Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [17]
The laws that protect companion animals, such as dogs and cats, from inhumane treatment and mistreatment don’t apply to most of the millions of farm animals that are raised as food for humans.
Saying no to animal-based food and clothing
Vegans are pretty savvy to the marketing magic that advertisers flash on screen, and we choose to confront the realities of animal agriculture by enjoying plant foods instead. Farm animals are rarely protected from modern factory-farming techniques, which inflict pain and discomfort and keep the animals from their natural social tendencies. Following are a few examples:
Cattle: Cows raised for beef generally have more time outside than their female relatives. But these cows don’t escape torture and pain. Beef calves are usually dehorned, males are castrated, and many of these animals are burned with searing brands. After cattle reach market weight, they’re stunned with a severe knock to the head, bled, and skinned. Many wake up from being stunned during the final stages of their slaughtering.
Chickens: Most chickens raised for consumption never see the light of day — they live their entire lives in a warehouse-style factory farm. Packed into tiny cages with several other chickens, they aren’t able to raise their wings or follow their natural instincts of pecking and scratching the ground. So they peck and scratch each other. This can cause too much damage to valuable poultry, so the chickens are debeaked at a young age, which, as you can imagine, is a painful process.
Pigs: Because of their huge size, farmed pigs are kept from hurting each other by being forced to live most of their lives in crates. They can’t turn around or walk more than a few steps forward or backward. Pregnant sows are kept in farrowing crates, which gives them just enough space to deliver and suckle their litters. These incredibly inhumane crates have horrified enough voters that California, Florida, and Arizona have finally made them illegal.
Meat and dairy aren’t the only items to be avoided. Leather is another one of the many products culled from the meat industry. This isn’t the only animal skin that humans wear either. Fur farms raise many types of animals for their skins, including mink, chinchillas, and foxes. Kept in small, confined cages, these animals are killed as quickly and cheaply as possible. Anal electrocution, lethal injection of poisons, violent shaking, and beating are routine methods to kill these animals.
Why dairy isn’t okay, and why vegans are the only true vegetarians
Dairy cows are separated from their babies within a day or two after giving birth. The female calves become dairy producers while the male calves become veal. By drinking cow’s milk (even organic), humans are contributing to the death of veal calves. The mother cows bellow and cry for their babies, much like any human would. They’re continually drugged with hormones to force their bodies to continue producing milk. And they’re milked by machines long after they would have stopped naturally. And to top it off, they’re given antibiotics to stave off infection from their poor, crowded living conditions.
They stand up in cramped stalls, in artificially lit warehouses, with little to no access to the outdoors, for most of their lives. The constant cycle of forced pregnancy and milking leads to a severely shortened lifespan. Cows naturally live to the age of 15 or 20 years old. A factory farmed cow usually lives to the age of 4 to 6. After her milk production starts to wane, a dairy cow is most often turned into hamburger. This cycle makes vegetarians (who consume dairy products) complicit in the killing of animals, even if they aren’t eating the meat itself. Avoiding dairy products means vegans aren’t contributing to the pain and suffering of these gentle giants.
Not only are they raised and killed with terrible methods, but these