You Can’t Be a Feminist If You’re Drinking Milk and Eating Eggs
Being violated without consent isn’t just a human problem. Animal agriculture is entirely reliant on female exploitation. On farms, female animals are confined, forcibly impregnated, and killed so their ovulation markers, milk, and other body parts can be sold for human consumption.
At a time when women are rising up against sexual abuse, PETA is asking everyone to show solidarity with females of ALL species – who each experience fear and pain, just as humans do – and go vegan.
Cows on Dairy Farms Are Sexually Assaulted
Cows are wonderful mothers who, just like humans, carry their babies for nine months and nurse them, developing a strong bond.
Cows make milk for the same reason women do: to feed their babies. They produce milk only when they’re pregnant or nursing. On dairy farms, they are repeatedly forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination while being restrained in a contraption the industry calls a “rape rack”. In commercial dairy farming, their babies are taken from them within 24 hours of birth, and if they are female, they will enter the same cycle of misery as their mother. The male calves are killed or sold into the veal industry.
© Jo-Anne McArthur / Animal Equality
Mother cows often bellow and call out frantically for their young for several days or weeks after they’ve been torn from them.
The strain of continual pregnancy exhausts cows and often leaves them emaciated, with mastitis (infected udders), or lame. When they are worn out and can no longer produce high volumes of milk, they are sent to the abattoir and killed.
All this misery is inflicted on them just so that humans can eat cheese or yogurt.
A Hen’s Reproductive System Is Messed Up for a Scrambled Egg
Farmers treat hens like egg-laying machines. They use light and food to manipulate their reproductive systems to induce extra laying cycles, forcing them to produce as many as 300 eggs per year – far more than the 10 to 15 their ancestors produced in nature.
Because of this, they often suffer from cysts, infections, ovarian carcinomas, and reproductive tumours and sometimes multiple eggs become lodged inside them – which is life-threatening. Their bones often shatter from osteoporosis because their bodies are forced to produce unnaturally high quantities of eggshells, day after day, without rest.
When their egg production begins to wane, these sensitive animals are shoved into cramped crates and endure a harrowing journey to the abattoir. Over a million chickens die in transit each year in the UK. Those who survive the journey are shackled by their legs before their throats are cut – sometimes while they’re still conscious.
Mother Pigs Are Abused for Bacon
For a couple of weeks before and after they give birth, mother pigs are confined to farrowing crates so small they can’t even turn around, let alone fulfil their strong urge to build a nest for their babies, as they naturally would.
Females are repeatedly artificially inseminated for years on end. With each litter, they are separated from their piglets by bars in the crate, denying these mothers the expression of their natural instinct to care for their babies. The piglets are torn away from their mums after only a few weeks and transferred to fattening pens before being sent to the abattoir, where many are gassed to death. For females, who will go on to have their own litters, the cycle of abuse continues.
Reject Supremacist Thinking
The denial of animal rights originates in the same supremacist thinking that has obstructed women’s rights. Some are quick to dismiss the suffering of females of other species as unimportant, but females – regardless of species – are the victims of systematic oppression.
Humans’ justifications for discounting other animals’ suffering and denying their basic rights are based on speciesism and are strikingly similar to those that have been used to disregard women’s suffering and disallow them their fundamental rights.
Take a Stand Against Female Abuse – Go Vegan
The meat, egg, and dairy industries are built on the exploitation of female animals – something that no one should support. Every time you order or request a vegan meal, you’re standing up for females.
With so many delicious plant-based options available across the UK, going vegan is easier than ever before. Take our 30-day vegan pledge, and we’ll guide you through how to eat vegan and provide you with top tips for making compassionate choices:
