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In my previous post about Prop 12, I said I would talk about what I consider to be actually useful legislation. So I’m going to talk about the update to the FDA Modernization Act; or, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0. This happened back in December of 2022 but I still think it’s useful to look at.

Back in 1938, a law was enacted saying that animal experiments were required for every new drug. This included drugs for diseases the animals didn’t contract naturally. All new drugs required animal experiments without exception. But with improving technology, this law became more and more antiquated.

I’ve said new laws need to be strategic and realistic. However, they have to do enough to be worth the time and money spent on them. After proposals from Animal Rights Groups, an update to the law was approved in The House of Representatives and The Senate. It had support ranging from people like Cory Booker, to Rand Paul and John Kennedy. Afterwards, it was signed by The President.

This law allows scientists to use methods other than Animal Experiments to test a drug’s effectiveness and safety. These include organs on a chip, cellular assays, computer models, AI, etc. 

Many useless experiments get repeated because of laws we didn’t update. For example, we’ve known for a long time that lye, ammonia, and oven cleaner are corrosive. But we didn’t repeal the laws requiring us to drip these into rabbits’ eyes until 1983. 

New methods and technologies are useful because they rely on human biology rather than non-human species. With organ chips, you combine cells with a computer chip to replicate the processes of human organs. These have been used to research cures for COVID 19 and diseases like influenza, malnutrition, radiation exposure, and cystic fibrosis.

Cellular Assays allow you to test compounds on cells. 

With sophisticated computer models, we can simulate human biology and predict how diseases will progress. Quantitative structure activity analysis allows us to make advanced estimates for how likely a substance is hazardous. It does this using our current knowledge about human biology and comparing substances to things we already know are poisonous. 

I have a much more detailed post about alternatives to animal experiments in the link below.

We need to make sure that Organ on Chips are brought into the preclinical workflow. They can’t be too expensive, and need to be implemented in labs around the world. But this new law is necessary to begin using these methods.

Drug testing is notoriously slow. It can cost billions of dollars and take up to a decade to complete. A major reason is because animal experiments are so inefficient. Toxicology information translates poorly between different species. Even small differences in biology can create huge disparities, including closely related species. Potential cures for diseases don’t show up when tested in animals. Potential side effects go undetected.

We often cut out Animal Experiments during emergency outbreaks in lieu of more efficient methods. One method is microdosing. This is where you give people very small doses of a drug and observe the effects. We can use in vitro testing. This is where you test human cells combined with a device. We can observe the effects of diseases on people who already have them. We can also do test trials for drugs using humans. Due to the actions of people in the past, we have very strict guidelines for human testing. You can’t inflict serious physical or psychological harm. However, before clinical trials we can predict the potential effects and risks of a drug. To grossly oversimplify, we do this by analyzing the chemical compounds and using mathematical models. 

All the methods I mentioned are specifically for drug testing. There are so many more alternatives to Animal Experiments for general scientific research.

Lots of animal experiments are repeated because old data isn’t easy to access. Computerizing old files would make this easier.

Many people think Animal Experiments are a necessary evil. They think ending them would halt all research on diseases which kill them and their children. It won’t. In fact, Animal Experiments gunk up the process and make it take longer. However, despite the purported convenience or benefits of Animal Experiments, one simple fact remains. It’s wrong to experiment on others because they’re less intelligent. Especially when you take species out of the equation. 

There may be situations where such experiments are necessary. For example, if hundreds of thousands are going to quickly die if you don’t do them. But you want to make sure that it’s truly an emergency, and you’re willing to cross this line. You should also minimize the suffering and harm you inflict. 

But keep in mind, as little as two hundred years ago, our society did experiments on orphans. It also experimented on prisoners and slaves. It continued to experiment on prisoners and minorities in the twentieth century.

There’s still a major self interest element for eliminating animal experiments. Thousands of taxpayer dollars are wasted on experiments which are inconclusive, bizarre, or have obvious results. Examples include forcing animals to inhale tobacco smoke, or forcing them to ingest cocaine. As for drug testing, Animal Experiments makes the process slower and causes it to cost more money. The cost is passed down to the consumer, making medicines more expensive.

Surely anyone with a medical issue can benefit from voting for politicians who sign laws like the FDA Modernization Act 2.0.
Anyways, it’s just a thought. Have a good day everyone. 

Hello everyone. Today we’re going to talk about a recent decision by the Supreme Court, and what it means.

The Supreme Court recently upheld a law known as Prop 12, in a 5-4 decision. Prop 12 is a law in California which requires pigs, hens, and calves to be given a few extra feet of space and sets some minimal animal welfare standards. Its goal is to make meat ‘cage free.’ Meat which doesn’t reach these requirements not only can’t be sold in California, it can’t be imported from out of state.

Members of the meat industry tried to get the law overturned claiming it was unconstitutional. For example, AFBF President Zippy Duval said: “At the heart of this argument is whether one state can set the rules for the entire country.” 

What’s funny about this is that while opponents have made arguments about ‘states rights’ and ‘government overreach’ the meat industry wants to prevent California from deciding its own regulations. The Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiff. Basically, just because a state’s laws have effects on out of state traders, it doesn’t provide them the right to overturn it. 

So the question is, does this law matter and is it helpful for animal rights?

Typically on 98 percent of farms, animals are crammed into spaces so small they can’t move or stretch their limbs. They sleep in their own feces, and constantly suffer from boredom. The industry standard for pigs is 18-20 feet of space, and prop 12 requires 24 feet. It basically says that animals have to be able to turn around without touching their enclosure walls. 

Battery cages, and stalls so small one can’t move are the norm everywhere. In addition when sows are forcibly bred, farms use gestation crates. Florida and Arizona have banned these due to their cruelty. That being said, even when farms are ‘cage free,’ animals are still crammed into spaces that are too small to move, together with thousands of other animals.

For example, an investigation uncovered the conditions of a prop 12 compliant egg farm in California. The conditions were filthy and the animals were brushing up against each other. They couldn’t stretch their wings. Even without a cage, there was only a requirement for one square foot of space for each animal. 

Many animal welfare laws are vague, paltry, and go unenforced. Due to a lack of exposure, not only are people unaware of just how barbaric the inside of farms are, but how horrible conditions continue to be even after regulations are passed. Even the most small-scale, traditional farms can inflict forms of suffering we don’t think about. Farms in America that try to advertise their humane conditions don’t even come close to being that reformed.

Keep in mind, millions of dollars, and thousands of hours of activist time were used to pass Prop 12. If we put that much effort into passing a law, it needs to involve sweeping reforms. These still wouldn’t be perfect, but would at least be worth the time and resources invested. I’ll talk more about better legislation we should pass in a different post. 

There are two types of compromises. The first is strategic. For example, activists were unable to make any progress on animal vivisection for over a hundred years. The population was afraid to lay a finger on animal experiments. They thought anyone who suggested it was simply a fanatic. It wasn’t until activists started putting in incremental changes that we were able to make the progress we have today. This type of compromise is useful when you have to mix your ideas with something else to combat bad policies other people push. You should only use it as a negotiation tactic for when you’ve run out of options. 

The second type of compromise requires you to make trades in exchange for things that aren’t worth it. 

Compromise is a bit of a dirty word. One reason is because of fears of moral impurity. The other is because words like ‘unity’ and ‘compromise’ are used as political weapons. They’re often code for telling people to ‘slow down’ or to make changes in a way that isn’t controversial. However, if you wait for something to not be controversial, it’s no longer an issue. People wonder whether change comes from evolution or revolution, but they’re actually both parts of the same thing. 

The process required to turn animals into meat, or turn their bodily functions into commodities is inherently exploitative. Especially in a world with eight billion people where we over breed animals to keep up with consumer demand. Strangely enough, if everyone quit buying meat, there would be a risk of farm animals going extinct, not overpopulating, but that’s a whole other issue. 

Even if you don’t think the killing of the less intelligent matters, the less intelligent still feel pain. We overlook certain practices because of our biases. However, if you want to judge whether something is truly humane, you have to think, “Would I be okay with doing this to a two year old human?” If not, then it involves some form of cruelty.

The fact that meat companies were willing to go to this much trouble over adding four extra feet of space for their animals shows that there is no such thing as ‘humane meat.’ 

AFBF President Zippy Duval can be quoted saying the following.  “The arbitrary standards take away flexibility to ensure hogs are raised in a safe environment. Prop 12 will… lead to higher pork prices at the grocery store for America’s families.” 

What this means is that he would rather pass the price down to the consumer instead of making a little bit less extra profit. He’s even audacious enough to say that he’s watching out for the safety of the animals.

However, cramming thousands of animals together and forcing them to sleep in their feces until it turns into ammonia gas isn’t watching out for their safety. Not only is it dangerous for the animals, by extension it’s dangerous for the public health. The animals get diseases, and then we allow unregulated use of antibiotics because it’s quicker than properly diagnosing what type of infection each animal has. 

All that being said, none of this means we should turn apathetic and do nothing. This is an emergency. It’s an emergency for us, and for the animals in severe pain who need emergency relief. For example, it’s common practice to castrate an animal by tying their scrotum with a rubber band and waiting several weeks for the testicles to die and fall off. We brand, carve, cut, and castrate animals with no painkillers. 

We need sweeping reforms. Minimal reforms, like a few extra feet of cage space won’t do. Not only will they kill momentum, people who are less informed will say, “Oh, I guess we did something,” and then go do something else. Even worse, it’ll trick well intentioned people into thinking they are buying ‘humane meat’ when there’s no such thing. There are much better measures we can take, and with enough effort the things we see today can become relics of the past. 

Hello everyone, this is The Jungle blog.

Today we’re going to talk about the minimum that every activist can do to help. When advocating for animals, or talking about injustices committed against them, a common response people say is, ‘humans first.’ For those who are actually involved in activism in other fields, I just want to point out that there are many situations where human issues and animal issues are inseparable.

The first most prominent example would be Climate Change. Fifty percent of all land is used for Animal Farming. We continue to over-breed animals to keep up with consumer demand, which uses up land, food, and water, which could be used for humans. Raising animals for food is extremely wasteful and is one of the biggest contributors to the Climate Crisis. Because of how much damage that we’ve done to the environment, we can only mitigate or reduce extra damage, but even this is important. Female animals are subjected to a forcible breeding process where they’re kept perpetually pregnant for years until their bodies give out, in which case they’re slaughtered. The amount these animals are made to give birth is astounding, and couldn’t be replicated naturally. If nothing else, even with already existing animals needing to occupy land, it would at least be helpful for the environment if they were not forced to give birth to insane numbers anymore.

Second, without Animal Rights, there can be no Worker Rights. Workers on Factory Farms have to witness a lot of terrible things. Animals being cut and castrated without painkillers, forced to live in spaces too small to move, sitting in their own urine and feces. This accumulates into ammonia gas, which burns your lungs and eyes. Workers have to wear special masks. The average worker has to slaughter an average of 250 cows per hour. Turnover rate is up to a hundred percent each year, so workers are new and inexperienced. The animals are already slaughtered improperly because there’s so many of them. Workers having little to no experience makes the issue worse. Farm work is one of the least unionized industries in the country, and it is purposefully exempted from the largest amounts of legal protections for workers. Many workers are Latino, so citizenship is heavily emphasized, and a culture of bullying and ethnic infighting between Whites and Latinos is encouraged. Undocumented Immigrants have their citizenship status used to blackmail them so that they can’t request workers comp, or report a workplace injury. Factory Farms are built next to minority neighborhoods because the owners know the residents will have a harder time fighting back. While most farm animals are allowed to just sit in their urine and feces, pigs produce so much waste that it has to be occasionally disposed of. Therefore, many tons of untreated hog waste is regularly dumped into the water supply. Overuse of antibiotics leads to antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, which kills many people. So do the gasses Factory Farms produce.

Historically, most disease outbreaks can be traced back to practices involving the mistreatment of animals. Because of Factory Farms, disease outbreaks are more likely now more than any other point in history. Pandemics, and Epidemics are more likely, which generally leads to inconvenience, and shutdowns.

Animal Experiments are an outdated bureaucracy, which continues due to tradition. Medical Research is notoriously slow, and Animal Experiments are amongst some of the least efficient ways to gather data; many experiments are bizarre and not useful. Even minor physical differences between species can cause issues for research. Potential disease cures remain undiscovered because they show no results in non-human species. Harmful side effects go undetected because they don’t show up in Animal Tests. Toxicologists know that information about poisons don’t translate well between different species. Data gathered from Animal Experiments often can’t be translated into a form that’s useful for humans. There are much better methods to do research, and with improving technology, this becomes even more obvious. Medical, Veterinary, and Science groups lobby hard to keep these experiments funded. Protests against Animal Experiments go ignored by legislators because they put too much trust in these experts, lacking the time to get expertise on these subjects themselves. But the advice given here is unreliable because the question posed isn’t a scientific one, but a moral one. Companies that breed animals, and create experiment equipment also lobby to keep these experiments funded. Superior techniques for doing research are ignored in lieu of continuing Animal Experiments, which is the easy way out for keeping your lab funded.

Now there is a difference between animals, and human beings in general. Groups of humans can govern themselves. If you abuse a group of people long enough, they will eventually riot or revolt. In this respect, Animals are very defenseless. The eventual goal is to leave them alone, but in the world as it is now, we have to help them. There are institutions which oppress animals, and others working to help them. But because animals are rendered dependent on us, if the people trying to help them lose their heads, or miscalculate a decision on their behalf, it puts animals in a bad position.

Many people have a paternalistic feeling towards minorities, that they will grant them their rights once the white male population is feeling enlightened enough. But the have-nots cannot be dependent on others to grant them their rights. They have to organize, pool their own resources (creating an independent power base) and then pressure the ‘haves’ to hand over the rest of the stuff.

It’s important to not let your outsider status to minority groups mix in with your knowledge of Animal Rights. When it comes to Animals, humans will always possess an outsider status, and right now, when it comes to violations of their rights, every human is an interested party. Despite all this, our attitudes and actions towards animals are still a form of prejudice. If you are willing to do something to a creature because they’re an animal, but not to a human of equal intelligence, then on what basis do you do it? Because they’re a different species from you? That is pure unadulterated prejudice. For example, a dog is most similar in intelligence to a two year old human, able to learn up to two hundred words. Generally speaking, pigs (which we turn into bacon) are considered much more intelligent than dogs. Also, pain is pain. Two creatures might differ in intelligence, but both are conscious feeling beings capable of suffering. Two creatures might have differing needs, but those needs ought to be given equal consideration. We also should not kill the less intelligent for reasons that aren’t justified, like turning them into hamburger.

When it comes to the phrase, ‘humans first,’ being said in response to Animal Rights, what would you think of someone if you were talking about fighting against injustice in Africa, and in response they said, ‘white’s first.’ Anyone who’s made a thorough study of the topic will understand that animal issues are at the very least comparable to human issues. The victimized party adds up to the hundreds of billions. There is so much suffering, and also so much death. It adds up to the billions each year ALONE. Animals live in tiny spaces too crammed to even stretch their legs or move. They sleep in their own urine and feces, and are constantly exposed to ammonia gas. They are cut and castrated without painkillers. They have lives of pain, boredom, and sensory deprivation. Every possible activity is deprived from them, every instinct is frustrated. Animals that can live up to twenty five years are killed at one and two, assuming that we’re not talking about lamb, cabrito meat, and veal, where animals are brought into existence and then killed hours, days, weeks, or months after being born. We simply are trained not to see it because of the pervasive cultural prejudice known as speciesism (Even if it’s a clunky word, speciesism is bluntly what it is.)

