Natural Treatment for review Edeh disease disease

i want you to imagine that one morning youwake up and as you stretch in bed, your fingers graze your oak headboard and suddenly, beforeyour eyes, you see the tiniest acorn fall to the ground, sink into the earth, shootup into a great oak, get cut down by industrial machinery, chopped into pieces, manufacturedinto a headboard, packaged, shipped, displayed, and purchased by you. this all happens in the span of a few seconds. you start thinking maybe you aren’t quiteawake it was just a particularly vivid dream. but when you throw back your sheets, you’reregaled with their entire journey from cotton seedlings in a field all the way to adorningyour mattress.

by this point you’re understandably afraidto move, so you yell for a loved one, instinctually reaching out to them as they rush in. and it happens again. only this time you’re not watching theirhistory, you’re seeing it through their eyes. every moment in their life as they saw it,every experience as they experienced it—all in the blink of an eye. it’s all so much at once you find yourselfunable to explain to them what’s happening—at least not without sounding insane.

so you laugh it off—must have been a baddream—and thank them when they offer to make breakfast. maybe getting something in your stomach willsettle things down. you keep your socks on as you make your wayto the table to save yourself the life story of your floors and carpets, and pull backyour chair with your foot before carefully sitting down. you decide to just use a single fork for everythingthat you’re going to eat so that you don’t have to learn more than you care to know aboututensil production. your plate is set before you and your lovedone or family member or roommate joins you.

you smile and thank them and say you musthave just been hungry. and then you make the mistake of taking abite of bacon. what do you think you would see? what would you hear? smell? feel? what would it be like seeing through the eyesof that pig? just imagine the full scope of this—everyitem you pick up at the store, every piece of clothing you put on, every person whosehand you shake or hug.

how would your understanding of the worldand those around you change? and how would it affect your food choices? hello, my name is emily moran barwick. i’m an animal liberation activist, an artist,an educator and a vegan. i created the youtube channel and accompanyingwebsite, bite size vegan, where i educate people about veganism through a wide arrayof video styles covering a diverse range of subjects. in our time together today, i’m very likelygoing to challenge some of your life-long beliefs.

i’m going to ask you to set aside your preconceptions,suspend any certainties, and try to see with a fresh set of eyes that which you’ve neverquestioned. the everyday, ordinary, accepted aspects ofyour daily life. i am aware that this is a great deal to askof you, especially coming from a total stranger. i’m asking for your trust when i haven’teven earned it. but believe it or not, i am not here to forcemy beliefs upon you—to criticize your country, culture, traditions, religions, or beliefs. i’m not here to shame or shock you. i’m not even here to make you vegan.

i won’t pretend to have that power. and no one really makes any lasting changethrough force anyway. today, i’m simply here to show you whatis really going on every second of every day all around the world behind closed doors—includinghere, in ireland. i’m here to present evidence—for yourconsideration—that things may not be as they appear undoing a life-long belief is no easy task. but in order to make informed decisions, tolook ourselves in the mirror and ask if we are truly living the values we purport tohave, we must know the truth.

we must educate ourselves about what is reallygoing on, not rely on what we’ve been taught. we must make decisions based on facts, notfantasy. i’ll want to preface this talk by sayingthat i’m going to be transparent with you and i’ll even tell you if i don’t knowsomething. i will be focusing rather intensely on thesituation here in ireland. now i’m obviously not from here—and asmuch as i strive to be diligent in my research, it would be a grave misjudgment and incrediblypresumptuous on my part to come here and try to tell you about your own country, especiallyon something so incredibly central to your country’s history, economy and culture,as animal agriculture.

the facts i’ll present today are not ofmy creation—i’ve sourced them from primarily irish governmental and industry documents,the european union, and many, many others. you don’t even have to believe me—i willbe providing you with a link to a resource sheet containing a full transcript of thistalk with detailed citations for every fact i state, a full bibliography and additionalresources so that you can dig deeper. we’ll only be able to barely scratch thesurface in this brief window of time we have together. so let’s get started. for anyone unfamiliar with the term “veganism,”vegans do not eat, wear, or use anything that

came from someone else’s body. we don’t eat meat, drink milk or eat cheese. we don’t consume eggs or honey. we don’t wear leather, wool, silk, or down. we don’t use products that were tested onanimals or contain byproducts from their slaughter. and we don’t attend circuses, zoos, aquariums,or any other event that exploits living beings for our entertainment and pleasure. now you may think this is an extreme way oflife—most people do. maybe it seems unrealistic, unnatural, evendangerous.

