Let’s Honor Animal Mothers too
We give special thanks and honor to our mothers on Mother’s Day during May. How about expanding this occasion to include animal mothers? I’m thinking of those animal mothers who are forcefully separated from their babies. I’ll speak of three examples but I’m sure there are more.
One is dog mothers. Some are imprisoned in “puppy mills,” in which they are kept in cages all the time and constantly bred so that the business owner can profit from their puppies. The puppies are quickly separated from their mothers, often when they are too young. The mothers suffer a constant cycle of birth and separation. Pet stores typically sell puppies from puppy mills. Please don’t buy puppies from stores but instead adopt an animal from an animal shelter.
Another is elephants who are used for entertainment. In the wild, female elephants stay with their mothers for life. The male elephants leave when they reach puberty. But elephant babies being trained for entertainment are separated from their mothers and subjected to cruel training methods. These include beatings and constraint with ropes while being forced into a spread eagle position on the ground. Some circuses which have used elephants for years are now saying they will eliminate elephants from the ring. Until they do, please consider boycotting circuses with elephants, tigers or any wild animals.
A third animal mother who suffers is the cow used for her milk. Typically, her baby is removed from her almost immediately after birth. I still remember a visit to a dairy farm in which I heard the mother and her calf crying for each other. Heartbreaking. What happens to these babies? If male, they will have a short, miserable life until being killed for veal. If female, they will be kept to eventually replace their mother in a life of unnatural drudgery. What is “unnatural” about their life? Well, nature intended baby calves to drink their mother’s milk and to bond with their mothers. It is not natural for humans to steal that milk. In fact, pediatrician Frank Oski (who used to practice in Syracuse, NY) urged parents to avoid giving their babies and children dairy milk. The “dairy” cow is engineered to produce an unnatural amount of milk so the farmer can make more profit. When she stops producing at this high level, she is killed for her flesh. If allowed to live as nature intended, she would have a longer life.
Please consider using milk from almonds, hemp, rice or soy instead of dairy milk. If you are a woman worried about osteoporosis if you don’t drink dairy milk, check out a study of 100,000 women and men over a period of 20 years, in which the women who drank more dairy milk had more fractures. Go to NutritionFacts.org and search for “Is Milk Good for Our Bones?”
You can explore vegan options for cheese and yogurt too. Vegan cookbooks can be purchased from Book Publishing Company, (888)260-8458 or info@bookpubco.com
You can find recipes online, such as at LiveVegan.org
You can subscribe to Meatout Mondays from Farm Animal Rights Movement and receive free a recipe each week plus news of vegan products and stories about vegan athletes and other inspiring people. Go to www.MeatoutMondays.org
You can come to People for Animal Rights vegan socials – which are meant for non-vegans as well as vegans. Sometimes we order off the menu at a restaurant; sometimes we have a potluck at someone’s home. Find out more by contacting me below.
People for Animal Rights, P.O. Box 15358, Syracuse, NY13215-0358, (315)488-PURR(7877) between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. or LDESTEFANO3@twcny.rr.com or at peopleforanimalrightsofcny.org. Translated into Spanish by Rob English.
