Tag Archives: pigs

Modernize U.S. military medical training to save lives and money

May 22, 2017 admin

By Doris Browne, M.D., M.P.H.

Nearly 100 Republicans and Democrats have come together in support of an important bill — Rep. Hank Johnson’s (D-Ga.) Battlefield Excellence through Superior Training (BEST) Practices Act (H.R. 1243).

If enacted, this bill would help doctors, medics and others save the lives of injured military service members by replacing ineffective and expensive trauma-training drills on animals with superior and less costly human simulation models.

I am a service-disabled veteran who spent nearly 28 years as a physician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, and I currently serve as president-elect of the National Medical Association. I support this effort to modernize military medical training.

Many military medical personnel currently receive Cold War-era training that involves inflicting traumatic injuries on pigs and goats to learn how to repair injuries in humans. Some animals have very different anatomies from humans, which can inhibit successful translation of medical skills across species.

For instance, goats have 13 sets of ribs as opposed to 12 sets in human beings. Compared with humans, goats and pigs have smaller torsos, thicker skin and major differences in internal organs. Goats have a four-chamber stomach compared to the human one-chamber stomach, making goats poor models for teaching human abdominal procedures. Placing an epidural needle in pigs is different from doing this procedure on humans, as the respective spinal cords for pigs and humans end in different vertebral sections, and incorrect placement in humans could cause severe nerve damage.

Goats’ veins and arteries sit on top of the muscle and are easy to visualize, grab and clamp to stop a hemorrhaging wound. Human veins and arteries run through the muscle, and when damaged, they contract, making them difficult to grab and clamp to stop a hemorrhage.

Also, the pressure required to properly apply a tourniquet on a human’s limb is significantly different from that needed to apply one to a small goat’s limb. Failing to learn how to properly stop hemorrhaging wounds can have potential life-or-death consequences.

A recent study found that nearly a quarter of combat deaths from 2001 through 2011 were potentially survivable, and in 90 percent of these cases, avoidable deaths were due to massive blood loss.

Military medics shouldn’t be burdened with translating skills learned on an anatomically foreign, sedated goat or pig to a bleeding and screaming comrade on a chaotic battlefield.

A better training method would use anatomically correct, advanced human simulators that can breathe, bleed and even die just like real people.

The BEST Practices Act would help the military make the transition to using superior human simulation technology in place of animals for trauma training.

A recent Army study found that the agency could even save millions of taxpayer dollars with this transition.

Last month, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had suspended all animal use for trauma training. This policy shift will allow medical personnel to master emergency skills on realistic human anatomy, improve providers’ skill confidence and save the agency money.

The Department of Defense should follow suit by giving its medical personnel the human-simulation training tools they need to better save lives and permanently banning inferior, animal-based trauma-training methods.

Doris Browne, M.D., M.P.H., is a retired colonel who served nearly 28 years as a physician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and is the president-elect of the National Medical Association, the largest and oldest national organization representing the interests of more than 30,000 African-American physicians and the patients they serve.

Fashion

Playing Dr. Frankenstein – not “cutting-edge”!

February 13, 2017 admin

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.

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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.

Animal Issues

This Valentine’s Day, show some serious love to animals! Pledge to go vegetarian – or eat way less meat! Drop the fur – forever! Bannish wool from your closet! Fight for ALL animals (even the ones you don’t think are cute)!💙

February 12, 2017 admin

From PETA.ORG. Some sweet – and arresting – images. – R.T.

InCity Voices

Go, Lettuce Ladies, go!!!

January 24, 2017 admin

PETA’s Lettuce Ladies have toured the world — from England to India, and beyond — with their vegan message, helping countless folks turn over a new leaf.

They’re culturally conscious advocates who encourage people everywhere to ditch meat by offering them free, delicious, plant-based meals, …

… vegan starter kits and leaflets bursting at the seams with information about how our choices affect animals.

Lettuce Ladies embody empowerment! Our advocates are all volunteers. Lettuce Ladies choose to turn heads to protect animals, improve people’s health, and help fight climate change.

They know that, unlike themselves, millions of animals suffering and dying on factory farms and in slaughterhouses are never given the chance to consent. Cows, pigs, chickens, minks, foxes, and all other animals exploited by the food and fashion industries have no say in what happens to their bodies, so our Lettuce Ladies use their own to call attention to the plight of these living beings.

Today, in a society that uses scantily clad models to sell everything from cars to cheeseburgers, those who use their bodies as a political or an emotional statement to call for justice and compassion — as our Lettuce Ladies do — are a breath of fresh air!

