Monday, August 15, 2011
ANIMALS USE FOR ENTERTAINMENT
Chimpanzees, bears, tigers, elephants, and other animals aren't actors, spectacles to imprison and gawk at, or circus clowns. Yet thousands of these animals are forced to perform silly, confusing tricks under the threat of physical punishment; are carted around the country in cramped and stuffy boxcars or semi-truck trailers; are kept chained or caged in barren, boring, and filthy enclosures; and are separated from their families and friends—all for the sake of human "entertainment." Many of these animals even pay with their lives.
Animals are used extensively in the entertainment industry, including in circuses; zoos and pseudo-sanctuaries; marine parks; the exotic "pet" trade; advertisements, television shows, and movies; cruel "sports" such as bullfighting, rodeo events, and horse racing; and more. Businesses that exploit animals exist to make money, so the animals' needs are usually put last.
Bears, elephants, tigers, and other animals used in circuses do not voluntarily ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire. To force them to perform these confusing and physically demanding tricks, trainers use bullhooks, whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, and other painful tools of the trade. When they're not performing, elephants are often kept shackled by two legs, and lions, tigers, bears, primates, and other animals are forced to eat, sleep, and relieve themselves in tiny cages.
Zoos, which sentence intelligent, social animals to lives in cages for our fleeting distraction and amusement, aren't much better. Extremely bored, depressed, and deprived of everything that is natural and important to them, many animals in zoos literally lose their minds—a condition called "zoochosis." Animals with zoochosis engage in neurotic behaviors such as pacing, spinning, and bobbing their heads. They also mutilate themselves, become overly aggressive, throw feces, and engage in other abnormal behaviors that are not seen in the wild.
Animals used in rodeos, horse racing, dog-sled racing, and other cruel "sports" are forced to run for their lives. When they aren't being used in competitions, they are usually kept chained or in cages or stalls. Those who don't "make the cut" are often casually discarded by being sent to slaughter or are destroyed.
ANIMALS USE FOR EXPERIMENTATION
Millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals are locked inside cold, barren cages in laboratories across the country. They languish in pain, ache with loneliness and long to roam free and use their minds.
Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear of the next terrifying and painful procedure that will be performed on them. The stress, sterility and boredom causes some animals to develop neurotic behaviors such incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back and forth and even pulling out their own hair and biting their own skin. They shake and cower in fear whenever someone walks past their cages and their blood pressure spikes drastically. After enduring lives of pain, loneliness and terror, almost all of them will be killed.
More than 100 million animals every year suffer and die in cruel chemical, drug, food and cosmetic tests, biology lessons, medical training exercises, and curiosity-driven medical experiments. Exact numbers aren't available because mice, rats, birds and cold-blooded animals—who make up more than 95 percent of animals used in experiments—are not covered by even the minimal protections of the Animal Welfare Act and therefore go uncounted. To test cosmetics, household cleaners, and other consumer products, hundreds of thousands of animals are poisoned, blinded, and killed every year by cruel corporations. Mice and rats are forced to inhale toxic fumes, dogs are force-fed pesticides, and rabbits have corrosive chemicals rubbed onto their skin and eyes. Many of these tests are not even required by law, and they often produce inaccurate or misleading results; even if a product harms animals, it can still be marketed to you. Cruel and deadly toxicity tests are also conducted as part of massive regulatory testing programs that are often funded by U.S. taxpayers' money. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Toxicology Program, and the Department of Agriculture are just a few of the government agencies that subject animals to painful and crude tests.
The federal government and many health charities waste precious dollars from taxpayers and generous donors on cruel and misleading animal experiments at universities and private laboratories instead of spending them on promising clinical, in vitro and epidemiological studies that are actually relevant to humans.
Millions of animals also suffer and die for classroom biology experiments and dissections, even though modern alternatives have repeatedly been shown to teach students better, save teachers time and save schools money.
Each of us can help save animals from suffering and death in experiments by demanding that our alma maters stop experimenting on animals, by buying cruelty-free products, by donating only to charities that don't experiment on animals, by requesting alternatives to animal dissection and by demanding the immediate implementation of humane, effective non-animal tests by government agencies and corporations.
ANIMALS USE FOR CLOTHING
Every year, millions of animals are killed for the clothing industry. Whether they come from Chinese fur farms, Indian slaughterhouses, or the Australian outback, an immeasurable amount of suffering goes into every fur-trimmed jacket, leather belt, and wool sweater
Animals on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy wire cages. Fur farmers use the cheapest and cruelest killing methods available, including suffocation, electrocution, gassing, and poisoning. More than half the fur in the U.S. comes from China, where millions of dogs and cats are bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death, and sometimes even skinned alive for their fur. Chinese fur is often deliberately mislabeled, so if you wear any fur, there's no way of knowing whose skin you're in.
Most leather comes from developing countries such as India and China, where animals routinely have their throats cut and their skin ripped off while they are still conscious. In India, a PETA investigation found that cows have their tails broken and chili peppers and tobacco rubbed into their eyes so that they will walk after they collapse while traveling long distances to slaughter.
Most of the world's wool comes from Australia, where sheep undergo "mulesing," a gruesome mutilation in which large chunks of skin and flesh are cut from lambs' backsides without any painkillers. Each year, millions of sheep discarded by the Australian wool industry are crammed onto export ships to be sent to the Middle East. Sheep who survive the terrifying voyage are often dragged off trucks by their ears and legs, tied up, and beaten and have their throats cut while they are still conscious.
