Despite its extraordinary cruelty, the practice of eating live meat continues to be accepted in many cultures. Once again, as with many of our cruel practices, it hides out under the umbrella of “tradition” – something apparently “natural” and “ordinary” that can never be changed. These practices may be based on tradition, but they are also based on a relationship with animals and the natural world that is flawed.

Not only is it flawed morally to eat live animals, it is wrong and unnecessary. Unbelievably, the enjoyment and so-called benefits of live meat are connected with the animals’ vitality and their suffering when they die. These ingredients though, are nothing more than fantasies imposed on animals. They are a substitute for a proper relationship with animals and the natural world. People fantasize that they can somehow “extract” human vitality from meat by torturing the animal in a cruel and childish manner. The vital relationship that is sought with animals through their suffering is the wrong kind. Being in harmony with nature and our own instincts means understanding ourselves as part of the natural world and not in dominion over it. It’s time to harness our relationship with nature to create new traditions, rather than tolerate the horrible suffering of animals who are tortured in front of us.

Please sign the petition and share: https://www.change.org/p/11789461/u/21698275?utm_medium=email&utm_source=petition_update&utm_campaign=161384&sfmc_tk=Dowxu8LO90xJJIwA1v0PdGZUiKat%2FO6YYXKZEl6blAOrdZv4s0s9wvx7AzN6NkCU&j=161384&sfmc_sub=141196959&l=32_HTML&u=30269140&mid=7259882&jb=13

Animals do not have to suffer so that humans or other animals can live – and in fact, that suffering seldom produces results and wastes research dollars. An article penned by a neuroscientist and PETA research associate details how so-called “breakthroughs” in new treatments using lab animals very rarely translate to results for humans. We also have new science proving other methods to be more effective. Take for example, this news that algorithms crunching databases of large amounts of chemical data are more effective than toxicology tests on animals.

Animal testing increasingly looks more like a cruel sport than a necessary stage in testing. As the above article comments, one researcher hangs mice from their feet, sets mice against each other to measure stress and cuts into their brains. Like so many outdated practices, animal testing reinforces the myth of its own necessity. But isn’t necessity the mother of invention? As animal testing has become less acceptable, new methods have sprung up. In America, animals are still tested on because small animals aren’t covered by the Animal Welfare Act, a legacy of our disregard for creatures other than humans. See what you can do to write to your local lab or university to ask them to stop animal testing. Chances are, they have the science to help them do so.

Would violent psychopaths stand out more in a culture where animal cruelty wasn’t tolerated? From this list of violent criminals who tested on animals provided by PETA, it appears that animal testing can provide a convenient veil for violent psychopaths to hide behind. If these criminals didn’t get to wreak cruelty on animals in a legitimized setting, perhaps their latent cruelty and violence would be spotted earlier and checked.

Of course, most animal testers are not psychopaths. But society’s cognitive dissonance on morality – we preach kindness to humans and practice cruelty to each other and animals – is the reason why the violent can continue to blend in easily. Aggression, violence and cold disregard for life is the secret gospel that a mechanistic, capitalist society is preaching. And if psychopaths can get their start in animal testing with no questions asked, those without violent tendencies may be broken down by these norms, suffering a huge psychological cost. The psychological health of people working in industries that harm animals should be a huge concern as it breeds both trauma and violence. Neither of these effects – whether they lead to further violence or not – stop at the boundary of the individual. They go on to affect everyone close to the individual and the world around them. Animal testing and animal cruelty is a harm done to everyone – animals and human.

I am in line for the Killbox. I am standing with the Others who love me, and whom I love. We are living beings. We have lives. Goals. Culture. We like shelter and good food. We like the sun on our brow. We like the clean crisp air of the morning. But today we are being driven toward the place. We know what is coming. We are terrified. We are sad. We tremble and our bodies start to shake. Tears come. Our legs nearly give out to escape this vile place. This Nazi place. This black evil place. We are pushed there harder – quickly. I can smell death. I don’t want to die in this place. Yet they make me go there, closer. Then it is my turn. This is wrong. It is illogical. It is the place of abject poverty. It is the place of shame. This is the place of the humans.

