By Bob Gaydos
Cruelty, meet irony.

The human beings who run the Copenhagen Zoo apparently have a single-minded approach to managing the institution: If the animals trapped in their breeding program do not measure up to the humans’ arbitrary standards (too old, too young, too weak, too common), the animals are killed.

Only they don’t call it that. Instead of killing, they call it culling, which the humans apparently think sounds better but doesn’t make any difference to the animal involved. Dead is dead, however one tries to gussy it up with phony, save-the-species kind of language. And dead for no good reason is, at heart, cruelty.

In March, the Copenhagen Zoo bosses killed a healthy, 18-month-old giraffe, named Marius, because, they said, his genes were not needed in their breeding program. He was surplus. They rejected offers from other zoos to take Marius and shot him in the head with a bolt gun, dissected him front of a crowd that included young children, and fed his remains to the zoo’s lions.

This week, they killed the lions, a family consisting of a 16-year-old male, a 14-year-old female and their two, young cubs. The humans said the adult lions were nearing the end of average zoo age (which is actually 25) and were simply too old for breeding, even though they had just produced two young cubs

The cubs, like Marius, simply had the misfortune of being born at the Copenhagen Zoo. They were killed because the zoo had its eye on a young lion at another Danish zoo that it wanted to mate with two younger females at Copenhagen, to create a new pride. The females are offspring of the deceased male and the zoo officials said they wanted to avoid in-breeding. They also said the young male they had their eyes on would just kill the young cubs anyway, so bye-bye.

Apparently, sterilization or merely swapping healthy animals between zoos to let them live out their lives are concepts that do not fit into the breeding program of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, to which the Copenhagen Zoo and about 345 others in Europe belong. The Copenhagen Zoo said it had no offer to take the lions off its hands, but its treatment of Marius shredded any credibility on that count. In addition to rejecting an offer from another zoo to take the giraffe, the zoo speeded up his execution in response to a petition signed by tens of thousands of people around the world to spare him.

When Marius was killed, the corresponding zoo association in the United States said such a thing would never happen in this country because the zoos sterilize or swap healthy animals. That’s instead of killing them for expedience, or budget-balancing or ego-satisfaction or whatever is driving the men in charge in Copenhagen. Certainly, it’s hard to believe animal welfare enters into their calculations.

Zoos are ostensibly a means to protect and preserve species of animals on this planet and to expose and educate millions of people about the beautiful diversity of wildlife most of us would never have the opportunity to witness. But grabbing animals from their native habitats and breeding them in captivity, for whatever stated reasons, does not give humans the right to mistreat the animals, to cage them and treat them as entertainment, or to regard them as some kind of laboratory experiment which can be discarded in the name of science or conservation.

What the Copenhagen Zoo (and others that operate under the same principles) does has nothing to do with wildlife conservation, humane education, or respect for animals. It is strictly about the convenience of the humans. EAZA said it “regretted” the deaths of Marius and the lions, but that the Copenhagen Zoo has been consistent in its approach and has broken no association rules. That’s lame and, frankly, should be embarrassing to other members. It is time for zoos in Europe and elsewhere to rethink their mission and find more humane, compassionate ways to go about meeting it.

Certainly, people who respect animals as living creatures can avoid visiting zoos that blithely dispose of animals as so much “surplus.” Those who wish to voice their desire for a change can sign a petition at: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/to-the-executive-director-of-eaza-to-work-with-british-and-european-parliaments-for-relegislation-to-ensure-the-reduction-in-occurrence-of-surplus-healthy-animals-in-captivity-relocated-and-not-killed

Finally, there’s another word they sometimes use in zoos when they talk about animals — euthanize. A lot of reporting on the Copenhagen Zoo killings said the giraffe and the lions were “euthanized.” No they weren’t. Animals who are sick or injured or lingering painfully near death are euthanized to relieve their suffering. There is no mercy in killing a healthy animal being held in captivity.

The pride of Copenhagen — not its zoo was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My Visit to a Cow Sanctuary.

Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary — the future of sustainability.

“Wanna go see the cows?”

It’s been three weeks since we’ve been talking about visiting the cow sanctuary. During those three weeks, it was one day or the other we had to postpone our visit. I was very impatient, I kept bothering Hemant about the sanctuary. “Well, there are cows and this man takes care of them. He rescues them before they’re sent to slaughterhouses and raises them in this 42 acres of land he bought,” Hemant mentioned. “Wanna go?” he said with his modest voice. My mind took me back to when I was a child in India where cows visited my home all the time and my mother would feed, adore and take the blessings of every cow that walked through the entrance of our home. I kept talking to Hemant everyday about the prospect of feeding a cow, playing with one in the field and just hugging it. I was way too excited. I even dreamt of a cow by the name Yogeshwari (a cow later mentioned in this article and is real). There she was in my dream sitting up high on a concrete slab in the middle of a rich, green field of grass. I was chanting the Shiva Rudram Namakam at a nearby temple when I heard her calling for me. In black and white, there she was sitting peacefully. I still vividly remember the open field, Yogeshwari on the concrete slab, and me feeding loads of grass that kept going straight into her mouth. “How can I dream of a cow I’ve never met?” I thought. I found this inner excitement myself to be quite weird. Where was all this joy coming from? What is this sudden attraction towards cows? “It’s probably the intense meditation I’ve been practicing recently,” I thought to myself brushing it off. Or maybe it’s the fact that I felt so strongly about vegetarianism and that this central principle in my life was ready to turn into action.