perhaps a well-intended but misguided over-reactionto isolated cases of animal cruelty. after all, most people identify as animallovers—they don’t want to cause the suffering and death of innocent beings anymore thanvegans do. but all those undercover videos of abuse andhorror stories of cruelty you hear in the news—those are in america, right? or china. or some far away land. or a case of one corrupt individual givingall farmers a bad name. or the inevitable product of factory farms,big agribusiness, and corporate greed.

but it’s not like that here. here we have smaller farms. higher standards. better conditions. stronger regulations. our farmers care about their animals. maybe your family or you yourself are involvedin some aspect of animal agriculture and find the claims of many animal activists objectionable,inflammatory, and completely out of line with your own practice.

or maybe the rolling green pastures you drivepast, with peacefully grazing cows seem to be another world from the vegan argumentsagainst beef and dairy. or maybe you have a friend who raises theirown chickens for eggs and treats them like family members, nothing like the tiny cagesin the media. certainly there’s a middle ground betweensystematic abuse and the extreme measures of veganism? a way of farming animals that’s inline withthe inherent values of humanity: stewardship, compassion, respect for life, humane treatment. assuming this is the case, how much do youknow about the exact nature of these higher

standards and stronger regulations—or eventhe origin of the animal or animal product on your table? where were they born? where and how were they housed? how were they treated? how were they killed? unfortunately—or, you may think fortunately—thehypothetical exercise we started off with is total fantasy. the vast majority of people posses very littleto no knowledge of where their food comes

from and how the individuals from whom itwas taken were treated—including the republic of ireland and the whole of the eu. what we eat is such an accepted part of ourevery day life that most of us have never even thought to question what we’ve beentold. this isn’t due to a lack of intelligence—thisinformation is deliberately difficult to find—and even then, it’s couched in euphemisms anddense legal language. which makes you wonder— if there’s reallynothing wrong with how we breed, raise, and kill the animals we eat—if it really isbetter here, why such make such an effort? today we’re going to decode this language,look behind closed doors—we’re going to

take that figurative bite and see the historyof the animals we eat. and this is not just about them, but alsothe environment, our health, and the health of our family. you deserve to know the truth about what you’reputting in your body—about what you’re feeing your children. and you certainly deserve to know what you’repaying others to do to animals in your name. now i’m not even talking about instancesof overt abuse and neglect—which have and do occur in ireland— because we all knowsuch cruelty is unacceptable. what we’re going to focus on are the standardoperating procedures and best practices.

you may already be familiar with some of whati’ll cover—perhaps it’s even part of your every day work—but remember today isabout seeing these accepted conventions through new eyes—the animals’ eyes—and questioningour mentality towards these beings. to this end i’ll be using terminology youmay find objectionable when applied to non-humans—perhaps overly anthropomorphic. this is a perfect example of our completelycontradictory beliefs. humane regulations are an inherent admissionof animals’ ability to suffer and feel pain. so how can we claim that our standards arehigher, our animals better treated, that they’re healthy and happy—then deny that they evenpossess these capacities when asked to see

from their perspective? we cannot have it both ways. so let’s see how the vast majority of ireland’spopulation lives. the republic of ireland’s human populationis now over 4.7 million. of course this does not include the over 1and a half million pigs, 5 million sheep, almost 7 million cows, and 11 million chickensand other birds. as you most likely are aware, ireland’smain animal agriculture outputs are dairy and beef, however the most highly consumedanimal products in the republic are pig meat and poultry.

in fact, ireland has one of the highest levelsof poultry meat consumption within the eu at 32.8kg per person in 2015, finally overtakingirish per capita pig meat consumption by over a kilo. and, believe it or not, at least accordingto the respective countries’ statistics from 2014, ireland’s population consumedalmost 7 kilos more poultry per person than the united states, and between 9 and 24 kilosmore red meat, depending on the measurement parameters. it just so happens that the most highly consumedmeats in ireland are the most intensively farmed, though this can be easy to miss asthe agricultural census groups pigs, poultry,

horticulture, fruit and mixed crops as “other.” ireland’s pig industry states in its own2015 report that “currently 99%+ of irish pigs are bred and reared in indoor, non-strawbedded, slatted or solid floor systems.” in 2003 the european commission stated thatwhile “the majority of pigs for fattening (81 %) are reared on units of 200 pigs ormore,”…[t]he industry in…ireland is characterised by units of more than 1000.” within the pig industry worldwide, it’sstandard practice to “process” piglets—a perfect example of the euphemistic terminologywith which we reduce individuals to inventory. it allows us to distance ourselves from ouractions.

