Deep Roots: Animal Rights Blog » chickens

Thank you!

eChris — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:20:13 +0000

It is always so great to be able share good news. Our good news is that we were able to raise $4,000 in about a week to be able to build a new barn and rescue more chickens (and eventually other small farm animals). The construction of this barn will truly mark the next step in our evolution as an organization working to rescue at-risk animals and end animal exploitation.

We couldn’t have done it without help from dozens of people. It was truly awe-inspiring to see folks from Chicago, NYC, Portland, and as far away as Holland come together to help out a grassroots sanctuary in rural Indiana. We couldn’t have done it without all of the people who donated and helped spread the word. It really was a grassroots effort.

We heard today that the money is being transferred to our account, so we plan to get started really soon. We will keep you up-to-date on work days and progress through this blog, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and our newsletter. (Have you signed up for our free email newsletter?)

We are really excited about this next step. Are you?

As if that wasn’t enough good news, here is some more from the past couple of weeks:

Charges were dropped against the AETA 4! As animal liberationists, we are really excited about this. Now we can go back to chalking sidewalks without being charged with terrorism (we hope).
BP and the Coast Guard reached an agreement to stop burning sea turtles trapped in the oil spill. BP still needs to do much, much more, so don’t think this is letting them off the hook.
Zimbabwe stopped the sale of elephants and other wildlife to North Korea.
Obama administration argued against commercial whaling at IWC. This one truly is a victory of the masses. LOTS of people fought to make this happen. Keep taking action… it works.

I’m sure there is more good news. Feel free to share in the comments.

Donor will match donations over next two days

eChris — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:20:20 +0000

We just got some great news that a donor will match all donations to our Kickstarter campaign made in the next two days. That means that every donation you give will be doubled and we only need to raise about $1,700 to be able to go forward with construction and operation chicken rescue! However, we have less than three days to raise that amount, so please donate as much as you can and share this with everyone you know.

Kel asked some good questions about this campaign that might help shed some light.

Kel: can you help me understand why a chicken coop costs $6000?

Chris: Calling it a chicken coop is a bit deceiving. It is more of a barn that will be large enough to hold dozens of chickens and a few small farm animals. All of which will be rescues from abusive situations. The $6000 figure was the estimated amount to cover material costs, equipment rental, and food/care for the chickens for the first year. It didn’t make sense to us to raise money for an empty barn. We also factored in the credit card processing fees. Let me know if you have any other questions. You are right, we should have better explained where that number came from. I assure you, it was the result of a lot of research and personal experience.

Kel: What happens to the pledged funds if you don’t reach the goal?

Chris: The cards aren’t processed if we don’t raise all the funds. It is all or nothing.

If you want more information about what we are buiding and why, visit the Kickstarter project page (http://kck.st/crFbgq).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Deep Roots seeks to build chicken refuge

eChris — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:34:19 +0000

We are very excited to kick off the next step in our development: a barn. More specifically, this will be a small barn with a 2-3 acre yard to house dozens of new chickens. In order to make this happen, we need to raise $6000 by July 10th. To meet that goal, we’ve teamed up with Kickstarter and created a fun giving model. You can check it out here: http://kck.st/crFbgq

This project has been driven by Mabel, the sanctuary matriarch and currently the only bird living at Deep Roots (pictured below). When Mabel came to us, she was missing most of her feathers, a large chunk of flesh had been torn from her side, and she was dehydrated nearly to the point of death. During her recovery, she had been very solitary. That changed when Harold, a duck rescued from the dinner table, came to live with us. Mabel and Harold quickly became inseparable. Wherever you found one, the other was rarely more than a few feet away. They did everything together: forage for bugs, sleep, chase cats, and learn to trust humans. They were the best of friends and anyone who met them, immediately fell in love.

Sadly, Harold died last year, leaving Mabel to bide her days alone. She seemed saddened by Harold’s death. But one thing that she learned from Harold was that life is better with friends. Mabel can now be found hanging out with the cats and dogs at the sanctuary. She follows the cats and dogs around, begs for food when they beg for food, and jumps in laps when they jump in laps. Unfortunately, the cats and dogs are terrified of her. They don’t seem to understand this fearless, talkative descendant of dinosaurs.

That’s why we decided to take on some chicken friends for Mabel – survivors of the farming industry, like herself. Chickens have it pretty bad. Our hope is to build a place where people can come to meet chickens, interact with their incredible personalities, and realize that we shouldn’t be killing them in the name of food. You can help accomplish this goal by donating to our Kickstarter campaign (http://kck.st/crFbgq) and spreading the word to all your friends and family. The Kickstarter page has lots of easy ways to share the campaign through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and email. You can also post a widget to your website.

Another great way to help is to “attend” our Facebook event and invite all your friends. http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123261337700473 While you’re at it, be sure to “like” us on Facebook so we can easily share photos and updates with you.

