I was a proud Aussie until we began slaughtering our most recognisable icon, the beloved kangaroo.
It’s hard to think about these beautiful creatures being hunted down with guns, knives and clubs for monetary greed and personal gain, all under the guide of “pest eradication”. Have you ever known another country to proudly display a “pest” on its Coat of Arms? Or on the tail of its national airline? Me either.
So what happens to these majestic animals once they’ve been killed? It’s a long list. Here’s an excerpt from an article on the Australian Wildlife Protection Council:
Kangaroo paws are made into bottle openers, and stuffed heads into wall mounts. In the orient, you can buy “the Golden Ball Purse,” a small coin purse made from a kangaroo’s scrotum. In England, golfers can pay to sport a furry, fuzzy natural hide golf bag. In Germany and other parts of Europe, people have developed a taste for kangaroo meat. Italians make shoes from the leather. Americans wear these and other leather products made from kangaroo, often without knowing it. The hides are desired for the softness of the leather and there is the added advantage of no expensive feeding costs before slaughter. Never mind the extreme cruelty to many millions of wild animals or the mismanagement of wildlife for great financial gain. All of us, not just Australians, are part of the problem.
Six million kangaroos were killed in 1999 alone. Now, according to reports, our lovable Skippy is facing extinction.
Here are my Top 5 ways to help save the kangaroo:
1. Write to groups such as the Australian Wildlife Protection Agency and ask how you can help them get the word out.
2. Arm yourself with accurate information from websites (ActNowForAnimals, StopKangarooKilling.org, SaveTheKangaroo.com, AnimalLiberation.org) dedicated to the cause, to learn everything there is to know about this barbaric sport. Then blog about it to spread the word.
3. Boycott and write to restaurants, businesses and companies that sell or use kanagroo fur, skin, meat or any other body parts in their products. Some of these include:
• Adidas (sign a petition here);
• Kangaroo Export Import International;
• Country Hide and Skins;
• Macro Meats Gourmet Game;
• Packer Leather;
• Aussie Game Meats;
• Southern Game Meat;
• Aussie Best;
• Australian Bush Store;
• The Leather Shop.
4. Write to the Australian Government;
5. Support the the call for the European Union to ban all kangaroo products.
Who knew the Coat of Arms was a menu?
While living in the States, I had the opportunity to see Food Inc, a documentary about the (dire) state of the American food industry. Now this gem of a film is screening in New Zealand.
Producer-director Robert Kenner and investigative authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) lift the veil on the U.S. food industry – an industry that has often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihoods of American farmers, the safety of workers and the environment.
While animal-lovers undoubtedly will have a hard time sitting through some scenes of this tell-all documentary, the message is one everyone should watch to understand exactly where their food comes from, how it is grown and processed, as well as the risks associated with eating it.
Food, Inc. filmmakers take you behind the scenes (see trailer below) to witness practices they say are deliberately hidden from the American consumer. They also reveal how a handful of corporations control the nation’s food supply.
Now the question remains — how similar is the food industry Down Under? Thanks to comedian Mike King we know about the despicable treatment of pigs in New Zealand factory farms. But what else is being hidden from the eyes of the consumer?
It’s also worth noting that some of the food on our supermarket shelves is directly imported from the United States.
Hot tip of the day? Go organic, grow your own veges and get your ticket to see Food Inc!
It’s great that more and more companies are coming out with vegan product lines. But just because no animals were harmed in the making of these lipsticks, moisturisers and the like, does it mean they’re good for you? Not always.
Unless the ingredients are natural and organic, chances are you could be slapping man made chemicals on your bod. These chemicals are absorbed through the skin, into the bloodstream and contribute to toxicity that can lead to various dis-eases. Yikes. Whoever coined the phrase “beauty is pain” was right on more than one level.
The Environmental Working Group has a comprehensive list, called The Cosmetics Database, that’s well worth keeping handy. It features many of the products we’ve all come to know and love, complete with their toxicity/carcinogen level. You’ll never look at your mascara the same again.
Vegan Peace also has a comprehensive listing of ingredients and products that can help determine if your beauty products are indeed vegan friendly. Then it’s just a matter of determining which of those are human friendly.
A great natural beauty line worth Googling is Living Nature, which is made “of” New Zealand and is low on the scale of harm according to The Cosmetics Database.
Better yet, find beauty fixes right from your own kitchen. Here’s a handy how-to intro from The Green Dove.
Bursting the Beauty Bubble
One of my big lessons over the past few years is never believe what you read in the mainstream media. Why? Because more often than not there’s an underlying reason why these outlets promote certain stories over others — and that reason usually boils down to cold hard cash. Give love to a particular industry or product and watch those advertising dollars flood in. Just check out any mainstream magazine and count how many big brand products appear in the editorial pages. Then count the ads from said company.