We finally decided on a day. Just happened to be 55 degrees fahrenheit, in the middle of winter, snow was melting, and the sky was as clear as it can be. A blessed day it was. We arrived at the small-town of Bangor, PA just before noon. As we drove in looking for a sign to direct us to the sanctuary, we almost missed the cow smiley-face sign pointing an arrow into a remote, downhill, unpaved drive way. As we drove down and down the hill, the narrower and muddier the road became. As I sat in the back seat, feeling the wind of the clear-skies and the warmth of the sun light on my skin, I saw a group of cows staring at me as we approached the entrance of the sanctuary. I opened the door with curiosity, my eyes fixated on the group of cows. A smile sprung up on my face. I couldn’t believe it. My heart was pouring with gratitude. I felt a sensation of peace I couldn’t explain. A feeling of humility rushed through my veins as I ran to the back of the car to grab the several bags of food we brought to feed them. My mother earlier told me to take with me cooked rice, bananas, and fruits. Being a traditional Hindu, she told me to pay my respects to the cows as cows represented the ‘Adi Mata’—meaning the “first mother” or the “mother of all mothers”.

“You know people ask me, how do you live so secluded on a farm, isn’t it lonely? I ask them the question back, what do you think is more crowded, the city or the farm? I tell them, the farm is more crowded than the city. You know why? It’s because during the summer, all the ants come out. All the flowers bloom. There are so many insects and birds that are at this place and its all in perfect order. When God made all these beings, they made them all function in a perfect order. It is us, humans, that don’t have the knowledge to work in perfect order. All these animals, when I see them, work so perfectly together and live so peacefully.” -Professor Sastri

Cows in Hinduism

In Hinduism, cows are worshipped as a mother. They are consider as “Lakshmi”-the female Goddess that controls this Universe through her Shakti (the powerful feminine element). Many Hindu households in India consider the cow to be part of their family. These sentient beings are taken care of from the beginning of their lives to the end. They are given human-like identity with elaborate names, treated like humans, and respected for the resources they provide. A cow’s milk is believed to be Sattvic (purifying), hundreds of different foods like ghee (butter) are prepared from this pure milk She provides. The ghee is said to have enhance memory, alleviate arthritis and disorders in the eyes, and is known to contain various antibacterial and antiviral properties. Cow dung (gobar) is used as a fertilizer rich in minerals, as fuel (look up biogas) and a disinfectant in many homes. Cow urine is used for medicinal purposes. It is believed that cow urine has amazing germicidal power to kill varieties of germs. The ancient scriptures of Rig Veda considers cattle as one of the most important animals. In the Rig Veda 3.33.1, the cows figure frequently as symbols of wealth and in comparison with river goddesses, “like two bright mother cows who lick their young, Vipas and Sutudri speed down their waters.” In the Atharva Veda, the cow is represented by the Devas, various energies controlling this universe, as a source where all those energies are contained. In fact, the importance of the cow is not given over other animals discriminatingly but its to show that the cow, because of what it has to offer, is a central figure in representing the kind of compassion we must show to all non-human living beings. It is through the cow we perceive the beauty of all animals and all of creation. The cow is an instrument of this compassion and realization. Mahatma Gandhi understood this,

“I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world,”

and that,

“Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. And Hinduism will live so ling as there are Hindus to protect the cow…Hindus will be judged not by their tilaks, not by the correct chanting of mantras, not by their pilgrimages, not by their most punctilious observances of caste rules, but their ability to protect the cow.”

Professor Sastri and his work

As we walked down to walk way to the shed where Professor Sastri lived, I couldn’t get my eyes of the cows all sitting and staring at the guests that just arrived in their home. Well, we’ve always been visitors right? This Mother Earth was theirs all along and us humans have just come and occupied it. I opened the door, along with Hemant and Anjuji, and met a man of great humility and kindness, a mahatma (Great Soul) of our time, Professor Shankar Sastri. Professor Sastri, a bachelor all his life, retired from CUNY as Dean of Engineering in 1999. Soon after, he bought the 42 acres of land in Bangor, PA to create the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary (the name Lakshmi was named after Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi‘s cow called Lakshmi). He has so far rescued 17 cows, among other animals like chickens, turkeys, cats, all of which were rescued before being sent to slaughterhouses. Upon rescuing the cows, he names them various sanskrit names deeply rooted in Hindu mythology, full of personality. He doesn’t treat them as animals but as living beings with an identity. Throughout this article you will find pictures of Rama (the Bull, brought from India), Vishnu (brown colored one), Vedanta (black with a white question on its forehead), Lakshmi (brown colored one currently injured), Yogeshwari (black and white), Bal Ram, Sita, and others.

“They are beautiful beings aren’t they? I’m never alone here,” he says smiling. “And we have the best milk here, and the best ghee, and we even offer for sale organic cow-dung patties to many temples.” -Professor Sastri, founder of the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary

We introduced ourselves to Professor Sastri. His humble voice and Divine presence immediately yielded within me great respect towards him. We were surprised at the minimalistic lifestyle he was leading. A small wooden table, old fashioned fire place and a small kitchen made up his living quarters. Here is a man who migrated to the United States in the sixties, spent decades as an engineering professor, remained a bachelor all his life and now surrendered his retirement to taking care of these beautiful gentle beings. Sounded like a perfect lifestyle to me. I always questioned the purpose of life and Professor Sastri’s lifestyle answered it. We come into this world penniless and leave penniless, I thought to myself. Our purpose lies in the amount of unconditional love and light we radiate to those around us— not just human beings but all of creation. Professor Sastri is a living example of this. After our introductions, Professor Sastri took us to where the cows were, a small shed he built himself where the cows gather to be fed. He also was gifted a Ganesha Deity, once worshipped by three thousand monks, to which he does Puja (prayer) everyday. As we walked up, the cows too stood up slowly and approached us with curiosity. I can never forget this moment in my life. Vedanta was the first to approach me. He took the bananas and the bread I fed him so quickly that I was running out of things to feed him. As I told Professor Sastri of my dream about Yogeshwari, he called her out to come meet me. I saw Yogeshwari in the distance walking towards me as I was walking towards her. We both met at a point where I offered her rice and she took it all right in. Feeling teary-eyed at one point, I thought to myself, “this is unconditional love, no expectations, no contracts, just pure reciprocation.” I pulled out my iPhone and started recording my interaction with them. I wanted to show the world the little space of heaven Professor Sastri created (you will find videos at the end of this article).

