Animal Rights Activists Protest Dolce & Gabana, Fendi, Canada Goose, and DSquared

Vegan Future Now joined dozens of other animal rights activists in New York City’s posh Soho neighborhood on Black Friday to protest retailers who continue to sell real fur and to educate consumers about the brutal realities of the fur trade.

Despite the cruelty involved in the production of fur clothing and accessories, many retailers, including Fendi, Dolce & Gabana, Canada Goose, Nordstrom’s, and DSquared, continue to sell products torn from the bodies of defenseless nonhuman animals who suffered unimaginable pain and anguish at the hands of trappers and fur farmers.

We call upon all fashion designers and retailers to join the likes of Prada, Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, and Michael Kors and commit to removing real fur from their lines. Unless or until you do, we’re not going away.

Here are photos from the demonstration:

Animal rights activists outside Dolce & Gabana in downtown Manhattan on Black Friday

The cruel and barbaric reality of the fur trade is shown on video for the edification of passersby.

Despite the availability of cruelty-free alternatives, Dolce & Gabana continues to exploit animals for their fur.

An animal rights activist outside Canada Goose on Black Friday

The feathers that line the inside of Canada Goose jackets are obtained by ripping them from the bodies of fully conscious geese. This cruel and painful process is repeated several times in the course of a goose’s life.

People lined up in front of Canada Goose to take advantage of their Black Friday deals are confronted by animal rights activists.

This couple apparently thinks that animal abuse is hilarious. Don’t be like this couple.

This woman, who is wearing a Canada Goose jacket with fur trim, observed the protest with consternation.

Animal rights activists outside Fendi’s Soho location on Black Friday #fuckfendi

Animal rights activists outside Fendi

A group of animal rights activists entered DSquared to protest the retailer’s use of real fur.

An animal rights activist stands in front of DSquared and its display of a disgusting fur hat that nobody fucking needs.

A very animated and irate employee of DSquared reacts to the presence of people who care about animals.

Another employee of DSquared is very upset that she has to deal with people who care about animals.

The animals who are exploited for the fur industry never die pleasantly. If they are caught or killed in the wild, they will suffer gunshot wounds or be trapped in cruel leg-hold traps, where they often languish for days and die of starvation, dehydration, and exposure. Animals bred and raised for fur live in filth and squalor and die by any of several gruesome means, including anal electrocution, gassing, and bludgeoning. Please do not support this cruel and antiquated industry. To learn more about what goes into the production of fur, please visit PETA’s website.

March Against Fur/Canada Goose

On Saturday, February 18th, 2017, dozens of animal rights activists gathered in New York City in the March Against Fur/Canada Goose in order to raise awareness about the cruel and inhumane fur industry and the barbaric practices by which Canada Goose and other manufacturers of fur clothing produce their garments.  Activists brandished signs and banners, chanted slogans, and distributed anti-fur pamphlets to passersby. Vegan Future Now handed out several dozen of the pamphlets, which were published by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and had many candid conversations with pedestrians who were, by and large, very supportive of our efforts.

Here are some photos from the event.

Two activists pose with their signs before the march begins.

If you wouldn't wear dog fur, then how can you justify wearing coyote fur?

Canada Goose kills. Like, a lot.

One of the organizers of the march and one of the most passionate animal rights activists in New York City, leads protesters down Fifth Avenue.

If people stop buying fur, manufacturers will stop producing it. It's that simple.

Rob Banks leads the march near the Flatiron Building.

Activists rallied outside Paragon Sporting Goods on Broadway to protest the retailer's decision to carry Canada Goose jackets.

A committed and passionate animal rights activist minces no words about her attitude toward the fur industry.

Animal rights activists raise awareness and their voices outside Paragon Sporting Goods.

One of the heroes of the New York City animal rights movement speaks up for the animals outside Paragon Sporting Goods. 

To see more photos as well as video from the march, and to get the latest updates about what Vegan Future Now is doing, please follow us on Instagram at @veganfuturenow. 

Ritual Slaughter in New York City

If you're not one for open-air slaughterhouses, the overpowering stench of blood and feces on the streets and sidewalk, and the sound of terrified animals having their throats slit in the presence and with the assistance of children, then maybe New York City just isn't the place for you. For that is the distressing and anachronistic scene at an annual event that takes place in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, in which an estimated sixty-thousand young chickens are jammed into plastic crates, shipped into the city on trucks, left on the sidewalk without food or water, and then summarily slaughtered in an atavistic and violent atonement ritual known as kaporos.

