For all the animals I ate or wore for 19 years, the rabbit I imprisoned in a hutch and sometimes forgot to feed, the frogs and fish that died in a plastic bucket, and the horse’s who’s backs I sat on and kicked in the ribs. And then I learned the truth……sorry is never enough.
As a teenager I naively thought I could change the world, I knew the truth now and all I have to do is let everyone know what goes on, as they obviously can’t know about the brutality caused to beautiful creatures in order for them to eat them, maybe they have never realised the suffering of the dairy cow when her baby is torn from her shortly after birth so humans can steal her milk, or how chickens are kept, mutilated in cages or barns suffering day in day out of misery and neglect, and they obviously don’t realise that innocent animals are cut open and poisoned legally in laboratories in the name of a ‘science’ that is kiling people too ? When they know, when I tell them they will stop it, of course they will, no-one would contribute to these barbaric practices if they really knew. Thirty years ago I honestly thought it would be that simple.
I gradually became despondent as my revelations fell on deaf ears and I realised that the majority of people just didn’t care, or care enough to dp anything. So I made it my mission to be a voice for the animals, the defenceless, the voiceless and my voice was loud. I wrote letters, did school talks, petitions, marches, vegan tasting days, stalls, more stalls, demo’s, leafletting, direct action,. I sat on butcher shop floors until the police were called, I sang animal rights songs in fur departments until dragged out by security, I dressed as a rabbit, guinea pig, mouse and a vivisector. In my youth, and later I climbed roofs, glued locks, painted roads and put potatoes up hunts scums exhausts. I’ve been arrested and charged for minor incidents and more serious ALF actions I have been hit, followed, raided and offered bribes by the police, had a gun pointed at me by a crazed huntsman, rammed in my car by a landrover, charged at by mounted police, and had a bucket of elephants piss thrown at me by a clown. To date I have saved, at a guess over 500 animals from prison, pain neglect or death, I have watched lives ebb away far too often, each and every one was precious, this does not include the 3,000 odd animals that have not died in order for me to eat them. I have witnessed far too much violence towards good people from animal abusers and the state, I have also witnessed far too much animal abuse for it ever to leave me and for me ever to stop.
I will never, ever understand why people don’t care. When someone knows that they are contributing to so much pain and suffering then why, oh why do they continue, continue to ignore it like it’s not real? Is animal flesh that addictive these days that people simply just can’t give it up? Did you know that 93% of ALL animal abuse comes from the farm to your plate and that great suffering is always involved? Yes you know, I have been telling you for 30 years, you know, you don’t even have to like pigs, cows, chickens or sheep, turkeys, fish…. to realise that it is wrong on every level to cause unecessary harm to any being, it is the first basic rule of compassion. Do you know how bloody easy it is to simply buy cruelty free cosmetics and household cleaners, those that have not been used to poison and mutilate innocent beings that have no voice. Unlike the animals we all have a choice to live a far more cruelty free life and I will never understand why everybody but the evil minority do not make the compassionate choice.
The real friends of the animals are those that fight for them, they don’t eat them, wear them, drink their babies milk, shoot them, hunt them or make them perform, for it is only when you realise that by respecting each and every being as an individual, whatever species, gender, race, religion that it is wrong to pick and choose who you care for and to whom you cause pain, soley based on species.
I take the ridicule, the exclusion, the insults and violence and always wonder why it’s a crime to care when the real criminals choose to ignore what their conscience tells them. I say, go kill your own animal to eat, wring a chickens neck, slice a pigs throat open, inject poison into a rabbit and watch it writh in pain, or hold a stungun to a cows head then look into her saucer shaped eyes and blow her brains out, see how your whole being responds, then come back and tell me it’s the right thing to do, because unless you can do that you are nothing but a hypocrite living your selfish life pretending to be oblivious to the pain you are causing, and that makes me ashamed to be a part of the human race.