“Many people in America see animals, particularly cows, as meat,’’ Professor Sastri says. “Animals have a soul, personality, they interact… Ten years ago I did not know much about farming, but the divine call was there…I enjoyed my years of teaching, but I enjoy this work much more.” -Professor Sastri (in rediff times).

After feeding the cows, we said a prayer and ate our pasta/dhal lunch with veggie chips. I sat next to the window where I kept looking at Yogeshwari back and forth. I thought to myself, “what gentle beings…what gentle beings. How can they be slaughtered? How can they be killed? How can they be looked upon with such hate and inferiority?” As the day progressed, we walked around the sanctuary. We met Lakshmi, the first cow at the sanctuary, who was now injured due to a hip problem. We then went up to a shed where Professor Sastri created a space for educating the public about the importance of cows. The place filled with quotes, posters of cows in various forms, pictures of great beings like Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Lord Krishna and Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi with cows. We performed Angihotra, a ritual of yagna which brings healing and purification to the environment one is in, to which we offered butter, cow dung, and various other offerings to the fire God. Professor Sastri spoke about the Agnihotra, why we do it and the role cows play in it. We also spent a few minutes meditating during which I felt tremendous energy at the place.

“You must look at Vedanta,” says Professor Sastri. “Her mother was given to us by Swami Dayananda Saraswati and her offspring was born with the question mark on the forehead. See it? Swamiji always asks, in time of trouble ask the question, “who am I?” Vedanta was born with this question mark on his forehead so named him Vedanta.” -Professor Sastri

After drinking tea prepared from cow milk, which might I add was silky smooth and nutritious, we went back to where the cows were and did a cow prayer. I never knew that my Vedic chanting would come so handy. We went up to the space where the Ganesha deity was placed. As we all gathered in reverence facing the Ganesha deity, to our shock, all the cows stood up. As I chanted the Ganapathi Atharva Shirsha, the cows, unflinchingly, starred at us with great respect. To me, this was a life-changing event. It was a testament, a moment of truth that inextricably became part of my consciousness. We are not so different from them. They are not so different from us. In fact, we are all one. We all breath the same air, eat the same food, live on the same piece of land. If they had a voice, they would stand up for their rights too, I thought.

The future of the cow sanctuary

On our way back from the cow sanctuary, we all agreed that more people need to know about this place. We spoke about implementing a bio-gas project where we can use the cow dung from the sanctuary to create fuel. We spoke about making the sanctuary a place of education where people can be educated on the importance of cows and other animals, how the 25 year life span of a cow can be more beneficial than the mere 5 years in which it is milked and slaughtered. We spoke about creating a camp for kids who can come and spend time with the sentient beings, feed them, play with them and build compassion. We also spoke about having each Hindu temple adopt a cow as part of their temple and create their own sanctuaries. In addition, these sanctuaries can be a place of interfaith dialogue bridging all faiths and lifestyles. We also spoke about planting trees in and around the 42 acres of land and create a space for the vegetation as well, a small effort to counter deforestation. If each state in the United States had a cow sanctuary, how wonderful, holistically, and compassionate would we all live? “This place has so much potential,” we all thought.

“Animals are like children, they need love and compassion. They are innocent children. When you know love and compassion, you know God and you become God. As you increase the circle of love and compassion you become a Deva.” -Professor Sastri

Today as I sit here and write this article to let the world know my first encounter with these gentle beings, I make a plea. I make a plea to you to understand and think about the impact your lifestyle is having on this planet. I make a plea to think about the choices you make, the products you buy and the food you eat. I make a plea to educate yourself, if you have not already, on the impact human beings are having on this planet, especially in trying to feed its population. I finally make a plea to visit the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary and see for yourself the importance of these beings. I don’t speak as an activist, I speak as a human being bearing a sacred responsibility of coexisting with this one precious planet that we have, a responsibility we all have. I don’t ask you to abandon your lifestyle of meat-eating, if you do eat meat. I simply ask you to be aware of how your food arrives on your plate, give it respect and reverence, and at the very least be thankful for it. When we understand the value of species that don’t have a voice, we understand the value of each other. As humans we have the ability to make decisions, think rationally, and learn to give. This human body is an honor, it is a privilege we are given to not just enjoy the pleasures of the material world but to create a beautiful planet for us all to live in while discovering its Truths.

A society towards peace and prosperity starts with you and the changes you make in your life. I hope you found this article insightful. Visit http://www.cowprotection.com/ for more details on the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary. You can find videos of my visit at the end of the article.

Below are a few facts from farm sanctuary website:

Cows used for meat

In 2010, 34.2 million cattle were slaughtered for beef in the United States. Often beginning their short lives on rangeland, calves are soon separated from their nurturing mothers and endure a series of painful mutilations.

Before they are a year old, young calves endure a long and stressful journey to a feedlot, where they are fattened on an unnatural diet until they reach “market weight” and are sent to slaughter.

After being taken from their mother, calves’ cries can be so intense that their throats become irritated.

Calves raised for beef may be subject to a number of painful mutilations, including dehorning, castration, and branding. Even though each of these procedures is known to cause fear and pain, pain relief is rarely provided.

Because it is thought to improve meat quality and tenderness, male calves are castrated at a young age. Methods include removing testicles surgically with a scalpel, crushing spermatic cords with a clamp, and constricting blood flow to the scrotum until testicles die and fall off. Each method is known to cause pain that can last for days.

