Terrible news affecting billions of animals was received last week.
Two years after EU policymakers declared the most ambitious plan ever by any government to phase out some of the cruelest practices in factory farming, this legislation, along with a suite of other reforms that would reduce the suffering of potentially billions of farmed animals, have been dropped.

A leak from earlier this year outlined the EU Commission’s plans for the world’s most comprehensive farm animal welfare reforms to date. In addition to legislation to phase out cages for farmed animals across the EU’s 27 member states, the Commission planned to put a ban on the routine mutilation of hundreds of millions of animals every year such as piglet castration, to stop some of the currently common and legal murder methods of about a billion farmed fishes, shortening the transport of live animals, to stop the practice of slaughtering day-old chicks, to stop the sale and production of fur, to reduce the crowdedness in the chicken industry, and stopping chickens from growing at such rates that essentially they can’t stand up because their legs can’t support their own weight.

Such a reform in EU would have possibly induced and bolstered momentum for similar changes in other countries as well. That is especially so considering that both animal advocates and farmers have been pushing for the new standards to also apply to food imported from outside the EU, which could reduce the suffering of hundreds of billions of animals all over the world.

Regardless of your personal views on welfare reforms, considering our general views and what we think animal activists should do with their precious time, the crucial point we want to make here is more about the reasons such legislation has failed, and about the lesson we think should be learned from the fact that a unique process has initiated this act and yet it failed.

Commission officials admitted that the legislation had been dropped due to pressure from the powerful European meat lobby, and concerns over rising food costs due to inflation, extreme weather, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Again it is made so clear how a handful of powerful key players in the human political game can so tremendously affect the lives of billions of sentient nonhuman animals.
As always, the fate of billions of sentient beings is determined by economic and political interests, not ethics.

And this story also has a depressing aspect from supposedly democratic sense.
This legislation proposal came about as a result of what’s called a European Citizens’ Initiative, in which EU citizens can propose a policy directly to the Commission so long as they collect at least 1 million signatures in support of it. The Commission doesn’t have to adopt the proposal, but it at least has to formally respond to it. A coalition of animal groups has managed to gather more than the required million signatures, and so the Commission agreed to craft the legislation.

Olga Kikou, Head of Compassion in World Farming EU and substitute representative of the ‘End the Cage Age’ European Citizens’ Initiative said that “After years of strong citizen engagement and clear-cut commitments, the Commission is now betraying EU citizens who believed in what was promised in 2020,” and added that “The farm animal revolution that everyone was expecting would have diminished the suffering of hundreds of millions of animals every year. It has fallen victim to political games and those who espouse business as usual.”

Obviously this is far from being our main concern here, however this should function as an important reminder of how the world really works.
Even when something that may turn at least some parts of the lives of at least some animals into at least a little bit less horrifying, it is being trampled by factors and motives that has nothing to do with the victims themselves, who as always, are treated as pawns in a cruel game where their lives are being absolutely controlled by others.

Activists must not confuse accepting reality for what it is and acknowledging reality for what it is. This is our world and us activists are the last who should paint a prettier picture. We are also the last who should accept it. We can choose to keep fighting to marginally scrape the edges of this exploitative world, only to see how one political move after another revokes all the little gains we have made, or we can choose to fight all the maladies at once by looking for ways to destroy it.

Fish farming, usually euphemized as aquaculture, is already the most rapidly growing exploitative industry, and the consumption of factory farmed fishes already exceeds the one of caught fishes, and it is about to get worse.

An unfortunate breakthrough was achieved at a Spanish government-run research center, where the first successful breeding of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna took place. Up to now, farming of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna has relied on catching young wild fishes and fattening them in open-sea cages, but now that the inhibiting dependencies have been removed, this industry can expand.

The breeding facility will supply fertilized eggs and juvenile Tuna to the newly created commercial firms, which will either continue the breeding cycle on land, or use a combination of land-based tanks and sea cages.
At least two companies already plan to build an industrial farm of land-bred Tuna, and they would be the first to use only tank-bred Atlantic Bluefin stocks of fertilized eggs or young Tuna.
One of the companies plans to establish its own breeding program and sell young fish to “grow-out” farms for fattening and sale, next year, with the goal of selling about 45 tonnes of juvenile Atlantic Bluefin Tuna by 2025, and 1,200 tonnes by 2028. The other one aims at producing fishes by late 2024. And they would probably be followed by other companies soon.

The Bluefin Tuna is a highly migratory species with complex behaviors and migration patterns. Farming these fishes so intensively would cause many welfare issues such as high stress, frustration, disease, and, ultimately, poor immunity.

And not only that more Tuna fishes are going to suffer, and to suffer even more than they do now, an increase in farmed Tuna would mean more fishes being caught from the oceans to feed them.

Usually “solutions” offered by humans end up hurting more animals or hurting animals more severely, and in many cases both. One of these cases is fish farming.
In a former post we discussed how as a consequence of the reduction in marine animals capture from the oceans in the last few decades, humans hurt marine animals even more severely by intensively farming billions of them. A lifetime of dense confinement in waste filled water, exposure to diseases and other bodily harms due to genetic manipulation are forced upon the fishes as a direct result of the decision to switch to farming. The other, less known, result is widening the scope of abuse even further. As a consequence of farming fishes, many of which are of carnivorous species, even more fishes are captured from the oceans, to feed the fishes confined in the farms.

It is estimated that every year between 450 billion and one trillion fishes are purposely caught specifically to be grind up into fishmeal and fish oil, which are mostly used as food for other animals humans rear for food, mainly farmed fishes.

Virtually any fish or shellfish in the sea can be grind up into fishmeal and fish oil, but they are usually produced from small marine fishes that are considered not suitable for direct human consumption.

These sentient beings, hundreds of billions of them, are even more invisible than the hundreds of billions of sentient beings that humans directly consume.

If fishes that humans consume are not even counted by the industry as single “items” but in kilograms and tones, and even among the animal liberation movement their misery is rather concealed, probably because activists know how little empathy fishes raise among humans, when will come the time of the fishes that are eaten by the fishes humans eat?

This horrible development is another example of how economic decisions such as trade agreements, which we wrote about in some former posts, and technological “advances” are much more significant in terms of animals’ suffering than the movement’s efforts.
Despite what might seem as a strengthening of the movement in the last couple of years, along with the much greater increase in the number of consumers and the much greater increase in the consumption of each consumer (which by far exceeds the increase in the number of vegans and in the consumption of vegan products by none vegans), internal changes in the industry also make the world a worse place all the time.

Earlier this month some disappointing news was published.
Beyond Meat’s latest financial report revealed that its net revenue dropped by 30.5 percent in the second quarter of 2023. Compared to the same period in 2022, revenue decreased from $147 million to $102.1 million. And in the US, the largest economy in the world, Beyond saw year-on-year sales fall by 40 percent. The following morning, Beyond Meat’s stock dipped by more than 20 percent.
This report was followed by media coverage suggesting that plant based “meat” was just a trend.

Although indeed this news is a bit concerning, it is a different publication which should make us really worried. Just a few days after the news about Beyond Meat, an article titled: “Price-, Taste-, and Convenience-Competitive Plant-Based Meat Would Not Currently Replace Meat” was published by Rethink Priorities, and it has some extremely depressing well based statements.

The articles’ main argument goes as follows:
Plant-based and cultivated meat are both a major, maybe even the greatest, source of optimism for reducing, and according to some even ending, animal farming.
These hopes rely on the assumption that what primarily drive food choices are price, taste, and convenience. Therefore, the price, taste, and convenience (PTC) hypothesis assumes that if plant-based meat is competitive with animal-based meat on these three criteria, the large majority of current consumers would replace animal-based meat with plant-based meat as there would be no remaining reason for them not to. However, price, taste, and convenience do not mainly determine food choices of current consumers; social and psychological factors also play important roles. Therefore a majority of current consumers would continue eating primarily animal-based meat even if plant-based meats were PTC-competitive.