InCity Yum Yums, Rosalie's Blog

Early voters! All voters! – Please VOTE YES on QUESTION 3

October 26, 2016 admin

Rosalie asks you to Vote YES on Q 3 – for the animals!

Question 3 – Humane Conditions for Farm Animals

Question 3 “would prohibit any confinement of pigs, calves, and hens that prevents them from lying down, standing up, fully extending their limbs, or turning around freely.”

PLEASE VOTE YES ON QUESTION 3!

By Rosalie Tirella

Don’t believe the fear-mongers!!! A YES vote on Question 3 helps the Mass. economy! Especially our local Worcester County farmers, all of whom farm with wisdom and compassion! A YES vote means an economic boost for our local farmer guys and gals! A YES vote means you are supporting our LOCAL biz folks – mostly small biz folks. Many of whom are third/fourth generation farmers…

Egg, pork and veal suppliers from other states who “factory farm” – an innocuos-sounding phrase that only hints at the cruelty/neglect that is never-ending when raising farm animals in gargantuan, miles-long warehouses, “animal-factories” where pigs, chickens and calves are treated like widgets/assembly line parts and not like animals – will have to make improvements. Animals that need sunlight; space in which to turn around, walk around, stand up, fully extend their limbs; caregivers who don’t kick, stomp, punch or fling them will at least be given “the right” to turn around in their crates and cages, lie down, turn their heads, stand up. So basic!!! This is all Q 3 asks for!

Factory farms that truck their “product” “produced” by animals living in factory farm animal-hells will be prohibited from selling their “product” in Massachusetts. Their pork, eggs, veal will not be accepted here until their farm animals are housed more humanely. Just like the way McDonald’s and Wal-Mart treat their egg suppliers: If you house your chickens in animal hell, these multi-billion dollar global corporations tell the factory farms, then we don’t buy your eggs – do business with you!

OUTSTANDING! VISIONARY!

The ABUSE of farm animals in America on factory farms MUST STOP! LIKE ALL AMAZING animal/human (the two are intertwined!) RIGHTS crusades, A NEW AND BETTER WORLD FOR FARM ANIMALS needs to start somewhere. Why not in beautiful Massachusetts, once home to the abolitionists and suffragettes and now home to climate-change visionaries and women’s rights crusaders? Suppliers will get the message and, for love of the holy BUCK$$$, they WILL MAKE the necessary improvements. They will make THEIR HUGE FACILITIES MORE HUMANE so they can once again sell their “product” in Massachusetts. Like Woody sang: It’s all about the do(ugh) re me!

If all 50 of our great states had a Question 3 on their ballots election day what a wonderful America it would be! And if it was voted in, millions of farm animals would be able to literally breathe more freely, cry out in pain and fear a little less often, physically ache not as intensely … stand, turn around, move their heads in their cages/crates, fully extend their limbs! This is all we ask! To alleviate some of their suffering!

Slavery in the U.S. was once called “good business” by millions of “good” people in this country!

Child labor was once labelled “good business,” too!

Circuses with performing elephants were “business” as usual all over the world.

But times change. People evolve – our hearts grow bigger. We see the light.

SEE THE LIGHT this election season! EARLY VOTERS and NOV. 8 VOTERS – please Vote YES on Question 3!

Thank you!

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The yes on Question 3, Citizens for Farm Animal Protection (www.citizensforfarmanimals.com) state on the Secretary of State’s ballot information mailer:

• “A YES vote prevents cruel treatment of animals in Massachusetts by ending the practice of cramming farm animals into cages so small they can’t turn around or stretch their limbs, and will remove inhumane and unsafe products from the Massachusetts marketplace.”

• “Endorsed by the MSPCA, Animal Rescue League of Boston, The Humane Society of the United States, and 400 Massachusetts veterinarians because no animal should be immobilized in a cramped cage.”

• “Endorsed by the Center for Food Safety and Consumer Federation of America because cage confinement increases food safety risks, and a YES vote protects Massachusetts consumers.”

• “Endorsed by Massachusetts family farmers and the United Farm Workers because proper treatment of animals is better for farmers. From McDonald’s to Walmart, retailers are switching to
cage-free eggs—the right thing to do at the right cost.”

VOTE YES ON 3!!!!

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From PETA.ORG:

Factory Farming: Misery for Animals

On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and stuffed into wire cages, metal crates, and other torturous devices. These animals will never raise their families, root around in the soil, build nests, or do anything that is natural and important to them. Most won’t even feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they’re loaded onto trucks headed for slaughterhouses.

The factory farming industry strives to maximize output while minimizing costs—always at the animals’ expense. The giant corporations that run most factory farms have found that they can make more money by squeezing as many animals as possible into tiny spaces, even though many of the animals die from disease or infection.

Animals on factory farms endure constant fear and torment:

They’re often given so little space that they can’t even turn around or lie down comfortably. Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept on crowded, filthy feedlots.

Antibiotics are used to make animals grow faster and to keep them alive in the unsanitary conditions. Research shows that factory farms’ widespread use of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten human health.

Most factory-farmed animals have been genetically manipulated to grow larger or to produce more milk or eggs than they naturally would. Some chickens grow so unnaturally large that their legs cannot support their outsized bodies, and they suffer from starvation or dehydration when they can’t walk to reach food and water.

When they’ve grown large enough to slaughter or their bodies have been worn out from producing milk or eggs, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported for miles through all weather extremes, typically without food or water. At the slaughterhouse, those who survived the transport will have their throats slit, often while they’re still conscious. Many remain conscious when they’re plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart.

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VOTE YES ON QUESTION 3!

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

Nov. 8 please vote for humane living conditions for farm animals! Vote YES on Question 3

October 12, 2016 admin

Rosalie – 10/12/2016 …Over the years she’s run hundreds of articles in InCity Times on animal cruelty. Massachusetts farm animals need your support this election! Educate yourselves! Learn more below (we’ve made some sentences bold):

VOTE YES ON QUESTION 3

Please visit citizensforfarmanimals.com

Thank you,

“Rose”

Factory farms abuse animals

By Craig Shapiro

Imagine spending your life confined to a crate that is so small you can’t turn around. Imagine being mutilated without getting a painkiller or being forced to live in your own waste.

Billions of farmed animals endure these and other abuses every day — and when their bodies give out, they’re slaughtered for their flesh.

Mother pigs spend most of their lives in “gestation” crates about 7 feet long and 2 feet wide. After giving birth, they’re moved to farrowing crates that are only wide enough for them to lie down and nurse. Some piglets are just 10 days old when they’re taken from their mothers, who, in a cruel cycle, are impregnated again.

Piglets are held in crowded, filthy stalls until they’re separated to be raised for breeding or meat. The stress of confinement often leads to cannibalism and tail-biting, so their teeth are broken off with pliers and their tails are chopped off. Millions are also castrated — without being given painkillers.

Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do — to nourish their young — but calves on dairy farms are taken from their mothers when they’re just a day old. They’re fed milk replacers, including cattle blood, so their mothers’ milk can be sold to humans.

Female cows are artificially inseminated just after their first birthdays; once they give birth, they lactate for 10 months and are inseminated again. Some spend their lives standing on concrete floors while others are crowded onto massive feedlots and forced to live amid their own feces.

The stress of these conditions leads to disease, lameness and reproductive problems that make the cows worthless to the dairy industry, and after four or five years, they’re trucked to slaughter. A cow’s natural lifespan is about 20 years.

Female calves who aren’t slaughtered immediately replace their mothers in the dairy herd. But many males end up in miniscule veal crates that intentionally prohibit exercise and normal muscle growth. Kept in darkness, they are fed low-iron milk substitutes so that they will become anemic and their flesh stays pale and tender.

Many suffer from chronic pneumonia, diarrhea and other diseases that are caused by their unhealthy living conditions. These young calves are often just 12 weeks old when they’re sent off for slaughter. Many can barely walk because of disease or muscle atrophy.

More than 8 billion chickens are raised and killed for meat each year — in fetid, windowless sheds that stink of ammonia. To keep up with demand and cut costs, farmers give chicks steady doses of growth-promoting drugs to ensure they reach “processing” weight quickly, often in as little as six weeks.

The hundreds of millions of hens who are raised for their eggs spend their lives in wire-mesh cages that rub off their feathers, chafe their skin and cripple their feet. Chickens can live for a decade, but these hens are so exhausted their egg production wanes after about two years. More than 100 million “spent” hens are slaughtered every year.

Male chicks born on egg farms don’t survive nearly that long. Millions are just a day old when they’re killed, usually in high-speed grinders called “macerators.”

Factory farms don’t want us to know their dirty secrets, but there is a cruel, bloody story behind every piece of animal flesh, cheese or egg on our plates. The silver lining is that we can end this abuse by switching to a humane, healthy, eco-friendly, plant-based diet.

For more info, visit:

http://www.citizensforfarmanimals.com

Animal Issues

China is leading the way on climate change, and the U.S. should be ashamed

July 5, 2016 admin

Rosalie’s kitchen table this a.m.: More corn please! pic:R.T.

