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The world is aware of the horrendous destruction and loss of life caused by the bushfires in Victoria. ALV is out in the badly affected areas working. It is extremely hard to get admitted into the worst hit areas as they are still considered crime scenes with police tape wrapped around many properties and vehicles left totally burned out on the sides of the roads and jammed up into trees. We were able to get the rescue van in yesterday which was filled with hay/feed/water and first aid supplies along with our experienced rescue team, including Anita, Cherie and Skye. I did bush fire relief work at the Ash Wednesday disaster back in 1983 and knew what to expect and what needed to be done.

Anita, Cherie and Skye feeding the cows

I knew it would be extremely hard to locate injured wildlife at the centre of the destruction five days later so we concentrated on doing food drops around any water sources we could find in the burnt out wilderness including around dams and tiny streams. Locals had told us they saw kangaroos visiting their dams the night before, so we were happy to leave piles of food there for them to find.

It was numbing to find one totally burned out fern gully with only the stumps of once magnificent tree ferns standing in the ash alongside a small stream trickling through the masses of dead and black trees fallen across it. It was deadly quiet except for the tiny and occasional chirp from a lonely bird who we could not locate and the noise of firetrucks and SES vehicles passing on the windswept dusty road.

We also fed several groups of really hungry and thirsty cattle we located along burnt out roadsides, the fences totally destroyed. At dusk as we were driving down the mountain we decided to do one last hay drop and turned into an extremely blackened area. We came across a dazed family group of cattle - a magnificent black bull and a couple cows with their calves at foot. I’ve never seen such a regal looking bull in my life, I expected him to back right away from us, but when we approached with a bale of hay he couldn’t get to it fast enough, pulling a handful of hay straight out of my hand! We also quickly filled water buckets from our main supply in the van, and the bull was so thirsty he got his head stuck in the water bucket while emptying it. Within minutes many more heads popped up over the burnt out ridge and before long there were 30 head of cattle devouring the hay we brought.

Patty hand feeding a bull

It’s so tragic up there, I felt at such a loss seeing the handful of locals standing around their burnt out properties, trying their best to make some sense of it all. My heart breaks for them and what they are going through, many are more or less in a daze. I knew at the end of the day I would be returning to my home, my haven, my familiar place of safety and rest. They have none of this left. I was in awe of their spirit of strength and resilience and will to keep going. And the feeling of community in the state of Victoria, indeed the whole of Australia is awesome everyone seems to be personally feeling this tragedy and wanting to do something to help.

We will continue on with our feed drops and helping out any which way we can.

Hungry cows eating

Patty recently returned from a USA speaking engagement where she addressed the annual United Poultry Concerns (UPC) Forum in Virginia.

Thanks to Karen Davis, founder of United Poultry Concerns (UPC) for inviting me to give a talk at their annual forum in Virginia USA.. I think I’d rather do anything than fly in a plane but it was great to be part of this conference and to show recent footage our rescue team took inside a parent bird breeding factory for egg laying hens. I wrote about this rescue in an earlier blog, Tears and Loyalty, but to my knowledge undercover footage of this relatively unknown aspect of the egg industry hadn’t been shown before.

The footage was only approximately four minutes and it’s main impact is the voices of the birds - for once they can speak for themselves. The roosters crow continually while the hens scream non-stop; it appeared they had all gone mad.

The backs of the hens were red raw from constant mating. The roosters were packed tightly in the sheds with them, it is wall to wall exhausted birds, every single one bedraggled and miserable. But the roosters were still humping the hens and holding tightly to the backs of their necks with their beaks while doing so.

There is no respite or escape for either the hens or roosters for a solid twelve months. All eggs laid by the hens go into incubators to hatch and the female chicks (who mum and dad will never know much less even see) become battery hens, barnlaid hens or free range hens. Meanwhile, the male chicks are ground up alive in industrial blenders, or gassed in plastic bags because they don’t lay eggs.

Please click here to spend four minutes with these birds. The more of us who are with them, (even for just four minutes) the more informed and passionate we will be to help them.

And help is on the way! In the USA the vegan message is sprouting faster than grass in spring, Many of us by now will be aware that Oprah has signed on for a three week vegan diet. My family usually turn a deaf ear to my vegan urgings but now with the doyen of daytime TV stepping up to the plate, people are opening their eyes. Check out Oprah’s kind journey here http://www2.oprah.com/foodhome/food/cleanse/blog/blog_1.jhtml

And meanwhile Ellen, America’s other TV Wonderwoman had Skinny Bitch authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin on her show with some of their delicious vegan recipes. Have a look at the segment here: http://ellen.warnerbros.com/2008/05/how_about_some_delicious_skinn.php

