It was a photo without any potential for recourse. This person was sending it to me because they were [legitimately] horror-struck,  and maybe to ‘share’ the grief. This person was actively seeking out these photos, and since this person knows I organize against the fur trade, decided I needed to see it.

I’m going to be blunt.

The last couple of months, I’ve been getting increasingly upset by the amount of graphic imagery being circulated by animal activist folks on the internet. I’m all for pictures speaking a thousand words, but should there not be consideration for who those words are directed at? For example, if 95% of the people on your FB are already vegan, you ought to ask yourself if your audience will benefit from seeing those images again and again and again.

I know some activists “bear witness”, and I believe it’s an approach that can be effective as a means of mobilizing and inspiring individuals to change behaviour. I also know that it does not work for everyone. I know this because I’m one of the people it doesn’t work for. Continually exposing myself to the relentless suffering does NOT mobilize me. It cripples. It breaks. It pauses me with paralyzing anger and sadness. It makes me a less effective activist. For me, I have learned (the hard way) that I need a hefty amount of insulation from that kind of imagery if I am to be as effective as I want to be. And I’m no part-time activist. I work in animal protection professionally as well as being an activist personally.

And it’s not like I don’t go out of my way to ‘hide’ the folks on Facebook who insist on posting photos of animals being murdered as though it warrants no warning. When you consider human and non-human animals alike as individuals, then what these photos depict is, literally, murder. Would you share a photo willy-nilly of a human having their skull blown to pieces? Probably not. And yet, so many people have no such hesitation sharing these same photos of non-human animals.

And I get it. I’ll even add a confession here: I have a few photos on hand that I will very occasionally post to remind my non-vegan pals that there are reasons  (billions upon billions of them actually) that I am vegan. I choose the images that tell the strongest story. And while you won’t see any blood in those photos, they are truly, undeniably heartbreaking. But I use them sparingly, and I do so when I have truly weighed the pros and cons of sharing the image, and decided it is worth it. And I even feel guilty every time because I recognize that I’ve risked triggering/traumatizing people. After all, these photos are likely wedged between a post about how shitty Pete from Mad Men is (so shitty, right?!), and about how so-and-so’s adorable daughter went for her first bike ride of the season.

What happened Friday was really triggering, but luckily I was able to talk with the person directly and explain that it was inappropriate to do that to someone with no warning. They wholeheartedly understood, and said “well you work on these issues all day, I thought you had seen it all”. And therein lies the problem: don’t assume for a second that because someone is an animal activist that they aren’t capable of being highly traumatized by violent imagery. Desensitization after continual exposure is not a inevitable. Some people never stop reacting to that imagery. I know because I’m one of them.

So here’s what I’m asking for, and it ain’t much. Can we, as kind, empathetic individuals tighten up our etiquette about sharing graphic, violent imagery on Facebook? Pretty please? Before you share a photo, whether on your newsfeed or directly with someone, ask yourself a question: Is this photo potentially triggering for activists (or non-activists, which I’ll get into in a second)? If so, either ask permission, don’t share it, or share it in a way that gives a person the option of not seeing it. Or, don’t think about it at all, but know that you may be hurting your comrades.

I know some of you will no doubt be shaking your heads, saying “Well, what about these images and all the non-vegans who see them?” You’re not going to like my answer. First, there’s a very, very good chance you’ve already been ‘hidden’ by your non-vegan pals if you post that sort of stuff regularly. Graphic images are very effective at jarring people, no doubt. And there is also no doubt that they can sometimes make people vegan. But any seasoned activist would be remiss not to consider the potential consequence of this approach: empathy avoidance. That’s a whole other post, but I’ll wrap up this up with a thought from Debra, an activist who runs These Glass Walls:

“…People really need to ask themselves what the purpose is before they click on “post” or “share.” If the only purpose is to share the horror, please don’t. Even if it’s sharing the horror of, say, factory farmed animals for the purpose of educating omnivores, STILL ask yourself if there might be a better way to get the info across. Sometimes there isn’t, but think about how you might be traumatizing others and whether that’s really effective or if it’s more likely to make them just not want to see your posts.”

Debra’s right. Sometimes there isn’t a better way. Sometimes you’ve got to share the image. But be sparing. Be precise. Choose carefully. Think of your audience.

The ladies at Snooters!

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. We all know what that means…

Actually, I don’t. I don’t have much of a tolerance for modern tribalism (let alone hyper-corporate modern tribalism). Nor do I care for football culture. I’ve never watched the Super Bowl. Does the winning team actually get a bowl? I couldn’t tell you much of anything.

Well, one thing I do know about the Super Bowl is that people become hyper gluttons over chicken wings. It’s all over the web, people hawking their ‘best’ chicken wing recipes, dishing on where the best deal is on wings (“per pound”). If you don’t believe me, just google “shortage of chicken wings” and sit back. Headlines said things like “US averts shortage of chicken wings”.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Isn’t “avert” a term we ought to reserve for like, really important things? Say, for example: averting an alien invasion! Or how about averting a global water crisis, or averting climate change?

While all talk of fetishizing animal products gives me the freaks, especially disturbing is the fact that unlike most kinds of meat, ‘chicken wings’ has avoided the almost inevitable dilution-through-euphemism transformation, where humans give a kind of  meat a new name to divorce it from the animal (or the part of the animal) it came from. This is the magical process whereby ‘ground meat, blood, fat and organs encased in intestine’ is transformed into the much less horrendous sounding, much more vague– ‘sausage’. But ‘chicken wings’ are just sort of out there, honestly talking about who they belonged to. And people just don’t seem to care.

And that is just wrong. Chickens are such incredible animals. I’ve yet to meet a chicken I didn’t like. The chickens I’ve met at sanctuaries always seem to be in a great mood, just out there genuinely happy to peck around with their sisters, cooing in that way that makes my whole body buzz with happiness. OK, I confess I really, really love chickens. I wrote a whole tribute to them. Here are my favourite things about chickens:

• They experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which indicates that they dream, just like we do.
• Even after periods of separation, chickens recognize each other as individuals, demonstrating their impressive memories. Upon reentry, a chicken who has been separated from her flock is treated like an old friend, not a new member.
• Throughout history, hens have been notably celebrated for their ability (and willingness) to defend their young from predators, which makes it all the more surprising (and innaccurate) that the term ‘chicken’ describes someone who lacks bravery.

Years ago,  I was walking downtown on a Sunday morning, and I noticed a pile of chicken wing bones in front of the after-hours Chinese food place where all the drunk students go to get their post-bar binge on. Clearly someone had sat on the curb, ate to their content, and discarded the remnants. And in that moment, that little pile of half-eaten chicken’s wings so perfectly encapsulated what I myself was just beginning to see: that animals are truly seen as discardable, worthless, here to serve us; their body parts, our entitlement for being born human. I thought of how many lives were comprised of the bones in front of me, and it made me so sad and angry that I couldn’t think straight. I had stumbled upon a mass grave. Only it was a mass grave that people were walking past, with absolutely no consideration.

So when I think about the Superbowl, I think instantly about that day. I think about the poor chickens who didn’t make it out, and I think of the chickens who did. My favourite memory of chickens was the day I got to carry newly rescued hens out of the barn to their new outdoor enclosure on Snooters Farm Animal Sanctuary:

As rescued battery hens they had never before seen the outside, let alone sunlight! And yet, within 20 minutes two of them were exploring their new landscape. They were so afraid, but Susan and Brian had built them this new house, and the weather was finally perfect. Goodness me, it was a beautiful day. I dream of that day for all chickens!

Regardless of who wins tonight,  the chickens are the ones who lose.

In case you missed the post, last week my Dad confirmed he has either had his eyes opened or his body snatched by aliens who have replaced him with Robo-Dad Version 1.0 (non-judgmental, curious about veganism, acknowledges a diet void of meat and dairy won’t cause you to wither and die). He asked me for a favour. He asked me to cook vegan food for him, for a week.

Always the obliging, obedient daughter (hah!) I accepted this task willingly. Thanks in large part to helpful meal suggestions by readers, my Dad will be chowing down on these dishes:

• Smoky Split Pea Soup from Appetite for Reduction (I also sent him home with Field Roast frankfurters to sub out his childhood favourite: lentil soup which was unfortunately made with dairy and chicken, and German weiners.)
• Rainbow Chili (I call it this because I can’t think of a single colour not represented in this. Used Sol Cuisine Veggie Crumbles for additional protein and to mimic that typical chili texture)
• Sweet Potato Black-Bean Quesadillas with Daiya (I’ll post the recipe for this soon. Let’s just say this dish is my security blanket, I think I could make it with my eyes closed. It’s always a hit.)
• Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (Cookies are a dish, right? They are in our house.)
• Succulent Shepherd’s Pie courtesy of my dear friend Vanessa (He better eat this barefoot, because her pie will knock his socks off)

In addition to cooking and baking, I tried to give him some pantry basics, including: a single serving of Spiced Carrot Cake from Sweets From the Earth, 2 Ginger Snappers cookies from New Moon Kitchen, Tofurky Roast Beef Style slices, vegan margarine, Zen Chocolate Pudding, various Gardein products, vegan parmesan, Daiya, So Nice soy milk and strawberry soy milk from Natura.

In the midst of all this excitement, I noticed the dogs were jealous of all my kitchen activity, and how could I resist? I made up a batch of vegan doggy biscuits too!

{Quick directions here: 1/4 cup dried fruit (not grapes or raisins as they are toxic to dogs!), 1/4 cup pumpkin puree, 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour, 1/4 cup of oats. Preheat oven to 350F, and line sheet with parchment. Mix all ingredients together well. Roll into 1 inch balls about 2.5 inches apart, press down on tops to flatten. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool and refrigerate. Fight urge to not feed them all to your dog[s] at once. Feed within one week!}

Dad picked up his goodies tonight.  He is genuinely excited. No lamenting what he’s “giving up” and not a single comment about animal foods being “good for you”. He’s a stoic dude, so seeing him calmly accepting the kindness of another person (especially one of his children) was really touching. He was really adorable too, asking about what needs to be refrigerated, and what the Daiya can be used in (answer: ALL THE THINGS). He did not turn up his nose at the thought of meatless ‘chicken strips’ or vegan cheese.  This is a guy who a few months ago told me soy makes men grow boobs.

