Good news for animals abandoned in a roadside zoo in Lebanon. After a month of negotiating with the owner, Animals Lebanon was finally able to close down what it calls ‘one of the worst zoos in Lebanon and give the animals the care they so desperately need’. On Friday, 13 February, the organization rescued nearly 40 animals.
Now Animals Lebanon need help now to care for these animals. They all need a place to live, whether in a sanctuary, rehabilitated and returned to nature, or adopted into homes, with vet care and proper food.
The moving video below shows the appaling state the animals found themselves in and raises serious questions about the legality of such operations. Zoos are nothing but animal prisons and they should be closed. Their only educational purpose is to teach children that animals can be kept behind bars and used as humans wish. They are, in short, speciesist enterprises of exploitation.
As I was trawling through the headlines today, I saw one in the Washington Post saying, “10-year-old Sussex spaniel wins Westminster show”. I’ve never been to one of these shows, and I would never, but from a vegan perspective they are morally repugnant. The emphasis on breed is what disturbs me most and I can see the point of Peta’s KKK’s stunt, although it may not be the best way to put the message across. If anyone is in doubt as to what breeding can do to dogs, besides contributing to canine overpopulation, take a look at this BBC documentary. It is heartbreaking to witness the suffering that some animals endure due to the genetic manipulation that creates their ‘look’. It’s a kind of fetish and a very sinister one. Real dog lovers are the ones who rescue them from the pound, regardless of their shape. Breeding and training animals as a way to make a living is exploitative specieism.
Talk about a complete lack of pedagogical sense. Following a year-long campaign to persuade Canandaigua Academy (a high school in upstate New York) to eliminate a project in which students butchered chickens in an ecology course, United Poultry Concerns last week learned that the Education Department has instructed Canandaigua Academy administrators to stop the slaughter project under NYS Education Law, Section 809 - Humane Treatment of Live Vertebrate Animals, which prohibits studies that employ “termination of life.” The surviving chicks of the last batch to be raised and killed were taken to Farm Sanctuary.
Previous birds were not so lucky: In December 2007, students illegally slaughtered 21 chickens in Eric Cosman’s ecology class, despite the pleading of Canandaigua activist, Joel Friedman, urging school administrators to show mercy and spare the birds. It was subsequently disclosed that under NYS Education Law, Section 809, a school seeking to harm and kill animals must submit a waiver application to the Education Department for review. The department promptly suspended the project, following a letter from attorney Elinor Molbegott, legal counsel for the Humane Society of New York, on August 5, 2008, advising the department of the project, which had not been applied for or approved.
The school district submitted the waiver application, a copy of which was obtained by Molbegott under a Freedom of Information Law request. The application showed that the school offered no legal justification for killing the chickens. The goals set forth did not meet waiver approval standards, and the application was denied. At this time, it appears that the Canandaigua Academy chicken slaughter project is dead for good.
“United Poultry Concerns is deeply gratified that the Education Law protecting live vertebrate animals in the State of New York was upheld,” said UPC President Karen Davis. “It gives confidence to the humane community, which increasingly is all of society, that laws protecting sentient creatures from preventable harm are enforced, and that the animals themselves, be they chickens or dogs, are gathered within our circle of compassion where they belong.”
I’m glad about the outcome of this terrible story and I wonder how the hell all this came to happen in the first place. I mean, how could school staff even think about killing animals in the classroom?
I recently decided to visit the blog Suicide Food , and I wished I had done it before. The blog is a a humorous (dark humor, I mean) semiotic deconstruction of animal food advertising using ‘happy animals’ willingly given themselves over to be killed. Or, as the blog explains, Suicide Food is about “any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed.” It is a very original way of showing the insidious ways in which speciesism is inculcated in our minds - and specially children’s minds - with deceptive innocence. You’ll never look at those pictures of ‘happy’ animals stamped on the packaging that contains their very remains or excrements in the same way again.
I recently decided to visit the blog 