All posts by stephanieb.ca

Kids love animals

Kids play violent video games, watch violent movies, and engage in mock battle… Why can’t they handle how most animals are killed for food?

In an era where kids are inundated with factory-farming propaganda from powerful groups like the dairy industry in schools and agribusiness lobbies at state fairs, our best defence is education. If we want to raise food-literate children, if we want them to think critically, to challenge the status quo — to make good choices when we can’t choose for them — parents have a responsibility to tell the truth so others don’t co-opt them with fiction.

How do you do that? For starters, picture books for children can go a long way. Check out Ruby Roth’s “#ThatsWhyWeDontEatAnimals,” and “Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken,” by Kate DiCamillo and Harry Bliss. Michael Pollan has a young readers edition of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and Eric Schlosser has a kids’ version of “Fast Food Nation” called “Chew on This.”

The Meatrix Trilogy cartoons borrow from “The Matrix” to take on factory-farmed meat, eggs and dairy, and the fast-food industry. It’s animation with some serious ammunition. The site also includes presentation kits, handouts and other resources for kids to check out on their own.

All kids naturally love animals, I think, but explicitly cultivating that love early on by exposing them to what many would consider “food animals,” by using positive language, and by helping them look at animals not as lower beings to be dominated but as peers worthy of equal treatment and consideration – that love won’t die once they get older and more hardened to the realities of the world.

Got misery? Milk does

Calves have a piece of plastic inserted into their noses that doesn’t allow their mouths to access their mother cow’s udders. Some flaps take it even further and come equipped with spikes that cause the cow to reject the mouth of her calf due to being poked and irritated by her own baby’s nose. For the taste of beef, for a picked bone on an empty plate; all of this suffering is glossed over by the word “humane” to satisfy bellies with a lowered sense of guilt.

The calves birthed on dairy farms are a by-product to the dairy industry. They serve no purpose aside from their eventual slaughter (sold as “Veal” in some restaurants) and causing their mothers to lactate, so their milk can be sold to us.

Please watch my music video to get an idea of what dairy cows and their children go through.

What’s the solution to climate change?

Every day we hear about the dangers of climate change. But what if there were just ONE thing we could all do to help stop it?

1. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the needs of 8.7 billion people, more than the entire current human population of the Earth. If we ate the grain ourselves instead of funnelling it through animals on farms first, there would be more than enough to end world hunger. Continue reading What’s the solution to climate change?

Humans have no biological need to eat meat

If it’s natural to eat meat, shouldn’t this baby be catching her prey with her bare teeth and hands?

We are able to thrive without eating animals; however, if we eat no plants, we die. In fact, decades of scientific evidence have demonstrated that humans have no biological need to consume flesh, eggs or dairy products. We can get all the nutrients we need on a plant based diet, without the unhealthy animal protein and cholesterol, and without inflicting needless suffering and death on billions of animals.
Continue reading Humans have no biological need to eat meat

Vegan Activists

If you have adopted the opinion that vegans are angry people, whether it was an impression you got from me or other animal rirights activists, please understand that the majority of us are not angry people— we are just frustrated. (Very frustrated.) In every instance or wave of activism regarding opression, violence and injustice, there always has and always will be immense frustration towards those who continue to condone and participate in the oppression, violence and injustice despite having knowledge of what is going on, and the effect it is having on others: people, animals and the planet. Continue reading Vegan Activists