Is Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) anti-vegan? (Please excuse some repetition on my part about a third of the way into the episode. Persist through this part as I get back on track after a few minutes š )
This episode discusses this question. My apologies for the length of this episode (1 hr 23 mins). I have shared some audio excerpts and have commented on them. You can find the excerpts at 19.15,Ā 22.58,Ā 23.50, 56.58, 101.05, 105.50,Ā 107.30, 108.40,Ā 111.25, 113.25, 116.20, 117.40, and 119.20.
The following quotes are from Wayne Hsiung’s (Direct Action Everywhere) 2009 essay titled “Boycott Veganism”:
“To sum up, veganism, far from helping animals, is a huge problem for the animal rights movement. If we want to stand up for animals, then we should stop calling ourselves vegan; stop asking others to go vegan; and even stop using the word vegan. When asked, we should state that our fight is for equality, justice, and freedom — not for a plant-based diet.”
“In fact, the concept of veganism is harmful to the animal rights movement. And if you are serious about working for animal liberation, the first thing you should boycott is neither meat nor dairy nor eggs. The first thing you should boycottā¦ is veganism.”
In episode 13, I take a brief look at yet another new gimmick āMeat-Free Week Australiaā (just one in an increasingly long line) and the problems associated. I share an excerpt by Prof. Gary Steiner about anthropocentrism and a couple of works about the āhumaneā myth.
Disclaimer: Please note I do not endorse opinions, links, individuals or ads on external sites.
In episode 11, I speak a little about “enriched cages”, “free range” eggs and “Meatless Mondays”.
I invite you to check out links to a number of excellent blogs about these issues I discuss. They can be found in the information section.
There’s many videos online displaying “enriched caged” systems, some by the industry.Ā I do not know where the following video was taken but it looks like an industry video. I could not see any information associated with it.
The truth is that ALL use is abuse. No amount of trying to pretty up animal exploitation will ever hide what we all know deep inside —Ā that using nonhuman sentient beings as “things, as resources is morally unjustifiable and needs to end.
The Egg industry claims that egg sales have skyrocketed since “Meatless Mondays” was introduced.Ā Please reject “Meatless Mondays”. It makes moral distinctions between animal products as if one is worse than another when they are all a result of tremendous violence.Ā If we make an ethical decision to reject something that is morally wrong, then we must reject it all, and not just on certain days.
Please go vegan. It’s the only morally consistent solution. It’s much easier than you think. It will be one of the best decisions you make in your life. Your only regret will be that you didn’t go vegan sooner. Here’s a good vegan resource
The music intro was an excerpt of “Carolan’s Dream“.Ā Turlough O’Carolan, (1670 ā 25 March 1738) was a blind early Irish harper, composer and singer.
Disclaimer: Please note I do not endorse opinions, links, individuals or ads on any external sites.
Consider the lives of āfree-rangeā hens. āFree-rangeā egg producers generally purchase layer hens from the same hatcheries as traditional egg producers. Half of the chicks born in the hatcheries are males who are ādisposed ofā often in cruel ways, including being thrown live into machines that grind their bodies up or into trash bags and/or large dumpsters where they either starve or suffocate to death. Further, since ālayer hensā typically are not sufficiently productive after two years, they are sent to slaughter at that time. The āfree-rangeā egg industry relies heavily on the routine mass-slaughter of animals to be economically feasible.
The lives of āfree-rangeā layer hens before slaughter are generally a living hell. The āfree-rangeā egg label means only that the birds are permitted some access outdoors, even if it is only a miniscule fraction of the space of the large shed in which they live. Because of intensive overcrowding in these sheds, and because chickens are social animals who have a literal āpecking orderā, their sensitive beaks are cut with a hot blade (to cauterize the blood flow) so they cannot hurt each other in trying to establish an impossible order in such crowded conditions. Also due to the crowding in a large, often poorly lit shed, the conditions of a typical āfree-rangeā facility are filthy with excrement on the floor in which the hens live and extremely poor air quality due to the lack of ventilation. In addition to the harsh living conditions, the hens are genetically designed to be enormously productive in laying eggs, which causes them to be less healthy than traditional hens. The poor health of layers is largely due to the fact that chickens who are not exploited eat most of their eggs (in natural conditions, only a small percentage of eggs hatch), replenishing the nutrients they lose in the eggs they produce. When their eggs are taken from the hens, the hens lose the opportunity to replenish the nutrients lost in producing the egg. Genetically-designed, highly productive layers lose even more nutrients and end up even poorer in health because they lose more eggs to humans than natural hens.
The egg production of hens peaks when the hens are around seven months old and drops significantly at around 15 months old. To get an extra six months of production out of the hens, āfree-rangeā producers will engage in a practiced called āforced moltingā to imitate the conditions of the winter-spring transition. In forced molting, the hens are starved for several days up to 14 days and the lighting in the shed is dimmed. Hens can lose up to 30% of their body weight during this starvation process and some of the weaker hens ā already malnourished from not being able to consume their own eggs ā are killed as a result. Several weeks after the forced molt ends, production is back to normal.
After the āfree-rangeā hens are āspentā, a condition in which they can no longer produce eggs at a commercially-viable rate and in which their health has deteriorated significantly from both the wretched living conditions and from losing nutrients from egg production/loss, the hens are transported to slaughter. Both transportation and slaughter can mean some of the most intensive cruelty the hens have yet experienced. They and their bones are very weak from giving so much nutrition for so long without replenishment from eating their own eggs. When they are handled roughly in transportation and slaughter, their bones are often broken. Also, layer hens are generally not used for human meat consumption; the meat is of very poor quality due to the poor health of the hens. āFree-rangeā hens end up at the same slaughterhouses as any other chicken where they are often intentionally tortured ā hurled against the wall and stomped upon ā by frustrated workers in poor working conditions with low pay. Even if the ā free-rangeā chickens are not intentionally tortured, some miss the electric āstunningā bath and neck blade (from struggling upside-down in their leg shackles) and instead are boiled alive in the de-feathering (scalding) tank.
Commercially-viable egg production, regardless of the label (āfree-rangeā, ācage-freeā, or āorganicā), is extremely cruel to chickens. As mentioned above, hens who are not exploited eat most of their eggs as a natural way to replenish many of the nutrients they lose in producing eggs. Even in the best conditions imaginable, such as in a sanctuary or in the wild, it is unhealthy and exploitative to the hens to take their eggs from them. When we add the extremely cruel living conditions that āfree-rangeā hens endure along with the mass-slaughtering that is required to keep egg production economically feasible, consuming eggs simply makes no sense at all for anyone concerned about the treatment or slaughter of animals.
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I hope you found this episode somewhat informative. Please join me next time. š
Welcome to my Vegan Trove podcast Ep 10. In this episode, Ā I share some thoughts on the current so-called current “animal rights” movement and I share some thoughts by others about the movement. I talk specifically about certain organisations.
Please note when I mentioned human exploitation, I really meant to say human oppression. I probably could have been clearer when explaining the connection between nonhuman animal rights and human rights.
I touch on how nonhuman animals rights and human rights are linked. I emphasise the need for a strong and morally consistent movement that must have veganism as its moral baseline. I think you will find some excerpts of other abolitionists speaking interesting.
Please view the below letter to Whole Foods by the so-called “animal rights” movement congratulating Whole Foods on their “humane” animal products.
Friends, I thought it important to address this issue since there’s a number of problems with this particular advocacy group Direct Action Everywhere’s strategy and theory, in particular the most welfarist indicator of them all — their decision not to mention veganism –Ā the very action needed to end the property status of animals.
A reading of Pulitzer Prize recipient Chris Hedges’ essay ( posted Jan 4, 2015 )Ā Ā “All Forms of Life Are Sacred“. His essay discusses veganism and the moral imperative.Ā Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize recipient and his bio can be found here.Ā He is also a regular contributor to Truthdig.com and his essays are posted each Monday.
Normally I discuss various issues in my episodes, but I decided there would be some value in reading this essay.Ā Next time I will return to discussing issues as usual.Ā I hope you enjoyed today’s episode š
I apologise for any poor pronunciation of any author’s name.
Disclaimer: Please note I do not endorse opinions of authors nor do I endorse individuals mentioned and I do not endorse any links, opinions or ads on external sites.
Please feel free to leave feedback / comments whether positive or negative as long as it is constructive and civil.
This podcast discusses some articles, one about animal industry and its partnership with Big Pharma. It discusses some attempts to “improve” animal exploitation through sedation of cows, and some other studies in relation to animal behaviour and how predictable it is and how this will be utilised by animal industry to promote “happy” animal slavery to the public.Ā I also talk a little about vegans who try to suppress other vegans from talking about veganism and I read a small piece by Angel Flinn from Gentle World.
As I mentioned, here are some links to some of the topics I discussed and a few extra about the dairy industry.