More and more people are realizing that without animal rights, there is no basis for human rights. There is no basis for human rights that wouldn’t also apply to animals. We are a society that emphasizes equality, at least in the political sense. But we must realize that not all humans are equal in ability and character. It’s also possible to lose your rights, for example, when you kill an attacker in self defense, you take away the other person’s right to life. When you throw someone in prison, you take away their right to freedom. Yet there are still needs we take equal consideration of. For example, we would not feel justified taking away a person’s freedom of religion just because they are a criminal. Even a person who believes in the death penalty would agree that there are certain forms of torture that are wrong to subject a prisoner to if you gave the person enough examples.

Not all humans are equally intelligent. There are children, young infants, and babies. Someone below the age of five lacks many abstract reasoning skills, language, and doesn’t know that they will die one day. There are also humans with mental disabilities, developmental disorders, brain damage, and dementia. How can we justify extending this equal status on account of being human, starting with the less intelligent, and stretching it all the way to the psychopathic murderer, and then not extend this status to animals? There was once a time we did not extend this status of ‘being human’ even in our rhetoric to many groups of humans; that time being in Ancient Rome. It wasn’t that Romans were soulless, crass people the way some are tempted to think. Many citizens were interested in philosophy and had a sense of justice, but they were also a military society that could not tolerate any kind of weakness. Technically we have continued their beliefs in practice, even to this day, it’s more obvious if you look at previous centuries. But when people undid the old way of thinking, creating the equal status of merely ‘being human,’ they didn’t extend this consideration to other species. This is mostly due to cultural error. On the other hand, our beliefs and understanding of the world have been greatly updated over the past several thousand years. This makes the previous mistake all the more glaring.

Everyone only has so much time and energy, and not everyone can devote their energy to the same causes. I don’t doubt the sincere intentions of a person that is a vegetarian, but is otherwise not very interested in Animal Rights. Some might devote most of their time and energy to other important causes. However, the minimum every activist can do to help is adopt a dietary boycott against animal exploiting industries – that is to at least become a vegetarian. Becoming vegan would make it more complete, however, I think it is better to become a vegetarian first. Other Animal Rights Activists might disagree with me, but it gives you a simpler goal to aim for when you’re inexperienced. It also prevents you from becoming overwhelmed, copping out, and deciding to do nothing at all. You don’t need to do it immediately. The idea just needs to be in your head. You could try it for a month. If you fail, you can always try again. Regarding any worries about failure, actually accomplishing something will feel much more satisfying than worrying about being perfect. You don’t know if your actions will catch on, but no one who starts important things like these does. Institutions don’t act like something is an emergency until we do as individuals; and not eating meat in a society where the majority of people do draws a lot of attention. Anyways, there’s a lot more support now than there was as little as several decades ago. There is a lot more awareness for Animal Rights, and as many as ten percent of Americans identify as Vegan or Vegetarian. Even as an individual your actions can make a difference. Over time, not eating meat accumulates into less profit for the Animal Industry, which causes less animals to be bred for ‘next quarter.’

I’ve spent time appealing to people’s ideals, not because I think that this will work; morality is extremely unconvincing, but rather, to poke holes in the philosophies people use to justify fighting for people’s rights. The culture is becoming more aware of our contradictions in attitudes. Our ideas and knowledge have changed. More people are aware that there is no justification for humans having rights that wouldn’t also apply to animals. As we come to understand how similar we are to other animals, we can no longer believe humans have some special status separate from them. It is similar to understanding that The Earth isn’t the center of the Universe, or that The Sun doesn’t spin around The Earth. Whether you like it or not, The Animal Rights Movement is growing in relevance. That is why companies like Tyson Meats are investing into research on lab grown meats; they are anticipating a rise in veganism and vegetarianism which is obviously large enough to hurt their bottom line. I’ve appealed to people’s idealism, now I will appeal to something much more substantial. Self interest. I’ve already technically named elements of self interest, for example, resource shortage, climate change, disease… While these are already close enough to nip at our heels, they seem too far off, too abstract, and too large to visualize. I’ve mentioned something a lot closer to home, workers rights; there’s corporate greed; Factory Farms blackmailing undocumented immigrants and building next to minority neighborhoods. Some people are already being affected directly, whether they realize it or not, and actually, corporate greed affects everyone. Perhaps people who are already involved in activism will go for this. But each of these things I mentioned are already large issues in themselves. There’s another element of self interest; those who feel they are unable to affect change finally being able to act. This would be an opportunity to participate for those who feel unable to affect the political process. In addition to dietary boycotts; there are smaller, easier boycotts you can participate in to fight against Animal Exploiting Industries; like refusing to buy wool or leather in the future. The processes used to create both of these actually cause a lot of suffering. Creating wool is not ‘just a haircut.’ In addition, wool and leather are expertly tied with meat, milk, and cabrito or veal (depending on the animal) to maximize profit. You can buy artificial leather, cotton, and polyester instead. Though it’s not very glamorous, these small, conscious efforts can make a difference if you make it a trend. But I’m going to point out something else which is very specific.

If you are an activist, and trying to build up a political network, something which is very helpful is utilizing smaller, pre-existing, turn-key networks. This provides a variety of issues to work on and a variety of actions to take which keep a fluid organization like this alive. The larger political networks can be (but not always are) run in a democratic manner, where the various parties in an area work together, and the organization and its people are self-governing. The smaller turn-key groups provide political power and funding. Those in the actual field understand this concept far better than I do. The reason I point it out is because people are becoming more aware of Animal Rights, and the issues are becoming increasingly relevant to people. Animal Rights Organizations are very useful turn-key networks, because a lot of effort is needed to achieve their difficult goals. But with this difficulty comes opportunities. Their growth can provide you with a lot of funding, and political capital. The importance of these groups is certain to increase as a function of time, as Animal Rights issues are increasingly talked about in politics. I believe that in the future, the conditions of the world will have changed so much that every community and political organization will be almost obligated to have an Animal Rights branch… even conservative ones if the issue has become mainstream enough.

Anyways, it’s just a thought, have a good day everyone.

We should always avoid calling something ‘the last acceptable prejudice.’ It can be a huge red flag about the cause you’re supporting; sometimes it isn’t, but it’s still a major error. By its very nature, unless a prejudice is on the verge of dying; if it’s ingrained in the culture, you can’t even be aware that you have it, won’t think about it often, or will think it’s just a normal part of the thought process.

A term coined by the Modern Animal Rights Movement is speciesism. In short, this is being willing to mistreat or put up with mistreatment of another creature because they aren’t ‘part of your species,’ or being willing to sacrifice the needs of one species to benefit another. It is a sort of attitude that you aren’t aware is influencing you. Once you’re aware of it, you may notice a lot of double standards held for humans and non-human species put in similar positions. The person who came up with the word admitted that it was clunky, but that it was the best phrase to describe what he was talking about. A lot of people think of it as just being mean to animals. But the issue is deeper, and should be understood if we want to quit inflicting unnecessary pain and death on others.

But first, how much do these ‘tinted glasses’ so to speak color your view on issues? Sure, there is a general lack of knowledge on things that happen. The specifics of Factory Farms, Animal Experiments, Puppy Mills; if people had more knowledge, they wouldn’t put up with these things anymore. We generally don’t see the animals people eat get killed. In the past people saw animals slaughtered all the time, and were able to look at death more directly because of the idea that there was an afterlife, whereas nowadays, people find the promise of an afterlife to be less comforting, even if they believe in it. There is also apathy for animal issues. But despite all this, there is a deeply ingrained attitude that allows us to think things are just okay. This is what allows scientists who had to start doing Animal Experiments for their PHD’s to eventually be able to kill hundreds of animals; even casually forgetting to euthanize whole litters of animals sitting in garbage bags or to forget to use painkillers. They are not some different class of people from us, we’re cut from the same cloth. Culture can overcome the natural human revulsion towards torture and murder if things are pushed far enough.

Speciesism is a type of prejudice that permeates the culture and affects your views even when you’re not even aware. For example, some philosophers have stated that it’s wrong to torture and kill animals not because the animals don’t want to suffer and die, but because its bad for humans in the sense that it makes us less likely to feel compassion for other people. This is an attempt to create an after the fact explanation to justify our instinct of not wanting to kill and torture animals that still fits within a speciesist worldview. Or I heard someone say that it was wrong to kill another person’s dog – not because you’re killing them, but because they are the person’s pet, and that it would be equally wrong to destroy their pet rock.

Let’s talk about a very niche type of speciesism. Showing unfair favoritism to certain non-human animals over others. For example, being okay with doing certain things to pigs, but not being okay with those things being done to dogs. This isn’t based on intelligence the way people rationalize. While there are multiple forms of intelligence, and you can’t just come up with a single number and compare multiple species on a scale; in general we typically consider pigs to be more intelligent than dogs. Yet we do things to pigs that we would never want done to dogs, and I don’t just mean eating them. This logic can cut both ways. Rather than deciding we should treat farm animals better, some people look at cultures that eat dogs and decide that it’s just ‘their way.’ This response is more sophisticated than deciding that eating a dog is wrong, and eating a cow isn’t, since there isn’t that much of a difference morally. But even people with this attitude might hear a farm make a statement saying, ‘Our pigs’ living environment is more humane, our animals exhibit less aggression,’ and see a warehouse crammed full of pigs and think it’s normal. But if they heard a dog farm say, ‘Our dogs’ living environment is more humane, our dogs exhibit less aggression,’ then they showed a warehouse crammed full of dogs, it might make them uncomfortable.

But the main symptom of speciesism is being willing to do something to animals because they are less intelligent, but being unwilling to do those things to a human of equal intelligence. Or if you are talking about things we do to animals, and then you ask a person, ‘how would you feel if we did this thing to a human?’ and they respond, ‘but they’re not human.’ Then the question here is, on what basis do we do these things? Because they’re merely not part of our species? That is pure unadulterated prejudice.

Some people say, ‘oh, my morality isn’t required to be so rational or logical. This so-called ‘extreme logic’ is just meant to point out that there’s an issue to those trained not to see it. We try to minimize suffering for ourselves, and experience as much happiness as possible. Morality should do the same for others.

Regardless of intelligence, two creatures are capable of suffering. They may have different needs, but those needs ought to be given equal consideration. We also should not kill the less intelligent for no reason, or for reasons that aren’t justified, like turning them into hamburgers.

Most people don’t believe in a ‘might makes right’ philosophy, or that the more intelligent should have greater rights than the less intelligent. But that is the question that is posed to us. IQ is not a good way to measure intelligence. Psychologists have been arguing about what it is for a century. Intelligence is complicated and there are multiple forms so it can’t just be boiled down to a single number and objectively compared on a scale. But to simplify, the question here is, would it be beneficial for society overall, if those with an IQ of eighty and below were made into slaves? I don’t think so; and if we are willing to create a society which enslaves others based off of intelligence, then why not less important characteristics, like skin color or sex? When it comes to animals, people are willing to say things that they would never say for anyone else. For example, to justify our treatment of animals, I’ve heard people say, ‘survival of the fittest.’ Throughout history, when have people ever justified their treatment of other groups by saying ‘survival of the fittest’ and not been the bad guys?

Our culture has a tendency of wanting to promote equality. But on what basis can we advocate for human rights without also advocating for animal rights? We try to give equal consideration for people’s needs, and create equality in the political sense. But people must realize that not all people are equal in ability or character. There are even situations where people can lose some of their rights. For example, if you kill a person in self defense, you’re taking away the other person’s right to live. If you throw someone in prison, you’re taking away their right to be free. But just because someone is a horrible criminal, we don’t take their Freedom of Religion away. You can’t ethically go into a prison and force the people to convert to a different religion. Even people who believe in the death penalty would say that there are certain forms of torture that are wrong to subject criminals to if the discussion went on long enough.

Not all humans are equal in intelligence, there are children, young infants, and babies. A dog is most similar in intelligence to a two year old human, and can know up to two hundred words. Many humans have mental disabilities, birth defects, dementia, brain damage, etc. Someone below the age of five hasn’t developed basic language and abstract thinking skills, and doesn’t know that they’re going to die one day. Yet we blanket everyone under the equal status of being human. How could we justify having extended this status starting with the less intelligent, all the way to the psychopathic murderer, and then not extend it to animals?

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Many humans have characteristics animals do not. Groups we label as separate and discriminate against are the same way. If you mistreat a group of humans long enough, they will eventually revolt, organize, or defend themselves. Animals cannot organize themselves like this…

Many people have a paternalistic feeling towards minorities; that they will grant them rights once the white, male population is feeling enlightened enough. But the have-nots cannot be dependent on others to grant them their rights. They have to pool together their own resources, reorganize, and then put pressure on the ‘haves’ to hand over the rest of the stuff. The Middle Class can help of course, these are the ‘have a little, want some more’ group, and you still want to eventually change unjust laws, and pass helpful financial programs. But people also need the ability to form their own power base, and not have to wait around for others to grant them their rights. For the sake of your own dignity you have to eventually be able to tell these allies, ‘thanks for the help, now scram.’ In this sense, power cannot be given, it must be taken. The point of this whole digression is that you cannot let your understanding of prejudice against non-human animals mix with your feeling of being an outsider to any sort of minority group. When it comes to Animal Rights, humans will always have the status of outsider. When it comes to our crimes against animals, all humans are an interested party. Animals are rendered dependent on us, which puts them in a bad position because humans are a self-interested, willful species with the universal desire for power. There are so many institutions which torture and kill them, and if the people trying to rescue animals make a bad decision on their behalf, the animals are screwed. So none of this is to insult the mental faculties or common human dignity of minority groups. However, our feelings and actions towards non-human species are still a form of prejudice.

When talking about Animal Rights, many people will respond by saying ‘humans first.’ How would you like it if when talking about solving important societal issues, someone said ‘white’s come first.’ Also, does ‘humans first’ mean, ‘we’re busy with human issues right now, but we’ll get to the animals eventually.’ Does it mean, ‘it’s too bad about the animals, we could help them if there wasn’t so much human stuff getting in the way.’ If this is the meaning, then these things aren’t really being said in good faith, but as an excuse to ignore animals forever. Or does the phrase, ‘humans first’ really mean that human interests should always trump Animal Rights? Animals live in painful, desperate situations right now; almost completely because of humans. They experience lives of pain and boredom. Animals that can live for up to twenty five years are killed at one or two years old. That is, if they aren’t killed a few hours, days, weeks, or months after being born to be made into veal, lamb, or cabrito meat. They’re experimented on. They are forcibly bred, and made perpetually pregnant until their bodies can’t take it anymore. The list goes on and on.

It’s true that we have other societal issues to address. Not everyone can devote all of their time and energy to the same causes. But the bare minimum an activist in a different field can do to help is to at least adopt a vegetarian diet. I’ll address this more in a separate video, however to continue, this sort of dietary boycott is the best thing that you can do as an individual to fight against animal exploiting industries. Even if you aren’t up to the level of being a vegan, this is still better than doing nothing. Other Animal Rights people will disagree with me, but I typically think it’s better to try being vegetarian first before upgrading to vegan. It gives you a simpler goal to aim for while you’re still inexperienced. You don’t have to do it immediately but you should at least entertain the idea. You can even try it for a month, and if you fail, you could always try again later.

