Skywritings

“Marriage” (as opposed to civil contracts), and especially its overlay of fideist fanfare and flim-flam, has always struck me as silly, irrespective of what genders are involved.

But it has also always seemed obvious that there should be an equal right to engage in such silliness, irrespective of what genders are involved.

So I (always slow on the uptake) only started to realize the importance and significance of the LGBT rights movement when I noticed who was opposing it: For, virtually without exception, those who opposed LGBT rights were the very same ones who opposed all or most of what I (and, I think, most decent people) would take to be fair and right.

So here’s Hungary’s Jobbik, a party that embodies and celebrates all the uglier sides of human nature — ethnocentrism, racism, sexism, brutality, violence — putting on a “charm campaign” in Washington to try to make itself look electable to more than just the tail end of the normal curve.

There is an important article in the Hungarian Free Press about the Jobbik/Fidesz “charm campaign” in Washington: “Tad Stahnke: Don’t be duped by Orbán’s charm offensive!“.

Perhaps the most important thing Tad Stancke’s timely report points out is that Jobbik is not the only foul emanation from today’s Hungary: The regime in power, Orban’s Fidesz party, has appropriated most of Jobbik’s ugly agenda — less out of conviction than out of opportunism and utter lack of either principles or scruples — to attract Hungarian voter and expat support.

And plutocratic Fidesz, too, is conducting a charm offensive in America to try to camouflage its affinity to its Charon.

To the point where we can just as well speak of “Fidik,” the fusion of the current body politic with its orbiting doppelganger.

The stance on LGBT rights is, as ever, the canary in the menacing magyar mineshaft.

But there is hope. Because although enough Hungarians are drawn to the Fidik mentality to keep it aloft for now, the decent side of the normal curve is also alive — if currently ailing — in Hungary, protesting against the xenophobic wall of shame under construction, and using their meagre means to help the migrants.

All you ever asked
of life
was thin little flakes
sprinkled frequently enough
so you could munch and munch
to your gentle little heart’s content.

At first I feared,
as your little belly swelled,
that you were egg-bound,
then that you were over-eating,
as your glide became a waddle,
and, alarmingly,
I no longer needed a net
to airlift you to the other tank
so the rest could eat in peace
and you would not burst:

I could just scoop you up
in my hands,
your soft, tubby little form,
and you,
too swollen to struggle,
but now I know,
also too weak.

And I thought
it’s because all you care about
is food.

When my sluggish soul realized
you were neither gravid
nor gourmande
but suffering from a fearful illness
I rushed
to purchase the paraphernalia for a cure,
but you could no longer wait,
nor even resist the filter,
grown stronger than you,
which locked you in its orbit,
so you could only linger there
gasping, helplessly.

So sudden.
Was it because I unjustly underfed you
in your last weeks?
Or failed to freshen your water enough?
Or discovered your ailment too late?
Or the world was just too much — or too little — for you?

Your waddle is still now.

You drift freely with the little whirl-pool.

I don’t know if you still are.

I don’t dare decide not.

And I don’t want to.

I squeeze your bloated little belly
gently, maybe I can expel the poison.

And soon I must umpire the learnèd paper
that confidently argues
that fish do not feel
nor see
nor suffer.

My own little lump of gold,
the only gold of value.

I won’t betray you again.

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains” — Auguste Renoir

Pronounced by someone speaking of his own pain, this statement is noble and betokens all that is good about the human spirit.

But all too often it is not that. It is about beauty (taste, pleasure) for me, and pain for others, especially non-human others.

“I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money… Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?” — J.M. Coetzee, “The Lives of Animals”

On June 13 2015, all around the world – in Paris, Brussels, London, Berlin, Istanbul, Delhi, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal – people gathered to March for the Closing of the Slaughterhouses.

But the slaughterhouses will not close of their own accord.

To close the slaughterhouses people’s eyes and hearts have to be opened. Opening people’s hearts is the only hope for the countless victims – innocent, helpless, without voices, without rights – who are suffering, horribly and needlessly, every moment of every day, everywhere in the world, for our palates.

Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur, The Ghost in Our Machine (with permission)
How to open people’s hearts?

With two fundamental facts that most people do not yet know or believe.

I. The first fundamental fact is that eating meat is not necessary for human survival or human health.

The vegans from all over the world who marched on June 13 were the living proof of this first fundamental fact (Nearly 1% of the world population of 7.5 billion is vegan today.)

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, voiceless, defenceless victims every year.

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.

SEE ALSO:
– Video Captures Terror Of Slaughterhouses – The Dodo
– “Hurt That Bitch”: What Undercover Investigators Saw Inside A Factory Farm – Mother Jones
– Scalding Live Chickens Is Business as Usual on Factory Farms – Mark Bekoff
– Cheap Meat Comes at High Cost to Farm Animals, Wildlife – Stephanie Feldstein
– Let’s #OpentheBarns to Transparency– Matthew Bershadker

Slaughter is the terrifying and horribly painful ending of a short, anguished life full of disease and fear and pain, for innocent, defenceless victims deliberately bred and reared for that purpose. And it is all carefully concealed from the public eye.

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 the June 17 march are very important, but they are not enough to open people’s hearts and close the slaughterhouses.

For that, we first have to open access to 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 people on the planet 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 hope.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain image)

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.

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 today.

As its first consequence, the 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.

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. 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. (Other countries are doing likewise: New Zealand is the latest.)

But this new status, like this public demonstration, are not enough.

Sensitizing Sentients to Sentience

In Quebec, on this new legal basis, and with the help of the new audio-visual evidence, as witnessed by the Quebec public, not only would we be able to prosecute those who do not comply with the existing (inadequate) regulations but we could also press for the passage of stronger and stronger legislation to protect sentient beings.

And the evidence provided by these surveillance Webcams would have a still further effect, apart from the enforcement and strengthening of today’s animal welfare regulations: It would also awaken and sensitize witnesses to the actual horrors made necessary by a non-vegan diet: It would sensitize us all to the sentience of sentient beings.

In place of the shamelessly false advertising images of “happy cows” and “contented chickens” we would all have the inescapable, undeniable, graphic evidence of the unspeakable 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 pain to other innocent feeling beings? Might it inspire us to abolish their needless suffering, instead of just diminish it?

SEE ALSO:
– Federal Report: Vegan Diet Best For Planet – The Hill
– No Lie Can Live Forever: Predicting a Vegan America by 2050 – Kathy Stevens
– 2015 Predictions From Vegan and Plant-Based Nutrition Experts – Sandy Pukel
– Getting from A to Z: Why Animal Activists Should Support Incremental Reforms to Help Animals – Bruce Friedrichs
– It’s About Power, Not Food: The True Causes of World Hunger – Joel Berg

Win/Win Outcome for All

Let me close with a little optimistic numerology and the world’s most benign pyramid scheme for every sentient being on the planet, with no losers other than industries that build profit on suffering:

If each vegan 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.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain image)
It is also entirely 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.

That will also be enough food to feed the world’s current malnourished as well as to allow the last subsistence hunters on the planet to make the transition to a truly fair, sustainable, scalable and merciful means of sustenance.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SeYhE-BsWsY

Le 13 juin 2015, aux quatre coins du monde – à Paris, Bruxelles, Berlin, Londres, Istanbul, Delhi, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montréal – des citoyens se sont réunis et ont marché pour revendiquer la fermeture des abattoirs.

Mais les abattoirs ne se fermeront pas de leur propre gré. Pour faire fermer les abattoirs, il faut d’abord faire ouvrir les yeux et les cœurs des gens. L’ouverture des cœurs est le seul espoir pour les indénombrables victimes innocentes, impuissantes, sans voix, sans droits, qui souffrent horriblement et inutilement, partout au monde, tous les jours, à tout moment.

Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur, The Ghost in Our Machine (avec permission)
Comment ouvrir le cœur des gens?

Avec deux faits fondamentaux que la plupart des gens ne savent ou ne croient pas.

