The process involves an injection of long acting corticosteroid which fools the cows into getting ready to calve; in a normal pregnancy corticosteroids are released by a calf as it is approaching maturity. A second injection two weeks later causes the cow to calve.

A cow is induced to birth her calf prematurely, thereby increasing her milking season, ie more money. The cows are all injected at the same time and I have been informed that in the Waikato it is not unusual to do mobs of 50 cows at a time. In the South Island with bigger herd sizes there could easily be over 100 cows induced at one time.

The calves either die before birth, die of prematurity and/or exposure or they’re killed in the paddock. The estimate is this is done to around 200,000 calves a year in New Zealand.

Watch this video and decide – Is this humane? Is this acceptable for just an economic benefit to farmers? Is this acceptable for a glass of milk?

The comment from this person who took with this video was “This video was taken on a farm I work on. I just can’t stand by and see this horror and pretend NZ dairy farming is clean and green. When actually it is the opposite. These calves were from induced cows, meaning they were injected by a vet to hurry the process of calving and to mainly get milk from the cow to make money. These calfs were all killed or had died at birth and will be used for pet food. This is the ugly face of some New Zealand dairy farms.”

This procedure is little known by the public and not commonly used overseas and would very much affect New Zealand’s dairy reputation, so the industry does have some motivation for stopping it. It is time to raise awareness of this practice as the dairy industry is revising their Code for Inductions this October. 

I probably would have let this news clip pass if it wasn’t for a couple of comments made both during and after the item.

One man interviewed at the Field Day said that it was a shame that the farmer was banned as he had put blood, sweat and tears into it. WHO has put the blood, sweat and tears into it? The cows and their babies, that’s who. Not the farmer who is running a profitable business on the exploitation, death and suffering of what he perceives as ‘his commodities’.

Then after the clip the TV1 news presenter made a really silly comment “Shaking up a cow, who would have thought of it!” Shaking up a cow? There is rather a lot more to it than that, if only he knew. And that in itself is the problem, if only he knew, and others too, of the truth behind what is in a glass of milk from a dairy cow.

And why fizzy milk? – cola flavoured fizzy milk? – to get kids to drink more milk, that’s why cola flavoured fizzy milk. What! - do they think that putting two really bad drinks together is going to miraculously make a healthy drink? Dairy cow milk is not needed in our diet, it does more harm than good and those that are suggesting children drink it to get calcium should really look into what milk from another species does to the health of a human. There are far better options available for maintaining a well-balanced calcium level without resorting to reliance on an industry (the dairy industry) that not only hides the truth but is perpetuating the death and suffering of thousands of cows and their babies for financial greed.

Refer to a previous post which details what is really involved in getting milk from a cow.

And visit the website NZ Dairy Cruelty for information on how drinking milk harms cows. There is also other extremely valuable and informative information on this site, so while there, browse around.

Now, by choosing to eat free range eggs it tells me that these people do have a conscience about where their food comes from – they obviously care enough not to eat eggs from battery hens. It also tells me that they do not know the full truth. Unfortunately, we have become so far removed from where our food comes from and what happens in the process for it to get to our plate that we just automatically believe what is told to us, a fairy-tale image of happy hens in open paddocks laying eggs whenever they feel like it.

Unlike the image that free range means something like the photo above, here is the truth:

There are no standards in New Zealand regarding free range. So what does that mean? What does free range mean anyway? All it means is that they are not in a small cage. Nothing more. It means that some still never see the light of day. It means that they can still be kept in cramped conditions. It means that they still go to the slaughterhouse on an assembly line chain just like the battery hens. It means that millions of day-old chicks are discarded simply because they are born the ‘wrong’ sex or not ‘egg-laying’ condition.

Just like the battery hens these so-called free range girls go to slaughter when their egg production takes a decline. And to replace these hens after going to slaughter? More females have to be born. The gender ratio is roughly 50/50 from hatched eggs, so what happens to the baby boys? Well, on the first or second day of birth they get sexed, by someone who inserts their finger (you know where) to determine if they are a boy or girl. The boys and the girls deemed not suitable for egg laying are then discarded, some gassed with the likes of carbon dioxide, some appallingly get fed into crushers - alive. Into giant mincers they are stripped of limbs and wings and crushed. Both methods are horrid, horrid thing to do. So this means that for every hen that becomes an egg-layer just over one chick had to die.

The female chicks are not raised by their mothers (who I might add are wonderful mothers) they are raised in artificial incubators, with artificial light and heat and many commercial incubators holding tens of thousands of eggs at a time, with rotation of the eggs a fully automated process.

At about 21 days after being layed they hatch and are then ready for the outside world – a world of artificial light and artificial food, sexed and sorted and if ‘kept’ generally debeaked at around 10-days-old. Debeaking is done without any painkiller and is an extremely painful experience. Why do they get debeaked? Because under stress they peck each other. You might think that if they peck each other then they should be debeaked, wrong, if they are not living under stress they quickly establish a ‘pecking-order’ and no longer need to take out their depression on others. Given room, natural food and a good life there is no need for depression, hence, no reason for pecking, hence, no reason for debeaking.

These little girls are then raised until their egg production starts at which point they could be fed chemicals to make their egg yolk look more golden and to make them lay more often. They then lay on average up to 300 eggs within that year, pumping them out. So think about it, one hen works for just under 12-days to supply a dozen eggs.