Obviously, the article doesn’t suggest that price, taste, and convenience don’t play a role in food choices, but that these are not the only or even the primary factors:
“Of course, there is no dispute that PTC are important factors in people’s food choices, but research in food psychology demonstrates these are not the sole or primary factors. Intuitively, this fact is apparent when considering basic consumer behavior: any given grocery store likely offers thousands of cheap, tasty, and convenient products, and yet, consumers decide to purchase only some of these products, without gathering any information on the large majority of them. Presumably, consumers do so by relying on factors well beyond PTC. Indeed, the psychological literature has identified myriad influences of food choice spanning psychological, biological, physiological, situational, and socio-cultural factors in addition to product characteristics (Köster, 2009). Furthermore, a rich literature on the psychology of meat consumption has identified factors particular to the consumption of meat and animal products. For example, people feel a peculiar personal attachment to meat (Graça et al., 2015), believe that meat is necessary for health, feel that meat consumption is socially normative, and perceive meat as a nice and natural component of a healthy diet (Piazza et al., 2015).”

The reason this article is rather convincing despite counter-arguing a rather intuitive hypothesis, is that it is well research based. Author Jacob R. Peacock, counter each assumed primary factor in humans’ food choices with studies that suggest differently. He starts with the Price factor and argues that according to the two existing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meat sold in US grocery stores, one found that plant-based meat acts as a complement for cows’ and pigs’ flesh and a substitute for chicken flesh, while the other found basically the opposite, with plant-based meat acting as a substitute for cows’ and pigs’ flesh but a complement for chicken flesh, but more importantly and relevantly is that both found that any effects of changes in plant-based meat prices seem to have only very small effects on animal-based meat sales.

Peacock also argues regarding the price factor that: “a lower price may lead some consumers to treat plant-based meats as inferior goods—or cheap substitutes—rather than a better deal. This effect might contribute to the lower popularity of margarine, which was designed as a substitute for butter at the time of its development in the 1880s (Dupré, 1999). Alternatively, consumers simply may not treat the two products as substitutes.”

Regarding the Taste factor, Peacock argues that it seems that in order for plant-based meat to be considered “the exact same product” and “indistinguishable”, it needs to pass a blinded taste test of some sort.
However, he argues, “blind taste tests may lack external validity, as, outside an experimental setting, plant-based meat consumers will never be blinded. Instead, consumers will be informed of what it is they are eating, as is necessitated by food labeling laws, allergies, dietary restrictions, and ethical norms.”
And then he mentions several studies showing that even plant- and animal-based meats which are indistinguishable in a blind taste test might still be experienced differently in an informed test: “In Sogari et al. (2023), 175 American consumers were randomized to blind and informed conditions, tasted four burgers (Beyond Burger, called “pea protein”; Impossible Burger, called “animal-like protein”; “hybrid meatmushroom” burger; and “100% beef” burger), and then ranked their preference for each burger. Informing participants of the burgers’ identities (for example, “pea protein burger”) caused a statistically significant drop in the Beyond Burger’s rank from third to fourth most liked, while the Impossible Burger remained first. In Caputo et al. (2022), 86 American consumers were randomized to blind and informed conditions, tasted four burgers (Beyond, Impossible, hybrid meat-mushroom, and 100% beef burger), and then participated in an experiment to measure willingness-to-pay for the burgers. Differences in willingness-to-pay between conditions did not reach significance given the small sample size; however, the point estimates suggest information caused willingness-to-pay to increase for the Impossible Burger by $0.91 and decrease for the Beyond Burger by $0.22 and the beef burger by $0.77. In Martin et al. (2021), 102 French consumers sampled both an animal and plant-based sausage, first blinded and then with packaging information, and marked the strength of their preference on a scale ranging from animal-based (−10) to plant-based (10). After seeing the packaging, a statistically significant shift in preferences in favor of the plant-based sausage was detected (from −6.2 to −4.3), although consumers still strongly preferred the animal-based sausage.”

Regarding convenience he argues that there is a lack of clarity on what exactly constitutes convenience equivalence, and the little evidence that might be relevant does not find a meaningful impact of increased convenience on animal-based meat usage. The little evidence he refers to is the following two studies: “Some work has focused on availability within grocery stores, moving plant-based meats to the (animal-based) meat aisle from devoted ‘vegan’ aisles. A non-randomized study of 108 grocery stores found the move increased sales of plant-based meat but did not decrease sales of animal-based meat (Piernas et al., 2021). Another smaller non-randomized study of nine stores found a very small increase in plant-based meat sales and no evidence of an effect on animal-based meat sales (Vandenbroele et al., 2019).”

Peacock mentions another kind of studies that according to him weaken the PTC hypothesis and these are Hypothetical discrete choice experiments, which are studies in which the participants are asked to imagine hypothetically picking a plant- or animal-based burger from a menu. One of them, conducted across 27 countries, asked its 27,000 meat-eating participants to assume plant-based meat and animal-based meat “tasted equally good, had equal nutritional value and cost the same”, and yet most of them preferred the animal based burger. As disappointing as these findings are as it is, Peacock claims that it is actually worse since according to him “the design of this study likely increases these estimates: the addition of “equal nutritional value” likely increases the attractiveness of the plant-based meat; the environmental framing and questions used earlier in the survey might increase social desirability bias; using a text description rather than pictures of the possible items and broad non-specific question wording might elicit more hypothetical bias; and participants are forced to choose one or the other of animal-based meat or plant-based meat.”
In addition, he argues that “Hypothetical choice and self-reports of diet change likely tend to exaggerate the extent of meat reduction: one comparison found that in a hypothetical choice, 59% of meals selected were meat-free, while in actuality, sales data found only 36% of meals to be meat-free (Brachem et al., 2019, p. 22).”

Peacock argues that: “The strongest evidence of actual behavioral impacts of PTC-equivalent plant-based meats likely comes from a study introducing Impossible Foods’ plant-based ground beef to a University of California Los Angeles dining hall (Malan et al., 2022). In this study impossible ground beef was introduced at two stations in the dining hall. On Thursdays, students had the option of receiving prepared burritos with either Impossible ground beef, animal-based steak, or veggies, while the build-your-own entree line offered Impossible ground beef every day alongside animal-based ground beef.
In this study, price is entirely equivalent since students pay for dining hall access for the entire semester, not individual meals. With regards to taste, Impossible ground beef specifically has not been subjected to any public taste tests. However, as reviewed above, the Impossible Burger, which is made of similar ingredients, has been found to taste equivalent in some studies. Convenience is likely equivalent as well since the burritos are prepared for students by dining hall staff, and the build-your-own entree line is self-serve for both animal- and plant-based ground beef.

The study measured how many beef-containing meals were distributed at the intervention dining hall, where the Impossible ground beef was available, as well as distribution at two other dining halls as controls. In addition to making plant-based meat available, the study employed several co-interventions designed to reduce meat consumption (Malan, 2020). These included environmental education, low carbon footprint labels on menus, and an advertising campaign to promote the new product, all of which have some evidence demonstrating their effectiveness (Bianchi, Dorsel, et al., 2018, p. 11; Brunner et al., 2018; Jalil et al., 2019; Osman & Thornton, 2019). Thus, the study’s results cannot be entirely attributed to the addition of plant-based meat options to the intervention dining hall’s menu.

In the ten weeks after adding the Impossible burrito to the intervention dining hall’s menu, 26% of burrito purchasers chose the Impossible, 7% the veggie, and the remaining 67% the steak burrito (Malan, 2020, Table 12). Consistent with previous results, in a scenario that ensures price, convenience, and potentially taste competitiveness, the portion of consumers selecting the plant-based meat option remains modest.”

These are very disappointing and worrying results. And it gets worse. The veggie burrito comprises 15% of selections in the absence of the Impossible burrito and with the Impossible burrito available, this share declines to 7%, suggesting the Impossible burrito partially replaced the demand for veggie burritos rather than animal-based beef.

Another crucial factor to consider is that this study was conducted with college students, and at the University of California, meaning among those who are more likely than average to select plant-based meats, so among the general population these results are likely to be even worse.