Cattle in the U.S. are often branded by having an iron hotter than 950 °F pressed into their skin for several seconds. This is done so that beef producers can identify cattle and claim ownership.

Between 6 months and a year of age, cattle are moved from pasture to feedlots to be fattened for slaughter. Calves gain weight on an unnatural diet and reach “market weight” of 1,200 pounds in just 6 months.

The majority of cattle are fattened in feedlots in just four U.S. states. Since calves are born all over the country, they often endure long and stressful trips from their place of birth to these states without food, water, or protection from the elements.

Cows used for dairy

More than 9.3 million cows were used to produce milk in the United States in 2008, and more than 2.5 million dairy cows were slaughtered for meat. Cows used by the dairy industry are intensively confined, continually impregnated, and bred for high milk production with little concern for their well-being. Far from being the “happy cows” the industry makes them out to be, these typically playful, nurturing animals endure immense suffering on factory farms.

Like all mammals, dairy cows must be impregnated in order to produce milk. Cows in the dairy industry spend their lives in a constant cycle of impregnation, birth, and milking with just a few short months of rest between pregnancies.

Nearly all cows used for dairy in the U.S. are eventually slaughtered for human consumption. At an average of less than 5 years of age, exhausted cows are considered “spent” and sent to slaughter, and millions of them are eaten by Americans as hamburger. In a natural setting, a cow can live more than 20 years.

Usually just within hours of birth, calves are taken away from their mothers. Calves can become so distressed from separation that they become sick, lose weight from not eating, and cry so much that their throats become raw.

Because male calves will not grow up to produce milk, they are considered of little value to the dairy farmer and are sold for meat. Millions of these calves are taken away to be raised for beef. Hundreds of thousands of other male calves born into the dairy industry are raised for veal. Many people consider veal to be cruel, but they don’t realize that veal production is a product of the dairy industry.

In the vast majority of dairy operations in the U.S., cows spend their lives indoors, typically on hard, abrasive concrete floors, frequently connected to a milking apparatus.

In 2007, the average cow in the dairy industry was forced to produce more than 20,000 lbs. of milk in one year — more than double the milk produced 40 years before. Breeding cows for this unnaturally high level of milk production, combined with damage caused to the udders by milking machines, contributes to high levels of mastitis, a very common and very painful swelling of glands of the udder.

In the name of increased milk production and profit, some dairy cows are repeatedly injected with bovine growth hormone, a genetically-engineered hormone that has been shown to increase the risk of health problems like mastitis and lameness.

Arguing that it improves hygiene, dairy producers cut off cows’ tails, called “tail docking,” either by placing a tight rubber ring around the tail until it falls off or by cutting it off with a sharp instrument. Each method causes chronic pain. Cows use their tail to swish away flies and can suffer immensely during fly season.

Investigations have found that cows who collapse because they are too sick or injured to walk or stand, known as “downers” by the industry, are routinely prodded, dragged, and pushed around slaughter facilities.

Please call the sanctuary before you visit to make an appointment. There are many ways in which you can help. You can visit the farm, you can ‘adopt’ a cow, you can donate to the care of the cows and the sanctuary (which needs a lot of help in terms of maintenance) and you can offer services to the farm in anyway possible.

The Copenhagen Zoo shotgunned to death a young giraffe named Marius a couple of months ago, cut it up and allowed children to watch as the zoo’s big cats eat the creature.

It was a real teaching moment. Just ask one of those kids.

A few days ago, the same zoo killed four of those hungry lions to make way for a new cat.

It was all done cleanly and scientifically, in the name of genetic purity. This time, they didn’t invite the kids.

I got a job working as a night watchman in my hometown of Buffalo in the mid-’70s. After everyone left the grounds, the place — an ornate old WPA pile — belonged to me.

This was where I met Eddie, while pushing a chemical broom down the building’s shiny terrazzo floors.

Eddie knew a thing or two about zoos, though he never talked about what he knew. Not in so many words.

I felt like a turnkey in a 19th Century madhouse. Tiny rooms — cages, really — housed scared-looking lonely creatures who peered out at me while I made my rounds. Sometimes, there’d be screams. The place stank of shit and urine and the weird lemony compound I used to spray on the broom.

Eddie had a small, bare-bones space just around the corner from the grim little room I was stationed at, with a battered steel desk and a noisy radiator.

Eddie was old when I met him. Spiky white beard, long, skinny arms. Large, brown, sunken eyes. Patches of scraggly hair. He had a long, protruding jaw that sometimes hung open and fat, rubbery-looking lips.

An ugly cuss.

Eddie didn’t have any time for me, or anyone else. I’d been warned he was crazy, crazier than all the rest, and that I should keep my distance.

My first night on the job, he was sitting on a wooden bench in the corner of his space, staring at his arm as if he’d never noticed it before. He was picking at a string of scabs along his arm. And they were bleeding.

He caught me staring at him. Looked up from what he was doing and grinned at me. He had a tremendous set of chompers.

I went back to the broom.

The guys I worked with knew Eddie when he’d been a star, a real show-stopping vaudevillian who’d do anything for attention — hang from the rafters, dress up like a woman. Scream his head off.

No longer. Attention was the last thing Eddie wanted, from me or anybody else.

I liked working nights. Liked being alone. I could do make my rounds in half the time I was given. The rest of the night I sat in the room with the desk, writing my novel. When I got frustrated, I’d light up a Parliament and wander around the corner, in case my muse was out there waiting to meet me.

She was never there. But Eddie was. He’d be there, picking at his sores.

I used to wonder what was going on in his head.

Was he remembering palmier, applause-filled days? Or nursing old grudges, dreaming of ways to wreak revenge on his keepers, the men who made sure he never saw the light of day?