I’ll be sharing his progress throughout, and while I am guardedly optimistic (we do live in a non-vegan world), I think this is a huge step for Dad, for me, and for our relationship. I am so thankful that I get to do what my Nonna, my Mom and my Aunts all do to share their love: they feed each other. While what I feed my loved ones is different, I do it with every bit as much passion, excitement and humility. Aw, dang. Now I’ve got a hankering for my Mom’s tomato sauce…

Take for example, not eating animals. My father has in his arsenal at all times, unsolicited advice about: protein, calcium, how good meat is for you, eating like our ancestors, how meat staves off illness, etc. He’s not rude, it’s just that food, like all other subjects, happens to be something he has a strong opinion on (even/especially if that opinion is based on folk nutrition, overvaluing tradition, cognitive dissonance, etc).

So you can imagine my surprise when last week on the phone, out of the blue, he starts telling me about what stops him from eating vegan (or at least mainly vegan). Had I been sipping a beverage, I would have spit it out. Had I been chewing gum, I’d have bitten off my tongue. Had I been with him in person, I’d have been looking for visible signs of circuitry. Who was this honest, vulnerable robot imposter and what did he do with my generally pessimistic, dismissive father?

{As an aside, I have three main theories about what happened: 1) He finally watched the copy of ‘Forks Over Knives’ I gave him two Christmases ago; 2) One of the vegans he works with rubbed off on him or 3) Aliens. As it stands, I haven’t asked him, and I could care less.}

We talked for quite a while. I dropped all the usual sound bites: the inherent violence of slaughter, cholesterol and saturated fats, environmental problems, and all the great alternatives that now exist. He told me the single greatest barrier to him eating vegan is: he cannot picture what he’d eat.

He told me when we took him to Hogtown Vegan (an AMAZING vegan restaurant in Toronto) he was super happy seeing that so many of his favourite foods could be veganized. He wants to see more of it, and frankly, I can’t really blame him. I want him to see all the great alternatives that exist because although we’d eventually like to see people eating a wide array of whole plant foods, you can’t ask someone who goes from eating a burger and fries to chow down on a quinoa salad with tempeh. They’ll give up before they even start. That’s not human nature, and such a rapid shift is simply not going to jive with the powerful pull of the human palette.

So my Dad asked me {*drum roll please*} if I would prepare enough dishes for his lunch and dinner for the week for him, and he’d come pick them up. That’s right. The guy who once told me fish is practically a vegetable is asking me for my culinary charity. He said he’ll gladly pay for it all, he just wants to experience what eating vegan could really be like, because he “knows” it’s better. I’M AS SHOCKED AS YOU.

So here’s where I ask you folks to help me, help my Dad. Please offer up your most delicious recipes in the comments section focused on these 3 main criteria:

1. Taste! Give me the salt, the fat, the sweet. I don’t mean give me excessive amounts of it, but no fat-phobic recipes allowed!
2. Familiarity! This is for a man in his 60’s who thinks iceberg lettuce is a superfood.
3. Ease! Nothing too complicated as I’ll ultimately be teaching him to replicate the recipes himself, and apart from some OJ and a few bananas, his kitchen looks like a movie set, and his soup cupboard looks like a disorganized Andy Warhol exhibit.

I thank you in advance for this, and encourage you to keep checking back! I’ll be charting my Dad’s progress, and what worked/didn’t work.

One last aside: several months ago, my Dad told me that his uncle bought some cattle for his farm out in the prairies. His intention was, like all other farmers, to make money (to feed the cows until they were big enough to slaughter). But something happened to him. My great uncle became very attached to the cows and couldn’t send them to slaughter. So he kept them. He kept them and let them live out their natural lives, despite being laughed at by the rest of his Mennonite community. My Dad told this story with a sparkle in his eye, a sparkle that was just barely discernible at the time. I’m not one to overvalue genes, but between you and me: I love knowing that the blood that ran through my uncle’s veins in that more oppressive time, is running through mine, and that my decision to love animals instead of eating them is the next logical step in the refusal to send them to their death. I realized today that the same blood is also running through my father’s veins. And this makes me hopeful. For him, and for us all, and ultimately for the animals.

Site : http://www.bizarro.com/

Though when applied sparingly, and gracefully, they are useful tools for helping us take the uncomfortable edge off of an otherwise pointy truth. They pleasantly obfuscate. They create a nice distance between the speaker and the reality in question.

But when it comes to the suffering of other animals, humans have developed a sickeningly extensive vocabulary of euphemisms. This linguistic distancing is proof that the human psyche is simply not built to handle the way we treat animals.

I want to create a running list that focuses on these euphemisms. I’ve got a small list started below. It’s far from complete, as the ways in which humans obscure the details of animal use are seemingly endless. Add your own as comments in this post, and I’ll add them to the overall list.

“terminated”
“destroyed”
“dispatched”
“retired”
“euthanized” (rarely is this term used to describe animals who have had their life ended for unavoidable medical reasons)
“sacrificed”
“harvested”
“culled”

What other reason is there for employment of these sorts of terms, if not because we are empathetic individuals who are (deep down) ashamed of what we are complicit in? And how come the institutions that use the word ‘humane’ are almost without exception, doing things that are undeniably inhumane? It’s reasonable to conclude that euphemisms like these are nothing more than security blankets to people, whose consciences no doubt routinely whisper: “Are you really comfortable with this?” We’re not comfortable with it. And the animal-use industries knows it, so in addition to hawking their goods, they offer us metaphorical security blankets, intended to soothe us into complicity. Ditch the blankets, people! I ditched mine, and I’ve never slept better.

2) Herbivore remixing a shirt is more exciting than any other “remix” you’ve ever encountered.

3) Your idea of fun is asking a Paleo dieter for their stance on slavery, human sacrifice, infanticide and some of the other “traditional” barbarisms that early humans engaged in.

“I love my dog! I love animals! I love them so much I require a collar of their fur around me at all times!”

4) Your definition of irony is a person wearing a Canada Goose jacket while walking their dog.

5) Despite having super healthy blood pressure (thanks, plants!), the mere mention of Lierre Keith or Dan Murphy causes a sudden, violent spike.

6) You think Bob Harper is literally the biggest loser.

7) You wish Gene Baur was your boyfriend. Or Dad.

8) You wince when the words “vegan” and “diet” are placed next to one another. IT’S A WORLDVIEW, MOTHERTRUCKERS.

9) Your favourite sport is cognitive wrestling, in which your opponent is the inflammatory carnist, who floats around in cyberspace and proclaims that just for all the vegans out there, they’ll “eat TWO steaks fer dinner 2nite!”

10) All you want for Christmas is animal liberation.

So what would happen if Condescending Wonka became a sassy vegan? We thought about it, and this is what we came up with:

Earlier today while brushing my teeth in the sauna (otherwise known as the ‘bathroom’), I was really feeling sorry for myself. You know how it goes, we’ve all been there. You’re upset about the heat, the discomfort, the sweating-from-areas-you-didn’t-think-could-sweat.

And then I thought about how I live in Canada, a country that doesn’t stop transporting animals to their death on days like this. In fact, in Canada, cows can be legally transported for 52 hours with no food, no rest, and no water. For pigs and chickens, it is 36 hours. Such suffering is not fathomable to us, either by scale or by duration. It is the purest proof of the total and utter lack of regard shown towards animals who are raised for food.

Lock your dog in a car on a hot day, and people will riot. They will call you a criminal (as they should). Roll a transport truck full of animals every bit as wonderful, unique and deserving of respect past those very same people and almost no one will even notice. Their suffering goes almost entirely unnoticed.

If you find your animal-eating friends, coworkers or loved ones complaining of the heat, you could do what I do: tell them how lucky they are not to be a farmed animal.

For more information on animal transportation in Canada, check out: http://www.wspa.ca/ati/CurbtheCrueltyReport.pdf

Several years ago, at about 4AM I got to the part in ‘Eating Animals’ where he shares the stories of the pregnant cows whose calves are discovered inside of them at slaughterhouses. I’m not going to go into more detail here, because it’s the single most upsetting animal-related thing I’ve ever read. Maybe it was being alone in my dimly lit room with an angry rain pounding on the roof. Maybe it’s the way that the dark and the quiet disrobe all the defenses you cloak yourself in during the day. I found myself so sickened, the kind that makes it impossible to think of anything but the suffering you just has described to you. The room spins, your heart unable to take such pain. I remember thinking “We’re told as children that monsters don’t exist, but I’ll bet no one ever asked a farmed animal”. That night, Safran Foer’s work gutted me. A part of me truly died and in doing so, provided a thick, impenetrable layer of emotional cement over my decision to live as a vegan for the rest of my life.

The most recent time Safran Foer killed me was this morning at about 11AM, when I saw this:

Once I regained consciousness, I tried to go to my happy place, but found that it had been turned into a Chipotle commercial.
And then I just got angrier.

Even the title of his video is nauseating. An appeal from Jonathan Safran Foer? An appeal? He is now appealing to us to eat “happy” chickens?

An appeal is worth celebrating when it promotes a just alternative. An appeal is not what happens when a burgeoning, elitist, niche market wants some hooky campaign to lure in well-intentioned eaters. Out of all the things to make an appeal on behalf of, it’s the “alternative” poultry producers who deserve the benefits of your endorsements, Safran-Foer? Do you really want to be any part of a club that allows Joel Salatin as a member? How about an appeal on behalf of the billions of farmed animals who die needlessly each year? How about an appeal to support the life-saving work of groups like Farm Sanctuary Vegan Outreach or Igualdad Animal?

I get it, you want to take a gigantic swing at the factory farms (who doesn’t?). But why stop there? Instead of taking advantage of a person’s inclinations towards empathy by promoting a form of farming that is still unnecessary, and capable of the same atrocities so often only cited as being present in factory farms (e.g.: mutilations, intensive confinement, separation of mother from baby, forced impregnation, “culling”, killing off male babies, etc.), why not advocate for a healthy, just and sustainable vegan lifestyle?