1. Le premier fait fondamental est que manger de la viande n’est nécessaire pour ni la survie ni pour la santé humaine.

Les véganes provenant de partout au monde qui faisaient partie des marches étaient les preuves vivantes de ce premier fait fondamental. On estime qu’il y a 75 millions de véganes sur la planète: 1% de la population totale de 7,5 milliards.

2. Le deuxième fait fondamental est que, pour fournir cette viande qui n’est pas nécessaire à la survie et à la santé des 7,5 milliards d’êtres humains sur la planète, une quantité inimaginable de souffrance est nécessaire de la part de plus de 150 milliards de victimes innocentes, sans défense, sans voix, chaque année.

L’abattage pour nous fournir en viande n’est pas l’euthanasie. Il ne s’agit pas de la terminaison d’une longue vie heureuse, sans terreur, sans douleur, afin d’épargner de la souffrance à la victime d’une terrible maladie incurable ou d’une douleur insupportable.

LIRE AUSSI: Dans le couloir de la mort: une ex-inspectrice d’abattoir témoigne

L’abattage est la terminaison terrifiante et terriblement douloureuse d’une vie courte, pleine de maladies et de douleurs, de victimes innocentes qui ont été engendrées et élevées dans le but d’être impitoyablement abattues.

Et tout ça, sans aucune nécessité pour notre survie ou notre santé. Nous ne leur faisons toutes ces horreurs que pour le plaisir de nos palais, et par habitude.

Les manifestations comme celle du 13 juin sont très importantes, mais elles ne suffisent pas pour ouvrir le cœur des gens et pour fermer les abattoirs.

Pour cela, nous devons d’abord ouvrir les abattoirs, avec des webcams de surveillance audiovisuelles, placées dans tous les sites des abominations – caméras qui filmeront les horreurs et les transmettront toutes, immédiatement, de façon continue et permanente, sur le Web. Comme ça, tout les citoyens pourront devenir témoins du coût terrible en termes d’agonie qu’infligent nos préférences gustatives, à chaque instant de chaque jour, partout, aux êtres sensibles, innocents, sans défense, sans droits, sans voix, sans répit, sans secours.

Photo: Image Wikimedia Commons (Domaine public)
Tout le monde ne regardera pas ces vidéos sur le Web. Mais le nombre de témoins qui regarderont, verront et ainsi sauront la vérité déchirante, augmentera de plus en plus le nombre de ceux qui le savent aujourd’hui, à un moment où la vérité reste toujours hermétiquement cachée de nos yeux et de nos cœurs. Et ceux d’entre nous qui connaîtrons cette vérité pourrons fournir la voix aux victimes.

Les réglementations existantes pour minimiser la souffrance dans les abattoirs sont honteusement insuffisantes: comment peut-on mettre fin à une vie innocente, sans nécessité, de manière humanitaire? Mais même les réglementations inadéquates qui existent aujourd’hui ne sont ni appliquées, ni surveillées, ni contrôlées adéquatement.

La surveillance publique des abattoirs, basée sur les preuves diffusées sur le Web, témoignées et rapportées par un nombre croissant de citoyens militant pour la protection des animaux, fera en sorte que déjà les réglementations inadéquates d’aujourd’hui – ainsi que les poursuites pour leur violation – seront mises en vigueur beaucoup plus rigoureusement.

Au Québec, qui avait été jusqu’ici la pire province au Canada pour la protection des animaux, nous venons d’acquérir un principe de base juridique pour revendiquer une surveillance rigoureuse des abattoirs: début juin, l’Assemblée nationale du Québec a tenu compte des nombreuses voix qui sont élevées au nom des animaux.

Le Code civil du Québec vient d’être modifié pour accorder aux animaux le statut d’êtres sensibles au lieu du statut de propriété inerte – ou biens meubles – comme anciennement. Mais cette nouvelle loi, comme la manifestation du 13 juin ne suffisent pas.

Sur cette nouvelle base juridique, et à l’aide des preuves audiovisuelles rapportées par des citoyens québécois, nous pourrons non seulement poursuivre ceux qui ne respectent pas les réglementations actuelles, inadéquates, mais nous pourrons aussi exiger l’adoption des lois de plus en plus fortes pour protéger les êtres sensibles.

