Animal Awareness: Where does your dinner come from? with Brandy Villadolid of PETA, by Diane Cooper

Despite the sad facts that this article faces, we also learn of incredible strides that are being made in bringing the "cruelty-free" concept to fruition in our society.

In helping to speed the day when humane treatment of animals becomes a reality, eating less meat and buying only organically and humanely grown products are potentially powerful strategies we can adopt. Our source for this article, on the other hand, strongly advocates that we follow a Vegan diet, i.e., one that absolutely eliminates all animal foods, including milk, fish, and cheese.

We at the Spirit of Ma'at wish to acknowledge that for some people, Veganism is not feasible for nutritional reasons. For others, it's simply unrealistic. And the Vegan approach fails to support those suppliers who grow animals organically and treat them with love and kindness.

In the final analysis, in this as with every decision that comes before us, we recommend that you follow your own heart.

Brandy Villadolid is spokesperson for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an organization that is making a difference in the way animals are treated.

Diane: Tell me about the premise of this organization.

Brandy: Basically, our mission statement is that animals are not ours to eat, to wear, to experiment on, or to use for entertainment.

And so of course there are a variety of issues along those lines. Philosophically, our best scientists and thinkers all speak about the absolute necessity of compassion towards animals. If we are to be just and kind people, and above all to be honest people, we have to stop the slaughter of billions of animals. And it is literally billions. Twenty-six billion animals in this country alone are killed every year for nothing more than a palate preference.

In experimental situations, animals sit by the millions right now, in steel cages, locked in little sub-basements waiting to be burned, waiting to be infected, waiting to have electrodes implanted into their skulls. And we must, each and every one of us, take responsibility for this suffering.

For circuses, elephants, tigers, and bears are basically stolen out of the wild. They are ripped away from their families and they sit in cages right now, waiting to be shocked with hot prods, waiting to be beaten with bull hooks and burned with blow torches so that we can see them dance in conga lines.

I really invite people to take a look at the footage we have, to check out the "Meet your Meat" video we have on our website (PETA.org), and look at the undercover training footage we have on Circuses.com.

Our videos demonstrate that every animal heading for the slaughter line hears the screams of those before it and is absolutely shocked. They cannot believe what is happening to them. Their eyes are wide with fear, just as yours and mine would be.

Yet monkeys locked away in cages in laboratories will still reach out to stroke the human hand that only moments before delivered a searing injection.

Diane: This footage is online?

Brandy: Yes, "Meet your Meat" is online. "Breaking Barriers" you have to order.

Diane: I covered some of the PETA issues in a print magazine eight to ten years ago, and published a list of the cosmetic companies that were still animal testing at that time. I know the statistics are still incredibly high — but in the last ten years, have you seen much progress on this issue?

Brandy: Absolutely. Consumer demand for cruelty-free products are definitely on the increase and will continue to be so. We are a little bit behind other countries, though. In the U.K. they are considering an outright ban on all cosmetic testing using animals.

Diane: So that would be good, right?

Brandy: Yes, it would be good for them.

Diane: But wouldn't that force the U.S. to make a change? It seems to me that every inroad could be considered a small success.

Brandy: Sure. Even now, we are seeing major corporations like McDonalds actually implementing enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act.[1] That is really unprecedented. It is not as though the legislature is forcing this. It's big business going to the legislature and saying, "Hey, this is a concern."

People are starting to realize that every day they have a choice. They can choose to be cruel or choose to be kind. And every time we sit down to dinner, we have a choice. It's that simple. I think this is becoming more evident. But we still have a long way to go.

For the most part, in modern society we treat animals as a means to an end, and think that they have no other reason for existing except to serve us.

The definition of kindness doesn't change depending on whom the recipient is.

Diane: Let me just toss this in. I've talked to shamans and other native American people who are really close to the earth. And in their culture, at least in the past, they had to take a life for food. Most indigenous peoples are meat eaters. Rarely are they vegetarians. In the past, they hunted in a conscious way, putting forth prayers to ask the animal kingdom which elk or deer would come to help feed them when they were hungry.