They are still young (12-months) when they naturally go through a short moulting period at which time their egg production declines. The cost of feeding, and the non-generating-of-income means that they do not get to wait for their moult to finish before egg production comes back, they are sent to the slaughterhouse. Still young, still in their prime. Hens, depending on the breed, will live from five to about ten years of age, they go to the slaughterhouse at one.

With thanks to http://www.nzeggs.webs.com/ for this image

To get to the slaughterhouse they are picked up upside down by their feet and shoved into crates to be transported where they then get shackled upside down onto a chain which dips their heads into a waterbath. The waterbath stuns them only, it does not kill them. The back of their neck is then sliced, and in some cases their spinal cord can be cut but they may regain consciousness only to have their heads pulled off on another machine.

What a traumatic way to live and die. Thought of as just egg laying machines without thought, care or compassion, and so easily replaced with more suffering birds. And the cycle goes on, round and round.

Now, think back to when you were young, your mum or dad possibly read you children’s books with cute little chicks on the cover or on the pages, think back to how you saw them then – did you get the warm fuzzies? I know I did. Well those cute little chicks are no different from the ones born in the egg industry, minced into nuggets or to live very short miserable lives. Whether they are born male or female does not make their lives or deaths any better, they are all treated like commodities. As a child would you have wanted that? No, so now as an adult you have the choice to say “no, I will not tolerate it, I will not!”.

And let’s admit it, we all want to, in some small way (and don’t deny it!) halt or slow down the aging process – but for a vegan, that comes with the ethical choice of not using animals (in products and testing) to gain that ego-boost – that selfish vanity streak that we all have to some extent. And I will admit it – I am not immune to bouts of depression when I think about how life seems to have passed me by – my mirror says it all.

My hair started going grey quite young and it seemed to happen almost overnight; when my dad passed from this plane and moved on to a higher plane - I had already lost my mum and at the time it was almost too hard to bear. Back then I was not vegan so used the average hair dyes that you buy in the supermarket or chemist, but since going vegan I have not dyed my hair at all except for the occasional lemon rinse or homemade rosemary/thyme boiled-up hair gloop, etc. So, for years I have been quite happy with my ‘natural’ look and have been strutting proudly with my ‘cruella de ville’ stripe of silver, but still have this nagging voice (the ego) wanting to hang on to my youth and look good while I am about it.

Well, lately I seem to have been going through a stage of, ‘how can I be this age when I still feel so young?’ I look in the mirror and do not recognise the person staring back. I have the ‘cruella de ville’ stripe of silver running through my hair but notice that the flecks of grey over the rest of my hair are becoming rampant and I have that dull, lifeless, non-gloss look. The ‘cruella de ville’ streak looked quite cool for a while but the greys? No!!! And yes – it does age you, the grey bits just do not look right.

Slowing the outward appearance of your rapid aging comes with a price – a price to the animals – way too high a price – and I ain’t going there for the sake of vanity, their lives are just as important as mine. For the non vegan it is easy just to buy the cheapest hair dye to make themselves look and feel nice – they may not see or may not care about the exorbitant price that animals have to pay – the cruelty – their exploitation and suffering – but I am vegan – I see the price – I feel the pain deep inside me. No animal should suffer being strung up by a leg and having their throat slit, or in pain burnt and blistering by effects of chemicals just for the testing of a hair dye.

I had two options here – 1) breaking my mirror into a thousand pieces and avoiding window shop reflections or 2) looking into getting a vegan hair dye. Well, option 1) was out of the question, I need seven years of bad luck like I need a hole in the head – so #2) won.

So, here is how I see it – I am getting older on the outside but not getting older on the inside – I can keep those two things closer together – lesson the gap so to speak by doing the thing I do the best, so putting my research abilities to work I decided to find a vegan hair dye. I thought at first it would be a mission, living in New Zealand, in what seems the agricultural capital of the world, but it was actually quite simple once I started looking.

Photo from Arrow Pharmaceuticals website

What I found was, Arrow Pharmaceuticals New Zealand Limited has a range of hair dyes called NaturStyle which at first – looking at the ingredients list on their website (link here) ’seemed’ vegan. And being vegan we know that just reading something on the internet does not mean ‘truth’ So, on the blower I got – and spoke to a couple of lovely ladies there – and they were extremely friendly and helpful – and they confirmed that the ingredients were not animals, animal derived or animal by-products. Well, of course, the other BIG issue is ‘has it been tested on animals?’. They were both emphatically adamant that this product is not tested on animals. It is available at Health 2000 and Radius Pharmacies, to name just two available outlets.

I would like to introduce to you two of the family members … Missy and Mandy.

Missy came to me from a family that were living in a rental property but the landlord wanted to move back in and of course that meant that a new location had to be found - a location that would ‘allow’ a pet Kune Kune who was already a year-and-a-half old and rather large. Well, of course, how many landlords would want that? So, Missy came to live with me. She is bossy and obstinate and I love her dearly. When she was a little piglet she was attacked by two dogs, hence the reason for only one ear – she is a very lucky girl to have survived. Her previous family loved her very much and still come to visit her when they can. Unfortunately her diet consisted of food off non-vegan human plates, takeaway foods and dog biscuits. And for the record - it is not easy weaning a large pig off takeaways!

Mandy was living alone and lonely  in a very confined area filled with huge farm equipment and oily mud, no grass, just mud, her stomach was dragging on the ground and her hooves were about 4-inches long and curled upwards, one even curled underneath her foot and she found it very difficult to walk. She was not a happy girl at all and did not seem to have much ‘zest’ for life. Mandy had never been treated for worms and had been fed on household scraps. Her teeth are badly worn for one so young (same age as Missy) and she had bad eczema. She was originally bought from a petting-zoo (yuck, yuck, yuck, hate the idea) for the previous owners’ daughter who quickly lost interest as Mandy grew out of her cute piglet stage and got bigger. When I went to pick Mandy up the daughter was playing on the trampoline with her friends and was not even interested in saying goodbye to her. What is that teaching the daughter? That it is ok when you have lost interest with an animal it can just be ignored and then got rid of? They are dispensable and replaceable?. Just like many children who are not taught respect for non-human life, she will not learn the value of a life and will be taking into her adulthood and therefore teaching any future children she will have the perpetual continuance of animal ownership and disregard for their welfare or happiness. Mandy is an extremely docile and loving girl, a real pleasure to have in my life. She now runs (in a Kune Kune sort of way) when she sees me, and is starting to trim down a little, although her feet will never be 100% I think (no, I don’t think, I know) that she is alot happier for having her hooves trimmed, it took six attempts to get them down to a semi-acceptable length. She always rolls over for a belly scratch and ‘pleasure grunts’ when I start trimming her hooves and is generally fast asleep before I have finished the first one. Her prognosis for a long happy life was not great, but when I first saw her, I knew, and she knew, there was something there, a bond, a mutual respect. The ‘owners’ could not get her to move onto the trailer, no coaxing or bullying worked, I basically just told them to ‘stop’, went over to her and gently stroked her and then stood and walked up onto the ramp and into the trailer with her following, with everyone else just standing there with their mouths open. Pigs respond to love, not discipline.

Kune Kune pigs are grazers with a high fibre diet just like sheep and cows are, they should not eat household scraps, takeaways or dog food. The only form of feeding should be proper pellets/nuts for pigs, without ruminants, and only as a supplement feed when the grass is not growing in winter. They are opportunists where fruit is concerned and have sharp hearing for when fruit drops from a tree. You should see Missy and Mandy run!!!

I find it very sad that people get pigs just because they are ‘cute’ and it would be ‘cool’, but the reality is that pigs grow, and can grow quite big too. Just like kittens and puppies the piglet shares the same fate of looking cute when young, being bought because they are cute, then discarded when the owner realises that they don’t stay 5-inches tall. The other thing that makes me really sad is that people think it is adorable to have a pig that is overweight. It is extremely cruel and does not make for a very happy life for the pig. They get serious issues with their limbs because of the weight they are carrying, arthritis can set in at a very young age and the fat folds will droop over their eyes and render them blind, even if they have lost weight after this stage the blindness can be irreversible. It is important to supply decent shelter as Kune Kunes can suffer from pneumonia if sleeping in exposed conditions and they also like a large amount of space to graze in. The girls come and go as they please into their ‘bedroom’ which has a concrete floor but I layed some old carpet squares down and have about eight inches of straw for them and a couple of blankets each. They just looooove to burrow themselves into the straw and make a wee ‘nest’. They roam around the orchard, can sleep in the sun, or under a peach tree in the shade (or walnut or apricot, etc, if they prefer), or even go for a mud bath in their wee pond.

I am hoping that while you are reading this, you are sparing a thought for all the beautiful pigs in this world who do not live a life of dignity or freedom - kept in cages, treated horrifically, and then sent to slaughter, their carcass served on a plate. What are we doing to these wonderful beings – these wonderful beings who share almost the same chromosomes as us. Chromosomes so close that when eaten by a human the human body thinks that it is committing cannibalism and therefore finds it extremely hard to process and digest. What, as a species, are we doing? Who, as a species, do we think we are? Better and worthier than another species? What gives us the right to treat non-humans in any other way than as respected individual worthy beings.

Pigs feel, pigs laugh, pigs cry, pigs play, pigs run, pigs amble, pigs love - and it is their right to do all this – for the whole of their lives.

http://fantippo.orconhosting.net.nz/milk.htm

I won’t tell you all about it as I would rather you check it out for yourselves. All I can say is “Well done Bruce”.

The Orange Roughy eats small fish, crustaceans and squid, an opportunistic feeder. They are slow-growing and long-lived. The lifespan of the Orange Roughy exceeds that of humans, anywhere from 100-years to 145-years or so and reaching maturity around 30-years of age. Because they mature at a slow rate and the amount of the fishing of this species it means that over fishing has greatly reduced their numbers – exceedingly so. Any fishing of this long-lived species is not sustainable.

It’s estimated that over one million tonnes of Orange Roughy have been exploited, and this is only since the fishing of Orange Roughy started, about 25-years ago. What will the number be next year? What will the number be in ten-years? What if there were none left?

