Permit me a moment’s foray into another relevant realm within the social justice world.   I am a big believer in the connectivity of the broader movement toward a more just and decent society.

Today I had the privilege of seeing this movie in Vancouver today.  It is very well made, thoughtful, and more importantly, thought-provoking.  Who among us is immune to being sexist in some form?  What is media telling girls and women they should be? (hot, sexy, skinny, a model.)  What is media telling boys and men they should be? (president, CEO, crime fighter, gangster.)  The media’s forceful not to mention limited portrayal of these gender roles has come to define what society expects from us, and what we even expect from ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs

When planning your Holiday Feast please remember the values of the Season: Peace, Charity, Health and Good Will.

Peace is not harming or killing someone for your dinner.

Charity is not taking grain away from the Starving in Africa to feed to Turkeys.

Health is carotene rich Squashes rather than hormone, sodium nitrate, parasite and worm laced Turkey bodies.

Good Will is thinking about all of the people -the animals, the farm workers, the ecosystems, the processors- and all of the other people that are harmed and oppressed by animal exploitation.

Peace be with you and those you love this Christmas, and with all of the less fortunate non-human animals.

I felt totally violated, DISGUSTED and 100% certain that Hawkers on Main St is forever dead to me.

Have you had this experience?  Please comment with your stories and experiences!  AND, check out mevegan’s new facebook page!  Just search mevegan.com

This was my written response to someone who believed specifically that consuming cow’s breast milk is “natural” because it can be found within the faddy “100 mile limit.”  I sought to discredit the idea that it is “natural” or in any sense “local,” or “environmental:”

I am Vegan, which is to say that I do not support the objectification of non human animals to suit my dietary desires, or in fact for any reason what so ever. I won’t walk up to another woman and begin to suckle from her breast, heck, there is no nutritional reason I would even want to! Thus, I offer the same courtesy to my bovine fellow Earthlings.

Dairy production (presuming you do not have a cow in your own back yard, and even if you do it is very un environmental) involves mechanically raping female cows, then taking their newborns from them at birth who will be locked up to become veal. The mothers are fed grains that come from other countries (far outside of the mystical 100 mile diet boundaries) even from other continents (most cattle grain comes from South America or Africa.) Growing this grain takes up vast swaths of land that could be used to grow more nutritionally viable food, which could be fed directly to humans rather than inefficiently cycling it through a cow to consume their milk. A dairy cow will eat “about 100 pounds of feed each day, which is a combination of hay, grain and silage (fermented corn or grass). They drink a lot of water too – up to 50 gallons a day.” (taken from Dairy Farming Today website’s FAQ.) And if we think about the gross fossil fuels burning into our environment to transport all of that grain here (yes, even pretty organic grains) it’s really an environmental disaster!

So what about drinking soy milk, where the beans are grown equally far away, then shipped around the world spewing toxins into the air? How is that better?? Well, it is a minute fraction of the quantities of environmental degradation that dairy produces.  However, for those who are legitimately concerned with the environmental impacts of their food choices, most Vegans (that I know) are happy to use local grown hemp seeds, or Fraser Valley Hazelnuts, and other beautiful proteins to make their own milks (which are absolutely delicious, I should add.)

Their are always ways to be better and better to our Earth, and shutting down all large scale animal housing/killing facilities is the #1 way of doing that.

I’ll leave you with an article from the United Nationes website and bid you Peace:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning

Today’s Vegan treat worth sharing is a very simple smoothie.  I took two over-ripened peaches (organic) and a hand full of organic strawberries and froze them last night.  Today I took, them out, popped them into the VitaMix (no home should be without one!,)  added about a cup of chocolate soy milk, a banana and a scoop of the chocolate flavoured Vega protein powder.  I blended it up, and voilà, a beautiful sweet treat to celebrate a great day!  You can also try a less sweet version and use plain almond milk for your liquid and either the berry Vega protein powder, or no protein powder at all.

A raw version that I am excited to try is simple:  Frozen peaches, frozen strawberries, 2 bananas, raw frozen coconut milk,  1 tbsp of hemp hearts.  Mmm, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Bon Appétit!

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) has been a notorious presence around the world for the past several decades.  Generally, the mention of the name provokes thoughts of violence, lawlessness, even terrorism.  What is it about the group that provokes these images?  Perhaps it is an image created by the media and the industries intent on keeping them out of their workplaces.  Or, it could be that we naturally fear that which we do not know or understand.