But anyone who has ever seen Safran-Foer speak knows that he’s no Gene Baur. Safran-Foer never even went fully vegan. He admitted when I saw him speak that he eats cheese from “farmers’ markets”, yet another one of those meaningless umbrella monikers that evoke the imagery of idyllic pastoral farmscapes, where farmer and cow march hand in hoof through golden fields. Don’t get me wrong, food accessibility and supporting organic, local fruit and vegetable producers is important to me. But I’m also not so easily fooled anymore. I have the answers, because people helped me learn the right questions. Now what I see at farmers’ market is actually shocking. It’s like people’s brains actually stop processing information when they are standing at a makeshift wooden stall being sold something by a person in a plaid shirt with a twinkle in their eye and soil under their fingernails. Instead of star-struck everybody’s farm-struck (y’heard it here first). Who cares if they can whittle or they make their own rugs, CHEESE FROM A FARMERS MARKETS IS STILL F$*KING CHEESE!

Image courtesy of John Beske

Is it really possible that Safran-Foer, a seemingly free-agent (read: fence sitter) when it came to actually taking a position and sticking with it, is now nothing more than a particularly clever puppet for the foodies? Despite speaking so eloquently about the inherent moral dilemmas of using animals (whether under the banner of factory farming or “free-range” farming), it would appear that he can now sleep easy having recommended that well-intentioned people simply buy into a newer, shinier myth that says “humane” farming is not only possible, but apparently common enough that “there’s an app for that”.

One thing you’ve got to give them props for is their straightforwardness. “BuyingPoultry.com”. Nothing says “alternative”, and “animals are not mere production units” like BuyingPoultry.com. But seriously– doesn’t the name reveal the same distanciated, distorted relationship with farmed animals that he argued so against in ‘Eating Animals’?

At this point the question that remains is: will Safran-Foer manage to kill me a fourth time? If his shenanigans persist, it’s highly likely. My imagination is running laps. I can just imagine all the fan mail he’s getting from the backyard butchers, and the free-range hucksters. Can’t you just see Michael Pollan emailing “Hey Jon! Thanks for finally coming to your senses! Pig roast @ my place on Saturday. Don’t worry, we eat the whole pig. Bring your friends!”

*Special thanks to John Beske for the use of his image!*

]]> http://theveganomaly.com/2012/06/16/extremely-sad-and-incredibly-inconsistent/feed/ 11 veganomalberta jsf image http://theveganomaly.com/2012/05/07/goodbye-ruby-tuesday-so-much-life-in-such-a-little-body/ http://theveganomaly.com/2012/05/07/goodbye-ruby-tuesday-so-much-life-in-such-a-little-body/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 00:49:00 +0000 The Veganomaly http://theveganomaly.com/?p=914 ]]> Someone very dear to me passed away on Saturday night, and I am completely bereft. She embodied so many of the qualities I admire in a friend. She listened twice as much as she spoke, she was so humble despite her obvious specialness, and she was never the source of conflict. She was a quiet fighter, filled to the very brim with a darling innocence you had to experience to understand. Ruby was her name, and she was a guinea pig I was fortunate to share just over a year with.

Dear Ruby (right) hiding behind Abigail

I don’t know where Ruby came from, except to say that wherever it was, she hadn’t been shown much love by humans. The presence of a hand (even one offering food!) was enough to send both her and her sister Abigail running to the furthest corners of their pen. While Abigail is the more confident alpha, Ruby was the unassuming, shy girl, forever hiding behind her big sister. It was a slow process, but little by little, they began to trust us. They had no reason in the world to, but they did anyway. What an honour.

I had always felt a particular fondness for Ruby, though I love my other three ladies and their endearing idiosyncrasies too. But Ruby was the underdog. The smallest, the mildest, the first one butted away from the food. After the first time Ruby got sick (it turned out she had a massive bladder stone), I bonded with her in a way I just haven’t with other animals. Thanks to a rigorous medication schedule, I was literally able to help to make her well again. As her “nurse”, I felt our connection deepening, and I know she felt it too, as evidenced by the way she began to come flying towards me each time I came into the room, wheeking and squealing.

The subject of our latest rant: the TOMS Classic.

So you pick up a pair of TOMS Classics and inspect them, cautious because you know all too well that we live in the era of blatantly superficial attempts at ‘corporate social responsibility’. Their message is so sweet it almost makes your teeth hurt, and you read their FAQs and you’re thinking “Finally! A shoe I at least won’t have nightmares about!” You use your vegan laser vision to examine the shoe for any animal products and it’s looking good.

Until…the leather insole.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Like many businesses, TOMS has vegan options for their Classics line. But do any of the stores in my neighbourhood carry them? Nope. Because most people don’t care about their heel touching what was once an individual. So they just carry the “normal” TOMS, that are generally less expensive than the vegan options. Vegan options are offered as a way to placate vegans, similar to the way that eccentric Aunt is appeased at Christmas when she wants to perform ‘Silent Night’ on her recorder. Tolerated because she means well, but not taken seriously. Now, I don’t need to tell you that 10 billion animals being needlessly killed each year is no recorder solo, and yet here we are– treated like overly sensitive, sentimental weirdos whose idealism (and loud voices and spending power) beckon them to offer “vegan options”.

Don’t get me wrong about the importance of vegan options. Ask anyone who has been vegan for a decade or two, and they’ll tell you what living through the Dark Ages was like (prior to many of the tastiest alternatives). Vegan options mean we are less alienated, they offer convenience when we need it, and they’re good outreach tools, as non-vegans see that they could still eat at their favourite restaurants with their favourite people, as a vegan.

So, vegan options: undeniably important, but not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the companies that offer them!

TOMS says that they “use earth and animal-friendly materials wherever possible”. OK TOMcat, no offense, but that is a crock. Why exactly is it not “possible” for all TOMS Classics to opt for the animal-free insole, as it does with the vegan shoe? The rest of the shoe is already vegan! And don’t even get me started on your other shoes. It’s 2012! Animal-friendly materials are abundant. There is simply no excuse.

I’m not trying to wage a war on TOMS, and I apologize if it appears that way. From what I observe, I think their model and message is decent, and their commitment to improving the quality of life for people is promising (even if it’s still ultimately a business motivated by profit). You’ve gotta have shoes, right? And while I can’t speak for everyone, I myself am quite tired of always buying second-hand shoes from thrift stores. And as much as I wish it were so, I don’t always have the money to buy shoes from entirely vegan companies (though I love Nice Shoes and Moo Shoes!)

I doubt very much that your non-vegan clientele would care about having an insole that happens to be vegan. But I bet many would-be clients are turned off by your having an insole made of pig skin. It’s simple veganomics! Lots of people don’t like wearing pigs on their feet (or anywhere else on their body for that matter) and they won’t buy your shoes because of it.

So what I want to know is why, TOMS? Why go to the trouble of making a 98% human-made shoe, and then add something as stupid as “classic suede” to it? Oh, yes, classic suede. Gotta love when they take the otherwise unusable skin from animals (in this case, pigs) at slaughterhouses and turn it into an unnecessary textile for humans to walk around in. Classssic.

You’re not fooling anyone by placating the vegans, least of all, the vegans. Sure, we may eat the Veggie Burger at Burger King, but we haven’t magically forgotten that the other 99% of the menu contains our dear animal friends. You’re not doing us a ‘favour’ by giving people a humane option (in this case, tolerating demands for compassionate shoes). Vegans want for animals to not be used that way by anyone, not just other vegans.

Nothing chaps my ass more than a company taking a product that is so close to getting a passing grade in the ethics department and then slapping some poor animal’s skin on it and calling it a day.

Shut. It. Down. Go all the way, TOMS. You’re so close already! We’ll even accept baby steps! Start with your Classics, then another line, then another line, and by that point the entire world will have come to it’s senses and will already be vegan and you’ll be so thankful some mouthy little blogger steered you in the right direction.

OK, fine. The word ‘irritable’ is sometimes used in reference to me, particularly when it comes to: getting up early, going to bed too late, sharing food, and listening to people tell me why they could never give up eating animals. My mother once told me “I don’t suffer fools gladly”, and I reluctantly confess this to be the case. Heaven forbid you’re a foolish person, because you’ll already know this about me. 

So what does being a bit irritable have to do with irritable bowel syndrome? Absolutely squat. An irritable disposition does not an irritable bowel sufferer maketh. I wish it were only a matter of putting on a happy face. I would have freaking tap danced down Yonge Street in an oversized top hat shooting fireworks out of my mouth- if it would have improved my IBS.

A couple of years ago, my life topsy turveyed for a while. A really, really bad break up (the quality stuff made for a  Monday night teen drama series) resulted in me losing ‘custody’ of my two amazing dogs, as well as being essentially run out of my community, and dealing with the good times of selling a house co-owned with a person who hated my guts.

Oh, my poor guts! That’s exactly where my stress went. For some people, it’s their back, others suffer from chronic migraines. Some people just cry constantly, or turn to the drink (which I did one night, and half-assedly). For me, I went from being a pretty regular gal, to being a total wreck down there. Every morning became hellish, my bathroom a kind of prison, as I was held at the mercy of my very stressed body. The worst part was that there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what would having me going to the bathroom with a frequency I more commonly attribute to my guinea pigs, who poop 10-20 times per hour.

“My bowels have organized a full scale mutiny…”

It got so bad that vegan brunch with friends was completely out of the question (my stomach never really ‘settled’ enough that I could leave the house until the late afternoon). Plans to go home and visit friends and family (and reclaim some of that territory stolen from me during the breakup) were back-burnered (I became terrified of long bus rides, having to eat food at other people’s houses, etc.). Had I been less fortunate, and not been able to work from home, I undoubtedly would have lost my job, a very real concern for IBS sufferers, and the second most common cause of worker absenteeism (next to the common cold).

The pain of the abdominal spasms would be so bad I’d nearly faint, and often be crying. I felt like I must be dying, my organs failing me, it was so awful. But I was given this vague diagnosis of IBS along with a considerable amount of emphasis on my mental state as being the underlying cause. I was essentially written off as overly sensitive and weak, with a problem that was entirely “in my head”. If only I could control my stress, I could control my IBS.  

