Activism – Page 8 – CAPE CHARLES MIRROR

United Poultry Concerns Urges Positive Action for Chickens During May

May 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Machipongo, VA, USA – On May 4, animal advocates celebrate International Respect for Chickens Day. Launched by United Poultry Concerns in 2005, International Respect for Chickens Day celebrates chickens throughout the world and protests their suffering and abuse in cockfighting, agribusiness, experimental research, and other cruelties.

“We urge everyone to do a compassionate ACTION for chickens, on or around May 4th,” says Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns which promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of chickens and other domestic fowl.

“A library display, a vegan open house, an informative blog post, or simply talking to family and friends about the plight – and delight – of chickens are great ways to stick up for chickens,” Davis says.

In honor of International Respect for Chickens Day, activists will be organizing creative actions all across the U.S. including a leafleting at the White House in Washington DC on Saturday, May 7th and a Peaceful Protest in Petaluma, California on Sunday, May 1. To further the message, UPC will have 150 kiosks in New York City advertising International Respect for Chickens Day with a powerful image of a mother hen protecting her chicks under her wing. It will read “What Wings Are For.”

“Happy chickens are cheerful birds,” says Davis, who maintains a chicken sanctuary in Virginia. “Chickens love the earth and sun, yet millions are sitting in filthy dark buildings on crippled legs breathing polluted air, as described in my book Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs. After they are dead, salmonella-infected chickens are soaked in toxic chemicals.”
United Poultry Concerns urges people to celebrate chickens on the planet instead of the plate.

For information, visit United Poultry Concerns at http://www.upc-online.org.

Karen Davis: My Personal Path and Rocky Road to Thinking Like a Chicken

May 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Ground Zero for Poultry Activism: Karen Davis’ office in Machipongo

United Poultry Concerns’ Conscious Eating Conference brings expert speakers to Berkeley, California to share their ideas about the best food choices we can make for the planet, ourselves, and other animals. UPC President, Karen Davis presented this personal account.

I did not grow up around chickens or other farmed animals, but meeting a chicken in a muddy shack in Maryland awakened my personal awareness of chickens, their feelings and living conditions. My experience with the hen I named Viva coincided with my discovery of the hidden suffering of billions of chickens buried alive in the modern poultry and egg industry. These revelations led me to “think like a chicken” so deeply that in 1990 I founded United Poultry Concerns, an organization dedicated to promoting the compassionate and respectful treatment of chickens and other domestic fowl including a sanctuary for rescued chickens. I will describe what I have learned about the emotional nature of chickens and their destruction by the poultry industry for nuggets and omelets. I will discuss what we need to do.

See Videos of Conference Presentations

Karen Davis, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that addresses the treatment of domestic fowl in food production, science, education, entertainment, and human companionship situations. She is the author of several books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry and More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality. Award-winningly profiled in The Washington Post for her outstanding work for the birds, Karen maintains a sanctuary for chickens on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. www.upc-online.org

5th annual Run For The Animals Huge Success

April 24, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The 5th annual Run For The Animals was held April 10, 2016, at the Historic Onancock School.

Cool morning temperatures didn’t keep the 260 runners and walkers away, many with their canine companions.

Record numbers were hit in both participants and money raised.

Raising over $12,000 for the local animal welfare orgs who serve the Shore;
including the SPCA, Animal Control, Shore Wildlife Rehab, Shelter Me, Eastern Shore Spay Org, Over The Moon Rescue, Road Runner Rescue, and Run For The Animals’ winter straw program.

Winners of the Half Marathon were:
Benjamin Thomas from Cape Charles
Josie Brown from Dames Quarter, MD (returning winner from 2015)

Winners of the 10K were:
Kevin Burcham from Midlothian
Laura Gonzalez from Exmore (returning winner from 2015)

Full details can be found at www.RunForTheAnimals.com

Feeling the Bern: Bernie Sanders Rocks Norfolk Scope

February 27, 2016 by 1 Comment

Photo courtesy Channel 13 News

NORFOLK, Va. — “There’s a lot of pain.” That was the message Sen. Bernie Sanders brought to Norfolk Scope on Tuesday. Repeatedly interrupted by a cheering crowd,Sanders touched on several campaign promises, including banking reform, free college education, a Medicare-for-all health care system, tighter campaign finance laws and stricter international trade rules to protect U.S. jobs.

“You are very, very powerful people when you start flexing your muscles, and that’s what everyone has got to do right now,” said Sanders.

There must be “a political revolution in which millions of people understand democracy is not a football game,” he said. “People in this community, where you have a strong military, you understand that people have fought and died to defend American democracy. … You are that democracy.”

The Cape Charles Mirror did interview one of the event’s attendees (the Editor’s daughter).

Mirror-“So, Rachel, was there a big crowd?”

Rachel-“Oh,yeah, every section at Scope, except for two were completely filled.”

Mirror-“Really? It was reported by the other news outlets that only 3500 or so showed up. It sound’s more like 7500 to 8000.”

Rachel-“At least that. That report is typical of what they say, trying to discredit Bernie.”

Mirror-“Did you get any pictures I can use with the nice new camera you got for Christmas?”

Rachel-“No.”

Mirror-“Why not?”