By Jennifer Bates

China will soon surpass the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy.

And now it is poised to overtake this country by yet another metric: environmental protection.

In an unexpected development, China – known for its choking urban pollution and notorious Three Gorges Dam – has introduced new dietary guidelines that seek to cut its meat consumption in half.

If this sounds familiar, it might be because you remember similar guidelines proposed in the U.S. in 2015 — which were promptly rejected by officials on the grounds that dietary guidelines aren’t an “appropriate vehicle” for addressing sustainability concerns.

But what we eat is directly tied to the environment, and large-scale animal agriculture is destroying our planet. You probably know that this industry spews climate-changing greenhouse gases into the air, but animal agriculture’s adverse effects don’t end there. Because the industry relies on water-intensive crops and uses enormous amounts of water to clean out filthy enclosures, provide animals with drinking water and more, the average meat-eater indirectly consumes nearly 600 gallons of water per day more than someone who just eats plant-based foods.

One pig produces as much fecal matter as 10 humans, and that waste has to go somewhere. Often, the toxic stew finds its way into our rivers and oceans, poisoning aquatic life. Meanwhile, countless acres of rainforest are cut down every day to create more grazing lands or to plant crops intended solely to feed farmed animals.

This industry is also hell on the animals raised for human consumption, who are violently abused and traumatized from birth to death. Male pigs and cattle are castrated without painkillers. Farmed fish are kept in crowded, filthy enclosures full of their own waste. And each year, nearly 1 million chickens and turkeys are still alive and conscious when they’re immersed in the scalding-hot water of feather-removal tanks.

The average Chinese citizen consumes about 128 pounds of animal flesh each year. But the average American? Two hundred and sixty-four pounds, more than twice the amount of our Eastern competitors.

By cutting its meat consumption, China will spare billions of sentient beings a terrifying death. Cutting back on meat will also be a tremendous boon to public health, because it will reduce not only air pollution but also diet-related illnesses such as diabetes and obesity. China seems to understand what the U.S. refuses to acknowledge — that the health of our planet and the health of our citizens are irrevocably linked.

Fifteen years ago, the U.S. dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol — the world’s first concerted effort to tackle climate change — with the argument that it was unfair to expect Western nations to curb emissions while exempting China. But now that China has fully signed on to the new Paris Agreement and has taken this important first step toward reducing its meat consumption, what’s holding back the U.S.?

It is a travesty that China acts while we sit on the sidelines refusing to address the most pressing issue of our time. Rather than bickering over “appropriate vehicles” while the planet melts and burns around us, we must respond. The only way to reclaim our status as world leader is by going beyond China’s measures.

First, the U.S. should drop federal subsidies for the animal-agriculture industry in favor of subsidies for plant-based foods. Next, we must lead on the development of in vitro meat, which generates 96 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and whose production requires up to 99 percent less land, 96 percent less water and 45 percent less energy than “traditional” meat. Finally, we must all do our part as Americans by curbing our crippling addiction to animal flesh.

Go vegan, and the health of our environment — not to mention our status as a world leader — will follow.

Animal Issues

So true! … Go vegan or vegetarian!

June 22, 2016 admin

Animal Issues

Protect our history with every bite

April 18, 2016 admin

By Jennifer Bates

Boston, Massachusetts. St. Augustine, Florida. Jamestown, Virginia. The events that took place at these sites helped write our country’s history. But now our gluttony could erase them forever.

Our seemingly unquenchable appetite for meat, dairy foods and eggs condemns billions of sentient animals annually to miserable lives in squalid pens and jam-packed cages followed by deaths that are terrifying and painful. But it is also fundamentally altering our landscape. Widespread animal agriculture is responsible for up to 51 percent of the global greenhouse-gas emissions that are heating up the planet at an alarming rate. Warmer air means that glacial ice—and giant hunks of it—could disintegrate in just a few decades. If the West Antarctic ice sheet melts, it could raise sea levels by 12 feet or more, and if that happens, the physical record of our country’s early history along the East Coast will literally wash away.

But our relentless drive for foods made from animals will decimate more than cultural landmarks. The animal-agriculture industry fouls everything that it touches as it oozes across the planet. It churns heavy metals and other poisons into our water and spews toxins such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia into the air. It sickens and chokes human communities unfortunate enough to be in its suffocating shadow and eliminates entire species as it clear-cuts huge swaths of forest.

What will future generations think of us when they learn that they can’t explore Boston or see a glacier up close because our generation valued the pleasure of the palate over the environment and its diverse life forms? We will lose everything to our expanding waistlines—our clean water and fresh air, our healthy communities and national treasures—if we do not make a change, and soon.

Earth Day is a good time for us to make that change. Every year, more than 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities like composting or choosing to buy locally grown produce. But what if those participants—one-seventh of all humanity—also went vegan? Billions fewer animals would be raised and slaughtered for fleeting meals, and the domino effect would be astounding. The dramatic reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions would slow the rising of oceans. Water previously channeled into factory farms would instead be used for human consumption. Oceanic dead zones—areas where little life can survive, thanks to pollutants from farm runoff—could begin to rebound, as could ecosystems damaged by rampant overfishing.

Fewer animals would also mean more crops for human consumption. As things stand now, we grow enough food for every human on the planet. But much of what we grow is diverted into feed for cows, chickens and other animals so that the populations of rich countries can eat animal flesh and eggs and drink animal milk—an inefficient system that is as unjust to the world’s poor as it is cruel to animals.

So on this Earth Day, don’t settle for small actions. Make the choice that will help preserve humanity’s past, protect its present and ensure its future: Go vegan.

Animal Issues

Why this feminist would ‘rather go naked’

March 15, 2016 admin

Ingrid

By Ingrid Newkirk

Is it odd that a feminist like me, from back in the bra-burning ’60s, champions racy protests featuring women wearing little more than body-paint markings that mimic a butcher’s diagram? Some might raise an eyebrow, but this March, National Women’s History Month, let me explain why I believe that supporting women’s rights and stripping for a cause go together like Gloria Steinem and miniskirts.

With feminism, as with all social movements, each generation has its own battles to fight, and while respect is certainly owed those who helped society evolve to this point, today is a new day with new issues to grapple with. I relate best now to the third-wave feminists who are sick of second-wave feminists—ever so ironically taking the place of repressive fathers and husbands—demanding that women cover ourselves up and “behave.” How dare we expose our bodies to prying eyes! But dare we do, with more feminists daring to do something more important: to challenge the idea that breasts are to be kept covered like a dirty magazine.

At PETA, which is awash with “uppity women” like me, we’d rather go naked than wear not only fur but leather or wool—any skin. We see animal liberation as a logical part of a philosophy that rejects violence to, and the exploitation of, those who are not exactly like oneself in some way or another. We reject prejudice on the basis of any arbitrary factor such as skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or species. For surely there is something fundamentally wrong with moaning about freedom for yourself while denying it to others.

We are all of us composed of flesh and blood. We have faces and feelings and a beating heart, as did the pigs and chickens and other animals who were killed and decapitated for nothing more than a fleeting taste. What is done to them would be the same if it were done to us. And that’s the point of provocative PETA campaigns such as our “All Animals Have the Same Parts” protests featuring those aforementioned butcher’s diagrams. The scantily clad women who stand out in the cold know that people will stop and stare and that many of them will have never thought about animal rights before. That’s the power of their protest.

Instead of attacking the (naked) messenger, who doesn’t need anyone’s permission to strip, I ask people to put that energy and outrage where it belongs—into taking action against those who would abuse and exploit the most vulnerable among us. Women’s rights and animal rights go hand in hand. If you reject violence against women, you can’t in good conscience eat bacon and drink milk. Why? Because mother pigs—sows, who are smart as the dickens and who love their precious babies as dearly as any human mother loves hers—are confined to metal crates so small that they can’t even turn around and they develop painful ulcers from the constant pressure of lying, nearly immobile, on the unyielding cement floor. Because terrified, crying calves are torn away from their devoted mothers right after birth so that humans can steal the milk that was meant for them. Because factory farm and slaughterhouse workers, who have grueling, dangerous, soul-crushing jobs, often take their frustrations out on female animals by sexually assaulting them—sometimes in their terrifying last moments. The video is on our website and is hard to watch.

I have seen slaughter, have seen pigs beaten and loaded into the trucks on their way to it, and have been disturbed by the unmistakable sorrow and fear on their faces as they rattled down a highway for the first and last time ever. It’s the same look that you or I would have. We all feel pain and fear and long for the freedom to live our lives. We’re all the same.

With one significant difference.

Unlike the pigs and turkeys and fish and cows, I have choices. I can choose to walk away from meat and eggs and dairy products and continue enjoying my life, opting instead for healthy, humane vegan foods. If you haven’t done that yet, please, come join me. Women unite for animal rights!

Worcester's Alternative Newspaper