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Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Fur Is Dying: Still Unfashionably Cruel, Fur Industry Faces Major Backlash

Canadian mink farm

Mink farm in Ontario, Canada. Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur/WeAnimals, 2014.

The thrill of glimpsing a wild animal in their habitat is as much in our true nature, as it is in the animal’s to desire freedom. We are a culture of Planet Earth documentaries, awed by the unbridaled beauty of the animal kingdom. Yet on fur farms, those same animals endure the indignity of captivity so severe it strips them of all the natural behaviors we find so enthralling. In this time of our heightened awareness of societal injustice, mindfulness can extend to what we eat and wear. As a moral species, we have long acknowledged that inflicting suffering on sentient beings for trivial means is wrong. Fur, and other materials that are the products of oppression, therefore have no place in the modern wardrobe.

 

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Friday, November 18, 2016

Imagine What a Vegan World Would Look Like

Santuario Igualdad Interespecie vegan

David and Piopito at Santuario Igualdad Interespecie in Chile. Photo by María Gabriela Penela.

For thousands of years, the human species has relied on the exploitation of our fellow inhabitants on Earth – the nonhuman animals. It has long been our society’s status quo, the norm. There are over 7.5 billion people on the planet. Nearly eight times that many farm animals are killed by humans annually. But what if the use of animals was no longer part of the equation?

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Friday, September 16, 2016

The Lives of Wild Horses Hang in the Balance

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Horses packed tightly in holding pens outside Tooele, Utah. Photo by Jennifer MaHarry

The majority of our nation’s wild horses are no longer free. They are warehoused in cramped holding facilities in order to make room for cattle farms on public lands.

On September 9, 2016 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board recommended the unthinkable: killing the 45,000 captive wild horses and burros so that 40,000 more could be rounded up in their place.

Under pressure from widespread outcry, the BLM backed away on Wednesday from the panel’s recommendation. The government agency has a track record of betraying the public’s trust, however. “The BLM’s intention is best exemplified by the agency’s illegal sale of 1,800 wild horses [in 2015] to a known kill buyer (all horses were slaughtered in Mexico) and its subsequent promotion and financial rewarding of the BLM employee who oversaw these illegal transactions,” the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign stated in response to BLM’s announcement. As long as profits and cattle farmers’ interests continue to be a priority, the future of wild horses remains uncertain. As long as Americans’ infatuation with meat persists, so will the cycle of killing horses in order to kill cows.

LAIKA’s Fifth Issue detailed the plight of wild horses in our exclusive report “No Home on the Range” by Mark Hawthorne. Following, is an excerpt from that report, along with a selection of images and recollections by photographer Jennifer MaHarry that accompanied it. They illuminate the suffering these magnificent animals endure during round-ups, in holding facilities and at livestock auctions.

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