Jul 25, 2017
Ah, the strawberries I picked while volunteer farming in Maine were so juicy and ripe. You don’t see strawbs like these in the store. 🍓💚
seen from Japan
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seen from United States
seen from Spain
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seen from Philippines
seen from Ukraine
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seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Japan
seen from China
seen from United States
Ah, the strawberries I picked while volunteer farming in Maine were so juicy and ripe. You don’t see strawbs like these in the store. 🍓💚
73 cows Get a hanky, this will melt your heart 🙂 Thank God for Jay and Katja, may all the animal farmers follow in their footsteps.
Check out our first weekly produce box for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members! The veggies are from our vegan farm, a 2.8-acre oasis for compassionately grown veggies, herbs, and flowers! We don't use any animal inputs (manure, blood/bone meal, fish meal, feathers, etc) so we can be a model for farmers and individuals. Check out our vegan farmers at Grow It Kindly
Veganic Agriculture: Say No to Poop!
Animal Place is one of the only animal sanctuaries in the nation growing vegan produce. Visitors ask, rightfully so, why we abstain from using the manure produced by the resident animals on our 2.8-acre vegan micro-farm. After all, the animals are not being exploited or mistreated, what is the harm?
While it is true no harm comes to the animals by using their poop, the reality is most of our fruits, vegetables and grains are grown using the cruel by-products of industrialized farming. If we wish to encourage a more vegan world, then we must be models to other farms and individuals. We cannot do that if we use the manure of the cows, pigs and chickens.
For example, when you buy soil enriched with chicken manure, this is where that manure comes from:
This is a manure pit from a traditional egg-farm in California. The feces produced by the caged birds falls into this pit and after the birds are slaughtered, the litter is cleared out and used for fertilizer.
More important for those of us who care about animals, this is who the manure comes from:
No one with an ounce of empathy can look at this hen and think she is happy and content. Her existence is moment after moment of unceasing misery.
The flesh of this hen, a "spent egg-laying hen", is not profitable. She may be composted or she may be slaughtered and her blood, bones and feathers ground up to be used in fertilizers as "blood and bone meal" or "feather meal".
In fields growing corn, soy, vegetables and fruits, manure from local industrial animal farms are sprayed, often in excess, on the land. The wet manure is not processed like human sewage, so the raw waste dramatically increases the risk of transmitting bacteria to human consumers. Spinach and broccoli are not agents of E. coli, the poop sprayed on the soil growing them is, though.
We remember who manure comes from and how the lives of cows, pigs, and chickens on modern farms are miserable and their deaths cruel and unnecessary.
In our modern world, being completely vegan is virtually impossible. Yet it is possible to be more compassionate and sustainable with veganic agriculture, pushing us further away from a reliance on animal suffering and closer to a world that is kinder to all.
-Marji Beach, Education Manager