Inclusiveness

Inclusiveness
by Finger Lakes Animal Rights
Ithaca Times Readers' Writes, January 13, 2021
Theme: Struggle & Gratitude

Imagine you are a newborn calf, a newborn goat, a newborn camel, a newborn yak. Your mother licks and nurtures you. You feel safe and comforted by her presence as you experience this strange new world for the first time. But soon after birth, you are taken away from your mother, because humans want to take her breast milk for themselves. Humans want to drink her breast milk, and use it to make cheese, or ice cream, or yogurt, or butter, or whipped cream, or sour cream, or coffee cream, etc. You will never see your mother again. She will never see you again. You were conceived via artificial human processes for the sole purpose of inducing your mother to continue to make milk. Milk that rightfully belongs to her and to you, not to humans. This is one of the parts of “dairy”. “Dairy” is unnecessary. It’s unjust. It’s animal abuse dressed up as normal.

Imagine you are a newly hatched chick. Outside the shelter of your egg, there are lots of strange noises and scents. You’re afraid. But you will never know the protection of your mother or her gentle touch, because you were born in an incubated tray set up by humans. If you were born to humans who want to use you for your eggs, and you are a boy chick, you will be killed as a tiny baby, because boy chicks do not make eggs. And even if you are a girl chick, if you stop making enough eggs to please or be profitable to humans, you will also be killed. If you were born to humans who want to use you for eating your body, your life will be short and taken away by humans. It’s unnecessary for humans to eat the eggs of female birds or the bodies of any bird. Doing so is unjust. Doing so is animal abuse dressed up as normal.

Imagine you are a newborn lamb. You have a beautiful, soft coat. Your mother tries to care for you. But you are all in an open field with no protection, and it’s cold, very cold. Your mother has recently been shorn and is weak from the cold and having given birth. She yearns to help you, but doesn’t have the strength. You are shivering. She can barely lift her head. You snuggle next to her to try and keep warm. Even though she struggles desperately to shield you, her child, from harm, her life ebbs away. Without her, so, too, does yours. This is one of the parts of the human businesses profiting from “wool”, “pelts”, “sheepskin”, “leather”, “leg of lamb”, “mutton”, etc. It’s not necessary. It’s unjust. It’s animal abuse dressed up as normal.

These are only a few examples of the multitude of injustices humans heap upon persons of other land and sea species. Humans using persons of other land and sea species for such as “food”, fashion, furnishings, entertainment, sport, labor, research, recreation, holiday rituals, religious rituals, convenience, pleasure, profit, etc. is the most monumental social injustice and form of discrimination currently on the planet. We all have the power to say no.

The golden rule does not exclude those of other land and sea species -- what we wouldn’t want done to ourselves or our loved ones, we should not do to others of any species.

For more educational sources of information, please visit: FingerLakesAnimalRights.org.

Much gratitude to those who include in their circle of justice all persons of other land and sea species.
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Ithaca Times Readers' Writes link to Finger Lakes Animal Rights' submission, "Inclusiveness": click here