Kategorie: Animals

As the climate catastrophe makes headlines every day, concepts like “regenerative agriculture” and other “sustainable” farming methods are being examined—but does regenerative agriculture do anything for the animals tormented by the farming industry?

What Is Regenerative Agriculture?

“Regenerative agriculture” is an umbrella term for farming and grazing practices that aim to create sustainable supply chains in food- and clothing-production systems by releasing as little greenhouse gas as possible. Typical farming techniques—such as plowing and overgrazing— force too many animals to feed off too little land, leave the soil barren, and release a high amount of carbon into the air.

Regenerative agricultural tactics, such as “low-till” farming and “holistic grazing,” focus on rebuilding organic matter by disrupting natural vegetation and soil as little as possible—but when it comes to farmed animals, do these methods really make a difference?

Is Regenerative Agriculture Better for Animals and the Planet?

There’s not enough evidence to suggest that regenerative agriculture can make animal-derived products “sustainable,” and the practice does nothing to prevent the immeasurable cruelty inherent in exploiting animals for their bodies. Because the term “regenerative” is vague, some brands are now using claims of regenerative farming as a way to greenwash and “humane wash” animal-based products. Companies are using misleading marketing terms with implicit beneficial claims—such as “carbon-neutral burgers,” “regenerative wool,” or “regenerative leather”—giving consumers the false impression that their purchases are ethical and eco-friendly.

Studies show that the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by even the most “carbon-friendly” beef production is still over double that of the least carbon-friendly tofu, bean, pea, or nut production. The same is true for animal skins. Wool, silk, and cow leather have global-warming impacts more than three times greater than those of vegan textiles like polyester fabric or polyurethane synthetic leather. The Food Climate Research Network and the University of Oxford have found that a significant expansion of animal agriculture—even if animals are “sustainably raised”—would cause “catastrophic” land-use change and other intense environmental damage. There simply isn’t enough land to make regenerative methods scalable in a way that would make animal agriculture sustainable.

Regenerative farming also doesn’t address animal welfare issues and does nothing to prevent the rampant cruelty in the animal agriculture industry. For example, cows used for milk—regardless of the “humane” or “ethical” labels on dairy packages—are forcibly separated from their babies, often within a day of their birth, and the strong emotional bond between mother and calf is traumatically severed. Mother cows will often cry out for their babies for days after they’ve been torn away.

Going Vegan Is the Only Sustainable Choice

Instead of purchasing animal-derived merchandise produced by agricultural methods that may be only slightly less environmentally harmful than traditional farming, brands and consumers should make the immediate and truly sustainable decision to buy only vegan products. Every person who goes vegan reduces the carbon footprint of their eating by 70% and spares about 200 animals every year.

Try PETA’s 3-Week Vegan Challenge

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EMERGENCY ALERT: As record-breaking heat waves rip through the U.S., it’s critical to remember that French bulldogs, Boston terriers, pugs, boxers, and other breathing-impaired breeds (BIBs) are at risk of suffering—or even dying—from heatstroke.

BIBs Struggle More to Withstand the Heat

Because BIBs have flat faces and abnormally small airways, they’re twice as likely to suffer from heatstroke than other breeds. These dogs have been bred for a particular look, resulting in drastically shortened airways that make it hard for them to breathe and stay safe—or even alive!—in the heat.

Be on High Alert for Signs of Distress

Gasping and rasping, shortness of breath, and panting may be mistaken as “typical” types of behavior for BIBs—but these are all signs of distress and can lead to fatalities in heat waves. In July alone, a French bulldog came close to dying from heatstroke, even though he was sitting in the shade; a bulldog with heatstroke collapsed in public; another died in a greenhouse; and yet another died from the heat at a doggie daycare—and those are just the reported cases.

Breeding Dogs Into a Lifetime of Suffering Is Cruel—Take Action Now!

According to a recent veterinary study, BIBs can no longer be classified as “normal dogs” because of their genetic health defects. They might be banned in the U.K., restrictions have been imposed on them in Germany, and in Norway, a court ruling established a precedent for the recognition that flat-faced breeds suffer more and should no longer be bred.

It’s time to save dogs’ lives by banning their breeding and sale in the U.S. You can help by taking the pledge to adopt and never shop:

Take the pledge!

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PETA is placing full-and front-page ads in The Washington Times and a full-page ad in The Hill condemning the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) disgraceful decision to award a nearly $13 million annual infrastructure grant—$65 million over the next five years—to the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) at the University of Washington (UW). This grant is in addition to the tens of millions of dollars it has received in 2022 to fund experiments on monkeys. NIH awarded the grant despite WaNPRC staff’s admitted destruction of data, the facility’s appalling record of infant primate deaths, multiple serious violations of federal animal protection laws and state animal health and import regulations, and rampant disease and toxic waste exposures at its breeding facility in Arizona.

PETA has called on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to investigate NIH’s review process in light of the award. In October, the group provided Becerra with evidence of unethical and illegal actions by the WaNPRC that endangered primate and public health, as documented by state and federal agencies in addition to UW’s own records.

“NIH knew of the primate center’s violations, destruction of data, failure to prevent zoonotic disease outbreaks, and starvation deaths of monkeys—and still awarded it a multimillion-dollar grant,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “NIH can’t be trusted with public funds.”

In December 2021, the King County Superior Court in Seattle held the primate center liable in civil litigation brought by PETA based in part on the facility’s failure to turn over videos and photographs of monkeys used in experiments. In a series of shocking under-oath admissions, the former director and experimenters there described routinely deleting data, making it impossible for UW to comply with not only the Public Records Act but also, apparently, the school’s own records-retention duties as the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-supported funding from NIH.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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