Just over seven weeks ago two good friends of mine had a lovely little vegan boy called Liam. With two wonderful, intelligent and compassionate parents he is destined for a rich and fulfilling life; sadly he is one of the very lucky ones. Billions of human and non-human children all over the world are not so lucky.

Last week I was reading the Stuff website as I do most days and came across an article which made me cry (also something that seems to happen most days – our world has both truly beautiful and truly disgusting things happening every day). The article titled ‘Mother dog finds her puppies drowned’ details how a female pitbull cross named Faith from Tauranga found her puppies drowned in an estuary on Saturday. According to the SPCA she only stopped howling, presumably in grief, yesterday and has been sitting in her kennel without moving. The article says that the six two-day old puppies were found in a plastic bag and that their drowning was obviously purposeful.

Among the almost daily articles detailing animal cruelty this story really stood out to me because I am the proud mother a red nosed pitbull called Daisy (see picture of us above) and anything relating to pitbulls grabs my attention but also because of the very obvious distress and grief both the mother and father were going through after finding their dead puppies. It has been obvious to me for as long as I can remember that animals have the same feelings as me but for some reason not everyone sees this. I wanted to share this families story with as many people as possible so that people might actually start to understand the rich emotions that animals have and how  they really are just like us.

Too often we hear stories of bags of puppies and kittens that have been dumped in streams, rubbish bins or on road sides. It is as if the people who do these things think that these animals are disposable, that their lives don’t matter and that the parents who’s babies have been taken are not going to suffer and grieve either.

I recently read a book called The Inner World of Farm Animals; Their Amazing Social, Emotional and Intellectual Capacities by Amy Hatkoff.  This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read and it should be compulsory reading for meat, egg and dairy consumers as well as animal advocates.

Among the many stories were heaps about the bond between farmed animals and their young. Did you know that baby chicks cheep to their mother and siblings a couple of days before they hatch to let everyone know they are coming out soon? Or that every chick looks different and a mother hen can tell which ones are her babies?

Cows have similar bonds with their calves. During our Dairy Investigation earlier this year a dairy farmer told us how cows on his farm often broke out of the paddocks to search for their stolen calves. This is sort of behaviour is not uncommon.

Knowing this makes you wonder how anyone could justify taking a baby from their mother, regardless of the species, for profit or in the case of Faith above because they can not be bothered caring for the puppies. Liam’s mother loves him greatly and her bond with him is very strong. Recently we were talked about how since having Liam and establishing this bond with him she can now really understand what mother sheep, cows and pigs must feel with every stolen litter. Fortunately she will never be confined to a farrowing crate unable to even turn around to nuzzle Liam, nor will Liam be taken away from her to be grown, cut up and eaten. 

The agricultural industry treats parents as machines; fathers are there to produce sperm and mothers are made to churn out babies who are often taken away not long after birth to be mutilated by procedures such as de-beaking, castration and tail docking. The babies remain separated from their mothers and are grown until they are big enough to kill and eat.

The ‘pet’ industry is similar in that the parents are nothing more than baby making machines, churning out profitable babies who are taken away from their mother well before weaning time so that they are ‘super cute’ and will fetch a higher price.

Companion and farmed animals are no different to me or you. They have a full range of emotions; they have bonds with their children and friends, they feel pain, happiness, apprehension and fear. Next time you sit down to eat a steak, eat an egg or drink some milk think about how you would feel if your friend/child/sibling was taken from you, abused and butchered. Or think about how you feel if someone placed your child/friend/sibling in a plastic bag and drowned them just because they could not be bothered caring for them. The horror, pain and grief that you would feel is no different to that of any of the animals that we share this earth with.

*** Please note that I do not think that human womyn have to be maternal or mothers and I support the right for womyn to have abortions, adopt out children and like myself choose to not have babies but there are also many womyn who maternal and who are mothers. I also do not think we should eat or harm human babies (or adults) in anyway.