The work of a graphic designer usually implies the abstraction of the main feature of an idea and communicate it in a clear way. Under my view, this poster summs up very well the concept of "cow" that is mainstrem in our society: cows are bottles of milk with udders/tits.

The following example of a speciesist advertisement is quite interesting in my opinion. Not only does it reflect the popular employment of a false distinction "animal / person" or "animal / human", but it also shows explicitly the pejorative use this distinction usually hides, and that we hear very often: "Only animals do x" (being "x" something bad). Futhermore, if we visit the website, we will find the slogan "Be a person", that comes to reinforce, in case it wasn't clear enough, that one thing are "persons" and another "animals", and that being a "person" is something necessarily good [1].

Office and Attach

Federico García Lorca. Poeta en Nueva York.


Beneath all the statistics
there is a drop of duck’s blood.
Beneath all the columns
there is a drop of sailor’s blood.
Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood;
a river that goes singing,
past the bedrooms of the suburbs,
and the river is silver, cement, or wind
in the lying daybreak of New York.
The mountains exist, I know that.
And the lenses ground for wisdom,
I know that.  But I have not come to see the sky,
the blood that sweeps the machines to the waterfalls,
and the spirit on the cobra’s tongue.
Every day they kill in New York
ducks, four million,
pigs, five million,
pigeons, two thousand, for the enjoyment of dying men,
cows, one million,
lambs, one million,
roosters, two million,
who turn the sky to small splinters.
You may as well sob filing a razor blade
or assassinate dogs in the hallucinated foxhunts,
as try to stop in the dawnlight
the endless trains carrying milk,
the endless trains carrying blood,
and the trains carrying roses in chains
for those in the field of perfume.
The ducks and the pigeons
and the hogs and the lambs
lay their drops of blood down
underneath all the statistics;
and the terrible bawling of the packed-in cattle
fills the valley with suffering
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
I attack all those persons
who know nothing of the other half,
the half who cannot be saved,
who raise their cement mountains,
in which the hearts of the small
animals no one thinks of are beating,
and from which we will all fall
during the final holiday of the drills.
I spit in your face.
The other half hears me,
as they go on eating, urinating, flying in their purity
like the children of janitors
who carry delicate sticks
to the holes where the antennas
of the insects are rusting.
This is not hell, it is a street.
This is not death, it is a fruit-stand.
There is a whole world of crushed rivers and unachievable distances
in the paw of a cat crushed by a car,
and I hear the song of the worm
in the heart of so many girls.
Rust, rotting, trembling earth.
And you are earth, swimming through the figures of the office.
What shall I do, set my landscapes in order?
Set in place the lovers who will afterwards be photographs,
Who will be bits of wood and mouthfuls of blood?
No, I won’t; I attack,
I attack the conspiring
of these empty offices
that will not broadcast the sufferings,
that rub out the plans of the forest,
and I offer myself to be eaten by the packed-up cattle
when their mooing fills the valley
where the Hudson is getting drunk on its oil.
 

Playmobils kit to create your own butchers shop

In case you want to show your son/daughter the role non-human animals play -unfortunatelly- in our societies, or to allow them to play creating their own butchers shop, take a look at Playmobils suggestions.

RSPCA Freedom Food is the label that appears over the corpses of the non human animals who were bred, deprived of freedom and finally killed for human animal consumption according to RSPCA guidelines.

They have registered the brand "Freedom food" and have created a logotype with the F of Freedom and now charge every direct exploitator who wants the desired logotype of "freedom" in his/her trays of flesh, milk, yoghourt, eggs or fish. That brand has the desired function of calming consumer consciousness, assuring in this way the demmand of that kind of "products" and even increasing it. That logotype brings benefits to non human animal exploitation and RSPCA wants to take part of it as the manager of the brand, in concrete 0,3% of every product plus a daily tax of 510 euros per inspection.

Rosa Parks has died at the age of 92 in Detroit - Michigan. Maybe her name is not well known for many, but her life implied a change in the lives of uncountable people that probably don't remember her now. My interest in remembering this afroamerican woman [1] is not because she was a vegetarian, but because of the decission she took one day on December 1955 and from which an important group of afroamericans has benefited since then.

A mother, her son and the father

In case we haven't realized what leather shoes imply for cows, a shoe shop has summed up this domination relationship for us.

Same as other-than-human animals, humans animals are also made of meat, meat, blood and bones. Our bodies are also edible. Although we don't like to think in this possibility: to be eaten. We have interest in living and enjoy our lives, in avoiding suffering and death. Non-human animals too.
Don't consume animal products: go vegan.

When I was just a kid, I use to spend my summer holidays in a village having fun with my friends. I lived in a house a few meters from the stable that shows this photo. Inside this, some cows spent all of their nights and some of their days. They were exploited and deprived of freedom in order someone else obtained milk from them. While I was playing, they were being enslaved a few meter away.

When they didn't produce enough milk, they became more profitable as flesh and were killed as their sons/daughters were already killed before.

It's not about they should have spend more time outside the stable.. it's about being fair and refuse to regard them as our resources or as means for our ends.. it's about respect them as our equals.

It's time to abolish slavery.. reject the consumption of non-human animal products (dairy, flesh, eggs..): go vegan.

We have been eating other-than-human animal corpses since we were babies, even before we knew who/what were we eating. It's now time to rethink about the space non-human animals occupy in our head / in our conceptions and to reject anthropocentrism / speciesism.

When I was in Cangas de Onis (Asturias-Spain), I had the opportunity to videotape the activity of the birds that were being sold at the Sunday market. During the time I spent there, I was able to see how docens of duck, hens and turkeys where bought and sold. Defenceless beings subjected to our demand and to a slave trade. For a few euros, they were caught by their legs and forcibly introduced in a box, remaining this way in order to arrive packed to their destiny.

These are the family members of the lamb who was kidnapped, murdered and carved some weeks ago to be served as dinner for my family. They celebrated his death, same as other human animal families do when they meet together.. celebrations at the expense of others.

Maybe he wasn't a member of my biological family, not even of my Homo sapiens species, he wasn't a human as 'we' are and he wasn't able to write nor read as you and me.. but, despite these differences, he was our equal. He was capable of feeling, to experience sensations, to suffer and enjoy, and surely, he wanted to live and enjoy his life as we all want to do as well.