No way of telling. When he started smearing his own shit on the walls, I pretty much knew he’d gone over the hill.

Years later, long after I’d said goodbye to that hellhole and to my career as a novelist, after I read about the demise of Marius then giraffe, I thought of Eddie. I Googled up his name and found this small notice from 1985:

“BUFFALO, NY (AP) — Eddie the chimpanzee, a one-time protege of Marlon Perkins and the oldest resident of the Buffalo Zoo at age 47, was given a lethal drug injection Friday after suffering a stroke, zookeepers said.”

The story said Perkins, who later became famous as the host of TV’s “Wild Kingdom,” taught his one-time protege to dance something called the “Zoological Conga,” and to shave his keeper.

I wanted to cheer when I read this:

“A glass shield was placed over his cage’s bars in 1958 after he hurled objects at touring members of the Buffalo school board.”

Three guesses what those “objects” were.

I think Eddie would have welcomed a shotgun blast back when I knew him, just as Marius the giraffe would have preferred a long, anonymous life in Copenhagen’s genetically pure ersatz savannah, neither of them burdened by the need to entertain or educate their supposed superiors, their highly self-regarding keepers.

This essay originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

Down a Desolate Hallway, Eddie’s Ghost Lingers Still  was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Question:

Ask yourself one simple question —
“would my ______ approve of this decision?”

Now what are you going to put in that blank? Your boss? No. Your coworkers? No. Subordinates? No.

Best friend! Good guess… but No.

Let’s try filling in the blank with someone special to you, someone you love unconditionally. Think mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister, daughter, son, grandma, grandpa. We all have someone in our lives we want to protect.

Powerful.

When you ask yourself this question with the right person in mind, it is compelling. You have real, raw emotions involved, rather than pure business concepts. Ethics is, after all, grounded in emotions rather than business operations.

If you experience this in a real situation, you will see the effect that it has. You remove the office politics from the question and enter into the real emotions that derive from your core values.

Of course, nothing is black-and-white. I simply wish for this small tool to be in the back of your mind next time (and it will be soon) an ethical dilemma confronts you.

DISCLAIMER: Ethics is a subject I hate. Too much controversy behind people trying to define a universal definition across all situations. Business operations do have importance, and not all decisions can be, or should be, “ethically driven”.

Cure Your Ethical Dilemmas With This Question was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I Used to Break into Laboratories to Free Animals

My Thank You Letter to Renee, Alice, Oscar and the 281 Other Animals I Helped Rescue from Abuse

One day while walking on a New York sidewalk, a couple stopped in front of me and embraced. I noticed that as the woman held her partner, she peered over his shoulder, with her eyes affixed to the reflection that they cast in a large plate glass window adjacent to where they stood.

I changed my path and made an effort not to walk between the couple and their reflection in the window. It seemed as if the woman wanted nothing more than to capture this reflection and emotional embrace in her memory. Who was I to stand—metaphorically (and literally)—in the way of that?

Their Moment Triggered Something in Me

Walking past that couple on the sidewalk triggered me to reflect on my own cherished memories. Some memories were obvious in their bliss—like the day I got married, or the day my son was born—but others were more nuanced and I spent the rest of the evening considering those. Until that moment I had never considered that some of my most profound memories have been bottled up, never to leave my lips for fear of state actors holding me accountable.

Accountable?

I began to feel like a bloated water balloon, still affixed to a running tap: bursting was inevitable, and I was already leaking…

One day shortly thereafter I was taking my son and our dog Morgan for a walk to the park. Morgan’s eyes are starting to glaze over with age, and it’s only in a vast open field at the rear of the park that I let her off her leash. In the field she does not have any risk of running into anything and every time I unhook her leash, she dashes off, running as fast as she can, usually in a giant figure eight pattern. On this day she did the same but unexpected to me, in that very moment, seeing her run free and unhinged my balloon popped. I found myself crying and adrift in a whirlwind of emotions.

I thought to myself of just how many days I spent talking about negative things (state repression, court cases) or reciting bewildering and often disheartening statistics about human consumption of animals, and just how few days I spent talking about freedom, about liberation, and about this beautiful and deeply spiritual idea of animals as individuals.

I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on some of these individuals.

Renee

Renee was a rhesus macaque monkey. Renee had spent 11 years in confinement, her health was ailing, and her future uncertain. She was never experimented upon, but rather was listlessly awaiting experiments at another facility. I sat for two hours in a thunderstorm before jumping the gates to the compound where she was held and bringing her to sanctuary.
Every year I think about Renee. I’ll never forget how Renee, despite being in an animal carrier, still managed to tear up the back seat of my mother’s car. I’ll never forget about how her prolonged poor health rendered her barren, and I’ll never forget about how her inherent desire to be a mother made her the perfect guardian for an infant monkey who ended up at her sanctuary a year later. I’ll never forget this selflessness in Renee. Renee gave something priceless to that little monkey and moreover, years later she would give me something priceless.

Alice

Alice was born at a breeder for vivisection and lived for six months in a holding pen for reserve research animals, en route to testing facilities. I opened Alice’s pen and carried her to safety. I had to run over a mile and a half with Alice before reaching our exit vehicle and while I was running, Alice threw up on me. Before getting in the car with Alice I put her down. I saw her sway and then land on her side. She was motionless for nearly a minute. In this moment of desperately trying to understand what was happening to Alice my comrades and I began to yell at each other. We fumbled to find her pulse; we thought the worst and my friend to my right began to cry. Then, almost as fast as she fell down, she sprang back up, wagged her tail and licked me in the face. We would later learn that Alice had an ailment that impacted her equilibrium, but would ultimately live a long, happy and healthy life.
This was the first time in Alice’s life she felt anything other than concrete under her feet. It was overwhelming for both her and us, because in that moment we both received something very special.