Les preuves transmises par ces webcams de surveillance serviront aussi à sensibiliser tous les citoyens concernant les horreurs nécessitées par une diète non-végane. Il s’agira de la sensibilisation à la sensibilité des êtres sensibles.

Et ce sont les preuves incontournables des souffrances de ces victimes sensibles – et de l’inutilité de leurs souffrances – qui risquent à nous inspirer tous à ne plus demeurer non-véganes – sans aucune nécessité vitale, juste pour le plaisir gustatif – à ces terribles frais.

LIRE AUSSI
– Arrêtez de manger de la viande (et sauvez la planète) – Moby
– Être végane ET athlète de haut niveau, c’est possible – Élise Desaulniers
– Ma vie de végétarien – Paul McCartney
– Les végétariens vivent-ils plus longtemps ?

Permettez-moi de conclure avec un peu de numérologie optimiste et une ruse pyramidale la plus bénigne du monde: si chaque végane aujourd’hui inspire encore 6 non-véganes à devenir végane ainsi qu’à inspirer à leur tour encore 6 non-véganes à devenir végane, et ainsi de suite, alors en seulement 9 étapes toute la population du Québec sera végane, en 10 étapes tous les Canadiens, à 11 le Canada ainsi que les États-Unis, et à 12-13, ça sera le monde entier.

Photo: Image Wikimedia Commons (Domaine public)
Il faut noter également qu’il est tout à fait juste que ça soit avec nous, qui sommes parmi les citoyens les plus prospères et les mieux nourris au monde, que tout cela démarre.

Au moment où nous aurions fermé tous nos abattoirs industriels et re-dédié nos terres vers la production directe d’aliments à nourrir les gens – au lieu de les utiliser à élever, nourrir et ensuite massacrer d’innombrables victimes innocentes, inutilement – la planète produira ainsi 40% plus de nourriture, 60% moins de pollution et 90% moins de souffrance.

Ceci sera assez pour nourrir toutes les victimes de la famine ainsi qu’à permettre aux derniers chasseurs de subsistance sur la planète de faire la transition vers une consommation réellement équitable et miséricordieuse.

Compassion. One very sad fact about the animal rights movement is that it has a lot of internecine hostilities. Some of them are evident in the comments on Ashitha’s Nagesh’s article “Vegans need to stop comparing the treatment of animals to slavery“. Ashitha is a vegan. She was only objecting to the slavery analogy because it might hurt some people’s feelings. But some of the commentators have been attacking her as if she were a promotor of animal suffering rather than a vegan like themselves.

Some of this is no doubt because it is so frustrating for those who have been sensitized to animal suffering to be so impotent in the face of so much of it, and so much indifference to it. But Ashitha is not one of that vast majority who are indifferent to it. She is just concerned that the slavery analogy might be hurting the cause of the animals. And she might conceivably be right (even though I think she is wrong, and I use the analogy myself).

But Ashitha is a vegan, and acting in good faith. She does not deserve the vicious remarks being made by some of the commentators on her article. And if anything is likely to hurt the cause of animals, it’s that sort of aggression, so obviously misplaced here.

Vegans need to project compassion, not aggression. It is compassion that animals need. It is aggression that hurts and kills them.

Commensurability. No one knows what message, what approach, what evidence, what argument will help to put an end to the horrors, as soon as possible.

I am the offspring of Holocaust survivors (and I myself was a kind of Holocaust survivor, in utero). I lost 27 members of my family who were taken to Auschwitz by cattle-trains — “just if they were cattle” — to be slaughtered. I too used the “as if they were cattle” simile, without thinking, along with its implicit implication that it’s OK for cattle, just not for humans. And I too was shocked and hurt, at first, by the analogy between the Holocaust and animal slaughter (even though I too had long been a vegetarian and had more recently become a vegan).

