Heidi StephensonTruth Tankas 4
Animal Rights Poetry By Heidi Stephenson From All-Creatures.org

Poems of compassion dedicated to the non-human animals who share this planet with us and the people who fight for them.

Truth Tankas 4
By Heidi Stephenson

There are no beings in the universe, according to human beings, except themselves. All others are commodities…
Every crime capable of being perpetuated by one being upon another, is day by day rained upon them
and with a calmness that would do honour to the managers of an inferno.
(J. Howard Moore)

Most of us would be horrified if a neighbour did to her companion animal what is routinely– and in most cases, legally – inflicted on literally millions of animals daily, not only in laboratories and in the wild, but in factory farms, transport and slaughterhouses. Most of us view ourselves as reasonably humane.
(Billy Ray Boyd)

The Chicken And The Egg

Young male chicks are gassed
At just twenty-four hours old -
(Or ground up, alive).
That’s why vegans don’t eat eggs:
The chicken and egg trade - one.

Double yoke (Britain)

‘Broiler’ hens are bred
To grow unnaturally fast.
This badly strains bones,
Causing leg deformities -
That stop them reaching their food.

50 million die
(An expected money loss) -
Only 6 percent
Of Britain’s ‘KFC’ girls:
Sick, starving – expendable.

Pig Business

In the U.S.A,
Male piglets are castrated
(No anaesthesia) -
So that “boar taint” doesn’t spoil
The taste of diners’ “pulled” ‘pork’.

“What a downer!”

Crippled animals
Are referred to as “downers.”
They are dragged to death:
There is no mercy for them -
(Often kicked and punched, to boot.)

If This Were You

Can you imagine?
The cold, sharp blade at your throat…
The terror of death…
Silence is complicity.
Avoidance is immoral.

Go on to: TURKEY (“Tis’ the season to be sorry…”)
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