Oscar

Oscar was also born into a facility that bred waterfowl for vivisection. Oscar would have but six months before he would end up on a necropsy table, unless someone interceded. It only made sense to intercede.
In our months of advance recognizance, we took notice of Oscar. He had a limp, one leg was shorter than the other, and he was only partially covered with his plumage. He was at a disadvantage from the peers with which he shared his installation, yet we’d watch as every night he and a dozen others would pile together to keep warm. On the night when we freed Oscar from his confines, he rode on a truck with hundreds of those peers.
Our trip was nerve-racking. We hoped to reach the sanctuary by sunrise. The temperature outside was in the 50s but the back of the truck was 80 degrees and climbing. Every stop we made to open the back of the truck to allow cool air in was another risk of being caught and every moment above 80 degrees was another risk to the safety of the birds inside. When we arrived, the walls of the truck were wet with condensed sweat.
We met the sanctuary owner. The man was a saint, and I felt guilty that he actually thought my name was Holden Caulfield. He led us to where we could unload our friends, an adapted Quonset Hut reminiscent of a miniature airplane hanger with a greenhouse top and an exit to an adjacent field and pond.
Oscar’s friends, in a brilliant chorus of noise and motion, ran en masse toward the pond and dove in. It was so brilliant, it almost felt choreographed. But I quickly became concerned and asked the sanctuary owner if the transition from a hot truck to the cold waters of a Pacific Northwest pond were dangerous. He acknowledged these concerns and suggested we wade out into the pond and begin clapping our hands to wrangle our friends back in. Slowly, they made their way from the pond back to the warmth of the hanger, shaking the water off in what looked like celebratory dancing, but then we saw Oscar…

Oscar was stumbling on himself and his breathing was erratic. He was not shaking the water off.

We dried Oscar with towels and moved him to an adjacent warm space by himself. We wanted him to feel safe; we wanted him to feel loved; we wanted him to recover from whatever shock he was experiencing, but he did not. Oscar died that afternoon.

I have never been able to forgive my recklessness of that day. But I also know I will never be able to capture in words the awe of seeing Oscar and his friends celebrate their first day of freedom. Oscar and each of his friends gave me lasting inspiration and insight into the very act of being alive and free.

This is a Thank You Letter

This is a letter to Renee, to Alice, to Oscar and to the 281 other beings I removed from abuse. In freeing you I learned things not only about you, but also about myself. I learned that fear of repression for what many consider my criminal acts, although tangible and real, is only as strong as you allow it to be. I learned that giving an individual a new option for a new future—one free of abuse—is not only liberating for those freed, but also for those doing the freeing, and this feeling stays with you, forever.

Years later I, too, would find myself in a cage, incarcerated for my tenure as a radical activist. And while prison is an overwhelming and at times terrorizing experience, I found myself when there calling upon my memories of the efforts I made to free others. I found something comforting there, something that made me realize that those days when I restored someone else’s freedoms were the freest days of my life. No matter how large or how small, each of these individual situations mattered…

The Analogy of The Star Fish Thrower

Many of us have heard, or shared the story of the starfish thrower, iterated in one way or another at some point in our lives. (The tale of a wise man who observed and wrote about the world, and his interaction with a child who, as the tide receded and the day sun rose, worked tirelessly to throw stranded starfish back into the ocean.) The wise man asked…

“But young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young man promptly picked up another starfish to throw into the ocean and politely responded…

“It made a difference for that one!”

How to Say Thank You

April 20th, 2014 is marked as the beginning of World Week for Animals in Laboratories. It is also a day the global animal liberation movement uses to remember the liberation of Britches the Monkey, a stump-tailed macaque who was taken from his mother at birth and had his eyes sown shut as part of a maternal deprivation study at the University of California, Riverside. On April 20th, 1985 the Animal Liberation Front freed Britches from his cage, removed the sutures that held his eyes shut, and brought him to a loving home where he could live out the rest of his life in peace.

As World Week for Animals in Laboratories approaches there will be conversations about tactics, presentations with overwhelming statistics, street protests and report-backs on so many amazing efforts to derail systems of abuse. There will also be conversations on repression, informants, and attempts by the state to stifle our already amazingly successful efforts.

And although state repression is very real, let this letter serve as a reminder that state repression is only as strong as you allow it to be.

In rescuing Renee, Alice and Oscar, every lock I broke, every cage I opened, unshackled me from the specter of state repression. This is the reason why I was crying while at the park with my son and my dog: because I saw this moment where Morgan shed her leash and became unhinged, and I briefly felt it with her.

This letter is not a call to take illegal direct action, but rather a call to challenge the boundaries of your own comfort in an effort to free others, because it matters “to that one” and because it’s there that we begin to unwrap the binds that confine each of us.

I invite you to join me in taking a leap of faith, and to empower yourself individually to shed your own shackles.

Renee, Alice, and Oscar, the individuals they are, and their passage to freedom has forever changed my life. In challenging my own comfort, something transformative happened to me.

To Renee, Alice, Oscar and the 281 other animals I rescued from abuse,
I say Thank you.

When I drive home from work along this one short stretch of the busy 4-lane highway, I often see a pair of Canada geese standing in the grassy area to the side of the road. There is no lake or other waterway nearby, and I’ve often wondered at this choice of a home for these beautiful birds. Today, I was entering the highway from a side street, and while waiting at the red light, I glanced up and saw the pair. They looked as though they were attempting to cross the road. Then I realized they had at least two or three tiny downy goslings tottering along beside them. One of the adults would attempt to cross the road, and make a threatening gesture as a car would swerve to avoid hitting them. The other one (presumably the female) was more guarded about crossing and was herding the young ones back to the safety of the tall grass on the side. The tender beauty of the chick’s downy feathers and newborn waddle really touched me.