What are your thoughts on this as it relates to our present conversation?

Brandy: At the end of the day, you are still creating a tremendous amount of suffering. I say we certainly we don't have a right to do those things. Definitely, if you compare it to the slaughterhouse, it's a step in the right direction. But it's not in the best interest of the animal.

For most of us, in modern society now, there is just no reason to eat animals. It's horrible for the environment. It's a living nightmare for the animals, and it's catastrophic for human health. The three biggest killers in this country — heart attacks, cancer and stroke — are all directly linked to eating a meat-based diet. By going vegan you all but eliminate those risks.

Of course, we haven't always known this. But as I said, we are in modern times and we know the effects of meat-eating on our health and the environment. We know that animal agriculture is one of the single biggest polluters on the planet, and the number one polluter of groundwater in this country. We really need to look at all this in a modern context.

Certainly, there may have been times in the past when people needed to eat animals to survive. That just isn't the case any longer.

Diane: Because?

Brandy: Because as a planet, and sustaining the kind of population we do, the reason we have the hunger crisis is because we are feeding so much of our grains to animals. The reasons that 400 million people are starving worldwide is that ninety percent of the grain produced on the planet is funneled directly into animal agriculture.

It takes sixteen pounds of grain to yield one pound of animal flesh. If we were feeding those grains to people, no one would be starving.

Also, a tremendous amount of pesticides goes into animal crops. That really is an environmental catastrophe, and it's a living nightmare for the animals.

And at the end of the day, it's killing us.

Diane: How did you get involved in this movement in such a dramatic way? Was this something you understood as a small child, or was there something that caused you to wake up to this problem?

Brandy: Well, I do think when I was young I actually got some PETA information about the Silver Spring monkeys. The laboratory was here in Maryland, and it was actually raided as a result of the PETA investigation, and shut down.

What they were doing was cutting off these monkey's limbs with almost no anesthesia, and locking them in cages for months and years on end. And there was a fairly infamous picture of a monkey called Sara with her arm ripped off. She was looking into the camera with these incredibly sad eyes. And I looked at this picture — I was very young, about thirteen — and I thought, Who could do this to an animal? I had all kind of thoughts of what I wanted to have happen to that vivisector, and I realized that if I were still eating animals, I was paying people to do things like that to them every day.

There was recently an article in the Washington Post called "They Die Piece by Piece," from a slaughterhouse worker who said that most animals were going fully conscious down the slaughter line. That is, they were getting their hooves cut off or getting their skin ripped off or their insides pulled out while they were fully conscious. He said there were animals who had gone through all that and were still trying to walk off the slaughter line.

Even as a young child, I thought, Surely we can do better then this, and it's not too much to ask. So I did start very young with the recognition that if I am to be a kind and honest person, if I'm going to take responsibility for the realm of suffering that is within my reach, it is absolutely necessary that I not eat animals and that I not use them for my entertainment. That I recognize they are part of another nation with other interests, and the best thing we can do is to leave them alone and to help them when it is merited.

For some animals, every day is "ground zero." They are terrified, and they cannot wait. They absolutely need us right now. Right now, if you were crouched in a cage waiting for a dropper full of chemicals to be injected into your eyes, pumped into your stomach, or rubbed into your open wounds, how much longer could you wait?

I think it is absolutely necessary to create an atmosphere of urgency. It is so urgent and so important.

Diane: Do you think this is what is reflected in the state of the planet? One of the things that makes my jaw drop is what we are doing to each other as human beings.

Brandy: Absolutely. From day one we are taught to hate the other, starting with animals, ignoring their suffering and cries, ignoring their rights to exist independent of our needs of them. And I think that certainly carries over into how we treat each other.

The prevailing attitude we have today is the same kind of attitude that engendered the rise of Nazi Germany and the proliferation of slavery: hatred for the other. An unwillingness to see ourselves present in the other is the reason for all injustice and tyranny.

Diane: But don't you feel this is about people being unconscious? I really get what you're saying, but for purposes of discussion, my experience of most people is that they are not consciously unkind.

