ON HUMANE CHOICE LABELLING - DON'T BELIEVE THE LIES!

Although Australia’s ‘Humane Choice’ label (http://www.humanechoice.com.au) and other such labels may look like a good thing for nonhuman farmed animals, it potentially could be a hindrance to attaining animal rights. Humane Choice labelled animal products seem to be more humane than the flesh and bodily secretions of factory farmed animals. However some people will inevitably choose to believe their profoundly untruthful labelling and purchase animal products with the Humane Choice label, instead of becoming vegan. This is why I chose to single them out. Also, I’m opposed to their degradation of wonderful words like integrity and respect. NO ONE raising animals for human consumption, nor anyone purchasing animal products and ordering the death of nonhuman animals, is on the side of RIGHT. Animal agriculture should be a thing of the past. Farming animals (fully aware individuals) is not only callously killing billions upon billions of innocent nonhuman animals for no other defence than “I like how they taste”, it’s killing our environment and it’s killing us.

On the Humane Choice website, they offer an explanation of their label. In italics are excerpts that didn’t sit right with me:

Excerpt:“The Humane Choice label will initially cover free range beef, pork, lamb, chicken and eggs and will guarantee the consumer that the animal has been treated with respect and care, from birth through to death.”  

I find their usage of the words ‘respect’ and ‘integrity’ to be nothing short of blasphemy. How can they say that an animal is “respected from birth” when the whole intention of his/her being bred into existence is to someday be killed and eaten by humans? We can all live without that kind of “respect”! And they go as far as making the claim that the animal is treated with respect through death. “Respect” and slaughtering do not go hand in hand. They seem not to have any conception of the meaning of the word “respect”.

Excerpt:  "The Humane Choice label will denote the animal has had the best life and death offered to any farm animal. They basically live their lives as they would have done on Old McDonald’s farm, being allowed to satisfy their behavioural needs, to forage and move untethered and uncaged, with free access to outside areas, shade when it’s hot, shelter when it’s cold, with a good diet and a humane death.”

In the first sentence, their death is being “offered” to them. Lucky them! They get to live on Old McDonald’s farm and have their death offered to them! They get to get a humane death, too! Oh boy! The truth is that they don’t die of natural causes; they are murdered (inhumanely) by humans. They are enslaved and killed so unnecessarily because humans can thrive on a plant-powered diet. In regards to satisfying their behavioral needs…I bet if they are anything like me (and they are), that they have a behavioral need to want to live!

Excerpt: “There is only one ‘Humane Choice’ so there is no variation in standards and consumers can have full confidence in the integrity of the product.” 

Enslaving other species and dominating them is not my definition of the word ‘integrity’. There is absolutely no need for consuming animal products as proven by many long time vegans, including myself. Yes, there is only one humane choice and that is to become vegan. I urge people not to settle for the pseudo “right thing to do” by purchasing products of humanely raised animals, but to do the “really right thing to do” by becoming vegan.

And to the Humane Choice Label and other such businesses…thank-you for having more compassion than most people towards nonhuman animals, but the Truth is that becoming vegan is the only choice that exemplifies integrity and respect for other animals. Anything other than being vegan is what I call ‘living a lie’ - as we have the right to own, enslave, and consume other animals; a very inhumane choice indeed.