This little vignette was so touching and poignant to me that it made me cry. Who would really care about this one little tiny story of a couple of creatures in the vast universe? But it was so heart-breakingly beautiful to me to watch the male goose challenging a two-thousand pound car hurling down the road. How would he know that it wasn’t just another predator? After all, he was the father goose, the big and strong protector of his family. The innocence and beauty of that simple gesture melts and breaks my heart at the same time.

Of course, this led to me thinking of the millions upon millions of tiny baby male chickens, products of the egg industry, who are discarded, alive, into waste bins, peeping and crying until they suffocate or are crushed to death. Of the females, roughly grabbed and held up to a hot iron to burn off their tiny little beaks so they won’t peck one another to death when they are imprisoned into tiny cages with dozens of other birds for the entirety of their lives. Of the mother hens who lay egg after egg after egg despite the utter impossibility of ever being allowed sit on one single nest or hatch one single egg for her entire life. Of the same birds who, having been “spent” are grabbed by the feet and thrown into crates, piled into trucks and transported to the slaughterhouse where they are hung by their feet and scalded to death to become “poultry by-product.”

These birds, too, are beautiful and worthy of a life. They deserve the chance to parent young chicks and to threaten a predator. But the predator is you and me, and we are a universe removed from their suffering.

Money, prestige, and a wreath: unacceptable reasons to whip, overrun, severely maim, and kill animals.

The day after the filly Eight Belles was euthanized on the track at the 2008 Kentucky Derby, I joined PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

In recent years I have expressed my dislike for circuses, zoos, and aquariums. Even visiting Disney World’s Animal Kingdom a few years ago was hard. But seeing a horse raced to its ankle-breaking death was the final straw for me.

According to a NY Times investigation, roughly “24 horses die each week at racetracks across America.” Here are even more sobering numbers: over the last few years, 6,600 horses have been injured, and 3,600 have died while training or racing.

When I joined PETA, I learned that my $25.00/year donation helped “animals suffering and dying in laboratories, on factory farms, in the fur industry, in circuses, and in other forms of ‘entertainment.’” The fee also subscribed me to Animal Times, the organization’s quarterly magazine which includes vegetarian recipes and tips on how to stop animal suffering in my own community. Fine, I can handle this, I think. So I awaited my first subscription.

What I did not know, however, is that I would also receive a membership card, a letter from the organization’s founder, and a colorful pamphlet which boasts these three words: Vegetarian Starter Kit. It’s the latter that, for the time being, did me in.

Because I was too weak to read every horrifying word of the pamphlet, I skimmed the text and glanced hastily at the images. Phrases flew by quickly:

• cut off beaks without painkillers…
• broken wings when shoved into trucks…
• insane pigs from crowded conditions (they compulsively chew on the bars of their pens)…
• death from decompression and suffocation (fish)…

That was enough, so I flipped to the pages of vegetarian recipes and breathed a sigh of relief.

As someone who has taught college-level rhetoric for years, I am aware that PETA is highly gifted in using pathos to make its arguments. Images of cute piglets, calves, and chicks on the organization’s website are completely endearing, and conversely, photos of forlorn-looking circus elephants and anorexic monkeys are more than disturbing. Still, as Aristotle knew over 2,300 years ago, pathos works. And it persuaded me. I stopped eating meat.

It’s been six years since the untimely death of Eight Belles and my endorsement of PETA. While I’m no longer a member of PETA (its mail propaganda is too overbearing), my diet is still mostly vegetarian—ashamedly, a few times a month, I do succumb to temptation (damn you, Five Guys Burgers).

I might falter with my vegetarianism, but I can guarantee one thing that will remain constant: I will never again watch or support the Kentucky Derby or any horseracing event as long as I live. Money, prestige, and a wreath: these are not acceptable reasons to whip, overrun, severely maim, and kill animals.

Last night I watched a documentary called Vegucated. I’d stumbled upon it on Netflix ages ago, and it sat idle in my list for weeks as I favoured lighter viewing fare. (Face it. You’re not always in the mood to learn.)

I should clarify that I’m not a vegetarian. I’ve eaten a heap of meat in my life—in this past week actually. But as I watched the factory farming practices unfold before me (which is where pretty much all of our supermarket and I suspect even trendy fresh market meat, eggs, and dairy originate), I started to feel a little icky about the ethics of my diet.

I literally leapt in my seat and peered from behind my hands at the sight of cows and piglets being castrated, and hens being de-beaked, without anaesthetic. Sows that have to spend the majority of their lives in a pen barely a square foot larger than they are. One-day-old male chicks put in plastic bags to suffocate, or dumped into what I can only describe as a woodchipper … alive ... because they will never lay eggs, can’t be raised as eating birds, and are therefore valueless from a business perspective. Female chicks being crushed as their packing/shipping trays were shoved into drawer-like containers. (“Sorry one-day-old chicks. If you’re not smart enough to duck your head when I wail your crate into this tiny compartment you’re outta luck!”). Don’t get me wrong. This footage comprised only a small part of an otherwise lighthhearted and even humourous documentary—perhaps 10 minutes in total—but I was shocked.

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.– Paul McCartney”

I consider myself a fairly educated individual. I went to university. I have two degrees and a post-grad certificate. Aware of the appalling conditions of battery chickens & hens, for some time I’ve opted to pay extra for free-range chicken and eggs. I go for line-caught fish when I can find it. I’d secretly congratulate myself for being such a conscientious shopper.

It’s not the eating of meat that I have a problem with. (I know this won’t be a popular opinion with any vegetarians and vegans who read this, and sounds in contrast to my reactions described earlier, but bear with me). I grew up in Vermont and still have friends there who hunt. Perhaps in a perfect world all animals would live their lives in the wild, reproduce and raise young, and we would each shoot with humane precision only what we could consume under laws designed to prevent over-hunting and herd-decimation. But that is not a sustainable approach for feeding the world’s meat eaters.

