Animal Rights

Caring for your older cat

Just like anyone of us animals grow old and need to have special care. Your beloved and once playful kitten may have come to a stage where she needs special attention. Generally cats older than seven years are categorized as geriatrics by veterinarians.

Make sure she is active and maintains healthy weight. You should barely be able to feel her ribs. If she is heavier cut down on her food and add more playtime. If you feel she is too thin increase the amount of food and if she fails to gain weight take her to the veterinarian to determine if there is an underlying health problem.

Give a good quality cat food. Avoid giving human food as this will have too much salt and fat for a cat and could lead to heart disease, diabetes and liver failure which they will become more susceptible to as they get older. A cat this age needs to be checked by a veterinarian at least twice year to determine their general health.

You need to look in to the oral health of the cat as tooth decay is very progressive and leads to various infections. Make sure to brush her teeth often.

Should you neuter your dog?

Are you facing the question of whether or not to neuter your dog? Neutering involves removing the dog’s testicles by performing a simple operation. It has many long-term benefits for your pet, both health wise and behaviorally, such as the following:

1. He will not develop testicular cancer, which can be difficult to treat and cause pain and discomfort for your pet. If he gets cancer, there is also the added risk of it spreading to other areas of the body.

2. Prostrate problems are common in dogs as they age as the testosterone causes the prostrate to enlarge. However, neutering lowers the testosterone levels in the body, thereby shrinking the prostrate. The lower testosterone levels also reduces the risk of the dog developing perianal tumors and hernias, which are dangerous.

3. There is less aggression and calmer behavior especially if the procedure is done before the puppy is a year old. This makes it easier to train the dog.

4. The dog will be less inclined to wander away because he is not interested in seeking out females who are in heat. This means he will be safe from traffic accidents and from getting lost.

ARE YOU READY TO GET A PET?

Are you considering adding a furry member to your family? Having a pet can be a great joy to the whole family and especially children who can learn a lot about responsibility, but you need to evaluate many things before deciding whether a pet would fit in to your lifestyle.

First of all you need to get the opinion of all family members on having a pet and the responsibilities that it entails. Are they agreeable to having a litter box or living with pet hair?

Do you have enough space in your house and garden and if you are living in a rented property check if there are any restrictions on having a pet.

How much free time do you have to spend on your pet? Some pets like dogs need more time allocated to them as they need to be walked daily and the house will need to be cleaned more often.

How much money can you spend on the pet including food, medicine, grooming and any other emergency which may arise?

If you have to travel is there anyone who can take care of your pet while you are away?

FASHION AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

Behind all the glitter and glamour of a fashion show, there are thousands of innocent victims who have paid the ultimate price by sacrificing their lives in the name of fashion. It is their fur that is gracing the models; the shoes and handbags are made with their skins and the cosmetics have a story of blood and suffering behind them.

This unfortunately is the truth behind the fashion show. Animals are caged in appalling conditions before they are killed by using the most inhumane methods such as suffocation, electrocution and bludgeoning. Animals such as snakes are skinned alive and kid goats boiled alive for their skins.

Animals such as mice, rabbits, cats and dogs, some of them pets kidnapped from their owners are used for testing cosmetics. These animals have to go through the agony of having chemicals rubbed in their eyes and skins. After a life of unimaginable torture they face an even harder death.

Stand up for animal rights, say no to products tested on animals; go to www.peta.org to find such products and turn away from the fashion industry which so ruthlessly violates animal rights. Use the many alternatives available.

What to Look Out For if You Support Cruelty-Free Products

Very simply, a cruelty-free product is one that does not test its products on animals. Among several manufacturers that have been in the market for many years, Revlon and Avon have adopted cruelty-free practices and therefore, one way to show your support against animal cruelty is to purchase these products and boycott those companies that still follow this practice.

While drugs are required by Federal Law to be tested on animals (which is a reality that we have to accept), there is no such mandate when it comes to cosmetics or even household products. And since research and development have shown several substances used in cosmetics to be safe, there should be no reason why these items still need to use animals for testing anymore.

At another level altogether, there are companies that might be cruelty-free but their products contain animal ingredients, and this is one of the gray areas that one might keep in mind. Yet another tricky issue comes in the form where the supplier might have tested the ingredients on animals while the manufacturer continues to be cruelty-free.

And finally, if a cruelty-free company is bought over by one which still tests on animals, this can also cause doubt in the minds of the people who have to make a choice between choosing cruelty-free products.

All in all, it is important that you do support cruelty-free products but you should make your decision once you have truly confirmed whether or not the manufacturer is indeed, cruelty-free, as mentioned in the aforementioned cases.

Animal Rights Versus Human Appetites

Can animal rights exist in a world dominated by human appetites? Human health is dependent upon healthy food sources. Animal stress and food safety are co-dependent factors. Food borne illness continues to contaminate the food supply through careless attention to the details of the lives of food animals. When this happens repeatedly, the link between animal stress and human health becomes impossible to ignore.

How does animal stress become a factor in food borne illness? Pigs, cattle and poultry carry high levels of pathogens in their intestinal tracts. When these animals undergo stress in their environments, stress such as overcrowding, rough handling, extreme cold or heat, or inadequate transportation to the slaughterhouse, their stress levels increase causing susceptibility to new and more severe infections. These infections from salmonella, e-coli, and campylobacter then enter the human food chain through cross contamination causing illness and even death in the elderly and the very young.