I’ve heard some people say that there’s no such thing as speciesism, because there are so many human issues and groups of people experiencing oppression; that it would be better if we lived in balance with other animals; hunting and farming in a way that was ‘in greater harmony with nature.’ This theoretically ‘less harsh’ approach misses the point, that we advance so-called human interests by harming other animals. That is, if it even worked. But as for the idea that there’s no such as speciesism because there are groups of oppressed humans, let me say this. Like it or not, animals have an impact on our society. They are very relevant to us. They’re conscious feeling beings. Even when they’re not registered by any farms, shelters, pet-shops, or government institutions, they still live in our cities and towns. Many human issues actually go hand in hand with animal issues, like workers rights, the environment, disease, and other things. For example, Factory Farms build their facilities next to minority neighborhoods because they know the residents will have a harder time fighting back. They exploit undocumented immigrants and blackmail them if they want to report a workplace injury. They encourage ethnic infighting, and a culture of workplace bullying that emphasizes citizenship status. Factory Farms dump untreated hog waste into the water supply. Overuse of antibiotics leads to antimicrobial resistance, which kills people. So does the ammonia gas produced by animals living in their own urine and feces. Farmworkers are excluded from the most worker legal protections, and farm work is amongst some of the least unionized industries in America.

So let’s say every human on earth was placed in a giant hierarchy, containing politicians, CEO’s, military, teachers, office workers, manual labor, etc. At the bottom would be the most mistreated groups of people on Earth. But beneath them, would be animals as a whole. Maybe not all animals. Some animals, like the types people keep as pets, are afforded special privileges. But even these groups are mistreated. Remember that there are puppy-mills, and dogs are used all the time in painful, lethal experiments.

Some people think that in order to be in favor of Animal Rights, you have to be an ‘animal lover,’ or feel some kind of personal sentiment towards a specific type of animal. That is not true. Animal Rights is an issue of justice. How would you feel if you expressed that you were against prejudice towards Asian people and someone accused you of being a ‘China Lover?’ Overly cautious Animal Welfare Groups that were once considered very radical for their times made too many compromises in exchange for trivial reforms; and now we think of Animal Welfare as a hobby for kindly ladies that are dotty about kittens, rather than a serious issue about morality and justice.

Pain is pain, regardless of intelligence. Anyone who’s thoroughly studied animal issues will understand that the amount of suffering caused is comparable to human issues. 100 million pigs, cattle, sheep, and billions of chickens go through Factory Farms each year. Every year, 25 million animals are experimented on. If even a thousand humans were forced to go through the type of experiments animals go through, there would be a national uproar. But there is a pervasive cultural attitude that prevents us from seeing all this. That attitude is called speciesism.

Anyways, that’s all for now, have a good day everyone.

Hello everybody, this is The Jungle blog.

So I was on YouTube one day, and there are these surveys YouTube Channels put out that have become very common. There was one that was asking, “Does Human Life outweigh Animal Life.” I had an issue with the phrasing of the question. Because I was tired, my brain had confused the terms, less-intelligent life, and Animal life, and I was thinking of them interchangeably. Once I realized the mistake, I answered ‘No,’ to the question. Someone’s life is not less valuable just because they’re not part of our species.

But what about the other question I’ve just raised? Does more-intelligent life outweigh less intelligent life? This subject is complicated. If you are working to help animals, this question isn’t just some abstract thought exercise. There are real life, practical situations where you will need this information. But first, let me say that the capacity for suffering in two creatures of different intelligence must be considered equally. Two creatures may have different needs, but those needs ought to be given equal consideration. To consider the suffering of a human, but not an animal is nothing more than unjustifiable prejudice.

So why is it wrong to kill? I believe every conscious being wants to continue having experiences after the present moment. Other species have evolved to hear and see differently, and even experience time at different speeds. Some creatures even have senses that we don’t, such as echolocation, or thermal detection. Others don’t have eyes, they have light sensitive nerves. It is likely that animals experience physical sensations much more intensely than humans. Anyways, once a conscious being exists – they cannot imagine themselves not existing, and if the thought of such a thing occurred to them, it would bring dread. They want to keep experiencing things, and when you kill them, you cut off that capacity forever.

Keep in mind, there is not one type of intelligence, similar to how there is not one type of muscle. Psychologists have been arguing about what defines intelligence for a century, but basically, you can’t just boil it down to a single number and objectively compare on a scale. But for our purposes, what is important is how much loss a creature would experience if you killed them. That is why comparing a scientist to a non scientist wouldn’t be useful. Neither would it be useful to compare a five year old; who has realized they are going to die one day, and acquired some language and ability to plan for the future – in essence; basic abstract thinking skills, to a forty year old computer programmer.

Animal Rights Activists like Peter Singer have stated that animals live in a perpetual present. I think this is flatly untrue. Certainly humans are much more likely to have anxiety about the future. Animals are more likely to live in the moment, but never just in the EXACT present, or this one EXACT second. I think most forms of intelligent life can live a little bit in the deeper future or past. Obviously, we don’t know for sure and we have to be careful projecting too many human traits onto other species. Other animals have experiences that are alien and unknowable to us. However, I want to point out that the majority of humans are not great long term planners either – even if we think we have strategies and goals. Many of us have a tendency to only be able to see a few feet in front of our faces. Also, there are examples of things that completely contradict our ideas about other animals. Wolves can bury meat in the ground and dig it up as long as two years later. Lab tests on goldfish have shown that they can remember things for up to three years.

Less intelligent life shouldn’t automatically, or inherently be considered less valuable. We shouldn’t kill less intelligent creatures for NO reason, or for reasons that aren’t justified, like turning them into hamburgers. We also have to think on a case by case basis, weighing it against other aspects of that creature’s environment and mental life. There may be cases where you should actually choose to save a less intelligent creature over a more intelligent one. Something we should also keep in mind is that a less intelligent creature is more likely to be defenseless, and in this respect, we ought to prioritize them.

This question is highly subjective… Who’s to say that the life of a less intelligent creature is less worthy of being lived than the life of one who’s more intelligent? Each has its own pleasures, and an intelligent creature can experience hardships and horrors that a less intelligent creature will never experience. But if you’re in a bad situation with few options, you have to make a decision one way or the other. Just because a situation is subjective, that doesn’t mean that you should just do nothing. That is a copout. If you are gifted with more intelligence, that comes with certain responsibilities, and having to make difficult decisions.

I want to get out of the way, that this line of thinking isn’t an attempt to justify some prejudiced attitude towards animals, or some desperate desire to value the life of a human over some other type of creature like a squirrel. Emotionally I actually lean in the opposite direction, and it was difficult for me to consider these points at the time when I did. Neither is this an attempt to address those creatures for whom it’s psychologically impossible to give as much consideration as we ought to. That is not a matter of morality, but a matter of the world being a messed up place. The things I’m talking about actually have some very important real life applications.

But before we get to that, let me point out that we make the mistake of lumping very different creatures into the same category. For example, a shrimp, a tapeworm, or a fetus is on a very different level from a fish, which is on a very different level from a pig, dog, cow, chicken, squirrel, or rat.

I think it’s likely that the cutoff point for what qualifies as conscious life is something in between a shrimp and an oyster – and this might be as good a place to draw the line as any.

Compared to other groups, animals as a whole are more likely to be treated with disregard. They’re less likely to be afforded certain privileges. A large number can be found in deplorable, painful, filthy conditions. This is a society that forcibly breeds them, experiments on them, and turns them into hamburgers. Unfortunately, when we help animals, there are times when we have to make certain decisions for them because we are aware of things that they’re unable to be. We have to be careful taking that logic too far. By giving up our status of ‘Masters’ over the other animals, we shouldn’t later attempt to play God. The eventual goal is to leave other animals alone. But if we are rescuing animals to give them better lives, and there’s an animal in severe pain for whom there is nothing that can be done, we cannot be unwilling to put them out of their misery. Other groups, like family pets might have certain privileges secured for them that their less fortunate counterparts have not.

Here’s another situation. Suppose a person has contracted a parasitical animal inside their body. Whether it was their fault is irrelevant. Should we refuse to give the person medicine that would kill the parasite, or flush them out? Do we have an obligation to preserve the life of the parasite inside that person’s body? The ability to control your own body is an inherent right that all creatures should fight for. In one situation, a creature loses their life, and then feels nothing. In the other, the host experiences immense suffering. There is a third situation where both creatures end up dying anyways, because the parasite wasn’t extracted on time. The intelligence of a creature, or more accurately, what sort of life experience they have, should also be factored into a decision like this.

If you have principles about more intelligent or less intelligent life that you are willing to apply to animals, but you are unwilling to apply these to humans – then this is nothing more than pure unadulterated prejudice. If you are willing to let something be done to a dog or a pig, but unwilling to have that thing be done to a two year old human; then on what basis do you do so? Just because they are a different species than you? A dog is most similar in intelligence to a two year old human, and knows up to two hundred words. While it’s impossible to objectively compare, generally, pigs are considered much smarter than dogs. Before you get all angry and say, “How dare you,” remember that I’m not advocating for killing any of these creatures. I’m trying to give extra value to the lives of animals, not devalue the lives of humans. This anger comes from pure denial and rationalization and ought to be actively dismissed as such. My line of thought here is no different than realizing that the Earth isn’t the center of The Universe, or that the Sun doesn’t spin around the Earth. A person might say, “Well, I’m not a Utilitarian,” or “My morality isn’t required to be so rational or logical.” This so-called ‘logic’ I get accused of using is just meant to point out that there’s a problem to those who are trained to not see it. What respectable school of thought on morality allows for inflicting needless death and suffering on others; or harboring pure unadulterated prejudice towards them just because they’re different from you?

Anyways, it’s just a thought, have a good day everyone.

Hello everybody, this is The Jungle blog,

So in 2020, Singapore was the first country to approve the legal sale of stem cell meats. The company selling it is an American startup called Eat Just’s- and will open one of the largest plants to produce lab grown meat in Asia. They also sell egg and meat substitutes. Right now they’re using the meat for chicken nuggets, which will sell for fifty dollars. In the 2010’s the first lab grown hamburger sold for 250,000 dollars, so this meat is much cheaper. Over time the price will go down even more. Two of the largest groups trying to bring stem cell meat to the market include Future Meat Technologies, which is based in Israel, and Memphis Meats. In Singapore, a company called Shiok Meats is working on lab grown crustacean meat. The Singapore Food Agency reviewed the data for Eat Just’s manufacturing control and safety testing. They made a statement saying that the products were ‘found to be safe for consumption at the intended levels of use…’ and they put a ‘regulatory framework for novel food’ to meet safety standards before being sold.

Singaporeans are more open minded about trying lab grown meat because of a cultural trait known as ‘kiasu-ism.’ Part of it is a fear of missing out. But it also involves wanting to project an image of trying new things. Although lab grown meat is only being sold in Singapore, these sales will lead to new startups and competitors, which will eventually lead to approval and sale in other countries.

Currently, making meat in a lab can reduce the amount of animals killed; but doesn’t always reduce it to zero. The process can still be unethical. Stem Cells are able to be found in already born animals, and you only need to harvest from a few, since the stem cells of a single animal can hypothetically feed every human on the planet. The animal isn’t killed. However, the stem cells need to be cultured and grown. Typically, you grow the stem cells using something called ‘animal serum.’ You can also grow them using drugs, or genetic modification, but this is expensive, and may be rejected by consumers. Animal serum is usually made from blood that comes from embryos which are flushed out of cows being sent to slaughter. The ethical issues here range from death, exploitation, and a lack of reproductive freedom.

A man from The National University of Singapore recently led a research team which tested a new method of culturing stem cells using carefully tuned magnetic fields. So far, tests have shown that even ten minute exposures release molecules that have ‘regenerative, metabolic, anti-inflammatory, and immunity boosting properties.’ If this method was sufficiently developed, we could culture stem cells without killing any animals, and it would be cheaper too. If we can culture stem cells like this, even being able to create meat, imagine the applications such a technology will have on medicine.

Don’t assume just because a product uses technology that it’s unsafe. Over the years, stem cell technology will be improved, tested, and will need approval from teams of scientists who have spent years being trained on what to watch out for. Typically, if something is dangerous, we scope it out using empirical evidence. Observations and existing knowledge helps us narrow down what we’re looking for. This is better than just guessing, which is what you’d be doing if you are willing to accept all the technology we have nowadays; like the internet, antibiotics, cars, and airplanes; but then reject other technologies out of hand. Selectively breeding animals is unnatural too, and it changes them at the genetic level. It just does so more slowly.

Some people may be uncomfortable with all this technology. Generations tend to either be on the spectrum of fetishizing nature, or fetishizing technology, each variant a reaction to their parents. One generation likes formula and tang, the other likes orange juice (which is the product of countless unnatural processes.) For example, there are those that realize vegan and vegetarian diets don’t need to be healthy, they just need to be ethical. But previous generations of activists had to plan their diets from scratch, back when vegetarianism was rare, and there were less options. Now, many have different attitudes. We have more information, and more options. That tangent aside, others might be skeptical of new claims. Over the years many farms have tried to ‘humane wash’ what they do, or claim that their meat is ethical. It is always good to temper emotional energy with an attitude of sobriety. On the other hand this is different from the farms that ‘humane-wash’ their products because this will allow us to eliminate the animal farming process completely. Rejecting this method would be to condemn hundreds of billions of animals to suffer and die.

This story is important for two reasons:

First, it shows us that the transition between meat made from killing animals to lab grown meat won’t be instant. It’ll start out imperfect. Not all meats will exist at first. Companies will test the popularity of a few products, before releasing more. The main reason why EVEN companies like Tyson Meats are investing in research for stem cell meat is because they’re anticipating a rise in veganism and vegetarianism. All this shows that this dietary boycott is still necessary and people should be encouraged to adopt it. It is our main tool against animal exploiting industries. It puts pressure on companies, and even as an individual, your actions can cause a difference. Over time, not eating meat, or finding other ways to deprive factory farms of their money, leads to less animals being bred for ‘next quarter.’

Second, it shows that changes could come sooner than we may have originally estimated. This isn’t to paint a rosy, overly optimistic vision for the future. Considering just how bad animals are treated, I never adopt such an attitude for Animal Rights. We don’t know what the future could bring. Things could still go wrong, causing the development of this technology to slow down. But right now rapid advancement is happening, and lab grown meat is being sold this decade. We picture certain changes as only existing in the distant future. But the end of this current phase of animal rights is starting now. We still have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of issues to address. We need sweeping reforms to deal with Factory Farming. We need better funding and enforcement for Animal Welfare regulations. We need to end Animal Experiments; and we don’t achieve change by sitting around and waiting for others to act. Institutions don’t act like things are important until we do. We can make a difference as individuals. We need to form groups, do protests, and information campaigns… There are all sorts of ways to participate.

People are conditioned to think that they can’t really affect anything politically. Our votes merely hold the line, but don’t really create meaningful policy change. Politicians do the opposite of what the majority of people want. People don’t control anything so when they’re required to make an important decision on behalf of the country, they’re not up to the task. Even though we are a Republic in name, people don’t see any of what democracy is about, and you can’t value something you have no experience with. But democracy isn’t just about voting. It’s about Universal Civic Participation. Things like writing, speaking, protests, groups, money (power coupons,) universal education, etc. If the goal of democracy is to have a population that deeply participates in its civic issues, then what does that say about our country? The political system itself is a means, not an end. But it’s the best system we have. All that is to say that any person can start a group themselves, even if it’s three or four people, or even just people they know. You can go door to door in your neighborhood or apartment complex, pass out fliers, schedule a neighborhood meetup/party. People don’t understand this because they aren’t even familiar with their next door neighbors, or the people in their local area. That being said, it’s still better to start small. Because People’s Groups are fluid by nature, you have to keep finding actions to take, or else the group dissolves, even worse, it just turns into a pretentious social club.

