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Many of us are quick to be disturbed when someone beats a cat for the fun of it and are also quick to recognise it as cruelty. Ironically we bypass the many ways in which animal cruelty is embedded in our own day-to-day lifestyle.
We use animals for food, clothes, entertainment, as experimental subjects and as commodities for a host of other reasons. These have been such prevalent and enduring practices that it seems natural and perfectly sensible to engage in them.
We think that animals are very different from us; that they are not sentient. But the truth is that animals do feel pain, discomfort and loneliness
The vital difference between them and us is that they cannot speak for themselves and thus have no choice as to what is done to them.
Around the world more and more people are becoming educated in issues concerning the plight of animals and how this affects themselves and the environment. They are realising that this is an enriching experience
Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word that means 'nonviolence in thought, word, and action'.
a fluid secreted by the mammary glands of females for the nourishment of their young.
Few people realize that in order to produce the milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt in meat-eating and vegetarian diets, cows are subjected to yearly pregnancies. The strong maternal bond between the cow and its new-born calf is borken after a few days; for more read The Diary Cow
"I know from over 60 years of biomedical research that using animals as models doesn't always work." - Dr. Albert B. Sabin - Developer of the oral polio vaccine
In 1990, a revolution occurred in the treatment of heart problems. That was the year that Dean Ornish, M.D., of the University of California at San Francisco showed that blockages in the arteries can actually begin to go away with a combination of a low-fat vegetarian diet, a half-hour walk each day, stress reduction, and avoiding tobacco.
Not a very glamourous thought, is it? But the fact is, when you slip into a fur, you're surrounding yourself with the corpses of dozens of animals. Animals who have been ruthlessly trapped. Drowned. Even electrocuted or gassed on fur farms.
Before you buy fur, please forget the myths about the "glamour" of furs and think about the animals who were killed to make this product. If these animals were trapped, they suffered excruciating pain in steel-jaw leghold traps for hours or even days. Such traps also catch dogs, cats, songbirds, and other animals who either are left crippled or chew off their own feet to escape, only to suffer and die later. If these animals were "ranched", they were kept in tiny, dirty cages for months and were killed by electrocution, poison, suffocation, or possibly were skinned alive.
It's not a pretty sight. But the way we see it - if you're going to wear fur, you should know what you're getting yourself into.
Although some children dream of running away to join the circus, it is likely that most animals forced to perform in circuses dream of escaping them. Colorful pageantry disguises the fact that animals used in circuses are mere captives forced to perform unnatural and often painful acts. Circuses would quickly lose their appeal if the details of the animals' treatment, confinement and training became widely known.
At least two US cities -- Takoma Park, Md., and Hollywood, Fla., -- have joined countries such as Finland, England, Sweden and Switzerland in taking steps to end circus savagery by restricting or banning the use of animals in entertainment. Also, the Pickle Family Circus based in San Francisco is an exciting and innovative circus that used no animal acts.