barns over bolt-guns
Protein doesn't have to come down a slaughter line. Mushrooms, beans, lentils, and soy can be grown indoors year-round, and many mushroom farms now operate out of converted barns, keeping farmers farming with a different crop. The meal still gets made; no one ends up in a stunning box.
Organ-on-a-chip systems, human cell cultures, and computer modelling can now answer many questions we once asked of animals, and because they're built from human cells, they can catch reactions that animal models miss. US law no longer requires animal testing before a drug enters human trials, opening the way for medicine to keep advancing without laboratories of caged primates.
pipettes over primates
Food grown in gardens, farms, and community plots can feed a household without anyone taking a life in the woods, and it offers much of what draws people to hunting: time outdoors, a connection to land and seasons, and the satisfaction of providing for yourself. Where deer or elk numbers genuinely need managing, using wildlife contraception can help do that work without a rifle.
seeding over shooting
Poison works fast, but surviving rodents breed quickly and populations bounce back, so the poisoning never ends. Fertility-control bait works more gradually, curbing births so that numbers can fall and stay down, and paired with sealing entry points and removing food sources, it tackles why rodents are there at all. It also spares the owls, hawks, and pets poisoned in turn when they eat poisoned rodents.
prevention over poison
Seaweed farms grow food and materials without feed, fresh water, or fertiliser, and they filter the surrounding water as they grow. The omega-3s many people eat fish for come originally from algae, and algae-based oils deliver them directly, without a catch.
kelp over killing
Culls are often justified as a way to reduce deer-vehicle collisions, but they don't settle anything: the killing has to be repeated year after year, because deer move in from surrounding areas and numbers climb back as soon as it stops. Wildlife crossings paired with fencing address where deer and traffic actually meet, and have cut collisions with large animals by 80 percent or more — 96 percent for deer and elk along the fenced stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff.
crossings over culling
Hemp, cork, and other plant fibres can be made into durable textiles and leather alternatives for clothing, shoes, bags, and upholstery. Hemp grows fast and needs few pesticides, giving us the materials we rely on without raising animals for their skin.
hemp over hides
MEETING HUMAN NEEDS, WITHOUT KILLING ANIMALS
Our Vision of Compassion
"From now on, I choose to believe that the failure of our needs to be fulfilled results from insufficient dialogue and creativity rather than scarcity."
~ Marshall Rosenberg
Most people already recognize that the animals we share our homes with have needs for play, curiosity, affection, protection, and many others (and they go to great lengths to meet those needs). Yet for most of the animals currently on farms, research labs, and in the wild, we either don't recognize those needs or, when we do, we don't respect them enough not to injure and kill them. Although those of us in this organization understand that many people currently killing animals are attempting to meet important needs of their own, such as sustenance, stability, belonging—and others—we also believe it is possible to use a different set of strategies (ones that don't involve killing animals) to fulfill all human needs while simultaneously meeting the needs of the animals we share this planet with. Below, you'll see what some of these strategies might look like if we decided to choose kinship over killing.
Protecting an animal's life and liberty could* mean choosing...
*we present these possibilities knowing they are just that, possible options rather than the only options. We offer them in the spirit of inspiring creative problem solving, as a demonstration that it can be possible to meet our own needs while also preserving an animal's life and liberty.
Killing animals is a choice, and is it not the only choice we have available to us. At any given moment we have the capacity to choose something different.