The goal of protests is that they’re a form of negotiation when a government isn’t representing its people. They’re pressure campaigns. If authority overreacts to a protest, that’s beneficial, because it presents a certain image on the news. The other goal is to court attention at all costs. A TV ad can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Publicity is free. It doesn’t matter if you’re hated. What matters is if people are talking about you, and at the end of the day, swing to your side (whether enthusiastically, or reluctantly.)

Currently in America, Vegans and Vegetarians combined make up a total of ten percent of the population. The bigger this number grows, the faster it can increase. If we accomplish enough, we can pass the torch to the next generation. Once Vegans and Vegetarians make up twenty-five percent of the population, and sixty percent of Americans approve of basic Animal Rights positions – we can shut down the meat industry permanently. Then, if we can reach this point, we have to brace ourselves for the most painful part – the moment of victory, where we will have to deal with the inevitable entropy and backlash.

Anyways, it’s just a thought, have a good day everybody.

Hello everybody, this is The Jungle blog,

Something I’ve noticed in The Animal Rights movement is that not a lot has been said about what our end goals are. A lot of focus is on maintaining groups from day to day; generalized boycotts against injustices like the meat industry, animal experiments, etc; and starting campaigns against the worst offenders (the importance of that last part can’t be overstated.) But we also need a linear timeline of what we intend to do. Such a method by itself can be stiff and inflexible, however, the movement is in dire need of some focus. The best analogy for dividing up a movement would be The Cold War. The long conflict would be like The Cold War itself. Within it there are the actual wars with their various strategies and goals, and within wars, there are battles. But after The Cold War ends, there are new conflicts; like the current international power games between America, China, and Russia.

Older generations of animal rights activists couldn’t have imagined certain issues being solved close to their lifetimes. For example, when it comes to the meat industry, the consensus is that ending it will be a gradual process; where demand goes down, and the new groups of animals simply aren’t born. Perhaps there are other factors which make killing animals for meat no longer viable, but the idea behind this view is basically, “I’m optimistic about Animal Rights, I’m not delusional.” But the current leaders of The Modern Animal Rights Movement started out when it was in its infancy. They couldn’t have anticipated the rapid spread of awareness for Animal Rights, or the future advancement of stem-cell technology. However, my idea of what could happen is not as simple as you think – and needs to be described in a little more detail.

Shutting down the meat industry – and having animals no longer be labeled as ‘property’ won’t be the end of Animal Rights. It would be the end of a major phase, but we have been abusing animals for thousands of years. It’s deeply intertwined into our culture, and its practices. There would still be animal rights abuses all over the place and other areas where Animals live in deplorable conditions. There may be legal protections for animals that were overlooked. Similar to how America winning the Cold War wasn’t the end of all global conflict, this won’t be the end of Animal Rights. Reaching this point wouldn’t even be the period when Activists can rest for a little bit. After every change, there is entropy and backlash. The moment of victory is when you have to fight the hardest because success goes to your head. You have to hold on to what you’ve achieved, and stop things from going backwards. Even with boycotts, support from the majority of the population, and technology to ease us in, those who are angry and afraid of change will support exploiting animals even harder. Before you know it Animal Exploiting Industries will recover from their recent setback, and fight against new reforms.

Of course, animals being used for food isn’t the only major Animal Rights issue. There are other fights along the way. For example, the pain caused by experiments comes very near to the pain caused by Factory Farms. We need more protections for animals in the entertainment industry. There are zoos – which are basically like prisons, and the breeding houses which sell dogs to Pet Shops. There are other examples. But the end of the meat industry would definitely mark a major shift in how things are done.

An important piece needed for this is stem cells. These are blank slate cells in embryos which turn into specialized cells like skin cells, heart cells, nerve cells, liver cells, etc. However we don’t need to get them from embryos. Full grown animals, including humans have them too. We just need some from a few animals, and then we’re good. Because they can replicate, the stem cells of a single animal hypothetically could produce enough meat to feed every human on the planet. The issue would be perfecting the process of turning it into meat, and making it affordable for the common consumer. We also need to use stem cells to create animal products like milk and eggs.

Some people may then ask, “Why should we do anything for animals at all? Why not just wait for stem cell technology to improve?” First of all, change doesn’t happen by waiting around for other people to do things. We need to take control of the process. Governments and institutions don’t act like something is an emergency until we do. Achieving change any other way leads to unintended consequences. Without understanding animal issues, you’ll miss important details. For example, you won’t know just how intertwined the meat, leather, dairy, egg, and wool industries are; along with issues like workers rights, pollution, and disease outbreaks. Everything is efficiently tied together by Factory Farms to maximize profit. For example, male animals are less efficient, so they’re killed earlier. With male chickens, it’s as soon as they’re born. Animal Rights has to become a political issue, people need to be informed about things the average person currently doesn’t know about, and Animal Rights has to gain as much attention as possible. The second thing I want to point out is that the main reason why corporations like Tyson Meats are funding research for stem cell meat is because they’re anticipating a rise in vegetarianism and veganism. Thirdly, you don’t know what the future will bring. You can predict an increase in technology, but you don’t know what will happen for sure. Fourth, the switch between meat made from killing animals, and meat from stem cells won’t be instant. Replicas may be imperfect at first, not every variant of meat may exist, and producers will want to test a few products with consumers before releasing more. Fifth, even as an individual your actions lead to difference. Refusing to eat meat, or finding other ways to deprive Factory Farms of their money leads to less profits, which over time leads to the industry breeding less animals for their next quarter. Sixth, there is a power struggle between Animal Rights Activists, and Animal Exploiting Industries. This dietary boycott is one of our most important tools.

By the time the change I describe takes full effect, Animal Rights will be completely inseparable from Human-Related Issues. They will be inextricably connected with economics and politics. This will secure the dilemma where issues must have some element of self interest to receive attention. For example, without Animal Rights, there are no Workers Rights. Farm work is amongst some of the least unionized industries in the country. Many legal protections for workers don’t apply to farm work. Workers have to butcher an average of 250 Cows per hour and work in ammonia gas. Factory Farms are built next to minority neighborhoods – untreated hog waste is dumped into the water supply. Factory Farming increases the likelihood of pandemics now more than any other point in history. Over-breeding animals for food uses up land, plants, and water which could be used to feed humans. This wasteful, inefficient, method of producing food is the biggest contributor to the climate crisis. Also, in the future, people will be unable to ignore Animal Rights because within large political networks, Animal Rights Groups will be some of the most important smaller turn-key networks which provide political support and funding.

But what has to happen first before we reach this point? The numbers may vary, but the basic idea is the same. Currently, ten percent of the American population identifies as Vegan or Vegetarian. The higher the number gets, the faster it will increase. Animal Rights has to become a political issue. It needs to gain attention. Things like providing legal protection for downed animals; or abolishing battery cages, force feeding, and intensive confinement need to become major talking points. Issues related to Animal Experiments need to be on the ballot every election. Over the decades, becoming vegan will become increasingly common. You’ll see it all around you. It’ll be easier to prioritize making the switch if everyone else is doing it. There will be increasingly better provisions to make switching your diet easier. It may get so easy that more people will feel comfortable starting out as vegans, rather than being vegetarian first. Once a combined twenty five percent of the American population is vegan or vegetarian, and stem cell technology is sufficiently advanced, all we need is for sixty percent of the population to either be strongly in favor of switching to stem cell meat, or at least in favor of basic Animal Rights positions. This will be the point where the issue is still an issue, but we have support from the majority of the country. The remaining forty percent will likely be those with a strong reaction against change, rather than those exhibiting anything similar to the hesitancy we see in this decade. Some centrists could swing in favor of animal rights, while others might swing in the other direction; telling people to ‘slow down’ or saying, ‘I’m in favor of your goal but not your methods.’ This is the point where we can shut down the meat industry. Legally, animals need to be individuals with rights, not property. This will set an unusual precedent, because usually when we come up with rights for humans, since we are all part of the same species, we share the same basic needs. Nevertheless, even if two creatures’ needs differ, we still ought to give them equal consideration.

Things won’t just fall into place. This is merely the goal. There is a long road ahead. There are a lot of issues in the present to address before we get there. We need to spread awareness, and build the actual structures and groups required to carry things out. For now, we need so-called ‘sweeping reforms’ to address Factory Farming. I think these are actually just basic emergency measures to relieve animal suffering. Half measures, like a few extra inches of cage space won’t do. We need better funding and enforcement for Animal Welfare regulations. Especially in The United States. We need to shut down more animal labs, pass regulations that relieve suffering for lab animals, and eventually ban Animal Experiments completely. The hardest fight will be once we arrive at our goals and have to deal with the inevitable backlash. In fact, a ‘counter-revolution’ is usually in the process of cooking before any change actually happens. I think Gen-Z will merely lay the groundwork to get there, the way previous generations laid out the groundwork for us. I imagine that by the time Gen-Alpha is in their twenties, we will have caused a sort of Vegan Craze to sweep the country that people will want to participate in. This is purely speculation, but I believe they will be a very political generation, and will be the ones to carry out the switch.

Anyways, it’s just a thought. Have a good day everyone.

Hello everyone, this is The Jungle blog.

Over the years, I’ve asked myself many variations of the same question. If I don’t believe that people with different religious beliefs than myself are going to hell, and I’m also not anti-pleasure, and don’t believe in victimless crimes, then what is even the point of the concept of tolerance?

I had seen concepts like ‘tolerance’ and ‘unity’ get weaponized by groups who were unwilling to practice what they preached. So at one point when I was a teenager I came to the conclusion that the concept of ‘tolerance’ was merely training wheels for the human race to prevent members of different religious groups from trying to kill each other; and we were coming close to the day when we would no longer need it. But years passed, and without me realizing it, I started moving away from this position. Since all these thoughts were merely obsessions irritating the back of my brain, I couldn’t always remember why my thoughts had changed. I just occasionally remembered that they had. I’ve been reflecting on this, and wanted to share my thoughts.

But before that, I want to go over why people feel a sense of disgust about tolerance. You have a lot of extreme moderates who always tell people to slow down when trying to take back their rights. This is even if said group is suffering – a lot. They say things like, ‘I agree with your cause, but not your methods.’ But in the field of action, where things are urgent and you have limited options, you can’t afford to be so picky. Some people are afraid of conflict – for two reasons – Christianity, and Middle Class Politeness Culture. They say – ‘oh, that’s so bad…’ or ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t want to be rude.’ This isn’t a personal attack by the way. I’m infected with similar tendencies. Things have gotten so bad, even ‘compromise’ has become a dirty word. A book I read which was written many decades ago said this was because of people’s fear of moral impurity; and that the word compromise originally referred to a woman’s virginity. I agree that this assessment was true when the book was written, but that it’s no longer the case. The reason compromise is a dirty word is because its meaning is so open to interpretation. Who’s compromise are we talking about? Mine or yours? It’s often weaponized. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad concept. Compromise is what democracy is all about. The concept of democracy is meant to help achieve universal civic participation. It’s not just voting; it’s education, protests, speaking, writing, and money. But when groups of free people are building a society together, there is conflict. Without conflict there is no freedom. If we’re all adding building blocks to our society, then there is no – one perfect analogy for what those blocks represent.

But then there is the reversal. Remember that there are some enemies for which there is no compromise. For many people who start as outsiders, their first instinct once they are accepted is to become insiders, to people please, and move to the center of the political spectrum- but then they lose all ability to take effective action. The other political individuals swallow them up. You only need to stay in control of the power that makes you different. There are times when it’s better to defer than fight. You need to pick your battles carefully. Another issue is that the world is much more complicated now. People who are your enemies, or who function to work against you, don’t always announce themselves as such. Groups forget what they believe in, and don’t know who they’re fighting. Because people always pass responsibility to someone else – groups trying to achieve change waste their energy.

But onto the main topic at hand. What is the point of tolerance? For example, I don’t ‘tolerate’ people having ‘extra marital’ sex. It’s their decision, and they’re not hurting anybody. I embrace it.

However, let’s think about the things a modern person might actually consider to be evil. I think the majority of what tolerance should be about is understanding that humans are not perfect moral beings, and that people have all sorts of forbidden impulses. This ideology needs to be flexible – and can take multiple forms. For example, we might be able to sympathize with a thief, a drug dealer, or even a killer; and, don’t say, ‘oh, I could never be like that.’ Every man and woman has aggressive impulses, much of which goes repressed. They may accidentally leak into our behavior in different ways. Every person justifies their aggression differently- everyone channels that energy for different purposes. But we are all frustrated social animals, and we have to utilize emotional maintenance, the same way every person makes decisions about their diet, exercise, and sleep. It’s easy to fall off the wagon. All it takes is one bad week to ruin your life. Repressing this energy will only exhaust you, and it will simply come out at bad times.

Here’s a less extreme example of the version of tolerance I described. Let’s say you have people in your life that you can’t cut off. This could be close friends or family members. They may have ideas, behaviors, or beliefs you consider legitimately harmful. But you come to realize you can’t change these people, and the only thing you can do is to understand them.

This allows you to suffer fools gladly with a sense of detachment. There are a mix of all sorts of different people in your environment that you can study the way a scientist studies varieties of animals, plants, samples of soil, and trees. For something very irritating, there are subtle things you can do to outwardly change someone’s behavior, or at least get them to not do something in front of you. For example, let’s say you know someone who likes telling you very lazy, unoriginal, racist jokes. You can simply pretend to not get the joke and ask them to explain it to you.

Often, ideas that were once original and new, can harden into dogma. So can methods used to approach a moral issue. People crave order, but need chaos. Because people’s minds require flexibility, and cultures need change to stay alive – our approach to issues must change too. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. I bumped into a social media post talking about sexual assault, where the a in the word rape was slashed out. You could still see the ‘a’ – it was just slashed out. Obviously this is unusual, on TV, cuss words are censored, but not words that merely describe bad things. However, over time, I’ve seen this trend become a little more common. I saw a post talking about sending nudes, but the u in the word nudes was slashed out. I saw another post where the ‘i’ in the word nipple was slashed out. These two examples are worse because it contributes to a culture of making things like nudity or ‘nipples’ taboo. I saw a post with the word kill in it, where the ‘i’ was slashed out. I saw another post where a guy was saying Black Lives Matter was a terrorist organization – but he censored out the e in terrorist. He went on a long rant, and I found it pretty funny because these types of guys like to refer to people as ‘snowflakes.’ It’s a good example of how even two opposing groups within the same generation share the same strengths and weaknesses. All this is actually similar to how the previous generations came up with a list of ‘naughty’ words you can’t say on TV. It reminds me of a joke where there’s a guy on TV who says the word ass. Then he says hole. Neither word is bleeped out, but then he says asshole, and the word hole is bleeped, but the word ass isn’t.

I want to note that even if you slash or censor a letter in a word, you still know what the word is. Slashing out a letter is just a symbolic gesture to make it feel like you made a difference. This instinct from two places. There’s the obvious desire to show some concern about a sensitive issue. Then there is Middle Class Politeness Culture. Many liberals still come from such backgrounds, and have remnants of these instincts. During conflict and debate, many injustices are allowed to continue because of clever phrases and euphemisms that don’t actually mean anything. They slip right under our noses. If we’re talking about a bad leader, or a serious issue, why should we be afraid to talk about it openly – and name the issue directly?