And what this documentary has made me realise is that there is so much bad in the end-to-end process from birth, to life on the factory farm, to the transport to (and actual) slaughter, that there’s no real way to make ethical choices if you’re not going to hunt your own food or rear your own. Even if you could find a small family farm nearby where you could witness, for example, hens freely roaming through grassy fields with the luxury of their entire beak, there’s an overwhelming liklihood that they’d have came from the same hatchery that supplies the factory farm and breeds them to lay 250 eggs/year compared the normal 10-15/year they would in the wild.

Even if you could find a dairy farmer with clean and healthy grassfed cows, it sounds like they’d still be being subjected to a lifetime of repeated artificial insemination, genetically modified to produce four times more milk than they would for their own offspring, with their male children taken away at birth for veal and their females taken away to begin five years of the same fate. (Apparently a cow can live naturually for 25 years, but dairy cows are killed off after only four or five.)

“But even supposing one could find some way around this murderous supply chain … consumption perpetuates the idea that it is morally acceptable to use animals, and to exploit female reproductive systems … it normalizes the practice of controlling and commodifying female bodies and reproductive processes.”

This is nothing I’ve ever thought about in detail, and I still have a lot of thinking and research to do (like how accurate all of the environmental benefits the documentary highlighted are). I’d never harm an animal or allow someone else to do so, but I’m also not and have never been an animal welfare advocate. Yet after watching this it’s curious to me that treatment we would be outraged by if it were to befall puppies, kittens and other domesticated pets we accept when inflicted on animals we have no contact with in our daily lives. That’s pretty callous when you think about it. What makes one deserving of a decent quality of life and another not?

Will I become a vegan? Maybe. I’m not sure I’m organised enough to learn a new range of foods and how to prepare them. And I know nothing about the range of vegan or vegetarian commercial products available where I live here in Belfast (after all, there’s not a single vegetarian restaurant in all of Northern Ireland, apparently). Also, I’m fairly certain that not all pre-prepared or processed vegan options and ingredients will necessarily be healthy, in the same way that ‘normal’ ones aren’t. After all, Oreos are technically vegan. But I’m going to look into it a bit more and will certainly be trying to make more informed and more ethical choices moving forward. I recommend you watch this documentary, too, so you can do the same, whatever you own decision is.

Extra bits if you’re interested
Here are a few links I found today that you might find interesting:

Eggs: What are you really eating?
Debeaking standard practice on cage-free farms
The dairy industry

An intrepid journey towards veganism (maybe) was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Conversations w/my 6 yr old nephew

Luke: “I don’t even know what i’m gonna have for lunch today.
You know uncle david that you can get a side salad at mcdonald’s. It doesn’t have any animals on it.”

This was my nephews attempt to “casually” suggest that lunch @ mcdonald’s would be good with him. The salad reference because my diet is plant based, just to let me know they have food i can eat. Priceless.

Luke: “Have you ever had a sonic slushy? They’re really good, and they don’t have any animals in them & no animal names.”

Once again just a casual suggestion. We explored a little further with this one. I asked him to imagine what it would be like if sonic had a “Chicken Nugget Slushy”. Apparently that would be gross. I think it would be a hit. He loves chicken nuggets & slushys; why not combine the two?

Luke: “You’ll need to show me how to use your toaster. That’s right, you don’t have many electronics in your house.”

Here he suddenly remembers that i my camper is off the grid.

ipod battery runs out: “i’m bored”

Starts fingering through my legal pad lamenting “if there were any blank pages i wouldn’t be bored”. So i flip the pad, & instant blank pages!

So after having several sword battles hand drawn on a legal pad, “here’s your paper back uncle david”. “Do you have any books?” Please…do i have books? I have books like my daughter has shoes!

Done with the books, what to do now? Do a Dusty of course: (head out the window just like my yellow lab).

The fun thing about hanging out with kids is listening to how they view the world. There is a raw innocence that is at once refreshing & sad.

Chicken Nugget Slushy was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Getting in the BOOB Biz

Since moving into my “Camp David” compound i’ve been brainstorming on ways to realize the american dream & cheat some poor sucker out of his hard earned $’s (er…..i mean become an entrepreneur & practice capitalism).

So, read about people selling human breast milk on the internet. Seems even Alicia Silverstone is getting into the business (bless her clueless little heart). So i pondered on whether or not i should get in the “dairy” business?

Eating a vegan diet i figured this breast milk thing could be a loophole. Milk for my coffee, don’t you know. The problem is i’m avoiding relationships w/ women. I’m not compatible w/ them apparently (just ask either of my x-wives).

So what to do? I like boobs. Chance for free milk for my coffee & $’s in my pocket too.

Lactating Lesbians.

Yep, that’s the ticket. No chance of them wanting a relationship w/me. Plus i’ve long been pro lesbian. Big fan.

Since Alicia (we’re on a 1st name basis don’t ya know) has the breast milk market covered i need another option.

Hmmmm…. What else can you do with milk?

Butter!

Vegan Organic Breast Milk Butter, that’s the ticket.

B.O.O.B © Butter Of Organic Breast-milk

Brainstorming @ work & a co-worker brings up: “what are you going to do with the babies?”

Quandary.

Simple, just take a cue from the cow dairy business.

The females will become producers & the boys will become supper.

Problem solved.

Ok, ok……prolly not (laws & whatnot). So….

The boys will be sold to rich chinese couples who want a male.

Pretty sure i’m not the 1st one to come up w/ this one (ever seen Yao Ming the 7'6" chinese basketball star?)

Problem solved (yet again).

Lactating Lesbians was originally published in Animal Rights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.