AR-News: Reasons for optimism

[Bruce Friedrich]

What we're up against can seem dispiriting; I pulled the info below together
for a journalist and thought I'd post it here to. Please reply to me
privately if you think I should add some other big stuff. 

Preface:
Ten years ago, all of the following would have been assumed to have been a
long way off, and yet here we are, looking at the following figures,
prosecutions, initiatives, and so on, and they’ve happened. Rather than
state, for each item, “this couldn’t have happened 5-10 years ago,” please
just assume that if I have it down here, I consider it to be a remarkable
thing indeed.

	*	A Gallup Poll on animal rights in May 2003 found that
Americans support passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farmed
animals, 62% to 35%, while 96% of Americans say that animals deserve some
protection from harm and exploitation, and 25% say that animals deserve “the
exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation.”

	*	Animal behaviorists are finally studying society’s most
neglected animals—rats, mice, and farmed animals (chickens, pigs, cows), and
they’re publishing their findings, so we now know that rats and mice dream,
play, and have a sense of fun, and we know that chickens, pigs, and cows are
every bit as interesting and intelligent as any dog or cat.

	*	Just last year, Florida banned gestation crates, marking the
first time a standard agricultural practice has been banned in the U.S., and
the state (a conservative one) banned them by a margin of 55-45 percent.

	*	Last year, five of six ballot initiatives passed. In the
past 13 years, 17 of 25 ballot initiatives for animals have passed. In
previous history, only one ballot initiative for animals had ever been
passed (and it was overturned).

	*	The very first felony cruelty prosecution for cruelty to
farmed animals took place a few years back in Belcross, N.C., when PETA went
undercover on a pig farm there. We secured more felony indictments in rural
Oklahoma as well after another investigation. These are not bastions of
progressive thought, yet they saw that pigs are more than meat.

	*	In 2000, McDonald’s eliminated some standard abuses of
laying hens, the first time any large company had said that birds have some
interests that matter. Burger King, Wendy’s, and the trade groups for fast
food restaurants (National Council of Chain Restaurants) and grocery stores
(Food Marketing Institute) are being brought along. 

	*	This year, The New York Times and The New Yorker both did
stories that discussed chicken intelligence, which had never happened
before. Once people start to see chickens as interesting and deserving of
respect, some basic protections are sure to follow, and fewer and fewer
people will eat them.

	*	A study this year funded by Safeway in the UK (not the same
as Safeway here) suggested that all the UK will be veg. by 2047, at present
rates of change.

	*	Last year, Burger King introduced a veggie burger in all of
its 8,000 U.S. outlets. McDonald’s is now test marketing one in more than
500 restaurants in California. Top companies see that the future is in
vegetarian foods: In 1999, Kellogg’s bought veggie food maker Worthington
Foods, and Kraft bought Boca Burger, the best veggie burger manufacturers.
Check out www.BocaBurger.com to see how much they’re promoting it!

	*	Last year, two drunk guys were convicted of felony cruelty
for abuse of a calf, and misdemeanor cruelty for psychological abuse to the
calf’s mother, who watched them drag her calf behind a truck. I have this
article if you’d like it.

	*	In the last few years, Germany put animal rights into their
constitution, the UK banned fur farming and an array of standard farming
practices as cruel. The EU is keeping countries out on the basis of animal
concerns. Just last night, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to ban
fox hunting (I had a letter in the Times of London and will have another
item in the Independent tomorrow). Can the U.S. be far behind?

	*	This year, Matthew Scully, senior speechwriter for George W.
Bush, published Dominion to rave reviews across the media spectrum. The book
does the best job I’ve ever seen of putting forth the perspective of a pig.
Among other amazing developments, Charles Colson and Pat Buchanan were both
deeply influenced and wrote and talked about the book. Buchanan did a cover
story in American Conservative about it and Colson recorded two of his
weekly commentaries on it!

	*	Animal Law is now taught at more than 20 law schools, where
10 years ago it was only taught at Rutgers and the Vermont Law School. There
are also two animal law casebooks. The first just came out in 2000, and is
already in its second printing.