Multiple factors compete for dominance. Over time, the desire to be thoughtful caves to Middle Class Politeness Culture. In addition, a person has to weigh the need to be diplomatic against the occasions where it’s necessary to be a little rude.

I just want to get it out of the way that I think driving when you’re high is a very stupid and dangerous thing to do. But there are many people that insist that driving while high isn’t dangerous, and that it isn’t the same as driving while drunk. Obviously the specifics aren’t the same, and the two experiences feel different; but it’s still dangerous nevertheless. But because people think it isn’t, and we are in a society where getting high is taboo, you have to pick your battles carefully. It depends on the setting and driver. For some people, it’s better to let the issue go – for others, you absolutely want to intervene. In The Great Gatsby, lots of people were drinking and driving. There’s the caveat that cars were a new invention. But that’s beside the point. It wasn’t until alcohol was legal and more socially accepted that we could focus our energies on making drunk driving a taboo rather than just forcing people not to drink. A similar process will have to happen with marijuana. Even now we still have hangups about alcohol from prohibition – grocery stores don’t sell liquor, many stores won’t sell alcohol on Sunday. This is even though many people don’t go to Church, and others aren’t Christians. Americans also don’t freely drink wine with their meals.

One might wonder how anyone could be stupid enough to be a drunk driver. Imagine the background of such a person. The inability to prioritize battles has made it to where the person must take an all or nothing approach. Rather than simply not drinking and driving – the person has to either drink ALL the alcohol, or none at all.

Perhaps you’re in a situation where you’re wondering if you should report something you’d usually consider bad, but seems understandable in a specific case. You might realize some things have to be judged on an individual basis.

Other issues can be vague and amorphous. There’s some detail you can’t explain and if you act immediately, you could cause great harm. Two things seem contradictory, but after the issue is given much examination, you realize there are additional options. It’s only after putting off your ego which wants to immediately explain something, that you can discover anything new.

If you’re involved in activism, you will have to work with groups you consider harmful. This is for strategic reasons. If you are affected too directly, you may be unable to do this, and that’s fine. You might want to take a more backseat position rather than be on the front lines. For example, let’s say you grew up in The Church. Doesn’t matter if it’s Catholic, Protestant, or Latter Day Saints. Maybe you’re a woman who was inculcated with the belief that your only purpose in life was to make babies, or a gay person who was told that being gay is an abombination. Perhaps you were kicked out of the house as a teen for being an atheist. Maybe you didn’t suffer directly but were still a bystander. Worse yet, maybe you read the Bible and discovered that God endorses all this; and that humans have used religion to justify such things for thousands of years. As an adult, you won’t want to work with churches, but may encounter situations where as an activist, it’s strategically necessary. This is an example of what I mean. Something important is that being a victim, and victimizer is not mutually exclusive. Someone can be both. Variants of this idea are used by those defending The Church, and those arguing against it.

In a sense, you could say tolerance is something extremely subjective, personal, and individualized: therefore, the concept of tolerance cannot be black and white. Some behaviors are truly ugly and there are situations where you absolutely should not be tolerant. For example, witnessing someone bullying a person because of their race, or sex, or because they’re gay; or being abusive to someone for being transgender. Perhaps there is someone willing to turn their neighbors over because they care more about the law than morality. For example, turning over Jews hiding in someone’s basement during WW2. Another ugly behavior could be harassing someone for being part of a ‘non-Christian’ minority group, like Jews or Muslims.

Then there is the tolerance paradox – this is the issue of simultaneously being tolerant and still being against things that are really horrible. One attempt to reconcile this ‘paradox’ is by saying that tolerance should not be weaponized by those that promote intolerance. This is certainly true in many cases; but I disagree with it for two reasons. One – what about defending the rights of religions that have beliefs and doctrines that are intolerant? As an aside, you might live in an area where it’s really common to fly hate symbols, but the people who fly them are just ignorant, not hateful. It’s not *all* people who fly it that are hateful, but it’s still a hate symbol nevertheless. Secondly, things like racism, sexism, or homophobia are not necessarily ‘intolerant’ per se. They’re just really horrible.

With the tolerance paradox – I’m not going to do the thinking for you. It’s complicated and referred to as a ‘paradox’ for a reason. I’m merely going to provide a quote that I think will serve as a useful guide.

“It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other. Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day, and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedience, which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions, only exhibits servitude at certain intervals, and throws the burden of it upon a small number of men. It is vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great and only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations which have introduced freedom into their political constitution, at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted—the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their ruler, and his master—more than kings, and less than men.”

Anyways, I hope even if people didn’t agree with specific things I said, that someone still got something out of this. If you want to see more articles this one, consider checking out my other posts. Have a good day everybody.

Hello everyone, this is The Jungle blog.

I was on YouTube one day watching videos when I saw an ad that astounded me with how audacious its claims were. It was advertising ‘Responsible Bacon,’ which they claimed was good for the environment and was ‘carbon neutral.’ I knew better than to take the advertisements at face value. 99 percent of animals made into meat are raised on Factory Farms, where animals are crammed into filthy spaces too small to move. They sleep in their own urine and feces, which sits and turns into ammonia gas. The industry doesn’t have an incentive to consider more humane alternatives. To match consumer demand, they have to over-breed animals, which uses up land, plants, and water, which could be used to feed more humans. Millions of living, feeling, animals are slaughtered each year. Workers have to kill an average of 250 cows per hour. As you can imagine, all this is terrible for the environment. In fact, it’s one of the biggest contributors to the climate crisis. We have to address it.

Anyways… I was skeptical of the advertisement I saw on YouTube – and I know that companies most heavily advertise things which are the most audacious to claim.

Later, I learned about the concept of ‘carbon offsets’ which corporations use to claim that they’ve reached carbon neutrality. Then I went to the website directly and took a look at their claims. The company is called Greenfield. They’re based in Canada but for whatever reason they advertise to Americans specifically. Now let’s think about the tone of what they say their business is about. They make all sorts of claims about their farms being humane, but as you’ll see later, they still look like shitty places to live – and what their statements essentially say is, let’s murder animals in a way that’s good for the environment.

Before we dive right in, let’s take a look at the statements the company leaders have made during interviews. Here’s a slogan on their site. “The Bacon Rebate: How to help save the planet, eat bacon, and get paid.” Apparently you can ‘save the planet’ by eating carbon offset bacon, and make money. Totally not too good to be true.

Here’s another statement. “We are proud to offer consumers great tasting, sustainable bacon that they can feel good about eating,” and another, “Conscious carnivores don’t have to give up the foods they love.” That phrase is hilarious. “Conscious Carnivores” That’s like saying “Loving flesh-eaters.” Also, don’t it twisted. People who eat meat aren’t carnivores. They eat plants too. That makes them omnivores. Any homo sapien that attempts to be a carnivore is going to get constipation. Here’s another statement: “The Bacon Rebate is part of a larger campaign aimed at helping Americans ‘have their meat and eat it too,’” Again, this company is based in Canada, but funnily enough they advertise to Americans specifically. It’s like Greenfield thinks Americans are stupid or something. Also, the saying ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too,’ would be better if it were, ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it in your hand afterwards,’ but unfortunately that doesn’t roll off the tongue. One final statement, “… we see an opportunity to help conscious carnivores feel good about their choice…”

So if you go to their website, you’ll notice they talk exclusively about pigs. The pictures are all of pigs. Why? As you’ll see, pigs are the easiest animals to make exaggerated claims about. They make the following statements: “Temperature and ventilation settings are carefully set to match the requirements of each growth stage. Barn environments are monitored daily to ensure acceptable conditions are maintained… Alarm systems protect the barn from sudden changes that could result from power outages or equipment failure. If these events occur, backup generators maintain a constant environment for the animals.” Temperature and ventilation settings being set to match the requirements of each growth stage isn’t special. All Factory Farms have to do this for pigs specifically. Pigs have a harder time regulating their body temperature compared to other animals. If farms didn’t control the temperature to some degree the pigs would drop dead, which would interfere with meat production. This doesn’t mean their living quarters are comfortable. Also note that they’re referring to growth stages. This isn’t a matter of humanitarianism. This is a matter of maximizing profitability on animal corpses.

As for the buildings having alarm systems which go off during power outages – of course they do. If the buildings didn’t have minimal controls, the pigs would drop dead. You’d have a pile of downed pigs, which would result in gross, unusable meat.

The next claim made is that the pigs’ living quarters “…are thoroughly washed, disinfected and dried between each batch of pigs so that every new group of animals has a warm dry environment when they enter the barn.” So why do they have to claim that living quarters are washed, disinfected, and dried? Well – factory farms have so many animals crammed together, and they sleep in large piles of their own urine and feces. Ammonia gas forms which burns the animals lungs and eyes. Workers have to wear special masks. Pigs are the only animal where some attempt is made to pump the feces out of their cages. This isn’t done out of love for the animals. This is because pigs produce SO much of it. Over a hundred million tons each year. I don’t know how exaggerated Greenfield’s claims are – but what I just described would be the one modicum of truth here. Also, even if the feces are cleaned between ‘each batch of pigs,’ why is this amount of feces being allowed to accumulate in the first place? Surely if a pig was living in a nice grassy field, or was someone’s pet there’d be a better solution for separating living and bathroom space. Try to think of it in these terms the next time you evaluate whether living conditions are ‘humane’ or if an animal is experiencing suffering. Also, why are the living quarters just cleaned when there is a new batch of pigs? Isn’t there a way to clean them within the same batch of pigs? Is there no place to move them, or is this just not profitable? What happens to a batch of pigs when they are replaced?

Secondly, millions of tons of feces have to go somewhere after they’re cleaned. They can’t just lie around, they have to be disposed of. Typically, untreated hog waste is dumped into the water supply of nearby minority neighborhoods – where these types of farms are typically built.

Before talking about their claims about living spaces, let’s look at the statements Greenfield makes about their breeding sows to get a better picture. These are female pigs used to make babies. They call their program, Advanced Open Sow Housing.

Their website says the following. They spend 7-9 days in breeding crates. Zero days in gestation crates, and 21 days in farrowing crates.

On their website they brag about getting rid of gestation crates, more commonly known as ‘sow stalls.’ This isn’t that special. Sow stalls are where pigs are kept during pregnancy. They’re crammed in a small space and forced to lie on the hard floor. These stalls are actually bad enough that two states in America have banned them – a country not known for its wide array of animal welfare laws. The two states that have banned them are Florida and Arizona.

But the pigs still spend 7-9 days in breeding crates. Pigs are forcibly bred. Terrified sows are typically tied to what the industry nicknames ‘rape tables.’ And the animals still are spending 21 days in farrowing crates, where a mother is crammed into a small space with her children.

The following statement is made: “…a sow: Is free to explore their surroundings and have social interactions with each other and their caregivers.” Their caregivers, as in workers hired to move them. But they are still breeding sows. Breeding sows are kept perpetually pregnant. After she gives birth and is given the most minimal time to nurse, she is impregnated as soon as its physically possible. A breeding sow is made pregnant again and again until her body can’t take it anymore, and then she’s killed.

The Greenfield website makes the following claim. They say that the breeding sows have ‘improved wellbeing, leg, and joint health.’ However, the reason breeding sows have leg and joint problems in the first place is because they have to lay on the hard floor while pregnant.

Here’s a statement made about their pigs in general. Not just the breeding sows. “All of our pigs are raised in open pens where they can freely move around, sleep and socialize with other animals.” Obviously with the ‘open pens,’ they’re partially referring to getting rid of sow stalls.’ But pens can still be cramped, discomforting, and dirty. You could still be crammed with a thousand other animals. With all the wonderfulness of a warehouse, with its hard floors, and metal beamed roofs. Claims of open pens with free movement and socialization have always been shaky at best. When photos are provided they still don’t look good, and companies are typically trying to figure out what photos look the best, and they get to decide when they take the photos. Farms don’t usually look the same when a whistleblower applies for a job and takes photos of the work environment. When evaluating claims like this, keep the following in mind: What does and doesn’t qualify as a free range farm is poorly regulated. If an animal goes outside even once in their life, it can qualify as a free range farm, even if the animal spends the rest of their life in a cage, lives in horrible conditions, or goes through rushed painful slaughter. For example the practice of separating male and female chickens at birth, and immediately killing newborn males is still commonplace on ‘free range’ farms. On such farms, animals live even shorter lives because it’s more profitable to have it be so; and most animals are only allowed to live for a year or two in the first place.

Before we go on… they show the environment the sows live in on their website. They have an interactive video which I took at. I took a couple of screenshots here, and I think you should see them.

Wow… look at that awesome environment. The dingy gray room. Inside of a warehouse. There’s the awesome hard floor, and the wonderful metal beams on the roof. And there’s so many pigs, how clever. Instead of having the mothers and children living together in their natural social groups, just breed as many as possible and put ‘em in a building. What a wonderful place to live. This looks so humane.

But to be serious for a moment… this company does get to decide when they start filming their videos. An important question to ask is how many pigs do they usually keep in this environment when they’re not recording. It’s very likely that the amount of workers and livestock in this room was modified before this video was shot. They’re trying to ‘put their best foot forward’ and even then, this looks like a shitty place to live.

The next statement about the breeding sows says that ‘…a sow… is fed through electronic sow feeding system that ensures optimal nutrition for each individual animal and reduces aggression among group-housed sows.’ The reduced aggression is something that gets brought up multiple times. In another list of claims, they say, “We maintain stable animal groups to support natural behaviour, socializing and to minimize aggression.” Take note of the language in this statement. They say, ‘Stable animal groups.’ It indicates a view of them as property. They say, ‘minimize aggression.’ Pigs are naturally friendly, sociable animals. Think of the potbelly pigs people keep as pets, they snuggle, learn tricks, etc. But on factory farms, pigs cannibalize their children. They bite each other, becoming crazed by the taste of blood. Therefore, pieces of their teeth and tails are removed without painkillers to prevent bite marks from appearing on their corpses. This aggression is highly unnatural. It only happens because the animals become crazed from stressful conditions – and it’s not just pigs either. You see increased aggression and cannibalism with chickens and turkeys too. So my question is, why are they talking about ‘minimizing aggression’ here? Imagine if we said this about a group of dogs living in clusters at a warehouse. We promote ‘stable animal groups.’ We ‘minimize aggression.’

I want to take a look at a statement made about breeding sows. It says that ‘…sows… Spends only 20% of their reproductive lifetime in confinement; only during the breeding and nursing stages for the safety of the animals and caregivers.’

So they spend one fifth of their ‘reproductive lifetime’ in confinement. Only ‘during breeding and nursing stages for the safety of animals and workers.’ Except a breeding sow spends her whole life reproducing, and what about the phrase, her ‘reproductive lifetime,’ what the hell does that even mean? Saying, her reproductive years, or reproductive period would make sense. But ‘reproductive lifetime’ doesn’t mean anything. I can’t think of a better example of injustices being allowed to continue because of cleverly phrased Middle Class politeness-culture.

Also, she’s kept in confinement ‘during breeding and nursing stages for the safety of animals and workers.’ Why? Can she not nurse her child without being in confinement? Of course – they have to keep her in confinement during the forcible breeding process to make things easier on the workers. They’re probably scared of her ‘reduced aggression.’

Let’s talk about their claims on antibiotics. On their website they say they don’t use antibiotics for their animals. If an animal actually requires antibiotics and there are no other options, they are removed from the program and aren’t used for the meat supply.

