How to Do Animal Rights - Personal Activist

Chapter 4

Personal Activist

In this section are some simple personal activisms that most people can do. But we start with a bit of a difficult one.

As an animal rights activist you cannot do any better activity for animal rights than the one below. All other activities are far less effective than this one.

Here is the Single Most Effective Thing You Can do
for Animal Life

Stop making babies (or at most make only one).

Seventy thousand years ago there were 15,000 people on Earth. Now we exceed seven billion.

The more people, the greater the destruction to animal life and Nature.

Being a veggie or vegan is not sufficient.

For estimates of the number of food animals people kill annually see the entry Numbers of Animals Raised & Killed.

See more about the World Human Population.

Some More Self Activism for Individuals

Other activities, should you not be up to the one above, come at different levels of convenience and if there is a secret for successful personal activism it is that you should do what you feel comfortable with and are good at doing.

1. Let's Stop 'It'

Most people call an animal an ‘it’, as if animals are unfeeling sticks or stones. They compound the offence by calling inanimate human creations, such as a car, ship or country, a ‘she’. Make a contribution to animal rights by calling animals always him or her, he or she. Convey that animals are beings, with needs of their own.

For more see the entry ‘It - Stop Calling Animals It’.

2. Speak Plainly

Foil people hiding behind euphemisms. Let them be truthful and forthright about what they are doing. Do not let them lure you into euphemistic compliance when animals are getting in people's way. Stop using euphemisms that support animal wrongs.

For more see the entry Euphemisms.

3. Invertebrate Harmony

Invertebrate harmony is the view that we should try to live in harmony with all creatures no matter what their moral status and treat them with respect and compassion. Invertebrates, like bees, ants, bugs and spiders, make up the vast majority of animals on Earth, well over 90 percent by weight and number. Yet humans harm lots of them for very little reason. Practice animal rights at the lowest level, that of the invertebrate, and treat them well.

For more see the entry Invertebrate Harmony.

4. Let's Be Vegan or Veggie

If you have not already done so, opt out of the killing system by being a veggie or vegan, at least on one or two days of the week. Every week people in the US alone slaughter 175 million poultry, 2 million pigs, 700,000 cattle, 60,000 sheep, plus a host of other animals.

For more see the section Animal Statistics and the entry Vegetarianism.

5. Spurn Animal Products

Avoid or at least cut down using animal products, such as leather and feathers in pillows and duvets. Eschew fur items, not only fur clothing but also cosmetic and artists’ fur brushes. These brushes are sometimes made from synthetic material but they are also made of animal hair. The labelling is often obscure and misleading.

See the entries The Forgotten Fur and Fur Species & Sales Value.

6. Read Labels

Ask the people who serve you where the ingredients of your food, cosmetics or medicine come from. Unless they are really knowledgeable they will probably not know, but you could patronise alternative products if you find out that any ingredients are derived from animals. Look for up-to-date cruelty-free product guides on the Web to help you. Some ingredients to look out for are:

Musk: oil from the scent glands of certain wild animals, in particular the musk deer. The deer are killed in traps or confined all their lives to cages hardly bigger than themselves. However, quite a lot of the musk in perfumes today is synthetic.
Rennet: a protein taken from the stomachs of slaughtered calves, lambs and kid goats. Rennet in the living young converts their ingested mother’s milk into solids for digestion. Rennet is the chief means for making cheese hard. Some hard cheeses, though, are made with artificially cultured rennet and may be suitable for vegetarians.
Collagen: another protein taken from animals. It is used in cosmetics.
Gelatin (American English) or gelatine (British English) is derived from collagen and used in cosmetics and many foods.
Lactose: a sugar that comes from milk. It is added to various foods, lotions and medicines.
Cochineal: extracted from the ground up bodies of insects and used to add a red colour to foods and lipsticks.

7. Watch News

Seen an anti-animal situation in your newspaper or TV? Take a few minutes to phone or write to the editor / producer. One page is all you need. Briefly describe the abuse, state why it is offensive. Tell them you demand a reply.

See Media Watcher for more information.

8. Tabling

Be a tabler. Set up an information table at busy places, like markets and street corners, and stock it with all types of animal rights information, such as leaflets and pamphlets that you can get from animal rights organisations. A further step is to arrange your information attractively on portable display boards that you can leave in libraries, fairs and similar places.

See the entry Solo Information Worker.

9. Your Gear

Wear eye-catching animal rights artwork on your T-shirt. A move like this could strike up interesting conversations with people who sit opposite you. There are also interesting graphics on sweatshirts, cooking aprons, mugs and other paraphernalia.

10. Stickers

Display an animal rights sticker in your car window. Give the drivers behind you something to think about.

11. Blog / Web Site / Online Page

Places links on your blog, web site or online page to your favourite animal rights organisations and web sites. Display their logos, banners and graphics.

12. Library Books

Ask your public, school or college library to buy books on rights, welfare, veganism and other animal-friendly subjects. Look up a few specific titles, authors and other essential details your library does not but should have and hand your list to the librarian. Keep an eye on the bookshelves for sight of your books and ask the librarian to put them and other animal-friendly books on a prominent stand for display. Your long-term goal at your library could be to get animal rights accepted as a standard library shelf subject (if it is not one already).

Buy animal rights books to read and then donate them to your library.

13. School Animals

Urge your school or college if they are into cutting up real animals to ‘dissect’ animals virtually by computer program instead. And ask your school not to keep animals on the premises for educating the children/students.

14. Make Menus

Ask for more animal-friendly (or at least less animal-unfriendly) food at your college or work refectory. For instance, get management to ban eggs from caged hens and offer eggs from genuine free-range hens and generally to shun factory farmed animals. Persuade management to provide simple information about the food they offer so that diners know what they are eating and have a proper choice of alternatives - free-range and organic.

15. Study Animal Ethics

Ask for animal ethics to be taught at your school, college or university. Animal ethics is a bona fide scholarly pursuit that incorporates animal rights but has broader scope (see Chapter 2: Animal Ethics.)

16. Stimulate Ethical Policies

As far as you can, trade with companies that have publicly published ethical policies. For example, use banks with a stated code of ethics. Pressure companies that have no ethical policies regarding animals to embrace a code of ethics incorporating animals. Become a share-holder in animal abusing companies in order to criticise them more effectively as a shareholder. Publicise their response or lack of one.

17. Stir Up Ethical Purchasing

Get your company to make its purchases from animal-friendly companies. If your company is not animal-friendly, ask them why they are not - with the intention of putting ideas into their head. Has your company a code of animal ethics spelling out how the company should act regarding animals and animal products? Get management or colleagues to compose a code.

18. Act for the Little Animals on Your Doorstep

Many people stick fish in glass bowls or other unsuitable lodgings that cause their inhabitants serious problems. It is up to us to point out to our fish-keeping neighbours the demerits of bowling fish. And what about birds in cages and animals in tiny hutches...?

For more about goldfish see Goldfish Bowls.

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