Living Cruelty Free

I received a tip (you know who you are — thanks!) that there is another humane certification around, and it is the “Animal Welfare Approved” seal, and it looks wonderful. If you are a small family farm with high animal care standards, you should definitely check it out and consider signing up for it — the more farms that join it, the easier it will be for cruelty-aware consumers to buy your products. (So far the AWA seal only seems to have a few farms listed, and no eggs/dairy, which I would find really useful.) (Just to be clear about this — I think veganism is the kindest way to live, but if you’re going to eat animal products, I hope you’ll consider supporting farms that let animals live well-cared for, comfortable lives — it’s far kinder than supporting farms that abuse animals the way factory farms do.)

Animal Welfare Approved Farms:

Beef:

Cates Family Farm

Drakes Bay Family Farms

Pigs:

Cane Creek Farm

MAE Farm

Parker Farms

Willow Creek Farms

Poultry:

Good Shepherd Turkey Ranch (Turkeys)

Whitmore Farms (Turkeys and Dual Purpose Chickens)

Meat Companies:

Pork:

Niman Ranch

Williams Pork

Turkeys:

Heritage Foods USA

Restaurants: (When dining at these locations, you are welcome to ask which of the selections are Animal Welfare Approved. Encourage them to carry only Animal Welfare Approved products.)

Blue Hill Restaurant (NY, NY)

Blue Hill at Stone Barns (Pocantico Hills, NY)

According to its website, the Animal Welfare Approved seal is run by the Animal Welfare Institute. The AWI’s standards “prohibit cruel conditions and practices that other labels allow,” and are “reviewed by veterinarians, farmers, and scientific experts in animal behavior and rooted in the Animal Welfare Institute’s 55-year track record of reducing the pain inflicted on animals.” The AWA seal is only open to family farms, since the AWI maintains that “families who own, labor on, and earn a meaningful livelihood from their farms have a true commitment and connection to their animals,” and the Animal Welfare Approved organization is nonprofit, has no fees or royalties for participating, and provides advisors and auditors to farms free of charge.

A number of people, including Bill Niman, of Niman Ranch, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Willie Nelson, endorse the Animal Welfare Approved seal.

“We demand the ultimate sacrifice of animals raised for food. Humans owe them a humane and dignified existence in return. The Animal Welfare Institute is setting the gold standard for how farm animals should be taken care of. I’ve worked closely with them for years and have seen their independence and deep commitment to humane animal farming. How these animals live affects us all because good animal husbandry provides wholesome food and protects our air, water, and landscapes.”

- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The Animal Welfare Approved seal has a number of stringent requirements that many other humane farming seals do not require. It prohibits different standards of care being applied to different groups of animals on one farm, docking pigs’ tails, debeaking egg-laying hens, confining sows in crates, and making animals live above pools of their own waste. It requires that farms it certifies have only breeds of animals that are selected for good resilience and genetic soundness, that sows be provided with nesting materials, and that animals have actual outdoor access and natural daylight. (It also has a nice pictorial comparison of caged, cage-free, and free-range hens, and a nice pictorial comparison of crated, crate-free, and free-range gestating sows.)

That all sounds great, right? Willie Nelson is a well-known animal rights supporter who has spoken against against dog-fighting and worked to close horse slaughterhouses in Texas, and don’t those stringent animal welfare requirements look fantastic? But the part of the AWA program that touched me was that the AWA regulations on caring for chickens recommend Great Pyrenees dogs as protectors of chickens from wild animals. I LOVE Great Pyrenees — they are one of the most gentle-tempered breeds I’ve ever met (yet very fierce to predators — they were bred to be gentle to sheep yet fight off wolves) — and I completely support any organization that recommends Great Pyrenees as guard dogs. (For those of you who like both cats and dogs, Great Pyrenees are also one of the few breeds that are known for not just tolerating, but liking cats. Since I like both cats and dogs, that is really appealing to me. I would buy/rescue a Great Pyrenees if I could afford to keep a huge (100 lb on average) dog, and had a huge property to let it run around on.) Also I think Great Pyrenees as guard dogs are much kinder to wild animals than traps, electric fences, etc.

Here are all the Animal Welfare Approved standards (don’t read them if you don’t like to read about animals being slaughtered) (if you are knowledgeable about farm animal conditions and care about animal welfare, could you read these and tell me what you think of them? Do you think they’re stringent enough? Pearl — I seem to remember your mentioning the AWA seal before in your comments — what are your thoughts on it?)