Rachel -“I was too busy listening to Bernie.”

Mirror-“How was he?”

Rachel, -“Dad, Bernie rocks!”

Cruelty and the Truth about Dairy

February 21, 2016 by 8 Comments

Besides humans, no species drinks milk beyond infancy, and never consumes the milk of another species. Cow’s milk is a refined substance especially suited to the nutritional needs of calves (calves have four stomachs and gain hundreds of pounds in a matter of months, sometimes weighing more than 1,000 pounds before they are 2 years old). According to the American Gastroenterological Association, when people ingest it, problems such as food allergies among infants and children can occur. Most people begin to produce less lactase, the enzyme that helps with the digestion of milk, when they are as young as 2 years old. This reduction can lead to lactose intolerance. Millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, and an estimated 90 percent of Asian-Americans and 75 percent of Native- and African-Americans suffer from the condition, which can cause bloating, gas, cramps, vomiting, headaches, rashes, and asthma.
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VAUTE COUTURE: All-Vegan Fashion Brand

February 5, 2016 by Leave a Comment

At the Mirror, we are passionate about great design, as well as ways to accomplish great design, cruelty free. We were very excited to accidentally come across Vaute Couture (“Haute” with a “V” for Vegan, pronounced “Vote”) the “The World’s First All-Vegan Fashion Brand.” The company is based in Brooklyn NYC, and was founded by Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart as “a quest to take animals out of the fashion equation, and create the perfect winter dress coat warm enough for a Chicago winter.” We came across VAUTE while keeping an eye on New York Fashion Week (ok, really following Kendall Jenner), and it was noted that Vaute is the first vegan label to show at during the Week. CNN said “Hilgart is the rebel of fashion week, VAUTE is breaking runway history.” PETA named Ms. Hilgart the “Most Influential Designer”, and Glamour Magazine & Conde Nast called Leanne a “Gamechanger, embodying courage, conviction, and creativity.” VAUTE has also been featured in WWD, Elle France, BusinessInsider, and more.

Celebrity fans include Angela Kinsey, Alicia Silverstone, and Emily Deschanel.

From the Vaute website, “The line launched in summer of 2009 in the depth of the recession, to hundreds of preorders from customers who had never seen the coats in person, most of which had never met Leanne, and would wait months before receiving them. This proof of concept allowed Leanne to produce her line’s fabrics with the same cutting edge mills that work with Patagonia and North Face. Without a background in fashion but 8 months of fabric research, Leanne realized that marrying these high tech performance textiles with structures, cuts and finishes of dress coats created a coat that had the look and feel of a beautiful wool coat, but the warmth and protection of a ski coat, and without any animal fibers. Her entire first production run was funded by her earliest supporters.”

Open House at United Poultry Concerns: November 28th

November 14, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Saturday, November 28
OPEN HOUSE 2-5pm
United Poultry Concerns
Meet our rescued chickens and savor the feast at UPC’s annual Thanksgiving Open House from 2-5pm.
Please bring a delicious vegan dish to share. Family and friends are welcome.

Free and open to the public.
12325 Seaside Road,
Machipongo, VA 23405

For more information, contact:
karen@upc-online.org

757-678-7875

McMuffins going Cage-Free

September 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Americans love their Egg McMuffins, which accounts for the two billion shell and liquid eggs the company uses annually (about 4 percent of the 43.56 billion eggs produced in the United States). This week, McDonalds announced that it begin a process that will ultimately lead to them using only cage free eggs, and will be phasing out using eggs produced by hens trapped in battery cages.

Currently less than 10 percent of the nation’s laying hens housed are “cage free” , so it could take McDonald’s up to 10 years to reach its goal of having 100 percent come from hens that are allowed to move freely inside barns.

The company is responding to consumer demand and public pressure for more “humanely” produced eggs. Meeting the price could be dicey as cage free eggs tend to be more expensive. In California, where egg producers were required to provide more space for their birds by the beginning of this year, agricultural economists estimated that prices for eggs would rise 10 to 40 percent. Egg producers there argue, however, that retailers add big markups to cage-free eggs that distort the actual increase in the cost of producing them.

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Karen Davis: How UPC Introduced Open Rescue to U.S. Activists

August 16, 2015 by 1 Comment

Open Rescue: image courtesy of Animal Rights and Media at weebly.com

United Poultry Concerns’ Forum on Direct Action for Animals, June 26-27, 1999, in Machipongo, Virginia, introduced U.S. animal activists to the strategy developed by Australian activist, Patty Mark, of Open Rescues, in which undercover investigators admit to rescuing animals and documenting the conditions of their abuse instead of liberating animals behind a mask. UPC President Karen Davis describes this landmark forum and the revolution it created in farmed animal rescue strategy in the U.S. in “Open Rescues: Putting a Face on the Rescuers and on the Rescued” in the collection, Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals.

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Pope Francis: The Green Pope

July 26, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Pope Francis

In 2013, the Pope took the name of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, and since that time has injected himself as an advocate for not just animals, but also for the health of the planet. It was recently reported that, during an address at St. Peters, the Pope attempted to provide solace for young boy who had just lost his dog. He told the boy all dogs do go to heaven (as well as all animals), “One day we will see our animals again in eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all God’s creatures.”

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