At first. But when I thought about it more — and despite the obvious disanalogy that Jews were being genocidally annihilated, precisely because they were Jews, whereas animals are continuously being purpose-bred, deliberately, to keep on being slaughtered for our taste-pleasure — I realized that, no, the analogy was nevertheless fundamentally right in the relevant aspects, and that it needs to be said.

Slaughtering sentient (feeling) beings as if they were insentient objects is monstrous, and monstrous in exactly the same way, whether those that are being slaughtered are black or white, man or woman, child or adult, Jew or Gentile or, yes, person or pig. It is indifference toward the suffering of those one considers so different that they don’t matter. It began before racism and slavery. It was already there in merciless and genocidal inter-tribal warfare and even inter-family vendettas. Always the different ones; the ones that matter less than “us.”

And, yes, we’ve come a long way. If we’ve not stopped doing it to people, we’ve at least outlawed it, and most of us obey and embrace those laws.

Animals are the last unprotected victims of the very same horrors, and the very same human indifference. And their scale of suffering has just grown and grown. Let us not evoke their difference as a justification for treating their suffering as if it were somehow less wrong, somehow less horrible. It’s not.

All feelings matter. But the ones that matter most here are not those of the people who are offended by the comparison, but those of the victims. At least 150 billion of them per year. If they can be helped by pointing out that we are treating them as monstrously as we have treated people in the past, then let it be said.

Let me close with a quote from Coetzee:

“I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money… Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?” — — J.M. Coetzee, “The Lives of Animals”

“What does a vegan eat?”

Tons of stuff: In fact food tastes much better to me now that I am vegan than it did during the years I was a carnivore, and then a vegetarian.

The reason is that our metabolism — that of a contextual omnivore rather than an obligate carnivore — has two modalities.

Originally, and through large parts of our evolutionary history, we were herbivores and ate only plant-based foods (grains, beans, vegetables, fruits). There were also times when the only way we could survive was by hunting meat (esp. the paleolithic period).

And then we invented (rather than evolved) agriculture, and we could again have enough to eat through plant-based sources alone. We had developed adaptations along the way for meat-eating, even though our digestive system is basically still that of a herbivore, with yards of intestines instead of the carnivore’s short gut and strong digestive enzymes.

So, as with many biological contexts, there was a cue that indicated to our metabolic system which of the two “modes” — herbivore V or carnivore M — we were in, and that cue was the presence of animal protein in what we ate. And, also like many other contextual modes, one of the modes was dominant over the other. And the dominant one was the carnivore mode (M). If meat was available, and we ate it, then our metabolism went into M-mode, we got a strong appetite for meat, and an indifference or even a distaste for vegetables. Meat also had the advantage that it was almost completely self-sufficient: The body could get almost everything it needed from meat alone, as in true carnivores. (Not quite, but almost.)

The cue for V-mode was the absence of animal protein in what we ate. Vegetarians, however, are not in V-mode, because they eat eggs, milk and cheese, which are animal proteins. So vegetarians do not have the strong appetite for vegetables that vegans do. They still crave meat. I noticed the change in my appetite about 8 months after I had stopped eating animal protein completely.

(There are a few supplements that vegans need to eat unless they are very careful about their diets, but these supplements are easily available today, and just about everyone takes them anyway, whether meat-eater, vegetarian or vegan. They are mainly vitamin B12, calcium, Vitamin D and omega-3 oil, plus a few other occasional ones (e.g., iodine, iron, B6), all of them available from plant or synthetic sources).

That’s the story. And all these animals are being bred, suffering and dying — because we have chosen M-mode (not a forced choice, except in the few remaining paleolithic hunter environments like the northern Inuit or the deep amazon jungle natives). The choice was purely a cultural one, a matter of acquired taste, though once the animal protein was being consumed, the cues of the M-mode kept reinforcing our choice, making us feel as if we could not live, or enjoy eating, without eating animal-protein. And because M-mode is dominant, this appetite gets stronger, spreads worldwide, and we want to eat more and more meat, as the Chinese (and all nouveau-riches) are now doing. And of course the result is also the obese meat-and-potatoes Americans, heart-disease, diabetes, as well as the secondary ailments because of the hormones and antibiotics with which the animal victims have to be plied to keep producing them at industrial scale.