during “processing” baby pigs have theirteeth cut or ground, their ears sliced or pierced, their tails cut off and boys havetheir testicles ripped out—all without anesthetic. while the irish pig industry seems to favorraising intact males, the republic’s laws explicitly permit unanaesthetized castration,along with teeth and tail cutting of piglets under 8 days of age. ear tagging, notching, or other “lawfulapplication” of identification are permitted at any age on any animal. baby pigs are killed before they’re 6 monthsold—a decade before their natural lifespan. the brief time they get to spend with theirmother is through the thick metal bars of

her farrowing crate. nursing mothers are tightly confined, unableto turn around or interact with their babies. pigs are highly intelligent and incrediblysocial, ranking with primates in their level of social cognition. mothers can recognize their piglets by soundalone, and sing to their babies while nursing—referred to in studies as “nursing vocalization.” but despite their scientifically recognizedarray of complex emotions, piglets are separated from their mother within days or weeks oftheir birth, with ireland specifying no earlier than 21 days.

the sooner her babies are taken, the fastershe can “re-enter production.” at her “time of service,” the astoundingterm for forceful penetration of her vagina with an instrument full of boar semen, shemay legally be chained in place, one of the number of exceptions allowing the tetheredrestrained of pigs. tethering stalls as a whole, where pigs werechained in place all the time were outlawed by the eu in 1995, but as we’ll continuallysee with all regulations, this came with ample exceptions, loopholes, and a 10 year windowfor implementation. in 1998 91% of ireland’s mother pigs werestill confined to sow stalls or tethered. and when sow stalls, also known as gestationcrates, were subsequently outlawed through

a 2001 eu decision, again with ample fine-printexceptions and only for a certain portion of their pregnancy, ireland was one of ninemember states found to be non-compliant in 2013, with the european commission statingthey’d “had twelve years to ensure a smooth transition to the new system and to implementthe directive.” later that same year, the organization compassionin world farming released an undercover video from their investigation into five pig farmsin cork, waterford and kerry, with one investigator stating, “these are the worst pig farmsthat we have seen in europe, and the worst conditions that i have seen in years,” findingpigs covered in their own excrement, relegated to filthy pens, cannibalizing dead pigs leftin their pens out of boredom, bins full of

carcasses, weak and emaciated pigs left todie, open wounds, among other violations. fearing their findings were an indicationof conditions within “a large section of irish pig farming,” the organization notedhow “ironically, as these investigations were taking place, ireland held the eu presidency. during their tenure, the irish governmentmade a show of taking the lead on animal welfare.” humane regulations do not equal humane treatment. as i mentioned earlier, there’s a tendencyto dismiss these kinds of investigation as isolated incidents—five isolated incidentsin this case. that’s why i’m laying out in such detailthe exact nature of the highest standards

available—standards that reduce intelligentbeings to machinery. that allow the repeat sexual exploitationand confinement of mothers, the mutilation of babies, the separation of families in orderto churn out the next round of living products. if we look at ireland’s own portrayal ofideal conditions, images printed in welfare guides, pig farms featured on ear to the ground,and make the effort to see with a fresh set of eyes, how can we call this treatment humane? if this is the highest standard, what’shappening when the camera’s not rolling? this particular episode of ear to the groundperfectly illustrates our true motivation for enhanced welfare—allowing a few pigsto access to the outdoors for the first time

in their lives to see if this improves theflavor of their flesh and the price their carcasses will fetch. ireland’s pig industry stakeholders in theirown 2015 report cite animal health and welfare as major challenges, and propose a financialincentive of €200 per sow for depopulation—meaning payment for killing and “restocking” their“inventory.” in 2015, 3.2 million pigs were killed in export-approvedplants in ireland. when we add in the estimate for non-exportapproved plants and the 181,000 irish pigs shipped alive to other countries, the bodycount climbs to 3.6 million (3,575,737). this does not include pigs “destroyed”for disease or depopulation, nor the worn

out mother sows killed with their “production”declines. deemed unfit for human consumption, even intheir death’s these serially abused beings are denied any recognition of individuality. if we are capable of treating these social,intelligent, emotive beings—who show affection and play in many of the same ways as our belovedcanine companions—with such malicious, selfish disregard, imagine what we’re capable ofdoing to beings with whom we’re less able to relate, 2015 was a banner year for theirish poultry and egg industries, with rising global demands and domestic consumption. along with poultry surpassing pig flesh asthe most eaten meat in the country, irish

egg consumption and production are also rose,with the nation’s 240 egg producers churning out 281 million more eggs in 2015 than fiveyears prior. by sheer quantity alone, chickens are themost severely exploited of farmed land animals. the mothers of the pig industry, layer hensare imprisoned, used up, and thrown away when their bodies give out prematurely from theextreme demands of production. hens lose vital nutrients every time theirbody forms an egg. every aspect of their lives is regulated toensure maximum output. >from breeding them to produce eggs at an alarminglyunnatural rate, to controlling their laying cycles with days and days of persistent lightfollowed by long periods of complete darkness,

to starving them for weeks at a time in aneffort to force yet another egg cycle from their worn out bodies, a process benignlyreferred to as “induced molting.”. of course, the eu essentially banned the completeremoval of food and water in 1999, so instead of suffering through up to 3 years of thisbrutality, european hens whose production has declined have the good fortune of beingslaughtered around their first birthday. the vast majority of the world’s more than7 billion layer hens spend their abbreviated lives in cramped battery cages, unable toeven extend their wings. now you may have heard the big fuss aboutthe european union’s groundbreaking directive set in 1999 banning “barren battery cages”by 2012.

