A Day at the Stockyard

All Farm Sanctuary interns are given the opportunity to visit a stockyard in a monthly field trip. I had read a lot about how animals in the agricultural business are treated but I hadn’t really seen it firsthand so the minute I heard about the trip I knew I would go. I also know myself enough to know that I could handle what I would see. The experience was pretty much what I expected; though I will say seeing animals treated as commodities in person was different than reading about it or watching it. The place we went to was small; it was a sort of a mom and pop’s stockyard. I can’t imagine how bad industrial ones are because this one was not pretty. There were animals in pens on display. So many babies—baby goats, lambs, and calves. There were adult animals too. When I put my hand out to the adult cows, they cringed and moved away. Testimony to what they have learned of people. In the next room were mainly calves—unwanted byproducts of the dairy industry. They were very tiny; some still had their umbilical cords hanging from their bellies. If you put out your hand they would suckle from it; they had probably never had a chance to do this with their own mothers. At this point I checked out the auction. A man was rapidly announcing weights and prices for the calves. Calves were being pushed on the sort of stage to be displayed. It was hard to hear the prices but I know one calf was sold for forty dollars. There was a rapid succession of calves: weight, price, sold. Many of these calves would most likely go on to be slaughtered for low-grade veal. Past the auction and the calves were some pigs. Their eyes were sunken in and their ears down—they looked sad, like they had given up and accepted their fate. I thought how these pigs would soon be slabs of meat—people’s dinner.

            What I have mainly taken from this experience is how I view dairy. Whereas I once looked at dairy products as appetizing I will now see the faces of all those calves and turn away. I knew meat was bad and I knew dairy was too, but the connection was less palpable. Now I feel it strongly.

Farm Life

         For the past month I have been living on a farm working as an intern. This is not, however, your average farm. The animals here will never be slaughtered for their meat and humans will use nothing they produce. Every animal here is considered an individual, not a production unit. I am talking about Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. To be an intern here you have to be a vegan; this wasn't a big deal for me as I had already gone back to veganism by the time I came here. One of my favorite aspects of interning here is getting to be around so many like-minded people.  Many of the staff and all of the interns care about animals in the same way I do. I feel a sense of relief that I do not have to be on guard for the animals’ welfare because I know everyone here is watching out for them. I also can eat any food that is offered and not have to ask or wonder if it is vegan. Living here it is easy to forget the whole world is not vegan!

         Working as a shelter intern, I must say the work is not fun. Interns are given the jobs nobody wants to do. I spend a majority of my time cleaning up after the animals here. This is especially unpleasant with the sick birds who are in cages. Everyday I work with these birds I have to scrape the poop off their kennel pads before I can put them in the laundry. There is also a rooster who has free reign of the kitchen and poops every five minutes (maybe a little bit of an exaggeration but not much). Yours truly gets to clean up after him all day long. Some days I am put on cleaning. This means working outside no matter the weather. I have spent days stripping barns—picking up all the old hay (and I mean all the hay) and then laying new hay. I don’t do this on my own though (I’d never finish) I work with other interns and cleaners who are on staff. Stripping barns isn’t bad; I mean it isn’t great but it isn’t bad. Some of the really bad days have been raking roads for hours on end, picking up stray sticks, and pulling weeds and dead plants leftover from the winter. The work may seem pointless but it’s not; it is done to make the farm look pristine for tour season, which starts next month.

         I have another month left here and while I won’t miss cleaning up shit, I will miss being here. As I write this I can here chickens outside my window. I love watching them peck at the earth. They are beautiful and their snipped beaks (debeaking is the technical term) remind me of the world they came from. Some days when I leave the house I can see pigs across the street; I like to walk over to them. I call to them and they walk over to me to say hi. They grunt happily and I can see they are covered in mud from rooting. Farm Sanctuary is the antithesis to factory farming. This place reminds me why I am vegan and I hope I will take what I have learned and seen with me into the unvegan world we live.

The chickens who live outside Vegan House, where I'm staying.

P.S. During the month we (the interns) took a trip to the stockyard. I hope to post on it soon. Stay tuned.

The Media's View of Vegetarianism

I was watching America's Next Great Restaurant and an Indian man pitched an idea for a possibly vegetarian restaurant. The investors basically said they couldn't invest in a restaurant that would only appeal to 15% of the population. He had to agree to serve meat to move forward. Presumably he could still have vegetarian dishes, just meat ones would have to be there as well. This, in a nutshell, is how vegetarianism is viewed in media. It is okay, as long as it is NOT the only option. I believe the issue goes deeper than that though. The media never seems to be able to say that eating meat is not okay. Let me explain with two examples. Recently Oprah had a show on veganism. Kathy Freston, author of Veganist, was one of the guests. She got to explaining how an animal suffering for her meal did not sit right with her. Oprah was quick to jump on her that the animals didn't suffer because her show got to tape one slaughterhouse in which the cows appeared to die painlessly. This was the only slaughterhouse out of many that consented and I am quite certain they cleaned up their act before any camera crew entered the premises. Michael Pollan also pointed out that there is nothing wrong with eating meat as long as the animals get to be on "happy" farms. My other example is the movie Food, Inc. It was a popular documentary which showed some of the cruelty involved in today's animal husbandry, particularly the horrible living conditions of chickens raised for meat. The segment about animals, however, concluded with a look into Polyface farms. A farm where animals get to live on the land until they are killed or murdered (if I want to be really pushy) for their meat. The implicit philosophy in both examples and I believe in American media in general, is that factory farming where animals suffer is bad, but for God's sake don't stop eating meat. There is nothing wrong with it! I wonder if television and movies which did espouse vegetarianism, no matter what, could never make it to the general public because of the huge pockets of the meat and dairy industries. I suspect so.