Your first thought may be that such an overtly unsanitary and unhygienic and morally appalling festival must certainly be illegal in the Capital of The Modern World in the year 2016, and indeed it is illegal. The ritual sacrifice of live animals as described above and practiced within the city limits of New York violates no fewer than fifteen city and state public health and safety laws and statutes regarding cruelty to animals. And yet, it is an annual occurrence that the NYPD does not merely tolerate, but positively supports. Every year the NYPD and the mayor's office not only fail to enforce the very laws that it is their sworn duty and solemn responsibility to uphold, but are also complicit in the breaking of those laws by providing manpower, barricades, and generators to aid and abet the practitioners of these flagrantly illegal activities: activities that are a threat to public health and public safety and are also unimaginably painful and traumatic to the animals involved.

This disgraceful and inhumane practice must end now. And so must the willingness of the New York City Police Department and Mayor deBlasio to look the other way and grant impunity to those whose attachment to an obscure and violent religious tradition is being allowed to imperil public health and public safety and to subvert the laws that protect nonhuman animals from agonizing cruelty. The desire of a few small religious sects to adhere to the barbaric practice of sacrificing live animals in order to atone for their sins should not put other New Yorkers in the position of having to sacrifice our health, safety, and decency at the altar of religious tolerance.    

Below are photographs that Vegan Future Now took at this year's kaporos ritual in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Hovering over each photo with your cursor will reveal a description of the image.

Tens of thousands of live chickens are shipped into Brooklyn in small, cramped, feces-laden plastic crates.

This young chicken will have her throat slit open in order to make a human being feel better about the sins he or she has committed in the past year.

The practitioners invariably hold the chickens with their wings pinned behind their backs, which is incredibly painful for the birds.

No matter what your feelings about animal rights may be, I think we can all agree that no animal should be treated like a bag of groceries.

The NYPD provide barricades, manpower,  and generators to make sure this illegal activity goes off without a hitch.

Most of us would have to provide our own lights and electricity if we wanted to host an event that violates fifteen state and local laws, but the NYPD are happy to do their part to illuminate this illegal and bloody event.  

Animal rights activists showed up in great numbers to protest the cruel and anachronistic practice of animal sacrifice. 

Leaving aside the logically and morally indefensible practice of scapegoating through an atonement sacrifice, forcing children to witness ritual slaughter on such a massive scale is tantamount to child abuse. 

Just before I took this photo, a man standing beside me informed me very menacingly that the contents of this crate are his private property and if he saw me take a photo of it, he would break my camera. I took the photo and the man did nothing. Verbal and even physical abuse of protesters is a common occurrence at kaporos rituals.

A terrified young chicken is handed over to the man who will slit her throat open and toss her aside to bleed to death.

At no more than a few weeks old, this young chicken is sliced open in a ritual that should have ended thousands of years ago.  

Another victim of superstition and human cruelty.

This barbaric and unnecessary act is repeated 60,000 times over the course of just a few days on the streets of Brooklyn every year.

After their throats are slit, the chickens are tossed to a second slaughterhouse volunteer who places them headlong into inverted traffic cones, where they slowly bleed out.

Is this really the kind of work that children should be doing? Though there are laws on the books that forbid persons under 18 to work in slaughterhouses, those laws apparently don't apply to all of us equally. 

Once the chickens have bled out, they are thrown into garbage bags. The participants in and organizers of this event claim that the chickens slaughtered in the ritual are used as food for the less fortunate, though that claim seems incredibly dubious in light of the complete absence of sanitary standards observed before, during, and after slaughter.

This is where the chickens end up. Their bloody bodies are thrown by the hundreds into plastic bags, which are in turn thrown into a cargo van. This is not a refrigerated food service vehicle and in no sense of the word are these corpses being handled as if they were intended for human consumption.  

The blood of the innocent and defenseless does not cleanse your soul. It stains it. 

For more information, please visit EndChickensAsKaporos.com

  All images Copyright 2016 Vegan Future Now

  

Why Every Thinking Person Should Be An Environmentalist, and Every Environmentalist Should Be A Vegan

Let's begin by defining the only term in the title of this essay that might admit of some ambiguity: environmentalist. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an environmentalist is “one who is concerned with protecting and preserving the environment”. To be anything other than an environmentalist in this sense of the word then, is to lack concern for protecting and preserving the environment. And to lack concern for protecting and preserving the environment is to be indifferent to the inescapable fact that a healthy environment is necessary for the survival of the human race; for without clean water, fresh air, and healthy soil, human beings simply cannot live, or at least not for very long.