>from the media coverage, you’d think eulayer hens are living in luxury. but as we’re seeing with humane regulation,the devil is truly in the details. in reality, the directive merely replacedbarren battery cages with “enriched,” meaning furnished, battery cages. reports extolled how hens would now be afforded750cm2 each, neglecting the legislation’s clarification that only 600 of these wouldbe usable due to “furnishings”—meaning this most “revolutionary” advancementfor the rights of layer hens granted them each an additional 50cm2. understanding the true impotence of this legislationmakes its pathetic implementation all the

more baffling. in 2012, nine countries told the europeancommission that their farmers would not meet the deadline for conversion, with four additionalcountries saying it was unlikely they’d be ready. these thirteen countries had over 12 yearsto grant the laying hens they enslave a meager 50cm2. and all the while the media celebrates thevictory for animal welfare, the public eats more and more eggs, reassured by their higherstandards, and the individuals this entire charade is supposed to be for, remain justas exploited.

this is readily evident if when we put a faceto the figures. meet alice and joy. they were both liberated with a few of theirsisters from irish egg farms and brought to eden sanctuary just outside of dublin, wherethey walked on grass and saw the sky for the first time in their life. alice came from a battery cage farm. joy came from an enriched cage farm. eden’s founder, sandra higgins, describedin a report on the eu directive the conditions in which joy and her friends were imprisoned.

“a large number of them had extremely inflamedand swollen bodies, obviously stressed to the limit by the human demand for eggs. one hen was barely able to walk, her legsunable to keep her body upright because they were forced so wide apart from the swellingin her abdomen. some had prolapsed from the effort of layingeggs. some died of egg peritonitis. joy, like the others, was exceptionally light,with a mere covering of skin and feathers over her sharply protruding keel or breastbone. she had ammonia scalds on her skin.”

apparently they hadn’t seen the news toknow how fortunate they were to be living under the highest of standards. confronted with this reality, most peoplepropose a shift to free-range and cage-free facilities. but as we’ve seen, the only comfort theselabels bring is to our own conscience. cage-free birds are crammed into tiny shedsand have twice the mortality rates of battery caged hens. they still have their sensitive beaks cutor burned off, and as they still suffer the same predisposition to osteoporosis from theirinbred overproduction of eggs —which, with

their increased opportunity for movement,results in an increased incidence of fractures. their bodies are their prisons. the most horrifying consequence of our perversegenetic manipulation, is the fate of male layer chicks. we’ve optimized our machines, you see, anddesigned one kind of chicken for meat and another kind for eggs. because of this, the egg industry producesbillions of unwanted male baby chicks every year. to “dispose of”—as it’s termed—thesebaby chicks, they are either painfully gassed,

slowly suffocated in plastic bags, or theyare ground up alive. this is standard practice all over the world,regardless of cage-free, free-range, and organic labels. the eu regulation under which ireland operateslists maceration as the preferred method, specifying that chicks must be less than 72hours old when the are killed –they are not even granted three days of life. now you won’t find any mention of this barbaricpractice in ireland’s newly implemented animal welfare act, or anything specifyingmethods of confinement and slaughter. and even if you manage to unravel the convolutedlanguage and trace the overly complex changes

in legislation enough to find what eventuallybecame part 7 of schedule 5 of the welfare of farmed animals regulations, you’ll find,amongst a myriad of disturbing details of legalized murder, “the permitted methodsfor the killing of chicks,” cleanly laying out the proper way to grind up conscious,living, feeling, day old babies. of course if you happen to look deeper andfind that schedule 5 was deleted in its entirety in 2013, you may understandably assume chickdisposal was abolished. in reality, the reason ireland’s new welfareact seems so sterile is that it simply defers the gruesome details to the eu regulations,and ireland-specific supporting statutory instruments.

