Animal Writings

Yes and totally on everything you said except I would hesitate to recommend nayonaisse to someone who was giving up eggs. I still can't stand the stuff. Veganaisse is where it's at! Nayonaisse doesn't even deserve to be in the same sentence as Veganaisse. But I just put them in the same sentence.
 

I'm not a big fan of the "it's mentrual waste" argument. It suggests that conceptions of filth are universal, and encourages the "unclean" menstruation taboo.
 

Lake desire, thank you for your comments. Your points are good ones and valid, and I appreciate the constructive criticism. I have toned down that paragraph and may amend it further.

My intention was not to characterize the menstruation process as unclean (although perhaps unwittingly as you suggest I have contributed to that perception), but to remind people of the source of their food. So often, when omnivores and lacto-ovo vegetarians see eggs in their sanitized cartons, with labels like "farm fresh," they have no idea that they are ingesting bodily secretions.

I try to focus predominantly on the animal cruelty issues. Specifically, we have perverted, distorted, and exploited female domesticated animals' natural bodily functions, such as menstruation, lactation, and giving birth. We have taken these abilities, which serve them and their species so well in nature, and used them as a basis to turn the animals into life-long slaves.

Through forced, invasive means such as hormones, intensive breeding, and frequent artificial insemination, we have degraded something natural and quite wonderful into hard labor. Near-constant lighting in factory farm hen sheds tricks the hens' pituitary gland into producing more eggs. As a result of our insatiable greed, hens now lay 250 eggs a year instead of 20-25. The industry calls this "productive;" I call it shameful and abusive. The greatly exaggerated number of eggs, as well as the larger size of the eggs, takes a huge toll on the hens' bodies. For example, prolapses (in which the egg sticks to the uerine wall) are more frequent and painful. Also, hens' bones become weak and calcium-depleted. We impose misery on these gentle creatures so we can have more omeletes and Perdue can increase their profits.

In factory farms (and many smaller farms, including so-called "humane" farms), we deny female farm animals - and their offspring - the joys of motherhood and natural feminine instincts and behaviors. We don't allow hens to carefully prepare a nest and monitor their eggs. We deny mother hens the opportunity to speak to their pre-hatched chicks and welcome them into the world. We deny newborn chicks the protective wing of their mothers. We steal baby calves and piglets and other animals from their mothers long before the end of their natural bonding periods, and we confine the animals to such an extent that they can barely engage in any play or learning skills or other natural social behaviors. In the majority of cases, such as with chickens and turkeys, we completely sever the mother-child bond.

Of course, as soon as the animals can no longer menstruate or lactate fast enough for us, we kill them, as if their lives have no value outside of their ability to produce income or culinary pleasure for humans.

As I write this, there is a commercial on TV that shows men going "yeah," as if they were some masculine he-men, as they pick up a sausage with a fork. The sausage may have been the flesh of a worn out sow, repeatedly impregnated, confined to a tiny gestation crate that made it impossible for her to interact with her young, and who consistently had her litters taken from her a fraction of the way through the normal weaning period, and who was killed when she was no longer economically useful. Could the disconnect be any larger?
 

You're welcome. I sometimes feel like I'm juggling as both an AR activist and an anti-racist ecofeminist and pin-point the ways human and animal oppression intersect. Chickens are my favorite animals so don't you worry about me contributing to anything that harms them. :)
 

No worries. :) I plan to have some posts about the connection between various forms of exploitation and oppression in the not-too-distant future.
 

This was an amazing entry and an even greater elaboration in the comments. I think if people truly understood how their food is acquired, I think they'd change their minds about what they eat. What's even more heartbreaking is when meat and dairy go to waste in stores or in people's homes in their fridge or on their plates. Or when kids through eggs on Halloween, and the like. What these poor animals had to endure just so that humans can be wasteful, it's just disgusting.
 

As ignorant as this may sound, I just heard about the egg being chicken menstruation on the radio this week. That piece of information was rather disturbing and gross. Although, menstruating is a natural and feminine form of cleaning, I DON'T WANT TO EAT IT! Since then, I have been grossed out and researching to make sure what I heard was true. I am guilty of eating eggs all the time. I eat them scrambled, boiled and even over easy with the yolk still runny. I am considering the vegan lifestyle now. I have given up red meat and pork products 3 years ago. But I never considered giving up dairy because it is such a big part of my life. Now that I know, and knowledge is power, I have no choice but to make some serious changes to my diet. Thanks for the information. Peace.
 

Anonymous: Thanks for your comments and best of luck in your peaceful transformation. You may want to check out www.noeggs.com for more information, including cooking tips and recipes.