In addition argues Peacock, “many, if not most, of the reviewed studies likely included numerous and sometimes extensive additional co-interventions also designed to increase sales of plant-based meat and/or decrease sales of animal-based meat, like promotions, ad campaigns, and environmental information. These will presumably reduce in intensity over time, as might their effects.”
And he adds that “these early studies may represent novelty effects and tap into consumers’ curiosity to try something new. One survey identified “I like to try new foods” and “I’ve been hearing a lot about them and was curious” as the two most popular factors in a self-report of why customers tried plant-based meats (A Consumer Survey on Plant Alternatives to Animal Meat, 2020, p. 5). This effect would also be expected to fade over time. Indeed, this decline may already have been observed. In 2019, sales of the Beyond Taco at the fast-food chain Del Taco declined from 6% to 4% of the sales mix (Maze, 2019), and across two samples of Burger King stores, sales of the Impossible Burger declined from 30 per day per store to 20, and from 32 to 28, in the weeks following introduction (Shanker & Patton, 2020).”

Peacock concludes his article with the following inference:
“Collectively, these results show that the PTC hypothesis, in its current form, is likely false. The underlying premise of PTC as key determinants of food choice is not supported by evidence from cross-sectional surveys on consumers’ self-reported determinants. The little available evidence thus far suggests PTC do not individually significantly reduce animal-based meat usage. HDCEs find that a minority of consumers select PTC-competitive plant-based meats instead of animal-based meats. (Miller (2021) adduces two countries where plant-based meat selection nears two-thirds when health equivalence is also assured. However, the study design is especially subject to hypothetical and social desirability biases and likely yields estimates that unrealistically favor plant-based meats.) Data from introducing plant-based meats at particular restaurants suggests that they draw only a modest portion of customers. Finally, a controlled experiment introducing high-quality plant-based meat to a dining hall—at equal price and convenience to animal-based meat—shows that most participants did not choose plant-based meat. Across six lines of evidence, it is clear that the empirical evidence opposes the PTC hypothesis.”

Considering that plant-based meat is a great source of optimism among activists, but that these hopes rely on the assumption that what primarily drives food choices are price, taste, and convenience and this assumption is false, this optimism is actually very questionable.

Beyond Reach

All these findings further prove that rationality can’t beat motivation. Given that animal based food is directly linked to public health complications as the animal agriculture industry is interconnected with foodborne illness, diet-related diseases, antibiotic resistance, and infectious diseases; and given that animal agriculture plays a major part in environmental destruction including pollution, land use, water use, deforestation, and greenhouse gas emissions; and of course given that animal agriculture is the cruelest thing ever in history, there is nothing more rational than ending it, let alone once humans can enjoy the same taste at the same price and the same convince. But humans are not rational, and they are not ethical.

Some activists have decided to give up on turning to humans’ moral fiber and appeal to their taste buds instead, believing that the best way to get humans to eat less animals is by giving them what they want, meaning juicy delicious burgers, sausages, ground “meat”, and more, without the exploitation. Never before did humans need “to give up” so little in order to not actively support industrial animal abuse, but still, the utterly vast majority maintain their violent and oppressive habits.

Not the enormous food waste, not the enormous water waste, not the enormous pollution, not climate change, not obesity, not diabetes, and not the risk of a heart attack or cancer, and now not even when it is the same product with the same look, texture and taste, have made veganism mainstream.

Every new plant based product that successfully imitates an animal derived one, doesn’t prove that there is no culinary need for any animal based product, but the opposite. It is not by chance that the most popular plant based burgers are also the ones who “bleed”. And it is not by chance that many humans want their food to bleed, or that they find plant based “meat” products disgusting before they have even tasted, smelled or seen them. It is what these products symbolize that disgust them, and it is what animals’ flesh symbolizes that attracts many of them.

Meat is not a mere gastronomical preference and food in general is definitely not a mere energy source. It is deeply imprinted in human society and culture, so just asking humans to switch the animal derived raw materials of their food to a plant based one, even if it has the same look, texture and of course taste, for many it is not enough.
If eating meat was only a preferable energy source, then it would have been much easier to convince humans to simply change it, especially once there are culinary equivalent options. But no matter how many times vegans are telling humans that converting their diets into a vegan one is only a raw-material swap, clearly it is not at all just that. It is a much more profound and deep change, for most a self-determination one. Veganism is not a raw-material swap since food is not fuel. Humans eat for great many reasons, for reasons of community, rituals, family, expressing their identity by eating that and not this, and of course for pleasure.

For billions of humans food is comfort, a gesture, entertainment, an enemy, a profession, a hobby, a weapon, it can break barriers, it takes so much TV screen time and so much space on book stores shelves, it defines cultures, and in many cases the last mean of mothers to get in touch with their children. It involves so many taboos and determinations of who belongs to the group and who does not, it unifies and distinguishes between ethnic groups and cultures. Unfortunately food is much more than taste and nutrition.
And meat particularly, is very unique among foods. All along history meat has been and still is very highly valued by humans, by almost every single culture. Meat’s value is incomparable to any other food, and in no proportion to its nutritional significance, therefore, in his book Meat: A Natural Symbol the anthropologist Nick Fiddes suggests that this special status of meat results from the fact that it embodies humans’ dominance over nature and the other animals. Animals symbolize power and nature, and so eating other animals is the ultimate symbol of humans’ power, of their superiority over other animals, and their triumph over nature.
Meat is a dominance and power symbol and humans take pleasure in the power and the predominance, as well as in the taste. Obviously nowadays they can get the same taste from equivalent plant based products, and they can most definitely get the required nutrients from other sources, but the social aspects of meat eating are much stronger and much more significant than its nutritional values, and even its taste.
Meat’s symbolism is far from being the only reason humans eat meat, but it is definitely a significant one, and so it is highly important to acknowledge that.

The fact that humans have never had to “give up” less than they do now thanks to the abundant plant based products, which are amazingly identical to animal based products, but they still choose the violent versions, and even more so, the fact that most are not willing to try the plant-based option over the torture based option despite that it tastes the same, costs the same and is as available, is extremely worrying.

When humans run out of excuses as to why they don’t stop consuming animal based products but they still consume animal based products, activists run out of excuses as to why they still insist on trying to convince them to stop instead of making them stop.

Last week, as Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka region was flooded due to the explosion of the Kakhovska hydroelectric power plant, the Kazkova Dibrova Zoo was completely submerged under water along with about 300 animals. Owner of the zoo, Olena Navrotska, in a statement, said that all animals in the zoo died as a result of the catastrophe. In a separate statement, the animal rights organization UAnimals said that “only swans and ducks could escape” from the zoo that housed species of monkeys, raccoons, donkeys, ponies, nutrias, various birds, porcupines, marmots, turtles and many other animals, who apparently did not survive.

This horrific event shouldn’t only be a reminder of what may happen in cases of catastrophes when so many animals are confined in cages, but that so many animals imprisoned in cages is in any case already a catastrophe.

Lunatic Asylum

Humans’ gruesome tradition of imprisoning nonhumans in cages for display goes back 5,500 years, with kings across the world demonstrating their power and wealth.

Despite the modern justification of a concern for animals, the purpose of zoos was never changed. Zoos are still collections of “interesting items”, demonstrating humans’ power and domination. Animals in zoos are treated like a stamp collection. The more species the better, especially if they are large animals from foreign places that the public would be willing to pay money to watch. The “specimens” are arranged in cages to make it easy to observe them from close range, at all times, despite how extremely stressful it is for the animals.

Zoos talk a lot about their essential scientific research, their total commitment to wildlife conservation, and their vital role as educators. Meanwhile, people do what they have always done – they go to the zoo to be entertained.
The expectation of the visitors is that the animal would please them. Humans demand to be taken notice of and they are insulted to find that usually the animals ignore them. They expect the animals to entertain each and every one of them. The mentality is of: “come here and say hello! Do something cute”. The ugliest examples of humans demand for attention include teasing, banging on cages and throwing things at them.
Zoos foster the assumption that humans are the center of the universe.

Animals in zoos are deprived of their normal and natural behavior.
Tigers can’t run, birds can’t soar the sky, monkeys can’t swing from the trees, and elephants can’t roam over large areas.
Animals which would naturally roam tens of miles a day, tread the same few paces in a small cage.

Zoos confinements deprive the “prisoners” of their most basic behaviors including exercise, social interaction and bathing.
Animals that naturally live in large herds or family groups are often kept alone, or at most, in pairs. Foraging and mating behaviors are virtually eliminated by regulated feeding and breeding regimens. The animals are closely confined so they lack privacy. Solitary and shy animals live in cages with viewing from all sides.

Complex behaviors and deep instincts that have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years can’t find any outlet. The result is boredom and stress. The animals show signs of mental disturbance through abnormal behaviors. Sometimes they become apathetic and just sit in one place, but the most common abnormal behavior is repeated movement: rocking from side to side, pacing up and down or round and round, waving or circling the head, over and over again.
Animals in zoos tend to over groom themselves, grooming to an excessive extent, pulling out hair or feathers, often leaving bald patches, irritated and torn skin.
Self-inflicted physical harm, such as biting or chewing tail or leg, or hitting the head against a wall are all also very common.
Such obsessive and repetitive behaviors, including self-mutilation, are very common among zoo animals and are a result of no mental stimulation or physical exercise and a chronic frustration and boredom. This stereotypic, self-destructive behavior is called Zoochosis.

Some humans believe that caging animals in a zoo, is somehow for their own good.
They argue that zoos protect the animals from harms.
They see themselves as animal lovers and the zoo as a place that enables people to get to know and love animals.
But the confinement in the zoo harms animals more than anything they might face during their lives. Zoos cannot protect animals. In fact animals need protection from zoos.

Zoos also claim to be educational. But what do they teach us?
Animals, which have become crazy and show unnatural stereotypic behavior are only ‘educational’ in showing how humans can drive animals mad by keeping them imprisoned.
The confinement educates people for relationships based on domination and control.
It teaches hierarchy and speciesism. It teaches how to objectify sentient beings.
Not that humans need these lessons…Humans are natural born exploiters.

The events in Kazkova Dibrova Zoo shouldn’t be a reminder of what may happen in cases of catastrophes when so many animals are trapped in cages, and not even as a reminder of how zoos are in any case a catastrophe of its own, but as a reminder of the mega catastrophe which is human domination over other nonhuman animals. The catastrophe of human domination is demonstrated not just in cases of specific disasters, and not just in the fact that imprisoning  nonhuman animals for their whole lives so humans could be entertained watching them in their cages still exists and is still very popular in 2023, but everywhere around the world and all the time.
Everything in humans’ life has catastrophic impact on others. Humans’ clothes (and not only leather, fur, wool, silk and down), humans’ houses, humans’ cities, humans’ transportation, humans’ entertainment, humans’ energy production, humans’ waste, and of course and most importantly humans’ food. All humans’ food.
That’s why we must dethrone humans from everywhere and forever.

Today is Mother’s Day
While humans are celebrating, billions of nonhumans are violently forced to never experience a mother’s love

For the Grand National Festival starting today in Liverpool, which includes the world’s biggest steeplechase, here is a short reminder of the abuse involved in the horse racing industry.

Horse racing is a very big and highly institutionalized industry. In the US alone its economic scope is at around $10 billion a year. In order to display the fastest horses, the racing industry breeds hundreds of thousands of horses per year on a global scale, and selects the fastest among them.
Most horses start with flat racing which is sprinting along a course at the age of two, which is 3 years before they are fully mature. “Owners” race them early because they want to get a return on their “investment” as soon as possible, despite that racing places an enormous strain on the horses’ under-developed limbs.

The few horses who have speed ability and stud potential would contest in the “classics” and other more valuable races. Slower horses are forced to run in “handicaps” and selling races, where they can be sold to different owners and trainers.

And the ones who are found unfit for these kinds of races, would carry wagons, would be sent to the circus, or as most horses end, would be slaughtered for meat consumption.

Confinement

Horses are herd animals with strong social behavioral needs. But as in every other exploitation system, the horses are denied natural behaviors and have no contact with fellow horses.

The horses are kept in a small stall for more than 20 hours a day, in dark dingy stables, separated from each other.
They develop neurotic stereotypic behaviors, similar to animals in factory farms and zoos, such as wood chewing, box walking (round and round the stall), wind sucking (grasping an object with the teeth and sucking in air), or weaving (swaying the head, neck and forequarters from side to side).
They are deprived of natural behavior such as foraging hay, having straw bedding, and visual and physical contact with other horses.

Acceleration Manipulations

The industry is making tremendous efforts in order to make the horses run faster. The ingenuity is limitless:
They use special instruments to broaden the bronchi in order to widen the horse’s airways.
They use hormones in order to increase the red blood cells (since they carry oxygen).
They inject venom into the horses’ joint to harden it.
They infuse a mixture of carbonated water, sugar and electrolytes in order to increase the levels of carbon dioxide in the horses’ blood and to decrease the lactic acid. They do that to prevent exhaustion.
They use thousands of drugs.
They use oppression and subjugation methods.
They use batteries that are planted under the horse skin which will give the horses an electric shock when they slow down during the race.

One of the most “creative” efforts the industry is making to increase the horses speed is a violent surgical procedure called Tubing. A hole larger than a 2 pence piece is surgically cut into a horse’s neck, into which a metal breathing tube is then placed. The tube is designed to increase the air intake into the lungs with air drawn through the neck, in part bypassing the nose and mouth. The tube often gets blocked with mucus from the horse’s throat, causing severe distress.

Drug Use

The use of drugs in horse racing is extremely common. Exploiters are using any possible chemical to give the horse an advantage over the others so they can increase their profits, no matter how high the price the horses pay.

Pushed beyond their limits, most horses are subjected to cocktails of drugs intended to mask injuries and artificially enhance performance.

Diseases and Injuries

The horses suffer from a wide range of diseases and injuries because they start to train and race, before their body and skeleton are fully developed.

Horses are forced to race with hairline fractures, that without drugs would be too painful to run on. The pain killers effect fades at some point and the horses which spend around 20 hours in the barn every day, are forced to bear the horrible pain for all these hours.

In some cases injured horses are being kept alive so that greedy owners can pump semen and therefore money out of them.

Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage (EIPH)

Due to the excessive exertion demanded of horses in the rigorous training and in the race, more than 90% of them have lung bleeds and breathing difficulties. The severe condition is usually a result of burst capillaries. The tiny blood vessels are ruptured by the acute pressure of blood pumping around the body during strenuous exercise.

Only about 1 per cent of horses show outward signs of bleeding, with blood at the nose. The rest are more difficult to diagnose because they bleed into their lungs without it being obvious.
Researchers at the University of Melbourne have shown that 56% of racehorses have blood in their windpipe, and 90% have blood deeper in their lungs.

Stomach Ulcers

90% of the horses have deep bleeding stomach ulcers within 8 weeks of starting race preparation.
A study regarding horse racing found that in the US, 94% of the horses in races have one or more lesions in the stomach lining and 100% of the horses who had raced in the 2 months prior to the study, had ulcers. When horses continue to race, their ulcers get worse.

Apart from the stress of racing, the major reason for the ulcers is intermittent feeding. Horses are fed only at certain times, so there is nothing to neutralize the stomach acid that damages the stomach lining.

Genetic Manipulations

The thoroughbred horses are “genetic freaks”. They run too fast, with a too large frame, on too small legs. These horses lack fully developed bone structure and muscular systems, and so are more likely to suffer injury. They develop acute lameness and sometimes break a leg in the race.
The cartilage plate, in the shaft of the leg bone, is undergoing too much strain. It causes a tear in the periosteum layer around the bone leading to haemorrhage, acute lameness, shin soreness and scar tissue.

Jump Racing

“Failed” and “retired” thoroughbred racing horses, are commonly further exploited in other types of races such as jumping races. These are even more dangerous and harmful than flat races, with up to 20 times more fatalities. This is mainly since a group of horses are forced to jump a series of one meter high fences, together, at speed.

There are two main types of jump racing, hurdles in which horses jump lightweight frame ‘fences’ with brush tops, and steeplechases in which horses jump a number of higher, more solid obstacles. Both are generally long and very tiring events.