i hope by now my initial claims that we can’ttrust what we are told are sounding slightly less like a conspiracy theory. if you’re wondering why this hasn’t beenexposed on the news, it has. and every time it’s people are appalled,outraged, disgusted. they wonder how anyone person or industrycould be so barbaric. and they continue to eat eggs, not realizingthey’ve just answered their own question. the european commission estimates that theeu kills 330 million chicks every year, with global estimates at 3.2 billion. the chickens of ireland’s raises meat industryaren’t any better off, bred to grow at such

alarming rates that they collapse under theirown weight before being sent to slaughter at only 5-6 weeks old. in 2015 ireland killed a record 80.3 millionchickens in approved export plants alone. ireland’s safefood review not only describesin detail how irish chickens are hung upside down and dragged through electrified waterbaths, but also addresses the health impact on the human population. campylobacter is the most common cause ofbacterial gastroenteritis in ireland, with “the highest burden…seen in children underfive.” in 2008, of the broiler chicken carcassesinspected from ireland, 98% were contaminated

with campylobacter. that same year, ireland had the most outbreaksof cryptosporidiosis and e-coli in the entire eu and eea. and i’m sure your familiar with bovine spongiformencephalopathy or mad cow disease—which brings us finally to most iconic and the mostprofitable sectors of ireland’s animal agriculture: dairy and beef. ireland is home to over 6.3 million cows. 1.7 million were slaughtered in factories& abattoirs in 2015, with total “disposals” as it’s termed, reaching nearly 2.1 million.

but these numbers say little about the livesof these beings. we all know milk comes from cows. we may think they have a constant supply ofmilk and even that they need to be milked to relieve the pressure. but cows are mammals, just like us. they produce milk for one reason: to feedtheir babies. cows carry their babies for 9 months, justlike we do, they lactate to feed their babies, just like we do, and after weaning, they stopproducing milk, just like we do. so in order to have a constant supply of cow’smilk for human consumption, we need a constant

supply of pregnant cows. in the dairy industry, as we’ve seen withmother pigs, cows are repeatedly subjected to what we call artificial insemination. but were we to awake in the condition of ourimaginary scenario, take a sip of milk and see the same experience from the cow’s perspective,we’d not hesitate a moment to call it rape. cows are restrained, anally penetrated bythe inseminator’s arm, and vaginally penetrated by the semen-containing rod. aside from the trauma of this experience,cows often sustain internal injuries, which is why ai training on female cows at slaughterhousesis gaining popularity.

after all, any damage to working cows wouldslow down production, and what’s another violation when they’ll be dead soon anyways? no matter where she’s raised or how she’shoused, when a dairy cow gives birth, her baby is taken away. can’t have them sucking up all the profits,after all. animal health ireland’s handy calfcare guideadvises that “dairy calves should be removed from their dams,” meaning mothers, “immediatelyafter birth and hand-fed colostrum,” which is the very first milk all mothers produce,containing important antibodies. they go on to explain that “the dairy calfis going to be separated from the cow anyways”

as “dairy cows are not bred for their motheringabilities,” citing the low quality of their colostrum. not only does this negate the emotional devastationof having child after child taken away, but it even uses the consequences of our own exploitationas a means of justification. cows bond intensely with their calves andwill cry for days when they are taken. a former cattle rancher friend of mine turnedvegan when she witnessed her cows chasing the trailer as it took their children away. she says they cried for days and only stoppedwhen they lost their voices. this is not anthropomorphizing.

it is a mother’s grief and it’s utterlyheartbreaking to watch. if her baby is male, he is sent to a vealfarm where he is tied down, unable to move, or locked in a cage where he cannot even turnaround until he’s slaughtered while still only a few weeks old. veal, an industry that even many meat-eatersoppose, wouldn’t exist without dairy. every cup of yogurt, every scoop of ice creamand every glass of milk is directly connected to the deaths of those baby calves. of course the dairy calves of ireland areshipped to other countries to meet their fate. female calves are doomed to suffer the samefate as their mothers, whose worn out bodies

give out around 4 or 5 years of age, despitetheir natural lifespan of 20 years or more. they’re sent to slaughter for cheap meatand pet food, deemed unfit for human consumption. at the slaughterhouse, many of these mothersface their final and most brutal separation from yet another child. while formal statistics are difficult to obtainas most studies focus on the economic cost of “fetal wastage,” accounts range fromapproximately 10% to 70% of cows arriving at the slaughterhouse pregnant. ireland’s welfare laws allow the unanesthetizedcastration of cows up to 6 months of age with a burdizzo, or a rubber ring around theirscrotum up to 8 days of age, as well as the

painful removal of their horns up to 15 days. of course ireland’s farm animal welfareadvisory council recommends these procedures not be carried out simultaneously with theweaning of beef calves, stating that, “weaning of the suckled calf from its mother can beparticularly stressful for both the cow and her calf.” their dairy brochure offers a single bulletpoint, that “weaning of calves should be done with the minimum of stress.” an eu audit encompassing only a fraction ofirish dairy farms between 2012 and 2014, found up to 70 welfare violations per year, statingthat “the most frequently detected in bovine

animals is mutilation.” and that despite corrective measures, “thenumber of mutilation non-compliances detected from 2012 to 2014 remained stable.” living beings aren’t meant to be productionmachines. dairy cows are prone to infections from frequentmilkings, and are often pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones, all of which seep intotheir milk. even here in ireland there’s an officialnumber of pus cells allowed in milk, euphemistically referred to as the “somatic cell count.” in the united states, 750,000 pus cells areallowed in every ml, with the eu specifying

