Gene Bernofsky photo; World Wide Film Expedition.org

Much has been written about circus animal exploitation, and those who care to know, do know. We know about the trauma of capture and separation. The abusive training. The extreme confinement in trailers, cages, and chains–lives so impoverished that animals lose their minds. And the fruit of that suffering: brief minutes in the ring where defeated animals perform unnatural, coerced acts for cheering throngs. We know about the suffering when things go as planned, and the suffering when things go awry.

But this piece is about the other animal–the one who wields the whip and bullhook. The animal who clutches kids with one hand and circus tickets with the other. The animal who profits off the misery of “lesser” beings in the name of charity. In short, the animal who determines the fate of all others.

Welcome to the Shrine Circus

The Shrine Circus comes to town quietly. Promotional signs (a pink elephant wearing a fez) are posted here and there, but actual advertising is low-key and short-lived.

Gene Bernofsky photo; World Wide Film Expedition.org

Because Shriners have access to school systems in a long-standing tradition, free kids’ tickets are distributed by the thousands; adults then purchase their own. And by the thousands they come to the University of Montana field house–hoards of kids and their families from a wide radius around Missoula.

In the past, one brave young woman made it her business to know when the Shrine Circus would make its run; she’d be there alone, if need be, to hold a “boycott animal circuses” sign. This year, with organizational effort, 24 different individuals–ages six to 60 and beyond–showed up over the course of five performances; as many as 16 were present for two shows.

Gene Bernofsky photo; WWFE.org

Our signs were non-confrontational: “Have a (heart) for circus animals.” “Cruelty isn’t entertainment…have compassion.” “Sad animals.” “I’d rather die free than live as a slave.” “For their sake, make this your last animal circus.” “Circus: yes! Animal circus: No!” ”Animals don’t enjoy circuses.” “Charity is no excuse for animal abuse.” One woman read this last sign, proclaimed, “I want you to know that I don’t agree” and walked away.

Circus-goers: “Don’t challenge my assumptions”

A woman approached with an almost tearfully-delivered story about a child who was burned from head to foot, accrued hospital costs of a million dollars, was treated and saved at a Shriners hospital. That’s awesome, we told her, but the circus she was attending didn’t raise money for any hospital (and no claims were made that it did). According to the poster, “Proceeds benefit the Western Montana Shrine Club. Contributions are not deductible as charitable donations.” And according to a New York Times investigative piece from 2005, 98% of Shriners hospitals’ operating income comes from endowments.

Still, she insisted that this child was alive because of the hospital and how could we protest that?!? (She knew what she knew and would not be swayed by the facts.) We aren’t opposed to circuses, we clarified–just animals in the circus. But no, she continued, this was the best way to raise money for the hospital. Besides, she didn’t want to be bothered by constant phone calls asking for donations when she could just attend the circus!

We observed that the vast majority of circus-goers prefer the “drive-by” method of insult delivery–shooting zingers and walking off. At the Saturday afternoon performance, when mobs of people were backed up and moving at snail’s pace past our demonstration line, scarcely a word was offered. There was no quick escape.

Not that any of us expected to feel the love. “Are you people serious?” “Get a life!” “You’re crazy, the animals live better than I do!” “Dirty hippies!”  One dad, holding his two-year-old, gave us the finger behind the child’s back while other kids looked on. A mom loudly instructed, “They don’t have jobs so they protest instead.” One male, puffing a cigarette on the tobacco-free campus, took great delight in telling us about the double burger he had just eaten…as if anyone cared.

We smiled and tried to take the high road, most of us understanding that this was the place not for confrontation or displays of ego, but to plant the seed of doubt about the treatment of circus animals. Should it take root, this seed might grow and blossom into compassion and a sense of justice–if not in the parent, perhaps in the child.

And the children provided the most poignant moments. Those old enough to read the signs did so, some mouthing the words to themselves, some methodically moving along our line to read each one, sometimes with knitted brows, sometimes struggling to fully comprehend. I would hazard to guess that, for most, this was a new idea: Circus animals aren’t willing participants. Circus animals don’t have fun.

Two mothers actually covered their children’s eyes, one telling her daughter, “Don’t look, you’ll feel bad,” the other verbally laying into her son when he looked anyhow.  ”Keep walking, Brittany,” another mom admonished her curious daughter–urgency in her voice. Brittany turned away and kept walking.

But there were also the heart-warming few. One mom slowly read each sign to her questioning child. Another kneeled down to explain, “These people disagree with how the animals are treated in the circus, and they have a right to stand here and say so.” A woman approached us to express her sincere confusion; she still planned to attend, she said, but would research the issue afterwards. We were happy to provide her with a “Break the Chain” flyer from Animal Defenders International. I’m betting she won’t return next year.

A young dad read I’d rather die free than live as a slave and agreed with an emphatic “True THAT!” He read every sign–told us he once saw an elephant being hit with a bullhook. “But I’m only one person,” he said as he walked toward the entrance. “And you’re only…” he trailed off, looking back at our line of 16, a stark contrast to the hundreds pouring into the Adams Center.

Intimidation. Name-calling. A racial insult.

Gene Bernofsky photo; WWFE.org

A couple of clowns decided to harass us.  One got in our faces and didn’t back off. It had a nightmarish, Invasion of the Clown Car Body-Snatchers quality to it. We peacefully stood our ground until she finally took her bobble eyelashes and aqua ‘fro and sauntered off. A “constable” approached the young woman near me–an Asian-American college student exercising her First Amendment right on her own campus. “What’s wrong with using animals?” the constable demanded. She politely responded, adding, “Elephants don’t even belong here! They belong in Africa…and Asia.” Looking her squarely in the face, he replied, “A lot of things ought to go back to Africa and Asia.” None of us saw that coming, but she handled it with poise and dignity, informing him that his remark was offensive and asking him to leave–repeatedly.