The exotic skins trade is just as horrifying. Snakes and lizards are skinned alive because of the belief that live flaying makes leather more supple. Kid goats are boiled alive to make gloves, and the skins of unborn calves and lambs—some purposely aborted, others taken from slaughtered pregnant cows and ewes—are considered especially "luxurious."
You can help stop this. Saving animals is as simple as choosing stylish cruelty-free clothing, which is available in every price range and at all kinds of retail outlets, from discount shoe stores to high-end boutiques. With so many fashionable, comfortable options available today, there is no excuse for wearing any animal skins.
animals used for food
ANIMALS DO FEEL PAIN!
Farmed animals are every bit as intelligent and capable of feeling pain as the dogs and cats we cherish as our companions. They are inquisitive, interesting individuals who value their lives, solve problems, experience fear and pain, and are capable of using tools.
Yet the more than 16 billion animals who are killed for food every year in the U.S. have little legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on companion dogs or cats. They are neglected, mutilated, genetically manipulated, put on drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transported through all weather extremes, and killed in gruesome and violent ways.
Even so-called "free-range" animals are often mutilated without the benefit of painkillers; kept in filthy, disease-ridden sheds; forced to endure long trips to the slaughterhouse without food or water; and killed in the same ways as animals from factory farms. Going vegan is the best way to stop these atrocities.
LEAVE MEAT WAWY FROM YOUR PLATE IS GOOD FOR YOU`RE HEALTH
Giving meat the boot is also the best way to ensure a lifetime of good health. Vegan foods provide us with all the nutrients that we need, minus the saturated fat, cholesterol, and contaminants that are found in meat, eggs, and dairy products. Plant-based diets help protect us from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, strokes, and several types of cancer. Vegans also tend to have stronger immune systems and, on average, live 10 years longer than meat-eaters do.
WE CAN STOP THE WORLD HUNGER
Not only does raising animals for food gobble up precious resources and produce tons of waste, it also steals food from hungry people. Raising animals for food is extremely inefficient. For every pound of food that they eat, only a fraction of the calories are returned in the form of edible flesh. If we stopped intensively breeding farmed animals and grew crops to feed humans instead, we could easily feed every human on the planet with healthy and affordable vegetarian foods
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The idea of at least some awarding rights to animals has the support of legal scholars of Harvard Law School. Animal rights is routinely covered in universities in philosophy or applied ethics courses, and as of spring 2010 animal law was taught in 125 law schools in the United States and Canada.
Critics of the idea argue that animals are unable to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and for that reason cannot be regarded as possessors of rights. And therefore only humans have rights.
There has also been criticism,in particular the destruction of fur farms and animal laboratories by the Animal Liberation Front. A parallel argument is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals as resources so long there is no unnecessary suffering, a view known as the animal welfare position.
The 21st-century debates about how humans should treat animals can be traced to the ancient world.
The idea that the use of animals by humans—for food, clothing, entertainment, and as research subjects—is morally acceptable, springs mainly from two sources
Richard Ryder writes that the first known legislation against animal cruelty in the English-speaking world was passed in Ireland in 1635. It prohibited pulling wool off sheep, and the attaching of ploughs to horses' tails, referring to "the cruelty used to beasts," which Ryder writes is probably the earliest reference to this concept in the English language.
Animal suffering
Singer writes that commentators on all sides of the debate now accept that animals suffer and feel pain, although it was not always so.
According to Singer, scientific publications have made it clear over the last two decades that the majority of researchers do believe animals suffer and feel pain, though it continues to be argued that their suffering may be reduced by an inability to experience the same dread of anticipation as humans, or to remember the suffering as vividly
The problem of animal suffering, and animal consciousness in general, arises primarily because animals have no language, leading scientists to argue that it is impossible to know when an animal is suffering.
http://www.educar.org/comun/derechoshumanos/animales
http://www.animal-rights.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights
animal rights
All animals are born equal before life and have the same rights to existence.
Article 2
Every animal is entitled to respect.
Man, the animal species, can not claim the right to exterminate other animals or to exploit them in violation of this law. You have an obligation to put their knowledge to serve the animals.
All animals have the right to health, care and protection of man.
Article 3
No animal should be subjected to ill treatment or cruelty.
If required the death of an animal, it must be sudden and will not involve any distress to the victim.
No animal should be subjected to ill treatment or cruelty.
If required the death of an animal, it must be sudden and will not involve any distress to the victim.
Article 4
Any animal belonging to a wild species have the right to live freely in their natural environment, land, air, water, and reproduce.
Any deprivation of freedom, even for educational purposes which is contrary to this right.
Article 5
Any animal of a species living traditionally in the human environment, right to live and grow with and under the conditions of life and freedom that are typical of their species.
Any change to this rhythm and conditions that were imposed by man for commercial purposes is contrary to this right.
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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
BULLFIGHT OR BULLYING?
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| Brutal... |
SPAIN'S CONTROVERSIAL BULLFIGHTS GRANTED SPECIAL CULTURAL STATUS
By Travelmail ReporterLast updated at 10:14 AM on 1st August 2011