Fact Sheet: Rodeos

Rodeos are a pretty common 'entertainment' option in many areas around Australia.  There are a number of different events that happen at rodeos.  These include calf roping, horse and bull bucking, steer wrestling and more.  This 'entertainment' comes at a price.  In order for this 'entertainment' to occur, horses and cows have to be placed in stressful and uncomfortable situations.  Horses and bulls being ridden in the bucking events will have spurs, electric prods and flank straps used on them in order to make them buck.   Many try to escape the holding stalls by climbing out as they are so distressed.

Source

The flank strap is a piece of rope, often covered in the skin of a sheep, that is tied tightly around the flank of the animal in order to irritate him/her more and get him/her to buck more.  As the animal is already irritated by the presence of the rider, one can imagine that they must be rather uncomfortable, if not distressed.

Source

Spurs "have blunt, free running rowels - the star shaped wheel on a spur" (APRA).  They are used to get the animals to do what the rider wants; buck.  There are rules by the APRA dictating how thick they must be.

Source

Calves will be caught with rope lassos while they are running (bringing them to a sudden halt and risking injuring their necks).  They are then forced to the ground and have 3-4 of their legs tied up.

Source

Steer wrestling requires a person to ride a horse while chasing a steer, then jump off the horse, grabbing the steer's head and forcing it into the ground.  There is absolutely no reason for the animals to have to suffer like this, but because of humans who want to be 'entertained', they continue to go through this.

"There is considerable inherent welfare risk to animals participating in rodeos. These risks are exacerbated by poor or non-existent levels of regulation and enforcement at a state level, and the involvement of multiple rodeo organisations with varying welfare standards. Many rodeos take place in remote areas where there is little monitoring or enforcement of animal welfare codes of practice. Consequently the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) is concerned the welfare of the animals used is compromised by rodeos which can be conducted in a manner that is cruel and unnecessarily dangerous." - Australian Veterinary Association

Source

Please do not support the rodeo.  Let these animals live in peace, instead of being poked, prodded and pushed into the ground for human entertainment.  Animals should not have to suffer so that humans can be entertained.  There are many other forms of entertainment that can be had; seeing a movie, going out for a bike ride, etc.  Animals should not have to bear this pain for our pleasure.

Animals Australia has a great fact sheet put together that covers the issue in even more detail, as well as a petition. 

If I have missed anything, let me know in the comments or send me an email! :)

Fact Sheet: Writing to Animal Rights Prisoners

I have been thinking a lot lately about more action that I can take in the animal rights movement.  While I may or may not agree with the actions taken by these individuals, I do believe that it is their human right to have some support so that they don't get lonely, depressed or despondent.

'Writing' by J. Paxon Reye

I ended up finding the list of prisoners by the Animal Liberation Front, and another by Bite Back.  They both seem to be updated regularly and focus mainly on the UK and US.  There seem to be no lists for Australia (although that could change with the meat industries here pushing for the same laws as the US has).

I then found a few places where I could buy cards to send to them (funds are donated to charity and the pictures are of animals):

• PawsForCharity
  
• Cards by Teri
  
• AnimalsAsia

There are some great guides all over the net, with my favourites being by Striking At the Roots (very thorough) and How to do Animal Rights.
The main points to take from their articles are:

• your mail will be read before it gets to the prisoner
• don't talk about the case
• don't include any stickers or items that are not a letter, postcard or card
• don't be too bummed if you don't get a reply
• stick to one or two activists who you can talk to regularly
  

If you have any more information that I can add, please let me know so that I can keep this updated.

Safe Sex - The Vegan Way!

Here I try to list all  most sexual health products and where you can buy vegan ones from in Australia (as much as possible).  Remember that safe sex is the best sex for yourself and your partner/s.  Also remember to ask for consent!

If you want these products to be more easily available, why not contact Woolworths or contact Coles to see if they can stock these products, or if they already do.  Let me know in the comments if you want me to write you up an example letter.