A Shriner in a “Motor Patrol” jacket accosted us with a sneering, “I suppose you’re for Obama, too. I suppose you’re pro-Muslim!” (An ironic “insult,” given the Shriners’ history as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. The first Shrine temple ever established was the Mecca Temple.) His rant ended with “…kill ‘em all” but by then we had tuned him out and didn’t know to whom or what he referred. Another Shriner treated us to a bitter diatribe, his coup de gras, “What a bunch of losers!” So much for benevolence. But then there was the Shriner who gave us two thumbs-up–hands held close against his torso to avoid detection.

The Western Montana Shrine Club contracts with the Jordan World Circus, an outfit that has lost its U.S. Department of Agriculture exhibitor’s license due to violations. Jordan now leases its animals from other exhibitors, most with their own USDA violations. Jordan circled the wagons–or semi-trailers–behind the Adams Center for its stint in Missoula, the animals carefully hidden from view. Only one trailer was open and visible; it held a cage and the cage held a dog.

Photo lightened to reveal dog

Imagine spending your life in a barren cage inside a trailer, standing in your own waste. Imagine being chained in concrete parking lots in one town after another. This comes only after often-abusive training sessions with bullhooks and whips, restraints and prods. Imagine being uncaged and unchained just long enough to perform meaningless, demeaning stunts you learned through intimidation and pain.

Imagine knowing that 24 people came to your defense, but 24,000 came for your show.

The animal whose hand brandishes the whip, whose hand signs the circus contract, whose hand clutches the tickets and covers the children’s eyes…is the same animal whose hand holds the sign revealing the truth about the tragic lives of circus animals.

“Even if you are a minority of one,” Mahatma Gandhi said, “the truth is the truth.”
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Photo credits (all but dog): Gene Bernofsky, World Wide Film Expedition

This post also appears at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

PETA - click image

The Coast Guard motto is Sempre Paratus, “always ready.” We can rest assured that, when the need arises, they will indeed be ready to clip the legs off living goats using tree branch trimmers. They’ve apparently undergone rigorous training in Virginia to perform this very act.

A whistleblower caught the heinous deed on video and PETA released it. The Coast Guard is defending the use of live animals in combat medical training, saying,

“Animals used in trauma training are supported and monitored by well-trained, experienced veterinary staff to ensure that appropriate anesthesia and analgesia prevent them from experiencing pain or distress.”

Oh, whew! No legs, no pain, no problem.

Dr. Michael P.Murphy, associate professor of surgery at Indiana University School of Medicine (and an Iraq war veteran) said,

“Learning how to apply a tourniquet on a severed goat’s leg does not help prepare medical providers to treat an anatomically different human being wounded on the battlefield.”

According to the Huffington Post, Dr. Murphy “was among the medical professionals who signed PETA’s letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta seeking an end to the practice.”

Remember the movie, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” ? I can’t help but connect that to this. Both propositions–psychic soldiers who stare at goats to kill them with paranormal powers on the one hand, and mutilating goats to ostensibly save humans on war zone battlefields on the other–are beyond ludicrous. Happily, one is fiction, stars the Most Handsome Man in the World, and features music from one of the Best Classic Rock Bands ever. The other, sadly, is true, funded by taxpayers, and features the extremity of hubris, a human flaw with a very long history.

According to Wikipedia,

In ancient Greek, hubris…referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser… and the shame reflected on the perpetrator as well. It was most evident in the public and private actions of the powerful and rich. The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist’s fall.

…As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.

What can be more shaming than for one’s body and life to be considered entirely disposable? We need not search far to explain how goats end up mutilated on crude operating tables: it is the tyranny of human exceptionalism. Pity the nonhuman animal, born so far below our exalted station in the universe. Beings of no moral consequence, they are ours to use and squander in the pursuit of our own species’ self-serving goals.

At this point it would be easy to go all high flown and quote Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), French Renaissance essayist and Skeptic, and I think I will:

“The most calamitous and fragile of all creatures is man, and yet the most arrogant. (…) Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as that this pitiful, miserable creature, who is not even master of himself, should call himself master and lord of the universe? It is apparent that it is not by a true judgment, but by foolish pride and stubbornness, that we set ourselves before other animals and sequester ourselves from their condition and society.” Quoted in “Minding the Animals…” by Dr. Steven Best

I imagine the Coast Guard goat pruners looking down at the anesthetized creature and seeing a thing of little consequence, one with no investment in living, one with no connection to nor any moral claim upon “its” captors. Merely a means to a noble (read:  speciesist) end. Others of us would see a different vision: a fellow sentient animal, one as much like us as different from us, a relative in the deeply-rooted, widely-branched family tree of the Animal Kingdom.

Having grown up in a Great Lakes port town with its own Coast Guard station, I’ve always had a soft spot for that branch of the service. These were the public servants who were always ready–Sempre Paratus–to rescue stranded boaters, to pull struggling swimmers (and sometimes their bodies) from the lake, to protect the marine environment. But that benign image has been replaced with a sinister one, though it’s possible that many a Coast Guardsman and woman are as horrified as I.

If humans were really so exceptional, we’d find a way to use our considerable talents not to wage war on our own and other species, but to benefit all. Instead, we mutilate “lesser” beings as a patriotic exercise, failing to recognize that the shame is reflected on the perpetrator; refusing to accept the most likely denouement for the human drama–that the protagonist is surely headed for a fall.