Two horrific acts of animal cruelty — only one prison sentence. Dunky the Chihuahua was dragged from his owner’s car and thrown from the top of a parking garage. The woman who killed Dunky got 3 years for his death and for auto burglary and vandalism. Meanwhile, a woman who poured accelerant over a dog called Denali and set her on fire is facing charges for arson, but not a single one for animal cruelty. There were 7 other dogs in the house at the time. The attack on Denali was an act of deliberate vengeance against the woman’s ex-husband.

Since animals are mostly considered property by the law, punishment for animal cruelty has been mixed up with these ideas. Perhaps the police involved in Denali’s case see the dogs as merely the property of the ex-husband? Is it easier to charge a woman with a known criminal record (Dunky’s killer), who is also being charged for crimes against property?

Animal cruelty is a charge that doesn’t seem to be taken very seriously by itself, but it should be. When prison sentences are served for animal cruelty, that means people who are a danger to animals can’t hurt them. Denali’s killer should be serving time for the attempted murder of 8 animals. Please sign and share the petition.

Woman Gets 3 Years For Throwing Dog Off Building From 7th Floor

SIGN: Justice for Dog Doused in Accelerant and Set on Fire

This week, a chance to vote on a bill to ban the live sheep trade fell flat in the Australian House of Representatives. It had passed the Senate and had wide support among Australian politicians across both sides of the aisle. It failed because two politicians refused to “cross the floor” and take a stand to support the bill. Earlier this year, video footage exposed the horror of the live sheep trade, showing sheep packed together, afflicted from the heat and dying on the long voyage north to the Middle East. An Australian Green politician has rightly said the live sheep trade is “simply incompatible with animal welfare.” It just won’t do to slightly improve conditions, as the Liberal party have suggested, by increasing space and ventilation. Travel will still be hard on the animals, and exporters will likely cut corners to save money on power etc.

Australian politicians have made this ban political by choosing to treat it as a partisan issue. The Liberals don’t want to vote with the opposition party because the opposition have made this a policy issue for the next election. If politicians prefer to be political rather than vote for animal welfare, that is their choice. It now represents an opportunity – an opportunity for Australians to put pressure on their politicians to end this trade, or suffer in the next election. It can also be an opportunity to take more comprehensive action to protect animals. No one is even talking about live exports of other animals, such as cattle. Please read more, sign and share, and if you’re an Australian voter, contact your representatives!

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/10/live-exports-ban-coalition-pressured-to-allow-lower-house-vote-after-bill-passes-senate

https://secure.animalsaustralia.org/take_action/live-export-shipboard-cruelty/?r=5b9a9f999e7521536860057&ua_s=e-mail#action

The USDA have been silently slaughtering kittens for years. We know this because of Freedom of Information Act requests made by White Coat Waste Project that revealed the slaughter. After White Coat Waste Project noticed a casual reference on the website to kittens at the Beltsville Agricultural Center Research facility, they requested information from the USDA showing that the kittens have been used in experiments for years and then incinerated.

It’s not just that the kittens died – lives casually thrown away year after year – but the ordeal these animals had to go through before they died. During the course of the experiments, the kittens were force-fed raw meat so their feces could be inspected for parasites. It’s not clear how this affected the health of the animals, but they were clearly deemed unfit to be rehabilitated. Did they receive care after these experiments? The USDA has refused to comply with the most recent FOIA request, so White Coat Waste Project is suing them.

The USDA is the body responsible for setting standards and holding agriculture accountable. Their casual hypocrisy on this matter is unconscionable. Please read more about this horrific cover-up, share on social media and sign the petition.

https://petitions.whitecoatwaste.org/sue-usda/?pid=6879934&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=usda_lawsuit&utm_medium=hf&red=caged-kittens-2%2f%3finitiativekey%3dXAPAAAVEGSKG

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/07/politics/usda-cat-experiments/index.html

The Bureau of Land Management’s brutal sterilization program for wild horses should not be allowed to take place. The plan calls for the least safe and most invasive method of sterilizing wild horses – even though controlling wild populations is already legally suspect (according to this op-ed).