	*	A Zogby poll on vegetarian issues and concern for animals
indicates that a majority of Americans in all ethnic groups sometimes,
often, or always eat vegetarian at home. I sent along an email about this.
It was commissioned by PETA.

	*	Teens are the future, of course, and they’re going veg. in
even grander droves! See www.PETA2.com, which is already more popular than
our vegetarian site, even.

	*	Two years ago, the U.S. Congress provided the first-ever
appropriation for the development of non-animal test methods by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA currently requires more
chemical toxicity testing on animals than any other federal agency. In these
painful tests, tens of thousands of animals (including birds, mice, fish,
frogs, rats, and turtles) are killed each year. Dogs are poisoned with
pesticides, and industrial solvents are smeared into rabbits’ eyes. Congress
provided $4 million for the EPA's FY 2002 budget “for the research,
development, and validation of non-animal, alternative chemical screening
and prioritization methods.”

	*	The Christian Vegetarian Association was founded a few years
ago, and Catholic Priest Fr. John Dear, S.J., has spoken out about
vegetarianism as a moral imperative for Christians. Even the Vatican has
spoken out about the degree to which modern factory farming systems are a
violation of Catholic teachings about kindness for animals. Last month, the
Rt. Rev. Andrew Linzey, a professor at Oxford and Anglican Priest recently
likened cruelty to animals (e.g., fox hunting) to rape and child abuse
(victimizing those who are weaker).

	*	Dennis Kucinich is, as far as we know, the first ever vegan
Presidential candidate, and he speaks about his veganism openly.

	*	Natural Foods Merchandiser (Jan 03) reports that retail
sales of vegetarian products have increased by 20 to 40 percent annually for
the last five years. In 1996, U.S. retail sales of veggie foods were $3.1
million; by 2001, sales had jumped to $1.25 billion. Mintel predicts sales
will hit $2.8 billion by 2006. Five to nine percent of American adults—9.7
million to 17.4 million—are “almost vegetarians” who eat some meat, poultry
or fish, and another 38.6 million to 48.2 million Americans—20 percent to 25
percent of the population—are “vegetarian inclined,” eating four or more
meatless meals a week.

	*	The American Dietetic Association now has a vegetarian
nutrition specialist, a vegetarian working group, and advocates a vegetarian
diet, noting” a considerable body of scientific data suggest[ing] positive
relationships between vegetarian diets and risk reduction for several
chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, including obesity, coronary
artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and some types of cancer.”

	*	Starbucks, 7-11, and just about every grocery store in the
country all now sell Silk brand soy milk, which is a boon to cows and their
calves! Even John Stossel (ABC News) did a piece promoting Silk as a tastier
alternative to cow’s milk (It was his “Give me a break” segment, mocking the
dairy industry for trying to stop soy milk from being called milk!).

	*	Just this year, the NIH issued instructions to
federally-funded laboratories about how to properly kill mice and rats (who
are not covered under the AWA) after PETA’s investigation into the Univ. of
N.C. revealed cruel killing methods and animals reviving in the “dead
animal” cooler.

	*	There are now 17 cities with bans on animal circuses; this
happened for the first time in 1990 and they’ve been picking up steam, with
9 bans in just the past two years.

	*	There are now six states with student choice laws
(guaranteeing a student’s right not to dissect animals), 3 more states with
statewide policies, and 5 more large school districts that guarantee a
student’s right not to dissect.

	*	Within just the last few years, more than 20 leading U.S.
colleges and universities have allowed their students to choose dissection
alternatives.

	*	Despite years and years of defensive rationalizations, it is
now true that two-thirds of all U.S. medical schools, including Harvard,
Stanford, Columbia, and Yale, have eliminated the use of animals to train
doctors.

Postlude, in the “won that battle” category:
In the early eighties nearly all cosmetic companies claimed to test their
products on animals out of necessity, but now there are over 550
cruelty-free companies that sell cosmetics that have not been tested on
animals. Major product testers such as Gillette, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Avon
and Mary Kay no longer test their products on animals.

And on the fur issue, fur sales are in the toilet, designers are giving the
stuff away, their own spokesmodels don’t even wear the stuff (Giselle), and
this year, we actually hosted a cruelty-free fashion show during fashion
week, another first!


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20031123/3f5642cd/attachment.html