My dear partner fancies himself a bit of an explorer, especially as it pertains to health and medical issues. He’s the guy who gets the obscure phone calls from loved ones about weird symptoms and sleuths  things out. If you’re like me, the thought of sharing your most personal details about poop (and the always glamorous act of pooping too much) with the person you’d like to also find you ‘sexy’ is horrifying. In fact, I was so private that for the first couple of months, I’d cloak my pain in vaguish explanations like “My stomach is just really hurting”. Ever the stalwart for accurate medicalspeak, after months of relentless nagging, he dragged out of me that it was not my “stomach” that was hurting, it was my “bowels” and they are “really fucking upset”. To this day, I cringe with the power of a thousand shy people when I say it. [And for the record-- bowels is an exceptionally crude moniker for a body part that is already responsible for dealing with the 3rd most disgusting human-made creation. It goes 1) animal agriculture 2) nuclear weaponry and 3) poop.] 

So after I admitted my “bowels have organized a full scale mutiny against the rest of my body and they want justice”, it got much easier. He did a lot of reading, and we initially thought, like my doctor, that the majority of work to be done was on reprocessing the way I deal with stress. So there I was, working on managing my stress while eating my 12 grain sprouted bread in the morning, totally confuzzled when I’d end up in the bathroom 15 minutes later. I didn’t even feel stressed! It was a noggin-scratcher, to say the least.

And then Joseph found the website of Heather Van Vorous, particularly her book ‘IBS: The First Year’. And this was the first step on the path to putting my IBS into remission. What was most magical about her book, was that it confirmed my physical intuitions. For example, during a flare up, I would want nothing more than a white bagel for breakfast, and Joseph would look at me quizzically and say “But that is so bad for you! And there is no way that is good for your belly! It makes no sense!”

Friends don’t let friends [with IBS] eat [insoluble fibre] alone:

Thanks to Heather’s book, I learned it actually made perfect sense that my body would crave bagels, white bread, rice, bananas, quinoa, and pasta (soluble fibre) while simultaneously intuiting that a green smoothie, or kale salad, or gorgeous raw red pepper, or soy latte, would only make things worse.  

This is because people with IBS have a hard time with fat, caffeine, coffee, carbonation, alcohol and this mysterious little thing called ‘insoluble fibre’. What’s that, you ask? Insoluble fibre is, simply put, found in the stuff that is the healthiest for us and a HUGE part of the vegan diet! Leafy greens, whole wheat flour, seeds, nuts, beans and lentils, peaches, pineapple, apples, oranges, dates, green beans, celery, onion, broccoli, cucumber, sprouts, you get the idea. Pretty much anything with a tough skin, hull, peel, pod or seed, is likely insoluble fibre. And before you start flipping out, don’t worry! There is no diet in the world that would tell you to stop eating these foods, though depending on the severity of your IBS, you may have to restrict yourself for a short time. The rule of thumb is simply that you NEVER eat insoluble fibre on an empty stomach. You always start with soluble fibre. Heather’s book explains all this in detail, and she will empower you with all the knowledge you need to get going in managing this physical condition.  Yes, say it with me: it’s a physical problem.

IBS is not “in your head”, though as with any other physical problem, stress can aggravate it greatly. It’s even thought that the actual onset of IBS can be brought on by food poisoning, a bug, or a traumatic event, but that does not mean that IBS is a brain-based problem. Any doctor (unfortunately, most of them) who tells you otherwise should be dropped like dairy. I know personally it can be a hereditary issue, and I also know it is more common for women than men, and common for people who were abused as children to suffer from it. Heather sees it as a brain-gut dysfunction, and through dietary management and some alternative therapy, I really believe most people can have their IBS put into remission. And because IBS is a functional disorder, when the symptoms disappear, so does the actual diagnosis. 

I’ve thought long and hard about what to say next. I want so badly to share everything I’ve learned in this bizarre, frustrating journey. But ultimately, it’s too important to have it oversimplified and summarized here. If you have IBS, chances are it’s taken enough of your time away from you, I don’t want to waste more of it here. The following is a brief step by step to what I recommend you do next. And please, even if you don’t have IBS, pass this on to a loved one who does.

Step 1) Get a copy of “IBS: The First Year” and read it right away– Book a day off work, plunk the kids in front of the TV, do what you’ve gotta do. (Note: the IBS management diet is mainly vegan, and easily made entirely vegan, as almost all animal products are discouraged from the get go.)

Step 2) Start to rule other illnesses out right away– You’ll want to ensure you actually have IBS, and the only way to confirm this is to rule out all other possibilities. Be sure to read Heather’s book for a detailed overview of what you should rule out.

Step 3) Get angry– Immediately after reading the book, I became angry. Angry with healthcare professionals, who made me feel like IBS was “in my head”, when the reality is that there is an underlying physical condition, and stress can exacerbate it. You’ll feel angry, and you’ll be justified. The amount of pain endured by IBS sufferers simply because the medical community refuses to prioritize the issue is infuriating.

 Step 4) Tell your loved ones– I should have done it sooner. But I was embarrassed. Having to cancel get togethers, meetings, etc. I wish so badly I’d just rounded up my loved ones, and told them. When I finally did, not only did I feel liberated, I got some much deserved empathy for living with such chronic suffering! And even better than that was that many people confessed that they too struggled with IBS, so I felt much less lonely too. 

Step 5) Stock your pantry– Become obsessed with the difference between soluble and insoluble fibre and memorize what foods are which. Soluble fibre will become your dear friend.

Step 6) Get angry again– Damn right you should be angry! Why is your body different from other people’s? Why can’t you just eat what normal people eat?! Take a deep breath and remember, that your bowels need time to recover from the torture they’ve been consistently enduring. Stick to the diet, and if you’re like me, in no time, your body will feel ‘normal’ again. 

Step 7) Buy a hot water bottle and a lifetime supply of strong peppermint tea-- Drink it constantly. Don’t stop drinking until your pee smells minty fresh. Just kidding. But seriously…thank me later.

Step 8) Here’s the part where I tell you to try hypnotherapy– If you haven’t garnered from the site thus far, I believe in science. I don’t believe in fairies, or crystals or supplements that come in bottles without a DIN. When I read in Heather’s book (and on various sites and blogs) that hypnotherapy was associated with a huge success rate at resolving IBS, I was so desperate I was willing to try anything, including what I considered to be the wackiest of all quack-pot quickfixes– hypnotherapy.

Heather recommended Michael Mahoney’s work, and because of how valuable her book had been in managing my IBS from a dietary perspective, I decided to trust her that this may actually work at putting my IBS into remission. The purpose of the therapy is to unconsciously rework negative thought patterns associated with IBS. For example, many people with IBS are terrified of using transit or having someone else drive them places, in case they need to stop suddenly to go to the bathroom. The fear generated by these situations is enough to create a palpable fear of ever having to do it again, even if the outcome wasn’t negative (read: even if the person didn’t crap their pants/embarrass themselves/etc.). The very fear of it being a possibility is enough to create a strong negative connection in the brain. Simply put, hypnotherapy works on an unconscious level to disconnect those connections. And the best part is, you get to just fall asleep while you listen. Please don’t delay in giving it a try. I’d give anything to have found it earlier.

 
To be honest, I was reluctant to even write this piece, because IBS stole so much of my time away from me. It stole me from the people, animals, places and activities I adore, and I didn’t want to give it any more of my time writing a piece like this. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people are likely suffering just like me, not knowing what to do, eating a healthy vegan diet and yet being constantly unwell. I never want anyone with IBS to suffer longer than they need to.

I’ve been symptom free for long enough now that I’m almost starting to forget the fear, the pain and the panic. I wanted to get this out there before I’ve been back to normal for so long that my time with IBS is starting to feel like nothing more than the memory of a bad nightmare I once had. It’s still scary, but there is a vagueness too. My life is so full of hope and peace again, now that I’m symptom free. So if you’re reading this, thinking “What the hell is wrong with me? What if I never get better?”, I hope this post offers you the hope you so deserve. I welcome all comments and will do my best to answer questions. Please, please, please consider sharing this with loved ones living with IBS. 

What do you call it when someone painlessly ends the life of another who is suffering from an incurable condition (often at the patient’s own request)? Unfortunately, this isn’t the set up to some hilarious joke. What you get, according to the trusty Oxford Dictionary, is euthanasia.

The people who wrote the Oxford Dictionary are probably pretty smart, and they seem to think that euthanasia is killing someone for his or her own good, because death has become a better option than incurable suffering. But we find ourselves a wee bit confused: why do we describe shelters as “euthanizing” healthy animals? That doesn’t sound like euthanasia to us or to the Oxford Dictionary for that matter. That sounds more like killing: to deprive of life or vitality; to put to death; to cause the death of (Oxford, FTW!).

Ever the stalwarts of accurate discussions, we use the word “kill” when we discuss this issue, because that is what we are doing to companion animals. And we hope this doesn’t make you uncomfortable. We’ll leave it to you to speculate as to why the euthanasia euphemism has become so commonplace (but it likely has something to do with the uncontrollable guilt that would come with acknowledging that we kill perfectly healthy animals en masse, despite as a culture claiming to value them).

According to the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, in 2008:

• 54% of the cats taken in by shelters were killed.
• 19% of the dogs taken in by shelters were killed.

But let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: this is not the fault of shelters. By and large, shelters are running on tight budgets, staffed by generous and compassionate volunteers, and doing largely thankless (and emotionally depleting) work that remains invisible to most of us (which is just fine for most people).

Shelters all too often find themselves in a nightmarish predicament of providing shelter for some animals while taking the lives of some other animals, to make room for still other animals. Is there really such a shortage of space for animals, you ask? Consider this: in Toronto alone there are between 100,000 and 300,000 homeless cats, many of whom were dumped on the streets by guardians who lost interest in caring for them. Extrapolate that number out, and you can see that the number of animals in need of homes is so enormous that purposely bringing more animals into existence just to make a buck is, quite literally, insane. Oxford-dictionary-style insane.

If aliens were to come to earth (and decide not to obliterate/colonize us) they’d have some serious questions that we may not have decent answers for. After no doubt expressing disgust at the way we harm and kill animals for food even though we don’t have to, they’d probably say (telepathically of course): “why create more life when there are already so many who need the love and companionship of a human family?” And despite our own demonstrable capacity for intelligence and empathy, most people would seem like absolute fools when we can’t even answer. We’d completely embarrass ourselves in front of the aliens, who would have it confirmed in an instant that not only are we not the smartest beings in the universe, we’re not the most empathetic either.