400,000 cells/ml and brazil allowing 1,000,000cells/ml]. yes, ireland’s dairy and beef cattle arelargely pasture raised and on much smaller farms than industrial production. but even that’s changing. with the end of the milk quotas, ireland’slargest dairy farmer said that in order to compete, “the dairy farm of the future isgoing to have to be bigger.” and for the cow, the pig, the chicken, duck,turkey, for the lamb or sheep—they don’t know the name of the company or person enslavingthem. they don’t know what size the farm is orin what country.

they are just as robbed of their rights andtheir lives regardless of location our rationalizations and justifications areof no use to those whom we exploit. with some of our most impressive mental gymnastics,which would be admirable if it weren’t so horrific, we say this barbaric mutilation,this conversion of living beings from someones to somethings is for their own good. because if we if we don’t clip their teethor cut their beaks or slice off their tails, they’ll attack and chew on each other. what we fail to mention, is that these behaviorsare stress responses to confinement in overly-crowded, insanity-inducing conditions.

if we didn’t put them in these abusive conditions,they wouldn’t react the way they do. but we humans love to play the role of saviorin the disasters of our own creation. we swoop in to milk the cow and relieve thepainful pressure of her swollen udder. pressure that wouldn’t exist had we nottaken her child away. we’ve spent all this time looking at thetreatment of animals in ireland, but the truth is, ireland exports the vast majority of itsoutputs, including 90% of beef and around 85% of dairy. in addition thousands of live pigs, chickens,sheep, lambs, and unweaned calves—babies we’ve stolen away from their mothers—areshipped out of ireland on extended, terrifying

journeys to other countries through all mannerof weather extremes. if they manage to survive the journey, they’reeither fattened up for slaughter, or in the case of veal calves confined and slaughtered,or simply killed immediately. ireland’s transport reports show regularviolations of animal welfare regulations, with ireland as a whole receiving a formalnotice from the eu in 2011. and when these beings arrive at their finaldestination, the nature of their treatment and their deaths are out of irish hands. undercover investigations continue to exposebrutal abuse of these imported animals. ireland ships living beings across the euas well as to destinations like tunisia, libya,

morocco, kosovo, albania, rwanda, china, andthe ukraine. but what about the animals that you eat? how are they treated? looking again at what’s eaten the most,60% of pig meat and 90% of chicken consumed in ireland are imported. another safefood report found the majorityof ireland’s population had very low awareness as to the actual source of their food, illustratinghow a single slice of hawaiian pizza processed and packages in the republic of ireland, wouldhave ingredients from at least 19 countries. ireland is home to multiple multinationalcorporations with the world’s largest beef

producer, jbs, recently relocating their headquartersto the republic, amidst criminal proceedings for violating brazilian laws. in surveying and observing irish consumers,they found that “while many aspired to be healthy, economical, and to support the domesticmarket, this did not follow through to their purchasing behaviour. it was observed … that there is a markeddifference between consumers’ attitudes and their behaviours.” this finding was echoed in an eu study onawareness of slaughter regulations, with the majority of irish consumers unaware of thedetails or even whether regulations exist,

and just two of the 13,500 respondents fromacross the eu citing animal welfare at slaughter as a consideration in their meat purchases,with the main driving forces being quality and price. once again money trumps ethics. yes, the industry keeps the truth deliberatelyhidden, but to be honest, most of us prefer not to know. we say we love animals, but it’s impossibleto love someone and profit from their death. of course farmers take care of their animals. but we only need to look at the language tosee it’s not compassion, it’s maintenance

of inventory. we even limit the parameters of their so-calledlegal protection by the bottom line of cost. we amass mountains of paperwork, conduct thousandsof studies, spend untold amounts of money, form governmental, institutional and industrypanels, all to decide, define and decree the right way to rape, confine, mutilate, kidnapand kill. i mean it really is absurd when we step backand think about it. do we have manuals on how to humanely rape? or how to compassionately kidnap? or ethically rob?

