https://youtube.com/watch?v=SeYhE-BsWsY
On this day, all around the world – in Paris, Brussels, London, Berlin, Istanbul, Delhi, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal – we are gathering to plead for the closing of the slaughterhouses.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1382127222102879/
But the slaughterhouses will not close of their own accord
To close the slaughterhouses we have to open people’s eyes and hearts.
Opening people’s hearts is the only hope for the countless victims – innocent, helpless, without voices, without rights – who are suffer horribly and needlessly, every moment of every day, everywhere in the world, for our palates.
How to open people’s hearts?
With two fundamental facts that most people do not know or believe.
I: The first fundamental fact is that eating meat is not necessary for human survival or human health.
http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf
How many people here are vegans or vegetarians? (Please raise your hands.)
You are the living proof of this first fundamental fact.
II: The second fundamental fact is that in order to provide this meat that is not necessary for the survival or health of the 7.5 billion humans on the planet, an unimaginable amount of suffering is necessary for over 150 billion innocent, defenceless, voiceless victims every year.
http://www.occupyforanimals.net/animal-kill-counter.html
Slaughter for meat is not euthanasia. It is not the merciful, pain-free, terror-free ending of a long, happy life in order to spare the victim from suffering a terrible incurable disease or unbearable pain.
Slaughter is the terrifying and horribly painful ending of a short life full of disease and fear and pain, for innocent, helpless victims deliberately bred and reared for that purpose.
http://j.mp/images-abattoirs
And it is completely unnecessary for our survival or health. We inflict all this pain on the victims only for taste pleasure, and out of habit.
Demonstrations like today’s are very important, but they are not enough to open people’s hearts and close the slaughterhouses.
For that, we first have to open the slaughterhouses, with audio-visual surveillance Webcams placed at all the sites of the abominations (breeding, rearing, transport, slaughter) — cameras that will film the horrors and stream them all immediately, continuously and permanently on the Web so that all citizens can witness the terrible cost in agony that our taste-preferences are inflicting, every moment of every day, everywhere, on our victims: sentient beings, innocent, defenseless, without rights, without voice, without respite, without help.
http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/176/7/162.1.extract
Not everyone will look at the videos streamed on the web.
But the number of witnesses who will look and see will grow and grow. And with them will grow the knowledge of the heartbreaking truth, the reality that has till now been hermetically hidden from our eyes and our hearts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
And those of us who come to know the awful truth can provide the eyes and the voice for the victims.
The existing regulations for minimizing suffering in slaughterhouses are shamefully inadequate — how can one needlessly end an innocent life humanely?
But even these existing, inadequate regulations are not being enforced or monitored or obeyed.
As its first consequence, this crowd-sourced monitoring of slaughterhouses, based on the evidence streamed and stored publicly on the web, witnessed and reported by a growing number of informed and concerned citizens, will help to ensure that today’s existing (though inadequate) regulations – and prosecution for their violation – are enforced more and more reliably and rigorously.
Here in Quebec, the province that has until now been the worst in Canada for animal welfare, we have just acquired a legal basis for requiring rigorous monitoring of slaughterhouses: the National Assembly has heeded the many Quebec voices raised on behalf of protecting animals from suffering.
http://lesanimauxnesontpasdeschoses.ca
The Quebec Civil Code has been amended to give animals the status of sentient beings instead of the status of inert property – or movable goods – as formerly.
http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/travaux-parlementaires/assemblee-nationale/41-1/journal-debats/20150605/148869.html#10h
But this new law, like this public demonstration, is not enough.
On this new legal basis, and with the help of the new audio-visual evidence, as witnessed by the Quebec public, not only can we prosecute those who do not comply with the existing (inadequate) regulations but we can also press for the passage of stronger and stronger legislation to protect sentient beings.
And the evidence provided by these surveillance Webcams will have a still further effect, apart from the enforcement and the strengthening of animal welfare regulations: It will also awaken witnesses to the actual horrors made necessary by a non-vegan diet:
It will sensitize us all to the sentience of sentient beings.
We will all have the inescapable, undeniable, graphic evidence of the suffering of these innocent, sentient victims – and the utter needlessness of their suffering.
Might this not at last inspire us all not to remain non-vegan, just for the pleasure of the taste, at this terrible cost in suffering for other innocent, feeling beings? Might it inspire us to abolish their needless suffering, instead of just diminish it?
Let me close with a little optimistic numerology and the world’s most benign pyramid scheme:
If each vegan here today inspires just 6 more non-vegans (1) to become vegan AND (2) to each inspire 6 more non-vegans to become vegan, then in just 9 steps all of the population of Quebec will be vegan, in 10 steps all of Canada, in 11 Canada and the United States, and in 12-13 the whole world.
Note also that it is fair that it should be ourselves, the most prosperous and well-fed populace in the world, who start. By the time we have closed all of our industrial slaughterhouses and converted the land to producing food to feed people instead of using it to breed, feed and butcher innocent victims, needlessly, the planet will be producing 40% more human food, 60% less pollution and 90% less suffering – with enough left to sustain natural wildlife and their habitat too.
http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
That will also be enough food to feed the world’s current famine victims, as well as to allow the last subsistence hunters on the planet to make the transition to a truly fair and merciful sustenance.