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

Who’da thunk that commemorative events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic would cause an uptick in the demand for pate de foie gras, but that’s the sad truth.  You just can’t escape cruelty, and the intervention of 100 years hasn’t brought on the evolution of enlightenment. Seems that every place from my blue-collar Hoosier hometown (pop. 32,400) to New York City’s St. Regis hotel to a Hong Kong establishment is recreating the last meal served on the doomed ship. ”The idea is to recreate the ambience on the ship,” said the chef at Hong Kong’s Hullett House. “It’s for people who want to be somewhere else.”

Oh how one wishes that “somewhere else” could be one of the hellholes where ducks and geese suffer forced feedings, organ damage, and unending pain only to be slaughtered for their diseased “fatty livers.” How one wishes that the fine ladies in their furs and feathers and the gentlemen in their impeccable tuxedos could witness in person the torment of too much force-fed grain pumped into the stomachs (called “gavage”) of immobilized birds. A girl can dream, can’t she?

Foie gras, whose production has been challenged in court, is “revered as one of the most exquisite foods in the world” by gourmands. It is but a decadent, gustatory bauble for the one per cent (and wannabes)–one whose price is off the scale in pain and suffering. To her credit, Kate Winslet, leading lady in the Cameron production of “Titanic,” worked with PETA to expose the cruelty of foie gras in a YouTube video. The revealing film footage, shot surreptitiously, is of the very sort that has been criminalized by state legislatures (two so far–Iowa and Utah) at the behest of their ag-industry overlords.

Foie gras will disappear from California menus on July first, when a state-wide ban signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2004 goes into effect.  Wrote Wolfgang Puck to fellow restaurateurs in the Golden State,

As a chef, a businessman, and someone who cares about the humane treatment of animals, I’m writing to let you know why I support this particular law, and why I hope you’ll give it your full support, as well…We chefs have the ability to create delicious and original dishes our customers will love without causing torment to animals. –from “Forbidden Foie Gras”

Others defend the dish as a 5000-year-old culinary tradition, asserting that the gavage phase, which lasts about 18 days prior to slaughter, is nothing more than a “facsimile” of a bird’s natural feeding prior to a physically-demanding migration. Oh, and let’s not forget that old exploiter’s standby, the “They’re Not Like Us” argument:

…it’s unrealistic and somewhat silly to apply human physiology to a migratory bird. You’re dealing with an animal that stores fat in its liver for long journeys in migration. You’re also dealing with an animal that has no gag reflex and is basically feature made to be able to swallow whole fish. So I think the issue begins when people start to humanize their anatomy and say, ‘Well, I don’t want a tube stuck down my throat.’ But we’re not built the same way they are; we’re not made to swallow fish whole. –from “Good Taste: Quietly fighting foie gras ban“

Most of us aren’t made to swallow animal cruelty whole, either, though a great many humans manage to ignore the inconvenient reality of industrial animal production where their “normal” food–animals like pigs, chickens, and cattle–is concerned.

But a so-called luxury item like foie gras is just such as easy target; it would be a shame to forego taking another shot at it given the Titanic hoopla playing out today and tomorrow. One assumes there were no vegans on board–indeed, the word vegan wasn’t coined until 1944. But had there been, they might have requested “faux gras” as a substitute for the real–and cruelty-saturated–thing.

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

Google images

‘Tis the Easter season. This is apparent thanks to the frequency with which supermarket advertising circulars appear, each and every one featuring the dead, sliced body of a pig front and center. How else to celebrate the Season of Renewed Life?

Indeed. Let’s sit down to a meal of flesh from an intelligent, sentient being who was brought into the world to suffer a hideous, hellish life and die a cruel, industrial death solely to grace our tables as we give thanks to the Lord of compassion for His sacrifice born of love…and the miracle of Easter. Amen!

If Jesus ate meat at the Last Supper, it would have been lamb. Jewish Passover traditions call for lamb, and so do most European traditions. But, in north Europe pigs were always important. Hams, from pigs slaughtered in the winter, then salted and smoked were ready to eat in the spring-before fresh meats were available. This is especially true in North America where lamb was never an important meat.  ~Food Historian Bruce Kraig, WLS-TV Chicago

Lambs all over North America must wipe their woolly brows in relief every Easter: Whew, dodged a bullet! But I digress.

The foods section in our local paper is something I rarely read. Pouring almond milk over cereal is the extent of my cooking interest and ability. Or at least it used to be–until desperation to produce a vegan birthday cake drove me to find a recipe I thought I could handle–and did. Talk about your miracles!

Tilapia orgy in Malaysia -OregonLive.com (click)

But a recent foods section caught my eye with this photo caption: “For a meatless Friday meal, try tilapia with avocado salsa.” Meatless? Tilapia?? I quick looked up tilapia, just to make double sure it wasn’t some exotic vegetable or fermented, sprouted soy thingie.  An article from the Detroit Free Press went on to tout the benefits of cooking and eating this African freshwater fish.

Promoted as the “new chicken of the sea” or “aquatic chicken because it breeds easily and tastes bland,” tilapia are industrially produced on huge factory fish farms in China and Latin America; the U.S. is the largest consumer at 475 million pounds in 2010 (New York Times). Along with fish farming come the many sins of industrial animal production: overcrowding of sentient beings, added hormones (in some cases), displacement of native species, massive aquatic ecosystem degradation and destruction.

Likely we’ve all heard (at least once) the proclamation, “I’m vegetarian, but I do eat fish” or “fish and sometimes chicken.” I imagine a hierarchy (“How Similar to Us Are They?”) where fish–cold-blooded, scaled, underwater-dwelling, egg-laying fish–are so alien as to merit virtually no consideration as living beings.  Chickens–creatures with wings, not even mammals!–are just above them. I mean, aren’t they produced by the billions? Basically just dumb, mindless automatons? 

