TARGET!
Rose always buys her cruelty-free mascara, made by Wet ‘n’ Wild, at Walgreens. $3 bucks. pic/text: R.T.