Animal rights are a human health issue. Human nature will not change. However, human motivation led by self-interest is creating positive change in the lives of animals used for food. Corporate factory farming is proving to be counter to human health and animal health as well. 

Individual choices made locally can influence the lives of animals in a positive way. Purchase cage free eggs, and organic meat and support the local farmers and growers as often as possible. Demand that corporate grocery suppliers buy and distribute local f

Ban on seal oil sought

Animal rights advocacy groups are demanding a government ban on the importation and retail of seal oil in the country of Taiwan in efforts to provide protection for the helpless marine animal. Humane Society International Canada chapter Executive Director Rebecca Aldworth noted at a Taipei press meeting that the US, Mexico, Croatia and the European Union have done their part in banning oil seal importation. Their demands have been made in time for Canada’s yearly seal hunting tradition, which is set to begin in four months’ time.

Taiwan’s Environment and Animal Society has successfully launched a boycott in April this year, forcing major retail outlets to remove seal and sea lion products from their shelves. Online retailers however are unfazed and still offer such products on their online retail stores. Currently, Taiwan remains fourth on the global list of the largest sea markets in the world. Over a period of merely 6 years, the Asian country imported more than 431,000 kilos of seal oil. That required as many as 120,000 seals to be killed for their oil products.

One official from Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture was quoted by the Central News Agency to have said that around 160,000 individuals personally signed the EAST-backed petition that demands a ban on oil seal products being imported and sold in the country. The official added that once the petition was filed in their office, there will be considerations made. Any and all trade policy decisions surrounding seal oil will be relayed over to the Bureau of Foreign Trade for implementation.

Cruelty against dogs and cats

Man’s best friend was never meant to be eaten. Still, there are cultures around the world that consider dog meat as a delicacy. It was believed that the meat of dogs help males boost their sexual activity. While this has no scientific basis, there is no stopping the people from that part of the globe from killing dogs and selling their meat in the market. There are rumors that speculate that big money being transacted in the business, while the government sits indifferently to the cruel acts.

Adding to the cruelty is the belief that the more a dog suffers while awaiting death, the better the meat tastes. So dogs whose meats are sold are usually put in confined spaces and treated sparingly, in order to increase their meats value to satisfy customers. There were cases of death by slow hanging and using a propane torch to burn off hairs off the animal. Cats were subjected to the same cruelty, being put into sacks and then smashed against hard objects to cause death.

Such cases of animal cruelty have been recorded all around the world in countries such as Rome, Mexico, China, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. People who eat dog meat argue that it is no different from eating poultry, cows and pigs meat. Still, there are cultures, such as Islamic and Jewish which ban the act of eating dog meat, considering it a sin against their religion. Hopefully, the killing will stop and dogs and cats are given the right they deserve.

Animal Right Activists protest “pilot whale” massacre

The Faroe Islands, an autonomous province of Denmark, is home to one of the oldest cultural traditions (or so they say!) which involves killing pilot whales. Apparently, this activity takes place annually but is widely accepted amongst the Faroese as it has been a central part of their diet for more than a thousand years.

This whale hunt (known as the “grindadráp”) typically occurs in the summer months, where at least a thousand of these intelligent creatures are herded by the boats-men and are driven towards land where they are beached and killed by cutting the dorsal area all the way to the spinal cord.

The ones that aren’t beached are caught by their blowholes using a hook and dragged on shore to be slaughtered along with the rest of the whales. The gruesome part about this practice (or tradition, if you will) is that it takes the animal anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes to die.

And just recently, several French animal rights activists, supported by the Bridgett Bardot Foundation and Sea World, protested outside the Danish embassy in Paris to demonstrate against this age-old ‘massacre’ of pilot whales (as they called it!) exhorting the Danish government to stop this brutal and cruel practice which provides meat and blubber for households in the Faroe Islands.

Whether or not this practice will be put to an end is anyone’s guess but what is for sure is that animal activists everywhere are waking up to the brutality that goes into making a meal of these harmless dolphins.

An end to bullfighting?

Althoguh Bullfighting has been around for centuries, it is a cruel and bloody “sport”. It is extremely popular in Spain and it has come as a (pleasant) shock to many around the world that one part of the country has banned the sport.

Animal rights campaigners were jubilant as Catalonia announced that Bullfighting would forever be banned in the region. However, the decision taken by the Catalan parliament has less to do with Animal Rights than it has to do with making a political statement.

The Catalan people have long been at loggerheads with the rest of Spain and have been seeking to distance themselves from the rest of the country. As a result of this they have banned Flamenco, speak their own language and have even gotten rid of the Spanish flag. They now are looking toward independence and becoming an independent state. The ban on Bullfighting is seen as just another move to thumb their noses at the Spanish government. This is reinforced by the fact that the sport was never really very popular or widespread in the region.

Whatever the motive, it still represents a victory for activists and a better life for the animals. The usual practice in this gruesome sport is to drug the bull or force it consume water and Epsom salts. This is done so that the animal is confused and has a disrupted sense of direction. All of this is done so that the Matadors get an advantage in disposing the bull in the bloody way that they do.

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