Anna's companions: Roxy & Lola! Roxy was adopted from the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue and Lola from a man holding a cardboard box in the alley next to my house!

And before you say, “Well I’m not a breeder, so I’m off the hook!” we’ve got news for you, courtesy of every Economics 101 class that’s ever happened, ever: if you demand it, the market will provide it. That means that if you think it’s acceptable to purchase animals from pet stores or private breeders, some idiot out there will supply your demand. And the opposite is also true. Take a look at Albuquerque, New Mexico, which banned the sale of cats and dogs in 2006. Animal adoptions have increased by 23 per cent, while the rate of animals killed at shelters has decreased by 35 percent.

Let’s break down some of the problems with our system of creating animals, abandoning them in shelters or on the streets, killing them, and then creating more new animals:

1. Animals aren’t here for us. This is axiomatic. While we mutually enjoy life with companion animals, their actual existence has nothing to do with us.
2. If we acknowledge that animals don’t exist for us, then we also must acknowledge that it is not our right to choose when they die.
3. If we acknowledge that because animals don’t exist for us and therefore we shouldn’t have control over when they die, we must also acknowledge that a system that decides how one in every two cats dies, and how one in every five dogs dies, is a flawed system in dire need of a committed, emergency overhaul.

It also illuminates an inconvenient, but unavoidable reality: your superficial want for a Labradoodle is grossly outweighed by the right to live that all animals have. Frankly, it’s just too damn bad for you.

Oh, and it’s also too damn bad for the “responsible breeder” (hereby dubbed the ‘responsibreeder’). Why aren’t we more empathetic to the well-intentioned responsibreeder, you ask? Truth bomb: The responsibreeder is fictitious. Non-existent. Think Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or that sister you invented to get out of office work parties. There is no such thing as a responsibreeder, as the very definition of “responsible” means “having an obligation to do something, or having control over or care for someone, part of one’s job or role”. If we consider notions of responsibility on a community level (as we ought to), then the only responsible breeder is a breeder who is not breeding.

OK, so you’ve read this far. And you may even be in a position of wanting to bring home a new furry family member. Before heading out to meet Sandy, who owns the certified-accredited-organic-fair-trade-gluten-free-pedigreed Sunny Oakridge Autumn Harvest Labralove Kennel, we dare you to Google your local animal shelter or humane society and check out all the wonderful individuals who are literally waiting for their second chance.

If even after looking into the eyes of an animal who may be sentenced to an unnecessary death (read: killed), you choose to purchase an animal from Sandy, the charismatic responsibreeder (who assures you she’s doing it for the love of dogs), there’s not much we can do. But one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that you are not an animal lover. You’re an animal collector.

My Millie: one of my 9 companions! We fell in love with her the moment we met her at the Toronto Humane Society.

And for those of us who opt out of the canine version of Toddlers and Tiaras, remember that there is always an animal out there who is wonderful and who needs a home. Your home. You can be a total superhero for that animal. As for what we, as animal advocates, can do, this is some stuff we prioritize:

• Fix your companions! There is no excuse. By understanding there are more animals already than there are people willing to adopt, fixing your companion will ensure you’re not contributing to their already staggering population.
• Don’t reward superficial people with superficial comments! One thing we always try to keep in mind is that people who purchase dogs do so in large part because of the dogs’ aesthetic qualities (their squished faces, for example). We make a point of never dwelling on an obviously purebred feature (especially once that compromises the animal’s wellbeing) when talking to their humans because we feel like doing so validates the humans’ decision to buy instead of adopt. That doesn’t mean we are not super tender with the actual animals, we just refuse to reward their human companions for shallowness. (As one reader pointed out however: keep in mind that there are breed-specific rescue groups though!)
• Rescue talk! When people remark about our animals, or even when strangers simply find out that we live with animals, we always make a point of talking about where we adopted them from. Remember– even though it seems bizarre to us, there is a serious stigma surrounding rescue animals. Every second we talk about our companions is an opportunity to myth-bust!
• Insure your pet! Having an illness or injury that is expensive to treat should never be a reason to end a companion’s life. By insuring your pet (or setting up a savings system so you’re already emergency-ready), you’re ensuring a long and happy life together by taking away much of the stress of covering expensive medical costs. And if you’re considering adopting an older animal, expect medical bills and for insurance to be a bit more expensive.

In closing, shopping is what you do when you need a new toothbrush, or run out of balsamic vinegar. It is not what you do when looking for a companion. So be a superhero. Adopt! Rescues rule!

Sometimes, despite serious efforts, people stop being vegan. And they’re not necessarily jerks. Sometimes well-intentioned, good-hearted people just choose to not stay vegan. While the details may change, one thing often remains consistent: the incessant need to ‘justify’ this decision to fellow vegans. This is an issue that deserves to be handled with the utmost of care, thanks to the phenomenon I refer to as the ‘failed vegan multiplier’ (consider this a primer in veganomics). The premise is based on the retail understanding that while a satisfied customer may tell 1-3 people about their decision to purchase a product or service, a dissatisfied customer will tell between 8-10 people about how unhappy they are. So while vegans are almost always happy to share all the ways veganism has made their life more rich, a failed vegan will almost always share even more information, to even more people, and it will likely be extremely negative.

This is almost always a simple matter of cognitive dissonance. To the former vegan in question, their decision to jump ship requires that they either accept themselves as: a) weak-willed b) inconsistent c) immoral d) a failure, OR– they contend that it is the movement that is flawed, wrong, strange, unnatural, unaccepting, elitist, and judgmental. So in order to counteract the guilt, they almost always go on the offense.

I recently had a close friend (or someone I thought was a close friend) pull an interpersonal Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde when she deleted me from Facebook with no warning, and ended our friendship via a text message. Talk about a knife to the heart! Now, when I say ‘ended our friendship’, I actually mean ‘insulted the vegan movement and my community’s “creepy obsession with animals” to the point where I wanted to remain friends with her like I wanted a hole in the head’. But I’m vegan, I’m a sensitive person, and this betrayal hurt me, especially given that it came out of nowhere and I’d been an extremely supportive friend.

In my opinion, until veganism reaches critical mass (which I believe will happen within my lifetime), there are simply going to be people who, despite knowing what they know and feeling what they feel, will abandon veganism because their identities are too dependent on external approval and validation. Not everyone is happy being considered a maverick, and we as a community can continue to find ways to support these people. [Note that I say ‘can’ because I don’t believe it is our personal obligation to, I’m very much against prescribing recommendations to people in any situation, this is merely a point worth considering.]

I have had a lot of time to think about my former friend, and had she given me the chance, there are some things I would have liked to say to her. I share them with you in the hopes that should you find yourself in this situation some day, you have a potential place to start a discussion. I do, of course, encourage you to trust your own intuition.

Five things I’d consider saying to someone who is respectfully telling you they’re jumping ship on veganism:

1) I understand this decision can’t be very easy for you, because I know how much you care about other animals. I also know that telling me probably makes you feel embarrassed, nervous, and afraid that I’ll judge you.

2) People are animals too, and while I’d love to see you stay vegan, if you’re suffering then not only is that not good for you, it’s not good for the movement. Does this decision seem like something long-term, or is it the result of feeling like you don’t have enough support or knowledge? If that’s the case, I’d be happy to help you access some amazing resources and feel more connected to the vegan community.

3) Veganism is a social justice movement. Therefore, like many of the freethinkers in other social justice movements, we have a worldview unlike many of the people around us, including those we love. Imagine how it felt to be a woman fighting just to be respected as a person in a world that refused her! It’s never been easy to be a history-maker, and veganism is no exception. I believe that we’ll be looked back upon by future generations as progressive people who lived in accordance with human beings’ deepest understandings of empathy and compassion. This provides me with comfort when I find the opposition difficult to endure.

4) I hope that despite your decision you’ll remember that veganism is a healthy, sustainable, compassionate worldview because all animals are individuals who are entitled to a peaceful, free life. You might feel like you need to justify your decision to others, but please remember that your individual beliefs and experiences are not reflective of the movement as a whole. There are more vegans than ever before, and it is a movement that will only continue to grow, especially as more and more linkages are made between it and other social justice movements.

5) I hope all the compassionate reasons you went vegan are the same reasons you continue to respect the movement, and keep an open mind about it for the future. Our personal journeys are long and winding, and don’t feel like there would be a grudge held if you ever decide you want to be vegan again.

And as for what I’d say to my former friend given that she didn’t respect me enough to actually have that conversation with me?

I know your family’s refusal to appreciate (or at the very least respect) your decisions has always been difficult for you. I truly wish your life, up to this point, had given you enough self-trust to push back, and I believe one day it may. In the mean time, I forgive you, I know it wasn’t really about me, or the ‘crazy, creepy vegans’, or even the animals for that matter. It was about you taking an opportunity to feel less otherized. I hope that the community you sacrificed is worth all the meaningless conversations you’ll now quietly endure over immoral, unsustainable, unhealthy meals with relatives who will continue to become chronically ill and remain steadfast in their ways, nonetheless. I hope you finally get the respect you’ve deserved from them the entire time, but have yet to receive (even way before you were a ‘crazy vegan’ yourself).

I told you. I’m vegan. I ain’t a saint…

At first, I was just going to give you some time to cool down. I thought maybe you’d just got in a bit over your head. It can’t be easy going from being Queen Amidala to a vegan movie star in a perfumed sea of apolitical non-vegan celebrities. I thought maybe PETA had come on a bit too strong, made one too many requests, maybe asked you to drop trou for a billboard outside a preschool or something.

But I knew you wouldn’t fault us vegans for being a little clutchy. After all, you know as well as we do the scale of suffering that occurs every second of every day. You know how difficult it is to have to function ‘normally’ (i.e.: refraining from screeching at every person who says “But I love meat!”). You know how it feels to listen to people pray to their climate change demigod whose inconvenient truths, though helpful, conveniently kept the most important truth hidden: that animal agriculture is ruining the planet. You know what it’s like to have every non-vegan with access to the internet forward you an article about those vegan parents who killed their baby, without so much as a modest admission that the epidemic of childhood obesity and diet-related illness attributed largely to animal foods, make this isolated incident nothing more than that– isolated. You know these things. So I don’t think you’d jump ship on the animals for that.