In reality, the ALF is a group of committed Vegans who oppose the property status of non-human animals and take direct actions to end this status, to free animals and to destroy the objects of their captivity and abuse.  Critique #1 of the ALF is that they are violent.  This is clearly not the case.  In the innumerable actions committed all over the world, none has ever cause physical harm to any animal, human or non-human.

Critique #2 of the ALF is that they are automatically evil because they so frequently break laws in the commission of their activities.  While it is true that a great many laws have been broken by the ALF over the years, it is just as true that all major social change has been brought about by dedicated individuals breaking unjust laws.  The underground railroad was terribly illegal, not to mention completely in abhorrence of socially accepted values.  None the less, a dedicated few realized the gross injustice that society was allowing to occur and took direct action to stop it.

Critique #3 of the ALF is that they are terrorists.  I think this term is insulting to both the ALF and to actual terrorists, like Mr. Bin Laden and his cohorts.  The ALF are truly ANTI-terrorists, in other words, they actively seek to cease terror and promote peace.  Mr. Bin Laden and friends are actual terrorists, because they seek only to destroy, they do not seek to change hearts or minds in anyway.  True terrorist attacks are untargeted, in other words, they are against anyone, whoever is there at the time, regardless of their history, beliefs or involvement with the things that the terrorist finds condemnable.  The ALF very carefully select their targets and plan an action in tremendous depth before carrying it out.   In fact, a great many actions have been forced to abort due to a risk that someone could have gotten injured.

The Animal Liberation Front has no mailing address, no head office, no membership list.  Who are these rogue freedom fighters?  Where do they come from?  Why do they do the things that they do?  I highly recommend the book “Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? by Steven Best and Anthony J Nocella II, it changed my perception of the ALF quite radically.

For more information about the movement, stories on Animal Liberation and information on how others have carried out actions (which is only available for curiosity’s sake, may christ himself forbid anyone from actually reading this in depth, meditating on it, doing research and deciding to carry out an action that could and probably will save countless lives, and possibly alter the course of history) please check out the always informative, always controversial and best digested with an open mind web site:  www.animalliberationfront.com

Continued from The Vegan Files #1…

Many years went by before I first heard the word Vegan.  I heard the word for the first time when I met one.  He was an enigma, though also a closet level 5 douchebag.  Someone who actually managed to survive on no animal products at all!  I couln’t believe it!  I thought about it for a while and decided that he must live on a diet of exclusively salad greens, olive oil, orange juice and tofu.  That was too crazy for me, no siree, I could never do such a thing and never would!

At that time I had a beautiful, though adorably naive, vision in my mind of a farm.  In my vision, there was a huge pasture that stretched farther than the eye could see, with chickens nesting happily wherever their hearts desired.  The woul peck around for food, drink water from the stream, take naps underneath the big apple tree, and lay their eggs whevever they were ready.  Then, the friendly farmer, naturally wearing his trusty overalls, would come out and collect the unnecessary eggs from the ladies. Then he would pack them up to be sent to market where people like me would buy them with pride.

This fairytale was marred one day, when I was visiting my Vegan friend’s house and saw a copy of the Vancouver Humane Society’s monthly newsletter sitting on his kitchen table.  Since he turned out to be a level 5 douche bag, I tended to spend most of my time at his place alone, reading magazines.  This allowed my a long opportunity to read their cover story on battery cages.  I had never heard the term, nor imagined the concept.

A battery cage is approximately 33 inches by 25.5 inches and holds nine to twelve live, egg laying hens.  These women are imprisoned in these cages their entire lives, and you’re dreaming if you think they get to leave to go outside, eat their meals, or receive veterinary care!  A hen’s natural lifespan is 6 years, while these imprisioned egg laying hens live a short, tortured 9 months.  These chickens suffer from stress so severe that they are reduced to self mutilation, feather pecking, and even caniblism.  One hen lives her entire live in the same amount of space as a regular sheet of school/note paper.

This image haunted me, but fortunately for me, all my eggs came from Idylic McHappyville farms, so I had nothing I could do better to improve the lives of these poor tortured souls.  Thus, several more years passed with me not thinking twice about the egg and dairy that I regularly consumed.  Nonetheless, the good that did come from my friendship with Douchie McLooser was that I was able to see that not only was a Vegan diet physically possible, but that he ate wicked food at all the same restaurants I regularly went to, he just got to be more creative.