Is it Vegan? (UK website)

Every country should have a site like the Is It Vegan site in the UK. This site is an extremely useful database that lets you search for UK products to find out whether or not they are vegan. Although it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list of all products available in the UK, in the very least it is a list of all products that you can count on to be vegan, so you have some useful brand names to look out for, such as Yaoh shampoo, which is safe. It is useful to note that ASDA household cleaning products are not vegan, and anything marked 'McBride' probably isn't either.

On a similar note, the ProefDierVrij website in the Netherlands also has a search function for cosmetics so you can see what brands test on animals or don't test on animals. It's useful for visitors to the Netherlands and residents alike to know that the Etos products as well as the ingredients in their products from alternate suppliers have all NOT been tested on animals. However, there may be some animal-derived ingredients, such as milk products in lotion, so still check the bottles!

That time of year...

With Thanksgiving fast approaching in the United States, the time has rolled around to spread the word about the Sponsor-a-Turkey program over at Farm Sanctuary in New York State.


The money from your sponsorship goes to the care of the turkeys at Farm Sanctuary, as well as to helping them care for all of the other animals living out happy lives on the property there. I have never had the chance to visit, but I only hear good things about Farm Sanctuary and the message they are spreading. So, if you are so inclined, pop on over there and donate to a really good cause. Around this time of year, the number of turkeys that will be slaughtered is beyond ridiculous.

Another option, if you have the space and the inclination, is to actually adopt one of these beautiful birds! As it says on their adoption page, "Home adopters must be vegetarian and committed to providing lifelong care for their turkey friends." If I was in the States and had the room, I would so have a turkey on its way to me right now, safe from hungry Thanksgivers.

While other countries, such as the UK, don't celebrate Thanksgiving, they still have a very Turkey-heavy holiday season at Christmas time. I was thinking that animal rescue organisations could probably benefit from a similar program there, but there appear to be some people working on saving the turkeys in an entirely different way.

We do what we have to.

Adidas and Kangaroo Leather

I stumbled across this article recently while on Google, but before I clicked on the link all I could see was 'Stella McCartney, militant vegan, joins forces with Adidas...' and I was excited, because I know that Adidas carries some vegan gym and sports shoes, which are pretty hard to find. This could only be a good thing.

Imagine my surprise when I followed the link and saw the rest of the title: '...company that profits from bloody slaughter of kangaroos'.

I had absolutely no idea that Adidas used kangaroo leather, and no idea how kangaroos were 'harvested' for this leather. I'm shocked and pretty sickened.

This article is over a year old, so I checked the Adidas website to see if Stella McCartney was still partnered with Adidas, and sure enough she is. It appears that she is designing a line of clothing and shoes for Adidas, and I am 100% sure that she will use entirely synthetic fabrics within her line, but the questions that the Daily Mail article raised are still valid (as much as I hate to agree with the Daily Mail on anything).

As such a staunch supporter of animal rights, how can she align with a company that supports such a horrific slaughter?

Or, on the other hand, should we be happy that she is bringing at least a measure of compassion to such a company? You have to start somewhere right?

The original point of this post was going to point out that Adidas carries a line of vegan training shoes, and on their website these shoes are clearly marked as 'vegan', which I thought was cool. Delving further into the website, I found many shoes that were also marked as 'K-leather'. After reading the Daily Mail article, I just can't get the images out of my head of baby kangaroos stomped to death or left for dead in the Australian outback.

Anyway, here is a head's up from PETA about where to find cruelty-free shoes in the meantime. And on ths ShoeBuy site, they have their vegan shoes specifically categorized for easy searching. They also ship internationally.

California Proposition 2

Two days ago history was made in the United States, for better and for worse. America elected its first black president, but also took away the rights of homosexuals to marry in California (Prop 8). Another Proposition that was up on the chopping board in California that had people waiting the outcome with bated breath was Proposition 2.

Proposition 2 was specifically to do with veal crates, battery cages, and sow gestation crates. If passed, it would prohibit these crates/cages that did not allow the animal inside to turn around, lay down, stretch their legs, or stand up freely.

By now, most people are beginning to understand that the days of happy farms with wandering chickens in the yard, cows mooing out in the pasture, and happy pigs in mud puddles are a figment of the past. Factory farming is the name of the game now, and animals are mere commodities, not unlike boxes on a shelf in that they have no rights, no personal space, and no semblance of a natural life (from birth to subsequent death). This proposition was working to reverse that, was trying to take that first step in the opposite direction. That first step was that the animals being confined should at least be able to stand, sit, turn and lay down in their confinement.

This proposition had the animal rights world in a frenzy, but not exactly how you would imagine. Not only was there the expected pro/con debate going on, with supporters of the proposition citing animal rights and the health of the animals and our food (close confinement breeds disease among the animals, for example) and opponents (mostly those working in the animal husbandry industry or directly related) resisting the proposition mostly due to the increased cost of food production in the absence of these cages.

However, there was also a pretty divided split among the animal rights world as to whether anyone should even support such a proposition. In the animal rights world, there were people crying 'No' to Proposition 2, and it all boils down to animal welfarism versus animal abolitionism.