The dominance of M over V is one of the things that is making it so hard to convert everyone to veganism. But the other thing is the enormous and prosperous meat/fish/dairy/egg industry, which does everything to cultivate our M-mode appetites. (Dairy does the biggest job because cow’s milk is actually so bad for us, both as children and adults: milk-consumption is propped up by advertising and misinformation very much the way cigarette-consumption used to be.) The infamous ag-gag laws that prevent viewing or filming the way animals are industrially raised and slaughtered are the ugliest aspect of the way the industry safeguards its revenue streams. But the real causes are of course us, the consumers that sustain them.

Eventually, of course, the unsustainability of our astronomical level of meat production and consumption, and the pollution, environmental and resource destruction it causes, the illness and scarcity, will force us all to become vegans.

But before that, how many more innocent, helpless creatures are going to be bred, brutalized and butchered in their short lives of misery — and all (I can’t repeat it enough) completely needlessly?

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.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SeYhE-BsWsY

Ce jour-ci, partout au monde – Paris, Bruxelles, Berlin, Londres, Istanbul, Delhi, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montréal –nous sommes réunis pour revendiquer la fermeture des abattoirs.

Mais les abattoirs ne se fermeront pas de leur propre gré.

Pour faire fermer les abattoirs il faut d’abord faire ouvrir les yeux et les cœurs des gens.

L’ouverture des cœurs est le seul espoir pour les indénombrables victimes innocentes, impuissantes, sans voix, sans droits, qui souffrent horriblement et inutilement, partout au monde, tous les jours, à tout moment.

Comment ouvrir le cœur des gens?

Avec deux faits fondamentaux que la plupart des gens ne savent ou ne croient pas.

I. Le premier fait fondamental est que manger de la viande n’est nécessaire pour ni la survie ni pour la santé humaine.
http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/2009_ADA_position_paper.pdf

Combien de personnes présentes ici à cette marche sont des végétaliens ou des végétariens? (Svp lever la main.)

Voilà, vous êtes la preuve vivante de ce premier fait fondamental.

II. Le deuxième fait fondamental est que, pour fournir cette viande qui n’est pas nécessaire à la survie et à la santé des 7,5 milliards d’êtres humains sur la planète, une quantité inimaginable de souffrance est nécessaire de la part de plus de 150 milliards de victimes innocentes, sans défense, sans voix, chaque année. http://www.unjoursansviande.be/compteurdelamort.html

L’abattage pour nous fournir en viande n’est pas l’euthanasie. Il ne s’agit pas de la terminaison d’une longue vie heureuse, sans terreur, sans douleur, afin d’épargner de la souffrance à la victime d’une terrible maladie incurable ou d’une douleur insupportable.

L’abbatage est la terminaison terrifiante et terriblement douloureuse d’une vie courte et pleine de maladies et de douleurs, de la part de victimes innocentes qui ont été engendrées et élevées exprès pour être impitoyablement abattues. http://j.mp/images-abattoirs

Et tout ça sans aucune nécessité pour notre survie ou notre santé. Nous ne leur faisons toutes ces horreurs que pour le plaisir de nos palais, et par habitude.

Les manifestations comme celle d’aujourd’hui sont très importantes, mais elles ne suffisent pas pour ouvrir le cœur des gens et pour fermer les abattoirs.

Pour cela, nous devons d’abord ouvrir les abattoirs, avec des Webcam de surveillance audiovisuelles, placées à tous les sites des abominations – caméras qui filmeront les horreurs et les transmettront toutes, immédiatement, de façon continue et permanente, sur le Web. Comme ça tout les citoyens peuvent devenir témoin du coût terrible en termes d’agonie qu’infligent nos préférences gustatives, à chaque instant de chaque jour, partout, aux êtres sensibles, innocents, sans défense, sans droits, sans voix, sans répit, sans secours.

Ce n’est pas tout le monde qui regardera ces vidéos sur le Web.