And what about those big old media conglomerates that feed us mere mortal readers with “facts” and “expert” opinions across newspapers, television and the Internet? Why do they get to decide what’s news or not? And why is 99 percent of it downright negative?
Case in point: this morning I woke to read an article from one of my favourite real news sites Natural News about how Amercia’s Associated Press have waged a war against alternative medicine in a series of stories, stating that “10 years and $2.5 billion of research have found no cures from alternative medicine”. Say what? I really don’t know where to begin with you, AP.
Here’s an excerpt from the Natural News story:
The AP, it seems, has decided to ally itself with pharmaceutical medicine and spend its time and money hiring writers who promote drugs and discredit anything natural. A recent story by Marchione, for example, claims that statin drugs help prevent swine flu! It’s quite clear that AP is following a specific agenda to destroy the reputation of natural medicine while boosting public perception of pharmaceuticals. And yet, in reality, it is Big Pharma that has delivered no cures. But the sick-care industry has delivered America into financial bankruptcy and helped our nation become the most diseased population in the history of human civilization. AP feels no need to report on that inconvenient truth. Rather, it sees its job as encouraging yet more pharmaceutical use in America while destroying the credibility of far safer and more effective natural therapies that could help turn around America’s health. The Associated Press is sadly misinformed about natural medicine, and yet their stories are syndicated across thousands of newspapers and millions of web pages each day.
What’s sad about this situation is that millions of people take the voice of mainstream media as gospel, without a second thought. I used to be one of them. Then I woke up. So, in light of mainstream media’s latest antics, I’ve compiled a list of top 5 tips to help stay mentally healthy, no newspaper subscription required.
Top 5 Tips for Staying Mentally Healthy
1. Turn off the evening news and cut off the daily newspaper subscription. If you must get your daily dose of mainstream news, look at it from an entertainment point of view. You’re the only one who can decide what’s news and what’s not;
2. Question any information you’re given. Just because someone is labelled as an expert, guru or has the word professor in front of their name, doesn’t mean what they say is true or right for you;
3. Put aside 20 minutes or so each day for meditation or quiet time. Clearing out mental clutter is a sure fire way to add clarity and greater purpose to your life;
4. Transition from a diet of animal flesh and animal-based products to a plant-based wholefood diet. Meat, dairy and anything else animal-derived not only pumps pesticides, parasites and disease into your body, it also creates a breeding ground for negative, foggy thinking. Raw organic wholefoods are packed with life-giving enzymes and all the nutrients a body needs (that includes protein);
5. Mainstream media may tell you to load up on the sunscreen and hide from the sun, but this is a recipe for a health disaster. Many sunblocks are laden with cancer-causing chemicals that bake right into the bloodstream through the body’s largest organ, the skin. Getting at least half an hour of sunshine every day is vital to good health and healthy thinking. The sun has been revered by cultures worldwide as a life-giver and isn’t the cancer-causer mainstream media has dubbed it to be.
Heartbreaking. Informative. A reminder for vegans. A wake up call for meat eaters.
I just came across Veganvideo.org produced by alifeconnected.org. To-the-point, yet kind and easy-to-watch (no Meet Your Meat graphic scenes here), it drives home the fact there is still hope for humans, the animals and the planet — if we all adopt a vegan diet.
“Expand your circle of compassion and the love will come back to you a thousand times.” VeganVideo.org
“We’re trying to overcome the crunchy-granola reputation. Our image needs to be polished. People think that a vegan diet is a sacrifice, that it’s tasteless and unappealing. It’s not. They think you can’t get enough protein, calcium or iron. You can.” — Priscilla Feral, national president of Friends of Animals and author of The Best of Vegan Cooking. Priscilla was quoted in a story, Turn Over a New Leaf: Vegan Diets are Moving Solidly into Mainstream, on the Hartford Courant news site.
Dr Oz has dished up just the medicine for rotund Rocco, a cowboy whose diet of animals and junk food has put him on death’s door.
What is the medicine that is Rocco’s only hope? To follow a vegan diet.
A scan of the cowboy’s plaque-jammed heart, which resembles that of an 85 year old’s, shocked him so much that he’s giving up animal products to save his life.
“I can’t look back, I’ve gotta look forward,” Rocco told Dr Oz. “I’ll make the best out of a bad situation.”
While Dr Oz did well highlighting what many of us know (eating animals and animal-derived products is a death sentence), he misses the point by introducing meat back into Rocco’s diet during week four of the 28-day challenge he set for the cowboy.
The doc also recommends Rocco eat soy products, but should have mentioned soy needs to be fermented before consuming.
Despite these two not-so-wise recommendations, Dr Oz has put the attention squarely on the overwhelming benefits of a vegan diet — and that can only be a huge positive for people, animals and the planet.
Watch the show here…