This is something that needs to become common in The United States. This company is in Canada but they advertise to Americans. Overuse of antibiotics leaves residue of drugs in meat, and leads to AMR, or Antimicrobial Resistance. This kills people. These drugs are given to animals who are merely deemed ill, without checking if they actually require it. This is like when people take antibiotics for colds, even though colds are caused by viruses, not bacteria.

My question here is, why are the animals becoming sick enough to require antibiotics? Their website frames things the following way: “Despite all the measures in place to prevent illness amongst our animals, they can still get sick.”

So, it’s possible for non-captive animals and animals who live in houses to occasionally get an infection which requires antibiotics. But it’s not super common. (These animals are neither, by the way, they’re farm animals.) However the chance of a disease being transferred from a herd animal to a human is like winning a terrible lottery. The chances are astronomical. The animals aren’t the ones who are dirty. We have to do something to drastically increase the chances of infections. Like the bustling meat markets of medieval Europe, or the warehouses and pens we cram thousands of animals into today. When evaluating their statements – remember that they’re trying to frame their response to animal illnesses in the best possible light.

The next thing I want to talk about are the claims which drew my attention to this company in the first place. The idea that a farm, which breeds animals and turns them to meat is somehow saving the environment – and their claims of carbon neutrality.

They say that they eliminate all the carbon emissions they can. What nonsense. However, they say for the carbon they can’t eliminate, they use carbon offsets, and that they are carbon neutral. Carbon offsets are the concept that if you release carbon into the atmosphere, that you can just pay some money – perhaps to an environmental organization to offset the carbon you just released. This reminds me of the ‘indulgences’ given out by The Catholic Church in The Middle Ages. Anyways – if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

What counts as a Carbon Offset, and the prices you pay for them can vary wildly. For example, there are airports that can let you offset your plane ride for two dollars. Claims about offsets are often misleading or shaky at best. Let me explain what I mean.

Something that would be important for a good offset is ADDITIONALITY. For example, planting trees that wouldn’t otherwise be planted, or replacing an oil rig with a wind-farm that wouldn’t have otherwise been built. You could also prevent trees from getting chopped down, that were going to be destroyed no matter what. However, companies often pay money to already existing nature preserves that have trees that weren’t going to get chopped down, and then can use that to make big claims. Companies have even donated money to things that aren’t real nature preserves, like outdoor hunting clubs for rich men. Sometimes – companies might fund something that isn’t bad, like a charity to save whales – but that doesn’t offset any carbon. It’s not what the company advertised or promised. There have been cases of governments in developing nations forcing people off their land to provide space for nature preserves used for carbon offsets – and then the people involved aren’t allowed to talk about it. These programs continue until someone blows the whistle, and the outside countries funding it shut it down out of embarrassment.

Even without these problems, there is a deeper issue. There isn’t enough space on Earth to plant the number of trees needed to offset the carbon we put in the atmosphere. Planting trees is part of the solution. But just having companies try to claim they’re all carbon neutral is a cop out. It’s unpleasant to hear, but not destroying the planet will require sacrifice. This involves demonstrating better ways to do things as individuals, using public transport, protesting, passing regulations on corporations, using windmills instead of oil, not overbreeding animals for consumption, etc.

This company lists a bunch of examples of their carbon offsets. For example, they list a lot of wind farms they give money to.

Giving money to an already existing wind farm doesn’t offset your carbon. These non-polluting sources of electricity already exist. It doesn’t provide additionality. It’s not what they promised – which is to offset their carbon. If you built a new wind farm, this would provide additionality.

That aside, I want to hone in on a specific project for a second.

If you are a farming organization in Canada trying to offset your carbon emissions, and you pay a dairy farm in California to try to get rid of its own emissions, you aren’t offsetting your emissions. You’re offsetting theirs. Animal Farms are horrible for the environment. Both of these farms are polluting immensely, and paying someone else for a project that already exists once again doesn’t add any additionality.

There is supposed to be an intermediary group between the company trying to offset its carbon, and the organization receiving payment, in order to verify the validity of a claim. These are called Carbon Registries. However, Carbon Registries are not actually very reliable. There aren’t any good checks in place to ensure they make good decisions. Even the talk show host John Oliver was able to make his own Carbon Registry. He has a video that goes into a lot more detail about the problems with Carbon Offsets than I can. Here is the link to that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0&ab_channel=LastWeekTonight

For Greenfield, the Carbon Registry they work with is a group called Green Circle. Let’s take a look at some of the companies Green Circle has worked with.

Oh wow, is that Coca Cola and Exxonmobil? Those are two companies that are totally known for being green and good for the environment. Did they manage to reach carbon zero too? That’s amazing.

Anyways moving on:

I have a few questions for the Greenfield company. Details about things that they left out of their advertising. I think that these questions are perfectly reasonable and fair if you are claiming your farms are humane.

For example, what does the slaughter process entail? See usually on farms, the average worker has to kill hundreds of animals every hour. The animals are hung upside down, and they’re required to be stunned before slaughter, but because there is a huge rush, they are often not knocked out properly. Then, the struggling animals have their throats cut, except for when the blades miss, in which case live animals like pigs, chickens, and turkeys are dunked in a scalding tank. So how is Greenfield’s slaughter process any different? Who knows. Maybe the company is a little less brutal because they’re in Canada. However, for those tempted to think conditions are better in their country because they live outside of The United States, conditions are far closer to America than you would like to think. Unless you’re a country like Sweden, you don’t even have that little bit of room for complacency.

Second question, do you use painkillers for operations and surgical procedures? Do you remove pieces of the animal’s tails, teeth, and ears? Do you participate in tail docking? During these body part removals, do you use painkillers? (These procedures are done to prevent bite marks from appearing on the animals bodies. But this heightened aggression is unnatural and comes from extremely stressful conditions. This isn’t done out of love for the animals, but because a carcass with bite marks sells for less money.)

Third, male animals are considered less efficient because they cannot get pregnant. Artificial Insemination is used on females. So how long are males kept alive compared to females? At what age are the males castrated to prevent meat taint? What is the mortality rate of newborn piglets before the fattening process?

Fourth, when castrating animals, which method do you use? Do you cut open the scrotum and tear the cord between the testicles, or do you tie a rubber band around the animal’s scrotum and wait a couple weeks for them to rot and fall off – and do you use painkillers during these surgeries?

The last thing I want to address today is this. Greenfield talks about how many Animal Welfare groups use The Five Freedoms for Animals. These are Freedom from Hunger and Thirst; Freedom from Discomfort; Freedom from Pain, Injury, or Disease; Freedom to Express Normal Behavior; and Freedom from Fear and Distress. However, Greenfield says, no – no, we go beyond that. We use the Five Domains. These are Nutrition, Environment, Health, Behavior, and Mental Domain.

This is a real problem I’ve got with Humane Washing. Proposals like these are too vague to address any specific legal, or systemic injustices that animals face. The so-called ‘sweeping reforms’ that I would propose would still technically be compromises; in other words, basic emergency measures to help relieve severe amounts of pain. But half-measures – like a few extra inches of cage space will not do. Not only will these effectively kill momentum for the Animal Movement, they will also go unenforced. People who are less involved will say ‘I guess we did something,’ and then go do something else. We need sweeping reforms. Anesthesia during any painful operation needs to be mandatory. Some of these operations shouldn’t be happening in the first place – like ear tagging, dehorning, cutting out pieces of flesh, or branding – all of which is done so farmers can mark their property. We need to outlaw veal crates and battery cages. We need to ban force feeding, and support legislation to protect downed animals. We need to outlaw intensive confinement for animals. None of the shit Greenfield has done counts by the way. Not using antibiotics on animals unnecessarily needs to be law – and animals shouldn’t be living in conditions that cause them to become so sick in the first place. To get more funding, and better enforcement for reforms, this needs to become a political issue. For this to happen we need to draw as much attention to it as possible.

Anyways, that’s all for now. If you enjoyed this article, consider checking out some other posts. Have a good day everyone.

Animal Experiments cause a lot of suffering and are inefficient. Drug testing is notoriously slow, and can take up to a decade and cost up to three billion dollars. Toxicologists know information about poisons don’t transfer well between species, even similar species like chimps and humans. Information doesn’t come up in a way which is helpful for people. Drugs that show no side effects in animals end up causing problems in humans. The most notorious example of a drug which caused unexpected harm was thalidomide. It was tested heavily in animals. Even after it was suspected to cause deformities in humans; tests done on dogs, cats, rats, monkeys, hamsters, and chickens all failed to cause deformities. Deformities didn’t show up until it was tested on a very specific strain of rabbit. In addition, potential cures for human diseases remain undiscovered because the effects don’t show up on other animals.

There are a lot more efficient ways to gain information. Nowadays we have a lot of new technologies that make this even easier. It’s likely companies will want to make the switch on their own just because it’s more cost efficient, but companies which cage, breed, and sell animal, or animal experimentation devices lobby heavily to keep Animal Experiments funded and legal. First I’m going to talk about the older methods of research which we can always rely on, then, I’ll talk about the new ones.

First we have human testing. Because of the horrible actions of people in the recent past, we have strict ethical standards we need to follow. We need to make sure the participant consents and fully understands what they’re doing. We also need to make sure that they were not forced or coerced to participate in any way. Experiments must not inflict physical or psychological harm. We can however test potential cures or drugs using test trials. Instead of intentionally infecting people, we can study people who already have a disease. Many people with HIV volunteer for studies so we can find a cure for AIDS.

Many tests are done for things that are nice to have, but not necessary, like cosmetics or makeup. We literally have thousands of these products already. We would simply have to release a few less each year – or, if we release a new product, we can simply use ingredients we already know are not poisonous.

We have other methods that are more sophisticated. One is microdosing. This is when we test an experimental drug by giving people a very tiny dose of it one time. Then we use imaging techniques to see how the body reacts to it. Instead of cutting open an animal’s skull, planting electrodes, or inflicting brain damage, we can use advanced brain imaging techniques like fMRI scans to look at people’s brains to the level of a single cell. We can use transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily cause brain disorders for a short period of time, which we can observe and then quickly reverse. Not only does nobody have to get hurt, but unlike using animals, the information is actually reliable.

Another method is in vitro testing. This is when we combine human cells with some other device. We have ‘organs on chips.’ These are cells added to a chip to mimic the function or structure of organs, or systems of organs. Organ chips have been installed in 150 labs, and 17/25 global companies used by the FDA to approve treatments and vaccines for COVID. Producers of these chips have collaborated with AstraZeneca, and Johnson and Johnson to identify toxins for specific species. Organ chips have helped with research for diseases such as COVID 19, influenza, malnutrition, radiation exposure, and cystic fibrosis.

We’ve created three dimensional models of longs which use human cells to test the effects of chemicals, e cigarettes, and pathogens. A German based manufacturer called VITROCELL uses machines to test the effects of things like cigarette smoke and pesticides on human lung cells. The lung cells in the machines are fed a liquid blood substitute. Researchers can use human blood cells to test drugs for contaminants which can cause dangerous fevers.

Diptheria is a disease which creates poison inside the body. Drugs for this disease use antibodies to block the poison. We get these antibodies by injecting horses with the diphtheria toxin, and then draining large amounts of their blood. These drugs also have the potential to cause serious allergic reactions, and we have difficulty acquiring large stockpiles. Thanks to the funding of some research, we have figured out an alternate way to gain these antibodies, fully derived from humans, which can allow us to end the aforementioned practice.

Another method of testing are human patient simulators. These are lifelike, computerized dolls which can breathe, bleed, talk, shake, and die. For advanced training, we can use a doll called a trauma man, which is a realistic replica of a human torso which can breathe and bleed. It has realistic layers of skin, tissue, ribs, and internal organs. This is a much better method than having to cut live pigs, goats, or dogs.

Finally, we have In-Silico Modeling. These methods involve the computer. One method involves models which simulate human biology and show how diseases progress. Studies have shown these accurately predict how new drugs will react in the human body. Another method is called Quantitative structure activity relationships, or QSARs for short. These use the computer to make advanced estimates of how likely it is that a substance is hazardous, by comparing its similarity to other substances we know about and using our knowledge of the human body. Companies and governments have started using these instead of testing on animals.

In conclusion, animal testing is wasteful and inefficient, and information translates poorly between different species. We have other more efficient methods, and new technologies, which make gathering information even easier. Hopefully this article has helped you to rethink the necessity of animal experiments. I have some other articles which go into even further detail about why animal experiments are so wasteful if you want to learn more.

Have a good day everyone.

In a fight to improve society, no one is a hundred percent good or bad. Groups are made of individuals who are all fighting for their own agendas or areas of self interest. But it’s still necessary to find out who’s responsible for a particular evil, or bad conditions, and target them to fix the problem. We collect, work together, and create to solve problems. But this isn’t enough. Groups of people always fight each other for power. When trying to achieve important goals, or large scale societal change, there will always be large, powerful interests which oppose you. No one is one hundred percent to blame. Everyone’s decisions are influenced in conjunction with everyone else’s.

In a complex, interrelated society, it becomes even more difficult to figure out who is to blame for a particular problem, and without action, groups attempting to achieve change die. The most dangerous thing is for a group to lose sight of what’s important, become troubled by infighting, and forget what its identity is. A problem that gets worse in the modern world is being unable to identify your enemy. Without action, groups die. There is a ‘constant, but somewhat legitimate passing of the buck.’ CEO’s will blame their board of directors, or Mayors will blame their committees, who in turn will point out the Mayor was put in charge of a thing.

Sometimes the problem is not knowing where to get started. If things get too bureaucratic and complicated you won’t know what to do. Anybody who’s tried to cancel an incorrect bill, get a license, schedule an appointment, transfer to a college, work with a third party app, etc, will actually understand what I mean. Sometimes, the issue isn’t one of being able to do anything, but getting started somewhere, anywhere.

So if you’re staging a protest, or advocating for a social change, it becomes necessary to isolate a target, freeze it, personalize it, and then polarize it. The target needs to be a personification. It can’t be something general, vague, or abstract. Targets like, ‘city hall,’ ‘the government’ or large corporations won’t do. These impersonal targets are loose collections of individuals fighting for their own interests, no one a hundred percent good or bad. The public can’t direct its anger towards such targets for very long. An organizer or activist needs to be flexible and nuanced in their own mind. They can take time to weigh the pros and cons of a decision; but they can’t stay in limbo forever. When it comes time to speak out, it can’t be done half heartedly. Full conviction is needed.

The target will try to squirm out of being the target, either with deliberate, malicious efforts, or just out of self preservation. They will ask, ‘why are you singling me out? The are others who are responsible too.’ You ignore these arguments for the time being. You won’t have the time, energy, or resources to dilute your attacks on so many targets. Others who are responsible will compulsively expose themselves, fearing they are next.

Here is an example which can sum it up better than I can. This quote is from a book. For context, this book was published in the late sixties.

“I remember specifically that when the Woodlawn Organization started the campaign against public school segregation, both the superintendent of schools and the chairman of the Board of Education vehemently denied any racist segregationist practices in the Chicago Public School System. They took the position that they did not even have any racial-identification data in their files, so they did not know which of their students were black and which were white. As for the fact that we had all-white schools and all-black schools, well, that’s just the way it was.