Mais le nombre de témoins qui regarderont, verront et ainsi sauront la vérité déchirante par ce moyen augmentera de plus en plus le nombre de ceux qui le savent aujourd’hui, à un moment où la vérité reste toujours hermétiquement cachée de nos yeux et de nos cœurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag

Et ceux d’entre nous qui connaitrons cette vérité pourrons fournir la voix aux victimes.

Les réglementations existantes pour minimiser la souffrance dans les abattoirs sont honteusement insuffisantes : Comment peut-on mettre fin à une vie innocente, sans nécessité, de manière humanitaire?

Mais même les réglementations inadéquates qui existent aujourd’hui ne sont ni appliquées ni surveillées ni contrôlées adéquatement.

La surveillance publique des abattoirs, basée sur les preuves diffusées sur le Web, témoignées et rapportées par un nombre croissant de citoyens militant pour la protection des animaux fera en sorte que déjà les réglementations inadéquates d’aujourd’hui – ainsi que les poursuites pour leur violation – seront mises en vigueur beaucoup plus rigoureusement.

Nous venons d’acquérir un principe de base juridique pour revendiquer une surveillance rigoureuse des abattoirs: La semaine dernière, l’Assemblée nationale du Québec, la province qui fut jusqu’ici la pire au Canada pour la protection des animaux, a tenu compte des nombreuses voix Québecoises soulevées au nom des animaux. http://lesanimauxnesontpasdeschoses.ca

Le Code civile du Québec vient d’être modifié pour accorder aux animaux le statut d’êtres sensibles au lieu du statut de propriété inerte – ou biens meubles — comme anciennement. http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/travaux-parlementaires/assemblee-nationale/41-1/journal-debats/20150605/148869.html#10h

Mais cette nouvelle loi, comme cette manifestation, ne suffit pas.

Sur cette nouvelle base juridique, et à l’aide des preuves audiovisuelles, témoignées par toute la citoyenneté québécoise, nous pourrons non seulement poursuivre ceux qui ne respectent pas les réglementations actuelles, inadéquates, mais nous pourrons aussi exiger l’adoption des lois de plus en plus fortes pour protéger les êtres sensibles.

Les preuves transmises par ces Webcams de surveillance serviront aussi à sensibiliser tous les citoyens concernant les horreurs nécessitées par une diète non-végane.

Il s’agira de la sensibilisation à la sensibilité des êtres sensibles.

Et c’est les preuves incontournables des souffrances de ces victimes sensibles — et de l’inutilité de leurs souffrances — qui risquent à nous inspirer tous à ne plus demeurer non-véganes — sans aucune nécessité vitale, juste pour le plaisir gustatif — à ces terribles frais.

Permettez-moi de conclure avec un peu de numérologie optimiste et une ruse pyramidale la plus bénigne du monde:

Si chaque végane qui est présent ici aujourd’hui inspire encore 6 non-véganes à (1) devenir végane ainsi qu’à (2) inspirer à leur tour encore 6 non-véganes à devenir végane et ainsi de suite, alors en seulement 9 étappes toute la population du Québec sera végane, en 10 étapes tous les Canadiens, à 11 le Canada ainsi que les États-Unis, et entre 12 et 13 ça sera le monde entier.

Il faut noter également qu’il est tout à fait juste que ça soit avec nous-autres, qui sommes parmi les citoyens les plus prospères et les mieux-nourris au monde, que tout cela démarre.

Au moment où nous aurions fermé tous nos abattoirs industriels et re-dédié nos terres vers la production directe d’aliments à nourrir les gens — au lieu de les utiliser à élever, nourrir et ensuite massacrer d’innombrables victimes innocentes, inutilement — la planète produira ainsi 40% plus de nourriture, 60% moins de pollution et 90% moins de souffrance. http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/

Ceci sera assez pour nourrir toutes les victimes de la famine ainsi qu’à permettre aux derniers chasseurs de subsistance sur la planète de faire la transition vers une consommation réellement équitable et miséricordieuse.

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“I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money… Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?”

J.M. Coetzee, “The Lives of Animals”

Photo by Joanne McArthur, We Animals