The sterilization could hardly be called a procedure, as it involves vets literally reaching inside female horses for their ovaries and removing them right there on the spot. Without follow-up, a plan for administering antibiotics, pain relief, or a period of care, horses could hemorrhage or get sepsis and die out in the wild.

The BLM is ignoring other alternatives that could be safer, because of so-called cost, even though the scale of this sterilization program would be massive (and therefore costly) as well as the huge risk of failure. If the program is doomed to fail, it’s been suggested, it would be easier to justify mass cullings of horses by offering the excuse that other alternatives have failed. There is something callous and cynical about the sudden leap to board a large scale program that is not strongly backed by experts, that puts horses through so much unnecessary damage – without even giving pain relief.

Brutality is often justified by “necessity”. This program is crude, unnecessary and incredibly harmful to horses. Please sign the petition and share to protect wild horses.

Ghetto Rescue took one last video of Valerie the pitbull before she died, and it is heartbreaking. A blue-grey pitbull with a beautiful lustrous coat, she’s lying on the ground being reassured by the humans around her, as the life is ebbing out of her.

Ghetto Rescue found Valerie in South Los Angeles after she was dumped out of a car. They claim she was sexually assaulted, although her death seems to have been the result of trauma to her chest. The LAPD are investigating the case for bestiality and animal cruelty, and treating the sexual assault just as if it was a human rape (testing for DNA). The difference is however, that the rape is considered “bestiality” and is a misdemeanor rather than felony.

It’s reassuring to hear reports of the police going about their business in a thorough way, just as if Valerie was a human. The police started the investigation based on the posts of Ghetto Rescue. Still, Valerie’s abuse will have to be treated within the capacity of the law, which might not be enough to hold her abusers accountable. The sad thing is that this beautiful pitbull lost her life even though she was a shelter animal. Her chance for a new life ended tragically. Animals like Valerie are vulnerable to abuse, and protecting them ends up being a band-aid once they are seriously injured or traumatized. Rather than comforting them when they are dying, we need to take steps to protect them in life.

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/08/09/lapd-investigating-alleged-trauma-sexual-assault-of-pit-bull-found-in-south-los-angeles-area/

Because of a legal loophole, Japanese whalers can still kill large numbers of whales in the Antarctic every year, and this year, many pregnant and young whales were amongst the dead. Japan justifies these expeditions for scientific research, but their reasons are shaky.

For a start, the International Whaling Committee banned commercial whaling in 1985, and most countries, if not all, complied. A 1946 law that says whaling can still take place for scientific reasons is used as a justification for Japan’s expeditions. The whales on these expeditions can be sold for meat, leading to accusations that the scientific explanation is a convenient excuse. The scientific research is apparently undertaken to discover such factors as sexual maturity, nutritional condition and prey consumption of the whales. However critics have said this can be done by taking a biopsy instead. As well as claiming whale-hunting is done for scientific research, Japan has also defended its ancient “culture” of whaling.

122 pregnant whales and 114 juvenile whales died in this massacre. 333 whales in total were killed on this expedition. How did they die? By harpooning, ie using harpoons loaded with a 30g penthrite grenade.

Rather than terrorizing their population and using a violent method of killing them, Japanese whalers could find a more humane way of studying them, but they choose not to. Cultural inertia towards animals needs a wake-up call. Around the world, people are realizing that we don’t have to accept a cultural narrative about dominating and harming animals. It’s time to put pressure on the defenders of “cultural” cruelty to animals.

More info on this story:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12061465
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44307396
https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/japan-whaling-kills-122-pregnant-whales-for-research/news-story/a1851aeec523563c79d593df7085e61b