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Beef Cattle and Calves^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Chickens^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Dairy Cattle and Calves^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Ducks^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Geese^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Pigs^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Rabbits^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Sheep^©

 

Animal Welfare Approved Standards for Turkeys^©

Um, this gel really didn’t work for me. It didn’t overload my hair or make it stiff or producty-feeling, but it didn’t hold it in place either. It seemed a lot like straight aloe vera gel to me — maybe it provided slightly more hold than that, but not much. It did make my hair a little more silky and less fly-away/frizzy, but not enough to make me keep it — and I’m afraid it made my hair a little more limp than usual as well, which I really didn’t like. My hair needs a little more hold, basically, and I get much, much better results with Paul Mitchell super clean spray. Though I would like to find a cruelty-free gel that provides hold and doesn’t make my hair look greasy or limp. (Just in case you wonder about this sort of thing, Aubrey Organics is the trifecta — animal-testing-free, vegan, and organic.)

Aubrey Organics B5 Design Gel (8 oz) is available for $10.98 from the Aubrey Organics online store, or Whole Foods/your local natural store.

INGREDIENTS: Deionized Water, Organic Aloe Vera, Panthenol (Vitamin B-5), Organic Gum Arabic, Tragacanth Gum, Organic Rosa Mosqueta® Rose Hip Seed Oil, Inositol, Sulfur-Containing Amino Acids (Methionine and Cysteine), Horse Chestnut Extract, Horsetail Extract, Coltsfoot Extract, Nettle Extract, Linoleic Acid (Vitamin F), Biotin, Aubrey’s Preservative (Citrus Seed Extract, Vitamins A, C and E), Organic Balsam Oil, Organic Orange Oil.

So, the last post I made (a week ago? My I’ve been lax about posting lately) mentioned an animal called a jerboa. I was initially curious as to what a jerboa was, but then I completely forgot about it. But then Cute Overload ran a picture of a jerboa, and it is really cute:

(Apparently Cute Overload obtained the photograph from an article in the Daily Mail, and you can even watch a video of it there.)

I was saddened to learn that the number of animals used in (inhumane) animal experiments in the European Union increased by 3.2% between 2002 and 2005 — that’s an increase of 339,279 animals. France leads the European countries in number of (inhumane) experiments at 2.2 billion animals used in 2005 (though that’s apparently down 40% from France’s 1990 number, which is a very good thing). Austria wins the most humane European Union member country title with only 167 animals used in any experiments in 2005 — apparently Austria has banned cosmetic animal testing entirely, and has a strong commitment to decreasing medical animal testing — Austria has even instituted some sort of governmental/legal commitment to promote the development of alternative methods in scientific research.

Overall, 12.1 million animals died in laboratory experiments in the European Union in 2005. As you can see in the chart (sorry it’s so small — you’ll have to click on it to read it — the wordpress photo editor isn’t working today apparently) — rodents and rabbits made up 78% of the total, with mice being the most commonly used rodent (53%) followed by rats at 19%. The second most used group was cold-blooded animals (which surprised me — I didn’t realize that many reptiles were tortured in experiments) — at 15%. The third biggest group of animals was birds at 5% of the total (birds?!). Horses/donkeys/pigs/goats/sheep/cattle made up 1.1% of the total. Non-human primates made up 0.1% of the total. No great apes were used in any experiments (yay!). Other animals that were used were: hamsters, ferrets, gerbils, old world jerboas, chinchillas, beavers, ground squirrels, aremenio, foxes, badgers, seals, otters, fitchew, boars, bats and shrews, llamas, moles, European bison and red deer, coturnix japonica and bob-white quail, poultry species, zebra finches, canaries, parakeets, parrots, and farmed avian species.

Most of these animals — 60% — were used in experiments that will eventually help human medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and “fundamental biology” studies. 15.3% were used in production and quality control of products and devices for human medicine, veterinary medicine, and dentistry. 8% were used for toxicological and safety evaluations. 5.5% were used for testing cosmetics and toiletries.

I’m not going to argue against any of these inhumane experiments, much as I dislike them, because most of them will save human lives — other than to say that I hope they will save human lives and not be wasted, and I hope scientists are strenuously looking for other ways to perform these experiments using in vitro techniques instead of live animals. (Except for the 5.5% of the animals that were used for testing cosmetics or toiletries — I think those are awful, and I’m glad they will be stopped when the ban on animal testing goes into effect in 2013.)