I mean, some people are, yes. But generally we are all just trying to do the best we can. Most people are simply unconscious. So given that, do we have to be so harsh with the human race in the way you are talking about? Can we not understand that most people are so busy surviving in the world that we've created, that it's not so much a matter of being horrible humans?

Brandy: Yes. But I think George Bernard Shaw touched on this when he said, "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."

I think that this indifference is where the bulk of the suffering comes in our relationship with animals. It isn't necessary that we hate them, only that we be indifferent. We're basically lazy and selfish, and we live in a convenience-oriented society. It is difficult to make people aware of these things.

It's a difficult subject, and a lot of people don't want to think about where their dinner comes from. They don't want to see what happens in slaughter houses. But at the end of the day, we have to. If we're going to be good people, and kind people, we cannot do these things to animals, and we cannot consciously choose to remain asleep and to ignore the realm of suffering that is within our reach.

We absolutely have to act.

Diane: Yes, I hear you. You're just so vivid and so passionate about it.

What is the current issues that PETA is working with now.

Brandy: All of them. We work very hard trying to get animals out of circuses. We travel around from city to city. We have a video of an investigation that we did a couple of years back where we went undercover at one of the nation's biggest circuses, and we found trainers instructing other trainers to beat the elephants until they screamed.

We travel around trying to get people to look at this video, to get them to realize that when they buy a ticket to go to the circus they are paying to sell an animal into a lifetime of unthinkable loneliness and misery. We work very closely with local activists trying to get local ban ordinances against animal acts, and we have had an incredible amount of success, from Florida to California.

Right now, we are working on Calvert Laboratories. They have forty-eight beagles, and several of them they no longer use. We are attempting to get them adopted into loving homes so that for the first time they can feel sunshine and have grass under their feet. We are trying very hard. We've offered to do that for Calvert. But they, as of yet, are not relinquishing the beagles to us.

We also have worked very closely with the Suarez Brothers' Traveling Polar Bear act. We have successfully gotten one of the polar bears removed and sent to a zoo in Baltimore. These animals were traveling around in 110-degree weather performing for circuses, and were absolutely miserable and malnourished. They were in terrible condition.

We do a lot of work in vegetarian and vegan outreach. Again, since twenty-six billion animals are slaughtered in this country for food, the best thing that people can do for animals is to stop eating them. So we really travel around and try to get people involved, to be aware of vegetarian and vegan options. I recently did a tour in Missouri offering free vegan buffalo wings and free dairy alternatives to the lunchtime crowd in different cities.

We have so many campaigns we are working on. We've implemented animal welfare standards with all the major fastfood giants such as Wendys and McDonalds, and even grocery store chains such as Safeway. We've gotten them to buy only from suppliers who comply with the minimum standard of the Animal Welfare Act.

Also, in the past we have gotten General Motors to stop using animals in crash tests. The list goes on and on. There is much more work to be done, of course.

Diane: I just interviewed one of the founders of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and the statistics they are working with are just as incredible. Fifteen million animals euthanized in the '70s down to five million today. It's still a horrible statistic, but things are getting better because people are becoming more aware.

Brandy: We do a lot of spay-and-neuter work, as well, and encourage people to adopt their animals from shelters and not encourage breeding and the pet-shop trade.

Diane: So is there a more open attitude for having animals in our home as companions?

Brandy: Sure. In the PETA office, most of us bring our companion animals to work. My dog comes to work, and she loves it.

We advocate across the board for people to get to their local shelters and take a feline or canine companion. They are there, and they really need us. There is just no reason for anyone to go to a pet shop or to an independent local breeder. Every time you get an animal from a pet shop or local breeder, you are effectively putting a lethal injunction in the neck of another in a shelter who is waiting for you to adopt it and take it away from a world that has thus far not wanted it.

There is much to be done, and we need everyone's help and awareness.

Diane: Thank you very much for sharing your passion with us.

1. See U.S. Code Collection Title 7 Chapter 48: Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter.