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Stealth Activism

May 5, 2017 by Tofu Temptress 3 Comments

Cuddly pig.
One for the 'Bacon tho...' brigade
One for the ‘Bacon tho…’ brigade

For many people who become vegans, activism or outreach is the next logical step. Once one finds out about the horrible cruelty involved in the production of animal products, it’s hard not to want to tell everyone about it. Ah, but then you’d be known as the dreaded ‘preachy vegan’. So what to do? You think most people you know and indeed most people in general like animals and wouldn’t want to see them harmed. You want others to make the connection you did. You want to simply communicate with ordinary folk, but know deep down that few people are receptive to your message. Well, there’s one kind of activism that anyone can do, is free and you don’t even need to talk to anyone.

Who knew pork was made from pigs?
Who knew pork was made from pigs?

It’s called stealth activism and is super simple. You draw people’s awareness to animal suffering without breaking any laws. How? Well, it has a few forms. The other day there was an article in the press about a young woman who had bought a packet of spaghetti bolognaise from Morrisons. So far, so unremarkable. However, when she took the cardboard off to cook it later, she discovered, to her horror, that a sticker had been affixed to the plastic film. The sticker had a non-graphic picture of a frightened looking cow. With the picture was a message from said cow informing the young woman that her ‘personal choice’ had cost the cow her life. When I read the article I thought the headline should read something like ‘Woman hears truth and feels uncomfortable for five minutes.’ I also couldn’t help feeling that perhaps a seed has been planted and she may return to these uncomfortable thoughts. If a more sympathetic person had been the one to uncover the message, maybe they would’ve seriously considered going vegetarian. Who knows?

Some toys I found for sale in a supermarket recently.
Some toys I found for sale in a supermarket recently.

There’s a few websites where you can purchase similar stickers and covertly pop them onto supermarket meat (or indeed milk or egg) products. Check out how The Vegan Punk does it here. The approach I take is slightly different. For one thing, stickers cost money and I also tend to be a bit spontaneous so would most likely forget to take them with me. What I do is I go into the supermarket toy section, pick up any farm animal cuddly toys (Peppa Pigs are everywhere, but I’ve found cows, sheep and chickens too) and pop them into my trolley. I then wander about getting my groceries until I come to the meat aisle.

Do children realise?
Do children realise?

I have to be honest with you here, I’m pretty shy and was a bit worried I’d get caught placing them next to the corresponding meat product. It turns out I had nothing to worry about. The meat aisles these days are pretty quiet in general. I’m rarely disturbed as I put cuddly cows next to beef, sheep next to lamb and pigs next to pork. I’ll then take a quick pic and move on, leaving them there.

Trying to counter cognitive dissonance.
Trying to counter cognitive dissonance.

 

What do I hope to achieve by this? Well, I just want to assist people in the calmest way possible, to make the connection. I want people to see the irony that we encourage children to love and care for these toys, and yet also encourage them to eat their real counterparts. I want to start an awkward conversation between a child and a parent. I want to make people do a double take. I basically want to encourage people to think, which can never be a bad thing.

Cuddly cow next to minced cow.
Cuddly cow next to minced cow.

As for the supermarkets, they can never tell you you’re out of line. You’re simply taking a product from one area of the supermarket and placing it elsewhere. It’s far less disturbing than when my friend used to find packets of nappies in the booze aisle of the supermarket he worked in. Having worked in shops myself, I can see no reason to object to this tactic. So, if you’re not the outgoing type, don’t feel comfortable ‘bothering’ your friends but still want to communicate with people, stealth activism could be for you. It’s a bit of mischief that might just nudge people onto the right track.

Filed Under: Cruelty free Living Tagged With: activism, Cows, meat, pigs, sheep, supermarkets

The Dairy Crisis

January 20, 2015 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

Milk machines
Milk machines
Milk machines – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

I’m sure you saw the news in the media recently about the crisis that UK dairy farmers are facing. In a nutshell, too much milk has been produced for not enough demand and farmers are getting a pittance for what they produce from the supermarkets because of this. They’re even getting their payments delayed, which means missing deadlines for bills and so on.

Just before being separated forever
Just before being separated forever – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

Now as you may have guessed, I’m not a big fan of the dairy industry, but it is kind of a complex problem. It seems that small dairy farmers are giving up the business due to lack of profits and it is these smaller businesses that tend to graze their cattle outside in the warmer months. Sadly, some small dairies are trying to solve the problem by merging, and this means having cows in sheds all the time. There’s no daylight, no freedom to roam, no joy whatsoever in their lives as working milk machines. Of course, even farmers who do choose to graze their herd outside still have to sell male calves to the meat industry, forcibly separating them from their mothers. They still have to maximise output, meaning unnecessary strain on udders and calcium deficiency in cows. They still have to administer painful injections to stop infection and sell ‘worn out’ mothers for slaughter at the end of it all. I’m not saying that small dairy farmers are living in an idyll, just that they are a degree better than factory farms, where misery is everywhere, all the time. The fact that decreased demand for cows’ milk has led to this sorry state of affairs is odd. The irony is not lost on me.

The calf is wheeled away like rubbish
The calf is wheeled away like rubbish – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

And then of course we have the frightening individual that is Liz Truss, our current minister for the environment. She has proposed a raft of measures to combat this dairy crisis, one of which is to reduce the number of dairy inspections by eight thousand a year. It seems lunacy (and if you’ve ever heard her give a speech, this will be of no surprise to you). To reduce inspections, when more farmers feel forced to merge into so-called mega farms, therefore negatively impacting animal welfare significantly at a stroke, seems insane. Viva has a website which is an excellent resource called White Lies which details the fact that when farms attain Soil association, Freedom Foods or Red Tractor accreditation, often all the farmer needs to do is not break the law on the day of the inspection. Standards need to be raised and this means an increase in random, unannounced inspections, not a flippin’ reduction Ms Truss!

The dairy industry doesn’t just impact negatively on the welfare of cows however. The recent badger cull sparked controversy, not just because badgers are cute (well, there may have been a bit of that) but because many scientists felt that badgers were being made the scapegoat by the dairy industry, to explain away the outbreak of bovine TB on their farms. A far more likely explanation seems to be that slurry gets transferred from one dairy farm to another and TB gets transported that way. (Remember foot and mouth.)

Badgerlands
Badgerlands

Author Patrick Barkham suggests in his novel Badgerlands that perhaps the intensive way cows are reared these days makes their immunity to TB very low. So these mega farms that could become part of the system here in Britain (they’re already the norm in America) could well be creating their own problem (remember mad cow disease, or BSE.) Even in the unlikely event that Badgers are the main cause of this outbreak, catch/vaccinate/release programmes have been found to be far more effective than culls anyway.

Happily, there are some people who have seen the industry for what it is – some very important people: dairy farmers themselves. There are pages devoted to documenting dairy farmers who have ‘seen the light’ and decided to go into a kinder business. These individuals are from all over the world – Ireland, The Netherlands, Iran and beyond. Each one of them has to struggle against a culture (no pun intended) that sees dairy farming as not doing much harm, and so brands them mad for giving it up. They have seen the look in the calf’s eyes as they sell him at market, pleading and scared. They have heard the cries that emanate from both mother and calf when they are forcibly separated, that sometimes go on for days. They have experienced cows going lame from lack of calcium brought on by intensive breeding and mastitis due to excessive milk production.

Cows are friends, not milk machines
Cows are friends, not milk machines – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals
Cows need grass
Cows need grass – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

Perhaps Liz Truss should work on getting those EU subsidies diverted from propping up the meat and dairy industries and have them support kind businesses instead. Due to lack of demand through increasing lactose intolerance and increased awareness of health and welfare issues, dairy is a dying industry. Let’s breathe new life into farms, making them utopias of plant based food and wildflowers. Naive, me?

Filed Under: Vegan News Tagged With: calves, Cows, dairy, lactose, milk

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