But what really bugs me is the language of this report.  I’ve tried to replicate the exact language as it appeared in the report in my descriptions above — no animals were “hurt” or “killed” they were instead “used,” and no acknowledgment of their sacrifice is made.  (I’d like to apologize to the writers of this report for attacking their language — I suspect the writers were forced to use this kind of language to be taken seriously in the scientific community — and to be fair I’d like to state for the record that I think this is a beautifully written report that is far, far easier to read than many of the animal testing things I’ve read lately, and it’s a great resource for people who are against animal testing.)

But anyway, these 12.1 million animals (unwillingly) sacrificed their well-being and lives for the betterment of (human) science. Yet no humans have thanked them, or acknowledged the suffering they go through to make our lives better. This really makes me feel like we’re really ungrateful as a society. I wish we had views towards animals more like what I imagine some Native American cultures have — at least, I’ve heard some Native American cultures support hunting and eating animals, but they then thank the animals for their sacrifice and express gratitude to the animals for providing them with sustenance (just to be clear, I think veganism would be even better, but I do prefer gratitude to no gratitude). I found at least one Cherokee legend that describes this sort of attitude on this firstpeople.us website. Isn’t that a much more graceful way to live? Rather than “using” animals and pretending no sacrifice was involved?

Usually I really like Paul Mitchell products — Paul Mitchell has a great philosophy — it’s animal-testing-free and slightly environmentally friendly — and most Paul Mitchell products are a step up from drugstore brands (Paul Mitchell products are neither organic nor vegan/vegetarian according to their website, though I’ve read a few blogs that suggest that Paul Mitchell products are vegan/vegetarian — if you have any information on this, could you please drop me a line?)

However, I really didn’t like this conditioner. I’ve never actually experienced noticeable “product buildup” before — but then I tried this conditioner, and it left actual gunk on my hair that I could feel. Eeeeew. The problem may have been that I didn’t use the conditioner with the matching Color Protect Daily shampoo though — it may work better with that — I used it instead with my current favorite shampoo, which is Paul Mitchell Super Skinny smoothing shampoo. But I doubt the shampoo is really to blame — I think product buildup of that magnitude is probably the fault of a bad conditioner.

Oddly enough, the Color Care Conditioner’s ranking on MakeupAlley is as high as 3.1/5 stars (out of 25 reviews) — so I’d guess a lot of people like this shampoo a lot more than I do. I suppose it must work for some types of hair. (Though there was one reviewer who described it as leaving a residue on her hair, so there’s more than one of us who had product build-up issues from this conditioner . . . )

Paul Mitchell Color Protect Daily Conditioner (16.9 oz) is available at Amazon for $14.04 (as a set of 2 bottles — $28 total) — and many local salons.

Ingredients:

Water (Aqua), Cetyl Alcohol, Dicetyldimonium Chloride, Cetrimonium Chloride, Polyquaterium-37, Propylene Glycol Dicaprylate/Dicaprate, PPG-1 Trideceth-6, Hydrolyed Wheat Protein, Helianthus Annus (Sunflower) Extract, Dimethicone Hydroxypropyl Copolyol/Hedychium Coronarium (White Ginger)/PEG-12 Dimethicone, Cocodimonium Hydroxypropyl Hydrolyed Wheat Protein, Dimethicone Bisamino Hydroxypropyl Copolyol/Algae/Aloe Barbadensis Leaf/Anthemis Nobilis (Chamomile)/Lawsonia Inermis (Henna)/Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba)/Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary)/PEG-12 Dimethicone, Wheat Amino Acid, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Hydroxypropyl Polysiloxane, Hydrolyzed Wheat Starch, Pathenol, Fragrance(Parfum), DMDM Hydantoin, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate

I was reading this interesting article about animal testing alternatives, and I stumbled upon this interesting project called “Sens-it-iv” — Sens-it-iv is a project run by a group of 28 industry organizations, university/research institutes, and other organizations who are working together to try to develop non-animal-using tests (using in vitro methods) to determine whether new chemicals might cause allergic reactions. So people with allergies can buy hypoallergenic products that did not cause any pain and suffering to rabbits and mice. Isn’t that a great idea? If I did have allergies to anything, I certainly wouldn’t want to buy hypoallergenic stuff that I knew had been tested on animals. Yuck.

