I Wish You Torture Free Holidays

Susan Saladino, The Madonna and Veal Calf, Oil on Canvas

Modern technology has moved us into an age where we have successful and superior alternatives to products and procedures that involve cruelty. Despite these alternatives, laboratories still subject the most sensitive and intelligent animals to brutal atrocities..... Despite the availability of natural plant hormones proven to be safer and equally as effective, some women still choose traditional animal estrogen; even with the understanding that by doing so thousands of adult and infant horses will be tortured and killed.....Synthetic fabrics are readily available as a compassionate alternative, but people still choose to strip the skin off living animals.....Even the circus, a place for innocent entertainment, has a bizarre backdrop of exploitation and cruelty.....For their entire lives, farm animals are contained in severely confined cages or metal crates unable to even turn around, never seeing the sun or breathing fresh air; only the toxic stench of their own excrement. Industrialized farming of today is an exploitation of the innocent. The heartbreaking reality of factory farming is the antithesis of what is projected in countless children's storybooks and toys where we see happy faced farm animals frolicking in sun filled green pastures, well cared for and loved by farmer Brown. Anthropomorphizing animals illustrates to children the similarities between animals and humans with an underlying message encouraging love. The other message given to children is that it is acceptable to exploit and kill those very same creatures. Link

The great visionaries of the last century all realized that the doctrine of "might makes right" is never acceptable. Animals don't have a voice: This holiday season, give them yours. Link