My decision to launch this website is the result of my own personal journey learning about the many ways animals are exploited today for personal and commercial profit, how cruelly they are treated in this process, and how deeply embedded this exploitation has become in our present day human lifestyle. The exploitation and inhumane treatment of animals extends from factory farming to rodeos and circuses to canned animal hunts to animals used in laboratory testing to illegal poaching and much more. With my growing awareness of how animals are exploited and abused for our gain, I want to encourage all people to advocate for change and become a voice for the humane treatment of all animals.
But it’s more than animal cruelty, it’s about the many problems associated with our American food system–one based on factory and industrial farming and unsustainable agriculture. Problems of massive animal waste releasing greenhouse gasses and carbon pollution contaminating our air. The problem of animals that have become just another “commodity” and a unit of production, as opposed to the living, breathing, feeling sentient beings (like us) that they are. We don’t “see” them anymore, we just see their byproducts–our meat, cheese, eggs.
The problem of massive crowding for these animals, packed onto farms where they sit on their waste and are injected with antibiotics to make them grow faster and become big quickly. The problem of environmental damage from these enormous factory farms and industrial agriculture that now relies on huge amounts of pesticides and insecticides that are killing species and causing cancer in humans. The problem of hormones being implanted into dairy cows and beef cattle and chickens to make them grow inordinately large and produce more meat and milk–so producers get more return on their investment with fewer animals, but these hormones are causing several types of cancer in humans. The problem of our federal government and agricultural policy that promotes and supports industrial and factory farming, and subsidizes the grain, corn and soy that is used as feed, and doesn’t support small farmers. Our government money goes only to the huge corporations that are literally making us physically sick as a nation of people, with their packaged, processed foods full of sugar, their GMO foods that silently are now prominent in our food supply, and agriculture that’s full of chemicals. This, or much of it, has all happened in the last 30-40 years, where we are today with a food system that is a stunning contrast to where we were before corporate industrial agriculture and factory farming took over to monopolize our food.
So with this website, I will strive to create a world where animals matter more and we treat all animals with the respect and dignity they deserve, not exploit them and force them to suffer at our hands or for our quick consumption. Where our health matters more. Our culture has become so complicit in immoral and unsustainable behavior toward animals and making decisions entrenched in denial while conveniently “looking the other way”–because if we looked at how these animals suffer for our food, it’s too painful and almost unbearable—is there any hope for change? I believe there is, and that we will get there with each and every person making more conscious, mindful and new decisions that are reflective of knowing and understanding the consequences of our actions and the personal questioning of deeply held beliefs. I envision a truly animal-friendly world where we value animals and treat them with respect and the live beings they are, and we choose to create a cruelty-free, humane life for animals and a healthier environment for all of us to live in together.
The purpose of this website it to raise awareness of the many issues today where animals are exploited and deeply suffering for our food supply, entertainment or pleasure, and all the issues and problems surrounding this. This site is an effort to collect, organize, aggregate and generate information to help people become more aware of the issues, and to help people make different decisions as a result.
The secret to the success of a system that raises, confines, mutilates, abuses and kills billions of sentient animals every year around the world is simply, in a word, us. The power of our willful ignorance cannot be overstated.
The power is in your hands.