By donating to the Kickstarter campaign, you not only help us to save lots of chickens, but you also get fun gifts in exchange. What you get depends on how much you give. We’ve got new buttons, limited silk-screened totebags, copies of the book Extraordinary Chickens, the chance to name one of the new chickens, and more. Be sure to check out our page on Kickstarter for more info about the gifts (as well as more info about our plans for the chickens). http://kck.st/crFbgq

Why not just eat local eggs?

eChris — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:17:48 +0000

In the past few years, I’ve noticed an increase in the frequency with which I hear the question, why not just eat local [tag]eggs[/tag]? While I’m happy to see a growing awareness about food miles and the importance of eating local, I’ve maintained my position that eating local eggs still isn’t enough if you care about the animals. I have two main reasons for this. Allow me to briefly explain:

1. Death is death.
There is a common misconception that the egg industry (small-scale or large) does not partake in killing. This logic makes sense if you look only at the [tag]chickens[/tag] that are currently producing the eggs. But, you must ask yourself, from where do those egg-laying chickens come? After producing fertilized eggs, the chicks are then separated by their sexual organs. Male chicks are either immediately killed, raised as food, or, at best but not likely, raised to fertilize the eggs. It is impossible to predetermine the sex of the chicks, so the death of the males is inevitable.

The killing of the chickens doesn’t end with the males, however. You also have to ask yourself what comes of the hens that are no longer able to lay eggs? Chances are they end up as dinner.

2. Exploitation is exploitation
This is the fundamental difference between [tag]animal rights[/tag] and [tag]animal welfare[/tag], if you ask me. Welfare is working to win improvements in the standards of care and the methods of killing, whereas animal rights argues that animals are not ours to exploit. They have their own basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When child labor laws were passed in the U.S., they did not state that children were to be given longer breaks and shorter work weeks, they won the abolition of child labor, arguing that it is unethical to exploit children for their labor. This is the same line of logic that I take when looking at animals. While I’m not going to fight with those winning better welfare standards, you also aren’t going to find me working towards better exploitation practices, but rather the abolition of exploitation.

Do I think eating local eggs from farmers that you know and can talk to is better? Without a doubt. For me, however, better isn’t enough. We can’t just do enough to feel better about ourselves. We have to work to do what is ultimately the right thing. But that is a whole other topic.

Carnival of Empty Cages #6

eChris — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:12:20 +0000

Welcome to the long awaited 6th Carnival of Empty Cages! It has been nearly a year since the last carnival was published, and a lot of great [tag]animal liberation[/tag] material has been written across the blogosphere. We’ve seen the birth of several new animal lib bloggers and the growth of many of our old favorites. I wish I could promise you that this carnival would successfully catch you up to everything that has gone on in the past year, but that is just not feasible. Instead, you will find a nice (yet relatively small) sampling of some of the great material that has been published.

With this edition of the Carnival of Empty Cages, we announce that the Deep Roots blog will now be the permanent host of the carnival and that the carnival will be published on a monthly basis! Please help spread the word about the animal lib blogosphere by submitting posts to future editions of the carnival and linking back to us. Enjoy!

Connecting Oppression

In his post Is Heterosexism Different?, Gary Francione talks about the links between [tag]speciesism[/tag] and [tag]heterosexism[/tag] by responding to the following question that he received:

I understand that speciesism is problematic because it is like racism and sexism because it attaches a negative value to species in the same way that racism attaches a negative value to race or sexism attaches a negative value to the status of being a woman. But you also often liken speciesism to heterosexism and I think that there is a difference here because unlike race or sex, which have no inherent moral value, sexual relations between members of the same sex may be considered as immoral because such conduct is not natural.

Sistah Vegan discusses a challenge to PETA’s Animal Liberation Project and the [tag]animal rights[/tag] movement as a whole in the post Unresolved Trauma from Experiencing Racism (and not experiencing it). The post talks about the balance of connecting issues of speciesism and racism while also dealing with the triggers and trauma from generations of racism (and being compared to animals).

Focusing on PETA’s attack of Michael Moore and fat people in general, Ryan at Veg Blog discusses Anti-Fat Sentiment in Animal Rights.

Sometimes its the comments section of a post that interest me most. Such is the case with the post Confessions of a (former) breeder at Invisible Voices. About halfway down the comments section, Pattrice Jones initiates a great dialogue about reproductive freedom and how it connects the liberation of humans and non-human animals.

Of Human and Non-Human Animals reminds us that meat isn’t just bad for animals, its also the most danger industry for human workers.

Few people realize that, in a country like the USA, meatpacking is the most dangerous occupation.

In the year 2000, about 25 percent of all employees of American meatpacking plants had non-fatal occupational injuries or job-related illnesses: that is as many as 4 times the national average for all private industry sectors.

I had planned to write a post for this carnival critiquing PETA’s recent State of the Union video, which features a woman stripping (eventually to the point of full frontal) while talking about PETA’s campaigns, but alas Gary Francione beat me to the punch. Nothing wrong with that, though, as Gary has done a wonderful job at highlighting what is so wrong with PETA’s pornography.