If we had been confronted with a politically sophisticated school superintendent he could have very well replied, ‘Look, when I came to Chicago the city school system was following, as it is now, a neighborhood school policy. Chicago’s neighborhoods are segregated. There are white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods and therefore you have white schools and black schools. Why attack me? Why not attack the segregated neighborhoods and change them?’ He would have had a valid point, of sorts; I still shiver when I think of this possibility; but the segregated neighborhoods would have passed the buck to someone else and so it would have gone into a dog-chasing-his-tail pattern—and it would have been a fifteen-year job to try to break down the segregated residential pattern of Chicago. We did not have the power to start that kind of a conflict…

Many liberals, during our attack on the then-school superintendent, were pointing out that after all he wasn’t a 100 percent devil, he was a regular churchgoer, he was a good family man, and he was generous in his contributions to charity. Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as “He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband”? This becomes political idiocy.”

Let’s talk about some bad modern applications of this strategy. Let’s say you are dealing with the issue of animal experimentation. This is an idea more people are open to discussing, and it needs to become political in nature. Now let’s say there’s a man who’s well known to be a national hero. He’s known for having worked sixteen hour days to combat a public health issue. Politicians make false, or bad faith charges and arguments against him to gain political power. This figure is the subject of all sorts of bizarre outrageous conspiracy theories. Some of them aren’t as bad by our standards today, but would have once been immediately dismissed out of common sense. So obviously some people hate him, but many people around the political spectrum consider them a hero.

Let’s say you start a campaign charging this man of approving horrible, cruel animal experiments. In general, Animal Experiments include torturing young baby animals, cutting open their skulls, planting electrodes, intentionally infecting them with harmful pathogens, testing chemicals and drugs. These experiments are excessive and bizzare. Now it doesn’t matter that most of the scientific community does this. You pick the best example of someone responsible for the practice and target them. The issue doesn’t suddenly become unimportant because there’s an issue that affects humans. Especially considering animal experiments are wasteful and inefficient.

But there are better targets. The majority of the public have no idea just how bad Animal Experiments are – even those who are against the practice. If you find a news network willing to pick up your story, the only ones which will do it will lack credibility. Because of the caliber of ‘journalist’ you’ll be working with here, the information will be so diluted, it won’t be recognizable. Certainly the public won’t be aware of what’s going on. The audience for this type of network wouldn’t approve of ending or placing limits on animal experiments, even if they’re willing to become outraged about an animal cruelty story when it suits them. Statements like, ‘this man tortures puppies’ will sound right at home with, ‘he drinks baby blood’ or ‘the WHO is coordinating a massive conspiracy with 200 other countries to trick people.’ Luckily, the message will be so diluted, it won’t even be traced back to you.

Said public figure should be petitioned to stop if they are heading any experiments. They should be exposed if possible, but to make them the target of an attack isn’t a good idea. Most people can only predict the outcome of a faulty tactic AFTER it’s been employed – but in this case, it’s a matter of being aware of our current political climate – or understanding the larger context of what’s been going on over the past few years.

There are plenty of other figures you can target, no less famous than the school superintendent from the quote I mentioned. Someone who doesn’t already have a massive reputation for being a national hero, renowned for their self sacrifice and 16 hour work days. Someone who doesn’t have politicians attacking them for their own political power, or have absurd conspiracy theories being very publicly thrown in their direction.

While these situations are hypothetical, I still think it’s important to talk about so anyone considering taking this approach thinks twice. I also think it’s very important to look back at our mistakes, even if it doesn’t look significant at first glance, because we all have tendencies to repeat certain patterns, and the only way to solve it is to be aware of them.

Anyways, it’s just a thought. Have a good day everybody.

The experiments done on animals are painful no matter what part of the world you go to. But scientists from around the world are particularly shocked when they see the conditions and lack of basic precautions in The United States. But the conditions around the world are nothing to be proud of either. People outside of America may be tempted to think things are not so bad in their own countries – but unless you are a country like Sweden, you don’t have grounds for complacency. Conditions are far closer to The United States than you think. In America there are very lackluster Animal Welfare Laws and they often go unenforced.

When people learn how horrible Animal Experiments are, there are calls to put an end to all Animal Experiments. Such calls have shown no signs of winning over the majority of voters in any country. These types of calls have been made by antivivisectionists since the eighteen hundreds and they have repeatedly failed to persuade the public. We haven’t made any progress until a couple of decades ago. But it was only because of small piecemeal changes, that the changes were able to happen at all. This was because of pressure from animal movements on companies that sold products such as cosmetics. Since then, something strange has happened. Limiting animal experiments has become a little more mainstream, acceptable to openly talk about. Not long ago, it was considered too far into the future to ever become law.

Why has it been so hard to convince the public? It is because many think that ending Animal Experiments would put a halt to all research on diseases that kill people and their children. This is even though Animal Experiments are actually inefficient and wasteful. The changes we’ve made haven’t completely eliminated the problem, but it has spared millions of animals from suffering and dying in labs. For the longest time, the all or nothing approach has just meant nothing for the animals involved. It is true that there are organizations that were once more progressive, but have given up on their values to gain favor here and there; and that they’ve done this so much that their strategies have become ineffectual. You should ignore the talking point of ‘just slow down, you’re moving too fast’ but – – if your only choice is to implement what you want one piece at a time, then you have no other alternative.

One of the most important tools to help animals are Ethics Committees. Especially in The United States, where some of the most basic precautions and Animal Welfare Laws are missing. Ethics Committees help create guidelines for groups of scientists by weighing the benefits gained by humans versus the pain inflicted on the animal. Many Animal Experiments are bizarre, inconclusive, and yield little to no useful results, only a fourth are published. Many operations are done on animals without painkillers. These Committees would require painkillers if an experiment inflicts the same amount of pain where anesthesia would normally be used in a medical or veterinary practice. Ethics Committees are commonplace and considered perfectly reasonable in other countries such as Australia and Sweden.

Nearly all Ethics Committee nowadays would weigh the benefits gained by humans disproportionately to the needs of the animals. By their very nature, they are associated with less radical parts of the movement. Those who want to give more consideration to the animals will find it hard to convince their fellow committee members to do so. Because of this, many people will have nothing to do with Ethics Committees.

Legislators often ignore protests against animal experiments because they are overly influenced by medical, science, and veterinary groups. They don’t have time to gain expertise in these fields so they listen to the opinions of experts. But these groups have a special interest in keeping the Animal Experiments funded and their advice here is unreliable because the question posed isn’t a scientific one, but a moral one. Even scientists who didn’t particularly care for these experiments were required to do them for their PHD’s, or else they had to drop out and find another field. They pass the practice down to their students. People in the field who voice objections are laughed at for being stupid. These groups lobby heavily to keep Animal Experiments. Groups that capture and breed animals, or create devices used to experiment on animals also lobby heavily.

Experimenters will claim that getting rid of Animal Experiments will end all research on diseases that kill people and their children. You can respond by asking if they would be willing to accept the verdict of an Ethics Committee, like the way people do in so many other countries. These contain animal welfare representatives, and weigh the costs to the animals compared to the benefits of the research being done. You point out such committees are considered perfectly acceptable and reasonable in other countries like Australia and Sweden. If they say no, you have proven their previous argument to be a deception. After all, why would they refuse the verdict of an ethics committee, whose members would surely be just as eager as everybody else to see major diseases cured? You will have revealed their actual motivation, which is the ability to do whatever they wish with the animals involved.. If they yes, then you ask for a signed statement requesting the creation of such a committee.

First, we need to implement Ethics Committees. We also need to improve the Animal Welfare Laws we already have, and get them to cover a wider range of animals. These laws need to be given higher priority and actually enforced. For this to happen, Animal Experimentation needs to become a political issue. This has already started to happen in some countries. It would need to be given wider coverage, and for this to happen, we need to draw as much attention as possible. People will need to discuss it more too. It is likely that groups will want to make the switch away from animal experiments anyways, just because other methods of research are much more efficient. This also includes new technologies that make Animal Experiments further obsolete. But then other groups will also lobby in favor of experimenting on animals. Groups need to put more pressure on companies to get them to consider alternatives. More scientists need to speak out against experimenting on animals. There has already been a notable number of scientists doing so. More students need to refuse to dissect animals when they’re asked to do so in the classroom. This is easier nowadays than it used to be. Students have rights they can utilize, and groups they can use for protection. Even though it is easier to do this nowadays – it is still very important. Sometimes, if all else fails, you will have to sacrifice some grade points to do what is right.

Hopefully this article gave you some ideas on how to achieve changes in a society dead set against ending animal experiments.

Have a good day everyone.

Many people have a hard time condemning animal experiments because they believe it’s a necessary evil. They worry that research will stop for diseases that kill people and their children. So let’s talk about that today.

If we’re talking about examples of experiments in the twentieth century- we may think of the experiments Henry Harlow did on baby monkeys. Behaviorist Psychology from back then thought that showing affection to young babies was harmful, and that love between children and their parents was really just a side effect of the feeding process. Henry Harlow sought to demonstrate the opposite, by taking baby monkeys away from their parents, and giving them fake parents. A wire metal ‘mother’ which gave them food, and a cloth mother which provided them with comfort. Though they still went to the wire mother for food, they preferred the cloth mother. John Bowlby was able to demonstrate the exact same information several years before – without harming anybody. He did research by taking notes on institutionalized orphans from the war. His findings showed unequivocally that merely feeding a child without showing them affection was harmful. Later Harlow did other experiments to induce psychopathology in monkeys. First by providing them with fake metal mothers. These lowered to freezing cold temperatures, shook violently, or had spikes. Then, he started using real mothers. He made these mothers antisocial by raising them in isolation. They couldn’t mate normally, so they were tied to rape racks. When they gave birth, they abused their children, even smashing their skulls on the ground and smearing the remains.

Other experiments during this time were done by the military, testing the effects of nerve gas on monkeys. These monkeys were taught how to pilot a fake plane, after months of conditioning and electric shocks. Other experiments were done on dogs to induce learned helplessness. This is when you shock an animal, and make it impossible to escape. You do this several times. Then you shock the animal again and make it possible to escape, but the animal does nothing.

We continue to do learned helplessness experiments today. We also drip corrosive materials into rabbits’ eyes. We take other animals and shock them, or force them to navigate mazes and press levers. Other animals are left in hot temperatures, to observe the effects of heat stroke, and to see how long it takes for them to die. We test the toxicity of items by forcing animals to eat items that are poisonous or inedible. We observe the effects, and see how long it takes to kill them. We drip makeup, nail polish, floor cleaner, etc, into their eyes. We force animals to inhale cigarette smoke. Psychology experiments are among the most painful. We cut open the skulls of monkeys and plant electrodes into their brains, then test the effects of fear, sleep deprivation, stress, and various drugs.

Only a fourth of animal experiments done are published. The studies themselves show how painful the experiments are, even with the sanitized language and technical jargon. Animal experiments are mostly a tradition passed down to generations of scientists. Even scientists who didn’t particularly care for doing them had to do it for their PHD’s. Those who object are thought of as soft, or people in the field will say that the needs of these animals don’t matter at all. Because there’s a vested interest, research labs, and industries that breed animals or create animal testing equipment lobby our government very hard to not get rid of these. Animals are separated from their parents, and scream while being captured in the wild. This isn’t said to criticize science itself or to say ‘we shouldn’t trust experts.’ Rather, every field is run by humans who may have irrational, or less than scientific motives. Animal experiments are often bizarre, with results that are inconclusive, obvious, or unable to be translated in a way to help humans. A lot of animal experiments are done to satisfy mere curiosity. Science done to merely satisfy curiosity is good – but you need to make sure that the experiments you do aren’t harming anybody. Other experiments are mandated by the government, but aren’t beneficial to humans anymore, and we only do them because no one has bothered to change the laws. We’ve known for a long time that lye, ammonia, and oven cleaners are corrosive, but we didn’t repeal the laws requiring scientists to drip these into the eyes of rabbits until 1983. We also repeat old experiments because existing information isn’t easily accessible. If old files could be computerized, they’d be easier to access.

Toxicology experts consider it common sense that information about poison doesn’t translate well between humans and other species. We are similar to other species in a lot of ways, but we still have different bodies and differences in our nervous systems. Even creatures that are the most like us, such as chimps have very important differences. Lots of Animal Experiments are done for products that are nice to have but not needed for survival – such as cosmetics and makeups. But there are already thousands of these products – we would just have to release less new ones or we would just have to use ingredients that we already know are not poisonous.

In other experiments, animals are forced to inhale cigarette smoke. Lung cancer needs a cure too, but is it right to force a less intelligent animal to inhale smoke until they develop cancer, when those of us who choose to smoke do so knowing the risks?

For other types of cancer, experiments on animals have yielded no useful results. Potential cures for humans end up not showing results when they’re tested in animals, or things that work on animals don’t work on humans. Robert Gallo, the first American to isolate the HIV/AIDS virus, said a potential vaccine by French researcher Daniel Zagury, was more effective in stimulating antibodies in humans than in other animals. There has been no shortage of volunteers for study. We would only have to make sure volunteers understand what they’re doing, and there is no pressure or coercion to participate.

A lot of researchers can get funding for their animal experiments by simply relabeling it as ‘medical research,’ even if the experiments have little to do with curing diseases.

Research for developing new drugs is notoriously slow. Animal Testing actually slows us down because it is inefficient compared to our other methods. Things that test really well in other animals end up showing no results in humans, and potential cures for human diseases remain undiscovered because they don’t show results in non-human animals. There was a new drug in England called Opren, which was touted as a wonder drug for treating arthritis. It passed all the typical animal tests, but had to be pulled off of shelves because there were 3500 adverse reactions, and sixty one deaths. The most notorious example of a drug which caused unexpected harm was thalidomide. It was tested heavily in animals. Even after it was suspected to cause deformities in humans; tests done on dogs, cats, rats, monkeys, hamsters, and chickens all failed to cause deformities. Deformities didn’t show up until it was tested on a very specific strain of rabbit.

Animal Experiments are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Not only are they needlessly cruel, but wasteful, and they don’t produce useful results. These include experiments where animals are forced to ingest drugs like cocaine.

When talking about whether an experiment is ethical, we should consider whether something is an emergency, or just a matter of convenience. Do we just get some benefits, or are we actually averting something bad? There may be a hypothetical emergency where we have no other options, and hundreds of thousands are going to die unless we start bending our codes of conduct. But you should really think carefully about what other lines you are ready to cross. Is it okay to inflict that much pain on someone because they are less intelligent, more defenseless, or because they don’t know what you’re about to do to them? Especially considering you are doing it to a creature with a very different nervous system from human beings – and whatever test you do is going to yield you very little results anyways. Animals suffer when separated from their parents, they scream in terror when captured in the wild. Others are forcibly bred to create new animals for labs. Breeding animals are heavily mistreated and sickly. Animals show terror in the laboratories when they’re about to be tested on. Then they actually suffer during the experiments. We accept that there are limits to the pursuit of knowledge. That’s why we put strict limits on what can be done to humans. As recently as the nineteenth century, our society did experiments on orphans, slaves, and prisoners. It continued to experiment on prisoners and minorities in the twentieth century. So think about that the next time somebody says – ‘well, sometimes we gotta do bad things to get things which are good.’ No – we have many ethical limitations in science and this needs to be one of them.

Nowadays, we have new technologies and methods that make animal testing further obsolete. I’m going to talk about these in a different article. We also can study human volunteers. They have to fully understand what they’re doing, and consent without pressure or coercion. For diseases, we can study humans who already have them. Remember that Henry Harlow was studying love between parents and their children by torturing baby monkey’s, while John Bowlby got the exact same information several years before by studying children who were orphaned from the war.

There are some fields of science that may have legitimately been slowed down in the past without using animals. Even nowadays there might be some fields of science which could be slowed. But people are innovative. Necessity is the mother of invention. Who knows what methods we might have discovered for gaining knowledge if we hadn’t had such backwards attitudes towards animals in the first place? Examples of such attitudes involve philosophers like Descartes, who identified as a mechanist, which is the belief that non-human animals are all just soulless machines, and when a dog squeals in pain, it is just like the squeaking of a machine. He was so convinced of this that when his wife disagreed with him, he nailed her dog to a piece of wood. This set a bad tone later for Animal Experiments, which used to be done openly on the streets. Anyways, that tangent aside, nowadays, we have a lot of new technologies that allow us to get information easier than we used to.

Companies may want to make the switch away from Animal Experiments on their own; just because other methods, including new technologies are more efficient, and cost effective. But we also have to consider that legislators often ignore protests against animal experiments because they are overly influenced by medical, science, and veterinary groups. Since they don’t have time to gain expertise in these fields themselves, they listen to the opinion of experts – but these groups have a vested interest in keeping these experiments funded, and their advice here is unreliable because the question being posed to them isn’t a scientific question, but a moral one. Such groups lobby heavily in favor of animal experiments. Companies that capture, or breed and sell animals, or companies that create devices to experiment on them also lobby heavily. So there are multiple forces working against each other.

Next time, I want to talk about ethics boards, how to actually achieve change in a society dead set against ending animal experiments, and how we have achieved the changes we currently have.

Anyways, that’s all for now, have a good day everyone.

People often say to me, “I understand why people become vegetarians, why do they become vegans?” A quick reminder, vegetarians are people who don’t eat meat, whereas vegans don’t eat meat OR animal products such as milk and eggs. This question is surprising to hear, as many people are okay with killing animals for meat, but excessively cruel practices such as Factory Farming draw people’s disgust. People who don’t oppose killing animals, but oppose making them suffer should take heed of what I’m about to say. 99 percent of Farm Animals are raised on Factory Farms. They sleep in feces, their eyes and lungs are burned by ammonia, they are constantly bored, thousands are crammed into tiny spaces too small to stretch their wings, or move. Often, Animals who can live twenty to twenty five years are killed at the age of one or two. They are cut and castrated without painkillers. Now people come up with scenarios where the animals are treated well, or ask about free range farms. Free range farms are better. But the laws for what qualifies as a free range form are badly written and poorly enforced. Particularly in The United States. If an animal is allowed to go outside at all, it qualifies as a free range farm, even if they spend the rest of the year in a tiny crate.

That being said, even in the most kind scenario, one problem remains, when an animal is held captive and part of their body is made into an industry, this inherently leads to the animal being exploited. This is why even traditional forms of farming caused intense suffering in the past. This remains true whether it’s done by corporations, or the government. They both have to keep up with the demand of a growing population. Trying to maximize egg or milk production, by overmilking, exposing hens to light, or depriving a chicken of food and water, and putting them in the dark, makes the animals become very sick. A cow’s udders will get infected. A chicken will die from physical stress and exhaustion. For companies, the problem is worse because if they pump out less animals, they are beaten by competitors who don’t. Dangerous practices are still dangerous, even if they are modified to be less harmful. If you give your abuser power over you, they have the power to abuse you even more in the future.

If we are okay with freely killing animals for food, or using them as a factory for milk and eggs it becomes psychologically impossible to consider their suffering. In the end we will cut corners to try to save money. A smaller cage, faster production, etc. Cows have to be forcibly impregnated in order to produce milk. Just like any other animal, when we quit milking them, their udders dry up. We don’t have to keep milking them forever. The idea that their udders will fill up and start to hurt if we don’t milk them is absurd and blatantly false. Our selective breeding hasn’t been able to alter their bodies that much.

Now if we tried to create a perfect scenario where we use these farm animals without harming them in any way, meat, milk and eggs would become a luxury item, only available to the super-rich. Such a situation would be undesirable to most people, and unsustainable. The question isn’t whether we can create a perfect scenario, but whether such a thing is possible in the world we live in today. Our population is higher than ever, and growing. Eight billion people. It took all of human history up to the eighteen hundreds to reach one billion. It took a century for that to multiply to its current number. The industry has to keep up. Perhaps in a survival situation, it’s more ethical to eat a bird’s eggs, rather than killing the bird for food. Or perhaps there are some people who own a small family farm with their own personal chickens to lay eggs for them. What would you have us do then, have a chicken or cow delivered to every family in the country so everyone can have their own personal animal? Breeding and selling these animals to people would become its own industry, deadly in its own way.

Reforming factory farms is difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort. We are in desperate need for emergency intervention for animals. But we need meaningful changes. Wasting energy on small token reforms like a little extra cage space, will accomplish nothing, and kill momentum. It will take steam and energy away from the movement because people will say, ‘I guess we did something,’ and those who are less invested will go do something else. Entropy will always exist – but we need to support legislation that protects downed animals, and abolishes battery cages, force feeding, veal crates, and intensive confinement for animals. Doing these things will bring the issue into public awareness. As individuals we can become vegan or vegetarian, or refuse to purchase wool and animal leather in the future, buying cotton, polyester, and plant leather instead. The government doesn’t act like something is an emergency until we do at an individual level.

Don’t try to do everything at once. You will fail. Even eating less meat, being pescatarian, or vegetarian is a huge step for considering animals. The full change is extremely important, but making some changes is better than being overwhelmed and deciding to do nothing at all. You can always do more at a later date. Changing your eating habits is very difficult for multiple reasons. People’s diets are deeply personal, people lead busy lives, and our brains are animal like and impulsive. Dairy is in a lot more products than you would think, when you look at a food’s ingredient labels. Other ingredients require people to kill animals other than meat. Things like retin, gelatin, food coloring, or enzymes which come from fish. When you start, it doesn’t matter. Start with something simple that you can easily remember. If you cut out meat, cook good meals like curry, soups, stews, beans and rice, stir fry etc. Get a cookbook if you can. Don’t be discouraged when the novelty wears off. Keep going. If you fail you can always try again. Even if you don’t want to become vegetarian, I beg you to consider what I’m saying. It can be a fun thought exercise, is it right to do these things to animals? You can be self aware, even if you’re unable to change.

Human beings are currently sleeping in their own shit. Our laundry detergents and plastics contaminate our water. Our car exhaust and lead gasoline go into our air and rivers. Lead is a poisonous metal which causes brain damage. We’ve known all this forever but feel like we can do nothing. We’re also sleeping in the shit of the billions of animals we breed. Breeding so many animals to keep up with demand uses up land, food, and water which we can use to feed humans. We have the power to exploit animals forever, they can’t assemble, protest, or fight us. We can keep doing this until we make our planet completely unlivable, and then we will move on and do this to a new planet.

Some people have the luxury to look at the problem from a distance, and consider the long term consequences. Others are affected directly, now, whether they know it or not. For example, people who live near Factory Farms, and have untreated hog waste dumped into their water.

People work at these places to provide for themselves and their families. Workers have to kill an average of two hundred fifty cows an hour, breathe in ammonia gas, and see all sorts of terrible things. Factory Farms have the highest turnover rate in the country – even up to a hundred percent of the workforce each year. Many workers are new and inexperienced, which causes conditions to further deteriorate.

The runoff from factory farms pollutes our rivers and air. Feces are drained away. Excessive amounts of leather are tanned which causes air pollution. Exploiting animals is one of the biggest sources of disease. Think of the bustling meat markets in Europe during the middle ages where animals were butchered on the open market square, which lead to plague. The animals aren’t the ones who are dirty. The odds of catching a disease from a farm animal are astronomical unless we do all sorts of things to drastically increase the odds. Meat exposed to fecal matter has residues of e coli and salmonella. Overuse of antibiotics leave residues of these drugs in meat, waste, and fertilizers. These products also contain antibiotic resistant bacteria. All this combined with pesticides contaminate the ground and water. Because of its direct pollution, many people don’t want these farms in their backyard. So the industry builds their farms next to minority neighborhoods on purpose, knowing they will have a harder time fighting back. Factory Farming affects large segments of the population directly; and will eventually harm society as a whole.

Think of it this way. This is an opportunity to add some excitement to an otherwise drab, colorless life. To finally be able to do something about the issues which have been impossible to solve. You may feel trapped by stagnation and mediocrity, here’s a chance to fix this. For others, the fight is more direct, and we will need massive societal reform.

It’s just a thought. Have a good day everybody.

There are many things to discuss when talking about why animals should have rights. Additionally, when talking about killing animals for meat, people give a lot of responses about why it isn’t wrong, some of which the responses to could fill up entire articles by themselves. However, here I will go over the basic ideas and address the main things said in response.

First of all, people talk about the ways in which human beings are intelligent and animals are not. But intelligence is not an indicator for whether you should have rights. The important thing is whether you are a conscious being who can feel, perceive, suffer, feel pain, feel enjoyment, etc. All beings may not have the same types of rights, because they have different needs, but all beings ought to be given equal consideration.

It is said that killing animals for their meat is natural. Whether or not the systematic killing of hundreds of millions of animals each year is a natural act is debatable. Especially when it comes to methods we use nowadays, involving cramming many animals together in filthy disease ridden areas in spaces too small to move in – or the methods associated with factory farming. But besides this, it doesn’t matter if an act is natural. That doesn’t make an act right. Things occurring in nature are not a good justification for what is right or wrong. Plenty of horrible unacceptable things humans should never allow occurs in nature. Disease, famine, drought, flooding, etc, are all natural. Should we try to copy these things, or allow them to run rampant on this basis?

People bring up tradition, or people’s nutritional needs. Our ancestors hunted animals in order to survive. We no longer need to eat animals to stay alive. Humans are omnivores and can be healthy without eating meat. Protein, along with other nutrients can be found in abundance in plants. It is especially easy to get enough nutrients if you still eat animal products such as milk or eggs. If you don’t eat such things, the main nutrient you need to worry about is vitamin B12, which is infused into foods such as cereals, yeasts, etc – and can be taken in supplement form. This nutrient is extremely important, but luckily, the body only requires an extremely small amount. Any excess B12 – that is, above a few micrograms is quickly flushed out of the body. Suppose we did have to kill animals, or make them suffer, and that we needed to eat them. Even then, we still don’t need to kill as many as we do now, we would kill the minimum amount, do the minimum amount of harm, and try to reduce the horrendous amounts of suffering we inflict.

Some people make an appeal to tradition. We’ve done something for thousands of years, therefore it is right. But just because we’ve done something for a long time, that doesn’t mean said decision isn’t harmful or misguided. Societies ought to be able to change. Slavery has been practiced since the dawn of humankind, yet it is now illegal in the entire world. Men and women, have been treated unequally for thousands of years, with a few exceptions in the past, where some progress was made in certain ancient civilizations; yet we’ve taken steps and made societal changes to help mitigate this.

Some people fear that if we didn’t kill animals for meat, that said animals would overpopulate, or that some people would have a lack of food. In response, let me bring up several points. First, think of the implications of using killing as a form of population control. Especially on those who are less intelligent. Secondly, farm animals wouldn’t overpopulate just because we quit killing and eating them. The reason we have so many farm animals is because we overbreed them, often forcefully to keep up with consumer demand for meat. If anything, we risk the animals going extinct, this is a separate issue, which I won’t go into here. As for the issue of food shortage, producing more animals uses up land we could use to grow more food for humans. It also uses up more plants and water, which could be used to feed people as well. It is more efficient to eat the plants we grow, than to use creatures such as cows as factories to turn grain, or corn, or grass into steak. If we quit breeding animals to turn them into meat, we would actually have more food. Whether this food is made available to everyone is an issue of things such as how we distribute resources or how we as a society treat the poor.

There are those who believe that while it is wrong to treat animals so horribly the way we do now, that it would be okay to turn them into meat if we did so in a manner that was less painful or humane. However, the act of killing is in itself inhumane. You can do so in more or less painful ways, there are situations where taking life may be deemed necessary. But whether or not you kill in a less cruel manner, you are still doing harm. Conscious beings instinctively want to stay alive, so that they can continue to have more experiences. When you kill a living being, you cut this ability short.

Nowadays, the majority of animals made into food are raised on Factory Farms, thousands of animals are crammed together in spaces too small to move, the areas are filled with so much ammonia human workers have to wear special masks to breathe, the animals are diseased, forcefully bred, and their horrible lives are then cut short. Some animals are killed minutes after being born. Animals have body parts cut off and aren’t given anesthesia. They are also slaughtered in ways which are agonizing and produce terror in the animals. Often, due to the vast amounts of animals, the excessive speed, and the often improperly trained workers, the animals suffer even more because they’re slaughtered improperly. The point is that the animals are treated like cogs in a machine – thus the name “Factory Farms.” Animals who are slaughtered for food suffer extensively, in even more ways than I’ve already mentioned.

It’s not really possible to efficiently turn animals into food or get large quantities of their milk and eggs anymore without these types of methods. Producers have to use vast amounts of animals to keep up with consumer demand, and the growing population of eight billion people. A little over two hundred years ago, our population was only one billion. Before that, it was not in the billions, but the millions. In addition, even if the only thing which matters is our gross mistreatment of animals and not their slaughter to be made into meat, there is still so much work required to make sure that animals are treated right, because of how deeply ingrained the way we treat animals is in each layer of society, and how deeply ingrained our attitudes towards them are. Especially when what we do to animals is so normalized when they’re being made into food – something that many people consider ‘the natural circle of life.’ Unfortunately people will tolerate the types of treatment of animals which they wouldn’t allow in other areas when it comes to their stomachs, or what they plan to eat for breakfast. In addition, when countries add small regulations to factory farming, such as giving the animals a few feet of extra room, or putting fewer chickens in the same cage, such regulations often go ignored, and we can barely enforce them. We don’t put any effort into enforcing the very paltry amounts of animal welfare laws which we already have. So how could we hope to completely regulate all the activities that go on in Factory Farms, while continuing to industrialize an animal’s flesh and the products which come from their bodies?

Let me add that we still need meaningful and sweeping reforms for Factory Farming. Such disregard is given for the suffering of animals and the issue has become an emergency for them. We need to support legislation that protects downed animals, and abolishes battery cages, force feeding, veal crates, and intensive confinement for animals. These will bring attention to the issue, and draw it into public awareness. Small token reforms such as a few extra inches of cage space won’t do. These will not only accomplish nothing, but will effectively kill the movement, because people will say, ‘hey, I guess we did something,’ and those who are less involved will go do something else.

Basic animal welfare laws forbidding the most obvious forms of animal cruelty must be given higher priority to be effective. What I am saying in response however, put simply is that in the long run we need to solve the roots of the problem, not just the symptoms. Generally, people don’t know or think a whole lot about the various ways in which animals are mistreated. Keep in mind that politicians who do want to help enact changes for animals have to tread very carefully, as one wrong move can stir up unhelpful controversy, outrage, and incur the wrath of the public.

Some people make the argument that the animals are already dead, so it doesn’t matter if we eat them. But if we continue to use this logic forever, the killing and mistreatment of animals will continue as well. The truth is that continuing to buy or consume meat creates a demand for it. Changing society will take a lot of effort because it will require a lot of people to change their attitudes and behaviors. Even after this, there is a lot of work to be done. Luckily for us, the more people who adopt an idea, the faster the idea grows. More people are open to and aware of it. It is a snowball effect. A great way to contribute to this momentum is to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet.

There is a lot more which can be said to add to these topics, and about Animal Rights in general. However, I have covered everything I can at the moment within a reasonable amount of space. I will discuss other topics in other articles.

Anyways, that’s all for now, have a good day everyone.