The first Orange Roughy fishery started in New Zealand around a seamount area called Chatham Rise. It started in the late 1970’s but declined rapidly after 1979. Each winter Orange Roughy migrate to specific sites on the Chatham Rise, where they aggregate in large numbers to spawn. This is the area that supported the greatest fishing of this species at the time. There are other seamount areas that have since also suffered greatly from the fishing of this species. The fishing industry have incredibly high levels of catches for a couple of years and then rapidly decline to low levels without recovering – hence the reason for changing the areas of fishing for Orange Roughy. Also the Orange Roughy spawn irregularly.

The way that Orange Roughy is fished is by bottom trawling. Bottom trawling is extremely destructive to the ocean. In trawling for Orange Roughy there are very high by-catch numbers and the mortality for these other deep sea species is nearly 100%.

The environment of the deep sea is fragile and slow to recover after the trawl path has destroyed the sea bed and communities on the sea floor. Sediment disturbance also have destructive effects over very large areas. Immediate gratifying dollar signs in the eyes of the greedy but total devastation to the future of the Orange Roughy, to other species and to our planet. Same with the Hoki, but that is another exploitation, and another story. So, in the meantime – Orange Roughy – if the demand wasn’t there, the exploitation wouldn’t be either. Do not support the exploitation of this remarkable fish and this remarkable planets sea bed. Say NO!

My friend has a computer that I could have used – but to be honest – I go there to her home with all good intentions and we just sit and drink coffee and natter. I also like a bit of peace and quiet when writing and she has a tribe of eager kiddies, and writing would be hard when it sounds like the house is being pulled apart. So to sum it up, I haven’t posted for quite some while but I’m baaaack!

On Thursday night there was a SAFE movie night. We viewed Food, Inc. Check out the trailer at the website titled Hungry For Change. The icon to the left will take you to Amazon, or search the internet, there may well be a full length version posted somewhere, I haven’t looked, but worth a try.

Although the movie was Americanised it still held very true for the rest of the world, we all know that fast food has wheedled itself into just about every orifice that it can get into – and why not, fast food industries want to make a profit and the public ask (or believe they do) for it. The movie highlighted corporate greed and the absolute monopoly that only a few corporations have on food and the coverup, buying-off and bullying that these corporations do and the corrupt way in which these few corporations legalise policies. I think because the movie took a more ‘human’ approach than a ‘cruelty to animals’ approach it might mean more people would be open to watching it and having it impact on their food choices – humans have an ego and see what they want to see, they might turn a blind eye to animals being slaughtered but seeing a movie that has the human element and shows the impact on average people it might make them sit up, take notice, and look into what they eat (here is hoping – forever the optimist I am). The movie touches on the obesity epidemic and other health issues and tries to get the voice across that cheaper food does not necessarily mean cheaper as there are seriously horrendous spin-off effects to ‘cheap’ food. All-in-all, not a bad movie to watch. If it gets people thinking about ‘we are what we eat’ and there are choices if we just say ‘no!’ then hats off to them and I hope that many people do find a way to watch it – the voice of many is needed against the food corporate empire to even begin to falter.

It is a vicious cycle, eat bad food, feel listless, so eat bad food because you don’t have the energy to cook – much easier to go and get a hamburger at McD’s and before you know it you are starting to look and act like a hamburger, a hamburger with no energy, a high fat content and no nutritional value. It does not take long to cook a nutritious meal that is on the table before the person is back from the takeaway shop, although it might seem it. Eating a nutritious meal means that your energy levels are higher, more ’stable’ and you do not need as much food because your hunger is satisfied for longer. Fortunately it hasn’t become totally impossible to buy cheap vegetables at markets here in New Zealand and alot of us who have the classic Kiwi half-acre can grow a few things. Sometimes you don’t even need a back lawn but just a balcony, hey even a tomato plant can be grown in a pot and potatoes in old tyres. But still the fast food industry grows, thrives and kills in an insidious way. So not only is it a problem with peoples energy abating and the small cost of buying a hamburger and the time in people’s lives that they think is needed to cook a meal but a habit as well – a habit we are passing on to our next generation. You just have to break the cycle.

Not only are there many ingredients in toothpaste that are derived from the suffering and death of non-human animals, but there are many companies that use the inhumane practice of testing their products on animals. In New Zealand along with vegans from many other countries we have to be aware of all aspects and look behind the product and into the company that produces that product. What you will find is that many are seriously lacking in compassion for the sake of financial gain. Is the company that makes your toothpaste using animals for testing their toothpaste or any of their other products on? Quite possibly, in fact, more than likely. So to be absolutely sure only buy a toothpaste that states clearly on the label that it is vegan and not tested on animals. There are a couple of vegan toothpastes available but I thought I would introduce you to a lovely product which I just purchased:

lemon-myrtle

Phyto Shield Lemon-Myrtle, Botanical Oral Care Toothpaste.

I bought this 100g tube of toothpaste for $6.10 from Stay Well Pharmacy in Hornby, on Shands Road – the little shopping complex on the left after coming off Main South Road.

Chemical-free and does not contain parabens, sodium lauryl sulphate, added fluoride, sugar and artificial sweeteners. Along with no petrochemicals or chemical bleach.

Suitable for children, vegans and vegetarians.

Not tested on animals.