Sens-it-iv Mission Statement

There are not yet any “in vitro” tests or test strategies available to test chemical compounds on their potential to induce allergies.

The aim of the Sens-it-iv project is to develop “in vitro” alternatives to animal tests currently used for the risk assessment of potential skin or lung sensitizers.

Interestingly enough, the Sens-it-iv webpage explains that it’s a little tricky to create in vitro alternatives that test allergic reactions. It’s not just find a human-skin-equivalent and run tests on it — allergic reactions involve an allergen hitting the human-skin-equivalent or lung-skin-equivalent (most allergic reactions occur on the skin or in the lungs, apparently), “sensitizing” the skin- or lung-equivalent, and then another allergen coming back and causing the skin- or lung-equivalent to launch into a full allergic reaction. So the synthetic skin or lungs has to pretty sophisticated — more sophisticated than your basic skin-equivalent like those created by MatTek or SkinEthic. Scientists have to be pretty innovative to develop in vitro alternatives that mimic that sort of complexity.

According to its publishable summary, Sens-it-iv has already had some success in its mission to find in vitro alternatives to replace animals in immune response experiments. Unfortunately, the summary is written a little above my level of understanding, and all I can say for sure is that Sens-it-iv has had “good progress” with trying to create a skin-equivalent that will mimic an allergic response, and it is in the process of developing T-cell equivalents — T-cells are key allergic response cells in some tissues, so creating synthetic T-cells would be hugely useful to the study of allergic reactions. (Sens-it-iv has also done some other scientific stuff that sounds great — be sure to read the publishable summary if you’re interested.)

I’m making a wild guess here that the main reason Sens-it-iv exists is because of the upcoming ban of animal-testing on any cosmetics products in Europe. The ban on testing finished products already went into effect in 2004 (since most companies don’t test finished products on animals, it wasn’t really a big deal, and that’s why there was not much fuss made over it at the time), but the ban on testing ingredients goes into effect in 2009, and this has a lot of cosmetics companies worried (the ban has a three loopholes that will not be closed until 2013, which is why I state that the Ban will go into effect in 2013). I assume various European cosmetics companies will want to be able to market their products as hypoallergenic, which is why they are banding together to discover in vitro alternatives to animal testing for hypoallergenicity. I think this is a great illustration of how well the ban is working — it’s creating innovation by incentivizing scientists to come up with scientific breakthroughs! This is overall “better science” the way Carol Howard describes “better science” in her article on the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing website — once scientists have developed in vitro allergenic equivalents, think how useful those will be! I suspect that nowadays scientists have to fill out a lot of forms to obtain 30 rabbits to cause allergic reactions in their lungs on on their skin, then they have to kill and autopsy the rabbits, and a month later, they have 30 measly data points (and they have thirty dead rabbits on their conscience as well). But if they instead have allergic-response-equivalents instead of live rabbits, they can run allergic-response tests 100 times a day (the way one of the scientists involved with the joint-equivalent described how they went from testing maybe 30 loads on animal-joints in a month to testing 100 different loads on a joint-equivalent in a day). Overall, it’s definitely better science!

I am so glad something like Sens-it-iv exists — I can only hope it is successful!

Well this is a little belated, but I thought I’d wrap up everything I wrote about in November:

There were several product reviews:

• Dermalogica Multi-Active Toner

• Dermalogica Oil Control Lotion

• Tom’s of Maine Sensitive Toothpaste

• Alba Unpetroleum Multi-Purpose Jelly

• Pureology Super Straight Shampoo

• Pureology Super Straight Conditioner

Some News About Animal Testing Alternatives:

• 50 Million Euros ($78 million) To Go To Study Animal-Testing-Alternatives in Toxicogenomics in the Netherlands

• A Breakthrough in Alternative Testing Methods: Using in Vitro Methods to Create Faux-Joint-Tissue

• The EU Will End the Use of Primates in Medical Research

Some information on humane farming:

• Cornucopia.org can help you choose dairy products to buy

• Fias Co Farm: A Truly Humane Farm

And a post on things I Wish I Could Buy Cruelty-Free, and a Happy Thanksgiving message. Also, as of today, Alba Botanica, Method, and the Body Shop are the most popular cruelty-free brands, while Nature’s Gate, Tom’s of Maine, Jason Natural Cosmetics, Avalon Organics, Aubrey Organics, Dr. Bronners, and Kiss My Face rank lower in popularity, and no one has voted for any other cruelty-free brands . . .