The Bubble That is College

I am sitting in my room on my day off from work today, bored. I didn't have this problem last year when I was in college. I had so much work I didn't have time to be bored. It was a good thing. I didn't have to worry about what to do with my life; all I had to do was focus on getting my assignments done. Now I am stuck in a vast unknown. I don't know what to do in the next five minutes or the next five years. There is no one telling me "Do This!" and I probably wouldn't listen if there was. College insulated me from the real world and if it did that to me it probably has done that to others. I found myself in my last year of college not knowing what my next move should be. I decided not to go blindly to graduate school with no real direction and so I ended up here. Living with my parents, working a job I could have gotten out of high school. College was originally meant to be, I suppose, training for a specific career. I treated college as a playground. A place where I could dabble in interesting subjects with no concrete plans of what to do with my education. I guess if I had thought more about my future maybe I could have prevented this year. I don't know but I like to believe things happen for a reason and maybe there is a reason I had to go through this.

Veganism: "It's SO Easy"...um, Not so Much

In the past year or so, I've been toying with the idea of veganism. I mean if you're a vegetarian for the animals (which I am) it just makes sense. Dairy cows and chickens suffer just as much, if not more, than animals raised solely for their flesh (just google it if you don't believe me). Besides the fact, in the end, they, too, are slaughtered for their meat. Anyway, so I knew it made sense for me to go vegan, but putting it into practice was another matter. Animal products are in EVERYTHING, so unless I wanted to make all my food from scratch, (yeah right!) it was gonna be hard. I ended up trying vegan foods but still remaining a lacto-ova vegetarian. I went on like this until August, when I finally got the push I needed to take the plunge into veganism. I visited Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York and it was absolutely amazing. I was there for a two day conference and I got fed all vegan food. I saw it was possible to eat vegan and knew it was time I gave it my all. When I went back I gave up dairy and eggs, just like that. And you know what, it was easier than I thought it would be. Maybe it was because I was so convinced veganism was the right choice (for me, for the animals, for the world). Flash forward to November and I come across this blog article. http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/ I shrugged it off at first, but then I actually read it and what she said seemed sincere. What if she was right and veganism was not only bad for my body, but not saving any animals? I was deeply disturbed. Being unsure of my beliefs led me to apathy. I started eating non-vegan foods here and there. They do taste good and I no longer had the firm background I had before to refuse them. I guess this gets me now to the title of my post. Being vegan isn't easy. I read on so many animal rights websites that it's so simple to be vegan but it's not. I don't say this to put down veganism (I'm actually for it), I just think we should be honest about what it is. To be vegan you really have to be committed; non-vegan food is everywhere. Also, I find it much harder to see the connection between animal suffering and a piece of cheese than between animal suffering and a piece of flesh. I'm not the only one who feels this way. I remember in Melanie Joy's book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, she found that vegans were disgusted when meat touched their food but not when dairy or eggs did. I live in a small town, so vegan options just aren't out there that much. Being vegan means saying no to food a lot, which can be tough. I think it's easier to be vegan if you live in a city where there are more options available but I still don't think it's a piece of cake.

Better, but still...

Right now I'm working at Chipotle. They serve what they claim is humanely raised meat. I found out from my general manager that one of their meat suppliers is Niman Ranch, so I googled the place and this is what I found.

I must admit the pigs do seem to be living pretty good lives. Still, the whole thing doesn't sit right with me. Yes, it's better than factory farming, but those pigs are going to ultimately be killed. Maybe humane farming is the best we can realistically hope for in terms of animal rights. People don't seem too eager to give up their meat. I just don't like the idea of an animal being slaughtered for my meal.

Welcome to Blogging

My name is Jessie and I have never had a blog before, so please be kind. I like writing and think I have a knack for it so thought I'd start a blog to get myself motivated to write. Okay, now I want to explain the name of my blog. I just graduated college, but am currently working a minimum wage job--there's the obvious connection. I also want to use this blog to explore going beyond the bare minimum and in my mind the bare minimum is following the status quo. One topic I am particularly interested in is animal rights. The status quo tells us to eat meat and dairy and never question it. The status quo also tells us to choose a career, to know what we're going to do with our lives. I'm still searching and refuse to just pick a career as if it was like choosing a name from a hat. So I plan to post on all of the above and whatever else interests me. I will post something new (and hopefully a bit longer) by next week.