100% naturally New Zealand

Manufactured in New Zealand by New Zealand Natural Oral Care Company, freephone 0800 red seal or 0800 733 732

 Ingredients:

• Calcium Carbonate (chalk-mild mineral abrasive)
• Aqua (purified water)
• Glycerol and Sorbitol (moisture retaining agents from plant origin)
• Silica (natural ore for better paste structure)
• Orange Oil
• Lauryl Glucoside (mild cleanser from coconut oil)
• Carboxymethyl Cellulose (gumming agent from plant fibre)
• Lemon Oil
• Calcium Magnesium Carbonate (abrasive)
• Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate (plant derived sweetener)
• Menthol
• Aniseed Oil, Peppermint Oil, Thyme Oil, Myrrh Oil, Lemon Myrtle Oil
• Totarol (in ethanol) Tincture

Sounds all good to me and it is also a very nice tasting fresh-feeling toothpaste.

Maybe your local chemist or health food shop has it in stock, and if they don’t, maybe they would look at stocking it or get it in for you. We live in a very accommodating society when it comes to most retail shops and they are on average only happy to oblige. If you don’t ask, you will never know.

Keeping along with the thought of not supporting companies who exploit innocent animals for testing their products on – think about the toothbrush you use and which company it was made by, are they a company that does animal testing? I just purchased a new vegan toothbrush from SAFE (link in sidebar), 145 Armagh Street in the centre of Christchurch. They have a selection of vegan toothbrushes (and other stuff of course). Go in and check it out and while you are there say hi to other like-minded vegans as well, very approachable and very friendly. And if you are not vegan but thinking about it – good on you, keep getting information and learn – pretend you are a sponge and suck up that information, take things slowly (or not!) because with every step you take towards veganism you are helping the animals, the planet and making yourself healthier – and always remember you are not alone – there are other vegans out there.

Save the Beagles Protest – Saturday 26th September

Hundreds of animals each year suffer the fate of live testing at Valley Animal Research Centre.

Animal testing is unscientific, producing no beneficial data and merely filing the pockets of fraudulent scientists.

Allen Goldenthal breeds hundreds of Beagles dogs every year. The only existence these animals know is one of pain and suffering.

Valley Animal Research Centre must be stopped! Come along to the protest and make your voice heard for those who cannot speak.

Saturday September 26th 1.30pm Bainesse Kennels, Himitangi or meet at 1pm, the Square information centre, Palmerston North

For further information

visit: www.varc.org.nz

New Zealand Open Rescue

PO Box 37612

Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.youtube.com/NZOpenRescue

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzopenrescue/

And an exerpt from Save the beagles www.varc.org.nz about other things to do:

Sign SAFE’s online petition to the Minister of Agriculture http://www.banbeagleexperiments.org.nz/Sign-Petition/ If you have your own website or blog, please link it to this petition.

And for other ideas go to www.varc.org.nz under the tab ‘what you can do’, and …

For more information, please contact National AntiVivisection Campaign, PO Box 6387, Wellington ; nzarinfo@gmail.com

snow receding, summer looming

It is a lovely trip into work every morning, I see some beautiful sights – ever changing sights, Mother Nature showing off her beautiful colours in the changing of the seasons. The snow on the mountains is slowly, day by day, starting to recede.

I also see other things. Lambing season is in full swing and over the last month while driving to work and home I have noticed an unusually large amount of ewes with twins or triplets. I am not sure if this is consistent with the rest of the country or whether it is only a regional phenomenon this year. It has been a better winter in Canterbury, alot milder in temperature than the last couple of years and although there was a fair amount of rain there was no snow on the ground.

The problem (other than the ownership of course) with the farmers having ewes that  produce more lambs is that sometimes a ewe cannot feed three babies. The first reason is that a majority of sheep breeds only have two functional teats (some breeds have more) and another reason is that if the ewe is lactating early in the season she will lose body weight and condition. Ewes rearing twins and triplets cannot consume sufficient nutrients to prevent this weight loss early on in the season. With triplets their growth can be uneven and inconsistent with their siblings as they have to battle for the teats, competition for the available milk supply  – and the farmer wouldn’t want that, the uneven growth I mean – he wants big fat lambs. The ewes with triplets can also have an increased risk of teat damage.

Of course the farmer wants highly productive sheep, those that lamb frequently, produce multiple lambs that grow rapidly and are capable of re-breeding after having the existing lambs weaned from their mothers at an earlier time than is natural. But with triplets from ewes with only two functional teats the fight begins and the farmer wins, theft of one of the babies.

wee fella

This little sweetie is only 10-hours old at the time of this photo and because he was one of three that his mum went through labour and gave birth to he was deemed (or doomed?) surplus to requirements, “would have died anyway”. This is not a definite, he may have died, but then again he might not have. But because he, like many are unfortunate enough to be born into slavery, farmers find someone to buy them – yes ‘buy’ like a commodity, and he could just as well have been bought by someone who wanted him fattened up a bit and had his carcass on a dinner plate. He is special in his own right. Do farmers care about what would happen to this little fella or others like him? No way, compassion is something that is not thought of in the sheep industry, only profits. Supplement feeding for the ewe could have avoided the separation of mother and baby entirely and minimized weight loss in the ewe. Well, actually, abolition of farming sheep would have avoided it entirely.

I am always deeply saddened and feel like a part of myself is dying inside with the exploitation of so many sentient beings, not a day goes by that I don’t think of the atrocities and suffering that human beings inflict on just about every other species including our own – and today my thoughts go out to those that lost their loved ones in 2001 .

