Animal Voice May 2008 1.24 Mb - here you can download the pdf of the May 2008 edition of Animal Voice, or keep browsing to read articles from the magazine and downloads for individual pages. 

Dear Readers –

This issue of Animal Voice is very much a Consumer Power issue. In putting it together, I became acutely aware that although there are eight Consumer Rights in the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection, there should be nine. The eight Consumer Rights are: Safety, information, Choice, Representation, Redress, Consumer Education, Satisfaction of Basic Needs and A Healthy Environment. To this list should be added a ninth Consumer Right – namely: Freedom of Conscience and the right to assume and take for granted that what we buy has been produced humanely and ethically.

We are told we have a choice between kind and cruel food and that the market is driven by our choices. How on earth can we make educated choices when we are not allowed onto the farms to see production methods for ourselves? Why is it that we can-not take it for granted that supermarkets will present us with ethical options only?

I think it is very convenient to keep consumers in the dark. After all, factory farming is Big Business. There is a natural tendency among us all to believe that what goes on, on the factory farm can’t be that bad. The truth is that it is worse than we allow ourselves to imagine. Kept away from public scrutiny, industrialised farming is a constant reminder to me of its parallel with apartheid. I am constantly reminded of what Brian Bunting said in his 1964 book The Rise of the South African Reich on the suffering of victims of Apartheid.

He said: “Appalling crimes are committed … and are tolerated because, after all, 'they are not the same as us‟.”

In the same book, Bunting noted: “The herrenvolk (master race) attitude lends itself to cruelty and sadism because the victims are regarded as being different, inferior.”

Bunting could just as well have been talking about the victims of factory farming. And, just as it was convenient during the dark days of Apartheid to keep people in child-like positions of docile acceptance of the status quo, so too is it convenient for Big Business to keep consumers in child-like positions of docile acceptance of the status quo. Please let us all adopt a mindset
that it is our right to assume that the food we eat has been produced with the utmost care and respect. To start with, we need labels that give clear and complete details of production methods.

Write to the Chairman of the National Consumer Forum and voice your objection to cruel food: Mr Thami Bolani, P O Box 4487, Halfway House 1685, South Africa.  We are requesting him to help us achieve our right to Freedom of Conscience when it comes to the food we put on our plates. Cruel food should not be part of a choice we are asked to make. More than any legislation or government decree, we, the consuming public, can ring in the changes for farm animals right now, by our pro-active determination to demand Kind Food.

A big Thank You to all of you whose ongoing support has made this issue of Animal Voice possible.

Sincerely, Louise van der Merwe