As cows and horses paraded to the American Royal downtown Saturday morning, a group of animal rights advocates marched through Country Club Plaza, intent on ensuring more farm critters live out their natural days in bucolic peace, rather than biding their time before the slaughterhouse.
The annual walk, one of dozens across the country held each fall, raises funds for Farm Sanctuary in up-state New York. For the event organizer, that green expanse prompted a moment of conversion.
Name: Devin Listrom (left, holding the banner)
Conversion by cinema: In 2005, Listrom says, he caught a screening of Peaceable Kingdom at a local film festival. The movie, which incorporates underground footage of factory farms, focuses on a handful of producers' emotional connection to their animals and their repudiation of the industry's slaughter-house mentality.
Back to the land: The next year, Listrom says, his activism was solidified by a trip to Farm Sanctuary, a preserve in up-state New York, where hundreds of abused and neglected farm animals are cuddled for their cuteness rather than chopped up for their protein value. Listrom saw the memorial to Hilda, a female sheep that the Sanctuary members rescued from a pile of dead animals in a stockyard. Emaciated and covered in maggots, Hilda was rehabilitated before living another 10 years on the farm. "I went vegan the next day," Listrom says.
Animals have feelings, too: During his stay, Listrom says he saw the impact of factory farms. "You can see the emotional scarring of the animals," he says. "You have to let them come to you." To care for the 800 animals scattered across the green expanse, the Sanctuary has to raise $6 million per year, Listrom says. When he got back to Kansas City, he wanted to find a way to help locally.
From Plaza to pasture: In 2006, Listrom organized the first "Walk for Farm Animals" in the metro, one of nearly six dozen such fund-raising events for the organization throughout the country. Now in its fourth year, Listrom says, the 2009 march raised at least $2,000 for the animals back east. Sure, the vegetarian and vegan participants get some snide comments from carnivorous Plaza visitors. "But we keep the walk positive," he says.
What keeps him marching: Listrom says its not hard to stay motivated as an animal rights' activist. Every minute, chickens are being de-beaked, calves are being torn from their mothers and pigs are spending another filthy day in a crate so small they can't turn around. "I know animals are suffering every single day and they need our help," he says.
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My comment is in reply to a few of you who think animal rights people are trying to conrtol everybody, that is stupid and not true. We are trying to get people to wake up to the cruelty that these amazing creatures put through. How would you like to have your babies taken away, or forced fed to enlarge your liver, and having half your face cut off. Even having your throat slit hanging from your toes?
Even with all the cage free, organic and even local farmers who still abuse and kill their animals. No matter how they are raised they are still slaughtered. Nothing will ever justify killing another being. Farm animals have feelings to. About half of the animals who live at farm sanctuary have been rescued from cruel local farmers. Just because you put an animal on a field or feed them organic grain, and give them a little more space does not mean they can't be abused and killed. Farm animals are denied their most basic needs in most cases such as water. Think about it, and pull your head out of the sand.
Animal rights are going to support all the chickens, pigs, cows ect.. and we are not going to stop. So why don't you think about the torture these farm animals as well as all animals are put through instead of your self. People are so stupid about animals. Going vegan is a way to save the animals, improve your healh, and reverse most of the environmental damage for the methane (a green house gas that is worse than car gumes)that factory farms put out, and that even goes for organic factory farms. Eating and killing animals is cooking the planet and clogging your arteries.
Check out www.farmsanctuary.org and www.tribeofheart.org www.vegforlife.org www.earthlings.com
The radical animal rights movement not only wants people to stop eating animals, they also want you to not wear wool or leather or fur. It doesn't stop there. They also want complete extinction of all animals. They also want complete control over all food. Do you realise PETA is paying scientists to discover a way to produce meat in a test tube using human stem cells? How insane is that? Dont fall for this BULL.
So tell me Bea, how many cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and such are you going to support?
And what about all those nasty cougars, coyotes, wolves, lions and tigers and bears (oh my) who kill those poor little herbivores? Shall they be converted to vegans?
After all, vegan is an old Osage word for poor hunter.
Let animals live out their lives? Cows and pigs and chickens? We'd be overrun with them!
Give me a cotton-pickin' break.
And now, off to my freezer to find some of the ground beef from the steer we raised here.
Hello Orphan of the Road - The concept of "producing" organic and "natural" flesh would be fine, if these were not sentient beings. And because they are, and there is no need to cause them any pain or death - Why should we?
It just makes no sense to slaughter an innocent animal when we can thrive on a plant based diet. And those who ignore these animals who suffer needlessly might already have cold dead hearts.
Being vegan is a wonderful choice to live a healthy, sustainable and ethical life.
We should all support sustainable agriculture. A grass-based agronomy is sustainable. A corn-and-soybean ghetto is not.
Buy from local farmers, the food has more vitamins and minerals than produce shipped from far, far away.
There are lots of producers around KC who sell organic and naturally produced meat and produce.
Go vegan if you wish but you will get my beef/lamb/chicken/fish/wild game when you pry my fork from my cold, dead hands...
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