It will sound ridiculous to anyone with common sense but, still, a lot of people who eat fish claim to be vegetarians. A new, meaningless term was created to describe these people: flexitarians. The phenomenon caught the attention of the UK Vegetarian Society, who said it loud and clear in its magazine that vegetarians don’t eat fish. Even the BBC chimed in to discuss the issue, and were followed by the Guardian’s columnist Barbara Ellen , who is an outspoken vegetarian. Said Ms Ellen:
Flexitarian is a stupid term anyway. These people should call themselves by their proper descriptive term – nit-picking, self-absorbed twits. Unlike vegetarians, who at least do the job properly, flexitarians seem obsessed with defining themselves in fiddly food sub-sections, as if “I’ll only eat organic”, “I’ll only eat sushi on Tuesdays” or any little quirk to their diet says something intensely interesting about them. Well, guess what, flexitarians, it doesn’t. Get over it. Real vegetarians have had to.
Vegetarianism has increasingly come to mean the same as veganism, although in many people’s minds it can include egg and milk (that would be properly defined as ovo-lactovegetarianism). But, as many undercover investigations have revealed, the reality of dairy and egg production is as grim, perhaps even more so, that what goes on at the slaughterhouse.So don’t fall for fad diets, flexitarianism and all this nonsense. Veganism is the real thing .
A new investigation by Mercy For Animals gives us an opportunity to discuss the atrocities behind the production of eggs, which besides being completely unnecessary for our diets, are heavy on suffering.The video was shot with a hidden camera and microphone by a Mercy For Animals employee, who worked at Hy-Line North America’s chick hatchery, in Spencer, Iowa, for two weeks in May and June, 2009. Male chicks are dropped alive into a grinding machine. Female chicks are brutally hooked up to a spinning debeaker that mutilates their sensitive beaks with an infrared laser. And all this is true of so-called free range, cage free, natural, certified humane and every other nonsensical label designed to inject a guilt-busting dose into the process of animal exploitation.Male chicks are considered a ‘waste product’ by the hatchery system, therefore they are destroyed by grinding, just like a piece of trash. Now, if a child was caught doing something like that, in a civilized family, they would be punished for that. So how come a whole industry can legally incorporate such a terrifying method into their practice? And it’s the way it’s going to be. As a United Egg Producers representative coldly told AP yesterday: “If someone has a need for 200 million male chicks, we’re happy to provide them to anyone who wants them. But we can find no market, no need”.As to the female chicks, they are going to spend their lives caged up in tiny spaces, laying egg after egg and when their productivity declines, will be sent to slaughter.The industry is designed this way and it will never change. The only way to put a stop to all this is to go vegan. By doing that, you help decrease demand and the suffering of these animals.
I often support the work carried out by Mercy for Animals as we need bigger organizations to expose the rotten-ness of the animal exploitation industry. Last week one of New England’s major egg operations was exposed with undercover footage showing the gruesome nature of their business. Now Radlo Foods says it will convert from the battery system to the free-cage system over a period of ten years..
Some animal advocates believe that giving a few more square centimeters to chickens in egg operations will represent a major improvement in their lives, but sadly the cage-free reality is not as rosy as it seems. For one, male chicks are still ground alive at one day of age, as they are not useful to the egg industry. Chickens are still debeaked in order to stop them hurting each other out of stress. Their food is full of chemicals. And they are killed at the end of their productive life. Does it sound like anything resembling a minimally decent life? I don’t think so.
That’s why going vegan is the only way to counter the egg, milk and meat industries because so-called improvements will only benefit the exploiter and the consumer looking for a dose of guilt-relief. Still, watch the video below and see for yourself what an egg really contains.
Two posts ago, I wrote about Disney’s branching out into factory-farmed eggs, which I still couldn’t find out whether this is real or not. Still, we all know the horror that battery egg farms represent for chickens. The good news is that more and more people are turning away from this vile business and in some cases even adopting chickens rescued or bought from battery farms.
The BBC had a report about a charity looking to re-home 4,000 battery hens who are being removed from a farm in the Eastern part of England. Called Little Hen Rescue, the operation will save ’spent hens’ from slaughter and will put them for adoption so they can finally get a life. The hens are 72 weeks old.
Jo Egland, who runs Little Hen rescue, said: “They make fantastic pets. Sometimes they are a little skinny or bald, but they soon put on weight and grow new feathers. They have never seen grass, or the sun. They have never had a loving cuddle, or eaten worms They can live for several more years.”
This is a growing movement in England as more and more urbanites discover the joys of having a pet chicken, and fortunately they are adopting them, instead of buying them. It’s the same principle as adopting a dog from a shelter. Anyone willing to find out more, check out this website.
The blogosphere has been abuzz with news that Disney has ventured into selling eggs. Yes, selling eggs, and apparently of the nastier, factory-farmed variety. Green Muze wrote that “Disney eggs are the latest corporate abomination to hit the grocery shelves. A recent commercial for the Disney-stamped and endorsed eggs was spotted on American television today, reports Jezebel , an online news source. The commercial shows the Mickey Mouse stamped eggs magically turning into Mickey Mouse shaped fried eggs. Whether this is a promotion for a movie or a tie-in with agri-farming nobody knows.”
The commercial says the eggs are ‘fresh farm’, which is an euphemism for battery hen eggs, since the label doesn’t mean much. Since we have no right to the eggs chickens lay, there is no such a thing as a good egg. Battery hens live in cages so small they can never turn around or even spread their wings; they are debeaked at only a few days old and fed on a antibiotic-rich diet. Don’t be taken in by the free-range myth either. Take a look at this link and see for yourself what it really means.
If anyone has any concrete information about Disney eggs, please leave a comment. Even if it turns out to be just a marketing gimmick, the commercial is real and bad enough for chickens.
Another day, another shocking undercover video of the appaling conditions animals have to endure on farms. The industry tries to evade responsibility by saying that the atrocities captured on video are isolated cases. If that really were the case, why is it that everytime someone goes inside a factory farm with a hidden camera they come out with such imagery? Really. Factory farming, and indeed, all animal farming is cruel, and the only way to stop that is going vegan. Steer clear of all that ‘humane meat’ or free-range egg spin. It’s a big fat lie.
Mercy For Animals has released this heart-breaking video of undercover footage shot at Norco Ranch in Menifee, California. Some of the most extreme abuses documented include:
* Birds confined in tiny wire cages so small they couldn’t walk, perch, fully stretch their wings, or engage in other basic behaviors
* Ill birds neglected to die on top of dead piles - denied veterinary care or proper attention
* Workers killing birds by grabbing their necks and swinging them around in circles - an attempt to break their necks which often resulted in prolonged deaths for the animals
* Hens suffering from bloody open wounds and untreated infections
* Dead hens left to decompose in cages with birds still laying eggs for humane consumption
* Birds trapped in the wire of their cages or under the feeding trays without access to food or water
It will sound ridiculous to anyone with common sense but, still, a lot of people who eat fish claim to be vegetarians. A new, meaningless term was created to describe these people: flexitarians. The phenomenon caught the attention of the UK Vegetarian Society, who said it loud and clear in its magazine that vegetarians don’t eat fish. Even the BBC chimed in to discuss the issue, and were followed by the Guardian’s columnist Barbara Ellen , who is an outspoken vegetarian. Said Ms Ellen:
Two posts ago, 