of course not because those are oxymorons. they cannot coexist. but when it comes to our treatment of animals,we will bend over backwards and create massive paper trails of regulations to feel good aboutwhat we are doing. we turn these living beings into data points,flowcharts, and percentages—calculate to a decimal point’s certainty the exact costof every aspect of their lives and details for their deaths. we relegate the annual mass murder of over3 billion day-old conscious, innocent babies to a footnote.

a footnote in a study conducted for the welfareregulations we’re so graciously creating. we deem them legally sentient, deserving freedomfrom hunger, thirst, discomfort, pain, injury, disease, fear, distress and mental suffering—thenuse this very recognition of their capacity to feel the same emotions and sensations aswe do to design—in language so disturbingly detached it’s nothing short of sociopathic—theexact manner in which we may legally violate, imprison, cut, burn, alter, and murder them. this is how profoundly illogical our thinkingis when it comes to animals. it goes against all basic human understanding. knowing better but doing wrong anyway is worsethan having no knowledge.

yet we have the audacity to hold this legislativerecognition of non-human sentience on high as a giant step forward for the rights ofanimals. as if systematically exploiting individualswith fully admitted knowledge and comprehension of their capacity to suffer is something tocommend. look what we offer ourselves as evidence ofprogress: one news report extolled the reduction in animals slipping and falling on their wayto slaughter in one abattoir in one country. when we look at our actions from the otherside, the perverse absurdity of our deluded self-congratulations is astounding. if you were in the place of these beings,how grateful would you feel if your captor

laid down a bathmat on the ramp to your execution? is this really the best we have to offer? being the most courteous murderers? the most considerate rapists? pouring untold resources into these convolutedlaws and regulations, all the while completely blind to the fact that there’s another optionentirely. one we don’t have to manipulate our valuesto justify. one we don’t have to couch in euphemisticterms or bury beneath incomprehensibly dense legislation.

one that allows us to finally align our actionswith our values and become the people we believe ourselves to be. good people. kind people. animal lovers. stewards to this earth and its inhabitants. before we address—very briefly—issuesof the environment and health, i’m going to play a short video. while i’ve included footage on your resourcepage of the undercover investigation into

irish pig farms and the brutal abuse and prolongedslaughter of live exported irish animals, i decided to take a different approach heretoday. the video i’m going to play only includesfootage of government-sanctioned conditions and practices, all completely legal here inireland. if it really is better here, we should haveno objection to watching. if you feel you must turn away, i’d justask you to think on the question: “if i can’t watch the process, do i have a rightto eat the product?” video in my years of being vegan and speaking withmany, many non-vegans, i have yet to ever

hear one reason that even comes close to justifyingputting a sentient being through what we just saw. not one. you cannot watch that and say that the animalswe kill for our food don’t know any better. that they die peacefully and humanely. they can sense the fear. they can smell the blood. and they fight. they fight to the end.

and you can’t say that it’s happeningin some far away place because it’s happening all over the world. the co2 chambers you saw - those were themedieval devices lowering pigs to an extraordinarily painful death of burning from the inside out– that is seen as the most humane method of slaughtering pigs. it’s employed worldwide, including herein the ireland. the eu, in its groundbreaking legislation,recommended phasing out the use of carbon dioxide, but said “the impact assessmentrevealed such recommendations were not economically viable at present.”

interestingly enough, butina, the companythat manufactures the very chambers you saw in that video—and the ones operating herein ireland—was one of the stakeholders involved in that assessment. it’s the absurdity of murderers decidinghow they’re allowed to murder. as we saw with the disease outbreaks, it’snot just the animals’ welfare that’s compromised. in ireland, just like the united states, heartdisease is the number one killer. we’ve long had proof that a balanced vegandiet can prevent and even reverse heart disease. 74% of men and 57% of women in ireland wereoverweight or obese in 2010, with the world health organization designating ireland asthe leader of europe’s obesity crisis, with

almost the entire adult population predictedto be overweight or obese by 2030. more than 1 in 4 children in ireland are overweightor obese, with a safefood study finding 61% getting insufficient dietary fiber, 40% exceedingrecommendations for dietary fat, and all exceeding salt intake by 50%, specifying that “processedmeats … made a major contribution to the salt content of all children’s diets,”the very kind of meat that the who has designated as a class one carcinogen. we’re taught that animal products are necessaryfor protein, vitamin d, b-12, iron, and other nutrients, but these “foods” are a packagedeal—inseparable from their disease-promoting components.