The horses are forced to jump over 10 hurdles in the average race and as many as 20 or more hurdles in the longer races. In The Grand National the horses are forced to jump over 30 fences.
When horses are bunched up as they approach a jump, it can make it more difficult to take off accurately and can lead to error or even a ‘pile-up’. Muscle fatigue, especially in long races, increases the danger of horses to injure themselves when taking a jump. Horses are large, heavy animals and when they fall, they suffer extreme pain, even if there is no serious or long-term damage.

When jumping at speed, the force on the lead foreleg as it hits the ground is 1.7 times the body weight of the horse. Some of the shock of the hooves hitting the ground is absorbed by the spongy bone, which is compressed in the process. The bone becomes weaker in the course of a race as a result of this micro-crushing.
When a horse breaks a leg or a shoulder, the bones may shatter into many pieces, making it impossible for a veterinarian to “repair” them.

‘Wastage’

The cost of restoring a horse to full fitness is high, and it is not necessarily successful, therefore usually deemed uneconomic. Consequently, horses’ injuries get worse. Horses that suffer severe injuries and horses failing to win races are considered ‘wastage’ by the racing industry and are sold for riding, eventing or other uses. The majority are sent for slaughter, either directly through auctions or ‘eventually’ when they have no further use.

Two days ago, headlines about an asteroid that may impact Earth on Valentine’s Day in 2046 were published.
Like in the case of former similar headlines about an asteroid hitting earth, there was a great fuss online among animal activists, many of whom shared their hopes for it to happen. And like in the case of former similar headlines, after realizing that the chances of a hit are very small, and that the chances of a hit, if one would occur, to wipe out the human race are tiny, the wishing activists go back to their conventional activism – shouting that they want animal rights now in another demo, leafleting in the usual street corner, flipping burgers for tomorrow’s meatout, making another persuasive argument to another unpersuaded person, and other humanity alteration project activities.

But how can activists, after all the wishing and prayers that an asteroid would wipe out the earth, go back to their tiny scope of potential influence over a tiny scope of the suffering? How can they approach another human that just might consider stopping his own personal part of the greatest torture enterprise ever in history, when what they really wish for is that an asteroid would hit earth and all the suffering that all humans are causing and would ever cause, would end and for good?

Most activists are hoping for a planetary scale miracle while working on tiny changes in tiny scopes of action (obviously tiny compared with the global oppressive mechanism we all face).
The fact that the problem is so immensely huge that it’s almost impossible to really comprehend, leads too many activists to passively think big but actively work small. We want to change that so activists would think huge and act huge. Think global and act global.

Obviously animal activists wishing for the planet to be wiped out, is not new. Many activists say they would press the ‘red button’ when asked the hypothetical question, but very few are willing to dedicate their lives to create such a button. Very few are willing to stop focusing on their tiny scope of influence, to stop looking for ways to make a few more vegans and start looking for ways to stop all of the oppressors from causing all of the suffering.

Our goal in establishing the E.A.S movement is to turn this hypothetical abstract wish into an actual ideology and goal. Our aim is to upgrade this amorphous popular hope into a popular and firm ideology among many animal activists, switching from prayers for external factors to rescue everyone, to relying on ourselves and other animal activists to do it. Our vision is to form a conceptual, philosophical and substantial practical activistic agenda that doesn’t passively long for a “doomsday” event, but looks for ways to actively bring it.

Valentine’s Day in 2046 can truly be happy, but not because an asteroid would finally wipe out humanity, but because us activists have finally worked towards what we ought to do. Our responsibility is not what we consume or what the tiny fraction of humans we may potentially affect consume, but what each and every one, in each and every place on this planet is doing in every single moment, since the suffering is everywhere all of the time. So put the advocacy leaflets down and pick up a leaflet of a relevant science faculty. ‘Red buttons’ don’t come out of thin air, we need to create them.

Earlier this month it was announced that researchers from China’s Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology have managed to clone what they proudly referred to as “super cows”. The scientists behind this terribleness are claiming that the three calves who have been cloned so far would be capable of producing about 18 tons of milk per year, or 100 tons of milk in their lifetime, which is nearly 1.7 times the amount of milk the average cow exploited in the dairy industry is currently forced to produce. The program’s lead scientist, Jin Yaping, said that they plan to raise a herd of 1,000 super cows in two to three years.

Cows in the dairy industry are already being pushed to the extreme emotionally and physically in order to produce more milk. The only thing that matters in the industry’s eyes is their milk production levels, and the cows themselves are “a minor interference”. Only that these “minor interferences” are suffering their entire lives. And now they may suffer even more from producing even more milk. Continue reading →

The World Slasher Cup, an official international cockfighting tournament known as the “Olympics of Cockfighting”, has started today.
During this weeklong torture event, hundreds of cockfighting matches would be held until only one human would be declared the winner, and after thousands of birds were lost.

The image of cockfighting as an illegal, small scale activity that secretly takes place in shady places with a few dozen people who come to gamble a few bucks, is very inaccurate. In reality it is a highly organized industry which runs billions of dollars every year and is legal in many countries such as: the Philippines, where The World Slasher Cup is being held and where this blood sport is a national sport, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Peru, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ecuador, France, parts of Spain, Indonesia, and etc. In some other countries despite that it is illegal, the law is not enforced and cockfighting is popular, like in India and in 8 states of the United States where cockfighting is enforced only with a small fine.

Besides the numerous illegal cockfights being held in it, the United States is also highly involved in this blood sport by becoming a global power in breeding and exporting birds to other countries. Among the tens of thousands of people attending The World Slasher Cup are American professional breeders, as breeding the kinds of birds who are popular in cockfighting is not illegal in the U.S. That is as long as it is not for fighting purposes, however, whether for illegal events held within the U.S. or to be exported to other countries, clearly, these birds are bred for cockfighting. It is estimated that every year in the US, tens of thousands of birds are bred and sent to 25 countries.

The world capital of cockfighting is the host of The World Slasher Cup, the Philippines, where it is a national sport with 4 TV-programs broadcasting fights live, 10 cockfighting-magazines, and more than 2,500 cockfighting dedicated stadiums. The estimations are that about 30 million roosters are murdered each year in the Philippines alone.

But the cruelty of cockfighting starts much earlier.
Until their first fight, which in some places is when the roosters reach 8 months and in other  places 2 years, the roosters are kept under a training regime to increase their aggression, speed, and balance. The training includes attaching weights to the roosters’ legs, making them fly high, for example by throwing them up, and “practice fights” with other roosters. When they don’t train, many of these birds are tethered by one leg to their small plastic barrel if not a tiny wire cage.
In many cases humans cut off the roosters’ combs, wattles, and earlobes so they would have the least possible “weak spots” during the fight.

During the “practice fights”, gloves are attached on the roosters’ natural spurs so they would not be injured. In the real fight, in most places, 1 to 2.5 inches long knives are attached to their legs instead of their natural spurs. This makes the injuries much more lethal with usually one dead rooster and sometimes both. In the places where the birds fight with their natural spurs, the fights take much longer, as they are still to the death. Either way the roosters suffer immensely.

A cockfight usually results in the death of one of the birds, sometimes both. A typical cockfight can last anywhere from several minutes to more than half an hour. “Winners” as well as “losers” suffer severe injuries including broken wings, punctured lungs, and gouged eyes.

We can’t seriously discuss the end of speciesism while even these practices still exist.
It is not that they are worse or more important than any other exploitation industry, however it is obvious that from society’s point of view, and in many places even from a legal point of view, they are much less accepted. As opposed to eating birds, most humans are against cockfighting, yet dozens of millions of birds still suffer every year because millions of humans like to watch them suffer. So when will the suffering of the billions of birds who are eaten by the vast majority of humans ever end?

Considering that we are still fighting against something like cockfighting, how could it be that you still don’t get that this world would never be fair, egalitarian and non-violent, and that giving humans more and more chances to change is in fact the greater violence?
Until when will we fight against things that should have never even been imagined by anyone, not to mention ever existed and even more unbelievable that still exist?

Obviously any cultural practice that is torturous for other sentient beings must be eradicated.
However, the fact that something that is obviously torturous for other sentient beings and therefore must be eradicated, still exists, and the fact torturing other sentient beings plays such a significant part in human culture since forever, must make it pretty obvious that it is humanity who must be eradicated.