When people have lamb for dinner they do not consciously make the connection between the carcass on the end of their fork and the lamb leaping around with the other lambs in the paddock, they do not think of them as living, vital, alive beings, they close their minds to the lambs being loaded into a truck heading for the slaughterhouse, they do not think of the terror that these babies feel, the loss that their mothers’ feel – these babies that have no choice – the innocents – they should not be farmed for fashion or dinner plate and do not go with knitting needles, mint and kumara.

Pritt Glue-it Refill Roller with spare refill

I commend them on their prompt response …

An excerpt from their reply;

“We do not use animals in the manufacture of any of our products” – signed by the Henkel Corporation.

Sometimes it is hard to know about the processes that many of our foods go through before reaching our cupboard or fridge, processes that you wouldn’t even think to question until something triggers you to look into it a bit further; well this happened to me.

No milk today - 3x in a row Bean Me Up is out of stock, so all I have for you is the price label, note: when taking photos in supermarkets do not use a flash

I was listening to a Radio NZ podcast on the processing of Bean Me Up Soymilk which is made locally here in Christchurch, and was finding it quite interesting until the moment the product came out of the heat tank – you see, it goes through a filter, and I thought she said ‘silk filter from Japan’ – the noise from the machine was quite loud so I may have heard incorrectly. Anyway, right then I knew I had to find out.

It took quite a few attempts at phoning before I actually managed to speak to someone for clarification. They advised me that it was silk and I replied “so it is not suitable for vegans then” and she said “oh hang on” and went and spoke to the person who operates the heat tank and he said “I’m not sure if it is silk or nylon, it could be nylon but I am not sure”. She also mentioned that “everyone does it that way” – but does she mean that the filtering is done by everyone or the use of silk is done by everyone? Do others use silk, nylon, cheesecloth or muslin?

Bean Me Up Soymilk. Got the photo!

So now I am left without a definative answer from Bean Me Up, do they use silk or nylon? Why would they say they used silk on the podcast if this may or may not be correct, wouldn’t that be false advertising? Shouldn’t they know? – anyway, until I am 100% sure that it is vegan it is off my shopping list, I can always make my own, or use something else, there are always other options (I must admit I have since got a real liking for Rice Milk).

I was buying the soymilk because of my stance on the dairy industry only to find out that I might be supporting the exploitation of silkworms – the silkworms that are exploited by being boiled alive to get the silk out, which I also find abhorrent. And what about their soy yoghurt which is advertised on the web as a vegan dairy replacement? Does it go through a filter? I am not sure – something for me to pursue at a later date perhaps.

UPDATE:UPDATE:UPDATE: Confirmation has been received that Bean Me Up soymilk and tofu are vegan, the filtering cloth is nylon.

But it just points out to ethical, compassionate vegans the importance of not assuming something is vegan just because the list of ingredients is ok, but to also question the process as well. This got me to thinking about other things, this would also apply to products in cans or glass jars that have labels – what is the glue made from? And speaking of glue, how about the glue used in non-leather shoes? And another of my peeves is the word ‘organic’ – the producers consider blood and bone to be ‘organic’, so unless you know who grows your vegetables be very wary of that word. I will not be a part of the exploitation of innocent lives and I feel that the only option is to question everything, and I will not stop questioning, and I will not find it a burden, non-human animals are too important for me, way, way too important to do anything but question – and in the answers I will have something to pass on to others, because knowing what is in our food and the process it goes through to get to our plate is important.

My fruit trees have been covered in blossoms for more than a week now, but in a way they have still been dormant – until today that is, suddenly, without warning they all arrive – thousands of individuals but all as one. One minute not there, the next a deafening sound descends upon my small orchard. I have a picnic table under the huge apricot tree where I can sit and listen and look at the wonder around me, so loud there are no other sounds that can penetrate, the industrious wonder of the Honeybees who give so much to the continuum and beauty of this planet.

In New Zealand the day that officially takes the title of the first day of spring is the 1st September, but for me today takes that title.

Bees may be solitary or social. They feed on nectar and pollen, and play an important role in the pollination and survival of many flowering plants. New Zealand has 28 native and 13 introduced species of bee. At least three native bee species have a basic social structure, a bit like the introduced Honeybee and Bumblebee. The rest are solitary, although they may make nests close together. Native bees pollinate many native plants. They also pollinate kiwifruit and apple orchards and some vegetable crops, and are important pollinators in horticulture.

The photos I have taken today in my orchard are from the Apis mellifera species, introduced into New Zealand in the 1830′s.

There are many species of Honeybee in the world. All of them build nests with hexagonal combs for brood (their babies) raising and food storage. All of them use dance language as their primary means of recruiting nest mates to valuable resources.

Honeybees do their dance on the vertical plane of the comb and indicate direction by transposing the direction of the sun to the direction relevant to gravity using a straight upwards direction to be equivalent to flying towards the sun. In all species the vigour with which the bee dances is directly correlated with the richness of the resource indicated, while the length of the straight run, or its omission are indications of the distance to be travelled to the resource, this need not be a straight line but may involve flying around some natural obstacle such as a small mountain.

Honeybees pass on additional information to their hive mates concerning the taste and odour of the food resource by means of one bee regurgitating from its crop some of the nectar it has collected and feeds it to another bee, when this is happening it looks like they are kissing, and before long there is a string of bees all ‘kissing’ each other as the food gets passed around. Recruitment to a site is strengthened by returning foragers passing on the location to more of the colony.

The down side is that humans found yet another form of exploitation, exploiting the honey that the Honeybees make for their use in the cold months of winter. The honey is stripped from their hives and a substitute replacement (sugar syrup) is put in it’s place. The sugar syrup is not the Honeybees natural food and is a poor replacement for their own food, especially through a very cold winter. Commercial beekeeping practices are there for profit and not the welfare of the bees. Commercial beekeepers are restricted by timeframe and requires the beekeeper to grab as much honey in the shortest possible time, therefore by not being careful many deaths occur to Honeybees that are sitting on the rim of the hives and through the shock to the colony, Honeybees are seen in their commercial value with no intrinsic value of their own. It must also be noted that many colonies can perish through mis-management; hives not being checked through the winter as cold winds and rain can kill a whole colony if the top cover is not secured; for sufficient food – remembering that we have taken their precious winter honey store and the Honeybees are then totally reliant on a beekeeper making sure there is plentiful food. Honeybees do not venture outside the hive during the cold winters for long periods, only for their toilet duties – yes, that’s right, they do not go to the toilet inside.

In the wild a small part of an existing hive along with a new virgin Queen will swarm, the ritual of mating where many Drones (males) will mate with the new Queen and she will find a new site for her new colony. The sole purpose and desire of the Drone is to mate with a virgin Queen, his life role being accomplished he will then pass away, no doubt with a smile on his face, and definitely with dignity. Nowadays the favoured method is artificial insemination involving the death of the Drone in a most disgusting way, the sperm is obtained by pulling off his head causing an electrical impulse to the nervous system which causes sexual arousal, the lower part of the Drone is squeezed to make him ejaculate, and then collected in a hypodermic syringe and fertilisation of the new virgin Queen is done. No swarming, no virgin flight, no mating, no dignity in death. Nothing short of slavery really.

I leave you with one final photo – the picture of life eternal.

My place of work does not have vegan soap and being vegan and constantly aware of what products I use, especially when I have to spend eight glorious hours at work everyday, it became necessary to ‘bring my own’ soap. I have always toddled off to the loo, Dr. Bronner’s soap – in soapbox – in hand, and after a while this became a major pain in the butt so now I just leave it on the hand basin.

Only a short while after leaving the soap on the hand basin one of my work colleagues came out and said ‘I would have thought soaps would be vegan’. He had never stopped to consider what was in a bar of soap, not aware that soaps have unnecessary animal content, it could have glycerine, and/or lanolin, and/or tallow in it or all three, all of which are animal derived. Having the soap on the hand basin made my work colleague question what was in soaps – which in the scheme of things is really good to have people more aware. So now he knows about soap!!! I invited him to start using it too, there is no advantage in using animal products in soaps, possibly another ploy from the slaughterhouses to make more money from the suffering and death of the innocent. Vegan soaps are just as good and often better, especially if they are made with real essential oils. They feel nice, they smell nice, they lather well, animal-free, guilt-free. What were we thinking as humans? To have even had the original thought of plastering the remains of slaughtered animals over our bodies – to get clean? Ewwwwyuk.

A main concern when buying soaps is not to promote Companies that exploit animals to put their products on the market, i.e. Companies that use animals to try out their products on, generally when still in the trial or ‘toxic’ stage, onto the skin or into the eyes of the innocent slaves who have no choice or voice. Research for beauty is a disgusting and immoral thing to do, well actually animal research in general is immoral as they are subjected against their will to horrific experiments and a miserable and often painful life. There are other options for testing results of products which may in fact be a more productive form of research anyway as it has not really been proven that testing on animals is a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that the product is safe for human use.

Another concern of course when buying vegan soaps is the use of palm oil and where it originated, terrible to think that in avoiding soaps with animal products it may use palm oil from cleared rainforest. Please bear a thought to using palm oil - deforestation is causing Orang-Utans and other equally important insects and animals to suffer and die. Here is a quote from Palm Oil Action Group: “After logging rainforest habitat, palm oil companies often use uncontrolled burning to clear the land. In 1997-98 a devastating fire killed almost 8,000 orangutans in Borneo. Orangutans are predicted to be extinct in the wild in the next 20 years if the palm oil industry, deforestation and burning of peat forest do not change.”  The Palm Oil Action Group is concerned about oil palm plantation development and deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

The Lotus Heart in Cathedral Square, Christchurch has a gift shop that sells Dr Bronner’s soaps and it is where I bought my bar of lavender loveliness (the lemon one is nice too!) for work. The small bathroom at work has a wonderfully lovely aroma of lavender.

For soaps at home I buy from a lovely wee shop in town – Blue Earth Store in Poplar Street (runs between Lichfield & Tuam Streets, not far from Madras Street). They stock a wonderful range of soaps which are produced in Ashburton by Blue Earth, all with tremendous smells and textures including names like Fudgey Fig, Gardeners Nut soap and Angels Love Cake. I use their Lavishly Lavender at the hand basin and the Carrot & Orange Cake in the shower and also use their Shampoo Smoothie for my hair, which lathers up really well and makes my hair light and fluffy. Although they do use palm oil, they assured me that they do everything in their power to use sustainable palm oil. I am going to one day complete my mission of trying all of their soaps – if I can just get past buying my favourites, I may even find other favourites. Blue Earth products are the cheaper option as the Dr Bronner’s soap comes with a hefty price tag.