I googled “is fish meat” and got a couple of interesting hits. One concludes that “it depends on your perspective” at which I snorted in disgust. The author was talking to me when he/she wrote, “Many people hate to arrive at the conclusion of everyone wins, but in this situation that may be the case.” To be fair, though, religious perspectives, dietary preferences, red meat vs. white meat, and a biological approach ( meat is muscle protein, period) are all given their due here.

Another site is unequivocal:

Fish is considered a meat. Some might say that this conclusion is too simplistic, but it is really not. The only thing complicated about this matter is trying to classify a meat as something other than meat. It is a protein, and it comes from an animal. That is it, plain and simple. The only reason there is any debate is because people want to avoid thinking that they are eating meat. If you are eating fish, then you are eating meat.

Most of us tiptoe around religious mandates regarding slaughter of animals and consumption of their bodies out of respect, out of fear of appearing insensitive, out of fear of offending. Sometimes out of ignorance. Here’s where I harken back to childhood, a half-Polish, Protestant kid with lots of Polish Catholic friends and relatives. I was eating lunch–Campbell’s chicken noodle soup–with my friend Mary, who was removing pieces of chicken from her mouth and neatly placing them on a napkin. I was baffled. “It’s Friday,” she reminded me. (The Friday fish fry was and is an institution in my heavily-immigrant, heavily-Catholic hometown.) I kept my own mouth shut–you don’t question another’s religion. But seeing Mary spit out chicken chunks because it was Friday made me wonder–is this really what God wants? REALLY? Well, turns out not God so much as the church:

“Just why do Catholics eat fish on Friday – or, better said, why do Catholics abstain from warm-blooded flesh meat on Friday? …it is a penance imposed by the Church to commemorate the day of the Crucifixion of Our Lord – to enable us to make a small sacrifice for the incredible sacrifice He made for our salvation. Why, then, is fish allowed? The drawing of a symbolic fish in the dirt was a way that the early Christians knew each other when it was dangerous to admit in public that one was Christian. Our Lord cooked fish for His Apostles after His Resurrection, and most of these men were fisherman (sic).” Catholicism.org

This is not to come down on Catholics. Most humans whose religion has compassion at its core routinely rob animals of their lives–with or without ritual. I once attended a panel discussion on living a compassionate life; it was presented by a progressive Christian pastor and a Buddhist nun. During the Q&A, someone beat me to asking about killing animals for food. The pastor seemed uninterested in addressing this topic and sat back while the nun took it on, saying pretty much what you’d expect from a practitioner of one of the more respectful-of-animal-life belief systems.

So when will religions–many with millennia of ancient tradition behind them–come up to speed with what we know about animals today? That animals lead emotional and yes–even moral lives? That chickens show empathy? That cows make friends and suffer in their absence or loss? That pigs are social, playful, and protective? That fish are complex, intelligent creatures with memories and cognitive powers, that their “pain system…is very similar to that of birds and mammals”?

We live in a modern world and have new insights into animals’ lives. When dogma clashes with compassion and justice, which should give way and which should hold sway? If warm-blooded and cold-blooded can no longer be claimed as any kind of moral divide, what about Friday’s fish?
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For an admittedly incomplete list of faith-based animal resource, visit our Vegan Living page.

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

EarthIslandJournal "fair use" from Trapperman.com

Imagine a wild animal lured to a baited foothold trap. The trap springs, catching the unsuspecting creature by the paw. Imagine–it isn’t difficult–the fear and pain; the thrashing attempts to free the firmly-clamped foot.

Now imagine people gathering to watch the terrified animal attempting to free himself. Guns–constant companions in this part of the world–are produced and shots are fired. The animal is hit but not down; a circle of pink forms in the snow, the trap’s anchor chain at its center. Pictures are taken; pictures are posted.

When the location is the Northern Rockies and the animal is a wolf, this scenario is not only feasible, it actually happens. This time it was in Idaho.

One dog too many

Anti-trapping sentiment picked up steam in the Missoula, MT area when, in 2007, a beloved border collie-cross died in an illegally-set body-grip beaver trap at a popular Forest Service recreation site. Cupcake, the dog, died in the arms of his frantic, anguished human.

Cupcake’s story was one too many for local activists weary of the way trapping flew under the radar, a mostly-hidden pursuit enabled by trappers at the state management agency, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks. Traps littering public landscapes were not only catching, injuring, and sometimes killing companion animals, they were causing untold suffering and death for wild species–both intended and unintended (“non-target”) victims. Adding insult to injury, trappers pocket cash for the skin and fur of native wildlife dwelling on America’s public lands.

Cupcake’s terrible death drew grassroots activists together and Footloose Montana (Promoting trap-free public lands for people, pets, and wildlife) was born. Footloose came amazingly close–for a first-time attempt–to qualifying an anti-trapping ballot initiative in 2010, falling 1500 statewide signatures short (over 31,000 were gathered). Incidents like the one described above–a stark illustration of the cruelty inherent in trapping–only steel the commitment to try again.

Death Threat

After posting the wolf torture picture–copied from a trapping forum–on their Facebook page, Footloose personnel received this message:

“I would like to donate a gun to your childs (sic) head to make sure you can watch it die slowly so I can have my picture taken with it’s (sic) bleeding dying screaming for mercy body. YOU WILL BE THE TARGET NEXT BITCHES!”

Authorities–including the FBI–have been notified.

I should add that wolf-hater hysteria continues with at least one Republican candidate for Montana governor calling for a wolf trapping season (currently not legal). A population of 650-700 wolves is apparently too many for the fourth largest state–a state whose human population is ranked 44th with a scant one million.

Candidate Rick Hill worries that exceeding a wolf “tipping point” will cause irreparable harm. Says he: “The consequences of this are going to be a really poor hunting season this year…”
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To read a full account of the Idaho wolf incident (including the trapper’s forum comments and photos), visit the Earth Island Journal. To support Footloose Montana in any way you can, visit their website or Facebook page.

This post first appeared on animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

For what is gelatin but “a mixture of peptides and proteins produced by partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted from the skin, boiled crushed bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as domesticated cattle, chicken, and pigs”? (Wikipedia). An industry site doesn’t mention chickens, but does mention fish skins. Gag me.

Remember Jell-o with a can of fruit cocktail stirred into it? That was a staple at our house. Lime Jell-o cabbage salad, orange Jell-o carrot salad–there was a whole lotta gelatinous shakin’ goin’ on in my Midwestern childhood. Later on, as an adult vegetarian, the store brand yogurt I ate also contained gelatin–unbeknownst to me (“It’s yogurt! Why read the ingredients?”) Vegetarians more savvy than I probably knew to look for pectin instead– “a carbohydrate found naturally in plant cell walls. Pectin’s gelatin-like properties make it ideal for use as a thickener or stabilizer in food products such as jams, jellies, yogurts, and ice cream” (from Safeway’s Open Nature glossary).

But candy corn! No, nothing is sacred. (It contains honey, too, for a vegan double whammy.) Difficult as it was to wrap my mind around the idea of carcass-tainted candy corn (perhaps even more difficult: Frosted Mini-wheats!), the idea of human-derived gelatin poses a greater mental challenge. First impulse? Revulsion. I know what you’re thinking–shades of Soylent Green. But it’s not like that.

This startling news comes from Beijing University of Chemical Technology, where

 ”…a new technique for making gelatin from human DNA is attracting “increasing interest from research and industrial circle (sic). The researchers revealed that successful experiments had been carried out in which human genes were inserted into a strain of yeast to “grow” large amounts of recombinant human gelatin.

Gelatin has a history of use as a gelling agent by the food industry and human-derived gelatin “could become a substitute for some of the 300,000 tons of animal-based gelatin produced annually for desserts, marshmallows, candy and innumerable other products,” according to the researchers. (RedOrbit.com)

It’s enough for most vegans (I’ve joined those ranks) to know that gelatin comes from animals who were raised to suffer and die. It doesn’t really matter which animals, but here’s the rundown in the gelatin world market for 2003: 42+% of raw materials came from pigskin; 29+% came from bovine hides; and 27+% came from bones. Less than 1% came from “other.” (Source: industry site referenced above.)

Now here’s a novel proposition for the ethical vegan: If you could get past the ick factor, would you eat foods made with human-derived gelatin?

In response to this development, one U.S. bioethics researcher raised the specter of cannibalism, but went on to add that, “The gelatin is not derived from human tissue in the same way that animal gelatin is. It’s really derived from yeast – yeast that have been modified with genetic sequences found in human beings” (emphasis is mine).

Well, that’s certainly comforting. Cuz when you’re just chillin’ with your peeps, you’d hate to think that the marshallow candy you passed around might have contained your buddy JimBob, rest his soul.
________________________________________________________________Look for vegan Easter (and other) treats at Pangea. “How to avoid gelatin” at LiveStrong.

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

Global Post screengrab-click image

It’s been hard to miss the spectacle:  The Donald’s two sons and a whole passel of dead African animals. A  short video of trophy still shots includes one Son of a Trump holding a knife and an elephant’s tail.  The hunt was arranged through Hunting Legends (motto: “Legends are forged in the crucible of Africa’s wild places.  The legend within answers to the call of your hunter’s spirit. Don’t just be…be the legend”). Apparently the company is feeling the sting of criticism from legitimate conservationists, given this defensive post. (Sorry, but “The Trumps hunt Africa” page is password protected.)

Trophy hunters routinely attempt to cloak their ego trips in a facade of altruism, claiming that the dollars spent help native communities–and that natives are the beneficiaries of the meat. Said Donald, Jr.: “I can assure you it was not wasteful – the villagers were so happy for the meat which they don’t often get to eat.” He tweeted that the hunts control animal populations and the money spent contributes to conservation. But from the UK Telegraph comes this:

Johnny Rodriquez, of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, said the Matetsi reserve, near Victoria Falls, where the men hunted was sparsely populated so the meat was unlikely to benefit anyone. ”Because of the state of the country, there is also very little transparency about where the money these hunters spend goes,” he added. “If they want to help Zimbabwe, there are many better ways to do so.”

Matthew Scully, in his excellent book Dominion: the Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, offers up a scathing chapter on Safari Club International (SCI) and its mission of altruism, suggesting that trophy hunters need “to feel themselves a part of some grand and glorious purpose beyond mere butchery,” a need he attributes to Theodore Roosevelt:

It’s a very American thing. British and German hunters had been in Africa long before T.R. got there, filling their own safari journals with breathless romantic drivel but sparing us, at least, any pretense of altruism. To Roosevelt we owe the notion of the safari as a form of public service and the rich American trophy hunter as a sort of missionary, there to uplift the natives and instruct them in the ways of game management. ~M. Scully

SCI goes so far as to claim that African wildlife is of value to humans only because hunters have “created” that value!

“THERE ARE ETHICAL HUNTERS OUT HERE – BELIEVE IT OR NOT,” claims Hunting Legends at the aforementioned post. “Yes, we even hunt elephant. Elephant which are destroying their own habitat and killing themselves. If not controlled these very same elephants would have absolutely nothing to eat. They are destroying themselves, only because their (sic) are to (sic) many of them!”

What do overcrowded, underfunded Zimbabwean prisons have to do with wild pachyderms? Just last year the government suggested feeding elephant meat to prisoners, reinforcing the notion of elephant overpopulation, placing their numbers at 100,000. Conservationists dispute this number, claiming fewer than 35,000 elephants remain and that a state-sponsored cull would be misguided.

Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force slammed the proposal, arguing that the move would result in the extinction of elephants and in the long result in the “killing” of the tourism industry.

He said: “This is the most dangerous thing that they will be doing if approved. One of the biggest foreign currency earners in the country is tourism. How then can we steal from our own heritage? Why are we selling our future heritage down the drain? We should be looking after these intelligent animals so that they are not killed. Government should actually be putting in harsh laws to protect these animals.” Zimbabwe Independent

To understand the political and social climate in which Zimbabweans are attempting to protect animals, visit the task force website. The home page is titled “Zimbabwe’s Tragedy.” You’ll see why. It’s an uphill battle with numerous fronts, and likely no one is looking to “be the legend.” In this case, genuine altruism comes not from the barrel of a gun but from a strong backbone, a courageous voice, and the intestinal fortitude to stand up for animals against overwhelming odds.

This post also appears at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

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Remember a typical high school day? English: work on Hamlet essay.  Civics: meet in library. Art: finish perspective drawing. Algebra: test, chapter 7. Ag-education: artificially inseminate cow.

Wait, what?

That’s the gist of an article in a recent Missoulian (Missoula, MT): animal husbandry ain’t what it used to be. Sure, it still involves mucking around in manure, but increasingly, it also means turning to science to engineer ever more production out of animals–in this case, commandeering the reproductive systems of individual cows.

“The point is not to manipulate Mother Nature,” says a teacher at Missoula County Public Schools’ Agricultural Center, located on a 100-acre farm. “The point is to find excellent genes in cattle and then produce more of them.” Creating “genetically superior animals saves resources and produces better, more bountiful food,” the article instructs.

Even though “bodily integrity” is a concept that never applies to animals in a human-dominated world, this goes far beyond the crude confinement of gestation crates and battery cages and into a brave new realm of intimately aggressive managment. Genetically superior cows are induced into estrus and super ovulation with hormones, causing them to produce anywhere from five to 50 eggs. Semen from genetically superior bulls is used to artificially inseminate them (if you’d like to see how that works in a one-minute dairy cow video, view here, or in a longer, more instructive video, view here). The inseminated eggs are then removed from Super Cow, frozen, and later introduced into younger, more durable recipient cows in a process called embryonic transfer.

“Instead of supplying six to eight calves over her lifetime, a healthy cow can produce 50 or more offspring using embryonic transfer,” according to the article. This idea was delivered factually and dispassionately, but I read it with sadness. I imagined the lives of these cows–robbed of their natural life rhythms, invaded by plastic-sheathed arms inserted in their rectums, embryos later flushed from their uteruses; recipient cows–they have to be the “right package” to put the embryo in–who submit to “an epidural block at the tailhead to prevent straining. The loaded transfer gun is carefully passed through the vulva and the cervix then guided into the uterine horn on the same side of the ovary with the active corpus luteum…”

Anyone who has read Lisa Kemmerer’s Sister Species: Women, animals and social justice will instantly recognize the institutional exploitation of female reproductive means central to the book’s message.

Does this manufacturing approach to calf creation affect how students relate to animals? Do they tend to see cows less as sentient individuals and more as objects of production–objects whose product is born to die?

No, says their ag teacher in a 10-minute interview on Montana Public Radio. He maintains that (paraphrased), Some might think that raising livestock would desensitize students, make them uncompassionate, but in reality it’s the opposite; when they raise these animals they become more compassionate toward those animals and other people–“it has a nurturing effect, raising livestock.”

His students agree. A male student says (paraphrased), People come out here thinking it’s raising animals to kill them but that’s not our goal at all. People spend so much time with them, working on them, caring for them, they do get attached and feel a lot of pain for them at that point. And a female student: Everyone gets really attached but when you take them to the fair, it’s business and you know that’s what has to happen.

Of course, that isn’t what has to happen. It’s a choice that’s been made–by everyone from these students and their teachers right on up to our meat-eating society as a whole. If we truly felt “a lot of pain” for animals, wouldn’t we just admit that raising them to kill and eat is unnecessary–that it’s an elective appetite–and stop doing it?

Folks will argue ’til the superior cows come home as to whether programs like 4-H desensitize kids to killing. It’s harder to argue a claim presented no less than three times in the relatively short Missoulian piece: that creating superior cattle will feed a hungry planet. ”The world needs food, and no matter what, the important thing is to get people fed. And this new technology is allowing that,” asserts a high school Junior.

But even genetically superior cattle are still cattle who require resources. According to a recent Scientific American, reducing per capita meat consumption is one of five solutions to feeding the world and sustaining the planet. “Tragically, 80% of the world’s hungry children live in countries with food surpluses, much of which is in the form of feed fed to animals that will be eaten by well-to-do consumers,” says Jeremy Rifkin, writing in “There’s a bone to pick with meat eaters.” He continues:

Hundreds of millions of people are going hungry every day all over the world because much of the arable land now is being used to grow feed grain for animals rather than food grain for people. Grain-fed cattle, pigs, chicken and other livestock, in turn, are being consumed by the wealthiest people on the planet while the poor go hungry.

… The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grain represents a new form of human evil, with consequences possibly far greater and longer lasting than any past wrongdoing inflicted by men against their fellow human beings. Today, more than 70% of the grain produced in the United States is fed to livestock, much of it to cattle. Unfortunately, cattle are energy guzzlers, considered by some to be the Cadillacs of farm animals. In the U.S., 157 million metric tons of cereal, legumes and vegetable protein suitable for human use are fed to livestock to produce 28 million metric tons of animal protein that humans consume annually.

Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. …Bear in mind that an acre of cereal produces five times more protein than an acre devoted to meat production; legumes (beans, peas, lentils) can produce 10 times more protein; leafy vegetables 15 times more protein.

A footnoted Viva! Guide, ”Feed the World: Why eating meat is a major cause of world hunger and going vegetarian is a solution” makes this claim: “If animal farming were to stop and we were to use the land to grow grain to feed ourselves, we could feed every single person on this planet. Consuming crops directly – rather than feeding them to animals and then eating animals – is a far more efficient way to feed the world.”

And far kinder and more just, too–for animals, people, and the earth. If the student is right that ”no matter what, the important thing is to get people fed,” why don’t high school ag programs give him and other kids like him the real tools to change the world?

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

“NAFA’s wild fur consignors are reaping the rewards from our international wild fur promotional efforts as buyers competed heavily today for most articles, pushing prices to high levels.

“Today’s sale concluded with the following items:
• Fisher reached new highs, selling to the world’s high fashion industry
• Lynx Cats also reached new highs, selling under strong competition to Russia, Ukraine, Greece and Italy
• Lynx sold at advancing prices over last year
• Coyotes sold at high prices with the Canadian trimming trade dominating the better sections
• Red Fox sold at sharply increased prices with strong competition from all major markets

“All other articles sold 100 percent at advancing prices. Our next sale is in May where we will offer 2.7 million mink. In Wild Fur, we will offer approximately 500,000 Raccoons, 400,000 Musquash and 100,000 Beavers (price chart).”

For you bargain shoppers, a squirrel’s skin goes for a paltry $0.63. (Sixty-three cents? For someone’s life?) Top-dollar-getter is the lynx cat (aka bobcat) at $426.31 for a Western animal’s skin (see “pelt” categories here).

NAFA is aggressively marketing to international consumers–particularly young, flush Chinese–with its “Northern Lights” wild fur collection. It’s all about “fun, fantasies and the feeling of just being young and beautiful,” according to its oh-so-breezy website write-up. “The amount of wild fur exhibited at the Beijing Fair shows the growing importance of many species, particularly muskrat, beaver, coyote, red fox and raccoon within the fashion industry, this being outside of the traditional fur retailer.”

Particularly bad news for the North American musquash: The muskrat fur market is booming. More specifically, the muskrat belly fur market is booming, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is “thanks to soaring purchases by Chinese and other newly rich nations that need muskrat fur to line coats and footwear.” That’s right. You mind your own business, pursue the things important to you–engineering a den, gnawing on cattails, nursing your babies, plying the marshy waters and basking in the warm sun, and snap! just like that! you’re ten bucks lining Grizzly Adams’ pocket…and you literally are the lining in Xiulan’s fashion boots.

The fur on a muskrat’s stomach is felt-like and virutally waterproof. This is good and bad. Good, because Nature outfitted the semi-aquatic rodent with the perfect wetlands drysuit. Bad, for the obvious reason. “Rats, as trappers call them, have never fetched a higher price,” reports the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. “An auction in North Bay, Ontario, this month (January) featured 55,000 muskrat pelts — including a bundle, known as a lot…sent by way of an Ohio agent.” Says the trapper: “The Chinese bought them all.”

Muskrats live in families–mom, dad, the kids, and coexist with their neighbors, the Beavers. (Evidence from one den-cam shows muskrats actually living with their beaver hosts.) And like all of Nature’s denizens, they’re an integral part of an intricate web, serving as prey for many species and provider of habitat for others–their feeding activities serve to maintain open areas in wetlands, which in turn provide habitat for birds. Other animals–snakes, turtles, frogs, ducks, and geese—use muskrat lodges and platforms to rest and nest in.

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Many Native American tribes place their creation myths on Muskrat’s amazing and able back, and no wonder: “Muskrats can swim under water for 12 to 17 minutes. Their bodies, like those of seals and whales, are less sensitive to the buildup of carbon dioxide than those of most other mammals. They can close off their ears to keep the water out” (Wikipedia).

Muskrat plays the role of Earthdiver in several Native American tribes, being the only animal to succeed at diving to the ocean floor to bring up earth for the Creator or culture hero to make land with. In some Algonquin traditions, Muskrat is a female figure who becomes the mother of humankind. Muskrats are considered lucky animals in other tribes, and some folktales include muskrats bestowing wealth or hunting success on humans who treat them respectfully. Native American Muskrat Mythology

But let’s get down to brass tacks–or should we say, steel traps, which have nothing to do with respect. Muskrats are killed in body gripping traps, foothold traps (from The FurBearer.com: “if a standard foot-hold trap is used and the muskrat isn’t submerged, it may twist and pull until it escapes, leaving its foot in the trap. This is called wring-off…”), and cage traps set at a den’s under-water opening so the animal drowns. (A primer on muskrat trapping and skinning can be found here.) Lest anyone labor under the misconception that drowning is a peaceful, easy death–a fiction sometimes promulgated by trappers–note this comment at a discussion forum:

“This morning on my way out to set more foothold traps for coyotes my brother and I made a detour to check some muskrat colony traps in one of his ponds. We connected on three different colony traps and caught single catches in each of them. One big male went down biting onto the wire of the trap. We had to break his teeth with a multi-tool to get him out of the trap.”

Yeah, trapping bites, all right. And what really bites–now that fur is no longer cool in the U.S. thanks to groups big and small crusading against cruelty–is that a global market comes roaring to life, making trim of coyotes from Montana, making lining of muskrats from Michigan. Just so the nouveau riche in China can get their “fun and fantasies” on, NAFA having convinced them this is necessary.

But given that we here in the U.S. are still struggling ourselves to drive the last few nails into the coffin of this anachronistic brutality, we’ll have to be patient with our Asian neighbors. Indeed, they’re already making terrific progress in their animal activism, taking on shark finning, rodeo, and more; in our well-connected, linked-up world, let’s hope their progress comes faster than ours has.

Finally, for those who are wondering, “OK, this is all well and good, but what about the obvious connection between beauty queens and muskrat skinning?” –wonder no longer. The tradition continues in Dorchester County, MD, where Miss Outdoors is crowned on the same stage–and thankfully, prior to–the muskrat skinning contest. Pretty teens vying for one title; men with knives vying for another. Absent is any notion that Muskrat is the mother of humankind.

This post also appears at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.

Well, it depends on whom you ask.

“I want them to open their (expletive) eyes,” said Toby Bridges, founder of Lobo Watch (Sportsmen against wolves–united we stand!). Bridges wants Missoula County to follow Ravalli County’s lead in drafting a wolf “management” policy.

“If enough counties cry (expletive) on this, at least you’re going to get their (expletive) attention. I’m going to keep throwing gallons of gasoline on this fire and it’s going to get hot.”   Read more: Missoulian  

Bridges believes that the state management agency, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) is incapable of “putting together effective wolf control.” While I certainly have my own gripes with FWP (continued wolverine and fisher trapping, wild bison mismanagement), anyone with half a brain can see what would go wrong with issuing fiats on a county-by-county basis.

Down in Ravalli County, which borders Missoula County to the south,

…commissioners have drafted a proposal that calls for removing the kill quota on wolves, allowing hunters and trappers to take up to five wolves a year, and allowing hunters to use their elk or deer tags to shoot a wolf in the general hunting season. It would also allow black bear hunters to use bait, which is currently illegal in Montana. Read more: Missoulian

It’s not at all unusual to spot trucks from Ravalli County sporting bumper stickers that advise, Wolves: Smoke a pack a day or No grizzly reintro in the Bitterroots or Save 200 elk, kill a wolf. I once saw a hand-lettered job that advocated spaying and neutering “enviros.”And now, having dug up a state law from circa 1930 that allowed for predator bounties, the Ravalli County Livestock Protection Group is calling for a “wide-open season on predators.”

The bounty would pay $100 for a wolf or mountain lion and $20 for a wolf pup or mountain lion kitten. Coyotes will bring $5 for an adult and $2.50 for a pup. The funds for the bounty would come from a fee imposed by the Ravalli County Commission on livestock.

…”This is totally different than sport hunting,” said…a Darby outfitter and member of the loose-knit Livestock Protection Group. “It would create a wide-open season for predators. The bounty system was created before there was a big-game season. It will be interesting to see who trumps who (sic),” he said. “We’re not lawyers. We just found this statute and we intend to follow it through.”
Read more: Missoulian

At least one rancher is unhappy that livestock producers “will have to foot the bill for the bounty. There should be a tax on the Defenders of Wildlife or the federal Fish and Game. They are the ones who put them (wolves) here.” This comes from someone who grazes his animals on public land at ridiculously low, taxpayer-subsidized grazing fees.

But Montana’s county vs. state predator management struggles pale in comparison to Idaho’s most recent actions. The state’s Senate Resource Committee just passed a bill (S 1305) along to the full Senate with a “do pass” recommendation:

The bill would let livestock owners whose animals are molested by wolves shoot the wolves from motorized vehicles, powered parachutes, helicopters or fixed-wing planes, by night or day, using rifles, pistols, shotguns, or crossbows, night scopes, electronic calls, and traps with live bait.

The bill’s sponsor, a sheep rancher, called for the live bait provision because “the darn things keep coming at us in the night … You just literally can’t find ‘em.” (Spokesman-Review) The bill passed out of committee on a party line 7-2 vote. Imagine being the two dissenters in that goon squad!

So extreme is Idaho’s Senate proposal that U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID)–the author of the federal legislation (along with Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT) that removed wolves from Endangered Species Act listing–is concerned that it goes too far (see update at end). And no wonder. Get a load of this:

Siddoway used his wife’s dog Sophie as an example of how a dog might be used as bait to lure wolves in.

He said he would place Sophie on a 20- to 30-foot chain and then set up in a blind with a rifle some distance away. Then he would turn on an electronic wolf howl.

“You try to get Sophie to chime in with the wolves,” Siddoway explained. “If they come down you just start shooting,” he said.

Siddoway also said he would place sheep in a corral surrounded by traps in the mountainous area along the Wyoming border in the Targhee-Caribou National Forest where he grazes his sheep.   Read more: Idaho Statesman

One of the two dissenting Democrats is concerned that the bill “…sets no parameters for the use of live bait, and she worries that could lead to the possibility of torture of these animals used as bait.” Wonder what Sophie thinks of this nimrod plan?

Back at the Missoulian, the Mule Deer Foundation’s regional director is also belly-achin’ about too many predators. ”I would suggest the commission (FWP) look at predator quotas for mountain lions, bears and wolves. I will be an advocate for deer hunters to take some time to coyote hunt to give our deer a chance.” Did you catch that? Our deer. Hunters’ deer. The deer who grew to be fleet of foot because they evolved with pressure from predators. The predators now reviled as competitors for “our” deer.

Now is certainly the winter of our predator discontent, and every time you think it can’t get any worse, it does.

Update: “Fighting back tears,” the sponsor withdrew his bill. Full details at the Idaho Statesman.

This post first appeared at animal law blog Animal Blawg, where comments are accepted.