I visited my mother, two brothers and two sisters in the California desert after the conference. I was out of toothpaste not tested on animals so asked for the nearest health food store. WOW, when I followed my sister’s directions it was not a little corner shop but a mega-supermarket. Seriously, I stood in awe when I walked inside and could hardly move. Aisle after aisle of vegan choices… that’s plural - as in CHOICES! Tofurky, Boca Burgers, countless varieties and brands of tempeh, tofu, vegan mayo and salad dressings, frozen meals, pumpkin pies, vegan ice creams, pies and cakes, organic fruits and vegetables. We all know of course, that most of these items are ‘treats’ and the best vegan diet is eating plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit, beans, grains and nuts while keeping processed foods to a minimum. Did I have fun! I filled the shopping cart and my mother’s freezer/fridge.

Melbourne is right up front with following this trend, just being voted the Vegan capital of Australia, and one of our Animal Liberation Youth leaders, Anikee is busy setting up a vegan grocery store in Brunswick (more on that when it opens!)

Not so much fun was to discover two dairy feedlots and rows of egg sheds a half hour drive from my mother’s place. It’s desert territory with beautiful mountains surrounding it, but the sprinklers were on growing the grasses/crops to feed the cows locked in barren lots and the hens locked inside dim sheds. The time is approaching on a global scale when we simply won’t be able to be so wasteful. The animals and starving people are eagerly waiting for this time to come - for them it’s a matter of life and death, for us it’s a food addiction.

And finally, hats off to the wonderful activists who were busy saving this little piglet from a horrible Melbourne piggery while I was shopping in the USA. Pig Rescue - April ‘08 (view more)

ALV’s Openrescue team have successfully completed 6 Openrescues in the first two months of 2008 removing a total of 64 exhausted, ill and emaciated birds (hens, roosters, chicks) from factory farms in Victoria and NSW.

Not all of these abused little birds have survived but the majority are now in good loving homes enjoying life. Seven tiny featherless bodies are dustbathing and sunbathing near me with great delight as I type this.

So why do we do what we do, going out in the middle of the night, crossing dark paddocks, sliding under electric fences or through barbed wire, jumping into ditches laying flat on our stomachs when cars pass by, hardly breathing if we hear strange noises? And when finally reaching the huge windowless sheds we quickly change into biosecure white uniforms, disinfect our footwear, slip on rubber gloves and a protective mouth mask to enter into the filthy, putrid and stinking world of the animals who are tortured for their flesh.

Why do we do this? To save as many lives as we can and to photograph and videotape the disgusting, cruel and unhealthy conditions to bring this universal horror to public attention so it can be STOPPED.

Our last rescue just five days ago brought tears to our eyes, one of our younger team members collapsed onto the floor alongside the tens of thousands of hens and roosters inside this shed and burst into tears. I don’t cry as much as I used to, but I also found myself down on the hard metal flooring sitting among the frail and featherless hens and young virile roosters who were repeatedly mating them and curled up in utter frustration and grief.

This night our team had planned to inspect some RSPCA approved barnlaid egg sheds (part of their Choose Wisely Campaign !?!) but upon arrival we discovered these sheds had been depopulated and were awaiting the next batch of victims. We’ve been inside these same sheds before and filmed the overcrowding, debeaking, cannibalism and torment.

As we stood in the cold night air at midnight near these empty sheds we could hear plaintive and eerie wailing noises followed by piercing screams in the distance. We followed our ears and several paddocks away we found two huge sheds both brightly lit in the middle of the night. Each shed was filled with exhausted, debeaked and debilitated hens suffering severe featherloss mixed together with young virile roosters. There were no cages, all the birds were tightly packed together on metal flooring. We saw a couple old battle scarred roosters limping about who had obviously missed the ‘old’ rooster cull. This is called ’spiking’ in the industry - where they kill the older male birds at around 50 weeks of age and replace them with young roosters to further boost the economic productivity of the already exhausted hens. Hens who are laying the eggs which after hatching will be the future battery hens, barnlaid hens and free range hens who lay the eggs people eat.

It was clear that the hens were being repeatedly mated with no escape, their backs were red raw. The hens are ISA laying hens. The shed was extremely overcrowded, the birds had little room to move, and the thousands upon thousands of birds had only hard metal flooring to stand on and their claws were sore and damaged. You can see the photos we took below, but these won’t let you hear their chilling screams and wails. The conditions were so appalling and distressing for these feeble birds that it reduced rescue team members to tears. But our loyalty to these suffering animals will NEVER EVER be reduced. We are there for them and will do whatever it takes to help them.

You can help. Please forward this blog to your family and friends so they know who they are eating and that there’s a better way, so we can all live healthy and fulfilling lives!
For a vegan world, Patty

A bald rescued hen at her new sanctuary

Sitting on a friendly lap