So, to be anything other than an environmentalist is to be indifferent to protecting and preserving the very system upon which human beings and all other forms of life as we know it rely for survival. Indifference to an issue as important as the survival of one's own species is at the very least unbecoming of a thinking person, and at worst imprudent, myopic, and destructive.  

With the exception of certain religious zealots who positively relish the idea of seeing the world engulfed in an apocalyptic conflagration, however, very few thinking people are keen to admit that they are indifferent to the survival of the human race. But the simple fact is that if you are not concerned with protecting and preserving the environment upon which human survival is utterly dependent (which is to say, if you are not an environmentalist), then aren't you, ipso facto, indifferent to human survival itself? For how can someone lack concern for the preservation and protection of that without which human survival is impossible and at the same time claim to be concerned with human survival itself? Because human survival cannot be uncoupled from a healthy environment, there is simply no reconciling not being an environmentalist with the claim that one is concerned for human survival. 

“Because human survival cannot be uncoupled from a healthy environment, there is simply no reconciling not being an environmentalist with the claim that one is concerned for human survival. ”

Every thinking person should be concerned about the survival of life as we know it on the only planet we have, and should therefore be concerned about protecting and preserving the system upon which life depends: the environment.

Ergo, every thinking person should be an environmentalist.

And every environmentalist should, obviously, do her utmost to support those industries and organizations that adhere to environmentally responsible, sustainable practices and (perhaps more important) should also withdraw her support from those that do not. Being an environmentalist is after all about much more than just separating the refuse from the recyclables and driving less; it's about making informed, considered, rational choices to support industries and organizations whose values and practices are consistent with the principles of environmentalism and to refuse to support those industries and organizations that are destroying the environment upon which we and all other species rely.

Animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation on the planet. In the United States alone, over 260 million acres of forest have been clearcut and converted to cropland for cattle.

And no industry is doing more to destroy the environment than the global animal by-product industry. No other industry in the world uses more natural resources, produces more pollution, or is responsible for more environmental degradation than the industry that produces meat, eggs, and dairy. Consider these statistics:

• Animal agriculture is the number one driver of deforestation on the planet. According to a report by the United Nations, 70% of formerly forested land in the Amazon, and 91% that has been deforested since 1970, is now used as pasture for cattle.

• Raising animals for food uses 70% of the earth's arable land, equivalent to 30% of all the ice-free surface on the globe.

• Animal agriculture accounts for 50-70% of all fresh water used by human beings for all purposes. The production of just one pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of fresh water.

• According to scientists at the World Bank, animal agriculture produces 51% of all man-made greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined and tripled.

• In the United States, untreated animal waste has polluted the ground-water in seventeen states. Thirty-five thousand miles of America's rivers in twenty-two states have been contaminated by the excrement from factory farms. Thirty-five thousand miles is fourteen times the distance from New York to Los Angeles, or one-and-a-half times the circumference of the Earth.

Taking all of the above facts into consideration, it's clear that animal agriculture is not an industry that any sincere environmentalist should be willing to support. In fact, there is no industry that is less deserving of an environmentalist's support than the global animal by-product industry. Whether your primary concern about the environment is climate change, deforestation, water pollution, or water scarcity, there is no way to square a willingness to support animal agriculture with the claim that one is an environmentalist, because a person cannot rightfully claim to be concerned about protecting and preserving the environment if he is unwilling to withdraw his support from the one industry that is doing more than any other to destroy the very environment that he claims to want to protect and preserve.

What does it mean, in practical terms, to withdraw one's support from animal agriculture? It means to stop buying and consuming the products of animal agriculture: meat, eggs, and dairy. It means being vegan.

Ergo, every environmentalist should be a vegan.

To be an environmentalist is to recognize your moral obligation to current and future generations of human beings as well as to the billions of other nonhuman animals with whom we share this planet and our brief time on it. Being vegan allows you to fulfill at least part of that obligation and to spare the lives of thousands of animals in the process.

What thinking person would say no to that?   

To learn more about the benefits of going vegan, please see the Why Go Vegan page of our Web site. And to get your free Vegan Starter Kit from the good folks at PETA, please click here.

(Full disclosure: Vegan Future Now has no formal affiliation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We just think they do awesome work.)