But what was it then? Don’t we deserve closure?

Were the 120 vegetarian/vegan restaurants in NYC not enough? Or how about the 40 right in L.A.? Did you find yourself with no choice but to forage for wild mushrooms and lap dew off fallen leaves? Were the vegan meals you endured as a millionaire so abysmal that you woke in the night, weeping, and dreaming of a simpler time when you could opt for cow’s milk instead of soy in your $9 latte?

Did you just feel too damn guilty when Dior made all that clothing you modeled for them vegan? Did you feel like one of those vegans, always pushing their pesky agenda onto other people? I admit, it must be damn awkward being Oscar-winning Natalie Portman and requesting vegan alternatives…

Was it the stigma? Was it hard, shuttling between all the mega movie star meccas being the token vegan (because I’ve heard it’s so hard to be vegan in LA)?

Did you just not like the v-word? Hated the way it rolled off your tongue?

So what was it, Natalie? You’re a bright, educated woman with demonstrable articulation, who claimed Safran Foer’s Eating Animals changed you “from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist”. So what is your explanation for choosing to consume animal foods again, and so quickly after proudly identifying as a vegan superhero?

“I actually went back to being vegetarian when I became pregnant, just because I felt like I wanted that stuff. I was listening to my body to have eggs and dairy.”

Like a knife in my heart, Natalie.

“If you’re not eating eggs, then you can’t have cookies or cake from regular bakeries, which can become a problem when that’s all you want to eat. I actually wanted eggs at the beginning and then they grossed me out after a while.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Lemme get this straight. You want to eat desserts from regular bakeries? That is your official explanation? And what the hell is a regular bakery for that matter? Oh! I know! A regular bakery is one where the baked goods are full of milk and eggs stolen from other animals in horrifying, cruel, soul-crushing ways.

“I know there are people who do stay vegan [during pregnancy]“. 

Oh, you mean like, vegans? Yes, vegans stay vegan during pregnancy.

“But I think you have to just be careful, watch your iron levels and your B12 levels and supplement those if there are things you might be low on in your diet.”

For real? It isn’t bad enough that you declare yourself a vegan activist and quicker than you can say ‘casomorphins’, you publicly declare yourself a former vegan activist (because you’ve got cravings). No, that’s not enough. You have to fear monger on your way out! Do you know how much work you created for all of us? Every person capable of snidely hitting the forward button sent us your compelling interview because, while these idiots don’t consider you an authority on nutrition when you decide to go vegan, whadayya know– when you ditch the v-word like last year’s Dior, then suddenly it’s all “that’s Dr. Natalie Portman to you, you vegan idiots”.

Well thanks for the helpful hint, Natalie. I’ll be sure to continue to supplement my B12 and monitor my iron levels, speaking of which– have you been keeping an eye out for those pesky deficiencies that ‘animal eaters’ (your term, not mine) are highly prone to? In case you’ve forgotten, that’s: calcium, fiber, folate, iodine, magnesium, vitamin C and vitamin E.

Wow, Natalie. I thought you were cool. And maybe you are, and you’re just going through a tough time. Being pregnant can be pretty wild! Hopefully though, when you look down at your little darling, you can’t imagine how it would feel to have him stolen from you, and you remember all over again why you became a vegan. And when you do, we’ll happily welcome you back to the club, because we’re vegan and we can’t help but love animals, even the weak-willed ones.

]]> http://theveganomaly.com/2011/09/14/was-it-something-we-said-an-open-letter-to-natalie-portman/feed/ 54 veganomalberta natalie-portman http://theveganomaly.com/2011/09/12/everyone-loved-marineland-a-lament-on-behalf-of-my-8-year-old-self/ http://theveganomaly.com/2011/09/12/everyone-loved-marineland-a-lament-on-behalf-of-my-8-year-old-self/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:27:42 +0000 The Veganomaly http://theveganomaly.com/?p=782 ]]> *note: for readers who didn’t grow up in Ontario, Marineland is a Canadian marine mammal ‘entertainment’ facility, similar to Seaworld or any other large facility. Marineland currently holds many marine mammals, including dolphins, walruses, sea lions and orca whales.*

Dear Marineland,

On behalf of my 8 year old self, let me start by saying thanks. Thanks for profiting off my genuine admiration for, and fascination with, marine mammals. Thanks for happily leading me to believe that experiencing these animals in captivity was some sort of honourable educational pursuit, a pursuit which kick-started my first official career path: marine biology. At the age of 8, I told my Uncle Steve I would be the person to discover (definitively) why whales breach. I pursued this calling tenaciously, raising over $500 on the school playground in a couple of months, even going so far as to arrange payment plans for my peers based on their weekly allowance. All proceeds were to be donated to Greenpeace for their whale-saving campaigns. I had a clipboard, a posse of collectors and everything. Anything to save the whales.

Marineland, I was too young to understand how wrong it is to not only keep these animals in captivity, but to make money off their enslavement. I saw myself as an amateur scientist, someone who wanted to be up close and personal with the individual animals I so adored. It didn’t help that in the 4th grade, a classmate of mine was presenting on orca whales and made a claim about them eating seals. My teacher interrupted him, turned to me, and said, “Is that true?” I was the local authority on all things cetacean. I was “Whale-girl”. I fell asleep to the sounds of the humpbacks, I knew all their names in latin. But had I known then what I know now, my heart would surely have broken.

I’ve dealt with the guilt of being a kid who adored marine-parks, though my family didn’t have the money to go more than once in my entire childhood. I loved those memories so much that I kept framed photos of the dolphins and whales I saw that one day around my bedroom for years. I made stories up about them. I daydreamt about the zany adventures they got up to. I was– I confess– even one of those kids who knew every word to those nauseating ‘everyone-loves-Marineland’ commercials. That adoration came from a pure place in me, and the profiteering spirit of Marineland and facilities likes it, made a killing off scores of children just like me.

A study in 1999 found that the majority of Americans are opposed to the captive display of marine mammals when there were “no demonstrated educational and scientific benefits” (Bekoff, 94). While Marineland, and facilities like it, may be quick to argue that one does in fact provide educational benefits, it should be noted that the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) have stated in their own literature that “little to no systematic research has been conducted on the impact of visits to zoos and aquariums on visitor conservation knowledge, awareness, affect, or behaviour” (Ibid).

But Marineland, I must confess: I actually think you are an educational place. An extremely educational place. You can learn a lot by looking at your model. In the name of that same scientific tenacity I possessed as a child, I’ve taken the liberty of compiling what I believe to be some of the most important educational lessons that Marineland and facilities like it, can offer:

Fact One: Marine parks are businesses. I know, weird, eh? With all that talk about caring for animals and providing them with food, shelter and high quality veterinary care, you’d think they were a non-profit organization simply doing their best to protect the animals who have (through no fault of their own), ended up in their care. And you’d be wrong. Their primary focus is to make money, not to consider the ethical dilemma of keeping other animals in captivity, let alone the rights and needs of the individual animals being held by them.

Fact Two: All that rhetoric about encouraging ‘conservation’ is actually described by advocates as the ‘conservation fallacy’, because the industry claims that human beings anecdotally “benefit” from seeing animals in captivity, and that this benefit somehow magically translates into greater protection of that species in the wild. The truly educational part of this, is that this somehow appears to justify any suffering endured by the individual animals held in captivity who become forced ‘representatives’ for the ‘benefit’ of their species.

Fact Three: Captured marine mammals face up to a six-fold increase in mortality in the first month or two after capture, a consequence of the unnecessary stress they endure (Rose, 2004).

Fact Four: Animals in captivity frequently engage in behaviours associated with massive trauma, including: self-injury, eating disorders, infanticide, suicide, hyper-aggression, and depression (Marino et al., 2009). These heartbreaking behaviours are a response to human-inflicted trauma and enslavement. It’s strange though because I don’t think the trainers mention this during their performance…

Fact Five: Given that there are no predators, food shortages, by-catch, pollution or other natural hazards in artificial environments– why is the overall survivorship of captive dolphins the same (and sometimes less than) dolphins who live in the wild? (Rose, 2004) And why do studies focused on orcas conclude that their mortality rates in captivity are consistently three times higher than those living freely in well-documented parts of the Pacific? (Ibid)

Fact Six: Captive animals usually don’t have privacy from the public and therefore cannot control when and where they’d like to rest. Imagine that a group of people blindfolded you and stole you from your home. You were brought to a strange environment, where you are held against your will, and there are windows on each side of you. On the other side of those windows are ever-present crowds of obnoxious onlookers peeking in (and banging on) your windows while you are simply trying to relax as much as is possible in such an unnatural environment. This is the life of a captive marine mammal (as well as any captive wild animal).

Fact Seven: Because the social and physical lives of captive individuals are so dramatically altered from what would happen in the wild, many scientists are legitimately asking whether more accurate information about these animals could be obtained through observing them in the wild. This debunks another major myth about animals in captivity being useful for research on the species.

The best lesson Marineland (and facilities like it) can teach us is that animals do not want to be treated this way and that it is wrong to do so. However, this will be infinitely kept from the proverbial ‘lesson plan’ of these facilities and it is up to us to advocate on behalf of the individual animals within them.

Enter Marineland Animal Defense (MAD), an inspiring and steadfast group of citizens committed to ending animal captivity at Marineland. Their goals are four-fold: to end breeding programs at Marineland; to end plans for expansion of captivity; to re-home captive animals to sanctuaries; and to hold Marineland accountable for various abuses (human and non human).

Their regular demonstrations are textbook success stories of outreach, having handed out thousands of pieces of literature to well-intentioned individuals who simply want to do what my parents did for me. This success is despite the absurd lengths Marineland has gone to prevent potential attendants from exercising sound judgment. MAD is a wonderful model for other communities who share space with marine profiteers. While I have not yet had the honour of standing alongside them, I plan to in the future.