SAFE Online Store stocks a good range of cruelty-free soaps and other skin care items and while you are there definitely worth a browse through their website at their other products as well.

You can always make your own, but lets face it, with the busy lives we live and the quality of the available vegan soaps, why bother?

Alone in a crowd on a cold frosty morning

The calves who go to the slaughterhouse suffer terribly on their journey in cattle trucks where they struggle to keep their footing. They are generally cold and hungry by the time they get to the slaughterhouse. A calf does not want to die, a cow does not want her baby to die. All a cow wants to do is bond with and feed her baby and all a calf wants to do is bond with and feed from his or her mother – and they would do this for anything up to 12 months.

Cows would naturally live up to 25-years of age but are sent to the slaughterhouse when their milk declines generally when they are 7-10 years of age. But before their untimely death they are often kept in paddocks without any shelter and suffer in summer from the heat and in winter from the cold winds and here in the South Island we have some serious frosts and even snow. And because they no longer have their babies to feed, they are walked to milking sheds and can suffer lameness, an agonizing thing to suffer from, from the walk which can be quite a distance or from standing on the concrete at the milking sheds. 

What a horrible thing to do to sentient beings!!! A cruel and unnecessary thing to do to such a docile animal, just so we as humans can have a glass of milk in the morning.

Some people will justify, or ignore the above treatment because it is believed or they are told that the milk is a great source of calcium but the truth is most of us are just not aware and are not informed of the horrors of the milk industry.

Well, I am here to ask you something, why do cows have calcium in their milk? They don’t get it from drinking milk. Did you do your chemistry at school and learn that calcium is a mineral? Minerals come from the ground in which plants grow, so in essence the cows get calcium because they eat plants. I know we are not going to all rush out and eat grass or clover, our bodies can’t digest it properly, but keeping in mind that grass and clover are only two plants in a huge list of plants then you know exactly what I am going to suggest, don’t you? Yes! Eat plants, get your calcium from the source and not the cow.

The other important factor is of course that a cow’s milk is produced for optimum growth of her calf i.e. it increases cell growth rapidly. So what do you think it does to the cells of a human when consumed? That’s right, increases cell growth, and if you have cells that are abnormal then they grow extra fast too. And surely, if the cow was put on this planet for her milk to be consumed by humans don’t you think it would have been the right composition for human consumption. For humans who consume excessive amounts of dairy products it actually interferes with calcium absorption. Cows’ milk is made for calves, just like cats’ milk is made for kittens, horses’ milk is made for foals and humans’ milk is made for human infants.

Alternative milks are rice milk, soy milk, oat milk, almond milk, or how about making your own nut or seed milk out of  cashews or macadamias perhaps (replacing the honey from recipes of course). For alternative dairy replacement ideas visit NZ Dairy Cruelty’s site. There is a huge range of things that will naturally give you enough calcium to lead a very calcium-filled life, some of which are as follows, and this is by no means the complete list:

• Almonds
• Apricots
• Avocado
• Brazil nuts
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carob powder
• Chick peas
• Collard greens
• Currants
• Dates
• Figs
• Green leafy vegetables
• Hazelnuts
• Kale leaves
• Kelp
• Lentils
• Linseed
• Molasses
• Mung beans
• Navy beans
• Okra
• Olives
• Parsley
• Pinto beans
• Prunes
• Raisins
• Rhubarb
• Rice milk (calcium enriched)
• Sesame seeds
• Silverbeet
• Soybeans
• Spinach
• Sunflower seeds
• Tofu (set with calcium)
• Turnip greens
• Walnuts
• White beans

So, what does another vegan hope to achieve then? What I hope to achieve in this blog is to educate people, even one person at a time would be great, to the world of veganism, the wonderful world of veganism. And just like most other vegans I hope to educate people to the fact that animals are sentient and do not wish to, or deserve to be treated the way that they are. They are not objects, they are not slaves, they are valid and they feel and they experience happiness and sadness and a whole range of other emotions just like we do. Finding the words to describe what we are doing them? – well there are no words really.

The one thing I found when first going vegan was that I knew no other vegans, so I had lots of questions about lots of things including ingredients in foods, I found myself asking “what is in this product? and what to look for and where to buy it. So, I am thinking that I will have a bit about food to maybe help someone who would like to transition to becoming a vegan and to tell them that they are not alone – go for it!! Look at what you eat, see that vegans actually do eat, and actually do eat lots of nice things, there is a whole heap of food out there that is not only good and tasty but vegan too. The other thing I hope to do is educate people on looking at what they eat and seeing it more for what it is – an animal, a dead animal on a plate. We are taught at a very young age to compartmentalise our compassion, “awww, isn’t that wee baby chick on tv cute, here Harry, eat your chicken, put hairs on your chest!!”  Selective compassion – not fair, not right.

Also what I hope to achieve is to send the visitors that happen to chance upon my blog onto other websites, wonderful & informative websites like:

• The Abolitionist Approach
• NZ Dairy Cruelty
• NZ Egg Cruelty
• NZ Vegan

So, fellow vegans, band together and lets educate!!!