Animal Abolitionists say that those pigs, chickens and calves shouldn't even be eaten, and therefore whether they are comfortable before their death is neither here nor there, because they will be slaughtered, they will be eaten, and we shouldn't support the abusers by paving an animal's journey to the carnivore's plate.

Animal Welfarists, on the other hand, say that in today's world it is asking too much to close down all factory farms and animal farms in general, because the world is not yet ready to forego eating meat. So if it must be, then at the very least what we can do is make the animal's short life as comfortable as possible with laws dictating their humane treatment, and make their death as compassionate as can be.

Up until a few months ago I had no idea that there existed such a debate. Now I see both sides of the fence and wonder where I stand. I think it depends on how far you are going to reach into realism or idealism in your stance of animal rights.

Proposition 2 was passed two days ago with a 63% majority, so in the next couple of years there will be changes taking place in California.

While similar propositions have been enacted in various other states, they never included chicken battery cages in their amendments, focusing instead only on pigs or calves (or bot), so this is a landmark decision which will hopefully spurn similar decisions across the States.

I'll probably write more about abolitionism versus welfarism at another time, but right now I will say this.

The animal rights world at this very moment is shaky, at best. Our members are spread far and wide, with no centralised core, which makes for a weak foundation. Added to that is the fact that our topics are so incredibly diverse- rodeos, circuses, zoos, animals in food production, domestic animal abuse, hunting, the fur trade, the seal slaughter, fishing, whaling, vivisection, the list goes on and on and on. In short, we have so much to do and so little people to support us. The movement is still young.

Therefore, in regards to Proposition 2, we need both the abolitionists and the welfarists. We need people who are there fighting for an end to all animal food production, and the welfarists there looking out for the animals in the factory farms until everything is closed down. No battle was ever won by just idealists, nor was it won by realists alone.

Abolitionists and welfarists should stop bickering with eachother and just focus on what they are respectively fighting for, and together, little by little and maybe without intending to, they will help eachother get to their common goal.

Whale Wars, this Friday on Animal Planet

I was 7 years old when the realm of animal rights first opened up for me. I can't remember exactly how it fell into my hands, but I received a pamphlet about the 'Save the Whales' campaign. It listed about 20 humpback whales that you could 'adopt', with photos,and statistics such as size and weight.

At that age, I don't think I understood why the whales had to be saved, I just knew that I was the girl for the job. At seven years old, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, listed among the 'artist' and 'bartender' I would have also mentioned 'whale saver'. I hung the poster of the whales on my corkboard and thought that I really had adopted one of them (not sure if I ever sent away the adoption form). I thought that I was personally responsible for one of those whales, and that one day I would probably meet it and it would love me and let me pet it over the side of the boat. In it's own whale-like way, it would thank me for saving it and a lifelong bond would ensue.

So it was actually the whales that first introduced me to the animal rights world, and my compassion for needy animals grew from there. However, as far as actually getting involved in animal rights, I have been late coming to the game, I'll admit. For awhile I thought that my vegetarianism was enough, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't, and I'm now trying to make up for lost time.

Fastforward 20 years to last summer, when I went to the Running of the Nudes protest in Pamplona and met a ton of like-minded people that were active in the animal rights world, as well as plenty that were also active in the human rights world.

One of these people was Laurens.

Laurens was a Dutch police investigator working on organized environmental crime, but when I met him he was just quitting his job and was waiting to move to Australia to be with his girlfriend. He was a volunteer for Sea Shepherd, an organization that up to that point I had not heard of, but have run into many times since then at conferences, fairs, etc.

Sea Shepherd lives by the creed 'Less Talk, More Action'. The founder, Paul Watson, originally co-founded Greenpeace, but then split to start Sea Shepherd so that he could be a little more active in the fight against animal abuse on the high seas. You may remember the organization from the news last winter during the squirmishes with Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic which gained international media coverage. This organization is dead serious about saving the ocean's wildlife and will do everything in it's power to prevent oceanlife abuse, travelling to literally every end of this earth to meet abusers face to face. They are not afraid of confrontation, to put it mildly.

Had it not been for Laurens I'm not sure if I would have paid as much attention to Sea Shepherd and what it is they are doing. As it is, he made me aware of what they stand for and the campaigns they are working on, and for that I am grateful.

So the other week when he sent me this link, my heart swelled five times its normal size. I was so happy for him and everything that he is doing. It's crazy, but I feel really PROUD of them!

This series, Whale Wars, starts on Animal Planet this Friday 7 November at 9 pm eastern time. It looks so good! Please try and watch it! A big up to Animal Planet, as well, for taking on such a controversial topic! It's not all fluffy cuddly stuff, people!

Whale Wars Trailer on the Animal Planet Discovery Channel

Laurens is seen throughout this whole trailer. He's the guy who says 'That ship stands for everything I hate'. In fact, they made a promo ad with just him.

Sea Shepherd starts another mission next month, Operation Musashi, so here's wishing the crew a HUGE GOOD LUCK!

If anyone is interested in supporting Sea Shepherd or reading more about what they stand for (many campaigns involving ocean wildlife), here is the link to the organisation: http://www.seashepherd.org/

Also, a Save the Whales Again! campaign, spurned from the original Save the Whales campaign that got my little heart interested.

And don't forget to watch 'Whale Wars' this week!