First, these campaigns commodify a traditionally disempowered group (women) as a supposed means to the end of helping another disempowered group (nonhumans). But what sense does it make to say that we should treat one group instrumentally in order to help another group? It does not make any sense whatsoever. Indeed, by encouraging the public to see women as objects, PETA merely ensures that people will continue to see nonhumans as objects. As long as we continue to treat women like meat, we will continue to treat nonhumans as meat.

Animals as Food

Bruce Friedrich over at the Huffington Post write about a growing trend among “conscious consumers”: [tag]humane meat[/tag]. Friedrich, however, boils the topic down to one question: would you (as a compassionate consumer) be be willing to cut an animal’s throat?

With 111 shark species on the World Conservation Union’s Red List, the issue of shark protection is starting to become popular these days. Anita Wolff at Britannica Blog published a post about the shark’s deadliest predator: humans.

Another post, or rather a series of posts, dealing with “compassionate consumers” is Animal Writings’ three-part series on Advocating to Free-Rangers. In part one of the series, entitled Understanding Why They Buy Free-Range/Cage-Free, Gary shares his observations about the ethical basis (even if weak) for why people choose free-range or cage-free eggs. Part two, Leveraging Their Consciences to Get Them Closer to Veganism, deals with using that ethical basis as a way to push their logic a little further towards a more compassionate living standard. And part three, Organizations’ Message, discusses the need for organizations (and individual vegans) to really focus on getting the most out of their messaging with regards to promoting veganism as an ethical living standard.

Gregory McNamee at Britannica Blog has a post about Horse Slaughter in America. Although miniscule in comparison to the slaughter of chickens, cows, and pigs, the number of horses slaughtered in the U.S. for food in 2006 was around 100,000. This post discusses why we are slaughtering horses for food and what we can do to stop it.

Animal Rights and the Environment

Pattrice Jones’ post entitled Drought and Despair takes the issue of drought and uses it to connect struggles of liberation and personal mental health.

Animal liberationists often talk about how the best thing you can do for the environment is to go vegan. Invisible Voices published a post (Environmentalism: Part of Animal Rights) along these lines, but highlighting how many of our environmentally destructive patterns are antithetical to animal liberation.

Gary at Animal Writings has a short and simple Two Simple Ways to Help Birds. After all, wild birds deserve the right to a home and food, too.

Veganism, Speciesism, Abolition and Animal Rights

It seems more and more discussion is being heard about why [tag]veganism[/tag] must be at the root of any movement for animal rights. The Garys have both weighed in on this topic. Gary at Animal Writings writes about why he is vegan to reduce animal suffering and Gary Francione writes that veganism is the fundamental principle of abolitionism.

For new vegans, Ryan at The Veg Blog has some good tips on label reading for beginners. He also compiled a list of 10 Ways To Be A Kick-Ass Vegan.

Jenna, over at VeganFreaks, has a very interesting and compelling argument against speciesism using the notion of semiotic communication as one way to point out the sentience of non-humyn animals. Along that same line of thought, Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary has a post about pig love and sentience.

Eric at An Animal-Friendly Life writes about the Language of Liberation

Well-chosen words hold the secret to liberating animals, those who cannot speak for themselves. How? Because emancipation begins in the mind. We can physically rescue as many individual nonhuman animals as we want, but the only way to truly achieve lasting liberation for all nonhuman beings is to first alter the mindset, or attitudes, of a meaningful percentage of those responsible for their exploitation.

Another post from superblogger Ryan discusses a key reason as to Why We Need to Rethink Welfare – we’re doing the industry’s marketing for them.

Animal Person has a post fisking a New York Times article on Nonhumans as Property. Mary points out that it is this status as property that needs the full attention of animal rights advocates.

Randomness

Invisible Voices has a really nice and important post sparked by Pattrice Jones’ book Aftershock.

I wouldn’t have ever described myself as someone dealing with trauma, and my activism tends to be low-key, low-risk. Yet we all deal with the repeated trauma of facing what goes on in this world, to humans and non-humans, as we work to enact change. It doesn’t have to be something as obvious as being beaten by the police or rescuing animals at our own peril to put us in the position of dealing with trauma. And burnout.

Will Potter writes about an odd case where Death Threats to Biologists “Not Necessarily a Crime”. It is, of course, another example of double standards.

Last but certainly not least, Britannica Blog has yet another post dealing with animal exploitation. This one, The Bull Market in Bear Parts, talks about the growing trade in bear parts as medicine and how this is leading to the “farming” of bears.

Well, that’s it for this edition. I know its all a little overwhelming, but there was a lot of catching up to do. Please be sure to submit your post (or any other great animal lib related posts you like) at http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_197.html. The next edition of the carnival will be posted at the beginning of November, so be sure to get your submissions in before the end of the month.