Bearing Witness: The First Stage in Changing the Paradigm for Animals

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If you are an animal advocate or just someone who is concerned with animal issues, the first most important task we have is to find creative ways to get people to bear witness to the suffering of animals for food and other uses. You can’t have a meaningful conversation with someone who has not yet been exposed to the reality you too have witnessed. The act of witnessing forms the basis of a constructive dialogue about our impact on animals and what we can do about it. … READ ON

Beyond the Struggle to Survive: The Study of Pleasure in Animals

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“Happy, healthy animals are beautiful to behold. They make us smile, and there’s value in that. But pleasure has deeper meaning and significant implications for humankind’s relationship with other animals. Pleasure adds intrinsic value to life – that is, value to the individual who feels it regardless of any perceived worth to anyone else. Pleasure seekers have wants, needs, desires, and lives worth living. They can have a good quality of life. If we let them.” … READ ON

Natalie Portman Working on a Vegan Documentary Based on the Book ‘Eating Animals’

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Natalie Portman took a break from her career after the release of Black Swan to have a child with fiancé Benjamin Millepied, whom she met on the set of her movie, but she’s now back to work, this time on a documentary project based on the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran-Foer which she claims led her to a veganism a few years back. … READ ON

Martha Stewart Denounces Factory Farming in New Video

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Martha Stewart denounces factory farming in a new video recorded by Farm Sanctuary. The interesting thing here is that the focus is only on factory farming which is simply the result of a mindset that views certain animals as commodities to satisfy human pleasures. She does not denounce eating animals on principle because doing so reduces their value to mere commodities. And yet it is precisely this belief—that animals are here for our use—that is the justification and catalyst behind a system of food production that uses animals as resources on a scale of mass production that we have come to know as factory farming. Therefore, to denounce factory farming without providing a solution, leaves her audience wondering, what should I do? Look for humane products? Go vegetarian, vegan? The answer is unclear.
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The Meat of the Issue: Normal, Natural and Necessary?

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In the last 24 hours, I’ve had an earful of reasons why people eat meat. Most of the reasoning centers around health. Many say when they tried to be vegetarian their health declined. Others say eating animals is part of the “circle of life.” Still others believe that some animals were somehow born into this world to serve us as food. Having come out of a Melanie Joy’s vegan empowerment workshop last night, I am inspired by her insights about why people believe they need to eat animals and how to best communicate with them about the issue.
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The Ghosts in Our Machine

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Animals are hidden within the shadows of our highly mechanized world. That is the message of a new documentary project by Liz Marshall featuring the life and work of animal rights photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, a woman who has equal parts bravery and empathy for non-human animals trapped inside of a cold and mechanized world which reduces their identity down to mere commodities. … READ ON

Legal Action Taken Against Santa Cruz Chicken Hatchery Based on 2010 Animal Abuse Investigation

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Newly released undercover video footage, taken by a Compassion Over Killing investigator working inside Cal-Cruz Hatcheries, reveals shocking abuse of newly-hatched chicks. As described in the lawsuit, this video documents numerous routine abuses—including acts amounting to felony animal cruelty—that are in violation of the California law. Among the atrocities documented are: … READ ON