Condoms by robertelyov

Penis Condoms

Condoms are useful in preventing pregnancies and stopping the transmission of STIs and STDs (even if you cannot get pregnant, not getting diseases and infections is pretty rad).  Unfortunately, most condoms on the market contain casein, which is a milk protein.  Where does milk come from?  Poor, suffering cows.

Luckily, there is Glyde!  So if you're the kind of person who wants to use condoms during sexual intercourse, while being animal-friendly, now you can!  You can buy them from The Cruelty Free Shop here or The Green Edge Online here or check out Glyde's website for a list of some of the places that they are stocked at.

BIG Drip by Images by John 'K'

Personal Lubricant

Lubricant is usually produced to help with intercourse, however it is nice to have some on hand in case things aren't going as expected.  Or for stretching your piercings.  Unfortunately, one of the main ingredients in many lubes is glycerin, which can either be from plants or animal fats.

Sylk personal lubricant is completely vegan friendly.  They say that they are available at big Coles and Woolworths stores but they are also available online here.  Glyde has provided again, with some lubricant available here through The Vegan Store. Astroglide is another brand that is vegan friendly and can be purchased online through their website. Yes Organic Lubricant is yet another vegan friendly lube available online here.

With lubricants, ensure that you can use them with condoms, we don't want people getting pregnant by mistake!

Yaz by Stacy Lynn Baum

Oral and Internal Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives are hard to find in vegan form, however the vegan police are hardly liable to come after you for this one; it is better than having an unwanted child.

All vegans must, at times, make compromises because we live in an imperfect world. We need to make the best choices we can based on the world we have inherited, not the society we envision and are trying to create. Making concessions for birth control is not necessarily indicative of hypocrisy. It simply means that you are being realistic, practical, and responsible. - Jo Stepaniak

If you do use non-vegan pills, I suggest you contact the manufacturer and ask them to consider using vegan alternatives.  If enough people ask, maybe we can change them.

There are other forms of contraceptives, including an injection that may be vegan friendly, however I have not been able to find a reliable source of information on that one - yet.  There are also hormonal and copper IUDs that are apparently vegan friendly, though I haven't had a chance to email and check.  I have also discovered the NuvaRing, which may be vegan friendly, but again I haven't as yet had a chance to email.  I will update when I do.  Or, if you have information, please share!

If you are only using these kinds of contraceptives, remember that you can still get STDs and STIs!

Vaginal Condoms

The Femidom is available from The Vegan Store here and is the only vaginal condom I could find that was vegan.

Dams

Dams are used as a barrier when giving oral sex to another person, helping to prevent the spread of STDs and STIs.  Sheer Glyde is a vegan dam that is available here, from The Vegan Store or here from The Sensual Vegan.

Bondage Bear by Ulleskelf

Accessories and Bondage

Vegan Erotica has a range of straps, collars, hitting toys, restraints and more.  If it's outside of your price range or not what you're looking for, there are a range of PVC and faux leather products available on eBay; I personally got a collar from eBay.

If I have missed something, used gendered language, or anything else, let me know and I will update this post!

Fact Sheet: Dairy Cheese

Dairy cheese is made by, basically, allowing milk to curdle and then curing it in a variety of different ways to add different flavours and textures.  This cheese contains a variety of different chemicals and hormones.  It is a concentration of all of the ones found in dairy as it takes about 10 pounds of milk (4.5kg) to make 1 pound of cheese (0.45kg).  One reason that many people find it hard to 'quit cheese' is because of the opiate effect of the casomorphins which are found in milk, but whose affects are exacerbated in cheese.

Cheese by jtuason

Most dairy cheese available commercially in Australia has rennet in it.  Rennet is taken from the stomachs of baby cows and used to help it curdle.  There are a few rennet-free dairy cheeses available, however as we know, the dairy industry supports the deaths of 700,000 calves a year.  These calves are allowed to be starved for 48 hours before being sent off to be killed.

Calf by photogrammer1

 
Dairy cheese is known for not being the most healthy food you could eat; many people only eat small amounts because of this.  It contains a high percentage of fats and cholesterol, both of which people do not need in excess. A person could be led to think that cheese has a lot of things that they can't get anywhere else, however all the vitamins (A, B12 and more) and minerals (calcium, zinc and phosphorous) can be found from other more ethical sources.

Vegetable stand by comprock

If you really do enjoy cheese, why not try some healthy, cruelty-free alternatives?  The Vegan Store has a big range, you can find Tofutti cream cheese and cheese slices at the supermarket or you can try to make your own.  There are more available than I have just listed, feel free to try them all and find a favourite that is better for you and the cows!

Cow by vietor

Please note that I have only discussed the treatment of cows in the dairy industry and the composition of cow cheese.  I have not yet had a chance to research cheese from goats or sheep.

Fact Sheet: Honey

Lots of people ask if honey is vegan, and some places even sell products with honey in them as vegan.

Bees are animals; they are insects and insects fall into the animal category in biological sciences.  By definition, vegans do not consume honey as it is an animal product.  The bees will collect nectar in their stomachs and there, it is turned into honey, which is then regurgitated when they get back to the hive.  Therefore, it is most definitely an animal product.

'bee on sunflower' by jlodder

However, not only is it an animal product, but there are some animal rights issues surrounding honey and its uses:

"The queen bee is usually killed every year and a new queen introduced to the colony.⁵  The queen may have her wings clipped to prevent her from flying; this is to stop the bees carrying out their natural instinct to swarm (the old queen and a large proportion of the bees leaving the nest once the colony has provided a new queen to replace her)."
Source: The Vegan Society

"Bees are often killed, or their wings and legs torn off, by haphazard handling."
Source: Saint Francis Couture

"Often, queen bees are artificially inseminated."
Source: Veganpeace.com

'Bee happy' by Glisglis

Not to mention that the bees are basically factory farmed and their honey stolen (the honey that they accumulate for the winter and hard times naturally) just so we can have something sweet in our drinks or bread.  The honey that is taken from the bees is usually replaced with sugar or syrup. 

"Some beekeeping schools and beginner’s books advocate feeding sugar syrup to bees in the fall to carry them through the winter."
Source: Hobbyfarms.com

One bee only makes 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire lifetime.  There is a good write up available here that is full of more research and in depth information if you would like to learn more.

Even if you don’t care about the animal rights issues involved in honey production, you should think about the environmental impact of what you eat (more info here too).

Alternatives to honey include: agave nectar, maple syrup, raw sugar, rice syrup and more.

Fact Sheet: Chicken Eggs

We all know what eggs are, right?  The perfect ingredient for omelettes, something that you have to fiddle with to crack open and put in cake mixes.  Something that healthy people have raw.  Something that comes from chickens that roam the countryside, with farmers picking up after them.

Egg Cartons by clairegren

Eggs are, in fact, unfertilised (most of the time in commercial production) material that the chicken expels from their vent.  It is a natural part of their life; similar to how female humans experience menstruation monthly.  However, chickens in the egg industry are forced to produce eggs at a higher rate so that the most money can be made.  If their egg production falls, they will endure a forced molt in order to boost production before they are killed off.  The egg-laying hens themselves are not the only victims of the egg industry.  Twelve million male chicks are killed each year as a by-product of the egg industry.

Discarded male chicks - Animals Australia

The egg industry made $340 million dollars in 2005-06 thanks to the exploitation of 13 million chickens forced to sit there each day giving you an egg.  Chickens are intelligent creatures capable of communicating with one another, learning tricks and problem solving.  In the egg industry, they are confined to cages with 550 square centimetres per bird.  If you have a ruler near you, it's equivalent to 22cm x 25cm worth of room.  Not only this but the birds are debeaked and can suffer multiple injuries due to not being able to walk around, stretch their wings or socialise normally.

Battery Hen Australia - Source

But surely it's different on free-range farms, right?  Wrong.  They still don't need the male chicks, they still need to breed the egg layers, they still need to kill off the egg layers once they've reached the end of their useful lifespan.  Not only this but they are, obviously, still motivated by profit, which requires using the least resources possible to get the same amount of eggs.  As such, 'free-range' does not really mean what most people are led to believe and there is no legally enforceable standard in Australia currently.  In 2011, the Australian Egg Corporation started taking steps to make a legally enforceable definition of free range which would allow 20,000 chickens per hectare, which Animals Australia campaigned against.  This is not even 10x more space than current regulations for 'normal' egg production (they would have 1m x 50cm in which to roam).

Photo of a rescue by UPROAR!

If left on their own, chickens will naturally eat their own eggs in order to take the nutrients back into their body.  It takes a lot of energy and the shell uses up a lot of calcium that would be better off put back into their bodies for the next round.  If you have a chicken, break the egg open for them to eat or consider grinding up the chicken shell to feed back to them for calcium.

Want to know more about going egg free?  Check out WhyVeg or VegWeb for recipes for tofu scramble, cookies, cakes and muffins.  

Want to rescue a chicken?  The Battery Hen Adoption Project seeks to find people to adopt hens that would otherwise be killed by the egg industry.

Fact Sheet: Dairy Milk

Dairy milk.  We are told that we must have it or our bones will break; that there is no other good source of calcium; that it is the only 'real' milk.  It is the default substance that is put in our coffees, cereals and biscuits.  There are, in fact, many sources of calcium that do not require cows to be milked and their calves killed.

'Got milk?' by Mark J P

Like every female animal, female cows only produce milk for their babies, not for any other reason or any other species.  In order for them to continue to lactate, they are 'forcibly inseminated' to make them pregnant.  Once they have their calf, it is removed from them within 12-24 hours and kept to either become veal or another dairy cow.  Cows normally bond with their calves for up to 8 months.  700, 000 calves are sent off to slaughter each year in Australia.  They are legally allowed to be starved for up to 48 hours before being killed, in Australia.

'Calves on slatted floor' by Compassion in World Farming

19-50 year old men and women only require 1,000mg each day.  Two glasses of fortified soy milk can provide you with 750mg and two glasses of dairy milk can provide you with 600mg.  Obviously this changes with brands (and also between soy, rice, almond and oat milk), so check labels.  Not only this, but animal protein can cause the blood to become acidic and leach calcium from the bones.  It's a good thing then that calcium is not only found in dairy milk.  In order to absorb the calcium, you need to ensure you get vitamin D.

Other sources of calcium include:

• green leafy vegetables
• tofu
• soya mince
• white/brown bread
• orange juice
• tahini
• baked beans
• broccoli

There are a lot of alternate sources of calcium.  If you are interested in using some dairy free alternatives, there are lots of chocolates, icecreams, yoghurts, milks, butters and cheeses that are dairy free.

Fact Sheet: B12

One of the things that you need to know how to get if you're vegan is B12.  There are not many known good non-animal sources of B12.  However, the B12 from animals is actually due to the bacteria that the animals consume when they eat grass or dirt.  That's right, B12 is made by bacteria.  Personally, I was displaying symptoms of B12 deficiency when I was an omnivore simply because I was not eating healthily, so B12 intake is not just an issue for veg*ns.

eating by davedehetre

B12 is important for cell division and blood formation (1).  It also is important to maintain the proper function of our nervous system (2).  Symptoms of B12 deficiency include heart palpitations, depression, fatigue, weak pulse, mentruation problems and memory problems (3).  If you haven't been taking a B12 supplement or keeping an eye on your intake, regardless of your diet, you should talk to your doctor about getting it checked.

Adults require 2.4mcg each day (4).  While we do store the B12 in our liver (2), you can become deficient over time if you are not replenishing the stock.  It also seems that the more you take, the less is absorbed in one go.  Therefore, a person should take5-10 micrograms per day or 2000 micrograms each week (1).  If you're taking an iron tablet, check out the label (for example this one has 50micrograms of B12 in it).  A lot of them have B12 in them.

nutritional yeast by daniellemakes

If you want to ensure that you are getting enough B12 each day, there are many multivitamins and supplements available.  The Vegan Store has this multivitamin which has 150 micrograms of B12 in it.  B12 is also found in fortified nondairy milks, fortified cereals and there is quite a lot of it in nutritional yeast (nicknamed 'nooch') (1).

Just a note: I am not a doctor, dietitian or anything like that, I am just providing this information for those of you who may not know or who have an interest.  If you want more info, check out my sources or use Google.

Sources
(1) http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/b12.htm
(2) http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/vitaminb12
(3) http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=nutrient&dbid=107
(4) http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002403.htm

Fact Sheet: Pigs

Pigs by rajthesnapper

"[Pigs] have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds." 

  - Professor Donald Broom of Cambridge University Veterinary School (2)

Cool Pig Facts:

• Pigs can live 9 - 15 years long (1)
• Pigs enjoy music (6)
• Pigs are as good at video games as primates (7)
• Their courtship ritual involves a song between the male and female (6)
• Mother pigs sing to their young to inform them that milk is flowing (2)
• Pigs are not dirty; they enjoy being clean (4)
• Pigs are the 4th most intelligent species of animal, after primates, dolphins and elephants (1)
• Pigs enjoy swimming over mud (2)

Swimming Pigs 2 by Nate Derrick

Pig Meat Industry

• Pigs are sent off at age 4-6 months to be killed for food (3)
• Female pigs are pinned down in stalls so that they cannot move around after giving birth (6)
• Pigs are not given the space to move around and root in soil, let alone swim (2)
• Up to 10% of breeding pigs are killed due to illness, lameness or not falling pregnant readily enough (2)
• A lot of pigs have their tails cut off (without anaesthetic) so that other pigs don't chew them off due to being so bored (5)
• Pigs are castrated without anaesthetic (5)

Pig biting a bar on its pen by Compassion in World Farming

Sources
(1) http://drbj.hubpages.com/hub/Pig-Facts
(2) http://www.savebabe.com/
(3) http://www.unleashed.org.au/animals/pigs.php
(4) http://www.thewonderpigs.com.au/facts.htm
(5) http://www.rspca.org.au/how-you-can-help/campaigns/pig-farming/
(6) http://www.worldanimalfoundation.net/f/Pigs.pdf
(7) http://chris-mclaughlin.suite101.com/the-intelligent-pig-a84448

Fact Sheet: Iodine

I found out the other day that iodine is important and that it's another one of those things that some vegans don't know about.  Although apparently most Australians, regardless of diet, don't know about it.  However it used to be available in milk and meat thanks to cows so they got away with it.  A decrease in the amount of iodine in soil has meant that it's also a problem for omnivores.  Apparently pregnant people need to make sure they have a lot of it.

"It's used by the thyroid gland to make thyroid hormone - one of the important hormones that drives our metabolism." - Lavelle, P 2005

Photo Credit: Medicine Net

A lack of iodine can cause people to be tired, have skin problems and lose their hair.  It also increases your chances of getting thyroid cancer.   

"A lack of dietary iodine can cause an enlarged thyroid gland (goitre) or other iodine deficiency disorders including mental retardation in children." - Better Health Channel

The Australian Government realised this problem and made it so that all bread makers had to use iodised salt instead of regular salt.  Which is fine and dandy, but what if you don't eat bread, or you eat organic or locally made bread?  Well, you can go buy yourself iodised salt and add it to your meals!  I did this but some other vegan sources of iodine include seafood and kelp.

Photo credit: Salt by Kristian Niemi

Nutrition Australia has a handy table that tells you how much iodine you need each day.  In order to make sure that you get this amount, Kathleen Alleaume recommends that "a small pinch per person of iodised salt each day is a simple way to ensure your family’s diet contains iodine".

If you want to find out more information on Iodine, just check out the links, especially the last one by Kathleen Alleaume as there is more than enough information.  I hope that this has been informative and useful!