A world in which practices such as this still exist is a world that can never be fixed. And we all know that these are not the big issues. One of the major ones is of 66 billion birds per year. When will the end of their suffering ever come? Not before you realize that humanity is a lost cause and the only way to save these birds – 66 billion of them every year – is by removing the humans.

Nonhuman animals are forced into many roles and functions during humans’ holidays, festivals and various celebrations. Christmas is no different.

We’ll start with humans’ supposedly best friend.
Puppy dogs are a very popular Christmas gift, only that unfortunately, when the holiday ends and the initial enthusiasm from the adorable puppy declines and the awareness of the responsibility of taking care of someone inclines, many puppies end up on the street or in animal shelters soon after Christmas. This dreadful fact is so common that many animal shelters halt adoptions during Christmas to somewhat decrease dogs abandonment after the holiday.
In addition, since many dogs given as a Christmas gift are not adopted but are purchased in a “pet” store, this “gift” perpetuates the commodification of sentient beings, and since the majority of these puppies come from puppy mills it also perpetuates these horrible places.

Far from the status of dogs but still supposedly a beloved animal by humans, and a positive symbol of the holiday, are reindeers. But as usual, the fact that certain nonhuman animals are viewed as a symbol in human culture doesn’t protect them from exploitation but makes them victims of it. In the case of reindeers, being a symbol of Christmas, they are forced to entrain humans during the holiday season as props for Christmas events and displays, mostly in shopping centers, schools, town squares, holiday parades and etc.
The reindeers are forced to endure long journeys from one event to another while confined to tiny pens. And the events themselves are even worse as the reindeers, who are naturally sensitive animals living in huge herds, are exposed to highly stressful and unnatural situations such as being alone, or with only a few other reindeers, in a very noisy place, with bright artificial light, and constant flow of people, many of whom are touching them.

In many countries the exploitation of reindeers goes beyond entrainment props during the holiday season. In Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Alaska, Mongolia, China and Canada, farming reindeers for their milk, flesh and skin is quite popular. Reindeer flesh is consumed regularly, as well as on Christmas Eve. Being a holiday symbol doesn’t stop humans from torturing and devouring reindeers on the very holiday they supposedly symbolize.

And last, and definitely least in human hierarchy of other species, are the animals humans are using merely to feed themselves with. Turkeys are considered as the main course of the previous holiday in the US which is Thanksgiving, but in fact tens of millions of turkeys are tortured and slaughtered particularly for Christmas as well.

And many other nonhuman animals that humans regularly view as raw material for their own culinary pleasure, are also not spared during Christmas, as ‘Pigs in Blankets‘ and ‘Roasted Beef‘ are also very popular domination symbols during the holiday.

So no matter if nonhuman animals are treated as a holiday gift, a holiday entertainment prop, or a holiday course as a corpse, nonhuman animals are objects for humans’ pleasure. All year round, and especially during holidays. There is no super trite Christmas film that can convince us otherwise than that when it comes to nonhuman animals it is in fact a horrible life. And the only way to truly make it wonderful is if humans are never born.

For International Bacon Day held today, a brief glance at the lives of the animals behind this so beloved torturous flesh.

 Meet The So Beloved Torturous Flesh

The pig industry consists of two different herds, each with its own function.
The breeding sows function is to produce as many piglets as possible. The role of the piglets is to produce meat. They are reared to the age of 4-6 months then they are slaughtered.

18 to 20 piglets per sow per year is common in the industry. By selective breeding, pig breeders attempt to increase the number of piglets per sow and some have already reached more than 30. The more baby pigs born, the greater the fight between them over their mother’s teats. The industry’s solution is more genetic manipulations of course. They have simply “created” a sow with two more teats. There is no limit to the industry’s effort to squeeze more money at the expense of the poor animals.

The Sows

The sows are kept in metal-barred stalls or tether stalls which are so narrow that the sow cannot even turn around, she can only take a step forwards or backwards. The sows are confined in these stalls throughout their 16½ weeks of pregnancy. Pregnancy after pregnancy after pregnancy.
A sow is fed at one end of the crate, and her feces collects at the other. Some crates are so narrow that simply standing up and lying down require immense effort. In some factory farms, the sow is tied to the floor by a short chain or a strap around her neck.
All the sows are deprived of all exercise and of any opportunity to fulfill their social and psychological needs.

In January 2013 new welfare regulations regarding the sow stalls came into force in the EU. As usual, 12 years adjustment was given to the farmers at the animals’ expense, and as usual it barely even addressed one aspect of a life full of suffering.
As opposed to what is sometimes professed, sow stalls weren’t banned but their time use was restricted. The sows are legally imprisoned in them for the first month of their pregnancy, and illegally for as long as their captors desire, since as long as these torture devices are there and as long as nobody is going to enforce the new regulations, sows will keep being crumpled in these stalls.
To this day not all of the EU members have implemented the required welfare regulations despite that they were given 12 years to do so. In response EU officials have sent rebuke letters to these countries, another evidence of the irrelevancy of legislation.

And that only goes for the EU, several US states, Canada and New-Zealand. All represent a relatively small portion of the pigs industry. Most of the pigs are tortured in the rest of the US states and in China which is by far the biggest pig producer in the world. And maybe the saddest thing about the EU reform is that as lame as it is, activists can only dream of such reforms implemented in China where the industry has only started to shift from small backyard farms to massive intensive factory farms, and is growing in frightening scale.

With population growth, rapid economic development, continuous urbanization and an expanding middle class, China’s total pig consumption has increased fivefold since 1980. In the mid-1970s, in the midst of the country’s Green Revolution, an average Chinese citizen ate an average of 8 kilograms of pig flesh per year. Today, each person in China eats about 39 kilograms – even more than Americans.

Until the 1980s 95% of Chinese pigs came from smallholdings with fewer than five animals. Today just 20% come from these backyard farms. Some industrial facilities, often owned by the state or by multinationals, produce as many as 100,000 pigs a year each.

Farrowing Crates

About a week before the sows give birth, they are moved to another type of cage, one that the EU 2013 reform didn’t include – the farrowing crate.
Sows are devoted mothers and would normally spend days building a nest of leaves or straw. On the concrete or metal floor of the farrowing crate, they cannot do this and so lapse into a stereotype behavior. They simply go mad.

The bars on the crates totally restrict the pregnant sows’ ability to move. This causes their whole body to ache and many have back and leg problems. The bars prevent them from reaching their babies, though the babies can reach their mothers’ teats to suck. Sometimes short chains or rubber straps are used to immobilize the mother to give the piglets easy access to her. Five days after her piglets are taken away, the sow is being raped again and the whole misery-cycle starts all over again.

Animals produced for meat are ‘crop’.
It starts with the sows which are treated as reproduction machines, production units of baby pigs.
The worth of a sow is measured by the number of piglets she successfully weans per year.

Life In The Pens

Normally, piglets would stay with their mother for about 15 weeks. However, on factory farms, they are taken away at 2 to 3 weeks, weighing only about 15 pounds. They are crowded into small filthy “nursery” pens surrounded by metal bars and concrete.

The air in these factories is laden with dust and noxious gases which are produced by the animals’ urine and feces. Studies of workers in pig confinement buildings have found that 60% have breathing problems, despite the fact that they spend only a few hours a day inside the confinement buildings. Imagine how the pigs who have an acute sense of smell must feel like. Ammonia fumes damage their lungs and unsurprisingly many die of respiratory diseases.

Lameness, sores and other leg, back and hip problems are all very common in the pig industry. Urinary tract infections are also very common, especially among sows, as result of low levels of activity and since pigs have to lie and sit in their feces.

The pigs are deprived of fresh air, quietness, natural diet and exercise, freedom to forage, walk, roam, explore, dig and interact, wallow in mud and develop natural social relationships. This confinement in semi-darkness would torture any sentient being.

The lack of environmental stimulation in the pens and in the sow stalls prevents any normal behaviors and leads to psychological disorders including: chronic stress, aggression, depression and frustration.
The result is that the pigs and the sows develop abnormal and neurotic coping behaviors, like waving their heads from side to side, biting bars over and over again, or biting each other’s tails. Some sows become apathetic and unresponsive. They are in a severe state of depression.

Tail Docking

Bored and frustrated, many chew and bite the other pigs’ tails. Tail-biting can lead to infections and abscesses, so to prevent tail-biting, most farmers cut the piglets’ tails with pliers or a hot docking iron.

Teeth Clipping

Many piglets’ pointed side-teeth are clipped down to the gum with pliers, in the first few days of life. This is done to prevent them from injuring either the sow’s udder or the faces of their litter mates, leaving them shocked and bleeding.

Identification

Ear notching is the most popular method of identification in commercial farms.
Pigs are ear notched using specially designed pliers, which leave v-shaped notches in the ear.

Castration

Most male piglets are castrated. Castration is done because consumers find the meat of intact males objectionable. The piglets are castrated without anesthesia.

Although many drugs are given to pigs throughout their lives, pain relievers are not among them, not in any of the mentioned procedures.

Selective Breeding

Selective breeding is being used to develop pigs with faster growth rates and quicker, heavier muscle development. Pigs’ legs are simply unable to keep pace with the growth rate of the rest of their body. As a result pigs suffer from painful joint and leg problems.

Selective breeding also forces the pigs’ muscles to grow out of proportion to their blood-vessels, lungs and heart. They can be physiologically affected by not being able to get enough oxygen into their muscles, and so even a young pig can have a heart attack.

Loading, Unloading and Transportation

After 4 to 6 months of hell, when the pigs reach the industry’s desirable weight, they are violently loaded on the transport trucks off to the slaughterhouse.

The pigs who are denied normal movement for most of their lives, are suddenly expected to get as fast as possible from the transport trucks into the slaughterhouse.
And as always time is money so all the “necessary” means are being used to load and unload the pigs on and off the truck, as fast as possible.

Pigs cannot sweat. If the weather in the truck is too hot, pigs’ temperatures soar. They pile up over one another to get to the air vents. In cold weather, they huddle together for warmth. Consequently some die from suffocation.

When the trucks reach the slaughterhouse, if the pigs refuse to “co-operate” with their tormentors, they are bludgeoned, kicked and brutally assaulted until they are totally subdued. In many cases it happens while the pigs are so terrified and traumatized that they silently dream-walk.

The Murder

Once inside the slaughterhouse, the first thing that probably strikes the pigs is the noise. In some locations it is like a roaring mechanical tide, elsewhere it is the sound of metallic slamming and clanking of chains and hooks, coupling and uncoupling, the hiss of power hoses, the bang of the “captive bolt” as it penetrates the skulls of cattle, mixed with the shrieks of terror from doomed animals.

Prior to being hung upside down by their back legs and bled to death, pigs are supposed to be ‘stunned’ and rendered unconscious. However, ‘stunning’ is terribly imprecise, and this results in conscious animals hanging upside down, kicking and struggling, while a slaughterhouse worker tries to ‘stick’ them in the neck with a knife.
If the worker misses, the pig is carried to the next station on the slaughterhouse assembly line, the scalding tank, where he is boiled alive.

Simply mumble ‘MMM…Bacon!…’ became the icon of the idiotic responses humans make when they encounter a serious, well based, rational arguments against consuming nonhuman animals. But that notorious “response” is not the most common one. The most common is conveniently looking away while continuing with the same cruel habits. Whether humans are defying and trolling or aphetic and dogmatic, the victims keep losing.

Last week it was reported that the largest massacre of bottlenose dolphins in Faroe Islands’ history took place. After being driven 45km for over five hours by speed boats and jet-skis, 100 dolphins were brutally slaughtered as part of the Islands’ traditional whale hunt called “Grindadráp“.

This violent massacre that is executed several times a year and can reach about 1,000 whales and dolphins annually, is practiced since the 10^th century, passing from generation to generation from the medieval whalers, and is considered an important tradition, a rite of passage that turns boys into men.

It starts when a pod of whales (mostly pilot whale) is spotted near the islands or near channels between them. The message is passed to the elected whaling officials and to the district sheriff, and the word is spread as widely and as quickly as possible to the community, so the men can drop whatever they are doing and ardently rush to their boats.

The islanders surround the pod with their boats in a wide semicircle, separating the whales from the open sea, and slowly drive them towards the bay. On the foreman’s signal, stones attached to nets are thrown behind the whales along with a lot of noise making to frighten the whales, driving them towards the beach where they become stranded in the shallow water. Here they are totally helpless against the human brutal attack coming from the shore.

The whales are stoned, speared, stabbed, slashed, and clubbed. The killing is done using traditional knives with blades of 16 to 19 centimeter long, making a cut across the back and down to the spinal cord. The severing of the spinal cord causes a very powerful muscular spasm throughout the body of the whales, after which they are paralyzed, dying of blood lose. It takes several minutes of indescribable pain until the whales die.

Whales who are not stranded far enough up on shore are hauled by striking a steel pointed hook, or a gaff into their back. Since whales have smooth skin and since they panicky try to escape, it often takes several times to get it deep enough. Then they are dragged to shore with a rope attached to the hook to be slaughtered.

The pilot whales form some of the most cohesive social groups in nature and won’t abandon each other even in situations of mortal danger. This of course enhances the terror as they are swimming in the blood of their family members watching them severely beaten and slaughtered.

After the killing is over the carcasses are divided between the people of the community.

This slaughter is done in a festive atmosphere in which everybody participates. People tend to drink a lot, and children even get a day off of school so they can join the fun, watch the terrified whales being murdered and climb over whale carcasses.

Obviously there is something outrageous about the hypocrite outrage of so many people at this particular brutal slaughter of this particular beloved nonhuman animal while actively supporting the immensely greater brutal slaughter of other kinds of nonhuman animals.
But much more outrageous is the fact that even the outrage of so many people at this brutal slaughter doesn’t manage to stop even a ritual slaughter of one of humans’ most beloved animal. So when will the common systematical brutal slaughter of nonhuman animals that humans consider merely as a course on their plate, would ever end?

More and more reports from more and more animal shelters reveal that humans are forsaking their animal companions, mostly dogs, after many have adopted ones in the beginning of covid-19 breakout.
This course has started earlier this year when lockdowns all over the world were canceled and dogs where less needed to serve as humans’ companions or even as their formal excuses to go outside during lockdowns.
In the past year, many humans have decided that adopting animals is not really a lifelong commitment but a temporary setup, and so at some point, they decided to put them in a shelter in the best case, and in the worse one they simply throw them to the streets.

Lately things have gotten even worse due to the increase in the cost of living all over the world. Many humans cut their expenses by forsaking the dogs they have adopted, many of which when they were lonely and frustrated during lockdowns. Once lockdowns are down and cost of living is up, many humans ungratefully forsake their dogs. They used dogs for emotional support during the pandemic and now many of them are abandoning them.

After an adoption boom in the beginning of the pandemic about two years ago, nowadays more than 3.4 million human households have forsaken their companion animals in the UK alone. Similar worrying reports are coming from the U.S. and other places as well. Continue reading →

Our decision to initiate this blog about 7 years ago was, in many senses, driven by the great fuss among many animal liberation activists around the headlines published in the end of March 2015 of an asteroid about to wipe out the earth. Many activists shared their hopes for it to happen, but didn’t change their actions so it would. And our hope was and still is, that among other things, this blog would help to change that.

So for International Asteroid Day held today, we repost our “Asteroid argument” published about 7 years ago, which is unfortunately still as relevant today as it was then.

The Asteroid Argument

Our first post was dedicated to activists passively wishing an asteroid would wipe out the earth, while doing nothing active so that their wishes might come true.
Of course we don’t mean it in a literal sense, as in actively directing asteroids towards earth, but metaphorically, as in actively looking for viable ways to stop the suffering. Ideas like these for example. But there is an active aspect even in the case of asteroids. Continue reading →

Today is UN’s World Bee Day. The aim of World Bee Day is to “raise awareness among the international public about the importance of bees and other pollinators for humanity in the light of food security, the global elimination of hunger and care for the environment and biodiversity”, ironically and tragically, while ignoring the need to raise awareness among the international public about the massive exploitation of bees by humanity.

The honey industry sees bees merely as production units. Honey consumers see bees as symbiotic beings who willingly choose to share their labor and resources with humans. And even not all vegans consider bees in their moral circle.
But actually like the other commercially exploited animals, bees are sentient beings who are used as bio-machines to make a product for human pleasure.
Probably because they are insects and because they are seen flying around, bees are considered free of the usual cruelties of the animal farming industry. However bees undergo treatments similar in their essence to those endured by other commercially exploited animals. They go through routine examination and handling, artificial feeding regimes, drug and pesticide treatment, genetic manipulation, artificial insemination, transportation (by air, rail and road) and murder.

Sentience

Despite the non-incidental, convenient, common assumption – bees can feel. All the evidence available indicates that they, as many other invertebrates who have a centralized nervous systems (which includes a brain), do have the capacity to feel suffering and pleasure.
Invertebrates, it seems, exhibit nociceptive responses analogous to those shown by vertebrates. They can detect and respond to noxious stimuli, and in some cases, these responses can be modified by opioid substances.
Enkephalin-like substances and their receptors have also been found in insects, and opiate agonists and antagonists have been shown to modulate nociceptive-type responses in several species of arthropod, including mantis shrimps, honeybees, and praying mantes.

Bees are highly adaptive and sophisticated beings with a bit less than one million neurons, which are interconnected in ways that are beyond our current understanding, jammed into less than one cubic millimeter of brain tissue. The neural density in the bee’s brain is about 10 times higher than that in a mammalian cerebral cortex, which most of us consider to be the pinnacle of evolution on this planet.

Bees display complex behaviors such as communication with other bees using different types of body movements (the famous bee dances) informing them about the position of flowers and where to pick pollen. They also have a great memory which allows them to remember where the flowers and the hive are.

Honey Production

Bees suck nectar from surrounding flowers, hold it in their primary stomach and fly back to the hive. There, the nectar is chewed and regurgitated by other bees until its complex sugar breaks down to 2 simple ones – glucose and fructose. Then the bees deposit the nectar into cells in the honeycombs they build. They fan it with their wings until most of the water content evaporates in the warm temperature of the beehive, and what’s left is thick and gooey honey. The bees then cap each cell with bees’ wax, storing it for future use. The honey is very essential to feed the bees and their young in the winter when pollen is less widespread. Therefore bees work continually throughout the other months to hoard supply.

Bees can only gather a tiny amount of pollen from the flowers in each trip, 55,000 miles of travel and pollen from 2 million flowers are needed to gather just one pound of honey. They do all of this work to create food for their own consumption, not for human beings.

Honey Stealing

For humans to consume honey, first it must be robbed.
To make the theft easier, humans usually remove the bees from their hive by shaking, heating, smoking, gassing or using forced air to blast them out the hives.
Many bees are injured, squashed or otherwise killed during the conquest of their home.

When the honey is taken from the bees and they are not killed, the bees are left without their food. As a substitute for this, bees whose honey have been taken away are fed water with sugar, a deficient substitute which significantly harms the bees’ health since it lacks the essential nutrients, fats and vitamins of honey.
Honey bees are adapted to warmer climate, and therefore ‘beekeeping’ during winter, especially in cold countries, puts them in much strain. The bees’ technic of keeping the hive warm is simply vibrating to generate heat, like shivering. This requires a lot of energy, but their food –honey – was stolen, leaving them even more vulnerable.
The “winter loss” the industry deems “acceptable” is about 15% of hives, and some years it’s twice as high.

Artificial Insemination

The industry creates new generations of queen bees by artificial insemination.
The favored method of obtaining bee sperm is to pull off the males’ heads: decapitation sends an electrical impulse to the nervous system, causing sexual arousal. The lower half of the headless bee is then squeezed to make it ejaculate, and the resulting liquid is collected in a hypodermic syringe to be inserted into the female.
Small metal instruments are used to open the queen’s “sting chamber” and insert the syringe, which makes this experience very stressful for her. The queen is actually being raped.

Swarming

Bees cannot escape from captivity by just flying away because single bees cannot make it on their own, and a whole group cannot escape since the “beekeepers” are preventing what is called swarming – which is when the queen leaves the colony with many worker bees – by clipping the wings of the queen. Clipping is often done using a “baldock cage”, this is a ring with sharp spikes on its perimeter and a mesh covering the opening of the ring. This is used to trap the queen in one place, her wings are then cut with scissors. Other methods for wing clipping include using a plunger and a tube with a mesh end which the queen is held against as her wings are clipped.
“Beekeepers” often kill the old queen and replace her with a new one (older queens are much more likely to swarm than younger ones).
Preventing swarming is particularly important for bee exploiters since not only would they lose about half of “their” bees, but also since bees do not produce honey during the intense preparation of swarming.

Queens

The queens are bought from commercial ‘queen suppliers’. Hundreds of queens are kept in cages waiting to be shipped around the country. After arrival at the post office or shipping depot, they suffer from overheating, cold, getting banged around and exposed to insecticides.
Queens can live for five years but most “beekeepers” kill and replace them after one year. The reasons are to gain control over the colony and to keep honey production at maximum. Artificial pheromones are also used to keep the colonies under human control.

Other Products

As is the “norm” with animal exploitation industries, humans try to squeeze any possible profit from the beings they exploit. Bees are exploited for much more than honey:

• Bee Pollen is collected from flowers and brought back to the hive as a load on the hind legs. It is an important food source for the bees, which is needed for survival. The collection of pollen involves fitting special traps in the hive, in order to scrape the pollen from the bees’ backs.
• Bee Venom is the sting of the bee. Its collection involves the stretching of an electrically-charged membrane in front of the hive. When the bees fly into it they receive an electric shock and sting the membrane, thus depositing the venom. Venom is mostly used in medical substances and some beauty and “anti-aging” products.
• Royal Jelly is a creamy-white sticky fluid, which is made from a blend of two secretions from the glands of the worker bees. It is the sole source of nourishment for the queen bee throughout her life. Since royal jelly enables the bee to become a queen, some people believe they can recapture their youth by eating it.
• Beeswax is secreted by bees to build their hives. The grayish-brown wax is secreted by the bee to construct honeycombs. Beeswax is used in some candles and many “natural” cosmetics (which are marked as “no animal products”) as well as some food products and pharmaceuticals.
  This compels the bees to keep working to produce more and more wax to make up for the wax stolen from them.
• Propolis is a resinous substance gathered by bees from trees. It is used to fill holes, and varnish and strengthen the hive. Bees also use it as a natural antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal agent. It is gathered by humans either by scraping it off the hive or by collecting it on specially made frames. It is used by humans for medical uses as well as the production of cosmetics and special varnishes. Again, their extraction compels the bees to go and pick more for the hive to be kept safe.

• Bee Brood is made of the bodies of bees in the different early stages in their development including eggs, larvae and pupae. The bodies of these bees are simply eaten.
• Pollination is the most lucrative part of bees’ exploitation. It takes 6 million honeybee hives to pollinate just the almond trees, in the U.S alone, each spring. About a million of which must be trucked in from out of state. 60% of the annual income of 1,500 “beekeepers” comes from pollination. “Without the almond industry, the bee industry wouldn’t exist”, said one large-scale “beekeeper”

Honey is a classic example of the human character.
Humans commercially steal bees’ winter food source, merely to sweeten their own food.
Sweeter life for humans; genetic manipulation, artificial insemination, pesticides, poisoning, artificial food, rough handling, smoke, chemical repellents or air blast, transportation by air, rail, road and even by mail, and murder – for the Bees.

It is so natural for humans to steal from bees who have sweeter “sugar”.
It is so natural for humans to steal from the weak something so basic in order to provide something so marginal to the strong.

Humans don’t even understand how can it even be possible to steal from a bee.
For them the bees are giving humans the honey. Like chickens and eggs, cows and milk, sheep and wool, geese and down and so on. No questions. No criticism.

With all this violence being so natural and obvious for humans, isn’t it time for some questions and criticism over conventional activism?