Category Archives: Vegan cats

animal activism, animal rights, Vegan cats

DON’T BUY LARGE EGGS

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Photo by Michael Goldberg

By Leslie Goldberg

Obviously, I wish you wouldn’t buy any eggs at all. But the large eggs are the worst, explained chicken expert Jan Galeazzi of Animal Place, a farm sanctuary in Grass Valley, CA. And there’s even some eggs that come in “extra large” and “jumbo” sizes which, for the hen, can be, well, just imagine…

As she held one of the rescued chickens, tucked under her arm, Jan talked to a group of us gathered recently in the chicken yard connected to Animal Place’s chicken barn.

She explained that modern selective breeding has created a chicken that doesn’t much resemble the one that God/evolution created. The God-made chicken produces about 15 eggs a year. The man-made chicken produces up to about an egg a day.

An egg a day. Doesn’t matter whether the hen is on a factory farm, a “free range” or in a backyard.

The larger the egg, the harder it is for the chicken to pass them. Sometimes they just can’t lay the egg. It won’t come out. The egg can either break inside her oviduct, causing an often fatal infection or get pushed back into the stomach.

The chicken’s stomach can get filled with eggs in shells so that their abdomens become huge and it’s hard from them to walk. Eventually they often die from the condition.

Also, just the strain of producing so many eggs wears the chicken out after a couple of years. On factory farms they are “culled” at a year or two. In the backyard, commercially bred chickens can usually live about four or five years. The biggest killer of laying chickens (besides the chicken industry) is cancer of their reproductive systems.

I recently saw a “joke” on the internet: “Hey vegetarian, my food poops on your food.”

Well, Mr. Carnivore, actually your food also poops on your food. Eggs come from a chicken’s so-called “vent.” In a chicken there’s no additional hole for poop, explained Jan.

Speaking of poop, it also gets into the meat. A New York Times article cited a study finding that 48 percent of chicken found on grocery store shelves was contaminated with e coli, generally an indicator of the presence of fecal material.

That’s basically why you’re supposed to cook the shit out of chicken flesh and chicken secretions.

Sorry, eating eggs and eating chicken “meat” is just shitty on so many levels.

– A Vicious Vegan blog post –

animal rights, art, humor, Uncategorized, vegan, Vegan cats

A VEGAN FACES UP TO THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS

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It’s true: For some, having a cat makes life worth living. The hardcore cat freaks will even start needing more and more of the little critters. Three cats become seven cats which become 25 cats which become an intervention involving the Humane Society and the local sanitation department.

But even if you never make it to the 11 o’clock news level, cat companionship can be a problem for vegans. The sorry truth is cats eat meat. Sometimes it’s bird meat or mice meat, but often it’s fish, chicken, beef or lamb in the form of processed commercial cat food. Some cats even insist on raw eggs and cows’ milk.

When I write “insist,” I mean INSIST. I’m not sure you can talk a cat out of anything she sets her mind to. Most cats have their minds firmly set on animal foods.

(Yes, yes, yes, I know there have been cases of cats who have gone vegan, but they are not the norm. The norm wants meat NOW.)

There’s just no way the complaining feline majority is going to be persuaded by the vegan’s environmental argument, the vegan’s health argument or the vegan’s animal cruelty argument.

Animal cruelty? My cat would probably find a Mercy for Animals video amusing.

Of course, you could force your cat(s) into Meatless Monday, by leaving her (them) in the garage every Monday with water, vegan cat food and a blanket(s) while you spend the night in a motel. Problem is, she (they) would make up for Meatless Monday on Tuesday.

A vegan friend of mine has, albeit reluctantly, decided to refrain from getting another cat after her 18-year-old one dies. She believes the tragedy of the factory farming and slaughter of cows, pigs, chicken, sheep, goats and fish is worse than the tragedy of cats euthanized by the SPCA and the Humane Society.

The numbers support her contention. According to HSUS, 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized in this country every year, a pittance when you compare that to the 9 to 10 billion “food animals” slaughtered annually (not even counting the fish).

So here I am with Barky, the spectacularly beautiful black cat we got from the Humane Society years ago. She’s stretched out on my desk. As I pet her back and hear that tiny rumble of a purr, I’m soothed, forgetting for a while, the anguish of the billions of animals forced into unseen slaughterhouses and torturously small pens and cages all over the country.

— A Vicious Vegan blog post —