i’ve included more in-depth informationon health and nutrition on your resources page, as well as a link to a free comprehensiveguide to going vegan from eden farm sanctuary’s go vegan world campaign—but i want to speakvery briefly to fishing and the environmental impact of animal agriculture. whether you eat fish and marine life or not,this matter impacts all of us. the ocean, or rather the phytoplankton withinthe ocean, provides somewhere between 50 and 80% of our oxygen and the oceans ecosystemsstore carbon in massive quantities—we are destroying the very lungs of our planet withthe delusion of sustainable fishing. setting aside all arguments for animal ethics,the destructive nature of animal agriculture,

the environmental crisis at hand should beon the forefront of ireland’s agenda—too protect and preserve the incredible landscapeof this country, in which its citizens take well-deserved pride. and while ireland is the first country toimplement a nation-wide sustainability program, it unfortunately mirrors all of the majorgreen initiatives and government panels the world over, proposing and celebrating symbolicgestures, essentially applying media-friendly band-aids to a severed limb. animal agriculture accounted for 34% of ireland’sgreenhouse gas emissions in 2013, the single largest contributing sector.

it’s responsible for 97.5% of ammonia, 89.2%of methane, and 94% nitrous oxide and a greenhouse gas that is 296 times more destructive thancarbon dioxide and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years. ireland had the 4th highest greenhouse gasemission per capita in 2011 the national competitiveness council reported in 2008 that the roi was“one of the highest carbon emitters on a per capita basis in the oecd,” utilizingless than half the oecd average of renewable sources, with no waste to energy conversion,stating “the least preferred waste solution from an environmental perspective, dominatesin ireland.” their subsequent 2015 scorecard, showed ireland’senvironmental performance (epi score) and

rate of improvement still lagging behind oecdaverage, with particularly poor performance “in relation to biodiversity and protectionof habitats, fisheries and water sanitation.” keep in mind this is the impact of the iconic,grass-fed, pasture-raised irish agriculture. as it is, epa documents show time and againthe waste lagoons from pig and dairy farms and wastewater from rendering plants contaminatingireland’s protected waters, and mislabeled or non-compliant handling of srm materials,meaning remains at risk of containing mad-cow disease, directly threatening the public health. the irish times reported the increasing environmentaldevastation of new zealand’s dairy practice, saying how that country was “often heldup as an example of what ireland could have

been if the milk quota regime had not pulledthe handbrake on our growth.” twenty days later, the quote was lifted. even if this approach was the ideal we holdit up to be, we simply don’t have the land for the number of animals we eat every year. the amount of land that it takes to produce37,000 pounds of plant-based foods will only yield 375 pounds of meat. you can grow 15 times more protein on anygiven area of land with plants versus animals. we have environmentally reached the pointbeyond personal choice--beyond “you eat how you want to eat and i’ll eat how i wantto eat.”

this is a global crisis and it’s not aboutyou and it’s not about me anymore. we say that children are our future but whatfuture can they have when we are eating the planet to death? the world cannot sustain meat, dairy and eggproduction. it simply can’t. we have to start aligning our actions withour values. i understand that animal agriculture is moredeeply rooted within irish culture than i can possibly comprehend—an enormous sourceof pride for your country, which is all the more reason to take action.

far from contradictory, offensive, disrespectfulor extreme, the principles and practices of veganism are the best hope for healing ourplanet, and of preserving the beauty and history of countries like ireland. and in making this shift, we’ll need farmersmore than ever—those who know the land when so many of us find it foreign. we’ll rely on them for our food as muchas we ever have. we cannot justify what we do to animals outof tradition. our traditions do not alleviate their suffering. and our customs do not dictate the value ofsomeone else’s life.

traditions can be wrong. and customs can be cruel. there are many atrocities in the history ofhumanity that we now look upon with disgust and disbelief at what used to be commonplace. and you don’t have to give up taste or evengiving up our favorite foods. these days there exist vegan alternativesfor virtually every meat, cheese, dairy creation, even eggs. and you can find recipes online for makingyour own versions if the readymade alternatives aren’t available in your area or are tooexpensive.

veganism, far from being an extreme lifestyle,a threat to tradition, is the most sane and rational way to live. it’s the most powerful tool we have forsaving our planet, for improving our health when we eat health-consciously, and for regainingour compassion- for becoming the people we believe ourselves to be: good people. and good people don’t destroy the planet,leaving our children without a future. good people don’t throw newborn babies intogrinders. good people don’t rip day old babies awayfrom their mothers. good people don’t rape, torture and murder.

yet “good people” everywhere are doingall of these things with every bite of every meal. but that’s the beauty here. you no longer have to buy into the lie. you decide what goes into your body. you decide whether you want to continue tohave others kill for you. you decide whether you want to continue consumingdeath, terror, and heartbreak. you have the information at you feet. the responsibility now lies in your hands.

you decide. and my hope is, you’ll decide to go vegan. subtitles by the amara.org community

Selfi Suswanto Monday, February 20, 2017