This Holiday Season, Don’t Give a Cow

VegNews Magazine

November/December 2004

By Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

I am often perplexed by the claim that animal advocates are anti-human, as if compassion for one species means lack of compassion for another; as if our capacity for mercy and kindness is limited. When we deem certain groups unequal, we call it racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism. When we do it to non-human animals, we justify it on the grounds of tradition, science, or religion.

The claim seems rather odd because though we are reminded daily that humans steal, lie, cheat, kill, rape, and hurt each other, I have never heard any of these people called “anti-human.” Wouldn’t the accusation better suit someone who actually acts against humans? Ironically, those who commit the worst crimes against humans are derisively called “animals.”

This societal premise leaves animal advocates reluctant to publicly object to such groups as Heifer Project International, whose mission is “to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth.” Their mission statement does not say that they give animals to people around the globe to use, breed, sell, and consume their milk, eggs, flesh, hair, fur, feathers, and skin. Instead, Heifer, whose $56 million revenue increases every holiday season, dupes individuals and seemingly progressive celebrities, such as Susan Sarandon, Frances Moore Lappe, and Jimmy Carter, into supporting what is essentially an animal slave trade.

Aside from the environmental and health problems this model creates, Heifer perpetuates a speciesist paradigm, viewing animals as mere commodities with no regard for their own inherent value.

Heifer says “sharing the offspring of gift animals with others in need” is “fundamental” to its approach; however, a mother’s relationship with her offspring is sacred and not unique to humans—we even call ourselves “mother hens” when we fuss over our own. Manipulating a female’s reproductive cycle is offensive enough (as with egg-laying hens and lactating cows), but to take away her offspring is the ultimate blow.

The Heifer Project’s glossy “catalog,” sent to millions of homes every year for “holiday shopping,” egregiously exploits children’s affection for animals and manipulates our sensibilities, as they depict beautiful children hugging their “beloved animals.” This carefully crafted public relations campaign succeeds in helping us forget that these catalog “products” are living, feeling beings. The truth is concealed. There are no pictures of slaughter, or of females yearning for their young, or of the animals’ living conditions.

There are many other programs dedicated to providing solutions to hunger without exploiting animals. Trees for Life (treesforlife.org) enables you to buy a fruit tree in someone’s name, providing a food source to communities in developing countries. Every time you buy a gift from the Women’s Bean Project (womensbeanproject.org), you help a woman break the cycle of poverty and unemployment by supporting their programs that provide skills and training to women. One of Plenty International’s (plenty.org) programs includes training villages in soy bean agriculture and production as a way to improve nutrition, soil quality, and food security.

If we claim to be a compassionate society—a compassionate species—don’t we have a duty to foster solutions that do not harm others? The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer certainly thought so when he wrote, “The thinking [person] must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.”

Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is founder and director of Compassionate Cooks LLC, dedicated to empowering people to make informed food choices and to debunking myths about vegetarianism through cooking classes and DVDs, nutrition courses, and humane education workshops.