I think of 8 year old me, wanting nothing more than to end the practice of harming animals. Sure, it seemed a wee bit lofty, but I thought if I applied myself hard enough it could be accomplished in time for Saturday morning cartoons. Flash forward to now. I feel the full weight of that objective, mostly because I understand the scale and institutionalized, normalized nature of what we do to other animals. But some things never change, and that includes animal liberation being my heart’s own true desire. It may have started with whales (it’s often the charismatic megafauna that ignite us), but it didn’t end there. I hope it won’t end there with you either.

Warning: this article contains spoilers for all of the Planet of the Apes films.  Proceed accordingly.

As a vegan and a Ph.D. student in film studies, I struggle with the use of animals in film.  Seeing animals exploited in films is something that I despise as much as other uses – for food, for testing, for circuses, etc. – but I find it much more difficult to avoid.  Exploitation is built into the medium itself: celluloid film contains gelatin, an animal product that serves as an organic emulsifier (this is why I’m one of the only people in my department that doesn’t lament the switch to digital film).  Like all vegans, I have had to accept that my veganism isn’t ever going to ever be perfect, at least as far as films are concerned.

Film is a tricky medium for representing animals; if you want to tell a story about an animal, you have to – in most cases – manipulate an animal into performing the role.  Babe, for example, is a film about the worthiness of pigs as moral agents whose production necessarily ignores their status as such.  With the exception of animated films (La planète sauvage is one that I would recommend in a heartbeat), this is endemic to movies about animals and all movies in which animals appear.  To represent an animal on screen usually requires exploiting that animal in one way or another.  It would follow, from a vegan standpoint, that we should almost never tell stories about animals in the cinematic format; at the very least, we should avoid using animals in the production of films.

This is why the Planet of the Apes films are so appealing.  Not only do they offer a fascinating, often thrilling, and sometimes funny science-fiction story about non-humans, they do so without – for the most part – violating the rights of the animals whose plight they are shining a light on.  What I’m going to be discussing here is one film in particular, the recent reboot/remake/prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, its context within the Planet of the Apes franchise and what it has to say about animal use.  If you haven’t seen the film, I’d suggest you do so before reading this!  (If it’s not clear in the rest of the post, let it be said here that I rather liked the film, and am quite fond of the franchise in general.)

It’s rare to see a film that doesn’t use animals in some way.  As I mentioned earlier, animal exploitation is built into the medium itself.  Many films go further by employing “animal actors” that must be coerced into “performing” the actions required of them by a script.  When the story calls for an animal to be terrified, or to fall down, the director can’t simply tell the animal to act the scene, as s/he would a human actor; the animal must be provoked into the behaviour in some way.  For them, the terror is real, the pain of falling is real.  And these animals do not go back to their homes after the shoot, compensated for their day’s work; rather, they are slaves in the truest sense of the word.  The companies that own these animals are the ones who receive compensation, and the animal performers that they rent out to film shoots are not their employees but their property.  And when scripts call for animals to be killed on screen, too often they are actually killed (a few examples that occur to me off the top of my head: Godard’s Weekend, Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Iñárritu’s Babel, Haneke’s Caché, Von Trier’s Manderlay, etc.).  Where no one would ever consider it OK to butcher a human being for the sake of cinematic authenticity, countless films have sentenced horses, pigs, fish, cows, birds and other non-human species to death for our collective entertainment.

With animal use so rampant in the film industry, the Planet of the Apes films are remarkable for how little they use animals.  Most of the non-human characters in the film are played by human actors in prosthetics, and they are remarkably effective in their roles.  In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the apes are again played by human actors, but with the prosthetics of yesteryear swapped out for state-of-the-art motion-capture suits and computer-generated imagery.  The films are not perfect by any means; while the ape characters are portrayed by humans, horses are still used,  and sometimes violently.  And we can always make the quibble that the films don’t value ape subjectivity as such, but only insofar as it is transformed into something recognizably human.

The first Planet of the Apes film was released in 1968 and spawned four sequels, a live-action television series, an animated television series, and a 2001 remake.  I’m most familiar with the original film cycle, which was a ground-breaking science fiction franchise and was largely responsible for 20th Century Fox’s financial stability in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  (It was also the first film franchise to spawn such a glut of children’s merchandise: in many ways, Star Wars couldn’t have happened without Planet of the Apes.)  The first film is a pop culture touchstone, most famous for its apocalyptic twist ending and lines such as “Get your paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”  But like most good science fiction, Planet of the Apes is an allegory: it critiques human racism (while inadvertently reinforcing certain racist essentialisms: the gorillas, who are darker-skinned than the apes and chimpanzees, are inherently violent, bestial creatures) and warns us of our planet’s possible future in the face of nuclear war.  But on a more literal level, the Planet of the Apes films are about the way that human beings interact with the other species with whom we share the planet, and how our wrong-headed sense of superiority will lead us all into calamity.  Human domination, the films tell us, is not the only way to live on this planet, and indeed such an ideology has an expiration date that we only hasten with our arrogant behaviour.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is essentially a contemporary remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth (and arguably best) film in the original cycle.  In the new film, James Franco plays a scientist whose research accidentally leads to the birth of a super-intelligent ape.  Franco adopts the ape, Caesar, and raises him as a part of his family, as a son.  Though Caesar is capable of understanding human speech and communicating through sign language, he understandably struggles with his place in the human-dominated world: in one touching scene, he sees a dog on a leash and asks Franco if he himself is also a pet, which he rightly identifies as a degrading and subservient position.  Caesar is no man’s pet; he is man’s equal and will be respected.  After an incident in which he defends a family member with a violent display of simian strength, Caesar is forcibly relocated to an ape sanctuary, which proves to be more of a prison.  Here he sees first-hand the horrors that humans subject animals to as a matter of routine, whether in the name of science or in the name of senseless and wanton cruelty.

With his advanced intelligence, Caesar is able to break out of the facility, secure the experimental vapour that triggered his own evolutionary leap, and bring it back to the imprisoned hordes.  With an army of intelligent apes, Caesar leads a revolution, not seeking to overthrow humanity but only to be left untouched by it.  This, I feel, is the valuable message of the film: that the most ethical way for us to deal with non-human species is to leave them alone to the greatest extent possible.

As Devin Faraci pointed out in his review on BadassDigest.com, the film basically assumes that the viewer believes that animal testing isn’t a virtuous or just phenomenon.  He writes that “I like the idea that this is a movie made for a modern age where we are a little more advanced, where we accept the idea that maybe we should be kind of nicer to the animals around us.”  In the film, apes are subjected to all manner of medical experiments in service of what is undoubtedly a noble goal: the curing of Alzheimer’s disease.  But in my book it’s always more ethical to use consenting human subjects than non-consenting non-humans; in fact, I don’t think it can ever be considered ethical to use the latter (at least not without adopting a problematic utilitarian or “ends justify the means” approach).  I would venture to say that the film is more ambivalent in its stance on animal testing than Faraci claims.  Though Caesar’s intelligence seems to make him beyond the reach of science’s bloody hand, other apes are not; certainly other species, like rats, are not.  The film, to my eyes, doesn’t make any definitive statements about whether this state of affairs is right or wrong, justified or not.

The privileging of Caesar above other primates indicates that Rise of the Planet of the Apes equates rights with intelligence, and it defines intelligence as human intelligence.  Like Peter Singer’s “Great Apes Project,” the film reinforces the speciesist assumption that human-like characteristics are superior, more inherently valuable, and more worthy of rights protection than non-human-like traits.  And when Caesar speaks, the film makes a grave error in associating intelligence with the capacity for speech, which is a privilege of human biology that should be considered separately from our IQ.

As we all know, we don’t grant human beings rights based on their performance on an IQ test – so why should it be any different with other species?  We either recognize that these species have an inherent value and interest in living a life free of exploitation or we don’t.  We can’t qualify rights eligibility based on criteria like intelligence without getting into seriously problematic territory.

These points aside, Rise of the Planet of the Apes would be a failure from an animal rights standpoint as a result of a single moment in which Caesar is seen to ride a horse during the battle for ape liberation.  One would like to think that Caesar would recognize his own plight in that of the horse, just as he had recognized the subservience of the dog earlier, and promoted the horse’s liberation rather than himself taking up the reins (literally) of animal exploitation.  If Caesar wants to be left alone, he should also recognize that the horse deserves the same.  (Perhaps it’s fitting, however; while the apes in the film are all played by humans, the horses depicted are actual horses.  The film couldn’t possibly make a coherent case for their liberation while also contributing to their exploitation.)

Ultimately, I think it’s more instructive to point out the shortcomings of films like Rise of the Planet of the Apes rather than simply to take them at face value.  On the face of it, the film is about animal liberation, but how seriously does the film take the cause?  On what grounds does its narrative promote animal rights?  Like most films, Rise falls short of being truly abolitionist, for reasons stated above.  But I hold out hope for a truly vegan cinema that tells stories of animal liberation using allegory or computer-generated animals.  A film that tells us to leave the animals alone has to practise what it preaches.

Guest contributor D.H. Jeffries is a Montreal-based vegan and Ph.D. Student in film studies at Concordia University.  His idea of heaven happens every September, when the Toronto Veg Food Fair and TIFF take place in the same week.

I’d been vegetarian for years before I went vegan. I was never any good at watching those PETA videos, or reading in detail all the horrors endured by farmed animals at the merciless hands of fellow human beings. I thought no further than that consuming the flesh of a murdered animal was wrong.

Prior to my veganism, I was participating in what most call the ‘alternative’ (read: elite) food economy, happily paying the premiums associated with organic milk, free run eggs, etc. As far as I understood, so long as the animal products that I consumed were produced in this alternative way, there was no real moral dilemma. While I now fight feelings of guilt over believing this for so long, I also believe this misperception to be the intention of the animal agriculture industry whose hegemonic influence controls and shapes so much of the dialogue and discourse on food systems.

As bought into and morally comfortable as I was with supporting alternative animal agriculture, there were many critical truths hidden from me, and five in particular I want to share today. I say ‘hidden’ because they were in the truest sense of the word. I was one of those individuals who even visited the farms where my food came from, and I assure you if any of the following critical truths had been made even a smidgen clear to me, I’d have become vegan a lot sooner. It is my sincerest intention that this piece may potentially save you the time and heartache of finding out why vegetarianism, though a great start, isn’t enough.

Critical truth #1: The male calves

I never once as a vegetarian thought about what happened to all the calves born to pregnant cows. I never thought about this because I’d never cognitively processed that cows need to be kept impregnated in order to produce milk (and don’t feel foolish if you didn’t either!). While I was living in the fantasy world of no-meat = no-cruelty, I had no idea that the male calves born to pregnant dairy cows end up as the veal on the plate of some person whose face I want to kick in. I’ll never forget the moment I learned this– I felt duped, betrayed by all the promises made by the dairy companies I’d supported about welfare being the highest priority. If intentionally impregnating female animals and slaughtering their baby animals can be described as taking animal suffering seriously, then by that same standard John Wayne Gacy would have been a great babysitter. And the same goes for all dairy. When we consume a cow, sheep or goat’s milk, we are actively participating in the deaths of these baby animals.

Critical truth #2: The male chicks

Because farmed animals are seen as commodities (no different than say, car parts), when particular animals are seen as purposeless, they are discarded in ways that a psychologist would say must reflect some committed hatred for these little beings. Male chicks who are born onto farms serve no economic ‘function’ and are therefore disposed of in heinous ways. As though spawned from the imagination of some sociopath on steroids, chicks are thrown into grinders, manure pits, etc. When we consume eggs (regardless of whether the carton says ‘free-range’, ‘free-run’, ‘organic’) we are actively participating in this barbarism.

Critical truth #3: The ‘spent’ dairy cows

In my world, when someone retires there is generally a store-bought cake served on party napkins, greeting cards rife with bland jokes about what retirement life will entail, and one of the higher ups gives you a fancy watch. What does a dairy cow get after a life of service (a job she never applied for)? She gets ground into hamburger, that’s what. Despite having life expectancies of 20 years or more, most dairy cows are sent to slaughter as soon as their production decreases (at about 3 or 4 years of age). So by supporting dairy, we are participating in and supporting the meat industry, as it is ‘spent’ dairy cows who end up as the ‘lower quality’ meat in your grocery store.

Critical truth #4: Dairy is a feminist issue

Despite calling myself a feminist since I was a kid (which cost me big time on the playground), and despite having a rich understanding of feminist theory, it had somehow escaped my worldview that the mass, institutionalized control of female farmed animals is the entire basis of the dairy industry (and the meat industry too for that matter). The same dominionistic, patriarchal energy that has siloed men and women (‘us’ versus ‘them’), is responsible for the mammoth sized schism between humans and non-humans. Female cows have their babies stolen from them (sometimes at only a few hours old) and killed for food. Female pigs are confined and constrained in gestation and farrowing crates, and all female farmed animals have their reproductive systems controlled by a profit-thirsty, industrial system designed and perpetuated by a worldview that sees them as mere units, commodities, or capital (instead of as thinking, feeling, individuals). I now understand dairy to be the feminist issue.

Critical truth #5: Sneaky buggers

One thing I learned through my graduate work, is that so long as citizens shift their dollars to alternatively produced animal products (i.e.: ones with stated ‘welfare standards’; ‘organic’;  ’antibiotic free’, etc.) animal-use industries will find a way to co-opt the jargon, the packaging, the colour schemes and the narratives that come with them. Take for example the carton that paints a picture of quaint rurality that communicates several things: a) Old MacDonald lives here b) the cows are free to roam the pasture and appear healthy/happy c) this is an environmentally sustainable, ‘natural’ product. While this sort of packaging may have once been reserved for the organic, alternative (elite) supply markets– today’s eater (hopefully due to their empathetic nature) expects more, and industry is cleverly responding. So long as we settle or concede that the consumption of animals (in any way) is acceptable, we also create massive, lucrative opportunities for industry (with their gargantuan budgets)  to  convince people that their products pass some arbitrary ‘checklist’ for animal welfare, environment sustainability, etc.

I hope, dear vegetarians, that you’ll consider confronting the hypocrisy of abstaining from flesh while consuming dairy and eggs (which support and result in the same suffering and death one seeks to avoid as a vegetarian). May all the beautiful, empathetic reasons you decided to become vegetarian be the same reasons you decide to go vegan!

PS: I have been working on a straightforward visual representation of some of the major issues associated with consuming dairy. It can be found here, please share it far and wide!

Gene Baur sharing stories at the Square (Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur)

And that’s why 10 000 tastes, 10 Billion Reasons was born. It started as a small idea. I saw that Gene Baur, president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary was doing a North American Tour to celebrate the Sanctuary’s 25th Anniversary. What it ended up becoming was a massive publicity campaign, which involved [legally] occupying the largest pedestrian intersection in Canada. 5000 free veggie dogs (courtesy of Tofurky) were distributed to lines of enthusiastic people who braved both a bit of a wait and a bit of rain to opt for the free, vegan option instead of the lunches they’d otherwise likely have eaten. This is what Mercy for Animals calls ‘feed-ins’ and, simply put– they fricking work. Whether we like it or not (and I don’t), we live in a culture motivated by money. Our lines were FULL of people who were there for two reasons: a) to get free lunch and b) because they were at least curious about what a vegan hotdog tastes like. We also had overflowing lines for the vendor stations, which included Yoso, Daiya, Tofurky, Sol Cuisine, Natura, Sweets from the Earth, Sunrise Tofu, and Vega. One vendor actually complained that there weren’t enough actual vegans in the lines. I was a bit perplexed, as our primary motivation for this portion of the event was to fill the mouths of people who would likely never pay money for vegan food, with vegan food. Standing in line they may have thought they were getting the deal, but it’s the movement that benefits. Why?

Because while the person in line believes they’re just trying something new, expecting it to be decent, and carrying on in their merry, animal-eating way, in fact, a seed is being planted. The overwhelming response from vendors was that people who had never tried their products were blown away by the taste and asking where they could be purchased. And one thing I learned from my graduate work is that people need alternatives. So while to some, the strategy may seem a bit odd (feeding them the alternative prior to the real work which is asking them to stop participating in the exploitation of other animals), I think planting a seed this way actually works in our favour. I saw an elderly german couple eat their first veggie dogs, and remark that there was no compromise in taste. I saw two young men, one with a basketball tucked under his arm, come out of the line up with their veggie dogs, grinning like pranksters because they couldn’t believe they were about to try a veggie dog. I polled them after their first bite and I’m happy to report that one of them loved it, and the other said while he tasted a difference, he’d eat them again. Then they asked me why I was vegan, and it turned into a 10 minute conversation in which I was moved by the astonished looks they gave one another as my friend Rachel and I discussed the ethical reasons for a vegan worldview, as well as the environmental and personal health benefits. It was a conversation that I’d likely never have had the opportunity to have. And they were happening all around me. And because social justice for humans is also very important to me, I must make explicit mention of the joy I felt seeing people in the line for free food that I know were hungry. And not hungry because it was their lunch break. Hungry because they are food insecure.

In addition to the food, we had wonderful spaces for local organizations focused on animal issues, which were a flurry of activity. I am so thrilled that the amazing work of Snooters Farm Animal Sanctuary, Toronto Pig Save, Lawyers for Animal Welfare, Ark II, the Toronto Vegetarian Association, Farm Sanctuary, and Anouk’s Ark was showcased in such a high traffic area, with a reported 12 000 people having passed directly through the event.

Gene spent most of the afternoon at the Farm Sanctuary booth sharing stories with longtime supporters and new people alike. There was a certain electricity running through the crowd of animal activists (probably all the repressed urges to rush over and hug him until the end of eternity). Despite being one of the organizers, I confess on more than one occasion I scanned the horizon, saw his happy, handsome face and said “Holy shit, that’s Gene Baur over there!” as though it was pure coincidence, as opposed to the direct result of thousands of hours of work by our amazing team.

Georges Laraque, a formal NHL’er, whose own veganism was instigated after watching Earthlings (and who since then has taken out ads in newspapers and on television to promote his screenings of the film around Montreal) spent the whole day there, talking to reporters, answering questions, and doing everything he could to use his status and notoriety to help other animals. Also in the mix was Toronto Maple Leafer Mike Zigomanis, who chowed down on three veggie dogs and had nothing but good things to say about how much he’s enjoying being vegan. And did I mention there were break dancers and a steam-breathing dragon made out of artichoke hearts, cactus, kale, and dehydrated red peppers? Vegan Mealtime created an absolute piece of art for their live demo!

And that was only the afternoon part.

Great Hall (Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur)

The evening event, which was ticketed (with the intention of fundraising for Farm Sanctuary, Snooters, We Animals and the TVA) took place in the Great Hall of the Hart House at the University of Toronto. We wanted this component to have a sort of gala feel, as many people in the vegan community don’t have those sort of formal celebrations as often as they deserve to. This featured a raffle with over $5000 in prizes which were grouped into different ‘packages’. The raffle alone brought in over $2500, a testament to the desirability of vegan art, products, businesses and services to vegans and non-vegans alike. The 1st Annual Canadian Empathy Awards were a media-friendly way to honour some of Canada’s most steadfast animal defenders. This first year, the recipients included:

• Councillor Wong-Tam and Councillor De Baeremaeker for their work to ban shark fin products in the city of Toronto.
• Lesli Bisgould for using the law to help other animals while also encouraging legislative change to better protect other animals.
• Rabble.ca for issuing their Vegan Challenge in the spring and publishing pieces on veganism and animal rights issues continually.
• Jo-Anne McArthur, the internationally celebrated photojournalist, for her documentary project ‘We Animals‘ which focuses on the lives of animals on all sevencontinents, especially those used by humans.
• Rebecca Aldworth, the Executive Director of Humane Society International (Canada) for her work on the front lines of the resistance to the seal slaughter for 13 years. In the past three years alone, her hard work  has resulted in over 850 000 baby seals being spared from slaughter.
• Georges Laraque, as mentioned above, for his attention focused on animal rights and human rights issues. He is a spokesperson for PETA, the deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada, has been involved in hospital rebuilding efforts in Haiti, has performed in figure skating shows to challenge the stereotypes about gender and sports, and is involved with a vertical farming movement known as Terrasphere. Georges also owns two raw vegan restaurants (Crudessence) in Montreal.