These little piggies went to market and nearly died for a drop of water

I really wasn't expecting to be so moved – and enraged – when I clicked “play” on this video that came up on my Facebook newsfeed via Canadian for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals.

Please watch it. It's not the least bit gory. What it is is a glimpse behind the curtain that separates us from animals no different from us in the most basic ways, like being laid flat by a heat wave and dying for a drop of water. Except these animals – pigs en route to slaughter during a heat wave – commonly suffer with no relief.

But not this time. In this heartbreaking video, members of a group called Toronto Pig Save frantically administer some milk of human kindness to these chronically abused animals as they head to their undeserved fate.

REVIEW: Bringing the Ghosts in Our Machine to Life

There are many ways of alerting people to “the animal holocaust,” as some call it (with no argument from me), and winning hearts and minds (and hands, feet and shopping lists).

Some are films and videos.

And of those, some are in-your-face graphic and shocking, such as the Scared Straight of animal advocacy documentaries, Earthlings, and PETA's classic Meet Your Meat.

Others, like the award-winning documentary Peaceable Kingdom, mitigate hard-to-bear moments of brutal, cover-your-eyes reality with no less emotionally overwhelming oases of peace, beauty and hope.

The Ghosts in Our Machine – a new feature-length documentary from Canada – is in the second category.

Directed by Liz Marshall, Ghosts lets us tag along with animal holocaust “war photographer” Jo-Anne McArthur (to quote her sad-eyed, mordant self-description), usually undercover in places we're never supposed to see (the “machine” where so much of our food, fibre and medicine comes from), but also in places of compassion, like Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York, where many of the very same species live free, content and unmolested.

A newborn calf awaits life in a crate.
Photo from the online gallery of Jo-Anne McArthur. 

It doesn't matter where McArthur finds her haunting subjects, whether abused and degraded in captivity or delighting (and delightful) in liberation. Her camera captures every individual's essence in a way that allows a fur-farmed fox or a rescued stockyard calf to speak ineffable volumes to us, eye to eye, soul to soul. And for that reason alone, The Ghosts in Our Machine should be required viewing for any human animal who professes to love other animals but doesn't quite walk the talk.

Marshall and McArthur bring the ghosts in our machine to life. And those animals' faces, so redolent of personhood, of naked fear, curiosity, affection and pleasure, may never stop haunting you. And that's a good thing.

View the trailer and visit the website to find out where to see The Ghosts in Our Machine. 

Mother Jones on Mother Pigs

It's one thing to hear about the cruel confinement conditions imposed on the millions of sows who give birth to nearly all the pigs in North America from PETA or your friendly neighbourhood vegan. It's another thing when a vivid description of the shameful truth comes from a writer who starts by admitting “I love pork.” Here's how the always exceptional food and agriculture columnist Tom Philpott spells it out in the July/August issue of Mother Jones:

“Throughout their four-month pregnancies, many of these sows live in cages just large enough to contain their bodies. As the sows grow bigger, the tight confinement means they can lie face down but can't flop over onto their sides. The floors under these ‘gestation crates’ are slotted so that urine and feces can slip through into vast cesspits. Immobilized above their own waste, the sows are exposed to high levels of ammonia, which causes respiratory problems. Just before they deliver, they're moved to farrowing crates, in which they have just enough space to nurse.

“Once the piglets are weaned, it's back to the gestation crate for the breeding sow, which averages two and a half pregnancies per year. After three or four years, the sow is slaughtered for meat.”

And this, among other disturbing peeks into the world of captive sows:

Why Vegans Don’t Drink Milk

There are many reasons why vegans don't drink milk – the male calves who are killed at birth or raised in solitary crates to become “veal,” the brutal toll that modern intensive milk production takes on the bodies of dairy cows. But this moving video from Mercy for Animals tells a story that, in its own way, says it all. Certainly, it says all one needs to know to say “no.”

Saying it with video ... and music

Six years ago, a friend and associate asked me to produce a Christmas video of a different kind – a video, using footage shot in North America and Europe by her investigative group and others of the “farm to plate” experience of countless animals we rarely see in any other context than, say, a warm and fuzzy Christmas dinner. Hence the commissioned title – “Do They Know It's Christmas?” – and the timing: it was released on YouTube on December 21, 2007.

You can view it here.

Unfortunately, the version I had wanted to release was largely set to KD Lang's sublime cover of Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah,” but I was unable to get permission to use it on time. In fact, the permissions people at Sony wound up doddling so much, I concluded they simply couldn't be bothered. So a year later, I uploaded that original version – slightly tweaked – without permission.  So there! I also used excerpts from a couple other carefully chosen songs without even trying to get permission. I had gone rogue! The resulting video, “Hallelujah, Silent Night,” is embedded right here, below the next paragraph.

The Witness – a screening and a review

One of the most moving – and surprisingly delightful – documentaries in the world of animal rights advocacy is now free to view online. I reviewed it when it came out over a decade ago (reprinted below). Here it is: the gripping story of a “wise guy”-style New Yorker who became a passionate animal advocate – and a never-look-back vegan.

The Witness: A Tribe of Heart Documentary from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.

Little Buddha

Sometimes it takes a morally precocious toddler to help us tell right from wrong.

(To watch this extraordinary video in English, view it here on Youtube where you can click on the transcripts icon next to "add to" just below the video. The translation will then scroll below the video in real time.)


I must have started leaking tears around the same time the boy's remarkable mother did. How many parents just say “shut up and eat your octopus!” Flash forward five years, and this loving, fair-minded little boy may be happily chowing down on a Big Mac with his mother – such are the pressures and inducements of our meat-mesmerized culture.

Or he and his lovingly flexible mother may be helping to lead the movement against our species’ history of violence.